Secret of the Legion (36 page)

"I'm not staying behind! I can see perfectly well."

"How many fingers?" I held up a hand.

"Five."

"Four. I'm sorry, Valkyrie. It won't do. The timing of this op is critical. Our reactions will have to be razor sharp to avoid disaster. Otherwise, people die. You can't go."

"I'm going. You can't stop me!"

"Yes I can. I'll not risk this mission—not even for you. I'll put you in the brig if I have to."

"I'll tell you why you're going to agree to let me come with you."

"All right. Tell me."

She sighed, and looked down at the pile of material before her. She had pulled out two ID snaps from her folder, lovely, clear head shots of herself and Scrapper, Beta Twelve, her fem lover.

"There's something I've never told anyone," she said slowly. "I never told anyone because I didn't think anyone would believe me. And everybody I could trust was gone. But the time is right, now. I'll tell you all." She bit her lower lip until it turned white, then she resumed. "When that O had you trapped in the Mound, Thinker, you and Tara and Gildron and Twister, Snow Leopard saw it on his tacmap. He was on the wrong level, but I was in the same corridor, some distance behind the O. I was the only one within range. One called out to me—'Get that O!' he said. I acknowledged, and said I was on it. I ran up and fired at it from behind just as it opened up on you. I fired a tremendous barrage of auto canister x. I saw it had blasted you with the starmass. Then I saw the O's force field flicker and fade. I poured it on, and the thing turned on me and hit me with a wall of starmass. I figured I was dead. My tacmod was screaming at me, my A-suit was melting. I turned and ran, blind. I ran into a wall and fell, burning like a torch. I got up and ran again—right into another wall. I fell again, and I tried to get up. I couldn't. My suit was going. I was trapped in the starmass, I was right inside, the flames were swirling all around me. It was terrifying. All the lights in my helmet were bright red and the plex was bubbling. Black bubbles were forming on my faceplate, and the temperature was shooting up. My armor was white hot. I remember thinking that I was going to die."

Valkyrie's face was twitching and her eyes were wet. We were all dead silent, sitting frozen around the table listening to her account.

"And then someone appeared in the flames. An A-suit, glowing red. All I could see was the outline, a flaming red A-suit with an E strapped to the chestplate. I watched in fascination as the trooper reached down and grasped both my wrists and pulled me to my feet. The starmass was still swirling madly all around us and I got a glimpse of a corridor wall, melting into slag. The trooper pulled me away and guided me out of that hellhole with one arm over my shoulders. I could barely move the A-suit's legs, but somehow we got out of the flames. Once we were out, we stood in a burning corridor, and the trooper released me, and turned to leave. I couldn't tell who it was, and I didn't see why we should split up, so I snatched at a wrist and held on. The trooper turned back to me and I looked into the faceplate. It wasn't easy to see, because my own faceplate was all burnt. But I know what I saw. For just a frac, one frac, the light from the flames lit up the inside of that helmet and I saw who it was, and it was as clear as sunlight."

She looked down at the table, and continued. "It was me," she said. "It was Beta Eleven, looking back at me out of that faceplate. I'm not likely to be mistaken about myself. It was me—green eyes, pale skin, blonde hair, Legion cross as big as life on the forehead. It was me—and it wasn't a reflection, and I didn't imagine it, either. I was so startled I released my grip on her wrist, and she turned immediately and faded into the smoke."

We all just sat there, stunned.

"So you see," Valkyrie said, "that's why you have to let me go on this mission. I have to rescue myself from the starmass. It's already happened. So it's going to happen. And there's no sense in arguing about it."

Silence greeted her statement. I was lost in thought. "This is incredibly important," I finally said. "It means the time jump is going to work! It confirms it all! The ghost ship the Legion saw near the Mound is the
Star of Dindabai
! And at least one of us—Valkyrie—makes it to the interior of the Mound and contacts herself. This is a perfect example of what the spacetime physicists told us. You can't change the past, but you can fulfill it. You can contribute to the present and the future. Valkyrie is here today only because she rescued herself in the past. Now all we have to do is determine what happened to the others—One, Five, Nine, Twelve, and Thirteen. Perhaps they're dead and vaporized…or…just possibly…we get to them first. If we can do that, we don't violate any of nature's laws—it's possible. It's really possible!" I was trembling with emotion.

"It's more than possible, Wester," Tara said quietly. "It's going to happen. The last pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. Yes, we're the ghost ship and that's why ConFree and the System both panicked when you stopped washing dishes on Nimbos. They probably didn't even know what the ghost ship was at that point, just like we didn't, but they knew damned well it was important. And they didn't want you getting your memory back and talking about the interrogation, especially when they didn't know what it meant."

"So I can come on the mission?" Valkyrie asked.

"Of course you can," I said. "You must!"

"We've never understood," Whit interrupted, "the original purpose of Beta's mission to the Mound. Cinta has always been very close-mouthed about it. " She flashed Tara a quick smile. "We thought it was just a recon. What was the real story?"

"We also thought it was just a recon mission," I said, "at first. Snow Leopard knew the truth, but he didn't brief us until we were there. The Mound was an Omni installation the O's had built during the occupation of Uldo. When the Legion counterattacked, Beta was ordered to recon the Mound, far behind the lines, and determine its function. But that was just a cover. The actual mission was to confirm the presence of an Omni ship that was believed to be disabled inside the Mound. If we could confirm the ship's presence, we were to seize it, and heavy Legion forces would then be diverted to reinforce us. The Legion was quite busy right then, with a major offensive against the O's on Uldo. Regrettably, word of our mission, and the Ship, leaked. Both the System and Kenton Cotter-Arc's ConFree Special Mission Strike Force sent squads to track us down, neutralize us, and secure the ship for ConFree and the System."

I looked up at the wall screen showing the Mound. It brought a faint chill to my skin. "The Mound was a processing plant for human captives. It was pretty awful. We had to fight a squad of psyched DefCorps troopers who were processing the prisoners for the O's. Later, another squad of DefCorps Systies arrived, and after them, the ConFree Strike Force showed up. By then, we were fighting the O's inside the Mound. Everyone was out to get us. We were even fighting ourselves, at one point. It was…intense. Merlin was killed, in a firefight with the ConFree squad. Psycho was wounded, bad; Twister was disabled; and the others were all lost or separated. Tara, Gildron and I made it to the Ship. Then the damned thing launched, with us inside. And that's where we got the Star, that enabled us to build this lovely ship, and construct a D-neg time drive that is going to take us right back to the Mound, on the same day we left. Is it clearer now?"

"Sorry we asked." Whit said quietly.

"The point is that the interior of the Mound is a howling, flaming battleground, with O's, Systies, ConFree troopers, and Squad Beta all blasting away at each other with every weapon available, as hundreds of terrified Systie captives—men, women and children—dodge the lasers. Visibility is generally as far as the end of your fingers, tacmods are useless because of deceptors, starmass, and micronukes, and sudden death awaits you at every step. The starmass is especially dangerous. We have to decide in advance exactly what each of us is going to do, exactly where we're going to go to do it, and exactly how and when we're going to get back to the ship. And we have to realize that some or all of us may be killed doing this. That's why our preparations must be perfect. The
Star of Dindabai
is equipped with ten interlocking envirosim rooms, and five of these are now set up to sim the Mound. I've walked through one, with Tara. It's scary as hell, but it will prepare us for what we have to face. The reason we're on vac drive rather than stardrive is that we're not going to approach Uldo and do the time jump until we are all totally prepped for the Mound. I want everyone to make all their mistakes here—not in the Mound."

I glared at everybody. I suppose I was getting carried away, but this was the ultimate mission, for me. I knew it was just a test, for the Legion, but to me it was my entire life. We weren't being permitted to do this because the Legion sympathized with me about my missing comrades, although they surely did, but because the Legion wanted to test a new weapons system with a crew full of suicidal volunteers.

It didn't bother me at all. I knew it would never have happened without the Legion.

"No mistakes," I repeated. "Open the folders." Everybody fumbled with the bulky packages before them, pulling out tacmaps and tacmod printouts and ID snaps. I opened my own, and gently laid out the ID snaps before me. Five targets—well known to us.

"We'll have to add Valkyrie as a target," I said. "I'll amend the plan. We'll have to get her out of the starmass, then leave her. You'll do that, Valkyrie."

"Thanks."

I was examining Snow Leopard's image. Beta One, our maximum leader. A Legion squad is a small world, I thought, and it starts and ends with its One. He gazed sternly back at me, a chunky, ghostly pale face with hot pink eyes and straight white blond hair and blue veins standing out at his temples. Snow Leopard. He was the ultimate squad leader, and he led from the front. He was our heart, our soul, our brain. We were nothing without him. He had led us on Andrion 2, on Coldmark, on Andrion 3, on Mongera, on Uldo. He was our fearless, invincible leader. He had always thought of us first, and himself second.

And all they had found of him was one leg, severed by a laser. It was not promising.

"The tacplan has it all," I said. "You each have your targets. The plan tells you exactly where to go, and what to do. Today you memorize it. Tomorrow we do it, in the envirosim rooms. It's difficult. It's very difficult. But we're going to do it until we get it right."

Psycho looked up at me from his ID snap. Short blond hair, luminous pale blue eyes, an evil child's face. The little punk always knew how to get to me. He was always bugging me, but I had to admit he was a magician, an artist, with the Manlink. Beta Five was a little man with a great big gun, and when he raised that lovely Manlink it was all over for our enemies. He had saved our asses more than once.

The Systies had blown off his leg in the Mound. We had left him behind to cover us. I could still see him lying there behind an E, flying on mags, one leg a bloody stump, crudely bandaged, waiting for the Systies. The little creep owed me a hundred credits. As we were leaving I had told him he couldn't die until I collected that hundred credits. "Either way I win," he had replied. "Now get outta my sight." And those were his last words.

Psycho. Tara had said he had moved. It was all on the tacmap.

"Dragon, you'll go after Snow Leopard. We know exactly where they found the leg. He may be dead, but—if he is alive—he never knew you were the ConFree psychee, so you should have no trouble there. Our A-suits will be exact duplicates of what we wore to the Mound, so—hopefully—no confusion will arise in the minds of those we're attempting to rescue. Redhawk, you are responsible for Psycho. Get him to the rally point. It's not far." Redhawk and Psycho had quarreled about everything. I knew it would not make any difference.

I was holding Priestess's ID snap in my fingers. She was looking into space, completely calm. A cascade of shiny black hair, a fine, delicate child's face. Big dark eyes, deep pools to another dimension—vulnerable ripe lips. Priestess—my eternal love. I could almost feel her warm embrace, a touch of velvet skin and the beating of her heart in the still of the night. How many years had she been calling out to me from the past? How many light years was it, from Uldo to Nimbos? Even when they had locked up my memory, even when I didn't know who I was, she had been crying out to me. And how far is it from Uldo to Dindabai? Past all the years and light years, flashing through the immensity of interstellar space, hurtling through the Outvac faster than light, her spirit was a silent lightning bolt of infinite power and infinite purity, drilling me right in the brain. How could I ignore her? I loved my family, I loved Moontouch and Stormdawn, but I loved Beta Nine as well. She was my girl, my love, my future. I loved her totally; I would love her forever. And I was going to do everything in my power to save her, to get her back—even if it killed me.

"I'll go after Priestess," I said. "Valkyrie, this is going to be tricky. Both Priestess and Scrapper disappeared in the same burst of starmass. We'll go in there together. You'll be tracking Scrapper. If we do find them, I'll take custody of both Priestess and Scrapper while you go after yourself. You remember your own problem occurred a bit later. I'll put it in the tacplan."

"All right," Valkyrie said.

"We're all going to be there," I said. "I mean…our past selves will be there. In order to save Priestess and Scrapper and Valkyrie, we've got to arrive well before Tara and Gildron and I enter the O ship and launch. It means there's the danger of meeting ourselves. There's also the danger of friendly fire. Our presence here tells us we won't shoot our past selves, but there's nothing to prevent our past selves from shooting us. Keep that in mind. You remember how jumpy and suspicious we were. We were shooting anything in armor that moved. We could very easily have wasted some time travellers without even realizing it. The tacplan should avoid these problems, but you all know it's a very fluid situation in the Mound."

They were all there in my package. Scrapper, Beta Twelve, was looking out of her ID snap, completely unreadable, a mop of thick tawny hair, striking grey eyes, her lips firmly set. She had been Gamma Five, Valkyrie's lover, and the two of them were the only survivors from Gamma's apocalypse. Nobody was more highly motivated to save Scrapper than Valkyrie, I knew. Valkyrie would walk into Hell, half-blind, for her fem lover, and that was exactly what she was going to do.