by Matt Forbeck
Michaels pushed down on the accelerator and leaned back on the wheel. A vast cloud of smoke and steam swallowed the airship, and a moment later the craft began to rise on a column of the same stuff. Freeing himself from the greedy gravity of the ground always gave Michaels a thrill, and this time was no different. He felt like he had been born to wrestle rockets into the sky, and he gave thanks that he’d been able to do it once again.
It didn’t occur to Michaels until the ship was rocketing into the sky that the boy’s message might be for someone on the airship. If so, he hoped it wasn’t anything vital. It was too late for him to stop now.
29
Mitch had always hated flying, but he’d gotten used to it. He hated a lot of things in his life. Flying was just one more.
Of course, flying in a converted pleasure ship on his way to save the world from a machine that made killer mutants out of human beings—that was something else. He felt comfortable hating this even more.
He kept his eyes wide open as they launched into the air on the ship’s three vertical rockets. Then those rockets swiveled horizontal, and they went zooming out toward the tops of the mountains. He peered through one of the small portholes in the side of the ship and watched the monastery grow tiny behind them, then disappear behind the ship’s exhaust.
Mitch glanced at Brother Samuel during the takeoff. The monk spent most of the time with his eyes closed, muttering prayers that no one but him could hear over the engine noise. He clutched his big leather-bound book to him as if it were a baby, even though it was chained to his wrist.
Mitch didn’t see the value in carrying a book like that around with you. He knew that Samuel had probably memorized every last passage in the damned thing. Keeping something that large chained to yourself only guaranteed it would get in your way.
Soon the ship punctured the thick layer of snow-laden clouds and broke through into the sunshine above. The vessel’s vibrations tamped down as it leveled out, and the soldiers settled in for the long ride.
MacGuire unbuckled himself from his harness and began poking around the cabin. The other two Imperials slept, and Steiner and one of the Cogs played cards in the cabin’s rear. The other read a book he had pulled from his gear. Severian sat near the cockpit, dividing her attention between the pilot and Brother Samuel. El Jesus shot the shit with Juba and Duval in the dead center of the cabin.
MacGuire chatted with each soldier as he moved about the cabin. The man seemed to have appointed himself the commander of the mission, the morale officer, or both. Still, Mitch had to admit he was effective, a solid leader.
Eventually, MacGuire made it over to Mitch and sat down next to him. He had a knowing look on his face.
“You fought with Capitol’s 101st in Africa, under General Bishop.”
The man had been talking with El Jesus a moment before. “That’s right,” Mitch said.
MacGuire smiled. “I was on the other side. Imperial Eights.”
Mitch remembered that campaign. Capitol had triumphed, blasting the Imperials off the continent, but at the cost of many lives. It had been a waste of ordnance and lives, all because executives in both companies had decided that the played-out diamond mines in the southern part of that blasted land might still have some value in them.
Once Mitch had been transferred out of that unit, he had never wanted to come back to Earth again. Up until the latest conflict, he’d been able to make good on that promise to himself.
“Good times,” Mitch said, not a trace of irony tainting his tone.
MacGuire smiled gamely. “I’m glad to fight beside you on this one, Hunter.”
The noise had gotten to be too much. Hunter could barely make out a word of what the Imperial officer was saying. It seemed like a good excuse to cut the conversation short.
“Huh?” He leaned closer to indicate he couldn’t hear.
“I’m glad we’re on the same side,” MacGuire shouted.
“What?”
MacGuire shrugged at him, giving up.
Mitch had absolutely nothing to say about MacGuire’s sentiments. If the man thought they could bond over an old battle in which they’d fought like punch-drunk boxers blinded with swollen-shut eyes, he was wrong, especially considering they’d been trying to kill each other and their friends.
Mitch only reluctantly soldiered. MacGuire was a professional born into Clan MacGuire, one of the most powerful of the Imperial families, and he had a tradition of countless generations of warriors to live up to. If he didn’t actually enjoy battle, he still embraced it. The two would never see eye to eye, and Mitch wasn’t inclined to explain why.
Eventually the Imperial took his leave. As he stood, he clapped Mitch on the shoulder. Mitch ignored him and looked over to see what El Jesus was up to.
The big man sat sketching in his notebook. He carried paper and pencils with him everywhere he went, even into the trenches of war. The process seemed to calm him, giving his life a center to which he could fall back.
Mitch followed El Jesus’s line of sight to see who he’d chosen as his subject. It was Steiner, who sat oblivious to it, or maybe he just chose to ignore it. The Cog was sharp enough to have noticed, Mitch knew.
One of the Imperials who’d been sleeping next to the big man had woken up looking as pale as a mutant. El Jesus noticed and handed the man his helmet, upside down. The soldier nodded gratefully, then vomited straight into the bowl. Then he cradled the fouled helmet in his lap as he prayed for it all to end one way or the other.
Juba fished around in his shirt and pulled out a stick of gum. He handed it to the ill Imperial, who accepted it with a sincere nod of thanks. He looked afraid to open his mouth again because of what might come out but managed to stuff the gum between his lips and start chewing.
The gum wouldn’t cure what ailed the man, but it might help get the taste out of his mouth. Mitch noticed one of the Cogs starting to turn green around the gills at the scent of the puke, and he hoped this wouldn’t turn into an even longer trip than it was supposed to be.
Mitch spotted Duval staring at Juba, and he wondered what the connection might be between the two or if there was one. The megacorporations held sway over millions of lives under their individual banners. The fact that two people worked for the same company didn’t mean they’d ever heard of each other before.
Juba noticed Duval staring at him and offered her a stick of gum.
“No, thanks,” the woman said. Despite declining his offer, though, she kept staring at him.
Even Mitch found this odd. In some ways, she acted like a child. She stared at the world with wide-open eyes, taking it all in, much as if she’d just seen it for the first time.
Still, she was a soldier, and Mitch assumed she was a good one. On a mission like this, there was no room for dead weight. He was sure Brother Samuel wouldn’t have settled for warm bodies to put on the few seats on this ship.
However, he’d have needed to find people desperate enough to take on a suicide mission or who at least needed those tickets of his badly enough.
“What?” Juba finally said.
“Your fish.”
She pointed toward the tattoos that covered one of the man’s arms. They showed a shark chasing a school of fish. Each of the fish bore a date and a corporate logo. Mitch even spied a few Brotherhood tags mixed in with the rest.
The man had turned his arm into a leather belt on which he’d cut notches for each kill. Mitch wondered if that represented all of them or if there were others hidden on covered parts of his skin.
For a long time, Mitch had known the exact number of people he’d killed and could remember the details surrounding each incident: the date, the face, the method. He’d long since given up. During his stint in Capitol’s military prison, he’d had to do some horrible things to keep the same things from happening to him, and he’d done his best to put every bit of that out of his mind. The kills had started to go along with those moments too.
He might stil
l be rotting in that prison if Capitol had not decided he was more useful to them killing people instead. He suspected Nathan had had a hand in making that happen, although his friend had never said a word about it, and he had never asked. Of course, by the time Mitch had gotten out, Nathan had asked Adelaide to marry him, so Mitch hadn’t had too many grateful thoughts for the man right then.
“You like my fish?” Juba asked Duval.
“It’s beautiful.”
Juba popped his gum. “Thanks.”
Duval looked into his eyes. “You’re the shark.”
Juba shook his head and smiled. “Death is the shark. I’m just a guy with a gun.”
30
Mitch glanced through the closest porthole. In the distance, a transport rocketed into the sky. It looked like a falling star going the wrong way.
El Jesus stood up and leaned over Mitch’s shoulder. He gave a bitter chuckle, then said, “There goes all the money. Looks like we got on the wrong fucking shuttle.”
The corporal backed up as Mitch turned around. The transport was already out of sight.
“You were born on the wrong fucking shuttle,” Mitch said to his friend.
The big man grinned, then slipped into Spanish. The others in the ship might speak it too, but chances were better that they didn’t.
“¿Qué se arrastró su culo y murió?” El Jesus asked. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Tu mami.” “Your mother.”
Oh, ho. El Jesus smiled. “Mi mami es gorda. Pero mi hermana cabrá. Ella es fina como una chingada comadreja.” “My mother is fat. But my sister could manage. She is skinny as a fucking weasel.”
Mitch laughed and made a mental note to avoid the man’s mother and look up his sister the first chance he got. Just for grins.
The cabin fell silent after that. The others seemed to be put off by the use of a language they didn’t understand. The Cogs had been chattering in German the entire trip, but that hadn’t bothered anyone. Perhaps that’s because no one expected any better from them.
Mitch sat back and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them again, he spotted MacGuire. The man had finally taken a break from acting as the team cheerleader and sat down to have a moment to himself. He stared at a worn photo, his eyes warm yet dry. After a moment, he noticed Mitch looking at him and flashed it at him.
The photo showed a pretty woman of MacGuire’s age. She smiled back at him so hard he could see her love straight through all the years and miles that separated them. MacGuire gave the picture a quick kiss and stuffed it back in his shirt.
As MacGuire put his photo away, Steiner shook his head at the man. He clearly had no space for sentimentality in his life. He’d trounced his men in cards, just as he had in chess the night before. Mitch wondered if Steiner was really that good or if the other Cogs had long ago learned to let him win.
The games were over now, and Steiner had spent the last hour giving his weapons one more going over. Now he’d switched to loading loose rounds into spare clips in anticipation of the coming battle. Like all Capitol troopers, Mitch never carried ammo that wasn’t in a clip, and doing so seemed like an antiquated affectation.
Across the aisle, Juba worked at his rifle barrel with a bent-bristled toothbrush. The thing already gleamed, but Juba seemed bent on making it shine like chrome.
Mitch understood the sentiment. In battle, the only thing you could rely on was yourself and your equipment, and only if you’d taken the time to check and service the equipment yourself. Others failed, intentionally or not, but that was their problem, not yours.
You took care of yourself and your gear and did your job the best you could. That’s all anyone could ask. That and maybe a little luck.
Duval turned to Juba. “So who got them?” she asked.
“What?” The man had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did Mitch. She’d changed the subject without notice.
“Your tickets.”
Juba inclined his head so he could look down his nose at the woman. “Why do you want to know?”
“Suicide mission. We’re going to die together. That’s an intimate thing.”
Never one to miss a straight line, El Jesus barged into the banter at that point. He leered at the woman. “You make it sound like we’re gonna fuck.”
Duval gave the corporal a mysterious glance. “You can fuck a lot of people. You only die once.”
That sat the man back in his seat and furrowed his brow. It took him a moment to wrap his head around it, like wrestling with a Zen koan. Then he pronounced his judgment: “That’s fucked up.”
The conversation stopped as Hodge’s voice came crackling over the intercom. Mitch had barely seen the gunner throughout the trip except for a quick walk the man had made through the cabin at one point to stretch his legs. He had not said a word to anyone besides the pilot, just stood by the cockpit for a few minutes cracking his back before returning to his post.
“Multiple contacts bearing oh-oh-four and oh-one-five,” Hodge said.
Michaels, the pilot, answered, a tinge of jealousy in his voice. “Escape transports. Getting the hell out of here.”
He’d been a bit friendlier than Hodge, at least while they’d been on the ground. As soon as he had gotten behind the wheel, though, he’d been all business, and the soldiers hadn’t seen him since.
Mitch noticed Duval staring at him, and his gut clenched. Normally, a beautiful woman looking at him wouldn’t have bothered him a bit, but he knew this was nothing like that. It was just his turn to be the object of her curiosity. The first words out of her perfect lips confirmed that.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?” He wasn’t about to make this easy for her.
“Your tickets.”
Mitch grimaced, then stood up and made his way toward the cockpit, ignoring Duval’s wide eyes. He didn’t want to tell them about Adelaide and Grace. Particularly, he didn’t want to tell El Jesus. Not yet.
He leaned in the doorway and peered over Michaels’s shoulder. Mitch had never been in a transport this small before, but the controls looked pretty much like they did in the bigger jobs. In a pinch, he could wrestle the wheel around long enough to put the ship in for a landing, but he was glad to have a dedicated professional piloting the beast instead.
“Stand behind the line,” Michaels said without glancing back.
“Just looking.” Mitch wondered if the man always had such a sunny disposition when flying or if MacGuire had somehow pissed him off with one of his visits.
“Look all you want.” Michaels glanced around, checking the various clusters of instrument dials. “Get in my way while I’m flying, you’re gonna lose something.”
The pilot said it not as a threat but as a factual statement. Mitch decided to believe him.
“Where are we?”
“Close,” Michaels said. “Crossing the median. Start our descent into Canaan in a couple. Canaan’s bad.”
“It’s bad all over this world, no matter where you go.” Mitch realized he didn’t like Earth much, mother planet or not. Life here was a bitch for all involved.
Mitch glanced around the cockpit, past the instruments. This wasn’t just a place to sit. It was Michaels’s office.
A picture of a pretty woman sat tucked into the edge of one of the windows. Every time the man looked to his left, there she would be. To the pilot’s right, a small figurine of a saint sat right above the altimeter.
Charts and logs lay about the place. There were many of them, but each was fastened down separately and clearly had its own place. Mitch supposed that when working for a man like Constantine, you always had to be prepared to head off anywhere at a moment’s notice. He wondered what kinds of stories the ship could tell, but he figured he’d have to settle for the pilot instead.
“So after we drop, you what?” Mitch asked. “Off to Luna? Mars? Outer reach?”
The pilot shook his head. “Already used up too much
fuel to make orbit, much less break it.”
That surprised Mitch more than he had thought it would. “So you’re fucked like the rest of us.”
Michaels finally looked back at the soldier. “How do you figure that?”
Mitch shrugged.
Michaels snorted and turned back to the controls. “Don’t see how you’re fucked, seeing you volunteered for this. You must have had a reason.”
The man had a point. Whereas Mitch had sold his services—and probably his life—to Samuel for those two tickets, Michaels had stood by his employer instead. He could have just taken the ship and flown away. No one would have blamed him. Instead, here he was, flying a pack of mercenaries straight into the heart of hell.
“You like flying?” Mitch asked.
“It’s my life.”
“What if your life was killing?”
Mitch realized his hand had wandered to the chain of dog tags in the pouch on his belt. He forced himself to quit playing with them.
Michaels showed a rueful smile. “Man does everything for a reason. Even if they don’t know it themselves. Because otherwise, what are you? No different from those things. Just another demon.”
31
El Jesus had given his tickets to his mother and his sister. They’d hugged him and praised his name to the Cardinal. He’d never felt so much like a hero in his life.
Samuel had found him at their home. El Jesus had gone there on leave to wish his family a final goodbye. They’d all been weeping about how fucked up everything was when the priest had shown up, tickets in hand.
Before accepting the deal, though, El Jesus had taken Samuel aside and spoken with him in the kitchen alone.
“I can’t do this,” he had said quietly. “I want to, but it’s suicide. I can’t go fucking get killed while my mami thinks I’m going to hell. It’d kill her sure as a bullet.”
Samuel had frowned. “You’re a soldier, Corporal. Surely your mother has come to terms with the fact you could die at any time.”
El Jesus had shaken his head. “I always swore to her I’d come back alive.”
