Forced Conversion
by
Donald J. Bingle
Copyright © 2004, 2016 Donald J. Bingle.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
This book is published by
54°40’ Orphyte, Inc.
St. Charles, Illinois
Dedication
To Mom and Dad
FORCED CONVERSION
Chapter 1
Derek hated firefights with religious zealots. They never gave up. Even when they faced certain death, they thought that meant they had won, that their reward in heaven was close at hand and even more glorious if they took you with them.
The scene looked peaceful enough: a shallow mountain creek cutting its way through the soil and detritus of a broad valley floor. A scattering of aging Ponderosa pines whispered and swayed lazily in the breeze above, while the buffalo grass baked and dried in the naked glare of the sun.
But the sun and the trees lied when they whispered peace. Violence stalked this place. The bear and mountain lion tracks crisscrossing a bar of silt nearby bore silent witness to the danger. The pleasant gurgle of the creek’s bright, flowing water tried, but could not mask the truth of the mountain wilds. Kill-or-be-killed was nature’s way.
And today . . . today there would be violence here of a type never shown in the nature vids.
There were at least three mals on the far side of the creek. His enemy was hiding in the more plentiful pines and bushy undergrowth on the north side of the valley. Derek couldn’t see them, hadn’t seen them even during the coordinated burst of automatic weapon fire that forced him to dive for the dirt several minutes ago, but he knew that they were there. They were spread out along the outside of a U-shaped bend in the coldwater creek. That way they would have a clear shot at anyone fool enough to charge down the loose gravel bank, cross the shin-high water, and attempt to scramble up the opposite side.
Derek wasn’t a fool and he certainly wasn’t gung-ho enough about this mission, any mission, to charge forward on his own. Instead, he hunkered down behind one of the bigger Ponderosa pines. He gulped for air, breathing in the sweet smell of the sticky sap oozing from where a bullet had scored the trunk only moments before. The sugary scent mixed with the salty tang of his own sweat and the whiff of powder still in the air from his untargeted return fire. His mouth tasted of mud, tinged with metal.
He glanced furtively about for hostiles, then sat with his back to the trunk as he checked his ammunition and waited impatiently for the rest of the squad to move up. They’d heard the gunfire. There was no reason to risk moving back to report. Still, he counted the seconds and yearned for a radio to call for help.
He’d learned many things in the course of his training: military maneuvers, survival techniques, PsyOps methods. Things he otherwise never would have thought about back home; things Katy would never know or understand; things he would never tell her when he saw her again after his service was complete. But he had never learned why the squad couldn’t use a damn radio to communicate on patrol, not even a radio with an encrypted signal. Their vehicle had laser communications gear, but out in the field they used hand motions. So he sat, frozen in place, imagining a hand motion he would love to give whoever had banned the radios, and waited for reinforcement.
He heard the squad before he saw them, which didn’t say much for their training, or, more accurately, their leadership. A. K., the hulking squad commander, crashed forward, barely bothering to crouch as he moved quickly through the buffalo grass. Sandoval, slightly pudgy and sweating profusely, trailed diagonally on A. K.’s right, just ahead of Pancek, who moved in the calm, deliberate manner of a professional soldier. Manning, short and wiry, moved quickly and furtively in a mirror position to A. K.’s left, along with Digger, who was older, taller, and considerably more laconic in his movements and his attitude. Back and center, their resident techno-geek, Wires, crept forward awkwardly with his conversion equipment.
Derek swung his rifle around the side of the trunk and let off a burst into the trees across the creek, both to give the squad some cover and to make sure they knew exactly where he was. The squad would know the sound of his rifle; the ConFoe suppressor rifles made a deep, dull bark—the result of the rubber bullets. The mals used a variety of weaponry—everything from ancient Kalashnikovs to collapsible Uzi submachine pistols, but they all had the sharp yelp and bite of real ammunition made of brass and lead and designed to tear a ragged hole out of your sinew when they hit.
The mal religious fanatics didn’t have to play by the rules regarding lethal force. Only the ConFoes were supposed to do that. It’s what almost made it an even fight, despite the superior numbers, training, equipment, and transportation of the ConFoes. The Conversion Forces were tasked to locate, capture, orient, persuade, and convert the malcontents, forcibly if necessary. The ConFoes could only use lethal force in defense; the mals used it all the time.
A. K. halted the group’s advance in a brief hollow behind a small deadfall. “Bareback,” he growled. Pancek, Manning, Sandoval, and Digger simultaneously popped out their ammo magazines and snicked in fresh ones from their belts with smooth, practiced motions. Wires merely continued his slow, burdened effort to catch up; he didn’t even carry a gun.
Derek knew that A. K. had no need to switch; he never used rubber, despite the regulations.
Derek made no move to switch magazines either, but for a different reason. “There’s no need for that, A. K.,” he hissed back to his squad-mates. “We outnumber ‘em.”
“To hell with that. Damn mals need to learn to run back to their hidey-holes when A. K. comes to town,” the squad leader boasted, louder than he needed to. He obviously didn’t care if the mals heard.
“There’s only three . . .” Derek argued back.
A. K. fixed him with a steely gaze, the muscles tensing in his jaw. “You only saw three.” He looked up toward the shade of the more densely packed trees across the creek. The sunlight dappling through the swaying pine branches was the only thing that moved within his gaze. “They only showed you three.” His tanned face crinkled slightly as he took in a long deep breath, then loosed a practiced stream of spittle through his teeth. “I smell one behind every tree.”
He motioned, first to Sandoval, then to Manning. The signs were quick and precise and ended with a curt nod. Sandoval moved back and downstream, Manning back and upstream. They would cross the creek a hundred yards on either side of their advancing leader and attempt to flank the enemy. Derek had less than three minutes to get with the program before all hell broke loose.
Swearing below his breath, he ejected the partially expended magazine of rubber bullets and replaced it with the real thing. He stuck a couple extra magazines into the waistband of his camouflage pants for ready access and counted the grenades hanging off his belt: three stunners on his right, two incendiaries on his left.
Unfortunately, the mals decided not to wait to be flanked. They opened up on Derek with apocalyptic abandon before he could even turn back around toward them and get his bearings. Bursts of automatic fire tore up the ground in arcs to his left and his right, zeroing in on him as steady fire from the front pounded into the soft wood of the Ponderosa pine, chewing through it, sending wood and splinters flying into his neck.
He knew better than to have remained stationary this long after having been spotted by an enemy, especially with his back to them. Now they had fully triangulated their fire on his position. It was only a matter of seconds . . . .
With a bellow, A. K. vaulted over the deadfall and
charged forward to the left of Derek’s untenable position. In A. K.’s left paw, a gleaming silver machine pistol spat out a stream of fire and death at the position of the left-most attacker. In his right, an automatic heavy rifle did the same. A. K.’s taut muscles absorbed the recoil of each shot and his shoulders strained to keep the weapons level despite their thundering rate of fire. Even with the dual targeting and his quick movement forward, A. K.’s aim remained remarkably true, pummeling both positions without respite.
More splinters exploded from Derek’s tree as A. K. drew even and passed his position, still firing to both sides, his arms outstretched, his chest full and wide toward the center mal, who had been punishing the side of Derek’s cover facing the creek.
Pancek and Digger flung themselves wide to either side, each firing in short bursts at the mal nearest them as they gained speed in an effort to rush and jump the creek.
Derek’s tree stopped vibrating as the center shooter began to veer his fire toward the charging A. K. It was up to Derek to save the belligerent asshole. He reached down with his right hand to his left side and loosed a grenade, flicking the pin out with his thumb as he had been drilled in boot. He drew his arm back, then flung his arm upward as he twisted around the right side of the tree to fastball the weapon into the thicket directly across the creek.
As the explosion rocked the previously peaceful valley, Derek threw himself toward a large pine to his right, trusting the dust and chaos of the explosion to cover his movement and staying low to avoid the steady stream of lead that A. K. continued to spew in both directions. The tree he chose was half-undercut by the eroding bank of the creek and leaned out at a forty-five degree angle across the water. If he could clamber atop it and sprint across, he could drop down on the other side before he was re-targeted and capture their center opponent.
Derek attempted to shoulder his weapon to leave his hands free and planted his left foot hard to push up onto the angled pine. As he did, the earth gave way beneath him and his leg dropped into a void until his crotch shockingly halted the fall by colliding with a wide tree root. His rifle slipped off his right shoulder as he spun and jerked painfully downward to his left. Blackness and flashes of light flooded Derek’s vision as his plan disintegrated with the eroding earth. He scraped his face on the tree trunk as he fell, wrenching his lower back and twisting his right knee in the process.
Derek gritted his teeth to avoid crying out and struggled to remain conscious. The bank had undercut the old pine more than he had realized and his leg had punched through a layer of dirt between two gnarled roots. His left leg now dangled helplessly below the angled tree without purchase. His gun was out of reach, in the open to his right. Shots rang out on three sides of him, but the tree blocked his view of the firefight raging about him. Mud spattered against his exposed leg as slugs slammed into the bank. The automatic fire approached him from the left in a stream so thick that he knew his leg would be chewed off when the dum-dum bullets cut through his flesh, leaving his blood to course down into the pristine water of the creek.
He tried to marshal his thoughts and figure out what to do, but the only thing that could permeate the haze of pain was that this was surely an asinine way to die. Even more so, because only mals died at all anymore.
That was the beauty of conversion.
Where was that damn slowpoke, Wires, when you really needed him?
* * * * *
Icy slivers of water sliced into Derek’s face and splashed across his shoulders and chest. He opened his eyes into utter blackness. His body ached, the pain throbbing outward from his privates and his lower back to his legs, chest, shoulders, arms, and face and somehow out further into infinity, his agony reaching out further than his appendages. His head throbbed in time with the spasms of his back. His tongue was swollen and thick, his lips cracked and crusted with mud and sweat. He tasted blood and grit and bile with the sharp metallic aftertaste that always accompanied a burst of adrenaline.
This wasn’t what they promised in the conversion brochures. This isn’t what they told people, well mals, during orientation. Either they’d lied or he had died. Maybe the religious freaks were right about an afterlife, just wrong about what it contained.
He drifted back into blackness.
* * * * *
Stinging cold assaulted Derek’s face again. This time, when he opened his eyes, the flickering of a small flame broke the blackness. It snapped off as foul smoke and ash assaulted his nostrils. A circular red, white, and gray glow appeared from behind the smoke where the flame had been a moment before.
“If he closes his eyes, splash ‘im again, Manning,” grumbled the leering visage of A. K. behind his cigar. “He’ll either wake up or drown. Either way suits me.”
Shapes and shadows came into focus among the trees that blocked and scattered the dim moonlight. Another flame, this a campfire off to his left, crackled and snapped as the pitch of the pine branches boiled and burned.
“I tol’ you,” said Sandoval’s voice somewhere behind Derek. “I tol’ you, Wires, that you was wastin’ your time setting up the machinery. No way ‘ee needs to be converted yet. Poor bastard has to finish ‘ees service in the ConFoes, just like the rest of us.”
Derek saw Wires, to his far right, unpacking and assembling the scanner in a small clearing. Even in the dark, the techno-geek’s hands moved deftly, with quick certainty, snapping components together, toggling nuts onto well-oiled bolts, and plugging connections in with alacrity. He looked over to Sandoval without pausing at all in his tasks. His voice was soft and emotionless, “Just the same, I will continue. He looks terrible and you know this process takes some time. I’d prefer to be ready in case my services are needed.”
Digger squatted next to the crackling campfire, squinting into the flames and breathing in the pungent, piney smoke without coughing as he warmed his leathery hands. “If it’s all the same,” he drawled, “I’ll wait and see. Friggin’ bedrock’s too close to the surface hereabouts. No use diggin’ a hole, less’n you need it.”
“I’d try to live if I were you,” chuckled Manning, fingering another canteen full of cold water. “Wires ain’t ready yet, Digger doesn’t want to be bothered to bury you, and A. K. ain’t even got around to chewing you out over your lame-ass assault technique.”
It came to Derek that he had neither been converted nor had he died. Instead, his life in the squad and his tour of duty in the Conversion Forces continued. Perhaps it was the pain, or even the drugs that Manning had undoubtedly given him in an unsuccessful effort to dull his searing agony into an all-consuming full-body ache, but Derek felt no joy in discovering he was alive. No joy at all.
“What, what about the mals?” he croaked out raggedly, his words slurred and slow, his throat cracking with the effort.
Manning chuckled again. “Two wasted. Me on the one side—A. K. drove him headlong straight into me. It was bee-yoo-ti-ful! Pancek got the one on the other side.”
“Hey, man, I keeled him too,” interjected Sandoval. “Why do you think he run so slow? Shot him in the ol’ rumpola. Come next spring,” he continued, gesturing expansively at the clearing about him, “his ass will be grass!”
A. K. stopped sucking on his cigar and smiled thuggishly. “Pegged the bastard in the middle, too, but he got away. Wires was screaming for help so loud I had to come back and take care of you just to shut ‘im up.” He blew a putrid smoke ring into the thin, clear alpine air. “We’ll follow the blood-trail to verify the kill come morning.” He stuck the stogie back into his mouth and inhaled deeply. Like most smokers these days, he always fired up the strongest, most loathsome, extra-nicotine laced chubbies he could get his hands on and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, holding it there as long as possible before exhaling. After all, fouling your lungs really didn’t matter anymore.
Which was a good thing, Derek thought, as he pulled the asbestos coated emergency blanket up to his chin to stave off the cold ‘til dawn.
* * * * *
Derek still felt like crap in the morning, but Manning’s drugs had taken hold enough to make him ambulatory. Just barely. He wouldn’t want to jog uphill with a full pack or take on a mal in hand-to-hand, but he could move as fast as Wires could with all his equipment. That meant the squad was back in business.
Getting going wasn’t easy, though. Not only was Derek stiff and sore, but his hands were so numb from the drugs he had been given that he actually had to look to see if his fingers were gripping the zipper of his fly when he unzipped to take a morning piss. Even with the powerful drugs, he still winced in pain, then gritted his teeth as he fumbled gingerly at his crotch. His privates were swollen and discolored in ways never intended and not at all amorous. There was blood in his urine and pissing hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
It was a good thing his equipment was no longer needed for procreation. Like others of the unconverted, he used his recreationally from time to time, but it would be weeks before that would be enjoyable again. Derek zipped up and headed back toward the camp.
Pancek, quiet and reserved as always, greeted Derek on his return with only a brief nod. Pancek’s dark brow was furrowed like he had a headache and he had bags under his gray eyes; no doubt he had been on perimeter guard duty most of the night. But Pancek didn’t complain. He simply shouldered his pack and kicked dirt into the smoldering remains of the campfire. Then he walked calmly to the stream, stooping to fill his canteen. Finally, he stood, patiently waiting for the others to be ready to move out, as he screwed the cap back on the ConFoe-issued container.
A. K. came back into the campsite after reconnoitering ahead. “Bleeding like a stuck pig . . .” he sneered, gesturing to a clear trail through the buffalo grass.
“I don’t think their religion allows them to bleed like pigs,” smirked Manning.
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