Orion Protected

by J. N. Chaney

  Only then did Legion finally let up.

  More than one Rung warrior collapsed from wounds and exhaustion.

  “We can’t stop. Not yet,” I said, going over to Tong, who had fallen on his hands and knees.

  The Remboshi took off his helmet to throw up on the ground in front of him, his shoulders heaving as he did so.

  “We killed—we killed so many of them,” Tong gasped after vomiting again and gasping for breath as he spoke in a weakened voice. “They just kept coming at us like they wanted to die. I killed so many of them.” He was obviously traumatized, but I had to snap him out of it.

  “This is what Legion wants,” I said, grabbing Tong by the shoulders and getting him to his feet. “He wants to get into our heads. We have to keep going.”

  I looked around at our depleted ranks. At least five Rung warriors were dead. There were twice that many wounded to various degrees. Those still able to be patched up were seen to by the medic, who got them ready to move again.

  Stacy helped John with a somewhat serious wound on his shoulder. A blade had found its way between his armor and his chest plate.

  “Dean’s right,” Dama said, finding her breath. She had not been seriously injured but was definitely showing signs of exhaustion. “We can’t stop now. We have to move on. We’re almost there now. Sulk!”

  Sulk limped forward, his tail dragging behind him. A trickle of blood dribbled down his left leg.

  “Protect the rear and leave no one behind, but get them moving as fast as you can,” Dama ordered.

  “And you?” Sulk asked. I thought he had nerve questioning his commander, but maybe that was common practice for the Rung army.

  “I’m taking point,” Dama said, raising a hand when Sulk looked as though he was going to argue. “Hurry. We can’t afford to let Legion regroup. We’re almost there!”

  15

  We took off at a steady but careful pace. As much as I would have liked to run the rest of the way, there were just too many of our wounded who couldn’t move quickly. I moved beside John, who I could tell was in more pain than he wanted to admit.

  “You going to make it?” I asked. “Because if you’re not, I should get a confession from you right now that you know I’d win in a fight if there was ever a rematch.”

  “Even now I could take you,” John grunted. “Don’t make me laugh. That might hurt and pop open my wound.”

  “We just have to make it to that power armor,” I reminded him. “We need to get you inside a suit, then it’s clear sailing from there on out.”

  “We’re just overlooking the little details, like how we’re all going to learn how to pilot said power suits on the run, that we have to actually get to them first, and hope that Legion isn’t making a move against the Orion as we speak,” John said.

  “Details,” I said, shrugging off the weight of worrying about those topics. I especially didn’t want to think about what was going on back at the camp right now. If that virus’s nasty little tendrils could reach out in so many different places at once, we needed to get it at its core to nip it in the bud. “Let’s worry about what we can control, right?”

  “Worry about what we can control,” John repeated after me. “You’re smarter than you look, Dean Slade.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” I answered with a small bark of a laugh.

  Up ahead, Dama came to a sudden halt. She consulted the map on the back of her right vambrace one more time.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, coming up next to her and following her line of sight. “Legion?”

  “When we round this corner, we’ll be in front of the doors to the armory,” Dama said, pointing to her map and indicating an image that was consistent with what she was describing. “We have to anticipate Legion will make one final stand here. I’m worried. There were thousands of Rung taking shelter here that Legion infected. We’ve come across dozens, maybe a hundred at most.”

  “So where are the rest?” Stacy asked as she came up and joined the conversation.

  “He may have taken some to other Rung bunkers, maybe others toward the Orion, but I fear he also left a fair amount here guarding the doors to the armory,” Dama said. “He couldn’t get in. We managed to change the passcode as we lost control of the bunker, but there’s no doubt he’s there, making sure we don’t get inside either.”

  “Any bright ideas?” I asked. “How to get through a few hundred infected with no more than ten, maybe fifteen capable fighters?”

  “I think I may have an idea,” Maksim said as he came up to us. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  What else was new? He didn’t seem to have too many ideas that I did like. None, actually.

  The four of us stood silent for a moment, anticipating what he was going to suggest, curious yet dreading what we would hear.

  “Try us,” I said, finally breaking the silence.

  “I noticed a few of the Rung have small explosive devices that we haven’t used yet. If we were to use these together, say with a few dozen smaller piece of metal scraps, we could clear a path,” Maksim suggested. “At the very least, it will buy us a few seconds during which Legion will be disoriented and we can get into the hangar where the power armor is kept.”

  “You want to make a dirty bomb?” Stacy asked with a sneer. “Adding in scrap pieces of metal to inflict as much damage as possible? How many times did you use that little trick back on Earth on civilians?” I supposed that Stacy was starting to get exhausted and a bit emotional, since I thought this was actually one of the few options we had. I hated the thought of killing so many infected, since we were closer to a potential cure, but if we did nothing at all, no one would be saved.

  “We need to think about right now,” Dama said, reining Stacy back in. “Whatever wrongs were committed before will have to wait. We need to focus on a solution and working together today or there may not be a tomorrow.” I was glad Dama had echoed my thoughts and I didn’t need to pull Stacy back to the here and now and the dilemma at hand.

  “We’ll scout ahead,” I said, nodding to Stacy. “Maksim can work with you to create the bomb.”

  “Agreed,” Dama said. “I don’t know how quiet you have to be. Legion obviously knows we’re down here. He’s just waiting for us now.”

  That thought brought a chill to my spine. Dama was right. Legion was waiting for us. He had anticipated our move at the stairwell, leading us to believe he was going to rush in and attack, then hold infected with blasters in the rear to catch us off guard. What did he have planned for us now?

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Stacy asked as we made our way down the corridor. The hall we would have to make a right on was still a good hundred meters or so in front of us if I had read Dama’s map correctly and was judging distance accurately.

  “How much I could use a hot meal and a bath right now?” I asked. “Or how that blaster took me in the chest so hard, it made my belly button touch my spine?”

  “What?” Stacy almost laughed, surprised by my attempt at humor. “No, not at all.”

  “Oh, go ahead, then,” I said, glad I was able to bring her a moment of relief from the seriousness of the situation. “What were you thinking?”

  “If this all works and we get into that room, we can’t let Maksim get into a power armored suit,” Stacy said, shaking her head. “It’s too much of a risk. Think of what he’s able to do on his own, then put him behind the wheel of a walking tank? We can’t take that risk.”

  “I agree,” I said. “When we get in there, you and I will need to be on top of that situation. Tie him up if he’ll let us, knock him out if he won’t. As much as I hate the guy and don’t trust him either, he did save my life back in the woods and he’s trying to help now. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s the amount of concussions I’ve had or something else, but I don’t know how to feel about him, and whether his intentions are sincere or not.”

  “We won’t have to decide,” Stacy said. “If we live through
this, we’ll take him back, and he can stand trial in front of his peers.”

  I was about to make another comment about this topic, when we arrived at the entrance to the hall. On our right, just a few feet away, another massive corridor opened up, leading to the power armor hangar.

  I edged toward the corner, peering around the side.

  My helmet had done a good job of keeping odors out, but a rotten stench too strong to ignore hit me now. It smelled like death. That was the only way to describe the horrible stench assailing my nostrils at the moment.

  I tried hard to fight back a gag.

  Stacy coughed next to me as she too peered around the corner.

  Rows of infected stood waiting for us halfway down the aisle. The darkness didn’t give away much, but bright blue emergency lights stationed around the edges of the doors to the power armor hangar lit up enough of the room to see the horror greeting our group. There had to be a thousand or more, all standing so close to one another the air in the area had gone stale.

  One of the infected in the front lines took a step forward. It was an elderly Rung female with a deep gash across her left eye.

  “You should know that as you waste time here, the Orion falls,” she cackled with glee. “Your stupid knee-jerk race attacks where the bulk of my force isn’t. All those you love and care about are now mine. They are joining my fold as we speak.”

  I knew that Legion could be lying to throw us off. Still, a ball of panic formed in the pit of my stomach.

  “While we wait here playing these games, your people die.” The Rung shrugged her shoulders. “Even if you succeed in getting your precious power armor, you have gained nothing and instead are losing everything.”

  “You’re lying,” Stacy said, leaving the cover of the corner. She walked out into full view of the Legion horde. “You’re stalling for more time.”

  “Maybe I am stalling, but that means nothing.” The Rung lifted her head into the air and laughed. “Your fate is set. I actually have you to thank for waking me from my hibernation. When the Orion crashed, you gave me so many hosts to use and spread. You brought all of this about.”

  “You were just biding your time until the Rung and Remboshi came out of hiding,” I said, refusing to let Legion put the blame on our shoulders. I wouldn’t let that leech get to me. “You would have consumed them and then used the craft to travel off-world to another and another and another after that.”

  “Ahhh,” Legion’s host said, giving me a wide smile. “Dean Slade, you are more perceptive than you seem.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I asked, looking to Stacy for answers.

  She shrugged and held one palm up in an uncommitted gesture. “Maybe you just have one of those faces.” We refocused on the host as Legion spoke through her once again.

  “So, you know of my plan to take the Rung craft beyond the stars?” Legion asked with a sigh. “It will take some work. Their craft is not yet capable of such a trip, but in time, I will succeed. Once I infect those Eternals of yours and am able to use the Cognitive you call Iris, I should have more than enough information to then turn my conquest to the galaxy. Amazing what we can do when we all work together.” It was as if, in this parasite’s mind, we and the Rung had engineered everything to benefit Legion. It was truly a parasite, a freeloader, in the ultimate sense of the term.

  “It’s not going to happen,” Stacy said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

  “It’s too late.” Legion scratched at the underside of its chin. “The fundamental flaw of any species is the inability to work with one another. You, the Rung, and the Remboshi banded together too late. The reason I will succeed is because I am of one mind, of one single need. You couldn’t learn to work with one another, and like I said, now that you have, your window of opportunity has passed.”

  Memories of what Jezra said to me of her prophecy, of Lou and his faith, ran through my mind like lightning.

  “You’re wrong,” I said, feeling something like anger mixed with conviction rise in my chest. It was time we put this plague in its place. If I could, I was going to give it something to think about. “I’m going to stop you. That’s why I’m here. That’s why all of this had to happen. I’m going to burn you, and my face will be the last thing you see.”

  “We will see,” Legion said with a dismissive hand wave to me. “Now go waste your time somewhere else. I need to focus my concentration on bringing down the Orion and infecting everyone in the camp.”

  My hands clenched around the Dragon’s Breath I held in my palms as a trickle of nervous, angry sweat ran down my spine, chilling quickly and sending goosebumps to my limbs. More than anything, I wanted to lay into him right there. It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger a half dozen times and turn him into a pile of meat, but that would only kill the one host.

  “Soon enough,” Stacy said, placing a hand on my arm. “Soon enough.”

  I retreated with Stacy back around the corner and to our forces down the hall.

  “Did you mean that back there?” Stacy asked.

  “Mean what?” I asked.

  “Did you mean that you believe this all happened for a reason?” Stacy asked me with hesitation in her voice. “I thought you didn’t buy into all that mumbo jumbo fate talk.”

  I lifted my right hand to the medallion that hung around my neck. I remembered what my dying wife said to me. I remembered the events that took me to this planet and had led to this point. It was hard to explain everything with any degree of rationality. Maybe something else was driving the events that had brought us here.

  “I guess I’m starting to,” I answered as honestly as possible. “Maybe Jezra and…and Lou were onto something.” Before I could get into it further, we were interrupted by John.

  “Well, the madman’s done it,” John said, coming up to us and throwing a thumb back toward the way he came. “He’s created something, all right.”

  I followed John’s line of sight to where the Rung shone their lights down on the ground near where Maksim worked. They had used the inside of a Rung chest plate as a housing for the many smaller bombs the Rung carried. Stuffed into the breast plate were a variety of smaller scrap pieces of metal, knives, screws, and anything else that had been scrounged.

  “The smaller explosives will work as a catalyst to ignite one another and send the shrapnel ripping through Legion’s ranks,” Maksim said, looking up from his spot on the floor. “How many of the infected are there?”

  “A thousand, maybe more,” I said. “We’ll have to set this thing off and then it’s still going to be a fight to get to the doors.”

  “We’ll make it,” Dama said in a hard voice. “We’ll make it, if for no other reason than because we have to.”

  16

  “You sure you can hit this?” I asked Sulk as I carried the explosive device to the corner of the hall. “I’m going to heave it as far as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll hit it,” Sulk said with confidence, taking a knee as he positioned his rifle around the corner. “Throw it high.”

  The explosive felt heavy in my hands. It had to weigh a good thirty pounds. Between the small explosive devices and the added shrapnel, it wasn’t going to be an easy feat tossing this thing for distance.

  John came over to me, motioning for the bomb.

  “We’ll throw it further together,” John said, taking one side of the weapon.

  Stacy, Dama, Tong, and the remaining Rung that were still able to fight stood, ready to sprint forward. Our plan was simple enough. Throw the bomb. Sulk would shoot it to detonate the charges. We then would run like hell to the armory doors before Legion could recover.

  The idea was nothing fancy, but anyone who has ever been in a stressful situation understands things rarely go to plan. There were a number of things that we hadn’t thought of that could go horribly wrong, but like I mentioned before, our options were pretty limited.

  “We throw this and we get behind cove
r,” I told John. “On three.”

  We started to swing the bomb between us, counting each swing as we did.

  Legion, for his part, remained content to stand there staring at us, like he was almost daring us to try and break through his lines.

  “One, two, three!” I yelled in unison with John.

  John and I sent the bomb sailing through the air. As soon as we let go, both of us dove for cover back around the corner.

  The resounding boom was deafening. True to his word, Sulk had nailed the explosive, setting it off around the corner. I hoped we didn’t lose our hearing from the reverberation. We needed to be able to communicate.

  John and I were just getting back to our feet as the others rushed forward. Our window of opportunity was already closing and we couldn’t afford that happening. With each passing second, Legion was getting his troops up and ready for a fight. And after this fight, we still needed to get home and check on the colonists.

  I grabbed my Dragon’s Breath and followed at the rear of the line. In front of me, everything was smoky and dark. Once again, I was assaulted with the stench of so many bodies in a single room and now the acrid tang of the smoke. Although my helmet filtered out some, I still could smell it and taste it too.

  Dama and Stacy, who were in the lead, were already discharging their weapons on Legion. Our plan was working for the time being. Our throw had been perfect. Sulk hit it right when it was over the center of their numbers.

  Bodies were everywhere, some not moving and others trying to get their bearings. We were off like a shot, sprinting through the smoke. We bullied past most of them, firing at those who got too close. A sense of terror gripped at me as I saw the amount of destruction the bomb had caused.

  Not only that, we were willingly diving into their ranks, headed for the armory door. If they recovered sooner than we wanted them to, we would be trapped, and then what would we do?