Wine of the Gods 26: Embassy (17 page)

"Right. Like every criminal, they got careless. Two of the cameras worked intermittently, and occasionally were pointed in the right direction." Captain Christopher Hanger glanced over at the Chief of Police. "The pictures are quite obscene, and are going to have to never be publicized. That's one reason I wanted to speak to a very small group, first. Here are some that I've pulled out, which make the situation clear. Mrs. Deveneau, here being raped by three different men. Then she was placed on the couch, and Mr. Kelso, equally unconscious, is being placed in a compromising position on the woman. The camera is swinging around here, I've cut out the blank time, now we've got other men with other women. They can't make up their minds whether to have the women being naughty to each other, and after another swing of the camera, we can see that they dragged over some men to make a circle of it."

The room was hushed, in astonished horror. "Again, just out the reach of the camera, something going on. Two more new faces dragging men over, no doubt for another set piece."

Hanger cued his comp. "The other camera that was semi functional is even more interesting. As you see, it caught eleven men and ten women walking into this room. And not coming out. I went back to the Senator's mansion and took a forensic team with me. They've got every fingerprint, ever hair dropped, and I spotted something odd on one wall. I want a full up terrorist hunting team to check it out."

"Check what out?"

"I'm not sure, and no doubt I'll feel like an idiot and start seeing UFOs any day now. But I think we've got a secret entrance, and I want to do it right."

"You didn't look?"

"I hate that sort of book, where the chump goes through for a quick look before telling anyone something weird is going on. Seems like he never gets back to raise the alarm. I decided to be the other kind of idiot, and make myself look like an over-reacting head case."

"All right. God knows I'll take anything that gets this solved as quickly as possible." The Chief shook his head. "Do you realize I'm going to have to show that obscene film to some of the victims? I really can't charge the unconscious men with rape after seeing that."

"No, sir. So if you could authorize a team?"

"You've got it. Good grief. What an obscene mess. Why couldn't they have just snatched the jewels?"

They all nodded.

Michaels looked at the comp. "We may be able to match DNA to faces, if we have enough footage to at least guess who raped whom."

The team was pulled together quickly. Hard ass door breakers in bullet proof armor, riot guns designed for maximum close up damage, and minimal wall penetration. They had laser pistol backups and lexor shields. Captain Hanger felt undressed with only a helmet and a vest over his usual shirt. He felt self conscious with just his service pistol. He led the way inside the room, and looked again at the innocuous line down the plastered wall. "Here's hoping I don't wind up in the funny farm." He looked over at the puzzled cops. "Right here. Heads up." He pulled on the crack, this time not the centimeters he'd peeked through before, but a good meter wide. He stepped back and pulled it further.

"Go!" The team leader sounded surprised as he led the way through. They all charged through, and Hanger grabbed a chair and jammed it in the secret door as he clambered through.

For a second he thought he'd just stepped into the next room, but this room's windows were over there, about where he'd expect the middle of the hallway, and to the other side the premises obviously extended beyond the extent of the senator's mansion.

"Oh God, I think being wrong would have been a lot simpler." He heard the riot guns firing, somewhere not very close, and ran toward the sounds. No more firing, lots of cussing.

"God, damn it all!" The team leader hit the wall with a chair, then turned to look for something heavier. He glared at Hanger. "They ran through a hole in the wall, and it closed up behind them. Can you open it?"

"Push and pull, sideways and up and down." Hanger joined them all in doing so, looking for a line and seeing nothing.

"Well, on the crass assumption that they went the direction we think they went, let's look around the . . . house." He noted the blood stains on a chair, the wall. "They'll be slowed, taking their dead and wounded with them."

They searched and found no holes in any walls, nor any bodies, live or dead.

The house, mansion really, was in an exclusive neighborhood in upstate New York. Hanger's secret door turned a step into a five hundred mile journey. They failed to locate the owner, a moderately wealthy, four times divorced and childless man of sixty-nine, Charles Duchene.

The Feds took over shortly thereafter and they were all informed of the new Top Secret classification and the penalties for talking.

"Assuming any paper but the Midnight Sun would believe a word you said." The Fed closed his briefcase on their signed acknowledgments.

The Chief snorted. "Them least of all. They know it's all tripe, because they manufacture it wholesale."

The Chief had a brief press meeting. "The few cameras that were only damaged, and managed some recordings show the robbers playing games, pulling the unconscious victims into compromising positions. Any rapes—and there were some—were by the robbery gang, not the unconscious party guests. Here are pictures of the people we are interested in. Anyone who knows, recognizes, or may have seen these men, call this toll free number."

The Press got five pictures. The rest the Feds were keeping close. The forensic evidence all disappeared into the Fed's black hole.

"The Feds took all the DNA evidence." Lieutenant Lancing, now a detective instead of a SWAT team leader scowled. "They'll never tell us if they were space aliens."

"Not aliens, not in the space sense," Masters from forensics, like the rest of them, had only memories, no samples or results of tests had been left after the feds had swept through. "There were some rare genes, probably even some new ones, but they were human. I think we're looking at parallel worlds. Humans but, maybe a bit different. Wolves to our dogs. Fully interbreedable."

"Genetically engineered super soldiers, escaped and rampaging through the universe." Lancing flashed a grin.

"Probably never know." Hanger was glum. "And I obviously need to read more science fiction, to keep up on what I'll be facing on the street, next."

The small circle of people who had been there started silently pointing out articles about multiple dimensions to each other as the subject first started appearing in obscure magazines, and then started getting mentions in the popular press. They were not surprised when the Government publicly announced a serious, and expensive, attempt to find another 'membrane' across some much argued number of dimensions.

Captain Karl Mantigo didn't like his orders, but there they were in black and white. "What's one more step down the road to hell when you're three-fourths corrupted already?" And insane to boot, talking to himself. But this time he couldn't see any way out. He was going to kill innocent people.

No. Not innocent. These people probably killed all of our people who were stranded there. Other poor fools like me, too far down the road to even notice that whipping workers wasn't right. That killing the useless or rebellious was cold blooded murder. What a fucking mess. And I'm fucked right along with everyone else.

Lieutenants Chang and Larue were swapping uneasy looks. "Sir?"

"We are going to set an example. As you know the Hard Times Trading company, negotiating for twenty-eight Worlds that by right-of-discovery belong to Earth, is holding out for ridiculous wages and benefits. So we are going to go and shoot up one of the larger Worlds and give the rest something to think about."

"They don't mean, shoot civilians, do they?" Larue eyed the orders.

"They say to destroy infrastructure, avoiding casualties if possible while successfully completing the mission. Part of the problem is these new gates. The mining companies want to increase production since they can ship the ore home so cheaply. And sending in the army to fix their strike is cheap now, too. Six months ago the Earth was constrained by our own gates. Now, suddenly it's cheap to throw our weight around."

Chang looked a bit pale. "In other words, knock down the buildings. And if they weren't evacuated fast enough, too bad."

"With enough weasel words that they can hang us instead of them, if the Almighty Comet Fall finds out about it." Larue was much paler than anyone with his complexion ought to be able to achieve.

Mantigo nodded. "Exactly. We are waging war on civilians. So we will go slow, and we will give them lots and lots of time to evac. Got it?"

"Can they shoot back?" Chang was leaning away in unconscious rejection of the orders.

"They have plenty of mining explosives. Left there when the gates were closed. If they have anticipated an attack, we could be in trouble."

"What forces are they committing to this?" Larue was retreating into mechanical details.

"You will each have ten TCV's, rigged with the 105mm cannons and the 50mm machine guns. One squad each."

"So, twenty tracks, almost two hundred infantry. Christ. You know half the troops have been raised to think of the natives as subhuman. There is going to be a slaughter."

Mantigo nodded. "I will be in command of the tracks, Captain Ghadir is leading the infantry."

"Karl, I can't do this. You know what it is going to turn into." Chang was pale and sweating.

"You have four hours to make yourself so sick I have to put Jensik in your slot."

Chang closed his eyes in pain. "He's an innocent baby. You can't do this."

"I can do it as . . . properly as possible, so long as I have officers who are determined to do likewise. I'm not asking you to commit suicide. There will be resistance, and we will shoot back. But I want these buildings evac'ed before we level them. And I need you two to keep your drivers and shooters under control, no matter what the infantry is doing." He looked down at his hands. "It may be politic to . . . block the infantry. If they get over excited."
Maybe my soul is not dead after all. Pity about the state of my ass, after this . . . illegal attack on a civilian population.

Both the Lieutenants were nodding.

"I'm counting on you to not be a part of the problem, to de-escalate, to . . . Hell. Do whatever we have to do to keep this from turning into an atrocity, while hopefully knocking down buildings." They both nodded. "All right. Here is the map of the town around the gate. Our orders are to clear a hundred meter perimeter around the gate. We will drive through, spread out around the gate and the infantry will dismount in riot control mode. We will be broadcasting our intentions to demolish buildings. We will fire war-game paint shells at every building we will be demolishing, and give them half an hour to vacate the premises. We will then demolish the buildings. That is the preliminary plan. At nineteen hundred we'll be meeting in AST 15 for a final briefing. You have three and a half hours to get your twenty tracks and crews ready to deploy at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. Best get to it."

Not enough lead time. Typical snap political decision. Or maybe they don't want the troops to have enough time to think about the consequences.

The first thing that went wrong was the girl.

Captain Mantigo was in the third track. Mainly because he refused to ride with Ghadir in the first vehicle.

The girl popped out of nowhere, head swiveling as she took everything in. "What is going on here?" Not that he heard her, but she looked pissed and her mouth was moving. Grey slacks, open grey jacket over a black shirt. Disco.

They weren't scheduled to install any gates today. That's why we're going today.

The gate guards ran toward her, arms at ready. Then his track slid through the gate and he was back in the mission. At this point he was just keeping his mouth shut, letting the drivers get to their assigned positions.

"Geeze, the gate girl followed us through!" The top gun shouldn't have been looking back at the gate, and neither should Mantigo.

He did anyway, and saw the woman sit down on the ground cross-legged beside and a bit behind the gate.
Peaceful resistance? It'll get her killed in this mess.

He looked around and spotted the natives, scrambling for cover, or perhaps scrambling for weapons. There was a flat crack of an old chemical propellant gun and the bullet pinged off armor. It was going to be ugly from the first. He scanned for the shooter, or other threats, and was looking right at the gate when it ceased to show the next track in line and started showing blackness and flashes of electric blue.

"Oh shit." A quick count showed six tracks. Fifty-four troops and their officers, and no retreat. He switched to the command channel. "Captain Ghadir! Look at the gate. We appear to be cut off with only six tracks. I advise against starting any hostilities."

And unfortunately he outranks me and is officially in charge of this operation.

Track one had split right but hadn't yet passed around behind the gate. Could Ghadir see how abnormal it was? "What the hell are you talking . . . well, that's very odd, but not necessarily a sign of our being cut off." Ghadir's voice gained confidence. "Those Fallen are well known to use illusions." He must have pulled the mike away from his vocal cords. What he said next was indistinct, but apparently an order to the top gunner. The machine gun turret turned toward the girl.

The gate flashed blue and then opened to a large plaza with a fountain in the center, some distance away. The girl was standing up as the machine gun opened fire. The impact rolled her across the ground, but rather than the bloody mass he expected, she looked quite intact. The machine gun fire was ricocheting upwards, bouncing off a shield of some sort. The girl stayed flat on the ground, one hand out as if warding off the bullets.
No 'as if', she bloody well is.

"Fire on her from your side, Mantigo!"

"She's not shooting back. I suggest we capture her. The High Command is always talking about how much they want the Fallen's gate secrets."

Ghadir took in an audible breath at his flat ignoring orders, then the mike cut out again. The back egress ramps dropped suddenly in all tracks and the infantry charged out.

Under the racket of the machine guns, he hadn't realized that the natives had been shooting, but a man spun around and dropped, one hand clutching his side. His teammates turned and started shooting back. The first track's machine gun fell silent and the girl rolled to her feet and ran toward the troops. Maybe she was armed . . . Men collapsed and thrashed.

"Mike, stop the girl."

He looked the other way. Shooters in windows, women and children fleeing. Machine guns opened fire and the shooters fell silent. There were some armed men on the ground, running through the refugees, heading for the fight. Track one's machine gun opened up again and men, women and children fell. His own gunner's machine gun fell silent, and he swiveled to see the results. The girl was down, red blossoming across her chest.

"I think I got a ricochet off the ground through to her." Mike sounded sick. "She wouldn't be getting up like that, with a direct hit."

Judging by the amount of blood, she wouldn't be up for long. There were goats running across the battleground, dragging the troops gear. Bullets from handguns bounced off her shield as more men charged, collapsed . . . grew horns and hair.

"What the fuck!" There was panic on all channels now.

A man ran out of the gate and grabbed the girl as she tottered. Bare chested, he was wearing a weird mask, all spiky and spotty and . . .

"All machine guns fire on that girl." Ghadir ordered.

Mantigo felt his guts twist, and he shuddered. His head felt like it was splitting open.

The pair dropped, flat on the ground, an invisible barrier bouncing all bullets.
Not nearly enough bullets. Only Ghadir's track is firing.

"Back through the gate." Ghadir's voice rasped oddly and he coughed.

A gunner somewhere opened up with the cannon. Two shots, then silence.

Mantigo could see the weird man picking up the girl and running through the gate. One track went through. They were in motion, turning for the gate, turning, turning in a circle, he pawed at his seat restraint, he couldn't seem to, he couldn't open it with a hand that ended in split hooves, and he could hardly turn his head, something was sticking out, jamming against the overhead. He needed to run. He had to get out of this trap . . . he was stuck.

He managed to get his head into a position to see outside, as the track turned in idiot circles, occasionally jerking. From the noise he figured his driver was a stuck as he was. He tried to tell him to calm down and steer, but only goat bleats came out of his mouth.

The natives were laughing. He could see them laughing. Chasing goats. A few of them were angry and trying to kill the goats. Every once in awhile the track turned so he could see the street the tracks had fired down. Some people who didn't look local were mixing with the natives. Lots of arm waving and fist shaking. Wine bottles, for some reason. The track kept circling as the wounded and dead were carried away, and finally someone climbed up on the track and opened the top hatch.

He shouldn't have been able to do that.

Frantic goat bleating, and a black goat went flying off the track. Had someone pulled Mike out? How about poor Goh, the driver? Thumping and cursing. Another tumbling goat, then the track stopped. Would they free him next? He bleated to make sure they knew he was here. A man looked in and studied his fix. Reached in and unfastened the seat restraints, reclined the seat and then grabbed him unceremoniously by the . . . muzzle and hauled him out. Shoved his muzzle out the top hatch, then boosted him from the rear. Mantigo scrambled out and looked around. Black goats running around terrified, everywhere he looked.

The man that had freed him laughed. "Look you, if you can understand me, you need to get through the gate before somebody decides to have barbequed goat for dinner."

Gate? Oh yeah. That thing over there.
He jumped down bleating loudly and walking toward the gate. He butted a couple of stupid goats, and a bunch of them seemed to think going his way was a good idea, and then more joined and then all the goats were heading for . . . where was he going? Oh, there was grass on the other side of these rocks. He galloped through and started munching. There were people around, though, so he ran off a ways. Marvelous thick grass. He ate as he kept putting distance between him and the people. He ate until he was full and happy, and started trying to think. What was going on?

He looked at the lay of the land and headed up slope. Several goats followed him, and in half an hour they were in a position to look down on the people and their stone buildings. And all the other goats. They seemed to be spreading out in all directions, in small clumps and individually. He didn't know anything about goats, but looking at his companions he could see that they were a strong and handsome group. Their horns came in all sizes and shapes, thick and thin, straight and curved. He couldn't see his own, which was a bit frustrating. Thirsty, he wandered further, and found a stream. Excellent. As dark set in, he found another high point, and folded up his legs to watch the lights in the buildings below.

He must not forget that he was once a man.