Honor of the Legion

by Leo Champion

  “You people,” said Ortega in his deep booming voice, “are forgetting the main point. We don’t have two hundred and thirty-one M-25s to give away. Or the ammo for them, if we had the guns.”

  “They have hand weapons,” said Williams. “To take the fort the bastards will have to engage us hand-to-hand. They have picks, spades, shovels and we have sharpening stones.”

  Godfrey holds, thought Croft, although he knew it was probably going to be his death.

  It was his decision. He nodded his head.

  “Thank you for your opinions. Sorry, Korval, I’m going with my platoon sergeant here. You, keep a damn eye on them. We can’t trust them, but we need them. Hand weapons only.”

  * * *

  Mullins trudged west across the wastelands, exhausted. It was night now, two of Dinqing’s three moons visible on the horizon and in the sky directly above them. Unlike the sky the world had been mistakenly named after, one of the moons, the small one on the horizon, was distinctly pale-green. Together they cast a dull shadow on the low hills.

  Near him, at the tail end of the ad-hoc organization, just behind a dispirited Dr. Cramer and the two pissed-off chopper pilots who’d trained for flight emergencies but never the endless steps after that, was Jorgenson. Ahead of them, led by an aggressively-marching Newbauer setting the pace, was the guard team herding the Black Gangers.

  They didn’t have to like it. They were hiking west, to Fort Hubris.

  And safety.

  There was something to like about that, come to think of it.

  * * *

  Dawn was rising when Janja, with the Black Gang and his Indians, and Corporal Hill and the exhausted Sergeant Greene, reached the next well. 15A it was, according to a numbering scheme that Mandvi had bluntly described as byzantine, whatever that meant.

  What it meant to Lance-Corporal Sujit Janja was that they were going to drink and rest. When they reached the well, Greene and Hill had told the gangers, they’d take a break.

  Several of them dragged the two carts; an empty water cart, because it had been holed by a nomad sniper earlier. They’d driven the guy off but Janja had been wondering all night if he’d come back, possibly with friends.

  And the supply cart, which contained food. Every man in the crew knew they needed to refill the water cart and protect the food one, even if the food was only ration bars and a few field-stove-heatable meals for the Goldnecks and the guard crew.

  “Getting there,” said Hill to Janja as they climbed a steep hill. The well was supposed to be at the bottom of a valley just over this ridge.

  “We’re almost there!” Hill raised his voice to the Black Gangers.

  Sergeant Greene was lagging behind, and the crowd of Legion convicts blocked his view of what they were nearing.

  He’d been bitching all night, mostly due to the aggressive Hill setting a march pace on reasoning he couldn’t argue with: “Hubris and safety.”

  But the MP sergeant had apparently been slacking off on his fitness runs or something, because he was following the rest of the group and not even doing such a good job of it.

  With a nod and a head-gesture Janja had detailed Mandvi off to keep an eye on the guy and maintain an actual competent tail-end; the former Dalit was trailing a few yards behind the MP sergeant as they trudged through the sands, turning around every so-often to check for threats.

  They neared the well, the thirsty Black Gangers pulling them forwards now. Greene gained pace, thirsty himself, and they were cresting the hill when they came under fire.

  One of the Black Gangers collapsed as, in the dawnlight ahead of them, jezzails bloomed. Fifteen or sixteen zak-mounted nomads were by the angular mushroom-shaped well, silhouetted against the dawnlight two hundred yards away.

  “Charge!” yelled Dashratha as he fixed his bayonet.

  Dashratha had the right idea. The jezzails were single-shot weapons, Janja knew. You didn’t deal with those on their own terms, not against superior marksmen as these guys probably were, not to mention not outlined like he and his men were on this ridgetop.

  You dealt with them by attacking. Instinctively he drew his own bayonet. Began to fix it as he ran forwards, firing.

  The Black Gangers were throwing themselves flat. Greene had picked up his submachinegun and was firing past Janja, Mandvi, Hill and Dashratha as those four men charged the surprised enemy, holding their fire until they were within fifty, forty, thirty feet—

  Firing from the hip, Dashratha opened up, spraying the nomads and their zaks with his M-25. The others followed, while Greene’s submachinegun fire whipped past them at the right fringe of the formation, cutting down one nomad who tried to flee.

  The lead nomad – shit, no, that was a human mounted on a zak – shouted something. The band of nomad Qings turned, some drawing swords. Janja shot one of them down and the rest moved forwards.

  Then it was hand to hand, four infantry versus a dozen mounted cavalry. That should have been a wash-out against the fire team, but that math omitted the fact that Hill, Janja and their crew had fully loaded, fully-automatic M-25s and the other side didn’t.

  Swinging their blades, the nomads came at Janja and the others. Janja shot one out of his saddle before they’d cleared the gully, stopped his charge and sent a zak reeling with another burst, collapsing on its hooves with its exoskeletal body broken. In his peripheral vision he saw Mandvi and Dashratha fighting, shooting.

  Then a mounted nomad was within yards of him and there was no time for peripheral vision, no time to do anything but focus on the threat facing you. The nomad swung a long sword down and Janja thought of parrying but thought better; first he shot the bastard.

  The dark-skinned eatie collapsed, Janja easily parrying the dying alien’s sword blow. Shot it in the head again just to be sure.

  Another one came and it was too soon to fire. Janja raised his bayonet just in time to, with a resounding clang, deflect the alien’s long thin sword’s swinging blow. He ducked to a crouch and shot the nomad down in the back, as another one came for him from the right.

  That one’s blade was too close to deflect and Janja threw himself into a leftwards roll, firing as he moved to riddle the nomad and his zak with fire.

  Clattering gunfire had filled the air, but now it was over. His heart was beating faster than it should and, as he got up, he watched Hill and Mandvi fire single shots into the heads of not-quite-dead nomads around them.

  “Hold on!” Hill shouted. “This one’s alive!”

  Janja headed over. A human, blond and tall, with what looked like a busted ankle lay trying not to writhe under a shot-down dying zak.

  “A Frog, huh?” Hill asked with his gun leveled at the man.

  “Swede,” the man shot back. “Svetson, Philip. 341-BFB-9041. Sergeant-Major Second-Class, European Federation. Fuck you.”

  “Well fuck you too,” said Hill. “Janja or Dash, search this guy then look over the nomads. Mandvi, I’m thirsty.”

  “You got it, sarge— corp,” said Mandvi.

  “Yeah,” said Greene. “Get to it. I’m thirsty.”

  * * *

  During one of the boring nights on guard shift, Mandvi had closely inspected another of the well systems. The ‘stalk’ of the well was about four feet in diameter, ten feet high out of the ground and topped by a broad solar panel that powered it and also incidentally gave a bit of shade. Dull green lights on the indicator panel showed that the well’s battery was maxed out.

  Below the indicator was a control handle, and below that a trough with taps leading into it, going about ninety degrees around the stalk. It was at a height zaks could comfortably drink from, about three feet off the ground. On the stalk at other points were hose or irrigration attachments; eventually these wells, which had a pretty generous pump capacity, would be making the dry lands fertile.

  That wasn’t Mandvi’s concern now, as the Black Gangers started to grumble and Greene pushed himself to the head of the line. He disengaged the well’s accid
ental-release safety, turned the selection switch to Trough – the other connection points were all sealed anyway, they wouldn’t have worked – and pulled the control lever, a dramatically long one with a bright red handle.

  Water began to flow into the trough. Clear, pure water. Greene pushed forwards, and Mandvi was starting to unhook his own canteen for a much-appreciated drink when Hill’s voice bellowed:

  “Stop! Fuckin’ stay away from the well!”

  He was holding up a couple of yellow plastic cylinders about three inches in diameter and nine or ten long. There was writing Mandvi couldn’t make out, but above it and below it on the cylinders were unmistakable black skulls-and-crossbones.

  “And what the hell is this, Sergeant-Major Second-Class Svetson?” Hill snarled. “‘Hydrogen cyanide en DMSO’, huh? Some kind of poison?”

  “Empty,” Janja noticed, looking between the Swede prisoner and the well. “Did you fuckers…”

  “Got another two here,” said Dashratha, holding up two more canisters.

  “Found them on Qing bodies we were searching,” Hill explained to Mandvi and Greene. He turned back angrily to Svetson.

  “Did you poison the well? Is this well, are these wells, poisoned?”

  Svetson looked Hill evenly in the face and said “No.”

  “You were riding with guys carrying empty poison canisters, by a well, and you really think we’re gonna buy that you haven’t poisoned the well?” Greene demanded.

  “Asshole,” one of the Black Gangers muttered.

  “You really think the nomads are going to poison their own groundwater?” Svetson replied. “We were issued them, yes. The nomads refused. Their whole problem is with you guys desecrating their lands, they’re not going to do it themselves! But they liked the containers for carrying gunpowder. Kept those.”

  “You swear on Mother France – on Stockholm – that the well is not poisoned,” said Greene. “Because we are going to fuck you up if you’re lying to us.”

  “How about I drink some of the water myself?” Svetson suggested.

  Greene and Hill looked at each other, then Greene nodded.

  “Do that. Mandvi, fill a canteen.”

  Mandvi, the closest man to the well, took his canteen and filled it from one of the trough faucets. He went over and handed the water to Svetson, who chugged it down without hesitation.

  “We can drink?” Greene demanded.

  “You can drink just fine,” said Svetson. “And afterwards can I have some damn medical attention for this damn leg please?”

  Greene, his canteen out, was already heading for the water tank.

  “Sergeant Greene!” Janja called in his lieutenant’s voice. “Horses first, remember?”

  Greene turned, unaccustomed to the authoritative tone.

  “Horses first? What?” Greene demanded.

  “The Black Gangers are our charges; we’re responsible for their protection and we wouldn’t be here without them. They should drink first, then the junior men, then the senior men.”

  “Oh, fuck that,” said Greene. “You’re insubordinate.”

  “You take care of the civs,” agreed Hill with a grunt, and moved out of the way from the Black Gangers. “The convicts are our charges.”

  “You riflemen are really going for that bullshit?” Greene sneered as he filled his hands with water. A crowd of jostling Black Gangers followed him, fighting each other for a place at the trough. Mandvi kept an eye on them while the other three of the guard detail went over the dead nomads and their zaks.

  There were a bunch of jezzails and flintlock pistols, and one nomad had a revolver. All of them had at least one long thin blade. As the weapons were found, they were tossed into a central area with their ammunition.

  There was gold and silver; a few of them had purses of gold and silver, and others had medallions sewn into the skins they wore. A nice little haul, put together.

  Svetson, of course, did not have Euros in his wallet; he didn’t have a wallet at all, or dog tags, or any identification they could find. There was no rank insignia on his shoulders; they only had his word that Svetson was his name and Sergeant-Major Second-Class his rank.

  “Normal enough in these cases,” said Hill. “They want to be deniable. If he’s got a chip implanted they’ll have completely wiped all data on it.”

  The crowd of Black Gangers around the well had thinned, the last of them having filled their canteens and were drinking from them. Hill gestured at the trough.

  “Can we drink now, sir?” he asked Janja caustically.

  “About time,” said Dashratha.

  Mandvi un-clipped his own canteen again. Then his eyes crossed past Janja to the Swede prisoner, who looked to be holding his breath – or choking!

  “Euro, are you all right?” Janja asked.

  “Fine,” Svetson gasped thinly.

  “Oh shit,” said Mandvi, realizing. He whirled at Hill, who’d turned the tap back on and was about to fill his hands with water. “Get away from that trough, Hill!”

  “What?” Hill snapped back, although the urgency in Mandvi’s tone had caused a reflexive step back.

  Mandvi pointed at the choking Svetson.

  “Oh shit. You fuckers did poison the well, didn’t you!”

  “Fuck you,” Svetson gasped. “You’d have shot me anyway. Fuck you.”

  “That water’s poisoned?” Greene demanded.

  Mandvi looked in horror at the Black Gangers, who’d heard the exchange. One of them fell to his knees and began to pray.

  Another couple of them were starting to have a hard time breathing.

  Janja pointed his rifle at Svetson and chambered a round. He cocked his head at Hill.

  Svetson tried to say something, but didn’t get it out through his diminishing breath.

  “Fuck no,” said Hill. “Don’t give him the mercy kill.”

  “The water’s poisoned?” Greene demanded again, then started to gasp.

  One of the Black Gangers began to scream. Another man fell to his knees and began praying.

  “Antidote,” said Mandvi. “Maybe there’s an antidote and he’s carrying some!”

  Desperately Janja searched the now-collapsed Svetson again, then the packs on the man’s zak.

  “Medical kit,” he held it up. Clearly marked red cross on it. Janja ripped the zip open and began going through it, throwing tubes and bandages aside.

  “Find the fucking antidote!” Greene yelled, panicking. “Find the fucking antidote now!”

  “This is all standard medical stuff,” Janja said.

  “Not everything has an antidote,” said Mandvi.

  He went over to Svetson, who was still conscious. Breathing very, very shallowly now, though.

  “Tell us where the antidote is and we will give you some. We will give you some and let you go. Janja, you swear this on our honor, right?”

  “Sworn on my honor and the Legion’s,” Janja said.

  Svetson bared his teeth and gasped his last words:

  “Is. No. Antidote. Fuck. You.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It hadn’t taken long, as an exhausted Mullins marched through the desert, for freezing cold to become blazing heat as the sun rose. He wasn’t wearing a hat; like Jorgenson he’d left his helmet at Hubris. The sun beat down on his head and face, starting to burn, and he was tired.

  Lennon and the others in the guard detail at least had helmets, and Corporal Alvarez had his wide-brimmed drill-instructor-like hat that worked even better. Mullins glanced back at the Gangers in the center of the group, most of whom had picked up straw hats or baseball caps at some point. He wondered if any of them would sell him theirs, possibly for cigarettes.

  Maybe not such a good idea. This had been intended as a quick excursion out to the line, back at Hubris by sunset. He’d brought a half-empty pack with seven smokes left now; he was starting to jones for another one, the last had been three hours ago.

  His legs and feet hurt. Maybe it was ti
me for a break. A glance at his watch said that yes, it had been about an hour and a half since the last one they’d taken. Normally when marching extended periods, doctrine said that you took a ten-minute break every hour or so.

  At the head of the column, Cramer was consulting with Newbauer, who violently shook his head.

  Cramer shook her own head and said something.

  Newbauer spat on the ground and said something back.

  Then he turned around.

  “Doctor says it’s time to pause. Ten minutes! You all got ten minutes.”

  The Black Gangers sank to the ground. Reuter detailed Jorgenson and Mondragon to stand guard.

  Mullins collapsed to the sandy dirt himself, unclipped his canteen and took a careful sip from it. Next to him, Warrant Two Senechal sat down.

  “Lot more ground to walk across than fly over, huh Private?”

  “You chopper guys must be having a really bad time of this,” said Mullins. “We at least train for route marches.”

  “Hey, Army has physical fitness standards too. I know you Legion types don’t like us much, but give us some respect.”

  “Never had a problem with the Chopper Corps,” Mullins said. Any more than he, or the Legion in general, had a problem with cab drivers. And for much the same reason.

  “Surprised they stuck you guys out here with a bunch of Army. After the fight you started with them that got you busted out here.”

  Mullins shrugged again. “Engineers, not grunts. We work with those guys enough that there’s a bit of respect.”

  Senechal took another swig on his canteen. After a little while, Mullins took his cig pack out and carefully drew a smoke. Six left now, but I could use one.

  Need to be careful about rationing the rest, though. It was going to be a long walk back to Hubris, although there was supposed to be a logistical depot at Diamond North. Who knew if they’d have stocked that place with cigarettes, though?

  He lit it, and saw Senechal looking enviously.

  Fuck. But they were all in this together.

  “Take a drag?” Mullins offered. Manners were manners.