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.”
“You’re going to back up Lieutenant Travis, sir?”
“I’m going to reinforce the garrison at Revancha, because that’s where the Zapatistas are going to launch their next attack.” Behind Sergeant Suarez—Lieutenant Suarez—Diego saw the remaining vehicles assembling. He had to rely on the broken-down Pegasus ag transports, the ones named Coffin Wagons by his troops because they were so easily ambushed. With luck, they wouldn’t encounter any guerrillas in the jungle, because the guerrillas would all be assembling to attack the reactor at Revancha.
With luck.
“How many troops are you taking, sir? It looks like most of them.”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. Most of them. You’ll have twenty soldiers to defend our honor here.”
“Twenty?” Suarez asked with disbelief. “I couldn’t hold back a blind leprous beggar if he got cranky, not with only twenty soldiers. Sir.”
Diego almost laughed. Suarez sounded like BJ. But this was deadly serious.
“We’ve got no choice, Lieutenant,” Diego said. “Revancha is too important to risk losing it to guerrillas. I’ve got to head out right away if I’m going to reach Revancha in time. I’ve radioed the garrison commander and alerted him. If I’m right, the Zapatistas will hit the nuclear reactor just at dawn.” Diego glanced at his chronometer. “That’s in two hours, so I have to make good time. Any questions, Lieutenant?”
“Uh, I don’t know, sir. This is all happening so fast.”
“Work on it. If you have any big problems within the next hour, contact me. After that I’m going to full comm silence. We can’t risk the guerrillas intercepting our communications. It’s crucial that our arrival at Revancha be a surprise.”
“What if someone from HQ wants to talk to you?”
“Make up something,” Diego said brusquely. He put his hand on Suarez’s shoulder. “You’ve got what it takes, Lieutenant. Make me proud. Make everyone in your family and village proud.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Suarez snapped the best military salute Diego had seen in weeks. He returned it and climbed into the Pegasus transport he intended to use as his command center. It took several minutes for him to interface his battlefield display unit with the Pegasus’s circuitry, then he issued orders on a scrambled, encrypted band even as he felt the ag lifters begin to quiver. The Pegasus cleared ground, and the column moved out toward Revancha.
Toward Revancha—and destiny.
Alex Allen struggled back to the empty road leading to the front gate at San Cristóbal just as the Maw was breaking the eastern horizon. How he had lost his GPS was a mystery. He was always careful with military-issue gear he might have to pay for if lost. It must have fallen out of his belt pouch during the battle at the meteor crater. Explaining to Diego Villalobos how he had wandered around in the jungle for almost two days was going to take some doing. The colonel ought to give him a medal for surviving in such a terrible environment. He was trained for the icefields of Alaska, not the jungles of Chiapas, yet he’d survived on a single liter of water, avoiding guerrilla patrols and the terrifying creature he had seen at the bottom of the pit.
Allen frowned, remembering his meeting with Consuela. It had almost seemed that she’d wanted him to encounter the pit-thing, as if she already knew of its deadly existence. He couldn’t shake the thought even though he knew it was absurd. She was merely a simple peasant he had rescued. For that he ought to get a commendation. After all, wasn’t it the stated goal of the Mexican Contribution Force to give aid and assistance to the natives?
Feet sore and muscles aching, Allen finally reached the gate. He was surprised to see no sentries in the guardhouse on either side of the gate. What was this? A ghost town?
He jumped when a loudspeaker blared, “Recognition code!”
“This is Captain Alex Allen, and I’ve returned to report to the colonel on a recon mission. I don’t know what the daily recognition code is. I’ve been gone almost two days.”
There was a lengthy pause, and then, “ID verified. You may enter, Captain.”
“I should hope so,” Allen said testily. The gate unlocked. He stepped through, then it closed and locked behind him automatically. His mouth dropped open when he saw the empty garrison. Ghost town described it perfectly.
He wondered what had happened for Villalobos to move out so many of his soldiers, leaving his command post bare. If some crisis had occurred during his absence, it might reflect badly on him, unless he revealed all of what he had seen at the strange impact crater. Allen didn’t really want to do that. Villalobos might steal his discovery to win some points finally with the MCF and Union brass.
Allen fumed, but there was nothing he could do. Before he could get to the object in the crater, he would have to take care of the whatever-it-was rampaging at the bottom of it. He had seen how useless standard armaments were against it; he didn’t think anything short of a SPEAR missile could take it out. And, unfortunately, the only person who had the launch codes for the post’s missiles was its commanding officer: Colonel Diego Villalobos.
Allen decided he’d first check out what Diego had done, then worry about forking over what he’d found. He hefted the rucksack holding the portion of the alien creature he had killed. Or almost killed. Even after hitting it with his rifle, stomping on it, and sealing it in an airtight bottle, he wasn’t sure the crystalline tendril was dead. He swung the rucksack off his shoulder and peered inside.
The piece did not need air. That much was obvious, since it still fitfully kicked about inside the plastic bottle. As he watched, the tendril sprouted spikes that tentatively probed at the sides of the bottle, testing its strength. The faster he got it away from him, the happier he’d be. It was alien in a way he couldn’t even begin to define, which made him profoundly uneasy.
“Hey, Cap’n!” came a shout. Allen looked up from his rucksack to see a private waving at him from across the compound. “You better get your butt on up to the colonel’s office. The boss wants to see you yesterday!”
Allen growled at an enlisted man daring to speak so informally to him, then hurried up the stairs to Villalobos’s second-floor office in the sprawling command and control building. The door to the colonel’s office stood partially open. Allen sidled closer and eavesdropped for a moment, just to be on the safe side. Then he knocked boldly.
“Come!”
Allen breezed in past the vacant orderly’s desk to the colonel’s office, trying to look confident. Victory through arrogance. But all of Allen’s simulated brashness died when he saw a sergeant sitting behind the colonel’s desk, just as if he were in charge.
“Where’s Villalobos?” Allen demanded.
Suarez looked up. “Where have you been, Captain? Things have been jumping here.”
“Sergeant, I—”
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant,” Allen said sarcastically. “Brief me on what’s happened.” Allen listened in dismay as Suarez told him about their split forces, half under Travis going to defend El Manguito and the other half with Villalobos at Revancha.
“The man’s crazy!” Allen exclaimed. “He can’t leave San Cristóbal undefended like this. How many troops on post?”
“Counting you, sir? Twenty-one.”
“It’s a good thing I returned when I did. Contact Villalobos immediately.”
“Sorry, sir, he ordered complete comm blackout.”
“I need to assemble all the officers for an immediate appraisal if I am going to properly command. I—”
“Sir,” Suarez interrupted firmly. “Technically you are not my superior officer. You are an observer, not a member of the colonel’s staff. Colonel Villalobos placed me in charge. I command here.”
“I outrank you, Sergeant,” Allen snapped. “Even if your claim to be a second lieutenant is valid, I still outrank you.”
“You are on TDY while at this post and out of the chain of command,” Suarez said, his expression darkening and his tone increasingly less polite. “Colonel Villalobos was wondering whether you had gone AWOL, since you did not formally report back to him as ordered. When I heard you had finally shown up, I sent word for you to come here. To my office.”
“I was on a secret mission for Villalobos,” Allen lied. “He would not take a lieutenant—let alone a sergeant—into his confidence about such an important mission.”
He swung his rucksack off his shoulder and opened the top. He had hoped to avoid revealing his discovery, but it was clear that the time had come to play his trump card. Gingerly, he grasped the bottle containing the glass snake by its edges and set it on Villalobos’s desk.
Suarez stood up from behind the desk and went pale. “What the hell is that?”
“That is what the colonel sent me to find,” Allen said. Both men edged slightly away from the desk as another questing tendril from the snake rocked the bottle. “We need to get it into quarantine as quickly as possible. We don’t yet know what its capabilities are.”
Suarez reached for the comm unit at the side of Villalobos’s desk but yanked his hand back as a fresh attack from a tendril tilted the bottle even closer to him. He pushed his chair back and edged carefully around the desk.
“Wait here,” Suarez said. “I’ll go get the biotechs to put that thing in isolation.” He hurried from the room, and Allen could hear him shouting orders all the way down the stairs.
As soon as he was out of sight, Allen snatched his rucksack, pulled it over the furiously rocking bottle, and scooped it up, dexterously pulling the top closed without ever touching the crystal’s prison. He carefully laid the bag on the floor and darted around to the other side of the desk, where he found the encryption code for the day and contacted the duty officer in Mexico City.
“Who am I speaking to?” Allen demanded.
“Major Ortiz, if it is of any importance to one so rude.”
“Sorry, Major,” Allen said insincerely. “This is Captain Alex Allen at San Cristóbal. I was sent here at General Ramirez’s request, and I need to speak to him right away. Emergency.”
“Does this have anything to do with that tedious problem at El Manguito? Where is Colonel Villalobos?”
“The colonel has abandoned San Cristóbal, sir,” Allen said, his voice oozing concern. “He left a staff sergeant in command.”
“You are joking.”
“Afraid not,” Allen replied, keeping a wary eye on the door. This was taking too long, and he was afraid Suarez might return too soon. “Let me speak to General Ramirez.”
“One moment.” The comm unit hummed, and then a deeper, more authoritative voice echoed from the speaker.
“General Ramirez here. What is this about Villalobos going AWOL?”
“This is Captain Alex Allen, TDY from Union HQ. I went on a scouting patrol into the jungle, and when I returned, Villalobos had left for Revancha.”
“And you say a sergeant is in command?”
“Sergeant Suarez,” Allen said. “Villalobos took all the soldiers, leaving San Cristóbal with only twenty men. Twenty-one, counting me now.”
“We have reports from El Manguito of the mutant attack,” Ramirez said. “Villalobos had no reason to have sent reinforcements. The garrison commander has the situation in hand. But you say he went to Revancha?”
“That’s what the sergeant said, sir. What are your orders?”
“I’ll have Villalobos’s ears on a plate for this,” Ramirez said. “He’s deserted his post. No excuse for that. You are in command, Captain. If Villalobos returns, have him call me immediately, and I will repeat this order for him. Then you can clap him into the guardhouse!”
“Yes, sir, understood,” Allen said. “If he returns.” Allen clicked off the comm unit and turned to face an infuriated Suarez, who had burst back into the room during his final exchange, followed by two biotechs.
“I trust the general’s orders were clear,” Allen said, smiling. “There should be no more questions about the chain of command, I think?”
Suarez swallowed his fury with difficulty and spoke through clenched teeth. “What are your orders? Sir.”
“First, get that thing down to an isolation chamber,” Allen said, pointing at the rucksack on the floor. Suarez moved aside so the two technicians could get at Allen’s find. “Then get me some maps of the region. We may have a bigger problem on our hands than a few poorly trained guerrillas, and I need to decide what to do about it.”
As Suarez left, every step radiating rage, Allen sat down in Villalobos’s chair and put his feet up on Villalobos’s desk.
This had worked out even better than he could have hoped. Villalobos was gone, he was in command of the garrison, and he now had access to the missile-launch codes. As soon as he planned his best avenue of attack, the meteorite in the jungle would be his. Promotions and fame would follow.
Perhaps he should get lost in the jungle more often.
Dawn. Time to attack Revancha.
José Villalobos touched the contact stud on his radio, then pulled back. The Union had too much electronic equipment monitoring all frequencies for any trace of guerrilla activity. This raid was too important to risk them intercepting his orders. He instead lifted his hand high over his head and squeezed it into a fist, signaling Flaco and Gunther on his right and Mary on his left that they were to advance. Consuela moved like a shadow among the remaining soldiers, readying them for a frontal assault on Revancha—for the freedom of their families and villages.
José had decided to carry out the attack in waves, which would shake up the Union resistance and give him the best chance of capturing the reactor. Now it was time for Consuela to inspire the guerrillas not only to fight but also to obey orders.
Too many were angry men and women who wanted only immediate revenge for the deaths of loved ones. Attack. They understood that. But to attack with purpose and retreat to lure the enemy into a trap? That required more faith on their part, even after they had seen it work repeatedly. But the one who concerned him most was Consuela. She had been strangely silent after their last talk about whether to chase down the monster rather than attacking Revancha. José suspected that her mind was still on the frightening creature she had reported seeing.
Until this week José’s attacks had been typical of guerrilla action everywhere it had ever occurred. Attack and raid, harass and demoralize, then vanish back into the jungle, protected always by sympathizers in the towns and villages. Now, two entire patrols had been lost. It was a sign, a signal that it was time to become a soldier, not a guerrilla.
“Death to the Union oppressors,” José said, loud enough for Consuela to overhear. She smiled weakly and gave him a more reassuring wink. The words rippled through their ranks, and the attack began.
José and Consuela took point, their squads ranging behind them as they moved out of the jungle toward the high chain-link fence surrounding the CANDU reactor. Dotting the knee-high grass were the round, machined-aluminum sensor heads designed to alert the guards of any attack.
José glanced at his watch. Gunther’s squad should have engaged the Union guards at the front gate by now, drawing forces away from this section.
“Cut the fence,” he ordered.
Consuela dropped to her knees and began using a laser cutter. The beam sizzled through several tough metal links before it hit a live wire, causing an explosion that knocked her back into the grass.
José instantly scooped up the laser cutter Consuela had dropped and began slashing furiously at the fence. He hit another live wire that delivered a jolt strong enough to jar his teeth. When he pulled back, dazed, another of his men took the cutter from his hands and finished the job. José knew that cutting the live wires in the fence would have triggered an alarm circuit. Speed was now of the essence.
“We did not know about this,” he said quietly to Consuela, hands shaking in reaction to the electric charge that had scrambled his nerves. José gripped his Kalashnikov tightly to keep his temporary infirmity from being too apparent to the others.
“No,” she said, “but we must expect more traps. At least we took out the sensor heads in the field to keep the enemy from tracking our movements.” She gestured behind them, and José saw that while he had battled with the fence, his troops had systematically blown up the warning system. He had not authorized this—it wasted precious grenades and drew attention—but he wouldn’t chastise Consuela for showing initiative. By now the soldiers inside the facility already knew they were under attack. They would defend the central building containing the reactor while broadcasting frantically for help from Diego.
Which he would be unable to provide, thanks to the Cyclops attack on El Manguito. José had found a use for the hideous mutations the Neo-Soviets had sent him: diversion. Let the abominations be chewed up and destroyed.
The first guerrillas through the hole in the fence started across the dirt perimeter of the compound. One of them stepped on an ordinary-looking patch of ground and was torn in half by an explosion that also caught two of his comrades. Land mine!
“Stop!” cried José. His remaining soldiers froze in place, staring at the carnage just within the fence. “Who has the map of the interior?”
“Here,” Consuela said, handing it to him and squatting down next to him on the ground. He spread it out. The locations of mines had been marked with small red Xs.
“This area is not supposed to be mined,” he said. “How long ago was this map stolen?”
“Last week,” Consuela answered. “I—” She had to put out an arm to catch herself when another mine exploded fifty meters away.
“The mines must be remotely detonated,” José said. “They put them here, expecting an attack!” If he had a traitor in his ranks, it hardly mattered now. It was too late to turn back—had been too late almost from the start. Even if they were expected, the guerrillas would do what they came for.
“Find their observers,” he ordered. “Remove them!”
The soldiers fanned out doing what they did best. They melted into the landscape, and even José was hard-pressed to spot the guerrillas as they moved forward. They might stand out to IR equipment, especially if they fired their rifles, but they moved too quickly for detection to matter.
He hoped.
“Come on!” he cried, rushing forward. José wished now that he’d launched the attack before dawn, using the cover of darkness as an ally, infrared detectors or no. As he went, he tossed out IR flares, invisible to the eye but a burning, blinding spot to any electro-optical sensor. Confuse, then move in for the kill. It was all they could do against a superior force.
Sporadic firing told him his troops had found the Union observers. That they were on duty so early was one more sign of a traitor in his ranks. Or could Diego actually have guessed that Revancha was the real target? Had José grown so obvious that even Diego could anticipate his next move?
The garrison could not stay on alert endlessly. Its soldiers would tire and make mistakes after a day or two of back-to-back shifts. That meant Diego must have issued the orders only recently—probably with incentives of money, whiskey, and campesino women—to coincide with the El Manguito attack.
“He is smarter than I thought, my little brother,” José murmured to himself.
“What did you say?” asked Consuela, dropping to one knee. She lifted her Kalashnikov, then squeezed off a three-round burst that took out an enemy soldier advancing on them.
“Nothing. They are coming out of their holes. Fight, chica, fight!”
José took his own advice without waiting for a response. The garrison commander risked much by sending his troops out to meet the guerrillas head-on. He might feel confident on his own territory, territory mined and waiting to kill unwary invaders, but he was wrong. José and his force now controlled the exterior of the CANDU.
“Report,” he snapped into his radio. Now that their advantage of surprise was blown, maintaining radio silence no longer mattered. He had to know how the fight went elsewhere.
“No resistance,” came Gunther’s surprising report. “They drew back when we opened fire. We’re inside the main gates.”
“Watch out for mines, both remotely detonated and contact. They’ve been blocking our way over here. The Union soldiers are coming out to engage us directly,” José said.
“Affirm—” Gunther’s voice was cut off and lost in a haze of static as José’s radio went dead. An alert Union comm officer must have sent out a high-powered burst that fried the radio’s chips. Listening in might give some small tactical advantage, but removing the enemy’s ability to communicate gave the greater edge to the defenders.
José tossed away the now-worthless radio unit. The Neo-Soviets knew nothing about building such devices anyway. He needed to steal a good Union-made one, with variable encryption and microburst capability.
He hit the ground at the corner of a warehouse near the reactor, skidded on his belly, and brought up his rifle. Meeting with no resistance, he pulled a grenade from his belt, triggered it, and tossed it through the open door of the warehouse. The resulting explosion a few seconds later was strong enough to take out any Union personnel lurking inside. The building would serve well as a staging and assault point for the final push toward the central reactor building. Consuela went in first, and José followed with a half dozen freedom fighters.
“Empty,” Consuela said, looking around in confusion. “The entire warehouse is empty.”
Her words echoed in the cavernous space, ordinarily piled with equipment and supplies. Despite the enemy’s hasty withdrawal from the building, they had taken every piece of important equipment. It must have been well planned. Diego had warned his force at Revancha.
“They suspected we would attack and prepared for it,” José said urgently. “To the reactor building. Quickly, or we will lose all chance of taking it!”
Nervous, but still determined, José’s men formed up behind him as he ran for the back door of the warehouse, closest to the reactor. He had just reached it, Consuela close on his heels, when all hell broke loose.
* * *
Diego Villalobos leaned forward, studying the green ghost-spots darting across his battlefield display. He sucked in a breath and let it out, thumbed his comm unit, and said, “The guerrillas are at the outer fence. Prepare for assault. Repeat, all units prepare for assault.”
The Pegasus whined, lifted, and shot forward. Diego had halted his forces almost a kilometer outside Revancha to keep from spooking José. The plan had worked. Just as he’d guessed, the guerrillas had struck with a shock squad hitting the front gate to pull Union defenders away from the back fence. Diego watched as the guerrillas rushed across the road he had ordered mined. Some died—not many, but enough to slow the attack.
The Pegasus kicked into high-speed approach. Diego saw the dots begin to merge on his screen and shifted to less detail on a larger area display. Two squads of guerrillas had taken cover in the warehouse he’d ordered abandoned.
“Major Hinojosa,” Diego called over the comm to the Revancha commander. “Warehouse is occupied.”
“Blow it, sir?”
“Blow it!”
The center of Diego’s battle display blossomed with the intense heat of detonating bombs. Any guerrilla in the warehouse was far past caring about the reactor now. He wondered with a brief pang if José had been caught in the blast. It was the position he would have taken, were he leading the guerrilla attack. Then Diego concentrated more on the ebb and flow of battle on other fronts. The guerrillas coming in the front gate fought like maniacs.
“Driver, get us around to the front gates. Trap the Zapatistas between the Revancha defenders and our guns.” He extended one hand to brace himself as the Pegasus swung about and raced for the worst of the fighting. Diego felt the need to get into battle again.
He did not find the battle. It found him.
An RPG blasted out the side of the poorly armored Pegasus, sending it slewing to one side. Diego grabbed his Bulldog rifle and bailed out, hitting the ground and rolling until he could find a target. He squeezed off a round and took down a guerrilla. Then the survivors from his Pegasus added their fire to that of another Union squad.
He ordered his soldiers forward, squeezing the guerrillas between two deadly barrages.
“Sir, a few are escaping along the fence line,” one of his men reported.
“Let them go,” Diego said. “Attention, everyone, we’re going to squash the guerrillas near the reactor the same way we did these. Take out as many as you can, but do not pursue. I repeat, do not pursue. We’re here to defend the reactor.”
Diego joined with the lieutenant commanding the company at the front gate. Together, with a force of more than fifty soldiers, they ran through the reactor complex toward the central building. Lacking his battle display, Diego almost overran the fighting. The guerrillas had been caught just short of the reactor.
“Stop them. The ones with the explosives,” he shouted. He fired full-auto at a trio of Zapatistas trying to plant a bomb on the external wall of the reactor-pressure vessel. It was thick 401 stainless steel, and he doubted they could breach it, but why take a chance?
Shooting the three was an easy task for a full rifle company.
“Report,” he demanded into his comm unit. “Where’s the worst of the fighting?”
“At the reactor, sir,” came Major Hinojosa’s triumphant voice. “We’ve got ’em on the run everywhere else.”
“Clean up the stragglers, Major, then swing around and form another line behind my position. That will trap the Zapatistas within two lines of our soldiers.”
Diego worked harder to get his troops into position. He was glad that they had fought against the Cyclops, even with their severe losses. It had made them more confident going against mere humans—and turned the ground around the reactor into a killing field.
“Got the surviving Zapatistas cornered at the northeast corner of the reactor,” Diego reported. “Not more than thirty or forty of them left. Everyone, check your charge levels, reload, and get ready. We’re going in for the kill. No quarter, unless they surrender!”
Diego Villalobos slammed a new clip into his Bulldog, loaded a grenade in the launcher, then gave the order to attack.
* * *
“They’re everywhere,” Mary Stephenson said, injured and propped up against several fuel barrels—the only cover they had been able to find. “We got rat-trapped good and proper, José.”
“You don’t need to tell me.” José was sick. He had barely escaped the warehouse before it blew. Nearly all of his men had been killed in the blast. Flaco had been shot dead in front of him by a Union rifle. He had lost contact with Gunther but recognized a few of his men struggling to reach the jungle and get away. Mary was severely wounded and unable to walk on her own. Consuela was covered in blood, most of it her own, and he had too many minor wounds to count. They had come close, very close, to the reactor—but not close enough. And now any chance they had had of capturing it was drifting away in the wind.
“They are closing in on us, like a noose about our necks.” José took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He recognized some of the Union soldiers advancing on them as belonging to Diego’s personal squad. Underestimating his younger brother had proved disastrous. Now it was time to salvage what he could.
“Can we at least get to the reactor and disable it?” The disheartened looks he got told him that road was closed. “What of the rail guns?”
“One left. Four RPGs with grenades,” Consuela said.
José came to a swift decision. This was no time to be faint of heart. Diego would have him in a flash if he hesitated, and his capture would doom the Zapatista movement. The Consulta would be disbanded and hope for independence in Chiapas gone.
“Use the rail gun to take out a segment of the attackers directly north of us,” he ordered. “Fire fast and fire often. Those of you with the RPGs, run for the jungle the instant you see the way open up. Then, from the jungle, use your grenades to cover the rest of us.”
José reached over and squeezed Consuela’s hand. “Only a few of us will escape, chica. I am sorry for this.”
“No victory without daring,” she said, smiling back at him with an effort.
The rail gun began spewing depleted-uranium ingots through the Union line. The wave of advancing Mexican Contribution Force soldiers rippled and fell back, giving the four Zapatistas with the RPGs their opening. The supporting fire José and the others laid down held open the narrow path to escape.
“Now, go, chica, go. Direct the RPG fire.”
“José, you can’t stay behind. You—”
“Consuela, go!” He shoved her in the direction of the jungle that had shielded them so admirably over the years. She ran, head down, while he fired his Kalashnikov into the Union ranks to cover her retreat. He turned to Mary, bent, and started to pick her up. Her legs were too damaged to walk.
“Don’t be a fool, José,” she gasped, swatting him away. “Go on. I’ll keep ’em off your neck. Just promise me one thing. They beat us today. Don’t let them win the final battle!”
“Mary,” he said, putting his grimy hand to her equally grimy, bloody cheek. “With a dozen more like you, we would have won long ago.”
She yanked the Kalashnikov from his hands, wiggled around, and started firing both her own rifle and his. José knew it was time to go. He followed the others, vaulting over those who had fallen, feeling the hot sting of lead singing past him. He had almost reached the cover of the jungle when the lower-pitched sound of Mary’s Kalashnikov, easily discernible over the higher-pitched Pitbulls, fell silent. Just short of the protective greenery, José paused and looked back.
And locked eyes with his brother. Diego was standing near the barrels where José had so recently been crouched, his rifle raised and pointed in José’s direction. Even at this distance, José could see him hesitate, then lower the gun. The two stared at each other a moment longer, and then José turned and dived into the safety of the jungle.
The four guerrillas with RPGs, under Consuela’s able direction, had saved them. Many of his people had escaped under the covering fire. Even the one armed with the Harbinger rail gun had made it out of the deadly trap Revancha had become. But they were still few—pitifully few. Most of their comrades lay dead behind them. For them, the fighting was over.
“Explosives,” José ordered. “Set bombs with proximity fuses, drop them, and then run like the devil himself is on our heels.”
The devil did not follow, but Diego did.
I will see you court-martialed for this, Sergeant!” Alex Allen shouted, glaring at Suarez. “How dare you break comm silence against my orders?”
“That was the colonel’s order, not yours,” Suarez replied with carefully calculated insolence—just one hair’s width this side of insubordination. “You’ve been pointing out for hours that you’re the only one in charge now, and nothing Colonel Villalobos said is to be obeyed.”
“I am the commander of the San Cristóbal garrison now,” Allen said angrily. “Lieutenant Travis reports directly to me and to no one else. Is that clear?”
“You betcha,” Suarez said. After a discernible pause, he added, “Sir.”
Allen continued to glower at the stocky soldier, who stood, hands behind his back, legs planted solidly, completely unperturbed by the waves of hostility coming from his superior officer.
“What did Lieutenant Travis report from El Manguito?” Allen asked at length, annoyed that he had to ask—finally. The glint in Suarez’s eye told him the man thought he’d scored a point.
“The Cyclops are more difficult to eliminate than anticipated,” Suarez said. “She reports four killed. There may be as many as three more still roaming the region. Lieutenant Travis wants to secure the port and be certain the civilian population is protected before she goes after the remaining mutants.”
“The local garrison commander can tend to that. I don’t like San Cristóbal being so . . . vulnerable,” Allen said. What good was command if he had only twenty soldiers? That wasn’t even platoon strength. He fretted, briefly weighing the advantages of having Lieutenant Travis’s squads back at San Cristóbal versus the disadvantages of having the truculent officer here herself. He hadn’t gotten the impression that she thought much of Diego Villalobos, but he suspected she thought even less of him. What he had in mind was too important to risk interference from a squat, stubborn mule of a woman.
“All right,” he said at last. “Leave them where they are and let them assist the garrison commander in hunting down the remaining Cyclops.” His mind made up, he turned his attention to the other potential threat to his command: Colonel Villalobos. He was hoping for a truly spectacular screwup at Revancha—maybe something along the lines of a massacre. Forty or fifty dead Union soldiers, and Allen would look even more appealing to the brass, once his version of Diego’s incompetence was confirmed. That, plus the prize that lay out in the jungle, just waiting for him to come get it, would ensure his quick rise back in the ranks.
“While you were illegally using the comm equipment, did you happen to pick up anything about Colonel Villalobos?” he asked Suarez.
“The colonel himself was unavailable,” Suarez said, sounding disappointed. “I spoke to Major Hinojosa, who’s in command at Revancha, and he reports a complete rout of the guerrillas. At least a hundred, maybe more, dead. Minimal casualties on our side. No damage to the reactor.”
Allen drummed his fingers on the desk, irritated at this turn of events. But in the end, it would make little difference. From what he had gathered, the brass in Mexico City HQ hated Villalobos enough that they would seize on any excuse to get rid of him—one insignificant victory in battle would not be enough to change that. As long as he performed better than Villalobos, his command was safe. And he only needed to keep it long enough to get that meteorite.
“So where is the colonel?” he asked.
“He pursued the surviving guerrilla forces into the jungle,” Suarez reported. “No word from him since.”
With any luck, we’ll never hear from him again, Allen thought, and then dismissed Villalobos from his mind. He had to stay focused on destroying that pit creature and getting his hands on the meteorite.
And asserting his authority over this sergeant. The man’s insubordination was troubling. Allen had not thought any of Villalobos’s soldiers had that much loyalty for their commander—former commander, he corrected himself. But Suarez had been nothing but trouble ever since Allen had taken over. The problem would soon spread to Suarez’s men—unless Allen slapped him down now.
“See to patrolling the post perimeter, Sergeant,” he ordered. “I want visual observation as well as electronic surveillance at all times.”
“There aren’t enough soldiers for that,” Suarez replied without inflection.
“For that, sir!” Allen snapped. “You will address your superior officer in a military manner!”
“Put me in the guardhouse. You’d be down to one sergeant and two corporals.”
“I don’t bluff, Sergeant.”
“I don’t either, Captain.”
The two men locked eyes across the desk, but in the end it was Allen who dropped his eyes first. As much as he hated to admit it, he could do nothing to the senior enlisted man. If he were to order Suarez placed under arrest, he had no one to replace him. Worse, Allen was not entirely certain the other soldiers would obey such an order. Any sedition in such a small number would doom his command.
And his precarious position definitely ruled out any expeditions to the crater. Even without the fact that such a sortie would leave the garrison completely vulnerable to attack, he wasn’t certain he could depend on these ragtag men and women to hold their ground against an alien creature so powerful and unpredictable. He knew that well enough from his experiences in Alaska.
No, his original plan was best: a long-distance, surgical missile strike. Take out the creature, and the field was wide-open. He could collect the meteorite at his leisure.
“The crater with this monster in it,” Allen said. “The one I found. Have the biotechs discovered anything about the fragment I brought back?”
“Sir, you know that almost the whole garrison is in the field,” Suarez said with a hint of satisfaction. “The bio officer went with Lieutenant Travis to study the Cyclops in case he could get enough of a corpse to do it. The other biotechs have been busy keeping the post going. That hunk of crystal is still sitting in the isolation lab where you ordered it placed.”
“The creature is a huge threat to Chiapas, much more than those guerrillas,” Allen said. Suarez had not seen the crystalline thing; he had. He alone knew the menace it presented.
“I need a full inventory of long-range weapons capable of destroying a heavily armored main battle tank,” he said. “Something powerful enough to take out a Subjugator class tank.”
“All we have is a couple of SPEAR missiles,” Suarez said. “And those are more useful against personnel.”
Allen tapped his finger on one of the maps that littered Villalobos’s desk. “The target I’m interested in is here,” he said, pointing to the spot in the jungle where he had seen the monster.
Suarez leaned over the desk to study the map, interested in spite of himself. “Then we have a problem. SPEAR missiles have a fairly short range. That’s too far to reach, unless we want to send out a man on an Aztec with a missile launcher.”
“Can we do that?” Allen asked.
“Nope,” Suarez said. “Lieutenant Travis has both working Aztecs with her at El Manguito.”
Allen scowled, still staring at the map. He was so close to victory he could taste it, and once again his men were letting him down.
“We could try placing a homing beacon at the site,” offered Suarez. “That could help the SPEAR home in on the target and maybe extend its range a bit.”
“Do we have any?” Allen asked with growing interest.
“We have several. A scout unit could position the homing device and confirm the creature’s location.”
“That would do. The SPEAR is perfect for this type of assault.” The SPEAR rained down cluster bombs and carpeted a wide area with enough destruction to take out a small army. The biggest problem was that one of the submunitions might destroy the radiant source at the bottom of the crater. Allen wanted the creature gone, but he also had to retrieve the meteorite to cement his position with the Union Command.
Handing an energy source of that power over to the Union’s scientists would surely guarantee his promotion to major. Maybe he could even jump a couple of ranks. Colonel Allen sounded far better to his ears. That would make up for the time spent cooling his heels after the Alaska debacle.
“I can get the missile prepped and on a vehicle to take it into range of the crater in a few hours, but it will require at least ten techs.”
“Not the crater,” Allen said in exasperation, realizing he could not risk his little gift from space. But he dared not mention it to Suarez. Word would get around too fast that something worthwhile lay out in the jungle for the taking.
“I don’t understand, sir. A minute ago you asked for—” Suarez fell silent when Allen glared at him.
“There are villages all around that area, you fool. They pepper the countryside. Where there aren’t villages, there are fields with crops. Destroying those would be as terrible for the peasants as hitting a village. Instead of killing them outright, we’d be sentencing them to slow starvation. What’s wrong with you, Sergeant?” Allen liked the way that sounded—as if he gave a damn about a few miserable villages—and he liked the way it snapped Suarez’s mouth shut even better.
“I have nothing to say, Captain,” the sergeant said, fuming.
“I thought not. I—”
The sudden blare of alarms cut him off. Allen spun around and looked at the battle display console near Villalobos’s—his—desk. He switched it to local mode. “Something coming from the east. Slow. But massive. And energetic.”
Suarez fiddled with the comm board, then looked up. “It might just be the creature you’re talking about. The readings we’re getting don’t look like anything I’ve seen before. I guess you won’t have to blow it out of the countryside. It’s coming here.”
“Do you have orbital recon?” asked Allen, not sure how to find what he needed on the battle display. It was a different model from the one he had used in Alaska.
“Negative,” said Suarez. “Communications with the battle station are still out. Have been for several days.”
Allen wondered if this might be due to the same meteorite he hoped to retrieve out in the jungle. But it did not matter now. He had to defend San Cristóbal.
“Get the SPEARS ready,” he ordered Suarez. “Our unwelcome visitor is going to be in for a surprise.”
“But we’ve got civilian population nearby, sir. You said—”
“Get the missiles ready. We might have to sacrifice a few civilians to stop this threat to all our lives!” Allen’s voice rose shrilly. Suarez frowned, but left to prep the missiles while Allen tried to get a grip on himself. Staring at the battle display didn’t help. The creature wasn’t moving fast, but it was inexorably moving closer.
Why was it coming to San Cristóbal? An uneasy feeling grew until Allen felt as if fingers were tightening around his throat. He left his position in the command and control center and ran to the isolation lab. He pressed his face against the thick plastic observation port and stared at the crystalline growth he had brought back. The thrashing tendril in the bottle had changed dramatically. The questing tentacles had thickened to savage thorns poking their way through the bottle walls. If it continued to grow, it would soon rip the plastic apart.
What if the creature was coming here because it could sense this thing’s presence? It had spawned the snaky globs from its own body, after all. Perhaps it had some way to communicate with them.
Perhaps it was a mother coming for her offspring.
Allen swallowed hard. The snake-thing might have helped him wrest command from Villalobos, but right now it seemed like bringing it to the base was a mistake. He rushed from the isolation lab to the first floor of the command center. Suarez was working on the consoles, getting the SPEAR missiles ready. Beside him labored a corporal, sweating buckets. The corporal looked up when he came in.
“Sir, what is that thing? Never seen its like before.”
“Don’t worry, Corporal. Just do your duty and all will be well.” Allen hoped he wasn’t lying. He entered the command codes into the control console—the codes for which he had risked so much—and stared at the visual display above the boards, which was trained on the edge of the jungle just outside the garrison. The creature had mutated even further since he had seen it struggling in the jungle crater. It was larger, but it moved more slowly, almost falling at every step. The growths all over its body had changed, some vanishing entirely.
But its face! That was enough to give Allen nightmares for the rest of his life. Medusa had nothing on this monstrous being. Crystalline snakes of all sizes and colors lashed about wildly, as if goading the creature to attack. The arms were clear of new growth, but from the waist down it was arrayed with grotesque extensions that writhed in the same manner as the piece he had imprisoned in the isolation lab.
“Get a Rottweiler pointed at it,” he ordered. “Open fire when it gets in range.”
“Sir, if the Rott doesn’t take it out, there’s no way we’ll be able to use any kind of missile,” Suarez protested. “It will be too close to our own position.”
“Yes, yes, of course. All or nothing,” Allen said. He, too, was sweating profusely, his uniform plastering itself to his body.
“Can’t let it get much closer or the missile will be a no-go,” the corporal said, seconding Suarez’s warning.
“You can’t fire, Captain,” Suarez said firmly. “Carpeting that area with submunitions from a SPEAR will take out an unknown number of civilians.”
“Collateral damage. Unfortunate but not unexpected. Fire the SPEAR. Target that . . . thing, and fire!”
“Sir, I protest!” cried Suarez. “There are civilians living at the outskirts of San Cristóbal who—”
Allen reached over and punched the firing button. For a moment he worried that Suarez had not properly set up the SPEAR. Then the rush of missile exhaust echoed outside the C&C building. The display showed a burning exhaust trail, then the screen switched to high polarization to blank the brilliant detonation of dozens of powerful antipersonnel submunitions ripping apart the land around the creature. The building shook from the close-proximity detonation.
Dust rose in high columns outside the garrison, blocking the visual display. The corporal switched from one filter to another until he found a combination that cut through the curtain.
“Dead-on, sir,” the corporal said. “Blew it into a million pieces.”
“Not to mention the civilians,” Suarez said with cold fury. “Corporal, go see how bad the casualties are. Offer them whatever medical aid we can provide.”
Allen let the corporal go without protest. However many villagers might have been killed in the attack was inconsequential compared with the fact that the meteorite was now his for the taking. What were a few miserable peasants, weighed against the potential that tiny speck held for the Union?
And for him.
José Villalobos fell to his knees on the jungle floor, gasping for breath. He was in superb physical condition, but never before had he been forced to flee so far so fast. He strained to hear any sounds of pursuit over the roaring of blood in his ears and his own harsh panting. He wasn’t certain, but he thought they might finally have succeeded in throwing off the Union troops who had pursued them like avenging Furies—led by his own brother.
The reprieve had come none too soon. The ugly, swirling orb of light in the sky that was the Maw was sinking slowly toward the western horizon. It would be dark soon, and José had not relished the idea of trying to fight his way through the jungle at night—not when so many of his guerrillas were wounded.
The few survivors of the disastrous raid on Revancha sat slumped around him, as exhausted and demoralized as their leader. Of the two hundred who had attacked the power plant, fewer than fifty remained, and none had escaped unscathed. Sweat, dirt, and blood gleamed on their downturned faces; their clothing was shredded and torn from their panicky flight through the jungle. José was glad to see that most had managed to hang on to their weapons, but with so little remaining ammunition, he didn’t know how useful they would be.
His breathing was slightly calmer now, the roaring in his ears diminished, and he still could detect no signs of pursuit. For the first time in nearly twelve hours, José permitted himself to relax slightly.
He still could not believe how quickly it had all fallen apart. The attack on the reactor had been precisely planned down to the tiniest detail, and within minutes of their breaching the fence, disaster had struck. José had lost troops before, but never so many so quickly—and never so many that he counted as friends. He had seen familiar face after familiar face fall, covered in blood, cut down by the lethal chatter of automatic fire or the hot fury of grenades. The cheerful Flaco would drink no more bottles of tequila. Faithful, resolute Mary—his eyes stung at the memory of his last sight of Mary Stephenson: unable to walk, holding off the Union soldiers with a final burst of strength so her comrades could escape.
And for a time, it had looked as if her sacrifice would be in vain. In all his previous engagements with the Union, the enemy soldiers had feared to follow the guerrillas once they melted back into the jungle. The jungle was the guerrillas’ home; they knew its twisted paths and dangerous heart better than any Union soldier ever could. The heavy vehicles and powerful armaments that gave the Union such an advantage in open battle became a liability in the close confines of the jungle. That was why José had started a guerrilla campaign in the first place; he knew he could never hope to defeat his former comrades by fighting on their terms.
But this time, perhaps emboldened by their overwhelming victory at Revancha, Diego’s troops had pursued. The guerrillas, weakened, wounded, and demoralized, had been hard-pressed to evade them. For hours Diego had chased them, occasionally picking off one or two stragglers with well-placed fire. As they moved deeper into the jungle, the Union vehicles became ensnared in the trees and undergrowth. Diego attempted to continue the pursuit on foot, but José and Consuela had sent the rest of the survivors ahead, then slipped back silently through the jungle and caught unawares a few Union soldiers who had become separated from their fellows. The sight of their bodies, torn throats gaping bloodily as they lay on the trail, had convinced Diego that the fight was best left for another day.
Diego. José had always loved his younger brother—even after the disastrous raid three years ago that resulted in the deaths of so many innocents—but he had never respected him. It was José who’d had the brilliant mind, José who’d been top in his class, José who could plot dazzling strategies on the battlefield. Diego had always been the plodder, the methodical one. Competent, yes, but not particularly creative, and try as he might, José could not help looking down on him for it.
He had seen no reason to change his opinion over the years he had opposed his brother. Time after time he had thwarted Diego’s attempts to maintain order, had undermined his authority in Chiapas, had sabotaged his supply routes and killed his men. Always José had been several steps ahead.
But this time he had underestimated his younger brother. José had to give him credit, even as he sat staring at the bloody aftermath of his handiwork. Diego had planned and executed perfectly what must surely have been a last-minute defense strategy. He had lured the guerrillas into a trap and sprung it at precisely the right moment. It had been a masterful stroke.
José thought back to that moment on the battlefield when he had locked eyes with his brother. It had been years since they had actually seen each other, and he had been shocked at how much older Diego looked. He wondered if Diego had thought the same about him. It was hard to know how to feel about his brother anymore—the love they had shared since childhood was now so tangled up with hatred and resentment and fear that there was no separating them.
Right now the fear was paramount. Diego had anticipated José’s every move, had broken his forces, had made a shambles of all his carefully laid plans. Diego had done his work thoroughly—so thoroughly that now, as José looked around at the tattered remnants of his army, he had no idea what to do. Two of his most trusted lieutenants were dead, along with three-quarters of his force. It was a crushing defeat, the worst the guerrillas had ever suffered.
But it was more than the shock of defeat that kept José slumped on the ground, uncertain what to do. He had spent months planning for the attack on Revancha: gathering intelligence on the plant’s defenses, raiding to build up a cache of ammunition and weapons, carefully plotting diversions to divide the Union forces. He had spent countless sleepless nights poring over maps and drawing up supply and troop lists. He had poured his entire being into the attack, and all those months of planning and obsessing over the smallest detail had been swept away in a few disastrous moments.
He had rested everything on victory at Revancha, and he had failed. But he had been thinking for so long in terms of the attack that now he could not think of anything else.
José did not look up from the ground as a pair of booted feet came into his field of vision. Then the owner of the boots squatted until a pair of brown eyes could look into his. Consuela.
“Your head is bleeding,” she said in a brisk, practical tone. José absently touched his forehead, dully surprised to see that his fingers came away red.
“Here,” Consuela said, holding out a bandage from a stolen Union medkit. When José failed to reach for it, she sighed, pushed his matted hair back from his forehead, and applied the bandage herself. She stood, moved out of his sight, and returned a few minutes later carrying a canteen.
“Drink,” she said firmly, thrusting it at him. Automatically, José took the canteen and drained the little water it held in a few swallows. He had not realized until then how thirsty he was.
Consuela took the empty canteen back and stood looking at José, her expression a mixture of disapproval and concern. She said nothing, and a few seconds later she walked away. As always, Consuela saw what was, accepted it, and did what she could. José watched her as she moved among the guerrillas, dispensing bandages to some, water and food to others. As she worked to restore them physically, she also strove to renew their spirits: joking with one, lecturing another, commiserating with a third on the loss of a friend.
They had all lost friends this day, but José knew all those deaths would have been as nothing if he had lost Consuela. She was the glove to his hand, the rock against which he leaned, the earth beneath his feet. Without her, he was nothing.
José’s view of Consuela was abruptly blocked. He looked up to see Gunther standing over him, his body taut, his features distorted almost unrecognizably by rage.
“This—this is your great victory?” he spat, waving at the pathetic remnants of José’s force. “For years you have told us the Union is nothing, your brother is nothing! Is this the result of nothing?”
José was dismayed but unsurprised to see a number of the others nodding agreement with Gunther’s words. They had never faced such a devastating defeat before, and their confidence in their leader had been shaken, if not irrevocably shattered. He couldn’t blame them—at this moment he didn’t have much confidence in himself either.
“We wasted ammunition, we laid down our lives, and for what?” Gunther shouted. “A handful of dead Union soldiers? We traded three of our people for every one of theirs! I did not join the Zapatistas to sacrifice my life for nothing—I joined to kill Union pigs. At this rate, the villages will be empty before the Union is finally driven out. There will be no one left to savor our victory. You have failed.”
José said nothing. What was there to say? Gunther was right. Perhaps he had been too myopic, too focused on one goal. Revancha had lived in his thoughts for months. Perhaps that obsession had blinded him to the larger picture. If he had kept some distance, some perspective, would he have seen the trap that Diego had laid? It was all his fault.
Made bold by José’s lack of response, Gunther turned to face the assembled guerrillas. “Behold your leader. Is he not inspiring?” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“For too long we have pecked away at the Union,” he continued, his voice rising to be sure all those present could hear. “We have been too timid, too afraid to risk all to gain all. This is the result. We need to go beyond minor raids or the deaths of one or two Union soldiers. We must fight until the earth runs red with their blood. Only then will they realize that the cost of conquest is too high and leave us in peace.” He turned back to José. “And if our present leaders are unwilling to take the necessary risks, perhaps it is time we find leaders who are.”
“And I suppose you have somebody in mind?” Consuela called mockingly from the back of the crowd. She pushed her way through to the front, the guerrillas parting quickly before her, until she stood just in front of Gunther, her fists planted on her hips, glaring up at him.
“I?” Gunther asked in mock surprise. “I bow to the will of the people. Of course, should they have someone in mind . . .” His gaze swept over the assembled crowd, and one or two of his squad members started to cheer, but fell silent when Consuela’s oppressive eye fell on them.
“You bow to no one, unless it is to spit on their feet,” Consuela said. Gunther’s hands tightened their grip on his rifle, but he did nothing. Slowly, deliberately, she turned her back on him and addressed the guerrillas. “So this is what you think commitment to our cause means?” she asked scathingly. “To fall to pieces at the first defeat? How many battles has José brought us safely through?” She pointed at a battered man a short distance away. “You—did not José save you from a Union patrol that had you surrounded?” The man dropped his gaze, unable to meet Consuela’s eyes.
“And you,” she said, swinging around to face a female soldier. “Your village had been raided—did José not hunt down those responsible for killing your people and stealing your possessions?” The woman nodded reluctantly.
“Now, suddenly, we suffer one defeat, one setback, and you want to pick up your toys and go home? This is not a child’s game we play. This is war. People die. Losses happen. Nothing worth fighting for has ever come easily. And I assure you, our freedom is still worth the fight. As long as I breathe”—she glared momentarily at Gunther—“I follow José. And so do you.”
Gunther’s face had been growing darker throughout her speech, but he could tell the tide of opinion had turned against him. The guerrillas were shifting awkwardly, embarrassed by their momentary lapse. Consuela did not give them an opportunity to change their minds again.
“We need time to rest,” she said loudly. “Let us prepare to camp for the night so we can rest and bandage our wounds. The morning is time enough to decide where we go from here.”
The knot of guerrillas broke up into a swirl of activity. Consuela circulated through them, assigning tasks and creating order out of chaos. When she was satisfied with their progress, she left them to their own devices and stalked over to José.
“Have you finished feeling sorry for yourself yet?” she hissed, keeping her voice low so that the others could not hear her.
“I—” José started, but she did not let him finish.
“What I just did, with Gunther—that was your job,” she said. “He has made his challenge now, and he will not back down from it. One day soon, I think, you will have to kill him or be killed. Which will it be?”
“I just . . . I just don’t know what to do,” José said helplessly. He had never felt less competent.
“You are a leader,” she snapped. “So lead. We have suffered a terrible defeat, yes, but that does not remove our responsibility to defend our people. We failed against the Union, but there is a greater threat out there that needs our attention: the crystal monster.”
“Again with the monster!” José flared, a little energy returning to him. He gestured at the pitiful remnants of his army. “This is all we have. How do we fight a monster with that? We could not even defeat a pack of ill-trained Union soldiers. How can we hope to defeat an alien creature with the powers you describe?”
“I don’t know,” Consuela admitted, “but we have to try.”
José let out a sigh, then finally levered himself to his feet. “In the morning,” he said wearily. “We all need the rest. After we have slept, then we will begin to consider ways to kill this thing.”
Consuela’s taut expression eased. She touched him lightly on the shoulder, then turned and hurried off to supervise the others. José watched her go with a faint smile. She was right, as usual. He had a responsibility to protect his people from whatever threatened their safety—whether that was a Union soldier or a hideous crystal beast. He was a leader.
So he would lead.
The front gates of the San Cristóbal compound rose out of the dusk before them, and Diego grinned as a faint cheer came from the others also riding in the Pegasus transport. They were as exhilarated as he was, and less reserved about showing it. As their commander, he had to maintain a semblance of dignity, but inwardly he was just as adrenaline-soaked.
The battle at Revancha had gone even better than he had dared hope. The last-minute trap he’d laid, with the able help of Revancha’s commander, had worked perfectly, drawing the guerrillas deep into the base and trapping them against the reactor. The guerrillas had lost around three-quarters of their force. That was a devastating blow, one that might even cripple the rebel movement permanently.
The one cloud hanging over his victory was that moment when he’d seen his brother. Diego had frozen when he realized who he had in his rifle’s sights. Through the scope, José had looked so old, so defeated. Perhaps it was pity that had stayed his finger from the trigger. But deep within him he wondered if it was fear that had kept him from following through on the final confrontation with his brother at the crucial moment. Maybe BJ and his superiors were right—he had had the cojones to battle Viejo’s men, but lacked the will to face his brother directly.
Viejo had always been a larger-than-life figure to him, with Diego following along in his shadow. José Villalobos had been the brilliant one, the leader of men, and Diego had plodded behind him, the competent commander. Now their roles were reversed, and Diego was unsure how he should feel about that.
But there would be time to worry about it later. Right now he had to concentrate on relieving the skeleton crew he had left to man the garrison, seeing to his few wounded, and composing a report to his superiors in Mexico City. His astounding victory notwithstanding, Diego knew he could give them no room to criticize his actions. If he could present them with a fait accompli, perhaps they would ease off on their pressure slightly.
The Pegasus rumbled through the gates of the post and glided to a stop. Diego was the first one out of the troop carrier’s hatch, and he gave the gate guards a jaunty salute. They returned the courtesy, but seemed strangely reluctant to meet his eyes. Diego didn’t give it much thought. Perhaps they were annoyed that they’d been left behind. They would recover.
His men spilled out of the Pegasus behind him, laughing and talking among themselves. He turned to them and held up his hands for silence.
“Good work, everyone,” he said, pride evident in his voice. “Those of you who were injured, get yourselves checked out in the infirmary. The rest, report to your barracks and get cleaned up. I’ll have duty assignments for you in a little while. Until then, relax and enjoy yourselves. You’ve earned it.”
His soldiers let out another heartfelt cheer and scattered, some to their barracks while others helped their injured comrades toward the infirmary. There were few injuries, thankfully, and those were minor. Only a handful of his people had been killed, most of them in the jungle during their abortive pursuit of José.
Diego strode toward the command building. A subdued air hung over the post. The few soldiers he encountered hurried past him, also refusing to meet his eyes. No one spoke. Diego was at a loss to explain it; even the troops left behind should be sharing in the excitement of victory. Instead they seemed almost . . . embarrassed?
He snagged a passing soldier by the arm. “Where is Lieutenant Suarez?” he asked.
The soldier jerked a thumb toward the command building and hurried away. Diego was starting to get a bad feeling about this situation, but he headed toward his office anyway. After his people got squared away and his report to HQ was made, he needed to start planning the final strike against José. The guerrillas had been all but broken at Revancha. Diego knew he had to follow up on his advantage and finish them off quickly. But first, he needed to find out what was going on here at San Cristóbal.
He walked into his outer office, where Private Murdo ordinarily reigned, and was shocked to see Suarez sitting behind his orderly’s desk, face downcast.
“What’s going on here, Lieutenant?” Diego asked forcefully. Suarez looked up wretchedly and opened his mouth to answer, but was forestalled by the door to Diego’s office opening.
“Ah,” said Captain Allen, beaming, his voice virtually dripping with insincere bonhomie. “I thought I heard you out here. Come in, come in. I need to debrief you on the battle at Revancha. How did that go?”
Diego stared at him in disbelief, rage building swiftly inside him. This man had disappeared when his superior officer had needed him, and now here he was acting as if he owned the garrison.
Diego’s voice, when he spoke, was dangerously quiet. “Debrief me?” he asked. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is my post. In fact, this is my office. I’m glad to see you’ve returned safely from wherever it was you disappeared to without permission, but right now, get the hell out of my sight before I have you thrown in the brig.”
“Actually, Colonel, it’s you who should be worried about the brig,” Allen said smugly. “Assuming General Ramirez doesn’t just have you shot on the spot.”
He held out a sheet of hardcopy to Diego, who ignored it, continuing to glare at him.
“My orders,” Allen said, unfazed by Diego’s reaction. “I had HQ in Mexico City send them over, just to clear up any confusion. They were quite perturbed about your abandoning the post and leaving the garrison virtually unprotected. They were so upset, in fact, that they relieved you of command. I’m in charge now, so perhaps you should start getting ready for your court-martial. I rather imagine the general will want to schedule it as soon as possible.”
Diego finally took the sheet of paper Allen was persistently holding out and gave it a cursory scan. It confirmed what Allen had said: for abandoning his post, he had been relieved of duty pending an inquiry and possible court-martial. He felt curiously unsurprised—numb, even. This had been coming for years, ever since José had turned against the Union. Ramirez hated him for that, convinced that where one brother could go rogue, the other might follow.
Diego had known Allen was trouble the minute he’d shown up. Admittedly, he hadn’t expected the man to snake his command out from under him. But what else could he have done? Between Ramirez continually stealing away his best soldiers and José with his cursed Neo-Sov mutants, Diego had been backed into a corner. He knew that going to Revancha had been the right choice—and even now, if it came down to it, he would do the same thing all over again.
Diego forced himself to look back up at Allen, who had clearly been enjoying his silence. “I trust everything is clear now?” Allen asked with false courtesy. Diego nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Then if you’ll come into my office,” Allen said, “I’ll have that report on the action at Revancha now.”
Diego glanced at Suarez, who was staring down at the top of the desk, clearly unwilling to witness Diego’s humiliation. He gritted his teeth and walked past Allen into his office.
Allen closed the door behind him, walked behind Diego’s desk, and sat in Diego’s chair. While Diego remained standing, Allen stretched his legs out ostentatiously and got comfortable, rubbing in the reversal in ranks as much as he could.
“So?” Allen asked, raising an eyebrow.
Diego gave him an abbreviated version of the battle at Revancha, choosing his words carefully. He had seen Allen’s type before—clever and quick to take every advantage, but greedy. They always overextended themselves and tripped up. He would simply have to bide his time and wait for that to happen—and hope that it didn’t come too late for him to finish off the rebels before they could build their strength back up.
Allen sat nodding and smiling condescendingly throughout Diego’s report, until the part about calling off the chase through the jungle. Then he sat up. “You mean you didn’t pursue?” he asked incredulously. “You had them on the run and you failed to finish them off?”
“With all due respect,” Diego said insincerely, “they knew the terrain much better than we did. Pursuing them any farther would have carried unacceptable risks. Their back was broken at Revancha. We should be able to eliminate what’s left of them without much difficulty.”
“It sounds like your gamble largely paid off,” Allen said magnanimously. “But I still think you could have finished the job properly. Why, while you were gone, with only the handful of men you left me, we managed to defeat a far worse threat.”
Diego came to full attention. “An attack on the post?” he asked, shocked. “Here? Was it the Cyclops? Did they get past Travis at El Manguito?”
“Negative,” Allen said, enjoying Diego’s discomfort. “Travis repelled the attack at El Manguito, but she’s still chasing the last Cyclops through the jungle—she doesn’t want to risk it attacking another village. No, what attacked us was something much worse than a mutant.”
He swiveled in his chair and tapped a few keys on the comm console. A picture blossomed in midair above the desk, and Diego leaned forward to get a better look.
What he saw defied description. The video had obviously been taken from one of the observation towers on the garrison’s perimeter, but the creature it had captured was like nothing he had ever seen. It looked like walking crystal, hung all over with globules and tentacles of glass. It staggered as it came toward the post, looking like it was injured. The video had no sound, so he couldn’t tell if it was making any noises as it came.
Then the monster, and the surrounding terrain, vanished in a blaze of light. The video abruptly cut off. Diego stood disbelieving in his office, the blood pounding in his ears. As if from a distance, he heard himself ask, “What ordnance did you use?”
“SPEAR missile,” Allen replied smugly.
Diego stared at him in shock. “You used a SPEAR this close to the post?” he asked. “That thing was right outside the perimeter! What about the villages nearby? Did you even stop to think about collateral damage?”
“Of course I thought about it,” Allen snapped. “I decided that the civilian losses would be acceptable.”
All the rage Diego had been holding back finally boiled over. “Acceptable losses!” he raged. “No civilian casualty is acceptable! It’s our duty to protect these people, if you’ve forgotten. But I imagine your only duty is to yourself!”
Allen was on his feet in an instant, fists on the desk. “You are out of line, Colonel!” he shouted back.
Diego’s lip curled. “Out of line for wanting to protect the citizens of Chiapas? Out of line for finally telling you the truth about yourself, you bloated, backstabbing windbag?”
“Maybe some time in the brig would make you rethink your position,” Allen threatened.
“You’re welcome to try,” Diego answered, “if you don’t mind having your arms ripped off.” Both men were now leaning across the desk, noses practically touching as they exchanged insults.
Allen pulled back slightly. “This is still the Union military,” he said icily. “There is a chain of command. I am in charge here—I decide what’s necessary. I decide what are acceptable losses. And I decide what you do—unless you plan to turn traitor. Like your brother.”
The words hit Diego like a dash of cold water in the face. He slowly straightened, tugged down the front of his uniform, and sank into the chair in front of the desk. And glowered at Allen.
“I didn’t give you permission to sit, soldier,” Allen said deliberately. Diego simply looked at him, and Allen seemed to realize he had pushed Diego as far as he could. He sat down himself, cleared his throat, and began shuffling through the stacks of papers on the desk.
“Well,” Allen said with strained casualness, both men tacitly agreeing to pretend the shouting match had never taken place, “I’m sure Ramirez will be getting back to you soon enough about your final disposition. But in the meantime, we need to find something for you to do.” He pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack he held.
“Just the thing,” he said. “Since you’re so concerned about the local peasants”—he smiled meanly—“we’ve had some scattered reports coming in about attacks on several villages. Apparently a few people have disappeared or something—no one’s been quite clear on the matter. Some of them have been babbling about demons in golden armor—frankly it sounds like utter nonsense, but I’m sure it’s just up your alley.” He tossed the report across the desk to Diego. “Take a squad and find out what’s going on. But there’s no hurry—I imagine you’re rather tired. Get a good night’s sleep and set out in the morning.”
“Aye, sir,” Diego said through his teeth. He got up abruptly and left without waiting for permission. One more minute in that office with that preening ass and he would have gone over the desk for the man’s throat. He knew this mission was simply scutwork to keep him out of the way. And he knew more than that: his career was over. He had gambled everything, and he had lost. He had saved the reactor, and possibly the Union’s hold on Chiapas, but he had given Mexico City the excuse it needed to get rid of him.
He could resign now—that would be the dignified way out of the situation, rather than waiting to be court-martialed. But there was Allen to consider—he simply couldn’t walk away and leave the locals in that man’s care. His lack of concern for the people he was supposedly sent to protect had been made abundantly clear with his use of the SPEAR so close to their homes. He shuddered to think of how it must have been for them, to suddenly have death raining down on their uncomprehending heads from a clear sky.
No—they needed him. Their safety was more important than his pride.
At that moment, Diego felt closer than he ever had to understanding why José had done what he did. Both brothers had dedicated their lives to the Union military, and both had been poorly repaid for their sacrifices. José had chosen to walk away, but poor, duty-bound Diego once again had no choice. He had to act to protect his people, and no matter what José thought, he could do that best from within the military.
His thoughts had carried him through his outer office and out into the compound. But now he vaguely heard someone calling after him. He turned and saw Suarez hurrying toward him.
“Sir, I’m so sorry,” the lieutenant said, his words tumbling over each other. “It happened before I knew anything about it, there was nothing I could do, I know you left the post in my hands and I failed. I—”
Diego held up a hand to stop him. “It’s all right, Lieutenant,” he said reassuringly. “This has nothing to do with you—it’s something that’s been building for years. It just happened to spill over now. Not your fault.”
“I couldn’t help overhearing you,” Suarez said. “Please take me with you tomorrow. I want to help somehow—and frankly, if I have to stay in that office much longer, I’m going to punch that gringo right in the nose.”
Diego stifled a smile and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do. And don’t worry—it’ll all work out somehow.”
* * *
Back in what had been Diego’s office, Allen was pleased. He had consolidated his position—and, more important, he had Villalobos’s troops back. Now that he had the manpower, he could begin planning his expedition to the crater to retrieve his meteorite. That tiny fragment was his ticket to higher things—much higher than command of some rinky-dink little post, no matter how much value an unimaginative officer like Villalobos might place on it.
He reached for the comm console and began barking orders. By this time tomorrow, the meteorite would be in his hands—and his career would at long last be back on track.
The Death Priest picked his way cautiously through the jungle. The riot of vegetation was difficult enough to cope with in the daylight hours; without the brilliant white light of the Vorack to illuminate his way, it was even more hazardous.
But the priest had no time to waste. He had detoured briefly to check on the Slayer’s work at the Destroyer for the Faith and been pleased with the progress. He still regretted the loss of his control-room slaves; they had been painstakingly trained, and work went slower with these primitives, who were still adjusting to their new life of glorious service to the God-king.
However, with enough . . . persuasion, they could be made to effect the repairs under the enthusiastic supervision of the Slayer. The immense Pharon warrior was beginning to chafe under the restrictions the priest had placed on him. Slayers were trained for one thing only—battle—and all this enforced waiting was alien to the killer’s nature. But soon the time for secrecy would be at an end. Soon the priest would have his hands on the bit of Vor-stuff, and then the Maelstrom would tremble under the might of the God-king. And the priest would be there, standing at his side. The Death Priest trembled in anticipation of the glory that would be his.
But if that magnificent day were ever to come to pass, the priest would have to hurry. Time worked against him. The mote was becoming more unstable with each passing hour, and the slaves he had working on retrieving it insisted on dying. None could survive close proximity with the deadly beams emitted from the fracture in the crystalline globe for more than a few minutes at a time before they died a second death, crisped by the radiation beyond the ability of the life-support packs to repair the damage.
Therefore, the priest was abroad in this cursed jungle yet again, in search of more slaves. And he had to hurry—if he tarried too long, the last of the slaves toiling at the crater would expire, and work would cease completely. The time for secrecy was finally past—speed was of more importance now.
The Death Priest paused as the jungle suddenly gave way to an expanse of open fields. Beyond the open space was the largest habitation he had yet seen on this world: several massive buildings, strung with lights that made the compound bright as day even in the darkness of the night, which was usually lit only by the planet’s lone satellite and the few pinpoints of light that could be seen in the sky of the Maelstrom.
The priest activated his phase generator to conceal his presence from the primitives scurrying around the complex and studied the scene. A battle had obviously taken place here recently—the signs of destruction were everywhere. Charred craters indicated the use of explosives, while the walls around the place were scarred with pockmarks—no doubt caused by the projectile weapons the primitives seemed so fond of.
That explained why there was so much activity here, while the other, smaller settlements he had passed had been dark and quiet, their inhabitants asleep. Whoever resided in this complex was still recovering from the effects of a skirmish. That meant their defenses would be chaotic and disorganized, making it easier for the priest to slip in among them undetected.
And where there was battle, there would be bodies.
The priest studied the scene a while longer and decided to avoid the main gate. Most of the activity seemed to be concentrated there, and while he was confident he could get past their feeble defenses, he would prefer not to raise any alarms. There must be another way into the compound where he could infiltrate them undetected.
Keeping to the fringes of the jungle, the priest circled the place until he found what he was looking for. At the rear of the walled perimeter, there was a spot where the metal wire of the fence had been cut and hastily repaired. He studied the ground between where he stood and the weak spot in the fence. There were a number of detection devices, but those were easily neutralized. He started across the open field toward the fence, his phase generator making it seem as if he was simply flickering in and out of existence. He reached the fence without being detected, and one blast from his energy weapon fried the sensors in the fence as it melted its way through the flimsy barrier.
Once inside, the priest proceeded with even more caution. The ground was seeded with explosive devices that had to be identified and avoided, and an occasional guard trotted past. The priest evaded detection; they were potential slaves, true, but he had his sights set on a greater goal.
Somewhere in this compound was the source of a stench of death so powerful the priest had been able to detect it from outside the perimeter. The recent battle had clearly inflicted great losses on its participants—losses that could be turned into gains for the priest, and for the God-king.
The priest slipped past the burned-out remains of what had been a large building and paused. A slight sigh of pleasure escaped his creased and rotted lips. In front of him stretched row after row of black bags, laid out on the ground like cordwood. The shiny fabric of the bags outlined the unmistakable shape of native bodies. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of them. Here at last was the supply the priest had been seeking. These would ensure that he would have an ample supply of bearers for the Vor-stuff, with enough left over to man the ship for the long flight back to the Pharon homeworld.
The priest knelt behind the first bag in the front row and gently, almost lovingly, unfastened it to reveal the body of a woman, her slight form still twisted in its death throes. She had once been small and delicate-looking, but now her legs were crushed and her chest gaped wide with the wound that had brought her death.
The Death Priest cared about none of that. As long as the body was intact, it could serve the God-king, regardless of how terrible its injuries had been in life. Placing his bandage-wrapped hand over her face, he began the ceremony that would restore life to the lifeless form before him.
As he completed his invocation to the God-king, the woman began to stir slightly. He quickly reached behind him for one of the life-support tanks he had brought with him and rolled her over, as she struggled feebly, to fit it to her back. The hoses plunged into her torso and began feeding her the nourishing fluids made from the remains of others of her kind that would sustain her in her life-after-death.
The priest rocked back on his heels and waited. It always took slaves some time to adjust to their new existence. He watched as this one struggled to her feet and began taking a few tentative steps on her twisted legs. Her gait was a terrible, jerking parody of a human walk, but it would suffice. Had the priest cared to look, he might have noticed the look of unmitigated horror in the sunken eyes peering out from that ruined, blood-flecked face. But he did not.
When he judged she was steady enough on her feet, he issued her instructions. “Go back to the ship,” he told her, placing one hand on the side of her face and mentally guiding her to its location deep in the heart of the jungle. “Bring back tanks for the others.”
The slave bowed stiffly and began a slow, shambling walk toward the fence. The priest did not bother to watch her go; he had already turned to the next bag in the row. He had brought enough tanks with him to continue his work until the slave returned with the rest. If he hurried, he could finish his work here and be back at the crater before dawn—all without the stupid primitives in this compound being any the wiser to his presence. He would even have enough to send some to the Slayer to assist with the repairs to his spacecraft.
Within a few short hours, he would be returning to his ship, his prize firmly in hand. And then nothing—not these humans, not the Shard, not the power of the Maelstrom itself—would be able to stand in his way.
José swore under his breath as a dangling vine swatted him in the face. He had grown up in and around the jungles of southern Mexico—they were his home—but he was beginning to feel as if his life was one endless march after another through the sweltering vegetation. His days were beginning to blur together; he could no longer remember how long it had been since their successful raid on Puerto Madero or their agonizing defeat at Revancha.
He paused and squinted up through the foliage toward the sky. The sun—or what passed for the sun ever since the Change—had only been up for an hour or two, and already it was broiling.
He looked back at the ragged column of guerrillas struggling along behind him. From the imposing army of two hundred that he had commanded a few short days ago, his followers now numbered less than fifty. He was proud of all of them—they might not have the faintest idea what they were doing hiking through the jungle, on their way to a confrontation with some mythical beast, but there they all were, trying gamely to keep up.
But José was a realist—he knew his grasp on them was tenuous at best. Their faith had been shaken by the devastating defeat at Revancha—he could see it in the way their gaze slid away from his, in the set of their shoulders, and their dragging step. He could see, too, Gunther making his way from soldier to soldier, pausing for a few words of whispered conversation with each before moving on to the next one. It worried him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. All he could do was keep going and hope Consuela was right.
He quickened his pace and caught up with his sturdy lieutenant a few paces down the trail. “How much farther is it?” he asked, keeping his voice low to keep from being overheard. He couldn’t afford to appear anything less than supremely confident in front of his soldiers just then.
“Only a few kilometers more,” Consuela said. “Soon you will start seeing burned vegetation—that will be the sign that we are close.”
José chose his next words carefully—he did not want to alienate Consuela, but he had to be sure of what they were doing. “Chica, you must know that I do not doubt your judgment,” he said, stealing a sidelong glance at her. She kept walking, eyes steady on the trail in front of them. “But I must be certain of what we will find. Have you told me everything? Is it possible you have exaggerated the danger of—”
“No,” Consuela interrupted, her voice stony. José kept his eyes on her, and after a few more paces she relented. “José,” she said softly, “I know what I have told you is unbelievable, but it is true. You know me, and you trust my abilities.” She took her gaze off the trail long enough to look him in the face. “This thing that I saw—it is worse, far worse, than anything we have faced thus far. I led that stupid Union officer there so that I could test its strength, and it took everything he could throw at it without flinching. We must stop it. I do not know how, but we must.”
José nodded and clapped her on the shoulder. “All right, chica,” he said. “When we get there, we will figure out what to do.”
“Assuming we find anything there at all,” came Gunther’s mocking voice. He had come up behind them unheard, and his eyes as he looked at José were scornful. “Admit it, José—there is no monster. This is just a fantasy you have seized upon to avoid going up against our true enemy—the Union.”
Consuela halted so abruptly José bumped into her. She whirled on Gunther. “This is no fantasy!” she hissed, as angry as José had ever seen her. “You are so obsessed with the Union that you fail to see the greater threat in front of you. If you—”
José held up a hand, and both combatants fell silent. They had heard it almost at the same moment as he had: the small, stealthy sounds of someone moving quietly toward them on the trail. Hands went to guns, but seconds later all three relaxed as they recognized one of their advance scouts.
The woman hurried up, her face set. “Sir, we’ve got mass movement up ahead,” she reported.
“Union patrol?” José asked, worried.
“Unknown. I didn’t wait around to get a closer look.”
“Diego?” Consuela asked.
“Possibly,” José said grimly. He turned to the guerrillas behind him and gave a low whistle to attract their attention. When he was satisfied he had it, he gave the hand signal to go to earth.
To an untrained observer it might have looked as though they had all simply melted into the ground. Guerrilla warfare depended on the ability to strike at the enemy from hiding, and José’s troops were very good at hiding. Some slipped into the dense undergrowth on the sides of the trail; others concealed themselves behind fallen logs or tangled bushes, their faded clothes blending seamlessly with the dappled foliage.
Several climbed trees and stretched out along high branches, their rifles at the ready to attack, sniper-style. José sincerely hoped his brother had not renewed his pursuit. Being caught between two enemies—the Union soldiers here and whatever was at the jungle crater—was not a position he relished. He had hoped the casualties he and Consuela had inflicted in their earlier pursuit would have discouraged Diego, but he knew this was his brother’s best opportunity for victory since assuming command at the San Cristóbal garrison. Diego had never been this aggressive in the past, but perhaps the victory at Revancha had encouraged him.
Wanting to get a better view of the coming conflict, José scrambled up an almond tree that bent precariously under his weight. He stopped at the first large limb and peered through the foliage as the first of their opponents came into view.
He crossed himself when he saw who it was—or, rather, what it was.
Now he knew what had happened to his missing patrols.
He heard a small gasp from Consuela, but he could not tear his eyes away from the shambling, decayed parodies of humanity that lurched into view on the trail. Shreds of their uniforms hung off their twisted limbs, the wounds that had killed them clearly visible through the rags. Hoses from the dull metallic tanks on their backs circled their tortured bodies and entered their chests in several places.
“The dead have risen from the grave,” he breathed.
“José!” came Consuela’s horrified voice. “Do you see what I do?”
José had been a soldier for many years; he had foolishly thought he was inured to any vision of horror. Now he knew how wrong he was as yet another walking dead woman lurched into view: Mary Stephenson. Or what had once been Mary. Her legs were twisted and crippled, yet she walked. Her chest gaped from her death wound, yet she lived. A wicked curved knife gleamed in her hand, and it did not seem that death had dulled her lethal combat skills.
“What are we going to do, José?” Consuela cried, frantic. “We cannot leave her!”
“That is not the Mary we knew,” José said from his aerial perch. He aimed the Kalashnikov he had commandeered from one of his soldiers in Mary’s direction but could not fire. What good would it do? She was already dead. Obviously.
José forced himself to look from the abomination that had been one of his finest soldiers to the others coming from the green veil of the jungle. He recognized many of the guerrillas who had gone with him to Revancha and not returned—now somehow restored to this shambling mockery of life. Had Diego found some way of resurrecting the dead to use against their former friends?
But no. He knew Diego. Never would his brother use such evil technology, even if the Union were capable of it. Unlike his older brother, who loosed Neo-Sov mutants on his enemies.
Below, there was a sudden commotion as one of his guerrillas burst from hiding and ran into view. José’s heart sank. After his first glimpse of the hideous zombie creatures that had once been his friends, he had hoped to remain hidden and let them pass. How did you fight creatures that were already dead?
But the sight of one of the zombies had galvanized the man into action. He skidded to a stop in front of one of them, a woman. “Ana,” he pleaded. “Do you not know me? What have they done to you?”
José recognized the woman—she and the man had been lovers before the explosion of the warehouse at Revancha had torn them apart. Now she stared at her former lover from flat, uncomprehending eyes. He reached out a pleading hand to her. In response, her arm whipped out quicker than José’s eyes could follow and left a red, gaping wound where the man’s throat had been.
With a look of blank surprise on his face, the man fell, dead before he hit the ground. There was a moment of frozen suspension, and then José’s guerrillas attacked.
With a roar, several dozen guns opened up from their hiding places. The bullets staggered the zombies, but did not kill them. As one, the army of rotting corpses rushed forward, wielding wickedly sharp steel knives and bars.
José reflexively ducked as a ricochet tore through leaves above his head—a bullet had bounced off a metal backpack and went zinging into the jungle. He brought his rifle up, ready to fire—and then froze as he saw something new emerge from the jungle onto the trail, something that winked in and out of sight like a poorly remembered dream. And fast! It moved with the speed of an attacking jaguar—faster.
Even from across the clearing, the stink of the monstrous being caused José’s nose to wrinkle. He had been in many cemeteries, but this was worse than the simple stench of death. This was the odor of centuries of corrupted flesh.
From the glimpses he caught of it, this creature wore far more elaborate gear than José’s former comrades. Clad in interleaved metallic armor, it danced about, almost in sight and then vanishing, only to appear elsewhere. If Mary and the others were dangerous, this creature was utterly deadly.
The fighting had dislodged several guerrillas from their hiding places, and one unwary woman strayed into the monster’s field of vision. From some sort of peculiar energy weapon the creature carried lanced out a ball of green lightning that engulfed the unfortunate woman in a field of crackling electricity. She screamed as her body stiffened and her limbs began a spasmodic dance. The lightning dissipated, and she crashed to the ground, still twitching involuntarily. From a distance, her eyes found José’s, high in his tree, and her trembling lips formed the word “Please.”
His heart aching with horror and pity, José unclipped a grenade from his belt, armed it with a quick twist, and lobbed it toward her. The grenade hit the ground next to her, bounced once, and detonated with a roar. José ducked against the trunk of the tree to avoid the worst of the blast, his ears ringing. When his vision cleared, he looked down at the sad remnants of what had once been a soldier, and his throat tightened. At least the putrid creature would not be able to resurrect her into a pseudolife of slavery.
This had to be the chupacabra that Flaco had spoken of and that José had so casually dismissed. Poor, jolly Flaco—who was jolly no longer. He watched in horror as the shambling wreck that had once been his trusted lieutenant aimed a crushing blow at an opponent’s head, sending the man crashing to the ground. José lifted his Kalashnikov and sighted on the armored creature when it flickered back into view next to the downed guerrilla. It knelt and donned a knobbed gauntlet. Its victim never flinched as a long needle penetrated his chest; he simply withered to an empty husk.
José lowered his rifle. He could not shoot and be certain he could kill, because he was not sure whether this tall, commanding monster was not already dead, like the humans with it. Its head was wrapped in greasy rags. Sticking up from the top of its backpack was a bullet-ridden set of lenses, possibly a weapon or a solar collector. This creature had been in battle.
And had survived.
José lifted his rifle straight up and fired into the air to gain his soldiers’ attention.
“Retreat!” he shouted. “Disengage!” He slithered down from the tree, nearly falling in his haste, and collided with Gunther on the ground. The man’s eyes were so wide that white showed all the way around the edges.
“Get your squad together and get them out of here,” José ordered. “We cannot fight these things now. Get them away!”
Dazed, Gunther nodded, then visibly shook himself and began shouting orders. One by one, then by twos and threes, the guerrillas abandoned their former friends and stumbled into the jungle. The zombies seemed to lose interest once their opponents were no longer immediately before them.
From his hiding place crouched in the bushes, José watched as the tall monster in golden armor gathered its obscene flock back to it. For a time they stood quietly as the creature issued instructions to them in a strange, hissing language. When it had finished, a half dozen zombies turned and lurched into the jungle. The creature herded the rest of its slaves down the trail in the direction of the crater. José watched as they passed, and for a long time after they had disappeared from sight, he remained, staring at nothing.
He flinched as he felt a tentative touch on his shoulder, but it was only Consuela. “Was that the thing Flaco spoke of?” she whispered.
“It was not the creature you saw at the crater?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her eyes wide. “This was something new. And the things with it . . .” She shuddered.
José crawled out onto the trail and stood silently as the other guerrillas crept back to him. Only a few had been lost in the brief, abortive battle, but all were pale and shaken by the horrors they had just witnessed. Even Gunther was uncharacteristically silent, clutching his rifle to him like a talisman.
“All right,” José said, then had to pause and clear his throat. “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”
“Decide?” Gunther asked hoarsely. “There is no decision necessary. We must destroy that thing.”
For once, José was in complete agreement. “Don’t worry, Gunther,” he said, meeting the man’s eyes. “That monster cannot be allowed to live. But we must plan our attack carefully. You saw what happened when we fought without a strategy. If we are to have a hope of defeating it, we must be very careful.”
Gunther nodded reluctantly. José turned to Consuela. “I have a special task for you, chica,” he said. “I need you to follow the zombies who split off from the main group. We need to know where they are going and if there are more of them elsewhere in the jungle.”
Consuela nodded and melted into the trees, wasting no words.
José turned back to the remainder of his force. “Come,” he said. “We follow the monster to its goal, and there we will find the means to stop it.”
The guerrillas nodded as one and prepared to follow José. They were all on board now—anxious to stop the horror that had enslaved their friends and relatives. José only wished he had the faintest idea how to do it.
Diego Villalobos had never seen such destruction. The village of Portillo had been burned to the ground, and then the ashes had been turned into the thin soil by some kind of laser beam. Hurricanes routinely destroyed property and killed campesinos, but such complete devastation was unheard of.
The village was gone. Too many of the campesinos remained. Diego had seen combat and its resulting death and injuries. But his gorge still rose when he stared at the head-high pile of bodies.
“All the old folks, Colonel,” Lieutenant Suarez said in a choked voice. “Small kids, too, the ones under seven or eight.”
“But what happened to the rest of them?” Diego wondered.
“Unknown, sir,” Suarez said. “They’re gone without a trace. And whoever did this didn’t leave anyone alive to tell us what happened.”
Diego stared at the devastated village. This was the second settlement his squad had visited this morning. The first had lost only a few people—nothing on this scale of destruction. And the remaining campesinos had reported seeing a tall golden creature appear out of nowhere to steal their friends and relatives away.
It was the sort of tale Diego might ordinarily dismiss, if not for two things. First, he had seen the video of the crystal alien with his own eyes. Where he had seen one monster, he was prepared to believe in others. And second, the villagers he had spoken to were deeply frightened. People who ordinarily would have been hostile now crowded around him, eager to talk, anxious for the well-armed Union soldiers to protect them.
Looking at the pile of bodies before him, he understood why. It was almost enough to take his mind off the wreckage of his career. Allen had not even bothered to see them off—Suarez had told him the scheming captain had left even earlier than they had on some mysterious errand. He was probably off making up more lies to feed General Ramirez. Diego should have been warier when Allen showed up, but he had simply been juggling too many burdens to pay too much attention to the man.
That was a mistake, but he had no time to brood. The Union might have betrayed and abandoned him, but he was going to carry out the duty he had signed up for many years ago: protect its citizens.
“Sir!” A voice from across the village square broke his concentration, and he looked up to see BJ Travis waving at him. Her battered face was split in a fierce smile, and the men behind her looked tired but contented.
Diego saluted her as she hurried up to him, and she returned the courtesy, looking happier to see him than she had in a long time. Perhaps a couple of military victories against the guerrillas had finally reassured her as to his loyalties.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, sir,” she panted as she skidded to a stop next to him. “If you’ve come to lend a hand with the mop-up, you’re too late—we tracked down and killed the last Cyclops just a few hours ago.”
“Negative, Lieutenant,” Diego said. “This”—he gestured at the sad mound of bodies—“is what brings me here.”
BJ’s face tightened. “We’ve gotten reports from other villages that have been attacked, too,” she said in a subdued voice. “Nothing on this scale, though. That’s why we’re here, in fact. We figured as long as we were here, we might as well look into it. But now that you’re here . . .”
“Stay,” Diego commanded. “I may be able to use your help.”
“Sir, what’s going on back at the post?” BJ asked. “I got some weird message yesterday that made it sound as if Allen ruled the roost. I figured he was just being bullheaded and ignored the comm.”
“He is in charge now,” Diego said. This time the anger could not be suppressed. “HQ in Mexico City decided I had abandoned my post by taking my men to defend Revancha, and General Ramirez has relieved me of command pending an inquiry. So Captain Allen sends me out here to investigate the attacks on the villages.”
“What kind of utter—”
“Lieutenant,” he said to cut off her explosion, “I have my orders, and so do you.”
“Bull—”
“Lieutenant,” Diego snapped, “stay out of this. It’s political, and you’ll be ground up and spat out if you get caught in the middle.”
“I take my orders from you,” BJ said forcefully, “not some preening peacock from up north. If Allen doesn’t like it, he can court-martial me right alongside you.”
“Is there any doubt Captain Allen would recommend it?” Diego asked.
“Didn’t like the son of a bitch from the minute I set eyes on him,” BJ grumbled. “What’s he want us to do?”
“Carry on, protect the villages, and don’t give him any static,” Diego said. “I’ve been demoted to nothing more than squad leader, but at least he didn’t strip me of rank—he just took me out of the chain of command.”
“That’s crazy, even for someone like Allen,” BJ snorted.
“I appreciate your support, Lieutenant, but right now what’s happening here is more important,” Diego replied.
“What could be causing this?” she asked, her expression bleak as she stared at the carnage surrounding them.
“Did you get the report on the creature that attacked San Cristóbal?”
BJ nodded. “Didn’t understand much of it. You think it might be behind this? Didn’t Allen blow the thing apart with a SPEAR?”
“It might not be the only one, or there might be some other kind of alien roaming the countryside,” Diego said. “Whatever it is, we have to target and destroy it.”
“You and what flight of neutron bombs are going to do this?” BJ asked.
Diego said nothing. He commanded a partial squad of four men, none of them—apart from Suarez—veterans or even fully jungle-trained. They carried Pitbulls, a few grenades, and nothing more. If he encountered the golden alien, or even a guerrilla force of any strength, he could not hope to prevail. Diego knew that was what Allen expected—the man was secretly hoping he might die in combat and avoid the potential messiness of a hearing.
“How many men do you have with you, Lieutenant?” Diego asked, his mind racing as he recalculated his odds.
“Unfortunately, not many,” BJ said. “I sent most of ’em back to San Cristóbal after we dispatched the last Cyclops and just kept a squad of eight soldiers to investigate the village attacks. I did keep the Aztec cycles with us, though I don’t know what good that will do us if we can’t find whatever’s doing this.”
“Lieutenant Suarez,” Diego called. The man, who had tactfully moved a few meters away during this conversation to give them some privacy, hurried up.
“Let’s gather our squad and Lieutenant Travis’s men and hit the next village down the line,” Diego ordered. “Maybe if we can plot the pattern of attacks, we can figure out where they’re coming from.”
“I think you should take a look at this first, sir,” Suarez said, scowling down at his equipment. “I’m getting some anomalous readings here—power surges like nothing I’ve ever seen. See these spikes?”
“Guerrillas?” Diego guessed.
“Not unless they’ve gotten their hands on a fusion generator,” Suarez said. “That’s the closest I can come to these readings—but even that’s not quite right.”
The two men’s eyes met, and each knew what the other was thinking. An unknown force attacks a village. An unknown power source is operating in the jungle not far away. Coincidence? Improbable.
Diego peered over Suarez’s shoulder at the readings. Something out in the jungle was pushing the instrument readouts orders of magnitude above their usual levels, yet in such a way that he doubted space or aerial recon would reveal the source. The power leakages came out parallel to the jungle floor, as if being deliberately hidden.
“It’s only about fifteen klicks due west of here, sir,” Suarez pointed out. “We could take the Hydra there—there’s room for Lieutenant Travis’s squad as well—and see what’s up. It might be a major Neo-Sov invasion force or some kind of secret guerrilla base that’s stayed hidden from us until now.”
Staring at the readouts, Diego came to a speedy decision. “We’ll take the Hydra to within a kilometer and then go to ground and investigate on foot,” he said. “If somebody’s got the tech to hide that much power, they’ve probably got electronic nets scattered around to pick up something as large as a Hydra.
“Get the men loaded up, Lieutenant,” Diego ordered. “This is going to be it. I feel it in my bones.”
* * *
Diego, Suarez, and two other soldiers slipped into the jungle away from the Hydra, which had powered down and was virtually concealed by the thick undergrowth. BJ and the rest of the men had been ordered to stay by the Hydra while Diego’s squad did a preliminary recon. Diego hesitantly kept to a newly cut trail, although he was worried they might be walking into a trap. Suarez had point and kept up a constant chatter, warning of possible snares. They found nothing, but Diego felt the hair rising on the back of his neck as they approached the site identified as the energy nexus. He slowed, then motioned his scouts off the trail.
“Colonel,” whispered Suarez, “my readings are sky-high now. Whatever’s there is a thousand times more powerful than I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are blanketing emissions. What I picked up before is just the leakage. This might be a weapons complex capable of defending the entire planet from space attack.”
That meant the Neo-Sovs were not involved. Diego might have had some training problems, but such huge amounts of ordnance could never have been moved into the jungle without his men discovering it. José might have accumulated some energy weapons over the years, but nothing on this scale.
If not the Neo-Soviets or José, then who?
He fastened the latches on his body armor, loaded a grenade into the Bulldog, and began a quiet advance. Standing around asking questions he couldn’t answer was not the way to go. Seeing the energy source up close was. Suarez and the other two spread out, moving on cat’s feet through the vegetation. They moved so quietly all Diego heard was the soft wind in the high leaves of the jade jacaranda trees.
The jungle ended abruptly, crisped by what looked like laser burns. Diego went to his belly and eased his rifle ahead of him. Using the Bulldog’s scope, he studied the new clearing stretched out in front of him. He gasped when he finally figured out what it was.
“A spaceship,” he said into his mike. “Suarez, do you copy that?”
“Copy that, sir,” the lieutenant reported. “That’s the source of the energy.”
Diego slowly scanned the length of the ship, wondering at the construction. He knew the configuration of every Neo-Soviet and Union space vessel. This wasn’t any of them.
He studied the craft, finding a pair of large cargo-bay doors, now closed, and the forward weapons. Extrapolating from what he could see, the ship mounted no fewer than fifty laser cannons of incredible size and destructive capacity. If there had been any possibility that this was a peaceful trading vessel, that erased it entirely.
“Sir,” came the voice of one of his scouts, working her way toward the far side of the spaceship. “Airlock opening. People coming out.”
“Patch through a video feed,” Diego ordered. It was dangerous using broadband comm so close to a technically superior enemy, but he needed to see what was going on.
He recoiled when the picture popped up just a few centimeters in front of his face. He adjusted his battle helmet and studied the scene, going cold when he saw the “people” emerging from the spaceship.
“What are they, sir?” asked the scout, her voice turning shriller as she spoke.
“Dead,” was all he could say. He recognized one or two of them as they trudged out—guerrillas killed during the Revancha attack. Diego had demanded that every Zapatista killed be identified so their families could be notified. He had flipped through the files, every picture burning itself into his brain.
“That one’s Mary Stephenson,” said Suarez. “I recognize her from a couple of raids she led. That’s one of Viejo’s top lieutenants! We’ve found the main Zapatista base!”
“No, Lieutenant, not that,” Diego said grimly. Stephenson moved awkwardly because of a battered metal pack on her back. It unbalanced her, but she seemed not to notice. Fumes vented and hoses ran around her thin body to vanish into her belly and chest. She herded the others, similarly outfitted, toward a spot on the spaceship hull that appeared to need repair.
Stephenson was still acting like a lieutenant, but Diego doubted it was for José. The others obeying her orders all wore the hissing, venting backpacks, too. And all were in various stages of decay. Some were largely intact. Others, like Mary, had begun to decompose badly.
“What’s going on, sir?” asked Suarez. “They . . . they look like corpses.”
“Get all the readings you can, Lieutenant,” ordered Diego. “I don’t know what we’ve found, but it isn’t any Zapatista base.”
“But Stephenson!” protested Suarez.
“Dead. I saw the report. I verified the report.” Diego scanned back and forth across the spaceship and the zombie workers making what seemed the last of extensive repairs.
“I . . . look at that!” Suarez exclaimed.
Diego thought he had seen everything during his career in Chiapas. He was wrong. His finger tightened on the trigger of his Bulldog, but he hesitated to fire. He hardly believed his eyes, yet what both scouts and Suarez fed him through his battle-helmet monitor confirmed it. Coming out of the spaceship was the most horrendous creature he had ever seen. At first he thought it was only a mirage caused by the intense afternoon heat.
But it was nothing of the sort, not with the other three reporting the same hideous sight. Tall, thin, wearing heavy interleaved armor, it had a more elaborate pack on its back than those worn by the humans—by the dead humans. Was this thing dead, too?
Diego and his squad watched in silent horror as the monster approached a group of slaves working to repair one of the ship’s tailfins. Then, from a few meters away came a tremendous clatter as another of the hapless slaves dropped the piece of machinery it was laboring to fix.
The alien monster’s head jerked around at the noise, and Diego could hear a hideous metallic clacking noise as it opened and closed the mammoth claw attached to its left arm. Before Diego could even blink, the creature had taken two huge strides toward the unfortunate group of enslaved humans—or what had once been humans—and whipped up the energy weapon in its other hand. One burst of the green beam, and the entire group of slaves fell, smoking and dead, to the ground.
The creature hesitated briefly, staring at the results of its handiwork, then turned back to the rest of the workers busily repairing the ship. It waved an arm, clearly issuing instructions, then gestured curtly at the group by the tailfin and headed out of the clearing, followed by a half dozen zombies. Diego held his breath as the horrific group passed so close to his hiding position that he could have reached out and touched the monster’s beautifully engraved armor, had he been of a mind to do so. But they passed him by unnoticed, and after a few moments he could feel his heartbeat returning to normal.
He found his voice and activated his comm mike. “Lieutenant Travis,” he broadcast softly.
“Here, sir,” came the instant response.
“Have you been picking up our video feed?” Diego asked.
“Yes, sir. What the hell are those things?”
“I don’t know. But we need to find out what they’re up to. My squad will pursue on foot; I want you to get the rest of our soldiers loaded into the Hydra and remain on standby. When we find out what their target is, we’ll notify you.”
“And we’ll come a-running,” BJ said crisply.
Diego waited a few moments for Suarez and the others to work their way around to his position without alerting the monstrosities still toiling away in the clearing. When the four had reunited, Diego led them cautiously along the trail left by the alien and its slaves. He had no idea what he would do when they caught up with their prey, but he knew he would have to think of something.
Forward!” José shouted, wiping the blood from his eyes in a futile attempt to clear his vision. A bullet had hit the tree trunk he was using for cover and sent splinters of wood flying into his forehead. But many of the men and women fighting with him had suffered much worse.
The battle at the crater was not going well. José had waited until most of his former comrades were toiling at the bottom of the pit under the golden monster’s direction before attacking, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise. But there were still plenty of other zombies willing to defend their master with every bit of unnatural strength they possessed. No matter what José’s guerrillas tried, they refused to die.
And throughout the battle stalked the glowing form of the creature that had raised them from the dead. It carried an ornate cube in one hand, from which deadly lances of blue energy licked out; when they touched a person, that person died.
But they had to try. José was determined that not another campesino would fall victim to the alien monster’s depredations. He took aim at another zombie and fired. The thing lurched as the bullet tore through one of the hoses cruelly plunged into its torso, spilling noxious fluids everywhere, but it kept coming.
José backpedaled frantically, striving to stay out of range of the wicked knife it wielded. The zombie slashed and slashed again, and each time José just barely evaded it. The creature was too close for José to fire, so in desperation he swung his Kalashnikov like a club and hit the tank strapped to the zombie’s back with a resounding clang.
The zombie staggered back a few paces, and purely on instinct José leveled his rifle and fired directly at the tank. The top of the metal pack exploded in a shower of fluids, and the zombie collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. José stared at it, scarcely daring to believe, and then raised his voice, shouting to be heard over the din of the melee.
“The tanks!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Target the tanks!”
A few of his soldiers heard him, and a few more zombies fell. But their sense of loyalty continually worked against them. When faced with the reanimated corpses of their former comrades, many of the guerrillas were reluctant to fire, and that reluctance was deadly. Only Gunther killed without hesitation—killed once or killed twice, friend or foe, it was all the same to him.
José aimed carefully and took out two more zombies, but the battle was going against them. As long as the golden alien continued to wield its deadly energy beam, the guerrillas were fated to lose. José began concentrating his fire on the creature, hoping that since it wore a tank on its back as well, puncturing it would have the same effect. But the thing was impossible to hit—it seemed to flicker in and out of existence, disappearing from one part of the battlefield to reappear with deadly effect in another part. One lucky shot spanged off a round metal disk at the top of the monster’s tank, staggering the thing but otherwise having no effect.
José slammed one of his few remaining clips into his Kalashnikov and swore heartily. Wherever she might be, he hoped Consuela was having better luck than he was.
* * *
The scent of burning vegetation made Consuela’s nose twitch long before she heard the sounds of fighting coming from the village of Hermosilla, which lay just ahead. She tightened her grip on the Kalashnikov she held at the ready. Following the zombies that had split off from the main group being herded along by that monster had been easy; they had never even noticed her slipping along silently behind them. She had stayed hidden at the edge of the jungle as the zombies had reported to yet another of those hideous creatures. Shortly thereafter, the thing had headed off in the direction of this village.
Now she quickened her pace as the sounds of fighting grew louder. She had feared this might come to pass—the zombies were attacking another village, determined to create more of their kind from the hapless campesinos.
Consuela burst out of the jungle and into the outskirts of Hermosilla. Her rifle was up and firing on full-auto before she was even conscious of reacting, cutting the legs out from under a zombie that was menacing two huddled villagers with a wickedly sharp knife. Crippled but not discouraged, the zombie began clawing its way toward Consuela. She fired another burst into the tank on its back, and it abruptly collapsed to the ground and ceased moving. But now two more zombies had rounded the corner of the building and were advancing on the villagers.
“Go!” Consuela shouted. “Get to the jungle!” The frightened campesinos stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then dashed for the safety of the enshrouding jungle. Consuela slammed a fresh clip into her rifle and fired a burst into the two approaching zombies, checking their advance long enough for her to do the only sensible thing: turn and run.
She skidded to a halt in the center of the village, appalled at the sight that greeted her. Across the dusty square stalked the monster she had seen by the alien ship, its huge clawed hand red with human blood, the energy weapon it held in its other hand sending out deadly green beams. Consuela looked around frantically. There was a knot of women and children crouching next to one of the houses, but the monster would undoubtedly see them in a few moments. She gave a low, carrying whistle to attract their attention and gestured for them to get into the village meeting hall behind her. In there, they would have more cover and might be able to hold the things off. For a little while.
She laid down a long burst of fire to cover them as they ran for the dubious shelter of the hall, then dived in after them.
Only to find herself face-to-face with a squad of Union soldiers, led by none other than Diego Villalobos himself.
Consuela instinctively leveled her rifle at him. “I should have known,” she said coldly. “Are you in league with those things outside? Is this how the Union treats its people?”
“In league?” Diego asked incredulously. “We came here to stop them—whatever they are.” He and Consuela both ducked as the alien’s energy beam cut through the building overhead with a sizzle of frying wood.
“Look, we can continue this conversation some other time,” Diego snapped. “Right now, we’ve got a job to do—saving these people. Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there?”
“Help?” Consuela asked in disbelief. But Diego, oblivious to the rifle she still held pointed at him, had already moved past her to one of the windows and had begun firing out of it, joined by his three soldiers.
Consuela looked past them and saw a zombie outlined in the open doorway. She fired a burst at it to force it backward, slammed the door, and leaned against it. The door shook with the heavy pounding of the creatures outside, and she knew it wouldn’t hold for long.
“Suarez!” Diego called, ducking as answering fire from the alien cut through the air. “We’ve got to get these people out of here. I want you to lead them out the back and into the jungle. Use windows, whatever you need to. Blow a hole in the wall if you have to. We’ll try to hold these things off.”
One of the Union soldiers nodded and raced to the back of the building, urging the dozen or so villagers huddled there up and out through the back door. Consuela braced herself as a renewed attack shook the door.
“We can’t hold them for much longer,” she gasped.
“I know,” Diego said grimly. He released his grip on his Bulldog long enough to fumble at his belt. “Grenades,” he said, showing one to her. “We draw them inside and blow the building. That ought to slow them down long enough for us to get these people out, at least.”
He motioned to the other two soldiers, and they began to retreat toward the back of the building, dropping grenades as they went. Consuela stayed put, holding the door as long as she could against the zombies’ assault. She flinched as a putrefied arm came through the window next to her and a zombie began to clamber into the building.
“Go!” Diego shouted to her from outside the hall, and Consuela leapt away from the door and ran full out toward him. She had barely cleared the doorway when Diego shouted, “Fire in the hole!”, leveled his Bulldog, and began lobbing grenades into the building. For a second, Consuela thought nothing had happened. Then the blast came, powerful enough to knock her and the Union soldiers off their feet. Dazed, her ears ringing, she crawled back upright. The explosion had leveled the building, trapping a number of zombies in the wreckage.
“Come on,” Diego said, touching her arm. “We need to take cover.”
She looked him directly in the eyes, liking the way he met her gaze without flinching. So many years she had fought against this man, and this was the first time they had ever met face-to-face.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” Diego said.
“You saved the campesinos. And you also risked your life to save me, when you knew I was a Zapatista.”
“The rules have changed, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Diego said. “It’s human against alien now—and at the moment the aliens seem to be trouncing us.”
Consuela stood a moment longer, looking at him, then turned and slipped into the jungle without another word. By the time Diego’s soldiers had reached the spot where she had disappeared, she was far away from them, headed back to José to tell him of what she had found. And of what she had learned.
* * *
“Captain Allen, you won’t believe what we saw,” the scout said, his eyes wide.
“What?” Allen asked impatiently. His expedition had taken far too long to reach the crater. He chafed at the delay and had sent two scouts to reconnoiter the position. He knew he had to make certain there were no more crystalline monstrosities lurking at the crater—and from the looks of this pair, he wasn’t going to like what they told him.
“Dozens of them!”
“What?” Allen came out of his reverie. “What did you say? Dozens of what?”
“Creepy, Captain,” the first scout replied. “All these men and women, looking like they’d been dug up fresh out of their graves, working for this tall . . .” The private’s words trailed off as he struggled to describe what he’d seen.
His companion chimed in. “It was a monster. Shiny armor, holding some kind of box, with this green beam . . .”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Allen said. “These dead people are walking around following orders from some creature with a box?”
“And they all wore backpacks that hissed and creaked and had hoses running into their guts,” said the first scout. “Even the creature had one, except its equipment was a lot more complicated. It was even beautiful, fancy gold inlay, shiny steel . . .”
“They were just taking those guerrillas apart,” said the second scout.
“Guerrillas?” Allen asked, his voice rising. “What guerrillas?”
The two scouts exchanged glances. “The ones at the pit,” the first scout finally said. “The ones we told you about earlier. Weren’t you listening? Sir?”
If Allen had been listening before, he wasn’t now. He was consumed by a rapidly building fury. Had the guerrillas—those stinking, dirty peasants—actually beaten him to the meteorite? Were they actually digging up his ticket back north and out of this hellhole?
He was torn about what to do. He had only brought along ten soldiers, leaving the remainder of his command in the post at San Cristóbal. He had tried to get General Ramirez to send reinforcements before venturing out, but the MCF commander in chief had hedged, saying his troops were otherwise occupied and could not be spared for garrison duty.
Allen knew how tenuous was his hold on San Cristóbal. He had to prove to Ramirez how capable he was, and he was not about to make the same mistake Diego Villalobos had. But at the same time, he dared not let anyone else—or anything else—steal his treasure.
The armored personnel carrier had settled to the ground about five hundred meters from the crater. The soldiers with him carried the heaviest arms he had been able to find in the San Cristóbal armory. Two struggled along with a Harbinger rail gun and the depleted-uranium ingots it fired, another had a Rottweiler, and the rest had been outfitted with Bulldog rifles to give them grenade-launching capability. He had considered bringing along the one remaining SPEAR missile, but the Aztec cycles that usually carried them were with Lieutenant Travis, wherever the hell she was. His ten soldiers boasted the firepower of an entire company.
That ought to be enough. Hadn’t he already destroyed the crystal monster? Whatever was trying to muscle in on the monster’s domain at the pit should fall quickly to such firepower, without the need to use the remaining SPEAR missile.
“Advance,” Allen ordered, hefting his rifle. The going was easier now because he was traveling in the APC instead of slogging through the thick jungle, sweating his brains out. That would make any skirmish easier to win because he and his men were rested, even if it was the hottest part of the afternoon. Not that he thought the scouts’ report about dead soldiers was anything but superstitious claptrap. They had probably seen some of the guerrillas dressed in rags and mistaken them for dead men. This was going to be a cakewalk.
“Captain, you hear that?” asked one of his men. “Sounds like quite a fight.”
Allen cocked his head to one side and frowned. He heard nothing. He kept moving toward the crater, though, and a few minutes later he heard what the sharper-eared man already had. His heart skipped a beat when he thought of something happening to his meteorite.
“Forward. Gunners, prepare your weapons. Especially you with the Rott and the Harbinger.” He took a deep breath, gagged on the heavy jungle odors and stifling heat, then took point. Allen wanted to be first at the site. What terrible luck had let those guerrillas stumble on his discovery? He had to retrieve the meteorite immediately, before the entire population of Chiapas discovered the crater.
He stepped from the jungle to the glassy plain surrounding the crater and stopped, mouth agape. The two scouts had not exaggerated. Everywhere was chaos, a swirl of battling guerrillas and walking dead. The overpowering stench of freshly spilled blood and rotting human flesh almost made Allen lose his breakfast. He leveled his Bulldog but wasn’t sure where to point it.
Then he saw the armored creature, hovering near the pit where the meteorite—his meteorite—lay, its brilliance dimmed. This one looked nothing like the crystalline monster he had killed earlier, but it was obviously after the same thing Allen was. This was the real threat, not the ragtag guerrillas fighting around it.
Its allies were dead humans. This—whatever it was—shared nothing but death with them.
“Fire!” cried Allen, locking his laser sights in on the armored monster. The Bulldog recoiled in his grip as a grenade sailed forth, followed by heavy slugs ripping toward the alien creature.
The grenade blew up a few meters in front of the monster, but at least one of Allen’s steel-jacketed rifle rounds hit the armored zombie.
“Get it! Concentrate your fire on it!” he shouted. Some of his squad had vanished into the jungle, too spooked to fight. Those remaining opened up with their weapons. He heard the deep chatter of the Rottweiler begin, but the gunner was taking out the dead humans and the guerrillas, not the demon Allen had identified as the real danger.
From the armored form came a beam of energy that cut through two of Allen’s soldiers, silencing the Rottweiler.
“Rail gun, fire! Give it all you’ve got!”
His command went unheeded. The man lugging the Harbinger, as well as his loader, had turned tail and fled. Allen had just three riflemen left, and they shifted their aim to the creature at his order. Several guerrillas died, caught in the cross fire, but Allen barely noticed. All his being was concentrated on getting to the crater that held his prize, his mind filled with only one thought: mine.
The creature laid down its energy cube and replaced it with some sort of projectile weapon. Fléchette darts whizzed past Allen, every striking dart exploding. Another soldier died.
The creature shouted orders at its undead army, and a number of them broke off their struggle with the guerrillas and attacked Allen’s surviving soldiers. The area around the pit was total chaos, as soldiers and undead alike blindly attacked anything that moved, no longer able to distinguish friend from foe. Allen loaded another grenade into his Bulldog and fired, taking out three of the dead humans. They fell, the hoses to their back tanks severed and hideous fluids spilling out over the hard ground.
Allen kept firing, working his way deeper into the battle step by step, struggling to get closer to the crater. The monster had left off its attack, content with its slaves’ progress, and now turned its attention to the thing at the bottom, intent on some alien equipment it held in its hands.
Allen briefly froze as a luminous glow rose above the lip of the pit. It appeared to be a crystalline globe, encased in what looked like some sort of force field, its awesome energy swirling turbulently inside. Several slaves were carrying it in a rough sling. Even as Allen watched, one fell, crisped by the devastating radiation that burned through the containing force field. Another took its place.
Allen swelled with rage. That creature was stealing his meteorite! Heedless of the danger, he began forcing his way roughly through the battling men and women toward the crater. Dimly behind him, he could hear his few surviving men calling to him to wait, but he ignored them. The guerrillas, even the animated corpses were nothing. Only the orb mattered.
A bullet whined past his right ear. Another clipped the shoulder of his uniform. It missed the flesh, but the tug on his clothing pulled Allen from his self-absorption, and he realized abruptly how foolhardy he was being. Promotion and acclaim would do him little good if he were dead. He whirled around frantically, looking for cover—and ran smack into a thin guerrilla who looked at him with a killer’s eyes. Even before Allen had time to react, the man raised his gun and clubbed him to the ground. Dazed, blood trickling down his face, Allen looked up at the guerrilla.
The man leaned down. “My name is Gunther,” the soldier said confidingly.
Even barely conscious as he was, the incongruity of the introduction struck Allen, and his lips struggled to form words.
“I just wanted you to know who is going to kill you,” the man—Gunther?—said. He leveled his rifle, pointing the barrel directly between Allen’s eyes.
“Wait!” Allen cried desperately. “I am a friend to your people. I know a peasant girl—her name is Consuela. She can vouch for me!”
Gunther laughed. “I know her well,” he said mockingly. “When I report back to her, I will send her your regards.”
Allen froze. That tiny girl who had led him to his prize was a guerrilla? Impossible. How could he have miscalculated so badly?
He never heard the report of the bullet that killed him. But as it tore through his skull and into his brain, his eyes fixed despairingly on the glowing form of the orb. And one last thought took him into the final darkness: mine.
José Villalobos slumped against the trunk of a jacaranda tree, panting for breath. The days since the Revancha defeat had tested him—and his guerrillas—more severely than he could ever have expected. In the past, his war had always been waged from hiding, with snipers and booby traps. It had been a war fought by taking one life at a time, especially if it frightened a dozen more of the enemy soldiers. He had hoped to carry the war to the next level with his disastrous strike on Revancha, but Diego had anticipated his every move and decimated his forces.
Now, he was beset by enemies at every turn. He had escaped his brother’s pursuit only to be attacked by the reanimated corpses of his own soldiers. Consuela’s mysterious crystalline monster had seemingly vanished, only to be replaced by the walking dead, commanded by the putrefied alien the campesinos had dubbed a chupacabra. Everywhere he turned, he found only violence and death, and his forces were dwindling man by man, woman by woman.
The battle against the zombies in the jungle had cost him several soldiers; at the pit he had lost a dozen more.
For a while it had seemed as if the fight near the crater would finally hand him the victory he had sought for so long. Once José and the others had begun targeting the mysterious tanks carried by their undead foe, the tide of battle had begun to turn in their favor. But then that idiotic Union soldier had burst into the middle of the fight and destroyed everything. Faced with enemies from both sides—the corpses of friends at their fore and the Union soldiers firing from behind—José’s guerrillas had panicked and broken ranks.
And he could not blame them. It was hard enough staring into the flat, dead eyes of people they had once called comrades, friends, even lovers, and seeing only enemies. His people had been pushed to the brink of their endurance by the events of the past few days, and the surprise attack from the rear had been the final straw. He looked at them, slumped nearby, and did not know what to say to them. They were exhausted, wounded, discouraged—stretched thin. And somewhere behind them lurked the monster that was enslaving their people—and José had no idea what he could do to stop it. He had lost almost 90 percent of his force; they were now down to a few dozen soldiers. How could such a tiny remnant hope to defeat such a powerful force as they had witnessed at the crater?
His hand went to his battered Kalashnikov when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but he relaxed when he saw it was Consuela. She had returned from her mission, but he couldn’t imagine what intelligence she could possibly provide that would give them even a fighting chance. The golden-armored alien was simply too powerful to resist.
“What happened?” Consuela asked in a shocked tone, looking at the remnants of their army.
“We could not win,” José said, almost too tired to form the words. “The alien is too strong. We thought we had a chance for a time, but then a Union force surprised us and caught us between the alien and their guns. We had no choice but to retreat. We accomplished nothing, except to lose another dozen of our people.”
“We have lost more than that,” Consuela said, her expression somber. She told him of the carnage she had witnessed in the village. “No matter how many of our people they enslave, it never seems to be enough for them. They will not stop unless we stop them.”
“How are we to do that?” José asked her. “This”—he gestured at the demoralized guerrillas around them—“is all we have to fight with. I feel for the campesinos as much as you do, but I have nothing left to give them. The most we can do at this point is comfort the survivors and try to hide as many as we can.”
“There is one other thing we could try,” Consuela said hesitantly. José raised an eyebrow inquiringly, and Consuela paused, choosing her words carefully. But before she could tell him what she had in mind, José was nearly sent sprawling by a blow to his shoulder. He caught himself and turned to glare at his assailant.
Gunther had stormed up and was towering above the seated José. The guerrilla glowered down at his leader, his hatred hotter than the stifling afternoon air around them, and José saw that Gunther’s rage had built to unmanageable levels. The man had been briefly shaken by the sight of their dead comrades—as they all had—and had gone along with the attack on the crater readily enough. But the fresh taste of killing had gone to his head, and their defeat did not sit well with him.
“You are scared, Viejo,” Gunther said accusingly, each word etched in acid.
“Never,” José said coldly, rising until he could look the man in the eye.
“Really? I never could have known that from the way you ran from our enemies.” Gunther looked around at the other guerrillas, seeking an appreciative audience, but they were too tired to pay much attention.
“And where were you?” José asked pointedly. “I did not see you volunteering to stay behind. We were outnumbered and flanked by enemies on both sides. Retreat was our only option.”
“We should not have been there in the first place,” Gunther snapped. “The alien is dead. The people it uses to fight with are dead. We should concern ourselves with the living. Our true enemy is the Union. We should be planning our next attack on them, not wasting our time in the jungle fighting with corpses.”
“You are wrong, Gunther,” Consuela said, coming to stand next to José. “For years we have fought the Union, yes, but there are worse enemies out there. This alien thing is the greatest threat we have ever faced. We must defeat it before we can hope to free our people from the Union. What good is winning the people’s freedom if they are dead?”
“I would expect you to defend him,” Gunther sneered. “But how can we fight them? Look at what our brilliant leader has done. More than half our people are dead, our battles lost. We lost fighting this creature you are so frightened of, and we lost at Revancha. The attack was poorly executed. I wonder if brother Diego knew of our plans in advance. Perhaps the two of you are working against us.”
“That’s absurd!” Consuela flared. “No one has done more for the Zapatista cause than José.”
“Spoken like his lapdog. Or is that his whore?”
Consuela started for him, and José held up a restraining hand. “Gunther,” he said quietly. “Now is not the time to tear ourselves apart. We must stand united, regroup, and plan how to fight another day. Should we kill each other instead of our enemies?”
“You have gone soft, Viejo,” Gunther taunted. “Old and soft in the heart and head. You take us away from the battle. That is cowardly. Like I would expect from your brother.”
José merely stood looking at Gunther with a mild expression on his face that he knew would drive the man wild. Gunther had obviously decided the time had come for the Zapatistas to acquire a new leader—himself. The man was trying to goad José into a fight so he could assume leadership. Which would be disastrous. Gunther would get all of the guerrillas killed within days, and that would mean the death of the Zapatista movement. Gunther lacked everything a leader needed—especially a way to hold his murderous nature in check.
“This is not the place to decide such important matters,” José said finally. “We are too exposed.”
“Yes,” Gunther said. “You are exposed. For a liar and a coward. You are no better than your brother.”
José had fought Diego for years and considered him an enemy. Gunther was not saying anything he himself had not thought a thousand times. But for some reason it stung hearing Gunther brand Diego as craven.
“José is not a coward, and neither is his brother,” Consuela said fiercely. “I saw him with my own eyes, fighting to save the campesinos from one of those mummy creatures. Where were you while he was risking his life?”
“I was killing one of his officers,” Gunther boasted. “That foolish man who attacked us at the crater—he will not live to kill any more of our people.”
“So while he fights to save people, you fight to destroy them,” Consuela said with contempt. “This is indeed a great day for our movement.”
“You saw Diego, chica?” José asked in surprise.
“I fought beside Diego,” she replied. “I had not thought him to care so much for the people as to risk his life defending them. I think we have been wrong about him in the past, José. I think perhaps he is a man beside whom we could fight with honor.”
“He is my brother—I cannot trust my own judgment about him,” José admitted. “But I trust yours. What are you suggesting?”
“That we join forces,” Consuela said. She hurried on before anyone could interrupt her. “Alone, neither of us can hope to defeat these monsters. They are too strong—you saw that at the crater, I saw it at the village. But together, we might stand a chance. Your brother said it himself—it is human against alien. It is our responsibility to put aside our past differences now. It is the only way we can save our people.”
José hesitated, torn. Deep down, he knew Consuela was right. But he had spent too many years thinking of his brother as the enemy. It was hard to change that now.
Gunther had been growing steadily more enraged during their conversation. He hated being ignored—now he interrupted. “I cannot believe you are considering this!” he shouted. “That man is our enemy—we cannot trust him. Unless I was right, and you have been working with him all along!”
“Do you really think we can depend on him, chica?” José asked Consuela, paying no attention to his furious lieutenant.
“He could have killed me in the village. He did not. I think if he will agree to work with us, we can respect his word,” she replied.
José hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Do it,” he ordered curtly, inwardly quaking but outwardly showing no doubt. A leader had to appear confident before his followers. “Go to Diego and propose an alliance—a temporary alliance,” he emphasized. “We will work together until we have driven off this menace, and then we will see where we stand.”
Consuela nodded, relieved. José calmly turned back to face his troublesome lieutenant.
“I was right,” Gunther spat. “You are a traitor!”
Without a word, José punched him so hard in the face that Gunther stumbled backward and fell heavily to the ground. The other guerrillas stared, shocked.
“I am the leader of this army,” José said, speaking as much to them as to Gunther. “If you disagree with my decisions, you are free to leave. But I will not brook mutiny.”
“Traitor!” Gunther shrieked, losing the last shred of self-control. He clawed for the pistol at his waist, but before it even cleared his holster, José had dived for his Kalashnikov on the ground beside him and shot him point-blank in the chest. Gunther died without another word, a look of surprise on his face, the front of his fatigues quickly reddening with his heart’s blood.
There was dead silence from the others—none would look up to meet José’s eyes. But Consuela did, and her gaze held warm approval and confidence.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” she said quietly. “You did what had to be done.”
“It is time for all of us to do what we have to do,” José said, then raised his voice. “Zapatistas! Assemble and follow Consuela. We will go to Diego and see whether he will agree to an alliance. And if he does, we will fight together to defeat this menace. But we will not give in, and we will not give up hope.”
Slowly, the guerrillas began to rise and gather their weapons and equipment. They still would not meet his eyes, José was saddened to see, but they would obey. For now, that was the best he could hope for.
He took a deep breath, and for the first time in three years, he prepared to meet his brother face-to-face.
* * *
“That’s all the firepower we can deliver?” Diego said, swallowing hard at Lieutenant Travis’s report. “Only one SPEAR missile?”
“Allen used the only other SPEAR on that crystal thing,” BJ replied. “Dropped it right on our doorstep. Killed a bunch of the locals, too, the bastard.”
Diego compressed his lips. After seeing the destruction the other alien had wreaked on the village, he could not entirely blame Allen for his actions. He hated to give the man too much credit, and his heart ached at the thought of the civilian casualties, but it was entirely possible that letting the creature continue its rampage would have resulted in even more deaths.
“This spaceship,” BJ said, interrupting his train of thought. “You want us to target it?”
“What kind of range do you have with ordnance already warmed up and ready to fly?”
“Not much. We’ve got the missile launchers on the Aztec cycles, but that’s about it. We’ve been short on ordnance since . . .”
“I know,” Diego said, silently cursing General Ramirez for the thousandth time. Chronically undermanned, undertrained, and underequipped—it was a wonder the entire region hadn’t fallen by now, either to the Zapatistas or to whatever these things were that were attacking the campesinos.
At least the undead thing had finally left the village, taking an undetermined number of residents with it. Diego and BJ were standing in the ruins of the town, surrounded by burning buildings, rubble, and bodies. Diego had never seen destruction on this scale, not even in the worst of the guerrilla campaign. And he had no idea how to stop its cause.
“Sir!” called Suarez, hurrying toward the pair from across the village square, passing a squad of BJ’s soldiers who were laboring to put out the worst of the fires. Others were trying to find and identify the bodies so they could determine how many were missing.
“Sir,” the lieutenant panted, skidding to a halt next to them. “I just received a report from Private Murdo back at San Cristóbal. He tells me Captain Allen has been killed.”
“Killed?” Diego said blankly. Beside him, BJ tried hard to repress a wide grin at the news.
“Yes, sir. Apparently he led some kind of expedition out in the jungle, and he ran into a group of guerrillas,” Suarez said. “Shot dead.”
Diego could not say he was sorry to hear of the man’s death. His mind was already racing, trying to decide how best to take advantage of it.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “as the ranking officer in Chiapas, I’m temporarily assuming command of the garrison at San Cristóbal.”
“What about Ramirez?” BJ asked.
“Unfortunately, we’re having trouble with communications,” Diego said, staring hard at her to be sure she got it. “We’ll ask General Ramirez for his orders as soon as they’re restored.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, no longer able to suppress her grin. Suarez was smiling as well, and Diego felt a sudden rush of affection for them both.
“Suarez,” he said, “I want you to take one of the Aztecs and get back to the garrison ASAP. I want a full inventory of all available weapons. I have a feeling we’re going to need every one of them if we’re going to have a prayer of killing that thing.”
“Yes, sir,” Suarez said with feeling. He had just turned to go when a commotion at the other end of the village caught all their attention.
“I’m here to see Colonel Villalobos!” a voice was shouting, and with a shock Diego realized it was Consuela Ortega, José’s lieutenant. Diego had not expected to see her again when she disappeared so quickly after the alien’s attack. But here she was, walking boldly into the village as if she owned it, seemingly without fear of the Pitbulls pointed in her direction.
“Hold your fire!” Diego shouted hastily, hurrying over to where the small woman stood, surrounded by very nervous Union soldiers. Consuela gazed at him over the rifle muzzles, unsmiling.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Diego said. “Not alive and kicking, anyway.”
“And under ordinary circumstances, I never would have come,” she said. “But as we both know, these circumstances are far from ordinary.” She gestured at the devastated village.
“Agreed,” Diego said ruefully.
“We have big trouble,” Consuela said. “You and José and everyone else in Chiapas.”
“It’s been that way for years,” Diego said, his exhaustion beginning to catch up with him. Only a day earlier, he would have been overjoyed that his patrol had captured one of José’s best. Now it seemed almost insignificant.
“But never like this,” she replied. “You have seen the same monster I have—you know how dangerous it is. How many of our people it has killed. You do not seem to be having much luck fighting it.”
“I suppose you’ve done better?” Diego asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” Consuela said simply. “There is another one, at a crater deep in the jungle. We tried to kill it, but it was much too strong for us.”
“At a crater?” Diego said, his interest quickening.
“The aliens seem to be after an object that fell from the sky,” she said. “It is a deadly glowing orb—I call it el corazón del infierno.”
“Hell Heart,” Diego murmured. He looked up. “What do they want with it?”
“I do not know,” Consuela said. “But it does not matter. They have killed and enslaved many campesinos to get it. For all our sakes, we have to stop them.”
“Agreed,” Diego said again. “What exactly did you have in mind?” His soldiers were beginning to shift uneasily, unsure why their commander was chatting so casually with one of the enemy.
“We must not fight one another,” Consuela said earnestly. “We must work together to fight these creatures!”
“Together?” Diego asked skeptically.
“I have no experience trying to end wars,” Consuela admitted. “But now we have a bigger enemy, one more dangerous than the Union or the Neo-Soviets. And time is running out.”
“Old habits die hard,” Diego said. “Has José agreed to an alliance with his younger brother?”
“Yes,” Consuela said, and Diego stared at her, stunned. He knew deep in his gut that this was no Zapatista trick, as much as he might want to believe it. He had seen the destruction the alien creatures were capable of, and it was far beyond anything humans could create. But ally himself with José after so much bad blood? What help could José possibly provide that would be worth the risk?
“I have two ag cycles, the Hydra, and dozens of soldiers,” Diego told Consuela bluntly. “We have Pitbulls and Bulldogs and missiles. What could you supply that we do not already have?”
“We know the jungle,” she said. “You may have the better weapons, but we have the knowledge you need to use them. And if we are not dividing our forces by fighting each other, we stand a much better chance of defeating those monsters.”
Diego found himself nodding, slowly, unwillingly. BJ, standing at his elbow, hissed, “You can’t be serious, Colonel! Team up with these criminals?”
A few days ago, Diego would have felt the same way. But since then, he had been betrayed by his superiors, lost his command, and watched innocent civilians murdered before his eyes. He was closer to understanding José’s point of view than ever before, even if he still disagreed with his brother’s methods.
“It’s worth the risk,” Diego abruptly decided. “If José’s willing to meet, I’m willing to talk to him.”
“Colonel . . .” BJ protested.
“Lieutenant?” Diego asked, the tone of his voice making it clear his mind was made up. She subsided, but the set of her jaw told him there would be further discussion—later.
“Bring José to me,” he said to Consuela. “We can talk and decide where we should go from here.”
“Done,” said Consuela with a half smile. From behind her, in a dozen different places, guerrillas appeared. Diego stared, openmouthed. The guerrillas had concealed themselves so well along the edge of the jungle that he’d had no idea they were there until they revealed themselves.
The guerrillas gathered in a half circle behind Consuela. They were filthy and exhausted-looking. Nearly all of them wore streaks of blood from minor injuries; several had to be supported by their colleagues. More continued to file out of the jungle and assemble in the clearing on the edge of the village. The last one to emerge from the sheltering vegetation was José. He looked even wearier and thinner than he had on the battlefield at Revancha. Diego absently wondered whether his own appearance was as bad.
José stopped at Consuela’s side, and the two men stared at each other warily, each unsure how to feel about the other.
Finally, José broke the silence. “Diego,” he said, his voice raspy with exhaustion.
“Viejo,” Diego said, hardly trusting his own voice. They looked at each other for a few moments longer.
“You look well, brother,” José said.
“You look like hell,” Diego replied.
José’s face split in his old, familiar grin, and Diego found himself smiling back at him.
“True,” José said, and then his smile disappeared. “We will all of us look worse before this is over,” he said, serious again. “Shall we begin?”
“After you,” Diego said, stepping aside and making a sweeping gesture toward the center of the village. José strode past him confidently, followed by Consuela and the rest of the guerrillas. Diego’s men fell in behind them, still wary but willing to follow their commander’s lead.
Diego only wished he had as much confidence in himself as they seemed to have. But as he walked behind his brother, the two of them preparing to go into battle as in the old days, he found that, against all odds, he was happy.
Satisfaction.
The Pharon Death Priest felt the warm glow of accomplishment as he checked his sensor readings one more time. After hours of labor at the crater where the Vor-stuff had plunged to earth and countless trips through the putrid vegetation of this world to replenish his constantly dwindling supply of slaves, he had finally achieved the goal he had sought for so long.
He glanced proudly over his shoulder at the grim procession behind him. Following at a safe distance back struggled the slaves carrying the crudely rigged sling containing his prize. The speck’s intense light was slightly muted by the force field the priest had constructed with such effort, but it was still too bright to look at for longer than a few seconds.
If looking at it from a distance was painful to the Death Priest, being in close proximity to it was proving deadly to the hapless slaves. It required three of them to bear the sling with the trapped mote, and these three were already showing signs of deterioration. Where their hands held the sling, the flesh was slowly crisping and turning black. In several places, the white gleam of bone showed through the devastated flesh. Hideous sores were erupting on their limbs and faces, and the farther they walked, the slower their steps became. The priest barked at them as one staggered, nearly upsetting the delicate balance of the litter and sending the Vor-stuff crashing to the ground. The Pharon was certain the force field would survive the impact, but a spill would delay him further, and he had waited quite long enough for his moment of triumph.
There was a hideous gurgle from the slave supporting the front end of the litter, and its legs finally gave way, sending it collapsing to the packed earth of the jungle trail. It twitched a few times before succumbing to death, its body blackened and twisted by the hellish radiation emanating from its burden. The priest snapped an order, and another slave hurriedly took the dead one’s place, rescuing the sliding litter before it could unbalance completely.
The priest blew out a sigh of exasperation. There were already far too many of the pathetic, charred corpses littering the trail behind him. He was still kilometers from reaching Destroyer for the Faith, and his supply of slaves was quickly dwindling. The natives of this world were proving alarmingly fragile; despite the dozens the priest had discovered lined up at the compound, his supply might run out before completing the long trek to the ship. Something about the radiation of the Vorack-stuff had a rapidly deteriorating effect on the delicate chemistry of the revivified corpses. The priest was shielded from the worst effects of the radiation by the complex field of his phase generator, but the slaves had no such protection.
The Death Priest glanced at the procession of slaves that trailed behind their glowing burden, mentally toting up their numbers and not pleased with the result. He had hoped to save some to serve as replacement crew members on the long trip back to the Pharon homeworld, but at this rate they would all be charred bodies by the time he got back to the ship.
Ah, well, he told himself, he would just have to hurry. He barked another order at the primitives struggling along behind him, and with an effort they quickened their pace. The priest strode along the trail, happy for the first time in days. Soon the ordeal would be over, and he would return in glory to the presence of the God-king.
* * *
“We are running out of time,” Consuela said, sounding a bit desperate. “From what José saw at the crater, the mummy creature had almost retrieved the Hell Heart. It must surely have succeeded by now.”
“And it is probably on its way back to its ship,” Diego mused. He, José, Consuela, and BJ were all crammed into the back of the Hydra for an impromptu war council. BJ was still eyeing the erstwhile guerrillas with deep suspicion, but José and Consuela ignored her obvious hostility.
Tensions were no less thick outside the ag transport. Diego’s soldiers and José’s guerrillas kept to opposite sides of the small plaza at the center of the village, all clutching their weapons tightly to themselves and glaring at one another with deep mistrust. Diego had ordered Lieutenant Suarez to stay outside and keep an eye on the situation. He didn’t want another shooting war erupting anytime soon—not when they had far worse enemies to worry about than a handful of moth-eaten guerrillas.
He himself was sufficiently unnerved by the situation. Here he was, in the back of a Hydra, looking across at his brother. His sense of déjà vu was intense; how many times had they sat like this in the old days when they were still fighting on the same side? Back then José wouldn’t have been asking Diego’s advice and listening to his suggestions. It was an odd feeling to be fighting together after being enemies for so long. Diego was not sure, but he thought he liked it.
“It has a ship?” José asked now, interrupting Diego’s reverie. “You have seen it?”
“My expedition discovered it a few klicks from here,” Diego answered. He nodded to BJ, who obediently called up the vid Suarez had recorded at the alien spaceship. A muscle worked in José’s jaw as he studied the remains of his comrades working around the huge, beached form of the ship, under the direction of one of the mummy creatures. Diego had studied the recording several times, and he was still appalled by the contrast between the beauty of the ship, covered in intricate tracings and swirls of engravings and plated with gorgeous, glimmering metals, and the hideous, shambling, undead things that swarmed over it, effecting repairs.
“Note the openings in the hull here,” BJ said, indicating what looked like the muzzles of laser cannons. “We’ve counted nearly fifty of the damn things, each of unknown capacity and power. If they work, I don’t know what kind of attack we could mount against them.”
“It looks formidable,” José agreed thoughtfully. “But it appears their crew is largely outside, working on repairing the damage. That makes them vulnerable.”
“It also looks like they’re almost finished,” Diego said. “Perhaps if we just let it take off . . .” He didn’t finish the thought, knowing it could never be. The disgusting creatures had brought too much death for that to be possible. If they escaped, they would be going away with the knowledge that they had slaughtered and enslaved without being punished.
“It has victimized the campesinos,” Consuela said fiercely.
“We cannot let it leave. It or others of its kind will return and continue what they’ve started here,” Diego finished.
“The aliens are the true threat, and as far as we know there are only two here: the one we fought at the crater and the one you faced in the village,” José said, steering the conversation back to the main topic at hand.
“The human slaves are a big enough threat,” Diego said wryly. “When we met up with them at Hermosilla, they just wouldn’t stop fighting. I must have pumped a dozen rounds into one of them without even slowing it down. We did manage to cut their mobility by targeting the legs, but even that didn’t kill them; it just made them move slower. I mean, how do you kill something that’s already dead?”
“I may have a solution to that,” José answered. “During our battle at the crater, we found that if we targeted the tanks strapped to their backs, here”—he indicated several of the undead slaves in the still-playing recording—“it took them out. Something in those tanks is what sustains their unnatural life. Destroy them, and you destroy the enemy.” Then, half under his breath, he added, “And send our people at last to a peaceful grave.”
“The tanks—of course!” Diego exclaimed. Then he sobered. “But look at them—there must be dozens of them at the ship. How many did you say you saw at the crater?”
“Perhaps a hundred,” José said somberly. “We are outnumbered at least three to one, and our ammunition is almost gone.”
“We can provide that,” Diego said, “but not much more. We still have one SPEAR missile, but maybe even a SPEAR wouldn’t make a dent in that thing.”
“How many troops can you supply?” Consuela asked.
“What you see is pretty much what you get,” Diego said. “Reinforcements are out of the question.”
“HQ again?” José asked with understanding.
“Affirmative,” Diego said. “General Ramirez . . . doesn’t exactly know I’m in charge here.”
“My brother the rebel,” José said with a poker face, surprising both Diego and BJ into a snort of laughter. The two brothers grinned at each other, the first tension-free moment either of them had enjoyed in years. But the feeling quickly passed, and José’s smile faded as he turned his attention back to the recording.
“There are too many to fight,” he said finally. “Even if we snipe at the tanks from the safety of the jungle, we will still be vulnerable to those cannons. We have to assume they are functioning. I don’t know how we can . . .”
Diego held up a hand, and José trailed off. Diego almost had something—it was glimmering just at the edge of his memory . . . Then he had it.
“We do have one weapon we could use against them,” he said. José raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“The green goo,” Diego said, with just a touch of smugness.
“Of course!” Consuela exclaimed.
“You know what effect it had on our Ares,” Diego told her. “I saw some of those tanks close up, and I’m certain they’re made of metal. Ditto for the ship. It would almost certainly have the same effect on the aliens—assuming you have any of the stuff left.”
José nodded reluctantly. “There are two more canisters, hidden in the jungle,” he said. “I have been unwilling to use them—some weapons are too dangerous to risk. But if it will stop these aliens from killing our people . . .”
“One problem,” Consuela said. “The spray is a short-range weapon. We would have to get it up close to the ship for it to have any effect, and anyone carrying it would be killed long before we could get there.”
“What if we used the SPEAR missile to carry it?” Diego asked, liking the idea better and better as he spoke. “I don’t know if it would work, but if we could rig one of the warheads to carry a canister instead of the explosive—”
“I think it could be done, sir,” BJ interrupted. “But we’d need to get it here and experiment.”
Diego looked at José. “How soon could you get the canisters here?” he asked.
“They are hidden not far from here,” José replied. “We can have them here within a half hour.”
“Do it,” Diego said. “I’ll take one of my men and get back to San Cristóbal to retrieve the SPEAR. In the meantime, we need to see if we can come up with a backup plan—just in case this doesn’t work.”
“It will work,” Consuela said confidently.
“I hope so,” Diego said under his breath. He and José stood up simultaneously, he to find Suarez and José to fetch the cylinders. He just hoped it wasn’t already too late.
* * *
Diego and Suarez rode the crimson-and-gold Aztec cycle into the post at San Cristóbal just after dusk. They had made good time from the village along deserted, dusty roads. Frightened by the carnage of the past few days, the campesinos were staying hidden indoors, and while their fear saddened Diego, it also made his job easier for the moment.
Diego was disturbed when no sentry challenged him. He knew the post was currently guarded by a only a skeleton crew, but security had clearly grown lax under Allen’s “command.” He would have to work hard to restore discipline—assuming any of them lived beyond the next few hours.
Diego dropped off the ag cycle, followed in short order by Suarez. “Find a weapons tech and get the SPEAR loaded into the missile launcher,” he ordered his lieutenant. “And make it quick. We haven’t got much time.”
“Where is everyone, Colonel?” Suarez asked, pushing back his visor and squinting as the bright light from the security lamps shone directly on his face.
“We don’t have time to worry about it now. Get over to the launch center,” Diego repeated. “While the tech is preparing the missile, check the Ares suits. See if they were cleaned and if we can use them.”
The last report Diego had seen wasn’t too promising, but even if the suits were ruined, knowing how much damage they had sustained from José’s lethal bioweapon would still be useful. It might give them a better idea of what effects the goo could have on the alien ship, not to mention the wheezing life-support systems worn by the undead human slaves.
“Colonel?” came Suarez’s voice over Diego’s helmet commlink.
“Here, Lieutenant,” he said, hastily activating his mike.
“There’s not even a puddle left of those fancy assault suits. The acid chewed them up pretty well. A few spare parts survived, but that’s all.”
“Understood. See to the Aztec,” Diego said, and signed off. He gazed at the ruins of his command—how had Allen managed to wreak so much havoc in so short a time?
No sentries had been posted, but Diego knew the post was still occupied. He strode to a barracks and kicked open the door. Three men on their bunks jumped guiltily on seeing his insignia shining in the bright light and scrambled to get to their feet and stand at attention.
“Who’s in command of this post?” Diego asked coldly.
The three exchanged looks, and then as one shrugged and shook their heads. Diego could hardly believe that Allen had left the garrison without passing along command to someone. If he’d already run through his entire roster of officers, he should have breveted a couple of sergeants and let them run the place till he got back. But to abandon it!
Allen had put the post at extreme risk. If the man were still alive, Diego thought he just might have killed him personally.
With difficulty, he swallowed his anger. He had no time to spare on recriminations. The best he could do now was to act to protect the post and hope it was enough.
“How many soldiers do we still have in fighting condition?” he asked, none too surprised when the soldiers could not answer.
“Secure the perimeter, if you can,” he ordered. “If you can’t, fall back and fortify the command and control center. Roust all the troops you can find and concentrate on defending it.”
“Who’s going to pay attention to us?” one man protested.
“You’re all promoted to sergeant,” Diego said with exasperation. “Pass along my orders to any other noncom you can find, and if there aren’t any, you three are in charge. Any questions?”
The first soldier blanched, his mouth opening and closing like a fish washed up on the ocean shore. “We’re supposed to hold the entire post? Even if the guerrillas attack?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Diego said, amused in spite of himself. From outside the barracks, he heard the high-pitched whine of the Aztec. Suarez must have finished rigging the missile.
“Defend as much as you can,” he said curtly. “Carry on.”
Diego did a smart about-face and left, hollow inside. He hated to leave his post in such inexperienced hands, but he had done the best he could. His job was to try to deal with the alien menace—everything else would have to wait until later.
If there was a later.
* * *
The Death Priest emerged finally from the jungle into the clearing with a feeling of overwhelming relief. There before him lay the beautiful silhouette of his ship, the Destroyer for the Faith, outlined in artificial light to counter the growing dark. Nearly all the damage had been repaired, and he could see the dark bulk of the Slayer outlined against the shining surface of the ship, barking orders backed up by the menacing hum of his ever-present energy weapon.
The Pharon strode forward confidently, gesturing impatiently for his slaves to follow. They did, slowly, staggering under their burden. Far too many twisted, pathetic remnants littered the trail for kilometers behind them, but they had succeeded in their mission. Millions of them could die, for all the priest cared. He had the Vor-stuff!
He would need to keep the sphere outside, still held in abeyance by his force beams, until he was certain the cargo hold’s force shields were in place and operational. One failure could tear the entire ship apart, and take everyone aboard with it.
But in a matter of hours, he would have left this accursed planet behind forever—or at least until the Pharons saw fit to conquer it for the glory of the God-king. Once they had harnessed the power of the Vorack, this world, and every other world in the Maelstrom, would be easy pickings.
“Slaves, assist the others on the repairs,” the priest ordered. He had a headache from urging the almost-mindless slaves along the trail. He longed to return to the homeworld, where the slaves were less recalcitrant and did not require constant supervision.
Still, at least they obeyed, even if too slowly. The few survivors stumbled toward the ship and began working on the last of the hull damage.
The Pharon ordered the swaying slaves holding the litter to set it down—gently. With the last of their strength, they complied—and then simply disintegrated from the force of the radiation. Ordinarily that would have exasperated the priest, but nothing could perturb him now. Escape from this noisome world was imminent. By the grace of the God-king and decent repairs, the Death Priest could be in court with his magnificent tribute before the ninety-first anniversary of the God-king’s ascension.
He could hardly restrain his anticipation.
Sir, we’re detecting movement along the perimeter defenses,” came BJ’s sharp report. “You want us to fire when we acquire a good target?”
Diego glanced at the battle display and saw that the four approaching blips were making no effort to hide. He checked heat signatures and made a preliminary ID.
“Weapons down,” he ordered. “It’s Viejo.”
Within another few minutes, the four figures came into view. José and Consuela led the way, carrying a large plastic cylinder between them. Following were two more guerrillas bearing a similar canister. They carried the cylinders gingerly, as if afraid of their contents. And with good reason, thought Diego, remembering with a shudder what just one of those cylinders had done to his Ares suits.
“Were you able to get us the SPEAR?” José asked Diego, setting the cylinder carefully on the ground and stretching as if his back hurt.
“Affirmative,” Diego answered, gesturing to the Aztec now outfitted with his last SPEAR missile.
“Then we may have a chance,” José said.
“Sir!” BJ called from by the battle display. “We’re picking up a significant surge of energy from the alien ship. It looks like they’re powering up—maybe getting ready to take off.”
“Suarez!” Diego instantly snapped. “Get to work on fitting one of those cylinders into the warhead. We don’t have much time—let’s make the best of what we’ve got. And be careful.”
Suarez and two Union soldiers edged past the guerrillas and gingerly picked up José’s cylinder from the ground.
“Anything they need to know?” Diego asked.
“You probably know more about it than I do,” José answered. “The Neo-Sovs weren’t particularly forthcoming with details. What about the creature? Your officer said it is ready to take off?”
“About five klicks away. I sent out RPVs with cameras for recon, but the mummy-things snuffed out every one as they got close. I finally started lofting message rockets with cameras. They give us only a quick look, but Suarez is good at interpreting what they see.”
“And what have they seen?” Consuela asked. She had followed Suarez and the Union soldiers over to the Aztec and was watching with interest as they retrofit the missile.
“The last one we sent up wasn’t good,” Suarez told her. “It looks like they’ve just about finished repairs on the ship’s hull. That probably means it won’t be long before they’re ready to take off.”
“And taking our people with them,” José said grimly.
Diego knew how he felt. Seeing the campesinos turned into grotesque, undying slaves was horrifying enough; the thought of them being stolen away to some alien world to labor for the rest of their unnatural lives in the service of those monsters—that was not to be borne. They had to stop the alien ship before it took off and sent those poor people to their final rest.
Diego strode over to the ag cycle and peered into the guts of the missile payload. Wires dangled everywhere as Suarez labored to squeeze the Neo-Sov aerosol sprayer into a space not designed for it. If the cylinder ruptured, it would kill them all.
Suarez was beginning to look uncomfortable about his commanding officer breathing down his neck, so Diego backed off to give him room to work. Suarez knew how important his task was; hovering would accomplish nothing.
“Diego,” José said in a low voice, “have you considered that if we blow up the ship with that energy ball inside, the explosion might destroy much of the jungle?”
“And take countless campesinos with it,” Consuela added.
“We thought of that,” Diego said. “I’ve got BJ targeting the area directly outside the ship. Hopefully that will spread the green mist far enough to disable the ship and kill the aliens, but won’t hit with enough force to destroy whatever is holding that thing in check. I’ve got no interest in finding out just how powerful it is.”
“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, sir,” Suarez reported, powering down his handheld laser and backing away from the Aztec. The jury-rigged missile looked crudely assembled, but it would probably hang together long enough to reach the ship and do what needed to be done.
“BJ, launch another message rocket. We need to see what we’re targeting,” Diego ordered. The stocky lieutenant complied, and the tiny rocket soared into the air, carrying a surveillance camera with it. The people on the ground squinted to follow it as it disappeared into the dark night sky. A few seconds later, BJ reported, “Target achieved.”
“Suarez, what did we get?” Diego asked.
“We’ve got about a dozen zombies outside the ship,” Suarez said. “Both of the alien things are outside, too. The globe is nowhere in sight—looks like they’ve already loaded it into the ship.”
“That’s as much luck as we can hope for,” Diego said, and José nodded in agreement. “Suarez, launch the missile.”
Everyone backed away to a safe distance. Suarez made one last check of the weapon, and then took a deep breath and punched a button on the battle console. With a roar that set the ag cycle trembling, the SPEAR missile shot into the air, carrying their best hopes with it. Diego traced the outline of his crucifix and sent a quick prayer after it, and for a moment he thought he saw José doing the same.
In a few seconds, they would know whether they had succeeded or failed. Diego sincerely hoped it was the former. Failure at this stage meant death.
* * *
The Death Priest worked at the controls of the force-beam equipment, intent on the slightest power variation, the merest hint that something might fail. Painstakingly precise, he moved the speck of virulent matter into the center of Destroyer for the Faith’s hold. The slaves had finished the hull repairs. The ship’s engines were in decent condition, and once the Vorack mote was secured in the hold, the priest would be in command of more power than any other Pharon in history.
“For the glory of the God-king,” he murmured as he manipulated the globe into the hold’s acceleration dampers. The crystalline sphere surrounding the mote continued to crack and leak out energy at distressingly high levels. The Death Priest wasted no time turning on the internal force shields once the valuable mote was in place.
Giving a silent thanks to the God-king, the priest at last shut down his makeshift console. He had isolated the power source for the hold’s force shields from the rest of the ship. In case any of their hastily made repairs failed on the way back to the homeworld, he did not want the force field around the Vor-stuff failing as well. He was not interested in witnessing a supernova from the inside. The hold’s generators were now entirely self-contained within the force field. The priest was confident it would withstand even a catastrophic hull breach or a complete power failure.
“Slaves,” ordered the priest, “into the ship. Take your positions.” They obeyed, but with maddening slowness. He felt the pressure of time wearing on him. Too many natives of this world had seen him, and he had already wasted far too much time battling their primitive efforts to stop him. He wanted no more delays. He was so close to escaping this noxious place he could almost taste his anticipation.
“Slayer!” the priest called, and the huge warrior hurried over to him.
“Orders, holy one?” he asked.
“Gather the remainder of the slaves into the ship and prepare for takeoff,” the priest ordered. “We are ready to leave this cursed world behind.”
The Slayer clacked his enormous battle claw with pleasure at these words. “At once, holy one,” he said in his hideous, ruined voice.
He hurried off to collect the few remaining slaves, and the priest turned to enter the ship. He needed to get to the control room and supervise the efforts of the slaves there. He was dissatisfied with the level of training he had been able to give them, but had lacked the time for much more. Once safely back on the Pharon homeworld, he would see to it that they were disciplined properly.
Suddenly, a droning shriek split the air, and the priest whirled clumsily in the hatchway to see a pinpoint of light descending from the sky. Reflex took over, and the priest dived through the hatch, which slammed shut just as the missile impacted.
* * *
The explosion as the missile hit could be felt even five kilometers away, where Diego and the others stood.
“Report!” Diego snapped.
Suarez was busy at the battle console, intently studying the display. “Dead on target, sir!” he said, satisfaction evident in his voice. “The SPEAR hit just outside the ship. Readings indicate the bioweapon is spreading throughout the clearing.”
“Do we know yet how many casualties?” Diego asked.
“Looks like . . . yes! The readings on the slaves indicate the bioweapon is disintegrating their life-support tanks. At least a dozen have ceased movement.”
“What about the monsters?” Consuela asked urgently.
Suarez’s smile disappeared. “We scored one hit,” he reported somberly. “But it looks like the other one made it inside the ship before the missile impacted.”
Diego swore under his breath, and Suarez looked up from his displays. “Don’t worry, sir,” he said. “That ship isn’t going anywhere. The green goo is starting to eat away at the hull. In a few minutes, it won’t be spaceworthy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ate out the propulsion systems as well. There’s enough metal there to keep the goo busy for quite a while. Eventually, it’ll eat its way into wherever the other alien is hiding, and that will be that.”
“But we don’t know what kind of damage that creature can do in the meantime,” José said warily.
“Colonel!” BJ called urgently from her position at the battle console, and Diego went quickly over to where she stood.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“We’ve got some new power readings coming from the ship.” She looked up at him, her expression filled with dread. “I think it’s powering up the laser cannons. At this range, those weapons could rip all the way through the jungle and cut us down where we stand. We haven’t got anything that can stand up to that kind of power.”
Diego cursed again. “All right. Immediate evac!” he called, and the clearing erupted with a swirl of activity. “We’ve got to get out of range before those lasers reach full power.”
“We’ll never make it, sir,” BJ said quietly.
Diego turned to her, and their eyes met with complete understanding. “I know,” he said in an undertone. “But we have to try.”
He whirled and strode toward the Hydra, shooing soldiers and guerrillas in front of him as he went. He had just gone through the doorway when he heard the whine of ag lifters coming from one of the Aztecs. He spun, ready to rush back out, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Consuela standing just inside the door, tears running down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong? Where’s José?”
“He told me to give you this,” she said shakily, holding out José’s crucifix. “He asked that you keep it for him until he comes back.”
Slowly, Diego reached out and took the crucifix, then looped it around his neck where it rested atop his own. The chain felt cool against his skin. He listened hard as the ag whine died away. José was headed directly for the alien ship, the final cylinder of green goo undoubtedly loaded on the back of the Aztec.
“He shouldn’t have gone off alone,” Diego said, then pushed past Consuela to the battle display so he could follow his brother’s progress. José piloted audaciously, but there was so little time. The power emissions from the ship were rising at an alarming rate. The alien could fire at almost any moment.
Behind him, the bustle of a hurried evacuation continued, but Diego was oblivious to it, all his being concentrated on the tiny blip that represented his brother—the blip that represented their only real hope of survival.
José Villalobos drove the Aztec with reckless abandon. He had always been a hot-rodder, the one to risk everything on a single throw of the dice. Unlike his little brother.
Now José felt that not only the lives of his remaining guerrillas—including his beloved Consuela—and his brother hung in the balance, but the fate of the Earth as well. This monster could not be allowed to live. More would surely follow, and Chiapas, Mexico, the Union, the entire planet would be at risk. He had already lost far too many of his people to the undead creature—he wasn’t going to let it finish the job.
José slewed the Aztec to one side to avoid a giant jacaranda tree, and the cylinder lashed hastily to the back of the ag cycle slid precariously. José ignored it. So what if it went off prematurely? It would take several minutes before it could eat through enough metal to disable the cycle, and he was within seconds of the clearing that held the alien spacecraft.
Veering to one side, he scraped past a mahogany tree, then rebounded and emerged into the burned-out area around the ship. He could see the initial burn marks of its landing in the center of the clearing, lit clearly by the bright lights streaming from the ship. The alien had enlarged the area—undoubtedly to provide space to repair its craft.
It had used campesinos murdered and enslaved by its evil technology. He could see their corpses now, lying scattered like leaves around the ship, their life tanks melted and destroyed by the Neo-Soviet bioweapon. Among them lay one of the alien creatures. One mammoth arm was still outstretched as if reaching for the safety of the ship, but its beautiful engraved back tank had disintegrated, the hoses still pumping the tank’s obscene fluids into the packed earth around the ship.
José could see that the ship itself was beginning to disintegrate. Green moss sprouted everywhere, and holes were beginning to appear in the craft’s formerly shiny surface as the goo slowly ate through the skin of the hull.
José skidded to a stop near the ship’s tailfin. He cut the ag lifters, and the cycle fell heavily the last few centimeters to the ground. He jumped off the seat and fumbled with the cylinder, working to attach the sprayer-nozzle assembly to the cylinder. Already he was choking on the fumes released by the goo as it dissolved the alien metals.
Hefting the heavy cylinder and breathing as shallowly as he could, José began circling the ship, looking for a way in. He passed under several of the laser cannons, their throaty whine lending extra incentive to his search. Soon, he knew, they would fire, and when they did, his brother and all his remaining guerrillas would die.
He would not let that happen.
There. Above him was an airlock. He could tell it had once been sealed, but the goo had eaten a hole in the doors that was large enough to admit him. He clambered up onto the ship with some difficulty, still lugging the heavy cylinder, and gingerly entered the airlock. Green tendrils brushed along his face and shoulders as he ducked through the hole, and he shuddered at their clammy touch. But they found no purchase on his clothing, and their questing tendrils sought out and then ignored the plastic cylinder.
José had scarcely taken two steps inside the foul darkness when a sudden shift in the air currents warned him of an imminent attack. He ducked just as a razor-sharp knife cut the air where his head had been an instant before. His finger tightened reflexively on the spray trigger, and the green goo began spewing forth onto the attacking slaves. As it settled over their shoddy life-support units, they began keeling over. José kept his finger on the trigger until the last of them had collapsed to the floor.
“I do not kill you, my amigos, my countrymen,” he said softly. “You are dead. I am only restoring grace after you have lost it.”
He finally released the trigger and stepped gingerly over their devastated corpses, the floor underfoot made slippery by the fluids spewing from their ruptured tanks. He was in a narrow corridor with barely enough light to see. The junctures of ceiling, wall, and floor all seemed slightly off. There wasn’t a single right angle in the place. That and the dim lighting made progress extremely difficult, and he had to concentrate on placing his feet carefully with each step.
Another slave attacked as he passed a side corridor, and he took a nasty slice on his upper arm before he could respond with the sprayer. His attacker collapsed and died like the others, and he continued deeper into the ship.
The assaults by slaves grew more frequent as he grew closer to what must be the heart of the ship. Everywhere he saw evidence of hasty repairs: bare wires sticking out of walls, patches on the inner hull, empty places where equipment had been cannibalized to effect repairs elsewhere.
The stench of death, which had seemed overpowering when José had entered the ship, now clustered so thickly that he could feel it burning at the back of his throat. He had to be close now.
He ducked as he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye, and barely missed having his head taken off by a wickedly sharp scythe. But the sudden movement overbalanced him on the dangerously slick floor, and he tumbled heavily to the deck. Only a last-minute twist saved him from falling on the cylinder and rupturing it.
Dazed, he looked up and saw the emaciated form of Mary Stephenson—or what remained of her—standing over him, her weapon raised for a killing blow. José braced himself for the impact, cursing himself for a failure.
The blow never came. Barely seen in the gloom of the alien ship, her lips moved, forming words he could hardly make out.
“Please, José,” the sorry remains of his faithful lieutenant breathed, the words emerging with difficulty from decayed vocal cords.
Slowly, José got to his feet, and Mary lowered her weapon until they stood face-to-face.
“There is one thing more I have to do, Mary,” he said gently.
She stared at him a moment longer, then lifted a ravaged hand and pointed to a dim corridor behind him. “There,” she whispered, and José nodded his understanding. Then he lifted the nozzle of the cylinder and pulled back on the trigger.
Mary Stephenson seemed to collapse inward on herself as the greenish mist ate into the tank sustaining her unnatural life. She looked up at him from ruined eyes, speech beyond her capability, and struggled to form one last word. But then the light faded from her eyes, and she dropped to the floor with a sigh, her thoughts forever beyond his knowing.
“Rest in peace, my friend,” José said softly, then turned to enter the corridor she had indicated. Somewhere in its depths, he knew, was the monster he had come to kill.
* * *
José emerged, panting, into a huge space that he instinctively knew was the control center of the ship. He was bleeding from half a dozen wounds sustained while battling his way past what seemed like an endless horde of zombies infesting the place. Every square centimeter of surface was covered by display screens and control consoles, manned by yet more slaves. And in the center of the room, in a thronelike chair, sat the being responsible for the deaths of so many of his countrymen.
José had seen it at the crater, of course, but never this close up. As it turned to glare at him and rose slowly from its seat, José could see clearly the dead gray color of its skin and the greasy, filthy bandages wrapping its body, contrasting horribly with the beauty of its golden armor. It was taller than he had thought.
Then he was too busy to study it further, as the creature snapped out a word in some alien tongue, and its undead crew attacked. José fended them off almost absently, all his attention concentrated on the monster commanding them. Step by step, he fought his way toward the monster. He dimly felt the sharp pain as the slaves’ weapons sliced into his flesh, but he ignored it and his growing weakness as he battled his way across the control room, slaves collapsing in his wake as he hosed them with the green goo. The cylinder cradled in his arms felt alarmingly light, its contents almost depleted.
But there was enough left to do what he had come for. As the last slaves fell, their lives gurgling away onto a floor awash in fluids, the alien creature unsheathed the long scythes hung at its waist with a lethal whisper. José circled it warily, wanting to make sure he had a clear shot at the elaborate life-support tank on its back. He dodged one slash from the scythes and then another, each time getting a little closer. Blood ran in a dozen rivulets from his wounds, but he ignored it as he finally saw his opening.
José pressed the trigger, and the deadly spray misted out and enveloped the tank. The monstrous creature roared as the mist began eating away at its life-support system. Fluids began to leak from a half dozen holes, and José could see in the monster’s small, dark eyes the knowledge of its death.
With the last of its strength, the creature made one desperate lunge at the man who had killed it, and José looked down in dim surprise at the razor edge of the scythe that had sliced cleanly all the way through his chest. Then his knees gave way, and he and the monster collapsed together to the floor. He felt his vision going dim, and the last thing he saw as he slipped into the darkness was the unseeing eye of the alien as it accompanied him into death.
How do you explain it, Colonel?” asked Lieutenant Travis.
“I don’t,” Diego said as the two of them left the command and control building and walked slowly across the garrison. “I leave the explanations to the scientists.”
“Well, have they figured anything out yet?” BJ grumbled.
“Not that I know of,” Diego admitted, as they strolled along, enjoying the pleasantly warm day. Chiapas had never seen this much attention from their masters up north. The goo had barely finished eating its way through the alien spaceship two weeks ago before Union scientists had begun swarming over it, taking samples of everything. The remains of the two aliens had been removed for further study up at Union HQ in Cheyenne Mountain, as had the strange crystalline fragment Captain Alex Allen had found at the crater and the remains of the Ares suits destroyed by José’s bioweapon. Diego had learned that the Neo-Sovs were making a new incursion farther north, using the goo and something that looked like the Cyclops. Naturally, the Union was eager to find a counteragent to the deadly stuff.
The only thing the scientists hadn’t carried away was the cause of the whole thing: the glowing meteorite that had fallen to earth and brought with it so much destruction. The Hell Heart, as Consuela had dubbed it, sat hovering in midair among the melted ruins of the alien ship, entirely encased in a sphere of force beams. It had been the only thing to survive the destruction José and Diego had wreaked on the ship. The scientists and military were still circling it gingerly, afraid to do anything to it for fear of destroying the force field and unleashing its terrible power. The potential that lay within that glowing orb was tremendous, but Diego personally doubted they would ever find a way to harness its energy without destroying themselves—and most of the planet—along with it.
He and BJ walked past a knot of soldiers working to make repairs to one of the Hydras. Most of his soldiers were busy on maintenance in one way or another, working to get the San Cristóbal base back into operational condition. Those who had survived, anyway—nearly twenty percent of his soldiers had been killed.
One-fifth. For a few days, the commlink to MCF headquarters in Mexico City had hummed with denunciations of his command abilities. But even General Ramirez quieted down after Union Command let it be known that they considered Diego Villalobos the hero of the hour. Diego had not yet seen their official report, but rumor had it he had been recommended for a medal—even, perhaps, a promotion. He had lost 20 percent of his command, true, but he had also saved 80 percent, when the potential for total devastation throughout Chiapas had been extreme. He had held off a Cyclops invasion of El Manguito, protected the Revancha reactor, fought off an alien incursion, and broken the back of the Zapatista movement.
Which was not to say the Zapatistas were gone entirely. Diego had received several informal reports from Consuela, who had taken over after José’s death. Their relationship remained tense, but he had hopes that perhaps they would be able to work together on the problems facing the people of Chiapas, rather than wasting their energies fighting an unwinnable war. She was not a bad sort, and she was extraordinarily competent. He could see why José had valued her so highly. Lieutenant Suarez was serving as his liaison to the guerrillas, and if he was reading correctly between the lines in Suarez’s reports, the young officer liked Consuela even better than he did.
“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” BJ said, interrupting his reverie, “there are some things I should see to.”
“By all means, Lieutenant,” Diego said. “Dismissed.” He watched the stocky officer fondly as she hurried off, already barking orders into her commlink. Her promotion to captain should come through soon. If it didn’t, he could always threaten to resign—that carried some weight now.
Diego strolled slowly toward the main gate, saluted the sentries on duty, and walked out into the ravaged countryside.
The jungle would take years to heal. Huge black gashes showed where various indignities had been heaped on the land. Worse, from his perspective, were the graves that stretched across the denuded fields. He had tried to get a head count of those who were still alive, and had failed. Their best estimate was more than a thousand dead, including the sad corpses of the people the mummy creatures had enslaved. Diego’s squads had worked overtime finding the bodies, which were scattered over kilometers of jungle, and had given them a proper burial. Among those interred in the earth was Captain Alex Allen—in one final irony, laid to rest in the land he had so despised.
Once the toxic goo had finished eating its way through the alien spaceship, they had done the same for the dead there, including José. Diego’s fingers traced the outline of the single crucifix hanging around his neck. He had given its twin to Consuela. She would bear José’s legacy well.
His steps carried him through the raw graves dug into the ground to a two-meter-tall concrete pylon towering in the center of the makeshift cemetery. The pillar held only a brass plaque with a single name engraved on it: José Villalobos. As the Maw sank into the west, its white light touched the plaque and made the name glow.
It was a cruel irony that José had been taken from Diego so soon after they had found each other again. But Diego knew his brother had died doing what he wanted most: saving his people. The Hell Heart had brought so much death and destruction to Chiapas. It was a piece of the Maw that hung over the Earth like a deadly sword. But this time they had triumphed over it—he and José, together at last. The way it was meant to be.
Diego Villalobos turned and walked back to his post in the setting light of the Maw, renewed in body and soul for the long, hard task ahead of him.