Gates of Hell

by Daniel Gibbs

  “I’ve got watch in an hour. I’ll do my part afterward.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Godspeed, Oxford out.”

  It’s going to be a long night, Taylor thought as he turned off the computer, shivering at the thought that there was a traitor in their midst.

  Ruth took another step, each one more painful than the last. Three hours of this mountain-hiking crap is taking its toll. I could ask MacDonald for a break… I’d rather eat dirt. He’s not getting a whiff of weakness out of me. Grimacing, she could make out Ahmad about twenty meters ahead of her in the dense undergrowth. To her surprise, Susanna had not only kept up but seemed to enjoy the hike.

  “Hold,” MacDonald’s voice rasped through the commlink, quiet and muffled. “Coming to a clearing and I have eyes on enemy installation. Form up on me.”

  “Acknowledged,” Ruth said, picking up her pace. Crossing a rise in the path, she looked down toward the rest of the team. The clearing he’d mentioned was visible before her. She saw a tall plasticrete wall with guard towers ringing it. Taking care to stay hidden and within the protective brush, ten minutes later, she plopped down next to the rest of the team, who’d taken up positions lining the woods.

  “What’s the situation, Master Chief?” Ruth asked.

  “Situation is, we’re—” MacDonald began, then glanced at Susanna. “—in a mess.”

  “The base looks fortified.”

  “It’s beyond fortified. They’ve got interlocking guard towers, kill zones, and electronic security measures.”

  “They allow Amish in to perform day laborer tasks,” Susanna said.

  MacDonald, Ruth, and Harrell all turned and stared at her.

  “Think we could pass for Amish?” Harrell asked to guffaws from the rest of the team.

  “I’m sorry, Senior Chief, I don’t think so. You don’t have the proper beard.”

  “Hey, I’ve been telling you for years, Master Chief, you ought to let me grow my beard out to at least tier-one status,” Harrell cracked, and the rest of the team replied with muffled laughter.

  “There’s got to be a way in there,” MacDonald finally said after a good thirty seconds of silence.

  Ruth used the optics in her helmet to zoom in on the guard towers. “Each one of these things has a searchlight and a mounted heavy weapon.”

  Ahmad cleared his throat. “I noticed that too, LT.”

  “I’d wager if we could silently take out two of the towers at once, scaling the wall would be simple.”

  “A direct assault?” MacDonald asked incredulously. “Do you know anything about tactics, LT? Anything at all? We’d get cut to ribbons with the troop strength they have in there, even if we did get over the wall.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “We’re going to sit tight for a few hours, see what they do after dark, then find a place to hole up and let the professionals do their jobs. Clear?”

  “As a bell, Master Chief.”

  “Good. Meissner… start scoping targets. I want a full map of this place with tangos marked.”

  “Aye aye, Master Chief.”

  Ruth settled back in and said little for the next two hours. It’s almost like being on the bridge for a shift where nothing happens. The few times a conversation broke out, MacDonald quickly shut it down, demanding comms silence. As darkness descended across the landscape, she watched a beautiful sunset that left the sky a green hue.

  “Master Chief, I see the towers changing the guard,” Harrell said, his voice cutting into Ruth’s thoughts. “Right on time, as always.”

  Ruth snickered. “Leaguers are good for that.”

  “We’ll keep recording for thirty mikes. Then back to the barn we found earlier… Contact the Lion of Judah, get some shut-eye, and figure out our next move.”

  Ruth thought about replying but didn’t. Staring at the League base through night vision enhanced optics in her helmet, she wondered how Susanna was holding up. From outward appearances, while her dress was ruffled and stained with dirt, her face was chipper, and she appeared, if not happy, resolute. I’ve kind of taken her under my wing. Not sure how much good it will do. We’re going to need a miracle to survive this.

  “Conn, communications,” Taylor said, causing David’s head to snap around from the conversation he had been having with Aibek. “I’ve got flash traffic from the commando team, sir. They have five minutes of transmission time.”

  “On my viewer, Lieutenant,” David quickly commanded.

  MacDonald’s unsmiling face appeared, causing David to wonder if he ever showed emotion beyond annoyance. “Colonel Cohen, can you hear me?”

  “Good copy, Alpha leader,” David replied with a smile. It did not affect the Master Chief.

  “Hey, Rostami, you did something right for once,” MacDonald said to someone off-screen. “We haven’t found the enemy control center yet, sir.”

  “Any progress at all?”

  “We’re very close to the main League military installation on this planet. Found a hiding place for this evening, and we’re going to work through the information we gathered tonight. I thought about going in, but the team has been on the move for forty-eight hours and needs a break.”

  “Understood, Master Chief,” David began. “Got a little bit of good news for you.”

  “You remotely shut down the League defense net?”

  “Not quite. But the contractors are putting together a few stealth drones with air to ground missiles on them. You’ll have limited indirect fire support in a day or so.”

  MacDonald raised an eyebrow. “I see. How are you going to insert it?”

  “Another stealth craft, but from well outside the detection range previously established by your shoot down.”

  “Makes sense. Anything else?”

  “Our primary mission continues. Until we clean up the raids on our supply lines, I can’t offer direct support. Don’t worry, Master Chief. The moment we do, the Lion is on the way.”

  “Don’t wait too long, or you won’t have any Leaguers left to fight,” MacDonald said, with what hit David as false bravado.

  “Hoorah, Master Chief. We’ll burst transmit the access codes to the drones once they’re on station. Good luck and Godspeed.”

  “Same to you, Colonel. MacDonald out.”

  The screen blinked off, and David glanced at Aibek. “I don’t like leaving them there.”

  “I cannot say I like it any more than you do, sir. Lieutenant Goldberg has grown on me during my time here.”

  “She has a great head on her shoulders. Between her and the commandos, they’ll get out of there.” Aibek remained silent and stared at the monitors, leaving David to his thoughts. A frown spread across his face as he considered the predicament the team was in. I’ve got to sort out this problem and get there to help because I don’t believe they’ll survive without it… and I’m not losing another friend on my watch.

  15

  Later in the evening, the commandos made a small dinner of standard CDF ready-to-eat meal rations, from which everyone contributed something to Susanna. Afterward, the team had melted away, some to stand watch, while others talked amongst themselves. Ruth sat quietly, staring out of a hole in the roof toward the night sky, filled with emotional memories of the past.

  “Ruth?” Susanna said, after a long period of silence.

  “Yes?” Ruth replied, glancing down to see her crouched nearby.

  “Could we talk? No one else seems to want me around.”

  Ruth forced a smile. “They’re boys. Boys don’t like the girls invading their clubhouse. Don’t mind them.”

  “Something about they can’t use proper language for Leaguers when I’m around because you asked them not to swear.”

  “Marines, commandos—heck, most soldiers period—swear every other word. Not that I’m an angel—I swear too.”

  “My father would have caned me for the language Master Chief MacDonald uses,” Susanna said with a bright grin. “I like him.”


  “You do?”

  “Yes, he’s so different. All of you are so different. I’ve never seen people behave as you do before.”

  “Great,” Ruth said with a laugh. “We’re not the right role models for a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  “What’s a role model?”

  “Someone you aspire to be like, that’s a positive influence or a negative one.”

  “Being like you when I grow up wouldn’t be that bad, would it? You’re a respected and powerful warrior. You defend the weak and hold back evil.”

  “I suppose when you put it like that, it does sound kind of nice,” Ruth admitted. “Do you have goals for the future?”

  “We’re a straightforward people. The goal is to glorify God through our actions, be good stewards of the land, and raise strong families. I’ll hopefully find a husband soon, and we can start our own farm and journey. You have no idea how in debt to you I am for saving me. If you hadn’t, I’d never be able to have a family.”

  “Why?” Ruth asked as she frowned.

  “Because if I wasn’t a virgin, I don’t know if anyone would want me.”

  “You’re a lot more than just a virgin, Susanna,” Ruth retorted. “You’re smart, brave, and while we’re on the subject, not bad-looking either. It comes in handy, trust me. I don’t have that advantage. I’m very plain.”

  “In our culture, purity is sacred.”

  “So? It is in mine too. Jews are supposed to avoid those sorts of activities before marriage.”

  “Have you?”

  Ruth’s face blanched. “We’re not discussing that.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have anyone to talk to… no sisters. Only five brothers.”

  “It’s okay; I’m very private. I don’t tend to let people get close to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everyone I get close to ends up dying,” Ruth admitted. Why am I opening up to this girl? She doesn’t need my baggage.

  “Is this why you hate the League?”

  “I don’t hate them… I fight them.”

  “Ruth, the reason I was so scared of you at first, back in my family’s barn, is you looked like you enjoyed killing those two men.”

  Is it that obvious? “I,” Ruth began to say, her voice trailing off. “I don’t know anymore. Yeah, maybe I did,” she continued, silent for a few moments before her voice returned. “They took everything from me. My family, our home, our planet. Everything I had, they destroyed it.”

  “You survived, though.”

  Ruth shook her head. “My body and mind survived. Part of my soul died the day they killed my parents… as we fought them and watched the atrocities they committed, more of it died every day.” As she talked, her mind drifted back to a day, several weeks after she first joined a resistance cell.

  The cells were by their very nature, disjointed. This was done to prevent one unit from giving away the others if they were captured; something that happened far too often for comfort. They were based out of an abandoned factory and lived in squalor in a sub-basement. Ruth was cleaning an old hunting rifle that was her weapon, along with her parents’ old pistol.

  “You sure know how to clean guns, Ruthie,” Greg, a young man who was just over twenty years old, commented toward her.

  “I prefer using them on Leaguers,” Ruth replied, venom dripping from her voice.

  “We get to do that tomorrow.”

  “The thought of shooting our no-good collaborating mayor in the head keeps me going.”

  Another young woman who, unlike Ruth and Greg, shared ancestry with the Asian-Pacific area of Earth, looked over. “That’s pretty cold, even for you.”

  “What’s so cold about it exactly?” Ruth said, putting down the rifle and glancing up. “The jerk makes accommodation after accommodation with the Leaguers. Now he’s allowing them to put little tags on people so the patrols can tell our religion at a glance. I guess that’ll make it easier to round up Jews on Monday, Muslims on Tuesday, and Christians on Thursday.”

  “Hey, I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve what’s coming his way. I’m just saying maybe we shouldn’t be gleeful about it.”

  “Don’t start with me, Judith,” Ruth snapped.

  “Enough, you two,” Greg interjected, his broad shoulders flexing as he leaned his head back and stretched. “The enemy is out there, not in here. Save it for the Leaguers we’ll face.”

  Ruth finished cleaning the rifle in silence, then cleaned a pistol and tucked it into her belt. Dinner was whatever canned goods they could scrounge up; generally, items they would have thought not fit for human consumption six months prior. Now, though, as long as it didn’t have maggots in it, they’d eat it and thank God for the luxury of a hot can of soup when it showed up. She rarely interacted with the rest of them, choosing to focus solely on the task at hand, which in her mind was killing Leaguers.

  The next day, after barely sleeping, they took positions three hours ahead of time, warned by a mole in the local government what route the mayor and his convoy would be taking. Freiderwelt was a remote planet that lacked the interlocking satellite coverage required for autonomous helicars, so people used self-driving electric vehicles on paved roads. Primitive by the rest of the galaxy’s standards, but it’s our home.

  From the number of people involved, Ruth suspected that there was some method by which the resistance leadership knew where the cells were and who was in them, because there were fighters present she’d never seen before. Sighting down the scope of the hunting rifle, she aimed at the lead vehicle. As they’d practiced, a bomb planted under the road went off as it passed over top, manually detonated to avoid transmission jammers employed by the League protective forces.

  The explosion was colossal; a fireball erupted from the large passenger car, blowing its hood off and lifting it into the air. The next vehicle behind it slammed into its back bumper at fifty kilometers an hour, causing a chain reaction with the rest of the convoy. Better trained soldiers might’ve realized they’d do better inside of an armored and bulletproof vehicle, but Leaguers aren’t well trained. “Hold fire,” a voice Ruth didn’t recognize rasped from her commlink. “Wait for them to get out.”

  Sure enough, one of the car doors swung open, and a League soldier climbed out; when he didn’t take fire, the rest of them began to get out as well. Ruth thought she could make out talking between the soldiers, commenting that it was just a random bombing. We’ll be disabusing them of that notion momentarily, she thought with a great deal of satisfaction. “Weapons free,” the voice announced. Ruth had a Leaguer in the center of her scope the entire time, finger on the trigger guard. The moment she heard the command, her finger moved to the trigger and squeezed. The soldier collapsed, bright red blood pouring down his uniform.

  Instantly, other shots rang out. The Leaguers brought up their weapons and fired back wildly; the resistance took care to take out the leaders first in the hopes whoever was left wouldn’t know how to track snipers. Ruth sighted down on another man; this one older and moving as if he’d done this sort of thing before. “Goodbye,” she whispered, squeezing the trigger. He too collapsed, still twitching, but mortally wounded.

  “Close in, close in!” Greg said into the comm, causing Ruth to stand, slinging the hunting rifle over her shoulder quickly, and draw her sidearm. Holding the weapon in her hand, she felt like the hand of God, reaching out to slay those that had killed her family. She raced to the side of the roof she was perched on and bounded down the ladder.

  Ruth turned the corner to see several of her fellow resistance members crouched behind cover, exchanging fire with a dwindling number of enemy troops. She slid in behind a trash can, took stock of the situation, and rose, aiming her pistol toward the enemy. An unlucky soldier stood up at the same time; she pumped four rounds into his center mass, sending him flying backward.

  The gunfire slackened, then ceased. “Move in!” the unfamiliar male voice said into her commlink, and several others, as a group of them
stood up at the same time and quickly walked toward the car that held the mayor. Ruth was the first one there, aiming her weapon into the open door. Inside, she saw a balding Caucasian man in a suit, cowering on the floorboard.

  “Please, don’t kill me!” the mayor whined, hands over his head.

  “Get out,” Ruth barked.

  The man scrambled around, crawling out of the vehicle, clearly overcome with fear.

  Ruth leveled her pistol at his head, finger on the trigger. “By order of the Freiderwelt resistance, for crimes against the Terran Coalition and humanity, you are sentenced to death,” she stated coldly.

  “What? I’ve tried to stop the League from killing, I’ve tried to save as many as I could!” he stammered, wildly gesturing with his hands. “If we didn’t at least fake cooperating with them, they’d kill us all. My family, everyone. I can’t let them kill my family,” he said, words breaking way to sobs.

  An older man wearing a Terran Coalition Marine Corps uniform appeared at her side. “Coward,” he said toward the mayor. Ruth recognized the voice as the unfamiliar one on the commlink. “What’s your name?” he said toward her.

  “Ruth. Ruth Goldberg.”

  “How’d you come to join our resistance?”

  “Leaguers killed my parents in cold blood, in our home. I killed them, and one of your cells found me on the street.”

  “Then, by all means, execute this pathetic excuse of a man. You’ve earned it,” the man said, his tone icy.

  Ruth aimed the pistol directly between the mayor’s eyes. Holding it steady, she hesitated. Do I really want to do this?

  “Shoot him already,” the Marine said.

  “He’s unarmed,” she finally said.

  “Your point?”

  “I thought we didn’t shoot unarmed people,” Ruth protested.

  The man raised his weapon and fired a burst into the mayor’s chest. He fell backward, red stains spreading across his shirt. It only took a few moments as Ruth looked on for his eyes to glaze over and his breathing to stop.