The Legion Awakes (The Sleeping Legion Book 1)

by JR Handley

  The Beta City Retrieval Raid, designed by the Legion’s Lieutenant Xin Lee, would ultimately spell the doom for those Hardit militiamen who so foolishly sat idle, believing in the certainty of their safety. Lieutenant Lee’s raid, which was later given an official name, something suitably pompous and official, sought to salvage any viable resources from Beta City. The goal was to bolster the resources available to the Human Legion and to deny the Hardits, and any other enemies who followed them, the use of the city.

  The raid started with an insertion from one of the many access points on the floor of Lake Sarpedona. Once access was achieved, the Legion forces neutralized the automated defenses of Beta City by setting off a tactical gamma bomb. This ultimately spelled the doom for those foolish militiamen. Once the bomb was set, the Legion troops got the heck out of Dodge with as many supplies as they could carry. The Legion also left drones, pilfered blinder missiles, set in hunter-killer mode with orders to attack any Hardit who followed behind.

  During Phase Guinshrike of this attack, an Ensign Dock flew a decoy shuttle to draw enemy SAM fire, allowing the mini-drones from the blinder missiles to seek out and destroy any potential launch sites. Dock’s Stork then submerged in the lake and waited for the Marines to lift off back to Detroit City. The Marines the ensign had brought with him would then go topside and to make a lot of noise, causing the Hardits to believe that a land attack was imminent. At this point the Human Legion strategists detonated the gamma bomb, killing all of the base’s inhabitants.

  The plan was to return and retrieve whatever of the needed supplies they’d missed the first time, and then continue the campaign. But under the orders of the Legion’s enemy, the Hardit Tawfiq, commands were given for the Antilles Moon Mass Driver to again bombard Beta City. This forced the Human Legion forces to cut short their supply raid.

  The kinetic missile sent from the Antilles Moon destroyed the first level of Beta City and all of the topside assets, including the floating city of Kijiji. The kinetic strike also flooded every underground level of the base. In a stroke of historical happenstance, the Serendine Orbital Elevator was untouched but that was where luck ended for the doomed First Tranquility Campaign. As the raid on Beta City was in its final stages, Hardit Supreme Commander Tawfiq sent a report to Major McEwan, taunting him with knowledge. A Night Hummer, a member of the race who could foretell the future and whom McEwan had sworn to protect, was inside the city about to be destroyed. After receiving this message, he returned inside the doomed city with a team of volunteers in an effort to save the Night Hummer trapped there.

  Ultimately, the Hummer ended up refusing the help, but McEwan didn’t leave entirely empty handed, because the Hummer gave him the coordinates for the Legion’s next port of call after evacuating the Tranquility system, a planet known to the Jotuns as Shepherd-Nurture-4.

  Cursing the manipulations of the Night Hummers, but not prepared to fade away and die, the survivors of the fledgling Human Legion abandoned Tranquility and made for Shepherd-Nurture-4.

  From this beginning, the Human Legion grew into a third faction in the civil war raging throughout the Empire, of which the revolt in Beta City had been an opening act.

  The Legion grew in strength and acquired new star systems and allies, but McEwan never forgot Tranquility, because he knew that buried in secret under the Marine base known as Detroit, millions of cryogenically frozen human soldiers waited to carry out their duty in the name of freedom. Of Sergeant Scipio and the survivors of Beta City, the Legion had no knowledge.

  As the civil war reached its critical decision point, McEwan sent a flotilla of ships to Tranquility to retrieve this so-called Sleeping Legion waiting beneath the ruins of Detroit. Its commander was the toughest Marine in the Legion, a former senior drill instructor who despised McEwan. Her name was Colonel Tirunesh Nhlappo.

  — PART III —

  2601AD

  — Chapter 54 —

  New Detroit City

  Echo Co., 6th BN, 2nd RGT, Nhlappo Expeditionary Force

  Sergeant Moreland Vicker, a typical Marine, tried not to think too much and pointed his weapon when and where he was told. Normally he didn’t even care at whom he fired, so long as the mission ended with him alive and the other guy retired. All that changed today, when he was promoted to squad leader. Now he couldn’t be the loner, going where the voids took him, because he had 37 other Marines who lived or died as a consequence of him. He never liked stripers, thought they took themselves too seriously, but now he understood how one could develop a God complex.

  As he manned his post with the rest of 3rd Squad, Vicker briefly thought about the craziness that the last two years had brought. First they’d been slaves of the White Knights and now they were free, whatever that meant, and part of some strange thing called the Human Legion. With human officers – human drenting officers – leading the show. And to top it off, Cadet Prong was the frakking general in charge of that cluster frakk. That couldn’t last, but asking questions of officers often ended up with an early retirement. Before he got too far afield, the relentless stream of data from headquarters brought him back planet side. The latest intel they’d received said all of Echo Company, frakk all of the 6th Battalion and maybe the whole bloody regiment would be mounting some offensive against the frakking wolf-dung Hardits. He couldn’t remember ever having participating in a campaign of this scale.

  Has any Marine ever done an op of this size? wondered Vicker. He mentally shook his head; he couldn’t let himself get distracted. My Marines depend on me. These frakking human baby officers certainly don’t seem to have a clue or the ability to lead.

  Vicker was pull out of his deliberations by the sound of renewed carbine fire from the left flank of his portion of the line. He quickly ran over to check out the situation, getting updates from his AI as he went. No sooner had he received the incoming transmissions than he realized the Hardits were probing his lines again with those cowardly suicide bombers. They weren’t even proper suicide bombers, being forced into it by their commanders, the ones who were hitting the button blowing them up.

  The firing intensified as Vicker shouted his orders into his helmet’s integrated communications system. “Corporal Puterman, disperse your Marines throughout our line and get your section to start picking off anything that looks like it’s in charge. Lance Sergeant Gillen, get the rest of the squad to lay down some suppressive fire. We need to push them back. We hold the line no matter what. Understand?”

  Before the NCOs could reply that the order had been understood, Marine Radford chimed in with the shenanigans for which he was known. “I hear our general would rather stick his mating prong in an alien than kill one, Sarge. Are you sure our orders are to kill them?” Half the company snickered under their helmets, safely assured that the AI in their battle suit wouldn’t let that response see the light of day.

  Vicker didn’t even wait a millisecond before he was staring down the visor of Radford and lifting him off the ground by his neck. “One more comment from you, I swear you will retire today, Marine. You pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down, or do I need to demonstrate the point early?”

  While it was not the most comfortable position, Radford’s suit protected him from Sergeant Vicker’s abuse, but Radford was a smart Marine with a keen survival instinct. “Roger that, Sarge. Understood, won’t talk about our general’s faggoty alien ways again. Message received loud and clear.”

  To say Vicker was upset would be an understatement. Hidden inside his helmet the veins on his neck began to tick, and his face turned maroon. He managed, through years of discipline and training, to hold on to his composure. “This isn’t over, Marine. Report to my quarters after our shift for some corrective training, understood?”

  This time Radford seemed genuinely worried, and his demeanor more subdued. “Roger, Sergeant, I will be there. Will that be all?” He received his answer when Vicker threw him onto the ground, all 150 pounds of combat armor hitting the deck in a resounding crash.
Nathan Radford scampered away as quickly as his technologically enhanced frame would carry him. His bad day was just starting, however, as his fire team leader and section leader lit into him as soon as he regained his place on the line.

  Once it was clear that Sergeant Vicker was done dealing with the squad’s problem child, Gillen and Puterman both chimed in affirmative answers in tandem, satisfying Vicker temporarily as he trooped the line while occasionally stopping to shoot one of the approaching Hardits. As he got better visuals, he forwarded them up his chain of command, and mentioned that he was being probed by militiamen rather than the fiercer New Order troops. He quickly sent up a request to lead their lines in a frontal assault against the Hardits. He’d heard stories about Sergeant Gupta and the Charge of the Bloody Blades, and he wanted in on some of that glory. Not that he cared about glory for its own sake, but the amount of rack time you could score with the ladies had to pay off exponentially after that. The approval from on high didn’t hurt either, with promotions, cushy jobs and what not.

  Tensions mounted as 3rd Squad waited for their orders, when suddenly Marine Nathan Radford dropped dead as an emplaced Hardit machinegun zeroed in on his form standing on the line. Seconds after his corpse hit the deck, riddled with holes, the rest of the squad dropped into crouches, taking what cover they could. Meanwhile, Igor, the squad leader’s AI, zeroed in on the location of the entrenched gun emplacement and had the squad’s missile launcher eliminate the threat.

  Next, several other Marines began dropping, individually and in groups. Half of the squad’s NCO contingent, and the medic died as Hardit missiles successfully bracketed the unit’s casualty evacuation spot. Again, Vicker made a desperate plea to higher command for permission to charge the enemy, and physically blunt the tide that was pushing back his portion of the line. As he was mentally grumbling and thinking of how to jump the chain of command to get permission to strike back in a tangible way, he was shocked to hear Major Spartika herself speak.

  “Attention to orders, attention to orders. We will begin a tactical nuking of those drenting wolf-dung Hardits in exactly sixty seconds from my mark. Once the nuke has gone live, I will personally lead the counter attack to wipe up these Hardit dung. That will be all.”

  — Chapter 55 —

  Beta City

  The tactical nuclear bombs sent a shockwave through the entire planet. Radioactive dust danced in the wind, killing the Hardit combatants charging the New Detroit battle lines. The explosion itself killed off anything within a few miles of the multiple impact points. The thermal wave that followed started a forest fire that took days to burn itself out, and the radiation killed all of the fish and wildlife in the surrounding area. The fallout further wreaked havoc on the ecosystem, as the mushroom cloud deposited radioactive dust particles throughout the planet. Tranquility was lucky, however, as it was a hardy planet used to extreme conditions from its sun. Given the technology available, once the planet was securely held in Human Legion hands, the aftermath of the nuclear explosions could be mitigated and cleaned.

  Aside from the obvious physical damage from the detonation of tactical nuclear bombs, the associated electromagnetic pulse also began waking things up. Habdisks throughout the planet began responding to the emergency protocols set in place years in the past for such an occurrence. These self-contained living compartments, which made up the various cities in the White Knight Empire, housed everything from workshops to bedrooms and everything in-between. They offered some protection from catastrophic failings of the military base within which they were located, and were buried deep enough underground to protect the inhabitants from deadly radiation on the surface. More specifically, after any catastrophic failure the habdisks were designed to protect the inhabitants through a flash cryogenic freeze and then revive them after a set amount of time, before automatically drilling to the surface and spilling out a full company of Marines ready for combat. It was that very protocol that was started when Colonel Nhlappo ordered elements of the 1st Tranquility Provisional Army to detonate tactical nukes.

  Unfortunately, while the chain of habdisks in Beta City were revived as a direct result of the detonation, the drill motors on the habdisks were malfunctioning due to damage done to the structure years earlier when it was hit with a kinetic torpedo from the Antilles Moon Mass Driver. They shook, violently even, as the engines tried in vain to follow the letter of their programing, but they didn’t budge from the spot where they had been placed when Beta City was first built.

  Habdisk 612 was a mess, a direct result of the failed resurfacing efforts and previous orbital bombardments. Debris littered the floor, evidence of the kinetic torpedo and the failed emergency resurface protocol. Cadets were still comatose from the emergency freeze initiated during the height of the Free Corps Mutiny and the establishment of the New Order. Some of the Cadets were flash-frozen in unfortunate positions, with one unfortunate couple locked in such a state of body congress as to require medical assistance to separate once they awoke. Any observer could see that an emergency cryo-freeze was a serious affair; fully appreciating the myriad of safety protocols set in place to make the process safe and pain free.

  In the main habdisk in the network, Lance’s unit slowly began to revive. Lance, having wisely taken the precaution of going into his private quarters and instructing the disk AI to revive him first, began the metamorphosis from the human icicle he was, to the sergeant he was trained to be. Once he was awake, Lance quickly gave himself a shot of emergency nanites kept in the first aid kit he carried with him, and put his uniform on. After he again resembled a soldier and leader, he queried the AI for an update on the situation. He was shocked to learn they had remained frozen for 35 years, over 160 years since the battle at QEP 16 that killed so many of his childhood friends, but he continued reading the minute details and became increasingly concerned. Their base had survived the mutiny, been raided by both sides of the war, and had only been revived because of the emergency protocols originally built into the machine.

  Lance couldn’t help but wonder why their automated distress signal had been ignored, a simple reply to that request would’ve woken them up. At least the report meant that humans are still fighting for the planet, he mused. But if these humans weren’t mutineers, if they were loyal to the White Knight Empire, why didn’t they wake us up sooner? Which means they must be Free Corps mutineers who have renamed themselves ‘The Human Legion’. What the hell was a ‘Legion’ anyway? Sighing, he knew that those details would have to wait, and he set about reviving his Cadets.

  But they couldn’t wait for long – not with nukes being tossed around topside. It looked as if his motley assembly of Cadets, Aux militia, and other survivors would soon be going to war, not only against the Hardits, but – it now seemed – against a new enemy: the Human Legion.

  AFTER

  ACTION

  REVIEW

  Human Legion

  — INFOPEDIA —

  Military Concepts

  — Human Marine Forces Military Manuals

  In the Human Marine Corps there is a proper way to do everything, from the appropriate position in which to sleep, to the required items needed to take a proper Marine Corps shower. If you’re not familiar with how the military teaches a Marine what is required of him or her, all you need to do is spend some time in the Human Marine Forces Digital Library Database. If you have the credentials, and sometimes, the necessary security clearances, you can look it up. The Human Marine Corps standard operating procedures cover everything, you just have to understand how to use them. The Human Marine Forces Digital Manual (HMF: DM), which are a series of books that holds the standard doctrine for the Human Marine Corps, tell you everything you must know from the crèche to the grave. Heck, one manual even covers your afterlife too! No joke, the military offers Marines manuals on standardly observed religions and religious doctrine throughout the White Knight Empire.

  These books are listed as HMF: DM with the number series which tells th
e purpose of the manual: tactics, vehicles, uniform policy, etc. After the number of the series, there is a dot with another number which further breaks down into a sub category. For instance, the DM 5. series would be infantry standard procedures for the Marine Corps, and the DM 5.10 would be a manual which covers the infantry tactics for the Human Marine Corps. Further, after the sub category there would be another dot with another number which lists explicitly what the manual covers, so for instance, the DM 5.10.5 would cover the infantry section tactics. The DM 5.10.7 covers the infantry platoon and the DM 5.10.8 would teach infantry company level tactics.

  Now, armed with the proper manner with which you should look you can begin your quest for any little tidbit of information your heart desires. Given that this is an open source publishing venue I can only list those manuals that are not classified, but there are literally hundreds of numbered category manuals with subsequent follow on sub-categories and even more sub sub-categories after that.

  1. Naval Manuals, Aquatic

  2. Naval Manuals, Void

  3. Air Wing Manuals, Terrestrial

  4. Air Wing Manuals, Void

  5. Infantry Manuals, Marine Corps

  5.1. Battle Suit

  5.2. Weapons, Individual

  5.3. Weapons, Heavy

  5.4. Unit Organization

  5.5. Fire Support

  5.6. Air Support