The Gates of Hell

by Chris Kennedy

  “You know,” Hex began, “when we first got together, you were content to let us lump together in a big sweaty mess once we finished, well, you know.”

  “Yup,” she said without budging. “That was then. Now, you’re too warm. We stay sweaty, and that makes me itchy and cold, so I need more blanket. You’re like a furnace; you should be fine without it.”

  “Yeah, but I might drift off the bed,” he countered. “I have to shove my arm out to brace myself until it goes numb. No one can sleep like that.”

  “Well, if you’ve cooled and dried off, I guess you could snuggle me for a bit,” she teased. Taking the invite, he gently nudged her arm back out of the way, pulled the blanket off the mattress just long enough to tug it over himself, and nestled his way back against her as tightly as he could. The two spent a few uncomfortable moments as they shifted and wrestled until he could get one arm underneath her head. She wiggled her hips back against him.

  “But there’s the problem,” he breathed against her neck. “Once you’re all snuggled against me, I get all excited, and we start all over. Can’t we just sleep a little?”

  Maya rolled awkwardly in the cramped space, careful to avoid striking him, and turned to face him. “Bastard,” she joked, as the two closed tightly together again.

  “You know you…like it,” he stated, careful to avoid the other word.

  “I…keep my mouth busy before I say something stupid,” Maya purred, and drew him into a long, deep kiss.

  She wants to say it, Hex thought. Should I say it? Or should I wait until she says it first? I just want us both to say it and get it over with.

  “You’re like a narcotic, sometimes,” she announced when they came up for air.

  “A narcotic, yeah?” Hex asked. “Not a narcissist?”

  “You and I both know that this unit only has room for one narcissist,” she said. Maya’s hips ground around as she worked on raising the stakes.

  A pounding noise echoed through the tiny room. The pair simultaneously grumbled a lamentation.

  “Speak of the devil—” Maya started.

  “—and he appears,” Hex finished. “Why can’t he use the intercom like a civilized Human being?”

  “Because he’s a Neanderthal,” Maya answered. Hex pushed away and struggled to get his jumpsuit on. He hated how the damn things made it impossible to hide his current condition.

  “Coming!” Hex shouted, to which the intruder responded with another bang. Maya buried herself under the blanket.

  “Didn’t you facilitate him hooking up with our resident dirty Tri-V star?” Hex whispered. His answer came in the form of a nonchalant shrug underneath the blanket. Later on, he knew she’d give him shit for calling Maven, her friend and the Marauders’ lead pilot, a porn star.

  Even if I think she looks and acts the part.

  Finally dressed, Hex braced himself with one arm and reached the other out to tap on a keypad next to the door. Small electric motors slid the hatch open.

  “Hex.” Marc Lemieux grinned. His eyes carried the annoying gleam they got when he thought he’d made a great deal. Without awaiting a reply, he said, “Get suited up and meet me in the briefing room ASAP. Time to get to work. I got us a contract.”

  Lemieux smirked and pushed off to float away. “You, too, Maya!”

  “Yes, sir,” Hex blushed and called after him, and closed the door. “Dammit, he knows?”

  Maya pushed out of the bed and searched for her clothes. “There are no secrets in the Marauders. You didn’t know that?”

  “Hmm,” Hex grunted and grabbed his boots. “Wonder what it is… I just hope it’s not another damn defensive contract.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “We’re a mobile unit, meant to maneuver. How does he not know that?”

  “I knew there was a reason I loved you,” he said carelessly. The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees, and time froze. The two quietly stared at each other for an eternity before silently dressing themselves, lost in their own thoughts.

  That didn’t go as expected.

  * * *

  “Sorry, Hammer, this one ain’t working out either,” Lieutenant Colonel ‘Big Lou’ Auletta stated. Big Lou was one of the few holdovers from when Pierre Lemieux, Marc’s father, had run the company. “There’s not enough room in this pass.”

  Hex stood nearby, watching Big Lou’s MX-721 Greengold tank wobble atop the boulder it had been high-centered on. The treads spewed rock and gravel forward as they attempted to gain purchase. One of Hex’s soldiers moved their CASPer forward and pushed down on the rear of the tank, while being careful not to stand immediately behind it. As the treads caught the rocky soil, the tank backed away from the boulder and settled to the ground with a loud thump. Big Lou stood in the commander’s hatch and slowly directed the vehicle back to where the other tanks waited.

  “The whole ravine is full of boulders this size. I don’t even think the CASPers could clear them.” Auletta sounded disgusted.

  “Copy, Panzer Lead,” Lemieux said. “Ghost One, what do you think?”

  “Concur, Hammer,” Hex answered. “Even if we moved all the CASPers in here to lift them out, I’m not convinced we could move them all.”

  “Damn, it really looked like that pass would be open.” Lemieux grunted in frustration. “Angel Lead, you got eyes on? Can’t you see these things before we get to them?”

  Hex looked up to the Sky Raider, a Maki-made, Human refitted, wide-fanned, close-air-support flyer. Maven droned lazily overhead to locate a decent passage for the tanks.

  “Hammer, Angel Lead,” Maven responded in her standard ‘cool pilot’ tone. “I’m not seeing much more than our preliminary imagery showed. You’ve got maps; it all looks the same from up here. We need better sensors.”

  “Maps aren’t the territory, Angel Lead,” Lemieux stated in his mentor voice. “I sent you up there to get better eyes on, to see the actual terrain. Are you telling me you can’t?”

  “Affirm, Hammer,” Maven answered. “Maps aren’t the territory, as you’ve told us. But imagery is imagery, and my mark one eyeball isn’t much better at resolving the three-dimensional nature of the surface than our imagery showed. From up here, I don’t get enough depth perception, and those boulders you keep running into just blend into the ground cover.”

  “Fine, Angel Lead,” Lemieux retorted in disgust. “If you’re useless up there, then head back and refit. Put yourself back on alert.”

  “Wilco, Hammer,” Maven answered.

  The flyer cut sharply right and rocketed back to the staging area they’d set up just outside the quiet city. Hex’s attention drifted back to the mission’s goal—defending Fr’henk City. As he watched the pair of flyers head off, his eyes were drawn to the city. Quiet was an understatement. Air traffic was non-existent; vehicle traffic was minimal. Not a single road extended from the city. The shiny new metropolis appeared to have sprung from the ground spontaneously, and few seemed to have moved in since. The starport had the occasional burst of activity, but that was about it.

  What are we really defending?

  “Hammer, Panzer Lead on command private,” Lou grunted, clarifying that he was speaking on a channel available only to Lemieux and his section leads. “This isn’t gonna work, boss.”

  “I don’t want to hear negativity from my head tank driver, Lou,” Lemieux responded. The line went silent for a moment, a sign that Lemieux was conferring with Lucille, his command analysis program. “Lucille says there are still four possible routes, and there’s still a seventy-three percent chance at least one pass is usable. We need to get the tanks up on the key terrain.”

  “Boss, even if we get in there, who’s saying we can make it back out if need be?” Lou argued. Hex watched as the column behind Lou’s tank backed out, spun on its treads, and moved up the narrow ravine through which they’d entered.

  “Concerns noted, Panzer Lead,” Lemieux replied. And disregarded, Hex heard in the subtext. “We’re not ceding th
e high ground. Keep it up.”

  “Roger, Hammer,” Lou replied.

  “Hex, per the brief, didn’t we have a ninety-two percent chance of finding three tank-worthy paths through the hills?” As Maya spoke, Hex checked his comm status screen. It stole his attention from the hill he was marching down, and he nearly stumbled. The two hadn’t had a serious talk since his verbal slip nine days prior. They still shared the same berth, which Lemieux didn’t seem to mind. Despite his best intentions to slow things down, she still coaxed him into bed whenever she felt like it. Who was he to resist? But otherwise, they’d only made insignificant small talk in the brief moments when they either dressed or undressed. Even their post-coital conversations, previously profound and extensive, had dwindled.

  “Ghost Two, go private.” As he said it, he noted with curiosity that he was already on a private channel. He couldn’t recall selecting it. Embarrassed that all of First Squad had seen him waver, Hex refocused on traversing the hills. The primary job at the moment was to remain ahead of the tank columns to scout the pathways. “Nevermind, I see that now, but…how did you switch me to private? And why?”

  At least we’re actually talking.

  “Last night I gave maintenance a hand and set up remote access to your comms,” she said with pride. “I can literally switch you to whatever frequency I want at the touch of a button. Anyway, back to my original question, didn’t we have a better chance of finding a way through?”

  “Yeah, but that was then. This is now,” he answered. “His little data analysis whatchamahoozie missed the boulders that are littering the paths. Resolution on the imagery wasn’t good enough to see them, and we need new sensors. Maps vs. territory. Look, Maya—”

  “With the odds rapidly decreasing, why are we still pushing into the mountains?” Maya interrupted. “It’s CASPer heaven for us until we run out of jump juice, but there’s little chance the tanks will do anything but get stuck in the passes.”

  “Yeah,” Hex said. “Lemieux believes he has to hold key terrain because of Clausewitz. Look, Maya, while I’m impressed with your comm hacking abilities, please don’t go rearranging my comm setup in combat, okay?”

  Unless you wanna talk about what I said in the berth? he thought with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  “Well, you’ll still hear the other freqs, you’re just transmitting on this one,” Maya replied defensively. “So how do we convince Lemieux to move us back where we’re all mobile? Is there some other ancient strategist or tank theorist we can quote or something?”

  The burly CASPer driver dug into his memory. The only tank strategist he’d studied was Guderian. While perfect for the German-trained Lemieux, the only Guderian maxim he recalled was, “When the situation is obscure, attack.” The surrounding terrain prevented such a strategy.

  Surely there’s something better? Keep thinking.

  “Ghost Two,” Lemieux called out. “Anything good your way? I’m showing you’re cresting a ridgeline above a very promising valley.”

  “Crap, Hex, he’s right, this valley looks great,” Maya said over their connection. Her voice was low and tinged with defeat. “Should I lie about it? If we make him think there are no good passages, maybe he’ll back our tanks out of this deathtrap.”

  “No, he’ll head there anyway ‘cause he doesn’t trust anyone who gives him bad news…and you’d better answer him now,” Hex said.

  “Yes, Hammer, this way is clear,” Maya reported.

  “Finally, some good news,” Lemieux stated. “Panzer Lead, I’m taking my column into that valley, it’ll allow Command Platoon to get further forward. You keep digging through those other passes with First Squad; move to support however you can. Wait, belay that. Ghost One, take First Squad. I want you to bound all the way forward and check out where the ridgeline meets the forest and scout some pathways for Panzer Platoon.”

  * * *

  The crest of the ridge gave Hex pause. Waves of ridges, hills, and canyons in the high ground they’d traversed ended right where Hex stood. As Lemieux kept saying, the map was not the territory, and Hex witnessed the territory in awe. A vast forest of thick red-skinned trees covered in large blue-green leaves spread out from the edge of the hills and ran off as far as the eye could see. If a more gorgeous sight existed anywhere on Earth, he didn’t know of it. The escarpment ran several kilometers to his left and right. The dichotomy between the forest below and the rocky cliffs was both stunning and viable for defensive positions. Or it would be, if it were possible to bring the tanks up.

  “Hex, it’s Maya again.” Her tone was unusual, almost sheepish. “Yes, we’re on private.”

  “Go ahead,” he said curtly and continued his scan of the forest.

  “Look, I know…we’ve been avoiding something,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?” His heart raced suddenly. A gust of wind rolled through the trees off in the distance, which rustled all the leaves in swirls and waves.

  “You know what I mean,” she stated. His muscles tensed, and he closed his eyes.

  “Ghost One, report,” Lemieux cut in. Hex switched to the command frequency.

  “There’s an escarpment at the forward edge of the forest, Hammer,” Hex reported. “It looks like a good position if we can get the tanks up. Cover and concealment along the main avenue of approach, too. Our fields of fire are better here than anything else we’ve seen. Any chance we can get the Angels over here to nape a clearing along the edge?”

  “Good copy, Hex,” Lemieux responded. “I’ll look into it.”

  Hex swapped back to Maya’s private channel. He double checked to verify the setting was right before speaking. This was not a conversation he wanted to accidentally broadcast to others.

  “Is this the best time, Maya?” Hex asked. He looked to his left and stared at a remarkable, exquisitely layered cliff face further to the south. “We had a full week in transit, and you never talked about it that whole time. Do we really need to do this now?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that I feel safer here, inside my armored shell. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. You know, I’m not like Lemieux or Maven, I’m not some broken wing that just needed a good lay.”

  “Your silence, and avoidance, said otherwise,” Hex said bitterly.

  “That’s not fair, Hex, and I could say the same for you,” Maya replied. “These things, these ‘merc romances,’ they start as flings, then things get real, then things don’t work out. Come on, we’ve both seen this happen more times than we can count. When have you ever seen it work out?”

  The squad frequency crackled to life in Hex’s ears. “Wow, there’s a lot of wind out there,” Private Espinoza called out.

  Hex looked out and saw a great deal of wind wash through the trees in the distance, slowly drifting toward them. Hex didn’t respond to his soldier’s statement. Instead, he listened. The wind was calm by his position.

  “The wind here is kinda strange, isn’t it?” Private McQuitty remarked. “Calm here, and stormy out there.”

  “You’re strange,” Private Sullivan teased.

  “I just don’t see how this works out in the long term,” Maya continued on the private line. “I mean, remember Jessica and Marc? They seemed so perfect together, and then it all went to shit the longer they were together.”

  “You’re one to talk, Brony,” McQuitty retorted.

  “Hey, it’s a perfectly normal hobby,” Sullivan said defensively. “It’s not as uncommon as you think, and the various incarnations of the show have some very compelling storylines.”

  “Anyway,” McQuitty said, reclaiming the conversation. “I was talking about the wind. Isn’t it odd how it just sort of rolls slowly toward us like that? I mean, to cause that kind of disturbance in the trees, it’d have to be a strong gust, but it’s not moving all that fast. Plus there’s three separate lines moving along through the trees, as if there’s three perfect, strong, but slow-moving gusts.”

  “I l
ike you, Hex, and I don’t want things to change,” Maya said. “But they will change; they always do.”

  “Wait,” Hex said. His attention solely focused on the breezes McQuitty mentioned, he barely heard Maya continue.

  “We’ve waited over a week, Hex! If we don’t have this talk now, then when?”

  “Wait!” Hex shouted. “We have inbound. We’ll talk later!” He switched to the command channel. “Hammer, Ghost One, we’ve got inbound!”

  “Shit, where?” Maya queried. Hex ignored her private frequency in favor of the command channel.

  “Three lines moving through the forest; the southern one’s coming for us, middle one’s half a klick north, last one’s a full klick north,” Hex explained. The movement in the trees was only a few hundred meters out from them. “Where are the Angels? If we nape that line like I asked for soon-ish, it could stop the whole damn thing.”

  “Are you sure, Ghost One?” Lemieux asked. “Lucille isn’t showing anything coming this way.”

  “It’s not plugged into our sensors or camera feeds, Hammer. It won’t see shit.” Hex swapped to his squad channel.

  “First Squad, on me, jump to those cliffs to our south, we’ll hold them there where they can’t scale the wall,” Hex ordered and swapped back to command. “Damn sure, sir, maybe the trees are blocking the sensors or something, I don’t know. But it’s definitely not the wind coming for us.”

  “Well, you’re my forward eyes. Keep me informed,” Lemieux directed. “Panzer Lead, how’s your progress?”

  While the other units chattered away to pass reports and receive direction, Hex turned his attention to his immediate concerns.

  In relative unison, the group of CASPers fired their jumpjets and maneuvered the hundred plus meters to perch atop the cliffs. They lined the edge, careful not to get close to where rock might crumble, and prepared to fire.