Gestapo Mars

by Victor Gischler

  Somewhere in a cell, a woman was being kept prisoner for no other reason than the accident of her birth. I moved toward the submarine pens, then stopped. My conscience kept tugging me in the other direction. I remembered the clean, simple sense of satisfaction knowing I’d helped Max and his family escape. It was something I’d done, not because of orders or because I was compelled by programming, but simply because I’d understood in some basic way that it was the right thing to do.

  I also had the gut feeling that every second was precious. Detouring to find a woman I’d never met, who might not even be there, was a bad bet. I couldn’t waste a minute if I wanted to save my own hide. The only smart thing to do was head for the submarines as quickly as possible.

  I turned back toward the detention center.

  Fast-walking, I passed a number of doors on the way. I remembered Turner telling me the whole place was basically automated, so with luck I wouldn’t run into anyone at all. Then I rounded the corner and saw a man sitting behind a counter. Behind him stood a doorway with the words DETENTION CENTER on a sign. I approached slowly.

  Smiling.

  Everything normal.

  He stood slowly, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Sir? I’m not sure you’re supposed to be down here.”

  “I’m the new guy Mueller brought in,” I said. “He told me I could get a look at the prisoner.”

  The guard frowned. “Nobody told me. I’ll need to check. Do you have identification?”

  “Of course.” I reached back like I was going for my wallet. Instead, I unclipped the beamer from my belt and brought it around, thumb hovering over the trigger.

  He must have recognized it, because his eyes went big.

  “Take me back there,” I said. “To the girl. No alarms. No heroics. Right?”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  He led me down the main hallway, lined by white doors with little windows and a keypad on the wall next to each one. He took me all the way to the door at the end.

  I pointed the beamer at him. “Step back.”

  He stepped back.

  I sidled up to the window and looked into the cell.

  Antiseptic white, harsh fluorescent lighting. A small figure lay curled on a cot against the far wall, her back to us. White shorts, T-shirt, and deck shoes. A black braid hung down over the side of the cot. It was nowhere near as long as the clone’s exaggerated hair.

  I looked back at the guard. “Open it.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “It takes an override from Mueller.”

  “Okay. Put yourself in that other cell over there.”

  He did, and closed the door behind him. I pressed LOCK on the keypad and the indicator light blinked from green to red. Then I went to the girl’s cell and aimed the beamer at the lock. I thumbed the trigger and the red beam began cutting. Where it hit, it sparked, smoked, and popped.

  I drained nearly half the charge, but the door finally popped open.

  An alarm sounded. Red lights blinked.

  If I was in a hurry before, I was twice in a hurry now.

  I pulled the door open.

  She’d backed herself into a corner, eyes big and afraid, one arm up out of reflex to fend off whatever was coming. She had the same olive skin and Eurasian features as the clones, her long hair braided tightly in the back, but these attributes were no longer mesmerizing. She wasn’t putting out the vibe of a goddess. She was just a simple pretty girl, and very afraid.

  I clipped the beamer back on my belt, held up my hands, palms out.

  “Easy.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Carter Sloan. You don’t know me, but I can take you away from this place.”

  Distrust flashed in her eyes, and I wondered how long she’d been here, what they’d done to her.

  “The alarm is sounding, and I don’t have time to force the issue,” I told her. “I’m not going to drag you kicking and screaming—we’d never make it. We might not anyway. Your choices are to come with me or stay here, but I’ve got to know right now.”

  A second of thought, then she nodded quickly.

  “Great. Follow me.”

  We raced from the detention center. I glanced back only once to make sure she was still there. She stayed on my heels, some of the fear on her face replaced by determination.

  “What’s your name,” I shouted back.

  “Cindy,” she responded. “Where are we going?”

  “The submarine pen.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m following the signs.”

  “This rescue seems a little… improvised,” she said.

  “It was a late addition to my itinerary,” I admitted. We came to a metal hatch with an iron wheel in the middle. There was a sign next to the hatch.

  SEA LEVEL MONITORED WITHIN.

  DO NOT OPEN HATCH IF LIGHT IS RED.

  The light was green.

  I twisted the wheel and swung the hatch open. We rushed inside. I swung the pistol around, looking for somebody to shoot.

  The walkways were barely six inches above the water. My guess was that tides played hell with the water level. The place smelled like sea salt. There were four lanes, three with sizable submarines in them and the last with a much smaller submersible. A gigantic steel door—which I presumed led to the sea—was closed.

  A man in a Dragon Nazi uniform appeared atop one of the submarine conning towers. He looked down at me and frowned.

  “Sir, are you supposed to be here?”

  I shot him through the left cheek. He screamed and tumbled off the conning tower into the water.

  The pistol’s thunder made Cindy scream, too. “What are you doing?”

  “Shooting Dragon Nazi motherfuckers,” I said, “and stealing a submarine.”

  Another guard appeared, looking aghast.

  “Oh, my God! What did you do that for?”

  “Burn in hell.” I squeezed the trigger three times, and he went down in a shower of blood.

  “Stop that!” Cindy shouted.

  “Just shut up and be rescued.”

  I ran toward the smaller submersible, assuming she would follow. Another uniformed Dragon Nazi leapt in front of me to bar my way.

  “Sir, calm down, I don’t think—”

  “Eat lead, fascist!” I gunned him down where he stood.

  Another opponent rose to take his place.

  “Sir, this is a restricted area. Please stop—”

  I gunned him in the belly. He curled into a ball as he fell, mewling for mommy.

  Cindy screamed again.

  “Oh, my God, Arnold!” Another Dragon Nazi ran toward his fallen comrade. “Somebody get the first aid—”

  The pistol bucked in my hand. Bullets flew. Flesh shredded. He died down in the everbearing roses.

  I felt Cindy’s hand on my arm, tugging urgently.

  “Stop it,” she pleaded. “What are you doing? Stop it!”

  I spun, fixed her with a hard look. “What do you think this is? Do you think this happens clean? That we sneak out of here and laugh about it over champagne? These people killed the entire planet.” I grabbed her by the hand, held on tight. “Hang on or by God, I’ll drag you out of here.”

  We ran together, leaping over the corpses of the Dragon Nazis. She almost stumbled, then regained her balance. The alarm blared and the red light blinked and reflected off of the water. We passed the big submarines and kept going. I pulled her along frantically, sure that armed men would arrive to bar our escape. I expected a bullet in my back any second.

  We sped across the gangplank to the small submersible and climbed through the hatch. I slammed it shut behind us. We scurried forward and took the two seats in front of the big bubble window. I scanned the submersible’s controls, began to flip the switches for the startup routine. Another switch, and the big doors to the pen began to slide open ahead of us.

  “What are you doing?” Cindy asked breathlessly. “Ca
n you pilot one of these things?”

  I chuckled. “Madam, I am a Reich spy of the highest caliber, trained to operate anything that flies, rolls, or floats. My observational and intuitive skills allow me to deduce the operation of this submersible in a matter of minutes. We’ll be underway in no time. No problem.”

  Approximately ninety seconds after that, I wrecked the submarine.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Wrecking the submarine wasn’t entirely my fault. We’d just cleared the submarine pen when they launched the depth charges. Instantly leaks began spraying everywhere.

  We surfaced about forty yards offshore, threw open the top hatch and left the submersible behind. It was still taking on water as we waded ashore, the surf crashing on our backs.

  “We’ve got to head inland and hide,” I said. “They’ll be on us any minute.”

  Cindy threw herself down on the sand, coughing up seawater. “Just… I need a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute. Come on!” I grabbed her under one arm and dragged her to her feet, then dove into the tree line, pulling her after me. Thirty yards in and we hit the swamp, sinking knee deep into brackish water, the mud below sucking at our feet. It was slow going, but I kept urging her to keep up.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “We’re just trying to put some distance between us and them.”

  “Are there things in this swamp?” she asked. “I mean… like animals? Like snakes?”

  “Lady, I know jack shit about this planet and its local plant and animal life, but I know what a 12mm round with an exploding tip can do to human flesh, so keep running.”

  We forced our way through a line of shrubs with long, razor-edged leaves. When we came out on the other side, Cindy had a dozen shallow red streaks across her bare legs and arms. A cloud of biting flies attacked us a little while after that, and before long we found ourselves chest deep in dirty water.

  “This is impossible.” She sounded wiped out, like she wanted to give up. “We’ll never make it.”

  I turned, took her by the shoulders, looked straight into her eyes, so wide and vulnerable.

  “We don’t know anything about this swamp except that it’s big, and I’m not exactly sure where we are. We might be hopelessly lost, or we could come out on the other side any minute. If we can find the beach on the other side there might be a boat. We don’t know, but we’ll never know if we just quit. If you fall over dead, then you’ll have my permission to quit, but while you’ve got breath in your body then you’ll keep moving. You hear me?”

  Something rallied, her expression hardening. Maybe it was because she’d been a prisoner before, and now she saw her chance to be free. Whatever the reason, she was ready.

  “Okay.”

  We slogged through until the swamp sludge was only over our ankles and we could move faster. Then I stopped abruptly, held up a hand for silence. An electronic whine came to us through the swamp, getting closer. I drew one of the pistols and thumbed off the safety. Cindy looked at me, brow furrowed.

  I put a finger to my lips.

  A second later, the sniffer emerged from beneath the low hanging branches of a mossy tree. It floated in the air, a shiny metallic sphere the size of a volleyball. It rotated toward us, its single cycloptic camera lens focusing on us.

  I lifted the pistol and fired, the racket sending a flock of swamp birds into the air. The sniffer sparked and smoked where I’d hit it, sputtered, and dropped with a plop into the swamp water.

  Cindy had latched onto my arm.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Sniffer. Tracking us from our DNA trace.”

  “Did it see us?”

  “Without a doubt,” I said. “They’ll know exactly where we are. We’ve got to move. Fast.”

  We tripped and stumbled on through the swamp, filthy and wet. It seemed to go on forever. Cindy would have dropped in her tracks if I wasn’t pulling her along.

  Then I heard them. I looked back and saw the uniforms through the foliage. They were gaining. I fired at them until the magazine was empty. A body fell, but another half dozen came into view.

  I reloaded. Fired again.

  A smattering of return fire. Nothing earnest. Another squad of them were coming up on our left flank, and we altered course away from them. I realized too late what was happening.

  They were herding us. I couldn’t guess what might be ahead, but wanted no part of it and began calculating a new course that would take us out of the swamp, but away from whatever trap they were setting.

  Except I was too late.

  We burst into a small clearing, and they were waiting. Three of them in bulky power armor. Whoever had modified the armor for the swamp had done a good job. There was a layer of rubber over everything to ward off the moisture. Even more impressive was the stilt modification to facilitate maneuvering through deep water. The men in the armor took long, loping steps and towered ten feet over us.

  I pulled both 12mm automatics and blasted away, but the shots sparked and ricocheted off the armor. Hands shot out, the arms extending their reach to grab us. Metal tentacles wrapped around Cindy and she screamed. I fired until I’d emptied both pistols. No effect. The other two armored stilt men grabbed for me. I ducked and rolled through the mud, came up with the beamer, looking for a weak spot. I would have paid top dollar for a shoulder missile.

  I fired the beamer at a seam between the shoulder and arm. It flared bright as the metal heated, but otherwise had no effect.

  The metallic arms extended, coming right for me.

  More Dragon Nazi troops entered the clearing from all sides.

  Nowhere to run.

  An enormous scaled head dipped down into the clearing, jaws wide, gigantic fangs gleaming with saliva. It clamped tight onto the torso of an armored man, sparks flying as the monster’s teeth penetrated armor. There were screams and static as the giant reptile shook the man and then finally flung him dying into the muck.

  Two more reptiles rumbled into the clearing, each step shaking the ground. Three of them. A dozen feet high at the hip, looking like tyrannosaurs. A black-clad man with a swastika on his back clung to a saddle on the back of each lizard, reins clutched in one fist, the other hand holding a ten-foot shock lance.

  The remaining two men in stilt armor turned away from Cindy to face the newcomers. Shoulder-mounted mini-guns spun into action, spitting fire and peppering the monsters. They roared fury, jaws clamping and sinking into the armor as if it were aluminum foil. They tore the stilt men apart, pieces of them splashing into the swamp.

  The other Dragon Nazi soldiers opened fire. One of the huge lizards swung a tail. It slammed into a half dozen soldiers, knocking them back twenty feet, the sounds of screams and snapping bones filling the clearing.

  I grabbed Cindy, pulled her out of the way as another lizard chased the remaining soldiers back into the swamp, the creature’s roar drowning out every other sound. One of the riders reined in his ride next to us. He removed his helmet and looked down at me and Cindy from his perch.

  “Captain Harold Prince of the Eight-Oh-First Mobile T-Rex Troopers, sir. Are you Carter Sloan?”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw more of the huge beasts moving into the swamp, mopping up what was left of the Dragon Nazis.

  I looked at Captain Prince, eyebrow raised.

  “T-Rex troopers?”

  “Yes, sir,” Prince said. “Bio-engineered from authentic DNA and bred to be domesticated. Much better for terrain like this than mechanized vehicles.” He twisted in the saddle and pointed behind him. “Sir, if you go two minutes in that direction, you’ll hit the beach. We have a landing platform a thousand yards offshore. It was the only way we could get in under the laser matrix. A boat will take you out to the platform and a shuttle up to the Pride of Nuremberg which is waiting in orbit.”

  I pulled Cindy close to me. “Captain, this woman is important. She has to come with me.”

  “Unde
rstood, sir. Please proceed to the beach.”

  The roar of the T-Rexes mixed with the screams of the dying Dragon Nazis. We turned and ran, hope and relief giving new energy to our tired legs.

  The swamp opened into a wide beach, and two men in Reich uniforms waved us toward a small hovercraft. I glanced down the beach and saw another squad of T-Rexes wading ashore. My guess was that they intended to make short work of the Dragon Nazi installation. Whatever defenses Mueller and his pals might be able to mount, I doubted they’d stand up long to enraged dinosaurs. No more clones, or sex parties, or hallucinogenic bubblegum.

  A part of me will miss that, I thought wistfully.

  * * *

  The hovercraft carried us across to the gigantic landing platform. It bobbed gently on the calm sea. The platform rested on several dozen rows of inflatable durafiber tubes, each three stories high. The hovercraft took us around to where an elevator took us topside.

  A shuttle was just lifting off as another approached to land. A man with sergeant stripes on his uniform had to shout over the engine noise.

  “This is your transport, sir. It’ll take you to orbit.”

  “Thanks,” I shouted back.

  Cindy and I boarded and strapped ourselves into adjacent acceleration couches. Ten seconds later, we launched, the thrust pushing us back into our seats. We reached orbit, and there was an odd moment of weightlessness until the artificial gravity kicked in.

  A woman in an officer’s uniform came back from the cockpit to check on us.

  “The planetary assault frigate Pride of Nuremberg has orders to take you to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet, Agent Sloan.” She handed us two plastic bottles. “In the meantime, you might need to rehydrate.”

  “Fleet?”

  “What the admiral could gather from the outer planets,” she said. “The rebellion is over. Now we’re putting everything we have into a counteroffensive. One final battle.”

  “Where’s the fight?” I asked.

  “Mars,” she said. “I’ve got to get back up front and fly this crate. You guys just sit tight and relax.”

  We were both filthy and exhausted. We cracked open the plastic bottles and drank greedily. Some sort of electrolyte-enhanced mix with a slight lemon flavor. Cindy finished her drink and smacked her lips, then leaned her head on my shoulder, unable to keep her eyes open.