Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (6 page)

Like humans, the Naa had four fingers and an opposable thumb, but had no fingernails. Their feet were different too, having no separate toes, and being longer, broader, and flatter than humans’.

Booly watched them from his position on Villain’s back. These were tame Naa, of course, outcasts, misfits, and thieves for the most part, unwilling or unable to make a living out in the wild, huddling around Fort Camerone for protection from their own kind, while eking out a living based on alien scraps and day labor.

Still, there was something about them that Booly liked, a fact he had kept to himself, since many of his peers called them “geeks” and other disparaging names, a practice that seemed more than a little strange, for many of the same men and women who called the Naa derogatory names praised them for their valor and considered them worthy opponents.

The seeming contradiction stemmed from the Naa’s status as respected enemies. In order to kill, it was first necessary to hate, and calling the Naa names helped the legionnaires accomplish that. But there’s little glory in killing someone or something weak, so it was simultaneously necessary to build the Naa up, making them worthy opponents. Booly saw it as a piece of psychological flimflammery, and was often tempted to say so but had managed to hold his peace. After all, what difference would it make? One person says this, another says that, the whole thing was bullshit.

The domes had thinned now and were dropping behind. Booly swept the horizon from left to right. Nothing. Good. He activated his radio.

“Rossif ... Jones ... take the flanks. Wutu ... watch our back trail. You’ll be first to die if we take it in the ass. Gunner ... give me full scan on your detectors. Okay, everybody ... let’s move out.”

Back at the edge of Naa town a male watched them go. His fur was spotted with age, and missing where an energy beam had sliced across his chest twenty-odd years before, but his eyes were bright with intelligence.

He watched the patrol until it became little more than specks. It was a two-klick walk to the garbage dump and the com set that was hidden there. A com set that had been liberated from a similar patrol six years before. Used sparingly, and kept where no one thought to look, it had already accounted for sixty-two legionnaires.

The old one smiled and took the first step of his long journey.

To sup with the devil ... you must first enter hell.

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone knows they’re going to die but few know when. Angel Perez knew, right down to the day, the minute, and the second.

And if he managed to forget somehow, or used contraband drugs to push the information out of his brain, it was there on the wall screen to remind him. The words appeared in different fonts sometimes, and changed colors every hour on the hour, but the content remained the same.

“At approximately 1830 of day 4, standard month 2, you killed Cissy Conners. Having been tried for this crime and found guilty, you will be executed at 0600 on day 15, of standard month 4.”

The words never varied, but the digital readout located in the lower right-hand corner of the screen did. It showed his life expectancy in hours and minutes. What had originally been thirty-one days had dwindled to little more than an hour. They’d send for him any moment now.

He’d been in prison for more than a year while the criminal court’s centralized computer system took his case through the automatic appeals process. Then, having found no grounds for a retrial or an adjustment of sentence, an artificial intelligence known as JMS 12.1 had transferred him from carousel 2, tower 4, to carousel 16, tower 9, better known to inmates as the “death stack,” or DS for short.

Perez was glad that he’d refused his last meal. An empty stomach made it less likely that he’d throw up or shit his pants. He thought of his mother and wondered if she knew or cared.

Servos whined and his cell moved. Sideways at first, then downwards, dropping so fast that it made his ears pop. Air came in via thousands of tiny holes. None were large enough to look through, but Perez knew what was happening.

JMS 12.1 had rotated carousel 16 until his particular cell was aligned with one of the tower’s four elevator tubes and dropped it down a shaf
t. The cell slowed suddenly, making him feel heavier, and throwing him sideways as it was rotated out of the elevator tube.

There was a commotion outside. Other prisoners, with life expectancies only slightly longer than his, shouted obscenities and banged on the steel walls. The ritual had no effect on the guards but made the inmates feel better.

Machinery hummed, dead bolts snicked, and the door opened.

There were four of them. Just the right number to handle a desperate prisoner without getting in each other’s way. They wore black hoods, shirts, and pants. Perez was naked. That, like everything else in the prison, was part of the punishment.

The guard furthest to the left spoke.

“Perez?”

Perez found his throat was very, very dry. He mustered some saliva and forced it down.

“Wrong cell. He’s on carousel five.”

There were appreciative chuckles from the nearby cells. Their thoughts, their memories, were the only epitaph Perez could hope for.

One of the men had a black truncheon. He tapped it against a thigh. “Cute, Perez. Real cute. So what’s it gonna be? Vertical? Or horizontal?”

Perez forced himself to stand. His knees were shaking. The digital readout said he had 42:16 left. “Vertical.”

The man with the truncheon shook his head disappointedly. “Okay, vertical it is. Ito and Jack will go first. You’ll come next and Bob and I will bring up the rear. Questions?”

Perez tried to think of a flip comment, failed, and shook his head.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Perez waited until two of the guards had passed through the door, got a nod from the man with the truncheon, and followed along behind.

The hall was brightly lit and smelled of industrial-strength disinfectant. The floor felt cold beneath his bare feet. Perez was painfully aware of his nakedness and complete vulnerability.

There were catcalls and comments from men and women he’d never seen and never would.

“See you in hell, Perez!”

“Take care, asshole.”

“Sweet dreams.,. shithead.”

It went on and on until they reached the checkpoint. The party stopped, one of the guards placed his palms against a print reader, and the doors slid open.

The first pair of guards went through, Perez followed, and the others came along behind. There was another hallway, shorter this time, followed by a second checkpoint. This one required two sets of prints, one from a guard and one from Perez. The substance inside the reade
r looked and felt like gray modeling clay. He put his hands against it and looked towards a guard, who nodded his approval.

“It’s for your own protection, Perez. We wouldn’t want to grease you freaks in the wrong order.”

Perez removed his hands from the reader and the doors slid open. “How very considerate.”

“Yeah,” the guard agreed. “Ain’t it just?”

Perez saw that all four of the guards had placed themselves between him and the hall. This was it, then, the infamous death room, where justice would be administered. Justice that came straight from the Old Testament. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a bullet for a bullet.

Perez felt his bowels loosen and his knees start to shake.

“You need some help?” The voice was gruff but sympathetic.

Perez shook his head, turned, and forced himself through the doors. The room looked the way it did on television, only larger. And why not? Live executions were a regular part of the news. He’d seen plenty of them. So many they didn’t mean shit. Not until now, that is.

“Show ’em what death looks like and they won’t do it.”

That was theory ... but judging from the long waiting lines in death row, it seemed as if things were a bit more complex than that.

Perez was a case in point. He hadn’t
planned
to murder Cissy Conners. He had pointed the gun at her, demanded money from the till, and fired when her hands dipped below the countertop. Just like in the vids, where blood spurted out and the actor lived to star in another show. Except this bullet was real and the woman was dead.

The guard was polite. “Step over here, please.”

Perez did as he was told. He stepped over to the chromed framework and waited while his arms and legs were strapped to cold metal. It was shaped like a huge “X,” as in “X marks the spot,” and occupied the exact center of the cube-shaped room.

Perez looked around. The walls, ceiling, and floor were made of seamless easy-to-clean stainless steel. Dark-clad images rippled across them as the guards moved.

Perez felt an unevenness beneath his feet and looked down to see what it was. His penis had almost disappeared into his abdomen, and beyond that, his feet rested on a chromed drain. A drain that could handle a lot of water, or water mixed with blood, or ...

Perez looked up and around. Now he saw the hoses that hung on all four walls, the nozzles that would spray disinfectants into the room, and the television cameras carefully placed to record his death. He wanted to give them the finger but it was too late. The restraints held his arms and legs in a rigid embrace.

A voice filled the room. It was solemn but somewhat bored as well.

“Angel Perez, having murdered the woman known as Cissy Conners, and having been found guilty of said murder, you are about to die. Do you have any final words?”

“Yeah. Frax you.”

“Not especially original, but heartfelt nonetheless,” the voice said calmly. “Now, you are doubtless aware that a small percentage of the criminals executed in this room are chosen for resuscitation and enlistment in the Legion. Would you like to be considered for resuscitation? Or do you choose certain death?”

Like most of the people who found themselves in his position, Perez had considered certain death and rejected it. Somewhere, just beyond the walls of the death room, other facilities waited. Medical technology so sophisticated that it could bring all but the most massively injured back to life. And life, even half-life as a cyborg, was better than death.

His voice came out as a croak. “I wish to be considered for resuscitation.”

“Your choice has been noted,” the voice intoned.

“And now, in concert with Imperial Law, you will be executed in a manner similar to the way that you killed Cissy Conners. A bullet in the arm, followed by a bullet in the shoulder, followed by a bullet in the chest. Do you have any questions?”

Perez felt something warm dribble down the inside of surface of his leg. “No.”

“May god have mercy on your soul.”

Only one guard remained. He wore full body armor to protect himself against the possibility of a ricochet. He had a long-barreled .22-caliber pistol. It was equipped with a laser sight, reactive grips, and special low-velocity ammunition.

He stepped forward, raised the pistol, and sighted down the barrel. Perez felt every muscle in his body tighten against the expected impact.

The guard did something with his thumb and Perez saw a red dot appear on his left biceps. Seeing the dot, knowing exactly where the bullet would hit, was more than he could stand.

“Oh god, please don’t ...

The slug hit his arm, tore its way through, and flattened itself against the steel framework. The sound, like the pain, came a fraction of a second after the impact.

Perez screamed, fought the restraints, and lost control of his bladder. The urine was still splattering across his feet when the second dot appeared on his shoulder.

“No! No! N-!”

This bullet went through, hit the far wall, and smeared itself across the harder metal.

Perez was still in the process of absorbing the shock, and feeling the pain, when the guard corrected his aim.

Perez saw the dot slide up across his chest, slow, then stop. He was starting to scream when the last bullet hit.

 

Rain drummed against the limo’s roof and ran in rivulets down the windows. The palace was a smear of bright light, blocked here and there by the statues that lined the drive, and the fancifully shaped topiaries that dotted the lawns.

The limo threw up a wave of water as it turned into the drive. Sergi Chien-Chu shook his head sadly. He felt sorry for the people at Weather Control. Someone or something had chosen the night of the Imperial ball to screw things up. Within a month, two at the most, they’d be counting icicles on an ice planet, or sorting sand on a hell world. The Emperor had very little patience with incompetence, other than his own, of course, which generally fell under the heading of “bad luck.”

A massive portico jutted out over the drive. The rain vanished as the limo came under its protection and slowed to a stop. A footman appeared and waited for the door to open.

“Buzz me when you’re ready to leave, sir. I’ll be in the parking lot.”

The voice came via the car’s intercom and belonged to Chien-Chu’s chauffeur cum bodyguard, Roland Frederick. He sat twelve feet forward of the rearmost passenger seat and was invisible behind black plastic.

Chien-Chu gathered the ridiculous toga around his rather portly body and prepared to leave the limo.

“Don’t be silly, Frederick. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll take a cab home.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but madam would never forgive me.”

“What if I
order
you to go?”

“No offense, sir, but I’m a good deal more afraid of madam than I am of you.”

Chien-Chu knew it was true, and knew something else as well: that Frederick
wanted
to stay and would do whatever he pleased.