Hell Heart

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Revancha would dry up all volunteers.

  So much rode on this victory, and here were his aides, obsessed with monsters. José forced himself to look away from the window to the maps spread on his desk. Time grew short, and he had so much to do.

  “Chupacabras,” he snorted. He took one last drink of tequila and returned to his planning.

  11

  * * *

  The Shard staggered and collapsed against the wall of the crater. Its once-smooth surface bulged and writhed with glassy tumors, and with every passing hour more of its unholy spawn broke free of their parent.

  Earlier in this sundering of its self, the Shard might have recognized what was happening to it. It might have sensed the disintegration of its finely tuned control over the precise internal structure of its shell and that its ability to morph its physical form at will was burgeoning out of control. Somehow the radiation from the mote had caused the Shard’s body to mutate horribly.

  But the Shard was no longer capable of thinking anything. Its once cool, sharp mind had been reduced to a level of mindless, animal rage. For as its traitorous body had broken apart, pieces of itself dropping loose and wriggling away, to its horror it had felt its consciousness fracturing along with its crystalline shell. Where once it had relied on precise data from its surface sensors, now it was receiving a confused jumble of impressions from dozens of viewpoints all at once. It was still in the pit, but it was simultaneously wriggling into the jungle in a dozen directions, overwhelming the Shard’s splintered mind with a barrage of sensations until it felt all knowledge of its consciousness, its self, slipping away. The Shard tried to order its shear planes, to eliminate dislocations in its structure, to return discipline to the crystal husk that kept its energy from being sucked into the Maw.

  It failed.

  Yet another growth swelled from its side and dropped to the ground. The Shard fell to its knees and used its fist to crush the creature, but try as it might, it could not destroy all the growths. They sprang up fast, too fast even for a swiftly attacking Shard.

  Somehow, without even knowing how it had happened, the Shard found itself on the surface, rolling on the ground to crush the errant growths under its bulk. It remembered nothing of scaling the shaft to reach the surface, but with each mutant offspring it destroyed, it felt a slight semblance of order return to its mind as another channel of impressions was closed.

  In a frenzy, the Shard leapt at the growths now surrounding the pit, crushing them in its hands and under its feet. When it had destroyed every crystalline snake it could see, it paused for a moment, trying desperately to regain control over its shredded consciousness. Shard felt neither physical pain nor exhaustion, but they were not immune to mental anguish.

  It could feel other pieces of itself, ones that had thus far escaped it, receding from it into the jungle, and it knew what it had to do. Only when it had destroyed every last cancerous growth would it regain its self. On clumsy feet, displaying none of its usual quicksilver grace, the Shard blundered into the jungle in search of its mutant offspring. One by one, it tracked them and killed them, each tiny death bringing slight relief to its fevered mind.

  It scarcely noticed when its rampage sent it staggering into a village, just beginning to stir in the morning light. Several humans failed to get out of its path quickly enough, and the Shard killed them without slowing, with efficient slashes of its razor-sharp talons. The few bullets bouncing off its tough crystalline exterior, fired in desperation by the village’s protectors, only helped propel it on its mission.

  Had the Shard still been capable of reason, it would have known this was madness. But it did not care. It only knew it had to destroy the pieces of itself and restore its mind to normality. Only then would it be able to claim its prize, which it dimly recalled had been important.

  But for now, it roared, it slashed, and it killed as it raced across the countryside.

  * * *

  The Death Priest stepped out of his hiding place and watched the Shard crash through the vegetation on the other side of the clearing in pursuit of he knew not what. Nor did he care. His long hours of patient waiting had yielded victory. The field was now open. The Vorack fragment was his!

  With caution, phase generator fully activated for whatever protection it might offer, the priest approached the pit that had been the Shard’s prison. He circled the edge of the crater, keeping well out of the path of the radiance that blasted upward from the mote buried at the bottom of the hole. The radiation readings from the mote were much more intense than they had been during the Pharon’s pursuit of it in space. Perhaps the violence of its landing had cracked the protective globe surrounding the pinpoint of light, unleashing its deadly energy to such devastating effect on the Shard.

  No matter. The priest was confident he would be able to cobble together sufficient equipment from the ruins of his ship to surround the globe with a force field. That would be sufficient for the trek back to the ship and the hold prepared and waiting to receive the mote of Vorack-stuff. The temporary field would not be sufficient to stop all of the radiation, but what of it? Some slaves would undoubtedly die along the way, but what of it?

  After all, as long as there was life on the planet, there were always more slaves to be had.

  12

  * * *

  Diego Villalobos rubbed his bleary eyes and tried to concentrate. He had been awake half the night once again, trying to decide what his brother might be planning to do next. The attack on the Puerto Madero supply base two days ago was only the beginning of a new guerrilla campaign, of that Diego was now sure. He’d feared as much at the time, but with his limited resources, the Cyclops had been too great a threat to ignore. Still, it was obvious José wanted the ammo stored at the Puerto Madero outpost for something else.

  What would it be?

  His finger traced along the ancient, cracked, yellowed map spread on the desk in front of him. He had found it in a trunk of his father’s belongings after José had angrily renounced the Union and disappeared into the jungle.

  “Where are you going to strike next, Viejo?” Diego wondered aloud.

  He knew he should no longer be thinking of his brother as “the Old One.” It lent him an air of honor and dignity—even wisdom—but old habits died hard. “Comandante” was what the campesinos called him, revealing that the Zapatista guerrillas had wormed their way into the power structure of the villages and turned the alcaldes against the Union. Diego seldom went into the villages anymore—places where he had been born and raised—without wearing his Kevlar vest and carrying a weapon. This obvious mistrust turned many against him and the Union, but more than once a guerrilla sniper had almost taken his life.

  José always claimed those were instances of Union soldiers turning against their oppressive military ruler, that he would never attack his brother in so cowardly a fashion. Diego knew better. José might not have ordered the assassination attempts, but he did nothing to punish them.

  Diego believed his brother had loved him, but he had never respected his abilities as a military commander. And Viejo’s contempt for his younger brother deepened when Diego refused to renounce his allegiance to the Union. What festered in Diego’s soul was the worry that José might be right.

  “Another guerrilla trick,” Diego muttered. Find the enemy’s weakness and exploit it. He still loved and even admired José, despite all that separated them now. It was foolish, but blood was blood.

  He turned back to the map and studied the points where Viejo had attacked recently. Supply depots, from which he’d carried off ammo, explosives. In preparation for what?

  Perhaps he would attack San Cristóbal because the fiber-optic cable that was the backbone of communications between north and south ran through the garrison? If José could cut off the Union’s communications, he would have an enormous advantage. Or was he planning something even larger, something involving mutants and the deadly bioweapons the Neo-Sovs had supplied him?

 
; Diego tipped his chair back, bracing himself against the wall and chewing on his lower lip as he thought. Viejo was a traditionalist in many ways. That tied him to the campesinos, who would never allow the Neo-Soviet mutant soldiers into their villages. More, Viejo couldn’t use the twisted DNA disasters to full advantage in battle anyway. He had perfected guerrilla tactics, not the straightforward battlefield sweeps and counters the Neo-Sovs favored.

  So, where would he be most likely to strike?

  Diego’s eyes drifted to a crease in the map, a spot where the disintegrating paper had almost deleted an entire town. He ran a hand over the yellowed sheet to smooth it out and noticed that the town blotted out was Revancha. There had been no CANDU reactor there when this map was first made, but there had been a town. Everything he’d been thinking and pondering suddenly came together, took shape, fitting together like the notches of well-honed gears.

  “Here,” he said softly. “Here is where you will attack, brother. Revancha. You want to seize the old CANDU reactor. With it, you become the one to give power to the countryside.”

  Diego considered what it would take to launch a guerrilla assault on the Canada Deuterium Uranium reactor. A major offensive, Viejo’s most ambitious attack in three years and one designed to turn the people against the Union in several ways.

  Showing that the Zapatista guerrillas were a force to be reckoned with might cut off the trickle of recruitment now enjoyed by the MCF. The increase in forced impressment that would follow would drive more campesinos into José’s camp. If he kept a stranglehold on the reactor, Union-controlled towns in the region would be forced to find alternative power sources. With the heavy cloud layers seldom breaking apart over the jungle, solar power was more a fantasy than a workable scheme.

  It was so obvious. José intended to seize the reactor, force the Union to fight to get it back. The CANDU used ordinary uranium, which would not contaminate the countryside too seriously should the pressure vessel be breached in the battle, but the campesinos were terrified of radioactivity. Viejo could play on that, blaming the Union for any contamination, turning even a defeat into a propaganda triumph.

  If José managed somehow to hold Revancha against the Union, he could expand his influence quickly in many directions by distributing power to his supporters and denying it to his foes. The more Diego thought about it, the more he realized his brother had decided to step up from small acts of sabotage and pointless jungle skirmishes. The war had been fought that way for too long. Viejo wanted to win, and Revancha was the key.

  So how could Diego stop him? A preemptive strike against Comitan would never work. José was safely garrisoned in the center of the city, shielded by Zapatista sympathizers. An attack there would result in an unacceptable amount of collateral damage—both from a propaganda standpoint and from Diego’s own conscience.

  He would have to defeat José even before he got there. Diego knew that the Revancha garrison consisted of some of the best soldiers in his command, reflecting the key importance of the reactor. But Viejo could have attempted an attack there at any time. What made the reactor such an attractive target now?

  The mutant soldiers, Diego decided. They had changed the odds, and made Diego think he could succeed in storming Revancha. Diego’s mind spun through supply problems, getting the ag vehicles on the way with sufficient reinforcements, figuring out how to counterattack the guerrilla force. It was at this point in his thought process that Betty June Travis burst into the office.

  He glanced up at his XO and saw that she looked distraught. It was unusual for her to be up at this hour of the night—early morning, Diego corrected himself. She enjoyed her rack time.

  “Got a bad one, Colonel,” BJ said without preamble. “Your brother’s launched a major offensive.”

  “The reactor at Revancha?”

  “No, not there. He hit the port of El Manguito.”

  “What?” Diego dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor and stood, bracing himself on stiffened arms above his map. El Manguito was fifty klicks along the Pacific coast from Puerto Madero. Could he have misjudged José’s intentions so completely?

  “He hit five minutes ago, using those damned Neo-Soviet mutations. The garrison was still asleep and didn’t have time to respond.”

  “Didn’t the alarms function?”

  “Every last one of them,” BJ said. “It didn’t matter. The first wave of mutants came straight on, full frontal assault, no slowing. Just a flat-out attack.”

  “How many did he use?”

  “The mutants? No idea. The battalion major was killed, and the chain of command is re-forming. No one’s sure what’s going on, other than we’re getting our butts whipped good.”

  “Why El Manguito?” Diego murmured, shaking his head. It made no sense. The port was important, granted, but why would José endanger civilians in an attack that, even if successful, gave him only a marginal advantage? El Manguito was not a main supply depot, and even if it were destroyed, it would not significantly diminish the Union’s fighting capabilities. It had to be another diversion, like the Cyclops attack south of his garrison. One way or the other, he again had no choice but to respond.

  “Don’t know,” BJ said, “but the locals have their underwear in a knot over it, sir.” She stood with her feet shoulder width apart, looking as stolid and immovable as a granite statue. “Let me take the reinforcements, sir. I need to get into the field again.”

  “The Ares suits,” Diego said, coming to a speedy decision. “Commit the assault suits. Get Captain Allen out.”

  “No can do, sir.”

  “Haven’t they cleaned them up yet?”

  “It’s not that. Well, not only that,” BJ said. “Nobody’s seen Allen in nearly forty-eight hours. He took a rifle, and the armory corporal thinks he lit out for the tall grass.”

  “He went into the jungle alone?” Diego had thought he was past being shocked by soldiers doing stupid things. He was wrong. Even the best scouts went into the jungle in pairs—and Allen was totally unfamiliar with the terrain. Ordinarily he would rejoice at the spy’s absence, but not now—not when he needed every trained soldier he could get.

  “Hasn’t seen fit to come back, either. Can I put him down as AWOL?” BJ took great glee in the idea. She didn’t like Allen any better than Diego did.

  “No, don’t. Our best course of action is to defend El Manguito and forget Allen even exists. If he’s still alive, that is.” Diego fumed at the man’s stupidity. “What about the Ares suits?”

  “When they popped Allen out of the Ares day before yesterday, they contaminated the entire bay. All the assault suits have that green slime on them.”

  “I was told that. But they still haven’t decontaminated?” Diego was startled. His biowar officer had left him with the impression that the suits would soon be clean as whistles just a few hours ago.

  “They tried everything, but the damned stuff keeps coming back. Radiation doesn’t work, heat doesn’t work, and they’re trying acids now that damage what they’re supposed to be cleaning.”

  “The Neo-Soviets aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t use a weapon they didn’t have an antidote for. Or whatever you’d call it.”

  “It’s probably a gengineered bioagent. Finding and concocting a counter for that witch’s brew will take a spell,” BJ said, her Texas drawl heightening as her emotions rose. “There’s no time to get the suits into the field. We have to act now, sir.”

  “Or we lose a port city to the guerrillas,” Diego finished for her. He kept thinking of Revancha, where the nuclear reactor quietly and efficiently churned out power for the countryside. He couldn’t let go of the thought that it was José’s primary target, but he couldn’t allow his brother to destroy El Manguito either.

  “Forget the suits, Lieutenant,” he said, coming to a swift decision. “Take a dozen Hydras and two Aztecs. Stop the attack, kill as many of the mutations as you can, and do not allow El Manguito to fall.”

  “Your ord
ers are as clear and refreshing as spring rainwater, sir,” BJ said, smiling widely. She hated garrison duty and was raring for the chance to get back into action.

  “I want results, not to hand out a bunch of posthumous medals. No heroes. That includes you.” He fixed her with a cold stare, knowing she was likely to be at the front of any counterattack. That was one of the things that made her such a good officer, an officer soldiers would follow into the worst battles imaginable without flinching.

  “You’ll get results, sir.”

  “Get your force organized,” he said, “but wait a minute while I see how much backup I can give you.” BJ began shouting orders into a small radio as Diego keyed into his secure link with command and control in Mexico City. He braced himself for yet another unpleasant conversation with his superiors. But at this point, getting more men was more important than any bruises to his ego.

  At this time of night it took several minutes for the duty officer to respond, and when he did it was not cheerfully.

  “This is Colonel Villalobos,” Diego said. “I need support troops at El Manguito, at least a battalion. A major guerrilla assault is in progress, threatening the city. Mutant Neo-Soviet troops are being used.”

  “Have you been smoking hemp again, Colonel?” came the insulting response. “The guerrillas do not attack cities. They are cowards who fight from ambush.”

  “I repeat,” Diego said through gritted teeth, “El Manguito is under heavy attack and will fall if you do not authorize reinforcements. Both ground troops and aerial support are needed.”