Soldier of the Legion (27 page)

Snow Leopard ignored his question. “What happened to you, trooper? Why didn’t you make it back to your ship?” Snow Leopard had decided the Systie was telling the truth, I could tell.

The Systie took a deep breath, and made another effort to control his emotions. “Some of our guys were trapped when the fifth level fell in. We knew the ship was launching, but they were still in there. We tried to get them out.” He hid his face from us. We did not ask him whether or not he had found his buddies. It would not have been polite.

Exhausted, I couldn’t even form a complete thought. I noticed Boudicca propped up against a wall, one armored fist on her brow, eyes closed, jaw clenched. Her other hand came up to her eyes and she sat there miserably, trembling. I could not see her face. If I had not known her so well, I’d have sworn she was crying.

That wave of dread returned and I suddenly knew. I took a deep breath. “So what’s all this about a prisoner?” I asked Snow Leopard quietly. “Who…who did they grab?”

He looked at me wearily, vaguely surprised. “You didn’t know? It’s Valkyrie. She’s missing. Looks like the Systies got her.”

###

The forest was burning in the night. That was the view when we reached the top. We had climbed all the way up through the shattered Systie base, threading our way through the twisted wreckage, avoiding the worst fires, crawling up like worms, alert for stragglers. But we found only the dead and what the living left behind. We also found mines and pockets of biogas. Lots of nasty surprises. Ironman had been evak’d by an amtac, slicing in from above.

We surfaced in a forest of flames, a charcoal forest glowing red in the night, burning brightly. Great torrents of sparks and incredible rushes of flames rose up to the heavens, sooty smoke hiding the stars. Fire lifted into the night, exploding wildly, a chilling, beautiful spectacle. We stood in the ruins, cracked our helmets open, and breathed in the hot night air, lush with smoke and full of the taste of ashes and death. The glowing bones of the base crawled with soldiers from the Third, dropped in from topside on the glowing aftermath of our antis, but we were the first to surface from below. We had crawled up through Perdition, and I never wanted to see it again.

The Systies had dug their base and unitium mining operation in from one side, leaving the forest above them for cover. Pits of flame glowed in the charcoal forest like volcanoes. Their ships had been well concealed under blast-proof launch silos. Now the silos opened to the stars, spitting rivers of flame as the base burned. The ships were splitting vac, far beyond our reach. Where the forest had collapsed, the skeleton of the base glowed cherry-red.

I looked up at the stars, blinking. Another river of fire glowed high above, a ghostly highway in the heavens, a glittering stream of golden sparks and silver comets, traced across the velvet sky. As I watched, some of the sparks lit up and exploded silently, mini flashes of nuclear light, flaring briefly, then fading, breaking up into a shower of angel dust, winking in the night. It was a vision of ice and fire.

We learned on the comnet that
Atom
had reacted to Snow Leopard’s first shouted warning in microfracs, crash-launching into stardrive immediately, but not before instantaneously launching the cruisers and the fighter force and a full strategic strike. Fleetcom doesn’t like risking its battlestars unnecessarily and in this case
Atom
’s presence was not necessary to deal with this minor disturbance. She would be safe in stardrive and could return at any time.

A lot of surprised pilots woke up quickly, some of them with faces scalded by cups of hot dox, but they all had alarms shrieking in their ears and the stars suddenly dancing in their screens and a red-hot weapons panel instantly alive with fully armed antis and nukes and chainlinks and targets coming on the screen, and Andrion 2 rushing at them, enemy deceptors lighting up their lives.

Most of the Systie ships had gotten through, hiding in the deceptors, but some of them had not, and these still tumbled through space, the wreckage skipping along the atmosphere, lighting up the night sky—glowing, burning, spitting flames, exploding. Exhausted and stunned, we watched the show. Aircars hovered over the base like a swarm of bloodsucking gnats, dazzling white searchlights stabbing mercilessly down into the dark, revealing the Systie’s secret world. Legion fighters orbited high above, specks of blue flame in the night, and two of them dipped low for a better view, suddenly flashing past close overhead, twin sonic booms shattering the night, rattling my teeth. I never could watch them without a hopeless thrill.

Even then, exhausted and drained, I could feel it. Raw power, and the will of the Legion, a mailed fist in the heavens for us all, and we knew it was ours, and ours alone. All we had to do was call it in, just like Snow Leopard did. Just one feeble squawk and they’d be there,
Atom
’s fist, dropping in from topside, ripping the atmosphere open like a rotten fruit, bringing all of
Atom
’s power and glory, bringing instant death to all our foes. They had torn the top right off this base and now it glowed in the night, the mark of the Legion, our mark, burnt into the face of this distant world for all to see.

A miracle, I thought. We had all survived. Ironman was safe in evac, and all the Legion’s skill and knowledge were with him.

The rest of Beta was right here, helmets off, breathing the hot night air and watching the flames as the base burnt and the Third fought the fire. We had kicked in the door and walked right into their best. Snow Leopard, staring into space, silent at last, pale and drained, hair plastered to his skull, hollow eyes now bloody red.

Coolhand, also silent, squatted in his armor, watching the show, hypnotized, content. Merlin stood, stunned, staring at the burning charcoal forest and the volcanoes spitting flame and the fleets of dancing aircars and the blinding searchlights flashing over us, and the lovely sparkling trail of destruction up by the stars, taking it all in as if he never wanted to forget it.

Psycho, spent at last after his orgy of destruction, his face all cut and swollen, both eyes blackened, still toting his Manlink on one hip—the Manlink that saved us all. Psycho called her the Mother of Destruction, and we called her the Tacstar Goddess.

Warhound sat in his armor, holding his head, eyes closed. Dragon stood off by himself, scowling, cradling his E in his arms. This was one of his unapproachable times. What did he think about, I wondered. Flashes from lost wars? Lost worlds, lost causes, vanished soldiers?

Priestess, precious Priestess, her head on my armored shoulder, her scent a hot musk in my nostrils, her hair soaked in sweat, Beta’s perfume of the day. I could easily lose myself in dreams of Priestess, with her lovely soft hair kissing my cheek. I would only have to close my eyes.

An aircar slowly passed over us, raising a swirl of smoke. And a vision came to me: the Phantoms of the March. Surely this was what Longwalker and Starlight had discovered, all those lost dead years ago. They had run into the Systies, and somehow escaped. The Phantoms of the March, an alien army. What else could Longwalker have believed? He thought they were ghosts.

I was too tired to sleep, too tired to close my eyes. I could only stare into the night. I saw Valkyrie, misty in the smoke, the breeze rustling her blonde hair. Valkyrie, a captive of the Systies. It was obscene. She worshipped freedom, and even the Legion could not hold her. She did as she pleased, always. How could they put her in a cage? What would happen to her?

Horrified, I looked up to the stars, the smoke of the burning forest stinging my eyes. Valkyrie was still alive. I was positive I could feel her, across the light years. Alive.

Priestess looked up at me calmly. “I don’t hate her. I’m jealous whenever she’s around and I’d fight her again over you, but I don’t hate her. The Legion will find her. We will find her! And when we do I’ll kick her butt. And then I’ll kick your butt—and you’ll still be mine.” She smiled and laid her head back on my shoulder.

Chapter 13:
In the Eye of the Hole

Somewhere in the eye of the hole, I awoke. I knew immediately where we were. The chron confirmed it. That far in, we were probably already on our way out. Still too early to tell. I knew it from the silence and from the pressure on my skin, and from my own fear. Boring a magical hole into the vac, we ripped through the delicate fabric of reality, making our own fantastic highway, Atom’s Road, a sparkling antimat bullet right between the eyes of the Cosmos, holding the wormhole open with antimatter, quantum vacuum and negative pressure. In the eye of the hole. We still had a long, long way to go.

Awake, again. I pondered the bottom of the wall bunk above me. A tomb. A shiver rippled over my skin. I did not want to be alone but I could not move. Thoughts coiled around my mind like snakes.

Coldmark lay somewhere ahead of us, a pale fat frozen fruit glowing against a black sky. And in distant combat orbit around the planet, hurtling across the night sky like a tiny silver star, the System Ship
Preference
no doubt awaited us, its sensors all on max, its crew probably on yellow alert. We now knew exactly where the Systie ships had gone. Most of them were too fast for us, hiding in hundreds of deceptors. They had escaped death, but they did not escape
Atom
. A fleet of deep space probes had followed the tracks all the way, right into the out and out to the in. And it led to Coldmark.

There were plenty of other Systie ships, in orbit around Coldmark—a whole fleet! We had plans for them all, but I wanted the
Preference
.
Preference
had a Legion prisoner, and it was marked for destruction, whether or not we got our comrade back. We rode the
Spawn
, one of
Atom
’s cruisers, and
Spawn
carried its own fleet of fighters and assault craft. We had enough power to knock Coldmark right out of orbit, but lucky for the Systies it was not that kind of mission.

In Hell, Valkyrie and I had gone through the swamp together. We were only trainees at that point, not lovers. The luck of the Legion threw us together for the swamp. It was a simple test, the kind the Legion liked best. They armed us with cold knives and dropped us by twos into that nameless swamp. The mission: get to the hills on the other side. If we reached the hills, we passed. If we never appeared, we failed. Howling packs of swarmers opposed us, and swamp suckers, and hungry, aggressive lizards and flesh-eating fish and numberless varieties of poisonous snakes and clamstones and snappervines and even carnivorous trees. Invisible mudholes might suck us in to our deaths and poisonous vegetation could send us into fevers and death dreams and hallucinations. At night the vampire gliders awaited to kill us quietly as we slept, sucking us dry. Worst of all were the cannibals, human stone-age throwbacks, tracking us quietly through the swamp, hungry for Outworlder flesh. They had committed some awful outrage against the Legion, generations ago, and were still paying for it.

That was where I got to know Valkyrie. I could not have made it without her, and she could not have made it without me. I had never admitted it to her, but she frightened me. I had never before met anyone without a soul. The cannibals actually found us one night, and we killed about six of them with our cold knives in their first wild rush, and ran from the rest. We stayed together and cut sharp wooden stakes with our knives and left them in our tracks, punji stakes, under the water, and listened to their outraged screams. She bound my wounds, and I bound hers, and we fought our way out of that swamp.

We climbed through a cool forest of tall dark trees, wreathed with mist, and walked along a freezing stream. Eventually, we found a secret road of stone and climbed some more and dropped, exhausted, halfway up the hill to a grove of softly swaying trees. A light rain started and we huddled together for warmth. Her eyes were like a wild beast. She had blood on her hands and she left scratches all over my back and tooth marks on my neck. From then on I was her Thinker, and she was my Valkyrie, and it was Thinker and Valkyrie, forever.

Forever. I was pledged to another, and she was a prisoner of the System. But it changed nothing.

I triggered a minicard, and her image appeared before my eyes, glowing with life, floating in the air. How could I have ever been lucky enough to meet this girl? A miracle, a gift of the Gods. An angel, carved from sunshine and moonlight. Hair of molten gold and glittering emerald eyes, focused on some other world. I never understood her—never. But that did not matter. Not now.

###

I entered the lounge, cold and lonely. I knew I had been rather withdrawn lately; nobody wanted to bother me. Powerful, spooky music wailed in the background, Empire stuff. Beta was normally not so introspective; we preferred noise and feeling. Somebody else must have put it on. I spotted a few troopers from Gamma, and many others I did not know. Beta huddled in a corner on the floor around a low table covered with charts and readouts and minicards and d-screens.

“Thinker here,” I said.

“Welcome back,” Snow Leopard responded. “We were just talking about Coldmark. Have a seat.”

I found a place on the floor. Snow Leopard looked good, his long blond hair brushed carefully back revealing his prominent widow’s peak. He appeared rested and alert as his piercing pink eyes roamed over the readouts. He was a great planner, and in his element here. We faced a very tricky situation on Coldmark.

Priestess had curled up in a chair. She wore minishorts and her legs appeared to be distracting Psycho who sat on the floor nearby, ogling her. Coolhand and Merlin and Warhound and Dragon huddled around the table. Ironman would not be with us on this op; he was back in
Atom
’s body shop, growing a new arm.

“This is not going to be easy, girls.” Snow Leopard was always a realist. We knew his plan to accomplish the mission would also maximize our chances for survival. Some leaders focused on the mission exclusively and viewed their assets as expendable. Snow Leopard wasn’t like that. “You heard the man. Coldmark is in the Neutral Zone. Officially it’s an independent world, and the inhabitants do have their own government. Unofficially, the System has been more active in this sector than we have, and the locals have been cooperating, not having any choice.”