Secret of the Legion (16 page)

Chapter 8
Marching in the Mud

Black clouds scudded across the silvery face of Andrion 2's single moon. It was a still, starless night. Valkyrie and I were motionless in the deepest shadows of a grove of dato trees. Alpha Station loomed against the sky, a massive, dark presence. Only a few lights showed topside. I savoured Andrion's sweet night air. It was here Beta's troubles had begun. Our first world—we had even called it the New World. When we dropped in from the stars, we had called this site Zero Alpha. Then we had built Alpha Base, which had become Alpha Station. We had destroyed the entire area in the drop, but fast-growing dato trees were now sprouting everywhere. All of the Black 12th had been here once, but now Andrion 2 was a backwater, left in the wake of the war like so many other worlds. Alpha Station was manned by a few under-strength companies, as was Farside Base, on the other side of the planet. The 23rd had been eager to put the three new replacements to work, and questioning their good fortune was the last thing that would have occurred to them.

"He's late," Valkyrie whispered.

"He'll be here," I replied. We were both clad in camfax and armed with E's, hauling comtops and fieldpaks. My mind was whirling with images from the past. I could hardly believe we were there. Tara was a genius. She really had the Legion wired. We had arrived independently, with genuine orders, and had not acknowledged that we knew each other. They had been keeping us busy, but that was about to end. The 23rd's three new replacements were about to run into trouble.

"Do you think they're catching up to us?" Valkyrie asked.

"Maybe. Tara didn't explain. But it sounded as if something was happening." Back on Quaba 7, Redhawk had received a brief message from Tara on his impossible starlink. It read ORDERS SENT. 3, 10, 11 LEAVE FOR A2 IMMEDIATELY UPON RECEIPT. DO NOT/NOT DELAY. And that was all we got from Tara. We had tried to raise her all night on the link, but failed. We knew we were lucky to even get a text alert. The quantum gateway that carried Tara's link was fleeting at best in the Quaba/Andrion sectors, and until it improved, contact was going to be sporadic at best. Our orders were there in the morning, and we hopped a transport the same day. It was troubling. The original plan had been for Redhawk and Valkyrie to proceed to Dindabai, and me to move on alone to Andrion 2. Something had certainly happened. We had now been on Andrion a full week and the starlink didn't seem to work anymore. We were completely in the dark. But it didn't matter. We had a mission. I was home, now. And nothing was going to stop me.

A black aircar appeared suddenly around a corner of the base, hissing a few marks above the ground, gliding slowly our way. Valkyrie and I stepped out of the trees and I raised a hand. The car floated gently over to us and the assault door popped open. Redhawk grinned at us from the driver's seat. He was right where he belonged. He was a great aircar driver.

We tossed in our gear and climbed in. I took the Number Two seat and Valkyrie slipped in right behind us. It was a full-sized aircar and there was a lot of camping and survival gear on the seats and floor.

"We can't carry all that stuff," I observed as we pulled away from the base and headed into the night.

"We don't have to," Redhawk replied. "Take what you like. We'll leave most of it behind. We have to make it look like we were just going camping. The Legion will find the aircar and conclude something happened to us."

They'd be right, I thought. Something had certainly happened to us, on our way to the future.

Into the night. We were headed for Taka country and we could only take the aircar so far. Strange things had been happening in Taka country since the last time Tara and I were here. The Taka were Andrion's original inhabitants, and to me they were blood brothers. We had fought them at first but then joined them against the priests and the Soldiers of God and the exosegs. Ultimately I had pledged myself to them, forever, and taken a Taka girl as my lover. Nobody could be closer to the Taka than I. But things had changed. The Legion was no longer welcome in Taka country. And, with vastly reduced strength, the Legion did not have the resources to reestablish its control over the Taka.

Nobody in Andrion Station seemed certain what it was that had prompted the change of the Taka from close and loyal Legion allies to distant and hostile tribesmen, seemingly indifferent to the Legion's role in freeing the planet from the double curse of the priests and the exosegs. We freed them from slavery, but that no longer seemed to matter. I found it odd. It didn't sound like the Taka I knew. Their loyalties were absolute. Something had certainly happened, and it had happened after Tara and I had left Andrion, after the ConFree raid had been repulsed, and after the 23rd had subsequently confirmed their loyalties were with ConFree, not the Lost Command.

Something—we had to find out what, if we were to accomplish the mission.

We headed roughly south, passing over the Mountains of the Exiles, then swooping low over a darkened plain, headed south to God's Garden—Taka country. At night the landscape was a mysterious world, a marshy lowlands sliced with silvery rivers and dotted with clumps of white-stalked flowertrees. My blood stirred. I remembered this territory. The dead city of Stonehall was up ahead somewhere and, further south, the ruins of Southmark itself could be found, in the Swamp of Lost Souls. The Taka had a long and glorious history, but it was all lost, forever, in the mists of time. No one would ever know what Southmark had been. It was only a book of dust now, in the Tomb of the Kings. I had held it in my hands, with Moontouch close beside me. We were all dust, she had said—dust in the wind.

"Dox?" Valkyrie had found a case of dox.

"Might as well—we can only carry so many." The aircar shuddered slightly as we entered rough air. I popped the cap on a dox and let the silky, hot liquid swirl around my mouth and slide down my throat. Simple pleasures. The closer we got to death, the more we appreciated life's little pleasures.

"Aircar 898, you are approaching a restricted zone. Please turn aside."

Redhawk glanced at us and grinned. We remained on course. Somebody in Alpha Station had noticed us.

"Aircar 898, repeat—you are approaching a restricted zone. That's Taka country. Acknowledge, please."

We continued into the night. Valkyrie was silent, slumped in her chair, sipping dox. I had loved her in my past life. It was easy to understand. She had hair like golden fleece, glittering emerald eyes, and a flawless, exquisite face. Tender pink lips that had once belonged only to me—but now she belonged only to the Legion. When she had been my lover, she had not had that damned Legion cross burnt onto her forehead.

"What are you lookin' at?" she growled sullenly.

"Sorry." I turned to look out the plex.

"Aircar 898, you have entered a restricted zone. Acknowledge, acknowledge!" The message was shot through with static. The jets popped once, and quit. All internal power suddenly cut off. The gauges and readouts all flashed to zero as the console lights blinked off. It was immediately dead silent. We could only hear the hissing of the air outside as we slid down towards the deck.

"I'll be damned," Redhawk said.

"This is just what they said would happen," Valkyrie said. "Aircars that enter the Taka zone suddenly lose all power."

"I'll be damned," Redhawk repeated. "This is fascinating! Total power loss! How the hell can they do that?"

"I hate to interrupt," I interrupted, "but are we going to die?"

"No worries, gang—we glide right in, the blades will autorotate us right down. I've never seen this before!"

The ground was coming at us quickly.

"Prep for a hard landing, guys," Redhawk warned us. I tightened my harness. We were falling like a brick, and the Garden of God was coming right at us, bathed in moonlight, sheets of silvery swampland set in a mysterious dead ocean of ink.

We banged hard against the ground, jarring my teeth, bounced once, and crashed down again, settling in at a slight angle. All in one piece!

"See? Told you!" Redhawk assured us confidently. "We landed on a cushion of air—the closer we got to the earth, the thicker the cushion, even on zero power. It's a nice safety feature. Everybody out!"

We jumped out into ankle-deep water. We were in open swampland. Scraggly clumps of tall, spooky trees grew from little islands of higher land. Dark hills rose on the horizon. The sky was still covered with clouds. The air was fresh and cool. We hauled out our fieldpaks, ratpaks, coolers and canteens, clipped our comtops to our u-belts, and hoisted our E's. It was silent—there was only the sighing of a faint breeze. It was going to be a long walk, and we had to move out quickly in case the Legion decided to send a rescue car.

"All set?"

"Got plenty of dox?"

"Everybody got a medkit?"

"Let's move out."

***

Hours later, we were still sloshing through swampy terrain, under a fitful moon streaked with black clouds. The air was fresh and wet but there was no rain. A soft breeze washed over us as we plodded forward mechanically, silent. It reminded me of Uldo. There was really no way of knowing if my memory was as good now as it had been before. Even without psyching, memories are constantly fading away, but I could still remember a lot about our march to the Mound, on Uldo. It had been just like this, at one point—sloshing through the swamps. All of Beta had been there. And Tara said we were marching in the mud for God, for justice, and pronounced it good. She said she felt ecstatic. I thought she was raving, but later, when I saw what the O's had done to our people, I changed my mind. And, standing under our impaled dead, I vowed revenge, and I too felt ecstatic, and determined to go on. Only then had I understood.

Now, sloshing through the muck, we were fighting another enemy, an enemy even more sinister and treacherous than the O's. Traitors, in our own ranks. We had been fighting them since our original landing on Andrion 2, and had never even known it. I knew they thought they were doing the right thing, but it didn't make their treason any less dangerous to the future of humanity. History is full of dead civilizations that had been overrun by barbarians while frantically trying to do the right thing. In the Legion's History of the Galaxy you could even read some of the desperate speeches, given by doomed leaders in their last few days. Some were almost comical. People with good intentions were dangerous, I knew. I had long ago decided that the Legion was all that allowed ConFree to survive, and ConFree was humanity's only hope against the System. We, the Legion, were the barbarians that the Systies feared. They knew we were without mercy or pity, just like them, and we stood between them and the tender, peaceful, perfect worlds of ConFree, where people lived in prosperity and comfort, the way life should be lived. As long as we remained barbarians, ConFree would prosper. And as soon as we weakened, ConFree would die. I had vowed it wasn't going to happen on my watch.

"Let's take five," I said.

"Nah, let's keep going," Redhawk replied. He had a strange sense of humor. We found a relatively dry area under some trees and dumped our fieldpaks.

"Anyone for dox?" It felt good to be off our feet. It was still the pit of the night. The clouds must have been fading, for I could see a few stars—the moon was heading for the horizon. I popped a dox. Just what I needed.

"I'm going to wee," Valkyrie said, heading into the dark.

"Watch out for snakes," Redhawk called out after her, grinning. She did not answer.

"Do you think the Legion can see us?" I asked him.

"That's a twelve. It's doubtful. They can't see much in the Taka zone any more. It's bizarre. There's a very powerful source of deceptor interference that covers the whole area. It originates on a mountain not far from the old Southmark. It makes commo impossible—even the smaller visual details are hard to read."

"And you enter the zone and your aircar dies."

"Exactly. The few Legion patrols they sent in on foot were intercepted and politely escorted out. Since the orders were not to use force, they didn't have any choice."

"Strange."

"The reconsats do show some large construction projects underway, although it seems to be stone-age stuff. New buildings, stuff like that."

"New buildings?" That was strange. The Taka were tribal primitives, living in the wreckage of a glorious past, squatting in the midst of the dead stone bones of the once mighty temples and fortresses of Southmark. Their history was long gone. They certainly had no business constructing new buildings.

"The whole Taka zone is now restricted. Nobody's been there since the LC split with ConFree. The Legion just doesn't have the resources to resolve this little problem, and so they're leaving it alone."

"Sounds like the Taka don't welcome visitors."

"That's a ten."

It was very, very strange. The Taka had pledged themselves to us forever, after we had delivered them from the exosegs and the priests and the Soldiers of God. And now this. Tara was convinced that Gildron was somewhere in Taka country. When the ConFree commandos had attacked Alpha Station, Gildron had been separated from Tara. He would have headed for the Taka, Tara said. The Taka were our friends, totally loyal, blindly loyal, and they knew and liked Gildron as well. They would have given him unconditional shelter, unconditional protection.

Gildron had the Star. He had to have it, Tara said. Nobody else did. And the Star was our objective. Recover the Star, and bring it back to Dindabai. That was the mission. Gildron was Tara's creature. He adored her; he would do whatever she said. She wanted us to bring him back, too. I wasn't anticipating any trouble, if we could just locate and get to Gildron. The two of us had been through a lot together. He was a big, retarded ape, but he had a good heart. Despite his uncanny ability to communicate with the O's, he could barely speak with us, but he was always friendly. I was confident he would do as I asked.

If he didn't have the Star, we'd just have to find it—wherever it was.

"It's kind of spooky out there," Valkyrie said, reappearing from out of the dark. "I thought I heard some movement from the swamp."