Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle

by William C. Dietz

  There had been silence within the temple of the Lords. A deep abiding silence that had lasted for a hundred thousand years and never been broken. Until the humans arrived, that is. They worked softly at first, walking, talking, and prying, deciding how to proceed. Then came the growl of heavy equipment, the rattle of drills, and the whine of laser cutters.

  But the ruins had survived a great deal over the millennia, and were so huge that their very size was a more than adequate defense against the not-always-gentle probings of the archaeologists, xeno-biologists, and fortune hunters who sought to understand their secrets. Until now, that is, and the advent of a war that the long-dead builders would have considered to be barbaric, and more than sufficient reason to go wherever they had gone.

  The temple of the Lords was so huge, so vast, that the twelve aerospace fighters occupied no more than a small portion of the tightly set stone floor. Huge figures, each different from all the rest, stared down at the machines much as they had looked down at what? Members of a long-vanished religion? Representatives from different star-faring races? The scientists were still arguing over the statues and their possible significance.

  So the scientists objected when Lieutenant Commander Angela Ritter removed her fighters from the spaceport and installed them in the great hall. As a matter of fact, they were still talking about the reports they would file and the penalties they would levy when the orbital barrage began. Some died in their burning prefabs, some vanished in the explosion that took the spaceport, and some survived to learn the intricacies of the Mark IV power rifle.

  Suddenly the scientists knew what the military had known all along: the Hudathans would give no quarter, show no mercy, and accept nothing less than total victory. The simple fact was that they didn’t care about human suffering, they didn’t care about preserving the ruins, and they didn’t care about the planet’s ecology. All the humans could do was even the odds a little, take some of the bastards with them, and avenge their own deaths.

  A voice sounded in Ritter’s helmet. “Delta Base to Delta Leader . . . condition green . . . repeat . . . condition green.”

  Ritter eyed her heads-up displays, confirmed the ready lights, and spoke into the voice-activated mike. “Roger that, Delta Base . . . wish us luck.”

  “What for?” the voice inquired. “You never needed it before.”

  But the comment was pure bravado, and both parties knew it. Ritter switched frequencies. “Delta Leader to Delta Wing . . . condition green . . . let’s crank ’em up. Remember . . . stick with your wingman, conserve your offensive load, and stay in atmosphere. Even the smallest ship in orbit would eat you alive.”

  A whole chorus of “rogers” came back and Ritter struggled to ignore the fact that all the voices she heard would be stilled by sundown.

  Compressors whined, engines fired, and thunder echoed between ancient walls. Hundreds of green flockers, their nests tucked here and there throughout the ruins, shot outwards to escape the noise, and headed east towards what had been a bowl-shaped reservoir and currently served as a gigantic birdbath. Other creatures, reacting to the unexpected disturbance, ran, jumped, and wiggled towards safety.

  But there was no safety as death rained down from the sky, and Ritter lifted her aircraft away from ancient stones. She hovered for a moment, dust billowing up to either side, and checked to confirm that the rest of her tiny command had done likewise. Then, ready as she’d ever be, Ritter took a moment to cross herself, and sent the appropriate command to the plane’s fly-by-wire control system. Heavy gee’s forced the pilot back into the seat as the fighter passed between vine-covered columns and climbed towards the enemy-held sky.

  The flat-roofed structure might have been a dwelling, set into the side of the hill, where it would catch the evening breeze, and cool the rooms within. But a profusion of plants had grown up around ancient walls, blurring the angles and softening the lines so they were indistinguishable from the jungle around them. With strong stone walls, a good line of retreat, and the ridge that stretched left and right, the villa, if that’s what it could properly be called, made an excellent weapons emplacement and company HQ.

  By all rights First Lieutenant Connie Chrobuck should have led a platoon, and taken orders from a more experienced officer, but infantry expertise was in short supply on Jericho, which meant that she was in charge of a full company, half of which consisted of legionnaires, while the rest had been patched together with biologists, archaeologists, geologists, technicians, and various port trash who would rather fight than sit on their cans.

  Interestingly enough, it was this last category that had turned out to be the most useful, having as they did a more than passing familiarity with weapons, some of which had been garnered while serving with the Legion. Though unsure of the exact number of deserters under her command, Chrobuck judged there were quite a few, and took full advantage of the fact.

  She was lying on the roof, scanning the jungle in front of her with a computer-enhanced scope, when a curlyhaired cargo jockey named Louie flopped down beside her. He wore a utility vest loaded with gear, fatigue pants, jungle boots, and was armed with a power pistol and an assault weapon. His breezy informality was typical of the civilians in her company. “Hey, Loot . . . I did like you said. Any geek that decides to come up along the stream is going to get one nasty-assed surprise.”

  Chrobuck nodded. She wore a green beret over short hair and looked at him with large gray eyes. Her single gold earring gave her a piratical air. “Good work, Louie. Now, remember, let the Trooper II handle the heavy lifting, while you and your squad watch his flanks and add to the suppressive fire.”

  Louie grinned. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, honey, we’ll cover the tin man’s ass. And when this thing’s over you and me can have a beer. Whaddya say?”

  Chrobuck thought about shoving the words down the man’s throat, or telling him that she didn’t date idiots, but what was the point? Louie would be dead soon. “Sure, Louie, you hold the line, and the beer’s on me.”

  Louie grinned, gave her a confident thumbs-up, and rolled away. The manner in which he stayed below the skyline and handled his weapon testified to military training. An ex-marine? Legionnaire? She’d never know. Chrobuck looked upwards, saw no sign of the bad weather the Met officer had promised, and swore as contrails raced each other across the sky.

  Raksala-Ba gave thanks that he no longer had a flesh-and-blood face to signal the fear he felt. He braced himself against the boat’s infernal rocking motion and tried to look relaxed. The others did likewise. The pilot came over the command frequency. “Hold on . . . we’re going in.”

  The assault craft had lost sixty percent of its control surfaces, and one of its two engines, so what happened next was more like a controlled crash than a normal landing. The ship hit the middle of a clearing, went airborne like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake, and smashed into the jungle. Half the cyborgs were crushed when the ship hit the side of a vine-covered building but the rest survived.

  Raksala-Ba was among the lucky ones. He released the harness that had held him in place, made his way out through an opening that hadn’t been there before, and looked around. The wreckage was at his back, an ancient vine-covered building stood to the right, a ridge rose up ahead, and a stream gurgled to the left. Bullets rattled against his armor.

  There was no time to think or strategize. Months of training took over. The Hudathan tracked the incoming fire to its source, selected a high-explosive warhead, and fired. An explosion blossomed on the ridgeline above. He felt a mild orgasm and was still enjoying the afterglow when the pleasure disappeared.

  The Trooper II named Quanto had fought under the famous Colonel Pierre Legaux on Algeron, had kicked some serious Hudathan butt during the first war, and forgotten more tricks than the newbies were ever likely to learn. Not the least of which involved concealing his heat under the surface of a lake, stream, or in one case, four feet of dirt, only to pop up and surprise the enemy. And surpr
ise them he did, emerging from the swift-flowing stream like an avenging spirit, missiles leaping away from each shoulder as water cascaded down off his jungle green camouflage. One surface-to-surface missile found the still-warm wreckage and exploded. The other hit the borg off to Raksala-Ba’s right and blew him to bits. Although impervious to .50-caliber bullets, the Hudathan armor could not withstand high-explosive missile hits.

  Raksala-Ba felt a piece of shrapnel clang off his shoulder, swiveled to the right, and fired. The mini-missile blew Quanto in half. A Trooper II was dead. Raksala-Ba felt a powerful orgasm ripple through his nonexistent genitals and started up the slope in front of him. The fear that had plagued him earlier was momentarily gone.

  Ritter and the wing under her command arrived at 15,000 feet in time to slice through the second wave of Hudathan assault boats. It was easy at first, maneuvering until a ship filled her sights, then blowing it out of the air. At least fifteen of the incoming ships were destroyed within the three short minutes that it took the Hudathan fighters to react. They came out of the sun and destroyed two defenders on their first pass. Ritter bit her lower lip as the eternally cheerful Roo vanished in a ball of flame and “Nags” Naglie hit the side of a jungle-clad mountain.

  The fighting grew fast and furious. Ritter flamed a fighter, caught a glimpse of empty sky, and ordered the fighter to climb. Radio discipline had gone to hell in a handcart but it was too late to do anything about it.

  “Watch your tail, Logan . . . damn, that was close.”

  “May day, May day, I’m going in . . .”

  “Come to Momma, geek face . . . Come to Momma.”

  “Hey, Bones, did you see that? I . . .”

  “They’re on my ass! Get ‘em off! Get ’em off!”

  “Break left, Snakeyes . . . I’ve got ’em.”

  A tone sounded and a target appeared on Ritter’s display. The parameters didn’t match anything in memory so she ran them again. Nothing changed. Whatever the Hudathans had sent down was big, real big, and coming her way. A strategic target, then, something worth dying for. The flight leader glanced at the place where her wingman should be and saw that he was there. His name was Kisley, but was better known as “Kisser,” since he had a tendency to kiss anything with lips, especially when drunk. “Hey, Kisser, do you see what I see?”

  “That’s a roger, Delta Leader. It’s big, it’s fat, and it’s ours.”

  “Exactamundo . . . let’s engage.”

  Arrow Commander Indu Korma-Sa stared into the holo tank with a sublime sense of detachment. The fact that two fighters had appeared, and were getting ready to attack his large, rather awkward surface support ship, bothered him not at all. For unlike all but a few of his peers, Korma-Sa had taken the time and trouble to read many of the data cubes captured during the first war, and had discovered something called A Book of Five Rings by a human named Miyamoto Musashi. Not just any human, but a warrior who had killed more than sixty samurai in personal combat, before retiring to a cave and writing his book. A book that Korma-Sa knew by heart. The situation gave rise to the appropriate quote.

  “To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.”

  Korma-Sa looked into the true void, saw that which should be done, and gave the necessary orders. "Allow the enemy to close and use the short sword to destroy them.”

  Long accustomed to his commanding officer’s almost allegorical orders, the hard-faced weapons officer signaled willing assent, waited as the fighters closed with the ship, and readied the short-range weapons.

  Ritter and Kisley expected to die at any moment and fired all their long-range weapons in hopes of a lucky hit. They exploded harmlessly against the supply ship’s protective shields. Both pilots waited for the inevitable response and were surprised when it failed to materialize. Thus encouraged, they readied their short-range armament, and arrowed in for the kill. They were only twenty miles away when the alien ship opened fire. Kisley died immediately. Ritter was hit but kept on going. Hudathan computers tracked her, but the flight leader was good, and managed to stay alive for another 10.7 seconds. She didn’t see the torpedo that hit her aircraft or feel the explosion that took her life. Korma-Sa honored her bravery, cleared the episode from his mind, and reentered the void.

  Chrobuck watched Quanto die through her scope, bounced a signal of a low-flying drone, and sent the video to Brigade HQ. “Zulu Four to Bravo One.”

  The first voice she heard belonged to Colonel Wesley Worthington himself, C in C, Jericho ground forces. “This is Bravo One . . . Go.”

  “Sending video on freq four. We are in contact with what appear to be military androids or enemy cyborgs. They eat fifty-caliber ammo for lunch but don’t like missiles. I am one T-Two, sorry, make that deuce T-Two’s down, and fading fast. Over.”

  There was a moment of silence while Chrobuck watched her four remaining Trooper IIs fire their laser cannons to no visible effect. Whatever the things were shrugged the energy off, unleashed a flight of mini-missiles, and halved what was left of her cybernetic armor. She didn’t have to tell Worthington because he’d seen the firefight firsthand. For him it would be just one more piece of bad news in a day filled with nothing else. Worthington had deployed what troops he had around what the archaeologists had named the “Valley of Temples,” which featured a Class III spaceport, some fairly well fortified SAM launchers, and the colonel’s underground command post.

  “Bravo One to Zulu Four. Assume cyborgs for now. Pull back but make ’em pay. Help is on the way. Bravo One out.”

  Chrobuck grimaced. “Make ’em pay?” With what? But orders are orders, and she knew Worthington didn’t have a whole lot of choice. She ordered the surviving cyborgs to fall back to a point where hastily trained civilian support teams could rearm their missile racks, called in an artillery mission on the area between them and the enemy LZ, and called for the company supply sergeant. Her name was Horowitz and she was built like a truck. She didn’t have a lot of respect for lieutenants and let it show as she low-crawled onto the roof. “So, Lieutenant . . . what’s up?” Horowitz had to yell to make herself heard over the shriek of outgoing arty, the thump, thump, thump of HE a half-mile in front of her position, and the cloth-ripping sound of machine-gun fire.

  Chrobuck ignored the lack of respect and cut straight to the point. “How many shoulder-launched missiles have we got?”

  Horowitz knew exactly how many SLM’s she had, but pretended to consult her wrist term. Never one to give all of anything, the supply sergeant took ten percent off the top. “I issued twelve SLMs day before yesterday with forty-three stashed to the rear. We didn’t think we’d need that many of them.”

  Chrobuck nodded. “Well, conditions have changed. Order some professors to bring the slims forward. They will be issued to uniformed personnel only. We can’t afford to waste them on trees.”

  Horowitz remained impassive. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And, Horowitz?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Have the eggheads bring the rest of the SLMs, too. There’s no point in saving them.”

  Horowitz was embarrassed but tried not to show it. She looked into the young officer’s face, saw the determination in her eyes, and nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am. Camerone.”

  Chrobuck nodded. “That’s right, Sergeant . . . Camerone.”

  The sergeant back-wiggled into the jungle while Chrobuck continued to observe. The artillery mission came to an end, and with the exception of some intermittent machine-gun fire in the jungle below, a temporary silence settled over the ruins. The arty had carved an arc-shaped swath through the jungle and Chrobuck saw a number of Hudathan casualties. The only proble
m was that for every enemy casualty she saw two of her own.

  She pulled back from the scope just in time to see something pass through her peripheral vision. It was a spy-eye, one of thousands released by the Hudathans, and was held aloft by a tiny antigrav generator. A legionnaire saw the device, nailed it with his energy rifle, and returned to the mines he was placing.

  The momentary respite ended as a flight of Hudathan ground-support craft appeared out of the south and swept in at treetop level. Missiles leaped away from their wings and homed on the artillery pods located to the rear. They responded with motor-driven gatling guns, antimissile missiles, and a full-spectrum electronic-counter-measure defense. Most of the incoming weapons were destroyed or misdirected but a few got through. They destroyed three large-caliber tubes, an ammo dump, and the quad that had been ordered to move up in support of Chrobuck’s company. Twenty-three bio bods were killed. The explosions shook Chrobuck’s command post and sent flames soaring into the sky.

  But the enemy aircraft were still coming, ejecting chaff, and jinking back and forth to evade surface-to-air missiles. Chrobuck saw bombs drop from their wing racks and watched a line of explosions march her way. Entire trees, blocks of stone, and the occasional body were tossed into the air. It was only when she saw lights winking along the leading edge of their wings, and felt rock chips hit the side of her face, that Chrobuck realized how exposed she was. She scrambled to her feet and was halfway to the jungle when the line of planes roared overhead. They flew so low that she could feel the air that they displaced and see the alien unit designators.

  A storm of small-arms fire, along with the hail of slugs produced by the two remaining gatling guns, formed a curtain of lead. A pair of SAMs reached up, didn’t have time to arm themselves, and zigzagged towards the sun. One of the planes staggered as it hit the line of fire, performed an unintentional wing-over, and crashed into an ancient temple. Chrobuck heard a series of secondary explosions as she slipped into the coolness of the jungle and tried to reestablish contact with her platoon leaders.