Heaven’s Devils

by William C. Dietz

  “I’m going to take the Tac Squad out on a mission tonight,” Captain Jack announced, “and you’ll be second in command.”

  Tychus nodded woodenly. “Yes, sir. What’s the objective?”

  “We’re going after a civilian collaborator,” the officer replied. “A man who took money to provide the enemy with information about his neighbors.”

  “Sounds like a picnic, sir,” Tychus commented. “Why wait? Let’s pick him up now.”

  “I said he was a civilian,” Captain Jack replied. “What I didn’t say is that he lives about fifteen miles north of here, in a fortified house, on top of a hill. There have been periods of civil unrest on Raydin III—and his home was built to take some punishment. So a bit of circumspection is in order. We’re going to dress like Kel-Morians and arrive in a Kel-Morian transport, which was captured along with the town. It was in need of some repairs, but our people put the ship right and it’s ready to lift.”

  “So if we arrive at night, the collaborator will believe we’re there to pick him up,” Tychus mused, “and allow us to land unopposed.”

  “Something like that,” Jack agreed vaguely. “Round up your men, get some food in them, and order the duty driver to take you down to the warehouse where the stuff we captured from the Kel-Morians is stored. Do you know Gunnery Sergeant Sims?”

  Tychus felt his heart beat just a little bit faster. “We’ve met … yes.”

  “Good. He’ll help you get the team set up with all the proper gear. Meet me at the landing strip at 2000 hours. And don’t be late, Findlay… . You know how that pisses me off.”

  Tychus knew it was time to leave, and stood. He was halfway out the door when Captain Jack stopped him. “One more thing, Sergeant… . Bring a rocket launcher. We might need it.”

  ***

  After spending a couple of hours getting ready, Tychus and his squad drove onto the airstrip at precisely 1930, thereby ensuring that they would have plenty of time to run one last check on the team prior to liftoff. Lightning flashed in the eastern sky as the big truck came to a halt and the marines bailed out.

  All the necessary arrangements had been made by Corporal Proctor, so none of the Confederate soldiers opened fire on what appeared to be a squad of Kel-Morian outriders splashing across what had been a city park, to the row of aircraft parked beyond.

  Kel-Morian battle dress was a good deal less formal than the color-coded gear issued by the Confederacy. In fact, in many cases the protective gear that each soldier wore consisted of CMC armor plating patched together with pseudo-leather padding. The uniforms were covered with guild symbols and insignias that marked their specialty, a tradition that started all the way back with Moria’s original mining guilds. The rippers were known to be the best-equipped soldiers in the Combine, but even they had a preference for Confed armor when they could get their hands on it; a fresh coat of black paint easily erased its origins—and the blood the soldier surely would have spilled in procuring it.

  The Kel-Morians knew where the improvised airstrip was, of course, but there was no reason to make the war easy for them, so, with the exception of handheld lamps and the spill of light that came from inside the Kel-Morian dropship, the entire area was blacked out. However, out beyond the area that was under the direct control of the military, some of the local citizens were making no effort to comply with the blackout, and the marines lacked sufficient personnel to chase them down.

  “All right,” Tychus said as his team assembled next to the ship. “Pair off and check each other’s gear. Wasser, you’re with me.”

  Corporal Wasser, better known to the rest of the squad as “the troll,” was short but extremely powerful. So strong, in fact, that it was necessary for Tychus to actually exert himself to beat Wasser at arm wrestling.

  But Wasser’s real claim to fame was his relationship with Captain Jack, which some likened to the bond between a man and his dog. Tychus knew that if Wasser was present, Captain Jack wouldn’t be far away, and that proved to be the case as the squad members completed their checks and trooped into the cargo bay. Captain Jack, now Overseer Jack, according to the Kel-Morian insignias on his clothing, was chatting with the pilot. Once the squad was aboard and properly strapped in, he came back to sit with them.

  “Lock and load,” the officer said, as the engines ran up and the Kel-Morian dropship wobbled into the air. “We’ll be over the target in about five minutes.”

  The trip was so short there wouldn’t have been any reason to use a transport if it hadn’t been for the deception involved. But Tychus was glad of it, because the faster they could complete the mission and return, the sooner he could check on Operation Early Retirement. Calvin was supposed to send two trucks in at 0300 and Tychus wanted to be present.

  Both of the ship’s side doors had been removed to make way for an automatic weapon on one side and a rotary rocket launcher on the other, both of which were manned by helmeted crewmen. The slipstream blew cold air and rain in through the doors, but Tychus was glad of the openings nonetheless, because they allowed him to catch an occasional glimpse of the countryside whenever a bolt of lightning crackled across the sky.

  As the ship flew north he saw clusters of lights and knew he was looking at homes that should have been blacked out. And that raised an interesting question… . Since he could see them—did that mean they could see the ship? And would they recognize it as a Kel-Morian aircraft if they did?

  The fact that the dropship was flying low, only a couple of hundred feet off of the ground, seemed to suggest that it would be identifiable during a lightning flash. Tychus felt something cold trickle into his bloodstream. Did Captain Jack want people to spot the Kel-Morian aircraft? And if so, why?

  There was no way to know as the ship banked and circled to port. That revealed a brightly lit house. The house, or so Tychus assumed.

  Captain Jack was communicating with the pilot via his helmet comm, and while Tychus couldn’t hear what was said, he saw the officer’s lips move. Tychus wondered why he had been cut out of the conversation. Normally, as Captain Jack’s number two, Tychus would have been privy to all the interactions on the command channel. So was this an anomaly? Or was the officer hiding something? There was no way to know as the transport lost even more altitude and the circle tightened.

  Tychus, who was seated opposite the opening on the port side, caught a glimpse of a large house, outbuildings, and a landing pad with civilians running every which way. Then he saw the strings of lights and realized that a party was under way. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off as spikes began to rattle against the fuselage. “That’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Captain Jack said grimly, his voice flooding all of their helmets. “Let the bastards have it.”

  The rocket launcher was on the starboard side of the dropship and therefore pointed upwards. But the gauss cannon was operational and it sent streams of red tracers down to explore the estate below. Men, women, and children were tossed about like rag dolls as the supersonic spikes found them. Empty casings flew through the air, bounced off the deck, and rolled away.

  But the battle wasn’t one-sided. The door gunner’s head jerked as a spike smashed through his visor, scrambled his brains, and blew a gout of goo out through the back of his helmet. As he fell a marine stepped in to take his place.

  Tychus was out of his seat by then and hurried to confront Captain Jack. “I suggest that you tell the pilot to land this thing now, sir! The transport makes an easy target.”

  “Soon,” the officer agreed grimly, as a shoulder-launched rocket exploded against the hull. “Let’s make sure everyone in the area sees the markings on the ship first.”

  Now Tychus understood the real reason for using the Kel-Morian dropship and the disguises. The Confederate civilians weren’t collaborators, they were something else, dissidents perhaps. People the government planned to eliminate. And having seen the ship’s markings, witnesses would report the attack as a Kel-Morian raid! Thereby reinforcing all of th
e Confederacy’s propaganda about enemy atrocities.

  And the plan would probably work unless Captain Jack got them all killed, which appeared to be increasingly likely as more enemy fire hit the hull, and holed it. A marine screamed as a piece of shrapnel took his leg off just below the knee and a corpsman rushed to his side. “Put it down, sir! Put it down now,” Tychus insisted as he stared into Captain Jack’s stony eyes.

  “You’re a coward, Findlay,” the officer replied tersely as a bullet came in through the open door, hit metal and ricocheted past his head. “And I’ll have you up on charges the minute we return to base.”

  Enraged, Tychus lifted his weapon and smashed Captain Jack in the side of the head. The officer was wearing a helmet, but the rifle butt hit so hard it broke through the protective shell, and delivered a blow to the company commander’s skull. The ship dropped ten feet, then recovered as the pilot fed more power to the retros. Tychus stumbled back.

  Captain Jack’s unconscious body was still falling to the floor as Wasser uttered a roar of outrage. He jumped onto Tychus’s back and called for reinforcements. Tychus managed to drop the marine who came straight at him, but when two more tackled his legs, he went down. Wasser wrapped two hands around Tychus’s throat and cut off his air supply. Tychus felt the ship vibrate as the pilot maxed the retros, wondered how he could have been so stupid, and fell into a black hole.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Of the thousands of new soldiers recruited into the Confederate armed services over the past few months, there have been several dozen complaints filed with the Bureau of Personnel regarding illegal drafting. The bureau claims that these allegations of unsanctioned conscription are unfounded and based on ‘the typical panic and unrest found in civilian populations during wartime.’ Out of respect to our audience, UNN has chosen to drop this investigation until tensions dissipate to peacetime levels.”

  Max Speer, Evening Report for UNN May 2488

  THE PLANET TARSONIS, THE CONFEDERACY OF MAN

  The unconscious boy lay on the cot with his eyes closed and his arms hanging down to the floor as Camy rifled through his pockets and two men looked on. The wallet was right where she expected it to be, inside the still morphing jacket in a self-sealing pocket.

  The con artist kept her back to the onlookers as she opened the leather folder and went straight for the cash. Bills … nice. Camy knew right then that she’d snagged a good one. It was rare to find bills these days—especially among the low-life scabs she usually came across in Hacker’s Flat.

  Having stuffed the cash into her bra, she took an inventory of the rest. And that was when she saw the name “Ark Bennet” on a holocard, and frowned. Could it be? Could the naïve, slack-jawed youth lying on the cot really be the scion of the famous Bennet family? After shuffling through the rest of the boy’s wallet, she concluded that he was. Not because she’d seen him on the vids, but because of the name. She’d never met anyone named “Ark” before—much less an “Ark Bennet.”

  Camy’s first reaction was greed. How much would the Bennet family be willing to pay to get their boy back? A hundred thousand? A million? The notion of a ransom was tempting. Very tempting. But it was scary, too … because the Bennet family was extremely powerful, and the moment they reported their son missing the Tarsonis Police Force would scour the city looking for the boy. The thought of that, and what they might do to her, made Camy’s heart pound.

  There was another party who would be willing to buy Ark Bennet, however. He wouldn’t pay as much as the Bennets would, but the transaction would be a lot safer, and would put a layer of protection between Camy and the police.

  “So, pay up,” one of the men demanded. “We’ve got some serious drinking to do.”

  “Don’t worry,” Camy replied. “I will. I’ll pay ten each, plus whatever you can get for that jacket, which will be ten times more. It could be traceable though, so take it at least six blocks away, and sell it quick. That goes for the rest of his stuff, too. I want one of you to strip him down—while the other goes for some street clothes. The faster we do this the better. So move!”

  The grubby, smoke-filled room was located over the one-time garage that had long served as Harley Ross’s command post, and there was a strong possibility that he was the most unkempt recruiting sergeant stationed on Tarsonis. Something the marine was proud of, because while other noncoms were spending their time in upper schools, strutting about and telling lies about how wonderful the Marine Corps was, he was out sifting through working-class neighborhoods where only two out of ten teenagers finished school and work was hard to find. And his numbers were better than anybody else’s. Which explained why Captain Fredricks left him alone.

  So that’s where the recruiter was, playing cards with three of his cronies, when his fone began to rattle on the table just as Dicer upped the ante. A sure sign that he had a winning hand. So rather than throw good money after bad, Ross looked at the incoming number and flipped the device open. “Hey, sweet cakes, what you got for me?”

  The other men watched cynically as Ross nodded, said, “I’ll be right over,” and broke the connection. “Don’t tell me,” Dicer said. “Let me guess. I raise the ante and you have to leave.”

  Ross smiled apologetically. “Sorry about that, but duty calls! There’s a war on, you know… . Somebody has to keep the Kel-Morians at bay, or they’ll land on Tarsonis and go after your wife.”

  “She’d probably welcome a squad of KM rippers after all the years living with Dicer,” one of the other men observed, and Dicer glowered by way of a response.

  “How ’bout it?” Ross inquired, as he cashed out. “Anyone want to make fifty credits? I could use some muscle.”

  “Count me in,” a man named Vic responded. “I could use some scratch.”

  Ten minutes later Ross and Vic were in the unmarked van and on their way. Traffic was bad as usual, so it took a full twenty minutes to reach the Hacker’s Flat neighborhood and pull up to the loading dock behind the pub. Camy was there waiting as the two men got out of the van. She was clearly annoyed. “What the hell took you so long?” she demanded. “The stupid sonofabitch is starting to come to.”

  “That’s no way to talk about a young man who is about to join the Confederacy’s armed forces,” Ross replied sternly, as he mounted a short flight of concrete stairs. “Show some respect.”

  Camy produced a snort of derision, pivoted toward the door, and led the men into the back room. A young man was laid out on the cot, but was trying to sit up and form words that refused to come. Both the fancy jacket and shoes had been replaced by used clothing purchased at a bodega a few doors down. “Good work!” Ross said, as he stood over Camy’s latest find. “He’s in good shape. Where’d you get him?”

  Camy shrugged. “I think he’s a college student… . He wandered off the campus and was strolling along the street when I spotted him.”

  Ross eyed her. “You think he’s a college student? Or you know he is? Let’s see his wallet. There’s bound to be some ID in there.”

  “He didn’t have a wallet,” Camy responded vaguely. “Maybe he forgot it or something.”

  Ross shook his head in disgust. “So you cleaned out his wallet… . What else did you get?”

  Camy stood her ground. “What difference does it make? It isn’t like you need his real name or something. A girl has to make a living. Which reminds me … Fork it over.”

  Ross, who was wearing a rumpled suit, removed two separately packaged ounces of crab from his coat pocket and handed them over. Crab was the nickname for a powerful narcotic substance that was both a depressant and an intoxicant. “You ought to cut back, Camy… . That stuff is bad for you.”

  “And you ought to kiss my ass, Ross,” Camy snapped back, as the packets disappeared into her purse.

  “I’d be happy to handle that responsibility for him,” Vic interjected, and leered at her.

  “You wish,” Camy responded darkly. “Now quit screwing around and get the meat ou
t of here. There hasn’t been any sign of a search so far, but there’s bound to be one, and I’d like to be somewhere else when the heat arrives.”

  “Roger that,” Ross replied. “Vic, you grab him under the armpits, and I’ll take his legs. Camy, if you would be so kind as to go out and open the back door, I would be eternally grateful.”

  Having struggled mightily, Ark managed to sit up at that point, and voiced his objections. “Gibo tell orby im pop.”

  The man named Ross swore, let go of Ark’s ankles, and adjusted the ring on his right hand. Once the Marine Corps emblem was rotated inwards, he slapped the booster against the boy’s neck to fire a powerful sedative in through the pores of his skin. Ark jerked convulsively, saw the brute’s face roll out of focus, and felt himself float away.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERATE TROOPSHIP GLADIATOR

  Consciousness returned slowly. Ark heard noises, occasional snatches of conversation, and the persistent rumble of something. Engines? Air conditioning? There was no way to be sure. Then someone pried open his left lid and aimed a pen light into his eye. The woman had a pleasant middle-aged face and was wearing medical scrubs. “This one is coming around,” she announced. “Let’s get him off the table and into the holding area.”

  Two men, also in medical scrubs, came to assist, and they were anything but gentle as they pulled Ark up into a sitting position. “Where am I?” Ark inquired blearily, as he eyed the medical equipment around him. “You’re on a system runner, headed for the troopship Gladiator,” the woman replied cheerfully. “I hope you enjoyed your going away party … ’cause you’re going to pay with one helluva hangover.”

  Ark wanted to tell her that there hadn’t been any going away party, but the men had him on his feet by then and were walking him out of the sick bay. There were a number of twists and turns, but Ark’s head hurt, and he couldn’t keep track of them. A hatch irised open two minutes later, and he was pushed into a compartment half-filled with ratty-looking young people, all of whom regarded him with empty-eyed stares. As the men let go, Ark felt dizzy and quickly sank to the deck.