Hell Heart

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “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.

  26

  * * *

  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 thre
at, 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.