The Legion Awakes (The Sleeping Legion Book 1)

by JR Handley

  No sooner had General Toma started demonstrating his mirth then several of the officers on his staff joined in, expressing their command-approved levity. When a few moments passed and the room had become businesslike again, Sergeant Okeke continued. “Sir, after Cadet Platte sniped the enemy we continued sporadically firing on the enemy to keep them off balanced and to break their sleep cycle. When we saw the flare from the Dynia River, we opened fire on the front to keep them focusing on us. At that time the heat and the constant use caused our barrels to overheat, at which point the AuxTechs suggested urinating on them to cool them down so we could have the chance to swap out barrels. Shortly after we were back in action, when we heard the cannon signal to charge. We had stalled out about halfway there, when AuxTech Holly stood up screaming some war cry and motivated the Mini gunners to follow her. It was truly impressive sir, truly. In fact, I couldn’t suggest highly enough the need for them to receive an award for their actions on that exercise, sir.”

  With a skill he was learning to perfect while working with these Cadets and NCOs, General Toma merely nodded and called on Captain Grigonna for her overall strategy for the battle. He was again impressed with her candor, as she gave all the credit to Sergeant Scipio for planning the battle using the equipment he was so intimately familiar with. Again, the general paused to make several notes before he called Lance forward. “Sergeant Scipio, how did you come to your three-pronged battle strategy?”

  Having known his time was coming, Lance was prepared to answer. “Sir, my strategy was rather simple. The general idea was that the mountains couldn’t be passed in time, the river couldn’t be forded, and so the front was the only choice. Sir, there is no river a Marine can’t ford, nor any mountain a Marine can’t cross. Everything after that was simply determining how to make those things happen. For the river, I knew in advance that the exercise was coming so I specifically looked for ford points. Once I knew they were there, the rest was easy. And with the mountains, everyone knew of the tinier paths, I just split my forces to take advantage of them. They all converge back on each other, so as long as the timing was right we could use it. Sir, we pushed our Cadets to exhaustion and then some, but we did it. Once everything was in place, we charged and the flanks rolled just like we were taught they would. Finally, I’d be remiss if I also didn’t mention the extreme usefulness of our AuxTechs, and that they receive some boon for their willingness to go above and beyond. They’ve rejoined the Marine Family as far as I’m concerned, sir.”

  When Lance finished, the Cadets of Whiskey Company spontaneously cheered their approval of his evaluation of the Auxies. General Toma raised one of his four hands to silence the crowd. “I’ve already read the reports and I agree, these Aux went above and beyond. In recognition of that work, I hereby create the position of Marine Technician, a non-combatant role in the Marine Corps. All of the AuxTechs are re-instated into the Marines and awarded that rank. The one exception is Holly Lapasa. I’ve read your file, clearly a mistake was made in booting you from the Marines and you will be re-instated as a Marine Cadet. You will remain as the technician as well, until a replacement is found and then you’ll train them. As for where you’ll be assigned, you will stay with Whiskey Company. You’ll be an extra body, so one squad will have a slightly larger command section. The rest of you, you’ll notice that the “A” for Auxie was removed from your uniform and replaced with a “T”, signifying your status as a technician. You will officially fall under the Marine Engineering Regiments, and Marine Technical Corporal Basil Terloar will serve as the liaison. He’ll remain with 1st Squad as well, but all future Marine Technicians will fall under the jurisdiction of our engineers. Congratulations, Whiskey Company, you’ve kept your regiment out of the Cull. Now go, celebrate!”

  — Chapter 44 —

  Light Engineering Workshop, Level 4, Beta City

  In the days after Lance’s victory, while he and his fellow instructors planned the switch from planetary to void combat training, he couldn’t help but notice that the mood around Beta City was tense. There was an escalation of brutalities visited upon the Aux, with an astounding number of them dying as a result. Lance was shocked to hear from Basil that many were killed for sport by Hardit and Marine alike, with many of them tortured for the sheer joy of watching them scream.

  When Lance arrived in the Light Engineering Workshop on Level 4, he was stunned to see four Marines surrounding an Aux covered in blood. She was tied to a pole, with her arms and legs spread out and tied individually, stripped naked from the waist up and crying. The Marine Engineers surrounded her, as they took turns electronically inflicting pain on her with a shock stick. The shock stick was a handheld weapon used by Hardit overseers to control their Aux slaves, with prongs at the business end that delivered lethal and non-lethal electronic shocks to the recipient. According to the flow chart the engineers had made on the project status board, they were seeing how many volts from the shock stick were needed to cause the Auxie’s body to void itself.

  Lance paled when he saw that the second test was how many volts it would take to kill her. I can’t sit idly by and let this happen. What could cause a Marine to sacrifice their humanity to become a barbarian psychopath? He quickly stepped in, not even trying to make it a fair fight by announcing his presence, and grabbed one of the Marines in a choke hold from behind. When the Marine stopped struggling, Lance snapped his neck and had moved on to the second Marine before his presence was detected. He had just snapped a second neck, when both of the remaining Marines, whose uniforms marked them as belonging to the 428th MER (Marine Engineering Regiment), turned to face him.

  As the engineers advanced on Lance, and while he prepared himself for the physical confrontation ahead of him, he couldn’t help but notice that their eyes had a vacancy to them that made him wonder what illicit recreational drug they’d managed to find. It wasn’t unheard of on Kalino for Marines to incorrectly make recreational drugs, with results similar to what he was seeing in front of him, but he’d never heard of the end result being so much rage.

  As Lance dropped in a crouch, preparing to fight the two drug-addled Marines by himself, he heard the sound of pistol shots as the two charging Marines were each shot in the head. When he looked over to see who had shot them, he was shocked to see his own Captain Grigonna. He quickly snapped to attention and saluted her, providing the ritualistic greeting of the day. She solemnly nodded, before telling him to meet her in her office while she released the Aux, and reported the situation to the proper authorities. He heard the captain instructing the Aux to say that the Marines had attacked her, a Jotun Marine officer, so she shot two and in a rage snapped the other two’s necks. Lance was just reaching the range where he would be out of earshot when he thought he heard the Aux repeating the same story back to Captain Grigonna.

  — Chapter 45 —

  Headquarters, Whiskey Co., 8th BN., 6907th TAC RGT

  As Lance waited in the ante room to his company commander’s office, he began to go over every worst-case scenario in his head of how this meeting could go wrong. His tension was made worse by the questioning looks he received from Sergeant Keita, his direct line supervisor.

  When Captain Grigonna walked into the room, he jumped to attention as soon as Sergeant Keita shouted ‘Attention on deck!’ in a parade ground quality voice.

  Captain Grigonna’s ears flattened to her head when she saw Lance, and then turned to Sergeant Keita, telling him to head over to 1st Squad and perform a surprise inspection. With a knowing look, Keita asked if he was to find the standard infractions, or should he seriously inspect the troops and their quarters. This seemed to catch the captain by surprise, but she merely grunted before telling him to act like a competent sergeant and make a judgment call.

  This can’t be good, thought Lance. She’s never been so ruffled that she lost control. What has changed? What does she know? Am I to be punished for what happened in the engineering workshops?

  When the captain turned to Lance,
however, the anger was gone from her and she just looked tired. “Into the office, now!” she barked at him as he stood at attention. Not wanting to stick his foot any further into the shit storm he’d started in the engineering workshop, Lance marched with all the dignity he could muster into her office. The sound of her slamming the door behind him caused him to flinch. I think I’d rather face that wee beastie from the QEP than deal with an angry Jotun Marine. This is definitely not a situation I hope to repeat.

  Lance didn’t have to wait long before Captain Grigonna got down to business. “If you ever put me in that position again, Marine, I swear I will skin you and wear your hide on my boots! Do we understand each other?”

  Not sure if that was a rhetorical question, Lance answered anyway. “Ma’am, they were torturing that Aux, ma’am! I couldn’t stand back and let that happen. It wasn’t right, ma’am.” He threw as much conviction as he could into his answer, convinced they’d execute him for killing those two Marines over an Aux whose life was viewed as worthless.

  The answer that Lance got from Captain Grigonna surprised him more than anything had since he woke up in this strange future. “Good answer, young one. Protecting the weak is an honorable thing. The powerful protecting the weak is the very basis of the White Knight Empire, it is the essence of the client or vassal state arrangement each species makes with our overlords. As for what happened in the engineering lab, that was regrettable but it has been handled. After today, you will not speak of it again. The record will indicate that I executed them for assaulting an officer while in a drunken state, and the 428th MER will curse their names when they suffer a month or two with no grok calls. However, what you saw is just the beginning of a malaise spreading through Beta City. Marines all over the base are reacting strongly to their combat drugs and losing whatever personal judgment they might’ve had. We’re lucky, because 8th Battalion is a Cadet Battalion, so your combat cocktails are minuscule in comparison. Besides, we needed our Cadets thinking as they learned your new and revolutionary tactics… What is it, Marine? I see the questions written all over your face.”

  When Lance didn’t immediately ask his question, Captain Grigonna prompted him again. “Well Marine, spill it or I will be extremely disappointed by your lack of astuteness. I expect much of the NCOs in my command.”

  Deciding that he had nothing to gain by his silence, and everything to lose, Lance asked the only question he had. “Ma’am, what do you mean by ‘combat drugs’? I thought they’d just gotten a bad batch of some Beta City strain of recreational drugs?”

  The shocked look on her face startled him more than he expected. “You don’t know about combat drugs? You are familiar with Marines taking ‘recreational drugs’? By the ancestors, where in the frakk are you from Marine?” Clearly she was agitated, because for the first time in the short period he’d known her, she moved not one, but all four of her arms around while she talked to him.

  Up until this moment he’d kept his word to Colonel Marchewka, but Lance decided to answer honestly. “Ma’am, I’m from Kalino, on the island of Cardamine. It too is on Tranquility-4, ma’am.” When Captain Grigonna looked at him blankly, he decided to be more direct and filled her in on all of his history without leaving out the regrettable affair onboard QEP 16. Realizing some caution was in order, he left out the part about Colonel Marchewka’s mom, instead laying all the blame at the feet of the Night Hummers the colonel had consulted. However, he did reluctantly tell her that he’d been ordered not to talk about his past by the colonel, and had honored it until her direct questions forced him to answer.

  Captain Grigonna clearly needed a moment to take it all in, to consider the precarious position Lance had placed them both in by acknowledging that he’d violated the colonel’s orders when he followed hers. She waved her upper left arm as her ears twitched her understanding. “You’ve come a long way, young one, since you joined us as a crèche sergeant. Thank you for your candor. I will honor the colonel’s request for discretion, and this information will stay within these walls. I planned ahead and already had my AI electronically seal the room. Now that I understand things better, though I find it odd that a Marine would take drugs just to have fun, let me tell you about these combat drugs. The White Knights have perfected a system of narcotics that enhance a Marine’s natural aggression, and allow them to ignore the pain of physical injury. Sadly, it also inhibits part of the rational areas of the brain. That is why you get what we saw in the engineering workshop. For some reason, more Marines are being fed those drugs, even though we aren’t currently fighting. And it’s not just the Marines, the Hardits are acting strange too. I know, they’re always strange but it’s gotten worse. Something’s afoot, I don’t know what, but I need you to watch and listen. As a sergeant, you must be ready to act whenever this skulking menace strikes. Can you do that for me?”

  Lance was in shock, so much so that it took him a few prompts before he affirmatively acknowledged his commander’s request. After he told her that he’d gladly do his part, her twitching ears indicated her understanding. She reminded him to keep a close watch on his Cadets, since they were reaching an age when they’d be old enough to be graduated early should events overtake them. Having expected that warning, Lance nodded and emphatically assured her that he’d look after them.

  After a few moments of wrangling with his better judgment, Lance decided to go for broke and asked the question Basil couldn’t answer the year before. “Ma’am, when I was a Cadet we had weekly shots of nanites to serve that role. They only lasted a week, and were sometimes unavailable for resupply, but they didn’t have the side effects you’re seeing from these ‘combat drugs’. They also had drawbacks, because some field duties, like the system the QEP was in, couldn’t get them but they were conducting human trials on self-replicating nanites when I left Kalino for my first assignment as a Marine. Why was that abandoned?”

  The twitching in Captain Grigonna’s ears intensified as she processed this information. Lance wasn’t sure what surprised her more: that he was telling her about something so classified, or that he even knew about it. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Marine? The existence of these nanite advances are highly classified, but they’re not as much of an advancement from the version you received as a Cadet. You already have a nanite factory, they were always self-replicating, they were just turned off. More accurately, they’re in a passive mode at the moment. You still have an inert nanite factory, all you would need is the passcode and the correct signal for them to be activated again. They’d need to be updated, but you’re already capable. You received the weekly injections of temporary nanites to prevent a Cadet who was booted going into their Aux servitude with the nanites needed to thrive there. Instead, they would simply activate and train you on the nanites once you were a full Marine. Even off, they offer some residual protections against illness and injury. Haven’t you questioned why you aren’t reacting to the combat drugs?”

  Startled at the thought that the use of nanites on QEP 16 had been possible, and could’ve been used to bolster the flagging Marines in his section who ran, anger flared within him. For the first time in Lance’s life, he began to question what was and what could be. Why did they have to serve such cruel overlords? Why couldn’t they better their lot in life? Mentally shaking off those thoughts, lest they get him killed, he went back to the conversation at hand. “Ma’am, then why haven’t the Marines of Whiskey Company seen any ill effects from the drugs? They don’t have the nanites, do they?”

  Captain Grigonna stared at Lance, without blinking, for several moments before she answered. It was almost as if she was willing him to figure it out for himself, before she gave up and answered the question. “No, Whiskey Company doesn’t have the nanites, and you’re right that they’re not acting as strangely as the rest of Beta City. Lieutenant Colonel Nagiv, our battalion commander, wisely toned ours down to facilitate learning. And we have had an increase in discipline issues in other squads, but I’ve d
ealt with it quietly. You might’ve also noticed an increase in the physical training exercises as well? Gives their bodies room to use up the drugs in their system through extreme exertion. There’s been issues in 1st Squad as well, but it gets chalked up to their previous reputation as Aux Candidates. They’ve come further than that, but their reputation made most not blink at the behavior issues out of your squad.”

  Taking a snarling breath, having taxed herself with the prolonged use of human speech, Captain Grigonna continued. "The only humans in Whiskey Company with nanites are you and Senior Sergeant Keita. After several encounters with your predecessors, and several previous failed mutinies by humanity, we Jotuns and the White Knights realized that humanity was a dual-edged weapon. As our warriors of choice, you’re everything we could ask for. Fearless, reckless, loyal and brave. But you’re also cunning, ingenious and capable of unpredictable results. Because of the threat, the White Knights have slowly been weening humans off truly dangerous technology. Which leads us to you, you’re a throwback to that effective tech and tactics. But if a Jotun captain knows this, many others do too, so you’re dangerous. Watch your six, always, and keep close to your loyal battle brothers. Now, unless you’ve any questions?”

  For the first time in his life, Lance was dumbfounded. Normally quick on the witty comment or to ask follow on questions of his superiors, this piece of information shocked him into silence. After calming himself with the biofeedback techniques he learned in the crèche, he dared to ask the only question he had left. “Ma’am, might Whiskey Company receive these nanites then? We’ve proven our loyalty and our discipline, and if Colonel Marchewka’s Night Hummers are right we’ll need all hands on deck for whatever’s to come!”