War in Heaven

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘Turret,’ she said through gritted teeth. I sent the command to fold the turret away as she slewed the FAV up the wall of the tunnel. The smartfoam of the tyres bit into the irregular surface of the rock wall. The turret only just folded way in time, though a column tore off part of the hatch.

  Behind us the gunship fired missiles at the column, which exploded. The tunnel filled with fire. There was another column bisecting the path ahead of us. We just missed that, driving up the wall at what felt like ninety degrees to the tunnel floor. Back on the ground Morag continued accelerating.

  Missiles reached out through the flames to destroy the second pillar. The gunship followed, buffeted by the explosions but not slowing down, railgun fire still eating at our rear armour.

  Morag jammed on the brakes. The straps on my harness had to work to keep me in the bucket seat. Ahead there was a large, roughly circular crevice in the tunnel floor. I thought she was stopping to avoid it; she was in fact slowing so that she wouldn’t jump it. The FAV skidded into the crevice and we started to fall.

  The suspension extended and the tyres bit into the rock all around us. It was part vertical driving but mostly free fall. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I cried out. Red light from our point-defence lasers lit up the darkness as two missiles from the gunship dipped into the crevice above us. The subsequent explosion forced the FAV down, dropping it about twenty feet before the tyres caught again. I fired the railgun blind up through the flames. The gunship hadn’t followed us, as it would have had to expose its vulnerable belly.

  I shouted in surprise when Morag retracted the suspension and just let us drop. The impact felt like something that should be followed by death. Then there was a second jarring impact as we hit the ground. Morag was lolling around in her seat like a rag doll. She spat blood out of her mouth as she came to life again. There was the sound of tortured metal as she pressed the accelerator, and the rugged FAV moved forward. I’d been battered around so much I had trouble working out what was going on. There was the sound of tearing metal from the rear of the FAV and then we broke free.

  ‘Missile!’ Morag shouted. Without thinking I swung the turret round to face behind us and fired off half the light anti-armour missiles. It was only then I realised what she’d done, why we’d had to drive so fast. She’d known about the crevice and how it bisected the tunnel that the others were in. She’d dropped us down on the front of the second gunship chasing the others. The missile salvo had finished it off. My panoramic view showed the twisted burning wreckage filling the tunnel behind us. She must have programmed an algorithm to do the maths on her internal computer while she was driving. She would probably shake and sob later when she thought about there being people in the gunship. That was okay, as long as it was later.

  Morag accelerated. Now we were behind a gunship this was more fun. I triggered the railgun, firing long bursts, chewing away at its rear armour. The gunship’s weapon pontoons reversed. Warning icons appeared in my IVD – they had a missile lock on us. The gunship fired two missiles, but we’d kept well enough back that they were easy pickings for the point-defence lasers. We drove through the flame of their explosions still firing at the back of the gunship.

  I risked two of our own missiles at it, but chaff and laser fire took care of them as we drove through fire again. As we emerged through the flames the gunship had gone. Ahead of us I could see the other two FAVs. The back of Pagan and Mudge’s looked like someone had been eating it. It had just driven up the wall and was now returning to the flat. I was remembering something about the map. There was a branching tunnel here that sloped down. The others must have avoided it by driving up the wall while the gunship, probably badly damaged, had taken it to escape. Morag went after the gunship.

  ‘No!’ I shouted too late.

  The downward tunnel was short. The end of it was a hole in the roof of a large cavern. We were airborne. Suddenly we were the world’s shittest aircraft. The gunship was waiting for us. Its railgun opened up and it fired two more missiles. One of the plasma door gunners missed. Rock melted and burned behind us. The other clipped the front of the FAV, partially melting the bonnet and leaving the metal and composite armour burning.

  I’m not sure how I had the presence of mind to do it, but the FAV’s superb systems gave me lock even as we fell and I fired the rest of our missiles. The FAV’s point defence took care of the gunship’s missiles. Above us the gunship’s own point-defence laser managed to take out all but two of ours. We splashed into the shallow lake that covered the bottom of the cavern. It was like hitting rock. Then we hit the rock under the water.

  I didn’t see it, but just before the gunship exploded above us, raining burning wreckage down to hiss in the acidic lake, two large humanoid-shaped objects must have bailed out of the open passenger compartment.

  I came to in the cab of the submerged FAV. Now it was the world’s shittest submarine. The cab was full of crashfoam. I couldn’t move or see. My IVD was red with warning signs. My body felt like one big bruise. Had she done all this on purpose?

  There was quite a lot of water leaking into the supposedly hermetically sealed vehicle. It was warring with the crashfoam and the crashfoam was losing. I felt my skin start to burn as well.

  I texted Morag but got an automated reply telling me that she was sorry she couldn’t answer on account of being unconscious. I burned myself in pooling acid as I reached for the manual release for the chemical catalyst that would dissipate the crashfoam.

  As the crashfoam dispersed I got more burned as water squirted in on me. Eventually I could see Morag again. She was unconscious, parts of her skin bubbling as acidic water leaked into the FAV.

  I opened a pouch on my webbing, removed a stim patch and stuck it to Morag’s neck. I saw a message from the FAV’s systems asking me if I wanted to use the periscope. This was for parking in a hull-down position (squaddie talk for parking behind cover). I replied in the affirmative and tentatively raised the periscope to just break the surface. This was still being kicked around by our impact and the fiery death of the gunship but I managed to pick out the two exo-armour suits circling the cavern high above us.

  They looked familiar but I knew I’d never seen the model before. Although the water was slopping over the periscope, it still provided me with enough resolution to watch in horror as thick black tendrils unfolded from the backs of the two suits. They were, at least in part, derived from Themtech. Then I realised why they seemed familiar. They looked a bit like Berserks, if Berserks were larger, symmetrical, made mostly of human materials, attached to exo-armour flight systems and carried Retributor railguns.

  Morag signalled her return to consciousness by mumbling a long string of nonsense.

  ‘It’s not a submarine,’ I said, largely for something to say.

  ‘What?’ she asked groggily. Coming more fully to, she assessed our situation. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ I asked.

  ‘Shut up, it worked. What now?’

  ‘Well, those things up there don’t have the right tools for the job, though if they’ve got grenades they could make our lives miserable. But we’ll drown or melt in here if we don’t get out soon.’

  I didn’t say that if they launched their missiles at us the force of the explosions would be magnified in the water. Their missiles’ engines wouldn’t work in the water but our point-defence lasers would pretty much be expensive and very bright flashlights. Also we now had no offensive ability, as without a pressurised barrel or a hydrodynamic round all the railgun was good for was pushing around water. All they had to do was wait us out.

  We shifted around, trying to avoid the worst of the leaks, lifting our feet out of the footwell. The air stank of rotten eggs from the sulphur in the water. The good thing was, the FAV’s anti-corrosion protection was holding. The vehicle wasn’t going to melt around us, and had it been any less well sealed we already would have drowned. The bad news was, if we tried to leave the vehicle we’d be
sitting ducks. Assuming we weren’t just dissolved by the acidic water (we wouldn’t be, but we would be badly burned).

  Morag left unsaid that this all meant they’d got and broken Rannu. If they had all the information they needed then he was probably dead by now, unless they’d sent him to the Belt. In which case he was also probably dead by now. Rannu had been a good operator and was on top of his game, yet they’d still got him like all the others. We hadn’t stood a chance.

  There were missile contrails in the cavern above us, then warheads blossoming to fire and force as black light, Themtech and point-defence weapons from the flying exo-armour took them out. We could hear the railgun fire through the water. The other two FAVs were on ledges far above the lake and had caught the two exo-armour suits in a crossfire.

  ‘See if the grapples work. We’ll see if the winch can get us shallow enough for the turret to fire,’ I said.

  Morag fired both the front-facing grapples. One of them bounced off; the other connected and started to eat its way in. Already the acid in the shallow lake would be corroding the cable. Morag triggered the winch and we started to roll forward. We were moving slowly towards a smooth rock shore at one end of the cavern. This would only work while the two exo-armour pilots were too distracted to notice the cable.

  Cat fired the remaining missiles from her turret-mounted battery. Sheer numbers overwhelmed one of the exo-armour suits’ point-defence systems and the impacting missiles destroyed it. The wreckage joined us in the lake.

  The other exo-armour suit flew through the barrage of missiles from Pagan and Mudge’s FAV, firing its Retributor and its own missiles. Red laser light connected the FAV to the incoming missiles, detonating them. The suit appeared through the flame and smoke like a horrible angel, landed next to the FAV and tore off its railgun. I was appalled to see it start to tear open the armour, assisted by its tendrils.

  We rolled forward painfully slowly to bring us to a firing depth, the winch straining to pull us through the water as it and the cable corroded. I watched as Merle exited the other FAV and sprinted to the edge of the ledge, bringing up his plasma rifle. White fire lit up the darkness as he fired almost the length of the cavern into the back of the exo-armour tearing open the FAV. The plasma fire started to burn the armour, eating into it. The turret on the FAV turned to face the Themtech suit.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I said.

  Pagan triggered the missile at point-blank range. He must have hacked the proximity fuse. It exploded. The FAV was airborne, tumbling over as it hit the side of the cavern before falling back onto the ledge. The exo-armour was blown off the ledge and splashed into the water close by the rock shore we were heading towards.

  The barrel of our railgun broke the surface of the water. A smoking, blackened, still burning exo-armour stood up unsteadily. I hit it with round after round from the railgun as the winch pulled us forward. It staggered back under the relentless impact but would not go down. White light flashed again and again as Merle shot round after round over our heads into it. Finally it hit the wall of the cavern, its head now ablaze with white plasma fire. It slid down the wall and into the water. I put another two bursts into it anyway. The ammo on the railgun was looking low.

  The protesting winch dragged us out of the water. Smoke poured off the FAV, the photoreceptive paint long gone. I hit the door release and slid it back. Morag did the same. I ditched my gear and started free-climbing up the rock. Morag ran into the cave system.

  Morag reached the rock ledge, which supported Mudge and Pagan’s FAV, just before I did. She hacked the door mechanism and managed to feed a snake through the crashfoam, then took control of the FAV and fired one of the front and one of the rear winches. She stepped back. I watched feeling helpless as the winches dragged the vehicle up and over onto its wheels.

  Morag reached in and pulled the manual release for the crashfoam dissolver. I ran forward and we pulled an unconscious and badly battered Pagan out of the FAV. Nothing looked broken but I didn’t like the look of the swelling on his face and skull. Mudge was battered but conscious and grinning. He was obviously very, very high.

  ‘I love these cars,’ he managed. I just shook my head.

  The FAV’s armour was pitted, scored, burned, buckled in a couple of places and a blackened mess, but it seemed intact.

  Opposite me, aided by patches of burning wreckage and guttering plasma fire, I could see a much larger cavern almost directly opposite this ledge. It would provide easy ingress for the final gunship if it knew where we were, and we’d been making a lot of noise.

  ‘Is the FAV running?’ I asked Morag quietly.

  ‘They’re hurt.’

  ‘We need to leave.’

  Morag concentrated for a moment.

  ‘I think it’ll run. Not well, but it’ll run.’

  On the other ledge I could see Merle signalling, asking if we were all clear. I signalled for him to wait.

  That was when the final gunship dropped through the hole in the cavern roof that Morag and I had fallen through. As it did, two more Themtech exo-armours leaped off it. They had us. It was over.

  Then in the mouth of the large cavern opposite me it seemed to get as light as day. The gunship became a fountain of white liquid flame as it dropped into the lake. The two exo-armours followed in rapid succession. Involuntarily I held my hands up in front of my face and backed away from the light. Beneath the water I could make out the three pools of plasma fire still burning, the surface of the lake bubbling as the water boiled.

  ‘Stay where you are, mate, or I’ll light you up,’ a booming voice echoed through the cavern. Even amplified I could make out the strong New Zealand accent.

  That’s when we heard the giant’s footsteps. I saw its heat signature as I magnified my optics. It had been far back in the tunnel but was making its way quickly towards us to the sound of metal resonating off rock.

  Cat moved their FAV back into the tunnel that had brought them to the ledge they were on and threw her brother a Laa-Laa. Merle extended the man-portable missile launcher and took cover, his reactive camouflage turning him into another piece of rock. Not that the light anti-armour missile would do much against the armoured metal giant that stalked out of the tunnel and waded into the lake. I recognised the enormous bipedal, roughly humanoid-shaped mech as a German-made Landsknecht, although it seemed bulkier than others I’d seen. I guessed that this was something to do with the heavier gravity. They had been superseded by newer, better models but were still serviceable and had still been seeing action on all the colonial fronts at the end of the war with Them.

  Its armour was pitted and scorched and it had obviously seen a lot of action judging by the patchwork of repairs all over it. On some of the less damaged parts of the mech I could make out intricate patterns that reminded me of the knot work that Pagan favoured, only different somehow. It had a medium missile battery on either shoulder and point-defence lasers mounted on its chest. The plasma cannon which it had used to destroy the gunship had cooled down to only red hot.

  ‘You fellows were sure making a lot of noise,’ the amplified voice with the Kiwi accent said.

  ‘Who are you?’ I shouted.

  ‘We’re the resistance,’ was the amplified reply.

  12

  Utu Pa

  Most of them may have been military but it looked less like a resistance base and more like a refugee camp. Gaunt, hungry, harried, haunted-looking men and women looked at the FAVs with suspicion.

  We’d managed to get Pagan’s vehicle running and I drove him. He’d come to and told me that they’d fired the missile figuring they were dead anyway. Pagan had been badly kicked about but was otherwise okay. Mudge was much the same. Cat’s FAV towed ours. Morag was reasonably sure that if she could find the right parts, despite the kicking it had taken, she could get it running. I was beginning to think FAVs were worth their exorbitant price tag.

  We told ourselves we’d gone with the Kiwi voluntarily, after the inevitable argume
nt about whether or not it was a trap or just a bad idea. When we drove into the network of caverns we were well covered. Somehow, even when there’s not enough food to eat, there are always enough guns. In this case there were also mechs. There were four of the fighting machines including the Landsknecht that had escorted us in. There was another Landsknecht, a Steel Mantis, a light fast scout mech and, most impressive, a Bismarck-class heavy mech.

  The Bismarck was basically a heavily armed weapons platform slung between four heavy-duty, insect-like legs. With a three-hundred-millimetre mass driver and two heavy missile batteries as well as various point-defence and anti-personnel weapons, its firepower was something to be respected. But it would be nearly useless in this kind of war. They had all the toys, but this was a hard planet to forage for food on. These people looked like they were starving. Compared to them, I just felt healthy and well fed.

  We climbed out of the FAVs into a circle of gun barrels. I tried my best don’t-fuck-with-us look, but as the adrenalin wore off the high G settled on me like a dead weight around my shoulders, pressing down on a sore spine. I spat. My throat felt red raw and the spittle had a pink look to it.

  ‘So, are we hooking up with the local resistance or being robbed?’ Cat muttered under her breath.

  ‘Who’s in command?’ Pagan asked.

  Nobody said anything. Most of the people around us were Maoris and had the squat powerful build of people born to high gravity. Except their bodies had started to waste. Many of them had tattoos that looked like they’d crawled onto their faces. The Landsknecht mech that had brought us in still towered over us.

  ‘I think we should give these people food,’ Morag said.

  Pagan hissed at her to be quiet. Cat and Merle looked less than pleased with her suggestion.

  Generator-run portable lights and free-standing lamps lit the cavern network. There weren’t enough of either to completely light the place and much of it remained in darkness. There were laser-cut niches in the rock that seemed to be bunk spaces. I’d find out later that they were called miner coffins and in the early colonisation period were where dead miners were left in state until they could be disposed off. There were a lot of them.