Soldier of the Legion (9 page)

“Thunder,” Sweety explained. I did my tac check and nothing stirred, only the Legion, now moving into position. A night breeze rustled around me, blowing aimless patterns through the tall grass that filled the courtyard. A few drops of rain spattered against my faceplate while the tacsit map glowed on the lower corner. There were plenty of entrances to the structure. Our probes cautiously advanced inside. No action yet. A shadow in the sky, glowing, growing silently in my faceplate.

“Aircar,” Sweety told me. She normally would not have mentioned it, but my adrenalin had given her a little jolt.

“Normal vision,” I whispered. Sweety cancelled the darksight, and darkness rushed over me. Lightning strobed, illuminating the temple, a flock of fleecy angels and a handful of passing aircars. It hurt my eyes a little. The trees danced in the rising wind.

“Restore it,” I commanded. My faceplate lit up again. I liked little glimpses of reality from time to time. But too long could get you in trouble. Sweety didn’t like it because it affected my eyes’ sensitivity to her carefully selected palette of enhancement colors and shades.

Tacsit showed that the probes had uneventfully progressed to the planned distance and depth for us to proceed. The probes kept moving and it was time for us to move as well.

“Beta, assault.” Snow Leopard ordered, already moving up the stairs. “Command, Beta…we are assaulting Structure 02.”

I moved up the stairs to his left, all sensors on max, my E at the ready, set on v-min as ordered. Steep stairs, weak grav and powered armor. I felt like a God. We arrived at the top in moments, not even breathing hard.

###

We had a tremendous view from atop the temple, huddling against the gritty stone walls of four towering domes. The plan was to follow the probes into the heart of the temple and then down further, into the underground. The probes now swarmed far below, mapping a subterranean world. Somewhere down in the bowels of the temple, the Scalers were waiting.

“Command, Beta—we’re in place on Structure 02.”

There was no hurry. CAT 24 was swarming all over the bones of this dead city, and Beta would hold its position until we got the word. We settled in, moving into the gaping doorways of the domes to get out of the rain, and found comfortable positions in the rubble.

Snow Leopard moved around the temple’s edge restlessly. Coolhand posted himself on the west side, observing the progress of the assault. I squatted just inside one of the domes, watching the sky. The wind and the rain hissed gently.

“Ahh, death.” Psycho settled himself down near me and rested his Manlink against the wall. I did not say anything. Priestess stood beside Ironman in the doorway of the opposite dome, her E at the ready.

“Think we’ll find any extra-large exos down there, Thinker?” Merlin asked. He crouched near Psycho, balancing his E on one knee.

“If we do, I’m putting in for sick leave, Merlin,” I informed him. “I don’t ever want to see another one of those things.”

“You think too much,” Psycho cut in. “Always scheming to get into Valkyrie’s pants. Anything for sick leave. You knew she’d visit her wounded hero. I wish you’d tell me how you arranged that run-in with the exo. I wouldn’t mind a few days in the body shop.”

I ignored him. “I should have used the laser,” I said quietly. “Slice off its legs. They can’t hurt you without legs.”

A short silence ensued as Merlin and Psycho pondered my comments. I knew Psycho would probably say something crazy.

“You know what I’d like to do?” he finally said. “I’d like to take on one of those critters with this.” He raised his hot knife and triggered it. It flared to life, hissing blue-hot. The light from the knife flooded his faceplate, revealing his evil, boyish features. “Can you imagine that,” he asked, his eyes glowing, his mouth twisting. “Man Kills Bug With Knife. They’d laugh in the Inners, of course. But I’d be famous out here.” His eyebrows rose, and I could not help laughing. I knew he was serious and crazy enough to try it.

“A shame, Psycho,” I responded. “We’d have to get another Five.”

“Thinker’s always thinking,” he said, putting away the knife. “What a pain. You can screw up your life, thinking all the time.”

He was right, of course. During Basic, I’d been known as The Thinker, for over-thinking everything. I’d probably missed a lot, by agonizing over the possible consequences of my actions. Psycho had not missed a thing. It amazed me that he survived.

“What do you think the Scaler was trying to tell us with his drawings, Thinker?” Merlin had a talent for guiding conversations. Then he would sit back and listen. His IQ probably topped the rest of us put together. He certainly didn’t need our opinions. I had no idea why a scientific wizard like Merlin hauled an E instead of working in a biolab somewhere. He tended to be nervous, a bit clumsy in the field. I could not fathom his friendship with Psycho. I suppose he secretly admired his brash approach to life.

I thought about the drawings. “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s strange.”

The lifies had thought they were making progress with their catch, the Boy Scaler. When he settled down, they showed him all sorts of wonders, in an effort to communicate. He calmly took it all in for a while, silent, eyes glittering like black gems, cold and hard. And then he showed a wonder or two of his own. He sketched out the night sky on a datascreen. He drew it expertly, with all the stars right where they should be, seen from his forest. He drew a moving star, and traced it right down to the horizon. After that, he did another sketch, an exoseg, Exoseg Gigantic Soldier, eating a man. Then he smashed the d-screen with the lightpen, suddenly convulsed with rage and tears. The lifies could get nothing further from him. But it gave us something to work on.

They took Boy Scaler by aircar to the edge of the flower forest near where he’d been captured, and released him. Dressed once again in his tunic of scaly skin and armed with his slingshot and spear, he bolted into the forest and disappeared. The lifies had injected a c-cell into his scalp. It would lead us to him, wherever he went.

He’d gone here, to Site 2012. The probes quickly confirmed that the bowels of this dead city crawled with Scalers. Now we had what we wanted: a big Scaler community. We were ready to come calling.

We knew so little we could have been blind, but the primary mission was certainly to defend this planet from the Systies. Everything else was secondary. I munched a mag, leaning against the doorway of the dome.

“It’s simple,” Psycho declared. “The star was a Systie ship. The exos came from the ship. Command knows it, they just don’t want to get the troops upset.”

The rain eased off. It would be dawn soon. “It seems obvious, Psycho,” I said, “but why would the Systies want to transport exosegs from one world to another? It’s crazy. Why would anyone want to do that? Even Systies aren’t that crazy.”

“How should I know? Ask Merlin. He’s the brains of the outfit. I just work here. Maybe the Systies are using the exos to do something for them.”

“Do what? They’re not smart enough to do anything.”

“How do you know? They sure know how to eat people. Maybe the Dominants are running the show for the Systies.”

“Come on...they’re not that bright.”

“We don’t know how bright they are,” Psycho insisted. “Not until we capture one of the Dominants alive, and disassemble it. Then we’ll know.”

“The Dominants are not intelligent. They live in holes in the ground, and the high point of their day is when they get to suck on somebody’s abdomen. They couldn’t be doing anything for the Systies.”

“Why not? That’s the high point of my day, too!” Psycho exclaimed. “Look—the exo soldiers are from Andrion 3—fully developed natives of Andrion 3. They didn’t develop here. But they got here somehow. They don’t have wings, and they can’t breathe vac. Why couldn’t a comet or asteroid blow a chunk of Andrion 3 to Andrion 2, with some exo eggs attached? I don’t know. I think they came here by ship. It’s the only way to get from planet to planet.”

“What do you think, Merlin?”

“I think we’ll know the answer when we find the Systies,” he replied.

“Do you think they’re here?”

“I don’t know. But somebody’s been here. And done some mighty strange things. I don’t think there’s much doubt it was the Systies.”

Strange! The exosegs were natives of Andrion 3. And if the Systies had transported them, where were the Systies? We had swept the planet clean and found no advanced signals or power sources. It’s not easy to hide a starship. Despite all our biomag wizardry, there could be whole cities, whole nations, whole empires, hiding from us in the forests, in the mountains, and deep underground. But if there were any Systies here, they weren’t using power systems.

“All right, you tell me how they got here. Soldier exosegs, from Andrion 3.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re going to find out. Probably sooner than we’d like. And if the Systies show themselves, we’re certainly not going to be worrying about exosegs.”

Psycho let it go. He got bored easily. It was one of his problems. I let my mind wander back to the moment when Priestess and I had suddenly come face to face with the exoseg. Instant combat. Two worlds meeting. Our reactions had been correct. Only an Inner could doubt it. An Inner would have tried to reason with the creature, tried to communicate with it. An Inner would have been lunch.

“You know,” Merlin quietly interjected, “if the Scalers think the exosegs came from a ship, they may not be too thrilled to meet us.”

He was a master of understatement.

###

“Bring the psycher to Alpha,” Lowdrop’s voice crackled over the tacnet. Lowdrop was CAT 24’s commander and he was right up front for this op. Alpha was to make first contact with the Scalers and Beta was backup. We had followed the probes and now we were crouched against a corridor wall in the underground city, guarding Alpha’s flank. The Scalers were a few levels below us. It was as black as a tomb down there, but with our darksight we could see just fine.

As we waited, I wondered which psycher they had assigned to the mission. Psychers were a solitary breed, desperately lonely, trapped in the prison of their own talents. They did not even associate with other psychers.

Painful memories asserted themselves from my previous life. Tara, close beside me in the warm night of my own lost world, a silken cascade of glistening brown hair and faraway liquid brown eyes, exotic Assidic eyes and pale brown velvet skin. I could still feel her heart beating next to mine, but she had never really been mine. I think she knew what she faced, but it was her own dark secret, and she didn’t share it. Not even with me. I had sensed that something was wrong. I’d always felt that her mind functioned in another dimension. I only had her for a year, and then they came one night and she’d left with them without a fight or a word. I never knew if she really had a choice, but she never looked back. Never even said goodbye.

She was so far ahead of me, so damned brilliant, that I never even came close to understanding her. Yet we were drawn to each other, as if by an overwhelming magnetism.

She had always been sad when I talked about the future. I didn’t realize until later that she was a psycher. I only had a ring now to remember her by. A silver friendship ring, which I had treasured all the way through Basic. I always suspected that she had gone to the Legion. I never even thought about the Legion until after she left. I suppose I half hoped to meet her again, somewhere out in the vac.

Our psychers came from many worlds. They kept to themselves. I never wanted that kind of power, but the Legion needed it. Now we could hear the psycher at work. Number 8388—Gravelight, they called her. I recognized her voice. I knew her as a pale, thin, nervous phantom of a girl, with limp golden hair. She had evidently reached Alpha’s position a short distance behind us, although I could not see her.

“Voices,” she said. “Voices. Fear, they are terrified. Many, many of them. They are trapped. I feel fear. Terror, waves of terror. Tears, and hatred. They hate you—you have come to kill them. Leave them alone!” She shrieked it, a command. Psychers often got excited.

I heard her crying. “They are all going to die. The mothers are gathering up their children,” she sobbed. “They all have knives. Sharp stones, I can feel the edges. When you get too close, they will plunge the knives into the children’s hearts. The men are singing a death song. They will kill you, they will defend the women. The traps are ready, they will put out the eyes of the seekers, and when you come you will die. They sing the death song...”

“The traps, what can you tell us about the traps?” Lowdrop interrupted.

“Silence!” She shrieked. “Tell him to blackout! Blackout! Who the hell do you think I am? I can’t work like this!” She was a nervous wreck. Someone calmed her down, and a long silence ensued.

“You know what they’re doing now?” she whispered. “The men are crawling along the side tunnels to get in position to kill you when you come down the corridors. Those are dirt tunnels—the probes haven’t discovered them yet—ahh! They got a probe.” One of the probes winked out of existence on the tacmap on my faceplate.

“They’re good,” Gravelight said. “Gooood. They don’t care if they die, now. They’ve decided you are with the Beasts—you control the Beasts. Earthers! Traitors! You betray your own race!” She began crying again. “We will kill you all! Oh, the women—they are dipping their knives into poison. Ahh, you will die like worms, deep under the ground. Crushed, smashed. They will dig to find your bodies. If any survive, they will roast you over fires so you will die slowly. The corridors are all trapped! They will cave in on you, you will not get out. Another probe!” It winked out of existence. “Stupid probes. They only use rocks. Oh, you will die if you go further! They will fight to the death. You cannot talk to these people, you are Death, you are Evil. They will not talk with Evil.”

I will have no talk with Evil
—the chant of the Legion.

“It’s the end for them,” Gravelight said sadly. “The end. They pray to their Gods. They know you come with the Beasts to kill them all. Now they only want to make a good end, a good death, to kill as many of you as they can. Even the young boys are out with the warriors. They will cover themselves with glory. They have knives and swords and axes and slingshots and spears and tridents. But the corridors will do you in. Those are one-way roads. You will not come back.”