The Gates of Hell

by Chris Kennedy

  They all assured him it was no problem, all except Cromwell, who was the only one actually paying anything.

  Ramba laughed. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Spokelse, the only Norwegian merc I’ve ever known. And the best.”

  Spokelse bowed his head, and Cromwell noticed that it wobbled, as if the man’s neck muscles couldn’t quite hold it in place. It was only after he tilted back for another draught of the pitcher that they all saw the thick line of scar tissue circling his neck.

  “Takk Gutten,” Spokelse said in reply. Cromwell was surprised that his accent wasn’t thicker. “Thank you, lad, but I daresay I’m not the best Norwegian merc to come along. That honor would go to my dear friend Roland Sigurdsson, may he rest forever in a bar where the beer is free and never runs out.”

  Ramba nodded. “I never met Roland, but I’ve heard bits and pieces.”

  “Ya mean ya haven’t heard the tale?”

  “No. Have any of you?” Ramba said, looking at the cadets, who all shook their heads. “I guess we haven’t. Do you have time to tell us?”

  “I’ve got a lot more time than money. If ya want me to, I’ll stay as long as there’s beer to drink. Is that alright with you folks?” He looked at the cadets when he said it. They all assured him he could drink as much as he wanted. “Well then, ladies and gents, fill your glasses and settle back to hear the story of Roland the Headless Mech Driver. It all started about thirty years ago, when Mk 6s were still front-line mechs, but 7s were the new hot shit…”

  * * *

  Roland Sigurdsson heard the rumble of thunder even inside the office building and wondered if there was something significant about the weather. He’d studied the mythology of his Viking ancestors, who would have seen the hand of Thor in the thunder snowstorm raking Copenhagen. As much as he considered himself a modern man, some deeply ingrained remnant of his people’s collective memory wondered if the weather wasn’t an omen of things to come.

  “Sigurdsson?” asked a man missing his left ear and leg.

  “Here.”

  Using his index finger, the scarred merc, because what else could he be, motioned for Roland to follow. He rose and matched the man’s pace down a long hallway, surprised at his speed using an artificial leg. At a nondescript office door, the merc knocked twice and opened it without waiting for permission.

  “Sigurdsson,” he said to whoever was inside. Seconds later, he pointed to the single chair positioned in front of a large, old style desk, where a burly, bearded man sat reading a slate. The chair appeared comfortable enough, with burnished red leather upholstery, but when Roland sat down, he found it hard and unyielding.

  “I’m Colonel Dieter van Owen,” the man behind the desk said, glancing up from his slate. He wasted no time shaking Roland’s hand or getting to know him. “My company is called Triple-A Temporary Volunteers. We supply over-stretched merc companies with short-term replacements, who may or may not work themselves into a full-time job. Right now this planet is devoid of mercs because of an unusual surge in contracts, so we have openings. Even better, we have a contract for a simple escort operation, so you’ll be getting experience right away. Now, I see here you did your initial training on CASPer Mk 6s; do you still remember how to operate one?”

  “Like riding a bike, Colonel,” Roland said. He saw no need to mention that, while he’d taken a course on operating Mk 7s, he’d never actually done it.

  “Notes from your training instructor say you’re the most natural mech driver he’s ever come across, that you operate a CASPer by instinct more than sensory input. Is that accurate?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that, sir. When I’m in a CASPer I just…I just do things. It does seem like whenever the suit tells me something, I already know it, and the data is more of a confirmation of actions I’ve already taken.”

  “Remarkable,” van Owen said. “You’re hired.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Is there a reason not to hire you that doesn’t appear in your file?”

  “Uh…no sir.”

  “Do you want the job?”

  “Yes, very much!”

  “Do you understand that our CASPers have all been salvaged, as it says in your sample contract?”

  “Uhh…yes. Sir!”

  “And that in the event of your death during the execution of a contract, our only obligation is to transport your body home, if possible, and to provide 500 credits to your heirs, or to the government body responsible for burying your remains?”

  “Roger that, Colonel.”

  “Then if you already knew all that, you’ve just wasted thirty seconds of my time! Don’t do it again. Sergeant Mistalovich will lead you to the assembly area.”

  * * *

  Spokelse took a long drink from the pitcher and drained half before setting it back down. Beer ran down his chin, which he wiped on the sleeve of his denim jacket.

  “I’d known Roland a long time by then, but that’s when everybody else first met him, in the cafeteria of this old office building in Denmark that was being used as an assembly area for Triple-A Temps. At the first instant, they all knew there was something different about him. It was this feeling he gave off, like he was more than just another merc. I never talked to anybody who didn’t feel that way about him. It was like this aura.”

  The battered old man, that’s how Cromwell thought of him even though he couldn’t have been much past sixty, tilted his head way back to drain the last of the pitcher. When he did so, Cromwell saw a ring of thick, dark pink scar tissue around his neck. At some point the man’s throat must have been slit. Surviving a wound like that required the immediate use of multiple nanite injections. Whatever had happened, Spokelse was lucky to be alive.

  “Triple-A had recruited a platoon, and everybody grew close, real quick like. Ramba here knows what I mean…when you go into training for real, your life depends on everybody else around you. Roland was the youngest, but it weren’t long before he got recognized as the best driver in the platoon. Better even than Colonel van Owen or the noncoms.”

  “How’d the Colonel feel about that?” Cromwell asked.

  Spokelse leaned back and waved for another pitcher. The others were on their second beers. “If you’re gonna be a merc, ya gotta learn to drink like one.” They all took the hint and drained their mugs.

  Otto glided over with two more brimming pitchers, using his fluid gait and rock-steady hands not to spill a drop, unlike a Human waiter, who surely would have slopped some of the liquid onto the floor. Using his long tail, Otto refilled the other glasses from one of the other three pitchers, emptying it.

  “Shall I bring you another?” he said to Spokelse, despite there being two other half-filled pitchers.

  “I’d say so!” the grizzled merc answered before Cromwell could say “No!” then he drained a quarter of his pitcher in one pull.

  “Now where were we?”

  Cromwell had pulled out a slate and punched in some numbers. At Spokelse’s question, he answered quickly. “You mean before emptying my credit account?”

  “For a good cause, my lad, for a good cause! Beer is never the wrong choice for spending your last credit.”

  “You were telling us about the platoon,” Ramba said.

  “Oh, right. Well let me tell ya, for being such an inexperienced bunch, the platoon learned fast how to do our jobs, and Roland, he learned faster than anybody. It was like he’d been born inside a Mk 6. He was the youngest of the lot, but he got promoted to corporal almost right off. As good as he was with the mech, though, he was even better at reading people. It was him who first had doubts about Colonel van Owen.

  “The trouble didn’t start right away. The platoon landed on this swampy shit-hole of a planet…I’m not sure anybody ever knew its name. The contract was a simple escort mission. It didn’t pay much, but rookie mercs need experience as much or more than money. See, everybody knew that when the merc companies came home, they’d need some new recruits�
�”

  “Because of casualties,” Shapiro said, interrupting.

  Spokelse squinted and laid the sarcasm on thick. “When your business involves things that blow up, yeah, there’s gonna be people who don’t make it home. It’s kinda part of the job description, ya know? So everybody needed experience and believed van Owen when he said he had contacts with the Horsemen and could get those who performed well an interview once the contract was paid. All rookies are young and stupid, so everybody believed him…nobody was suspicious at all, except for Roland. He had a feeling something weren’t right.”

  “Did he say why he felt that way?” Ramba asked.

  “No, not right away, he didn’t. It was all right there for anybody to see in the contract with Triple-A, but only he figured out what it meant. And even Roland didn’t see it right off.” Spokelse raised his right hand in a ‘stop’ motion. “But let’s get to that when it comes up, and get on with our story…”

  * * *

  Few roads through the swamp allowed for the use of heavy trucks, but they were necessary, because the cargo the platoon escorted was uranium. The mines were in a series of low hills surrounded by sixty miles of deep, tree-lined muck. The truck’s shielding only added weight to an already heavy metal, so the trucks frequently got stuck. The road was paved, but narrow, constantly slick with mud or water from the incessant rain, and the road’s surface tended to buckle under such a load. Trucks proceeded at a creeping speed, and still slid off the shoulder multiple times per mile, or got stuck in sinkholes. Since the Triple-A mercs only got paid when the convoy arrived safely at the mobile processing plant, and none of the Humans wanted to stay on-planet longer than absolutely necessary, that led to them using their CASPers to push the vehicles back onto the road or pull them out of craters.

  The last thing any of them wanted was a uranium spill. Colonel van Owen bitched about any delays though, and constantly urged the drivers to go faster. He finally became so obnoxious that the leader of the drivers told him they weren’t part of his contract, they weren’t under his command, and he could fuck off. They’d do it the safe way or not at all. Van Owen backed off, but he wasn’t happy.

  “Hey, Top, what’s the hurry?” Roland said over the inter-squad net on the second day of the planned three-day move to the refinery. “I’ve only been here two days, and I already know the faster we try to move, the slower we go.”

  First Sergeant Allison Kovak was one of the few veterans along for the mission. Roland couldn’t see her inside the CASPer, but if a voice ever sounded like somebody was shaking their head, it was hers.

  “Ours not to question why, Corporal Sigurdsson…ours but to do and get paid.”

  He laughed, but it sounded hollow even to him. “I like that better than the original.”

  “I doubt Kipling would understand mercs.”

  Roland tilted his head like a German Shepherd, although inside the mech nobody else could see it.

  “Who’s Kipling?”

  “Never mind,” Kovak said.

  During their short escort mission, Roland received a number of compliments from his fellow noncoms, to the point the privates all joked that he must be blowing them during downtime, the females included. At least five times a truck cracked the roadbed and started toppling, but Roland reacted so fast, he prevented all of them. Even the taciturn Master Sergeant Henrik grunted he’d never seen a Mk 6 move so fast or so efficiently, and Henrik was a genuine asshole. Getting praise from him was thought to be impossible.

  The trek took four days, not three, because the weight of the CASPers, combined with a convoy of trucks filled with the heaviest metal known to humanity, uranium, left the primitive roadway in shambles. Instead of jumpjetting on a battlefield crisscrossed with laser beams and magnetic cannon rounds, the platoon might as well have been digging ditches. Fortunately for them, all it would say on a resume was escorted a high-value convoy four days through potentially hostile territory without loss.

  But like all military and para-military units throughout history, and regardless of circumstances, the Triple-A rookies complained about everything. The food was bad, the hours were too long, their CASPer chaffed…on the fourth day, with the mobile processing plant less than five miles away, Top Sergeant Kovak had heard enough.

  “Quit’cher bitchin’, people! You’re getting paid for what’s essentially an on-the-job training mission. Nobody’s trying to kill you, and based on what I’ve seen in the last four days, with some of you that wouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Great feats are performed not by strength, but by perseverance,” chimed in Private Numis.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Kovak said.

  “No idea, Top, I just like the way it sounded.”

  A fifty-foot-high steel wall surrounded the mobile processing plant, with main gates wide enough for the trucks to pass through. Interspersed with auto-cannon mounted at regular intervals along the perimeter were anti-aircraft laser and missile batteries. Anybody and anything that assaulted the plant was going to pay heavily for doing so.

  A landing area stood just outside the walled perimeter, surrounded by hangars large enough to service surface-to-orbit shuttlecraft. One such building was provided to the Triple-A platoon so they could get out of their CASPers and await transport back to Earth, scheduled for the next morning.

  The contract paid 300,000 credits, but each person’s share was below standard rates, except the two veteran non-coms, Kovak and the surly Master Sergeant Henrik. For the rest, it was the first time being paid for merc work. They all looked forward to seeing the credits appear in their accounts, but Colonel van Owen cautioned them.

  “The contract isn’t finalized yet,” he said when some of them wondered why they hadn’t yet been paid. “First, our employers have to randomly sample ore from each truck to make sure nothing got switched out along the way.”

  “How long will that take?” Roland said. Some instinct raised the hair on the back of his neck. Others backed up his question with cries of agreement.

  Van Owen waved away their concerns. “Overnight, no more. We’ll get paid before we lift off. What would you spend it on tonight, anyway?”

  That’s not the point, Roland thought, but didn’t say. The colonel hadn’t spent much time among the rank and file, but that night he arranged for a hot meal, which was a welcome change from field rations. He even passed around several bottles of Tennessee whiskey, which grew in value the further you went from Earth. It wasn’t worth the same as F-11, but it wasn’t all that far off, either. The colonel stood by to make sure that every merc got a hit from the whiskey. Even if they didn’t usually drink, he was insistent. It was a bonding experience, he said. So with bellies full of food and alcohol, and absolutely nothing else to do, the platoon went to sleep early, and before long, snores filled the vastness of the hangar.

  All except for Roland. He ate his fill along with the rest of them, but refused the whiskey bottle when it was passed to him. Instinct warned him not to drink. After the colonel insisted, he tilted the bottle and pretended to swallow while his lips were actually closed. That satisfied Colonel van Owen. When nobody could see him, Roland wiped his lips on his sleeve.

  They set no watches, since the colonel assured them they were safer than back on Earth. The hangar nearly abutted the perimeter wall, after all, and the processing plant had some serious firepower. With no known threats and all their eyes drooping, nobody argued. Even Roland lay down to sleep, but he was pretending. Something in the back of his mind kept screaming a warning.

  An hour after Colonel van Owen left, Roland slipped out of the sleeping area and climbed into his CASPer. He’d always had premonitions about things happening before they did—he called them instincts—and he’d come to trust them. If anybody asked, he’d just say, since he didn’t know when he might get another CASPer, he wanted to spend as much time in the one he had as possible. It sounded lame, but plausible. The truth was different. He sensed imminent danger.

 
; Climbing into the mech felt to Roland like going home, as if the armor was his real skin. Once powered up, he armed weapons and waited. The suit was equipped with an over-the-shoulder 20mm chain gun and snap-out arm blade, along with a holstered laser carbine for backup. It wasn’t the heaviest weaponry out there, but nobody expected trouble. As quietly as possible, he moved into a tall doorway that led into the hangar where his buddies were asleep.

  He waited for more than two hours and began to feel like a fool. What exactly was he worried about, anyway? Why would anybody want to attack a platoon of rookie mercs, especially after they’d fulfilled their contract? The only thing worth stealing, the uranium, was already safe. After a while Roland himself began to drowse inside his harness.

  Thirty minutes later two dozen men entered the hangar, carrying laser rifles and driving a LAV—a Light Armored Vehicle—armed with a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon mounted in an open-topped turret. Darkness hid Roland’s CASPer in the doorway as the intruders spread out to surround the huddled forms of the platoon, who slept on cots in the center of the hangar. The MAC-equipped vehicle slipped behind a large metal work station, so without conscious thought, he zeroed the chain-gun on a cluster of three men. It seemed like the right thing to do; if they started something, he’d finish it. But then Colonel van Owen stepped into view.

  What the hell? Maybe this was some sort of test, a way to teach the new recruits a hard lesson in the field. Van Owen clearly knew what was going on, as he directed the newcomers where to go. Roland relaxed.

  Until they opened fire.

  For two and a half seconds, ruby-red laser beams slashed into the helpless mercs, simultaneously cutting through flesh and cauterizing the wounds. The odor of burning flesh filled the hangar as the sleeping Humans thrashed and rolled in panic. Prayers, curses, and screams echoed from the rafters. And then another sound drowned out their voices, the metallic hammer of a chain-gun firing on automatic.