Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (47 page)

Poseen-Ka used his rage as a lever, applied it with all his might, and finally broke free. It still felt as though he was walking through gelatin, but he was free enough to move. It took every bit of strength he could muster to access the ship’s
AI, and having done so, to request the coordinates of all ships that were capable of carrying a large quantity of water.

The computer produced three possibilities, and the sector marshal chose a strange, one-of-a-kind vessel as the most likely candidate. His choice was confirmed when further analysis showed the ship in question had become the nexus of fleet-wide communications.

With that accomplished, Poseen-Ka used brute strength to force his way through corridors full of eye-bulging manikins, down an empty lift tube, and into the ready room, where his space armor was stored. Zippers, seals, and closures, which should have been easy to operate, had been transformed into monsters that had minds of their own. It was as if they
wanted
him to lose,
wanted
to drain him of energy, although he couldn’t think why.

Finally, almost exhausted from the effort required to don his suit, the sector marshal made his way out through the lock and onto the flight deck. A senior crew chief stared at him, fought to break the unseen bonds, and flapped his arms up and down. The Sector Marshall wanted to help but feared that an attempt to do so would be unsuccessful, and consume what little energy he had left.

Poseen-Ka ignored the pilots and technicians who tracked him with their eyes, placed one incredibly heavy foot in front of the other, and climbed the roll-away stairs. A pilot stood poised at the top and made grunting sounds. The sector marshal squeezed past. The trip from the lock to the control room lasted hours, or at least seemed to.

Then, having forced himself to remember controls he hadn’t touched in years, Poseen-Ka fired the shuttle’s engines, gave himself permission to launch, and blasted towards the steel-framed stars. The target lay somewhere up ahead. He would find the waterborne aliens and kill them.

 

Booly had assigned one Trooper II to supplement Chrobuck’s security forces. That left seven T-2s, two quads, and the single T-3 to tackle the best that the Hudathan cyborg corps could throw their way. They approached the enemy in what academy textbooks called “an open-U formation,” and the Naa referred to as “killer horns.”

The idea was to make contact with the Hudathan flanks first, while directing a withering fire up the center. With that in mind, three T-2s had been assigned to the left side, four had taken positions on the right, with O‘Neal and her analogs holding the center. A pair of quads, one located to O’Neal’s right, and one to her left, completed the formation.

Booly, along with the company’s bio bods, brought up the rear. They ran to keep up and paused every now and then to fire the shoulder-launched “borg killers” they’d been issued. The conflict was little more than a head-to-head winner-take-all display of brute strength with cyborgs on both sides playing key roles.

Raksala-Ba gave thanks that the artillery attack had stopped, zoomed through the smoke, and panned the advancing line. He felt a hollowness where his stomach had been. His legs whined rhythmically but seemed disconnected somehow.

The artillery barrage had created a moonscape of overlapping craters. They looked like an obstacle course. Raksala-Ba tried to decide which was worse, descending down into the holes where he had protection but couldn’t see the enemy, or climbing up out of them, when the enemy was free to shoot at him, but he could see them and fire back. The fact that cybernetic body parts lay scattered around the shell holes didn’t make his decision any easier.

He climbed to the lip of a large crater, cursed the soil that crumbled under his pods, and peered over the top. Cyborgs to the right and left of him did the same. An order was given and they scrambled over the top. Shapes appeared through the smoke, etched themselves across his targeting grid, and became steadily larger. Firing solutions appeared down the right-hand side of his vision and priority targets took on a ghostly glow.

Most of the targets were consistent with the cyborg’s expectations, but some—six, in particular—didn’t match anything in memory. Two hovered in midair, two advanced like miniature tanks, one slithered along the ground, while the last dodged this way and that, making good use of cover. The objects moved as if controlled by a single mind, and when they opened fire, the results were devastating.

O’Neal saw the enemy cyborgs climb up out of the shell hole, sent the appropriate thought to her analogs, and watched the Hudathans run into a hail of lead and coherent energy. Many were killed or severely damaged. The rest seemed to falter, gain courage, and move ahead.

The noncom glanced around, saw the quads lurch up out of the broken ground behind her, and open fire with their gatling guns. The slugs flew over her head but came within inches of the leather wings who hovered above. They directed screams of animal outrage through the interface and turned towards their attackers, a stupid thing to do since they were heavily outgunned. O’Neal fought to control them. “No! Do not fire! They didn’t mean to hit you . . . .”

Raksala-Ba gave thanks for whatever it was that had distracted the enemy. He fired and experienced a powerful orgasm as a Trooper II exploded.

Dirt fountained around O’Neal as the enemy opened fire. Something hammered against her legs, knocked them out from under her torso, and left the legionnaire staring at the sky. The microprocessors that controlled the lower part of her body sent pain through her feedback systems and were suppressed by her battle comp. The noncom projected herself up to the battle disks, saw what lay ahead through their vid cams, and ordered the analogs forward. The quads, gatling guns still firing, lumbered by, their footsteps shaking the ground.

The enemy cyborgs were in the open now. They fired as they came. Still linked with the leather wings, O’Neal saw the borg known as Reaper fall, saw Booly jump clear, and urged her analogs to fire. They did, and the effect of their combined weaponry, along with their maneuverability, made the necessary difference. The enemy line paused, wavered, and fell apart.

Raksala-Ba couldn’t believe the way his arm flew off, the way something smashed through his torso, the way that his head flew through the air, landed, and bounced towards the enemy. Darkness came and was supplanted by primitive black-and-white vision as the emergency power supply located at the base of his heavily armored brain box kicked in. So he lived long enough to see the sun, the quad that made it disappear, and the disk-shaped foot that descended towards his face. It was then, in the split second before he died, that Raksala-Ba remembered the first time he’d been killed, and wished it
had been the last.

 

Captain Cynthia Harmon didn’t take the threat seriously at first, not after surviving countless fighter attacks, and the missiles fired by larger ships, the most recent of which had holed the engineering spaces, just missed the habitat, and left the
Nooni
hanging motionless in space. But Duncan was insistent and she gave in. “All right, Tom, a Hudathan shuttle is headed this way, so what’s the big deal?”

Duncan was used to Harmon’s sarcasm by now and ignored it. He issued an order to the ship’s AI and pointed towards the holo tank. “Watch this.”

Harmon watched as every object represented in the holo tank went into reverse. It seemed silly at first, and the scientist was about to ask Duncan what he was doing, when she saw the shuttle back its way into a Hudathan ship, and not just
any
ship, but what had previously served as their command vessel, until the Say’lynt seized control. She was shocked. “But that’s impossible!”

“Tell the pilot that,” Duncan said grimly, “because he thinks he can do it. The AI projects impact seven from now.”

Harmon watched the holo fast-forward and drop to normal speed. The shuttle was represented by a small red delta and it looked closer than before. “Impact? He plans to ram us?”

“I think that’s a distinct possibility,” Duncan said dryly. “I advise that you notify the admiral, call for help, and put every weapon you can on the shuttle. The pilot knows about the Say’lynt and is willing to die.”

Harmon glanced at Chien-Chu. The industrialist cum military leader had taken the third officer’s chair and was locked in a discussion with senior members of the fleet. She released her harness and got to her feet. “No,
you
tell the admiral. I have a Hudathan to kill.”

 

Poseen-Ka stared straight ahead, partly because that was his direction of flight, and partly because it required effort to turn his head. The force was growing stronger all the time. Because the sea creatures were closer? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter, because knowing wouldn’t make any difference. That, when he thought about it, had been the purpose of his life. To destroy those who could bring harm to his race, to impose order on chaos, to make a difference. And this, his final blow, would free the fleet to complete that work.

Poseen-Ka watched as a spark of light grew into a large globe-shaped ship. Sunlight played across the surface of its hull and stabbed the darkness around him. The Hudathan wanted to jink from side to side, wanted to take evasive action, but couldn’t find the energy. The shuttle bored in.

 

The turret had suffered a hit but the AI claimed it was operable. Harmon worked her way inside, freed a dead marine from the control chair, and took his place. The body drifted out through the shattered canopy and kept pace with the ship. Harmon adjusted the harness to fit her smaller body and wondered why her breathing sounded so loud. Then, secured to the chair, she took control of the weapon.

The sight swung down in front of her helmet. It took a moment to find the enemy vessel and lock on. The shuttle was steady, which was good, but the nose-on approach made for a small target, and would require some skill.

Harmon stomped on the right foot pedal, felt the cannon swivel in the direction, and swore when the grid stopped six inches short of the target. Something, a piece of metal or plastic, had jammed the track. Tw
o extremely precious minutes were consumed freeing herself from the harness, finding the chunk of debris, and pulling it free.

Other weapons were firing by now, crisscrossing the area around the shuttle, but to no effect. Harmon swore, clipped the harness into place, and stomped on the right-hand pedal. The cannon obeyed this time, stopped where she wanted it to, and spit bolts of coherent light.

 

The energy bolts looked like blobs from Poseen-Ka’s perspective, and came his way with what would have been mind-numbing speed, had his mind been free to do as it wished. But it was elsewhere when the shuttle exploded, elsewhere when the body it had occupied was vaporized, safe within the memories Raft One had called forth.

Poseen-Ka looked, concluded that the village looked no different than it had during his childhood, and ran down the cobbled street. It felt good to be home.

 

Harmon felt a sense of exultation as she watched the enemy shuttle explode, quickly followed by a stab of fear, as large chunks of alien metal tumbled in her direction. The scientist’s eyes widened as her fingers fumbled with the harness release. It worked, but too late, as a large chunk of black fuselage hit the weapons emplacement and smashed the biologist’s body.

Harmon had expected pain, darkness, or nothingness, anything but a warm sandy beach and softly surging surf. The voice came from somewhere in front of her. “Come on! Hurry up!”

The voice belonged to Valerie,
her
Valerie, and Harmon’s heart leaped with joy. She ran into the water, felt it close around her, and swam towards her friend. The sun was warm and there was no darkness.

 

Moolu Rasha Anguar checked to make sure that the exoskeleton was operating properly, forced his facial muscles into the semblance of a human smile, and stepped out into bright sunshine. The day was beautiful by human standards but warmer than he liked. The president looked out onto thousands of upturned faces, a scattering of tall, skinny trees, and a circular lagoon. A breeze swept in from the ocean, roughed the surface of the water, and sent wavelets lapping at the beach.

A battalion of Trooper IIIs, their analogs arrayed around them, crashed to attention. Platoon Leader Lieutenant O’Neal frowned as Frim and Fram sent waves of boredom her way, bullied them into submission, and scanned the ranks before her. They were perfect. Life was tolerable.

The applause built and continued as cameras swooped in to capture the president’s image and send it out to the billions who watched from their homes. Anguar had appeared on twenty-seven planets, dispensed thousands of medals, and the victory tour was only half over. And while he hated the endless speeches, tributes, ceremonies, and monuments, he loved the wild diversity of the citizens who came to see him, resplendent in their multicolored skin, fur, fea
thers, and scales, noble behind their beaks, noses, and antennas, strong on the legs, arms, tentacles, and wings that had won the war.

Anguar gloried in the fact that all of them were obnoxiously alive, scheming and conniving to get whatever they could, eternally at each other’s throats, whining about the things they lacked, already forgetful of the foe they had so recently vanquished. The truth was that they were nothing less than marvelous, and if holding the Confederacy together meant dragging his skinny ass all over the universe, then that’s what he’d do. The president held up his hands and waited for the applause to die down.