The Gates of Hell

by Chris Kennedy

  “Yes, sir, I’ve actually got a few. They seriously strip out the ring on each level and move on, so there’s huge empty spaces. I say we move these crates down there ASAP.” The large stern bald man nodded and gave a quick glance around the room.

  “Do it. D10…” Now he looked intently at a taller bald man. Unlike Bull, whose skin was smooth and totally devoid of hair as if it had all been polished off, Distelzweig had an intentionally shaven bald head and finely-trimmed, full facial hair. “Where are we on the toys?”

  “Illuminator’s good to go. I’m still playing around a little on the Rupert design since the conditions are a little unusual.” He turned to look at the lead pilot. “Archie, I know it doesn’t need to be said, but you guys gotta nail the timing and placement on this. I’ve got a run-in procedure that should help, but serious—” Bull cut him off.

  “You wanna come sit in this chair, D10?” Silence. “Or go over and sit in hers?” The entire retinue held their breath. “They know their job, D10. Work on yours. Figure out Rupert and start production. Better get it right…nobody loves you more than you.” Slow exhales began, followed by small chuckles all around as the crowd relaxed a little. D10 tensed more.

  “Sir, do you mean…” Bull shot metaphorical lasers from his eyes.

  “Were you planning to slap us a good game and wave us off? You’re going with Archie to make sure the swarm works. Put that survival instinct to use. Get. It. Done.” He turned to regard his favorite pilot. “Archie, in addition to the simulator runs, I want you guys to get some actual experience flying to and from the starport. Make the rounds to the Jivool’s other mines and try not to highlight this one. Come up with a good excuse, maintenance shakedowns, parts runs, compass swing, or something—is that still a thing?—use up the whole list if need be. Learn the land. Remember, the map is not the territory. I want to desensitize them, so make your flights a regular thing. But remember Rule Two—no one sees a Human. Bring some Jivool with you, let them do the talking and trading.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whiskey raised his hand. “Go ahead, Whiskey.”

  “Sir, do we have to wait for your buddy to show up?” Grumbles and groans built up around the table.

  “I remember my first op,” Archie teased.

  “Please,” Bull said. “Proceed, Whiskey.”

  “No, seriously, a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow, right?” Whiskey glanced around the room, looking for support. “Those guys are down that hole dying right now. Can’t we do this any faster?”

  Bull raised the quieting hand again and waited several seconds after silence returned.

  “I appreciate your position, Whiskey,” he said, “but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. I’ve been on the other end of the wrong way, right, Patches?”

  Patches stared through Whiskey and nodded solemnly.

  “We’re doing this the right way,” Bull said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir,” Whiskey replied. The rest groaned again and were again silenced by a gesture from Bull.

  “Go ahead,” Bull said genuinely.

  “Sir, one last item’s been bugging me. Even if we maintain a decent level of surprise, how do we get a team in fast enough to secure the package before it’s terminated? Obviously that’ll be their first priority once they realize what’s happening.” The entire group started to nod uncomfortably, as they’d all been thinking similarly. “A jump won’t work, the ship can’t hover as they jump in, it’ll get taken out. High-altitude would be suicide for a number of reasons, and…” Bull put his hand out gently, palm down, and motioned him to stop.

  “Excellent question, and I know you’ve all been wondering about that. Let me ask…how many of you know any history related to the American Vietnam War? There’re some great lessons learned from that entire conflict, but let me tell you about one in particular…”

  * * *

  Vo loved how her doctor worked. Being as its “name” was a series of light flashes that translated to something horrendously unintelligible when processed through the pendants, Vo had taken to referring to it as “Mengele” after a brief look through Human history. The original Mengele had sounded like a brilliant and thoroughly unappreciated man. Humans were so poor at recognizing genius.

  In any event, Vo had one major concern. She worried Mengele would deplete the Humans a little too quickly. The first dozen hadn’t survived the cybernetic grafts, and none so far had survived the bioweapon experiments. Even the psychological tests seemed to take their toll. Once a Human’s mind was broken, it seemed nothing would repair it. They were so frail in every way.

  Mengele assured her refinements were made with every necrosis. Even so, if the trend continued, Vo feared she might have to travel to Karma Station and recruit more volunteers from the newly arrived prisoners. Peepo would take that as failure, despite any progress made. Vo didn’t want to make that request. She reworked the efficiencies in order to get more out of each Human. Psychological tests first, mild cybernetics next, and, if it was still alive, it could be used to test either bioweapons or major cybernetics. This created a new issue in that psychological tests took a great deal of time. They had time, but Peepo required periodic results.

  Overall, it was a delicate balancing act. That aspect of it thrilled Vo. It was what she was made for.

  Her comm link buzzed, and she answered. It was Zrr’tk, the commander of the KzSha unit.

  “I gave orders not to be disturbed unless we were under attack,” she barked.

  “General Vo, a Lumar merc unit arrived in system and just commenced an assault drop. Their target looks to be our base of operations, where our spoils and remunerations are kept.”

  “Okay…so shoot them down.” Honestly, what was their commander’s purpose?

  “General Vo, per our contract, we have minimal surface-to-air assets. Our plan for this contingency was to draw reserves from the surrounding mines. I’m requesting permission to do so.”

  “Fine, then, do what you need to do.” Morons. “Wait! Do NOT draw reserves from this station, nor from Station 17. Understand?”

  “Yes, General Vo. I’ll keep you appraised. Zrr’tk, out.”

  That settled, Vo considered the implications.

  * * *

  Archie carried the moniker “SKYFAB,” short for “She’ll Kick Your Fucking Ass, Bitch.” The others assumed she was “just” a pilot when she’d started as a merc, but after seeing her handle herself in a brawl at a remote station’s bar, her compadres had inquired. She reluctantly explained her parents ran the infamous Laughing Coyote Xeno-centric Martial Arts School. The legend had grown substantially by the time she hired on with Bull. Everyone assumed that was why Bull had tracked her down.

  “No, seriously, I was told you straight up knocked out a Besquith on Vega Station. How the hell’d you do that?” Opie, her navigator, named for an uncanny resemblance to an ancient TV character, was chattier than she preferred.

  “Classified. How far have the INS solutions drifted?” The shuttle they flew, Cherry One, relied on two ancient independent inertial navigational systems, i.e. gyrocompasses, for navigation. Aside from dead reckoning, which they were also doing, the planet and their equipment offered them no other options. In fact, the shuttle and the quadcopter, Banana One, following them were the only ships that were capable of navigation. The skiffs, Apples One thru Five, and Lime One, the refueler, flew in formation behind them. The skiffs had no such systems, and they hadn’t prioritized rigging them up. Thus, the formation relied mostly on the two INS systems on Cherry One, the single system on Banana One, and dead reckoning from all involved. Umbra/Patches planted a few navigational beacons to help, but they were only visible on the slates, an ergonomic difficulty. The “navigator,” essentially the non-flying pilot on the shuttle, periodically referenced them as a triple check.

  “About 240 feet so far. I’ll run a radar update off the next turn point, just make sure to offset it. You’re going t
o tell me about the Besquith someday.” The major trouble with INS systems was that incredibly small inaccuracies increased over time. You could tell they drifted when they started to disagree with each other on their position. The entire team was somewhat boggled they relied on ancient navigational sources, but they accepted they’d acquired the cheapest, most immediately available junk. By now, they were somewhat used to it. Members of this “shipping company” didn’t last long if they complained about the difficulty of tasks. Bull didn’t permit his people to say, “no, because…” when faced with an issue. He expected to hear, “yes, if…” followed by a solution and plan of action.

  Archie strained to see into the darkness, even with state-of-the-art night vision. Lunar illumination was minimal, and the constant dust limited visibility. Her course was as accurate as they could determine, but the scattered rock formations and low ridgelines could end the operation in tragedy. Her head panned back and forth to maintain a solid night flying scan.

  “Time status?”

  “We’re about 40 seconds late right now; winds are hurting us. I’m gonna turn you early at the next point to shave that off.” Normally a change in airspeed could help to make up lost time or lose extra time, but such changes were impractical in a formation of eight moving slower than the shuttle was meant to fly. Off-course maneuvering was the best option. She felt ecstatic that, after an hour and a half of flying, they were still within one minute of their time over target.

  The radio silence remained the most unsettling aspect of the operation, even amongst the formation. Communication was limited to a simple set of light flashes, using lights imperceptible to KzSha, which communicated simple concepts, such as “navigation error,” “propulsion trouble,” and “require set down.” A “mission abort” call, a rare event, would only be supplied by Bull, i.e. Greenleaf One, via a single, encrypted radio transmission.

  Doubts about the success of their part or someone else’s part crept in occasionally. What if they caught Umbra hacking the individual sensors? What if they weren’t perfectly coordinated with the Lumar assault? Furthermore, they considered the miserable ending to the story Bull had told. Was that a possibility? She cracked her neck to the left and right and forced the doubts out. Cherry One would be on time, on target. Everything else would be what it would be.

  “Sooo, Besquith story time?” Opie asked. With a chuckle, she gave in.

  “Okay, fine, so it wasn’t so much what I did, but what he did to himself, with my help…”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, it was time. The formation now trailed them by three thousand feet. The doors were open, the illuminator was prepped, and they approached the target. Archie looked out to the spot where the mine lay and made one last sanity check. Navigation was leading them just to the right of it, so it must be off a little. The ridgeline, with a canyon beyond, was a couple miles off to the left. That checked. The spot itself was darker than she envisioned. There was a slight glow from another spot ahead and to the right.

  “Two minutes.”

  “Swarm, swarm, swarm.”

  The threat circle of the enemy’s air defense ring had been shrunk significantly with regular civil flights pushing the bounds of its auto-tracking. As predicted by Bull, they were afraid to highlight themselves by accidentally launching on what appeared to be unarmed mining skiffs. This allowed them to get pretty close, but soon the game would be up.

  To counteract, a few small crates, casually “lost” during previous passes, cracked open and swarms of small, plastic toy drones flew out in advance of the raid.

  “One minute.”

  “Stand by!” The entire crew tensed and gasped audibly. “It’s the wrong one. Ours is that one!” She looked at him and pointed. “See the pattern of the mines? In route study, you mentioned these two were close together. Well, this one is here, ours is there. See the slight glow? There’re lights in that one.” As she spoke, the blanket of tiny drones lit up at the other mine as well. Tracers burst out from nowhere, and missile batteries rotated wildly, failing to lock onto anything. Tiny flashes came from the small explosive charges of the drones hitting the guns and batteries. He processed for a second.

  “Shit, you’re right. Aim for it and set up, uh,” the wheels spun inside his head, “thirty yards left. Left of center, that is. Thirty seconds! Fuck, we’re late.”

  By “late” he meant by twenty-four seconds. In this unit, that was a disaster. The cockpit went dead silent for an eternity. The ground rushed by, and the hole in the ground, the hole of their objective, came up rapidly. Archie found herself holding her breath, recognized her muscles were tensed up, and she relaxed with a slow breath out.

  “Ten seconds.”

  She was further right than he said, too close to the center. Gingerly she eased the ship left. Thirty yards lay just inside the edge of the hole. She fixed it. Her course and altitude were dead on.

  “Five seconds.”

  “Execute, execute, execute.” That was the one and only call they repeated over the radio.

  “Illuminator active,” called the crewman from the ramp.

  “Okay, set up for Rupert deployment. Commencing teardrop. One minute!”

  * * *

  The complex, like all the others, was essentially a perfect round hole cut straight down, four hundred feet down in this case, with levels of reinforced concrete rings all the way down. The first few rings going downward had been used administratively, and the mining tunnels generally shot out randomly on the lower levels.

  A KzSha guard stood on the second ring in the darkness and looked down the massive shaft. He and the others had been alerted due to the attack on their base of operations, but they’d been ordered to maintain the blackout as a precaution. None seemed to feel in danger of attack, and their Veetanho contract holder would certainly not release them from guard duty. Moreover, sensors would alert them well before any aircraft or ground troops approached the mine. Which made the guard confused to see the anti-air artillery light up, followed by a flood of tiny flashes, and a shuttle passed just to the side of the top. As it did so, something fell out the back. Brilliant, erratic, headache-inducing light exploded from the object and drifted, unnaturally slowly, down the center. Some reverberating, piercing noise emitted as well and overwhelmed his echolocators.

  He shook his head and struggled to regain sight. As his vision started to clear, he tried to make out what the other guards said. The lights on their antennae flashed with confusion and pain. He realized the lower levels were starting to experience what he had.

  Something hovered over the top of the great opening. Straining to regain focus, he thought he could make out a quadcopter moving into the mine. That couldn’t be right, a quadcopter wouldn’t fit. Nevertheless, it attempted to do just that.

  It loitered for just a moment at the top, seemed to lose power, and dropped down into the deep, dark hole. Sparks scraped at one spot a hundred feet down, and the aircraft began to tip. A jet flared up for a split second to correct it back upright. The guard watched it spark a few more times, with a corresponding flare each time. Just before it crashed, a series of jets fired off, slowing it somewhat before it crunched down hard at the bottom. He considered how absurdly crazy this whole sequence was playing out when the shuttle passed overhead again. This time a couple dozen troopers fell out the back and deployed parachutes to slowly drift down the center, firing sporadic laser fire. Each carried another, albeit smaller, flashing light on its shoulder. Taken altogether, they made it near impossible to see or communicate. However, even while he squinted, they were remarkably easy to shoot. He and the other guards lit them up and riddled the jumpers with laser fire. The poor little creatures drifted limply down. Surprisingly, some still occasionally fired, only to subsequently get shot up again. As he looked down to observe them, he found a substantial gunfight occurring down below, where the crashed ship lay. The blinding illuminator remained active, so he drew back before the headache resumed.

 
What idiotic attack plan called for crashing a ship down a hole and releasing a bunch of helpless troopers into a killing field?

  Searchlights came on all around the ring. An attack in progress meant the blackout order was rescinded. Flashes from the top ring promptly shattered the searchlights. Unobserved attackers had already infiltrated the top ring. The guard clearly identified laser shields pop up around the periphery, and flashes of laser fire erupted from beside them. He and the other guards shifted their fire from the jumpers in the shaft to whoever was behind those shields. Curiously, he recognized a steady pattern in the laser fire coming from the shields. Straining to see through the intense flashing, the parachutists, and the general chaos, he realized he couldn’t make out any actual soldiers. Had all of these things been elaborate diversions?

  This was his last thought. A figure in black, attached to a rope, swung in from above and shot him in the head.

  * * *

  The KzSha guards at the bottom of the pit were dispatched easily, blinded as they were by the powerful illuminator. All of the assaulting troopers were equipped with goggles that filtered out the spectrum the illuminator used, so the KzSha couldn’t see very well, and the attackers could. The guards spaced up and around the ring were too distracted by the dummies falling down the center to notice enemy troops rappel down the sides until it was too late. Reinforcements wouldn’t be coming as all were committed to the unit’s primary base. Running down the narrow, unlit tunnel away from the battle, the cyclopic Veetanho reflected on events.

  Vo found herself impressed on several levels by the audacity of the Human attack. She imagined the KzSha must have somehow allowed a Human to escape during the initial attack. This Human must have avoided contracting the variety of diseases they’d unleashed on Human mercs, which was curious, as the rest of the unit had been infected until cured (most of them) by Mengele. In any case, this Human must then have found a way to message a Human merc unit. No, that wasn’t right, as the Human merc units were, by now, all neutralized. The sneaky Humans must have created units outside the authority of the Merc Guild. That would be another crime to bring to the Guild’s attention.