Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (3 page)

The carefully maintained grounds were seventy feet beneath him. The campus was dark except for the light from an almost full moon, some streetlights that had been placed with military precision, and a scattering of still-lit windows. Booly looked at his wrist term, touched a button, and saw the multifunctional dial appear. It was exactly 2359 hours. One minute to go.

He took a deep breath and released a long, steady plume of lung-warmed air. His heart beat like a trip-hammer. It reminded him of how stupid he was. So stupid he’d allowed the very creatures Uncle Movefast had warned him against to manipulate his actions, because even though Booly was half-human himself, and therefore tainted with the blood of those who had tormented him for six long years, he thought of them as aliens. Aliens who wouldn’t mind if he plunged to his death, or was caught trying to reach the admin building, as long as it reinforced their rather shaky sense of superiority. This
was an attitude Booly found hard to understand, since he’d been raised in an atmosphere where tribal needs came first, and what after all was the Legion, if not a military tribe?

So there was only one thing left to do, and that was to succeed. Because if he made it to the admin building without getting caught, and hoisted the senior-class pennant to the top of the flagpole, he would not only uphold one of the academy’s most venerable traditions, he would disappoint the bigots and graduate at 1000 hours the next morning. But it wouldn’t be easy, because while hundreds of classes had tried to hoist their pennants, and roughly twenty-five percent of them had succeeded,
all
of them had moved their flags across the ground.

The “aerial route,” as Riley liked to call it, was both untried and undeniably dangerous. Something the academy’s staff would officially disapprove of, even punish if they could, but secretly admire, because it was very much in line with the Legion’s culture of perseverance in the face of impossible odds, personal bravery, and death in battle.

The bell tower was located on the far side of the huge quad on which he and his classmates had spent countless hours marching back and forth. And even though the chimes were muted during the night, the sound still surprised him. He jerked, swayed, and regained his balance. It was midnight. Time to get going.

Checking to make sure that the pennant was tied around his waist, and the knapsack securely fastened to his back, Booty stood on the long, flat cornice. It received direct sunlight during most of the day and he could feel what remained of the warmth through the soles of his bare feet. That ability was a gift from his mother’s people, which, when combined with their superior sense of smell and the cape of short, thick fur that covered the upper part of his torso, accounted for much of the prejudice that he’d endured.

The rest flowed from his stubborn “screw you” personality, something he’d inherited from his father, a onetime legionnaire, currently serving as Naa ambassador to the Confederacy.

Like his classmates, Booty had spent a great deal of time in the field, learning how to move without being seen. But
unlike
his classmates, Booty had grown up on the planet Algeron, where tribe fought tribe, and bandits roamed the land. So it was second nature to avoid the skyline, to remain in the shadows, to seek warmth with his feet. He could almost hear his uncle saying, “Good rocks are like beautiful females, son—warm, clean, and pleasant to touch. Bad rocks are cold, wet, and slippery. Step on them and they will betray you.”

The cornice felt like “good rock” and carried Booty to the northeast corner of the building, where the first of many challenges awaited him. He knew the gap between Danjou Hall and the library was less than six feet wide, a distance he had jumped countless times on the ground. But this was different. This was scary. He looked down, saw a flash of white as a legionnaire walked by, and jer
ked his head back. What was a drill instructor doing out at this time of night? Looking for him? No, checking the plebes, that’s all, and handing out gigs to the jerks on guard duty.

Booty paused, brought his breathing under control, backed up about fifteen feet, and ran full tilt toward the abyss. His feet made slapping sounds as they hit the cornice. The edge appeared and he threw himself toward the library roof. It was made of copper and slanted up toward a highly polished dome. He hit harder than planned, felt the metal buckle slightly, and swore as he slid downward. His fingertips squeaked over bare metal and his toes sought something solid. There was a ridge, he knew there was a ridge, but where the hell was it? Finally. His toes hit the ridge and brough
t him to a stop.

Had anyone heard? The last of the chimes were supposed to cover whatever noise he made. Had it worked? There was no way to tell. Booly remained perfectly still. His breath came in short gasps and fogged the copper in front of his face. He heard a voice. It was a long way off.

“Sir! Cadet Private Maria Martinez, sir!” as a drill instructor ordered some poor slob to identify herself. The DI’s reply was barely audible. Booly waited. A dog barked, a door slammed, and a shuttle rumbled by thousands of feet above. Good.

Leaning in toward the slanted roof, Booly edged his way to the right. It was dark, very dark, and hard to see. His toes were pressed against the ridge and hurt where the metal cut into them. The zipper on his jacket made a scraping sound and left a wavy line to mark where he’d been.

He reached out, sank his hand into empty space, and damn near followed it. A pigeon burst into flight. Wings brushed his shoulder. Booly felt the bottom of his stomach fall toward the ground and pulled back from the void. The bird circled and flew away. This was it, the one gap that was too large to jump, where the plan called for him to descend and cross on the ground.

Scared, and angry with himself for damn near shitting his pants, the cadet gritted his teeth. “The goal, stay focused on the goal, and the path becomes clear.” That’s what his uncle had taught him and it almost always worked. Booly visualized the admin building, saw himself raising the pennant, and felt his emotions steady.

Days of careful reconnaissance had revealed that the library’s architect had provided present and future maintenance workers with a row of evenly spaced eyebolts to which they could secure safety lines.

Booly reached up, grabbed the rope end taped to his right pack strap, and pulled it free. The line, which consisted of a half inch black, gold, and
lavender kern mantle, had been “borrowed” from one of Staff Sergeant Ho’s supply rooms, and coiled into the pack lest it interfere with his running and jumping. The rope flowed smoothly as the cadet pulled it out.

Booly reached up over his head, felt for an eyebolt, and found one. It was a simple matter to thread the rope through the hole and pass the slack out and into the void. Then, when the white tape that marked the kern mantle’s middle point appeared, the cadet reached into a pocket, felt for the figure-eight descender, brought it out, and pulled the rope through the larger hole and over the connecting ring. With that accomplished, it was a simple matter to secure the descender to the front of his harness with a locking D carabiner and test the rig with his weight. It held just a
s he knew it would. The fact that he had learned these skills while growing up, and again during his years at the academy, made them all the more familiar.

He placed one hand above the descender and one below it. Confident that he could control what happened next, he backed off the ledge, swung in against the building’s side, and allowed himself to slide silently downward. The trick was to keep his upper hand loose while using his lower hand to control the rate of descent. Booly knew that moving his lower hand
away
from his body would increase his speed while bringing it closer would have the opposite effect. He kept it close.

Suddenly, perhaps thirty feet from the ground, Booly smelled something that shouldn’t have been there. The strong odor of a rather expensive cologne. The kind worn by some of his wealthier classmates.

Careful to make no sound lest it give him away, Booly stopped his descent, and used his feet to steady himself against the wall. The brick felt cold. He looked over his right shoulder. The shadows were ink black and impossible to penetrate. But the odor persisted, so he waited, and waited, until he began to question his own senses, and was just about to release some line when the sound of voices froze him in place.

“Hey, Reggie, how’s it hangin’?”

“Long and low. Now shut the hell up. The geek should come along any moment now.”

Booly didn’t know a Reggie, and didn’t recognize either one of the voices, but it didn’t take a genius to know they were underclassmen, tipped off as to the route he would take, and eager to make a name for themselves by turning him in. Which would put a black mark next to his name and cause him
to miss graduation as well. A graduation his parents had traveled millions of light-years to witness.

Booly looked upward, saw that clouds covered the moon, and understood why they hadn’t managed to spot him. He couldn’t go up, not without attracting their attention, so the decision came easily. Booly used his left hand to reach up and pull the watch cap down over his face. It took a moment to adjust the eye holes. Praying that the line would continue to run as silently as it had before, the cadet lowered himself to the ground in one smooth motion, landing within three feet of a surprised underclassman.

The plebe wore fatigues and the black arm band that signified guard duty. He saw Booly, opened his mouth, and folded with a knee in the gut. He was bent over, making retching sounds, when a blow to the back of the head put him down.

“Reggie?” The voice was tentative and came from the right. Booly released the climbing rope and eased that way. The senior did his best to sound annoyed. “Yeah? What now?”

The clouds moved out of the way and moonlight hit the plebe’s face. His eyes were like saucers. “You’re not Reggie . . . you’re—”

Booly never got to hear who the cadet thought he was, because his hand went over the boy’s mouth, and a hip throw took him down. He wasn’t more than fifteen years old and a knee was sufficient to hold him in place. The senior barely had time to gag and hog-tie the underclassman when Reggie called for help. He had reached his knees and was struggling to stand. “Somebody! Quick! Over here!”

If Booly had been from a more civilized planet he might have hesitated, might have searched for a less brutal approach, but he wasn’t, so he kicked Reggie in the head. The cadet slumped to ground. Booly checked both his pulse and airway prior to tying him up. It took five precious minutes to drag both plebes further into the shadows and stash them behind the shrubbery.

There was no way to know if the younger cadets had abandoned their posts as part of the attempt to intercept him but he hoped they hadn’t. Curfew violation was one thing, but leaving one’s post without permission was something else again. A rule that might seem silly on Earth, but was of extreme importance out on the frontier worlds, where it might mean the difference between life and death, and not just for one individual, but for his or her entire unit as well.

Whether the cadets accused him or not depended on how smart they were, and how well they had assimilated the Legion’s culture. Because accusing a senior without proof was tantamount to accusing a senior officer without proof
, a nearly suicidal thing to do. Add that to the fact that the academy’s staff
expected
the seniors to make a run at the admin building, and the fact that the plebes had not only broken general orders, but been
caught
doing so, meant their best hope lay in keeping their mouths shut and taking whatever punishment came their way.

But those considerations were for the future. Now Booly had even less time than before. Odds were that the underclassmen would be missed, found, or both during the next thirty minutes or so. He had to move and move fast.

Booly shrugged the knapsack off his back, pulled the kern mantle through the eyebolt, and dodged the falling rope. It took three precious minutes to stuff it back into the pack.

With the rope stashed, and the pack on his back, Booly tackled Morzycki Hall. Like all the buildings on campus it was named after one of the men who had fought under Captain Jean Danjou at the Battle of Camerone, in April 1863.

The wall was made of brick. Most were set flush but some had been allowed to protrude, creating a textured look. These were placed in a manner that made them convenient to Booly’s feet and hands, a fact that hadn’t escaped his attention when he marched by every day. And, given that the end pieces were slightly warmer than the surfaces around them, he could actually “feel” where they were. So he was able to free-climb the wall in practically no time at all. There were windows, but all were dark, and it was easy to avoid them.

Even so, the cadet had barely reached the roof when he heard someone shout for the sergeant of the guard, and knew that the plebes had been found. The odds against making it to the admin building seemed nearly impossible now, but Booly decided to try anyway, preferring to be caught in the attempt rather than wandering around on a rooftop. He sprinted for the far side of the building. The roofing material was textured and relatively warm beneath his feet. Suddenly he felt happy, exhilarated, and completely without fear. Adrenaline? Stupidity? He really didn’t care.

The edge appeared and Booly skidded to a halt. The admin building stood thirty feet away. Like Morzycki Hall, it had a flat, rectangular roof. His objective, one of three flag poles arrayed along the structure’s east side, was no more than a hundred feet away. Booly heard the sound of distant voices and sensed movement on the quad. He fought to maintain his focus.

The key to spanning the distance between Morzycki Hall and the admin building, more officially known as Tonel Hall, was the scaffolding that maintenance workers had built along the south wall. All Booly had to do was cross the approximately twelve feet that separated Morzycki and the scaffoldi
ng, scramble up one of many ladders, and make his way to the flagpoles. That and effect his escape. The original plan called for throwing a grappling hook over one of the cross-pieces, pulling the rope tight, and securing it to one of the air vents that protruded from the roof around him. Having done that, it would have been relatively simple to wrap his legs around the line and slide downward. Things had changed, however, and time was running out. The moment demanded what his father sometimes referred to as a “gut check.”