“What was your identifier again?” asked the legionnaire.
“DO-13-RD.”
“Dark Ops, huh?” Subs detected a mix of respect and suspicion in the legionnaire’s voice.
“Yeah. How about you, what’s your identifier? Who’m I talking to?”
“LS-517-VC.”
Usually when legionnaires exchanged identifiers, their helmets, or just the general knowledge of the operation, allowed them to just give their specification—such as LS for Legion Soldier, or DO for Dark Ops—and their number. Legion command rightly presumed that you’d know which company you were serving with. But when talking on a wide battlefield such as Psydon, it was necessary to add the last two letters. There were scores of LS-517s on Psydon, but only one was in VC.
“Victory Company!” said Subs. “I’ve done some ops with you guys. Years ago. Still know how to KTF over there?”
“Hell yeah. Still the best in the One Thirty-First.”
Subs chuckled. “So, like I was saying, I don’t need any special access codes. I don’t need any classified information. In fact, just talking to another leej has me feeling pretty good right now.”
“So what’s up then, DO?”
“I need a little bit of… scuttlebutt. Need to know if you’ve heard anything about a name. It’s like I said, I’m out here on my own with the army.”
“What’s the name?”
“A Major Berlin,” answered Subs. “You or any of your buddies know him?”
There was a certain disdainful strain of incredulity in the legionnaire’s voice. “Know him? Thankfully, no. But I’ve heard of him. Guy’s one of those new appointed officers. Freshly sent by the House of Reason.”
“A point?”
“Yeah. But don’t let them hear you call ’em that. Otherwise you’re working like a bot to clean latrines.”
“All right,” said Subs, not really sure what else to say, though he did enjoy talking. “I guess that’s all I had. You boys keep your chins tucked and gives those doros hell.”
“Roger that, DO. KTF.”
“KTF.”
Subs removed his helmet and stared at it, the visor lifelessly returning his gaze. “A point.”
Well… that was that. He wasn’t going to get mixed up in that political wormhole. If the SLIC pilots actually did come back the next morning, maybe he’d see about getting them to fly him to Camp Roode for a visit. It’s not like anyone would notice he was gone.
The legionnaire bucket continued to stare up at Subs. He was going to miss being in the Legion. He had a wife to go home to, a pair of sons who had mostly grown up without him. A job waiting for him on Teema with his father-in-law. But somehow, deep down in the darkest reaches of his being, where the truth is always shining, he knew that none of it could ever be as fulfilling as the Legion. And that thought brought up emotions he didn’t know how to deal with.
He placed his bucket on top of his footlocker. The air in his room suddenly felt too thick and oppressive to endure any longer. There was no breeze coming from the windows. A sheen of sweat covered his body. He stretched and reached his fingers to the top of his hooch, where the air felt even more stifling.
He needed to step outside. Not that it would be any cooler. But… maybe. He’d taken his pills to protect against Psydon’s bloodsuckers, so he might as well try.
Flinging open the hooch’s door, he emerged into the night. The only real light came from low-energy illum-poles stationed sporadically along the main thoroughfare. Not enough to light up the whole way—just enough so that you’d pass from dim light and back into shadow as you walked.
But maybe the dim light made it better. Because you could still see the brilliant canopy of stars overhead. That was the one thing Subs loved about being deployed: he was usually somewhere away from the light of a planet’s cityscape. Dark Ops did its work on the worlds where things still got really and truly dark. Where you could look up and see that great glittering galaxy with your fellow leejes and point the stars out one by one.
What about that fight on Linton?
Remember the time on Rrrddat?
Subs knew he would miss the Legion. But maybe… maybe he could convince his wife and sons to move away from the promised job in the city. Maybe they could find a plot of land somewhere in the country. Or in the wilderness.
And then he could stand out in the dark under all those stars with the fledgling men he’d missed so much time with and say, “Did I ever tell you about the time I was there?”
And maybe in those nights his boys would grow to comprehend all the turmoil in the galaxy that had kept their father away. And they’d all appreciate just being home. Together.
13
It was a relief to Subs when the patrolling soldiers began filing back into Firebase Hitchcock.
He roused himself from a heat-induced torpor and hefted himself out of his synthetic leather chair—his skin peeling away from it like the film protecting a new datapad. The first few soldiers in the platoon trudged by the hooch, not bothering to look anywhere but down.
They were bushed.
Subs went back out into the night air, oblivious to the cloud of pestering insects that hung thick overhead.
“Lookin’ good, Subs,” said a soldier shuffling by, a cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth.
Subs looked down, remembering only then that he wore nothing but his silk diaper and a pair of running shoes. Oh well. Nothing to do now but ride it out. “Yeah, well, I knew you basics had a long march today, so I wanted you to have something good to see once you got back to Hitch.”
Those nearest him laughed as the platoon continued marching by. Their uniforms were soaked in sweat and stained from their time out in the bush. They trudged onward, no doubt wondering whether the showers were working, or if anyone had stuck around to keep the chow warm… but most of all hoping no one would stand in their way from racking up and going lights out.
Subs looked over the lines like a vulpine she-bear watching her cubs. He eyed every passing soldier, looking for signs of injury. He craned his neck for the med bot pulling a stretcher with wounded. Or worse… body bags. But all looked well.
The platoon’s captain, Robert Garcia, approached Subs, walking tall among his men. For a basic, the captain was all right. Serious about his job, cared about his soldiers. But he was also military, and might not be thrilled at the example Subs was setting in his state of near-undress.
Subs met Captain Garcia’s eyes. “How did it go?” he asked, careful to sound earnest and inquisitive. He was, after all, an enlisted man, even if he was Dark Ops, and while Garcia wasn’t a point, he cared enough about the distinction in rank that he might take offense.
Ranks didn’t always carry the same weight from the other branches to the Legion. You had to earn your respect from a leej. That was something all sides were aware of, and that the Republic armed forces bristled over. It wasn’t unheard of for a leej to tell a Republic Army general where to stuff it. And so long as the general was relying on those leejes to complete his objective… he couldn’t do sket about it. But Subs was a different breed—a unique case. No one on Hitchcock actually needed him; he was ornamentation. So yeah, he was respectful to Garcia.
“All in all, I’d call it a good day,” Garcia answered. His only comment on Subs’s appearance was a quick downward glance at his silk diaper. “We got three listening stations set up pretty deep out there. Once the link is made, we should have some better insight about what the doros are doing beyond the wire.”
“I take it that’s what took you all so long out there?”
The listening stations were cleverly camouflaged to look like desiccated tree stumps rotting in the jungle. They weighed a ton and would definitely slow an expedition down as they were humped through the uneven terrain. The trouble was, these big stations had a design flaw that allowed water into their inner workings in Psydon’s unreal humidity. They had to be replaced all the time.
“No, not this time,�
�� Garcia said. He sounded upbeat; he must have been feeling good about what his platoon had accomplished. “We planted some new devices—essentially bots but small… look like local insects. R&D developed them for Dark Ops is the word, and now they’re making their way into the main branches.”
Subs nodded. He knew the devices Captain Garcia spoke of. They didn’t have the same range, but they were so inconspicuous that they made up for it. Also, they weren’t prone to malfunction. “Those are a whole lot easier to hump than what you had earlier.”
“You got that right.”
“So how far did you go?”
“Dropped them off at some predetermined spots on the grid. But farther than any patrol I know of before.”
Subs gave an appreciative nod. “Nicely done, Captain, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Garcia smiled. “I appreciate that, Sergeant Major.”
Now that Subs had a good rapport going with Captain Garcia, he wanted to get down to the last order of business. “Captain, when you have the opportunity, could you do me a favor and have Specialist Bucholz report to the comm station? I’m not relaying an order or anything, but long-range comms are down again and Alistair says she’s the only one with a hope of getting them back online.”
“I think there’s a resupply flight coming in tomorrow,” the captain replied. “We’re supposed to be getting a redundancy relay for the long-range comms.”
Subs nodded. “Yeah. That’s why it’s a favor. I need to look into the Legion net—something’s digging at me and I want to research it—only I’m getting denied access.”
“Did the last all-pass turnover skip you?”
Subs sighed. “Yep. Best not to grow old and forgotten, Captain. It kind of sucks.”
Garcia chuckled. “Well, the only way to follow that advice is to die young. Not sure I’m looking for that.”
And yet in Subs’s experience, a lot of the best men he knew had done just that.
“I’ll have Specialist Bucholz report to the comm station. I wanted to go there anyway to make sure the uplink with the listening bots worked. You should come and see how these new bots work out. Well, new to us, I guess.”
“Sure thing, Captain. I’ll come. Call it professional curiosity to see how this version compares to what I used to deploy. Mainly we just snuck in literal flies on the wall to know when our target would be home for our surprise visits.”
The pair began walking toward the comm station, cutting through the still-shuffling platoon returning for the field. Captain Garcia halted abruptly. “You… you aren’t really going to go inside the comm room still wearing a silk diaper?”
Subs looked down as if he was unaware. “Oh. Sure. I mean, why not? What are they gonna do? Kick me out of the Legion?”
***
The comm center was built like virtually every other comm center in use by the Republic military machine. It was the most secure building on base, created from modular printed walls that fit together to form a tight seal—much nicer than the mobile hab units doled out for most administrative purposes, and a whole lot better than the lousy hooches and tents given to the soldiers.
What was better still was that the comm building had functioning climate controls. Granted, they didn’t work all that great, but not all that great was still far better than not at all. It was noticeably cooler inside the building, and the humidity was drastically reduced. That alone made them popular locations on Psydon, and any time anyone could wrangle an assignment in the comm station or received orders to report to the comm center… they were happy.
In fact, Subs thought, that’s probably why Alistair always takes those double shifts without complaining. Not that complaining would do him any good anyway.
Still in his silk diapers, Subs sat on a desk, his legs dangling, as Alistair, his comm tech friend, worked at his station to get the listening bots connected to Hitchcock’s systems.
Subs noticed that Alistair kept casting sidelong glances in his direction. “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Alistair said through gritted teeth. He went back to his work for a moment before turning back. “It’s just that… you’re all nasty, and I use that desk.”
Subs looked around. The desk looked clean and neat. It certainly didn’t look like his friend made use of it. “I’m cooling off, thanks to the climate controls.”
Alistair gave a tight smile. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He went back to work, swiping across his displays and bringing up various subroutines. Then he turned back again and shouted, “Could you just sit somewhere else!”
Subs laughed and hopped down off the desk. He moved to stand next to Captain Garcia, who had been busying himself with incline pushups, using another desk for that purpose.
“Aren’t you tired from the patrol?” Subs asked.
“My legs are,” said Garcia. “Arms didn’t have to do much.”
Alistair was out of his seat and standing in front of the desk Subs had just surrendered. “Ahh!” he screamed. “I can see the sweaty imprint of your butt and nuts!” He scrambled back to his desk, grabbed a can of disinfecting spray, and doused the entire area with a carpet bomb of pine-smelling particles.
Subs gave a deep belly laugh. “It’ll dry off. You’re overreacting.”
Alistair looked up at the Dark Ops legionnaire, his finger still depressing the nozzle on the sprayer. “I eat at this desk, man. Not cool!”
“When you’re done,” Captain Garcia said, as if none of this conversation had even happened, “I’d like to know how long until we can expect an uplink. Is that something Specialist Bucholz has to make happen? Because if those bots find some doros, I want to make sure we can organize a reaction force to wipe them out before they get away.”
Subs often felt like the regular Republic Army was too stuffed with regulation- and career-minded officers to truly bring the fight to the enemy. That was the legacy of the appointment program that he was sure would eventually poison the Legion as well. It seemed like all the branches, except the marines, relied too heavily on the Legion to bring the actual fighting. But Captain Garcia was a good reminder that there were still some soldiers and officers who remembered that the primary specialty of an army was killing. No matter how socially taboo that might be to say out loud.
Alistair put down his can of disinfectant and dropped into his chair, folding his arms so they rested on his stomach. “Okay, so to properly answer that question, sir, I have to address a number of different items. In no particular order…” The comm tech began to count on his fingers. “One: we do need Specialist Bucholz. Two: but not to see the data. Three: we need her to get the long-range comms up, so that if we find something, you can actually call in a mission to get it taken care of. Four: I don’t know when she’ll show up. Five: what Sergeant Boyd did was inexcusable, and I want to file a formal complaint for him literally sweating his ass off on my workstation. And I want it filed like that verbatim and sent to the Legion commander—not the sector Legion commander, the big daddy.”
“He wouldn’t listen to a basic,” Subs shot back.
Garcia let a slight smile curl up the corner of his mouth. “The data. We can listen to that right now?”
Alistair nodded. “The firmware for the bots you implanted is only a variation of what’s used for the bigger, tree-stump varieties. So since we had those synced into our system, I was able to migrate the newer listening bots by looking at the two source codes. It’s essentially a redundancy of what’s already in place, so it didn’t really need a full install, which would take an hour or so. I did a couple of tweaks and… boom. We’re up.”
“Okayyy,” said the captain, drawing the word out as though he didn’t understand most of what he’d just been told, but was ready to move forward all the same.
Subs leaned against Alistair’s desk, arms crossed and looking down at the tech.
“Dude!” shouted Alistair, his eyes fixed on Subs’s silk diaper leaning against the edge of the desk. “Would you, for the love of
Oba, remove your sweaty keister from my workstation? You’re on my datapad, and you’re already fogging up the screen!”
Subs looked down. There was indeed half a datapad trapped under one of his cheeks. He hopped off the desk. “Sorry.”
“You Dark Ops have no respect for the rest of us,” said Alistair haughtily.
“That’s not really fair,” protested Subs. “It’s not just Dark Ops. No one respects basics.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said the comm tech. “No one respects the basic. Not even our girlfriends. Not that I have a girlfriend, mind you. But if I did, there would be no way she’d respect me.”
“So how long until we can find out what’s on these things?” asked Captain Garcia, steering back to the business at hand.
A chime sounded at the workstation.
“It’s ready now,” said Alistair. He leaned into his console, running his fingers across the various transparent displays, expanding, collapsing, rotating, twirling, and skewing various symbols. Executing directives and commands until a notification bar that read “Bug One” appeared. Directly below the bar was what looked like an audio wavelength. “Play findings for bug one.”
A soft, feminine voice came from the workstation. “Listening post bug one has twenty-seven seconds of potential audio interest.”
The track played, beginning with the gentle swaying sound of jungle leaves in the wind and insects playing their arms and legs like stringed instruments. The symphony was drowned out by a piercing howl—a cross between a guttural cry and a mouthy hiss. The howl sounded twice more before the computer announced, “End of log.”
“Well, that was terrifying,” said Alistair, looking between Garcia and Subs. “Either of you have any idea what kind of monster makes a noise like that? Because it didn’t sound human or doro.”
“Not sure,” answered Garcia. “But I agree it’s not human or doro.”
“It’s a dreex,” Subs said matter-of-factly. He saw Garcia and Alistair looking at him in surprise, and explained, “The Legion gave a dossier to all legionnaires. What not to eat and what might eat you. A dreex is the thing most likely to eat you.”
Order of the Centurion Page 11