Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (49 page)

Then, holding the Wula sticks with both hands, she raised them above her head and started to chant. It was a soft sound, conceived by females and denied to males.

The chant continued for a while, rising and falling in pitch, folding back on itself only to start anew. When Windsweet’s beingness seemed to float outside of herself, and the moment felt right, she opened her hands and allowed the Wula sticks to fall. The clatter of wood on wood served to bring her back from where she’d been.

The sticks lay in a jumble, layered like the years in someone’s life, and crossed like the tracks of a wandering dooth. The reading of the sticks was part art, part science, and called for complete concentrat
ion. Windsweet frowned and allowed her eyes to follow the topmost sticks down into the maze.

Many hours passed during which she learned that while her child would look different, he’d be beautiful as well, and destined for a life among the stars. But there would be trouble too, and terrible danger, with no surety that he’d survive. But if he did manage to survive, the sticks told Windsweet that her son would bring great honor to both his peoples and be celebrated for centuries to come.

The Wula sticks told her nothing of Booly’s fate, or of her father’s, for she was afraid to ask. “There are,” her mother had said, “many things we shouldn’t know.”

Rising from her place by the fire, Windsweet took a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Making her way up along the spiral staircase, she slipped out through the doorway and onto the plateau. A breeze blew in from the west, ruffled her fur, and probed the blanket for holes. The sun was rising and contrails made claw marks across the blue sky.

 

The sun had just cleared the horizon and threw long black shadows across the ground. The scout, a Naa by the name of Farsee Softfoot, squatted. Booly, Roller, Hardman, and Shootstraight did likewise. Softfoot looked tired, which wasn’t too surprising, since he’d been up for more than twenty-six hours and run more than fifteen miles cross-country.

“So,” Hardman said, “what are the smelly ones up to?”

“They’re coming this way,” the scout answered matter-of-factly. He picked up a stick and drew an S-shape in the sand. “They’re coming down the road like so. Should be here in three, maybe four hours.”

“Shit,” Roller said.

“Yeah,” Booly agreed. “Three hours doesn’t give us much time to get ready.”

“How many of them are there?” Shootstraight asked pragmatically.

Softfoot squinted into the quickly rising sun. “About three hundred, give or take. A lot of them ride inside their vehicles so it’s hard to tell.”

Booly felt his heart sink. Three hundred! Against 27 bio bods, 12 borgs, and 120 Naa irregulars. Only slightly better than two-to-one odds. Still, it couldn’t be helped.

“All right,” he said, trying to sound confident, “three hundred it is.”

“Actually three hundred and one,” Softfoot said phlegmatically.

“What the hell does that mean?” Hardman demanded impatiently.

“The smelly ones have a human,” the scout replied, “and judging from the way they treat him, he’s in charge.”

Booly’s eyebrows shot towards the top of his head. “A human? It can’t be!”

“Why not?” Hardman asked. “You left the Legion. Others could do likewise.”

The chieftain’s logic was impeccable and Booly was forced to agree. He avoided Roller’s eyes. Assuming Softfoot’s report was true, and he had no reason to doubt the scout, it meant the Hudathans had another advantage. A renegade would understand human tactics and be ready to counter them. More bad news. Booly did his best to ignore it and gestured for Softfoot’s stick. Taking it, he drew a picture in the sand.

“Here’s the road. It crosses the mouth of the valley like so. Assuming the Hudatha are heading for LS-2, they’ll leave the road here and head down-valley. There isn’t any road, but the path is wide enough for a single column of vehicles.”

“What?” Softfoot grumbled. “I don’t know the way to my own privy?”

Booly grinned. A legionnaire would never have said such a thing. Not to his face anyway.

“Sorry. I was thinking out loud. The objective is to stop them, well short of LS-2 if at all possible, and with a minimum of casualties.”

“How ’bout an ambush?” Roller asked, pointing to Booly’s trail. “We could lie in wait, trigger some mines, and hose ’em down.”

“Good,” Hardman said tactfully, “but not good enough. The trail is narrow, but the valley is wide, and the smelly ones could spread out.”

“
Will
spread out from the start if they have any sense,” Shootstraight put in. “Would
you
follow one of our trails?”

“Not if I could help it,” Booly replied soberly, his mind flashing back to the canyon and the ambush Hardman had sprung on him.

“Exactly,” Shootstraight replied, taking the stick. “So here’s what I propose. A canyon opens into the valley like so. As the smelly ones approach I lead a group of warriors out into the valley. I spot them, fire a few shots, and retreat.”

“And they follow you up the canyon and straight into an ambush,” Booly said, admiring the Naa’s devious mind.

“An excellent idea,” Hardman said proudly, and slapped his son on the back.

Roller frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know much about the Hudathans, but a human commander would send a patrol up the canyon while the rest of the battalion kept moving.”

Booly nodded. “Good point. So let’s give our friend time to detach whatever force he considers appropriate, blow the canyon behind them, and attack the force that remains. We have twelve borgs, and properly positioned, they should be able to eat the convoy alive.”

There was a moment of silence while the rest thought it over. Hardman was the first to speak.

“It is good, very good. We will split his force, isolate the patrol,
and
take him by surprise.”

Booly’s knees had started to hurt. He stood and looked each one of them in the eye. “All right. We have work to do. Let’s do it.”

 

The human vessels came out of hyperspace so fast and attacked with such all-out ferocity that three Hudathan warships were destroyed during the first five minutes of battle.

Woken from a deep sleep, War Commander Poseen-Ka was called to the command center, only to find his fleet fighting for its life. What he saw in the holo tank, and what his officers told him, were his worst fears come to life.

Suddenly, and with the insight that sometimes comes with unexpected danger, he realized that he had succumbed to the very same overconfidence that he had so often warned against. With the Emperor dead, and the successful landings on Algeron, he had lowered his guard. In doing so he had paved the way towards the possibility of defeat. These humans had the will to fight and were doing a superb job of it. And, with a fleet to engage, his ground forces would be left without air support.

Well, Poseen-Ka thought as he strapped himself into his command chair, such are the ways of war. The ground troops will have to fend for themselves while I deal with the human navy.

The Hudathan’s chair whirred as it tilted backwards into a semi-reclined position. He took information from the holo tank, compared it to computer-generated recommendations, and fought back.

 

The operations center hummed with carefully organized activity. The initial jubilation that had followed three kills in quick succession had disappeared, and a mood of quiet determination had taken its place.

Though distorted by their plastic pressure suits, the faces around Chien-Chu looked calm, as if they had looked death in the eye and come to terms with it.

This was the first battle Chien-Chu had been part of and he watched with interest, not just those around him in the operations center but himself as well, wondering how he’d react. Yes, he was frightened, a rather logical emotion, all things considered, but not to the extent that he’d feared. Not to the point of soiling his pants, gibbering like a fool, or trying to escape in a lifeboat. So that, plus the detachment of a noncombatant, allowed him to watch the battle with almost serene indifference.

The fact that they had caught the Hudathans by surprise was obvious, and a good thing too, considering the strength of their fleet. What had started as a fleet action had deteriorated into a number of separate brawls, some involving five or six vessels, others as few as two, all of them hard-fought.

His own ship, the
Imperial
, was slugging it out with a pair of cruisers, which though of lesser size, had enough combined strength to beat the battleship into submission.

Chien-Chu felt the entire hull shiver as a flight of missiles flashed outwards and, finding a momentary hole in a Hudathan force field, detonated on contact with the hull.

A nova blossomed and screens blanked as computers shut them down. Scattered cheers were heard but quickly disappeared as the second ship counterattacked with everything it had. Missiles raced outwards, were intercepted by other missiles, and blew up well short of their goal. Energy cannons spit coherent light, screens flared through all the colors of the rainbow, and fighters darted in and out looking for a point of weakness. The screens came up.

Chien-Chu saw one of the two-seaters stagger under the impact of an unseen projectile, tumble end over end, and blow up. He winced and looked away. It did little good. Death filled every screen.

He looked up to where Algeron filled most of a view port. Natasha was down there somewhere, living through god knows what, waiting for help to come. Well, it had, by god, it had.

A Hudathan ship shuddered as an internal explosion tried to rip it apart, went inactive, and drifted away. Chien-Chu cheered and others followed his example. Finally awoken from its self-induced stupor, the human race had responded and was taking its vengeance.

 

It was almost dark and the countryside was flooded with soft lavender light. Bare, and somewhat bleak during the day, the valley had been transformed into something beautiful. A rocky spire took on the semblance of sculpture, while a cliff was etched with light, and the skeleton of a dead bush became a plaything for the wind.

The spy-eyes came first, a dozen in all, drifting above the surface of the land like metallic seedpods, probing for signs of danger. Then came two computer-controlled robo-crawlers, both heavily armored, and capable of withstanding a major blast. If the Legion had laid mines up ahead, or prepared some sort of ambush, they would take the brunt of the attack.

The rest of the Hudathan vehicles followed one after another, preferring whatever dangers the trail might offer to the uncleared clutter of the valley’s floor. The trail, following the path of least resistance, was hugging the valley’s south side.

Baldwin swayed from side to side as the APC lurched over a rock. He was tired of standing in the hatch, of watching the miles roll by, of waiting for something to happen, but had no choice. The mission had been difficult to begin with, but the loss of air support made it downright dangerous. He wondered how the space battle was going and pushed the thought away. His attention belonged to the here and now.

As if to prove the truth of his assessment, there was movement up ahead. Riders mounted on what looked like woolly mammoths b
lundered out onto the trail, spotted the convoy, and loosed off a few shots. Then, figuring that discretion was the better part of valor, they returned the way they had come.

The spy-eyes sent belated warnings through the makeshift electronics that the Hudathans had grafted onto his standard-issue com gear, the robo-crawlers turned left and opened up with their machine guns, and Baldwin was thrown forward as his driver brought the APC to a sudden halt. Arrow Commander Tula-Ba asked the obvious question.

“Shall I send a dagger in pursuit, sir?”

Baldwin gave it some thought. Other units had reported attacks by the local sentients, some of which had done quite a bit of damage, but how serious could such a threat be? Memories came flooding back: Agua IV, the unending rain, and the indigs that never stopped coming—not until his career had been destroyed and his life ruined. The orders came of their own volition.

“Send two dags ... and no prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.”

Half the order was unnecessary from Tula-Ba’s point of view, since prisoners had no purpose and were therefore the exception rather than the rule.

Baldwin gave an order, the APC jerked into motion, and the column surged forward. It stopped at the point where ice-cold water emptied out of the canyon and made its way to the river that meandered back and forth across the valley. The sun had dropped to the horizon, and the canyon was dark, like the mouth of a mythical beast. Spy-eyes entered the darkness and quickly disappeared. Two dags consisting of twelve troopers each separated from the main column and went after them.

Baldwin waited for five minutes, and was just about to move out, when twin explosions shook the ground. Pillars of dirt fountained into the air, a spy-eye wobbled into a cliff, and a tidal wave of rock sealed the canyon.

In the twinkling of an eye Baldwin’s force had been reduced by roughly 8 percent, for there was no doubt in his mind that the explosions were part of a carefully conceived plan, and the patrol would be wiped out. The muffled
thump-thump-thump
of a heavy machine gun served to verify his assumption. There were seconds in which to organize some sort of defense and he used them as best as he could.

“They will attack from the north! Turn towards the right! Keep moving but unload your troops!”

His orders were only half executed when Booly ordered his forces to attack. The quads went first, water cascading off armored backs as they rose from the river’s bottom, and unleashed a salvo of surface-to-surface missiles. The range was less than a mile, so nearly every weapon hit its mark, and the Hudathans lost nine vehicles in the first thirty seconds of battle. Flames shot up through open hatches, turrets spun through the air, and troopers danced in cocoons of fire.