Cross of the Legion (39 page)

Chapter 30
Death my Destination

"Surfacing!" Dragon announced.

We were at the controls of a large commuter sub packed full of Arcwhites, Arcangels and lots of others, fleeing the imminent destruction of Norport Station. The sea was full of subs, all heading away from the station as quickly as possible. The defensive sub force did not know what to target.

We burst through the surface like a breaching dragonshark in a large phosphorous wave. The cloudy night sky blazed with glittering tracers. A whole day had flashed past during our nightmare visit to Norport. Skystars and chainlink skysweep x floated eerily across the dark in beautiful patterns. Opstars and tacstars erupted, flashing night to day in frozen blue electric instants. Vibrations thundered into the skin of the sub. The party was on. The
Wraith's
small force of fighters was distracting the station's defenders while we got away.

"One, put us right on it!" I demanded.

"You're heading right for it!" KCA had beached his minisub in the swamp not far from BioSite 2.
Kiss
and
Little Miss Miss
darted back and forth over the swamp, hunting.

"That's it! See it?" Dragon said, pointing out the front port to a ragged shoreline of mud and saltweed and swamp trees covered with strangle vines. It was raining. There—a minisub, run up onto the mud.

"Kill him, Thinker!" Valkyrie gasped, holding a bloody cloth against her shoulder. Scrapper was right beside her.

"Put us right alongside. Just ram the shore."

A faint bump, and the sub slid to a halt. I was at the crew door in moments, hauling it open. A warm night—the stink of the swamp, a light rain and a faint buzz. One of the Phantoms passed overhead. I leaped down to the surface, landing with a splash in dark, waist-deep muck. I struggled towards the shore and the minisub, a sinister dark outline. Dragon was behind me.

The sub loomed over me. I vaulted up to the wet cenite deck. Rain peppered my face. The main hatch was fully open, revealing the interior—empty! I turned away. Dragon looked up from below. Priestess came splashing up beside him, still wearing the Arcwhite outfit, splattered with blood.

"The swamp," I said. "He'll be signalling for pickup. One…"

"He's not going to get picked up, Thinker," Snow Leopard responded instantly. "Kiss and Miss will see to it. Recon has seized control of BioSite 2."

A titanic blast shook the earth, lighting up the clouds for a split-frac, freezing every raindrop. A rolling fireball gained height just beyond BioSite 2.

"That's the tacsite."

"Has the reactor gone up yet?"

"Not yet."

I leaped down into the mud. I had no shirt but I still had that DefCorps cold knife. What the hell else did I need? I sloshed into the swamp—wild spooky black trees full of hanging moss and stranglers, ragged fields of chest-high swamp weeds, sucking mud and silty water.

"Let's spread out!" Scrapper shouted.

"All right—do it!"

"Thinker, Claws has spotted the bastard." One said, in my ear. "See the flares." Brilliant electric-blue flares glittered to sudden life, floating serenely over the swamp. I headed towards them like a well-trained attack dog.

"How many targets, One?" I asked.

"Only one target." My heart froze. I knew he didn't need Stormdawn any more. He must have known he was doomed at that point. Stormdawn was only to stop us from blasting his minisub.

One target! I guess I was already assuming, at that point, that Stormdawn was dead. I tried not to think about it.

"Beta, Recon, One. DefCorps Starfleet is dropping fighters into the at. We're running out of time. Our Fighter Force is disengaging and returning to the Wraith. Kiss and Miss will stay on target."

"I'm not leaving until KCA is dead!"

"We'll support you, Three. Go!"

***

I found Stormdawn in KCA's wake, sprawled in a clump of saltweeds, almost submerged in the muck, discarded like a used dispo. His lovely face was cold and pale and still, his hair was matted with mud, and his white uniform was scarlet with blood. The rain pelted us fiercely and his blood was still flowing. I went to my knees and embraced him, stunned. His eyes—half closed, half open. Dead, cold eyes. His mother's eyes—dead! My heart was burning. I pulled at his blouse with trembling hands. His chest was a bloody mass of bubbling gore. Stabbed in the chest, stabbed in the heart, sliced open by a hotknife. Dead! I couldn't see clearly because of the tears. All I could do was hold him in my arms and cry like a baby.

"Thinker! Let us…Thinker!" Scrapper and Dragon were suddenly there, examining Stormdawn, pulling him from my grasp.

"Redhawk—land on our zero! We need a medpak. Now!"

"Thinker, KCA is right up ahead. See the lasers." Hot, glittering tracks sizzled down from the dark sky like golden rain, slicing the night.

I got up slowly. Stormdawn's cold hand slipped from mine. Dragon and Scrapper ripped his shirt off. My boy was dead. The laser was shredding the swamp—drawing me in like some kind of hypnotic, demonic vision. It was the hand of God, I thought, pointing the way—to KCA. I sloshed my way toward it, knife in hand, weeds and vines and cold dead branches cutting at my chest. I didn't even feel them. KCA. My nemesis. My fate. I could hear
Little Miss Miss
hissing overhead, the angel of death.

I found him sloshing through a wide pool of saltweed, his gaunt figure flickering in the flares. He was exhausted, forcing himself on, sweat streaming off his shirtless frame, a hollow face, a crude bandage wrapped around his forearm. I staggered forward, raising my cold knife. He spotted me, turned. He raised the hot knife. It came to life, burning blue, casting his face an unearthly hue. He was breathing through his mouth. He faced me. He knew there was no escape now, for either of us. A light rain glittered like snow in the cold light of the flares. Xmax and tacstars filled the skies, but it was all fading away, for me. Everything outside of KCA was just blacking out, just disappearing from view—as if it were not even there. I could only see KCA, just as if I was staring down a gun barrel at him. My whole being was focused on him—KCA and only KCA. He was imprinted on my brain with acid. A burning rage rushed through my veins. I'm a mad dog, and I'm going to tear out his throat and rip him to shreds. I'm going to drink his blood!

We circled each other in the muck, warily. My blade was out there, pointed right at him. His hotknife spat in the rain. I was just as tired as he was but it didn't matter. I am indestructible, I thought. I am a mindless Legion biogen, programmed to kill. And I don't care if I live or die.

He thrust, slashed, right, left. He didn't come close. It was hard moving in the water. I charged him, clumsily, butterfly slashes, thrust, thrust, back cut—nothing. He lurched backwards out of reach. But I had him with my eyes. He stared back. I know he saw death looking out at him. Death—what the hell am I afraid of? Death is my destination. I charged him again, going right in. The hot knife sank deep into my left forearm and I snapped it away, my coldknife slicing KCA's right shoulder open as he staggered back. I fell into the water. I surfaced, snarling. My left arm spouted blood but I didn't even feel it. I scrambled after KCA. He fell backwards over a tree root, going under for an instant, then surfaced, the hotknife still glowing, blood pouring down his chest from the shoulder wound. I attacked, going right in again. I could see the fear in his eyes as he suddenly realized that my only objective was to kill him, and that I did not care whether or not I survived the attempt. His hot knife sliced into my ribs as I slashed at his throat with my blade. We went down, tangled together under water.

I surfaced, slicing my blade wildly. Where the hell was he? A branch hit me in the head. We had moved into a forest of swamp trees.

"Thinker! Are you tenners?" Priestess was by my side, pulling me up. I had somehow slipped under the water again.

"You're bleeding, Thinker!"

"He's right there, Priestess. Where is he?"

"Let me…"

"Let go!" I tore away from her, enraged, splashing blindly into the dark. Where is the bastard? Is he going to get away?

"Thinker…to your right!" It was Dragon, somewhere behind me. And a sudden flare found KCA for me, lurching along holding on to a large tree root. He turned wearily as he spotted me again. He raised the hotknife. His face was pale and covered with icy sweat. His naked chest streamed with blood. I guess I looked the same. He faced me, exhausted, the blade out. I sloshed up to him with the last of my strength, and raised my own blade. My left arm was useless and I was losing a lot of blood from the arm and from the wound in my ribs. I was dizzy—lightheaded. But KCA was still there, imprinted on my retina, on my brain. KCA, and nothing else.

I went right at him again. I flung my left arm up with all my strength and thrust my knife forward with my right. His hot knife sliced into my left upper arm and went burning all the way through into my armpit and chest, penetrating to a point not far from my heart. My blade sank hilt-deep into his chest. We stood there for a moment, face to face, chest to bloody chest, glaring into each others eyes. Then we fell apart. I toppled backwards into the muck, leaving my knife in his chest—right where it belonged.

But the fight did not end there. I fought on for hours in a hot haze, gasping for air, bleeding from fatal wounds. Everything was swirling around me like a cyclone, so he was hard to spot, but every once in awhile I'd see his eyes, rivetted on mine, and then his face, a ghastly blue from the hot knife. I would continue my attack, refusing to die, and he would hit me with the hot knife, again and again, and I would bury my blade in his chest, again, again, again…

People kept interrupting me, trying to get me to calm down, to rest, to lie down. Fools! Who were they? Didn't they know what was at stake here? It was KCA! And he was right there, right at the point of my blade!

"He's dead, Three. He's dead. Please!" They'd say things like that, too, but I wasn't going to listen to that kind of talk. Not until I'd killed him myself!

"How is he?" Hot, red dreams, the world swirling around me. Gritty, awful pain, scalding my skin.

"He'll pull through. The tip of the blade actually penetrated his heart—burnt a little hole, but hit nothing vital."

Got him in the heart. Nothing vital, for a soldier of the Legion. We had cenite hearts, didn't we? They'd beat for a thousand years—after the original inhabitant was long forgotten.

"Thinker. Thinker! Talk to me, Thinker!" I strained to make out who it was—where the hell was KCA? Someone came into view, floating hazily before me—a girl, lovely pale face, dark hair—Priestess!

"Move aside, Priestess!"

"Thinker! It's all right! He's dead. Thinker—you killed him. It's over!"

I stared at her, not quite grasping it. Her eyes were red and swollen.

"KCA is dead, Thinker. We're on the Wraith. It's over!"

"Westo! We've been praying for you! You're going to be all right!" It was Millie, beaming at me, evidently overjoyed about something. Her eyes were red, too—funny. I was in an airbed, in the Body Shop. How had that happened?

"He's conscious!"

"Thinker! You got the bastard!" Dragon leaned over me, glowing with a savage joy. "I cut off his head. I saved it for you! The whole galaxy is going to see it!"

I tried to nod, but the effort made me dizzy. I should have been happy, but I wasn't. I was crashing into the depths of despair. Why hadn't he killed me? It would have been so much easier for me. My eyes filled with tears. I grabbed a handful of Priestess's blouse and pulled her ear down to my lips. It was hard to talk.

"Priestess," I croaked. "I want you to take good care of Stormdawn's body. When we get to Andrion…he's going to have the funeral…of a prince." It was so hard to say I almost couldn't. I was blinded by the tears.

"Thinker," Priestess replied, "Stormdawn is going to be fine. His wounds were not fatal!"

"Don't you lie to me about that, Priestess—I can't stand it!"

"She's telling the truth, Westo!" Millie interrupted, "Your son is alive! He's right here in the Body Shop! The hotknife missed his heart. It was a bad wound, but MedUnit 901 fixed him up fine. I helped the surgeon myself!"

And it was just as if a glorious sun was rising, right in that room, a brilliant golden sun, blinding us all in its holy, life-giving rays. I felt that God himself was right there. I could only reach out for Priestess and Millie, and hold their hands, in silent rapture and grace. And now the tears were for joy. From that day on, I was a believer.

***

"We never did have to nuke the place," Psycho said. "When One reported King Rat was fleeing the scene, there was no longer any need. We just popped back into the toilets and flushed ourselves away. Uhh…in a manner of speaking. And there was such a rush to grab a sub out, nobody paid any attention to me." Psycho flashed a huge grin and flung an arm around Sassy. Millie had set our airbeds side by side in the Body Shop, Valkyrie and Stormdawn and I, slowly recovering from some rather nasty wounds. I held Storm's hand much of the time—just for reassurance. His lovely smile was the best medicine for me.

"Psycho was more successful than I had dared dream," Snow Leopard said. "The assault on the power generator was planned as a distraction—essentially a suicide mission. I sure never thought he'd get inside."

"You can thank Sassy for that," Psycho said. Sassy smiled. She seemed fascinated with her new world. She was one of us now. The Legion doesn't forget its friends.

"Dox?" Millie placed a cup on a little tray by my side. I had my own personal nurse. She knew I wouldn't ever turn down a dox. The whole gang was there—all of Beta, all of Recon, Pits and Mams alike.

"Thanks. How far in are we?" I asked.

"About half way. No pursuit. We're free," Snow Leopard replied.

I savored the dox, pondering his words. A gang of Arcwhite kids were peering in the hatch. We had taken all we could, in the limited time we had.

"Congratulations, Thinker," Twister said. "The mission was successful—and we're all still alive." She seemed so happy—but she was wrong.