Hearts of Chaos

by Victor Milán

  But giri overcame ninjo, and his voice was firm as he called out, "Ready!" Twelve rifles rose.

  Diana Vásquez held out her hand to the children. "Sing, children. Please. Don't cry—sing for me!"

  * * *

  On the screen the woman, framed from the hips up, began to sing in a strong, clear alto: "Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe ..."

  "Aim!" the young lieutenant cried.

  Hesitantly the children joined in. Diana smiled as she sang, though the rain coursed down her cheeks like tears.

  "Fire!"

  Twelve rifles spoke in a brief pulse of sound. The front of Diana's prison denims went red. She dropped out of frame.

  The barn filled with an inchoate scream of rage and grief. Don Carlos engulfed his face with his hands.

  * * *

  Dilonna Saunders, cool and long of limb, exquisite face showing no more reaction than if she were covering a gallery opening, stepped forward. "And now, a reaction from the man of the hour, Planetary Chairman Howard Devore Blaylock."

  "Thank you, Dilonna," Blaylock said. His manner was serious but straightforward, "I'm sure we all regret the necessity of what's happened here today. But I don't think anyone can question the fact that the trigger was pulled by the renegade mercenaries themselves, and their commander, the self-styled 'Colonel' Carlos Camacho."

  "And do you have anything to say to these foreign mercenaries, Mr. Chairman?"

  "Yes, Dilonna, I do." He turned and looked straight into the camera. "You should understand that you are nothing more than common criminals. The lawful government of the planet Towne has repudiated your presence and your acts. Under the Laws of War third parties have no standing in such disputes. Therefore you have no standing, and are entitled to no protection under the Laws of War.

  "So I'm begging you: be reasonable. Make it easy on all of us, especially yourselves—and your children. The offer generously extended by General Kusunoki still stands: surrender and accept relocation to Outreach. Otherwise—"

  He held up his hands. "Justice will take its course. And as you have seen, the people of Towne demand that their justice be strict and swift."

  "That was brilliant, Howard, simply brilliant," Saunders said as the network cut away to a break for a public-service announcement. Trusties in prison denims carried the body away.

  Blaylock grinned slyly and nodded. "You bet it was."

  "I disagree."

  Blaylock spun and looked hard at Mr. Kimura. The small, dapper man stood unmoved. "Your rhetoric notwithstanding, the Seventeenth Recon Regiment retains the protection of the Laws of War. The traitor Chandrasekhar of Hachiman may be a scoundrel, but he is entitled to protect his interests. The money-troopers' presence is legitimate."

  Blaylock accepted a squeeze-bottle of sparkling mineral water, shot a quick stream down his throat.

  "You yaks crack me up," he told Kimura. "Seriously. You think you're such hot-shots, but you're so hopelessly small time. That means all of you, even your boss the high-and-mighty oyabun of your little greaseball prefecture. You think you're so sharp, making a living from breaking the law. If you had any goddamn imagination you'd get into the government. Then you'd be the law!"

  Kusunoki was speaking quietly to one of his aides, who hurried away. Then he looked hard at Blaylock.

  "I have ordered my men into defensive positions east and south of the city," the General said. "Will he come, this Colonel Camacho?"

  "Either he comes, or I just cut his balls off on worldwide holovid," Blaylock said with a lupine grin. "Either way—we win."

  Someone switched off the set. For a moment the only sound was the skreek, skreek of Cassie whetting Blood-drinker on her soapstone as all eyes turned toward Don Carlos.

  He raised his head. His cheeks glistened with tears.

  "There is only one thing to do," he said.

  PART FOUR

  Hurrah for the Next One Who Dies

  A glorious death! Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of petrol—to the last beat of the heart and the last kick of the motor; a death for a knight—a toast for his fellows, friend and foe.

  —Rittmeister Manfred, Freiherr von Richthofen

  26

  Shadizar

  Zamora Province, Towne

  Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

  23 April 3058

  It was not yet dawn. Michael Salstrup, Police President for the city of Shadizar, in Zamora province in eastern Hyboria, stared hard one last time at the yellow message form on his desk. It appeared to be nothing more than a routine fugitive alert from his counterpart in the Port Howard Metropolitan Police Force.

  It was not routine. Indeed, he'd been expecting it— half hopeful and half fearful—since the day he'd succeeded his predecessor, killed by a car bomb, six weeks before. He left his office on the top floor and rode the lift down to the holding cells.

  Sergeant Willoughby let him into the special block. For backup he'd brought Patrolman Clyde, skinny and nervous, and the steady Sergeant Mulcahy, armed with an automatic shotgun and looking like the former amateur boxing champion he was—though a return to the lightweight division was not likely in his future.

  Salstrup walked between barred cells to the end of the block. He signaled Willoughby. The female sergeant punched a button, a buzzer went off, and the door to the guard room slid open.

  "What the hell is going on here?" demanded Kommandant Stone of the local branch of the Planetary Police Howard Blaylock had instituted. Though he didn't have to, he wore his green PP uniform of stiff green twill. He was backed by a pair of uniformed rank-and-filers. One of them Salstrup knew from long acquaintance as a repeat offender, assault-and-battery.

  "I need to interrogate some prisoners," Salstrup said mildly.

  "These are Popular Militia scumbags," Stone said, getting up in the taller Police President's face. "Traitors. They're ours. You can't touch them without approval from above."

  "All I want to do is ask them a few questions."

  "Then let's see some authorization, buddy!"

  "Very well," Michael Salstrup said. He reached inside his coat, drew his service semiauto from his shoulder holster, and shot Kommandant Stone twice in the belly.

  As the Kommandant fell, clutching himself and moaning, Salstrup heard a multiple click from behind him. He turned his head to see Clyde, holding his freshly cocked service revolver at the extent of two badly shaking arms.

  "What are you d-doing?" the patrolman asked. His face was white as a sheet of paper. "This is treason!"

  "It's loyalty," Salstrup said quietly. "To Towne."

  Clyde shook his head, causing his gun to wave alarmingly. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't let you do that. Put the gun down—"

  Two loud cracks gouged Salstrup's eardrums like nails. Clyde half-turned, fell, lay still. The matronly black Willoughby stood by her stool, lowering her own revolver.

  The two PP goons went for their sidearms. Mulcahy shattered them with a single blast each.

  "Thank you," Salstrup told his two sergeants.

  He felt lightheaded, almost giddy. The wait was so long. In Shadizar, as in cities and provinces all across Hyboria, the resistance had laid the groundwork weeks before, during the time Blaylock was firming his grasp on rulership and extending the sway of his Planetary Police: assassinating hard-core collaborators in key positions, keeping it up until they were replaced by others more willing to turn a blind eye to militia activity—or, as in Salstrup's case, were themselves members of the resistance.

  And now it was begun. The wait was over. Win or lose, the dice were thrown. He felt as much relief as apprehension.

  The gut-shot secret policeman was giving off bubbling sobs. Salstrup pointed his handgun down, shot the writhing Stone through the head. Then he indicated the cells on the north side of the block. "Get these open in a hurry. We have work to do."

  * * *

  A muffled boom echoed across the mountains, still snowy ghosts despite the alleged
imminence of spring. A section of hillside fell away in a great boiling cloud of starlit snow.

  When the powder settled it revealed the tarp-swaddled form of a Mad Cat, standing in a half-section of conduit.

  "Voila" Marjorie Tunhill proclaimed, gesturing grandly at the unveiling OmniMech. "I told you it would be fine."

  Don Carlos nodded in grim and wordless satisfaction.

  Colonel José Carlos Domingo Camacho y DeBaca, Dfaz y Edwards—to give him his full name—was not a strategic genius, nor yet a tactical one. No one would mention his name in the same breath with Hanse Davion or Natasha Kerensky.

  But he was absolutely brilliant at keeping his regiment—his familia—alive and intact. He was also a master at bringing his undisciplinable assortment of wild talents and wilder egos—egomaniacs like Astro Zombie and Vanity Torres; religious eccentrics like Com Guard deserter LtJG Thomas "Red Dragon" Noonan, the two Rastafarian 'Mech jocks "Buffalo Soldier" Marcus and "Burning Spear" Powerman, and the martyred LUG Teresa de Avila Chavez; and the probably insane, such as LtSG Suthorn and Bobby "Navajo Wolf" Begay, compared to whom Cassie was a marvel of socialization—into positions in which they could drive the enemy as crazy as they drove him.

  And finally, he had a seasoned knife-fighter's unerring instinct for where a cut would draw the most blood, kill the most nerves, or sever the most crucial tendons.

  With the help of expert advisors ranging from the mild Father Doctor Bob to the bloodthirsty Cassie Suthorn, he had prepared for months to accomplish those ends. Now he was forced to move, long before the preparation was done.

  Whether what had been accomplished was enough was in the Virgin's hands. If it was not—he would win a death befitting a Knight of Galisteo.

  As he settled into the familiar confines of the Great White's cockpit, with dawn still hours distant, a Shadow Hawk descended from the sky before him. "Buenas dias, father," Gavilah said over the radio.

  "Buenas, my son. It is a good day to die."

  "Como asi." Even so.

  Don Carlos pressed a button. He felt the mighty 75-ton machine come to life around him as much as he saw the telltales spring alight on his board.

  "Vamonos, mijo," he said. "We have our rides to catch."

  * * *

  In Kordava, on the southwest coast of Hyboria, a car bomb took out Planetary Police headquarters. The provincial PP brass were all inside, summoned by the local police chief to an emergency pre-dawn meeting. Oddly, the chief didn't show until after the blast.

  * * *

  The yellow cargo blimp floated above the sleeping city, its engines giving off a deep soft hum. A great bloated cigar shape, it was formed of six modular sections, the middle four of which carried a payload of almost 600 metric tons internally. Far stronger than it looked, capable of traveling at over 150 kilometers per hour, the airship stood up surprisingly well against the violent mercurial moods of Towne weather. Except in extremely severe storms, it was safer than conventional aircraft, and cost a fraction as much to operate.

  The most important fact about it was that, at oh-dark-hundred of this early spring morning, it was making a regularly scheduled run from a logging operation in the Gunderland Mountains. Except for a two-week hiatus caused by the invasion, it had made the trip to the TTC yards weekly for the past twelve years.

  Nobody paid the slightest attention to it.

  It passed unremarked over the highway interchange where Route 55 crossed Highway 1, the north-south coastal road, over the modest skyscraper grove of Port Howard's central business district. The Admin Center, a sort of blocky letter "C," with stubby southwest-pointing arms and a main body so swollen that a substantial square chunk could be taken out of the middle for the courtyard, was soaked in light, and BattleMechs prowled the streets around it. But if anyone heard the purr of the blimp's engines, or noticed the great pallid shadow occluding stars overhead, they didn't mention it to anybody.

  The airship was descending when it crossed the rail spur leading north along the Circle Bay waterfront, and it almost skimmed the top of the Markbreit before crossing Starry Wisdom Street and the TTC perimeter. Slowing, it eased to a stop beside the cement tower in the compound's northwest quadrant and let down lines. Ground crew seized them, bent them to winches, and cranked the craft down.

  The first item of cargo to be offloaded was Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassie Suthorn, dressed in a black sneaksuit, with a suppressed Shimatsu-42 slung over her shoulder, Blood-drinker strapped to her right thigh, and a hands-free tactical communicator headset clamped over hair that she'd twisted into a knot at the back of her skull. Behind her came others, similarly outfitted: more Caballero scouts, militiamen and women, and finally the Dispossessed Mech Warriors of First Battalion.

  CEO Fred Landrey stood waiting for them in a long coat with a fur collar. He was a big balding guy with a walrus mustache, the man who had faced off with the unknown orator the morning Wolf Girl downed Pipiribau's Locust. Cassie and several of the 'lleros walked over to him.

  "Am I glad to see you," he said, shaking her hand and moving on to the others. "I got to tell you, it's been wearing me down kissing Drac ass for five months. And even worse having to put up with Blaylock's sellouts and bully-boys."

  "What about the cargo inspectors?" asked Badlands Powell. He looked more like his name than ever. A rolled-up balaclava concealed his chemotherapy-induced baldness. A lit cigarette dangled from his lip, on the basis of, what difference did it make? Ten Bears was amazed he was still breathing as it was.

  Landrey jerked his head at the warehouse behind him. A pair of dark figures lay sprawled on the blacktop just outside the muted light-spill from the door. Without attention being called to them they might have been grease stains.

  The hatch of the second cargo module swung up. A Raven stepped daintily down to the pavement, shook its long-beaked head, walked a few paces away. Raven O'Connor had the trick of making her 'Mech move as if it were a real bird.

  "You guys sure you're ready for this?" Landrey asked through puffs of condensation. "Counting the Towne Guards, the Snakes have twelve battalions in this burg—four regiments' worth of troopies."

  "Yeah," said Cowboy Payson. "We got 'em just where we want 'em."

  The TTC boss rolled his eyes. "Hasn't the Pretty-boy moved a lot of his troops out of town?" asked Buck Evans, scratching a grizzle-bristled cheek.

  "What difference does that make? You got what? One beat-up regiment—which is more like two battalions, to be honest about it."

  "We have friends," Cassie said. "Also, we cheat."

  Landrey shook his head. "I think you're rushing this."

  "Yeah, we are," Buck said. "But riddle me this: what would you think of us if we didn't move now?"

  "I'd respect your heads," Landrey said in a measured way. "But I'd question your hearts—and your balls."

  "And there you have it," Cowboy said.

  The Rooster came strolling out of the night, with night-vision goggles pushed up onto his tousled red hair, lighting a smoke stuck in his ugly face. His bandy-legged little frame moved as if the fifty-kilo blaster's pack strapped to his back weighed nothing.

  "So what's it gonna be, cousin?" he asked Landrey. "You with us? Or are you having second thoughts?"

  "I got second thoughts to spare," Landrey said, "but I'm with you. Win or lose, I've had it up to here with this crap."

  With a creaking of metal joints, Outlaw Leyva's Hurry Sundown emerged from the blimp. The black-clad, cowboy-hatted skeleton with stars for spurs beautifully airbrushed on the 'Mech's chest and belly was no more than a blur. A Shadow Hawk came clumping out close behind: Gabby Camacho's Red-tailed Hawk. They moved so as to keep the warehouse's bulk between themselves and the southeastern area where the captured 'Mechs were parked in lakes of light.

  "What's the situation look like here on the ground?" Cassie asked.

  "Your luck is in, sorta. Dracs never did quite sort out who was supposed to get the 'Mechs they captured from you when they landed
. Pretty-Boy quietly doled out eleven of them to his own DCMS jocks who'd gotten Dispossessed thanks to you guys. That leaves seven still here, plus the seven they trolled in when they grabbed your people at the Copper Queen."

  "What about the Naga?" Cassie asked. Since the Luthien Armor Works project was way classified, the 'lleros passed the prototype support 'Mech off as booty like the Colone's Mad Cat.

  "They don't quite know what to make of that beast. They got it on display out in Robert E. Howard Plaza in front of the Admin Center, right next to the statue of old REH himself."

  From the corner of her ear Cassie heard Frenchfry Ames, on foot, trying to hold a shouted conversation with his wife, who kept her 'Mech's beak turned resolutely away from him and wouldn't respond. They had reconciled and split up again at least once since Mariposa's death, to Cassie's knowledge. Evidently they were on the outs again.

  "What's the security like in here?" Buck asked.

  "One lance of 15th Dieron light and medium 'Mechs: a Sentinel, a Hunchback, a Jenner, and a Locust. Plus a platoon of 503rd infantry—usual spackle-for-brains Drac conscript groundpounders. If they don't have their thumbs up their butts it's 'cause they're sucking on 'em. Why stay awake when you got brick walls and BattleMechs to keep you safe?"

  "Is the transport ready?" Buck asked.

  Landrey nodded. "Trucks're waiting to go. You'll want to find a place on one; your Orion got farmed out."

  Buck shrugged. "Your ride's still here, Payson," the TTC man said. "All right."

  "Not even a Drac'd take that puny-ass Wasp of yours," Buck said.

  "Dark Lady's on display in front of the Center, too. They got the right leg straightened out, but the knee actuator's still frozen and the Dracs didn't bring many Atlas parts along. From the test we watched, she's still got as much speed as ever, but any kind of maneuverability she had's long gone. Nobody was real eager to take her on, even if she is the biggest thing on the battlefield." He looked past the clump of listeners. "But maybe you'll want to reclaim her anyway, Captain MacDougall?"