Heaven's Devils

CHAPTER ONE

THE PLANET SHILOH, THE CONFEDERACY OF MAN

The early morning sun was a blinding ball of fire in the sky, and the hot air shimmered as it rose off the long queue of fuel trucks that snaked the curve and disappeared over the rise beyond. Jim Raynor, squinting behind a pair of mirrorshades, brought the tanker to a stop, switched off the ignition, and leaned back. During the hour he’d already spent in the line, he’d memorized every scuff and speck of dirt on the back end of the truck in front of him.

Through the open window of the truck’s cab, Raynor scanned the familiar landscape. The gently rolling farmland was parched, and had been for more than a month, with the hottest weather still ahead. After a brief interlude, winter would fall like a hammer and the land would be covered with a thick layer of white. “She blows hot, and she blows cold,” Raynor’s father liked to say. “But Shiloh is a bitch either way.”

The tedious grind had been difficult for the restless eighteen-year-old to get used to, but he had suffered through the first few weeks of the vespene gas ration with no complaints. His parents had enough to worry about already.

The ongoing Guild Wars had diverted resources away from the planet and, according to his father, most of the other worlds, too. As a result, farmers like Jim’s parents had to deal with fuel rationing, city residents had to cope with food shortages, and everybody had to pay higher taxes. But they all did what they had to do, knowing their sacrifice would afford them protection against the Kel-Morian Combine.

Sitting on the console next to him, Raynor’s fone chimed and Tom Omer’s face appeared. The other boy was at the wheel of his father’s flatbed truck three rigs back. “Check it out,” Omer said, as his image disappeared and a hologram blossomed over the pas senger seat. It consisted of floating puzzle pieces, at least a hundred of them, which, if assembled correctly, would create a 3-D picture. A picture that Omer had pulled up from somewhere and ordered his fone to chop, mix, and deliver. “Your time starts now,” Omer said. “Go!”

The puzzle pieces were small. None were more than an inch across and they came in all sorts of sizes and shapes. But Raynor thought he recognized some of the colors and reached out to “pick” and “place” them with quick jabs of his right index finger. He made some errors, but was quick to correct them, and it wasn’t long before an image of Anna Harper in her cheerleading uniform began to piece together.

“Nice,” Raynor said approvingly.

“More than nice. She’s my future wife,” Omer replied. “Too bad she doesn’t know I exist.”

“Eh, you’re not missing anything. Anna doesn’t really have any substance.”

“Substance?” Omer called out. “You know what, Jim? Only you would say something like that. Anyway, you finished in forty-six seconds. Not bad for a motorhead… . What you got for me?”

Raynor flipped through a bunch of pictures in the fone’s memory and chuckled when he found one of Omer dressed in a clown suit taken back in sixth grade. “This pic is so hot, you’ll forget all about Anna,” he said, smiling. Raynor ran the image through the fone’s dicer app, and sent it off. “I’ll give you half an hour, and you’ll need every second of it.” There was silence as Omer went to work.

Raynor returned his attention to the road, but his mind was adrift. Upper school graduation was looming, and he had been thinking more and more about his future. He had spent his entire life on the farm, and even though their land wasn’t the best, it was going to be his someday—provided his parents weren’t forced to sell it to pay their increasingly high taxes.

Raynor figured that if he worked hard to help his family pull through, and the Confederacy won the wars, things would improve and he’d be able to focus on his own goals for a while, whatever they turned out to be. This gas shortage certainly wasn’t helping matters—his family’s fuel allotment wasn’t enough for their machines to yield a profitable harvest, so the outlook was grim.

The hollow coughs of a hundred truck ignitions firing in quick succession broke both the silence and Raynor’s train of thought. He turned the key, the engine started, and he put the tanker in gear. Then, having allowed the rig to roll forward for a hundred feet or so, it was time to stop again. He turned the engine off to conserve fuel and waited.

“Real funny,” Omer said, as he finished the puzzle. “I think I’ll hack your fone and delete that file.”

Raynor laughed. “I’d better make a backup then. You never know when a little blackmail might come in handy.”

“Hey, Jim, you still here?” a voice rang out over the speaker mounted above Raynor’s head.

Jim reached for the mic. “Hey, Frank. Yeah, I got a while to go yet.”

Frank Carver was Jim’s teammate on Centerville’s demolition team, a high-octane sport played in the less refined parts of the Koprulu sector that was much like the demolition derbies their ancestors had participated in. Vehicles were built and raced with the dual purpose of winning and destroying opponents’ vehicles. Since the wars started, the game had petered out due to a shortage of fuel and other materials.

“Yeah, me too—it seems even slower than usual today. You going into town tonight?” Frank asked.

“Nope, I can’t,” Raynor replied, “we gotta get the wheat in.”

Omer’s voice crackled through the frequency. “The harvest will be over by the time you get through this line.”

Raynor saw a puff of black vapor as the truck in front of him started up.

“Hey, Omer,” a young man’s voice popped onto the feed, “I hear you’re actually joining the Marine Corps, for real. I had no idea there was a fourth string in the military! Congrats, brother!”

A chorus of guffaws rang out as the trucks shuddered off again.

“Very funny,” Omer said. “When I come back for the victory parade, you’ll be kissing my boots for saving your sorry little asses!”

Raynor laughed, but his smile quickly faded. Despite everything his family had been through, the wars had still seemed so distant. But ever since Raynor’s classmates had begun enlisting, it had started to hit home for him. He’d heard the stories around town; many soldiers never made it home from combat. But Tom was right—he could come back a hero in the end, and Jim would still be driving his half-broken-down robo-harvester, dreaming of a break from the monotony of life. There had been moments during the past few weeks when Raynor actually envied the kid.

Raynor reached up to wipe the sweat from his face; his hand brushed past a new growth of stubble on his cheek! He craned his neck to see his reflection in the side mirror. For years Raynor had wanted to grow a beard like his father’s, and now it was finally coming in. He twisted his face in one direction, then the other, examining his tanned, youthful face, when the sudden roar of a powerful engine blasted him out of his thoughts.

“Jim, look alive!” Omer yelled through the comm.

Raynor glanced at the right side mirror, and saw a big blunt-nosed fueler pulling up next to him, about to swerve in the gap in front of his truck, crowding in ahead of all the others. The tanker’s door said HARNACK TRUCKING.

Raynor quickly put in the clutch and up-shifted but he was too late to fill the gap as the invading truck driver jerked in front of him and stomped on the brake. That forced Raynor and all the rest to do likewise, and within seconds, a percussive string of metal crunching metal resounded behind him.

“Damn it!” Raynor roared, joining the thunder of expletives that rattled the truck’s speakers. The frustration that had built up over the last hour sent adrenaline surging into his bloodstream. Raynor turned the engine off, set the brake, and was out of the cab in a matter of seconds. His boots delivered a muted thump as they hit the hot pavement. He quickly strode the length of the trailer in front of him as other drivers piled out of their trucks.

“Get that sonofabitch!” one of Raynor’s buddies yelled, and most of the gathering crowd echoed their support. One of the local farmers tried to get in his way, but Raynor pushed past and approached the driver’s door, fire coursing through his veins. He was about to throw it open and pull the bastard out by his neck when the door suddenly swung out.

A red-haired youth dressed in tattered shorts and a T-shirt hopped onto the truck’s drop step, grinning wickedly and cracking his chewing gum. Raynor recognized him immediately as the star of the Bronsonville demolition team. It all came rushing back to him—the explosive match in which Harnack intentionally flipped his own vehicle on top of Raynor’s as they went around a curve, nearly decapitating him in the process. The crowd went completely mad, and Harnack became an instant legend.

“What the hell is your error?” Raynor yelled over the clangor of loud, thrashing music that spilled out from inside the truck.

“My error? I’m lookin’ at him.”

“You’re such a moron. You’re gonna pay for all that damage back there!”

“Okay, farm boy, I’ll pay you with some fresh manure. Cup your hands.”

Furious, Raynor latched onto the Harnack kid’s legs, attempting to pull them out from under him, but the youth held tight onto the door frame. Raynor jumped back to avoid a kick in the face, but then Harnack launched himself out of the cab, clearly intending to land on top of Jim and ride him to the ground.

But Raynor anticipated the move, sidestepped his opponent, and had the pleasure of seeing him land spread-eagled on the pavement. “Stomp him!” someone shouted, but Raynor shook his head and waited for the other driver to get up.

The Harnack kid had game, Raynor had to admit, as his foe bounced up off the road with fists raised. His forehead was bleeding, as was his right forearm, but he appeared to be in no way intimidated. “Come on, sissy boy,” the other teenager said. “Show me what you got other than a funny looking face!”

“What are you, five years old?” His hands were up by then, held just the way his father had taught him, as both circled, looking for an opening.

“Knock his block off!” Omer shouted from the crowd. “Kick his ass!”

Raynor could tell it wasn’t going to be that easy, as Harnack threw a couple of quick jabs and drove him backward. He responded in kind, landed a blow that glanced off the other driver’s left cheekbone, and took a fist to the stomach in return.

Raynor knew that people were yelling things, rooting for him mostly, but the sound of it merged into an indecipherable roar. The first flush of anger had disappeared by then and his brain had kicked in. Think, he told himself, look for some sort of weakness, so you can land some good punches and end this thing quickly.

Harnack pressed forward and threw a succession of jabs, which Raynor easily avoided. Then, out of nowhere, as he dodged his opponent’s fist, Raynor took a skull-splitting wallop to the back of the head. What the hell? He instantly reached back to confront his new attacker, finding instead a sizzling hot metal bar. He glanced behind him. Harnack had backed him into the truck’s side mirror!

As Raynor turned again toward his foe, the kid flashed a gleeful smile before delivering a flurry of punches, most of which Raynor was able to block with wrists and forearms as he put his chin down and danced away.

“Come back here!” the red-haired boy demanded. “Come back and fight, you fekkin’ dirt-pusher!”

That was when Raynor saw Harnack squint and realized that the sun was shining in his opponent’s eyes. Raynor shifted his position slightly until he was sure Harnack was blinded by the glare, planted his feet, and threw a quick jab. The other teenager could see well enough to know something was coming his way, and raised his arms to defend against it. That opened his midriff to an attack, and Raynor was there to deliver a solid right punch to the gut. Three alternating blows, each powered by strong farm-boy shoulders, hammered Harnack’s stomach like pile drivers.

The Harnack kid grunted as the air left his lungs, then he clutched his stomach, dropped to the ground, and vomited on the pavement. A cheer erupted as the locals celebrated a victory by one of their own, and a few of the adults stepped in to drag the bully away from the mob of youths that had closed in and was shouting slurs and threats.

Raynor started walking toward his truck—he just wanted to climb in and shut the door so nobody would notice that he was a little rattled from the fight—but Omer intercepted him. “Good fight, man.” he said as he shook Raynor’s hand. “That was killer.”

Raynor muttered a series of expletives before spitting a wad of pink saliva onto the hot, dusty ground. Several of Jim’s buddies jogged over to congratulate him, and after a round of cheerful high-fives and slaps on the back, a smiling Raynor and his friends turned to watch the scene unfold.

One of the farmers climbed up into Harnack’s truck and revved the engine, sending black smoke belching out of twin stacks, and drove the tanker onto the shoulder of the road. Then, with a burly man at each elbow, Harnack was escorted over to his rig and told to wait for the end of the line to arrive or head on home. He chose the second option.

As Harnack struggled up the drop step and into his truck, Raynor’s friends howled with derisive laughter and shouted a few choice obscenities at him. The truck’s air horn blared as the teenager hit the gas, up-shifted, and roared along the shoulder. Then, having spotted a gap, he cut between two trucks and swerved into oncoming traffic to yet another sounding of horns. Harnack steered into the right lane and headed north toward Bronsonville, waving a one-fingered salute out the window.

The line suddenly jerked ahead and everyone scrambled to get back to their trucks. Back in the cab, and having closed the gap in front of him, Raynor eyed himself in the mirror. That was when he realized that Harnack had scored a clean hit on his left eye, which was already turning blue and would soon be swollen shut. He swore. There wouldn’t be any way to hide that from his mother, who was going to be less than pleased.

Raynor pulled into the station twenty minutes later, and was greeted with nods and smiles from his fellow truckers. It seemed as though he’d earned a fair amount of respect by standing up to the Harnack kid, and that felt pretty good.

He filled the tanker halfway, which was all his family could afford. As he started up the truck again, he hoped the fuel would be sufficient to get most, if not all of the crop in. That, at least, was better than nothing.