Soldier of the Legion (13 page)

Psycho suddenly appeared and knelt over Priestess, his Manlink glowing. “Hi, Honey. You still hanging around with these two losers?” He aimed again, and fired into the darkness.

Psycho! Psycho the Maniac, Psycho the Avenging Angel, covered with dirt, armored and armed and as cool as could be. Through his faceplate, I saw his happy grin. He sliced through Priestess’s bindings with his hot knife. A stone bounced off his armor. He ripped off another burst into the dark. “If they keep that up, they’re going to upset me, and I’ll switch to xmax,” he informed us.

“Cut us loose, Psycho!” Merlin demanded.

“What do you think, Priestess?” Psycho inquired calmly. “Why don’t we just leave them here. Who needs ‘em? They’ll just get you into trouble again.”

Priestess didn’t waste any time. “Give me your mini!”

Psycho fired again, a long burst. Priestess sliced my chains off with a laser burst from the handgun and then freed Merlin. Rocks ricocheted harshly off the metal grate. Regrouped, the Scalers had started to fight back.

Psycho fired on xmax and a tremendous blast lit up a far corner of the chamber. He peered into the dark, surveying his handiwork, shaking his head. “I leave you clowns alone for a couple of fracs and come back to find the Scalers having you for lunch. Can’t you do anything right without me?” He was in his element. He was magnificent under stress. When there was no stress, he generated it, just to annoy us.

“Where are the others, Psycho?” Merlin looked around wildly, an eternal optimist, completely detached from reality.

“Others?” he laughed madly. “Come on, we can handle this bunch. I just dug my way out of the cave-in. There aren’t any others!”

I snatched up Priestess’s E from where the Scaler had dropped it and let loose a long burst on v-min into the dark. It got darker fast. Scaler torches sputtered weakly here and there where they had fallen and piles of twitching Scaler bodies could be seen in the gloom. Only Psycho could see properly. The rest of us were all but blind in this underground world. The fire pit illuminated us nicely for the Scalers.

“You’ve got a beautiful ass, Priestess.” Psycho always said exactly what he thought.

“Thanks for rescuing us and keep your hands off!” she replied hotly.

“Can you please concentrate on the Scalers, Psycho?” I suggested. “Let’s get away from the fire.”

“On me,” Psycho said simply. He knew the way out. A rock exploded off Psycho’s plasmapak. He whipped around and fired again on xmax. A searing detonation illuminated shattered Scaler bodies flying through the air, and a sudden horde of fierce-looking dirtmen off to one side, whirling their slings in the air, coming right at us.

“Damn! Where did they come from?” A hail of rocks ricocheted all around us. A heavy metal trident flashed past my face.

“Lights! Psycho, give us lights!” Merlin had armed himself with an axe. He snatched the flash from Psycho’s waist and snapped it on, right at the dirtmen.

The sudden light was dazzling, silent nova, bursting to life, glaring and sizzling right at the dirtmen. It stopped them like a wall, just for a moment.

“V-min,” I said. “Auto.” We were really not supposed to be killing them.

“Always thinking,” Psycho retorted. “What a pain.”

He and Priestess and I stood shoulder to shoulder while Merlin held the light. We opened up with V bolts on straight auto. We cut down the dirtmen with thunder and lightning, with V bolts from another world, and the underground shook with the earsplitting din of the battle. The dirtmen just kept coming, right at us, chanting their death songs. Lord, they were good!

“The other side.” Rocks pelted us from behind. We formed a fighting circle, back to back, surrounded.

“Flares.” Merlin could only cover part of the chamber with his flash so we fired flares out into the darkness and they burst into brilliant light, glaring and spitting from the far corners of the great hall. Now we could see it all, many, many Scaler bodies, and women and children huddled in terrified clumps on the watery floor, playing dead. Warriors, leaping from behind those great columns, launching stones and evil spiked metal balls through the air to whistle past our ears. Shadows leaping from wall to wall, hundreds and hundreds of Scalers all around us, swarming in blind panic and terror and hatred and courage and bloody suicidal sacrifice. I felt for those Scalers, I really did.

“Deadman!” Psycho exclaimed. “I haven’t had this much fun since Planet Hell!”

“I love you, Thinker! I love you!” Priestess could not hold it in.

“What is this, confession time?” Psycho was outraged. “I save her ass, and she loves you? Wait’ll I tell Valkyrie!”

“Look out!” A spear flashed past my cheek and bounced off the stone floor. A rock hit me square in the chest, leaving me breathless.

A low wailing arose from the Scalers. Hysterical screaming, urgent shouting, someone barking out commands. The rain of stones slowed, and ceased. An evil silence fell on the great chamber. Scaler women and children ran frantically along one wall, illuminated by a flare. Grimfaced warriors with heavy metal tridents stood fast in the human flood, facing the direction from which the civilians were fleeing.

“It’s the Legion!” Merlin exclaimed.

Psycho glanced at his tacmod. “Negative. There’s nobody here.”

“Deadman,” I whispered. I could see something, in the inky black of a far corner of the chamber, behind the columns, hidden from the flares. I could see what the Scalers feared, what had drawn their attention from us.

“What is it?” Priestess demanded.

Something big, in the dark. Something dark and evil, writhing in the shadows. Something from Andrion 3, to break your bones and drink your blood.

“Death,” I said. “It’s death!” I was not too coherent, right then. I did not know if I could face another exoseg.

Two of them emerged from the shadows, illuminated harshly by the glittering light of our flares. Two grim, terrible, giant killing machines, heads snapping back and forth, antennas cracking out like whips, front legs probing ahead of them, awful empty black eyes reflecting only death. Another great exoseg appeared out of the shadows, behind them. And another. Their chittering filled the chamber, the only sound. It chilled my blood. I felt the hair rising on my scalp.

“To the death,” Merlin whispered reverently.

“My, my!” Psycho exclaimed. “Just look at that!”

“I can’t do this again, Thinker,” Priestess said quietly. “I don’t want this. Not again.”

“Lasers,” I said. We faced the exosegs. “Zap ‘em with the light, Merlin. Maybe it will help. All right, let’s do it.” I could not tear my eyes away from those giant, obscene beasts. Merlin flooded the creatures with light. My skin crawled at the sight of them. My heart raced, adrenalin shot through my veins.

We fired simultaneously at the first two exos, laser light ripping the air violently, dazzling our eyes, sizzling and burning, raw energy from the heart of a star. We sliced the creatures, from top to bottom, from front to rear. They disintegrated, quickly, screaming, a high-pitched squeal, grating to our ears. Their bodies, suddenly sliced into many pieces, simply fell apart, burning at the edges, smoking, the internal organs ripping out to fall among the rest of the wreckage. We ceased firing. A horrible stench suddenly hit us like a physical blow.

“Deadman!”

“It works!”

“I love it! I love it!” Psycho was ecstatic.

“Get the others!”

Three, four, more! More exosegs, picking their way in fast motion over and around the steaming carcasses of those we had killed, twitching and snapping, reaching out for us with their antennae. We had no real reason to fear them, despite their terrifying appearance. Our fighting lasers cut through them like paper.

Overcome with loathing, I fired again. Psycho and Priestess fired simultaneously. Merlin kept the light on them. It was a horrible orgy of death, a blind slaughter, a pitiless, deliberate massacre. I saw it through burning red eyes, and I loved every frac. I bounced the E up and down, and slashed from side to side and the creatures walked right into our firestorm and disintegrated, all those separate body parts falling down sizzling to steam and hiss in the water covering the stones of the chamber floor, yellow viscera suddenly free, spilling hot and steaming into nothingness.

A hulking, smoking pile of obscene exoseg parts lay scattered all around us. A head, lying on one eye, glared at us, mandibles still twitching. The lasers did it all, an elemental force, the power of the stars at our fingertips, as we stood fast against a tidal wave of nightmare, grotesque alien creatures from the edge of the universe.

I felt like a God. From the corners of my eyes I spotted Scaler warriors behind us, forming a human wall of tridents and spears, in front of their huddled women and children.

More of them, a new exoseg come to die, its antennae lashing out among the fallen corpses of the others.

“Take the Manlink, Merlin.” Psycho handed it to Merlin, who snatched it eagerly. Psycho stepped out to face the exoseg. He crouched, his black armor catching the reflections from the flares, his hot knife outstretched before him, already triggered, burning a blue-hot flame.

“Hold your fire!” Psycho demanded, “Let me take him.” The exoseg paused for an instant, focused on him.

“You maniac!” I gasped in horror, suddenly realizing his intent. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” I shrieked and pressed the trigger. The giant exoseg disintegrated in an irresistible, glittering stream of laser bursts, its burning remains showering down on Psycho.

“You subnorm earther reject! Get your ass back here, Psycho!” I could hardly believe he had actually done it. What a raving lunatic.

“Damn it, I had him! Why’d you fire?”

Two more exoseg soldiers jerkily picked their way over the great mound of stinking body parts, vacant compound eyes winking evil. We vaporized them, hitting them head-on with the lasers, slicing them up lengthwise. They exploded, green and yellow puss spraying outwards in an obscene halo of death.

We ceased fire. A great silence settled over the chamber. I heard my heartbeat, and the sputtering of Scaler torches, the whimpering of children, and the hissing of our flares. We slowly re-formed our fighting circle, without words. The great hall was littered with unconscious Scalers, the victims of our V bolts. Beyond the bodies, a strong, straight line of Scaler warriors faced us, stretching all the way across the chamber, shoulder to shoulder, behind a wall of long heavy tridents and spears. The women and kids were behind them, in the shadows, all talking at once, shouting at each other. They may have been debating whether they wanted us medium-rare, or well done.

“Don’t fire yet,” I said. “Let’s see what they do.”

“Can we fire after they kill us all?” Psycho was still unhappy because I had terminated his exo.

“Tenners, no more games. If they attack, we keep the E’s on laser.”

“I don’t think they’re going to attack us,” Merlin said. “Look!”

A Scaler warrior stepped forward. He was small but well built, with hard flat muscles and great scars on his chest. An ornament of gold glittered at his throat. He held aloft a heavy blackened metal trident, grasping it with both hands, keeping it parallel to the ground.

“Watch him...”

He walked towards us, fearless, and paused, almost arms-length away, the trident overhead. Three lasers pointed at his belly. He looked right into my eyes, and I knew he could see death, looking out at him. His eyes burned. He was not afraid. He had already decided what to do.

He knelt, and brought the trident down, slowly, holding it out, to us. Presenting it, to us.

“He’s surrendering,” Priestess whispered.

I reached out to take it, in a daze. It was heavy. A sun symbol engraved the metal shaft, a sun with a single rune on its face, radiating light. The long line of Scaler warriors carefully laid down their weapons on the flooded stones of the great hall. I could hardly believe it.

“Cease firing, Snow Leopard,” Psycho suddenly exclaimed. “The Scalers in the great hall have just surrendered to us.”

“What do you mean, Psycho?” For an instant, I did not understand.

“It’s Snow Leopard,” Psycho replied. “CAT 24 has broken through, they’re on the way. Engagement in the tunnel.”

Priestess’s arms snaked around my waist and she buried her face in my chest. I balanced the E on my hip and tried to comfort her. A great relief flooded over me. I was suddenly very conscious of her very naked body, pressing close to mine.

“Let’s see if we can find Priestess’s litesuit, guys, uh, and maybe mine and Merlin’s, too.”

Chapter 7:
The Mark of the Beast

Seven weeks later:

I awoke warm and comfortable. Completely relaxed, I wanted to stay in dreamland forever. It slowly dawned on my fuzzy mind that I was on the floor of the squadmod lounge, lying in a confused tangle of motionless bodies. I had not the slightest idea why. This has to be a dream, I thought. It felt so damned good just to be lying there, warm and lazy and mindless, that I wanted to continue like that forever. And it had to be a dream. The Legion does not sleep.