Hell Heart

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “Madre de Dios,” Consuela muttered, crossing herself. She knew she had to find José and tell him of this . . . thing. But she was hypnotized by the spectacle of unbridled crystal growth and the way the sharp-edged beast thrashed and rolled on the ground, trying to crush and destroy what had once been parts of itself. What remained of the creature’s once-symmetrical body sickened her with its ugly pseudolife.

  And beyond the monster, trapped in a crystal globe, glowed the pinpoint of brilliance in the depths of the pit.

  “El corazón del infierno,” she gasped. “Hell heart!”

  Consuela used the Kalashnikov to push herself to her feet, took one final look at the crater, then limped as quickly as she could into the jungle, more determined than ever to find José Villalobos and tell him of this new and terrible invader.

  7

  * * *

  Report!” Diego Villalobos shouted to his people, not realizing he was still deaf from the concussion of the impact. He could not tell whether the explosion had been a large blast far away or a smaller one nearby. He was even less able to explain the nature of the explosion. But since the Change, there was not a lot he could explain about the universe. He simply accepted what was and did the best job he could.

  “Sergeant Baca?” he called out. From the far side of the clearing, a figure raised a hand in acknowledgment and began the arduous task of regaining command of the confused soldiers. Most of them sat with their heads cradled in their hands, more shaken than he had been. If the guerrillas attacked at this instant, they would find easy pickings.

  At least the Ares assault suit was still upright, although it wasn’t moving. That could mean the explosion had disabled it or that the pilot inside was hurt. Or dead. Diego felt a twinge of guilt as he realized the prospect of Allen’s death brought him more pleasure than pain. It would solve at least one of his problems.

  “Captain Allen,” Diego radioed. Dead air greeted him, so he ripped off his helmet. He checked what remained of his instrumentation and verified that the concussion had been caused by something falling from space. He made a mental note to contact Major D’Arcy once back at San Cristóbal and ask what the Independence, with its top-of-the-line equipment, had detected.

  It was not likely to be anything launched by the guerrillas, but he could not rule out a chunk coming loose from one of the battle stations and crashing to Earth. It might even be some Union missile test gone awry. He would have been the last to know of any launch.

  “That rattled me a little more than I like,” came Allen’s shaky voice. He had opened the Ares assault armor helmet and was gasping in the fetid jungle air. Diego guessed the powered suit had lost some systems, possibly including life support. Without compressors pumping air throughout the Ares, a man could suffocate in a few minutes unless he popped the sealed face protection.

  “How could the concussion disable your suit?” Diego asked. The Ares was tough. Enough firepower to cause failure of its internal systems should have leveled the jungle.

  “Sure wasn’t a grenade. No grenade is that powerful,” Allen said. “I got some anomalous radiation readings as the bogey streaked down. Do you know what it was? The cause of the shock wave?”

  “Can you still uplink?” asked Diego, ignoring the man’s questions. He looked around and saw that his sergeant had finally gotten her soldiers up and moving; the activity was enabling them to shake off the worst of their shock. Perhaps Baca had what it took to be an officer after all. He still had his doubts, but beggars could not be choosers, as his mother had always told him.

  Diego touched the crucifix that hung around his neck at her memory and then turned back to Allen.

  The captain was panting harshly, but the color had returned to his face, and he no longer seemed in danger of suffocating.

  “Sorry, sir, but I’m not getting anything from the Independence,” Allen reported. “I can’t tell if it’s my equipment or theirs, but I’ve got dead silence on all frequencies.”

  “Keep trying,” Diego said shortly.

  As Allen worked, Diego turned away to see to his soldiers’ injuries. Most of the casualties appeared to be minor, although several of his people had been seriously injured in the battle with the Cyclops, and the explosion—whatever it was—had done none of them any good.

  “Sir!” Baca said abruptly. He turned to face her, but she was looking beyond him toward Allen, who was still absorbed in his suit controls. “Captain Allen!”

  Allen looked up, startled.

  “I’d button that thing up fast, sir,” Baca snapped. “The rest of you, don’t go near it.”

  “He can’t close it up. His life support’s out,” Diego said. He stepped away and took a longer look at the once-shiny exterior of the Ares suit—and went cold inside when he saw what Baca already had.

  “Allen!” he bellowed. “Can you shift power to your life support?”

  “I think so, but that’s going to mean no more comm. The battle station’s secure laser link is out. I was just trying the radio—”

  “Seal against atmosphere and use only internal systems,” Diego said. “You’ve got some green gunk all over your left side—and it’s spreading.”

  “What!”

  Allen stood clumsily and swatted at the kelly green splotches creeping up his left arm. His left leg was already a fuzzy mass that undulated like wind through tall grass. The growth must have started slowly and was now accelerating to engulf him.

  “Sir, I think we walked into a trap, one set specially to put the Ares out of action,” Baca said. “The captain triggered the trap by chasing the Cyclops and got sprayed with that gunk. The Zapatistas would think nothing of trading a Neo-Sov mutant for one of our suits.”

  “Get your face covered,” Diego shouted at Allen, wishing he had never set eyes on the man’s face at all. “The goo is spreading.”

  Allen’s face was pale with panic as he whirled around, as if bedeviled by a mosquito just beyond his reach. All his earlier composure was gone—the man looked positively frantic. The gyros in the Ares overcorrected and sent him crashing to the jungle floor. Until the suit recovered, he was pinned down by the gyroscopic action—but at least he had finally gotten his faceplate sealed. Diego wondered if the green fuzz had eaten into vital controller microchips or if some other malfunction had caused the Ares to react so erratically to ordinary movement. His money was on the goo.

  Baca backed away even more, staring with wide eyes at the Ares. “This isn’t good, sir. What is that stuff?”

  “Something toxic as hell,” Diego said. “It’s gnawing away at the metal, but it seems to be leaving the plastic fittings alone. For now.” Louder, he called, “Who’s got a working radio? Nobody? Sergeant, double-time a courier back to the Hydras. Call in airborne extraction. Get something heavy with an isolation cargo hold to remove the captain and his suit. Fast!”

  Diego’s fingers tapped the stock of his Bulldog as he considered whether firing a grenade against the Ares’s goo-covered left flank would be at all useful. His stomach turned as the sludge’s feathery tendrils rose up and wrapped around Captain Allen’s plasma cannon, turning it into Swiss cheese. He doubted they had anything outside the repair depot that could decontaminate the Ares without killing Allen. And as much as the man’s death might benefit Diego personally, Allen was still a Union officer, and the Union did not leave their men behind. He was no José, to turn his back on his loyalties.

  The whir of an antigrav Hydra commanded his attention. Diego got the more seriously wounded soldiers loaded and signaled the virtually inert Ares that help was on the way. The suit nodded its massive head in response. Diego was sure Allen wasn’t happy with the situation, but he would live—assuming they could get him safely out of the suit.

  The Hydra carrying the wounded whirred away, and the other two arrived almost immediately after. Diego climbed in with Baca and the others and smiled grimly. At least now Allen had something to report to his Union bosses, even if it wasn’t likely to be too
complimentary of the MCF.

  * * *

  “That’s the worst four hours I ever spent,” Allen said, wiping rivers of sweat off his forehead with a soggy uniform sleeve. His shirt clung tenaciously to his body as more sweat formed. “I thought I was a goner.”

  Diego had also doubted Allen would survive the trip back to the repair bay. Of the soldiers who had gone into the field, Allen was the only one not sporting some wound, either minor or major, yet he had been in the most danger of dancing with the dead.

  It had taken three of his biotechnicians—fully encased in plastic environment suits that seemed impervious to the bioweapon—and liberal applications of disinfectant to carefully pry the captain out of his suit without coating him in the slime. Those same technicians moved cautiously around the remnants of the Ares, now lying in a jumbled, molten heap in the middle of the room, safely isolated behind plastic.

  “Have they identified the green slime yet?” Diego asked.

  “Your bio team says it’s something new and toxic,” Allen said. “The suit’s got to be decommissioned.”

  “I expected as much,” Diego said glumly.

  “It’s history, a complete loss,” Allen said, and Diego looked at him sharply, reacting to the hint of satisfaction in his voice. Perhaps it was just the man’s relief that he was still alive while his suit was not. Still, it showed an astonishing lack of empathy for his fellow soldiers—six of whom had not survived their encounter with the Cyclops. It was hardly appropriate to gloat over one’s own survival when one’s comrades lay dead just a few rooms away. Perhaps it was his brush with death in Alaska—the one he refused to talk about—that had made him callous.

  “Carry on, Captain,” Diego said, carefully keeping the distaste out of his voice. “I’ll take charge of the decontamination.”

  “Yes, sir. Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No, Captain. Find your quarters and settle in. This has been a trying day for us all. Report to me when you’re ready.”

  Diego watched Allen walk off. He was just as glad to see the man go. While he was certain Allen had been sent to spy on him, in response to Mexico City’s complaints, he still had no idea what the man’s private agenda was. And he had no time to worry about it now. Diego turned back to his bio expert, a warrant officer.

  “What does it do?” he asked without preamble.

  “Never seen anything like it, Colonel. The slime feeds on metal and, given enough time, chews right through it,” the man replied. “It looks as if aerosol delivery is necessary. The spray hits the air and activates. Finds metal, eats, and grows in those fuzzy green patches.” The gaunt warrant officer pointed to areas visible through the thick, clear plastic quarantine vessel holding the suit out of which they had so laboriously pried Allen. “I never expected the Neo-Sovs to come up with anything so nasty or dangerous. God knows how they came up with this stuff.”

  “What happens when it runs out of metal?” asked Diego. “It doesn’t seem to like plastic.”

  “No metal—that is, no food—and it dies quick. There’s a kicker, though, Colonel. When it dies, it’s poisonous to anything living. Very toxic.”

  “For how long?”

  “Not too long—maybe a few minutes before it dissipates. It’s hard to remove from metal while it’s fuzzy and growing, but after it dies and begins exuding poison, standard disinfectant works okay.”

  “So it’s under control?”

  The words had hardly left Diego’s lips when alarms began to ring. All around the building doors slammed shut, automatically sealed and locked. The bio officer cursed and snapped a demand into his radio for his staff to report.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Diego.

  The warrant officer held up a hand, obviously listening to someone speaking over the radio, then took a deep breath and said, “Part of the captain’s suit brushed a steel doorframe when we were bringing him in. The green goo started eating there. We isolated it—thought it was contained.”

  Diego waited for the rest. He would have a hard time with his report to HQ on this one.

  “But a speck must have gotten onto the other suits. The goo is eating at both of the other Ares.”

  “Both? Get them decontaminated! Stop the spread. Get the entire area hosed down with disinfectant.” Diego barely held his anger in check.

  “Doing it all, sir. Spraying plastic over the green spots to see if that works as containment.”

  “Get repair crews to work on the suits. We might need them. And try to find a countermeasure for the goo while it’s still on metal. You know the drill.”

  “Yes, sir, of course. Sorry about this, but it’s a new one on all of us.”

  “Try to keep it off all of us,” snapped Diego. He went through decon, double-checked any metal he carried, and returned to his office to begin a report he was loath to make.

  8

  * * *

  The Death Priest prayed to his God-king and wished he had time to perform a suitable ritual sacrifice. But there was none. After his spacecraft had tumbled out of control following its encounter with the Shard and the Vorack-stuff, he had painstakingly nursed it into orbit, skipping along the upper planetary atmosphere, and then dipping lower with each orbit until the hull began to shriek with the heat of its descent.

  “Do not leave your stations!” the priest snapped. The Slayer nodded brusquely and patrolled behind the few remaining slaves. After its violent encounter with the Shard, the Destroyer for the Faith had barely retained its atmosphere. The priest cared little about that. His elaborate life-support system sustained him whether air stayed within the ship or leaked into the energy-swirled vacuum of the Maelstrom. What he did require was for all systems to work well enough that he could follow the piece of Vorack-stuff to the planet below.

  The Slayer had forced the few surviving slaves to repair some of the equipment. But the priest could see leaking hoses running from the slaves’ life-support packs to their torsos. None of them could survive for long. The Death Priest knew he would have to replace the workers, possibly with primitives on the planet below. But to get to his slave-replacement pool, he had to execute a decent landing. Already he had spent half a planetary rotation braking in the atmosphere and working to repair the damage well enough to land. That was far too long.

  “You will burn forever from the God-king’s wrath if you do not execute a proper landing,” the Death Priest told his slaves encouragingly. He rested both hands on the scythes sheathed at his waist to reinforce the need for efficiency. The Slayer performed adequately, as always. The severely damaged slaves worked more slowly as the atmospheric braking forces mounted on the spacecraft. But they retained enough control over the ship to home in on the fallen Vor-mote’s landing site.

  One by one the slaves collapsed or simply fell apart under the stress of the landing. The Slayer kicked the mummified debris from the vacant posts and ordered replacements forward. But before the ship had even reached the thick lower troposphere, the Slayer had run out of control-room slaves and had taken over the controls himself. The Death Priest worked alongside him, the two Pharon striving frantically to hold their ship together.

  “Yes, there, now, now!” the priest barked over the patched-together comm system. The handful of survivors in the depths of the Pharon ship strained to obey his orders. Braking rockets fired and dug hard into the atmosphere, slowing the ship to subsonic speeds in the wet blanket of noxious, oxygen-laden air.

  The Death Priest’s ship came in at a steep angle and kicked up a tall plume of shredded vegetation and dirt behind it. The craft touched down on its landing tripod, prow to the sky, then teetered and crashed onto its side, staggering the survivors inside. The ship was sturdy, and such a tumble would not impair it unduly. But the Death Priest would have to undo all the damage the battle with the Shard had inflicted on his vessel before he could lift off from this pitiful world.

  Lift off—with the mote from the Vorack.

  “Organize the remaining s
laves into work parties. Repair the ship immediately,” the priest ordered the Slayer. When the gold-armored Pharon warrior did not immediately move to obey, the priest turned to face him fully.

  “You refuse my orders?” he asked softly.

  “Holy one, never! But there are no slaves left intact anywhere in the ship!” The Slayer clacked his battle claw in his agitation.

  “Get more,” the priest said. “This world teems with life. Kill enough to repair the ship.” A curious weakness suddenly seized the priest. He sagged slightly, caught hold of a stanchion, and then straightened. Recognizing the effects of a life-support malfunction, he ran a quick system check and saw the trouble: the back tank that maintained his life-in-death was dangerously close to empty.

  “I will go immediately,” the warrior declared.

  “I accompany you,” the priest said. “Rites must be conducted.”

  The warrior bowed his small head and waited to follow the priest out of the control room. On increasingly shaky legs, the priest picked his way through the toppled corpses of slaves to the airlock and out into the fetid jungle. His filters removed much of the stench of life that surrounded him, but the priest still recognized the disagreeable odor of undisciplined, rampant growth. Where were the priests to discipline this planet? Did this ugly world lack a God-king or lords and ladies to impose structure?

  “Inferior,” the Death Priest mused as he forced himself to stride commandingly from the downed spaceship, showing no weakness, not even bothering to survey the external damage. There was no point in determining what repairs needed to be made until he had the slaves to make them. And he needed more than dead bodies to reanimate as slaves—he needed life-preserving gel to ensure his own continued existence.

  “There,” the Slayer said, pointing into the dense curtain of jungle vegetation. “Primitives.”

  “Kill them,” the priest said. He had not detected the local inhabitants, another sign of diminished capacity. The warrior blasted a portion of the jungle with his plasma weapon, leaving behind a body too charred for use either as slave or nourishment. The other native screamed and ran deeper into the jungle.