Curse of the Legion (12 page)

Chapter 7
Movement, from the Edge

A star tracer—from Moontouch! A bolt of fear shot through my body. No! Something's wrong! It's Stormdawn! What could it be, for Moontouch to send a star tracer? A thin sheen of sweat formed on my brow as I triggered the little card and the d-screen lit up. I was in my cube in Galactic Information on Quaba, but as the message formed on the screen everything slowly went black all around me and there was only the message, handwritten in spidery Taka runes, like silk, silvery, magical tracings, not quite there, fading in and out of my vision. Moontouch. She must have traced it with a light pen; somebody had helped her with the star tracer. What was it? Moontouch was not in the habit of sending star tracers. I know how her mind worked. The longer she ignored me, the greater would be my desire to return. She was right. And now a star tracer! It was bad news, I knew it, even before I read the first word.

"Translate," I said.

"My King," the metallic, emotionless voice of the translation unit began, "My Maker, My Soul, My Heart, My Blood, My Sword. We are one. I cry hot salt tears in the Tomb of the Kings, for you, kneeling in fields of holy skulls and chanting dirges to Those Who Have Gone Before. I charge them with your protection, with your Fate. I curse them, for their evil prophecies. I offer my Fate, for yours. They refuse! I burn holy silks, in the Tomb, and pray to the Gods of the Past and the Future, who know all. I pray on all the Kings and Queens of Southmark, in their holy place. I pray to the Golden Sword, on his iron throne. I cut my flesh and scatter my blood before his feet. I wander the Swamp of Lost Souls, singing the Death Song. I pray in the Garden of God, for forgiveness. I wade in the icy waters of the Cold Coast, begging for mercy. I walk barefoot in the Deadlands, a pilgrim to the Past. All is lost."

I could almost taste the scented ash of that burning silk. I was almost there, thrown into the Tomb of the Kings by Moontouch's hypnotic words.

"Return to me, O my King. The mailed serpent of time quivers in the shadows. A great evil awaits, breathing, stirring, watching with unblinking eyes. Once again, movement, from the edge. Abandon all hope, unsheathe your sword, and prepare to die for your people. What does it matter, who lives and who dies? What matters is to make a good end. The living maidens of all our dead Kings weave the battle flags of Southmark. To unfurl those holy colors once again, what a rapturous sight! Victory or death, it matters not, we stand by our holy past.

"Return to me, O my King. Your son grows tall and strong. You should see him before he falls in battle defending his people. I am blinded by tears. Black clouds cover the stars, strange evil birds float overhead, tall trees burn in the forest at night.

"When pigs rule,
When apes eat our young,
When tools rebel,
When the strong are weak,
And the weak are strong.
Lies, deception, and needless death
A man with a heart of ice, directing
Puppet soldiers, blind and deaf.
Movement, from the edge.
An evil tide for your people,
For my people.
We are doomed. I chant
Dirges, in the dark, to the holy dead.
The Gods laugh.
You abandon us, again.
I call out, helpless,
in the hands of the Undead
A ladle of cool water
To seal the peace
Our fate unfolds
As you burn the book of laws
To serve the System's Cause
As a soldier of the Legion.
We are undone.
This is the time for immortals to die,
For eras to end,
For our worlds to stop.
Unsheathe your sword,
Rip the scales from your eyes,
And the wax from your ears.
We all make our own end.
Die for your people, with sword in hand.
They will never forget us!"

###

Tara swooped into the little conference room impatiently, escorted by a flock of twitching aides. She slammed down a briefing folder onto the table and fell into her airchair. She looked terrific as usual—I figured anyone who looked that good in black was bound to rise rapidly up the Legion's lunatic chain of command.

"Gentlemen! Let's see it!" She was evidently having a bad day. The room was packed. The lights faded instantly and the wall screen lit up. At first it was hard to see anything, just a cloudy grey sky, then we made it out—an aircar, just a faint black smudge, punching a hot combat drop through that smoky sky. Then it was gone.

"Again." Tara demanded. We looked at it again, and the image froze in mid flight and enlarged slightly, out of focus. My skin crawled. This was it! How many had died, how many were to die, because of this obscene image?

"Details." she snarled it.

"This was the only visual image captured by Asumara defense forces during the raid on the Temple of the Sun," the analyst said, "or at least the only image we've found so far. We are continuing the search."

"Details."

"Analysis of the visual, thermal, electronic and radioactive reflection data reveals the craft to be a Quasar Model 2B armored assault aircar. Probes did not reveal a valid Legion ID pulse." The screen filled up with data, glowing lines of silvery numerals.

"Why not?"

"Because it had none. The pulse had been removed."

"Continue."

"We have a full list of all Quasar Model 2B aircars, from the factory. All were Legion cars. The 2B model was replaced with the C and no 2B's are currently in service. We have accounted for all cars manufactured. Our records reveal that six Legion model 2B's were declassified and abandoned as surplus upon completion of our successful campaign on Pherdos. These are the only formerly intact 2B's not under our control. These cars were inherited by the new Pherdan government when our forces left. We believe it's possible that the car that raided Asumara is one of those aircars. The data makes it likely, but without the actual aircars we cannot be certain."

"What are we doing to confirm that?"

"We're dropping Phantoms into Pherdos to try and ascertain the status of those six aircars. If we can't do it through aerial recon, we'll drop in boots and snatch somebody who might know. We're going over the personnel target list right now."

"Pherdos," Tara said calmly, gazing vacantly at the glowing image of that sinister aircar. "All right, but be careful. We don't need another war with Pherdos. Damn it. Pherdos." She thought a bit. "I don't believe it," she said. "Why would Pherdos want to do that?"

"Revenge?" someone asked.

"No. What's the point? What do they gain? How can a Con-Free—Asumara war benefit the Pherdan Federation? I don't think so."

"Well, who does it benefit?"

"It may be too early to ascertain that," Tara said. "Perhaps it will become clear later. But we will keep that in mind. And meantime we track down those missing 2B's. That's extremely important. Whoever did this has provoked a war between Asumara and ConFree. That makes me angry. That makes me
very
angry. We will find out who did this. And when we do, we will take appropriate action."

"Like we did on Asumara?" I asked. All eyes in the room turned to me.

"No," Tara replied coldly. "It will be worse than that. Much worse."

"Maybe we should ensure we know the full story before we go to war next time," I suggested.

"The full story? And what would that be? We knew the full story on Fortuna. The full story was that a raiding party of merciless Asumara crazies and transgen apes raided a ConFree world and slaughtered, raped, cannibalized and kidnapped our people. Do you think our reaction would have been different had we known they thought they had a good reason for doing it? I don't think so! I don't give a good God-damn what their reasons may have been. Our reaction was correct—to send the bastards straight to Hell, as soon as possible. But I'll tell you this. I don't like being used, and I don't like our troops dying because some scheming psycho bastard is plotting some kind of interstellar political deception operation. And when I find out who did this, and it's over, I'm going to have his skull displayed on my desk. That's all. Let's get back to work."

###

Working for Galactic Information was not easy, but you rapidly learned what was really happening in the inhabited galaxy. GI had a seemingly limitless number of information sources sending data to Quaba Hqs, and some days it seemed to me that most of that info was dropping right into my quantum in-tray. GI was always shorthanded and that's why Tara was not letting me escape, at least for now. My function was to send the data where it was most needed. Attempts to rely on autosystems to sort data had always ended in failure. Our artificial intelligence databanks were powerful, but stupid. All AI was stupid. Only human brains could make the sort of decisions we needed. So there I was, comfortably floating in my airchair, surrounded by datalinks and d-screens and holo fields all imbedded in a glassine wall that could fade away to an instant to transparency or revert in a flash to opaque at a whisper from me. I was down in the war room, one of many little cubes surrounding the master holo hall that depicted humanity's little slice of the galaxy, but I had the opaque on to limit distractions. We were pretty far underground. They could have dropped an antimat right on our heads and I wouldn't have even spilled my dox.

Transmissions were flowing in from Santos. I was responsible for the Gulf Union and surroundings. That included all Gulf Union worlds, Nimbos, Yida and a host of others. It also included independent worlds such as Tanami, Sirrah, and Santos. It did not include the Asumara front or the Pegal Stelcom. I was grateful for that, at least. All right, an Embassy cable. Let's see.

PRIORITY IR GI OUTVAC STARCOM CLASS1

CITE: EMB SANTOS 823477

FOR: IR GI QUABA

DATE: 329/01/07

SUBJ: SANTOS MEDIA UPDATE 329/01/07

TEXT: TWO SIGNIFICANT EVENTS REPORTED IN SANTOS MEDIA TODAY.

1) SANTOS MINISTER FOR INTERSTELLAR AFFAIRS WERT BROANZO EXPRESSES SOLIDARITY WITH 'FELLOW HUMANS' ON ASUMARA AND ANNOUNCES THAT 'FRIENDLY RELATIONS' WILL BE DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN WITH 'AGGRESSOR STATES' THAT LAUNCH 'MILITARY ADVENTURES' AGAINST PEACEFUL GULF WORLDS. ALTHOUGH CF WAS NOT MENTIONED, EMBASSY IS RESPONDING WITH QUERY WHETHER SANTOS WILL MAKE SIMILAR STATEMENT CONDEMNING MILITARY ADVENTURES AGAINST PEACEFUL OUTVAC WORLDS SUCH AS FORTUNA.

2) LOCAL MEDIA HAS REPORTED 'OUTWORLDER TERRORISTS' HAVE ASSASSINATED THE DEPUTY SPECIAL ADVISOR TO MINISTER OF EQUALITY RONO SASSOR THIS MORNING. THE DEPUTY SPECIAL ADVISOR'S AIRCAR WAS DESTROYED BY A POWERFUL GROUND TO AIR MISSILE AND HIS SECURITY ESCORTS WERE ALL KILLED BY AN OVERWHELMING FORCE OF ASSAILANTS FIRING MISSILES AND HEAVY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. AUTHORITIES HAVE LAUNCHED AN INVESTIGATION THAT REPORTEDLY CENTERS ON THE OUTWORLDER CULTURAL ALLIANCE. EMBASSY COMMENT: SANTOS HAS SO FAR MADE NO OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON THIS INCIDENT. IF TRUE, THIS IS THE FIRST INSTANCE OF VIOLENT, ORGANIZED OUTWORLDER RESISTANCE TO THE NEWHUMAN REGIME. THE VICTIM, DEPUTY SPECIAL ADVISOR SALOS ORD, IS AN ORMAN AND NOT A NEWHUMAN. OUR POLICE SOURCES TELL US THAT THE INTENDED TARGET MAY HAVE BEEN THE SPECIAL ADVISOR THEOPOLD LAMAR, ANOTHER ORMAN, WHO CHANGED HIS SCHEDULE AT THE LAST MOMENT DUE TO A CONFLICT AND SENT HIS DEPUTY IN HIS PLACE TO THE SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT.

PRIORITY IR GI OUTVAC STARCOM CLASS1

The Outworlder Cultural Alliance—I'll be damned. I thought back to that Doctor, what was his name, Kaspar, Len Kaspar. Taking action, at last. I'll be damned. What could I do? I could only pray for them. People had to do what was necessary, for their future, for their children. And what was necessary was never easy. It was always hard to take action—to do what had to be done. It was easy to do nothing.

I clicked on to the Asumara Front, absently. Asumara appeared before me, a great grey-green planet, heavily clouded, oceans of almost black water glittering in faint sunlight. The holo display showed all our forces, thousands of starcraft circling the planet like silver fireflies, each ship labelled in tiny, burning crimson letters, with codes showing the task forces and the missions and ongoing operations and status boxes for the details—anything I wanted to know, right there before me. Task Force Hammer, Task Force Thor, Task Force Bounty, Task Force Hunter. I always felt better, somehow, watching our assault.

I zoomed in onto the planet. The mottled green continents were speckled with little red dots—downside Legion and Fleetcom milbases, also labelled, with more status boxes. Every military operation on the planet was right there, Legion attacks and raids and counterattacks and recon missions, air strikes and snatch missions and hunter ops. FCB Delta, FCB Ice, FCB Liberty, Camp Lucille, Camp Stag, Fort Providence, Fort Gala. We were roaming freely over the planet, setting up shop and shattering their military. But it was about time to leave. We had made our point, publicized it throughout the galaxy, and now Asumara could just concentrate on putting out the fires and counting their dead and rebuilding. Maybe, just maybe, they'd think twice before attacking another ConFree world. And it didn't look like we had to worry about the Pegal Stelcom intervening on Asumara's side, despite their ultimatum. It was clear that we were very serious, and the Pegal Stelcom would be crazy to get involved.

I noted a long list of downside bases that were ceasing operations and evacing topsides. I was glad to see it.

Asumara flickered, and vanished. What's this? I hadn't done a thing. I reached for the controls, but a soft ping announced an incoming message, and a notice appeared on the master d-screen: STAND BY FOR FLASH. ALL CHANNELS OPEN. A sudden silence settled over my cube. The cubes next to me had gone dead as well. It was a little eerie, with the familiar hum and muted hiss of all our workstations suddenly gone. An allchannels flash! What could it be?

FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH ALL CHANNELS OPEN