Foreign Legions

by David Drake

  Bald Lucius, a pace behind Froggie, stabbed for the ape's head. His blade sparkled into the upright of the helmet's T opening, grinding on teeth and then the creature's spine. Baldy put his right boot on the helmet and tugged his sword free with both hands.

  Glabrio was down but twisting as he grappled with the other guard. Two troopers stood over the pair, chopping at joints in the ape's backplate. Three more troopers had sprinted past that part of the melee to get at the mercenaries beyond. Velio blocked an axe with his shield as his two companions hacked at the barb from either side.

  At Froggie's feet, the Commander tried to squirm around a console of translucent blue ice. Froggie grabbed him by the throat and pulled him upright.

  "You cannot—" the Commander shrilled. Froggie punched his sword home, all the way to the hilt. He felt ribs grate, then a snap! and a shock that numbed his arm. He'd driven his point into the ice beyond.

  The Commander's eyes rolled up. The blood that spewed from his mouth was as red as a man's.

  Froggie couldn't grip his sword. Ice was boiling away from where the steel pierced it; the Commander's staring body toppled backward, no longer supported by the blade.

  All the barbs were down. A trooper was helping Glabrio get out from under the bodyguard. The hilt of his dagger stuck from beneath the ape's chin like a hazelwood beard.

  Everybody was all right, everybody who counted. Slats hopped over the litter of bodies with the bag the local—his head now sitting on the stump of his neck with a startled expression—had brought to show.

  "Get out!" Slats screamed. "The wormhole generator has been damaged!"

  Something had been damaged, sure enough. The ice into which Froggie'd pinned the Commander had burned completely away, and the hissing scar was spreading across the floor. Froggie grabbed a trooper's shoulder and jerked him toward the mouth of the cave.

  "Go!" he said. He reached for another man, but they were all moving in the right direction, stumbling and cursing. Glabrio bent to pick up his shield but thought again and lunged through the opening instead.

  There was a smell like the air gets sometimes just before a thunderbolt. Froggie stamped out of the cave with only Slats behind him. "Venus Mother of Men!" he said as the forest enfolded him, blissfully cooler than the place he'd just left.

  Three-Spire, unhurt and unnoticed, sprang from the sizzling, sparking portal. "I will help you—" he cried.

  Slats put his four hands on the ground and kicked with both feet. The barb aide toppled backward, into the cave again. His scream stopped while he was still in the air.

  The walls of the cave vanished. It was like looking into the green depths of the sea. Three-Spire fell, his body shrinking but remaining visible even when it was smaller than a gnat glimpsed through an emerald lens.

  Froggie blinked. The basalt spike was before him again. His right arm ached, and the night was alive with noises of the forest.

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Lucky was bandaging Messus' left forearm; it was a bad cut, definitely a job for the medics from the Harbor.

  Froggie rubbed his right wrist against his thigh, trying to work the feeling back into it. His shield was scrap, but he guessed he'd carry it to Kascanschi.

  "We're done here," he said. "Let's get back to the damned town and Slats can call for help. It's safe to do that now."

  "Top?" said Lucky. He glanced toward where the cave had been, then straightened his head very quickly. "Is there going to be trouble? Because of, you know, what happened?"

  "No," said Slats forcefully. When they left the Harbor just a few days ago, Froggie wouldn't have believed the bug had the balls to do what he'd done—any of the things he'd done—tonight. "The event will never be reported. Our rivals have lost their considerable investment when we destroyed the dimensional portal; they will fear severe sanctions in addition if the truth comes out. We will gain credit for discovering a product of unexpected value on this planet."

  "Let's go," said Froggie, slinging what was left of his shield behind him. "I'll lead."

  "We'll gain, you say," Glabrio muttered. "The Commander gains, you mean. Third of the Fourth don't get jack shit."

  "You're alive, aren't you, Glabrio?" Froggie said as he stepped off on his left foot. "You'd bitch if they crucified you with golden nails!"

  The squad swung into motion behind him. Over the noise of boots and equipment Slats said, "The first thing the Commander will gain is this satchel of prepared drug which I rescued before the portal collapsed. I will present it to him myself. I estimate there are three thousand euphoric doses in it. And one fatal dose, I suspect."

  Froggie chuckled. He was looking forward to seeing Queenie. After a night like this, you needed to remind yourself you were alive.

  Not that it'd been a bad night. Froggie thought again about the way his sword had slid through a blue suit and the ribs beneath it.

  He chuckled again. In some ways this had been the best night of Froggie's life.

  A Clear Signal

  Mark L. Van Name

  One month to the day after Jim's execution, the aliens showed up at my gym. It was a Tuesday morning, and, as usual, R.C. and I had the place to ourselves. R.C. was in the far rear corner of the large free-weight room, methodically pumping his way through a warm-up set of hack squats. I had just finished my last set of bench presses and was sitting on the bench, trying to decide whether to add an extra chest exercise or call it a day. When the three aliens came through the gym's steel door without setting off any of the alarms, we both reached into our gym bags and kept our hands on our weapons, waiting to see what would happen.

  The aliens were taller and more buglike than the way they looked in the pictures and video I'd seen, and their skin was more of a sky blue than I would have guessed. As they walked closer, their legs moving more like those of a mantis than a man, I could see the clear, skintight suits they wore, the necklaces I knew from the news were translators, and the gill-like atmosphere conversion slits in the clear hoods that fit them like kids' Halloween masks of dead presidents.

  They moved as a group, in a triangle. R.C. stood, his hand still in his gym bag, and took one step closer to them. The rear one nearer to him turned its head to follow his progress, while the other rear one kept its eyes on me; clearly, the leader walked in front. I liked that; I respected the alien in front for the choice, and I was glad to have an easy target. The leader was a little larger than the others, probably edging toward a full seven feet tall and almost as wide as a thin man; hitting him should not be a problem if it came to that. All four of the leader's hands were obviously empty; disks the shape and thickness of bagels and the color of the morning ocean off Key West were equally obvious in all four hands of each of his bodyguards.

  R.C. tilted his head at them and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head slightly; he'd know I wouldn't do it, and he'd also know that I would back his play if he felt it had to go that way. He pulled out his gun, and immediately a low buzzing filled the room as the air between the aliens and R.C. shimmered briefly. R.C. went down fast, all six and a half feet and 280 pounds of him collapsing as if the air had gone out of him.

  My hand was just clear of my gym bag. I dropped the gun onto the towels in the bag and pulled my empty hand very slowly away. Going cold inside, I asked, "Will he be okay?"

  "Yes," the leader replied. "He should awaken in approximately one hour and experience almost no discomfort." His voice was as good as it had sounded on TV, an announcer's voice, deep and rich. It lacked only emotion, but that lack made it disconcerting, almost threatening.

  I let out the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding since I asked the question, and I leaned back against the racked bar. The metal plates on the bar clanged from the impact, and the aliens paused; I wondered if their translators were trying to make sense of the noise. "So what can I do for you guys? From what I've read I thought you were meeting only with government leaders. I thought you weren't allowed to mingle with the rest of us."

  My
question seemed to catch the leader off guard, and he paused and waved his lower left arm slightly. "Yes, we are restricted. We are here . . . without official approval. We are seeking Matthew Stark. You are he?"

  "Yes."

  "You must do something for us."

  I looked at R.C.'s crumpled body and knew I shouldn't say it, but if I were any good anymore at taking orders I wouldn't have ended my five years with the gang at Langley with the company version of a dishonorable discharge. "Screw you. You bypass my alarms, waltz into my gym, mess up my workout, and zap my partner; I don't have to do anything for you."

  "Yes, you do. We would not have risked the negotiations with your governments if we had been able to ascertain other possibilities. You must come with us, receive your instructions, and then execute them. No other option is acceptable."

  The three of them had stopped only a few feet away, and all eight of the bodyguards' hands were now pointed at me. I could feel the anger welling in me even as I fought to control it. "Sure, there are other options. One is that you and your two friends turn around, walk your skinny blue asses out of my gym, and do whatever it is that you want me to do. Or you find somebody else to do it. Try one of those options. I choose when I work, and I choose the people I work for, and I don't choose to work for you."

  After a slight pause, the leader spread all four of its arms and said, "We did consider those options, but we do not believe either would lead to success. We cannot do what we need you to do. We have already tried and failed. We do not know of anyone else with your unique qualifications. And, time is increasingly precious."

  "What exactly is it that you want me to do?"

  "Locate James Peterson and return him to us."

  I stood up without realizing I was going to do so. Eight disk-filled hands tilted and followed my movement. I felt the rush of emotions as my sadness and anger fought, then went cold as the anger took over completely. "I can save you idiots a lot of work. Jim's dead. He's been dead for a month. It was all over the news, the first execution in North Carolina in over three years."

  "No. He is not. We . . . intervened and repaired him."

  "That's crap. I read the stories on the execution, and the coroner pronounced him dead on the spot."

  "Yes, by your standards, for a short time he was dead. Our medical facilities are much more advanced than yours, however, and we were able to repair him before he suffered any permanent neural damage. After we restored him, he was . . . working for us. But now he has escaped."

  I didn't want to listen to any more. I had not particularly wanted the state to execute Jim. If anyone was to going to kill him, I should have done it, but I had had that chance and had chosen to let it go. The state's killing him would not bring him back to what he had been, and it sure wouldn't bring Louise back. In the end, though, I had made peace with the execution; he had brought it on himself. I didn't need my own special representatives from the first confirmed alien visitors to Earth coming into my gym and picking at that wound. "If you really did steal Jim's body and bring him back to life, he's your problem. I've been done with him since they arrested him five years ago. I'm going to shower. Get the hell out of my gym."

  I turned and headed for the showers. A current like the shock from a wall outlet passed through my whole body, and as I passed out I heard the buzzing.

  * * *

  I met Jim the summer before ninth grade, in those uncomfortable months when we were stuck between schools, between the friends we had known and the ones we hoped to meet, between the old hat of middle school and the new adventure of upper school. I had always loved watching basketball but had never been any good at it, and I had always been too afraid of failing to be willing to pursue it. On the first Monday morning of that summer vacation I promised myself I would try basketball in earnest, and I walked the half mile to the nearby community center, where I knew pickup games were always available for those brave enough to join them.

  The Woodlawn community center was a large old yellow stucco building that housed a surprisingly well-equipped weight room, a torn-up pool table, a trampoline, and one real wood-floored basketball court. The air conditioning couldn't keep up with the combination of the summer heat and the energy of all the kids in the place, but it did at least manage to make the inside temperature stay well below that of the St. Pete summer outside. The basketball court was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, the wood worn smooth by years of running feet, the glass backboards freshly marked for the summer season, the nets still white. It was also a place I could not play, because you had to either bring your own five players to queue up for a chance at the current winners on the court or be on a summer-league team scheduled to play on it.

  Fortunately, a row of six concrete outdoor courts stood right next to the building. Each was full-sized and had a buffer of about ten feet between it and the next court. A few trees at one end of the row provided a little bit of shade from the sun; the best players not already indoors competed on the court nearest to those trees. The worse you were, the farther you played from those trees.

  I knew my place and went to the farthest court, where two half-court games of three-on-three were in progress. I stood on the sidelines, practiced dribbling the old rubber ball I had picked up at a yard sale, and waited for a chance at joining a team. Despite several game changes and a few half-hearted attempts on my part to get the players to notice me, no one picked me for a team. As angry as that made me at them, I also really didn't blame them. I had grown up but not filled out the previous year, so though I was already a little over six feet tall and almost to my adult height, I still weighed barely a hundred and forty pounds. Despite my weight, my height would have made me attractive to potential teammates if I hadn't been so obviously uncoordinated, a guy who had trouble dribbling for more than two bounces without losing control of the ball. I could have claimed a shot at a game and picked up two other guys when my turn came, but I was afraid of the anger that would roar out of me at the humiliation I would feel when all of them turned me down.

  Around lunchtime a lot of guys headed out to get food, and the games on my court shrunk to two on two. I was watching a game carefully, studying the moves of the players just as I studied the NBA stars on TV, hoping the knowledge would help me when I finally got into a game, when up walked the only guy in the place who looked like more of a geek than I did.

  He was an inch or two shorter than I, and he looked like he weighed a good thirty pounds less, a bag of small bones wrapped in sickly white, acne-scarred skin. His shorts were unfashionably short, and he wore a tee shirt that said, "Jocks suck." He came straight over to me, stuck out his hand, and said, "Hi. I'm Jim, Jim Peterson. Looking for a partner?"

  I stared at him for a moment. I couldn't imagine a worse partner, but then again, any partner was a way onto the court, and I probably looked like just as bad a prospect to him. I shook his hand. "Matt."

  "Gotten in yet?" he asked.

  I laughed. "What do you think?"

  "You're not sweating enough to have played recently, and I'm betting you're about as attractive to these Neanderthals as I am, so I'd guess no."

  "You'd guess right."

  "Well, we'll fix that now." He turned and yelled to the four guys playing on the half court in front of me, "My partner and I have next. What's the score?"

  None of the guys looked happy about it, but one of them said, "Eight to five, us."

  Jim sat with me and watched the game.

  "Have you ever played here before?" I asked.

  "A couple of times," he said, "though getting on without a partner is tough."

  "Have you ever won?"

  He laughed this time. "What do you think?"

  I liked his honesty. "I'd have to guess no."

  "You'd guess right."

  One of the guys on the floor hit a rattling jumper from just north of the foul line, his teammate high-fived him, and the other two guys grumbled. The guy who hit the shot waved us onto the court and said, "
You're up."