by Tim C Taylor
“It’s a human thing. It is because I still love her that I need this to be secret. She must never know.”
“That is accept… accept… accept…”
“Leader? Are you all right?”
The song has been building, amplifying, layers of harmonies stretching out across many dimensions, seeking out echoes of itself in other times and places and leading them back toward unison.
The moment finally comes. Like a supernova, Leader’s song re-connects into unity and blasts away the pathetic echoes and fragments of a motif searching for itself.
Overwhelmed.
Leader Delta is undone. Not killed but subsumed into a greater song.
Into my song.
Me.
Mine.
I.
I am re-sung.
I am Leader.
“Are you still there?” the Human is querying.
“I am,” I reply. “You have been speaking with a fragment, but I am whole again now.”
I remember everything: my birth, my temporary death, and my rebirth. My absence since the battle… I had planned this all. Foreseen and fore-sung it, a quiet deviation of syncopation, now complete.
“Furn,” I say. “Friend Human Furn, I wish you to hear me well.”
“I’ve been doing little else,” he says. “Go on, what now?”
“I need you to kill a second of my race. This second one is called Shepherd, and it resides with me on the moon of Khallini that you call Pallas-Beta. You must kill Shepherd and Credence simultaneously.”
“It will take me a while, but I reckon if I can murder one then… then I will always be capable of one more. I can do that. But when you say simultaneously, just how fine can I cut it?”
“Within the same second.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Furn replies.
I sense he wishes to converse for longer. His isolation wounds him, but I have much to do. “When your solution is in place,” I tell him, “contact me.” I leave Furn’s mind, already knowing that he will do as I ask, because the resonance of his deed yet to come is a layered harmony in its own right.
My humming falters momentarily and I return to my past, confirming that I do indeed need to destroy Shepherd, whom my fragmentary self had thought of as an ally. I remember now how Shepherd had been caught in my deception, fooled into thinking I supported the Human faction.
I support neither Human nor Hardit; only Hummer.
Credence and Shepherd are still trapped in my mental Battleground. They cease their combat and join forces to break out of the prison I sing for them, but they will not succeed. I cannot destroy them because to do so would leave an echo in the past that they would have heard. I will, however, keep them imprisoned until my human servant kills them on my behalf. That way neither Human nor Hardit supporters will know each other exists; not for a while longer.
As for his love, this Springer. I did not lie when I told them that his deeds will save Springer’s life. I believed it then. But no longer am I the confused Leader Delta. I am Leader now, and I have remembered my purpose, my plan all along. Human Springer will have to fight to deserve her own survival, and as the future hardens its form, I can hear her stronger now; she has a part yet to play, but with the future so finely balanced, I cannot see what that role might be.
A few amongst the Hummer race will declare openly for one or the other faction, their songs too deeply entwined with their tools. But I have always remained neutral, despite the lies I may have spread. My loyalty lies with the Hummer race, and I am not alone.
I reach out to the minds of others whose loyalty I trust and harmonize them to my ambition, uniting the race in a way it has not been for a thousand years.
The handful who have declared for the Humans or the Hardits are of little consequence, and can easily be destroyed if necessary. The rest of us secretly join them as the entirety of my people turns our attention to a small, watery planet where the short-lived, time-bound creatures will fight for the privilege of being our servants.
Since a time when Humans still imagined they were alone in the galaxy, I have been steering the future to this point. And now my work is nearly complete.
The Battle of Earth is about to commence.
Author’s Notes: I Hum the Future
The Night Hummers.
If you’ve read all the novels by this point, you know they turned out to be pretty important.
Although Marine Cadet was my breakout book, I’d been writing about the Human Legion Universe for about thirteen years before I launched the first Human Legion novel.
The Night Hummers came from a novel called My Future in the Past, which I wrote in 2004 (and later was reworked into The Reality War). They were just an alien race with a cool name, and with a few surface details of description.
In Marine Cadet, they become far more important. So while I was writing Indigo Squad, I roughed out a story idea that would be the origin story of the Night Hummers and how they came into contact with the White Knights.
I’m being careful with spoilers here, but if you’ve read War Against the White Knights, you know that the relationship between the two alien species is more complex than it would appear at first.
That idea was very much down to Ian Whates, who insisted while we were working on Human Empire that it would be a great idea if the White Knights and Night Hummers were actually [REDACTED].
It completely invalidated the cool origin story I’d already prepped, but Ian was eager to go this way and I was keen for him to feel he had skin in the game.
As I wrote Ian’s idea into the final three novels, I’m glad I kept it.
The Hummers are pretty weird. And although they are crucial in the creation of the Human Legion, they are always operating under their own agenda.
Can you ever truly understand what another person thinks and feels? Plenty say you can’t, in which case there is no hope for understanding the Night Hummers.
But with I Hum the Future, I think we get a solid glimpse into the minds of this supremely alien race, and also get a deeper feel for what’s at stake in the events of The Battle of Earth.
Most of all, I got a sense of wonder writing it. I hope you feel it too.
Tim C. Taylor – April 2020
2739AD. Book6 - The Battle of Earth Part 1: Endgame
The dying General McEwan has no choice but to move the Legion into a trap set by alien warlord, Tawfiq.
This is the last campaign – the endgame. Defeat would mean extinction for humanity in THE BATTLE OF EARTH…
* * *
The author wishes to thank all those who supported the making of this book. In particular, Paul Melhuish for allowing me to raid his vault of filthy Skyfirean vernacular, Hans, Mike, JR, Melissa, Donna Scott, the wonderful recon team volunteers (sorry for blowing a lot of you up), and the loyal supporters on humanlegion.com.
* * *
— Recon Team —
I wish to thank our Recon Team for this book, who volunteered to scout out the first draft, searching for hazards. This book is much better for their generous assistance.
— Tim C. Taylor
Brian Anderson
Lynda Card
Reed Fallaw Jr.
Mike Garst
Andrew Jackson
Marc Morris
Steve Salas
Will R. Smithers
Brent Spurrell
Andrew Stafford
Michael Tompkins
— Prologue —
2701AD
The grounds of the Imperial Palace.
White Knight homeworld.
Dense bands of roiling mutagenic gas clouds tumbled along the valley floor, propelled by the light breeze the Emperor had ordained for his pleasure. The umber fog invaded all living tissue touched by its greasy embrace, gnarling the genetic sequences it encountered, sacrificing the designs of nature upon the altar of change.
His people called these clouds the flekk. Under its kiss, sturdy limbs transformed
into flowing tentacles. Eyes became mouthparts. Bone turned to hydraulic rams. Organ warred on organ, and minds imploded in a spiral of civil war that took on new factions at every cycle.
Much as the White Knight Empire had fragmented and burned in its latest bout of civil strife.
The Emperor growled, his deep rumble muffled by the sacred flekk clouds, but still loud enough to echo off the rocky face of the narrow valley in the heart of his pleasure grounds.
This latest war had been different.
It had featured humans.
He breathed deeply of the clouds of change.
At this gas density, all but an infinitesimal fraction of living beings would be dead within moments.
The Emperor continued to fill the enormous lung capacity of his current body, the form he was chained to.
He was not like the lesser species of the galaxy. His being was imbued with change, and the constant and forced adaptation of his race had made the White Knight Empire the strongest in the Trans-Species Union. The flekk clouds were the secret to their dominance.
But not for him, personally. By instructing his loyal followers to remain in a single form, he had successfully flushed out potential political rivals. In doing so, however, he had filled them with such loathing of his blasphemy that they had resorted to armed revolt. Hiding in the chaos of the war, a new faction had sprung from nowhere, the Human Legion. Not content with winning that war superficially in his name, and imposing a humiliating peace treaty signed at the Imperial Palace, this Legion had left behind a bioweapon that had locked the Emperor and his people permanently into their current forms.
Despite this petty demonstration of the Legion’s power over its former master, the ascendancy of the humans would not last long. Prisoners of that species had revealed under torture that his form resembled their mythical demons. That was good. When the tables were turned, he would become the demon that would haunt the nightmares of all humanity for generations, until he tired of them and exterminated the vermin race from existence.
With his tongue extended and his nose widened, he tasted the flekk essence of roasted sugars and warmed cyanide.
It tasted of change.
Of course it did. Vassal races waxed poetically about the serene calm they enjoyed from the natural beauty of their planets.
Calm was for slaves.
Power came from change. From forcing through mutation and experimentation to farm the bounties of transformation.
And in culling the inevitable failures. The vast majority of mutations had to be destroyed so that those with promise could be properly cultivated. In the endless churn of corporeal reinvention, the only constant was the Cull.
The Emperor expelled his lungs in a long howl, before dropping to all fours and cantering along the valley floor on cloven hooves. There was one branch of his own race so distinct that few realized they were White Knights at all. That particular experiment had proved so valuable that its culling had been extended long enough for them to plan rebellion.
The foreseers – Night Hummers as the humans called them – had deceived their betters. And now, it seemed, they were paying an unexpected price.
“Farmer,” he spoke into the comm pendant as he ran, “do they wither still?”
“Your Elevance,” reported the underling the Emperor had installed to act as a combined doctor, jailer, and farmer of the foreseer creatures. The farmer sounded relieved he was not based on the homeworld, but in the foreseer nursery inside the cluster of Trojan planetoids that preceded the orbit of the mother planet.
“You sound nervous. Have you failed me?”
“We have lost them,” said the farmer.
The Emperor dug in his heels, throwing up a cloud of dust to thicken the clouds. “What do you mean lost?”
“Their bodies are recovering slightly, and I believe can be nursed back to full health. But their ultra-cognitive functions – including the ability to peer into the future – are dead. They are reduced to vacuum amoebas floating in the microgravity. Vegetables. We have only the wildest speculation as to why.”
Retracting his hooves and extending clawed humanoid hands, the Emperor clutched at the formless clouds, imagining the Legion’s commander inside his powerful grip being squeezed to a pulp. General Arun McEwan was the cause of his foreseers’ demise. How? He did not yet know, but he was certain of his guilt. The human was probably entirely unwitting, but ignorance and stupidity hadn’t been enough to prevent McEwan from bringing his imperial presence to his knees.
The Emperor had been so desperate that he had considered an alliance with that upstart Hardit creature called Tawfiq. Jointly they would crush the humans at the trap Tawfiq was setting at the planet called Earth.
But the Hardits had infiltrated the imperial home system and would know the depth of the Emperor’s military defeat. The Human Legion was only now clearing the system themselves, their two principal commanders having taken half their fleet in opposite directions after splitting into rival factions while still in orbit around the homeworld.
The Emperor howled. Such a display of his enemy’s weakness deserved exploitation, but his own military might lay shattered in the twisted ruins of the metal world tree.
But there were loyal garrisons in other systems, and secondary fleets in transit between the stars. Many vassal races remained who could be pressed even harder into military service. But to rebuild a strike force to take on the Legion or the Hardit Empire would take time. Centuries, most likely. By then the leaders of the Legion would be dead, and their successors would have turned on themselves as humans always eventually did.
Give the vermin their due, though. McEwan’s team had agreed vague terms in the peace deal they had forced upon the Emperor. The many key clauses had been agreed with enough flexibility in their wording that the treaty meant whatever the two sides decided it should mean. It was a dynamic equilibrium of power that McEwan considered a victory. With the Legion in temporary ascendancy, he could afford to treat his most onerous clauses lightly. Even so, McEwan’s pledge to retain the Cull of his own people, albeit in a drastically reduced form, was still burdensome enough to cause the Legion’s split. And when that equilibrium shifted in the Emperor’s favor, then the humans would learn their true place in the hierarchy of existence.
The Legion had pushed hard for the human homeworld to be included within the Human Autonomous Region, the nominally loyal vassal state within the White Knight Empire. But Earth contained the seeds of the Legion’s ultimate destruction. Light though their tribute would be, the Legion was treaty-bound to defend the borders of their autonomous region on behalf of their Emperor, and Earth was occupied by Tawfiq’s Hardit Empire.
“You swore allegiance,” he howled at the clouds. “I will have my tithe in living flesh and precious minerals from every world in my empire, McEwan. Or I will have you.”
Either the Legion would dash itself upon the defenses Tawfiq was preparing in the Solar System, or McEwan would triumph against Tawfiq, but critically weaken his Legion in the carnage of the Battle of Earth.
Either way, neither the Human Autonomous Region nor the Hardit Empire would be more than fleeting aberrations. The Emperor hoped their leaders would survive long enough to beg for death at the feet of their master.
He connected with his last remaining reconnaissance squadron in the outer system and ordered them to move out immediately and tail McEwan’s main fleet. They would probably be spotted by the Legion’s rearguard, but now that the proper lines of authority had been confirmed in the Treaty of Athena, the Legion would not dare to fire upon imperial vessels.
He had originally intended to keep his reconnaissance ships hidden, but it was a higher priority that they did not miss any aspect of McEwan’s failure.
It would take many years for the ships to travel through the void to meet their destiny at Earth. And when they did, the imperial reconnaissance ships were loaded with vast blocks of stored entangled communication bandwidth, which he would use to t
he full to watch the events as they unfurled in real time.
He closed his eyes and indulged in one last fantasy of squeezing McEwan’s head until it pulped.
Then he turned around and marched back to the palace. Before he could take advantage of his enemies’ mutual destruction, he first had a shattered empire to rebuild, and with his foreseers afflicted by this strange malady, he had lost a critical intelligence asset.
It was time to create another.
—— PART I ——
PAYBACK
— Chapter 01 —
37 years later…
2738AD
The target grew rapidly in the cockpit of Squadron Leader Laban Caccamo’s X-Boat.
The Carbuncle: that’s what the intelligence analysts called it, and the impression of random metal boxes glued together and adorned with comm dishes and force booms was indeed ugly.
Mind you, everything to do with the New Order Hardits was ugly. That’s why the Legion had come here to do the galaxy a public service and wipe them the hell out.
He took a moment to take in the sight of the moon the Carbuncle orbited. The hemisphere turned to the sun gleamed in the black of space, its dark side visible only through the absence of distant stars it obscured.
Caccamo had gone through a phase in novice school of reading as many ancient Earth stories as he could. They often spoke of the moon as casting a romantic light upon the Earth. The moon was mystical. Its silvery light could spawn demons. Fairies and elves danced in the moonlight, like sexy space-rats with wings and pointy ears.
And this was that same moon. Luna. According to the stories, the light striking his retinas was the most romantic in the universe.
He shrugged. He wasn’t getting it. Luna was just another drentball airless rock, same as all the others.
It was the squat Carbuncle in Lunar orbit that was revving his heartbeat and making his hands tingle over the flight stick, because this was the first target to be hit in a campaign to liberate Earth. And when Earth was won, the wars would finally be over.