Legion Of The Damned - 06 - For Those Who Fell (23 page)

The latest order, which had been phrased as a “request,” was that Satto use the ship's guns to attack what remained of a human transport. A conspicuous waste of time and energy since any aliens still alive were stranded in the middle of a desert a long way from Dontha and his precious research facility.

But the infantry officer was insistent so Satto had agreed to attack the wreckage from orbit, a task which, though technically feasible, required moving the
Ravager
to a lower orbit, turning the ship onto its side in order to bring the starboard batteries to bear, and firing a preprogrammed series of energy bolts, which though far from precise, would probably do the job. The pilot, who had been making some last-minute adjustments to the destroyer's attitude, looked up from his controls. “The ship is ready.”

Satto gestured assent. “Warn the repair crew. Delegate fire control. Run the mission.”

The pilot murmured into a mike, flipped a series of switches, and touched a button. It would take 3.5 units before the destroyer was in the optimal position. In the meantime all they could do was wait.

It was early morning in that particular slice of the Great Pandu Desert, and if Captain Beverly Calvo had a favorite time of day on Savas, the peri
od immediately after dawn was it. The sun was still low on the eastern horizon, so the air was cool, and the entire area was awash in soft, pink light. That was why the maintenance officer always rose early enough to make herself a cup of tea, clump down the transport's metal ramp, and make her way up onto the top of the nearest dune.

Two T-2s, each with a bio bod riding on high on its back,
were patrolling the perimeter. The nearest one happened to be a couple of hundred yards away as Calvo arrived at the vantage point and looked out over the area below. The cyborg waved as the MO popped the lid off the top of her metal mug, blew steam off the surface, and took the first tentative sip of tea. It was good, and she waved back.

A good deal of progress had been made since the crash landing. Eight war forms were up and running, the cyborgs who had been assigned to crew them were becoming more competent with each passing day, and four of the transport's energy cannons had been stripped out of the ship and moved to positions at the corners of an imaginary grid. Conduit had been laid to three of them—and efforts to bring power to the fourth were under way.

The effort to free the number two lifeboat hadn't gone as well, however, because in spite of all the work carried out by a T-2 equipped with bucket arms, the cofferdam holding the sand back had collapsed, nearly killing Captain Amdo and two naval techs who had been in the bottom of the hole at the time. So, rather than invest more energy in what looked like an impossible task, the project had been abandoned.

Meanwhile, it sounded as though Kobbi was making steady, albeit relatively slow progress, as he and a menagerie of civilians worked their way up from the south.

Calvo sipped her tea, enjoyed the way the hot liquid felt as it trickled down her throat, and frowned as her eyes came to rest on the blackened remains of the Ramanthian assault boat. After the attack was repelled, the maintenance officer had expected an all-out reprisal. But nothing had happened. The question was why? Because the bugs were short on troops? Or had decided that what amounted to a handful of legionnaires weren't worth the effort? Or their CO was an idiot? There was no way to know.

Calvo had just finished the last of her tea and turned the mug upside down to let the last few drops of liquid darken
the sand when she heard a
crack!
as something passed through the planet's atmosphere. That was followed by a
bang!
as whatever it was hit the ground—and a rumble as the sound rolled out across the desert. Then, even as the startled officer was still tryin
g to figure out what was happening, a column of sand shot twenty feet up into the air before collapsing into a blackened crater.

Amdo, who had been sitting in the
Natu
's control room when the bolt struck, saw the impact via the main screen and switched his belt com to broadcast. “This is Delta Six! The bugs are shelling us from orbit! All personnel into the ship! Over.”

“This is Alpha Six,” Calvo said over the same frequency. “Both patrol forms will take cover where they are . . . We need to disperse our forces, not concentrate them. Can you activate the ship's shields?”

Another series of
crack! bang! boom!
sounds were heard and Amdo saw that the second column of sand was not only closer, but in line with what remained of his ship. The bastards were sitting in orbit, nibbling whatever bugs nibble, while one of their computers walked energy bolts across the coordinates where the downed transport was located. The naval officer's first inclination was to tell the legionnaire “No,” that the ship's energy fields weren't designed to operate within a planetary atmosphere, which was true. But then there was another
crack! bang! boom!
only louder this tim
e, and the naval officer wondered if the shields would offer at least some protection.

There was no time to explain, no time to discuss the idea, so Amdo took action instead. He stood, lurched across the uneven deck, and plopped down in front of the vacant engineering control station.

“Delta Six?” Calvo inquired. “Do you read me? Over.”

“I read you,” Amdo answered grimly, “and I'm working on it.”

Individual lights changed color, power flowed to the
shield projectors mounted on the top surface of the hull, and the naval officer stabbed a button a full second before the next bolt hit. The transport's force field flashed incandescent as it neutralized the incoming energy and shorted out.

Calvo was lying prone in the sand by then. She saw the fireworks as the energy bolt struck, knew something had gone wrong, and waited for the final blow to fall. It came with the usual
crack! bang! boom!
but hit twenty feet aft of the ship's stern and sent a geyser of sand up into the air. The MO came to her feet and cheered as the next shot fell a hundred yards out, and the succeeding bolts marched off to the west.

Meanwhile, in the transport's control room, Captain Amdo shook his head in wonderment. The
Spirit of Natu
might be down . . . but she refused to die.

Because very little sun found its way down to the jungle floor even when the sun was at its apex, evening came early down below the canopy, and even though sunset was still a couple of hours away, the legionnaires wore small, stylus-sized lights clipped to both sides of their headsets. Circles of pale white light wobbled across the thick vegetation and slipped between tree trunks, as the soldiers made their way up the trail. The RAV's headlights speared the treetops as it climbed a hill, dipped as the robot started down the other side, and threw long shadows up the trail.

The omnipresent drums had been beating for hours by then, as steady as a heartbeat. It was a psychological ploy, and an effective one, because even though Santana
knew
that the wild Jithi were trying to scare him, the device worked. “How much farther?” he demanded, and one of his headlamps played across Qwis Qwan's mud-smeared face as she looked back over her shoulder.

“We're close,
very
close.”

“Good. I'd like to set up a defensive perimeter before we lose the rest of the light.”

Qwis started to reply but was cut off when Dietrich came in via the platoon frequency. “This is Bravo Three Six . . . I have a man down. He took some sort of dart in the neck. Over.”

“They're trying to slow us down!” Qwis said. “They don't want us to reach the ruins!”

“I read you, Three Six,” Santana replied. “Throw him on the RAV or carry him . . . Come on, people . . . There's a clearing up ahead complete with cover. Let's pick up the pace. Over.”

Santana heard the
phut!
of a dart as it whizzed past his head, felt something nudge his pack, and splashed through a stream. There was a series of disconnected
bangs
as the Jithi fired their trade rifles from high in the trees and the rattle of automatic fire as one of the legionnaires replied.

“There it is!” Qwis shouted triumphantly, as she pointed into the gloom. “Head for the structure at the center of the clearing! Their blow guns won't be able to reach it!”

Santana looked ahead, saw what looked like a flat-topped pyramid, and stepped to one side. “This is Bravo Six . . . Follow Ms. Qwan! We'll hole up in the ruins!”

The officer forced himself to stand there, waiting for the sting of a dart, as he motioned his troops forward. But there was no pain, no moment of ensuing dizziness, as the rest of the first squad brushed past, followed by the RAV. Servos whined as it lumbered forward, slugs whipped through the foliage as someone fired into the treetops, and Dietrich appeared. His teeth looked extremely white in the steadily growing darkness. “No offense, sir, but that's the last time I'm going for a walk in the woods with you!”

Santana grinned and waved the second squad forward.
“Come on! The last one to the ruins has to dig the latrine!”

The trade rifles continued to bang away as the cavalry officer followed the last legionnaire across open ground and into the relative safety of the ruins. A bullet spanged off ancient rock as Santana ducked through a doorway just as someone fired from within. There was a flash, followed by the
crack!
of a high-velocity rifle round, and the sound of a distant scream.

Santana turned to see who the marksman was and saw that Qwis Qwan was standing just inside the doorway with the hunting rifle still at her shoulder. That was when he caught a whiff of her perfume—and realized that there was a distinct possibility that the colonist had saved his life. Light washed across the soldier's face as she turned in his direction. Santana turned his lamps off and reached out to extinguish hers as well. They were safe behind a stone wall—but it was important to be careful.

The action brought the two of them together, and as the lights went out, the legionnaire found himself cupping her face in his hands. The kiss was soft at first, then increasingly urgent, as Qwis reached up to pull him down.

That was when a flare went off high in the air, bathed the clearing in an eerie glow, and swayed from side to side as it fell. Somebody shouted an order, and there was a steady thumping sound as the RAV opened up with one of its nose guns. Santana broke the contact, smiled, and kissed her on the nose. “That was extremely enjoyable—but duty calls.” Then he was gone.

Qwis stood there for a moment, watched a second flare go off, and laughed. Life on Savas was boring, or had been until then.

Hooves thundered as Nartha Omoni and one hundred of her best warriors swept up onto a low-lying pass, where the chieftain ordered her mount to stop and eyed the valley below. For thousands of years the northern and southern Paguum
had pursued opposite paths around the planet, and since each group took roughly the same amount of time to make the journey, they met once every 4.5 years in a shallow depression under a plateau known as Passing Rock.

There had been wars, territorial disputes related to water rights mostly, but long periods of peace as well. Wonderful times when passings lasted a month or more, as hundreds of arranged marriages took place, entire herds of katha changed hands, and zurna races thundered far into the night. But that was then, and this was now.

That was before the summers grew even warmer, some of the best water holes dried up, and the southern tribe had been forced to cross into the northern savanna searching for grass and water. It was a bad thing to do, Omoni knew that, and understood why Srebo Riff was upset with her. The incursions had gone unnoticed at first, thanks to the fact that the two tribes were moving in opposite directions, but what had begun more than six years earlier was now apparent as the two tribes neared each other once again.

That was why the leader of the southern tribe was surprised to see a cluster of northern tents next to the ribbon-thin river, the peace pennant that flew above them, and a pen stocked with six katha. The number that were traditionally slaughtered at “first meet,” when the advance parties from both tribes came together.

But, unexpected though the encampment was, Omoni was eager to believe in it. Perhaps Riff had matured over the last few years, had come to understand the complexities of
life, and was ready to resolve problems in a peaceful manner. If so, the southern chieftain was more than ready to meet her counterpart halfway, even going so far as to pay the northerners up to twenty thousand katha for the water already consumed.

It was a good theory, a
wonderful
theory, and Omoni raised the silver-inlaid trade rifle high over her head. The undulating cry was part exultation, part announcement, as the chief and her zurna galloped down the rocky hillside.

The warriors followed, all but one of them, that is, who remained where he was. Unlike the rest of the warriors, this particular individual had no skull crest, a nose that was exceedingly small by Paguumi standards, and shoulder-length hair. His name was Nis Noia, he was human, and the only Confederacy intelligence officer on Savas. His zurna was equipped with reins, resented the fact, and lurched forward as the other animals departed.