Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“WHEN IT COMES TO MILITARY SF, WILLIAM DIETZ CAN RUN WITH THE BEST, AND THIS BOOK PROVES IT.”

—Steve Perry, author of the “Matador” novels

 

 

Their human bodies destroyed.
Reborn as living weapons.
The cyborg troopers of the Legion
are the Empire’s most lethal defenders.
And the
only
defenders
against an alien race
who lack any human
traits ... except aggression.
All that stands between
humankind and extinction
is the ...

 

 

GALACTIC BOUNTY
FREEHOLD
PRISON PLANET
IMPERIAL BOUNTY
ALIEN BOUNTY
M,CADE’S BOUNTY
DRIFTER
DRIFTER’S RUN
DRIFTER’S WAR
LEGION OF THE DAMNED
BODYGUARD
THE FINAL BATTLE
WHERE THE SHIPS DIE
STEELHEART
BY BLOOD ALONE
BY FORCE OF ARMS
DEATHDAY
EARTHRISE
FOR MORE THAN GLORY
FOR THOSE WHO FELL
RUNNER
LOGOS RUN
WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST
WHEN DUTY CALLS
AT EMPIRE’S EDGE

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Tor
onto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of
Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Vic
toria 3124, Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchshee1 Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagnation or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

LEGION OF THE DAMNED

 

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace mass-market edition / August 1993

Copyright © 1993 by William C. Dietz.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only aut
horized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-49586-5

 

Visit our website at
www.penguin.com

 

ACE

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 

My thanks go to Joe Elder and Judy Travis for encouraging me to try something new, to Ginjer Buchanan for believing in it, to Dr. Sheridan Simon for his design of the Hudathan homeworld, the Hudathans themselves, the planet Algeron, the Naa, and the asteroid known as “Spindle,” to Tony Geraghty, author of
March or Die
, Christian Jennings, author of
Mouthful of Rocks
, John Robert Young, author of
The French Foreign Legion
, and last but certainly not least, the legionnaires themselves, past, present, and future, who know what it is to fight for lost causes.

There is nothing more dangerous than an honest man falsely accused.

 

 

 

 

 

Colonel Natalie Norwood stepped out of the underground command post and into the elevator. Though normally spotless, it stank of vomit and was littered with bloody bandages, used hypo cartridges, and empty IV bags. Medics had used the elevator to ferry an endless stream of wounded soldiers down from the now devastated surface.

She nodded to the guard and watched the armor-plated doors slide closed. Blood had been spattered on the shiny metal. She noticed that the dots were uniform in size and thicker towards the bottom.

The soldier touched a button, machinery hummed, and the elevator rose. Norwood felt self-conscious in her dress uniform, gleaming medals, and polished boots. They made a marked contrast to the guard’s fire-scorched armor, cracked visor, and battle-worn rifle.

Both had fought and both had lost.

The alien Hudatha had taken less than five days to destroy the four battle stations that orbited Worber’s World, to decimate the three squadrons of antiquated aerospace fighters the Navy had sent up to protect it, and to lay waste to all of the planet’s major cities.

One of them, the city of Helena, had been home to the governor and headquarters for the general staff. They had been in a meeting, trying to decide on what to do, when a subsurface torpedo had burrowed its way
under
the command post and detonated.

The resulting explosion created a crater so large that it diverted the south fork of the Black River, formed a new lake, and left a heretofore obscure Army colonel named Natalie Norwood in command.

What a joke. In command of what? The shuttle that would carry her to the enemy battleship? The stylus that she would use to surrender?

The elevator came to a stop. The door slid open. The guard flipped his visor up and out of the way. He was no more than seventeen or eighteen, a kid really, with soft blond peach fuzz crawling over his cheeks and chin. His voice cracked as he spoke.

“Ma’am?”

She paused. “Yes?”

“Why don’t they stop?”

Norwood searched for something to say. The soldier had put his finger on the very thing that bothered her the most. The Hudatha had won the battle many times over. So why continue? Why attack objectives already taken? Why bomb cities already destroyed? It didn’t make sense. Not to a human anyway. She forced a smile.

“I don’t know, son.”

His eyes beseeched her. “Will you make them stop?”

Norwood shrugged. “I’ll try.” She forced a smile. “Your job is to keep the slimy bastards out of my liquor cabinet.”

The soldier laughed. “No problem, Colonel. I’ll take care of it.”

Norwood nodded. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

She felt guilty about her inability to answer the guard’s questions. Officers knew everything, or were supposed to anyway, but the Hudathans were a mystery.

An Imperial survey ship had encountered them two years before, had established rudimentary contact, and learned very little other than the fact that the aliens were technologically sophisticated, and very wary of strangers.

Why they attacked, and kept on attacking, was unknown. Her only chance lay in communicating with the Hudathans, meeting whatever demands they made, and waiting for help.

She stepped off the elevator and into the underground aircraft hangar. It was a huge place, made even larger by the fact that the aerospace fighters normally housed there were gone, along with the crews that flew them. Not “gone” as in “gone out on patrol,” but “gone” as in “gone and never coming back.”

They had left their marks, though. Yellow lines that divided one bay from the next, grease stains that resisted even the most ardent crew chief’s efforts to remove them, and the eternal stink of jet fuel.

The walls were covered with a maze of conduit, equipment readouts, safety slogans, and there, right in the middle of the back wall, a twenty-foot-tall three-dimensional holographic of the squadron’s insignia, a skull wearing an officer’s cap, and the motto “Touch me and die.”

It seemed a bit ironic now.

The sound of Norwood’s footsteps echoed off cavernous walls as she made her way towards the darkly crouching shuttle. It was a large V-shaped aircraft, originally intended as a VIP toy, now comprising roughly 25 percent of the planet’s surviving Air Force.

They appeared like ghosts from the shadows. Power techs, com techs, weapons techs, and more. Some came on foot, some on ground-effect boards, and one wore a twelve-foot-tall exoskeleton.

These were the men and women who had armed the planes, traded jokes with the pilots, and sent them out to die. They looked at Norwood with pleading eyes, not expecting good news, but hoping for it anyway.

She nodded, forced a smile, and marched across what seemed like a mile of duracrete.

The ground crew watched her go, absorbed her silence, and faded into the shadows whence they’d come.

Captain Bob Ellis stood waiting by the shuttle. He was a reservist and, like many of his kind, incredibly sloppy. His battle dress hung around his body like a deflated balloon, his sidearm threatened to pull his pants down, and his left boot was only half-laced. Ellis tried to salute but looked like he was summoning a cab instead. Norwood returned it.

“Captain.”

“Colonel.”

“Did you get through?”

Ellis nodded miserably. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And?”

“And they refuse to grant you safe passage through the atmosphere.”

“But that’s outrageous, it’s ...” Norwood was about to say “uncivilized” but caught herself. The Hudathans were aliens and what seemed outrageous to her could be normal practice for them.

“So they refuse to see me?”

Ellis shook his head. “No, they’re willing to see you, but they won’t
protect
you.”

“Says who?”

“That’s another thing, Colonel. Their spokesperson is human. Some guy named Baldwin. Colonel Alex Baldwin.”

The named sounded familiar but Norwood couldn’t place it. “Terrific. A goddamned traitor. Well, get on the horn and tell
Colonel
Baldwin that I’m on my way.”