Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (3 page)

The airtight hatch disappeared into the ceiling and Baldwin strode through the newly created opening. Imbala-Sa was right behind him.

The command center was oval in shape, with fifteen niches set into the outer walls, one for each member of the war commander’s personal staff. The cave-like seating arrangements gave the aliens a sense of security and served to protect their backs. Seven of the seats were , filled. Baldwin felt fourteen sets of cold, hard eyes bore their way through him.

The fifteenth seat, the one that belonged to Niman Poseen-Ka himself, was empty.

The center of the room contained a huge holo tank, presently filled with a likeness of Worber’s World and the surrounding system. The holo was at least twenty feet in diameter and looked absolutely life-like. Baldwin knew that if he watched the simulacrum closely enough, he would see tiny fighters strafe the planet’s surface, lights flash as nuclear bombs were detonated, and cities glow as they were burned to slag.

But his eyes were focused on a far more satisfying sign of victory, a woman in the uniform of a full colonel and a man dressed in a flight suit.

Indescribable joy filled Baldwin’s heart. This was it! The moment that he’d been waiting for, the moment when they groveled at his feet, the moment when his revenge was complete! He looked to the right and left.

“Where are they?”

The woman was about his age, pretty, with gray-streaked auburn hair. She was small, five-four or five-five, and very shapely. She projected an aura of strength.

“Where is who?”

“The admiral. The general. The officer they sent to surrender.”

The woman shook her head sadly. “That would be me. The rest are dead.”

Baldwin felt the joy drain away like water released from a dam. “Dead?”

The woman frowned. “Yes, dead.” She gestured towards the holographic likeness of the planet below. The cloud cover was streaked with black smoke. “What did you expect?”

Baldwin struggled to forget long-harbored fantasies and deal with things as they actually were. “Yes, of course. I’m Colonel Alex Baldwin. And you are?”

“Colonel Natalie Norwood. This is Flight Lieutenant Tom Martin.”

Baldwin nodded to Martin and turned back to Norwood. “You had a pleasant trip, I trust?”

“No, we didn’t,” Norwood replied. “Two of your fighters jumped us in the upper atmosphere. We managed to shake them off. Now, let’s eliminate
the small talk and get down to brass tacks. You attacked and we lost. What do you want?”

Baldwin smiled. The line came straight from his fantasies. Never mind the fact that the governor or an admiral should have uttered it, the words were perfect.

“Nothing.”

Norwood’s eyebrows shot up. “Nothing?”

“That is
correct,”
a new voice said. It spoke standard with a hissing accent. “Colonel Baldwin desired nothing more than the satisfaction derived from your arrival.”

Norwood turned to find herself face-to-face with a 450-pound Hudathan. He wore a belt and cross-strap. The strap bore a large green gem. It sparkled with inner light.

Baldwin made a sign of respect. “Colonel Norwood, Lieutenant Martin, this is War Commander Niman Poseen-Ka.”

Norwood held her hands palm-out in the universal gesture of peaceful greeting. She looked the Hudathan in the eye. She saw intelligence there, plus something else. Curiosity? Empathy? A little of both? Or were his emotions so different, so alien, that she could never understand them? But she must try. An entire world was at stake.

“It is an honor to meet you, War Commander Poseen-Ka. Am I to understand that there will be no discussions? No opportunity for a cease-fire?”

“That is
correct,”
the Hudathan replied evenly. “There is no need to negotiate for that which is already ours.”

Norwood felt a heaviness settle into her stomach. She chose her words carefully.

“But why? Why attack that which you have sacrificed lives to conquer?”

Poseen-Ka blinked, and for a moment, and a moment only, she saw what looked like doubt in his eyes. But was it? There was no way to be sure. His answer was measured and seemed empty of all emotion.

“We will attack as long as there are signs of resistance. Resistance cannot and will not be tolerated.”

“And it’s good practice for the troops,” Baldwin put in cheerfully. “Sort of a warm-up for battles to come. We let all the message torps through, you know. Here’s hoping the Emp responds.”

Norwood looked at Baldwin the same way that a scientist might examine a not altogether pleasant specimen. She saw thick brown hair, parted in the middle and swept back on both sides, a high forehead, intense eyes, patrician nose, and an expressive mouth. A handsome man except for what? A weakness of some kind, which, like a flaw within a metal blade, reveals itself when stressed. Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew hard. “So this is a game? A sop to your ego?”

Baldwin’s eyes flashed with pent-up emotion. A vein started to throb just over his left temple. “No! It’s proof! Proof that they were wrong! Proof that I’m fit for command!”

Suddenly she had it. Colonel Alex Baldwin. Of course! She should have remembered earlier. His court-martial had been big news on Imperial Earth, and even bigger news in military circles, where it was widely believed that he’d been railroaded. Something about a massacre on a rim world, drug addiction, and the Emperor’s nephew.

“Yes,” Poseen-Ka said, as if reading her mind. “Colonel Baldwin betrayed his people in order to prove his competence. That is what he claims anyway. There is an alternative explanation, however. Some of our best xenopsychologists have examined Colonel Baldwin and concluded that his true motive is revenge.”

Norwood didn’t know which surprised her the most. The Hudathan’s calm, almost clinical description of Baldwin’s psychology, or the subject’s lack of visible reaction.

It was as if the war commander had never spoken, as if Baldwin could filter things he didn’t want to hear, as if he was not entirely sane.

Norwood looked at Poseen-Ka. There it was again, that ineffable something that she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Sympathy? Understanding? What?

“Well, that about covers it.”

The voice belonged to Martin. They turned. Norwood frowned. “Covers what?”

Martin shrugged. His eyes were dark and flashed when he spoke. “What we came for. You heard the geek ... no negotiations until resistance ends ... and that means we have nothing to lose.”

“Now, Martin, don’t do anything . . .”

But the flight lieutenant closed his eyes, activated his implant, and sent a thought towards the shuttle. And, on a deck half a mile away, relays closed, power flowed, tolerances were exceeded, and an aircraft exploded. It was Martin’s ace in the hole, a little surprise that he and a crew chief named Perez had dreamed up.

It worked like a charm. The first explosion caused a Hudathan attack ship to blow as well, which triggered more explosions, which caused the deck under Martin’s feet to shudder in sympathy. A series of dull thuds followed moments later and served to confirm what had happened.

Martin opened his eyes and a lot of things took place all at once.

Imbala-Sa put two low-velocity darts through Martin’s heart.

Klaxons began to bleat, orders were issued over the ship’s PA system, and the surviving humans were dragged from the room.

Norwood tried to memorize the maze of seemingly identical corridors but was soon lost.

Crew members ran in every direction, shouted orders at each other, and did the multiplicity of things that they’d been trained to do.

It was hard to think in the midst of all the confusion, but one thing was clear. Martin
had
managed to kill some Hudathans, and in doing so, had unintentionally reinforced their xenophobia. It would be a long time, if ever, before the Hudathans would agree to meet with human beings again. Other thoughts might have followed, but were lost when she was shoved into a freight elevator and herded into a corner.

Then, after a very short ride, she was pushed, pulled, and prodded into a hallway, led to a small compartment, and secured to some wall-mounted rings.

Baldwin was stripped, forced to lie on a metal table, and strapped into place. He said something in Hudathan and the technician made a hissing reply.

Norwood was very, very frightened but did her best to hide it.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Baldwin tried for a nonchalant grin but wound up looking sick instead.

“The Hudathans believe that immediate reward or punishment can alter subsequent behavior. And, since I was the one that brought you here, responsibility for your actions rests with me.”

“What will they do?”

“They forced me to accept an implant. Through it they can dispense pleasure or pain.”

Norwood thought about that for a moment. “You deserve some pain.”

Baldwin nodded understandingly. “Yes, from your perspective, I suppose I do.”

The technician started a timer and touched one of the lights on his control panel.

Baldwin screamed, arched his back in agony, and started to convulse.

Norwood thought of the planet below, of the people he had killed, and tried to take pleasure in Baldwin’s pain.

But the screams went on and on, and no matter how much she tried to do otherwise, Norwood couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man who made them.

Louis Philippe, King of the French

To all present and to come, Greetings. In view of
the Law of 9 March 1831; On the report of our
Secretary of State at the Department of War; We
have commanded and do command as follows:

ARTICLE 1
There will be formed a Legion
composed of Foreigners.
This Legion will take the name of
Foreign Legion.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, the air was crystal-clear, and the mountains seemed so close that St. James could reach out and touch them. The Towers of Algeron. That’s what the Naa called them and they deserved a majestic name. Some of the higher peaks soared 80,000 feet into the sky, higher than Everest on Earth, or Olympic Mons on Mars. So huge, and so heavy, that they would sink right through Terra’s planetary crust.

But Algeron was different from Earth. Very different. Almost all of the differences stemmed from the fact that Algeron completed a full rotation every two hours and forty-two minutes. A rotation so fast that centrifugal force had caused a larger-than-normal bulge at the equator.

In fact, while Algeron’s mass was virtually identical to Earth’s, it equatorial diameter of 16,220 kilometers was 27 percent larger than Earth’s. That, plus the fact that its polar diameter of only 8,720 kilometers was 32 percent smaller than Earth’s, meant that Algeron’s equatorial diameter was almost twice that of its polar diameter.

And that’s where the Towers of Algeron came in. They were the topmost part of the world-spanning bulge, and thanks to the gravity differential that existed between the poles and the equator, weighed only half what they would on Terra.

All of which had nothing to do with Camerone Day, or the legionnaires waiting for St. James to speak, except that it pleased him to think about it. That was one of the privileges that went with rank: long silences, and the assumption that they were in some way profound.

Legion General Ian St. James smiled and ran his eyes over the assembled ranks. There were thousands of them, white kepis gleaming in the sun, weapons at parade rest. They were a treat to the military eye.

There were ranks of cyborgs, “trooper Ils,” in front, each one standing eight feet tall, carrying enough armament to take on a platoon of marines. They had no need of uniforms, but many had received medals for valor, and wore them on ceremonial harnesses designed for such occasions.

Behind them St. James could see the assault quadrupeds, or “quads,” four-legged walkers that could function as artillery, tanks, or antiaircraft batteries. They towered over the troops and provided what little shade there was.

Then there were the “bio bods,” men and women with their hair cut so short that they were almost bald, their kepis gleaming white in the sun. Their uniforms were khaki, as they had been for thousands of years, and would be for thousands more.

Each wore the epaulets, green shoulder strap, and red fringe that had been standard since 1930, the green ties that had been adopted in 1945, the scarlet waist sashes authorized in 2090, the collar comets added after the Battle of Four Moons in 2417, and the hash marks that indicated their length of service.

He saw divisions of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment, the 4th Foreign Infantry Regiment, the 13th Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère, and the 1st Foreign Regiment, which supplied administrative services to the entire Legion.

This was the day, April 30 on Earth, when the entire Legion came together as they were doing now. Not physically, because their duties didn’t allow for that, but spiritually, as man, woman, and cyborg joined in a union that bound together the past and present. The mystical
something
that made the Legion more than a group of soldiers.

Nothing was more symbolic of that union than Camerone Day. It was a remembrance, a celebration, and a reaffirmation all rolled into one.

St. James lifted the old-fashioned paper from which he was about to read. It was hundreds of years old and sealed in plastic. The story of the battle was read once each year, and this year it was his duty—no, his
privilege
—to perform that function.

St. James cleared his throat. The sun had already rolled halfway across the sky in the relatively short time since the ceremony had begun. He would have to hurry to finish the story before another one hour and twenty-one minute night fell. Amplified by the PA system, his voice startled a pair of roosting brellas, and they squirted themselves up and into the air.