Hearts of Chaos

by Victor Milán

  Cowboy slammed one hand off the top of the wheel. "It's raining the sons of bitches! One or two regiments, my ass!"

  Buck cocked an eyebrow at Cassie. "Looks like your pal the Mirza gave us a bum steer."

  "He predicted the attack," she pointed out. "Where the hell do all these Snakes come from, anyway?" Cowboy said.

  "Well, given Senior Lieutenant Suthorn's presence, this doesn't seem like a real propitious time to fill in some obvious gaps in your knowledge of the facts of life, Cowboy—"

  "I mean, what the Foxtrot? They were supposed to be scrapin' the bottom of the barrel to send two regiments after us!"

  "Maybe they did get help from the Capellans," Cassie said. "Or maybe Word of Blake decided they want some more of us. Terra's not all that far away."

  "God, that's a cheerful thought," Buck said.

  "Who cares?" Cassie said. "We've got to get back to the regiment—wait, listen!"

  She had been channel-hopping, getting nothing more than disjointed snatches of frantic talk on the tac freaks. Now a red light had begun blinking on her personal communicator, indicating a message coming in on the alert frequency. She held up the unit again.

  With a sound like a drum-roll magnified a million-fold, a volley of missiles crashed down in the street to the south of them. Something struck the windshield with a bang. It went suddenly opaque in a crazy network of fracture lines.

  As the car went into a spin, Cassie clearly heard the Colonel's voice say, "—ordering the immediate withdrawal of all units from the city."

  The car squealed to a halt, settled onto its suspension with various pings and squeaks.

  "Whoa," Cowboy said, staring at the windshield, which had been dented almost back to the depth of the steering wheel by the piece of debris thrown out by the missile impacts. "That was cutting it close."

  "Pull in right over there," said Buck. They had come to rest facing northeast. He pointed to a gun shop across the street, almost in line with the convertible's nose.

  "What are you talking about?" Cassie demanded. "We've got to get back, got to join the others!"

  "Give a listen, little lady," Buck said, tapping the communicator still clutched in her wiry brown hand.

  "I say again," Don Carlos was speaking Spanish, in tones of infinite weariness. "All Seventeenth Recon elements are to withdraw from Port Howard at once. Save what you can. We'll fight again another day."

  "We got our marching orders, Cass."

  Cassie threw herself against the back of the seat and folded her arms tightly across her chest. "We can't abandon the others."

  "Right. And they're all bugging out. If we hang around here, they'll abandon us. And they won't have a choice in the world. We're out-gunned, out-flanked, and out-fornicated."

  She shook her head. She could not speak. Tears blurred out her vision.

  The cur lurched forward, crossed the street diagonally, came to rest with its tires squeaking against the curb on the wrong side, right in front of the gun shop. "If you want to throw your life away taking on a whole Drac army single-handed," Cowboy said, opening the door and unfolding his lanky frame, "be my guest. Me, I'm going shopping." He slammed the door.

  Buck Evans followed him into the store. Cassie sat a moment, breathing hard. The com kept repeating the Colonel's message, over and over. Evidently he'd left a transmitter broadcasting a recorded loop.

  A burning aerospace fighter fell from the sky to the north. With fierce satisfaction she saw that it had the snouted-saucer shape of a Sholagar. The Fusilier fighter jocks weren't giving up without a fight,

  Tim! Where are you? She didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved not to see his little white Voss with the red-painted nose take to the sky against the invaders. For all the Rangers' brave talk, with the sky full of fusion-driven killing machines, the little synthe-tic-and-ceramic prop-driven craft seemed nothing more than toys.

  She climbed out of the back seat and went into the shop. The interior lights were out; the only illumination was the gray light filtered through barred windows streaked with urban grime. Buck Evans stood near the front, perusing a rack of carbines. Cowboy was behind a glass display counter to the left, feeding green double-ought shells into a stainless pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun with furniture of black synthetic.

  "I don't for the life of me understand why you don't just get yourself a good autoloader," Buck said, turning a semiautomatic version of an old AFFS assault rifle over in his hands. Civilians were not permitted to own full-auto-capable weapons in Port Howard.

  "Something about a good pump just suits me," Cowboy said, racking the slide to chamber a round, then topping off the extended magazine with a fresh shell from an open box on the counter. "I like the way they feel."

  "Your funeral," Buck said with a shrug. "Help yourself, Cass. Looks like nobody's home."

  As if to contradict him, a sturdily built black man with short gray-dusted hair came out of the back with an autoloading shotgun tucked beneath his shoulder and his finger on the trigger.

  "Not so fast, there," he said. "Y'all best be putting those things back where you found them, unless you got money to pay."

  Buck turned and walked toward him, holding his hands out. He still held the carbine in his right hand.

  "I know how you feel, citizen," he said, "but we're kind of short on change here."

  "Don't get any closer!" the shopkeeper ordered.

  Buck nodded his head toward the open door, through which the sounds of a 'Mech battle in progress not many blocks away poured. "Now, there's a little point you might want to consider. That's not just the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery kicking your fair city to kindling out there. It's a bunch of outlaw Dracs so crazy they're disobeying their own Coordinator to invade your happy little world. Now, how do you think they're going to treat a civilian such as yourself whom they happen to catch in possession of a large store of weapons?"

  He walked almost up to the muzzle of the leveled shotgun and laid the carbine on the counter next to the register. "I understand why you want to hang onto what's yours. But if you keep trying to hang on too long, you might lose more than you bargained for. Now, whether you're willing to give us a hand or not is your call,and we're not here to rip you off. But if you think the PG is rough on firearms ownership, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

  The proprietor stared hard at the tall blond man a moment more. "You're some of those offworld mercs, aren't you? Seventeenth Recon?"

  "That's us," Cowboy said. He had laid his shotgun down too.

  The shop owner sighed and lowered his weapon. "I guess you're right. I guess you've been right all along, haven't you?"

  He waved a hand. "Help yourselves. I'd rather you have it than the damned Snakes."

  The man looked at them for a moment longer, then turned and disappeared into the darkened back rooms. Cowboy grinned at Buck and vaulted the counter. As Cassie selected three high-capacity semiauto handguns and started scarfing spare magazines, the two began to pile boxes of ammo into their arms and tote them out to the car.

  Cassie came back from carrying out a load to find the proprietor had turned on a little holotank set up on the counter, where he could watch it from his stool behind the cash register. Cowboy and Buck were staring at the set, so Cassie stopped to look.

  It showed Howard Blaylock shaking hands with several Combine officers in tan field uniforms on the steps of the huge Planetary Government complex downtown. The buildings at their backs showed no sign of battle damage.

  "In the name of the people and government of Towne," Blaylock was saying, "I welcome the peacekeeping mission from the Draconis Combine, and trust that today will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all our people."

  A title at the bottom of the display read, "Newly Appointed Planetary Chairman Blaylock." In the lower right corner floated a neat little Kurita dragon-in-circle symbol.

  "I guess we know who the insider was on this little sell job now," Buck commented.

  "
The newsies must nof've been too surprised neither," Cowboy said. "Lpokit. They even got that cute little Drac meatball and everything."

  The bellow of the owner's shotgun almost imploded Cassie's eardrums in the confines of the store. The holotank exploded.

  "Y'know, I've always wanted to do that," the shop owner said, laying down the smoking weapon.

  * * *

  Cassie slipped back into the convertible's back seat. The overcast was closing in; a light snow was beginning to fall, though she didn't feel cold at all. Cowboy and Buck emerged and stacked a final couple cases of rifle ammo on the seat beside her.

  The store's owner emerged holding a case of Frost Giant's Daughter beer, a popular local brew. "I know this stuff usually doesn't go too well with guns," he said, "but I had it in the cooler in the back for after hours, and somehow I don't think I'm gonna have time to polish it off myself before the Snakes get here."

  "Thank you kindly, citizen," Buck said, accepting it from him. "We're headin' for the Gunderlands. I'd advise you do the same."

  "We can make some room in back, if you don't mind sittin' next to a skinny mean woman," called Cowboy. He pulled his new shotgun off the driver's seat where he'd left it.

  The proprietor shook his head. "Thanks all the same, but I got some business to tend to before I pull a bunk."

  Buck walked around the front of the car with the beer. Cowboy stood by the driver's door, facing east. He had his shotgun and stood holding it with the barrel pointing back over his shoulder.

  "I wish you wouldn't hold that thing like that," Buck groused, turning to prop the case on the door to free a hand to open the handle. "It's unprofessional."

  Cowboy just grinned. Then Cassie saw him stiffen and stare into the driver's side wing-mirror.

  It couldn't have been more than a microsecond later that she launched herself straight over the top of the windshield as Cowboy's 12-gauge went off with a shattering sound.

  16

  Port Howard

  Aquilonia Province, Towne

  Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

  23 January 3058

  Cowboy's blast of buckshot caught the lead man of the Drac infantry squad that had just trotted around the corner behind the convertible full in the chest. The ground-pounders were armored in nothing more than their tan trichloropolyester jumpsuits. The front of the lead man's suit came all over red blotches, and he fell. Cowboy threw himself over the closed driver's door and fell across the front seat on his back.

  Cassie twisted her body as she rolled down the hood of the car, had her feet beneath her when she dropped in front of the grille. She had struck a 9 mm into the waistband of her faded black twill trousers at the small of her back. Naturally the gun fell out and got lost, but she had strapped on a gunbelt carrying a sebond nine in a holster around her waist too. This weapon stayed put.

  She drew it, shoved it out both-handed before her at full arm-extension along the car's right side as she crouched to put as much as possible of the engine block between her and enemy gunfire. Buck was rolling across the street, prone, supine, firing his carbine as he went. A figure in tan appeared from behind the rear of the car, the Shimatsu-42 assault rifle in his hands spitting fire. Cassie lined up her sights on the center of his chest, fired twice. He went down.

  Cowboy laid his 12-gauge across the rear of the driver's seat and began pumping out shots. Buck made it clear to the other side of the street. He rolled up over the curb to the cover of a fire hydrant, where he slammed home a fresh magazine and began taking aimed shots. Cassie shot another infantryman, then rolled to the driver's side of the car in time to drop a third who was backing around the corner of the building, firing wildly.

  Silence landed like a weight from a great height.

  Cowboy oozed over the driver's door, ran to the corner. He tossed the shotgun end-for-end in the air, catching it in a left-handed grip, poking it around the corner, firing blind, racking the slide, firing again. Then he dropped to the sidewalk and peeked around.

  At once he was up again, shaking his head. "No sign of them," he said. "They musta heard their mama callin'."

  Buck rose deliberately from cover and came back to the car, keeping his carbine ready. Cassie stood. Eight forms lay on the pavement. Three were moaning and writhing. The others kept their peace.

  "Why'd you go and jump into the car like a damned fool?" Buck demanded. "There's almost nothing you can shoot that won't go through a car lengthwise unless it hits the engine, which was on the wrong end to do your sorry ass much good if any of those culebras had known what they were doing."

  "It seemed like the thing to do at the time," Cowboy admitted, sheepish. He was stuffing shells from the

  pockets of his heavy coat into the shotgun's tubular

  magazine. "Good thing they were lousy shots, even for

  Dracs."

  Pistol in hand, Cassie had approached the fallen soldiers. "These aren't Dracs," she said.

  Buck stared at her. "What are you telling us? That we just laid the whack on a passel of Boy Scouts?"

  "Well, they're not DCMS. Check them out; they haven't got anything more than jumpsuits and caps. Teddy Kurita started issuing helmets and those padded bodyarmor jerkins to all combat troops back when he was Kanrei, ages ago. This kit's at least thirty years old."

  "Then who the hell are they?" Cowboy asked.

  She picked up a Shimatsu, nudged the outflung left hand of the first man Cowboy had shot with the toe of her boot. "Look here. Little finger's missing. Which means—"

  She stuck the flash suppresser into the notched front of his high jumpsuit collar, slid it down so that the fastener unsealed for about twelve centimeters, pushed back the cloth to reveal a fragment of an intricate and colorful tattoo.

  "Irezumi," she said. Yakuza.

  "I'll be damned," Buck said. "Pretty Boy Kusu-noki's gone and recruited himself some yakuza cannon fodder."

  "Guess he reckoned it worked for Teddy, so what the hey," Cowboy said. A wounded man moaned loudly. Cowboy winced. "What about them? We can't just leave 'em."

  Combine born, Capellan raised, Cassie responded in what seemed to her the direct and natural way: she shouldered the Shimatsu and fired three shots. When she turned back to her companions, both were staring at her, faces pale.

  "What?" she said.

  Buck Evans shook his head. "N-nothing, Cass. But I think it's about time we were pulling up stakes—"

  As if to underline his words a terrific crash sounded from the west. All three of their heads snapped round as a 50-ton Enforcer, smoke and flames streaming from its shattered chest, toppled into sight from the left, two blocks away. It landed on its back.

  "Not one of ours," Buck said. The stowed ammo for its Federated autocannon began to cook off, lighting up the smoke pouring from the stricken machine like a hy-pertrophied fireworks display.

  Out of the side street from which the 'Mech had fallen stepped a Stalker. It paused above its downed opponent, then turned ponderously to face east. Cassie felt her blood congeal as it seemed to look directly at them. The 'Mech could have blown them all away with the merest puff from its awesome weaponry.

  The ruby lance of a large laser cracked past the 85-ton monster from right to left, apparently just missing behind it. The Stalker turned north and lumbered out of sight with a crunching and groaning of tormented pavement beneath its vast, pod-shaped feet.

  Wordlessly, the two Caballeros and one Caballera jumped into the car. Fortunately it was already pointing the right way: east, toward the putative safety of the Gunderland Mountains.

  * * *

  The Shilone's, landing gear squealed as it kissed the blacktop of the combined starport and airfield south of the port city. As she kicked in the retro boosters, Tai-i Sharon "Mouse" Omizuki of the Fifth Galedon Aerospace Wing, Tai-sa Terrance Kondracke's Desolation Angels, tried to contain the excitement that seethed in her like bubbles in champagne. Her first kill in years, and it had been one worthy of a company
commander: a 100-ton Stuka.

  Having tasted blood she was hot for a shot at more. But her group commander had ordered her company to land and stand down, and she was seasoned enough to know the wisdom behind that order. Fusion-driven, armed with one large and two medium lasers, her 65-ton Shilone could fight virtually indefinitely. But aerospace combat was a highly aerobic sport. Far faster than the conflict of the lumbering landbound Battle-Mechs, it imposed physical stresses many times the force of gravity on the system, stresses that could kill an unprotected human, especially one not trained and conditioned to endure them. More to the point, even an aerospace jock tempered and honed like a Muramasa blade and swaddled in a gee-suit could fly herself quite literally death in a fighter. As a practical matter, long before that point was reached, the accumulation of gee-loading and emotional stress would have reduced the pilot's judgment, perceptions, and reflexes to the point where the chances of a fatal mishap soared asymptotically toward certainty.

  Even under the enlightened leadership of Theodore Kurita, first as military commander and then as ruler of the whole Combine, the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery demanded much of its warriors. But the DCMS had long since learned the hard way that to keep a pilot in actual combat for more than an hour at a stretch, barring dire necessity, was simply to throw away expensive machinery, not to mention pilots' lives. And though, individually, their lives meant nothing, their training cost the Dragon a JumpShip-load of money.

  When the Shilone began to slow, Mouse turned the craft off the runway and taxied to a parking spot on the apron near some hangars under the guidance of a heavily swaddled ground tech wielding light batons and wearing ear protectors. She dropped out the access hatch in the craft's flat belly, waving off the gloved helping hand offered by a tech, and walked bent-over beneath the rapidly cooling craft to where a little van waited. The door slid open as she mounted the non-skid-padded metal steps.

  "Welcome to Towne," said the voice of her wing commander.

  In the entrance she stopped and bowed. "The Tai-sa does this unworthy one great honor," she said, not bothering to suppress a grin that the faceplate of her helmet didn't hide. Kurita aerospace pilots kept up appearances, but like fighter jocks in any time and any clime, their tendency, especially among those who had shared combat, was toward extreme informality. Respect came due as to how you flew. Everything else was a dog-and-pony show.