Lep couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the external cam feed. Who were these devils?
“Keep that ramp closed,” said the lieutenant. “The hostile on the roof is obviously intending to shoot us as we disembark.”
A ripple of fear passed through the scouts, Lep included.
“Stay calm,” roared Sergeant Nialeg. “The buggers have crippled our motors. That’s bad. But the carrier’s armor is still solid, our guns are hot, and our rifles ready to make an accounting. That’s also bad… for them. And if that idiot on the roof hasn’t broken his neck in the landing, he’s wasting his time. He’ll never get through the roof armor. We’ll burst through the roof hatches and catch him in crossfire. For purity!”
“Purity! Purity!” replied the scouts.
Lep didn’t join in, too busy using his station to flick through the external cam feeds, looking for targets for the carrier’s autocannon pods to service. But there was nothing.
“Er... Sarge?” queried one of the scouts readying to deploy through the roof hatches. “Can you smell something? It’s – I don’t know… ozone?”
An instant later, a circular disc of foam dropped down onto the scout’s head from a hole that had miraculously appeared in the roof.
“Frags out, rebels,” said a man’s voice as two grenades followed the...
It’s a boarding patch…
The thought just had time to register in Lep’s mind that he was seeing a piece of ancient military technology from a long-dead era before the grenades went off, and the Fat Belly hover carrier became a fat-bellied slaughterhouse.
OSU SYBUTU
“So, speak!” Osu demanded of the sullen rebel.
The squatting man kept his gaze down at the ice beneath his boots, ice turned red by a ruby sky approaching dusk.
It cast a demonic glow on the interrogation proceedings, but also softened the bloodstains on the rebel’s greatcoat. Maybe that would loosen him up.
He said nothing.
Was he still in shock? Zy Pel… Bronze… had said that when they’d pulled the only survivor out of the wreckage of the rebel carrier, he hadn’t resisted, but he’d screamed uncontrollably. They’d had to gag him before setting him riding pillion behind Stryker.
Osu wasn’t convinced this was shock. Time for another line of attack.
The man started shivering.
“Stryker, set the bikes to throw some heat. We won’t learn anything from an icicle.”
“You won’t learn anything anyway,” the man grumbled.
“All we really want to know is what the hell is going on with this damned planet,” Osu explained. “Is this an invasion? Are we in a civil war now? And why in the Five Hells was a military unit sent to kill us? Us! We represent an interstellar mining corporation. Who the hell did you think we were?”
The man shuddered, and this time it wasn’t the cold. “We saw… things. Horrors in the woods. Creatures that cannot be. We thought that’s what you were, and we followed you because we needed to know what we were facing. The guys call them vampire jacks. They had Legion equipment and they looked like normal people on the outside. But they weren’t. They bit!”
“We aren’t certain what they are,” said Bronze. “But there are no such things as vampires, and we don’t bite.”
The rebel looked up with interest for the first time, peering inside Bronze’s hood. “It’s you. The rider with the breach patch. I didn’t know such things existed any more. Why would a miner carry around a treasure like that?”
“They wouldn’t,” said Osu, “but Bronze here is a merc. He runs our escort team, and what pit of thieves he might visit to buy his toys is the kind of question I know to avoid asking.”
“Let’s say I believe you,” said the rebel. “You’re not vamps. You’re not military. What are you going to do with me?”
Osu shrugged. “It depends on the answers you give. Is it the Rebellion’s intention to seize mining rights on Rho-Torkis for itself?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then we aren’t enemies. Tell us what’s happening to Rho-Torkis, and I’ll set you free.”
The rebel withdrew into himself to consider his response. He flinched when Bronze stretched out a gauntleted finger and traced the unit patches on the man’s lacerated greatcoat.
“You’re a scout,” Bronze said. “2nd Regiment, Cora’s Hope Division. Says so right here on your shoulder. We assumed you were with the Rebellion, but you’re Cora’s World regular troops. I heard the situation had gone absolutely to drent in your system but is Cora’s World exporting its insanity now? Is Cora’s World trying to become Cora’s Empire?”
“I stand with the Rebellion,” insisted the rebel. His face fell. “My world has descended into hell. We got away in time. It’s why we need to forge a new Federation where the bonds between all strata of society are strong. It’s time to start again.”
“Like you did on your homeworld?” Bronze gave him a contemptuous grunt. “I was briefed. You had your own little homespun political revolution, didn’t you? You didn’t need vampire cults or alien invaders, the madness came from within you. All it took was the usual slime-spined Militia who will turn a blind eye to anything for the right price, and a heap of totalitarian bigots who deluded themselves they were creating a pristine new world order. By any means necessary. I bet you cheered them on, rebel scout. Until one day you woke up and found yourself atop a mountain of corpses – those who had to die because they hadn’t sung out the political mantra with sufficient fervor. Ideological purity is a madness that won’t stop until your planet’s a ghost world with two final survivors stalking each other, looking for an opening to kill the last betrayer of the narrative.”
“You don’t believe any of that speech, do you?”
“No? Every civic center on your planet has a place of public execution where political enemies of the new world order are put to death on the hour, every hour, every day, forever.”
“It’s true,” the rebel admitted. “The movement was betrayed. That’s why we sided with a Federation-wide alliance of liberation. The Rebellion. This time we will get it right.”
“Easy,” Osu snapped. “Both of you. Don’t mind Bronze, he snaps worse than he bites. Look, why not tell us your name? We already know your unit. See, I’ll tell you ours. That there is Urdi. He’s Zavage, and Stryker is standing outside.”
“They sound like code names.”
“Some. But they’re the mercs. I’m a geologist. My name’s... Sybutu. What’s yours?”
“Lep. Lep Clynder.”
“Well, Lep. I still don’t know what we’re up against here. I thought the Rebellion was a political movement with a military wing whose existence it denied, not that anyone believed you. And here you are, regular troops from Cora’s World nuking a peaceful planet, murdering thousands within seconds.”
“I’m ex-Legion,” said Bronze. “Whatever you may think of the corrupt skragg-necks and aristo-hats who run the stinking Federation, most legionaries are decent folk trying to do the right thing in a galaxy where acts of decency are condemned by a sea of haters as reactionary deviance.”
“I’m nothing to do with that,” Lep said hurriedly. “We’re Scout Company. We come in quietly. Take a look. Get out. If all goes well, no one gets hurt. No one’s supposed to know we’re even there.”
“Don’t mind him, Lep,” Osu reassured the scout. “Though I don’t blame him for smarting at what you did to the legionaries.”
“I didn’t do anything. I have never fired a weapon in anger. I swear it!”
Osu held up his hands. “Okay. I believe you. I’m just saying that I’m the one in charge here, not the merc – who, by the way, was kicked out of the Legion and with good reason – and all I need to know before I can let you go is your intentions here. Is this an invasion? A raid? Are there rebel authorities who will maintain the rule of commercial law, or should I hightail it to the nearest spaceport and evacuate my team? Give me a reason to set you
free, Lep.”
“I cannot say.”
Osu stared at Lep, considering his next move. It didn’t look as if the rebel was going to say anything else of use, but Osu wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Do you have someone special to return to, Lep? Someone who would miss you if we hadn’t rescued you from that personnel carrier?”
“Alyssa,” he replied. From inside his jacket, the rebel pulled out a holo-wallet showing a smiling young human woman and practically shoved it in the faces of everyone there inside the ring of warm bikes.
Lep seemed eager to establish a human connection to his captors.
It had the opposite effect on Osu’s scorched soul.
“I expect she’s worried about you,” he said acidly.
“Yes,” said Lep. “Terrified.”
“But you know she loves you and that helps get you through. That so?”
He nodded.
Osu laughed. It was not a happy sound. “I envy you that. My girlfriend’s name is Nydella. I never had the guts to tell her that I loved her. Seems stupid, really. I’ve always been too scared I’d scare her away.”
“You should take courage,” said Lep, relieved to be making this connection. The others looked away grimly. “Trust your feelings.”
“Yeah. I should have.”
The rebel froze. Doubt clouded his eyes.
“Shame you nuked her.”
Osu drew his plasma pistol and burned a hole through the rebel scout’s head.
He stared at the corpse for a few moments after it had slumped to the ground. Then he glared at the others, daring someone to criticize his state of mind, even his ethics. Several look thoughtful, but none spoke.
“We have a mission,” said Osu. “That man got in our way. His life was forfeit the moment he took up arms against the Legion.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to us, Sergeant,” said Zavage.
“Contact!” shouted Stryker from outside the circle of bikes. “Skragg! We’re surrounded.”
“Federation Militia,” announced an amplified voice before Osu had even grabbed his blaster and peered over his bike. “Put down your weapons or die.”
“Sorry, guys,” said the failed sentry, but Osu didn’t blame Stryker. Even as he watched, soldiers rose out of the snow like winter-camo zombies rising from a graveyard. He estimated thirty, and more were appearing every second.
One giant of a man threw off his camo-cloak and stood ten feet away from Osu, as if a herald awaiting the reply to take back to his master. Over his chain armor, he wore a huge cloak of fake animal fur. Beneath a metal helmet steaming in the cold air, the man’s beard was plaited and set with beads. If Osu had harbored any doubt that this was indeed what passed for a soldier in the Militia, the man’s rifle was slung over his huge shoulder. His weapon of choice was a war hammer, which he swung impatiently.
“Hold your fire,” yelled Osu, though he stayed behind the cover of the bikes. “We’re Legion. Everyone stand down. We’re on the same side. We’re Legion.”
“We know you’re Legion,” said the pale-skinned Viking herald. “We overheard your little chat after you executed the rebel scout.”
Militia troopers approached the bikes casually, with rifles slung.
Osu lowered his weapon to the ground and stood erect with arms in surrender. “We’re on the same side.”
The Viking shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Now, that’s where we have a problem. Your typical Legion arrogance means a lack of attention to detail.” The troopers were leaping over the bikes now. “You see, the two statements contradict each other. Let me spell it out. You can be Legion, or you could be on the side of the Militia and the Federation. But you can’t be both. Legionaries, you see, are traitors.”
“Don’t shoot them,” Osu ordered his team, and checked that the others weren’t going to put up a brief resistance. “And don’t believe anything that comes out the mouth of these prison scum.”
“I’m glad you’re Legion,” said a woman who’d perched her butt on the nearest bike and was watching Osu with her head resting in her hands. He sensed a quiet lethality about her that reminded him of the SpecMish man currently going by the name of Bronze.
She pulled back her hood to reveal an unnaturally white face completely covered in tattoos: roses weeping black blood.
“Killing is normally such an ugly business,” she said. “Every death is a wound to the soul for soldiers like you and me, Sybutu, and you are a killer. I can tell that poor Lep Clynder was not your first kill. The lives we take... even for killers like us, it seems so slight at the time, Sergeant, but each one festers and never heals. Have you learned that yet?”
She hopped off the bike and sauntered over, laughing like a child. She looked up at him clicking her tongue. “Which is why it’s such a relief that you turn out to be legionaries.”
Dread crept along Osu’s spine. Troopers were walking behind him, but he couldn’t see. He couldn’t turn around. And when he tried to cry out a warning... silence.
“Legionaries, you see” – she covered her head once more – “are different. Killing you won’t leave an ugly residue. In fact, it’ll be fun, and boy, do I need some fun.”
She reached up and plucked something from his neck: a small dart which she presented in front of his eyes before storing in a pouch in her coat.
“Let’s see if this has worked, shall we?”
She poked him in the sternum with a single digit and over he went, his body completely rigid.
His head hit the ground hard, but he barely felt a thing.
“No peeking,” said the Militia trooper before someone unseen secured a hood over his head.
They’d paralyzed him. He could see nothing through the hood, smell only leather and sweat, and had only a vague sense of being dragged along the ground before being dumped into a vehicle, although they could be phantom sensations he’d imagined to fit with his expectations.
His ears, though... they worked only too well. The tattooed woman, who volunteered her name as Trooper Lily Hjon would not shut up. She spent the entire journey to Fort Iceni telling him the many ways she was going to enjoy torturing him.
Osu had some personal experience with torture. Enough that he could tell from her whispered details that she had a whole lot more.
And she knew that the most harrowing torture was often the simplest.
“You’re their sergeant,” she would tell him in a hundred variations of the same cruel barb. “They look to you to keep them safe. And did you? No. You let them be captured without a fight. And now they’ll suffer for your failure.”
The journey to Fort Iceni was not long in distance, but it felt endless to Osu’s soul, because the yapping tattooed trooper was right. He had failed his team. Better all around if it had been he and not Yergin who’d bought the others an exit through the phony legionaries.
But even the longest journeys end eventually. He felt a jolt as their transport halted. Then a burning pain in his neck and a merciless tingling in his extremities.
They had arrived, and he was recovering.
Whatever the Militia had planned, they had made a mistake in not killing him straight away. A mistake they would pay for.
Hic manebimus optime.
He was Osu Sybutu,
He was Legion.
And he would never give up.
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