Soldier of the Legion (5 page)

We watched the show on the d-screens in the aircar bay, next to those sinister rows of armored aircars. Snow Leopard expected something. Our whole Combat Assault Team had gathered, all seven squads, and the other CATs in nearby bays. The tension built.

A sacred moment, I thought, quietly watching the flickering images. Great forests covered the land. Ponderous, ancient trees covered with brilliant multicolored blossoms towered into the sky, bursting with fruit and seeds and festooned with long tangles of hanging vines and moss. Rolling flowerfields of scarlet and gold and blue and silver reflected every color in the spectrum.

Small, leathery birds with great translucent wings glided effortlessly high above the trees. Under the forest canopy, the probes revealed an endless variety of delicate plants and animals crawling and climbing and hiding in the vegetation.

Out on the plains, diaphanous flying creatures floated silently on the wind like angels, awash in sunlight. Light grav, atmix close to perfect. A tranquil, dreamy world, the sky a brilliant blue, flecked with powdery white clouds.

Legion paranoia clawed its way through the fairy-tale scenes. My skin crawled. Who could believe such images?

A rainstorm swept past one of the scouts, and a rainbow glittered in the spray. The pilot shouted for joy. We found no sign of Systies. No sign of the natives. We swept the spectrum. No advanced signals of any kind. A primitive, quiet, virgin world. More perfect than we ever dared imagine.

I didn’t believe it for an instant.

Recon darted over the forests, swooped low over great raw mountain ranges, and flew over vast deserts of black sand and frozen wasteland. Nothing. Where were the natives? Survey had originally spotted them in the forests, and I had a view projected on the bulkhead over my desk that showed three separate smoke trails rising from a vast forest. I thought it quite a shot. But there were no smoke trails now—only silent forests.

Firefall, the expedition leader, didn’t like it. Nobody liked it. It was very peculiar.

Off to one side, a shout drew our attention. Squad Delta surged over to the arms lockers, excited.

“Listen up!” Snow Leopard raised a hand as he listened to the command channel on his headset. “All right, here it is. Command’s sending a heavy task force down to launch a max-assault on our initial objective. Beta
will be
participating! Move it, troopers! Armor and arms—NOW!”

We scrambled to the lockers. The whole aircar bay surged as Legion troopers fought to get at their A-suits and weapons. It looked like the entire CAT was going!

###

“Seal the car! Lock restraints! Night vision! Beta! Count off and weapons report. Mark!” The overhead lights flickered and went red as we counted off in response to Snow Leopard’s shouted commands. In my armor, I strapped into the seat, my E glowing softly at my chest, all systems green. My adrenalin was already flowing for the long ride down.

“Sir, Beta is A&A, aircar sealed.” Snow Leopard reported our status.

“Tenners, Beta. Pilot, AC gate is open. Roll to launch tube.”

“Rolling!” The aircar jerked forward abruptly and shot along the guide rail. We sluiced into the tube with a deafening metallic shriek, slamming us against the restraints. We were now in our assault carrier, and it would deliver us and the other six aircars of CAT 24 into the lower atmosphere of Andrion 2. I had no idea how many other CATs were participating, and I knew better than to ask.

###

In assault orbit, we watched the screens, A&A—armored & armed. All systems on, blood pounding in my ears, breath echoing in my helmet. My comrades rode beside me in their gleaming black armor and glowing red faceplates. As cold as death and all juiced up, every nerve ending on full alert. Our assault carrier slowly fell out of orbit, into the dark side, leaving
Atom’s Road
far behind. A glittering armada of death followed us, a night sky full of fighters and assault craft, alien warriors from far across the galaxy, come to stay. The date on my chron read 312/10/02 CGS, but I knew that was crap. It was Year Zero for Andrion 2.

And for us.

The chosen landing zone was a great, flat, flowered plain. Good killing ground and lots of room. We christened it ZA, Zero Alpha. It reminded me of all the ZAs on Planet Hell.

Being creatures of the great dark, we brought darkness with us. And light. Yes, we certainly brought light. We watched them prep ZA on the screens. Eye-searing antis flashed to life in the dark, again and again and again, turning the night into day. The planet shuddered. Antis scared me. We used antimatter for our star drives, our vac drives, and to settle serious arguments—it was nasty stuff. The screens gave us a view from the Ship, tiny intense brilliant white pinpricks burning on the night side of Andrion 2. The Hand of God, glowing with irresistible power in an alien night.

Come on, Systies—show yourselves!

We dropped opvacs onto ZA, great vacuum bombs, punching huge holes in the atmosphere, creating a horrific windstorm. Then we lit it, a flaming sky, burning it all, right down to the bare rock, a great searing white glow in the night. Then gamma, saturating the landscape, enough to fry the very microbes. Then biobloc—every bloc we could imagine, in the human range. Biobloc was even scarier than antimat—if it was set to your genetics you died a horrible death. We threw in everything we had. We did not want any opposition in ZA.

“Thinker, why are we doing a max?” Merlin was on the private channel. “Doesn’t that mean we’re expecting opposition?” Merlin took everything very seriously, even his occasional bad jokes. He was basically unfamiliar with reality.

“It could be they just don’t want to take any chances. Don’t worry, we’ll do all right, Merlin.” I wasn’t sure we’d do all right, but I wanted to think so.

Ironman broke in, also on private. “Thinker, keep an eye on me on the tacmap, will ya?” He was just a kid—like my little brother.

“Tenners, Ironman. No worries.”

Snow Leopard stepped on our conversation, cutting in on the override squad command channel. “We got it, gang!” He was brimming with confidence. “First wave. We all know what to do. I want this to be better than any of the drills we did on Planet Hell. Beta rules, all the way down—and no chitchat. We do it right!”

###

When we entered the atmosphere, the assault craft shuddered, and bounced wildly. We were totally helpless. If anything went wrong, we would all die, burnt to cinders, with perhaps an instant or two to realize death was at hand.

The drop song came on. It drove me crazy, I hated it, but they played it every time.

“The past is dead and gone,
The scent of flowers in a tomb,
A half remembered tune,
From a half-remembered time.
Open your eyes, cast off old dreams!
A New World awaits you—
A New World to love you—
Drop, drop, drop!
The Past is dead and gone!”

I switched over to my own sounds. I closed my eyes, and the music of the stars overwhelmed me. I had stopped listening to other music on Hell. Now I had only the music of the stars, hissing and humming and roaring in my ears. Sweety played the recording on demand and it was quite an orchestra, the high pitched howl of blue-white supergiants, the crackling hiss of yellow primes, the awful shriek of stars being ripped apart by black holes, awesome rumbling from gas clouds giving birth to young stars, the hopeless moaning of a black dwarf—it wasn’t really music but I loved it.

As the assault craft approached the target, we saturated the area with opstars, tactical nukes, just in case. This set off another massive firestorm, a great ring of fire all around ZA. Then we blitzed the atmosphere with deceptors. The fighters rushed into the center of the target and left behind long lines of fire, greasy black smoke roaring up into the night, highways of fire for our attack.

The general order from command swamped all channels, “Launch aircars!”

We launched with a lurch and bang that rattled my teeth. It looked like we were invading Dante’s version of Hell. We fell into a roaring inferno, an evil night sky blazing brightly with the flames of Armageddon over a glowing, blasted wilderness of black smoking rocks and burning earth.

Despite my fears, I felt right at home. As we rode the flames to our assigned objectives, a wild cheer burst into my ears.

Snow Leopard barked the warning, “Prep to decar!”

We crowded by the assault doors underneath the glowing red tac lights.

The assault doors snapped open and Snow Leopard led the way into the darkness beyond. “Decar...death!”

We burst from the car into the smoking night, weapons ready, equipment dangling. The firestorm raged around us. Legion fighters blasted overhead, punching holes in the sky. Aircars shot past us, kicking up a wake of black dust.

We dashed to our assigned positions. Oily black smoke hung close to the ground.

“Command, Snow Leopard. Beta is in position!”

We were arrayed in attack formation, tingling with anticipation, weapons at the ready. Nothing stirred, except the Legion. We could see everything, and there was nothing to see. All around us, the land smoked in the darkness. We’d blasted a healthy chunk of real estate into a lifeless moonscape and landed in force, and there was no one there to fight.

Chapter 3:
Grim Reaper

Days later, we’d settled into routine patrols, crisscrossing the planet in search of what wasn’t there. Gradually, boredom and frustration clawed at the ragged edges of our resolve. Then it happened! A native!

“Set your E’s on minimum V-stun rounds, ladies. Repeat, v-min.” Snow Leopard was already harassing us—he never let up. I was in the aircar, slipping the comtop helmet over my head. We were at last closing on a native! We’d been called in to pick up the search from the air for the native that Alpha squad had spotted in the forest while on foot patrol. He had gone to ground in a tangle of shrubbery. Redhawk spotted a nearby clearing and swooped down for a hot decar.

We hit the ground running in armor, but it was a short pursuit. He had disappeared into a very narrow tunnel leading down into the earth at a sharp angle. It was just the right size for a Scaler—our name for the scale-clad natives. They were smaller than us, but we could all see that a Legion soldier could fit in there as well—without armor.

Merlin launched a trio of microprobes and they showed a well-worn passageway extending a long, sinuous distance. It didn’t get any wider for a long time, so blasting a larger entrance was out.

I slipped my comtop on and activated the tacmap on my translucent faceplate. The comtop was a scaled-down version of the A-suit helmet. It provided light armor head protection and communication when we weren’t in our A-suits. We hurriedly changed into A-vests, litesuits and comtops.

“Stun rounds!” Psycho quipped. “Yes, sir! We sure wouldn’t want to hurt anybody.”

What a bloodthirsty little smartass. Psycho was a mental case. Snow Leopard spent a lot of time holding him back, but he was smart and fast.

I was not happy about the V-min, either. V rounds would stun and normally induce unconsciousness but minimum power didn’t pack much of a punch. I exited the aircar, adjusted my gloves, draped my E across my chest and yanked at the jumble of equipment strapped to my waist.

Snow Leopard looked appraisingly at the extra equipment I carried and cracked a grin, letting his guard down for a moment. “You look like a military surplus sale, Thinker.”

Dragon chimed in, “Hey, Thinker, can I borrow something if I need it down there? You know I don’t like to carry stuff.”

Psycho could be more obnoxious than Dragon. “Hey, Thinker, can you haul my gear, too?”

“Blackout, will you?” I didn’t mind. I always took as much stuff as I could carry. I knew the only way I’d really need something was to leave it behind.

The forest darkened. I glanced up at the clouds blotting out the sun. Violet shadows and a fine mist filled the air. Angel wings hovered above me. We’d named the delicate, jelly-like creatures air angels.

The entrance lay at the edge of a blackened, crumbling, dead city, choked with vegetation. Enormous tree roots snaked around the city, strangling it with glacial patience. Massive green trees rose amid the shattered stones of a fossilized past. Tiny, colorful flying creatures glided past, trailing the air angels. A stronger breeze stirred the forest. Nothing on screen.

We stood in the heart of the past. Broken stone blocks rested all around us, the tomb of a city, now part of the forest. It was officially designated Site 5543. The mist turned to pelting rain. Perfect—the tunnel will fill up with water and we’ll all drown.

We gathered around the entrance, along with a few life techies that had just arrived in another aircar. Then Squad Alpha arrived to guard the area and watch our backs. It could be a trap. We still didn’t know what we were up against or where the damned Systies were hiding. This tunnel or passageway would be a lovely spot to trap and kill a few Legion troopers.

Our camfax automatically blended with the surroundings. At that moment, we looked dark and wet. I re-ran the system checklist on my comtop. The darksight worked fine. So did the breather and the comset. We wouldn’t need the breather except for the water. Unless the tunnel caved in. Or they used gas. Or smoke.

Hardly anything to worry about.

“This could be tremendously amusing.” Coolhand had perfected his rather grim sense of humor on Planet Hell. A tall, slim youth, he came from some lost, hopeless spacer ratworld. Curly dark brown hair, friendly green eyes, a narrow, clean-cut face, tanned a pale brown. He was a musician, happiest when strumming his ionic lektra, his only real possession. In the field he was cautious, but good, so they made him a Two.

He looked up as three more aircars converged on our location from different directions—the clearing would soon run out of room. “I feel kind of sorry for this Scaler,” Coolhand said, gesturing towards the aircars. “All this attention. I think the brass are upset ‘cause they haven’t found anybody to shoot yet.”