Prophet and the Blood March (Prophet of ConFree) (45 page)

"What is it?" she asked, fearfully.

"We’re leaving immediately. For the target. They're boarding right now. I've come to say goodbye."

She whimpered and rushed into my arms, embracing me fiercely, her heart thumping against my chest, her breath gasping in my ears, her cheeks wet with tears, already.

"There's been some kind of security breach," I explained. "The attack is on, as soon as we can get there."

"Oh no. No, no, no," she gasped. "Oh my God! Please, please, please be careful!"

"No," I replied. "There'll be none of that. We're going up against Satan, the Darks, the Demons, malevolent spirits, and the Stellar Commune. We'll be following a lunatic Bright Martial who will be on point, bent on a glorious suicide. The only way to be careful is not to go. And I'm going."

She moaned in despair, clutching me tightly, trembling in hopelessness. I am not going to cry, I told myself. I am not going to cry.

"I'm sorry, Honeyhair," I said. "Sorry about everything. Now – don't even think about contacting me. If I survive, I'll contact you. But the truth is it is very unlikely that anyone in Delta Research is going to survive this mission. I want you to think of me as already dead – as soon as I walk out that door. My will is in the top desk drawer. I'd advise you to remarry some civilian with a nice safe desk job, if we succeed in defeating Satan and ConFree survives. But I promise you – I promise you – that I will love you for all eternity, alive or dead, this world or the next. And that my last thought, just before I die, will be of you."

"Don't you say that, Prophet, damn you!" she shrieked. "You will survive! I've been praying to God every day, every night, for you! For your safety and survival! God promised me you are going to be all right! Do you hear me? I'll be on my knees praying for you, the whole time you’re gone. For you and all of Delta! Don't you ever give up! Don't you dare listen to Satan! You're a soldier of God! You kill those cursed Darks, those Demons, those slave soldiers. Kill them all, kill everything that moves, you hear me? You watch out for your comrades, all of them! You make sure they all survive! And you show Satan he shouldn't have picked a fight with the ConFree Legion. Kill all those slaves, and spit on their stinking corpses, you hear me?" She was trembling. "And never surrender! Never give up! You hear me, soldier? You return with your shield, or on it! And I'll be waiting, no matter what! And if you are killed, I'll not marry some slug civilian. I'm not a damned housecat! I'll enlist in the ConFree Legion, that's what I'll do! So if you don't want that to happen, you'd best return to me. You hear me?" She was enraged, she was crying a river of hot tears, and her fingernails were digging into my back.

She was tough as nails. I could see I didn't have to worry about her. She'd get by, whatever happened to me. It was good to know that. We kissed goodbye, a kiss to last forever, if it had to. And I didn’t cry.

All right Satan, you filthy worm, I thought. Stand by – I'm coming.
We're
coming. And you're going to regret it.

We wound up in the middle of nowhere, some nameless track of vac where the tacship
Vampire
, Delta's designated driver, rendezvoused with the Bright battlestar
God's Light
for our date with destiny. The
Vampire
was crowded with troopers from other units, but Delta left them behind us as we marched through the docklock into
God's Light
with all our equipment. We were hyper and noisy as we entered the alien ship, accompanied by Blackie, who sensed our mood and barked excitedly. The Legion had not yet perfected that new doggie anti-cloaking formula and Blackie remained a valuable weapon for us because some of the Commune troopers used cloaking – just the elite units – and also Blackie could detect spirits from D2 faster than we could. So he accompanied us, armored up with a doggie-vest.

God's Light
was an amazing starship, a gigantic blazing white delta swarming with Bright knights, so many Bright soldiers there was barely room to turn around despite the size of the ship, which never seemed to end as we marched through the spotless corridors in our armor, searching for our quarters. About halfway there, Martial Breakblade appeared with a group of knights and greeted the Prof with joy. He appeared to be in top form, bubbling over with anticipation for the big fight that was coming.

Our quarters were in a corridor lined with bunks and crowded with young Bright knights in camfax utilities, thought-chatting excitedly. I could hear them easily. I was getting pretty good by then. They stroked Blackie with delight and helped us out of our A-suits, marveling at our unfamiliar armor. The male Brights flirted with Ice and Bees, and the females appeared fascinated by us all. We stowed gear and weapons at a designated spot in a weapons' ready room.

I did not join in the excited telepathing that was going on. I could only think of the brief scenes we had witnessed on our way up in the shuttle ride in the
Mary
to orbit around Quaba. It looked like all of Fleetcom was there, starships everywhere you looked, loading up with equipment and troopers and then drifting away from orbit, one by one, ship by ship, vac drive engines flickering to life. Hundreds of starships – thousands of starships. A mighty fleet, on the move, heading off to a perilous destination. Hundreds of thousands of Legion vacheads and boots were off to war, for their families, for their squadies, for all the women and kids in ConFree, for humanity. No turning back, no doubts, and no regrets. And it wasn't just Quaba, and it wasn't just ConFree. I knew that scene was being repeated all over the inhabited galaxy, because ConFree had friends, and those friends were coming to join us. Standing by our side, as we had stood by theirs. I knew that Honeyhair was back on Quaba, on her knees, praying to God, to Deadman, for me.

I went scouting, off by myself, and found a little alcove off the corridor that was stacked high with alien dropboxes. I fell to my knees. Nobody could see me, I assured myself. I prayed. I closed my eyes and raised my hands like I had seen Bees do it but my hands were fists.
God and Deadman,
I prayed.
Listen up! If you are there, here's what I promise. Take me, if you want. Count me as dead. Kill me, when the time comes. It's all right with me. But I pray for Delta. Protect my comrades, if you can. Protect my squadies. Watch over Delta. Put your hands on them and guide them through the chaos. Bless them all. Give them strength, let their aim be true and let them move through the enemy like a scythe through grain. Spare them all, if you have the power to do it. Yes, kill me, that's fine – but give me a high bodycount before I go out. I want to wade hip-deep through dead Darks. I want to bathe in blood. And God, Deadman, I pray for victory – for the Legion. For humanity. And watch over Honeyhair, too. Watch over her. All right, that's it, that's my prayer. Delta is in your hands. And if anything happens to them, I'm going to blame you. And I'm coming after you, dead or not. So you'll have two chances to kill me.

Amen!
I did a Legion cross and a Christian cross, before my face. I opened my eyes. Bees was standing there, peering into the alcove from the corridor.

"Prophet. Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine, Bees, thanks. Just fine. I feel great!" And I got up and embraced her.

Δ

First shock was all we had been promised. We were all strapped very tightly into our crash seats in the assault chamber, all armored up, weapons strapped to our sides, when it came. The noise almost deafened us, a horrendous screeching blast, and the ship vibrated like a mighty bell, shaking as if it was tearing itself apart, and my armor buzzed and hummed as elemental forces shot through the ship. But it did not end. It continued; it grew in intensity. Shrieking in our ears, promising imminent death. We were in the
Hello There
, a Bright plasma drill bunker-buster assault ship and we had just hit the surface of Vulcan and were slicing our way straight down into the Dark's underground fortress, thousands of mikes below. The walls of the
Hello There
were lined with simports that gave us the outside view. On the way down from the
God's Light
we had seen that terrifying shower of plasma drill bunker-buster missiles that preceded the assault ships, slicing their way into the installations below and hopefully turning the underground into one great glowing field of opstar- and tacstar-nuked burning wreckage. There were many assault ships accompanying us. We were not the only one. ConFree didn't have any ships like these. But the Brights did.

"All right folks, all is well," the Prof said. "From all I've been told our target area, Zero Alpha Eleven, should be pretty much vaporized by the time our assault doors snap open, and we expect no opposition in the landing zone. However, Eleven is very much smack in the heart of the Dark zone, so when we start hitting opposition, they will likely be Darks."

The ship was buckling, screeching, vibrating, rattling. I could hardly hear the Prof. The simports were dancing around in my blurred vision. Now they showed only glowing plasma shooting past as we vaporized our way down into the underworld.

"As you know, we are assigned to Martial Breakblade, who is the Martial of Task Force Glory, roughly equivalent to a Legion Company, but consisting of twelve six-knight squads, and reporting to Battle Group Morning Star – which is their equivalent of our Combat Assault Team. Our overall archangel command is Mission Gabriel. The other two commands are Michael and Raphael, but we won't be dealing with them. Now, the reason–" A particularly jarring blast shook the ship. Then the chaos resumed, as before.

"The reason we're with Breakblade is that if we follow our multiple attack plans successfully we will be eventually fighting our way into sectors near the surface where we may encounter allied human troops. That's when Delta's talents will be most useful. In the meantime, we are just grunts. And Doggie is in command. Over to you, sir," the Prof said.

"Doggie," I said. "I have a question."

"Sure. What."

"Instead of risking our butts like this, why hasn’t the Legion equipped us with attack holos? Aren't we an important enough unit to rate the attack holos? That way we can kill the enemy and they can't kill us."

"Good question, Prophet. First, quite whining. Second, I've been told the Legion is using every attack holo unit in the inventory to equip our front-line soldiers with that wonderful weapons system for this mission. See, they need it more than we do 'cause they won't have Brights by their side to counter the Darks. Trouble is, we are a special mission unit that will be accompanying Bright knights into battle. And also the Brights are not familiar with the holo units, which must be controlled from orbiting ships. I asked. And that was the answer. Just stick close to the B's. They'll kick all the enemy ass that shows up. We'll do fine."

"Yes sir," I replied. Strange, I reflected. Doggie was a newly promoted Major, but the Prof was now a Brigadier General and Ice, Saka, Bees and I were Commanders. Six of Doggie's squad members outranked him, but that didn't matter in the Legion world. He was the tac man, and he was in charge. Scout, a Captain, was his Two. Bird was not with us for our vacation in the underworld. He was going to be fighting up in the sky and the vac, taking on the Darks, Demons and Commune planetary and air defenses.

We continued down, down, down, the plasma rippling past the simports, the ship shuddering, bouncing us around in our seats. Last ride, I thought. Last ride. I knew these plasma drill ships were one-way trips. The ship would be abandoned and detonated after delivering the troops to the target. A depth display above the simport counted off our progress as we continued ripping into the rock, and the depth showed up on my faceplate as mikes – passing a thousand mikes, now. Not far to go.

"For God and Saint Michael," Bees said calmly, over the net. "Grant us victory over Satan! May God's will be done. Amen." And that's all she said, but it said it all. Victory! Not a word about Delta. Yeah – maybe she was right. Victory was important. We were just a small part of this, weren't we? Maybe nobody from Delta would survive, just as I feared, but if so, we'd go out together. And we'd go down fighting. I wore her cross around my neck. They had taken Bees' silvery Bright armor away from her, the armor the B's had given her on Vezhedak. And now she was just like us – black Legion armor, a large Legion cross and the Bright white hand lasered onto her chestplate, for all to see. We were each equipped with a Bright-friendly combat pulse ID as well.

"Stand by, Delta!" Doggie's voice echoed on the tacnet. "Safeties off! No more chit-chat! The B's are getting set!" A burst of icy adrenalin shot through my system. The depth indicator was still spinning down, 1347, 1354, 1366, 1382, 1404, 1422 – a giant crash shook the entire ship. Dead, we're dead!

"Release restraints!" Doggie shouted. The B's were charging past us, everything was suddenly a hot red, and the assault door had snapped open, never to close again. I caught a glimpse of Breakblade, recognizing him from the ragged scarf flapping from around his neck. It was a scarf that his grandfather had worn into battle with Satan. Breakblade was the first man out the door, followed by a horde of Bright white knights in silver armor. I snapped my restraints loose, leaped up and joined the rest of the squad as we pressed forward towards the door.

"All right, Delta," Doggie said. "Activate cloaking. Let's kill some Darks."

Δ

Our first glimpse of Zero Alpha Eleven, as we stumbled out the assault door, was encouraging, if confusing. Our eyemotes had thoroughly mapped the entire target area, but what we saw resembled nothing on the tacmaps, which were changing quickly as our tacmods readjusted the maps to match reality. Eleven was a glowing lake of hissing plasma with huge smoking islands of unidentifiable skeletal white-hot debris scattered everywhere. It would have been pitch black this far underground with the power all out except for the plasma, flames and spotlights from individual Bright troopers who dared to display them. Overhead, huge sections of cavern roof had fallen down into the molten lake. Everything visible was either scorched black or glowing white hot or burning brightly. Oily black smoke and clouds of evil ash swirled around us in a hot breeze. Up ahead, a huge plasma driller assault carrier was buried nose-deep into the lake like a colossal dart as Bright troopers charged out open assault doors. It was so hot everything was hazy and indistinct. Honey did what she could to sharpen up the images. A blinding flash suddenly lit us all up.