Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (15 page)

Fatside had been chosen to house the primary habitat, since it was larger, and thanks to its exposure to the sun, a good deal warmer. So warm, in fact, that air-conditioning was a must. An additional advantage was that Fatside’s considerable metallic content served to protect residents from radiation.

The administrative and living spaces had been excavated rather than built, so the walls were of rough-hewn stone, still marked where the robotic mining machines had eaten their way through the rock.

The corridor ended at what looked like an alcove but was actually a shaft. Narbakov stepped inside, flexed his knees, and jumped upwards. Leonid did likewise. The next landing was ten feet up, but thanks to his almost nonexistent body weight, the merchant had little difficulty making the jump. He waited for the hand bar, grabbed it, and was spared the indignity of crashing headfirst into the padded ceiling.

A technician nodded, stepped into midair, and floated downwards.

Leonid pushed himself out into the main corridor. There was another vertical shaft to his immediate right. The simplicity and efficiency of the system pleased him.

The corridor was crowded with miners, technicians, and the occasional legionnaire, all of whom were forced to vie for space with robots, automated transporters, piles of supplies, broken-down mining equipment, and the mess caused by the never-ending construction. That plus the poor lighting made for a crowded and almost oppressive atmosphere.

Passersby could have been gloomy and depressed, and probably should have been. After all, they were under constant attack and cut off from help. But Leonid was struck by, and somewhat proud of, the fact that they weren’t. The jokes, smiles, and routine greetings were much as they had been prior to the Hudathan attacks, with only tired eyes, and in some cases fresh bandages, to show the pressure they were under.

It was as if Narbakov could read his mind. “Morale is surprisingly good.”

Leonid nodded his agreement.

Both men grinned, knowing they were likely to disagree about everything else.

The staging area in front of the main lock was a madhouse. The smell of stale sweat hung over the crowd like a cloud, only slightly diluted by the sharp tang of ozone and the all-pervasive odor of chemical sealants.

Thirty or forty men and women were in various stages of undress as they either donned or removed their space armor. Six of them were legionnaires and came to attention when Narbakov appeared. He returned their salutes and slapped a woman on the back.

“Nice work, Sergeant. Your team did well.”

Leonid had no idea what the officer was referring to, but smiled, and nodded his agreement. It was important to show civilian support.

“Stand aside! Get away from the hatch!”

The voice was amplified and originated from within the lock. A klaxon sounded, a beacon flashed, and doors slid open. The first thing to emerge was a blast of cold air. That was followed by a transporter, which, like most equipment on Spindle, was extremely light and powered by a small electric motor. It lurched slightly as its balloon-style tires hit the uneven floor.

The machine carried a heavy load, though, including a pair of wounded bio bods, a badly mangled Trooper II, and three medics. All, with the exception of the cyborg, wore space suits with the helmets off. One of them caught sight of a med tech and yelled instructions.

“We’ve got a borg with a jammed life support module, a leaky pressure system, and more holes than a Swiss cheese! Tell surgery to prepare suite four, rig a number three laser, and stand by. We’re on the way.”

Leonid stepped aside to make room for the transporter. Held aloft by the lack of gravity, and pulled by the vehicle’s suction, a cloud of vaporized blood followed behind. The wounded bio bods were conscious, but the Trooper II just lay there, like a giant among Lilliputians. The merchant wished him or her the best.

Some miners were slow to move out of the transporter’s way and Narbakov gave one of them a shove.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Get the hell out of the way!”

The miner turned, raised his fists, and paused.

Narbakov was frustrated, worried about the cyborg, and ready to take it out on someone. It must have shown, because the miner made a face and waved the officer off.

Narbakov pressed an angry thumb against the pressure plate on his locker. It opened with a pop.

“Civilian asshole!”

Leonid thought about the men and women on Spindle’s surface, risking their lives to rearm cyborgs like the one on the transporter, but decided to let it pass.

They stepped into their suits, checked each other’s seals, and entered the lock. It was crammed to capacity with repair crews, legionnaires, and supplies. In spite of the fact that their helmets were on, most had open visors and were still talking to each other.

“Good to see you doing some work.”

“Work? What the hell would
you
know about work?”

“Screw off, toolhead. I do more work in one shift than you do in two.”

“... his head right off. Couldn’t find the damned thing afterwards. Must be in orbit.”

“So where’s the navy? That’s what I wanta know ... where’s the fraxing navy?”

“So she says, ‘Hey, dude, wanta get it on?’ And I say ...”

“... an entry in my file. Can you believe that shit?”

A klaxon went off. The voice belonged to a woman who had never been off planet Earth.

“Seal your suits. Seal your suits. Seal your suits.”

The chatter stopped instantly. Visors were sealed, checks were made, and silence prevailed. The regulations regarding radio discipline were strictly enforced. Unnecessary conversation could cost a civilian a week’s pay or put a legionnaire on report.

No one resented the rules, or tried to flout them, because to do so was to risk lives. Their own and others as well. There were a lot of ways to die on Spindle, and good clear communications were critical to keeping the death rate as low as possible.

The hatch opened and people spilled out onto the asteroid’s surface. This was the moment that Leonid always looked forward to, the time when he stepped out of the lock and was bathed in dull red sunlight.

The sun was huge and filled a quarter of the merchant’s vision. His visor darkened slightly, but not much, since the dwarf produced only 0.4 percent as much energy as the same area of the sun seen from Earth’s surface. It was one of the things that he missed the most, the warmth of sunshine on his skin and the interplay of sun and clouds. Pleasures that disappeared when you lived inside an asteroid.

This sun was different. It had a mass twenty-five times that of Jupiter, or about one-fortieth that of Earth’s sun. But despite its large mass, the dwarf had a radius of only 76,900 kilometers, giving it an average density of 26, a statistic that took on additional significance when compared to the density of lead ( 11 ), gold ( 19), and osmium (22).

The dwarf had begun to contract from a gas cloud about 154 million years previously, and its deuterium-burning phase had been over for 79 million years. It was still cooling, with a surface temperature of 1,460 K, as compared to the sun’s 5,780 K, and was hotter inside than out. Material near the core would heat up, expand, and rise towards the surface. There it would cool, become more dense, and sink towards the interior.

The atmosphere was cool enough to contain a variety of molecules including corundum, perovskite, melilite, spinel, fosterite, enstatite, and more mundane things like titanium oxide, iron-nickel alloys, and sodium, aluminum, magnesium, and calcium silicates. Most existed in the form of condensates about fifty to one hundred micrometers across and dust particles of the same size.

Chien-Chu knew that the different types of condensates and dust particles liquefied, evaporated, and solidified at different temperatures and pressures, producing the fogs, mists, clouds, and similar structures that swirled across the dwarf’s surface. And somewhere in that seething caldron of activity, tiny particles of stardust were being formed, strange stuff that had
the unique ability to produce lasing of wavelengths all across the visible spectrum.

The result was brilliant scintillations in a rainbow of colors, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in pure monochromatic gleams. The effect was completely chaotic and therefore endlessly fascinating to watch, and if there was one thing that people were willing to pay for, it was personal significance. They’d pay large amounts of money for the thing, substance, or condition that set them apart from their peers and make them seem special.

Wait a minute ... A terrible heaviness settled into the pit of his stomach. Given the fact that stardust had no established military or industrial applications, and that the Hudathans were unlikely to define “beauty” the same way that humans did, there was little doubt as to what they would do. Having failed to take Spindle with a minimum amount of force, they would gradually escalate, until victory was theirs. Narbakov’s voice intruded on the merchant’s thoughts.

“Come on, Leo ... we’ve got work to do.”

Leonid turned his back towards the sun. “Yes, Omar, we certainly do.”

 

Ikor Niber-Ba, commander of Spear Three, looked out through armored plastic. The sun, and the grotesquely shaped asteroid that attended it, filled the view port.

The humans had no long-range weapons, a fact that had allowed him to bring his command ship in rather close, lessening the distance that his fighters had to travel.

Niber-Ba was tiny by the standards of his race, little more than 250 pounds, a condition that had plagued him all of his life. In a society based on strength he had been weak. A punching bag for stronger males and the object of derision by females.

But the blows and insults had both strengthened and hardened Niber-Ba, pushing him in on himself, making him harder and smarter than those around him.

Eventually his nickname, “The Dwarf,” had been transformed from insult to honorific and struck fear into the hearts of many. And the fact that the Dwarf was confronting another sort of dwarf was not lost on Niber-Ba, for he had spent many years comparing himself against the societal ideal and had a highly developed sense of irony.

It was this ability to look within, to see his own failings, that came to his rescue now. Spear Three had been delayed, kept from rejoining the rest of War Commander Poseen-Ka’s fleet, and it was his fault. He had been too cautious, too paranoid, holding back when he should have launched an all-out attack. The substance that the humans worked so hard to scoop out of the sun’s atmosphere had no strategic value, after all, and was, from a Hudathan point of view, completely worthless.

There was no reason to delay the attack that an officer like Poseen-Ka would have launched by now, no reason except his own timidity and fear of failure.

Niber-Ba drew himself up to his full height of five foot six, did an about-face, and headed for the ship’s command center. The humans were about to die.

Before one can perceive beauty one must first open his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Booly awoke slowly, almost grudgingly, accepting his surroundings in small hazy increments. The first thing he felt was a delicious sense of warmth. It made a nice contrast to the cool air around his face.

He could smell the odor of cooking and something that could only be described as perfume. Not just
any
perfume, but a heady concoction that reminded him of summer meadows and the most beautiful women that he’d ever known. Booly felt the air stir in the vicinity of his face and fingers probe the side of his skull. It hurt a little, so he opened his eyes and found himself looking at a pair of shapely breasts.

The breasts were different somehow, and given the befuddled state of his mind, it took the legionnaire a moment to figure out why.

Then he had it. They were covered with a pelt of short sleek fur, like that of a mink or a Siamese cat.

The female completed her inspection of his scalp and straightened up. Her breasts disappeared down inside a modestly cut blouse. Her eyes slid past his, paused, and came back. They were charcoal gray like the fur that surrounded her delicately shaped face.

“You’re awake.”

The words were Naa rather than standard, a fact that registered on Booly’s brain but made no difference. He understood the language well, thanks to the chemically enhanced fast-learn mnemonics that he and every other legionnaire on Algeron had been subjected to.

The language was simple in many respects, having lots of words with only one syllable and no final consonant. The simplicity was deceptive, though, because Naà was a tonal language, relying on pitch to determine which of many possible meanings a particular syllable had. There were four recognized pitches: high, medium, low, and very low. The language was further complicated in that the pitch could be rising, falling, or constant.

The net result was a language that seemed simple at first, but like ancient Chinese, was actually quite complex, a complexity made more difficult by the fact that the original tongue had been divided into two major dialects. One was spoken in the northern hemisphere, and a different one was used south of the great mountain range. Booly knew both.

“Yes, I’m awake.”

The female smiled. Her lips were full and reminded him of little pillows. If his ability to speak her language surprised her, she gave no sign of it.

“You looked down my blouse.”

Booly blushed and shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”

She raised a well-shaped eyebrow. It was more pronounced that its human equivalents and had a feline aspect to it. “Really? Then explain this.”