Silence reigned when the door closed behind them, but not for long. The Marines hooted and shouted comments. The women cheered and clapped their hands delightedly.
“Way to go, Rock!”
“Claypoole’s got it bad!”
“I didn’t spot the ring through his nose until it was too late to save him!”
Some of the women looked speculatively at their Marines. The Marines were men, and they were…well, they were women.
EPILOGUE
From time immemorial, network news, in its endless competition for audiences and ratings, has relied more on appearance than substance. For hundreds of years the “sound bite” has delivered the news to trillions of viewers—thirty seconds of words intermixed with short vid segments and a voice-over delivered by a newscaster more meticulous about his or her personal appearance than the facts of the news being reported.
What sticks in the minds of viewers is not the news itself but the image of trustworthy Dan, or Katie or Hugh or whomever, as the photogenic news personality of the hour, carefully groomed talking heads, who become so adored by their audiences that every word they utter is taken as gospel. They, not events, come to determine what is the news. Network executives love that because if people are drawn to their coverage because of trust in the newscaster, ratings go up and so does advertising revenue, and that is the all-important factor in keeping them solvent. So packaging is and always has been more important than product in the news business.
The Confederated News Network was no different in that dog-eat-dog world than any of the other networks, although CNN, more than its competitors, did strive for accurate and objective reporting much of the time. And the icon for that sort of old-fashioned news reporting was Jack Wintchell, because Jack was a news reporter, while all the other personalities in the business were merely news readers.
Jack Wintchell had been investigating and reporting stories for half a century. He had a well-deserved reputation for meticulous honesty. That is why Marcus Berentus, the Confederation Minister of War, had turned to him for help in reporting the machinations of Haggel Kutmoi. It was Jack’s story on Kutmoi’s illegal fund-raising that had helped swing the recent presidential election in favor of Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant. Possibly his influence alone had done the job, so highly regarded was Jack among the countless viewers who hung on his every word.
Now, tonight, he was preparing to deliver possibly the most important newscast of his long, respectable, and influential career. He sat patiently in his dressing room at CNN headquarters in Fargo. A hair stylist was putting the finishing touches to his trademark coiffure: chestnut hair that looked as if he’d just come in out of the wind. His shirt, wrinkled, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up past the wrists, made him look as if he’d just rushed into the studio to deliver the hottest and freshest news anyone had ever heard. That and his rapid-fire delivery, as if what he had to report was too important to wait one more second, were a good part of his appeal.
Other news personalities dressed to the nines when on camera and flew into rages if one strand of hair wound up out of place. They never seemed able to catch on to the simple fact that Jack Wintchell’s disheveled appearance, although as meticulously planned and groomed as their own sartorial splendor, lent immediacy and authenticity to his reporting. He looked as sweaty and hardworking as Joe and Jane Citizen, just back from a hard day, their feet up, a drink in one hand, eyes glued to the vid screen, anxious to find out what the rest of humanity was up to. And Joe and Jane loved him for it.
“Jackie, m’boy,” Collard Simperson, CNN’s news director, enthused, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “You’ll knock ’em dead tonight, knock ’em dead!”
“I always do, Collie,” Wintchell drawled. He regarded his carefully dirtied fingernails as the stylist put a finishing touch to his hair.
“Ah,” the stylist said at last, “you are perfect, Mr. Wintchell! Perfect! I’ve never seen you so, so, Jack as you are right now, sir!”
“Thank you, Henri.” Wintchell held out his hand and Henri obligingly assisted him to his feet. “Collie, old boy, let us proceed,” he said, and together they marched boldly into the studio.
“Tonight,” Jack intoned at the start of his report, “we commence an historic new beginning.” These words shot into the homes, offices, stadiums, bars, clubs, and bistros, on hundreds of worlds spread out over the vast reaches of human space; many did not hear them until two weeks after they had been spoken, but because it was Jack Wintchell talking directly to them straight out of their vid screens, his words had the immediacy of live broadcasting.
“My friends, the alien menace known as the Skinks has at last been eliminated. Our brave forces have achieved total victory in the campaign against them on the world we know as Haulover. I ask you this: Can’t we now beat our swords into plowshares? Can’t we now get on with the business of business and return without fear to the peaceful pursuits of our lives? Yes! Go to your representatives in government and tell them that we no longer need to live in fear that every light in the nighttime sky presages death and destruction. Tell them: The future is ours and we must seize it. Tell them: The trillions we have earmarked for war can now be spent on peace! Tell them: No more war!
“I pray now, tonight, before you all, that we take the road to peace and prosperity and leave war behind us forever.”
Jack paused at this point and gazed earnestly into the camera. He looked as he always did, a haggard fighter, a man of principle and truth, everyone’s Uncle Jack, telling them straight, telling it like it is. Tears of joy ran down the cheeks of countless viewers over Jack’s memorable words in that memorable speech on that memorable night.
“Friends,” Jack continued sonorously, “Madam Chang-Sturdevant has been reelected our president. I am proud to have had a hand in that process. May God grant her the wisdom to lead us into this new Golden Age of Humanity that is now dawning. She has her work cut out for her. She has much to do to clean up her administration, reorganize our military forces, get this Confederation at last back on track. But she can do it, with our help and with God’s loving kindness.”
Jack paused again. He fixed those trillions of eyes with his own, gazing soulfully out at them from their vid screens. “This is my last broadcast,” he announced solemnly. “Tonight I am concluding my fifty years in the news business. It has been a good run and I have loved every minute of it. But it is time to say ‘Good night’ one final time. And so, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer and all the ships in space, this is Jack Wintchell saying good night and good-bye.” Real tears sparkled in Jack’s eyes as he spoke.
It was the greatest speech of Jack Wintchell’s long career. It was also the worst advice anyone had ever given the human race.
The Prime Master sat at the small desk in his tiny office, through which anyone seeking audience with the Emperor must pass. Few who sought it were allowed passage; the Prime Master tightly controlled who might disturb the Emperor. Nearly everything that others thought should be brought to the attention of the living god could be disposed of by the Prime Master.
So when two drones, launched by the Grand Master commanding the corps on the world the Earthmen called “Haulover,” reached orbit around Home and their messages were downloaded, the messages, still sealed, were brought immediately to the tiny office and handed to the Prime Master.
The Prime Master broke the seals and read both messages, only to find that they were identical. The messages included the information that twenty-seven drones had been dispatched with the exact same message. The Prime Master dismissed the High Master who had brought him the messages, giving him instructions to bring him instantly any other messages that might come from Haulover, regardless of the hour. If he was in session with the Emperor when a message came, the High Master was to wait in the tiny office until the Prime Master finished with the living god.
The High Master bowed himself out of the Prime Master’s presence.
The Prime Master destroyed one copy of t
he message, and sat for a long time, reading, rereading, and pondering the preserved copy.
An entire corps had been destroyed by the Earthmen. While that corps had inflicted significant casualties on the two Earthman Army corps that had annihilated it, it had inflicted little damage on the Earthman Marines who had assisted the Earthman Army in the destruction of the corps.
It didn’t take the Prime Master long to decide that the Emperor didn’t need to be bothered with knowledge of the fate of the corps, any more than the Emperor had needed to know of its existence on the Earthman world of Haulover to begin with. Should the name of the Grand Master who had died in his failure ever cross the mind of the Emperor, and the Emperor inquire after him, he could always be told the Grand Master in question had died in a hunting accident. Such accidents were not unknown, whether they had happened in fact or not.
The Prime Master read the message again. This time, by the time he finished reading, he smiled beatifically. The message included a great deal of information about the Earthman Army and airpower and their tactics. That was intelligence that would serve the Emperor’s army well when it next encountered the Earthman Army. As it most assuredly would.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DAVID SHERMAN is a former U.S. Marine and the author of eight novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. He is also the author of the military fantasy series Demontech.
www.novelier.com
DAN CRAGG enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. He is the author of Inside the VC and the NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier’s Prize. He recently retired from his work as an analyst for the Department of Defense.
By David Sherman and Dan Cragg
Starfist
FIRST TO FIGHT
SCHOOL OF FIRE
STEEL GAUNTLET
BLOOD CONTACT
TECHNOKILL
HANGFIRE
KINGDOM’S SWORDS
KINGDOM’S FURY
LAZARUS RISING
A WORLD OF HURT
FLASHFIRE
FIRESTORM
WINGS OF HELL
Starfist: Force Recon
BACKSHOT
POINTBLANK
RECOIL
STAR WARS: JEDI TRIAL
By David Sherman
THE NIGHT FIGHTERS
KNIVES IN THE NIGHT
MAIN FORCE ASSAULT
OUT OF THE FIRE
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
A NGHU NIGHT FALLS
CHARLIE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
THERE I WAS: THE WAR OF CORPORAL HENRY J. MORRIS, USMC
THE SQUAD
Demontech
GULF RUN
ONSLAUGHT
RALLY POINT
By Dan Cragg
Fiction
THE SOLDIER’S PRIZE
Nonfiction
A DICTIONARY OF SOLDIER TALK
GENERALS IN MUDDY BOOTS
INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning)
TOP SERGEANT (with William G. Bainbridge)
Starfist: Wings of Hell is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by David Sherman and Dan Cragg
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sherman, David.
Wings of hell / David Sherman and Dan Cragg.
p. cm—(Starfist; bk. 13)
1. Marines—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. I. Cragg, Dan. II. Title.
PS3569.H4175W56 2009
813'.54—dc22 2008043644
www.delreybooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-51268-0
v3.0
David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 13] Page 35