Slave of the Legion (14 page)

"Where are they? Where are they?"

"I don't know!" Dragon insisted. "We were separated!"

"The tacmap is all chaff," Merlin said. "Where the hell do we go?" The tunnel was lined with gaping hatchways, all leading to unknown worlds.

"One said split up," Twister said. "Get to a higher level, and secure the ship." Her teeth were chattering.

"But we can't go up to the city again—the O's will cook us!"

"But Priestess…"

"Our psybloc is off the scale!" Tara warned us.

"Something's coming!"

Gildron roared suddenly. An explosion rocked the underground. I was stunned. What next, what next!

"We're through," somebody said. I didn't recognize the voice.

"I detect multiple Legion A-suits!" Sweety warned us. "Unknown unit, probably Blue Gold, repeat, unclear count, unknown Legion unit, as marked…" They had broken into our tunnel.

"Blackout," I commanded. "Deceptors! Let's get outta here!" I tossed a deceptor behind us and we sloshed through the water, Dragon leading with the Manlink. We were running from the Legion troopers—I didn't want to fight them. Our psybloc helmet units were still flashing so there was really no way we could hide, even on blackout.

"Wester! Wester!" Tara clawed at my armor wildly.

"Far enough! That's it—everybody stop!" Dragon turned and the Manlink was at his shoulder, aiming right at my chest. I sloshed to a stop, trying to comprehend it.

"He's the psychee!" Tara exclaimed. "It's Dragon!"

"That's right, troopers," Dragon said. "It's Dragon! Now don't move! Nobody move, or you all die! I'm on auto xmax." I could see right through Dragon's faceplate into his cold, dead eyes, and I could see only a fanatic determination. It was truly terrifying. I knew Dragon was the best trooper in Beta—not one of us could match him for sheer nerve, guts, skill, or raw bravery. The people who psyched him had chosen well.

"Drop the weapons—now!" The Manlink's laser sight flashed over my face. "Any resistance and you die—all of you!"

"Black Jade, Blue Gold! Warning, we've got at least one O in the underground complex!" The others dropped their E's into the water. I let the SG slide off my shoulder, but my E was secured to my chestplate by an autorecovery mechanism.

"Your left hand, Thinker," Dragon said. "Slowly. Hit the release. I warn you, your death will mean nothing to me."

We were all unarmed now except Dragon and I. Even Gildron, snarling and bristling, had followed Tara's lead and dropped his E into the water. I slowly reached down with my left hand to the release tab, located near the butt of the weapon. The flickering laser sight blinded me, filling my helmet. I knew death was very, very close and I was bathed in icy sweat but I knew I had to do something and it came to me in a flash. As my thumb touched the release tab I hooked one finger around the ring of a psybloc grenade. I had a pack of them strapped to my u-belt, ready for action, and they were just below water level. As my E slid into the water and I brought my left hand back up carefully, the ignition ring was around one finger and the grenade was live in the pack. I held my hand so Dragon could not see the ring.

"Blue Gold, this is Blue Jade," Dragon said. "I've got five Black Jades here, under control, as marked…"

"PSYBLOC GRENADE ACTIVATED!" Sweety urgently warned me, alerted by the hot grenade at my waist. The warning was simultaneous to everyone else—including Dragon. He had turned his weapon to cover Gildron once my E went down. Now it swung back to me, a slow motion horror arc and I threw myself at Eight in agonizing fractions of time, splashing frantically through the water, that damned right leg giving out again—no! I could see his mouth, firmly set, and his eyes, glittering cold death. Then the grenade went off right at my waist, a shattering white flash and bang.

Chapter 11
A Fine Place to Die

I awoke in a firefight, laser snapping past my helmet, auto xmax bursting off the walls and the water boiling with shrapnel. Tara pulled a biotic charger away from an access port on my armor and shouted something but I could not hear it. Twister was against one wall, firing auto x. I came back to life quickly, my body shrieking objections.

"Cease fire, Black Jade! You're firing on a friendly unit!"

"Wester, Merlin is hit bad!" Tara informed me. I turned. Merlin was propped against one wall, chest-deep in a spreading pool of blood, fused whitened armor revealing a chest hit. He was in shock, deathly pale. He opened his mouth weakly but could not speak. I screamed in horror and turned to face the Blue Gold troopers. Tara thrust an E into my hands.

"Let's get out of here!" she urged me.

And something snapped inside me. It all just went red, and I stepped forward right into the line of fire, sloshing through the waist-deep water. I raised the E to my shoulder and fired, auto xmax. I was consumed, transformed, overcome with hatred and rage. I screamed, hysterical, running right at those Legion troopers, sloshing through the sewers like a wild man, burning out my E, finger holding the trigger down all the way, full auto x, blind rage. The world exploded ahead of me and I was taking hits, laser and x, banging and hissing into my armor, but I kept on going, totally insane, and I caught little glimpses behind me, Tara and Gildron and Twister following, E's blazing auto x and laser. The air around us was a glittering highway of death, laser and x, and I was not going to stop until I was dead.

And then I was down in the water, exhausted. Dead—surely dead. I struggled to my feet, gasping. We were surrounded by shattered Legion A-suits, smoking, blistered Legion armor. Four of them. No insignia.

Twister staggered, sobbing. "Legion troopers—they're Legion troopers! They're just like us, and we killed them. We killed them!"

Tara made the sign of the Legion over the nearest glowing A-suit. "May the Gods protect your souls. We will pray for your journey—you fought bravely! Deadman forgive us!"

One of them moved. An arm, twitching. I was on him like a wolf, pulling him up against one wall. "Who are you, you bastards? Answer me! Who are you?"

He was in shock, spitting blood. I snapped up his visor. A young, pale Outworlder trooper, blinking nervously.

"Am I going to die?" He coughed, spitting more up blood. We stood waist-deep in a widening pool of bloody water. I did not want to look at his injuries.

"Yes," I answered. "We're sorry. Please tell us who you are, and why you're here." My heart pounded raggedly.

"The ship," he said dreamily. "The mission was the ship."

"Yes—that was our mission! The ship! Why are you fighting us? We're all with the Legion! Why!"

"Water," the trooper choked. Tara brought a canteen up to his mouth. He took a swig, then continued. "We're not with the Legion," he said. "We're with ConFree. Special Mission Strike Force. Our mission was to stop you from securing that ship."

"ConFree! My God! Why? Why? It's crazy! The Legion takes its orders from ConFree!"

The trooper coughed again, and spit up more blood. "ConFree wanted the System to secure that ship."

"You must be insane!" I seized him by his shoulder and he shrieked in agony. "Why? Why? Why would ConFree want the System to secure an Omni starship? The System hates everything ConFree and the Legion stand for!"

The young trooper looked into my eyes and blinked away tears of pain. "I'm dying," he said in disbelief. He looked around wildly, then turned back to me. "We're fighting…for the future. ConFree believes the Legion has become too powerful. To counter the System…ConFree created the Legion. But the Legion has grown into a titanic, invincible monster, an instrument of blind aggression that ConFree can no longer effectively control. The System is doomed. Next, the Legion will turn on ConFree. That's what they told us. The Legion is now an instrument that is directing itself. And our mission was to redress the imbalance of power in the galaxy. Strengthen ConFree by strengthening the System. Oh, I'm going, Deadman, we believed…we believed…" And the life just slipped out of him. I saw it leaving his face, just like that. I slowly released my grasp on his shoulder and his body slumped back against the wall. I was overcome with horror.

"ConFree," I muttered, in shock. "We're fighting ConFree."

"He was absolutely right about the Legion," Tara said. "We are monsters. And they made us. Now they're afraid. And they should be!" Tara made the sign of the Legion over the dead trooper's face, tracing the cross in the air. "May you fight on in another world! Brave troopers, my God, what a waste! What an awful, criminal waste!"

"ConFree! Those dirty bastards!" I exclaimed, overcome with revulsion. "They send us out to die for them, fighting the O's, fighting the System, and then they want to strengthen the System? Sending people to kill us? Deadman, I can't believe it!"

"Believe it," Twister said mournfully. "These troopers died for ConFree."

"Merlin!" I suddenly remembered. We hastened back up the tunnel to our old position. He was still alive, against the wall, barely keeping his helmet above water, deathly pale. I gently took him into my arms.

"Thinker…" he said weakly, "I wanted to see that ship. More than anything…take that ship, Thinker. Don't let them get it!" And he gasped and died, right in my arms. My eyes filled with tears. Merlin, our holy, beloved tech. Merlin, who had risked everything for us on Mongera. Merlin was gone.

"Kill me," Dragon said. I turned. Dragon was propped against the opposite wall, his arms secured behind him.

"He's no longer in the autohypnotic trance," Tara said. "But it could return at any time."

"Kill me, Thinker," Dragon repeated, his face twitching. "I betrayed our mission. I got Merlin killed. The bastards must have done me after I was wounded on Coldmark. I couldn't do a thing, Thinker. I was totally psyched—I remember it all now. All I wanted was to stop you all, and turn you over to Blue Gold. It must have been me that did that nova beacon, too—but I don't remember that."

"It's all right, Dragon," I said. "We're all slaves. We're all psyched, by somebody." Yes, I thought, we're all slaves. I was a slave of the Legion—and my mission was that Omni ship. If it wasn't there, after all this, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But I did know that a lot of people were surely going to die. And I also knew that, just as ConFree had feared, I was no longer under their control.

###

"You are approaching the lower levels of one of the Omni column buildings," Sweety informed me.

"Terrific! Can you give me a fix on that O?" We were wading knee-deep in a sluggish stream of black ooze, on darksight, groping through the sewers of the Mound. Cold cenite walls coated with freezing scum hemmed us in. And at least one O was tracking us down.

"Negative, Thinker, the deceptors are extremely heavy." I popped another deceptor. Twister tossed a psybloc grenade behind us. It was ludicrous—we needed the psybloc to shield us from the O's psypower, but the blasts were giving away our position. Gildron roared again, furious. I had concluded that he was a dead loss—a lot of noise and not much action. Tara looked around us warily, poised to fire. Well, she was getting what she wanted, marching in the mud—Deadman! We didn't know what had happened to the rest of the squad, Snow Leopard and Priestess and Valkyrie and Scrapper. We were on blackout and dared not transmit.

"Omni one level down!" Sweety snapped. She flashed us a location—there, moving fast, closing on us!

"On me!" We ran for our lives, splashing through the mess away from that glowing phospho dot on our tacmaps. I sloshed to a sudden stop under an open ceiling hatch—cenite steps, leading up. An access ladder, for O's.

"Up!" Tara and Gildron scrambled up into the hatch. Twister was next. I snapped a contac grenade off my u-belt.

"Movement! The Omni is on our level!" I set the grenade to 30 fracs and hurled it into the dark. I snatched another grenade and set it. Twister disappeared up the hatchway.

The world exploded, a blinding ball of fire booming down the tunnel, raw flames flashing past me, enveloping me, and suddenly I was burning like charcoal, a great roaring, my faceplate lit up with warning lights. I was dancing in flames as Sweety shrieked in my ears, maximum volume. "TOLERANCES EXCEEDED! YOUR ARMOR IS FUSING! THE LADDER, THINKER—NOW!" I dropped the grenade and groped blindly for the hatchway. My fingers closed on the bottom rung of the ladder. I raced the flames up the ladder, exploding upwards in a volcanic blast of fire, climbing right up between Twister's legs and not pausing for an instant. If we had not both been in armor, it would have been very embarrassing. We erupted out the top in flames, with Gildron snatching at our limbs. I collapsed, my armor glowing and spitting sparks.

"Deadman! That was the O!"

"Thinker, are you…"

"Damn! If there's a galactic record for ladder climbing, I just broke it!" A sharp explosion sounded below us.

"What happened?"

"That's my contac grenade," I said. "The O is after us; he knows those flames work on us—let's move it!"

"WARNING! Your armor has been breached! I have three penetrations! Recommend…"

"Fuse it, Sweety!" We were in a narrow filthy alley, a floor slick with grease between oily cenite walls. Gildron paused, straddling the hatchway, firing his E straight down the ladder, auto canister. A berserk shrieking. Another blast sounded below, my second grenade.

"O RISING!"

"Run!" We ran again in a blind panic. Smoke poured off my armor. How could we fight the starmass? We could not counter it! The O's hadn't used it on Andrion 3 or Mongera, and the techs had no defense.

"Wester!" It was Tara, a shriek of horror. I slid into her. Gildron and Twister had just run up against a wall of cenite bars blocking all further progress along our alley. Beyond the bars, a solid cenite wall. We could burn our way out, but it would take time—and we did not have any time left. I turned, frantic.

"The enemy has reached our level! The enemy is approaching! Mag levels rising!" Sweety had it spotted now—a phospho dot on my faceplate coming at us, coming right at us like a dragon from the stars, drawing in its unholy breath, ready to blast us to fiery cinders.

"We stand and fight," I said. I don't know why, but I was suddenly completely calm. A warm wave rushed over my flesh and I heard the music of the stars in the background. I raised my E and set it to canister. Gildron stood beside me, a massive presence, bristling, his E at his shoulder. Tara and Twister huddled against the walls, their E's up and tracking.

"O approaching! Mags off the scale!" Our psybloc helmet units flashed wildly, the light glancing eerily off the filthy, oozing walls. A dirty place to die, I thought. But suddenly I was overwhelmed with a hot rush of emotion. No, I thought, it's a fine place to die. A holy place to die, for justice, for mankind.

"Fire canister when it flames us, guys," I said. "We die like soldiers! One, Three! We're trapped and done for! It's all up to you! Death!" I was just throwing it out for the record. The last thing I expected was that One would actually hear it. But he did.

"It's them, Valkyrie," Snow Leopard said clearly. "Get that O!"

"I'm on it, One!" Valkyrie responded. "Goodbye and God bless you!" I knew she was hurling herself blindly right at the O somewhere down that hopeless alley, a magnificent suicide for us all. I wondered briefly if any of us would survive. And then the alley erupted and a glittering blast of superhot burning gas hit us like the fist of a mighty god, and I fired, auto canister, right into Hell.

###

The relentless river of starmass faltered, briefly. I spotted a glimmer of flickering white light and hurled myself at it, frantic to escape the certain death that enveloped us. I fell in a tangle of A-suited bodies on a massive smoking hunk of cenite that dropped out from the wall. Twister had lasered a section of the alley wall and Gildron had kicked it out. We were out of the alley, wreathed in smoke and flames, our A-suits glowing white-hot. Gildron, Tara, Twister—all there.

"I can't move!" Twister, on her back. Gildron fired canister back into the flaming hell from which we had just escaped. We were bathed in white light. I looked up. A ceiling of glassy vertical tubes dangling from above, swirling madly in the hot air rushing up from our position.

"Critical A-suit failures!" Sweety informed me. "Major hydraulics failure, total right leg movement lock, total darksight failure, weapons systems guidance disintegrating, tacmod failing, tacnet failing, numerous penetrations, surface resistance down by half, damage to forty-six percent of all systems, I cannot guarantee the continued functioning of your A-suit, Thinker!"

Tinkling—those glass tubes above us, tinkling, an eerie crystal sea up on the ceiling. Twister screamed. Tara pulled her away from that jagged, flaming hole.

"Don't fail me, Sweety! Do what you can!"

"The enemy is approaching!"

"Oh scut!" The tacmap was a glowing, swirling mess—worthless. I snatched at a psybloc grenade and tossed it toward the hole as we retreated. Sweety was right—my right leg was frozen. I could not move it. I crawled backwards like a crab, firing canister into the hole. I caught a glimpse of Gildron standing over Tara like a great metal god, firing auto canister. Tara was dragging a helpless Twister along the floor. I had no idea where we were—thick smoke swirled all around us, and all I could see was that unearthly ceiling, writhing like an undersea forest.

"Leave me, guys," Twister choked out. "I'm done for, but I can still fire. Leave me! Get the ship!"

"Screw the ship!" I snapped. "We're staying! Tara…" I was against a wall. I backed into a little alcove—I'd be able to cover the others from there. And suddenly the floor spun and a door snapped shut, and I was rising—rising! An elevator! I had backed into an elevator! I leaned against one wall, raising my E. One side of the elevator was transparent—it shot upwards and the O's glassy city was outside, burning brightly from our attack. My skin crawled, but nobody appeared to notice me. I was in one of those vertical tubes running up the outside of a column building—on my way to the top! The elevator filled with smoke from my A-suit.