Cross of the Legion (14 page)

"They may not be used to opposition," Dragon said. "Trigger, do the car. Tacstar."

I watched as the groundcar bounced wildly over the rocky plain, coming right at us. Looked like five of them in the car, shouting and firing. X impacted all around us. Then Trigger's Manlink shrieked, freezing my blood, and the car erupted in a blinding flash, phospho tracers arcing up, a dazzling nuclear blossom. A whole sky full of flaming junk rained down. A smoking tire bounced past us, wobbling.

"That's the last time he exceeds the speed limit."

***

We walked through the settlement. There were twelve shacks, built along a little stream. Trash and garbage littered the site. The girls were still chained outside. I pulled the dead rapist off the first girl. She was twitching with terror. Priestess kneeled beside her, trying to calm her, but our A-suits probably scared her more than the rapists. I kicked in the door to the shack and stuck in my E and flicked on the spotlight to max and crept in. A man, a woman, cringing under furniture and blankets. I looked at them, then backed out.

"What's in there?" Priestess asked. She had burnt the girl's chains off.

"Parents," I said. "The girls are put out there so the gang doesn't loot the shack, I'd guess. Nice, huh?"

"You'd think they'd resist," Tourist said.

"Probably goodlibs. Disarmed and helpless. People like that deserve to be slaves."

"Take the girl," Dragon ordered. "First step is to learn the language. She owes us. Priestess, she's yours."

"Fine. All right, Legs, get up. You're not hurt. Dragon, she's filthy. When we camp, I'm going to give her a bath—and drown about a million of those creepy little worms."

"Feel free."

"Can I help?" Psycho asked.

"I knew you were going to say that," Priestess said wearily.

***

"Her name is Kesan," Priestess said. It was sunset on Odura. The white sun was fading fast, leaving only the tiny blue. Night fell fast on Odura. The horizon would glow blood red for awhile in the wake of the white, and then the sky would flicker, and glow an eerie violet, almost like blacklight, with that far-off blue star sparking in the cold. The temperature would drop too, right through the scales.

We camped around the E-sled. We had popped three sleepmods. They slept three each, although we kept two troopers on watch at all times.

"Kesan, huh? What have we got so far on the language?" Dragon asked. He was in a litesuit. Only the watch wore armor, in camp. We were all tired after a day's patrolling.

"The scanner is still working on the data," Priestess replied. "Don't worry. It takes awhile, but it works. It's amazing. I've seen it." We had slipped a psyscan over Kesan's head, after winning her trust. The thing was programmed to construct her language from what it found in her memory circuits. We would have been lost without it. We had no idea about the language, and no time to take the long course. Right then the psyscan was in the E-sled, deciphering what it had seen, and Kesan was chewing on E-rats, gobbling down everything we offered. She was famished.

She was a nice looking girl, dark eyes blinking, gazing curiously at the squad as she wolfed down our rations. The guys had gathered around her, grinning. She was snuggled up in one of our spare coldcoats. It was bitter cold.

"She's fallen for me already," Tourist said confidently. "Can't you see the way she's looking at me? Stop bothering the lady, all right?"

"You're hallucinating, Tourist," Flash said. "I told you, this is true love. I'm finally in love! Look at that angelic smile. She loves me!"

"It's the E-rats she loves, kid," Trigger said. "And she's been making goo-goo eyes at me, not you. I was just about to make my move when you clowns came crowding around. Disperse, will you? Respect our privacy. Kesan wants to be alone with a real man, not a buncha school kids."

"You rejects keep your clammy hands off my girl!" Sweats called out from his sentry position.

"Stop breathing on her!" Psycho objected. "This prize of war belongs to your Second, so don't get grabby."

"Give her a little space, guys," Priestess said.

"I love you, Kesan!"

"Gimme a kiss. Priestess, how do you say 'kiss' in Oduran?"

"We'll know that in several hours, with luck."

"Leave her alone with me for five marks and I'll find out that and a lot more as well."

"You think this language thing is going to work?" I asked Dragon. He gazed out into the dark, a faint violet glow from that strange blue star. His deep set eyes glittered, cold and hard.

"It's supposed to." He was not happy, I could tell. It was so cold we could see our breath in the air.

"What's next?" I asked.

"Redhawk's scanned the planet. The whole civilization has collapsed. It's all armed gangs, fighting each other, and helpless civilians, living like pigs, running like rats. There doesn't appear to be a single surviving center of civilization left. The cities are all looted and abandoned."

"And this was supposed to be a center of culture and learning and history."

"Things change."

"Right. What do you think?"

"The language is critical. Once we get that, we move. We pick people at random, if we must."

"Somebody must know something," I said.

"Yes. You'd think so." There was a burst of laughter from the vicinity of the sled. Kesan was teasing the troops.

"I told you she loved me!"

"She's laughing at you, dummy! Can't you…"

"Stand back—I'm going to show her some muscles."

"What a show off! Who'd fall for a goon like you?"

"Isn't it past your bedtime?"

"We won't need the A-suits any more," I said quietly. "Tell everybody to stow them in the storage bins. We'll go with litesuits and A-vests and comtops. That's all we need, for these people."

"Fine. Glad to hear it."

"We've got to do this, Dragon."

"Yes. I agree."

"I'm not leaving here without Chudit."

"Neither am I."

"If we have to dig, with our bare hands, into these temples, we'll do it."

"That's a ten."

"Chudit. It's like a curse."

"Chudit. We're going to find it."

"That's affirmative."

***

"Scope this out." Sweats was driving the E-sled. He dropped it into a sudden stop and we hovered there in a swirling cloud of dust, looking down to the drama unfolding in a dry rock-strewn gully. There was a man down there, an Oduran, dressed in ragged skins, surrounded by a pack of hungry repwolves—about ten of them. These nasty scaled carnivores hunted in packs. They were fast and deadly, with powerful legs, long tails, long necks and sharp teeth. We had run into them a few times already. They were set to make a meal of this fellow, but he was not making it easy. Two of the creatures were already writhing in the dust, and some of the others had turned on them. They were making a tremendous racket, baying and squealing and yelping. I was out of the car, shouldering my E. A few more of the repwolves darted in to attack the Oduran. He slashed at them with what looked like a knife, and they yelped, dancing around him.

"Kill a few of the lizards," Dragon said. I took down one big repwolf with a round of xmin. Four others were hit as well, as the rest of the squad opened up. They went down with agonized squeals and for a frac it looked as if the others were going to attack them. Then the survivors broke and ran, leaving seven dead behind.

We approached him on foot. He had collapsed to the sands, but as we drew closer he staggered to his feet, wielding a bloody knife. His brown hair was long and ragged, and piercing dark slit eyes looked out at us from a haggard face. He was small-framed but tough. His skin was smooth but dirty and he had a sparse mustache and beard. He was covered with bleeding wounds. He kept his free hand pressed to his ribs but the blood was oozing out through his fingers. He glared at us and kept his knife raised.

Psycho laughed, dropped his E, drew his cold knife, and advanced on the Oduran, his icy blue eyes reflecting nothing at all.

"Put that away, Psycho," I said. "Dragon, disarm him. DD, see to his wounds."

Dragon shot the knife out of the Oduran's hand with a vac bolt and cuffed him. He was exhausted, unable to resist further. Quite a guy, I thought—a survivor.

***

"He's a thief," Kesan said. "That's the guild sign, that tattoo on his arm. He's one of them—a packrat!" She was speaking Oduran, but the translation mod we had hung around her neck gave it to us in Inter, nice and clear. The psyscan had worked perfectly. One point for the techs, I had to admit.

"Tell the woman to shut her mouth," the Oduran said. "When I want to mate with her, I'll let her know. Until then she should shut up." He was also wearing one of our T-mods. He ripped at our E-rats with sharp teeth, famished, dark slit eyes looking out at us furtively behind a tangle of long greasy hair. We had removed the cuffs. He knew there was no getting away from us. Night had crashed again, it was freezing, and that one faint electric-blue star cast us all in its eerie glow. The desert was almost luminous, but the sense of desolation was total. A faint wind moaned. We were chowing down, gathered around a heat flare that crackled merrily, illuminating us in a flickering golden haze.

"Ask him what he was doing on his own," Kesan said. "They must have cast him out. Even the rats didn't want him! Ask him his name."

"What's your name?" Dragon asked. His T-mod interpreted the question into Oduran: 'Koto zampan?'

"Zampan Tiblio—my name is Fingers."

"Fingers. That's a nice name. What does it mean?"

"It means he's a thief!" Kesan said. "He's dangerous! You should shoot him!"

"Tell the woman I'm not going to sleep with her until she shuts up," Fingers said. "She's giving me a headache. Your food is great! Could I have some more of that hot drink?" We had given him a coldcoat as well. DD had patched his wounds. He was being pampered. I handed him another dox. We were hopeful he would know something. Kesan had not known anything other than how to manufacture lipstick and attract boys.

"It sounds like you're a man with no friends," I said. "And this looks like a dangerous place for a man with no friends. Is that right?"

"I am unappreciated by my peers. Until recently we were one happy family, living in harmony with our neighbors, redistributing their wealth in the most equitable manner possible. Then there was a disagreement, and I had to leave. It's true, I am temporarily without allies."

"He stole from his own gang, and had to run for his life," Kesan explained.

"Can anyone shut her up?" Fingers asked. "Is it her time of month or what? Is she always so cranky? Where I come from, girls do as they're told."

"We need some advice, Fingers," I said. "Good advice. If you can help us out, you can stay with us for awhile, and prosper. We don't know the area, you see. We have a lot of…questions. The only thing is, the answers are very important to us, and we don't have much time. So if you lie to us, or waste our time, we're going to kill you. Understand?"

"You have my attention. And you've got the right man! I've been working this area for years. I know everything! I'll be glad to help you! Where are you fellows from? Are you from Rayahati? You've got some mighty fancy equipment."

"No. We're not from Rayahati. We're from a long, long way away. We're interested in history."

"History?"

"Yes. We want to know about the past."

"The past. You mean, the Era of the Warring States?"

"Before that."

"Before that was the Commonwealth of Nations."

"No. Before that."

"Before that? Well…that was the Thousand Year War."

"And before the Thousand Year War?"

"Before that was Imperial Padan—the Dynasties. And before that, I have no idea. I'm a thief, not a historian. You want a historian—but they're all dead."

"Imperial Padan," Dragon said. "Didn't they keep track of the past? We've heard they had temples and libraries devoted to the study of history. Is that right?"

"Yeah, I heard the same," Fingers said, savoring his dox. "Crazy waste of time. Who cares what a lot of dead people did?"

"No historians left?" I asked. "No centers of learning? Universities? Libraries? Learned men?"

"No. People around here are focused on getting enough to eat. We don't have time to worry about the past. All that paper was burnt for fuel a long time ago."

"How about other areas? Aren't there any outposts of civilization left at all? Any place where we might find a historian? Somebody who knows about the past, or maintains historical records?"

"None that I know about. Civilization…ha. That's gone. Civilization is a full stomach, that's what we say." His dox steamed in the cold. I zipped my coldcoat tighter. It was getting even colder.

"So," Dragon said, "Imperial Padan kept records of the past."

"They taught us all about it, in school, before we burnt down the school," Fingers said. "Always harping about Padan. Space flight, galactic commerce—lots of crap. Lots of history."

"And where do we find Imperial Padan?"

"It's all around us. The ruins are everywhere. Dig down, it's there."

"All right, Fingers," I said. "Pay attention. This is an important question. Say you wanted to know about the past. With all these dead temples, some of them must have old records in them—books, disks, datapaks—history. Where would you go? Where would you look? Which area? Which ruin?"

Finger's cold black eyes glittered behind his tangled, greasy hair. He held the dox cup near his lips, but was not drinking. The reflection from the flare rippled over his body and it was almost as if he was radiating a golden light. A faint breeze touched us with unbearable cold. Then he laughed, but it was a sad kind of laugh, almost one of resignation.

"I can see where this is going," he said. "Maybe I should have let those repwolves eat me. But I guess it's impossible to avoid your fate. The place you want is the Lost Realm of Galantor. Galantor was the last capital of the last dynasty of Imperial Padan. The rot came from there, you see, the rot that led to the fall of Padan, and the Thousand Year War. We've never recovered from it. That's what they taught us in school. It's not really lost. I know exactly where it is. But it's no place anyone would want to go. Nobody sane, anyway." He shuddered, made a gesture with his fingers over his face, took a quick sip of dox, and continued. "You people will go, though. I can tell that much."