Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (25 page)

St. James believed the other man, and agreed with him, but couldn’t wait for the conversation to end. The fantasies were too strong, too compelling to ignore.

The meal was finally over.

The men rose, embraced each other, said the traditional goodbyes, and headed for their separate quarters, Dasser to add to the encrypted notes in his minicomp, St. James to play the data cube.

The officer forced himself to be patient, to walk slowly, to return the salutes, to enter his quarters as if there was nothing on his mind, nothing burning a hole through his pocket, nothing urging him to run and cram the cube into the player.

Then he was in his room, lying back on his bed, staring upwards as the ceiling blurred, divided itself into a million bits of light, and coalesced into a likeness of Marianne Mosby.

She was as beautiful as ever, but all business, and not the least bit apologetic. What she said echoed what he’d heard at dinner.

Conditions had become steadily worse. The Hudathans had taken more of the outlying planets. Scolari continued to recommend a retreat. A retreat that would leave even more frontier worlds vulnerable to attack, that would force the Legion to abandon Algeron, that would centralize power in the admiral’s hands. No one knew what the Emperor thought, or would finally decide, but it didn’t look good.

When the recording was over, and the ceiling had returned to its normal appearance, St. James allowed himself to cry. Not for the empire, not for the Legion, but for himself.

 

They woke Angel Perez, now known by his nom de guerre, Sal Salazar, with little or no ceremony. One moment he was nothing, a mindless, shapeless, colorless mote floating in a sea of darkness, and the next moment he was himself again, a cyborg, conscious of the systems that were coming up all around him, racking focus to see the med tech’s face. She was middle-aged, had a scar across her face, and the words “cut here” tattooed around her neck. She looked into his vid cams as if aware that he was looking at her.

“Welcome to Algeron, home of the Legion, and all that other crap.”

Then it came to him, his graduation from boot camp, acceptance into the Legion, and departure for Advanced Combat School on Algeron. A departure made simple by adding his brain box to a fifty-borg rack, hooking him to a computer-controlled life support system, and sending him to la-la land on a tidal wave of drugs.

After all, why ship big bulky Trooper II bodies all over the place when you didn’t have to? It was cheaper and easier to ship brain boxes separately and plug them in when they arrived.

Salazar was about to reply to the med tech’s greeting when he realized that something was wrong.
Very
wrong.

The feedback, the readouts, the sensors, none of them were right. He ordered his left arm to move, looked for the air-cooled, link-fed .50 caliber machine gun that should have been there and saw a Class Three, Model IV, cyber hand with tactile feedback and opposable thumb instead.

“What the hell?”

The med tech shook her head sympathetically. “Don’t panic, big boy. We’re running a bit short on Trooper IIs, that’s all. Should get a shipment any day now.” The woman straightened and put hands on her hips. “Hey, big boy, you tell me. Which is better? A bi-form or a whole lotta shelf time?”

The idea of sitting helpless in his brain box, listening to neuro-fed music or playing electro-games made Salazar’s nonexistent skin crawl.

“I’ll take the bi-form.”

The med tech nodded. “That’s what I thought. Now, take a break while I check your systems.”

The systems check was over fifteen minutes later. Salazar received a temporary assignment to the 1st RE and headed for admin.

It wasn’t difficult to find his way through Fort Camerone’s labyrinthine passageways thanks to the schematics available from the bi-form’s data base. No, the hard part was getting used to his insubstantial body.

Intended for light utility chores, and completely unarmed, the bi-form weighed about 250 pounds, one-quarter the weight of a fully armed Trooper II, and was therefore a good deal more maneuverable. Salazar felt like a truck driver in a sports car.

He was a bit clumsy at first and had a tendency to overreact, but soon got over it. He missed the Trooper II’s bulk, however, and the sense of power that went with wearing one, especially when he saw veteran borgs swaggering down the corridors.

He knew that most of them were jerks, like the men and women he’d known in boot camp, but that didn’t stop him from admiring their style. The worn armor, the carefully maintained body art, the equipment mods, all the little things that set them aside and marked them for what they were—survivors. Something Salazar wanted to be as well, which meant that he’d have to separate the substance from the swagger and keep the part that had value.

Of equal interest were the khaki-clad bio bods, the camopainted robots, the murals depicting glorious death, the holo pix of dead heroes and heroines, the animated dioramas of battles past, the E-boards listing that day’s events, a heavily armed patrol clumping towards an elevator, and in one hallway, the sight of two handcuffed Naa warriors, heads up, eyes bright, being led towards the intelligence section.

Yes, the hallways were fascinating, which made the admin section all the more boring. It was huge, and divided into subsections with names like “Logistics,” “Supplies,” “Intelligence,” “Budget,” and “Personnel.”

The latter seemed like one of the
most
boring places to work, so it was only natural that a bio-bod noncom named Dister would assign him there and place him under the direct supervision of a borg named Villain.

Dister was a stumpy little man with protruding ears and a huge nose. His uniform was wrinkled and strained where a sizable potbelly pressed against it. His voice was loud and easily heard over the humming noises made by the computers that surrounded them. Everything was white, blue, or gray, and shaped like a box. The noncom spoke and Salazar listened.

“The work is relatively easy-hell,
real
easy after boot camp-and certainly won’t overload your circuits. You’ll find that Villain is competent enough, though crabby as hell and a bit short-tempered. She was hit first time out and hasn’t recovered yet.”

Salazar wanted to know more, wanted to hear about the battle, but Dister turned a corner and another bi-form appeared. Except for an ID plate that read “Villain,” it looked exactly like he did.

Her bi-form stood six feet tall, had an ovoid head, side-mounted vid cams, a lightly armored chest cage, skeletal arms, equally skeletal legs, and a pair of four-toed feet. They were encased in rubber and squeaked when she moved. She nodded towards Dister.

“Corporal.”

Dister gestured towards Salazar. “Meet your new assistant. Name’s Salazar. Straight from boot camp. Show him the ropes.”

Salazar noticed that Villain didn’t even glance in his direction. Her vid cams whirred as she zoomed in on Dister. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want an assistant.”

The bio bod’s eyes narrowed. His voice grew softer instead of louder. “Oh, really? Well, I don’t give a shit what you
want
. Salazar is your assistant, so get used to it.”

There was moment of silence, and for one brief second Salazar felt sure that Villain would object, but the moment passed. Her voice was dead, empty of all emotion. “Yes, Corporal. Sorry, Corporal.”

Dister nodded. “Good. Now, get your chrome-plated butt back to work. Good luck, Salazar. Let me know if she gets out of line.”

So saying, the little legionnaire did a neat about-face and marched down the hall.

It was, Salazar decided, just about the worst possible thing that the noncom could have said, almost guaranteed to piss Villain off. He wished he could smile disarmingly, knew he couldn’t, and chose his words with care.

“Sorry about that.”

Villain shrugged noncommittally. Her reply came via radio. “It doesn’t matter. Just do what I say, keep your mouth shut, and we’ll do fine.”

Salazar started to reply, made the decision to nod instead, and waited for Villain to give him some orders. This, he decided, was only marginally better than boot camp, and in some ways worse. He made a note to find out when the Trooper II bodies would arrive and see if there was a way to get the first one they activated.

 

Ryber Hysook-Da gloried in the life-threatening plunge down through Algeron’s atmosphere, a plunge carefully calculated to simulate a meteor shower and fool the human detection systems. His insertion pod was equipped with a specially designed ceramic skin. It glowed where air molecules rubbed against its surface. Some of the heat found its way inside and turned the Hudathan’s skin white.

Hysook-Da activated the mind-link and checked his detectors. There were no signs of pursuit. Not that they had much to pursue
him with. Maybe the humans were as stupid as everyone said. After going to the trouble and expense of building a military base on Algeron’s surface, they had neglected to surround the planet with warships.

What were they thinking of anyway? Intelligence claimed that the problem stemmed from some sort of political rift between the Navy and a force called “the Legion.” But that was too silly, too fanciful to believe, so there must be another more credible explanation. Well, no matter, the humans deserved to die, so he’d help them on their way.

The pod bucked, rolled, and righted itself. The Hudathan checked the progress of his team, saw that all five of the entry pods were tracking along behind his, and gave a grunt of satisfaction.

This was a glorious moment, the first step in what Hysook-Da felt sure would be a rapid ascent to power, followed by a long and successful life.

First would come the completion of his mission on Algeron, followed by at least three celebrations of valor and rapid promotion to spear commander.

But that would be only the beginning. With the human empire in ashes, and his military record as a springboard, Hysook-Da would enter the dark and labyrinthine world of Hudathan politics. Then, through a combination of cunning and absolute ruthlessness, he would rise to the very top!

Just the thought of it left the young warrior nearly dizzy with lust.

A buzzer buzzed, a warning light flashed, and a tingling sensation ran the length of his left arm. Had the humans detected their presence? Were missiles rising to intercept them?

Fear flushed the dreams of glory from his head. A naturally produced stimulant entered his circulatory system. Training took over, readouts snapped into focus, and he scanned them for danger. It was there but not in the form of incoming missiles.

The outer surface of the pod’s ceramic skin had started to overheat. A minute correction in the angle of attack was sufficient to silence the buzzer, darken the light, and rid himself of the tingling sensation.

The overheating persisted, however, and held just below the critical level as the pod smashed its way through two layers of air and entered a third.

Algeron filled his mind-screen. An artist might have gloried in the way that the sun washed the clouds with pink, and a geologist might have marveled at the mountaintops that reached up to touch space itself, but Hysook-Da saw none of that.

What he saw was a target, a military objective, swarming with life-forms that threatened his kind. Not through anything they’d done, or were likely to do anytime in the near future, but what they
could
do,
might
do,
would
do, if given enough time and freedom. Yes, as with any potential enemy, the time to stop them was now.

Clouds whipped up around him, a crosswind pushed the pod sideways, and the outermost layer of ceramic skin flaked away. The po
d’s on-board computer sent a tingling sensation down his arm and put a message in his brain.

“PREPARE FOR INSERTION STAGE THREE.”

Hysook-Da checked the other pods, saw they were still in place, and ran a hand-check on his gear. Webbing ... check. Main chute ... check. Reserve chute ... check. Weapons ... check. And so on, until each piece of gear had been touched, and where possible, verified. He sent a message back.

“Ready for insertion stage three.”

“STAND BY ... THREE UNITS AND COUNTING . . .”

A digital readout appeared in the corner of Hysook-Da’s vision. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as the numbers became steadily smaller. Five ... four ... three ... two ... one.

Bolts exploded. Large sections of what had been the pod’s skin were blown outwards, fell, and exploded yet again. Nothing larger than a rivet would survive to reach the ground.

Hysook-Da extended his arms and legs, felt air rush by his neck, and hoped he was on target. The still-functioning computer claimed that he was—not that it made a great deal of difference, since it was too late to correct his course anyway.

The seal around his visor broke. Air rushed by his face. Tears were torn from the comers of his eyes. The clouds vanished and a wasteland appeared below him, blurred by the tears but identifiable nonetheless.

Good ... that corresponded with what was supposed to be down there ... and meant that the mission was still intact.

The Hudathan checked his readouts, confirmed the fact that he was still high enough to appear on radar, and scanned for his team. Each was equipped with a low-powered locator beacon, and assuming everything was all right, would appear on his mind-screen.

He looked and looked again. One ... two ... three ... four ... Where was number five? The worthless piece of dat feces had disappeared. It figured. Marla-Sa had always been jealous of him and would do anything to ruin his chances.

“STAND BY TO RELEASE MAIN CHUTE ...
FIVE, FOUR, THREE ...”

Hysook-Da waited for “ONE,” sent the appropriate signal, and felt the fabric spill from its pack.

The chute opened with a powerful jerk, the world stabilized around him, and a sense of relief flooded his mind. He had survived, up to this point anyway, and stood a good chance of making it to the ground.