Starfist: Hangfire (41 page)

He ran into the town square and stopped. There were lights on in the shops around the square, but not a soul was in evidence. The rain hissed down steadily. From behind him, up one of the narrow side streets, he heard the pounding of feet.

Where...? He looked around in despair. Then from straight ahead, across the square, he heard a tumult of voices coming down a street that led to a large building with a bell tower. The voices coalesced into a crowd of people. They were shouting something. The crowd poured into the square, about a hundred people, soaked to the skin, some drinking from bottles, all of them singing and shouting and dancing in the rain. They were carrying people on their shoulders.

Brock ran up behind Claypoole, breathing heavily. "What the—" Seconds later the rest of the assault party joined them. The twelve men stood in a tight formation, weapons ready, facing the crowd.

Abruptly, the rain stopped. There, in the front of the crowd, hoisted on the shoulders of several men, was—

"Olwyn!" Dean shouted. "Olwyn! It's Dean! It's Claypoole! We're here to rescue you!"

"Rescue him, hell! Where's Katie?" Claypoole yelled.

Utterly bedraggled from the rain, weak from torture and confinement but standing erect, Katie stepped out from the crowd. "Rock!" she shouted. The crowd broke into loud applause.

Claypoole started forward but Dean restrained him with a hand on his shoulder. "Better get rid of that," he said, gesturing at Claypoole's right side.

Claypoole looked down in surprise. He was still carrying the sword from the Coliseum! He grinned at Dean and threw the weapon onto the cobblestones.

Dean reached down and retrieved it. "Make a good souvenir." He looked up at Brock and grinned. "I guess we will dance at that dumb shit's wedding after all," he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Convocation of Ecumenical Leaders assembled in Mount Temple for its third consecutive day since the off-worlders of Interstellar City had analyzed their data and confessed they couldn't identify who the raiders were or where they came from. Bishop Ralphy Bruce Preachintent's hands were folded in front of his tie and shirt in the same manner he always folded them when he first faced the assembly. The tie was askew and a stain showed on the shirtfront. His iridescent lavender vestment, though fresh, was rumpled, as though he'd slept in it. His eyes, which normally glowed with the fervor of his calling, were sunken and distant.

The heretics who sporadically rebelled in outlying areas had never been more than a minor nuisance to Bishop Ralphy Bruce. He'd never even thought of the more serious heretical rebellions, which occurred about once a generation, to be any true threat to the theocratic rulers of the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles. Not even on those few occasions when the aid of the Confederation had been called upon to put down a rebellion had the theocracy been truly in jeopardy of overthrow.

As the current chairman of the convocation, he'd just been to Interstellar City for a more detailed briefing on what the off-worlders had found than the one they'd given to Metropolitan Eleison and his delegation. What he'd seen on the monitors had horrified him. That the off-worlders couldn't identify the shuttles or ground vehicles terrified him. The possibility that the strange-looking creatures in the vehicles might not be of this flesh nearly traumatized him. He'd raised no objections when the ambassador told him he'd ordered a violation of the treaty, that he had the entire planet under close surveillance to find where the shuttles came from; instead, he'd agreed to it.

In a different time and place Bishop Ralphy Bruce would have been solidly in control. But right here and now, he was in way over his head—and he knew it.

"My friends..." he said, his voice strained to keep it from cracking. Today he was unable to speak in the sacred cadences of the saver-of-souls, much less dance the holy choreography. "I have just come from Interstellar City. They told me everything they know, showed me all the evidence they have. It is most..." What word should he use to describe his reaction? Terrifying? Horrifying? Neither felt as soul-wrenching as the blow he had felt when he realized what he most probably was looking at. "...most disquieting." The word was thoroughly inadequate, but the somber expression on the faces of the leaders who watched him so closely assured him he touched them in a soul-felt place.

"It was with great pain that I authorized—" He couldn't keep his voice from cracking on the word.

"—planetwide surveillance in order for them to locate the, uh, unholy raiders." How unholy, he didn't say.

He'd promised Creadence he wouldn't divulge what they all suspected about the nature of the raiders.

Surprisingly, his revelation of the unprecedented surveillance raised no more than a few muted murmurs of protest. Encouraged by that, he continued with somewhat more strength in his voice, "It is my exceedingly strong belief that this extraordinary step was necessary in order to protect the faithful from these—these visitors from somewhere else. The off-world unbelievers also feel threatened by them. They will give us the information we need for the Army of the Lord to root them out, or they will call for assistance from the Confederation of Human Worlds if we cannot do it ourselves. Ambassador Creadence gave me his most solemn word on this. Unbeliever though he is, I trust his word on this matter.

"Yes, brother," he said as Ayatollah Fatamid slowly rose to his feet. "Do you wish to give testimony?"

The aged cleric stared silently at Bishop Ralphy Bruce for so long, only the harshness of his look showed he was aware of where he was.

"Ralphy Bruce," he finally said in his quavery, old man's voice, "I have sometimes suspected your heart might harbor thoughts and ideas that run counter to the precepts upon which the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles was founded. If you are wrong in this deep belief about the truth of the off-worlders, you will regret the day you chose to betray us in favor of the infidel!" The silence as he resumed his seat was palpable. Never in the memory of any member of the convocation had one of them made so thinly veiled an accusation against another, nor so serious a threat.

"You are righteous in what you say, brother," Bishop Ralphy Bruce said so softly his voice barely carried to the far end of the sanctuary. "But I am equally righteous in my belief in the depth of the threat we face and the earnestness of the off-world unbelievers when they say they will give us all the aid possible in defense against it."

Someone in the room applauded. A few cheered.

"BRETHREN!" The reaction of the few to his response to Ayatollah Fatamid so encouraged him that Bishop Ralphy Bruce suddenly felt the strength to sing the sacred cadences. "When they toil for the sake of HIM and his faithful, THE LORD will give strength even unto UNBELIEVERS!" His shoulders pulled back and he stood straight, his arms flung toward heaven. "Even as OUR LORD," he dropped his eyes to Ayatollah Fatamid, "or Prophet, as some call him, washed the FEET of the sinners, so may we TREAT with the unbelievers when it is in HIS cause! Let us pray!"

Four divisions quietly moved into place to encircle the swamp lands below the Mountains of Abraham.

Twenty-four squadrons of Avenging Angels assembled at three widely spaced and hastily built airfields a hundred kilometers from the swamps. The raiders had obliterated another remote village—and laid waste to a small Army of the Lord patrol base since Bishop Ralphy Bruce Preachintent gave his after-the-fact approval of the planetwide surveillance. The surveillance paid off. Following each of the raids, the vanished shuttles had reappeared low in the air above the swampland below the Mountains of Abraham and disappeared into them.

Nobody had any idea how large the off-world unbeliever force was, but except for the first raid—the one on Eighth Shrine, where no one could know how many there had been—there were no reports of more than three shuttles and twelve of the small, nimble AFVs in any one raid. The markings on the shuttles seen in the surveillance images were identical in each raid, which strongly suggested they might represent most or, with the Lord's blessing, all of the force the enemy had. If that intelligence was correct, the Army of the Lord was sending one regiment of infantry or light armor plus one squadron of attack aircraft against each of the twelve AFVs.

It was a ratio Archdeacon General Lambsblood found comforting. He'd seen the devastation wrought by the offworld raiders and wasn't in the least sanguine about their destructive power. Only a fool, he believed, would go up against them with anything less than absolutely overwhelming numbers and strength. Even with the odds so greatly in favor of the Army of the Lord forces under his command, he expected heavy casualties.

Every hovercraft and water-skimmer on the planet was commandeered for the operation. There weren't enough, so the Army of the Lord borrowed more from Interstellar City. There still were too few.

Chief Administrator Creadence used his authority to have the
CNSS Douglas County
, then in orbit around Kingdom, lend its six Essays and twelve Dragons to the operation. He was so wrapped up with watching the coming operation unfold it didn't occur to him to wonder why an old troop ship was plying the spaceways without a load of combat-ready Marines.

As well-equipped as they could get with vehicles capable of negotiating the swamp, the four divisions split into their regiments, the infantry regiments into battalions, and slithered into the miasmatic morass.

The light armor regiments sent their vehicles as deep into the swamp as they could find ground solid enough to support their weight. A hundred kilometers away, twenty squadrons of Avenging Angels rose into the air and halved the distance from their bases to the swamp, where they orbited in holding patterns.

If needed—the pilots kept hoping "when" they were needed—they were mere minutes away from striking.

Hours went by, then half a day, with neither contact nor sign of any life not indigenous to the swamp.

Then one of the regiments lost contact with one of its battalions. Scouts sent frantically to its location found a surprising and horrible sight: swamp scavengers and opportunists writhing in agony as acid ate away their bodies from the inside out. Of the missing five hundred soldiers, all they found were a few weapons and acid-scarred scraps of uniform cloth.

Archdeacon General Lambsblood knew what must have happened. The unbelievers had weapons that acted silently, and they had attacked so quickly the Soldiers of the Lord hadn't had time to fire their own weapons before they were killed or captured. The swamp scavengers and opportunists devoured the remains of some before the acid of the enemy weapons dissipated. The remains of others sunk into the murky waters or were sucked into the mud and quicksand. Many, perhaps most, of their weapons went the same way.

Archdeacon General Lambsblood was glad his battalions were converging. The closer they were to each other, the less chance another could be attacked without the next one knowing in time to counterattack.

Fifty kilometers away the Avenging Angel pilots chaffed. They had been orbiting for hours and had grown impatient for targets to attack.

By then the four divisions, less one battalion, had penetrated three-quarters of the way to the heart of the swamp.

"What's that?" Soldier Augustian asked in a panicky voice.

"Where?" Sword Lutherson demanded. His eyes scanned the foliage, his hands keeping his flechette rifle pointed where he scanned. His squad occupied the rear half of the skimmer.

"In the water. I saw something, maybe a man swimming under the surface."

Sword Lutherson looked at the water, his hands automatically shifting his rifle's aim. The water was murky, as though tainted with the devil's own urine. It certainly smelled thus to Lutherson.

"Nothing's there. Your fear is making you see things. Nothing but the vile beasts of the swamp can be in that water."

"But, Sword, I swear I saw a man under there."

Sword Lutherson snorted and returned his attention to the foliage that edged and overlapped the waterway their skimmer floated along, foliage that appeared to rot even as it grew. He did his best to ignore the insects that buzzed about his ears and crawled on his flesh. The rank vegetation grew dense in that part of the swamp and sight lines were short. Twenty meters ahead of the skimmer he saw a hovercraft following a bend in the channel. Another skimmer was barely visible through the foliage an equal distance to the rear.

Something thunked the skimmer's bottom. It jolted.

"Watch where you're going!" Lutherson shouted at the boatman operating the skimmer. "You'll run us aground."

The boatman didn't bother to reply. His wide eyes probed the waters to the front and sides of the skimmer. He didn't know what it was that hit his skimmer, but he hadn't run it aground or hit a sunken log, of that he was positive.

There was another thunk against the bottom of the skimmer's hull.

Seconds later a soldier fired off a burst from his rifle into the water abeam of the skimmer.

Lutherson open-handed him across the back of his head, hard.

"Stop that! Don't fire unless you have a real target. You'll give us away if anyone is close enough to hear. And don't waste your ammunition on the water, the flechettes lose their energy within inches. Even if there was something to shoot at, you wouldn't hit it underwa—"

A dual explosion tore the skimmer in two.

The nearest soldiers were shredded by shards of shattered hull. Those near them screamed as splinters tore into their flesh. Uninjured soldiers yelled at each other as they fell into the vile water and grappled for something that would keep them afloat. Some of them retained enough of their senses to reach for wounded comrades to pull them to safety, but hardly any thought to look for an enemy to fight. And none of them looked far enough into the distance to see that the hovercraft before them was also broken, as was the skimmer to their rear.

So hardly any of the soldiers saw the things that looked like deformed men rise, dripping, from the water and aim hoses in their direction. Those few who got off quick bursts riddled two or three of the horrid apparitions before the viscous green fluid coated their flesh and sent them into the agonies of the damned.