By Blood Alone (17 page)

The Worga sampled the air, found the same intriguing scent, and padded down the corridor. There was prey in the offing—and Horth was hungry.

 

 

Fort Camerone squatted on the dry, rocky plain, and, with the exception of the missile launchers, antenna arrays, and fly form landing pads that broke its hard, angular lines, looked a lot like the godforsaken outposts the Legion had occupied in North Africa centuries before.

General Mortimer Kattabi low-crawled forward, used his elbows for support, and brought the binoculars up to his eyes. A motor whirred, and the outskirts of the ever-expanding slum known as Naa Town swam into focus.

The shantytown consisted of hundreds of makeshift earthen domes, each reinforced with whatever chunks of metal or plastic that the occupants could beg, borrow, or steal.

The officer panned from left to right. Data rippled down the right side of the screen. Range, albedo, and more. None of it mattered. What
did
matter was the fact that smoke dribbled out of only half the chimneys, very little laundry had been hung to dry, and the narrow, twisting streets were practically deserted. Where were the cubs? The old folks soaking up the sun? No wonder his scouts were concerned.

Kattabi tilted the glasses up until the fort filled his viewfinder. He scanned the topmost parapet. The Confederacy’s flag snapped in the breeze, some sensors turned on their mast, and a sentry stood at his post. Business as usual. Or was it? That was the problem.

Never one to ride a desk for very long, and eager to escape from General Stohl’s self-important bullshit, Kattabi had assigned himself to a week of field exercises. Butt-busting, plain-pounding, hill-humping war games that would build muscle, hone skills, and keep the edge on.

And the plan had worked right up till the moment when his scouts went weird on him. Something was wrong, they claimed—something in the fort. That in spite of the fact that radio contacts had been normal.

Nine out of ten officers would have ignored the scouts and entered the fort. But not Kattabi. He had traveled the almost impossible road from private to general, and if he had learned anything along the way, it was to trust his people. Not just some of the time, but
all
of the time, even when they appeared to be wrong.

That’s why he listened, gave credence to their concerns, and went to see for himself. The officer back-crawled into some rocks, dropped below the skyline, and stowed his binoculars.

The battalion’s XO, Major Kirby, along with Captains Runlong, Primakov, and Verdine, waited for the General to speak. Chief Scout Gunmaker stood to one side. With his superiors but not
of
them. Kattabi shook his head. “Something is wrong, all right... but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.”

Gunmaker’s face was expressionless, but there was pride in the way he held himself.

Kattabi started to speak but stopped when a shadow flickered across the ground. Gunmaker glanced up, saw the Legion-issue recon drone, and raised his assault weapon. The airborne machine had almost certainly been dispatched by the people in the fort.

The range was long, and the target was moving, but neither of those factors made the slightest difference. The Naa fired a three-shot burst. The drone staggered and spiraled into the ground.

Kattabi raised an eyebrow. “That was some damned expensive target practice, Sergeant.”

Everybody grinned.

“Okay,” Kattabi said, “I’m a believer. I don’t know what the problem is, but I’ll be damned if we’re going into that fort till we understand the situation. Deploy, dig in, and keep ’em ready.”

The officers saluted and returned to their units.

 

Corporal Andrea Acosta never saw it coming. Sergeant Gunther’s hand struck the side of her face with such force that it made a cracking sound and she flew out of her chair. She hit the highly waxed floor and slid into a console.

Acosta swore, and had just started to rise, when a size twelve combat boot landed on her chest. Gunther’s face was beet red. “You incompetent bitch! The orders were to lure them inside—not chase them away! Let’s go.
You
screwed up—
you
tell DeVane.” The noncom signaled a pair of his toadies. They grabbed her arms.

The Ops Center (OC) was a large space filled with monitors, consoles, and equipment racks. About two thirds of the OC staff had been part of or managed to survive the mutiny. Most had doubts but, like Acosta, had gone along. They ignored the tech’s pleas as the troopers hauled her away.

Acosta babbled incoherently as the legionnaires half carried, half walked her down the outside corridor. “The joystick stuck! It came loose... the drone took off
...”

“Save it for DeVane,” one of the legionnaires said. “The borg loves a good story.” The other trooper laughed.

Acosta stopped, or tried to, but found herself lifted up into the air. The toes of her spit-shined combat boots left parallel dashes on the otherwise pristine floor.

The lift opened as the foursome approached. The passengers took one look and hurried away. They had a pretty good idea where the prisoner would be taken and didn’t want any part of it.

Most of the fortress was buried deep underground, safe from bombs, missiles, and orbital bombardment. But the ready rooms and maintenance bays where off-duty cyborgs spent most of their time were located one level below the planet’s surface. So, in spite of the fact that DeVane controlled the entire fortress, there was only one place where his fifty-ton body would actually fit.

Yes, the cyborg might have transferred his brain box to one of the human-sized bi-forms maintained for that purpose, but that would force him to abandon the source of his power, namely the energy cannons, Gatling gun, missile racks, and other weaponry which played such an important role during the revolt. Once he was outside his body, even for a moment, the cyborg would be vulnerable.

That’s why the lift stopped at level two and they frog-marched Acosta through a pair of blastproof doors and out into the maintenance bay. The stench was horrible, and what she saw made Acosta gag.

The bodies, some of which were more than forty-eight hours old, were piled like offerings before a pagan altar. There were at least fifty of them. Blood had seeped down onto the floor. Acosta’s best friend, Jan Hopkins, lay on her back. Insects crawled in and out of her mouth.

A servo whined. The tech looked up, and there was DeVane. The quad looked like what he was. A monster.

Some poor slob had spent hours on the huge, glaring eyes, the wide, grinning mouth, and the rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Acosta turned and tried to run. The troopers caught the tech and brought her back. Urine soaked her pants.

The voice had a hard, metallic quality, like the synthesizer that produced it. “Nice job, Acosta. There we were, all ready to suck Kattabi in, when
you
spooked him.”

The discovery that DeVane knew what had transpired down in the Ops Center would have surprised the technician, except for the fact that she knew he had access to the fort’s command and control systems.

“So,” the quad continued calmly, “what should we do with a piece of crap such as yourself? A little extra duty? No, I have it! How ’bout we rip your stinking guts out and hang them around your neck? Yeah, that sounds pretty good, now, doesn’t it?”

Acosta looked at her dead friend’s face and licked her lips. The internal voice pushed through her fear. “He’s going to kill you! Do something!”

Acosta pretended to faint, felt one set of hands drop away, and straightened up again. Her back-kick made contact, the second trooper swore, and the tech ran like hell.

Not
away,
as her captors might have expected, but
ahead
at the pile of bodies. They made for uncertain footing as Acosta high-stepped her way up and over them. Her plan was simple: Get
inside
DeVane’s defenses, where she would be momentarily safe.

The better part of two seconds elapsed while De Vane absorbed what had occurred and considered his options. Most of his weapons were designed for long-range use. That left the quad with the Gatling gun, some small-caliber machine guns, and six grenade launchers.

The cyborg deactivated the safeties and heard the bio bods yell warnings as servos whined and the Gatling gun emerged from storage.

Legionnaires dove every which way as the weapon opened fire. Gouts of flesh, blood, and bone erupted all around as the technician made it to the top of the pile, tripped over an out-thrust leg, and tumbled down the other side.

The bodies pummeled the technician as she fell. A fist struck Acosta’s face, a boot kicked her thigh, and an elbow stabbed her gut. Bullets followed. They plowed a trench through the corpses and stalled as the Gatling gun hit a mechanical stop.

Knowing that all sorts of things can and do happen during the heat of battle, the design engineers had taken steps to ensure that the Legion’s quads would be unable to fire on themselves.

De Vane had forgotten that, and was still in the process of reabsorbing the knowledge when Acosta hit the duracrete, rolled to her feet, and checked the cyborg’s ramp. It was fully deployed. She put her head down and ran.

The cyborg swore, ordered the ramp to close, and knew he was late.

Metal bounced as Acosta pounded her way up toward the cargo bay. She felt the platform start to rise, threw herself forward, and made it inside.

The engineers had considered every possibility. What if the cyborg was injured or killed? No problem; a control panel, complete with a lockout button, would allow passengers to access critical subsystems and command the ramp.

Acosta flipped the protective safety cover up and out of the way, waited for the hatch to close, and stabbed the button. Bolts snicked into place. The door was locked, and the mutineers would need a laser torch to cut it open.

DeVane felt the partial loss of control, screamed incoherently, and sprayed the entire maintenance facility with 30mm cannon shells. Three Trooper IIIs, one Trooper II, and nine bio bods were killed. A half million credits worth of support gear was destroyed.

It took Acosta the better part of ten minutes to stop shaking, realize that she wasn’t going to die, and remove her urine-soaked pants.

Once they were off, and tossed into a comer, it was time to “think, organize and act.” That’s what they had taught her in basic, and, difficult though it might be, that’s what Acosta planned to do.

 

Because of the planet’s rapid rotation, the equatorial region had bulged outward and formed a spectacular mountain range. Many of the peaks were more than eighty thousand feet tall but, because of the gravity differential between the poles and the equator, weighed only half what they would have on Earth. As another two-hour-and-forty-minute day came to an end, their snow-covered peaks faded from pink to purple.

The area occupied by Kattabi and his troops grew quickly dark. Helmet lights bobbed this way and that as the legionnaires fortified their hilly positions.

The quadrant had been bombed by the Hudathans more than four decades before, and used for countless exercises since.

That being the case, the entire area was riddled with half-collapsed tunnels, urine-soaked bunkers, and heavily eroded slit trenches. A dangerous place—especially at night. So much so that the medics had already started to treat a variety of cuts, abrasions, and sprains.

Noncoms, worried lest someone die in a cave-in, made their rounds. One swore as she fell into an old bomb crater. Her troops laughed and soon wished they hadn’t.

The command post (CP) had been established in what had served as a domicile many years before. The sleeping shelves, fire pit, and odor of incense were typical of most Naa homes.

Not that Kattabi cared
who
had lived there, so long as the enclosure could take some punishment and protect his staff from flying shrapnel.

The general nodded to one of his bodyguards, said hello to the battalion runner, and entered the CP. A fire glowed in the ancient pit. Kattabi felt the warmth against the palms of his hands, accepted a piping hot cup of tea, and thanked the trooper who served it. The liquid had a soothing effect and helped the officer think.

There was no longer any doubt. Something terrible had happened. There were plenty of reasons to think so—not the least of which was a lack of meaningful radio contact with the fort.

Oh, there were conversations all right, plenty of them, but none that mattered. The com techs
sounded
legit but couldn’t come up with any officers. Why? Because they were busy? Like the techs claimed? Or because of something a good deal more sinister?
A full-scale mutiny?
Was that the answer? Had the scouts known that something would happen
before
they left the fort? That would explain how certain they were.... But what about the men and women under his command? They seemed unaffected. Why? None of it made much sense.

One thing was for sure: It was impossible for General Stohl to keep his mouth shut for more than ten seconds. That being the case, Kattabi would have heard from the asshole by now. Yes, something was very, very wrong when Stohl remained silent—but what?

The general had no more than posed the question when Gunmaker materialized at his side. Snow dusted the legionnaire’s shoulders. The officer made his annoyance clear. “Yes? What is it?”

The Naa looked unperturbed. “Visitors, sir. Here to see you.”

The officer frowned. “Visitors? What kind of visitors?”