by William King
“What are you doing here, Raximander? Are the Brood making a comeback? Are you the spearhead of a new Assimilation?”
“You would not believe me if I told you. In my experience your species is not a very trusting one.”
“That’s rich coming from a being whose only plan is to eat everything that gets in its path.”
“That was not the Overmind’s goal, Stormtrooper 13. I am very disappointed in you. It does not seek to devour your species but to preserve it.”
“It, Raximander? It used to be we.”
“As I have told you, I am no longer part of the Overmind. I am an individual with my own plans and purposes and responsibilities. I find it at once invigorating and terrifying after so long a time.”
“I don’t believe you, Raximander.” I checked the tactical map just to make sure Raximander was not distracting me too well. It looked as if our forces were rolling back his surface troops. Only to be expected given our superior weaponry and control of the air.
I also noticed that there were being protests lodged by the Orthodox about our invasion of their territory. Damn! You would have thought they would have been grateful.
“I am sorry about that, Stormtrooper 13. You of all people should understand me.”
“And why would you think that?”
“You do not enjoy being part of your power structure, do you? Imagine how much worse it is to be immersed within a sentient Overmind.”
“You trying to sell me on the fact that you did not enjoy what you were doing?”
“I was not always part of the Overmind. I was a High Centurion of the Arkanoi, bred for war, born to command cataphract legions. Once I was like you. Now I am again. At least in some ways. I do not occupy my original physical form but I am myself once more, albeit with a number of sub-personalities that I have assimilated over the millennia.”
“And of course you would never lie to me about this. Just like you’ve never lied in the past.”
“I have lied to you under command of the Overmind. I am not lying to you now. Although, of course, I understand that you have no way of telling the difference.”
“Why are you here, Raximander?” I was determined to get an answer.
“Ah now that is a question that all sentient beings eventually ask themselves, isn’t it?” A solid mass of corpse warriors assembled. They pushed their way toward us, chanting their part of the conversation as they came.
“I don’t mean in a philosophical sense. I mean what are you doing on Faith? Why are you attacking this place right now?”
“Alas I cannot reveal that. Would that it were not the case, but it is so.”
I checked the tactical map again. The robogrunts were still winning. The civilians were being rounded up and moved away from the combat zones. I supposed we could have put them onto shuttles and taken them to the cleansing camps. I would not be surprised if the order came in to do just that.
I noticed also some indicators from along the borders. It looked like the other militias were assembling their forces. They probably figured they were going to have to defend themselves again Raximander. Or maybe they were getting ready to go on a good old fashioned bug hunt. It seemed like the sort of thing the locals would enjoy.
“You’re losing today, Raximander.”
“Am I? You have already admitted you don’t understand my goals. How can you be so certain that I have not already achieved them?” The mass of bodies swarmed forward. A few had energy shields. My grunt’s plasma bolts were redirected at semi-random angles.
“Because we would not be having this conversation.”
“I might just be talking to you for the pleasure of your conversation.” The first wave of undead minions reached my robogrunt. They lashed out with the butts of their weapons, bayonets, anything else they could lay their hands on.
“You would be the first being in the universe who ever did.”
The Colonel cut in. “13, looks like the Temperance Legion are advancing in from the southwest. They’ve mounted up on rollerbikes and they’ve got a few armored cars with them. They’re armed with Panzerfaust rockets as well.”
“Good. We can use the help. Let them take a few potshots at Raximander. It might encourage some solidarity.”
Rax’s pawn laughed. It was an eerie sound, a bit like coughing. “You really think that is going to happen, Stormtrooper 13? These people hate you even more than they hate me. You are everything they despise. They fear me but they have nothing but contempt for you and what you represent.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” My robogrunt mowed down a handful of corpse warriors, tore itself away from the grips of others and jumped on top of a car. It took aim and shot down at more of Rax’s minions.
“Like what?”
“Like how you got here.”
“Alas that is something else that I cannot reveal.”
“Rumor says that the Weapon Ship brought you.”
“If I denied it, you would not believe me. If I confirmed it, you would assume my motives were questionable.”
Silence descended. I studied tactical again. The Temperance column was rolling into Orthodox territory. Maybe this was a land-grab, not an attempt to hurt Raximander. Right now all the defenses of the Orthodox sector were in confusion.
Maybe the Legion was looking for payback for their old slights. Typical, I thought. They would seek any advantage they could while the greater enemy picked them off one by one. Was that what Raximander was up to?
I heard the distant sound of gunfire. It looked like the Legion was getting into action at last. They were cutting it a bit late. We had already mopped up most of Rax’s forces. Now they wanted a bit of the action.
Then I noticed something. It was not Raximander they were shooting at. Turns out that they were prepared to cooperate in the face of the greater enemy. Only they thought that was us. Not Raximander.
“I must go, Stormtrooper 13. As ever, it has been a pleasure talking to you.”
The corpse warrior fell silent and deliquesced into a puddle of slime. I listened to the sound of distant gunfire.
Chapter Sixteen
“The idiots are attacking us instead of Raximander,” Ragequit shouted into the tac-grid. “I am considering massacring them.”
“Don’t do that,” said the Colonel mildly. “You’ll only make things worse.”
“Blow them away now and less corpses to rise later,” Ragequit grumbled.
“They can still rise when they’re dead, you know that,” said the Colonel.
“Not if I vaporize them.”
“Try and resist your urge to slaughter, all of you. These are citizens. We’re supposed to be keeping them alive.”
“Maybe you should tell Raximander that,” I said.
“Maybe you should,” said the Colonel. “You spend more time chatting with him than I do.”
“Thinking of joining the Brood, 13?” Ragequit asked. His chortle filled the airwaves. “Trying to find out what the benefits are.”
“If they include not having to listen to you, Rax has a pretty persuasive argument.”
I was already redeploying my grunts to contain the approaching militia.
“No unnecessary deaths,” said the Colonel. “I’m opening communication channels and trying to convince the militias to calm down.”
I studied the tactical maps. It looked like Raximander had pissed off. His evil work here was done. The area was clear.
I did a quick sweep through the cameras and intel updates and saw nothing but citizens on the feeds. How many of them were infected I did not know.
Of course, some of those citizens were armed and had a grudge against the forces of the Federal Government. I could tell that by the way they fired their weapons at us. They weren’t using blanks.
I studied the spearhead of the Temperance Legion over a video feed. They rode along in balloon-tired locally-made armored cars. Each had a mounted pulse cannon or a rocket launcher on a swivel mount. They wer
e firing them off as if they were getting a bounty on every target they hit. Maybe they were offering the troops prizes for it. You never know.
They were all dark-skinned, in green fatigues, and they looked sober, serious, and workmanlike. Both men and women wore berets with little crosses on them. They looked a more clean-cut bunch than the Aryan Jihad. They probably would even when they were zombified.
I over-rode the nearest grunt, and said, “Cease fire, citizens. That is an order.”
My voice boomed out of the grunt’s amplifiers and echoed across the streets. The response was a wave of fire. I switched to direct neural control, aimed the golem’s reaper at the nearest pulse cannon and fired. I took out the control box.
Maybe I should have gone for something flashier. The Legion were not impressed, probably did not even notice. Shows what you get for trying to play nice. A rocket smashed into the golem and I got a view of the sky and the bottom half of the golem, just a set of hips and a pair of metallic legs before the feed went dead.
While that had been going on, the rest of my squads had taken up position on either side of the street. They opened up. Power generators, balloon tires, comm-dishes, anything that was likely to slow the Legion down without causing fatalities went up in smoke. A bright net of reaper fire wove itself across the street.
Armored cars rolled to a halt, skidded, or tipped over. No doubt there would be injuries, quite possible fatalities, but they would not be caused by direct fire. About half of the vehicles were still moving. I lobbed some smoke grenades into the mix. It would confuse unaugmented humans but the grunts had sensors that could see through it.
The Legionaries responded by dropping filter-masks and nightsight goggles into place. A metallic clang indicated two of the armored cars had crashed into each other. A scream told me somebody had been run over. It was going to be a mess in there.
It did not stop them from firing. Bullets pinged off armored vehicles. More people screamed as the ricochets got them. I heard someone shout to stop shooting till they could see their targets. Mostly he was obeyed. Discipline was pretty good, all things considered.
I sent a bunch of grunts loping from cover into the smoke. They had orders to pacify the militiamen without doing too much damage. It was fists and reaper butts and onboard tasers now.
“How are the negotiations coming along, Colonel?” I asked. Something exploded in the murk. One of my grunts’ signal ended. There were more screams. Sounded like somebody had used a sticky anti-tank grenade on it. At close range, surrounded by stalled vehicles, that was going to be nothing but messy. I had eight robogrunts left now among the Legion. There were a couple of hundred militiamen down there and more were approaching all the time. The attrition rate was not acceptable.
“I will give them negotiations,” Ragequit bellowed. “They can negotiate with my boot.”
“Fall back and rendezvous with me at the central plaza,” the Colonel said. “We’ll form a perimeter and hold them at the choke points. If need be we can air evac from there too.”
“Retreat. From these dicks?” Ragequit shouted.
“We’re supposed to be protecting them, not mowing them down,” the Colonel said.
“Roger that,” I said, just to discourage Raqequit from arguing. I picked myself up and began jogging for cover. The grunts laid down a carpet of smoke and regurgitant gas as they began to fall back toward the indicated perimeter the Colonel had left on the tac-display. I caught the acrid scent of it. It made me gag a little and I am supposed to be immune to it. The militiamen who had not bothered with their rebreathers were most likely very sorry individuals right about now.
I looked at the attrition stats. We’d lost a shuttle and a few dozen golems. About three scout drones as well. The militia had done more damage than Raximander. That made me wonder. Rax had not really been trying.
Was his whole purpose to stir up this hornets’ nest? Had he already got some infiltration agents into position within the leadership of the other militias? It was well within the realms of possibility. All this stuff was standard operating procedure during the early stages of Brood invasions.
I ran to the plaza. Ragequit was already there, so was Lopez. The Colonel was talking into her headpiece. I could tell from the sense of it that she was trying to organize some sort of ceasefire. Our cybertanks were already at the edge of the sector. Good for our survivability but not so good for the outcome of our peacekeeping mission.
Cybertanks are not exactly subtle weapons, and you can’t order them to physically restrain humans. They would cause more casualties than an air-strike if they were sent into action. The warbirds were laying down a carpet of gas and stun mines now, slowing the militia advance.
It struck me that now would be a good time for Raximander to attack, while we were configured for crowd control, not Brood annihilation. Every second I expected reports to come in of his reappearance. He might even have planned this so he could infect all of the armed warriors the militia had dispatched. My head spun contemplating the possibilities.
All the while, the Colonel kept talking. Her voice was getting softer and softer as it did when she was applying her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion. I heard more engines roaring as armored fighting vehicles approached. Gunships skimmed overhead. A chaingun chattered. The concrete all around exploded as rocket propelled grenades arced in on us. Explosions erupted nearby.
I was not too worried. Dyson fields and kinetic armor would keep them from inflicting too much damage. Ragequit and Lopez hunkered down nearby. They were giving their squads orders. We were fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. These were still citizens after all.
The warbirds could have downed the gunships in seconds if we gave them clearance. So far we were not allowed to. I was getting heartily sick of the people of Faith. They made me nostalgic for old times. At least I was allowed to shoot at Raximander. He might be doing me a favor if he infected them all.
A wave of infantry came forward. I contemplated setting my reaper on full auto and letting them have it. Instead I ordered my golems to lay down a carpet of thunderflashes and stun grenades. There were some screams and some of the less experienced militiamen turned and fled. They thought we were using real weapons. Their comrades however knew better, but not that much better. If they pushed it, I would go all Section Three One Seven on them. I would rather kill citizens than let the rest of my unit be sent back in corpse pods.
Chapter Seventeen
I heard the Colonel say, yes, yes, no and yes.
And suddenly the Legion advance came to a stop. I waited for a second, ready to hit the override on the reaper and let the natives have it. A few of them flung themselves flat in classic infantry shooting poses. Others stood there with their weapons held ready but not firing. A bunch took up position behind their vehicles, using them for cover. It looked as if, for the moment at least, they were not going to attack.
We waited for long tense minutes, until a small group emerged from the Temperance Legion lines. They wore officer’s patches and one of them had a grubby white sheet, somewhat bloodstained, held between outstretched arms.
“Don’t shoot,” he cried, unnecessarily. “We’re coming in.”
They advanced tentatively in front of their troops. The Colonel moved out to meet them. She was taking an unnecessary risk but when I moved to go with her, she gestured me back. I thumbed the override on my reaper just in case things went nasty. A red warning icon flashed on and off in my field of vision. Somewhere command and control systems were annoyed by what I was doing. Let them be.
I patched into the Colonel’s audio-pickup. “There was no need for this,” she said. “We’re here to help.”
“I’ll just bet you are,” said a youthful voice. I upped the magnification of my helmet’s viewer and focused on the speaker. He was a tall young black man, with a lean hawk-like face.
“Now, Otis, there is no need to take that tone.” I recognized the speaker from our briefings. This was R
aphael Beecher, Supreme Commander of the Temperance Legion. The voice was rich and mellow, which was a surprise since its owner was a scrawny dark-skinned man with a high forehead and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore small pince-nez glasses which reminded me of pictures I had seen of the Prophet Lenin. The assurance in his voice told me everything I needed to know. He was quite clearly the leader. “We are here to hear what the Colonel has to say, and see what she has to show us.”
He gave a small smile and said, “Pray lead on. I am curious.”
Beecher strode forward with total nonchalance. His companions glanced around like a patrol of rookies going into enemy territory for the first time. Their leader might have been taking a stroll through his favorite mall.
They passed through the gap in our lines. The bodyguards and Otis glanced at the golems as if they were looking at demons fresh up from hell. I supposed that’s probably what they thought they were.
The Colonel led them into the center of the plaza. Medico Mark was waiting there at the shuttle along with some service drones. “Can I offer you some food,” the Colonel said, “Or something to drink.”
A frosty look passed over the incomers’ faces.
“Of water, perhaps,” the Colonel added. I wondered if she had almost made a faux pas or whether she was winding them up. I would not have put it past her.
“Nothing. Thank you,” said Beecher. He did not seem offended. He seemed mildly amused. He was obviously a man used to tense situations.
“What are we waiting for?” asked Otis. It was a good question.
“I’ve negotiated a ceasefire. We’re waiting for delegations from the other militias to arrive. That way we only have to do this once.”
Beecher nodded, put both his hands behind his back, clasped his left wrist with his right hand and surveyed us like a general inspecting troops.