The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

  Human, Littorane, or Jotun engineers would have built underground defensive warrens with mathematical precision, but the Trog tunnels were so organic they almost looked like living beings. They didn’t merely zigzag along a plane to thwart the possibility of an enemy slaughtering the defenders by firing down a straight line, but they snaked up and down, twisting completely around on themselves and narrowing into constrictions he would have struggled to pass through if not for Hansel’s ability to cut through any obstruction – or even go off-piste through the ground and bypass an obstacle altogether. Bedrock still required blasting or burning through, but Trogs could swim through the deepest subsoils.

  Without a Marine BattleNet feeding data into a visor HUD, Arun could not track the fast-moving events in the tunnels, so he had passed tactical command to a senior dragoon officer duo.

  The Trog half was known as Batch, and the lilac-eyed woman who rode the Trog – her hair spiked up and dyed blue in an echo of a Celtic warrior – was named Escandala-2713.

  His brain struggled to process the information that this clone was his daughter, biologically speaking, and was named after his mother. It was off-the-scale weird.

  But Escandala and Batch had rallied the exhausted Trog army, and having robbed the enemy attack of momentum, was now pushing back.

  All Arun had to do was hurry up and stay alive.

  “Will you stop doing that?” Hansel snapped at Arun while they waited for the Hardit pressure to relent from the relative safety to the rear of the front lines – although the front in tunnel warfare was a fluid concept at best.

  Arun frowned. “Stop what?”

  “Drumming your fingers on my saddle rail. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Hush,” Gretel implored. “You know the Great Parent talks often of the Queen of Battle when he was merely the Human McEwan. Their first meeting was traumatic.”

  “I was buried alive,” said Arun, snatching his hand away from Hansel’s saddle rail. “It was not a pleasant experience.”

  “You looked at the time as if you enjoyed some of it,” said Springer, voice like a devilish angel.

  “Enjoyed?” Hansel spiraled antennae in amusement. “Please elaborate.”

  “Well…” Springer caught Arun’s warning glare and shrugged. “He was so high on combat drugs that he didn’t know what was going on. For a lot of the experience, he was singing. Badly. Naked, too, as I recall.”

  “I do not wish him to sing,” said Gretel. “It might be bad for morale.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Hansel retorted. “You do not suffer his drumming fingers.”

  Arun froze his hand. He’d been drumming again.

  “You see?” said Hansel, waving antennae imploringly. “Please sing, great Queen Human McEwan. Take pity on me and sing.”

  Shaking his head – he couldn’t exactly imagine Indiya or Aelingir doing this – Arun filled his lungs with the fetid tunnel air and prepared to sing.

  But the song never reached his lips. The world exploded in confusion. Arun was spinning through the air, ripped painfully from Hansel’s back. He felt as if hidden assailants had beaten his reinforced skull with iron bars, making it ring like a bell. Meanwhile, other little bastards were hammering away at his rib cage from the inside. He was going to choke to death with the dust and debris filling his mouth, but his lungs were so agonizingly bruised that he just held himself without breathing until he impacted the ground and grunted in pain.

  He opened his eyes but saw only an impenetrable haze of dust cut through with flashes from energy weapons, and the din of a furious melee filled with Hardit growls and yelps of pain.

  A huge Trog charged at him.

  At first, Arun thought the creature was coming to his aid, but it was a big, dumb digger caste Trog. He braced for the giant’s impact as it ran across him, but the digger knew enough to step nimbly over him. He could do with being shielded by the creature’s bulk, but to guard Arun from the Janissary attack was beyond the creature’s comprehension. Instead, it was leaping up into the air like a dancer. Other bulky shapes were similarly prancing, oblivious to the battle raging around them.

  The air cleared sufficiently Arun to realize what he was seeing; the diggers were eating the dirt right out of the air. And the sight they revealed was not good.

  Janissaries had blasted a hole through the tunnel wall and were pouring through in unceasing numbers.

  He looked around, searching for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing. He had no armor and no visor HUD, and he still could see nothing clearly, certainly not Hansel nor Springer. The hole the Hardits had blasted was no more than fifty feet from where he’d been chatting with the others. That was too close to be a coincidence. The enemy was here for single purpose: to kill him.

  Arun had never felt so helpless in his long life. Rolling onto his belly, he dug his fingers into the dirt and began dragging his body away from the fighting.

  He made about ten feet before he was grabbed from above and lifted off the ground. Arun twisted and bucked, flinging his arms to throw his weight around.

  It did no good. He was hurled into the air and fell… directly into the cushioned area that served as a saddle on Hansel’s thorax.

  “Stop wriggling, will you?” grumbled the Trog.

  “What took you so long?” laughed Arun as he grabbed the power lance from the bracket on Hansel’s flank.

  “Oh, nothing much. Just passing the time saving Springer and Gretel. Now, quit yapping, Queen of Battle, and act regal.”

  Arun grinned. “You got it.”

  Arun activated the tip of his lance and charged into the fray.

  Unlike the Hardits and Trogs who could tell friend from foe by scent, Arun relied far more on his eyesight, which struggled to penetrate the still-thick dust clouds. So he trusted to Hansel’s superior senses and his own quick reactions.

  There… a tail appeared out the dust clouds. Arun guessed where the torso was, and aimed his power lance, thumbing a blast of intense blue light that lit up a Janissary wielding a grenade launcher. The Hardit screamed and burned.

  Arun wanted to grab the launcher, but Hansel had already bounded away. Just in time – a stream of Hardit bullets flailed the space where they had been a second earlier.

  Hansel wheeled and caught a pair of Janissaries from behind, their rifles up and noses probing the air to find where Arun had disappeared to.

  Hansel speared one with the sole horn that remained after the Battle of Uluru, and Arun jabbed the other with his lance, the tip cutting through Hardit armor, hide, and ribs to pierce its heart.

  And beyond the dead and dying Hardits, Arun saw Springer and Gretel scything through the Hardits like reapers of death.

  Nonetheless, by the time the air had cleared fully, the situation looked grim indeed. Arun’s Trog guard had fought back tenaciously, the old Marines and their clone children gutting hundreds of the enemy on their lances and horns, or stomping them beneath their feet, but hundreds more were still racing through the breach in the wall.

  In the narrow confines of the tunnel, the Hardits hadn’t been able to take full advantage of their superior numbers. Then the wall exploded as they opened a second breach. A few moments later they blew a third. Now that the stream of Janissaries was becoming a flood, the attackers made their numbers count and began separating the Trogs into isolated groups, surrounding them. Despite their formidable chitin armor, the Trogs succumbed rapidly to the sheer weight of Hardit firepower.

  Although the lance Arun wielded was deadly effective, he wanted to die with an SA-71 carbine in his hands, as was his Marine birthright.

  He jerked, disoriented because his memories and his reality were blurring. Consequently, he missed a Hardit, his lance merely striking a glancing blow against the enemy’s flank instead of slicing through the heart.

  Hansel skidded around in the dirt and dealt the slightly stunned Hardit a crushing blow with his armored Trog abdomen.

  “Do you tire?” aske
d Hansel breathlessly.

  Arun noted his companion’s labored breathing and suddenly realized both that Hansel was bleeding in a dozen places, and that Arun cared. He stretched forward and gave the creature’s antennae a quick stroke in the way that Pedro liked. “No, my friend. I thought I heard the report of Marine carbines. I’m sorry. I think my memories are rearing up to claim me.”

  “I do not hear human carbines,” said Hansel as he lowered his armored head to the ground. A Hardit fusillade ricocheted off his crest, snapping jagged shards off the once-magnificent display. “However… I smell something approaching that I cannot identify. Nor can I pin down its location.”

  Yet more explosions blasted the walls, sending out fresh clouds of choking dust. This time the breaches were in the opposite wall, completing the encirclement of the Trogs.

  Or so Arun thought. His eyes couldn’t see through the dust, but his ears could hear through it. And that sound of gunfire was so familiar that he could hear it through vacuum, the laws of physics be damned.

  He heard the whine of SA-71 rails charging, the soft fizz and pop as darts emerged from the business end at hypersonic velocity, simultaneous with the wet fleshy noise of a Janissary life ending. Then he heard it all over again. Controlled Marine carbine fire.

  A moving shape caught his eye through the clouds. There was something different about this person – not only did the combat seemed to be focused on them, but the way they moved was different from anyone else Arun had ever seen.

  He knew who this was.

  — Chapter 34 —

  Arun McEwan

  Beneath the Mediterranean

  The Marine wore the same ACE-series combat armor Arun had practically been born wearing. Not only was the armor proof against the worst Hardit small arms fire – reducing impacts that would rip gaping holes out of flesh to mere brutal punches – the exo muscles of his armor were powerful enough to lift his enemies and dash them against the ground in head-pulping violence.

  This, Arun knew from personal experience. But this wearer neither wielded an SA-71 – it was strapped to his back – nor ripped apart his enemies with gauntleted hands.

  The Marine advancing on Arun used his powered armor to wield a black two-handed sword through the heads and torsos of his opponents with tireless strength.

  And his armor was enhanced by the nimble bodyguard who used her carbine’s teeth to rip apart any Janissary who worked around the sword-wielding warrior’s flank.

  He still couldn’t recall the bodyguard’s identity, but the swordsman… this was the leader of the Sleeping Legion forces on Earth, Lance Scipio, who should be hundreds of klicks away to the north.

  When he’d first arrived, bearing barely believable stories of hidden assets buried beneath Tranquility-4, and then went into battle armed with a sword (what the frakk?) Arun had thought Scipio a deranged madman, and not in a good way.

  Arun began to reconsider his assessment of the man.

  He’d seen that desperate need to get into close quarters fighting deeply embedded into earlier generations of Marines. His old friend, Carabinier Umarov, had been so eager to close with the enemy that once within a hundred yards, he’d drop his weapons and sprint at them, screaming paralyzing battle cries, and brandishing his crescent-shaped blades. And now that he thought of his dead friend, Arun recalled that when he’d first met Umarov, the ancient Marine had referred to Arun’s Detroit home as Marine Farm #3.

  If Beta City was Marine Farm #2, then where the hell was Marine Farm #1? Scipio had mentioned something about another Marine base at Cardamine Island. Frakk it! Umarov had given him a clue to the existence of this new Sleeping Legion nearly two centuries ago, but Arun had never joined the dots.

  A stray Janissary bullet grazed Arun’s back. He leaned out beyond the cover of Hansel’s head shield and fired lance blasts at the group of three Hardits trying to flank him.

  Springer and Gretel wheeled around Arun’s rear to protect his exposed flank, because Hansel was no longer able to respond to the Hardit attacks. Arun’s mount was wheezing now, listing on his five remaining legs and bleeding heavily. Arun had seen Trogs recover from far worse batterings, but there was no way his friend would be able to accompany him to Victory City and Tawfiq.

  Hansel set his head down to protect his rider from another wave of Hardits flowing around the swirling melee that had brought Scipio and his bodyguard to a halt. The dragoon’s crest armor was flaking off in jagged sheets in the hail of incoming fire.

  Arun looked through the cracks in the armor crest and fired lance blasts at every Hardit he could see. Springer did the same.

  Then another wave of Janissaries made a push for their target.

  Scipio was fully engaged with the Hardits to his front, but the Janissaries had changed tactics. They were pinning him in place with feint attacks, so they could overwhelm his bodyguard first.

  “Never again!” she screamed, in a voice Arun definitely recognized. A pair of Janissaries brought chainsaws buzzing to angry life and advanced the cutting edges to her neck. She flew into the air, using the ability of her suit to make mighty leaps, even if that model couldn’t fly in strong gravity fields. With five Janissaries clinging to her legs, she collided with the roof – which dislodged two of the Hardits – and descended toward an area of tunnel empty of anything beyond the dust-coated corpses of a Janissary and one of Arun and Springer’s clone children.

  Meanwhile, Scipio was on his belly in the dirt and blood, his arms stretched out behind him by teams of Janissaries. Kneeling, the two chainsaw wielders who’d threatened the bodyguard now brandished their cutting tools near Scipio’s neck, looking around at Arun and lifting their long lips in a Hardit grin.

  This was an execution being staged for his benefit! Even for the foul creations of Tawfiq Woomer-Calix, this was perverted behavior.

  Arun pointed his lance at the group around Scipio, but the weapon was inaccurate. With the Hardits crouching so close to the colonel, he was as likely to hit the human they were about to execute.

  Springer charged at them.

  “McEwan!” warned the bodyguard. Arun remembered her now. Her name was Kraevoi, and she was supposed to be dead.

  “Frakk!” A jolt of fear hit Arun, which in turn roused Hansel. Kraevoi hadn’t landed in empty space at all. She’d come clattering down on top of a line of Janissaries who had been concealed behind an overlapping wall of shields that seemed to convey stealth concealment. Now that the shields had been scattered, their absence revealed a tripod-mounted cannon. It was in the final stages of being readied for use. And it was aimed at him.

  He jabbed at the gun with his lance, but the energy blast deflected off a force shield.

  A short distance away, Springer was busy jabbing at the chainsaw-wielding Janissaries threatening Scipio while Gretel stomped on those pinning him down.

  Kraevoi tried to leap again, but her suit motors whirred powerlessly, drained, and the Janissaries rushed her, pushing her away from the cannon as they struck her with metal clubs that glowed blue.

  Hansel stirred. He was too exhausted now to control his scent, which reeked of agony and the kind of fatigue that smelled fatal. But he jumped at the Hardit cannon.

  And in mid-leap, the cannon barked.

  A stream of rounds cut through the Trog’s thorax and abdomen, but the great bulk of Arun’s mount was too great to be blown away and he landed in front of the gun

  Hansel’s legs collapsed on impact, and Arun had to hang on tightly to avoid being thrown by the hard landing. He lost his grip on his lance, and was reaching for his pistol to shoot at the Janissary who’d fired the cannon, when he saw the Hardit twitching, impaled on Hansel’s remaining horn.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Two more Janissaries raced to the gun, pulling it upright and aiming at Arun.

  He shot at them with his pistol, but the plasma round glanced off the portable force shield one was using to protect them both.

  The firer grinned. “Die, McEwan!�
� it said through a speaker on its collar.

  The shield bearer activated a control on its wrist, which Arun assumed would open an aperture for the cannon to fire through.

  He aimed at the cannon’s barrel with his pistol.

  There came a blur of motion. Gretel streaked into Arun’s peripheral vision, Springer standing up in the stirrups, her lance high above her head, angled at the Hardit gun crew.

  She threw the weapon at the monkey-wolves at the same time as the Janissaries fired. A split second earlier, Arun had dropped his pistol and dived for the ground behind Hansel.

  Shots thudded into Hansel’s flank, but the Trog gave no reaction.

  Arun grabbed his pistol off the ground and scrambled around Hansel to face the gun crew. He saw the Hardits pitched forward into the dirt, Springer’s lance skewering both their torsos.

  And that was it. The battle was over.

  Gretel was nudging Hansel with her head, as if urging her friend to get to his feet and stop messing around, but his scent was already growing cold.

  Scipio was striding over to Arun, hand outstretched. “Ass saved, sir,” he was saying. “Just in the nick of time.”

  Arun had no reply.

  The bodyguard rose unsteadily to her feet and took off her helmet to reveal curly black hair and a diamond-hard stare. A tiny part of him rang with recognition to see Kraevoi after all these years. She never made the rendezvous in the operation over Beta City in the First Tranquility Campaign. Arun hadn’t searched for her. Couldn’t have. She was supposed to be dead.

  But Arun had nothing to say on that either.

  “Thank you, Scipio,” Arun said tonelessly. “But you weren’t in time to save everyone.” He leaned forward and embraced the cracked head of his dead friend.

  He told himself he was being foolish – Hansel was only a Trog with a silly name, after all – but Arun’s eyes and his mind were too clouded with tears to encompass Lance Scipio or Sashala Kraevoi.