Soldier of the Legion sotl-1

by Marshall S. Thomas

  Two more darted past from the opposite direction, wheeling into the clouds for another pass. Psycho fired immediately, auto tacstar, flashing up into the snowy sky.

  “Ha! They’re here!” He crouched, Manlink at his shoulder, furious, looking up into the sky, pink snow falling softly all around him.

  A tooth-rattling howl as the air glittered with laser bursts flashing down in a beautiful, horrible arc from the sky, laser rain, slicing an irresistible path through the terrace, everything in its path disintegrating, exploding into dust. Psycho ducked. I couldn’t get any closer to the ground because of my clothing.

  “Systies are strafing. Psycho, hold ‘em! Air cover! We need smoke! Beta, Gamma, on me!” Snow Leopard rounded the corner, joining us, and stepped into the flaming ruins of the open doorway. I followed, anxious to get out of the courtyard. A series of sonic booms shattered the sky. Four, five, six. All right! That had to be Topcat, the extraction force, with Legion fighters. About time! They’d give us the air!

  Inside we faced a great hall lined with benches, the walls covered with heavy tapestries, with a raised platform at the far end and a nightmare red goblin carved into the wall behind the platform. He didn’t look too friendly. Perhaps that explained the SG’s.

  Smoking incense, flickering candles, and a sudden silence. Doorways. Two stone staircases, either side of the platform, leading up to the second floor. Warhound kicked open one of the doors. A library, deserted. Dragon did another. Musty, empty cells, desks and paper.

  “V-min, v-min, gang, she’s here. Upstairs! They live upstairs!” We picked our way carefully around the benches. Nothing stirred. Snow Leopard and Boudicca each took a staircase. Aircars shrieked past outside, and sonic booms rattled the building. We could hear tacstars howling on full auto. Could it be Psycho? I found myself behind Boudicca, hustling up the stairs. Scrapper and Sassin followed me. Sassin was the Cyrillian merc who carried Gamma’s Manlink. Of course, we called him Sassin the Assassin.

  We gained the second floor behind a barrage of v-min auto. We found a body in the corridor, a Coldmarker male. I caught a glimpse of Snow Leopard, Dragon, Merlin and Priestess, coming up the other staircase, firing v-min auto into their corridor.

  It was a long rectangular building and the corridor ran around the building, giving access to all the rooms. A great explosion shattered the sky outside. We did not have much time! The corridor was lined with closed wooden doors. I blew away the first one, and Sassin went for the opposite door. Boudicca joined me, stepping into the smoking dust, her E at her shoulder. A Coldmarker priest stood against the wall, clothed in a dark robe. “We’re unarmed,” he said shakily in Inter. “We’re a servant of God.”

  Boudicca pointed her E right at his head. “Drop the robe, holy man.”

  He carefully loosened the cloth belt and the robe slid to the floor. He was pale and fat and almost naked, trembling like jelly, clad only in a dirty loincloth. No weapons.

  “We want the girl,” Boudicca said, “the Legion girl with the golden hair.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She didn’t have to voice any threats. He understood.

  “Next cell!” He responded immediately, gesturing up the corridor. He trembled violently.

  “The Legion thanks you,” she said. Then she switched to xmin and shot him in the chest. The explosion blew him apart, spraying us with gore, splattering the entire room with blood. I was stunned for an instant, frozen in horror. She had been almost sane when I knew her in Hell.

  Laser light flickered and cracked in the corridor, and V bolts banged away on auto. Gamma and Beta were kicking in doors and firing on v-min.

  Boudicca stood before the door to the next room. Sassin raised his Manlink and fired and the door crashed right into the room. Boudicca and I stepped into the dark, E’s on v-min. A narrow slit in the cold stone wall high above admitted a sliver of daylight, revealing a fireplace with a few dying red embers. Valkyrie stood in the middle of the room facing us. She wore a Coldmarker cloak with the hood back and her golden hair shone in the dark. She appeared calm and detached. She stood over another girl, icy pale skin, black hair, heavy lids. A Mocain! The Mocain was on her knees, almost naked, shivering, facing us, her wrists and ankles tied behind her. Valkyrie stood over her, and she had the Mocain’s hair in one hand and a cold knife in the other.

  “Millina, meet the Legion,” she said. “Legion, Millina. Hello, Thinker! Hello, Boudicca! Good to see you! Millina, I wanted you to see the Legion, before your death.”

  The Mocain spoke. She tried to turn her head to face Valkyrie, but Valkyrie would not let go of her hair. “Legion…” the Mocain gasped, “We never killed you, Legion.”

  Valkyrie leaned over and hissed in her ear. “Your mistake!” She brought the knife down and slashed the Mocain’s throat from ear to ear. The Mocain convulsed and a scream started but it was abruptly cut off as a cascade of bright red blood spurted freely out from her neck. Valkyrie kicked her in the back, and the Mocain fell face-first to the floor. I could only watch, stunned.

  “Die, you sub!” Valkyrie appeared to be consumed by an ice-cold fury.

  “Are you all right?” Boudicca asked.

  “I’m fine! Give me an E!”

  I handed her my mini in slow motion, still in shock from what she had just done. I reached out and touched her. It was wonderful to see her. I tried to say something, but I could only stare at the dying Mocain.

  She snarled, “I want to kill every one of these filthy priests! Every one!” I’d never seen her like this, not even in her fighting fury when we almost died on Hell.

  Boudicca turned and called it in, “Mission accomplished! Request extraction now!” The noise level rose outside, a continual banshee shriek of auto laser and the ripping, popping bursts of auto xmax and the horrible, unearthly supersonic blasts of the tacstars. As we hustled out into the corridor, I became suddenly conscious of the events that had been going on all around us. I had been too busy to absorb the transmissions, but I was getting them now.

  “Systies on the ground! Moving in! Fully armored!”

  “Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!”

  “I’m hit! Oh, God!”

  “Take out that bunch!”

  “Topcat on the ZA!”

  “We’re taking fire!”

  “They’ve got the target!”

  “There’s two of them over there. Get ‘em both!”

  “I’m strafing them. Legion, get down!” There it was again, laser rain, ripping down all around us, burning holes in the stone walls of the monastery, ripping through the courtyards like the fingers of the gods. My skin crawled. It always crawled when I heard the lasers.

  It was getting ugly. I led the way, “Down the stairs!”

  We went charging down, and came sliding to a sudden stop halfway down the stairwell. Two fully armored Systie troopers, armed with SGs, stepped into the main doorway in a gust of red smoke swirling in from outside, like great robot genies in some wild drug-induced nightmare.

  Sassin and I fired simultaneously. His was a tacstar. A brilliant, white-hot micronuke blew away the two Systie troopers and took out the doorway and most of the wall as well. Shrapnel peppered us, and I noticed my hands were bleeding.

  Then the Systies counter-attacked. There was a sudden flash, and everything downstairs exploded. A hot pain lanced my left arm. I screamed in pain and anger. “Whoa! Back! Back up the stairs!”

  We laid down a tremendous barrage of xmax and tacstars, retreating back up the stairs. The building wobbled. Coolhand let loose about four smokers, and somebody in Gamma lobbed down a deceptor and it crackled and spun away merrily. It would keep the Systies busy for a few marks anyway.

  “Topcat, Snow Leopard. Beta and Gamma are trapped on the upper floor and we need extraction. Systies have the lower floor. We’ve got Valkyrie.”

  “Good job, guys! Topcat is on you! Blow a hole in the roof! We’ll extract you!”

  “Right here!” We gat
hered around a spot near the outside wall. Dragon and Doubledare guarded the stairwells. Sassin blew open a jagged hole in the ceiling. I shot a flare through the hole.

  “We see you, guys! Tell us when you’re ready!” Another tacstar rocked the building downstairs. An aircar whistled overhead.

  “They’re coming up!” Dragon announced, firing a long burst of auto xmax. Doubledare let loose as well. We charged back to the stairwells and split our forces, half to each stairway.

  Snow Leopard took charge, “We have to stop them, or we’ll never get out. Down! Attack!” We fired deceptors and walked down the stairs right into them, firing, and it was the last thing they expected. The building shook with the frenzy of lasers and xmax. I expected it to collapse at any time. Green smoke whirled all around us, and even with the darksight, it was difficult to see. The Systies used deceptors too. Tacstar bursts flickered and cracked, white-hot nuclear light, glaring and fading. We fired flame on auto and filled the downstairs with rolling sheets of fire.

  We paused halfway down the stairwell, again. A roaring inferno, full of burning splinters and shattered, blackened A-suits. One of them moved up from the floor, staggering sideways, flames running all over his armor. We fired lasers and white-hot tracks appeared on his armor and the metallic screeching set my teeth on edge, and he twitched and fell into the flames with a crash. At the end of the hall, the red God surveyed the scene silently, flames shooting up all around him.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Snow Leopard asked.

  “Dragon, Merlin, Sassin and Warhound, stay on the stairs and defend the main doorway. The rest of us, back upstairs and let’s call in the evac.” We could hear heavy firing outside again, and more sonic booms. Sweety was briefing me on the situation but I found it hard to concentrate when people were trying to kill me.

  “Beta, Gamma, Topcat. We’re on the ground defending your building. You are under heavy assault.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know! Keep them away from the main door, will you?”

  “Your door is secure for now, but don’t exit that way. Use the roof and get out quick! More bad guys on the way!”

  Valkyrie had pulled a table from a nearby room and moved it under the hole we had made in the roof. Another door opened suddenly and a Coldmarker ran out gesturing and screaming. Somebody shot him in the face, and the back of his head splattered against the wall.

  Valkyrie spat at his corpse. “Idiot! What a stupid move!”

  Warhound and Hotshot leaped up on the table and crawled up into the shattered wooden beams of the ceiling. Warhound shot off another flare. There was so much adrenalin in my system I could taste it on my tongue.

  “Topcat Air, Beta, Gamma ready for evac! Yellow flare!”

  “I’ve got ‘em, Topcat! Cover me!” Redhawk shouted as our aircar appeared above us, balanced effortlessly over the hole, assault doors snapping open. The backblast rushed down through the hole and washed over us. I boosted Valkyrie up to Boudicca, who was standing on the table. Valkyrie paused just for an instant between us, clutching my coldcoat, and she suddenly appeared very vulnerable, not at all like the terror I knew. Clear green eyes full of emotion, heavenly golden hair dancing in the breeze.

  “Did you really come here just to get me back?” she shouted above the shriek from the aircar. She looked right into my eyes, and then looked up to Boudicca.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I replied. “Thought I’d look you up.”

  “Don’t get mushy on me, Valkyrie,” Boudicca said. She hauled her up to Warhound’s outstretched arms. “Get your scrawny butt into that aircar!”

  Snow Leopard would be the last one into the car, in true Legion tradition, waiting until our rear guard was safely aboard. We had a tremendous view from the aircar as we struggled to haul everyone in. The snowy sky burnt with glittering laser tracks and flashed with white-hot airbursts. Every few fracs the aircar rang with hits, shrapnel scarring the plex and xmax banging against the skin and rocking the car, and lasers burning into the armor mils from our flesh. Heavy Legion fighters boomed overhead, ripping holes in the sky. Legion and Systie aircars spiraled through the air in crazy patterns, looping and falling and diving and flashing past us and darting up into the leaden clouds chasing each other around and loosing long bursts of laser and tacstars.

  The monastery complex rocked back and forth below us as Redhawk tried desperately to steady the car. Everywhere we looked, the buildings of the monastery glowed with swirling, multicolored clouds of smoke and flashed with brilliant explosions, as if the complex was lit up for some lunatic, barbaric festival, with flashing lights and fireworks. Legion soldiers in A-suits advanced into Systie fire, and glittering sheets of heavy laser from the skies, suddenly there. Broken, smoking A-suits littered the terraces of the monastery. Through the smoke I could see the Systies, too, A-suited DefCorps commandos, firing tacstars at the Legion! I raised my E just as Snow Leopard jumped in. We shot away from the roof instantly and the assault doors slammed shut.

  “We’ve got to recover Psycho!” Snow Leopard said. Then the ceiling of the aircar exploded, an ear-shattering crack, a bright white flash, and the plex blowing away, icy air roaring in-streaks of phospho white bursting away from us. Tacstar! Laser tracks peppered the ceiling. We had two squads inside and it was an awful mess. The roar of the air rushing in and the shriek of the jets overwhelmed us all. I could barely hear Redhawk’s voice echoing in my comtop. We were dead!

  “Beta Air hit! Nova! We’re coming in!”

  The earth tilted up madly and another aircar flashed past us and the monastery slid away, and then moved back at us quickly. I watched the spires of one of the buildings coming right at us and I could see Valkyrie’s Legion cross, red cloth fluttering on a blue tile roof, still there!

  Then there was a sickening blast and a white hot flash inside my head and I was gone.

  Chapter 19: Blood of the Legion

  “Cut it off! Use the laser! Oh, Lord! Give me a mag!” somebody screamed.

  A terrifying blast split the sky open directly overhead. A throbbing wave of pain pulsed over my body. The sound of firing rose to a lunatic crescendo, drowning out everything else. The shriek of tacstars grated in my ears. Someone in an A-suit stood directly over me, tearing away at the twisted mass of metal that surrounded me like a coffin. We were still in the aircar, and the battle raged all around us. Another A-suited Legionnaire smashed at the wreckage with his armored fists, tearing it apart. I got a glimpse of Snow Leopard, carrying Coolhand out of the wreckage.

  The A-suited Legionnaire got me by the shoulders and pulled me out of the wreckage. I had a hazy glimpse of his insignia: CAT 21, Topcat, the extraction team. The aircar was a twisted, crumpled wreck, but more or less in one piece. Two Legionnaires in armor knelt next to me, firing their E’s, auto laser, death’s bright light. The sky split with lasers and explosions and tacstars and aircars and fighters, booming overhead. Snow fell softly from heavy grey clouds.

  “Kiss it! Op Star!”

  “Get down! Down, down, down!”

  “Oh, no!”

  A brilliant phospho white flash, then a deafening blast. The mountains shook. A flaming crimson fireball rose into the sky, rivaling the morning sun.

  “Dead-man!” The firing slowed momentarily. A Legion aircar shot overhead. Another settled in a cloud of red smoke next to the wreckage of Beta Air. Priestess was all right and working on Coolhand, she had his comtop off. I found I could move. Merlin was on his knees, fumbling with his E. I didn’t see Warhound, Dragon, or Valkyrie.

  Systie xmax rounds spattered the wreckage around us! The op star had exploded right among the Systie commandos, but it had not taken them all out. We stayed low.

  “Thinker, have you seen Psycho?” Snow Leopard paused briefly with his E at his shoulder, wreathed in snow.

  I gestured, “He was over there when the strafing hit. I haven’t heard from him since.” I could not imagine anyone surviving that laser rain.

  “Somebody! Help
me out here!” Boudicca called out. I scrambled onto the wreckage, my body shooting jagged barbs of pain into my brain in protest. A squad of Legion troopers moved past us, CAT 21, ghostly A-suits advancing into the hovering nuclear cloud, snapping off random bursts on laser. I spotted Boudicca’s fluttering hands and hauled her up out of a twisted escape hatchway. Valkyrie emerged behind her, pale and shaken, a bruise on her forehead, her lower lip bleeding. But still alive! I grasped her hands and she rushed into my arms and held on with a death grip.

  She still wore the priest’s robe and was deathly pale. Laser bursts flickered a few mikes over our heads. I caught a glimpse of Redhawk crawling out of a tangle of twisted metal with Scrapper.

  “Down, down!” A red smoker burst brilliantly right in front of us. Sassin rose up out of the mists, a dark vision, still clutching his Manlink.

  Another figure emerged from behind him. “Valkyrie! Welcome back! Are you all right?” Lowdrop himself greeted us in a litesuit and comtop, E in one hand. Someone else stood beside him, and then I got a sudden glimpse of her face through the faceplate-pale weary child, limp golden hair. Gravelight! Why in Deadman’s name would they expose her to this idiotic shoot-out?

  Valkyrie pulled away from me and struggled to compose herself. “I’m all right,” Valkyrie replied bravely, rubbing blood from her mouth. Light snow settled on her hair. “I’ve lost my handgun. Has anyone got an E?”

  “All units evac! Immediate evac, please.” A booming all-channels maxburst, from Downside Ops.

  Lowdrop replied. “Tell Opscon we’re on the way! Recovering casualties, we’re on the way!”

  “Valkyrie!” Gravelight exclaimed. She seized Valkyrie by the arm. “Your captors…was there a Mocain girl called Millina?”

  Valkyrie’s face darkened, and her mouth tightened. “Yes, I killed that bitch sub! Why?”

  Gravelight shrank back, stunned, then frantically grabbed Valkyrie’s arm, “No! You killed her? Where? When? Where is she?”

  Valkyrie tore away from Gravelight’s grasp. “She’s in Hell! Where she belongs!”