Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) (9 page)

“Monitored and commanded by their Line Wardens, the legionnaires will make planetfall at eight different sites and converge upon the city. Though our intelligence on the exact size of the necropolis is incomplete, we estimate by the architectural borders that the legion will be able to sweep and clear the target within sixteen hours of planetfall. Naturally, if resistance is met that timeline could be altered. Once the penal legion has seized and secured the city, Reaper detachments will make planetfall and begin exploration and salvage operations.”

The shift manager shut down the screens and looked sternly at the marines.

“This Reaper cadre to which you now belong has been assembled from a multitude of fleets and though you may not know the marine on either side of you, be keenly aware that each of you are here because of your distinguished service records, proven loyalty to Grotto interests, and your desire to achieve success.

The bonus pay you are receiving represents the degree of trust placed in you by Grotto Corporation. On the balance sheet, that pay is tallied as an investment in this mission; though I hope you understand that it is also an investment in you. This necropolis could be the greatest salvage in Reaper history, and you are here to share in that victory. Think on this as you prepare.

We reach UK1326 in eighteen hours. Squad leaders will receive updated mission specs and are to report to the penal observatory upon arrival. Thank you and good luck.”

“Does she really expect us to buy into all that loyalty gibberish? The fact that our hazard wages and paying completion bonuses still don’t equal the cost of mercs really show you how low we are on the wage scale,” Ben scoffed quietly as he and Samuel left the briefing auditorium. “I’m in it for the money, plain and simple, so don’t mess with my morale by rubbing it in my face just how cheap I am, regardless of what’s good for the Bottom Line.”

“Good,” Samuel replied. “Because that’s all that matters to Grotto too; the Bottom Line. As long as we treat the company the same way it treats us, well, that seems like the closest thing to empowered equality that we’re going to get,” Samuel snorted. “Everyone is here for the money, that’s why you and I are here, heck that’s why every marine from Tango Platoon showed up for this one. Well, except Boss Aiken, from what I heard he got promoted into Command. It just eats at me that management feels compelled to spin it like we’re doing something noble.”

“That’s corporate culture for you, man,” Ben laughed as he and Samuel headed back to the barracks for much needed sleep. “Didn’t that merc, Imago, tell you something about how the attachment of ideology to soldiering is just a way for the company to shave off some wages?”

“Pretty much,” agreed Samuel before pausing in the corridor to look at Ben. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what he said actually. What it might be like to fight for ourselves, you know pick our own missions, get paid prime wages.”

“Those dropsuits are expensive brother, and besides, you gotta pay off that spine before you can even start to save up the expatriation fee,” Ben said as clapping Samuel on the shoulder while they continued towards the barracks, “Let’s do the job, get paid, and take this thing a day at a time. Just think about it, if that city is as full of loot at Grotto thinks we could be sitting out here on an easy salvage job for years. Remember how long we had on the space hulk? Yeah the fighting part was a real beast, but the six months of no-combat salvage? That was the easiest money we’ve ever made. A duty tour on this rock and you’ll be able to expatriate, get your family off that station, and move somewhere with sunlight and fresh air, maybe some trees.”

“You are a relentless optimist, Ben Takeda,” laughed Samuel as he slid open the door of his rack, “Get some rest and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Copy that, Boss,” nodded Ben, just a slight shift in his tone as he addressed Samuel by his new rank. He continued down the corridor to his bunk, stopping long enough to playfully fistfight Harold as the two men crossed paths.

Samuel closed the door to his rack and sat down on the edge of his thin mattress. He felt as if he had a lead weight in his gut, and had been a soldier long enough to know that it was fear. Samuel had faced fear over and over in his time as a Reaper, and it had become a familiar companion.

There was something wrong about the planet they were about to reach. Something in the maps that tugged at the back of his mind, almost as if his reaction was instinctual; a threat from a half-remembered dream. No city stood empty without reason, and if Grotto was bringing five thousand convict soldiers to sweep the city then there was something management wasn’t telling them.

Samuel was reminded of the turbine station back on Tetra Prime, the pointless fight with the mech-warrior that had cost him his spine and his freedom. He had begun to doubt himself and his decisions, and suddenly found himself angry with Sura for how confident she was in him, how sure she was that he could succeed, or even return to them before the credits ran out.

Sura and Orion were off Baen 6 and out of Grotto, but how long could they wait for him on that station? How long would his son have to live in the cramped compartments and corridors? At least on Baen 6 the hab-block unit had been big enough for the three of them, and there were plazas and open spaces to visit, even if they all rested in the shadow of Grotto overculture. On the orbital station Sura and Orion were sharing a single room, and there were few places the boy could go to play or run.

Samuel knew that if he survived this job he’d be able to set them up somewhere planetside on a world worth living on, and it saddened him to know that even then he would still be trapped in Grotto’s rigged financial system. He took out his data pad and ran the numbers again, as if somehow they would be different the hundredth time he calculated them.

He could pay off his debts to Grotto, and either relinquish the expatriation fee for himself or fund a homestead for his family. His choices seemed grim, unless there were indeed untold vaults of riches to be won on the dead planet. He could have freed himself from Grotto, but then he and his family would all have been living on Pier 16 without hope of ever leaving.

Pier 16 was on the fringe of Grotto space, and as Sura had discovered, there was a deep prejudice in Grotto space towards expatriated former citizens, and they’d labor in the lowest wage positions as a result.

Samuel let himself fantasize about what it might be like to actually succeed in this mission, to walk away with wages, easy salvage, and a completion bonus. There were agri-worlds where Sura and he could grow food for a living if they owned land, or they could even go to one of the wild planets on the frontier and simply live apart from corporate civilization, the same way the FOLKEN did.

Samuel knew that his choice was clear, and that he had to provide for his family, regardless of the loneliness he might feel or the likely death he faced. One way or the other his family was taken care of, so long as he signed the dotted line and took up his rifle. If he died, Sura would endure it, but in time she would thrive, as he knew and loved that no amount of hardship could break her. She would find another partner, as he knew she had during some of his longer deployments, and she would raise a son to be proud of.

The klaxon bells awoke Samuel from a troubled sleep and he realized he must have fallen asleep while still tinkering with his data pad. It did not do to dwell on the maybes and the what-ifs, Sura would have told him, and he stood to wash his face and prepare for the coming mission.

“This is the job,” said Samuel several times as he looked at himself in the mirror, imagining how Mag would have sounded if she’d been barking in his ear, “Get it done, marine.”

THE LEGION

Fifteen minutes later Samuel Hyst presented himself to the sentry who stood guard outside the observatory, and was allowed inside.

“Boss Hyst, welcome to the observatory, I’m Technical Officer Ingrid, let me show you how the system works,” said the middle aged woman in a crisp warden’s uniform as she approached him with an outstretched hand, which Samuel shook. “As you can see, the Grotto Correctional Department has performed some modifications to the traditional observatory stations on board this Reaper tug.”

Ingrid led Samuel around the room and he saw that there were a large bank of monitors lighting up the area, and at each one of them sat a Reaper squad leader. Boss Ulanti and Boss Marsters both noticed him and gave him respectful nods. Even those small recognitions of his promotion by Boss Aiken before the man assumed his Command meant the world to Samuel, to be accorded respect by such hardened veterans was more of an achievement to him than he realized. He fleetingly thought of Mag and missed his old squad leader, then focused his mind on the task at hand.

“There are approximately eight hundred and seventy-five Reapers on this mission, and as you can see, we have arranged for there to be an interface available for each of the one hundred and seventy five squad leaders, such as yourself.” Ingrid led Samuel down the long rows of the sizeable observatory compartment while pointing to the many workstations occupied by other marine squad leaders. “Each squad leader will be linked up to a Line Warden on the ground who commands twenty nine legionnaires. You will be able to observe the camera feeds and data-uplinks for all of the legionnaires, in addition to open lines of communication with the Line Warden themselves.

Naturally, your role during the initial phase of the operation will be to act in an advisory capacity to identify salvage hot spots and guide against unnecessary collateral damage should armed resistance be encountered.”

Samuel nodded and remained silently attentive as Ingrid escorted him to an empty workstation, flanked by two Reaper squad leaders he did not recognize.

“Boss Hyst, welcome to your designated station, we will be conducting an interface orientation and final mission briefing in ten standard minutes.” Ingrid presented a faux smile that Samuel was sure she’d practiced many times in order to perfect. “In the meantime, please make yourself comfortable.”

Samuel took his seat and looked around the room to see that most of the Reaper squad leaders had filed into the observatory shortly after his arrival, and the seats were starting to fill up in short order. The scale of the mission was like nothing he had experienced in his time as a marine, and he found himself begrudgingly impressed with the genius of it all.

Though many corporations ruled their populations with various financial schemes and economic coercion, none were as cunningly brutal as Grotto Corporation. Human beings were just as much a natural resource to be exploited as any ore, mineral, or gas in the vastness of space.

The nightmare that crouched just beyond the debt based social order of Grotto Corporation was the abyss into which a person would disappear if they were unable to make at least their minimum payments. After several warnings for missed payments or payments below the minimum required amount, citizens would be picked up by bondsmen and hauled to the local detention centers for processing and sentencing.

Bondsmen were a special breed of law enforcement officer that specifically sought out those unfortunate citizens who could not, or in some occasions refused, to pay their debts to Grotto. Bondsmen were dangerous, and would not hesitate to kick down doors and assault people in public to get their quarry. Once detained, the debtor would be given a sentence, one that took into account the total debt owed, payment history, and workforce assessment.

The ugly truth was that although most sentences were only a few weeks or months, all of the court proceedings, bondsman recovery fees, and cost of imprisonment were added to the citizen’s Grotto debt. As a result, a significant portion of first time offenders found themselves back in detention within just a few months of being released. Most workforce assessments provided only subsistence wages anyway. Usually the only people who were able to “rehabilitate” were those who lucked into promotions at work or experienced a death in the family, either of a dependent whose absence relieved the citizen of that financial burden or a relative who had arranged for a death benefit.

Second time offenders were automatically detained and rotated into the Grotto penal system, which was comprised of several moons that orbited a number of planets in Grotto space. Massive prison complexes had been built into those moons, and served not only as detention facilities, but as forced labor camps. Some of the prison moons doubled as factories or refineries, and low security convicts would be able to work down their debts and sentence by working the machines.

Others were vast salvage yards where much of the materials procured by Reaper fleets ended up for final processing. Rumor had it that Penal Legions would be founded from these populations when Grotto needed a cheap military option for one purpose or another. The convicts would volunteer for duty in much the same way the Reapers did, with the hopes of the additional earnings helping pay down their debts and move them towards freedom.

Samuel had never seen a legionnaire, and stories of their military exploits were simple rumor and tall tales told in school. If his time in the Grotto military had been any indication of how non-elite military assets were treated, it made a great deal of sense why he’d never even heard of a retired legionnaire.

Warden Ingrid cleared her throat as she approached the podium, and the lights in the observatory dimmed somewhat to enhance the luminosity of the speaker. She began to brief the assembled Reapers on the technical specifications of the workstations, instructing them on how to toggle between each of the legionnaire’s shoulder cameras, in addition to maintaining communication and data-uplinks with the Line Wardens.

As Samuel made notes to himself on his personal data-pad, Ingrid explained that the Line Wardens were all combat veterans of one branch of the Grotto military or the other and functioned as the command structure for each of the legionnaire platoons.

Unlike the Reapers, the legionnaires did not work in squads, and only broke down as far as platoons, the size of which differed even from the Reaper definition. Each legionnaire would be issued a standard pattern combat rifle with one magazine pre-slotted and two spare magazines on graft mounts attached to the stock.

Samuel wondered what the legionnaires were supposed to do if they were forced into a protracted engagement. As Ingrid explained the harsh discipline exacted by the Line Wardens he realized that Grotto did not care.

The average marine rifleman loadout was easily twenty high capacity magazines, sometimes more if the individual marine was willing to deploy without a sidearm. If the legionnaires could not get clear of a fight with their three magazines it was deemed to be a state of diminishing returns to further supply the penal soldiers.

The Line Wardens were armed with a combat repeating shotgun utilizing a drum magazine so that they would not have to reload for a long while. The shotgun and the thirty round big bore auto-pistol on their hips were designed to be used on the legionnaires as much as the enemy.

The threat of being executed in the field kept the soldiers in line when they were deployed, and if it didn’t, the small remote explosive implanted in their necks that would detonate if they left the maximum set distance from the Line Warden’s command collar made sure that they did as they were told.

Ingrid assured them that the legionnaires were highly motivated soldiers, each of them having been signed to a contract that dramatically reduced their sentences and debts, giving them all a better chance at a modicum of freedom. Samuel had never met a rehabilitated convict who had come from a penal legion, and he was skeptical that anyone survived long enough to gain their freedom.

If the mortality rate of the Reapers were any indication, it was unlikely that any of the legionnaires would live to breathe free air. They were used as battle fodder, and though they were perfectly clear on that fact, there was always hope. Samuel felt a kind of kinship with the legionnaires in that moment. The mission clock chimed and the monitors flickered to life.

The legionnaires were already packed into their landing craft, and Samuel could watch through the shoulder cams as each of the convicts looked at each other, checked their weapons, and prepared for deployment. Samuel donned his headset and began to toggle between the cameras to get a feel for the system, and did a quick read of the Line Warden’s personnel file.

Line Warden Shoto was a former bondswoman who signed on with the legion during the founding, so this would be her first combat mission with the group. The mission clock chimed again and the landing craft’s engines ignited, sending a hailstorm of craft into the void above UK1326. The invasion had begun.

Making planetfall from orbit was always a dangerous affair in Samuel’s experience, even when not sailing through flak clouds and anti-air barrages. The refurbished craft that comprised the penal landing cadre were recycled transport haulers from old Hive Fleets, outfitted to carry human cargo and their meager provisions.

Of the many dozens that were launched into the void, four of the ships burned to slag in atmosphere, and as the squad leaders of those ships in the observatory stood to leave, Samuel considered that it had been a less costly infiltration than he was used to.

Samuel had never observed planetfall from orbit, having always been ‘in the can’ as the marines often called it, and it had been a thing of dark wonder. He mused at how many times other observers had watched with callous detachment as assault ships were thrown into battle.

Samuel’s platoon jostled in their seats from the gravitational force as they plummeted to the planet surface. Another two landing craft must have been destroyed on impact or otherwise had critical landing failures, as moments after Samuel’s platoon hit dirt two more squad leaders in the observatory stood and left the room.

The bay doors opened and Line Warden Shoto bellowed for the convicts to disembark. The legionnaires hit belt releases and as their boots crunched the gravel underfoot the shoulder cameras began to reveal cyclopean structures looming in the fog just beyond the landing zone. Shoto barked for the convicts to form up and the platoon moved forward as they assumed a human ‘v’ shape.

Shoto took up a position in the concave center of the formation, both to have a full view of the entire platoon, but also to have a clear arc of fire that would enable her to wipe out the platoon easily with her repeating shotgun. It was a brutally genius method of maintaining martial discipline while remaining combat effective. Samuel was impressed despite his misgivings about the injustice of the prison system itself.

Samuel noticed that the cloud cover of the sky extended all the way to the ground in a sort of swirling fog, and it was no wonder that the un-manned probes had such a difficult time piercing the gloom. It was only the low-tech cameras and the crude satellite signals being bounced up from the drop ships that made observation of the legion possible. According to radio chatter among the Reaper squad leaders, Samuel knew that there were dozens of platoons nearby, all pushing towards the distant skyline, though through the fog it was difficult to make a line of sight confirmation with more than one or two other platoons at a time.

The legionnaires made swift progress across the broken ground and soon began to enter the outskirts of the necropolis. Immediately, Samuel felt the knot in his stomach tighten as through the camera he saw the strange buildings emerge from the fog. He could not pinpoint what exactly was so disturbing about the buildings, which looked perfectly capable of use by humanoid beings, complete with doorways, windows, and seemingly interconnected streets and sidewalks meant for vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

“The angles are all wrong,” Samuel said under his breath, prompting a few sidelong glances from the Reapers in his vicinity.

“Copy that Reaper Command,” Shoto grumbled as she responded, reminding Samuel that his mic was still active, “How are legion vitals? They’re getting jumpy.”

“Green across the board, Warden,” said Samuel as he swiftly checked the body statistics for the platoon, “I am noticing that they aren’t checking the blind corners on the approach and back-shadows on the pass.”

“We’re performing the requisite anti-sniper sweeps,” Shoto said curtly, her voice taking an icy edge that Samuel imagined aided in her former career as a bondswoman.

“Line Warden Shoto,” growled Samuel as he decided that it was time to flex his command authority, if not to save face, but more to save lives, “Blind corners on the approach and back-shadows on the pass, there could be hostiles capable of employing tactics beyond human physical possibility. We’ve crossed the Ellisian Line. How copy?”

“Good copy, Reaper Command, and duly noted,” responded Shoto before she switched to the legionnaire channel and her voice piped into the com-beads of the convicts as she relayed the new field protocols.

Samuel and Shoto kept their communication limited to as-needed specifics, the same as the rest of the Reapers and Line Wardens, while the penal legion entered the city from multiple directions.

The odd angles of the buildings had begun to be a topic of chatter on the Reaper command channel as squad leaders began to share ground intel. The general consensus was that the buildings were constructed and oriented towards humanoid occupation, with little apparent defensive capabilities. The notation of defensive capabilities indicated that there had been no additional occupation by squatters, pirates, or rival corporations. Any such groups would have erected hardpoints and various fighting positions throughout the city to enable them to defend their claim.