Soldier of the Legion sotl-1

by Marshall S. Thomas

  “As a man of God, why do you not offer yourself to Him? Surely this would be a sacred act?”

  “Of course. There is nothing that would please me more! But as a priest I am bound by my solemn vows. I must deliver my people up to God. If we priests were to offer ourselves, there would be no one to perform the ceremonies. It is a grave responsibility. We cannot be selfish!”

  “You are an inspiration to your people. Tell me more about the Beasts. How does God speak through the Beasts?”

  “What crap,” Snow Leopard declared, turning away from the screen. “That priest is the XO, and he doesn’t know anything. Nothing at all! He doesn’t know where the exos came from, or why they are here. All he knows is that it’s a great opportunity for him to slaughter all his enemies and live like a king.”

  “Maybe he’s not telling all he knows,” Coolhand suggested.

  “No, they’ve got him wired up. He thinks he’s telling the truth, but he doesn’t know anything!”

  “Well, if he doesn’t know, who does?” Dragon asked.

  “Probably nobody,” I said.

  “There aren’t any Systies here,” Ironman said. “That’s becoming clear.”

  “Then what are we doing here?” Priestess asked.

  “We’re doing the Legion’s will,” Snow Leopard replied. “That’s what we do, gang.”

  “Command doesn’t appear to know what it’s doing,” Warhound said. He appeared genuinely worried.

  “Command knows,” Psycho laughed. “Command knows. It’s just not telling. But it will, when it’s ready. And I can tell you my safeties are off.”

  “Beta, Deadeye!” The tacsite monitor spoke.

  “Speak, Deadeye!” Deadeye called us from the nearby Taka camp in the forest. We had handed out comsets to some of our auxiliaries.

  “The Lake People have come. They have left a gift for you.” He spoke in Taka.

  Snow Leopard stood beside me at the console. “Ask him what kind of a gift.” He was suspicious by nature. All Ones were suspicious by nature. But I asked.

  “It is a very nice gift, Slayer! I will bring it!”

  “Meet him outside.” Snow Leopard turned back to the monitor, the green glow from the screens giving his pale face an unhealthy pallor. Even in Hell his skin had not tanned. The rest of us had been burnt brown, but Snow Leopard’s face had just turned purple and then the skin had peeled away. Now it was pale again. We had been very close, in Providence, but he had changed after they made him a One. He had more to worry about than the rest of us.

  Coolhand joined me outside under a bright, clear sky. We were armed, but not armored. We wore whatever we pleased when on duty in the tacsite.

  “A gift. Cookies with arsenic?” Coolhand speculated.

  “We’ll have Psycho test it. He’ll eat anything.”

  “I wonder if they know about explosives.” Coolhand smiled.

  “We’ll find out soon.”

  Psycho and Priestess drifted outside as well, curious. Psycho frequently hovered around Priestess, even though he knew she wasn’t interested.

  Deadeye emerged from the forest, accompanied by a longhaired Laker girl dressed in a clean Taka tunic, young and quite beautiful. She carried a woven bag. Deadeye was grinning, his stabbing sword resting on his shoulder.

  “She is for Longhair, Slayer! His girl. The Lake People send her.”

  Then I remembered. This was the woman that Ironman had captured on our first Cult bust. We’d sent her back to her people. Her eyes rigidly fixed on some object on the ground, she stood silently. Obediently.

  “Somebody get Ironman,” Coolhand suggested.

  I went back into the squadmod and found Ironman on the weight machine, clad only in shorts, lifting.

  “Ironman, I got something for you.”

  He paused, let up on the weights, and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. “What’s that?”

  “Outside. It’s a surprise.”

  The girl went down on her knees when Ironman appeared, and bowed low. Ironman was speechless.

  “She is yours, Longhair!” Deadeye said cheerfully. “You captured her. Now she is your slave.”

  The word ‘slave’ caused a small commotion and Snow Leopard was quietly summoned. When he arrived, he pulled Deadeye aside and they talked for some time. It emerged that there was no easy solution. It seemed she could no longer go back to her people. She belonged to Ironman now, just as Deadeye said. Only it was not possible. The Legion had a thing about killing slavers.

  Her name was Morning Light. Ironman took her hand and made her stand up. She would not look at him.

  Snow Leopard made the decision. He looked at the girl, and at Ironman, and at Deadeye. “Well, she can’t stay in the squadmod. If she wants to orbit, fine. She can camp nearby. Deadeye, you make sure she’s set up right. Ironman…” he paused, looking into space. “You’re going to remain a member of this squad. When I call your number, you’d better be there.

  “One more thing, Deadeye. She’s not a slave. If she wants to stick around as an auxiliary for Ironman, she can.” He paused, and made sure everyone was looking and listening before he continued. “But be perfectly clear about this. If her people feel she’s working off some sort of debt, that debt is over as soon as we move out of this area. When that happens, we expect her people to welcome her home.”

  “Ten, sir!” Ironman seemed happy, although somewhat shocked. There were no guidelines for this situation. He was on his own. I did not envy him.

  “So we’re into slavery now?” Priestess stood next to me. She did not look pleased by this development.

  “Why, no…I think Snow Leopard is just trying to decide what to do.”

  “This is very nice for you men, isn’t it? And what if I capture a Scaler man? Can I keep him?”

  I could tell she was upset. “Priestess, the girl’s people won’t take her back. We have to do something with her.”

  “The poor thing! I’m sure Ironman will make sure she’s nice and comfy.”

  I decided to stop talking. It wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It troubled me. I expected more problems like this. Ironman’s girl was only the beginning.

  Chapter 8: Island in the Sun

  Sunlight. Lord! Andrion 2’s star blazed overhead, nuclear light, a soundless explosion lighting up our world. What a day! The sunlight glared off crystal white sands from a cobalt blue sky, and a shallow calm green sea lapped gently at the beach. I lay flat on my back in the sand, stripped to my shorts, soaking up the heat. With my eyes closed, I could see a red haze, with brilliant white spots burning in the center. A burst of laughter broke the silence. Beta was taking a break.

  They’d switched us from hunting Cultists to exoseg duty. We had been hunting exosegs in our aircar over the badlands, and had spotted seven of them crossing a dry lakebed. All they could do was run over the salt flat. We left charred, dismembered corpses littering the landscape, and then continued our patrol across endless stretches of glaring white sands bordered by dark jumbled patches of tortured earth and dead brown hills. We reached the edge of an inland salt sea and parked our aircar on the beach near the languid green waves.

  “Suck it up!” Psycho shouted.

  “On deck, trooper! Yummies!” Coolhand kicked sand all over me, stinging my skin. I opened my eyes. A can of bitter tumbled end over end in the air, glittering, heading right for my head. I caught it, snapped it open, and drank. Ice, exploding. What a day!

  Swimming, sunbathing and succumbing to the all-too-human joy of warm sand between our toes, we gathered around a dropbox covered with hot comrats and cold drinks. Brown soldier ants, I thought, all skin and muscle and desire and nerves. I could not be happier, here, at the end of the journey, with the sunlight of a lost star warming my flesh.

  Priestess wore tight panties and a sleeveless top. It did not leave much to the imagination. She was all legs and arms, toasting in the sun, a vision of incredible beauty completely at ease, surrounded by a gang of death-weary,
sex-starved professional killers. It was probably the safest spot on the planet. Every single one of us would have died to protect her, and we knew she would do the same for us. Anyone who even laid an uninvited finger on her would have to answer to the rest of the squad. Chances are, the squad would need a replacement soldier while the offender took on a new career as worm food.

  The gentle green waves lapped at the shore with a faint hiss. Tiny creatures darted about in the foam. I got up and ambled over to the eats.

  “You should take a look at Ironman, Priestess.” Dragon sounded concerned. “He’s having trouble sleeping when we’re on duty at the squadmod. Guy just can’t sleep anymore. Keeps going out for air at night. He must walk all night, he’s so pale and exhausted when he gets back. I think he’s sick.”

  It got a laugh, and Dragon took a long drink of iced juice. Ironman’s relationship with the native girl made him a good target for jibes. He was so quiet and good-natured that it never seemed to bother him. He just sat there faintly smiling, brushing his long hair back with one hand. Come to think of it, he had been spending a lot of time with Morning Light.

  “Have a drink, Ironman. Don’t listen to these guys.” Snow Leopard smiled. His skin was turning red. By late afternoon it would be purple.

  Coolhand got up and waded into the water with Warhound. Coolhand was a good soul. He seemed happy with the Legion and with himself. I knew he had come from an unhappy world and perhaps that explained him.

  Redhawk was taking a rare break away from his beloved aircar. He made a show of splashing out to join the others, clowning around and flapping his arms like some great bird. His long, shaggy hair and scraggly beard made him look like some primitive hominid attacking modern human perfection.

  “Universal Biotics,” Psycho was saying. “They’re the ones! If you get a biogen from UB, you’re set for life.” He laughed and took another swig of bitter. We sat in the shade of the aircar. Psycho held forth on his favorite subject.

  “They will do absolutely anything you want! And you can set them for whatever you want-pick a personality, pick a fetish, pick a vice-you got it!”

  “Are we gonna hear this again?” Dragon was not impressed.

  “May Deadman walk if I’m lying! I swear on the cross this is true! It was just before I joined the Legion. I was a…well, kind of a security guard for this extremely wealthy sub who owned most of what was worth owning in those parts. Well, one day he…”

  “The last time you were an arms salesman,” Dragon objected.

  “That was a different story,” Psycho explained. “Anyway, he went away. He did that a lot. And he left me in charge of the interior of the…well, I suppose you lowlifes would call it a palace.” Psycho paused to take a sip.

  “So he had this biogen girl. She was something! They are fanatics at Universal Biotics. I swear, they must give free units to the techs, because those techs really put their hearts into their work.”

  “Not only their hearts,” Merlin observed.

  “Yeah, well, they have to test the units, right? Anyway, I did a little research in the owner’s manual. If you should ever be fortunate enough to own a biogen, don’t leave the manual lying around under maglocks. Anybody can get into those things.”

  Psycho’s eyes got misty as he spoke. “He always turned her off when he left. You’re not supposed to, it’s very bad for the units. But I told you he was a sub. He didn’t care, he just didn’t want her wandering around. Anyway, I did the door and there she was on the bed, out like a stone. I did my adjustments-and believe me, it wasn’t easy-and then I turned her on.”

  “So what happened?” Ironman had an innocent streak that surfaced from time to time.

  “Well, I tell you,” Psycho reminisced, and the tired, familiar story took on epic, if crude, proportions.

  ###

  “That’s really disgusting,” Priestess observed quietly when he was through.

  Psycho ignored her. “Of course, it was one chance in a lifetime. Those babies are expensive. Not for the likes of the Legion! But I dream that one of these days we’ll be busting our way into some place and there she’ll be-my biogen!” He took a long drink and looked up to the sun, completely happy. Psycho was crazy. He probably did dream about biogens.

  I wished I could relax, like the others, but I couldn’t. Nasty rumors circulated in the Second about intercepted fragments of Systie conversation. Mysterious voices, whispering to each other. Nobody would confirm it.

  An island a short distance from shore beckoned, baking in the sun, pale weathered stone and glittering sands covered with twisted stunted dead trees, burnt white by the elements. Priestess and I went swimming. I strapped my E to my back, just in case, and Priestess had a hot knife at her waist. Some of the guys had gone to sleep in the shade of the aircar.

  Warm silky water burnt at my lips and stung my eyes. Sunlight exploded off the surface, glittering like a sea of diamonds. We swam lazily through the warmth to the island. Psycho’s voice floated after us, hanging in the air. “Don’t stay out too late, kiddies, or I’ll tell Valkyrie!”

  A white crystal beach, tingling our feet. Priestess was lovely, slim and bronze, tossing her dark, wet hair back. Her sleeveless top clung to her. Her long legs dazzled me. We explored the island slowly, taking our time. The heat was like a great oven. A forest of grotesque dead trees surrounded us, and soon we lost sight of the aircar.

  Trees bleached like skulls, bone white, all twisted and torn, rising from the grainy sands.

  We had never been alone, really alone, except in the body shop, and I had not even kissed her there. We were pledged to each other now, and we tried to keep it a secret but it wasn’t easy. Thou shalt not mate within thine own squad. This unwritten commandment was frequently broken, and often resulted in transfers. We did not want to be separated, so we were being very careful. The cubes in the squadmod were simply out of the question. The squadmod had no privacy.

  I put a hand on Priestess’s shoulder and dropped the E to the sand. She stopped and turned around, her skin wet and glittery from the sand. She came to me gently, with a faint gasp. I was almost in a trance. I don’t think any biogen could have improved on what followed.

  The ear-splitting shriek of our aircar’s perimeter defense alarm shattered our bliss. Naked, Priestess and I leapt off the sand and scrambled for our weapons. My E in hand, I found a berm where I could lie prone and cover the aircar. Priestess clung close to my side with her hot knife.

  I zoomed in with my sight and saw that the rest of the squad had already sprung into action. Ironman stood on the roof of the aircar with his E, sweeping the southwest horizon with his sight. Dragon lay prone with his E behind a nearby dune. Redhawk had been caught in the water and frantically threshed for shore. The rest quickly took up defensive positions.

  “TWO FOUR GAMMA, IDENTIFY YOURSELF AND STATE YOUR INTENTIONS! YOU HAVE TARGETED A FRIENDLY UNIT! YOU ARE ENTERING OUR DZ! AIRCAR TWO FOUR GAMMA ON FULL COMBAT PREP!”

  Then it hit me. Gamma! I glanced at Priestess. Her eyes were clenched shut and her lips had become a thin white line.

  “IGNITION! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!” Our aircar boomed out the warning.

  The squad starburst away from the aircar, Ironman diving off the roof, the others scattering. Warhound and Coolhand snatched up weapons and ran for cover. Redhawk exploded out of the water and dived onto the sand.

  A white contrail came streaking out of the southwest and exploded ahead, it must have been right over the aircar, a tremendous crack, splitting the air. A harmless, bright pink phosphorous cloudburst erupted, turning the sky a hellish cast. The Legion aircar shot overhead at max speed, minimum altitude, a silver flash, the sand exploding into the air with the shock of its passing. The aircar wheeled on the horizon, came around for another pass.

  I cursed aloud and saw that virtually the entire squad was standing, shouting and shaking their fists at Gamma.

  Snow Leopard shouted a quick command and Psycho answered Gamma’s challenge
with a smoke round from his Manlink. It streaked after the aircar and exploded right on target with a bright white flash and a tremendous yellow cloud.

  The aircar rocked and shook and settled slowly, regaining control, coming right back, sliding over the sands toward Beta, closer and closer. Then it slowed and whined to a stop next to our own aircar. The car discharged a jeering, laughing Gamma Squad. I pulled back from the berm. Priestess was gone. I pounded the sand with the butt of my E and proceeded to recite every Legion curse I’d learned since Basic. I was still warming up when I found Priestess back at the beach, pulling her top on. She refused to look at me.

  Feeling like a schoolboy, I found my jox, shook the sand out and pulled them on.

  I returned to the berm and sighted in the scene at the aircars again.

  Snow Leopard was visibly upset, his face already purple. He waved his arms about in front of a smirking, freckle-faced girl with flame red hair who I immediately recognized as Gamma One, Boudicca. She had a Legion cross burned right onto her forehead. I’d always thought she was dangerously unstable, though the Legion evidently didn’t agree. I knew that Snow Leopard didn’t think so either. They’d been close ever since Basic. Fire and Ice.

  There were three girls in Gamma, I remembered. Then I saw Valkyrie. She stood at the edge of the beach, hands on hips, her sun-whitened blonde hair flowing in the wind. She looked right at the island. Right at me.

  I slid back down the berm on my back and closed my eyes against the brilliant sun. It didn’t help. I got up and trudged back to the beach.

  This time, Priestess did look at me, waiting for my report.

  “She’s here.”

  Priestess shut her eyes and nodded sharply.

  I hesitated. “Do you think we should go back?”

  Priestess didn’t answer. She sank to her knees in defeat.

  I closed my eyes for an instant. Sin, and ye shall be punished.

  The pink smoke had finally made it this far and drifted listlessly through the stark bony trees, settling slowly over the island. What a mess! I felt like a kid, caught with his hand in the cookie jar.