Recoil Read online

  That Sign came with the arrival of the Skinks.

  Tabernacle Village, Kingdom

  The alien invaders did not bother the people of Tabernacle again after that first fateful day; with the arrival of the Confederation Marines they had more pressing matters to attend to. When the creatures departed Tabernacle that day on tongues of flame, as they had arrived, the remaining inhabitants took stock. Sixty of their number had been taken. Some believed the visitors had been angels and that those taken had been translated directly to Heaven because some of the most righteous souls in their community had been among that number. Others, especially those who had seen the visitors, swore they were devils sent to punish them for their sins. One of those taken had been Jimmy Jasper, snatched from the street right in front of his own house as his wife stood in the doorway looking on. Blinded by the flashing light, she did not see the angels.

  In the weeks that followed, the ones abducted came to be referred to as “the Taken.” Of them all, only Jimmy Jasper was ever seen again.

  The day of Jimmy’s return was one of great rejoicing, although it started inauspiciously enough. Elmer Swaggart was tending his crops that morning, a brilliant, sunshine-filled day, when he noticed a figure staggering toward him across the rows of tomato plants. The plants were only knee-high and Elmer was busy staking them out so the vegetables would be kept off the ground when he heard someone stumbling toward him.

  “I did not recognize him at first,” Elmer said later. “He was thin and ragged and exhausted, but I did recognize him as a poor, wandering soul seeking succor, and so I rose from my knees and took him in my arms.”

  Even Zamada, when she first saw Jimmy that morning, found it difficult to recognize him as her husband. But as Jimmy regained his strength and his voice his true identity became known at last to everyone in Tabernacle. The first words he spoke as he began to recover were, “I have seen the Lord God Almighty and He has sent me to save humankind.” A Day of Thanksgiving was declared and as soon as Jimmy had regained his strength, he preached to the multitude, small as it was, of the Rock of Ages True Light Christian Church.

  “I was lifted unto Heaven,” he began, “on the snow-white wings of Angels, and it was given unto me that the Lord has a mission He wants me to perform. I was given this mission by none other than the Archangel Gabriel. He told me that the devastation visited upon other parts of our world was the vengeance of the Lord upon the apostate sects that have for too long dominated life and suppressed the Truth in this land. We were spared because we are among the Elect, and I was selected by the Lord God Almighty, as He chose Moses, to go down and set His people free! Friends, I am to preach the Holy Spirit among humankind!

  “We have failed in our evangelistic mission, but the Lord God has given me the responsibility of correcting that fault! I am to go forth and start a revival of Faith. Some of you say the spirits who came here and took us were Devils. I say you were blinded by Satan! Those who came here to fight them were blinded by Satan! All of humankind is blinded by Satan! But I was given to see them as they truly are, Angels of the Lord. All of humankind will see them in the True Light too, once they have regained their Faith! We are not to fight these spirits, we are to welcome them! We are to love them as they love us. They are truly the emissaries of the One True All-Loving, All-Powerful, All-Knowing Creator.

  “And I warn you now,” he thundered, transfixing each listener with a stare delivered across a rigid forefinger, “if any among you persist in opposing the Angels of the Lord, you shall be destroyed! Those who do not listen to me shall be destroyed. Eternal hellfire shall descend upon those who oppose me. Worlds will burn if the Word is not accepted!”

  And so on.

  When asked outright what had become of the other people taken by the angels, Jimmy would only say, “They are with Jesus. All those taken were the most righteous of the righteous and they now have received their reward in Heaven.” Of course some people in the congregation knew that maybe, just maybe, some of those taken had not been all that “righteous,” but no one was going to contradict Jimmy Jasper on the point, and besides, sometimes the Lord moved in mysterious ways.

  “I must go,” Jimmy announced to Zamada at breakfast one morning, “today.”

  “Of course, husband. Must I accompany you?” Zamada stood in their tiny kitchen, a ladle in her hand.

  “No.” Jimmy did not pause while shoveling oatmeal into his mouth. “I cannot be encumbered in my work, wife. I love only the Lord now and the work He has given me. You shall remain here and keep our home in order until you are called.” In truth, he would never think of Zamada again after that morning.

  Zamada knew that “until you are called” meant until she was safe in the arms of the Lord, that her husband would never return in this life. In a way she was relieved. Jimmy was not the same man who was taken that dreadful morning. Something about him now frightened her. She thought at first it was the spark of the fire of the Lord that burned within him, but he had always been zealous in his faith. No, his spirit had changed somehow and made him different from the man he once was. When she was alone with him now it was as if he were far away somewhere, in some place beyond human comprehension. If that was what happened to a man who’d been called to the Lord, Zamada would rather he lived somewhere else. There were others in Tabernacle who felt the same way, although none would admit it openly: Jimmy Jasper had become a scary man.

  “Where shall you go, husband?”

  “Earth. Earth is now the focus of the Devil’s plan to destroy mankind’s soul. The government there is a tool of evil. I shall go to Earth and I shall preach the Word and I shall defeat Satan. With the Lord’s help, of course.”

  The church elders had raised a large sum of money to finance Jimmy’s mission to Earth, and that very same day, amid prayers, tears, and hosannas, he departed Tabernacle for Interstellar City, where he booked a flight on a starship bound for Earth. While waiting for departure the Lord sent him his disciple. “I am Sally Consolador. I am from the Twelfth Station of Jerusalem and was also taken when the Angels of the Lord came unto us there,” she announced, sitting next to him in the spaceport terminal, “and the Lord has directed me to accompany you and attend to the rod and staff He has given you in your Faith.” Jimmy had been informed he would have help, but he neither asked about it nor questioned the fact. It was not his to question the Lord. The thought did not even occur to him that there might be many other evangels working for revival, only that he had been chosen to lead the movement on Earth. There were many other worlds in need of Salvation, but Earth was the center of the Confederation of Human Worlds, and it was from Earth that Satan was directing his war against the Angels, so Jimmy was very proud that the Lord had picked him to work against Satan in his very lair.

  “I know, it was given to me that someone would join me on my mission.” He put his arm around her. “To that end I have purchased one-way tickets for two, but I did not know who that other disciple would be until now.” He smiled; Sally was a buxom woman. “We shall be a great comfort to each other in my work,” he continued. “We shall preach unto the multitudes, you and I, Sally, and we shall create great joy in the land, and we shall turn the hearts of the people away from Satan and unto God.”

  And in time they did, and in time they became a great pain in the derriere of President Cynthia Suelee Chang-Sturdevant in the war against the Skinks.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  TWO

  Bill Clabber’s Bar, Flambeaux, Lannoy

  “Ahhhhh, it sure is gonna get drunk out tonight!” Puella Queege shouted to the barflies. She grinned lopsidedly at herself in the huge mirror behind Bill Clabber’s bar. She thought she’d never looked better, although her dark hair, tied in a bun on her neck, military fashion, had started giving off loose strands. But her face was flushed with the glow imparted by a healthy dose of alcohol, and, just then, she perched on her stool, queen of all she surveyed.

  Before she had enlisted in Lannoy�
��s army, Puella had been a rather pretty young woman, if a bit on the heavy side. But for a long time she had striven to achieve a masculine look to blend in with the men of the battalion, had let herself go physically, and had hit the booze so hard it was starting to ruin her complexion. Still, when Puella was sober she possessed a very sharp intelligence, knew army regulations well, and was a master of the intricacies of orderly room procedures and functions. Without a doubt, she was the best company clerk in the battalion. When she was sober.

  The barflies, the usual crowd at Bill’s on payday night, were hanging on her every word, their sweaty mugs thirsting for the beer she had been treating them to since she’d staggered in around sunset. That was a bit of a disappointment, though, because she’d always imagined that, when she was the center of attraction in a bar, the barflies would be buying her beers, not the other way around. But what the heck, she reflected, the attention she got was worth the price of treating the old codgers.

  “Queege,” an old-timer sitting at a table up against the wall shouted, “tell us agin how yew done kilt them guys in the bank!” He knew the longer he kept Queege talking the more free beer he could count on.

  “Naw, girl,” another regular hollered, “tell us how it was to be a prisoner o’ war at that Confederation camp. Did they, you know, make you do interestin’ things?” He cackled so hard he started choking on his own spit. His partner pounded him hard on the back, forcing up a huge yellow-green mass of phlegm into his clawlike hand, which he wiped on his trousers.

  “Thass ol’ Queege, there, Hank,” another barfly admonished the choker. “Don’t nobody screw with our Queege! Ain’t that right, girl?”

  “Yar, girl, tell us ’bout th’ bank agin,” the first barfly insisted.

  “Well,” Queege said, and stretched and set her mug on the bar, shrugged her shoulders and shifted her weight on the stool, “it warn’t nuttin’ much. See, these guys, including the fuckin’ mayor”—at this point in the story, which they’d all heard dozens of times before, everyone nodded their heads and roared with laughter, which they did now, on cue—“was robbin’ the vaults. I come along ’n shot th’ shit outta ’em.” She tapped the ribbon representing the medal she’d been awarded for the act that now sat slightly askew above the left breast pocket of her tunic.

  Surreptitiously she adjusted the tiny piece of cloth, hoping the barflies wouldn’t notice its unmilitary positioning. Before the night was over it would, inevitably, fall off, and in the morning she’d go back to the post exchange and buy a replacement. But when Corporal Puella Queege, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion, had shot it out with the three bank robbers at Phelps during the recently concluded war on Ravenette, she had performed a truly heroic deed, earned the Bronze Star Medal on her chest, and become the only soldier in the battalion to have such an award. Never mind that she’d been drunk at the time and was only on patrol in the streets of Phelps that morning because she’d lied about being a military policeman. But the medal was real and she had killed all three of the bank robbers despite the fact that they had shot back at her, at very close range.

  “Ya see, I was on patrol that mornin’,” Puella continued—

  “Corporal Queege!” a voice cut through the barroom like howitzer blast. All heads snapped toward the door. A huge figure stood there silhouetted against the dim light from the street outside. “Front and goddamned center, Corporal!” the figure shouted. The barflies cringed and stared into their mugs. They might have been useless drunks sponging off a deluded corporal’s generosity, but they knew the Voice of God when they heard it, and they realized with a sharp twinge in their guts that the free beer was about to dry up on them.

  Puella’s mouth dropped open. Then she straightened her tunic and slipped unsteadily to the floor, where fortunately she was able to steady herself against the bar before she fell flat on her face. Well, she’d had a lot of beer that evening . . .

  “Y-Yes, First Sergeant,” she mumbled. That was the only way anyone addressed “Skinny” Skinnherd, first sergeant of the Fourth Company, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion. And nobody ever called him “Skinny” to his face either, because he wasn’t. He loomed in the doorway, a massive mountain of a man, gesturing that Puella should follow him out into the street. “Jeez,” he wrinkled his nose at the smell of stale beer and vomit that always pervaded Billy’s place, “you keep hangin’ out with these pigs, Queege, and you’ll be needin’ a liver transplant as well as a friggin’ bath. Come on, we’re shippin’ out in the mornin’.” He turned and stepped outside.

  Fumbling to adjust her tunic, Puella staggered after her first sergeant. It was raining lightly outside and the cool air had a sobering effect on her—not that the sudden appearance of First Sergeant Skinnherd hadn’t already begun the job. All up and down the street first sergeants and company charge-of-quarters NCOs were rousting men who until then had been enjoying payday binges.

  “Queege old Squeege,” a drunken sergeant from the Third Company shouted as he staggered by, “why don’tcha gimme some of yer—oooops.” He recognized First Sergeant Skinnherd and hurried on quickly. Everyone in the Seventh MPs believed Puella was putting out for her first sergeant, so, knowing Skinnherd, no one ever seriously tried to put the make on her. Not when he was sober, that is. But drunks can be very self-destructive.

  “Wh-Wha—?” Puella stuttered.

  “We’re movin’ out in the mornin’,” Skinnherd said over his shoulder as he stomped down the street, staring bullets at the retreating back of the sergeant, whom he thought he knew. “We got a change-of-station mornin’ report to do and we gotta close out the orderly room, and I need you, girl, drunk or sober.”

  “Wh-Where, First Sergeant?” Puella rushed to catch up with Skinnherd’s long, determined strides.

  “Asshole!” he shouted, not bothering to look back.

  Puella blinked. He’d never called her that before! “Who? Me, First Sergeant? All I done was have a few beers with the guys ’n it’s payday night, ’n I worked hard this—”

  “Not you!” Skinnherd barked. “How long you bin in the army, anyway, Queege? Arsenault, the Confederation training world . . .”

  “Never bin there,” she muttered.

  “. . . We’ve been ordered there to form up with some kinda task force.” He stopped and looked down at his company clerk. Then he smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “You old beer barrel,” he said, laughing. “If you could ever sober up . . . Army HQ has mobilized us, Queege. We’re shipping out to Arsenault to be part of this task force that’s gonna take on the Whatchamacallits, the aliens the Old Girl tol’ us about. Now, come on,” he said and squeezed her shoulder gently, “we got work to do.”

  Why us? she wondered.

  Office of the Chief, Armed Forces Headquarters, Lannoy

  “Now why in the name of Beelzebub are they bothering us with this shit?” General Reggie Fitzhugh, chief of the Lannoy armed forces asked his army chief of staff, General Rick Moreville. “Gawdam, Ricky, we ain’t even reconstituted the units that come back from Ravenette, fer all anybody knows they’re still full of hothead secessionists, ’n now they want us to furnish this Task Force Aguinaldo with a whole freakin’ battalion of infantry? Do we even got one that’s ready to ship out?”

  General Moreville ran a hand under his huge nose, wiping away the constant dribble, then rubbing his hand surreptitiously on his tunic sleeve. Throughout the army he was known as “Slick Sleeve Moreville” because of this habit. “Hell no, Reggie, ’n besides, what if them things make Lannoy their first stop? Who’s to protect us? That Marine and his ‘task force’ is light-years away; we’d all be baked potatoes by the time anybody got here. Naw, we gotta keep our forces intact. Screw this . . . this . . . gawdam order of his!” He snapped the flimsiplast sheet that read:

  “IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE AUTHORITY INVESTED IN ME BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATION OF HUMAN WORLDS, I HEREBY DIRECT THE CHIEFS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE FOLLOWING MEMBER
WORLDS TO TRANSFER IMMEDIATELY TO THIS TASK FORCE ON PERMANENT REASSIGNMENT ORDERS THE FOLLOWING UNITS . . .” The list was very long but opposite Lannoy it read: “2ND BATTALION, 35TH INFANTRY REGIMENT . . . ADDRESSEES WILL ENSURE THAT DESIGNATED UNITS ARE UP TO FULL TO STRENGTH WITH AUTHORIZED LEVELS OF PERSONNEL, WEAPONS, AND EQUIPMENT.”

  “Sheesh, Reggie, the old boy did his homework. The 35th is the only combat-ready unit we got right now. They did good on Ravenette and this old boy”—he snapped the flimsiplast sheet again—“knows it.”

  “Then we’ll send him someone else. You know the old army rule, when asked to furnish troops for any detached duty you send your ash and trash. Who we got we don’t need and don’t want around?”

  “Seventh MP Battalion,” General Moreville answered immediately. “They’re the boys ol’ General Lyons put up on the coast on Ravenette ’cause they wasn’t good for nutthin’ else, ’n the Confederation Marines steamrollered ’em. So they was taken prisoner intact—personnel, equipment, everything—’n when the peace treaty was signed, the Confederation give ’em back to us, like yer bad penny.” He laughed.

  “Yeah! We can beg off, saying we ain’t got no other combat-ready units. Hell, MPs can carry blasters as good as anybody. We can tell ’em we ain’t rooted out all the secessionists yet. That’ll frost their nuts.”

  “This old Anders Aguinaldo is gonna be highly pissed, Reggie.” General Moreville grinned as he said it.

  “Fuck him. What’s he going to do, send us to Ravenette?” They both laughed. Neither had been in the war.

  Office of the Commanding General, Task Force Aguinaldo, Arsenault

  “Don’t these people realize the threat we’re all up against?” General Anders Aguinaldo shook his head. “I asked for infantry and these fools send me this military police battalion!”