Secret of the Legion (3 page)

***

The pawnshops did a lot of business in Agra City, but this time I was the only customer. It was warm and stuffy inside. Snow was falling out in the streets, it was cold as a frigid bitch, and I still had only the one thin jacket the Oz had issued me. I was fingering a thick, glossy nitex coldcoat—a police field jacket. Some starving cop had probably traded it for something to eat, or some crazed druggo had killed a cop and pawned his clothes. I turned away in regret. I had saved up a few credits but I knew there was no way I could afford the jacket.

They usually had a lot of military and police equipment. It was high quality stuff and much in demand. I hovered over the glass counter as the bald gnome behind the bars concentrated on his sex book. He wasn't worried about shoplifting, I knew. He was more observant than he looked, behind his armored plex, and the door didn't open unless he triggered the release.

Nightsticks, armored goggles, field spotters, belt pouches, police gloves, a few knives. One of the knives caught my attention. A big, black cenite blade—a massive, coldly functional instrument.

"Could we see the knife?" I pointed it out. The gnome stirred, waddled over to the counter, retrieved the knife, and slid it under the plex in the goods tray. I picked it up.

It was a single piece of cenite. The finely checkered grip felt as if it were molded to my hand—the balance was perfect. A razor sharp blade, with tough little sawteeth on the false edge. The damned thing was beautiful.

"Does it have a sheath?"

"No."

"How much?"

"Sixty-five."

"We're serious. How much?"

"All right. Fifty-five. Serious."

"We can't afford that. Nobody can afford that. It doesn't even have a sheath."

"That's a DefCorps knife. It's worth a lot more than fifty-five."

"We'll give you fifteen credits."

"Sorry." The gnome retrieved the knife. I turned wearily and headed for the door.

"Thirty," he said. My hand was on the push bar but he hadn't triggered the door.

"We don't have thirty," I said. The door was still locked.

"Twenty-five," he said. "Bottom price."

"We can give it twenty," I said. "It's all we have."

"Twenty! God's ass! Done! Don't show it around—civilians aren't supposed to have these."

***

I awoke in a blind panic, drenched in sweat, my heart hammering. It was cold. I lay there, staring up into the dark. It was the pit of the night. I never knew what time it was at night. The guy in the next cube had an alarm chron that woke me up in the morning, but I had nothing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and flicked the hotplate on. A battered metal cup of water was already there. It was getting to be a nightly routine—a wild nightmare, get up, have a cup of hot water, ponder the future and wonder about the past, and then drift back to an uneasy sleep.

I never could really get a grip on the dreams. It was a sky full of sparklers—almost like fireworks. Falling softly, gently, like hot rain. But there was a tremendous, ear-splitting din, all around me, like a battlefield. And I was squirming in the mud, as this horrific sky came right at me. A sky full of lightning and fire—raging white-hot flames, blasting me to a crisp.

There were other people, too. They were around me, somehow. Voices. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. They were calling out to me in my dreams. I could hear them in my dreams. But when I awoke that part just faded away. Who they were, and what they were saying, I could not remember.

Night after night—strange voices, calling out to me under that awful sky. Voices from the past. I knew it. This wasn't some fantastic nightmare, this was my past. What was that wild sky? Who were the voices? They had been calling me urgently—they had something important to say.

I closed my eyes as the cup of water heated up. Tonight there had been something else, something vitally important. I strained to remember it. And it floated around in my head like a mist. A pale, frightened face, a young female, a massive blast of burning gas, a horrid flaming metal hand, reaching out to me, and someone shrieking my name—my name—my name!

It faded. I couldn't even see the face anymore. But I had seen it in my dreams. A girl, terrified. A metal hand. And the fire, again. She had called out my name, but I couldn't remember it. My name—good God! Who was she? I would have to dream it again—I must try and remember my name!

I sipped tepid water in the dark. It was still and cold—there was frost on the window. I hadn't lost my past. It was all inside me. And I was going to get it back! It was all I had to live for—all I had.

***

Without the library, there was not much to do. I started exercising. I pushed the little folding table back into the slot in the wall and that gave me the narrow space between the bed and the wall. I did crunches, I did push-ups, I did leg lifts and squats. I exercised for hours, every night, my mind blank, my muscles getting harder and harder. I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know what the future held, but it was a nasty world out there and I wanted to be ready.

When I got tired of exercising, I would put the table down and sit on the bed and take out the knife and gently place it on the table and worship it. I didn't think I had ever seen anything quite so beautiful, so perfectly functional, so perfectly deadly. I would caress it lightly along the hilt, and it was like touching a love slave. It was cold and dead but brutally utilitarian, as clean as an arrow, the final product of a thousand years of knife design. Cold black cenite, aching to leap into my palm, eager to do my will. You could tell just by looking at it that it served a totalitarian state, a state without mercy or pity.

The edge was like a razor. I didn't care—I wanted it sharper. I would sit there far into the night, hypnotized, sharpening it against a flat oiled steel skillet I had lifted from the pubfeed. And the cenite blade would sigh against the steel, a faint whining, hour after hour, and my eyes would grow heavy, and flicker, and sometimes I think I was doing it in my sleep.

"Will you please stop doing that?" I stopped, the voice still echoing in my mind—a female voice, annoyed. And I was coming back but I still had it, the floodgates of my mind, still open. A warm wave, rushing over my skin, then fading. It was so clear that I almost cried out as it faded. What was it, what was it? A girl, sitting just to my left, dark hair, I couldn't quite focus on her but…what was she doing? What…and a child. A child! Pinched little face…and a huge presence. A giant, in shadows. His eyes, glowing…fading, fading, fading.

I was frozen over the knife, my skin crawling, flooded with emotion. The past! Surfacing, right there in my rotten little cube. Gone! It was gone, now, but it had been there, for just an instant, a flash of the past. I could still hear her voice; I could hear every word; how could I ever forget it? "Will you please stop doing that?" she had said. She had been upset. And the child—I could almost see him. A pale face, that's all I could remember—no features, but it seemed to be a little boy. The girl—I couldn't make out her face either. And the giant—what the hell? An impression of a huge, menacing hulk of a man, a beast of a man, moving in the dark like a great snake.

I tried, but it would not come back. I slowly started sharpening the knife again. It must come back! Who were they? Who were they? My holy God, who was I? I was going to go insane, if I didn't find out.

***

I was on autopilot the next day at the pubfeed, washing the dishes, trying to summarize what I had learned about myself. I was an Outworlder, racially—but it told me nothing. There were billions of us, unarmed and powerless, kept in check by a vigilant United System Alliance and USICOM, the Interstellar Commission, monitored by the benevolent Mocains and their humanitarian intelligentsia, the Ormans, and a host of allied races. We were an evil, violent people, I had learned at Oz, with a bad historical record, but under the System we were meeting our obligations to the rest of humanity.

I knew I had come from a lower-class background. I found polite speech difficult. I instinctively wanted to say "I" and "me" and "you", rather than the proper "we" and "it". That was typical lower-class Outworlder speech, typical sub.

An evil, violent background—I seemed to be fascinated by weaponry and police equipment. It was an unhealthy obsession with evil tools, I knew. I must have been a soldier, or a policeman, or a criminal. All those scars, the dream of a burning sky—it was like a battlefield. And my reactions, when confronted by that druggo. I should have submitted, as required by law. My reactions were criminal, and unbelievably violent.

Certainly, I had been evil—perhaps a master criminal, or a political mercenary or an interstellar pirate chief. Someone important—otherwise the System would not have devoted so many resources to my rehab. Ordinary criminals did not get such treatment. Hence, I was not ordinary. It must have been somehow political.

And the arm—how to explain that? Despite all I had read in the library there was no real clue to who rated such expensive treatment. The arm should have been the best clue of all, but it led nowhere. And if I made any further inquiries of anyone, it would get back to The Slime Bug, and I would be back to the Oz.

Ando Ord sneezed at the next sink, a tremendous roar, spraying his germs over all the dishes. Terrific. And that was another thing. I had noticed that I never got sick. Everybody else would be wheezing and coughing and sneezing and hacking, but I never even got the sniffles. It was downright eerie. The pubfeed was crawling with germs, but I never caught a thing.

How long, I asked myself, must I wait? Must I grapple with these phantoms every night for the rest of my life? I had been psyched, but I knew my past was not really gone. They had told us openly how it was done. People think psyching involves erasing your memory, but that's not true. Memories cannot be erased, Oz told us, but they can be suppressed, permanently. The mind-gates to the past can be shut and locked, leaving your conscious mind outside, cut off from the past. That's what they said. They knew how the brain worked, and they could manipulate it. It meant that my past was all still there, in my mind, locked up by the System for the good of society.

But little pieces of the past were leaking out past the gates, from time to time, in my sleep, swirling around in my head. It was driving me crazy. I knew I couldn't take it much longer.

Chapter 2
Illumination

The door to my cube crashed open violently, awakening me suddenly from an exhausted sleep. I caught a split-frac glance of a shadowy figure colliding with the wall table and going down quickly, then a second figure and the room erupted, a crackling flash, white-hot lightning dancing on my skin, shooting over my body, slamming me back onto the bed. I felt a quick, overwhelming burst of agonizing pain, short-circuiting all my nerves, going directly into my brain. Then it all faded away.

"Are we all right?" A ghostly, girlish voice.

"Aah…scut! Right in the nuts!" A deep bass.

"Told it we should have gone first."

"Gaaahd!"

"Keep its voice down! Looks like these walls are made of paper."

I was slowly coming back, but every nerve ending was shrieking and I felt as weak as a newborn baby. One of them found the light switch and the feeble light panel flickered to life. They had closed the door. The people in the adjoining cubes had certainly heard the racket, but they weren't going to interfere, that was for sure. I tried to focus on the intruders, two of them. A wiry Cyrillian male, now slumped over in agony on one knee, skin so black it was almost purple, fierce slit eyes, sharpened white teeth, clad in a thick coldcoat. His companion was a slim little blonde girl, pale skin, delicate features, ice blue eyes, short tousled wispy hair, also in a coldcoat. She was holding a Police shock gun. I remembered the Cyrillian now—he had been hanging around outside the hostel for a few days. I had taken him for a plainclothes cop.

"What the hell was that?" the Cyrillian whispered through clenched teeth.

"Wall table," the girl replied. "It took it right off the hinges—dummy!"

"We don't think it's funny!" he hissed.

"It's got no sense of humor!" she whispered back.

The Cyrillian stood up shakily, and they turned their attention to me.

"Is that it?" The Cyrillian asked. The girl looked me over calmly. I tried to move, but a wave of pain overwhelmed me. I could only lie there in my worn jox and torn u-shirt, gasping. I was helpless and terrified. These two crazies were going to murder me, I knew—I was dead!

"Looks like it," the girl said. She picked up one of my hands and examined the knuckles, then let it fall back to the bed. Her companion took a look at the scar on my left arm.

"See this?" he asked.

"Take some solids," the girl said. The black took a holscan out of one pocket and began cracking off shots of me lying there in agony on the bed. The girl laid my left arm over my body so the scar would show in the shots. She was leaning over me now, looking into my face. She touched my cheek gently with sharp fingernails.

"We've found it," she said. "It's changed a little, but this is it. Definitely. We remember it!"

"Do the genetic ID," the Cyrillian said.

"We don't need it. This is Beta Three. Does it think we don't remember it? It found us on Katag, it trailed us through a trackless desert. We remember it!" She was blinking her eyes rapidly, breathing hard. "Identification is positive. We don't need the genetic ID."

"Then let's get outta here." The Cyrillian peered nervously out the broken window.

I slowly began to comprehend what was happening. My past had just kicked in the door. All of my questions were about to be answered! But I was still terrified—who were these people? I had no idea what they wanted. For all I knew, they could be planning to butcher me and have me for dinner.

"Does it remember us?" the blonde asked. She was kneeling by the bed, one hand on my shoulder. She was simply lovely, like a creature from another world.

I tried to talk, but could not. I shook my head. It hurt.

"It doesn't remember us," she said to the Cyrillian. "They've psyched it all right. Bastards!" She clutched my hand and squeezed. "Don't worry, Beta Three. We're here now, and we're going to take it back! It can depend on that!" Her face was shining with determination as her sharp fingernails dug into my hand.

"Perhaps we should leave the room for a bit?" the black suggested.

"It's not funny, Pandaros!" the girl snapped.

"It's got no sense of humor!" the Cyrillian replied, grinning.

***

"Remember," the Cyrillian said ominously, "one false move and we do it the hard way." I was standing shakily before the elevator. Luckily it was working again—I don't think I could have made it down the stairs, in the shape I was in at that moment. And I didn't want to know about the hard way. The easy way was hard enough.

"Don't worry," the little blonde assured me as the elevator door creaked open, "Things get better from here on!" They had let me dress and put on my cloth shoes and threadbare jacket, and now we were going out, into the night. I stumbled into the elevator. It was an effort just to move my limbs—there was no way I was going to be able to fight them.

It was cold out in the streets. Filmy plastic trash blew past us as we headed away from the hostel. They had not let me bring anything—not the knife, not even my ID. The Cyrillian was barking into a comset in a strange language. A blacked-out aircar appeared from the shadows, hissing along a few marks over the pitted pavement. A door slid open and they hustled me in and climbed in after me. The driver was another Cyrillian. We took off abruptly, rising. Cyrillians—damn! They were mercenaries, with an evil reputation. There was nothing at all I could do. Whatever was going to happen, they had me.

***

"Have a seat," the blonde said. It was a stunningly luxurious apartment, pale peach carpeting, emerald green marble, and rich cocoa-colored leatherette airchairs and sofas. Whoever these people were, they were well financed. I settled into one of the airchairs, testing my muscles. Everything still hurt.

There were more Cyrillians there. One of them was on a comset. "Agreed," he said. "Twenty G for two hundred K. Twenty two hundred hours exact. It knows the place. See it." I looked around. A low marble table was piled high with little bricks of something wrapped in bright green plastic. There was a trademark on the plastic—a blazing sun.

"Senso," I said. "It's smuggling senso."

"Importing," the blonde corrected me.

"Pure pleasure," the Cyrillian flashed me a frightening smile—his teeth had all been sharpened, a savage mouthful of fangs. "Take senso and it dies! But it dies real happy. Personally, we never touch the stuff."

"Finish off the deliveries," the girl ordered, "tonight. And get me the docs. We've completed our mission here. Now we do the docs and lift. Where's Nelson?"

Senso, I thought—a dirty business. A little flake of senso gave you a full body orgasm that lasted for hours. Pure pleasure—the Cyrillian was right. Senso freaks would pay all they had for more of the stuff. Like rats in some mad scientist's experiment, they'd trigger the pleasure centers until they died of sheer sensory overload, lack of sleep, dehydration and starvation. It was a deadly plague, and highly illegal.

"The docs, Whit." One of the Cyrillians dumped a pile of equipment on a nearby table.

"Thanks, Nelson," the blonde said. "Set up the ID holo." She turned to me. "Would it like some dox?"

"Dox?" I asked. "Sure." Dox was an unimaginable luxury on Nimbos.

She brought over a cup and popped it open. The rich aroma hit me immediately. I accepted the cup as she settled onto the edge of the table, watching me carefully.

Silky hot dox burnt its way past my tongue and down, and it was probably the best thing I'd ever tasted. The girl was gazing at me in fascination as I sipped the dox. The Cyrillian, Nelson, was setting up some equipment.

"Our name is Whit," she said suddenly. "Doesn't it remember us?"

"We remember nothing," I said.

"Well, we remember it," she said, "very well. Does it want to know about its past?"

I paused, and put down the dox. "Yes," I said, "we do."

"Good," she said. "That's good. We're going to tell it everything. But we have to do it slowly. A little at a time—do we understand?"

"We understand. It wants to break the bad news slowly. Let us guess—we were a major senso dealer, right? We were responsible for the deaths of millions, right? Isn't it afraid the cops are going to kick in that door?"

"No, we're not. And it wasn't a senso dealer. We've paid our taxes. The System knows all about us, and leaves us alone. Does it really think we could do this without the System's blessing? The senso is nothing—forget it. It simply allows us to move around freely in System vac. And that's what we needed to get to you. No, senso has got nothing to do with its past."

"Head up, please." The Cyrillian, Nelson, was aiming an ID scanner at me. It cracked, and he turned away.

Whit popped open a dox of her own. "That's Pandaros over there," she said, gesturing to the Cyrillian who had almost emasculated himself crashing through the door to my cube, "and this is Nelson." Nelson nodded to me. He was fooling with the equipment. I didn't say anything.

"We can hardly believe it," Whit said. "Cinta will be pleased."

"Who's Cinta?" I asked.

"It'll find out. By the way, its designation is Beta Three. Did we tell it that?"

"Beta Three…" I repeated. It brought nothing to mind. "What kind of a name is that?"

"It'll find out. It'll find out everything. We owe it, Beta Three—we owe it. That's why we're here."

"What if we don't like our past?"

"It's not a matter of liking it or not. It's a matter of unfinished business, of debts to be paid, and promises to keep. It'll see. It can't imagine how many people have been looking for it, and how much effort has gone into it. And we found it! Cinta will be pleased!"

"Beta Three," I repeated. "Beta Three." It was a strange name, but it was all right with me. Fine, I thought, I'm Beta Three. It's a start. I picked up the dox cup. I decided I may as well relax and enjoy the ride—I certainly hadn't been going anywhere back in the pubfeed. And I had wanted to know about my past. Well, here it was—good or bad, I was going to find out.

***

I awoke suddenly in shock, fighting a blind panic, arching up in bed and smashing my forehead sharply against the bed's overhead—someone in the room! I gaped open-mouthed at the girl in the doorway to my cube—a vision of languid beauty, short tousled blonde hair, blinking pale blue eyes, leaning against the bulkhead totally at ease. It was Whit—looking me over. I rubbed my aching head. I had almost brained myself. I was sitting up in the bunk, twitching—not a good way to wake up! The lights were on. I remembered now. I had not been able to find the switch, and had collapsed into bed completely exhausted and slept a dreamless sleep. We were on the P.S.
Stardust
on antimat drive, in the cold maw of the eye of the hole, balanced precariously between creation and extinction. I could feel it on my skin—and I knew, in a sudden flash, that I had been here before. I shivered.

"We're sorry," Whit said. "We were just checking. Did it sleep all right?"

"Fine," I said. "Fine." It was all I could think of just then. Checking? Checking what?

"We have a big day planned for it, Three. Might as well get up. Breakfast in the rec room." She didn't take her eyes off me. She seemed calm, but there was certainly something else there.

"Right. Give us a few fracs."

"Take its time. There's no rush, Beta Three—no rush at all." I looked at her sharply. Her face was flushed. She ducked out the door and it slid shut again. Strange.

The little cube was spotless and icy cold. The head was a vertical closet, also spotless. I had never imagined such luxury, such fanatic, sterile perfection. I hit the shower and closed my eyes.

***

"So it sees, we're really old friends," Whit said. We were sipping dox over our breakfast. A couple of Cyrillians were lounging over the remains of their meal at the next table. I had been astounded by the abundance and high quality of the food. The rec room was another miracle of compact and totally functional design. The dox was like a powerful drug. I could not remember ever tasting anything so rich. It was making my head spin. I put down the cup. It was marked with the logo of the Personal Ship
Stardust
.

"We wouldn't be here without it, Beta Three," Whit continued. "We owe everybody—but mostly we owe Cinta and Beta. Cinta arranged it, but it was Beta Three and Eight and Nine that stepped out of that awful night and freed us. Does it remember? We remember—we'll never forget. We owe it, forever. Beta, and Cinta." She was glowing. Her eyes were clouding over. She was lost for a moment. Then she laughed. "Memories. Good and bad. We're nothing—we're stupid, just as Cinta said. But we pay our debts. Touch us, and it's done. We see it as an angel. A dark angel, raising the dead. Doesn't it remember anything?"

I blinked, suddenly realizing that she had just offered to sleep with me. Things were happening entirely too fast for my taste.

"No, we don't," I said. "It promised it was going to tell us about our past. We're still waiting."

She bit her lip, and got up. "Come with us, Beta Three. It's time."

***

I settled into an airchair before a dark d-screen. The instrumentation was new to me, but a lot of things were new to me. It looked a bit like a starlink. Whit slipped into another airchair beside me. The door had slid shut behind us, leaving us alone in the little cube. It was dead quiet.

"How much does it know about the war?" Whit began calmly.

"With the CrimCon? We only know what we've been told," I responded. "The System and the CrimCon are at war. The System is slowly winning, but it's a protracted struggle that has lasted for generations, and may last for generations more. The CrimCon has recently split into two warring, power-hungry factions, and this may ultimately prove decisive. The break-away faction is called the Lost Command."

"And what about the Variants?"

"The V? The aliens continue to attack System worlds, but the DefCorps is learning how to counter them. The CrimCon attempted an alliance with the V, and encouraged them to move into System vac. The alliance failed, because the V learned they could not trust the CrimCon."