“Use your assault suits, Colonel,” said the duty officer dismissively.
“They were taken out by the guerrillas,” Diego said, beginning to lose his temper. “They have new weapons we are only beginning to encounter.”
The duty officer snorted in contempt. “I cannot authorize such engagement, but I will place it before General Ramirez immediately.”
“When can the forces arrive if he gives immediate approval?”
“Oh, it might be some time. There is the question of mission authorization, financial approval from the governor, and adequate supply for the troops. We do not want them stranded without food, water, and enough ammunition, should this prove to be a lengthy battle. Then there is the matter of mission statement, extraction contingencies, and many others you are well aware of, Colonel.”
“This is of highest priority,” snapped Diego. He felt as if time had run out—for him and for the entire region.
“I’m sure it is. Colonel Villalobos, Mexico City depends on you to maintain order in Chiapas. We’re talking about a handful of underfed, undertrained guerrillas, after all. I’m certain that if the burden of command is too much for you, General Ramirez would be happy to send a replacement,” the officer said sarcastically. “I will get back to you soon.” The secure link went dead before Diego had a chance to respond.
“Well, that went worse than I had expected,” he said bitterly to BJ. If relations with Mexico City HQ were moving into such open hostility, his command—and his career—was in greater jeopardy than he had believed. But he had no time to worry about that at the moment.
“Stop them, BJ,” he said, staring at the map, his mind racing through all the possibilities. “Stop the mutants dead in their tracks. And take Second Lieutenant Baca with you.”
“Yes, sir!” Betty June Travis spun and ran from the office, still barking orders into her handheld.
Giving BJ the privilege of promoting Baca showed his trust in her decisions and made her look good in her subordinates’ eyes. That would make her even more determined. She would command a force sufficient to repel any invasion Viejo was likely to mount, even one spearheaded by mutant soldiers. She would have fifty percent of his best-trained troopers. She would stop José.
Diego knew he dared not leave the San Cristóbal command post undefended. With fully half his forces going to El Manguito, he had to defend the seat of his power. But he couldn’t stop looking at the torn spot on the map where Revancha ought to be.
Even as BJ prepared to move out for El Manguito, Diego began assembling his senior enlisted personnel for a desperate gamble. He would move the remainder of his troops to Revancha and leave San Cristóbal with only a skeleton force.
If he was wrong and José attacked San Cristóbal, Diego’s court-martial would become the stuff of legend, the tale of the foolish commander who fought on two fronts—both wrong. One mistake at this point, and Diego knew it would be the end of him.
But he also knew it was a risk he had to take.
13
* * *
José Villalobos smiled when he received the first reports of the attack at El Manguito. He had committed every one of the mutant creatures given him by the Neo-Soviets. This freed his full force of more than two hundred guerrillas for the real attack on the Revancha CANDU nuclear reactor.
This time he had sent two eager young soldiers to deploy the mutants instead of Consuela. The chore was simple, after all; once pointed in the direction of the enemy garrison, the Cyclops would continue to attack until the Union soldiers were killed or the mutants were blown apart.
Either outcome suited José.
If his foolish brother remained occupied with other concerns—like the port of El Manguito or hiding with his men in the garrison at San Cristóbal—the Zapatistas would soon be triumphant. The Union would never pry the guerrillas loose once they gained a foothold in the cities. Taking control of the power supply from Revancha was the key in the lock.
Now all he had to do was turn that key.
“Consuela,” he greeted, pleased to see her as she hurried up. “Have you heard the news?”
“Of the El Manguito attack, yes,” she said, breathless. She hunkered down beside him. “But José, I must speak with you about the monster from the pit.”
“So?” José said without interest. He could not be bothered with such things, not when he had to concentrate his full attention on the Revancha campaign. It marked the crossroads of his efforts against the Union. Win, and he would be able to build legitimate political power—a presence powerful enough to make even the Union think twice about eliminating him.
True power would be his, buoyed by the people themselves. Then he could see that their lives would change for the better. No more oppressive taxes, no MCF recruitment—only cooperative effort to live and prosper.
What was one monster, measured against all that?
“José!” Consuela said angrily. “Pay attention. This is important.”
“So is the attack on the nuclear power plant,” he retorted.
“We might not live to enjoy our victory if we do not deal with this monster,” Consuela said earnestly.
José had learned to listen to her—she had often saved him terrible losses—but her obsession with this creature worried him. She seemed to have lost all perspective. Instead of staying focused on their true enemy—the Union—she was concerned about this thing, whatever it was.
He needed Consuela’s considerable combat skills more than ever. Failure was not an option in the Revancha campaign, but if she continued to be distracted by this beast, José wondered if he could win. He did not doubt the creature’s existence—since the Change, he had seen enough peculiar sights that he now disbelieved nothing, on principle. But this was one being. The Union forces numbered in the hundreds. Which was the greater threat?
“What should we do?” José asked her impatiently. “Abandon the attack to hunt down this crystal beast? Undo all the plans we have laid so carefully these past months?”
“We must do something,” Consuela insisted. “Have you not heard about the attack on La Presa yesterday?”
José sighed. “Yes, I heard about the attack. All in the village were killed, torn to pieces.”
“Then you know I am not exaggerating about this monster! About what it can do!”
“Consuela,” he said patiently, “we have no way of knowing what killed the people at La Presa. There was no one left alive to reveal the truth to us. You know the Union soldiers have struck out in anger in the past. They torture, they maim, they kill wantonly. The true monsters wear Union MCF insignia. And the sooner we seize the power plant, the sooner we can be rid of them.”
“José, I—”
“Consuela, please.” He sought the right words to calm her and found nothing that might sway her from her purpose. He simply could not be distracted from Revancha. The war could be won, but not by going in different directions. Force the Union to split their forces, concentrate his. In that lay victory.
“We march for Revancha,” he said decisively, almost daring her to object. Then he threw her a small concession. “As soon as we have tightened our grip on the power plant—as soon as our battle there is won—we personally will lead a force to hunt down and destroy this creature. But surely you see that we cannot afford to divide our forces now—not when we are so close to our goal.”
Consuela started to protest again, but then stopped and nodded slowly. “I do see that,” she said, her voice wretched. “You are right—if we falter now, we risk losing all. But I tell you, the monster is the greater threat. And I worry that the longer we delay, the worse the danger to our people.”
“Then we had better get moving,” José said, hefting his rifle. “The sooner we have captured Revancha, the sooner we can destroy this monster of yours.”
Consuela nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “I am with you,” she said. “As always. But I pray we are not making the biggest mistake of our lives.”
&
nbsp; “This is the correct path,” José assured her.
He rose from his squatting position and let out a soft whistle. From out of the jungle the other guerrillas came, seeming to appear from thin air. All were weighed down with the matériel Flaco had so painstakingly assembled over the past few months: rifles, grenades, extra clips of ammunition. He could tell they were nervous, but not panicky. Even that had been part of José’s plan. The raids they’d been carrying out over past few months had won them arms and ammunition. They had also boosted the guerrillas’ confidence, all in preparation for this final strike.
José felt no need to make one last speech. They were ready—he could see it in their eyes, in their stance, in the way they clutched their weapons to them. Instead, he moved quietly through them, meeting one’s eyes for a brief second, clapping another on the shoulder, trying by his presence and his touch to instill in them some of his confidence in their mission. Mary Stephenson shook his hand warmly, her petite features as calm as ever before heading into battle. Flaco gave him a gap-toothed grin. Even Gunther accorded him a grim smile, his hostility briefly suspended in anticipation of the coming bloodshed.
When he had finished circulating through his troops, José turned and surveyed them one more time, and then nodded. As one, they melted back into the jungle, breaking into squads and heading toward the reactor exactly as he had planned.
José watched them go with pride and turned to Consuela, as always, by his side.
“To Revancha?” he asked.
“Revancha,” she said, and if doubt and worry still shadowed her eyes, she gave no outward sign of it as they moved off through the jungle toward victory.
14
* * *
The Death Priest lay in wait on the night-cloaked trail, the primitives unaware that they were coming directly toward him. Fewer of them ventured into the jungle at night, but his chances of detection were greatly diminished in the darkness.
The pair of natives were almost upon him when he stepped out of the greenery surrounding the crude path and revealed himself, his metallic armor making soft clicking sounds as he moved. He was accustomed by now to the primitives’ response: blind terror, followed by a pathetic attempt to flee. But instead of panicking, these two launched an attack so fierce it startled the priest. The one in the lead whipped up a projectile weapon and fired, the bullet hitting the solar focusing device just above the Death Priest’s bandage-wrapped head.
The impact knocked him about but did no real damage. As he spun with the impact of the bullet, he activated his phase generator. Winking in and out of sight, he darted toward the native, who was still firing blindly, confused by his adversary’s disappearance.
The priest dodged to the left and attacked from the flank, knocking the rifle from the native’s hands, then expertly used a stun-rod. Greenish electronic haze formed around the tip of the dual-electrode weapon before leaping forth to engulf the victim. The primitive shrieked, stiffened, and toppled rigidly, every muscle frozen and the neurons of his brain permanently burned out.
The Death Priest swiftly changed his angle of attack and struck the other native with one powerful blow of his fist. The female crashed to the ground and lay unmoving. Leaving the first primitive where it fell, the priest stared down at his most recent capture. He and the Slayer had worked assiduously to capture natives singly and in pairs. Twice they had tackled entire columns of well-armed creatures. Every attack had been as successful as this one. He had quickly learned these creatures’ weaknesses, and their enslavements grew increasingly efficient.
The priest retrieved two life-support packs from his cache beside the trail, setting one on the ground beside each native. He knelt, and was rapidly lost in ceremony, his mind reaching out to the unconscious native. As before, he found no resistance as his mental tendrils insinuated themselves into the woman’s mind and found the proper limbic regions to bring under his aegis. Prayers were recited. Invocations to the God-king’s puissant presence were made. The female native’s brain was imprinted with the need to obey the Death Priest in all things. He had recruited a new worker for the greater good of the Pharon.
As the Death Priest fitted on the life-support unit, the woman feebly began to stir. Leaving her to regain her bearings and balance, he turned his attention to the other one, the one he had brought down with the neural weapon.
This slave proved even easier to instruct.
Once both were on their feet, the priest ordered them to follow him down the trail. Their progress was slow at first, as the slaves adjusted to their new existence, but gradually they became steadier on their feet, and their pace quickened. The priest was pleased with their progress. He and the Slayer had recruited no fewer than twenty slaves for the repair work on the ship; the Slayer was there now, supervising their work. The Shard had abandoned the crater where the Vor-stuff had landed, leaving the priest free to claim the errant bit of the Vorack for his own.
And for the God-king’s glory!
By now, the Slayer was undoubtedly close to finishing his final preparation of the ship’s hold; that was the priest’s primary concern. The interior of the hold was lined with a force field that the priest was confident would be able to contain the power of the energetic mote. The field had been in place for days, ever since the Pharon had first detected the mote speeding through space. The crash landing on the planet had slightly damaged the field’s equipment, but the hold was in the best-protected part of the ship and damage was minimal.
The battle with the Shard that had sent the mote hurtling down to the surface of this forsaken planet might have temporarily delayed the priest in his quest, but he was close to victory. He could feel it. All that remained was for him to transport the Vorack-stuff back to the ship, oversee final repairs to the vessel, and depart.
“Halt,” he ordered the slaves as the three of them emerged from the jungle into the blasted clearing surrounding the Vor-stuff’s crater. A half dozen slaves were already hard at work digging a sloping tunnel down to the bottom of the pit to make it easier raising the mote to the surface. The bodies of another half dozen lay scattered around the edge of the crater, their corpses twisted and blackened by the fierce radiation blasting from the virulent globe at its bottom. Their work was illuminated by the glow from the pit, bright enough to see even in the predawn darkness.
The Pharon wished there were some way of shielding the slaves from the lethal radiance—it was so inefficient having to replace them so often!—but he had no time to jury-rig any sort of protective shielding. He had taken readings of the radiation blasting from the pit; the mote was sending out rays a thousand times more powerful than they had been able to detect in space. The Pharon suspected that the protective globe around the mote had cracked during its violent landing. The enormous power contained within was leaking out, bathing anything nearby in a lethal dose of radiation.
The danger lent the priest an extra impetus to finish his work quickly. He had no idea how extensive the damage to the globe was—it could be so fragile that it would crumble at any time. Once the mote was safely in Destroyer’s hold, the danger was over. Until then, it was a menace to every living thing on the world—including the Pharon. If the globe broke completely, the resulting power surge could easily destroy the planet, and the Pharon did not intend for that to happen while he was on it.
He sighed as a slave emerged from the tunnel, dragging the twisted remains of another one that had succumbed to the power of the Vorack. He motioned the replacements forward. At this rate, he would have to acquire dozens more—which meant attacking a larger settlement and perhaps bringing unwanted attention to his activities or finding a large supply of freshly killed corpses. Alive, dead—it made no difference to the Pharon. Either way, the lesser beings served the God-king.
The Death Priest left his slaves hard at work and headed back out into the jungle. The tunnel to the bottom of the crater was almost complete. It was time to check with the Slayer on how the repairs were progressing. Then
he would see about locating a supply of slaves to transport the mote back to the ship. A large supply.
15
* * *
On the road to glory, sir!” radioed BJ Travis, obviously eager to see action again.
Standing just inside the gate of the San Cristóbal compound, Diego Villalobos checked her progress on his portable display, estimated Hydra transport speed and distance, and saw that she would arrive at El Manguito within the hour. This was as swift a response as he could muster to meet the threat of the attacking Neo-Sov mutants. His latest reports from the officer in charge of the post there had heartened him. The mutants had killed several ranking officers, but the junior officers had rallied quickly and forced the Cyclops back beyond the post’s defensive perimeter. They would hold out until BJ arrived to catch the Cyclops between the El Manguito post and her larger, well-armed mobile force.
“Sergeant Suarez, front and center!” Diego called. The sergeant hurried across the command compound and tossed him a salute. Diego considered how desperate his scheme was, how fraught with danger, how much he risked if he’d guessed wrong on any element of it. His career would be destroyed, and many lives would be lost.
“You feeling lucky today, Sergeant?” Diego asked Suarez.
“No, sir. I don’t believe in luck.”
“Good. I like a man who depends on skill. That’s what is needed in a new second lieutenant.”
“Sir?” Suarez frowned, not understanding.
“You just got promoted. And your first assignment is going to be hellacious.”
“You want me to support Lieutenant Travis, sir?”
“No. I’m placing you in command of the garrison.”
“Where, sir? El Manguito?”
Diego heaved a sigh. To him everything was crystal-clear. It wasn’t to his subordinates, however, because he dared not share too much with any of them. The last mutiny in Union ranks had been years ago, in Cuernavaca, but that did not mean it couldn’t happen again. “San Cristóbal,” Diego said matter-of-factly. “You are the officer in charge here while I’m in the field.”
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