March of the Legion (4 page)

"Thinker, you earther, don't screw this up!" Psycho was angry, probably because he wanted the exo himself. I ignored him.

"Blackout, Five," One ordered. One put up with Psycho only because the little lunatic was totally fearless in combat and a genius with his Manlink. He had saved us on Andrion 2, even I had to admit.

"Exoseg within range! Biobloc is set!" Sweety had it under control. I could see the exoseg clearly now, magnified on my faceplate. A grotesque bulbous head, glistening with compound eyes, topped with a mass of spiky, coarse bristles. Gaping, pincered jaws; long antennae, trembling, probing. Flashing black forelegs, snapping out in front of it. Exoseg Gigantic, species unknown. These were the natives of Andrion 3, and this one had probably found its way in from the outside after we did the starport. On the other hand, it could be a watchdog.

I was frozen with terror, but it did not matter. By this time, we could all deal with terror. I watched the creature twitch, coming closer and closer. I could hear it now, clicking and snapping. I raised the E and fired on biobloc. Biobloc was soundless. The creature stopped, stunned.

"Firing biobloc!" I informed the squad through clenched teeth. "No effect!"

"Thinker, give it a few more fracs!" A frantic scrambling, all around me, armor clashing against armor. I stood up and stepped over Priestess and walked forward, into the green, and that mindless horror filled the tunnel ahead of me—Deadman, it was big! I watched myself as if from far away, ice cold and paralyzed. My body functioned perfectly. I leaned into the biobloc, the E at my shoulder, aiming right at the exo's massive head. The creature twitched once, then the antennae cracked forward and the forelegs snapped to life. It came straight at me, berserk. My very own death, my image glowing in every facet of those dead compound eyes; multiman, microman, a whole squad of Thinkers, cold black armor and winking red faceplates.

I fired and the corridor exploded in a thunderous boom and a great rolling ball of fire hit the exo with a mighty fist of flame, enveloping it immediately in spitting, blue-hot sheets of sticky, burning gas. The exoseg exploded in flames, stopped in its tracks; now burning brightly, an obscene, fiery monstrosity, doing a dance of death. I took a few more steps, hypnotized. I had the E on autoflame and I directed the stream right at its awful head. It melted like wax right before my eyes. The corridor walls glowed white-hot; the filth spitting and burning; my black armor now glowing white in waves of superheated air, a great roar in my ears; the exoseg's massive legs curling and melting, burnt black, the entire exoskeleton one great sheet of flame.

I stopped. I released the trigger, and raised the E. I stood in a river of fire. Flames licked up my A-suit; and the corridor walls were afire and the massive exo burned like paper, crackling and spitting sparks, its insides popping open, its head all burnt and melted, evil greasy smoke rolling over me. I was frozen, hypnotized. I felt nothing except a cold, mute terror. Psycho appeared beside me, the barrel of his Manlink probing ahead of him. "Well, scut," he said. "You didn't leave much, did you?"

I did not answer. I watched the exoseg die. Why in the world had I advanced on it like that? Lunacy. Sheer lunacy. I was losing it. We were all losing it, in the Camp of the O's.

"Good work, Thinker," Snow Leopard said.

"Override encoded transmission from Command," Sweety interrupted. "I have recorded, amplified, filtered, and repeated." At last! We were all getting the same report, each from our own Tacmods.

The burst was almost inaudible in the howling roar of the deceptors. I strained to hear it, closing my eyes for better concentration. "…obtain objectives…" a piercing shriek drowned it out, then it warbled back in. "…by the magma. All units…" Another ear-shattering screech. Then a few more words, very faint. "…the lower levels. Maintain blackout but…" inaudible, drowned out in a rushing blast of static.

"What does it mean, Snow Leopard?" I asked.

"Hard to tell, Thinker. Something's happening in the lower levels of the base, or the starport, or whatever is down there. Sounds like it involves magma. Maybe the base is being torn apart. But whether we're supposed to go further in, or get out, it's not clear."

"So what do we do?"

"We continue the mission. This corridor leads somewhere, and that's where we're going. We're inside the rim of the caldera and not far from the edge. I want that starport. That's our mission. Priestess, you're in charge of Redhawk. Let's go." Snow Leopard was right next to me. I saw him clearly through his faceplate—his square cut, chunky face was deathly pale, and blue veins were throbbing faintly at his temples. His pink eyes glowed, eyes from another world. I had been close to him once, but now he was lost to us all. Our One was always decisive. I'm glad he was, because I sure as hell wasn't.

We set off, Priestess pulling Redhawk in a jury-rigged trav we had fashioned as a stretcher. Redhawk was mercifully unconscious. The dead exoseg glowed as we passed it, still faintly burning. Dying flames licked here and there on the walls, and wisps of dirty smoke drifted past us. It was dead quiet. There had been no reaction to our killing of the exoseg.

It appeared the Omnis did not know we were there.

Chapter 4:
The Souls of the Dead

"All right, Beta—you know the drill," Snow Leopard said quietly. "I'm in first, left—Three next, right. Cover, advance; cover, advance. Five next, Manlink, left. Nine is backup." He looked back at us. We were all in position, sprawled motionless among the rocks behind our weapons, clinging to the near-vertical cliff like lizards. The entrance was just ahead and above, on a steep slope. It was a black, gaping hole in the cliff face. Warped cenite beams and a tangle of cables dangled from the hole. An anti had touched the caldera here, sheering off megatons of rock and exposing a hardsited, camfaxed entryway leading from the shore of the lava lake. Our corridor had been split in two, ending in a sheer drop, but it had led right to the entryway. The lake glowed off to one side and a fiery sky rolled overhead. We were exposed to whoever—or whatever—might be looking.

"E's on flame," Snow Leopard added. "I want to avoid laser, vac or x—and biobloc won't help us if they're O's. Five, give us smoke."

Psycho aimed carefully, and a smoker exploded with a faint pop off to the left of the entrance. My adrenalin count went up. The wind whipped the smoke over the entrance, obscuring it from view. My faceplate switched to darksight, and I could see it again. The earth rumbled. Snow Leopard scrambled to his feet and up the slope, then picked his way through a tangled mass of wreckage and was suddenly gone, into the dark. I exploded to my feet and charged up the slope and into a nightmare tangle of shattered bulkheads, melted cenite beams, and shredded decking. Snow Leopard lay motionless on his belly near the left wall. I went to ground on the right behind a massive chunk of metal, my E pointed down tunnel. It was dark and quiet.

"One advancing." Snow Leopard was off; I covered him. Psycho stepped into the tunnel in a puff of smoke. I was sweating. There was no sign of life. Snow Leopard stopped, again in position on the left. I advanced, a low rush, passing Snow Leopard by, breathing hard, my E at the ready. I slid to a stop by a pile of wreckage. My tacmod was silent. A power strip ran overhead on one wall, and dead light panels lined the ceiling. There was an airlock ahead on the left. It was partially open, a dead black hole. I suddenly realized this was not an Omni installation—it was human. Systies!

"Open airlock," I hissed. "This is a Systie base!" There was Inter lettering on the power strip: DANGER NUKEFLOW 22TVF, and smaller letters: ERIDOS POWER SYSTEMS. I could make out something on the airlock too: EMERGENCY LOCK—1T AT—DANGER AUTOACT—KEEP DOOR CLEAR.

"Five, up," Snow Leopard ordered.

"What's it look like, Sweety?" I asked my tacmod.

"No life, Thinker. I detect organic matter. Bodies—humans."

"Nothing alive?"

"Negative life."

"You got that, One?"

"Smoke, Five." Normally it would have been deceptors, but normality did not apply to this place. Deceptors were too damned noisy.

Psycho fired right into the doorway and the smoke exploded violently out into our corridor. Snow Leopard and I burst in through an airlock partially blocked with wreckage, our fingers twitching on flame. We skidded to a stop in a room swirling with thick black smoke. It didn't bother us at all. There were bodies everywhere. Nothing moved. Psycho popped in the door, Manlink at the ready. We froze. It was dead quiet but for the hissing of the smoke. There were plenty of rooms and corridors ahead of us. We moved forward, scanning every room. My heart pounded, adrenalin surged, sweat trickled down my temples. We found only bodies, dead Systies, not even in armor. They had been caught completely off guard.

###

"Let's get these stiffs out of here." As the smoke slowly drifted out the airlock, it became clear what had happened. The outer airlock, at the end of the corridor closest to the lava lake, had been shattered in microfracs by our antimat. An explosion of wreckage had shot down the corridor at supersonic speed; one jagged chunk of cenite planking had lodged in the doorway of the second airlock, two emergency doors which should have autoacted instantly to save the installation. But the doors slammed up against cenite metal that blocked the doorway, and all within had died instantly as Andrion 3's poisonous atmosphere rushed in. The twisted slice of cenite, still lodged in the airlock, put a chill to my blood. What a stupid way to die.

Corpses were sprawled across the deck, faces swollen purple in death, limbs already stiff. They were all in litesuits, DefCorps duty uniforms. Some of them had been seated before a large control panel, monitoring the instruments. The first room was the duty station; the living quarters were beyond. There were dead in there, too—in the cubicles and the mess hall and the ex room and the store room. It looked like a neat little world the Systies had made for themselves here, in the Camp of the O's, but it had certainly ended abruptly.

"Move it, Thinker. Get that one." We dragged them outside, into the corridor. I reached down for the corpse.

A female, her swollen face contorted in horror, frozen hands clawing at nothing. A sudden end to her life. I got ahold of her tunic and dragged her through the airlock.

"Give me a hand here." Psycho was helping Priestess carry Redhawk into the room. There was a growing line of dead out in the corridor. A grisly, obscene spectacle. There must have been twenty of them, but I did not have the heart to count.

"Redhawk, can you sit up?" Snow Leopard stood by the control panel, puzzling it out. There were several huge, dead screens and an elaborate series of modules.

"Yeah…Priestess, honey, can you get me in that seat?" I helped Priestess ease Redhawk into the seat. We were all fully suited up, and still jumpy. Redhawk was the closest thing we had to Merlin. He was a tech's tech, and he would understand the panel.

"Nothing outside, Priestess?"

"Negative." She sounded tired.

"We're not leaving without Warhound."

"I know."

"So what is it, Redhawk?" Snow Leopard asked.

Psycho had stationed himself by the open airlock with his Manlink. All the bodies we could find were now outside. Our smoke still hung in the air and the atmosphere of violence and death was palpable. Somebody's dox mug lay on the floor in a blizzard of flimsy printouts and plastic manuals, a pitiful reminder of the lives that had so suddenly ended here.

"Aircars. Damn, this is an aircar control center!" Redhawk was astounded.

"Good," Snow Leopard said calmly. "That's good! Where are the aircars?"

"Don't know—we've got to activate power. Everything's down."

"How do we do that?"

"Give me a little time."

"We've got to do it very, very quietly. We can't tap into any outside power—you understand?"

"Sure, sure—they'll have emergency power. Deadman!" Redhawk gripped the edge of the console with his armored fingers. "Priestess, I need a bit more of your magic." Priestess gave him a biotic charge, slipping the tip into an access port on his A-suit.

"Thinker, Psyco—get that wreckage out of the airlock," Snow Leopard ordered. "I want to seal the lock and blow the at, and get us something we can breathe in here."

I had been lost in dreams, thinking of the Systies who had lived and worked here. It was almost unbelievable, knowing what we knew of the Omnis. How had the Systies coexisted with them? Even as allies, it was hard to believe.

Five and I removed the wreckage and dumped it in the corridor. The doors remained stuck in place. Everything here was dead, dead and frozen in one catastrophic instant of time.

"I want the absolute minimum power we need to breathe, and run these systems."

"That's a ten."

"How about that airlock?"

"I can close it manually," I replied. "The control's right here." I opened the access port and unfolded the manual crank. We were certainly back to basics, but it turned easily and the airlock doors began to move. As I cranked away, I closed my eyes and prayed for the souls of all who had died here. I was not certain to whom I was praying, and I had no sympathy for Systies and certainly none for Systies who had betrayed humanity by aligning themselves with the O's. But I prayed for them anyway. What could they have been doing here? How could they have lived with the O's? Were they willingly betraying their own race, their own species? Did they realize the enormity of what they were doing?

###

"Airlock doors secure."

"Power on. Emergency ventilation activated. Stand by."

The dead air within the installation stirred. The papers on the floor suddenly fluttered. The ceiling panels flickered and flashed on, illuminating us with a cold white light. The control panel came to life, reds and blues and greens glowing calmly, as if all was well—but all was not well, not at all.

"Confirm we're on blackout systems," Redhawk said. "No link to outside power sources. Commo all down…"

"Keep it that way," Snow Leopard ordered. "Tenners. Confirm the installation is airtight. Pressure building…"

The deck was filthy underfoot, sticky and gritty. We had dragged the dead through here. I bent down and picked up the dox mug. It bore the insignia of the 15th DefCorps—the same bunch we had run into on Andrion 2. I put it aside and recovered a manual from the deck—OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS—2200 LOCKON—MODE COMMANDS—fascinating stuff. I dropped it back onto the deck.

"Redhawk, can you bring the screens up? Will it attract any attention?" Snow Leopard was looking over the controls carefully.

"I can and it shouldn't. This installation is designed to function effectively on full blackout. And we're on emergency power. Just a frac." Redhawk turned to the task.

"According to the panel, the main screen should give us an overall view of the lake—can you confirm that?"

"Tenners," Redhawk responded. "Port visuals—that should be the starport. External, internal—Deadman!"

"Don't touch the internal! Not yet, anyway."

"Deadman! We'll be able to see everything!"

"Go slow! Nice and easy, or they'll be on us in a flash!"

"That's a big ten! Deadman!"

A dull explosion thundered through the walls. The lights flickered and the deck trembled. Sharp vibrations echoed up through our boots. We looked around, but there was nothing to see.

"What was that?"

"Antimat," Sweety replied calmly.

"Deadman. Somebody's still out there."

Psycho squatted by the airlock, checking his Manlink. Priestess appeared in the doorway to the living quarters. She had a pocket-sized datapak in one hand. She passed it to me, wordlessly. OPSKED, it was entitled—15 DefCorps—Starfleet Commandos—Property of United System Alliance—Responsible Officer—Lt. Jeffleigh Karmion.

"Fifty percent pressure," Redhawk noted. "Atmix confirmed."

Priestess sat down, exhausted, and leaned against a wall. I ran through the contents of the datapak. The entire opsked was classified SECRET SYSRES NOCIV DEFOR DEFCON. The first few docs were mission orders for Karmion's unit—Hqs Company, Aircar Squadron 303, 4th Commandos, 15 DefCorps. I glanced through the memos; there were several references to an Oplan Gold.

"I've got the external screen psyched. I think," Redhawk said.

"Don't do anything until you're sure," Snow Leopard replied.

The miscellaneous data was a lot more extensive than it should have been, I noted. I went into it. It wanted a password.

"Priestess, did you get into the miscellaneous?"

"Yes. That's the interesting part. The password is 'Jenny'."

"Now how did you do that?"

"There's a solid of his girl on his desk. And her name. It was just a guess—he was not very imaginative."

I punched in Jenny and the data came up on the screen.

It was a journal—the personal journal of Jeffleigh Karmion.

"Main screen coming on," Redhawk reported.

I raised my eyes. It glowed to life suddenly, taking our breath away.

The entire lake was there, massive black slopes glittering with pumice, cloaked in smoke, the great incandescent, golden lake of lava bubbling and hissing, grinding along slowly, black smoky clouds close overhead, the wind tracing eerie patterns on the surface of the lava. Lightning arced down from the clouds, striking the lake. A spidery complex of nav lines overlay the image, invisible highways in the sky, and a status box revealed there were no aircars in sight.

"Where are the aircars?" Redhawk asked himself.

"Never mind the aircars," Snow Leopard replied. "We use this screen to find Warhound. Tell me what it can do."

"Go to it, One," Psycho said dreamily. "Go to it. We find Warhound! That's our mission." He looked over his Manlink, holding it up to the light. Sometimes I thought Psycho was just as dangerous to us as to the enemy. But he had held together so far, I had to admit.

I turned my attention back to the datapak, browsing through the entries. It quickly became apparent that Karmion had some problems with the mission.

1444/02/01 SS. They awarded us a unit citation today. What reeking hypocrisy. A unit citation, for Vulcan Station. Conspicuous prudence, above and beyond. A unit citation awarded to slaves by cowards, from a very safe distance away. A justification for their own crimes. Why don't our leaders present the citation in person? It's for them, not for us. It's a unit citation for the System. This makes us physically sick. We'd rather die with what's left of our honor than live like this.

"Full pressure," Redhawk announced. "Air is pure, full normal. Take a bite!"

Snow Leopard straightened up before the control panel. "I'll try it." He cracked the visor of his faceplate open and took a breath. We all watched him silently.

"Tastes fine to me," Snow Leopard concluded. "I'll take first watch—the rest of you can off helmets, but keep them within reach. Have we got water in the lines?"

"That's a ten."

"All right, one at a time can wash up in the heads. One at a time. Get it all done, 'cause we're not staying long." Snow Leopard closed his visor again and turned back to the control panel.

"Redhawk," Priestess said, "I want you naked. I've got to work on your wounds. You should be first in the shower." We all laughed at Priestess's comment. When it came to her medical duties, Nine was so serious she sometimes did not seem quite real.