Secret of the Legion

by Marshall S. Thomas

  "Base, X Three," I reported back. "Entry successful. Going to blackout." My chron read 0816 hours.

  "X, Base, confirm. Good luck!" Gildron replied. He had all the power of the ship behind him, but we could barely hear the transmission. Interference was fierce. I could feel vibrations, like metal butterflies, tickling my toes. There was a lot going on in the Mound, even if we could not yet hear it.

  "All right," I said to the squad, "these are two of the Blue Gold troopers who were after us. They must have been left behind to secure the doorway. Note what happens when you don't pay attention. There are more of these guys, right up ahead. Plus that Systie squad. These other bodies are the Systies we killed when Beta first entered the Mound. Advance!"

  A cenite door was frozen open at one end of the hall. We darted in, one by one, covering each other without a word. My tacmod flickered and died—we could forget the tacmap. Vibrations ran up through my boots, and the echoes of auto x and tacstars rattled down the corridor. A terrific battle was raging somewhere up ahead. My back was against an icy sweating wall, my finger twitched on the trigger of my E. The psybloc units on our helmets cracked to life, spitting sparks, lighting up the corridor. O's—scut! I shot off a couple of psybloc grenades. They bounced off the walls, shrieking, illuminating everything. We moved down the corridor cautiously. All freqs were spitting static. I knew time was ticking away very quickly.

  "I detect three humans! Unarmored! Unarmed! As marked!" Sweety had them zeroed now. As we approached them, our laser zeroes roamed over their bodies. They were not moving.

  "Correction, Three," Sweety informed me. "No life." We stood over them. Three Systies in fatigues, arms secured behind their backs, ankles tied together. Their lifeless eyes were glassy, focused on eternity. Each one had been shot neatly, once, in the forehead.

  "These are the three Systies from Processing that we secured after we busted into the Mound," I said. "Blue Gold was here—they did this. ConFree didn't want any witnesses. Watch out, gang. They're up ahead, and so is the DefCorps squad."

  "Why didn't the DefCorps free them?" Tara whispered. Nobody answered her. Our psybloc units abruptly shut down—good! We moved forward carefully against the corridor walls, twitching, leaving the three dead Systies where they lay. Smoke drifted past us. A titanic bang rocked the walls, dust and debris rained down from the darkened ceiling. A lighting element was flickering eerily.

  "Black Jade, Blue Gold!" The voice ripped through the deceptors, on Legion combat freqs. "We've secured the ground floor! Systies are one level up! Repeat, we've secured…" A shrieking roar overwhelmed the transmission. Blue Gold was the ConFree Special Mission Strike Force, and Black Jade was Beta. The bastards were still pretending to be assisting Beta.

  "It's 0824 hours," I warned the squad. "Beta Five has already been wounded and left behind, and Blue Gold is engaging the Systies and pursuing Beta. Blue Gold is right up ahead. They won't be expecting an attack from the rear—let's do it!"

  "…Seven, Eight, report!" We were rushing forward. Blue Gold's frequency was illuminated on my faceplate, upper left plate. We had the freqs for Beta, Blue Gold and the Systies, as well as our own channel. If it got through the deceptors, we could hear it. This was Blue Gold, probably trying to raise the two troopers we had killed in Reception.

  "Door is open…" Sweety reported. There was only one way in—through the door to the column room, then up the elevator floor to the next level. But Blue Gold was forcing their way in as well, against Systie opposition. They would be moving fast, but they would certainly have secured the column room, or mined it. And if the door was open…Dragon was by my side, raising the Manlink.

  "Legion armor…" Sweety began. The corridor flashed and erupted, a dazzling, soundless blast. I found myself on the deck, totally deaf, scrambling to regain my feet. My faceplate had gone black for an instant and my sight was slowly returning. The first thing I saw was Dragon, walking slowly forward, Manlink at his shoulder, firing auto xmax into a raging firestorm that was still swirling and crackling where the doorway had been. Dragon had evidently fired his tacstar at the same instant the ConFree trooper had fired.

  I leaped up, sending a hailstorm of x into the fading tacstar. Redhawk and Valkyrie and Tara and Whit were right there firing, walking forward into the room behind a deadly hail of high explosive shells and merciless laser bursts.

  My hearing came back as we ceased firing. We were dispersed against the walls of the room. A tremendous din roared in my ears. The doorway was a ragged, glowing wound in the wall, liquid cenite pooling onto the deck, hissing and smoking. The room was thick with smoke, dominated by a large cylindrical column pierced by vertical slits oozing with sticky liquid. We had never figured out what it was. Everything was riddled with hits, smoking and burning.

  "One Blue Gold dead," Dragon said without concern. I could see the victim now, glowing smoking Legion armor, torn brutally in two. His blood was still dripping from the ceiling. ConFree had psyched Dragon during our mission to the Mound, and he had betrayed us. Dragon had no sympathy left for Blue Gold.

  "Dragon—let's disappear that ceiling," I ordered, "right now." I knew how dangerous that room up there was and I wanted to make sure anything in it was dead before we entered. Dragon raised his Manlink and fired right into the ceiling. A tacstar erupted, a blinding, horrific, phospho white flash, turning our faceplates black, deafening us again, the blast drilling me to my knees, my armor ringing with multiple hits, an array of red lights flashing inside my helmet.

  Total silence. I struggled to my feet. Dragon stood there, a rock, his armor smoking, burnt black. The ceiling was gone. A hailstorm of metallic debris rained down on us as a firestorm raged above.

  "No life," Sweety reported. I raised my E and fired the lifeline. It shot up into the smoke, whirring. The rest of the squad did the same—six gleaming cables whirled through the air.

  "Line secure." I clipped the cable fix into the locking mechanism on my chestplate. The warning indicator flashed green. I gripped my E tightly, then shot into the air with explosive force, right into the flames above, smoke flashing past me, impacting heavily into a cenite bulkhead and falling to the deck. I scrambled to my feet, oriented myself quickly, and fired a burst of auto x blindly down the corridor. Someone bounced off me, knocking me to my knees. It was Whit. I clicked the recovery mechanism and the line ejected itself out of the wall and whipped back to my A-suit like a demented mechanical snake. It was dark and smoky and the tacmap was dead.

  "X, Three, count!"

  "X Eight!"

  "X Ten!"

  "X Eleven—damn it!"

  "X Whit!"

  "X Tara. We're running out of time!"

  "Faster!"

  We ran gingerly down the corridor—it was all strangely familiar to me, but different as well. I suppose it was the most horrible little run we'd ever made. The corridor was full of mutilated bodies—Systie civilians, torn to shreds by X and laser and tacstars, and Systie soldiers, DefCorps troopers, their bronze-colored armor blasted white, still smoking, ripped open like paper by unimaginable forces. The deck was littered with bloody clothing and burning tacpaks and shattered weaponry. I saw a child, a little girl of pale angelic beauty, seemingly untouched, outstretched near one wall, dead as a stone. My boot crushed a baby bottle. Nine had run through these halls before, desperate to save a room full of children and babies. Then Blue Gold had swept through here, overrunning the DefCorps, tracking down Black Jade. And now we were here, again. It was a madhouse, and anything that moved was going to die. We would see to it. O, ConFree, DefCorps, man, woman, child—we didn't have time for mercy. We had tried it, in sim. It didn't work. We were a brotherhood of unholy biogens, totally focused and totally merciless, come to join the party.

  "That access panel is…" I began.

  "Movement! As…" The corridor wall erupted, showering us with smoking ricochets, pinging off my armor. I fired, convulsively, on full auto xmax. X snapped past me as the rest of the squad fired, t
he rounds arcing past just under the roof, guided straight to the target by our tacmods.

  "Target down!" We rushed forward along the smoking walls and found a DefCorps trooper on his back, his armor peppered and glowing. His faceplate had been shattered. He stared up at me with tortured eyes, blinking from a face of bloody, raw meat. His nose and lips were gone—his whole face was shot away. He was horribly wounded, but still alive. An awful, croaking moan arose, and I knew it was a plea for mercy. He was a soldier, and I wasn't going to leave him like that. I moved the barrel of my E over to his face, and a soft glow of peace entered his eyes. It was almost like a blessing. I switched to single fire xmin, and shot him once in the forehead.

  "Tacstars!" One shouted. Snow Leopard! I was paralyzed. It was just a brief, flickering burst of sound, but his voice had been totally clear. Beta One!

  "They're in the O's city," I said. "Redhawk, Psycho is right up ahead—go get him! Watch out for Systies and ConFree! The rest of you, on me."

  "I'm on it," Redhawk growled, setting off alone into the smoking wasteland.

  "I've got the access panel!" Tara shouted. The damned thing was almost invisible, set into one corridor wall, a metal panel higher than a man. Tara was working on the locking mechanism with a techscan. Dragon and Valkyrie and Whit were against the walls, securing the corridor. We were jumpy as cats. Something always happened at this point, in sim. But all that was happening now was the fire, slowly consuming everything that could burn. Our big advantage this time over last time was that we knew the Mound. We had it all on tacmap. We were going to drop to sublevels, blast our way into the O's inner sanctum, and immediately go after Priestess and Scrapper. Blue Gold had not followed Black Jade into the O's city. They had avoided Psycho and forced their way in elsewhere, ending their quest in a bloody firefight in sublevels with Merlin, Tara, Gildron, Twister and me. I could still remember every frac of that encounter. Merlin had been killed.

  "Open!" Our armored fingers pulled it open and the door creaked in protest, revealing a tall, dark slot in the wall. I stuck in an E and scanned above, then below. It was a dizzying drop. Several dirty pipes, beaded with moisture, took up most of the space, but there was just enough room for a soldier of the Legion.

  "Line secured!" Valkyrie tossed in a lifeline. It rattled down, falling into the void.

  A tremendous bang shattered our ears. The corridor ahead of us flared, and faded. A burst of auto x followed.

  "Scut! X-Ten, I've got opposition!"

  "That was Redhawk!"

  "Nothing we can do! Time is gone! Follow me!" I scrambled bodily into the access port, secured the line to my chestplate and shot downwards, totally adrenalized, one hand on the controls, the other on my E. Dirty, icy walls flashed past. I hit the bottom hard in a filthy little hole where the pipes shot out horizontally into slots in the walls. I was facing another tall access panel and time was running out. I fired vac right into the lock and the panel popped open. I fired auto xmax through the doorway and it erupted white-hot out in the corridor, spraying shrapnel. The others were landing behind me as I stepped through the opening.

  "Beta One, count!" Snow Leopard's voice convulsed me. Time, time, we were running out of time!

  "Split up!" I shouted. "We're here! Valkyrie, come with me. Dragon, Tara, Whit, go, go, go—faster!" I was running frantically down another dark tunnel now, evil black coils overhead dripping with moisture, a slick icy deck, and my psybloc unit suddenly cracked to life, illuminating the corridor, burning yellow glare and inky shadows. Valkyrie ran up against me from behind.

  "Move! Move!" It was Snow Leopard again, urging Black Jade on. We were getting his transmissions clearly. I knew the squad was running blindly down the underground tunnels under the O's city in the Mound, pursued by the O's. And I knew we had only instants to go, before the O's unleashed the starmass that would trap Priestess and Scrapper.

  "Halt!" Sweety called out. "Access to the O's inner base is through this wall. Recommend immediate forced entry." I whipped the barrel of my E over to the wall.

  "Get out! Get out!"

  "Run!"

  "Heads down!" The transmissions were all from Black Jade, from Beta. I recognized my own voice. It was like being stabbed in the heart, listening to them, listening to myself.

  "Omni approaching!" Sweety warned me harshly.

  "Thinker!" The last was a screech, right in my ears. Valkyrie was standing in the center of the corridor, snapping her E up to her shoulder in horrifying slow motion. There was something rushing at us irresistibly, down corridor, flickering a violet force field, lighting up the walls and ceiling. It was like a cosmic train from the heart of Hell, and I knew it was not going to stop until we were dead, or it was. It was an O, fully armored, fully armed, fully shielded, and out for our blood.

  ***

  VIEW: VISOR BETA X-10 REDHAWK MISSION ULDO X D/T 314 06 17 0832

  Redhawk moved through the acrid smoke like a predator, stalking dangerous prey. All his sensors were on max and his adrenalin was flowing. He was so alert his eyes were almost glowing in the dark. His E was shouldered, scanning for the slightest hint of movement, his finger twitching on the trigger, the weapon set on auto xmax. The corridor walls were burning. A battle had raged there not long before. The bloody deck was littered with horrific, shredded body parts. A great many unfortunate Systie civilians had been caught in the crossfire. A DefCorps trooper in full armor lay on his back, gaping hole cut into his chestplate.

  Something always happened at this point in sim. But now, in real life, it was deadly quiet. Redhawk was covered with icy sweat. He could hear the crackling of the flames and the moaning of some unfortunate survivor.

  "ALERT! DEFCORPS…" the warning from Redhawk's Persist was cut off by the blast of the tacstar. Redhawk found himself on his chest on the deck, deaf and half blinded. A searing glow flickered all around him and the warning lights in his helmet shone red. He jabbed the E forward and fired auto xmax.

  "Scut! X-Ten, I've got opposition!" Redhawk shouted. His hearing was coming back. He scanned the tacmod hurriedly. Multiple hits, no penetrations. The target suddenly appeared on his tacmap from out of the deceptor haze and Redhawk fired another burst.

  "DefCorps, Ten." his Persist informed him. "We got some hits. Target is retreating. Probably a survivor from the earlier engagement with Blue Gold. I saved your butt again." Redhawk hated talking to a machine, so he had put a little life into the programming.

  "You were asleep!" Redhawk chided the tacmod. Redhawk hosed the corridor with bursts of glittering, deadly laser, and advanced, covered in icy sweat. The mission! He had to accomplish the mission or die. He had sworn it to himself on his knees, in tears, in his cube, and nobody had known except himself. He had sworn to all the Gods of Hell that he was not coming back without Psycho. He had made out his will, pledging his pitiful possessions to Whit or anyone else in Beta who survived.

  Psycho should be right up ahead, lying in ambush behind a sealed cenite door, gravely wounded and hungry for blood, ready to blast anyone or anything that entered.

  "That's Five's door," the tacmod highlighted it for Redhawk and it appeared through layers of smoke, a cenite door, glowing briefly in pink on Redhawk's faceplate. Redhawk could see the message the Systies had scrawled on it, a single word: EXPORT. The deck had been completely blown away directly in front of the door. It was a gaping hole, smoking like a volcano. A corpse in DefCorps armor was draped over the edge and the armor was riddled with scores of xmax hits and several ragged laser tracks. This fellow had been in sim as well. He had tangled with Beta earlier, and lost. The door was still secure. It confirmed that Blue Gold had found another entry into the O's inner domain. And it probably meant that Beta Five was still there, on the other side of that door, waiting for something to kill. Redhawk swallowed hard, looked around nervously, and spoke on Beta's tacnet, low power.

  "Five, Ten. Are you there? Acknowledge."

  Silence. Only the hiss of deceptors on the net and the crackl
ing of the flames, all around him.

  "Five, Ten. I'm here to evac you. Answer, damn it!"

  "Screw you, O. Come and get me!" The answer adrenalized Redhawk. Alive! Psycho was alive, and he thought Redhawk was an O, toying with his mind.

  "Psycho, it's me! If I was an O, your psybloc would have activated! Open the damn door! We're evacing Beta! The mission is over!"

  "Burn in Hell!" It was an evil hiss. Psycho did not believe him!

  "Open the door, you demented little blond dwarf! Retard! Runt! Mutant! What have I got to do to activate your tiny brain? Open up or I'll kick your ass!"

  "Ten? Is it really you?"

  "Scut! You're just as slow as ever! Open the goddamn door!"

  "I can't! It's welded shut!"

  "Blast it open!"

  "Aw right, stand back!"

  The door came down in a blinding flash, glowing around the edges, and promptly fell into the ragged hole in the corridor floor, sweeping the dead Systie soldier off the lip and crashing down to the next level. Redhawk stepped carefully around the hole and into the open doorway. As the smoke slowly cleared he could see the top half of a Legion A-suit helmet, behind an E, peering over a massive, solid metal table.

  "Laser sighting! We are targeted!" Redhawk's Persist warned him. A tiny laser spot was roaming lazily over Redhawk's armor.

  "Quit targeting me, Psycho! It's me—Redhawk. I'm here to evacuate you. You and the rest of Beta. The mission's over! Come on. We've got to fight our way out. This place is crawling with crazies."

  "Redhawk! Scut! I can hardly believe it! What the hell are you doing here?" Psycho lowered his E. He was sitting on the deck with an open medpak and an SG across his lap, surrounded by grenades. His right leg had been shot off above the knee. The bloody stump was crudely plastered with medgel and sealant. Psycho was clearly flying on mags. His face was pale and sweaty behind the faceplate. Redhawk reached down and hauled Psycho up by the shoulders.