Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (30 page)

The biologist looked at Duncan, then out over the man-made abyss. What had seemed eccentric and wasteful suddenly seemed important. The Hudathans had killed Valerie. Now they would pay. And Harmon would do her part.

 

In spite of the fact that he had killed hundreds of sentient beings since becoming a machine-thing, and taken part in three planetary assaults, Rebor Raksala-Ba was scared. As were most of his comrades, because even though the Regiment of the Living Dead had acquired an awesome reputation in the minds of the Hudathan people, they had never gone head to head with the Legion’s much-vaunted cyborgs. They were about to do so.

What if their armor couldn’t handle the Trooper IIs’ offensive weaponry? What if there were more quads than they’d been led to expect? What if the humans had new weapons against which they had no defense? Those questions and more haunted the Hudathan as his shuttle bucked its way down through Jericho’s Earth-normal atmosphere. So, even though the pep talk was all too predictable, Raksala-Ba listened anyway, preferring it to the voices in his head. As usual, there was no way to know whether the Observer was on-board or had been recorded earlier.

“Like a disease that spreads via the blood, the humans make their way from system to system, leaving corruption behind them. Our job is to find such pustules, lance them, and cauterize the resulting wound.”

The ship rocked violently from side to side as a volley of surface-to-air missiles exploded nearby and transformed one of the assault boats into a cloud of metallic confetti.

Unable to see beyond the bulkhead opposite him, and terrified of his own fear, Raksala-Ba concentrated on the Observer’s voice. It continued unchanged. “Once on the ground, you will disembark, move in a northerly direction, and engage the human Legion. Yes, they will place their Trooper IIs in your way, but the alien cyborgs will fall by the scores as your superior weaponry cuts them down. The quads will be more difficult, but there will be relatively few of them to contend with, and you will emerge victorious.

“Once that task has been accomplished, you must seek out and kill the regular troops, remembering that the humans breed like Radu, and even a handful could reinfect the stars.”

The cyborgs knew a cue when they heard one, and the word
“Blood!”
reverberated through the troop bay. Up forward, in a jump-seat behind the copilot’s position, the Observer ran one last check on their vital signs, found everything to his liking, and closed his eyes against the explosions outside. The arrow had been released and would fly straight and true.

There had been silence within the temple of the Lords. A deep abiding silence that had lasted for a hundred thousand years and never been broken. Until the humans arrived, that is. They worked softly at first, walking, talking, and prying, deciding how to proceed. Then came the growl of heavy equipment, the rattle of drills, and the whine of laser cutters.

But the ruins had survived a great deal over the millennia, and were so huge that their very size was a more than adequate defense against the not-always-gentle probings of the archaeologists, xeno-biologists, and fortune hunters who sought to understand their secrets. Until now, that is, and the advent of a war that the long-dead builders would have considered to be barbaric, and more than sufficient reason to go wherever they had gone.

The temple of the Lords was so huge, so vast, that the twelve aerospace fighters occupied no more than a small portion of the tightly set stone floor. Huge figures, each different from all the rest, stared down at the machines much as they had looked down at what? Members of a long-vanished religion? Representatives from different star-faring races? The scientists were still arguing over the statues and their possible significance.

So the scientists objected when Lieutenant Commander Angela Ritter removed her fighters from the spaceport and installed them in the great hall. As
a matter of fact, they were still talking about the reports they would file and the penalties they would levy when the orbital barrage began. Some died in their burning prefabs, some vanished in the explosion that took the spaceport, and some survived to learn the intricacies of the Mark IV power rifle.

Suddenly the scientists knew what the military had known all along: the Hudathans would give no quarter, show no mercy, and accept nothing less than total victory. The simple fact was that they didn’t care about human suffering, they didn’t care about preserving the ruins, and they didn’t care about the planet’s ecology. All the humans could do was even the odds a little, take some of the bastards with them, and avenge their own deaths.

A voice sounded in Ritter’s helmet. “Delta Base to Delta Leader . . . condition green . . . repeat . . . condition green.”

Ritter eyed her heads-up displays, confirmed the ready lights, and spoke into the voice-activated mike. “Roger that, Delta Base . . . wish us luck.”

“What for?” the voice inquired. “You never needed it before.”

But the comment was pure bravado, and both parties knew it. Ritter switched frequencies. “Delta Leader to Delta Wing . . . condition green . . . let’s crank ’em up. Remember . . . stick with your wingman, conserve your offensive load, and stay in atmosphere. Even the smallest ship in orbit would eat you alive.”

A whole chorus of “rogers” came back and Ritter struggled to ignore the fact that all the voices she heard would be stilled by sundown.

Compressors whined, engines fired, and thunder echoed between ancient walls. Hundreds of green flockers, their nests tucked here and there throughout the ruins, shot outwards to escape the noise, and headed east towards what had been a bowl-shaped reservoir and currently served as a gigantic birdbath. Other creatures, reacting to the unexpected disturbance, ran, jumped, and wiggled towards safety.

But there was no safety as death rained down from the sky, and Ritter lifted her aircraft away from ancient stones. She hovered for a moment, dust billowing up to either side, and checked to confirm that the rest of her tiny command had done likewise. Then, ready as she’d ever be, Ritter took a moment to cross herself, and sent the appropriate command to the plane’s fly-by-wire control system. Heavy gee’s forced the pilot back into the seat as the fighter passed between vine-covered columns and climbed towards the enemy-held sky.

The flat-roofed structure might have been a dwelling, set into the side of the hill, where it would catch the evening breeze, and cool the rooms within. But a profusion of plants had grown up around ancient walls, blurring the angles and softening the lines so they were indistinguishable from the jungle around them. With strong stone walls, a good line of retreat, and the ridge that stretched left and right, the villa, if that’s what it could properly be called, made an excellent weapons emplacement and company HQ.

By all rights First Lieutenant Connie Chrobuck should have led
a platoon, and taken orders from a more experienced officer, but infantry expertise was in short supply on Jericho, which meant that she was in charge of a full company, half of which consisted of legionnaires, while the rest had been patched together with biologists, archaeologists, geologists, technicians, and various port trash who would rather fight than sit on their cans.

Interestingly enough, it was this last category that had turned out to be the most useful, having as they did a more than passing familiarity with weapons, some of which had been garnered while serving with the Legion. Though unsure of the exact number of deserters under her command, Chrobuck judged there were quite a few, and took full advantage of the fact.

She was lying on the roof, scanning the jungle in front of her with a computer-enhanced scope, when a curlyhaired cargo jockey named Louie flopped down beside her. He wore a utility vest loaded with gear, fatigue pants, jungle boots, and was armed with a power pistol and an assault weapon. His breezy informality was typical of the civilians in her company. “Hey, Loot . . . I did like you said. Any geek that decides to come up along the stream is going to get one nasty-assed surprise.”

Chrobuck nodded. She wore a green beret over short hair and looked at him with large gray eyes. Her single gold earring gave her a piratical air. “Good work, Louie. Now, remember, let the Trooper II handle the heavy lifting, while you and your squad watch his flanks and add to the suppressive fire.”

Louie grinned. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, honey, we’ll cover the tin man’s ass. And when this thing’s over you and me can have a beer. Whaddya say?”

Chrobuck thought about shoving the words down the man’s throat, or telling him that she didn’t date idiots, but what was the point? Louie would be dead soon. “Sure, Louie, you hold the line, and the beer’s on me.”

Louie grinned, gave her a confident thumbs-up, and rolled away. The manner in which he stayed below the skyline and handled his weapon testified to military training. An ex-marine? Legionnaire? She’d never know. Chrobuck look
ed upwards, saw no sign of the bad weather the Met officer had promised, and swore as contrails raced each other across the sky.

 

Raksala-Ba gave thanks that he no longer had a flesh-and-blood face to signal the fear he felt. He braced himself against the boat’s infernal rocking motion and tried to look relaxed. The others did likewise. The pilot came over the command frequency. “Hold on . . . we’re going in.”

The assault craft had lost sixty percent of its control surfaces, and one of its two engines, so what happened next was more like a controlled crash than a normal landing. The ship hit the middle of a clearing, went airborne like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake, and smashed into the jungle. Half the cyborgs were crushed when the ship hit the side of a vine-covered building but the rest survived.

Raksala-Ba was among the lucky ones. He released the harness that had held him in place, made his way out through an opening that hadn’t been there before, and looked around. The wreckage was at his back, an ancient vine-covered building stood to the right, a ridge rose up ahead, and a stream gurgled to the left. Bullets rattled against his armor.

There was no time to think or strategize. Months of training took over. The Hudathan tracked the incoming fire to its source, selected a high-explosive warhead, and fired. An explosion blossomed on the ridgeline above. He felt a mild orgasm and was still enjoying the afterglow when the pleasure disappeared.

The Trooper II named Quanto had fought under the famous Colonel Pierre Legaux on Algeron, had kicked some serious Hudathan butt during the first war, and forgotten more tricks than the newbies were ever likely to learn. Not the least of which involved concealing his heat under the surface of a lake, stream, or in one case, four feet of dirt, only to pop up and surprise the enemy. And surprise them he did, emerging from the swift-flowing stream like an avenging spirit, missiles leaping away from each shoulder as water cascaded down off his jungle green camouflage. One surface-to-sur
face missile found the still-warm wreckage and exploded. The other hit the borg off to Raksala-Ba’s right and blew him to bits. Although impervious to .50-caliber bullets, the Hudathan armor could not withstand high-explosive missile hits.

Raksala-Ba felt a piece of shrapnel clang off his shoulder, swiveled to the right, and fired. The mini-missile blew Quanto in half. A Trooper II was dead. Raksala-Ba felt a powerful orgasm ripple through his nonexistent genitals an
d started up the slope in front of him. The fear that had plagued him earlier was momentarily gone.

 

Ritter and the wing under her command arrived at 15,000 feet in time to slice through the second wave of Hudathan assault boats. It was easy at first, maneuvering until a ship filled her sights, then blowing it out of the air. At least fifteen of the incoming ships were destroyed within the three short minutes that it took the Hudathan fighters to react. They came out of the sun and destroyed two defenders on their first pass. Ritter bit her lower lip as the eternally cheerful Roo vanished in a ball of flame and “Nags” Naglie hit the side of a jungle-clad mountain.

The fighting grew fast and furious. Ritter flamed a fighter, caught a glimpse of empty sky, and ordered the fighter to climb. Radio discipline had gone to hell in a handcart but it was too late to do anything about it.

“Watch your tail, Logan . . . damn, that was close.”

“May day, May day, I’m going in . . .”

“Come to Momma, geek face . . . Come to Momma.”

“Hey, Bones, did you see that? I . . .”

“They’re on my ass! Get ‘em off! Get ’em off!”