Kreg Asay, Sat October 1st 2011 1:25am
Iron Falls: The Enemy Within
From the game manager of the popular USS Hyperion-F, we bring to you his latest writing endeavour; a near futuristic techno-thriller that launches an entire series.
"November, 2100. Sergeant First Class Gene Bukowski, a U.S. Army Special Warfare operator, and his team are uprooted from a mission in Mali when Emilio Heerdan's right-wing terrorist group kidnap the daughter of the United Nations Energy Secretary. Yet the mission proves more dangerous than his team can handle. Thrown into a mission that had been designed to end in disaster by a rogue intelligence analyst, Bukowski begins a journey back to a land on the brink of collapse."
Praise for Piotr's last work...
"Vesta Central is a quick, fun romp through space that anyone who grew up glued to the TV watching Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica (yours truly) will appreciate. The story is quick, but I'm okay with that, because the world Piotr created is vast and structurally sound enough that he will be able to return to it over and over. I see this short story as the first serial in a series. I look forward to the next installment."
Reviewed by Bernard J. Schaffer, author of Women and Other Monsters
--
Part One
One
“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.”
Kurt Tucholsky, German satirical essayist and poet (January 9, 1890 – December 21, 1935)
Monday, November 1
Near Sterkfontein, South Africa
Perched on the top of a flattened area just in front of a cliff face, Emilio Heerdan and his team had a commanding view over the ragtag collection of old caravans, converted trucks and simple structures of brick and iron so close to the archeological dig of Sterkfontein. The proximity of Safe Zone Yster Falle to the heritage site had a few environmentalists and archeologists bitching about the prospect of damage to the globally important area.
A full-blown refugee camp spread before them, fenced off from the outside world right in the heart of the most populated province in the country. Thousands of residents, displaced from their homes as far away as Mali and Ethiopia, squatted at the frontline between the Middle East Coalition and the African Union, a cold war that had gotten violently hot the last few months.
The sun, high in the sky, brought the entire scene into focus as Heerdan lowered his old-fashioned binoculars. He breathed in the fresh, mountain air and shook his head.
“How does anyone live like this?”
Many were homeless, displaced from their homes as far away as Mali and Ethiopia; the frontline of a cold war between the Middle East Coalition and the African Union had gotten violently hot the last few months.
Yster Falle and others like it throughout the African continent, were to be the safest in a region where uncertainty and a lack of safety had been ripe throughout the border countries that made up the African Demilitarized Zone: a declared border between the African Union and the Middle East. Many turned to the safe zones in an attempt to get away from rampant levels of corruption and deadly skirmishes between the African Defense Agency and the Middle East Coalition. Still, the camp had been an eyesore since the very beginning and no one would want his relatives living in.
“Sure seems like a place that would be better off destroyed to me, don’t you think?” he asked his compatriot, forcing himself to sound like he meant it.
Hans merely grunted, which didn’t exactly fill him with confidence.
“Our plan had better work.”
“It’ll work, trust me,” Hans answered. “You worry too much.”
Heerdan wanted to say that worrying was part of his overall personality description, but decided against it. Hans was a mercenary, paid to kill and not listen to Heerdan’s problems. Instead, he sighed as he studied the portable missile launcher for a moment. Granted, their orders were to be simple enough: test the reaction of local rescue services. Heerdan had little respect for the average South African Territorial recruit, as he believed them to be nothing but pathetic rip-offs of the Territorials employed by the African Defense Agency.
Then again, the ADA’s own were not all that great either if Hans was to be believed. Heerdan ran a free hand over his moustache and beard. Like their counterparts, the South African Territorials incorporated the various federal police agencies with firefighters and emergency services of every description. Formed eight years previously, the SAT had been one of several projects designed to better align the country with the African Union.
Not that everyone was thrilled with such a prospect. Despite the fact that there were a small number of politicians that were doing their best to run the country into ruin, South Africa was an economic powerhouse whose output surpassed the entire African Union several times over. Additionally, its military was top rate. Why the government was finalizing agreements to incorporate the country into the confederacy was something that both concerned and outraged certain groups. One such group was about to do something about that, and Heerdan and his men were at the forefront of whatever the group had in mind. Heerdan raised the binoculars once more.
“I’m ready whenever you are, Em,” said Hans, his accented rumble sounding somewhere deep within his gut.
Truth be told, Hans wasn’t ready in the slightest.
Heerdan studied the refugee camp.
Two
Monday
Safe Zone Yster Falle, near Sterkfontein
He raised the binoculars once more, and focused on the most-recent subdivision within the safe zone that had sprung up in the last few months. It was the closest to the edge of the fenced off area, and was their current target of opportunity. Heerdan hated thinking about what was to come. Yes, he understood the reasoning behind the attack; test the performance of the emergency services within Yster Falle, and not to worry about collateral damage. But there were families, and children there, even though they were nothing more but simpletons, Zulus and others doing nothing but live off the government.
Still, Heerdan noted the few whites, wanting to escape South Africa’s headlong mistake in becoming an incorporated member of the African Union. A part of him yearned to join them. But seeing whites being forced to live in squalor alongside illiterates, disease-ridden vermin, and criminals had been the last straw.
He spotted the big, fat yellow bus.
This was it: the intelligence guys said this bus was the best possible target.
“There goes the Willy Cab,” muttered Hans.
Many of Heerdan’s commandos found Willy Cabs—automated buses—to be abominations, even threats to their way of life, as many of them had been taxi and bus drivers who had lost their jobs when the government first introduced Willy Cabs several years back. Heerdan understood the anger, but privately did not agree that anyone, even a child, who used a Willy Cab, was a traitor. After all, he thought, how much power does a kid really have?
Some of his men must have agreed with him, because today Heerdan noted that only the extreme hardliners were here, men who had no qualms about violence if it would get them their way. Heerdan sighed. If only the kids were being educated in a different way—one that promoted the separation of the races—none of this would have to happen. But because the authorities believed everyone, regardless of race, should continue with their education, well . . . that's why the Willy Cab was targeted. And that’s why Heerdan was out here today, with his commandos. Because despite the agreement with the three powers to fully educate the children of the refugees, the white children seemed to be losing out.
Heerdan studied the bus, and reached inside his jacket to pull out an old-fashioned cell phone. “This is Tracker One. The piece is in play.”
“Roger, Tracker One,” replied Veijo Dreher, his second-in-command.
Heerdan closed the cell phone and put it back in his pocket. This had been Dreher’s plan, not his, but Heerdan had had to admit it was a kicker of a first assault. Yes, Dreher was targeting innocent children, but this was an area dominated by blacks. And ultimately, this would be a strike against the multinational presence throughout the country. Heerdan tried to ease his conscience with that; something must be done. This had been what had been agreed upon.
Time to do his job, so perhaps more white children would not come here, and thus live to fight another day.
“You ready, Hans?” he asked Kruger. The Austrian had been fiddling with the controls of a miniature surface-to-surface missile launcher for several minutes now. Probably has an itchy trigger finger; well, he's about to get his wish. Kruger had once upon a time served as a mercenary before settling and marrying into an Afrikaner family. So convincing the big Austrian into joining the Front had been straightforward and hadn’t required a large bank account, either. Unlike his second-in-command, Drehar.
But the best part about Hans Kruger was that he insisted on using his own personal arsenal against the multinationals. This would give Heerdan an effective fall guy, if anything went wrong.
Heerdan smiled thinly, and then turned his attention back to the Willy Cab as it cleared the shantytown’s outer defense perimeter. It now approached the edge of the hill that his commandos had called home for the last week. The Willy Cab rumbled past the commandos and started its turn towards the center of the settlement, moving slowly, as Willy Cabs always did.
“Take it out,” he instructed Kruger.
* * *
At sixteen, the boy was by far the oldest of the children aboard the automated bus. He was also the oldest and recent addition to the safe zone’s only school, with no hope of ever returning to his old high school in Johannesburg. Thus far the boy and his family, continued to languish in the camp’s interim holding centers; they'd been in Yster Falle since last Easter. Both of his parents had applied for permanent residency into one of the new boroughs within the equally new wards, but the bureaucrats over at the South African Territorials had stalled them, along with a great many others.
The teen looked out the window of the bus, ignoring the other children, and sighed with sadness.
“Please remain seated,” announced one of the two robots on the bus, their plain white torso and head casings catching the morning sun. Around them several kindergarteners were running about.
The teen snorted, wishing he had as much energy as those little kids, then frowned when the bus started to slow down.
“Would the children please return to their seats?” the driver robot said in its cumbersome fashion, while the other robot managed to scoop up one of the wayward troublemakers. “All children must put on their seat belts, please.”
The bus jolted over a rut in the road and the teen’s e-reader fell to the floor.
He bent down, grimacing again as the bus found another rut, and found his e-reader. He was fully under the seat when he felt, rather than saw, a huge flash of white overtake the bus.
“What was that—” he yelled, before he fell into unconsciousness.
Two sleek missiles, no more than a meter in length, leapt off the launcher after their targeting sensors had locked onto the bus via satellite hook-up, streaking over the half-kilometer distance like it was nothing. The first smashed into the front of the cab, where the automated bus’s primary computer housing was located. The second smashed into the side, lifting the bus and tossing it into neighboring caravans and makeshift housing, causing a near-instantaneous fireball.
* * *
“Ohmigod,” whispered one of the commandos in disbelief, watching as the Willy Cab bus erupted due to a secondary explosion, and looking away when they spied several children trying to escape. “What have we done?”
Heerdan shook his head. He didn’t like this, either. It felt wrong to be targeting children, especially Afrikaner children—the very ones he was trying to save from the black swarms and their foreign backers. “Their sacrifice won’t be in vain, Piet,” he said levelly, biting down the bile in his throat. “We must follow our orders.”
“Ja!” Kruger seconded.
“Let's go, guys," Heerdan said. “We’ve done our job.”
The Austrian mercenary nodded, and set off the self-destruct on his missile launcher without further comment.
====================================================
To find out what happens next in Iron Falls: The Enemy Within, please go to http://www.equillpublishing.com/iron-falls-the-enemy-within.html, available in all e-pub formats for $2.
Other titles by Piotr Mierzejewski, writing as P. S. Mierzejewski
Vesta Central
Scene of Tranquility
Thirteenth's Luck
"November, 2100. Sergeant First Class Gene Bukowski, a U.S. Army Special Warfare operator, and his team are uprooted from a mission in Mali when Emilio Heerdan's right-wing terrorist group kidnap the daughter of the United Nations Energy Secretary. Yet the mission proves more dangerous than his team can handle. Thrown into a mission that had been designed to end in disaster by a rogue intelligence analyst, Bukowski begins a journey back to a land on the brink of collapse."
Praise for Piotr's last work...
"Vesta Central is a quick, fun romp through space that anyone who grew up glued to the TV watching Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica (yours truly) will appreciate. The story is quick, but I'm okay with that, because the world Piotr created is vast and structurally sound enough that he will be able to return to it over and over. I see this short story as the first serial in a series. I look forward to the next installment."
Reviewed by Bernard J. Schaffer, author of Women and Other Monsters
--
Part One
One
“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.”
Kurt Tucholsky, German satirical essayist and poet (January 9, 1890 – December 21, 1935)
Monday, November 1
Near Sterkfontein, South Africa
Perched on the top of a flattened area just in front of a cliff face, Emilio Heerdan and his team had a commanding view over the ragtag collection of old caravans, converted trucks and simple structures of brick and iron so close to the archeological dig of Sterkfontein. The proximity of Safe Zone Yster Falle to the heritage site had a few environmentalists and archeologists bitching about the prospect of damage to the globally important area.
A full-blown refugee camp spread before them, fenced off from the outside world right in the heart of the most populated province in the country. Thousands of residents, displaced from their homes as far away as Mali and Ethiopia, squatted at the frontline between the Middle East Coalition and the African Union, a cold war that had gotten violently hot the last few months.
The sun, high in the sky, brought the entire scene into focus as Heerdan lowered his old-fashioned binoculars. He breathed in the fresh, mountain air and shook his head.
“How does anyone live like this?”
Many were homeless, displaced from their homes as far away as Mali and Ethiopia; the frontline of a cold war between the Middle East Coalition and the African Union had gotten violently hot the last few months.
Yster Falle and others like it throughout the African continent, were to be the safest in a region where uncertainty and a lack of safety had been ripe throughout the border countries that made up the African Demilitarized Zone: a declared border between the African Union and the Middle East. Many turned to the safe zones in an attempt to get away from rampant levels of corruption and deadly skirmishes between the African Defense Agency and the Middle East Coalition. Still, the camp had been an eyesore since the very beginning and no one would want his relatives living in.
“Sure seems like a place that would be better off destroyed to me, don’t you think?” he asked his compatriot, forcing himself to sound like he meant it.
Hans merely grunted, which didn’t exactly fill him with confidence.
“Our plan had better work.”
“It’ll work, trust me,” Hans answered. “You worry too much.”
Heerdan wanted to say that worrying was part of his overall personality description, but decided against it. Hans was a mercenary, paid to kill and not listen to Heerdan’s problems. Instead, he sighed as he studied the portable missile launcher for a moment. Granted, their orders were to be simple enough: test the reaction of local rescue services. Heerdan had little respect for the average South African Territorial recruit, as he believed them to be nothing but pathetic rip-offs of the Territorials employed by the African Defense Agency.
Then again, the ADA’s own were not all that great either if Hans was to be believed. Heerdan ran a free hand over his moustache and beard. Like their counterparts, the South African Territorials incorporated the various federal police agencies with firefighters and emergency services of every description. Formed eight years previously, the SAT had been one of several projects designed to better align the country with the African Union.
Not that everyone was thrilled with such a prospect. Despite the fact that there were a small number of politicians that were doing their best to run the country into ruin, South Africa was an economic powerhouse whose output surpassed the entire African Union several times over. Additionally, its military was top rate. Why the government was finalizing agreements to incorporate the country into the confederacy was something that both concerned and outraged certain groups. One such group was about to do something about that, and Heerdan and his men were at the forefront of whatever the group had in mind. Heerdan raised the binoculars once more.
“I’m ready whenever you are, Em,” said Hans, his accented rumble sounding somewhere deep within his gut.
Truth be told, Hans wasn’t ready in the slightest.
Heerdan studied the refugee camp.
Two
Monday
Safe Zone Yster Falle, near Sterkfontein
He raised the binoculars once more, and focused on the most-recent subdivision within the safe zone that had sprung up in the last few months. It was the closest to the edge of the fenced off area, and was their current target of opportunity. Heerdan hated thinking about what was to come. Yes, he understood the reasoning behind the attack; test the performance of the emergency services within Yster Falle, and not to worry about collateral damage. But there were families, and children there, even though they were nothing more but simpletons, Zulus and others doing nothing but live off the government.
Still, Heerdan noted the few whites, wanting to escape South Africa’s headlong mistake in becoming an incorporated member of the African Union. A part of him yearned to join them. But seeing whites being forced to live in squalor alongside illiterates, disease-ridden vermin, and criminals had been the last straw.
He spotted the big, fat yellow bus.
This was it: the intelligence guys said this bus was the best possible target.
“There goes the Willy Cab,” muttered Hans.
Many of Heerdan’s commandos found Willy Cabs—automated buses—to be abominations, even threats to their way of life, as many of them had been taxi and bus drivers who had lost their jobs when the government first introduced Willy Cabs several years back. Heerdan understood the anger, but privately did not agree that anyone, even a child, who used a Willy Cab, was a traitor. After all, he thought, how much power does a kid really have?
Some of his men must have agreed with him, because today Heerdan noted that only the extreme hardliners were here, men who had no qualms about violence if it would get them their way. Heerdan sighed. If only the kids were being educated in a different way—one that promoted the separation of the races—none of this would have to happen. But because the authorities believed everyone, regardless of race, should continue with their education, well . . . that's why the Willy Cab was targeted. And that’s why Heerdan was out here today, with his commandos. Because despite the agreement with the three powers to fully educate the children of the refugees, the white children seemed to be losing out.
Heerdan studied the bus, and reached inside his jacket to pull out an old-fashioned cell phone. “This is Tracker One. The piece is in play.”
“Roger, Tracker One,” replied Veijo Dreher, his second-in-command.
Heerdan closed the cell phone and put it back in his pocket. This had been Dreher’s plan, not his, but Heerdan had had to admit it was a kicker of a first assault. Yes, Dreher was targeting innocent children, but this was an area dominated by blacks. And ultimately, this would be a strike against the multinational presence throughout the country. Heerdan tried to ease his conscience with that; something must be done. This had been what had been agreed upon.
Time to do his job, so perhaps more white children would not come here, and thus live to fight another day.
“You ready, Hans?” he asked Kruger. The Austrian had been fiddling with the controls of a miniature surface-to-surface missile launcher for several minutes now. Probably has an itchy trigger finger; well, he's about to get his wish. Kruger had once upon a time served as a mercenary before settling and marrying into an Afrikaner family. So convincing the big Austrian into joining the Front had been straightforward and hadn’t required a large bank account, either. Unlike his second-in-command, Drehar.
But the best part about Hans Kruger was that he insisted on using his own personal arsenal against the multinationals. This would give Heerdan an effective fall guy, if anything went wrong.
Heerdan smiled thinly, and then turned his attention back to the Willy Cab as it cleared the shantytown’s outer defense perimeter. It now approached the edge of the hill that his commandos had called home for the last week. The Willy Cab rumbled past the commandos and started its turn towards the center of the settlement, moving slowly, as Willy Cabs always did.
“Take it out,” he instructed Kruger.
* * *
At sixteen, the boy was by far the oldest of the children aboard the automated bus. He was also the oldest and recent addition to the safe zone’s only school, with no hope of ever returning to his old high school in Johannesburg. Thus far the boy and his family, continued to languish in the camp’s interim holding centers; they'd been in Yster Falle since last Easter. Both of his parents had applied for permanent residency into one of the new boroughs within the equally new wards, but the bureaucrats over at the South African Territorials had stalled them, along with a great many others.
The teen looked out the window of the bus, ignoring the other children, and sighed with sadness.
“Please remain seated,” announced one of the two robots on the bus, their plain white torso and head casings catching the morning sun. Around them several kindergarteners were running about.
The teen snorted, wishing he had as much energy as those little kids, then frowned when the bus started to slow down.
“Would the children please return to their seats?” the driver robot said in its cumbersome fashion, while the other robot managed to scoop up one of the wayward troublemakers. “All children must put on their seat belts, please.”
The bus jolted over a rut in the road and the teen’s e-reader fell to the floor.
He bent down, grimacing again as the bus found another rut, and found his e-reader. He was fully under the seat when he felt, rather than saw, a huge flash of white overtake the bus.
“What was that—” he yelled, before he fell into unconsciousness.
Two sleek missiles, no more than a meter in length, leapt off the launcher after their targeting sensors had locked onto the bus via satellite hook-up, streaking over the half-kilometer distance like it was nothing. The first smashed into the front of the cab, where the automated bus’s primary computer housing was located. The second smashed into the side, lifting the bus and tossing it into neighboring caravans and makeshift housing, causing a near-instantaneous fireball.
* * *
“Ohmigod,” whispered one of the commandos in disbelief, watching as the Willy Cab bus erupted due to a secondary explosion, and looking away when they spied several children trying to escape. “What have we done?”
Heerdan shook his head. He didn’t like this, either. It felt wrong to be targeting children, especially Afrikaner children—the very ones he was trying to save from the black swarms and their foreign backers. “Their sacrifice won’t be in vain, Piet,” he said levelly, biting down the bile in his throat. “We must follow our orders.”
“Ja!” Kruger seconded.
“Let's go, guys," Heerdan said. “We’ve done our job.”
The Austrian mercenary nodded, and set off the self-destruct on his missile launcher without further comment.
====================================================
To find out what happens next in Iron Falls: The Enemy Within, please go to http://www.equillpublishing.com/iron-falls-the-enemy-within.html, available in all e-pub formats for $2.
Other titles by Piotr Mierzejewski, writing as P. S. Mierzejewski
Vesta Central
Scene of Tranquility
Thirteenth's Luck
