Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series

by Chris Bunch

Contamination from the hyperdrive missiles pocked the land around the ship, and Garvin wondered if Keffa was intending to create a radioactive moat.

  Two days later, the ship lifted and awkwardly grounded three kilometers away, and warriors began looking for the humans again.

  The incident remained a puzzle.

  • • •

  Heiser and Froude disappeared for a day, came back with one of the ship-observation teams.

  “Did you two ever hear of military discipline?” Garvin snarled. “Or that we might worry?”

  “We went out,” Heiser explained, “without clearing it with you because we knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “Don’t punish the troops,” Froude added. “We said we were under orders, highly classified and such.”

  “Not that I think you’ll be that angry,” Heiser said. “I think we’ve got a way to get rid of this Musth.

  “The only drawback is it’ll probably irretrievably strand us here on this planet.”

  “We were rather hoping we could find a way to seize the ship for our own purposes,” Froude said. “But, unfortunately …”

  Garvin and Njangu were wondering why the scientists seem to have all the good ideas, then both turned white when Froude explained how they’d done their “research.”

  “Nobody’s that loony,” Njangu said in wonderment.

  “I guess they are.”

  “Now,” Njangu said, “all we need is a dozen or so other loons to try it out.”

  “A dozen,” Garvin said grimly, “and I&R’s two best climbers.”

  “Me and Lir.”

  Garvin nodded.

  “And this one isn’t likely to be one of those laugh ho-ho in the face of danger vacations.”

  “You’d rather hang around here,” Njangu said, “getting whittled and eating trees while we’re waiting for Keffa’s backup goons to materialize?”

  • • •

  Froude and Heiser’s investigation had been thorough. They had kept with the observation team for a couple of days, and noted that the Musth, like most soldiers, were unfortunate creatures of habit.

  At dawn and dusk, the traditional times of attack, warriors took fighting positions outside the ship in hasty trenches, no more than knee-high packed dirt parapets, that snaked, like molehills, around the command ship. Then roll was taken and tasks assigned.

  After the dawn assembly, the warriors moved off on their missions. At dusk, they filed back into the ship. A few minutes later, floodlights came on, and the observers’ telltales showed infrared, radar and amplified light swept the area until near dawn.

  But not, evidently, around the ship’s base — some sort of creature evidently hid near one of the fins during the dusk assembly, then, once the Musth had vanished, streaked for the nearby woods. It didn’t make it, caught by the searchlights, and then a missile was wasted blowing whatever it was into oblivion.

  “I’d imagine a ship built for onplanet warfare wouldn’t have such a dismaying gap in its defenses,” Froude theorized. “Which shows again you should always use the proper tool for a task. This deep-space elephant is a risk to its crew.”

  Njangu considered who was really at risk from the ship, but said nothing.

  After Froude and Heiser had developed their theory, the next night, as the warriors were pulling back for the night, the two scientists crawled from their cover up the entrenchments, until they were only a few meters from one of the bullet-tipped fins, and considered matters as the searchlights began sweeping the perimeter.

  Since the command ship wasn’t intended to be an in-atmosphere speedster and, in any event, had more than enough power, the ship only looked aerodynamic from a distance.

  Up close, the ship’s skin was an eczema of radiation plating, radar and other flat arrays, and here and there extruded other sensors.

  The pair, survey complete, waiting until the lights went out at false dawn, then scuttled back the way they’d come. With the observers, they headed for the RP with Garvin’s command group.

  • • •

  “Will it work?” Jasith asked Running Bear as they watched the attack team disappear into the woods.

  “Maybe.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Running Bear shrugged.

  “Do you think Alikhan’s friend is going to show up?”

  Running Bear kept from snapping, “How in hell should I know?” Instead:

  “Old AmerInd fable,” he said. “Going all the way back.

  “A long long time ago, there were things called flims. They were like entertainment holos today, but not even three-dee.

  “Anyway, my people used to watch them, and their favorites were called ‘Natives and Cowmen.’

  “The cowmen sometimes were soldiers, sometimes just people. But they were always trying to steal my people’s — we were the natives — land. And all of these flims ended the same way — the cowmen would finally be trapped somewhere and about to face justice, my people were about to triumph, and there’d be bugle music, and the leader of my people would look around, and coming over the hill, always, always, always would be more goddamned cowmen.

  “I could never understand why my people would have wanted to watch something like that.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jasith said. “Oh. Yes I do. Boy, you’re sure a morale booster.”

  “Us sour-mushes wouldn’t want you to get too cheerful,” Garvin said, having come up unnoticed.

  “I swear, I’ll never understand soldiers,” Jasith said.

  “Welcome to the crowd. You might want to pack — we’re getting ready to go after Njangu.”

  • • •

  There were twelve of them slinking toward the ship, following the zigs of the Musth parapets.

  All except Lir and Yoshitaro carried heavy packs, holding fused demolition chargers, and other gear. None of them looked at the knot of Musth waiting to enter their ship and safety, superstitiously afraid of alerting the aliens.

  The lock slide closed behind the aliens, and the soldiers double-timed, bear-walking on hands and feet, to directly under the huge ship’s drive tubes. Njangu looked up at the grid above them.

  If I was a Space Ranger Against the Galaxy, we could crawl up those tubes and find a nice human-size hole to hunker through and shoot up them baddies. I’ll just be happy if the bastard doesn’t go and take off on us.

  The climb promised to be interesting, since nobody had planned for any mountaineering, any more than they’d planned on being aboard the mother ship in the first place, and all the exotic gear was somewhere back on D-Cumbre.

  Njangu and Monique had made climbing harnesses out of the rope every I&R soldier carried as part of his basic load, found pebbles for chocks, and would climb in double-stockinged feet. Most of the soldiers carried carabiners for nonclimbing purposes, so that was one thing they didn’t have to improvise, as well as ropes of various sizes for climbing, slings, and so forth. They also didn’t worry about pitons they didn’t have — Njangu thought it’d be fairly impossible to nail their way up through a starship’s hull.

  They roped up, five meters separating them. Njangu reached up, found a hand-jam, pulled himself up, had a toehold, was moving, slowly at first, then faster as his body remembered training, hours of practice, even some time wasted in recreational climbing with various I&R crazies.

  They crept slowly up the starship, finding, now and again, antennae or nameless protrusions to tie off on, and belay the other.

  They changed lead twice. Njangu knew Monique to be the stronger climber, but she evidently preferred to be second on the rope.

  Once he slipped, slid three meters before braking himself.

  He didn’t look down, not wanting to see how far away splat was, nor Lir to notice how scared he was, kept climbing. His shoulder muscles tore, his feet were raw, his fingers were disjointed.

  He pushed a pebble into a notch between shielding plates, tied a sling with a carabiner into it, clipped his climbing rope on, and moti
oned Monique past him, climbed after her, painfully, monotonously.

  His head bumped Lir’s foot, and he thought she was having problems, then realized they’d reached their goal, that hangar lock the Shrikes had blown open, hastily patched, almost three hundred meters above the ground.

  He saw Lir grin in the darkness. She crabbed sideways and found a jagged lip she could actually stand on. Njangu clambered up beside her.

  The two-centimeter lip was big enough to throw parade on. Better, there were two stud mounts a meter above them. One gave them a secure anchor for their rope. Lir dug into Njangu’s pack, took out a fat coil of very thin rope, rated for hundred-kilo strength. She uncoiled it, let it fall to the ground.

  There were pulls, then two strong tugs, and they reeled the line in, had a crude double pulley carved from a hardwood tree.

  The pulley was securely tied to the second stud mount, and the cord went back to the ground.

  Then it was endless hauling, as demo charges were tied on, reeled up, and positioned across the patch.

  Njangu had hauled up a hundred, a thousand, ten million charges when he realized they’d brought up all twenty.

  He bleared at the horizon, hoped it wasn’t starting to lighten.

  It was time to go.

  They rappelled back down the ship, using the slings they’d left in place. Monique almost got inverted, kicked hard at the hull, and recovered, hoping thuds didn’t transmit.

  Then they were on the ground.

  Njangu wanted to collapse for a week, realized he could make out people’s faces, and signaled. They crept back out as they’d come, then, when the lock slid open, before the first Musth came out, ran for cover.

  • • •

  “Your honors, I believe,” Njangu said, handing the det box to Garvin. The command element had been nervously waiting atop a hill some distance from the ship.

  “Give it to the good doctor,” Garvin said. “This was his discovery.”

  Froude took the detonator, then peered at the distant ship. There were Musth in formation in front of it, and it was almost full daylight.

  He licked his lips, shook his head. “No. I, uh — ”

  Garvin took the detonator back.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Your decency is something I wish I still had.

  “First Tweg, since you did most of the work.”

  “What ‘bout me?” Njangu said, as Monique took the box, slid the safety over, pressed hard on the sensor.

  • • •

  Keffa had decided to take the morning formation himself, and was pacing down the ramp considering his warriors, wondering why he hadn’t been able to wipe these wormlets out, wondering when his ordered support would arrive, when one of his officers stopped, pointed up.

  His thoughts broken, Keffa irritatedly looked up, saw a snarl of small objects somehow fixed to his ship, wondered what they could be.

  • • •

  There was a sparkle of light, Garvin thought from the sun for an instant, then the blast mushroomed.

  Fire erupted from the lock, then a jet of flame, quickly subsiding. Smoke poured out and rumbling began, grew.

  Garvin and Lir swore they saw the skin rip right around the ship, red glaring fire showing. The rip widened in less than a second, and the upper third of the ship blew apart. The ground reeled, and shock waves rolled across the sky.

  The humans were up, running, falling, staggering drunkenly as blast after blast deafened them, and streamers of colors they couldn’t imagine arched high through the sky.

  • • •

  Alikhan stared into nothingness. The raiders had assembled, fleeing from the Armageddon they’d set off.

  “Come on,” Dill said. “Keffa would have done the same — or worse, slowly — to you.”

  Alikhan didn’t respond.

  Dill left him alone, staring back the way they’d come, as the explosions continued.

  • • •

  It was three days before they couldn’t hear the sound of Keffa’s ship dying.

  Garvin sent two volunteers back to observe the ship, with a radiation meter. The device buzzed warning more than a kilometer from the ruins, and the scouts returned.

  Whether any of the Musth who’d been outside the ship survived, no one ever knew.

  • • •

  Five days after the scouts returned, another Musth ship entered atmosphere. It overflew the wreckage of Keffa’s ship, then the burnt-out mother ship the humans were now using as a base.

  Alikhan peered up at it, using one tube of Lir’s binocs as a telescope.

  “Well?”

  “More goddamned cowmen,” Running Bear muttered.

  “Blue, with a yellow stripe,” Alikhan said. “That is the emblem of Senza and his Reckoners.”

  Some anonymous striker in the rear ranks spoke for them all:

  “What took him so frigging long?”

  CHAPTER

  27

  D-Cumbre

  Wlencing held his blinding rage tightly to him as his flit landed.

  Senza was taking his full revenge, landing at the human port at Leggett rather than Silitric or the Highlands, humiliating Wlencing and his soldiers in front of the worms.

  His transmission had come as a surprise — Wlencing had not had the time to reestablish the outer-world stations, and had been very precise:

  Recent developments within our worlds suggest you might wish to confer with me on the strategic direction now considered optimal for the system known as Cumbre. It might be wise to also take minimal action against the humans until our new course becomes clear.

  Wlencing read through the diplomatic vagueness like a laser.

  Keffa had failed and Alikhan had succeeded.

  Senza had won, evidently destroying Wlencing’s and Asser’s fragile coalition, and assembling enough clanmasters to force Wlencing to do … to do what?

  The very least would be a return to the old order. Wlencing knew, if the humans were restored to authority, he and his fellows would be driven out of the system.

  Probably they would allow Senza and his mewlings access to Cumbre’s riches.

  Not that it mattered. Cumbre was an impossible dream, best abandoned.

  Wlencing wanted to take revenge, to kill Senza when he came before him, but knew he’d never get the chance.

  He hoped his cub would not witness his father’s humiliation, but knew he would.

  At least, he thought wryly, Alikhan provably has my determination, even in a cause as foolish as the one he chose.

  The cub must die for his betrayal … but that too was foolish thinking.

  He would never see Alikhan again. He should, must, be thought of as dying when his aksai was shot down into the sea so long ago.

  The future was all that mattered: rebuilding his clan, having more cubs when mating season came, attempting to reestablish his relationship with Paumoto, finding a new direction.

  Wlencing got out of the lifter, flanked by Daaf, other aides, and stalked toward Senza’s ship.

  He saw the small crowd of humans nearby, was surprised the wormlings weren’t shouting scorn, but just staring, cold-faced.

  Intent on his thoughts, he barely noticed the old man, once a fierce ‘Raum rebel, step out of the crowd and, almost casually, lob, underhand, a small ball.

  “You can always take one with you …”

  The grenade went off, blew Wlencing almost in half, killed two aides.

  Daaf, desperately wounded, managed to claw out his devourer-weapon, and shoot down the old ‘Raum.

  The landing field was hushed for a moment, except for the dull hum from Senza’s ship.

  But only for a moment.

  CHAPTER

  28

  It was a soft, tropical night. Garvin Jaansma, in dress summer whites, wearing the tabs of a Mil, leaned against a deck railing of the Shelburne Hotel, sipping a tall chill drink.

  Njangu Yoshitaro, nursing a beer beside him, wore the same uniform, wi
th the tabs of a cent.

  Caud Angara had promoted Garvin and had made him head of II Section.

  Njangu, for what Angara called “theft above and beyond the call of sanity,” got bumped two grades and given I&R Company.

  “You see,” Garvin whispered during the long ceremony when the Force licked its wounds with panoply, promotions, and medals, “how virtue triumphs? I expect you to be properly respectful of my increasingly greater rank.”

  “Don’t hold your breath on that one,” Njangu answered. “I’m quite happy letting you have the light-of-lime, whatever that is, and also be the conspicuous target.”

  Now, inside the Shelburne was soft music, enticing smells, and easy laughter.

  The two were waiting for their dinner companions, making sure they stayed a drink up on them.

  “So what’s your guess on what Senza’s going to do?” Njangu asked.

  “No guess,” Garvin said. “He gave the old man the hot skinny a couple of hours ago. With Wlencing dead, no face-saving talks are necessary. The old crew of Musth will get shipped back to their clans in whatever they call disgrace.

  “We’ll be doing business with Senza. Somebody, most likely Mellusin Mining, will front for him, so there won’t be Musth traipsing around Leggett, at least for a while.”

  “That’ll still piss some folks off.”

  “Tough. Who else are we going to trade with? The Confederation still ain’t come riding to the rescue lately.”

  “Strong point,” Njangu said. “It grates, but I guess that’s best. Just like there probably won’t be much of a war-crimes trial for collaborators.”

  Garvin’s lips tightened. “That’s what Jon said. Maybe they’ll lynch a few block wardens, a few other blatant assholes, but not much more. I surely doubt if any Rentiers will be for the high jump.”

  “Which leads me,” Njangu said, “to be delicately nosy about, ahem, your circumstances?”

  “Loy Kouro’s going to stay in jail as long as I can keep coming up with phony charges. Maybe three more weeks. I’m trying to bribe some jailbird to put a length of sharpened bedspring between his third and fourth ribs, so far without success. Jasith’s filing a divorce petition tomorrow.”