David Drake - Grimmer than Hell

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Grimmer Than Hell

David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

1977 by The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.; first printed in Analog Science

Drake; first printed in Destinies, Vol. 1, No. 5 (Oct.–Dec. 1979). "Underground"

March 1980).

in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3590-7

Cover art by Steve Hickman

First printing, February 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drake, David.

Grimmer than hell / by David Drake.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-3590-7

1. Science fiction, American. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3554.R196 G75 2003

813'.0876208—dc21

2002034194

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Produced by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

For Edmund D. Livingston, Sr.

Ed was proud to have served as a Marine rifleman on Okinawa and been part

of the unit which landed in Yokosuka—without ammunition—two days before

the Japanese surrender.

I'm equally proud to have been his friend in later years.

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

Hammer's Slammers

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher's Bill

The Sharp End

Paying the Piper

RCN series

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

Independent Novels and Collections

Seas of Venus

Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake

Ranks of Bronze

Cross the Stars

The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey

Northworld Trilogy

Redliners

Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows

Grimmer Than Hell

The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Armageddon

(edited with Billie Sue Mosiman)

Killer

(with Karl Edward Wagner)

The General series:

Warlord, with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

Conqueror, with S.M. Stirling (forthcoming)

The Forge, with S.M. Stirling

The Chosen, with S.M. Stirling

The Reformer, with S.M. Stirling

The Tyrant, with Eric Flint

The Belisarius series:

(with Eric Flint)

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

The Tide of Victory

INTRODUCTION

Coming Home by the Long Way

A few years ago I collected my humorous stories in All the Way to the Gallows. In my

introduction I admitted that I wasn't best known for writing humor.

This is what I'm best known for writing.

The impetus for this book was a fan suggestion that with surveillance cameras becoming

increasingly prevalent all over the world, it would be a good time to get the Lacey stories back in

print. I thought about the notion.

I only did three stories in the series, in the late '70s. Lacey is a man with all the ordinary

human feelings—which he suppresses ruthlessly, as he suppresses everything else that might

prevent him from accomplishing his task. He has no goals, no dreams, no friends; but he's very,

very good at his job.

A friend once suggested that the Lacey stories were even clearer descriptions of how I felt

about Viet Nam and what I'd become there than the Hammer stories I was writing at the same

time. She may have been right.

I don't want to get back into that mindset, but neither did I want to turn the setting into a

shared universe. Lacey is, if you'll forgive me, a more personal Hell than that.

The original collection, Lacey and His Friends (with an absolutely wonderful Steve Hickman

cover, by the way), bound in a couple novellas which showed the kinder, gentler, David Drake.

There is a kinder, gentler David Drake; but I'm not as defensive as I used to be about the other

parts of me, and they're real too.

The remaining pieces in the present collection are close in tone to the Lacey stories. They're

military SF of one sort or another, though "or another" covers a pretty wide range.

Three are odd-balls. Billie Sue Mosiman and I edited an original anthology titled (and about)

Armageddon. I wrote "With the Sword He Must Be Slain" for that volume.

Steve Stirling's Draka series is set in an alternate universe in which Evil wins. Steve turned

the setting into a shared universe with the volume Drakas! and asked me to contribute.

Evil doesn't win in my books (well, I'll admit it's sometimes hard to pick the good guys) and I

was a little uncomfortable with the assignment, but Steve's a friend and has written stories for me.

If I'd known he wasn't going to do a story for his own collection, I might have begged off; but I

didn't, and "The Tradesmen" resulted. It has a very dense structure, so much so that my outline

amounted to 60% of the wordage of the finished story. As a piece of craftsmanship, I'm proud of

it.

"Coming Up Against It" had a very strange genesis. Bill Fawcett got a deal for the two of us

to consult on backgrounds for a computer game, for which we'd be paid an absurdly large amount

of money. Part of the deal was that I would write a story in the game universe for binding in with

the game. I wrote the story.

We did commentary on the initial background and sent it in. The new version came back to

us, not a refinement but a totally new scenario. We did more commentary. The response was yet

again a totally new scenario. I don't recall how many iterations we went through on this, but I do

remember that I was getting steamed. (I later heard the rumor that somebody in the company was

keeping the meter running as a favor to the outside contractor doing the scenarios, a buddy who'd

fallen on hard times.)

My story, "Coming Up Against It," was based on a situation that was edited out of the game

early in the process. I didn't even think I had a copy of the story (I'd tried to put the whole

business out of my head; I was really angry about being dicked around), but it showed up while I

was searching for other things. It appears here for the first time.

And by the way, this is a prime example of a deal that was too good to be true turning out to

be too good to be true.

Bill Fawcett sold the Battlestation shared universe with me as co-editor. I'd been doing a lot

of work in shared universes by that time, and I decided that the two volumes of the original

contract would be my last for a while. I wrote my two stories, "Facing the Enemy" and "Failure

Mode," so that they'd give closure to the series. You don't ordinarily get that with life, but it's

something I strive for in fiction.

And that brings me very directly to the six stories which open this volume. They come from a

slightly earlier shared universe that Bill developed and I co-edited: The Fleet. They follow a

special operations company in a future war against aliens. (Parenthetically, most of my Military

SF doesn't involve aliens; possibly because I don't recall ever being shot at by an alien when I

was in Viet Nam or Cambodia.) Each story is self-standing but they have a cumulative effect and

are, I believe, some of the best Military SF I've written.

What the Fleet stories don't have is closure; that too, I think, has something to do with me and

Southeast Asia. The series ended and I thought I'd walked away from it, just as I thought I'd

walked away from a lot of other things back in 1971.

Then, years later, I wrote Redliners, a novel about a special operations company fighting

aliens until things went badly wrong . . . except that in Redliners they got a second chance. They

and their society got a second chance. They got closure, and in a funny way so did I. Since

Redliners I've been able to write adventure fiction that's a little less cynical, a little less bleak,

than what I'd invariably done in the past when I wrote action stories.

I don't think I'd have been able to write Redliners if I hadn't previously written the Fleet

stories. I'm awfully glad I did write them.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

RESCUE MISSION

A Story of The Fleet

"Is it true," demanded one of the First Platoon corporals in a voice that filled the echoing bay

of the landing craft, "that this whole operation is so we can rescue Admiral Mayne's nephew from

the Khalians?"

Captain Kowacs looked at the man. The corporal stared back at the company commander

with a jaunty arrogance that said, Whatcha gonna do? Put me on point?

Which of course was the corporal's normal patrol position.

Kowacs took a deep breath, but you learned real fast in a Marine Reaction Company that you

couldn't scare your troops with rear-echelon discipline. Trying to do that would guarantee you

were the first casualty of the next firefight.

"No, Corporal Dodd," said Kowacs. "Admiral Mayne is planning coordinator for this mission,

but neither he nor any nephews of his have anything behind-the-scenes to do with it."

He glared at his assembled company.

The behind-the-scenes order had come from Grand Admiral Forberry; and it was Forberry's

son, not a nephew, who'd been snatched—no body recovered, at any rate—when the Khalians

raided the Pleasure Dome on Iknaton five years before.

Nobody else spoke up; even Dodd looked abashed.

Kowacs gazed at the hundred and three pairs of waiting eyes—wondered how many of them

would have any life behind them in twenty-four hours—

Sighed and thumbed the handset controlling the holo projector.

The image that formed above Kowacs' head was fuzzy. The unit was intended for use in a

shielded environment, while the bay of the landing ship Bonnie Parker was alive with circuits

and charged metal.

No matter: this was the 121st Marine Reaction Company, not an architectural congress. The

projector would do for the job.

"Fleet Intelligence believes this site to be the Khalians' major holding facility for human

prisoners on Target," Kowacs said, referencing the hologram with a nod. "Their slave pen.

Reconnaissance indicates that slave ships land at a pad three kilometers distant—"

A second hologram bloomed briefly, the scale of distance merging it with one wall of the big

room.

"—and their cargoes are carried to the holding facility by air trucks which touch down on the

roof of the Administration Building," Kowacs continued as the image of the outlying spaceport

disappeared. The building in the center of the main hologram brightened and began to rotate in

three dimensions while the Marines squinted.

"Based on analysis of captured Khalian structures," Kowacs said, "Intelligence believes the

building is an integral polyborate casting, probably of two above-ground levels—"

"That high and the weasels only got two floors?" demanded a sergeant from the Heavy

Weapons platoon. She was concerned, not gibing like Dodd earlier. "Them little bastards, they

like low ceilings."

"Good point, Sergeant Rozelle," Kowacs said, as if he liked to be interrupted . . . but soldiers

who were too dumb to think for themselves were too dumb to trust with your life in a reaction

company. "Intelligence believes the building is scaled to the needs of human—slave—intake. But

there aren't any windows, and there may well be a third level inside."

Kowacs cleared his throat. Before any of the half dozen Marines poised with further questions

could interrupt again, he continued, "The walls and roof are rigid enough to withstand

considerable stress, but they're apt to shatter once their integrity is breached. Intelligence believes

that strip charges will hole them and that plasma bolts should crumble sections large enough for

easy entry."

Almost the entire complement of the 121st was veteran. Even the scattering of newbies were

aware that Fleet Intelligence believed a lot of things—but all Fleet Intelligence knew for sure was

that no analyst's butt was going to be on the line if his belief were false.

"The admin building is separated from the camp proper by double fences with a fifteen

meters between them," Kowacs continued as the hologram of the building froze and that of the

fenced area brightened in turn. "The intermediate separation is believed to be mined and is swept

by automatic weapons sited on the building's roof coping. The fence may be electrified."

Marines nodded, easy in the knowledge that barriers impassible to a bunch of unarmed

civilians were going to be a piece of cake to them.

The forty-eight buildings splayed like a double row of spokes around the hub of the admin

building, twelve and thirty-six, brightened as the hologram fence dimmed.

"Beyond that are the slave pens and workshops themselves," Kowacs said.

Just for a moment he paused, his mouth half open—prepared speech interrupted by memories

of Khalians and slaves. . . . Memories of his father and mother, dead on Gravely, and his sister's

body left behind two weeks later on LaFarge when the same raider landed to replenish its stock.

Its larder.

"Intelligence doesn't even guess at the structure within the compound," Kowacs forced his

tongue to continue, though it was several moments more before his eyes were focusing again on

the Marines. They were draped over folded bunks and the equipment crated to deploy with them.

Some of them looked back at their captain with vacant expressions that Kowacs knew must

mirror his of a moment before.

"There may be guards in the barracks, there may not," he continued thickly, damning the

emotion that clogged his throat and made him less able to do his job—

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GrimmerThanHellDavidDrakeThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2003byDavidDrake."Introduction:ComingHomeBytheLongWay"copyright©2003byDavidDrake."RescueMission"copyright©1988byDavidDrake;fir...

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