Soldier of the Legion (7 page)

We scanned the chamber carefully. Sweety noted mold, tiny parasites, slugs, worms, and billions of airborne microorganisms. It looked all right, but it did not feel all right.

Suddenly our tacnet exploded and we could hear autovac, shattering the dark, echoing through the corridors.

Snow Leopard screamed, “Fire! Fire! Fire!...Stop! Cease Fire! Freeze!”

Priestess and I froze as well, listening to the transmissions.

“I got him!”

“Don’t move!”

“He went down!”

“Don’t move!”

“Where is he?”

“Cease fire! Cease fire.”

“He moved!”

“Tenners, cease fire!”

Priestess and I leaned against the wall, side by side, our E’s pointed into the darkened chamber.

“Sounds like they got him,” I commented.

“That’s good,” Priestess said. “Good.”

“Element, up! Lifies up! On me!” Snow Leopard ordered. Evidently they were securing the Scaler.

“Thinker, Priestess, remain in place.” Snow Leopard never stopped thinking. He didn’t need us. I let myself slide down the corridor wall to a sitting position, my muscles relaxing. Priestess did the same. I felt good, despite that awful tunnel. This empty chamber was creepy, but there was plenty of room so I could breathe. We weren’t going to be meeting the Systies after all—at least not today! It was wonderful, sitting there looking at Priestess. I felt the blood pumping through my veins. I had never been so alive.

Snow Leopard was in his element. “Careful, zap him if he moves. Medic up!”

Priestess’s arms twitched, a reflex to the call for a medic. The life team leader called his own medic, the other man on the capture team. Priestess started giggling. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. I just wanted to hold her, to look into her eyes. Even with the faceplate and the mud, even with the green glow and the dark, she was youth and beauty and life. We embraced, silently, awkwardly, and I swear I could hear her heartbeat. I never wanted to leave her.

I felt a faint shudder in the floor and we tensed, the moment of tenderness evaporated. Suddenly, the chamber floor erupted before us with a tremendous crack. Rock shrapnel ricocheted wildly in all directions, peppering us with jagged flecks of stone. Dust and earth filled the air. A scream echoed in my ears, and we were airborne. I landed on my back, breathless. I raised my head. Dust swirled all around me.

A new sound consumed the room, a metallic chittering, harsh and bone-chilling. I raised my E. The dust cleared. A grotesque, massive exoseg head appeared, covered with coarse black bristles, jerking from side to side in super-fast motion, giant bulging compound eyes glittering black. Long, nasty antennae probed and snapped like great whips. A hideous wet mouth emerged, pincers open, front legs brushing the rubble aside as the creature rose up out of the hole.

“Exoseg Gigantic Soldier...” Sweety warned me.

Too late, Sweety!

I stared stupidly at the impossible apparition. My comtop shrieked with alarms and Sweety relayed information to me in a rapid-fire staccato. I could not believe how calm she sounded.

The creature seized Priestess bodily in its two front legs, raising her in the air. She screamed a nightmare scream, arms pinned, her E still strapped to her chest. The creature opened its maw. It was going to eat her headfirst!

I came out of my shock at the last possible instant. My E had been aimed at the exoseg but I had been unable to use it. Now it was all instinct. I hit the trigger just as my thumb snapped the setting from v-min to xmin. I did not even think about it. There simply was no time. I aimed for the creature’s eye, just past Priestess’s struggling form.

The explosive round burst inside the creature and shattered half its head. The flash lit up the hideous scene briefly. The giant exoseg’s two front legs jerked apart, and Priestess fell to the floor. Ricocheting shrapnel peppered my faceplate.

That bone-chilling chittering—shrieking, freezing my blood. It was still alive! Something smashed against the back of my head, and I hit the floor face-first, stunned and bleeding. My faceplate was scarred and Sweety flashed me a warning. The darksight faded quickly. I groveled in the rubble, blind and helpless.

“Priestess! Priestess!” No response. Shrapnel had penetrated the darksight layer in my faceplate, but I still had my E. An icy fury convulsed me. We will die, but I will take that thing with me. I pointed my E into the smoking darkness and activated the light.

A nightmare scene. The sudden glare of my E’s white light, a chamber full of dust, the great grotesque exoseg snapping back and forth wildly above me in convulsions, its movements faster than the eye could follow, leathery chitin, gore and foam spraying through the air like a shower of meteorites. It was only halfway out of the hole in the floor.

“...exoseg still functioning...” Sweety told me that and a great deal more, but I was not listening.

“Thinkerrrr!” Priestess was trapped underneath one of the creatures black legs, crumpled in the smoking rubble at the lip of the crater in the floor—alive! Covered with blood and gore, she lifted her arms, reaching out to me.

I raised the E and aimed carefully again at the exoseg’s shattered head. I set it on auto xmin and fired. Multiple detonations annihilated the remainder of the creature’s head and brought down much of the ceiling as well. A white-hot pain burned into my left cheek. My litesuit was riddled with hits and the whole world shook. But still the exo did not die.

Headless, it groped wildly about with the pincers on its long front legs. Green pus spattered all over me. I screamed, overcome with horror. I held the E with both hands, the stock tight against my shoulder. My flash tore loose from my suit and triggered itself, bouncing around at my feet, casting giant obscene shadows that danced from wall to ceiling to wall.

I aimed for its thorax and fired again. Glaring white-hot flashes from multiple hits illuminated the creature as though it were exploding in slow motion, splattering all over the chamber, an ugly hot sticky sickening death, gobs of green and yellow pus bursting off the walls, wet leathery chunks of exoskeleton tumbling wildly through the air, stiff spiky exoseg legs twitching in spastic death throes, a fountain of gore erupting from the abdomen, all illuminated harshly by the flash.

Movement. Priestess crawled slowly away from the exoseg. I kept my E trained on the creature’s abdomen. It slumped back into the hole and disappeared.

I jumped over debris and exo-parts and grabbed her elbow. She screamed and wrenched herself out of my grip. Then she turned back, looked at the hole in the floor and threw herself in my arms, shaking violently.

“It’s all right, it’s dead. It’s dead, and we’re alive. It’s all right.” I held her in my arms. We both shook in horror. We were alive. We would return together after all.

“I wet my pants,” she confessed weakly.

“It’s all right,” I responded hoarsely. “It’s all right.” I was not about to admit that I had done the same.

Chapter 4:
Slave of the Future

Whenever I opened my eyes in the body shop, Priestess was by my side. We had been admitted the same day, evak’d to
Atom
to treat our wounds. Her wounds were minor but she stayed on to look after me. I had a few broken bones from where the exo had whacked me, and several nasty shrapnel wounds. Nothing that couldn’t be repaired in a few days. Priestess the seductress, in hospital whites. When I awoke, she reached out and touched my hand. Who could ask for more? She had survived. I thanked the Gods of War.

Priestess and I had uncovered the secret of Andrion 2. Snow Leopard and the others had captured the Scaler—a boy savage armed with a spear and a slingshot, covered with filth, all wild eyes and animal screams. They had to zap him with blues to calm him down. He had evidently taken out the probes with his slingshot. They didn’t get any info from him at first.

We knew something was very wrong.

The giant exoseg we’d run into was one of the more aggressive species from Andrion 3: Exoseg Gigantic Soldier, the techs had labeled them. The dominant species on Andrion 3 used them as enforcers. It did not belong on Andrion 2. Their presence must have something to do with the Systies.

Command rearranged our defenses immediately, covering Zero Alpha with geodetic sensors and preparing for a planetary attack. We clearly needed more information. We launched our CATs into the wilderness while the lifies went to work on the Scaler.

Priestess briefed me regularly on the captured boy. He was just a kid, but his fine features brought me back immediately to those two defiant stone figures carved into the cold heart of the underworld.

Then, without warning, Valkyrie came. She appeared suddenly in the doorway to the recovery room. My heart raced when I saw her. She always had that effect on me. She was a green-eyed blonde, a princess carved from ice, a true child of the Legion—a baby, a genius, a killer. All the wisdom of the ages, behind those lovely eyes. It’s easy to fill a Legionnaire with info.
Atom
gave us more every night in our sleep, but all that knowledge was dangerous. It took a while to get it all under control. Valkyrie was still working on it.

She posed in the doorway dramatically, her face cold and distant, her golden hair carelessly tangled. A chill shot through my body. She wore her camfax litesuit, all covered with red dust. Her perfume was the scent of Andrion 2. Gamma patrolled the far West, a cold desert of dust.

I floated on a warm cushion of air in the tank while Priestess stood beside me. She had been cleaning my face with a medpad, checking the wounds. She paled when she saw Valkyrie, and drew away from me, almost guiltily.

“Hello, Thinker.” Valkyrie acted casual, as if she had just dropped by on her way to class.

“Hello, Valkyrie. I’ve missed you.” Damn, she looks good!

“You look a little tired, Thinker. You really should be more careful.” Her voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. She approached the tank slowly and ran her slender fingers along the rail—so erotic! How does she do that?

Priestess stood rigid, silent, the medpad still in one hand.

Valkyrie looked into my eyes. That faint, confident smile was there now. God, she could eat me alive whenever she wanted, just like before.

She turned to Priestess. “You must be Priestess. My, so much trouble for such a little girl. You really should thank me, you know, for saving your life. You see, I taught Thinker everything he knows.”

Valkyrie could be very nasty with competition. And she had just declared war on Priestess.

“Yes, Sister.” Priestess bowed her head and said the right words. She knew Valkyrie by reputation as a third level Sister of the dark arts, deadlier than many of her male colleagues, and very dangerous when she grew angry. I had seen her in ice-cold fury on Planet Hell, killing without remorse, splattered with blood as we’d fought side-by-side for our lives. I did not want to see that again.

Valkyrie turned away from Priestess in contempt and ran a fingernail along my upper arm, smiling faintly. It sent a surge right through my body. She was pure bitch, but I wasn’t about to complain.

“I can only stay a few fracs, Thinker. Can you ask your friend to leave?” She had a cruel streak that I did not like.

“I am leaving, Sister. Goodbye, Thinker.” Priestess looked ready to cry. I really felt for her.

“Goodbye, Priestess. Thank you.” I knew Valkyrie would not like my thanking Priestess, but there were limits to my cowardice.

“Try to hold on to your E next time,” Valkyrie hurled after her as she left.

“Valkyrie, did you have to do that?”

“Close your mouth, Thinker.” She gently touched a finger to my lips. “I just want to look at you.” A quiet, dreamy voice. “I’ve missed you. Missed you for ages. We’re in the desert now. It’s incredible. I love it, Thinker. I only wish you could come with me.”

“We’ll get together. I’ll be out in no time.”

“And back in Beta. Nice, personalized service you get here. What’s she doing here?”

“She was injured. She just got out of the tank.”

“Then she should be back with Beta downside, not playing wet-nurse to my man. You stay away from her, Thinker.”

“Oh, come on...”

“Don’t you ‘Oh, come on’ me. I know you perfectly well. And I know her type too. ‘Yes, Sister.’ Such a sweet little girl. Sugary little drip! She does whatever you say, doesn’t she?”

“Valkyrie...stop it, will you? Just stop it. Forget about her.”

“You stay away from her! She almost got you killed, just because of her stupidity. She didn’t get a single shot in, did she? What was she doing, anyway?”

“It happened very quickly, Valkyrie.” She was right. But it wasn’t just Priestess. We’d both been stupid and slow.

“People like that shouldn’t be in the Legion. How’d she get through Hell? Was she everybody’s hot little dolly? I’ll bet Beta carried her all the way! You just stay away from her, you hear?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Stay away from her. Tenners.”

“You remember that! You belong to me, and if she comes after you, there’s going to be trouble!”

“Right.” I looked into her cool green eyes. She smiled. I laughed. She knew me so well, it was scary. But it was good to see her again. Damn, she looks good!

###

Valkyrie knew me better than I knew myself. She also had a habit of showing up periodically to reinforce her claim on me. The visits were always intense and memorable. It occurred to me that there were other occasions when I’d been hurt worse and I’d never heard from her. It was as though she had some kind of radar that detected…

After she left, I thought about what she had said about Priestess. It wasn’t fair. I picked up my tacmod and called Priestess on private.

She answered, “Priestess.”

“Priestess, Thinker. Can you come by?”

“I’m sorry...I can’t. I have to stay here.”

“She’s gone. I want to see you. It’s important.”

“All right.”

She agreed! My heart leaped.

When she came, she hung her head. I reached out of the tank and took her hand. A warm rush shot up my arm. It was a bit scary.