The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

There was no doubting how Daex would treat traitors.

  A comm hail came from Admiral Kreippil, momentarily throwing Indiya.

  She swallowed hard and took a moment to regain her composure. “Go ahead, Kreippil.”

  “I submit an update from our investigation into Bloehn’s claims.”

  “Yes.” When Kreippil didn’t immediately reply, she added, “Go ahead.”

  “Admiral, I lack firm data, but my instincts push me to disturb you with the fragments I do know.”

  Indiya felt herself sink into a cold sweat. She started up a hormonal package to keep her cool and focused, because she knew her old Littorane friend well. By the time Kreippil began to feel the initial pangs of anxiety, most people would have already fled in panic. “Report,” she told him. “Do not hold back with your speculation.”

  “Very well. Hidden among natural asteroids we think were transported to the L4 point, we found bodies with surface signs of gas sublimation. We don’t know what that gas was, but we did find artificial triggers that were fired within the past few days. Between your position and L4 are trace levels of inert gas and dust, some of which is moving your way. The labs just reported on one of the samples we took. It contained a tiny number of nano-factories that self-destructed under observation, but not before revealing a link to a large mass of dark matter. The labs do not have the technology or even the theory to effectively measure this dark matter, but some of the models based on what they do know are predicting that these are bombs – complex devices of which the dark matter component masses tens of millions of times greater than the visible portion.”

  “Corrosion bombs?”

  “Inconclusive, but compatible with the data.”

  “And these models, are they indicating an attack sufficient to wipe out the fleet, as Bloehn suggested?”

  “More than that, Admiral. If true, then this strike would put an impenetrable barrier around Earth orbit. Permanently.”

  “You did well to trust your instinct,” Indiya told him. “Fleet Admiral Indiya to all ship captains. Emergency Protocol Delta-3. All ships to leave orbit immediately. Fleet commanders to coordinate shuttles to evacuate all personnel in orbital defense platforms but get the capital ships to safety first. Second Orbital Strike Squadron, you are to maintain high-Earth orbit at 80,000 klicks. I’m bringing Tanganyika strike forward by three hours.”

  Indiya’s heart pounded. The hormonal cocktail was working, it just wasn’t strong enough to calm her for what she needed to say next.

  Guess I’m still just about human, then.

  She raised the commander of the Earth invasion force.

  “Admiral?” queried Aelingir. The translation into human words didn’t fool her. She knew enough of Jotuns to hear the shock in Aelingir’s voice that the admiral would contact her unexpectedly.

  “I’m sorry, Aelingir. Tawfiq’s outwitted us. You’ve got ninety minutes before I order the strike. Be prepared for an imminent New Order counterattack. Hell, anything could happen. Even ninety minutes might be too long. We might no longer have any Legion ships in orbit by then. Let divine blessing be upon you and all who serve under you.”

  “It shall be done,” replied the Jotun commander, and cut the line to hurriedly implement the revised timetable.

  Indiya didn’t envy the Jotun. Many more people were going to die because she had brought the strike forward. And her gut was warning her that even this wouldn’t be enough.

  She actually found herself missing Phaedra Tremayne: Springer as she’d once been known. Annoying though she had been – though not as irritating as Arun’s childish infatuation with her – her precognition had occasionally proved vital. And as for the army of Hummers with the fleet, they had suddenly ceased their humming two years earlier. Those who were prepared to explain their silence simply said that their foresight was being blocked.

  With the Hummers neutralized, Nhlappo missing presumed dead, Xin gone with half the fleet, the White Knight Emperor effectively neutral, and Arun off playing soldiers, it was almost as if the other players in this war had stepped aside to let her and Tawfiq battle it out between them as champions of their respective sides.

  It looked like Tawfiq was winning.

  For now.

  You haven’t won yet, monkey-bitch. I’m just getting started.

  — Chapter 50 —

  Aelingir scanned the rows of human civilians lined up on the beach under the watchful eyes of her logistical task force. They shuffled their little feet in the white sand littered with the desiccated fragments of a washed-up sea plant, reluctant to release their grip on the familiar, pathetic though that was.

  “I recommend firing over their heads,” said Major Graenax, which only made Aelingir’s ears flick faster. The major was a good combat officer but lacked subtlety. He hadn’t spent years carefully studying humans the way Aelingir had.

  “Negative, Major. If you shoot they will scatter like a flock of birds, and we do not have time to root them out.” She growled before adding in a whisper. “We don’t have time to rescue all of them, whatever we do.”

  She trooped the line, the malnourished civilians shrinking from her martial bearing. They suited their dwelling place, their faded and much-mended clothing an echo of Dar es Salaam as this location was named. Only a hundred paces beyond the shoreline, tall buildings told of the city’s former glory, lingering licks of paint suggesting once-bright colors. Every window pane in this area had been blown out decades before, but the plastic sheets and patterned fabrics in some windows showed that the Hardits had permitted some life to continue here. Human eyes in those former apartment blocks and offices would be watching the scene below on the beach, wondering why the troopships were lined up on the sand under a protective cloud of drones and fighter craft.

  Good. Aelingir needed those eyes on her. That was the point.

  “You there!” she shouted at a pair of civilians she’d watch sneak their way to the back of the line “Where are you going?”

  Anywhere but here, seemed to be the answer. They fled for the safety of the city’s ruins. Aelingir’s Jotun Marines blocked the path they had taken and dared the other civilians to follow.

  The humans looked at each other. They lacked a chain of command… or did they? There was one human many of its fellows were looking to. A female. The white shooting through the hair beneath her hat told of age in her species, not vitality. The slight stoop confirmed Aelingir’s suspicion – this was an elder.

  “They run to their deaths,” shouted Aelingir. “Leave with us now if you wish to live.” She looked at the female and spoke carefully calculated words. “Think of your children.”

  The human woman bit her lower lip and tilted her head. It was the sign of a human decision maker deliberating…

  “You there!” Aelingir hurried over to the woman. “Are you the leader of this tribe?”

  The human peered up at her, her hairless face cracking into deep lines. “I was a city councilor, Jotun. Many years ago, before the Hardits stole our world. No, I am not a leader.”

  “Pity. You will have to do.”

  Aelingir grabbed the human with her mid-limbs and lifted the Earther until their heads were the same height. It was humiliating to extend the silly little human the honor of speaking at the same level, but she had assured Admiral Indiya that she would do her best to evacuate the civilians. And while it was true that the admiral was no bigger in physical stature than this civilian, the will of the purple-haired Spacer was powerful enough to intimidate Aelingir even down here on the planet.

  Respect it must be, then. “Acting human leader, I am General Aelingir, Commander-in-Chief of Planetary Forces. I greet you, but we must speak hastily. The city will be wiped out within an hour. Everyone here dead. Why do you not comply?”

  The human frowned, squirming annoyingly. “We’re not leaving.”

  “But why? We are not slavers. This is an evacuation.”

  “You see, ma’am?” said Major Graenax over the comm
and channel. “The humans are impossible. It’s been the same all down the eastern seaboard. They aren’t like our human comrades in the Legion. They aren’t civilized by association with elder races such as ours.”

  “I concur,” said Aelingir, reluctantly. She raised the amplification of her translator speaker and bellowed for the civilians’ benefit, “Release the Wolves!”

  She’d forgotten the acting human leader who flinched in her grip at the deafening volume.

  “Sorry,” said Aelingir quietly, and gently tossed her to the sand before addressing the restless crowd. “Listen to me, humans. Your ancestors gave a million of their children to alien slavers who bred them as colonists, laborers, and soldiers. Many were experimented upon, reshaped to better serve the purposes of their new masters.”

  Howls haunted the ruined streets.

  “Some became the terror weapons of the White Knights. Lobotomized, bred for psychotic tendencies, brutalized, and drugged into kill frenzies, they were more a tool for punishment than a military force.”

  Still baying, strange figures stalked the streets or made predatory silhouettes in doorways and windows. At least, the strangeness of the naked humans coated in colorful scales were making the eyes of the civilians bulge wide. To Aelingir, though, they were a unit of Wolves who had cheerfully obeyed her order to run skyclad and scare the Earthers.

  “Yes,” she told the civilians, “you can see they’re here now. Wolves we call them. Do you think they hold you responsible for your ancestors’ betrayal?”

  The Wolves began to hoot menacingly, the same noise they would use to pump themselves up before an assault.

  Even Aelingir felt a couple of her claws extend at the implied threat of violence.

  “We’re leaving in these safe troopships. Come with us, or meet your cousins, the Wolves. Your choice.”

  Aelingir and her detachment began striding across the beach to the waiting transports, ignoring the civilians.

  The Wolf tactic would work at Dar es Salaam or it would not. She had done what she could. Even though civilians had largely been driven away from the eastern flank of the Great Rift Valley Line, intelligence said that the New Order had retained modest fishing communities to provide food and slave labor. Aelingir’s evacuation missions wouldn’t reach them all in time.

  “Sti’I’yk,” she barked over a new channel. “Report.”

  “The humans are stubborn,” the Gliesan colonel replied. “I am persuading them to make for higher ground, but many are too afraid to move out.”

  Aelingir’s AI provided a map of Sti’I’yk’s location. He was in Toliara, a coastal city on a large island called Madagascar that lay 1,800 klicks to the southeast of Aelingir’s position. It was hopeless. The evacuation plan she had prepared had allowed twenty-four hours. The admiral had cut that to one.

  The map view faded, replaced by the sight of the citizens leaving the ruins of Dar es Salaam and streaming across the sand and into the transports. There would be time for one return trip to the beach. No more.

  Time was shorter in Madagascar. Sti’I’yk had to drive his humans up mountains. “If they are merely afraid to move out, Colonel, then make them terrified to stay. Make use of your human units to provide the encouragement. The White Knights recruited and bred them for their extreme aggression. Use it!”

  Her AI fed Aelingir a stream of further reports. The human-led evac missions were faring much better. She was so used to humans who obeyed orders constantly that she hadn’t considered that difficulty. Several were being harassed by Hardit forces emerging from underground bunkers, an impediment that she had considered. They wouldn’t prove a problem.

  As she stepped up the ramp of her command shuttle, she paused to watch the wooden fishing vessels out in the bay, recording images of them for her auxiliary memory. There was a noble simplicity about them she decided she admired.

  Shame they will be gone within the hour.

  — Chapter 51 —

  “Evacuate all my Janissaries,” ordered Tawfiq. “The humans have taken the bait. They are committed now.”

  “Redeploying all troops in the Africa, South Asia, and Australian sectors to deep bunkers. Supreme Commander, do you wish me to save some of the Faithful?”

  Tawfiq closed her eyes and breathed in her sense of importance. To think she, the Primogenitor of the Janissaries and creator of the Hardit Empire, was once a low-ranked technician who had marshaled human auxiliary slaves in the tunnels of a Human Marine Corps base.

  Not anymore. Even with her Janissaries safely in their bunkers – safe from the humans anyway, if not their cursed Trog allies – that left over four million human Faithful defending the Great Rift Valley Line for their supreme commander. They may be mere humans, ragged, starving, and almost out of ammunition, but even so… millions… She tried to comprehend the number of lives that depended on her next words, but of course it was impossible. She had moved beyond the scale of mere mortals.

  “No, Kiflun. I intend to use their deaths as a psychological weapon aimed at my deadliest enemy. Order them to make themselves visible to the enemy. I want the Legion commanders to know their number before they order their deaths.”

  “I obey and implement, Supreme Commander.”

  “It is a shame that I must permit the Legion this flicker of hope. Are you certain our orbital attack will come too late?”

  Kiflun cowered before her mistress, judging the safest way to answer. “Blessed One, I agree that the Legion will strike as you predict, but I cannot be certain when. Given the haste of their evacuation of the citizens, I estimate the strike will be launched within an hour. Our attack will hit in a little over two hours. Something has panicked the human naval commander. She has moved faster than we expected.”

  “Very well.” She stood and watched Kiflun sink to her knees. “I understand the concept of uncertainty, Kiflun,” she told her errant servant. “Do not make the error of offering a patronizing answer again. Another shall pay for your insolence this time. This time.”

  “Supreme Commander?” queried the groveling aide. “You wish me to summon your pet, Romulus?”

  “My pet? Yes, I suppose that’s what the human is. And like a nice dog, he will sit at his mistress’s feet and together we will watch the show.”

  — Chapter 52 —

  “Admiral, I protest. Shock Strike Delta is under my command. It is I who should order the strike.”

  “Noted,” Indiya replied to her most senior Gliesan officer. “But regrettably I overrule. Politics, my friend. Better that a human be seen to order the strike than an alien.”

  “But, Admiral, we don’t regard you as a Homo sapiens human. You have long since transcended that description in our eyes.”

  Indiya sighed. Aureanus was one of the Legion’s most experienced naval commanders, but he was a Gliesan. He had meant his words as a powerful complement, but their naiveite only emphasized the correctness of her decision.

  “The people of Earth are less progressive than us,” she explained. “They do not understand the true meaning of the Human Legion. Don’t forget they have suffered decades of alien occupation. Besides…” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “It has become my burden to bear responsibility for the blood cost of our campaign. That has not changed. Strike Captain Danin-Franz, are you ready?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Then I order you to fire.”

  The six boats of Shock Strike Delta Flight fired their first volley of missiles. Less than a minute later, with the firing tubes reloaded, they launched their second and final salvo before accelerating hard to escape Earth orbit.

  Their ordnance went by the name of Planet Busters. However, they were not intended to destroy planets, a task accomplished far more easily by throwing broken up moons and asteroids down the gravity well. The enormous missiles, almost a klick long, were scalpels in comparison to the rock-throwing option, designed to surgically reshape planets below rather than destroy them. Although anyone caught within its are
a of effect would hardly use the word surgical.

  The New Order had selected the Great Rift Valley as a natural bastion with which to anchor their defensive line, and it had proved a formidable obstacle indeed.

  The Legion advance had stalled. Against the millions of defenders in their well-fortified positions and huge arsenals, the Legion liberation had not only lost momentum but was taking horrific losses as it butted its horns against this defensive line.

  Indiya could not permit such a delay to the invasion. And with the imminent threat of a Hardit counter-attack from space, the orbital strike had to go in now while near-Earth space still belonged to the Legion.

  Half of the first wave of missiles reached their targets deep underground, triggering earthquakes along the tectonic fault lines on which the rift was based.

  The great lakes that had filled the fault line depression shuddered with the angry twitching of the deep Earth. Mini-tsunamis washed up against the steep mountain sides that bounded the lakes, ripping away trees and soil to expose naked rock.

  With any luck, the power of the waves would also scour the interior of these inner walls of the New Order bastion, and flood much of the enormous tunnel network that spread through the mountain roots.

  The other half of the first missile salvo tunneled itself even deeper underground, burrowing beneath the mountains that separated the eastern lip of Lake Tanganyika from Lake Rukwa. Titanic thermonuclear explosions melted the bedrock.

  The mountains began to sink.

  Then the second wave hit and, seen from space, the results really did look like a surgical strike. Legion geologists had been prepping options for orbital strikes since before moving in system and had worked on this one for months.

  The effect was to breach the mountain wall to the east of Lake Tanganyika, and cut a channel to carry the flow east to the sea.

  Looking down from space, it looked like a scalpel’s incision through the eastern lip. It was barely visible, but it was all they needed.

  Lake Tanganyika was deep. Colossally deep. Big enough to contain 4,500 cubic miles of water – 14% of the planet’s freshwater – in just one lake. The water’s oxygen content long since leached away, the lower layers of the lake had lain lifeless and still for millions of years, but now the searing touch of the molten rock flashed it into furious life. A steam explosion charged out of the breach, tearing the gap wider as it went, and deepening the groove carved by the missiles to the east into a water channel that flooded out through Lake Rukwa and crashed beyond.