Grimmer Than Hell

by David Drake

  They came to a bank of wire-fronted elevators and a crowd of waiting Khalians. "Come with me," the envoy said as he stepped into the nearest cage.

  The cage was small and low; three humans in battlegear and a Khalian filled it uncomfortably. As the elevator started the descend, Kowacs saw a horde of weasels pushing into the remaining cages.

  Bradley began to shake. The muzzle of his gun wobbled through tight arcs. "It stinks . . . ," he mumbled. "It stinks."

  He was right, of course. The air circulating in the Khalian burrow smelled of Khalians, and that was a stench worse than death to a man like Bradley, who'd seen what the weasels left of his little daughter on Tanjug . . .

  Or to a man like Nick Kowacs, whose family had been on Gravely when the weasels landed there.

  Kowacs shivered. "Top!" he said harshly. "Snap out of it. You're not going claustrophobic on me now."

  Bradley took off his helmet and squeezed his bald, scarred scalp with his left hand. His eyes were shut. "It's not the fuckin' tunnels," he said. "Not the tunnels. All these weasels. . . . I just, I wanna—"

  Bradley's fingertips left broad white dimples on his skin when he took his hand away. The weasel envoy watched the sergeant with bright black eyes.

  No one spoke again until the cage stopped and the Khalian repeated, "Come with me," as his paw clashed the door open.

  Kowacs couldn't guess how deep in the earth they were now. There was a sea of fur and tusks and chittering weasel voices outside the elevator. Many of this crowd wore ornaments of brass and leather, but Kowacs didn't see any weapons.

  He stepped out behind the envoy, watching the passageway clear before them and wondering if the Khalians would close in again behind the three humans.

  It didn't matter. They were in this, he and Top and Sie, as far as they could get already. At least the tunnel ceiling was high enough for humans, even the corporal with her burden of death.

  The envoy led through an arched doorway. The chamber within was huge even by human standards.

  The chamber was full of Khalians.

  The smell and sound and visual impact stopped Kowacs in his tracks. One of his men bumped him from behind.

  Kowacs closed his eyes and rubbed them hard with the back of his left wrist. That made it worse. When he didn't see the room filled with weasels, his mind quivered over the memory of his mother, her gnawed corpse thick with the musk of the furry monsters that had—

  "No!" Kowacs screamed. The distant walls gave back the echo, cushioned by the soft susurrus of breathing mammals. There was no other sound.

  He opened his eyes.

  A group of Khalians was coming forward from the crowd. There were twenty or more of them. They wore jewelry and robes patterned with soft, natural colors.

  They were very old. Some hobbled, and even those weasels who were able to walk erect had grizzled fur and noticeably worn tusks.

  Weasels don't wear clothing. . . .

  There was a great sigh from the assembled company. The aged Khalians gripped their robes and tore them apart in ragged, ritual motions. Some of them were mewling; their facial fur was wet with tears. They fell to the floor and began writhing forward, their throats and bellies bared to the Marines.

  The weasel in the center of the groveling line gave a series of broken, high-pitched barks. The voice of Kowacs' helmet translated, "Khalia surrenders to you, warriors of the Fleet Marines. We are your subjects, your slaves, to use as you wish."

  Come to the Council Chamber, the weasel envoy had said. The High Council of Khalia. They weren't surrendering this fortress—

  "Khalia surrenders—"

  They were surrendering the whole Khalian race!

  "—to you, warriors of the—"

  Bradley's shotgun crashed. Its airfoil charge was designed to spread widely, even at point-blank range. The load sawed through the chest of the Khalian speaker like so many miniature razors. The weasel's tusked jaws continued to open and close, but nothing came out except drops of bloody spittle.

  The aged Khalian nearest the dead one began to chant, "We are your slaves, warriors of the Fleet Marines. Use us as you will. We—"

  Sergeant Bradley's face was that of a grinning skull. He'd dropped his helmet in the elevator cage. There was no reason left behind his glazing eyes. "You'll die," he said in a sing-song voice, "you'll all—"

  He fired again. His charge splashed the skull of the corpse.

  "—die, every fucking—"

  Kowacs gripped the shotgun barrel with his left hand. The metal burned him. He couldn't lift the muzzle against Bradley's hysterical grip.

  "Put it down, Top!" he ordered.

  The moaning of the crowd was louder. Waves of Khalian musk blended sickeningly with powder smoke.

  "—are your subjects, your—"

  Bradley fired into the dead weasel's groin.

  "—weasel in the fucking uni—"

  "Down!" Kowacs screamed and touched the muzzle of his assault rifle to Bradley's temple where a wisp of hair grew in the midst of pink scar tissue. Kowacs' vision tunnelled down to nothing but the hairs and the black metal and the flash that would—

  There was a hollow thunk.

  Bradley released the shotgun as he fell forward unconscious. Sienkiewicz looked at her captain with empty eyes. There was a splotch of blood on the green metal of the gas cylinder and a matching pressure cut on the back of Bradley's skull, but the sergeant would be all right as soon as he came around. . . .

  "On behalf of the Alliance of Planets," Kowacs said in a quavering voice, "I accept your surrender."

  He covered his eyes with his broad left hand. He shouldn't have done that, because that made him remember his mother and he began to vomit.

  * * *

  "Hey, Sergeant Bradley," said one of the enlisted men in the Red Shift Lounge, "let me get 'cha the next drink."

  The man in whites toyed with his stole of Khalian tails. "We shoulda kept killin' 'em till everybody had a weasel-skin blanket!" he said. "We shoulda—"

  Somebody came into the bar; somebody so big that even Sergeant Bradley looked up.

  The newcomer, a woman in coveralls, squinted into the dim lounge. She glanced at the group around Bradley, then ignored them. When she saw the stocky man at the far end of the bar, she strode forward.

  The sudden smile made her almost attractive.

  Bradley's hand closed on his fresh drink. "If there's still one weasel left in the universe," he said, "that's too many."

  "Sar'nt?" murmured the drunken blond. "Whyn't you'n me, we go somewhur?"

  "Hey, cap'n," said the big woman to the man at the far end of the bar. "Good t' see you."

  "Go 'way, Sie," he replied, staring into his mug. "You'll lose your rank if you miss lift."

  "Fuck my rank," she said. Everyone in the lounge was looking at them. "Besides," she added, "Commander Goldstein says the Dalriada's engines 're broke down till we get you aboard. Sir."

  She laid the man's right arm over her shoulders, gripped him around the back with her left hand, and lifted him in a packstrap carry. He was even bigger than he'd looked hunched over the bar, a blocky anvil of a man with no-colored eyes.

  "You're always getting me outa places I shouldn't a got into, Sie," the man said.

  His legs moved as the woman maneuvered him toward the door, but she supported almost all of his weight. "Worse places 'n this, sir," she replied.

  "They weren't worse than now, Sie," he said. "Trust me."

  As the pair of them started to shuffle past the group near the door, the woman's eyes focused on the uniformed man. She stopped. The man she held braced himself with a lopsided grin and said, "I'm okay now, Sie."

  "Who the hell are you?" the big woman demanded of the man wearing the Headhunter uniform.

  "What's it to you?" he snarled back.

  "This is Sergeant Bradley of the 121st Marine Reaction Company," said one of the enlisted men, drunkenly pompous.

  "Like hell he is," the big woman said. He
r arms were free now. "Top's searching bars down the Strip the other direction, lookin' for Cap'n Kowacs, here."

  Kowacs continued to grin. His face was as terrible as a hedge of bayonets.

  The group around 'Sergeant Bradley' backed away as though he had suddenly grown an extra head.

  The imposter in uniform tried to run. Sienkiewicz grabbed him by the throat from behind. "Thought you'd be a big hero, did ya? Some clerk from Personnel, gonna be a hero now it's safe t' be a hero?"

  The imposter twisted around. A quick-release catch snicked, shooting the knife from his left sleeve into his palm.

  Sienkiewicz closed her right hand over the imposter's grip on his knife hilt. She twisted. Bones broke.

  The knife came away from the hand of her keening victim. She slammed the point down into the bar top, driving it deep into the dense plastic before she twisted again and snapped the blade.

  "Big hero . . . ," she whispered. Her expression was that of nothing human. She gripped the weasel-tail stole and said, "How much did these cost 'cha, hero?" as she tore the trophies away and flung them behind her.

  The bartender's finger was poised over the red emergency button that would summon the Shore Police. He didn't push it.

  Sienkiewicz' grip on the imposter's throat was turning the man's face purple. Nobody moved to stop her. Her right hand stripped off the uniform sleeve with its Headhunter insignia and tossed it after the stole.

  Then, still using the power of only one arm, she hurled the imposter into a back booth also. Bone and plastic cracked at the heavy impact.

  "I'm okay, Sie," Kowacs repeated, but he let his corporal put her arm back around him again.

  As the two Headhunters left the Red Shift Lounge, one of the enlisted men muttered, "You lying scum," and drove his heel into the ribs of the fallen man.

  Kowacs found that if he concentrated, he could walk almost normally. There was a lot of traffic this close to the docking hub, but other pedestrians made way good-naturedly for the pair of big Marines.

  "Sie," Kowacs said, "I used to daydream, you know? Me an old man, my beard down t' my belt, y'know? And this little girl, she comes up t' me and she says, 'Great Grandaddy, what did you do in the Weasel War?'"

  "Careful of the bollard here, sir," Sienkiewicz murmured. "There'll be a shuttle in a couple of minutes."

  "And I'd say to her," Kowacs continued, his voice rising, "'Well, sweetheart—I survived.'"

  He started to sob. Sienkiewicz held him tightly. The people already standing at the shuttle point edged away.

  "But I never thought I would survive, Sie!" Kowacs blubbered. "I never thought I would!"

  "Easy, sir. We'll get you bunked down in a minute."

  Kowacs looked up, his red eyes meeting Sienkiewicz' concern. "And you know the funny thing, Sie," he said. "I don't think I did survive."

  "Easy. . . ."

  "Without weasels t' kill, I don't think there's any Nick Kowacs alive."

  SMASH AND GRAB

  A Story of The Fleet

  The receptionist facing Captain Kowacs wasn't armed, but there was enough weaponry built into her desk to stop a destroyer. Her face was neutral, composed. If she was supposed to do anything besides watch the Marine captain, she was fucking off.

  This was like going through a series of airlocks; but what was on the far end of these doors was a lot more dangerous than vacuum.

  The inner door opened to admit a guide/escort—Kowacs' third guide since hand-delivered orders jerked him out the barracks assigned to the 121st Marine Reaction Company.

  His company, his Headhunters. And would to God he was back with them now.

  "If you'll come this way, please, Captain Kowacs," said the guide.

  This one was a young human male, built like a weightlifter and probably trained as well as a man could be trained. Kowacs figured he could take the kid if it came to that . . . but only because training by itself wasn't enough against the instant ruthlessness you acquired if you survived your first month in a reaction company.

  Captain Miklos Kowacs had survived seven years. If that wasn't a record, it was damn close to one.

  Kowacs was stocky and powerful, with cold eyes and black hair that curled on the backs of his wrists and hands. The Fleet's reconstructive surgeons were artists, and they had a great deal of practice. Kowacs was without scars.

  On his body.

  "Turn left at the corridor, please, sir," said the escort. He was walking a pace behind and a pace to Kowacs' side. Like a well-trained dog . . . which was about half true: if the kid had been only muscle, he wouldn't have been here.

  Here was Building 93 of the Administration Annex, Fleet Headquarters, Port Tau Ceti. That was the only thing Kowacs knew for sure about the place.

  Except that he was sure he'd rather by anywhere else.

  Building 93 didn't house clerical overflow. The doors were like bank vaults; the electronic security system was up to the standards of the code section aboard a Command-and-Control vessel; the personnel were cool, competent, and as tight as Nick Kowacs' asshole during an insertion.

  "Here, please, sir," said the escort, stopping beside a blank door. He gestured. "This is as far as I go."

  Kowacs looked at him. He wouldn't mind seeing how the kid shaped up in the Headhunters. Good material, better than most of the replacements they got . . . and Marine Reaction Companies always needed replacements.

  He shivered. They'd needed replacements while there were Weasels to fight. Not any more.

  "Have a good life, kid," Kowacs said as the blue highlights in the doorpanel suddenly spelled special projects/teitelbaum with the three-stars-in-circle of a vice admiral.

  The door opened.

  Nick Kowacs was painfully aware that he was wearing the pair of worn fatigues he hadn't had time to change when the messenger rousted him; also that the best uniform he owned wasn't up to meeting a vice admiral. He grimaced, braced himself, and strode through the doorway.

  The door closed behind him. The man at the desk of the lushly-appointed office wore civilian clothes. He was in his mid-40s, bigger than Kowacs and in good physical shape.

  Kowacs recognized him. The man wasn't a vice admiral. His name was Grant, and he was much worse.

  I thought he was dead!

  The man behind the desk looked up from the hologram projector his blunt, powerful fingers toyed with.

  He grinned. "What's the matter, Kowacs?" he said. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

  Grant gestured. "Pull a chair closer and sit down," he said. He grinned again. There was no more humor in the expression the second time. "Hoped I was dead, huh?"

  Kowacs shrugged.

  The chair along the back wall had firm, user-accommodating cushions that would shape to his body without collapsing when he sat in them. The one Kowacs picked slid easily as his touch reversed magnets to repel a similar set in the floor.

  Keep cool, learn what hole you're in, and get the hell out.

  Nobody likes to talk to the Gestapo.

  Though if it came to that, reaction company Marines didn't have a lot of friends either.

  Assuming the office's owner was the vice admiral in the holographic portrait filling the back wall, Teitelbaum was a woman. In the present display, she wore a dress uniform and was posed against a galactic panorama, but there were probably other views loaded into the system: Teitelbaum and her family; Teitelbaum with political dignitaries; Teitelbaum as a young ensign performing heroically in combat.

  Special Projects.

  "You work for Admiral Teitelbaum, then?" Kowacs said as he seated himself carefully.

  "I'm borrowing her office," Grant said without apparent interest. He spun the desk projector so that the keyboard faced Kowacs, then tossed the Marine a holographic chip. "Go on," he ordered. "Play it."

  Kowacs inserted the chip into the reader. His face was blank, and his mind was almost empty. He hadn't really felt anything since the Weasels surrendered.

  The message was date-
slugged three days before, while the 121st was still on the way to Port Tau Ceti. An official head-and-shoulders view of Kowacs popped into the air beneath the date, then vanished into another burst of glowing letters:

  FROM: BUPERS/M32/110173/Sec21(Hum)/SPL

  TO: KOWACS, Miklos Alexievitch

  SUBJECT: Promotion to MAJOR

  Effective from this date. . . .

  Kowacs looked across the desk at the civilian. The air between them continued to spell out bureaucratese in green letters.

  Grant's face was too controlled to give any sign that he had expected the Marine to react visibly. "Here," he said. "These are on me."

  He tossed Kowacs a pair of major's collar tabs: hollow black triangles that would be filled for a lieutenant colonel. "Battledress style," Grant continued. "Since it doesn't seem that you have much use for dress uniforms."

  "I don't have much use for any uniforms," said Nick Kowacs as his tongue made the decision his mind had wavered over since the day he and his Headhunters had taken the surrender of the Khalian Grand Council. "I'm getting out."

  Grant laughed. "The hell you are, mister," he said. "You're too valuable to the war effort."

  The data chip was reporting Kowacs' service record to present. Part of the Marine's mind was amazed at the length of the listing of his awards and citations. He supposed he'd known about the decorations when he received them, but they really didn't matter.

  His family had mattered before the Khalians massacred them.

  And it mattered that the 121st Marine Reaction Company had cut the tails off more dead Weasels than any other unit of comparable size.

  "Fuck you," said Nick Kowacs distinctly. "The war's over."

  "Don't you believe it, mister," Grant replied. There was only the slightest narrowing of his cold blue eyes to indicate that he'd heard everything the Marine had said. "We've got a real enemy, now—the Syndicate. The humans who've been using the Weasels for their cannon fodder. The people behind the whole war."