Who had assigned them to the squad? Snow Leopard would know—he had asked for replacements when it appeared unlikely that Dragon and Priestess and I were going to return. I knew very little about either of them. Both were likely suspects. But they were just kids, completely new to the Legion. Would I choose someone like that to undertake a sensitive covert mission?
Probably not. They weren't the only likely suspects. Tara and Gildron were the oddest of all. Their presence in the squad was completely inexplicable to me. Why would the Legion want to waste a psycher of Tara's immense talents on a dangerous recon mission like this one? And why the ape? It made no sense. There was certainly something the Legion had not told us about Tara and Gildron.
I had known Tara longer than any of the others—we attended midschool on the same world. But she took a very strange road to the present and I had no idea, any more, how her mind worked. All I knew was that she operated at a much higher level than me. How could I judge her? And wasn't she a believer? More so than any of us?
Who, then? Gildron? A complete unknown. Impossible to even guess. Would he want to betray us? He was Tara's creature—he would do whatever she said. If he was against us, so was Tara.
Who would betray us? I didn't know. I didn't really want to know. It was going to hurt to find out.
###
We took our first break halfway down the eastern slopes of the mountains, watching a luminous dawn silently tinting the horizon behind a totally black line of hills. Below was a great flat plain, completely featureless in the dark. It was still cloudy. Behind us, in the west, the sky was velvet ink. I sipped cold water from my cooler as the sunrise slowly burnt its way into the sky. I cradled my E in my arms. We were ready for an attack. The O's probably knew exactly where we were, thanks to our nova beacon.
"Three, Eight." He was on private. There was certainly a lot of conversation underway on the private net. It was a bad sign.
"Yes, Dragon."
"I want you to know I don't think it's you. And I can tell you it's not me. You can depend on me when the shooting starts."
"Thanks, Dragon. Who do you think it is?"
"I kind of favor your buddy Cinta—or Tara, or whatever name she's using today."
"Well, I don't know, Dragon."
"She's a psycher—there are only five of us who know that. Snow Leopard, Valkyrie, you, me, Priestess. The others presumably don't know. If any of the others did it, she should know. And the five of us wouldn't try it, 'cause we know she's a psycher. Right? Snow Leopard talked with her. If she didn't name anyone else, that leaves her, and her pet."
"But maybe it was psypower—the O's. They've got to be more powerful than she is. Maybe they did something to somebody that didn't leave any conscious trace."
"There was no psyprobe alert, Thinker. The techs swear the damned things work. If the O's had projected psypower on us, our psybloc would have activated."
"Yeah, well, the tacnet power reserves should have worked, too."
"Right. Good point. Well, no matter what, I think we can trust Snow Leopard, Valkyrie, you, me, and Priestess. All others are suspect."
"Unless Cinta's covering for one of us. You ever think of that?"
"Scut. You're right—there may be more than one!"
"It means we have to be alert every instant. We can't trust anyone!"
"You got that right."
Don't trust anyone! Absolutely right. We were facing more than O's and Systies now—we were facing ourselves. The ultimate mission, I thought—Beta against Beta. It was insane—completely insane. We could always depend on ourselves, before. Now even that was denied us.
"One, Three." I kept it on private.
"Yes, Three."
"This is going to eat up the squad, One. Shouldn't you say something?"
"Not yet, Thinker—the time's not right."
"Couldn't Tara tell you anything? She must know something!"
"The short answer is she doesn't know."
"Do you suspect her?"
Snow Leopard paused, then replied cautiously. "There are reasons for her presence here that I have not yet revealed. But the reasons are not completely convincing."
"You can depend on me, One—no matter what!"
"Thank you, Thinker. Keep alert."
"I'll do that."
The sky flickered—deceptors, flowering above the clouds like a great, orange blossom. The Legion was still with us. My blood was ice cold in my veins. I knew we were going through with the mission. Beta One was going to accomplish the mission, even if it killed us all.
"Let's go, gang—we're going down to the plain," Snow Leopard ordered.
"Down to the plain?" Speedy echoed. "Won't the O's spot us down there?"
"No, they won't," Snow Leopard replied. "We'll be safer there than here. You'll see."
Chapter 6
Messages From the Dead
The reason for One's confidence became clear as we reached the plain. Our tacmods were completely snowed under, and the cause was all around us. We walked warily past a massive amtac, half-buried in the dirt. It had melted—it was just a great blob of cenite, frozen forever, an obscene slagheap. Dead A-suits lay all around us, twisted and burnt, the faceplates all melted—Legion A-suits. Shattered pieces of armor pitted the dead earth. An armored arm, white bones jutting out of one end. A shattered E. A helmet, split wide open, a charred skull looking up at us silently. The sun came up—it cast long shadows all around us. A twisted aircar lay completely upside down, surrounded by wreckage. Three Legion A-suits sprawled prone side by side in a shallow depression, silent forever, still behind their E's, sighting a long-gone enemy. Ghost soldiers, I thought. Dear holy God, we don't need these images—stop it!
But the plain was full of dead A-suits and smashed equipment, and little rock rats scuttled everywhere. The soil was just dust—there was no vegetation. We came upon a tacair base with a downed Legion fighter burnt black, a massive, dead bird. Then a line of amtacs blown to smithereens, the wreckage scattered over the dusty plain.
And then we stopped. A Legion soldier on his knees cradled a wounded comrade in his arms, pressing a canteen up against his squadie's lips. Dead in a microfrac, the A-suits fused together forever, an eternal monument to war and humanity. The wounded one had his visor up, to get the water. His face was a skull.
"Oh, no." Somebody was crying.
"Silence in the ranks!" Valkyrie snapped. "Forward, Beta! They'll pay for it! They'll pay!"
We moved, forward. I didn't need Snow Leopard to tell me—this was the Cauldron, where the Eighth Legion had perished against the System. These were soldiers from the past, soldiers of the Legion who had died for the future and for Uldo. Well, we were the future, and our job was to make sure they had not died in vain. When we were through with the O's, we were going after the Systies, I knew. Uldo was ours—we had paid for it in blood!
We walked for hours, and it never changed. The wreckage of an entire Legion was spread out over the plain. We didn't touch any of it—it was holy ground. I knew it was very unlikely the O's would spot us here. There was so much cenite here, a little more would make no difference at all.
A cold wind blew all around us, raising yellow dust. The dust swirled everywhere, obscuring the smashed aircars and the dead A-suits, and sometimes they seemed alive in the dust. An entire Legion, maneuvering all around us in one last, titanic battle. I tried not to think about it. I sure didn't need this.
###
"I shouldn't be long," Snow Leopard said. "Only an hour. If I'm not back by then, investigate. If anything happens to me, continue the mission."
"Tenners. We'll be fine," Valkyrie said.
"Keep everyone up against the wreckage, and no movement."
"Tenners—go on!"
"Thinker, you want to come with me?"
"Sure." I hadn't been paying attention, and hadn't the slightest idea where Snow Leopard was going. We detached ourselves from the shelter of the shattered squadmod and set off to the
north. As we walked, One was silent. The temperature dropped. A scraggly treeline appeared ahead. Once, a forest had been there, but now it was dead, like everything else in the vicinity. Charcoal trees, their charred limbs scratching at the sky in silent protest.
"It's right up ahead, Thinker."
"What's up ahead?"
"Take a look." Snow Leopard stopped. He consulted a faded old printmap. He turned it over and showed me the reverse. It was a puzzling little diagram. It looked like a city plan, all divided up into little numbered squares, surrounded by roads. Only there was a pattern showing in the center—a Legion cross. It looked like a plan for a public park. Then I saw the title, on the bottom:
"4/8 Legion Cemetery at Palin."
"Come on," Snow Leopard said. "It was right in the center of the forest." I followed. The trees were just kindling, all burnt black. Why would Snow Leopard want to see a cemetery? The whole battlefield was a cemetery. Hadn't we seen enough death?
It was still there, under a grey sky. Thousands of vertical cenite markers, blistered and burnt but still there, marked the dead. Rows and rows, laid out neatly in a dead, charcoal forest. Each marker had a Legion cross on top, the designation 4/8, the serial number, squad name and warname below, then the date, and then that last, awful line: "Died In Service."
We walked slowly past the rows of markers. Some of them were marked "Unknown." I followed Snow Leopard up and down the rows. Every once in awhile I saw my own designation, Beta Three. There were a whole lot of Beta Threes in the Legion. Once I saw Beta Nine's designation, and then I stopped looking.
I drifted over to a dead tree and sipped at my canteen while Snow Leopard continued walking up and down the rows. I didn't know why we were there. Once Snow Leopard cursed, quietly. Once he appeared lost, and consulted his map.
Finally he squatted in the middle of the cemetery. He was still looking around, but I couldn't see his face—his back was to me. I didn't say anything. The sky was completely covered with heavy grey clouds.
We had been gone a half-hour when Snow Leopard finally moved. He got up and walked right past me, back the way we had come. His faceplate was darkened.
"I couldn't find him," Snow Leopard said. I followed him. I was afraid to ask who he had been looking for. Finally he told me, as we picked our way around more downed A-suits back in the Cauldron.
"My father died there," he said.
"I'm sorry," I replied.
"Don't be," he said. "He died for me—and you." And Snow Leopard didn't say anything else until we got back to the squad. It explained a great deal about our One, I thought. A great deal.
###
We continued advancing, moving carefully forward, staying close to the wreckage. There was plenty of wreckage to choose from—the Eighth Legion was all around us. The sky was all grey now, completely overcast. It was getting colder. A persistent light breeze stirred up the yellow dust. As far as we could see ahead, there was nothing but the shattered shell of a once-mighty army.
"That's a Systie aircar," Dragon said. It appeared slowly out of the dust haze, shredded like paper, blown to bits. Broken bronze-colored DefCorps A-suits lay scattered around it like discarded toy soldiers, half buried in the shifting dust.
"ALERT! AIRSAT! Chemically charged aerolayer ahead! I detect thermodisplacement igniters! Recommend immediate retreat!" Sweety's warning was icy clear. Adrenalin flooded my veins.
"Back! Back!" Snow Leopard ordered immediately. "Slowly—carefully!" We tiptoed back the way we had come, hearts thumping. Airsat! Damn!
"Let's see where it's going—freeze in place!" We froze. I was next to a pile of dinged-up dropboxes and I tried my best to merge with them. A couple of little brown rock rats shot out of the dropboxes and scurried away. Their ancestors probably had plenty to eat, I thought.
Snow Leopard stood calmly in the open, looking through his spotter. Now Sweety had a grip on it, and she colored the airsat for me—it had been invisible but now it was a pale pink on my faceplate, a massive blob of charged air blocking our path, drifting slightly in a light breeze. Thank Deadman for the tacmod, and thank the Legion for the techs—if not for their twisted dark science, we would have walked right into that and set it off. Airsat would have pulverized us all, A-suits or not.
"The breeze is blowing it southwest," Valkyrie said.
"It'll come up against the hills," Snow Leopard said, "and then start back. That's probably the boundary. Merlin? Do you agree?"
"Yeah—I wouldn't like to get between it and the hills. It's probably free to wander wherever the breeze blows it, within certain set boundaries."
"There's no way it can detect us?"
"Not unless we walk into it. Then it's all over. But as long as we can see it, we can outrun it."
"I don't like this," Speedy said, tensely. We ignored him.
"All right, we go around it," Snow Leopard said. "Northeast, then northwest."
"There may be more of them," Merlin said.
"We'll deal with them one at a time," Snow Leopard replied. "Beta, on me." And he was off, his E balanced casually over one shoulder.
"One at a time," Speedy mumbled. "Great! It's obvious the place is completely surrounded by airsat. We can't fight airsat, can we? Can we?"
"Keep your comments to yourself, Fourteen," Valkyrie said. "When we want your opinion, we'll ask for it." Speedy did not respond. The fellow was starting to get on my nerves.
As we walked through the dust, Uldo's sun rose higher and higher, but it was only a vague glow behind the grey clouds. We kept the airsat on our left. I hoped there were no more of them lurking up ahead. Getting trapped between two of them would be most unhealthy.
###
"Anybody got any dog vomit?" Psycho asked. We were huddled in a tangle of wreckage inside a blown-out squadmod, taking a quick break for lunch. We had our visors up and freezing air was turning our noses and lips blue as we wolfed down our rations.
"Yeah," Dragon responded. "I've got one that I'm saving for tomorrow. You taking a survey, or what?"
"Give you two bat guano for it."
Dragon laughed. "You're a funny guy."
"I haven't finished! Two bat guano and a depth charge. Aw right?"
"I really like the DV," Dragon said.
"So do I. What do you want for it?"
"You got a sister?"
I tuned out. "Priestess," I whispered. "Look what I got." She sat beside me silently staring into space, an empty ratpack in one hand. I passed her a doxcup and popped it open. The rich aroma rolled over us.
"Dox!" Her eyes sparkled and an angelic smile transformed her face. It was so lovely that my heart just ached for her. She took a sip with trembling hands. It was so hot it burnt her lips. "You're a magician, Thinker. I love it!"
"Aw right, who's been hoarding the dox? Thinker, you scut!" Psycho was outraged.
"Don't badmouth my man," Priestess said. "He's just bought my soul with this dox."
"Thinker, I'll trade you two bat guano for a dox."
"Some mission, huh, Thinker?" It was Merlin, resting with his back up against a crumpled bulkhead, spooning up his rations. "Remember Mongera?"
"A memorable vacation," I replied.
"I never thought we'd get out alive," Merlin said. "I thought we were all cooked for sure." Merlin had survived Mongera without a scratch. It was miraculous, but he deserved it, after losing both legs on Coldmark. I had gotten through Coldmark all right but had lost an arm and a large chunk of my hide on Mongera. The Legion had grown it all back for me, just like Merlin's new legs. If you stayed in the Legion long enough, you could eventually become entirely artificial. There were some people like that, still walking around pretending to be human. You could generally tell by the things they said—they were seriously crazy.
"What are our chances for this one, Merlin?" I asked. It started to snow—wet snow sifted softly down through the gaps in the roof of the squadmod and evaporated on our armor.
"Snow—just what we need," Ps
ycho said.
Merlin put his ratpack down and looked up at the shredded ceiling. "Technically, we're in much better shape this time, Thinker," he said. "We know how to kill the O's now, and we didn't last time. But it's going to depend on what we meet—and how many of them."
Merlin sounded so casual, so matter of fact—as if he had been killing O's all his life. It was truly miraculous. He had embraced death on Mongera; he had almost thrown his life away for Beta, for us all. I would never forget it. Mongera had changed us all.
"You've studied the O's, Merlin—what motivates them?" I knew that nobody knew the answer to that, but I respected Merlin's opinions.
"I think their motivations may be similar to ours. They are an aggressive, expanding power. They're migrating, hungry for new worlds, and as oxygen breathers, they want our worlds. They're an ancient race, with awesome psychic abilities that we cannot match. It appears so far that the differences between human and O are so great they cannot be bridged. The Systies tried and failed. We've never even tried—it's hard to get to know somebody who's trying to kill you."
"But we're making progress, aren't we, Merlin?" Dragon asked. "I mean we've learned a lot. We know how to kill them now. And we're still superior ship to ship."
"Yes—by Legion standards we're making progress. You know, there are some very important points about the O's that people tend to forget. For one thing, their technology is static. Their ships, their tactics, their weapons—it's all exactly the same now as it was hundreds of years ago. When we first met the O's, we lost—always. They were irresistible. Then, finally, we learned how to take on and defeat their star fleets. That ended the Plague War, and gave us a little breathing space. Until now, it was the only advantage we had. Their psypower insured we could not defeat them once they gained a foothold on a planet's surface."
"All right, so their technology is static. That's good," Dragon said.
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