Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (40 page)

Weasel was startled when the first shell exploded over their position. Who the hell was firing on them, and where the hell were they? The battle disks hadn’t reported jack shit yet all hell had broken loose. Frim and Fram started to back and fill, their tracks throwing up rooster tails of dirt, as their weapons searched the sky. Weasel took his fear, his desire to live, added it to similar emotions provided by the other analogs, and forced it through O’Neal’s despair.
“We need you!”

The thought, powered by the strength of the emotions behind it, appeared in letters ten feet tall. O’Neal read them once, twice, then three times. Suddenly she had it, the thing she’d been searching for, and hadn’t been able to find. The squad needed a leader, but it didn’t need
her
. Any noncom would do as long as they were competent. But the analogs were different. They needed her the way a child needs a mother, to provide emotional support and guidance in a dangerous world.

The knowledge pulled her up out of the darkness and into the alien night. Shells exploded overhead, analogs gibbered, and the squad demanded orders. Weasel sensed her return and provided a sitrep that was damned close to military.
“The wings saw a scout but couldn’t find the force that sent it. The arty attack started about six-zero seconds ago and consists of nonlethal air bursts.”

The fact that someone had ordered the battle disks into the air registered on O’Neal’s mind along with the knowledge that there was no time to ask about it. She brought up the list of offensive weaponry that the enemy was supposed to have and verified that artillery was on it. Still, why now? Especially since the live fire exercise was supposed to be over in less than two hours?

But pondering whys and wherefores doesn’t make much sense when someone is determined to blow your ass off. The noncom checked her battle comp.

Twenty or thirty air bursts had gone off with no effect. Why? She should have casualties by now. The answer came from another member of her squad. “Baker Six to Baker Four.”

“This is Baker Four . . . Go.”

“I have artillery-delivered combat-equipped microbots in the air over my position. Request permission to engage.”

It took O’Neal three seconds to confirm the fact that while microbots did not appear on the list of “enemy” weaponry, they weren’t proscribed, either, which left
her
holding the bag. She made the call. “Permission granted. Fire at will.”

The night was split into hundreds of geometric shapes as the cyborgs and their analogs opened fire on the incoming machines. Many were destroyed but some survived. Most were no more than a few inches across during the air-dispersal stage, but combined on reaching the ground and assembled themselves into a variety of self-directed weapons systems. The newly formed units included highly mobile gun platforms, self-propelled energy cannons, and a variety of smaller but nonetheless effective attack units. Making a bad situation even worse was the fact that many of the devices had dropp
ed inside the Legion’s defensive perimeter.

Capable though it was, O’Neal discovered that it took her on-board computer way too long to find and destroy the tiny airborne targets, so she concentrated on the larger constructs instead. Her tool-hands moved in short, jerky arcs as the cyborg opened fire with her arm-mounted weapons.

A partially assembled weapons platform staggered under the assault, swiveled on newly built treads, and fired a half-charged energy cannon. O’Neal felt the heat but shrugged it off. Her shells found a still-unprotected ammo bay and detonated the missiles inside.

The explosion created a shockwave. It hit the battle disks, threw them out of position, and rolled away. The leather wings regrouped, linked their computers into a single fire-control center, and returned to work. Though difficult
to hit from the ground, the microbots were vulnerable from the air. Hundreds of them exploded under the renewed assault.

The robots were far from defenseless, however, and O‘Neal saw more than one battle disk explode at the center of their massed fire, or arc across the star-spattered sky to crash against the rock-hard ground. The despair felt by thirty-plus analogs threatened to pull O’Neal under, but she used a vision of badly mangled robots to rally them, and ordered a counterattack. The results exceeded both her and the DI’s expectations.

Both afraid and angry, the squad’s analogs lashed out with an intensity the humans had never seen before. Weasel wrapped himself around a self-propelled gatling gun that had pushed in from the north, crushed the firing mechanism, and fried the machine’s fire-control processor with his eye lasers.

Frim and Fram ganged up on what amounted to a tank, moving in until their gun muzzles were only inches away from the robot’s flanks and firing until their tubes glowed. One of the shells got through, found a subprocessor, and sent the machine into a tail-chasing spin. The leather wings finished it off.

More than satisfied with the result, and concerned lest he generate more casualties, the DI sent an electronic message. The robots that could backed away and disappeared into the night. Those that were unable to do so remained where they were. Monuments to what a combination of technology, fear, and hate can do.

The sight could have been depressing but O’Neal felt something different as she looked out over the battlefield. The analogs had proved their ability to operate as a team, most were still alive, and she had found a reason to exist. It wasn’t much . . . but it would have to do.

 

Most of Fort Camerone had been hardened and placed deep underground, where it was safe from anything short of a direct hit from a nuclear missile. So, with the exception of missile launchers, antenna arrays, and fly-form landing pads, the one-story surface structure looked similar to Legion citadels that dotted North Africa in the long-distant past.

And in spite of the fact that there was very little likelihood that legionnaires would ever return fire from the crenellated battlements, the likeness was far from accidental. The architectural details had been placed there to evoke the past, to remind those within that they were the latest links in a chain that had been forged in the heat of battle and tested by time.

The duffel bag contained enough gear to carry Chrobuck through a five-day pass and threatened to slide off her shoulder. She readjusted the strap, returned the sentry’s salute, and stepped out through the main gate.

A half-track full of visor-faced bio bods rumbled by while a pair of patrol-worn Trooper IIs passed in the opposite direction. Their servos whined in unison and one of them had a pronounced limp. Chrobuck acknowledged their salutes and noticed that the air reeked of ozone. Voices shouted barel
y heard orders, music leaked out of a hover truck’s cab, and rotors whapped as a cybernetic load-lifter dropped onto a nearby pad. The dust disturbed by its passage floated upwards to join the ever-present pall of smoke. The sun shimmered and climbed higher in the sky.

Further down slope, beyond the free-fire zone and the constantly shifting crab-mines, hundreds of randomly spaced domes could be seen. They were made of earth, reinforced with whatever the Naa could lay their hands on, including wood, plastic, and scraps of metal, many of which had been polished to reflect the light of the sun. But no matter how much they glittered, Naa Town was still made of mud.

Although most Naa lived in heavily fortified villages a long ways from the fort, some of the more marginal members of their society had been attracted to the relatively easy money that could be made working for the Legion during the day, and for the bored, entertainment-starved legionnaires at night, although the concepts of “day” and “night” had only limited meaning on Algeron, and commerce never really stopped.

Still, as Chrobuck made her way down the intentionally switchbacked road, through the heavily fortified checkpoint, and into the town beyond, she couldn’t help but compare what she saw with her own youth, and conclude that mud huts were a step up from the overcrowded habitat on which she’d been raised.

Six square feet of worn metal deck, that’s how much her mother, sister, and she had been able to rent each night, most of it paid for by recovering sludge from the holding tanks, running errands for drunk spacers, or stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down. And maybe other things, too, things her mother refused to talk about, things that made her cry at night. Things that paid hard currency, which, when saved year after dreary year, piled up until there was enough to ship two girls off-hab, and pay for the schooling that enabled one to qualify as a med tech, and the other
to gain admission to the academy. Yes, Chrobuck decided, there are worse things than mud huts and wide-open spaces.

The pungent odor of incense closed around her like a cloak. There wasn’t a single legionnaire who didn’t know what the incense was for, since it was common knowledge that the Naa had an acute sense of smell, and found many of the odors that emanated from the fort to be offensive. Which explained why a thousand tendrils of slowly burning incense trickled up to join the smoke generated by an equal number of cook fires and glaze the otherwise blue sky.

Chrobuck liked the smell, the exotic feel, and took pleasure in her surroundings. There was life here and it felt good after Jericho’s dark a
nd brooding ruins. An army of cubs swarmed out to meet her, each armed with something to sell, or the promise of something to sell.

They were all sizes and shapes and ranged in age from four or five to early adolescence. All had short, sleek fur that came in a highly individual assortment of colors and patterns. Clothing was minimal and tended towards sandals, shifts, and trousers. Their heads were strikingly human in shape and size, having similar ears, noses, and mouths, although their teeth lacked canines and had a more even appearance.

And in spite of the fact that they knew the Legion’s chain of command backwards and forwards, every single one of them had promoted Chrobuck by one rank. “Over here, Captain! The finest wine on Algeron! Only five credits per gallon!”

“Welcome to Naa Town, Captain! Why wear plastic when my father makes holsters from hand-tooled dooth hide? Just fifty credits.”

“Hey, Captain . . . you hungry? My momma makes the best chow you ever had. Come and see.”

It reminded Chrobuck of the days when she had worked the corridors on Orhab II. She laughed and summoned a grubby little female to her side. “Tell me, little one . . . where would I find the male known as Sleepshort Warmhand?”

The cub’s face lit up, and she took Chrobuck’s hand and led her towards a hard-packed path. Some of the youngsters departed in search of other customers, but the rest tagged along, pelting each other with pebbles and laughing gaily.

Domes crowded in around the walkway. Some were very new, having been built on the rubble of their predecessors, but none were older than the previous war, when both the fortress and the town that had formed in front of it had been obliterated by the Hudathans. Adult faces appeared every now and then, gazing over low mud walls, peering out through open shuttered windows, or looking down from flimsy makeshift ladders. None were openly hostile, but all seemed cautious, as if unsure of what her presence might portend. That, plus the fact that nearly every single male went armed, caused
Chrobuck to watch her step.

The sun had passed zenith and dropped into the western sky. Long, hard shadows reached for the east, darkened the streets between the nearly identical domes. Chrobuck lost her bearings. But the cub urged the legionnaire forward with cries of “This way, Captain!” and tugged on her fingertips. Finally, after what seemed like miles of walking, the child came to a stop, looked up, and held out her hand for payment.

The dome looked like all the others and Chrobuck was suspicious. “How do I know this is the one?”

The reply came from behind her. “Because Feetdance would never mislead a customer. . . would you, Feetdance?”

The child shook her head solemnly and Chrobuck turned. This officer really was a captain and her salute was automatic. He was handsome in an exotic sort of way and Chrobuck realized that he was half-human, half-Naa, a supposed impossibility, except for the fact that he was there, watching her through half-amused eyes. “My name’s Booly and you’re Chrobuck. Welcome to Algeron, Lieutenant . . . I’m sorry about what happened on Jericho.”

Chrobuck nodded wordlessly and felt someone tug on her trousers. She turned, paid the child what she hoped was the right amount, and watched her skip away. Booly smiled. “So tell me, was it a long walk?”

Chrobuck shrugged. “It felt like a couple of miles.”

Booly laughed. “It probably was . . . in spite of the fact that the most direct route is half that distance. Come on, Sleepshort isn’t here yet, but we can wait by the fire.”

Chrobuck felt strangely awkward as she followed the other officer down a short flight of carefully excavated stairs and into a circular living area. The fire pit was raised above the floor and served as both furnace and stove. Coals glowed under a smoke-blackened pot and the smell of soup filled the air. Booly gestured Chrobuck towards a hide-covered couch and sat down beside her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. The supply convoy would have been more comfortable and a heck of a lot faster.”

Chrobuck smiled. “The note said I’d see the way the Naa
really
live, not to mention the fact that it came from my commanding officer.”

Booly had felt fortunate to get a platoon leader with combat experience but was concerned about what effect the battle of Jericho might have had on her. Everything seemed all right, however, and he was encouraged. “Yeah, that wasn’t fair, was it? But so many legionnaires have a distorted impression of my mother’s people that I couldn’t resist the temptation to provide you with a guided tour. Plus, the more you see of the terrain the better.”