Curse of the Legion

by Marshall S. Thomas

"We've got roughly four hundred and fifty combat-dispersed in this immediate area, with another one hundred and fifty on the way—and every one is equipped with an E, Lizzie, and psybloc."

  "Excellent! Do they know what they're doing?"

  "Yes."

  "Whose orders will they follow?"

  "They'll obey Deadeye. And Deadeye will obey me."

  "Excellent. I like your war paint. All right, here's the sit." He unfolded a silky color tacmap showing Alpha Station with all enemy units highlighted in red.

  "Thinker! It's 019. Remember me? Beta Squad, 1st platoon, 5th Training Company, BT." It was another Legion trooper, snapping his visor up, revealing a slim, pale face with thoughtful eyes.

  "019! Of course. It's great to see you here." I grasped his arm. I did remember him, a slight, intense trainee. I hadn't been sure about him, but here he was, right in the thick of it.

  "I made Recon! I told you I'd make Recon." He was beaming. Beaming, in the face of death. One of our weakest students. No, ConFree wasn't ready for the ash heap of history. Not yet, not with all these kids throwing themselves at the enemy. I felt so good right then, with Trainee 019 at my side. My faith was instantly renewed.

  "What's the plan?" I asked. We went back to the tacmap.

  ###

  "That's the sluice trough—see it?" Stones had it highlighted on the tacmap.

  "I've got it." It was on Sweety's tacmap as well—I made sure of it.

  "That's our back door. It runs underground from several industrial waste outlets to a series of decontamination and purification chambers, even further underground. We don't have to worry about those. We enter right there, at that red dot. It should be on your tacmap as well by now. Got it?"

  "I got it."

  "We've already tunneled in there."

  "I had been planning on using the power service tunnels."

  "Can't do it. The O's seem aware it's a vulnerability. But it looks like they haven't discovered the sluice trough yet. We've saturated the station with eyemotes. We know exactly what's happening."

  A searing, deafening blast turned the night white-hot for a frac, and I could suddenly see Alpha Station, harshly illuminated by a swirling ball of fire that was rising slowly into the dark.

  "Deadman!" I exclaimed.

  "That's our diversion. Tacair is going to keep their heads down. Also, it would be helpful if your auxiliaries could fire aimed shots at any O that shows his face. We've been doing that regularly at night. If we stopped doing it, it would seem unusual."

  "How do they respond?"

  "They're very wary now. Before recon arrived, Legion escapees from the Station were raising hell at night, sniping and shelling and mining. At first the O would respond aggressively, but they had trouble finding their targets, and the targets were shooting back. After recon got here, our weaponry and tactics got better and the O have been running scared. We're pinning them down. Do you know how great that is? We're pinning them down."

  "I know exactly how great it is. Deadeye, we're doing a recon into Alpha Station. Your mission is to secure this side of the Station. If any O shows himself, you shoot him dead. Tell your warriors you want only aimed shots—no autofire. First canister. Once the shield goes down, use x. Single, aimed shots. If you get two O's I want it done with two canister rounds and two xmax."

  "We will bring you the heads, Slayer!"

  "Don't take any chances, Deadeye."

  "Tell that to the women, Slayer. We live to die!"

  ###

  "Almost there." Stones' voice echoed in my comtop. I was slithering through waist-high brush like a snake, enveloped in my Lizzie. A full-scale air raid was ripping through the air above us. Every frac or so everything would light up in a white phospho flash and I'd freeze. Then it would fade to black and I'd resume crawling. The sky was full of tracers, flickering downwards like hot hail. Alpha Station was burning, glowing in the night,. I sure hoped there would be something left for us.

  A putrid, rotting corpse was sprawled just to my left. A faint breeze moved a shredded fragment of cloth. Such light, silky cloth—it must have been a female. The fields around Alpha Station were covered with bodies—hundreds of them, Legion soldiers and ConFree civilians, men, women, children, and Taka, all warriors, and O's too, still in their A-suits. It was a killing ground. I tried not to look at the corpse—it was burnt to a crisp, clearly from starmass. Just ahead I spotted a rotting skull, still partially encased in dead flesh. The birds had been busy. I vowed, once again, that the O would pay for their bloody deeds. They were not going to escape Legion justice. We were going to kill them all. Not one O would escape Andrion 2, if the Legion had anything to say about it. And we did!

  "Omni target ahead, Thinker, see the zero. A&A, mag shield active, Vulcan on, projecting random psypower, not yet in range." Sweety was as calm as ice. Damn it! I hit the zoom and spotted the O easily. He was not far from the station—a sentry, no doubt. Why the hell hadn't Deadeye's guys spotted him? Then I realized he was hidden from their view by a projecting wall of the station.

  "Stones, Thinker. I've got an O on scope. I have to take him out or he may spot us."

  "Go ahead, sir."

  I set my E to canister and aimed carefully. The zoom brought the O's faceplate right up close—I could even see his ugly split head. The O's mag shield flickered a very faint violet. The damned things used to be invulnerable to us, with that force field. Even tacstars couldn't hurt them, with the mag shield up. But they weren't invulnerable any more. I gently touched the trigger. The canister rounds hit him like a swarm of killer bees, ripping aside the madly whirling molecules of the force field, peppering his armor. I fired xmax, one round, right into his helmet. It exploded inside and blasted his head to a shredded goo.

  "Target eliminated," I reported.

  "All right, we're at the entrance. Get over here."

  ###

  The entrance to the sluice trough was at the bottom of a very narrow slit trench cut down through spongy soil with a plasmapak. We were a squad of eleven Legion soldiers, ten recon boots and me. We were all in litesuits, A-vests, and comtops, carrying E's and psybloc, wearing Lizzie camfax cloaks. As Trainee 019, warname Bluesky, sealed the narrow entrance above us with the camo plug, we were plunged into the deepest gloom and my darksight activated. We were squatting by a cenite pipe that had a large opening slashed into it. It didn't look large enough to admit a child.

  "Are we really going in there?" I asked.

  "Yes sir. We should be able to get through according to the measurements. Anything wrong?"

  "Oh no! I'm looking forward to it! Tell me—it seems to me this raid would be a perfect use for Holo-X. I'm surprised the Legion is not using Holo-X."

  "Ah well, that's ideal all right, but I was told we don't have vac superiority yet."

  "I see."

  "Without vac superiority you won't have a stable topside platform to project your Holo-X."

  "That's true. Yes, true. We seem to be raising hell though. Any hints when we're going to win the vac?"

  "I think the first hint is going to be when about five hundred Legion troopers overrun Alpha Station and slaughter all those O's. Some of them will be Holo-X but with those numbers a whole lot of them will be flesh and blood as well."

  "I guess you're right. All right, follow me." I squeezed my way into the narrow pipe. I was terrified. My claustrophobia wasn't getting better with the passage of time, but I was the leader and I had to go first. Deto!

  ###

  All I really remember about that fun little crawl, besides the sheer horror of it all, was the realization that I was going first, that I was the point for the Legion's bloody retribution for everything the O's had inflicted on Andrion 2—my adopted world. As I slithered along that filthy pipe like a poisonous snake my E was pointed right ahead and I felt a tremendous determination. Deathpaint and psybloc—it was a terrible combination. I was going to avenge all the Taka who had died for their world, and I was going to avenge all t
he Outworlders who had died for their civilization, for their race, for their people. That's what it was all about in the end—people. I guess that chased away all my fear. What the hell did I have to fear? I was Deadman's sword. It was the O's who had better fear me, not the other way around.

  Still, it was pretty scary. There wasn't even enough room to turn around. The sluice pipe was surrounded by tons of earth and stone, and if anything went wrong I knew I'd die miserably, hopeless and terrified. As I crawled forward through the muck, I tried to concentrate on the mission. Stones had told me Recon's mission was threefold: first, determine the O's positions and capabilities. They'd already done that, mostly through the eyemotes. Second, raise as much hell as possible to keep the O's off-balance when the main attack came. Third, capture a live O and return it to Legion forces upside. Stones had been greatly relieved when I told him that mission number three was already accomplished. Now they could concentrate entirely on having a fun time—mission number two.

  My personal mission was to recontact my wife and child and by this time I thought this could best be done by liberating as many Taka prisoners as possible from the O's. I had already accomplished Tara's mission by arming and training new Taka soldiers and setting them loose against the O's. Now it was time to free some prisoners. And there wasn't much time left. O shuttles and starships were still leaving the planet regularly, and the eyemotes told us some of them were loaded with ConFree and Taka prisoners. I knew Fleetcom was targeting and destroying all the O ships they could intercept, and nobody was asking about the cargo. The cargo didn't matter, even if it was our own women and children. We'd rather see them dead than captives of the O's. I felt the same. We all did. We knew all about the O's.

  ###

  "We're here, gang!" I announced. The removable grille was right where the tacmap said it should be, an icy pale metallic grate, set into the side of the sluice trough, just before the waste intake mechanism that was set into the floor of the aircar garage. It was right next to my visor. It was so damned beautiful I almost kissed it. It opened right into the garage subfloor, so the techs could get access to the sluice trough if anything went wrong. My blood was ice cold. A burst of hot emotion rushed over me. We had made it! We knew the aircar garage was full of prisoners, Outworders and Taka, all those who had not yet been murdered. The eyemotes told us the whole story. Women, children, babies—forced in there, a convenient holding site before being loaded onto the alien ships. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless…I touched the grille. No longer hopeless. I felt so good it was scary. I knew I wasn't human any more, at that point. I was Deadman's Dog, and I was out for blood.

  "All right," I said quietly. "Let's kill some O."

  Chapter 11

  Missing in Action

  The subfloor was a blacked-out underworld crowded with power systems, water and waste pipes, cables and storage lockers. Our entryway to the aircar garage was a short staircase leading up to a metal door. The damned thing wasn't even locked. The O's weren't quite as efficient as we feared—it was an extensive base, and we knew it a lot better than they did.

  I paused for a moment, looking over the tacmap. The other ten recon troopers were right behind me. The tacmap showed the garage was full of aircars and also full of humans—hundreds of them. Their Omni guards were there too. Sweety highlighted the O's for us, coloring them a bright red on the tacmap.

  "Six Omni targets, Three." Sweety's calm voice was meant for us all. "All targets are unarmored, shields down, armed with Vulcan multistrike, safeties on, all targets projecting random psypower. Target selection—now. Suggested attack approaches—now. See the tacmap. I suggest xmax or laser, single shots, no need for canister. I will counter and reverse their psypower at your command, Three."

  "Thank you, Sweety," I said. Unarmored! No shields! What a break! They saw no need for armor or shields inside the base—all they had to worry about was a bunch of helpless, psyched captives. Sweety had assigned primary targets for each of us—and secondary targets as well.

  "Do it, Sweety. Death!" I said, kicking open the door and charging in. It was very dark in there, only a few pale lights dotting a vast open area full of shadowy, still aircars. The entire garage was full of captives, Taka and Outworlders, huddled silently, motionless, in hopeless little groups, clinging to life in the face of certain death. My darksight lit it all up for me in a pale green as I ran past them but I wasn't looking at the captives. I was looking for the Undead, and they were glowing red on my visor. I shot my first target with xmax, blasting it right in its sickening concave chest, snapping my E to my secondary target as the garage suddenly erupted with deafening multiple blasts of X and the icy snapping of laser bursts. I hit the secondary with laser, walking it vertically down the O's tall body, ripping the creature wide open.

  "All targets down," Sweety reported. "Recommend confirm status of Targets Three and Five—life functions still active." I ran over to Target Three, twitching on its back, shocked glazed Omni eyes looking up at me. I blasted its split head with x as another trooper finished off Target Five. I felt nothing at all except hate.

  "All Omni life functions terminated," Sweety reported. Good! And they hadn't got off a single blast of starmass. Good!

  "Get to work!" I shouted. "Get that opstar in place! Four, Five, you're on the internal doors, prep for an O counterattack Get these captives up! ATTENTION ALL OUTWORLDERS AND TAKA!" Sweety amplified my voice to fill the garage. "You have just been liberated by Legion forces! We're taking you out of here. Do exactly as we say and ask no questions. Stand up now. Leave any belongings you may have. Follow us now. Don't say a word. Keep silent, make no noise!" I bellowed. I repeated the instructions in Taka. Bluesky and two other troopies were herding the frantic refugees together and leading them to one of the aircar gates. That was the plan—we knew we'd never get that gang out through the sluice trough.

  "O forces responding." Sweety cut in. "Armored O's approaching Doorway Two, three O's, armored and armed, mag shields up, armed with Vulcans, safeties off, psyprobes targeting garage, I am countering and reversing the probes now, recommend full auto canister, full auto xmax to counter…" Armored O's, I thought, shields up—scut!

  "Fire tacstar," Stones ordered calmly. The tacstar vaporized Door Two at exactly the same time that the aircar gates, on the opposite side of the garage, snapped open. The glare from the tacstar briefly revealed hundreds of former captives, mostly women and kids, rushing out the wide aircar gates. I caught a quick glimpse of a fiery night sky, crisscrossed with glowing tracers, but I had no time for that. I shouldered my E and fired auto canister into the section of wall where Door Two had been. A glittering burst of starmass shot out of the wall, ripping out and settling over everything, hissing and roaring, splattering everywhere. Aircars glowed white hot and exploded, blasting shrapnel everywhere. Screams echoed on the tacnet. The heat of the starmass burnt at my flesh, but the blast missed me. I ran forward, firing canister into the mess.

  "Who's hit?"

  "Recover casualties! That O is still moving!"

  We blasted the source of the starmass. Another horrible burst of plasma shot out of the jagged, glowing hole in the wall, and it caught a recon trooper dead-on. He flared up and died like an erupting star. Sweety found the O for me and I fired canister and another trooper fired a tacstar and the mini-nuke blew away the remainder of the wall.

  "All three armored O targets are terminated, Three," Sweety reported.

  "Oh Deadman!" someone cried out, "Stones and Shadows are both gone!"

  "Heavily armed O reaction force approaching from Door One," Sweety reported, "Five armored O's, armed with Vulcans, mag shields up, safeties off, psyprobes targeting garage…"

  "All right," I ordered, "withdraw through the aircar gate under cover of tacstars, canisters and xmax. Last man out, set off the opstar. The mission now is to escort those refugees to safety in the forests." I knew we couldn't recover our dead. There was nothing to recover.

  ###

  I fell
to one knee just outside the open aircar gate and fired a stream of canister just over the head of our last trooper as he ran from the garage, his mission completed. I fired bursts of flame into the garage as he ran past me, then I rose and followed him. The night sky was lit up as if for some barbaric spectacle, burning white hot flashes, burning black clouds edged in fire, lasers and auto x ripping close overhead, terrifying blasts erupting from the station, writhing fireballs rippling up into the flickering dark. Three Legion fighters cracked past us in a frac, three heavy booms, then the far side of the base exploded in a horrific rolling sheet of plasma.

  "Ops, this is Boots," I announced on the secure starlink. "Mission accomplished, request you cover our evacuation of the refugees through the northeast side of Alpha Station. Our opstar is set to—" The opstar in the aircar garage went off, a blinding flash and a shattering blast. The garage vaporized, an obscene white-hot phospho nuclear mushroom swirling into the night sky. Flower of the Legion, I thought, rising over our sacred dead.

  "Boots, Ops. Read you ten high. Your evac route is secure. Please avoid Alpha Station further. It is an active target." The wreckage from the opstar began falling all around us. I was still in the field, open ground. I took off for the forest. A huge Omni shuttle came careening overhead, disintegrating, red hot, shedding cenite skin, then it blew apart, turning the night to day, and a Legion fighter shot past, a beautiful, evil dead-black bat, flash, gone up into the dark, mission done. The O shuttle impacted everywhere, blinding, burning chaos. I ran into the forest.

  ###

  We reformed there, eight recon troopers and me, under the trees, clad in scorched Lizzies. Deadeye was organizing the Taka refugees, and the Legion survivors of the initial attack on Alpha Station were taking care of the Outworlder refugees. The eight troopers and I stood in a circle and grasped hands. I looked up at the flaming night, and I said what had to be said.