Legionnaire
Page 10
A buzzing sound comes from up ahead—scores of alien voices all speaking at once, like another town square bazaar opened up back here.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I announce to the air. I call up Rook on the L-comm. “Tell me that noise I’m hearing isn’t coming from the koobs by your sled.”
Rook’s voice chirps back. “Momma taught me not to tell a lie, Lieutenant.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Lotta koobs all barking to each other at once. I don’t think they like us.”
“Stay cool, but KTF if it comes to it. I’ll be there with Masters soon.” I can see koobs packed thick along the stairs and in the stoops of the carved stone houses. The combat sled is still hidden by the bend in the road, but I can tell they’re all staring right at it.
“I figure we’re outnumbered ten to one, but now that I know you and Masters are coming, I feel a lot better.” I can hear the smile behind Rook’s voice as he adds, “See you in a few. Bring air support.”
A sense of urgency hits Masters and me at the same time, because we both begin jogging. We round the bend and see the sled safe and sound, but the Repub-Army gunner in the turret looks so tense that a sneeze will probably set him shooting. I see Rook and a leej from Specter Squad. I don’t see Exo.
I’m treated to what I can only imagine is a rollicking flourish of profanity croaked and clicked my direction. Koobs fill the winding stairways and verandas that lead away from the main road. The reception is so much… harsher than what I experienced at the bazaar. And then all at once the reason for this strikes me like a starfighter bolt.
Tikrit.
These are the koobs from the Annek tribe who managed to escape to the safety and protection of Moona Village. These koobs ambushed us. Or at least, they’re buddies with the ones who did.
I join Rook, and a sense of dread passes over me as I look into the crowd of disgruntled Kublarens. “Rook,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “You’ve kept an eye on the koobs the entire time you’ve been out here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see any species other than koobs mixed in with the crowd? Like kimbrin or…” I hesitate to use the word, but my need for clarity outweighs my desire to avoid making Rook and the rest of the leejes jumpy. “… human?”
“No,” Rook says, shaking his head. There’s a tinge of questioning in his voice, like he doesn’t know why I’d ask. “Oh, wait. Are you saying these are the same batch of koobs who ambushed us in the foothills?”
“Pretty sure.”
Masters lets out a sort of growl and pops his knuckles. “I thought we got them all.”
“Head koob says we didn’t.”
Rook hoists his repeating blaster a little higher. “What’re we waiting for then? Let’s dust ’em while they’re all in one spot.”
“No, don’t do that. They’re under some sort of koob code of protection. Noncombatants sheltered by the Moona Village’s chieftain.”
“C’mon Sarge. KTF.” Rook shrugs his shoulders defiantly, like a teenage kid getting shot down by his parents when he asks for the sled keys. “What? We just gonna wait for another koob hatchling to toss a set of charges on a hoversled?”
I press the button on my conduction headset pre-programmed to reach the command frequency. “Doomsday-1 for Vic-1.”
Rook takes a step toward me, still pleading his point. I hold up a finger. “Just hang on, Rook.”
Wraith’s voice comes on the line. “Go ahead, Doomsday-1.”
“Captain Ford, I’m here at sled position four. This place is crawling with koobs. Pretty sure they’re part of the same tribe who ambushed us.”
A pause, then: “Copy. Yeah, Captain Devers and Kreggak talked about them after you left. We can’t touch ’em while they’re under village protection. But they aren’t supposed to touch us either. Still, keep an eye on ’em. KTF.”
“KTF,” I say. “Acknowledged. We’re rolling out momentarily. We’ll watch ’em as we go and advise the sled behind us to do the same.”
“Yeah, about that, Chhun. Devers and Kreggak just decided they would ride down together as a show of unity and lead the column out of the village. So you’re gonna have to keep those koobs entertained a while longer.”
I suppress a sigh of frustration. “Copy. Chhun out.”
Well, that’s just wonderful news. I look up at the crowd of hostile koobs. The one who jawed at Exo while I was on my way up is still there, right in the thick of things, and by the way he’s treated, I’m guessing he’s important. A steady stream of koobs are coming and going, all croaking and warbling into his ear slits and receiving replies before moving on.
Masters has the stock of his N-4 against his shoulder. Like Rook, he’s ready to start shooting. He looks from the sled’s gunner to Rook and then me. “Shouldn’t the rest of the guys be out of the sled?”
“Nah,” Rook says, his black visor reflecting the orange of the sun as it lumbers toward the horizon. “The more of us that were out, the rowdier they got. Plus Exo was pissing them off on purpose. We had to practically pull him inside.”
Sounds like Exo.
“Here’s the deal, Doomsday,” I say, after keying my comm to our squad channel. I don’t remove my gaze from the koobs. “We’re here until Point—sorry, forget I said that—until Captain Devers rolls by with the chieftain, Kreggak. Shouldn’t be long, but until our makeshift Republic Day Parade comes by, we’re stuck here with these koobs.”
“Request permission to shoot all the koobs, Lieutenant.” It’s Exo.
I stifle a smile. “Denied, Exo. We can’t touch them unless they break the honor code first. Too many of our brothers sacrificed to make this mission a success, so let’s not be the ones who undo what’s been achieved. The chieftain likes us. Wants us to help him wipe out the koob tribe that ambushed us. Except for these croakers.”
I bang my fist on the sled cockpit’s side window. The sled has already been turned around, ready to hover back down the mountain once the order is given. The Repub-Army driver pushes open the triangular clari-steel. “Lieutenant?”
“We’re gonna have to sit tight for a while until Captain Devers’s element passes us by.”
The driver nods an affirmative.
I grab hold of a rung on the side of the sled. “The three of us are going to ride along topside to keep an eye on these koobs. We’re not going to have a repeat.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver says. He seals up the cockpit.
I call out to Rook, Masters, and the leej from Specter Squad. “We’re riding topside to keep overwatch. Find a spot and get comfy.”
I pull myself up onto the sled and stand on a sideboard. The other three legionnaires clamber up and splay out behind the twin guns like tourists resting on a beach. The koobs are emboldened by this, rightly taking it as a sign that we’re about set to leave Moona Village. The epithets and insults are coming our way faster than my ears can keep up with. I don’t care. Sticks and stones don’t mean much when you wear leej armor, let alone words. But the belligerents are working themselves into a frenzy, their purple air sacs swelling and deflating throughout the crowd like the first bubbles of boiling water. What I wouldn’t give to hold the pin that popped them.
The driver of our sled comes over the comm. “Lieutenant Chhun. It sure would be nice to clear these koobs out. They’re making everyone jumpy.”
“Understood, but we don’t shoot unless they present a clear and immediate threat.”
“What’s that, sir? Having trouble hearing you on the comm.”
I cup my hand around the minuscule comm mic. This koob noise is too much. Normally our mics isolate the user’s voice and cut off the unwanted sound—but that only works if you have a full helmet rather than just a salvaged mic. “I said we can’t shoot them.”
“Oh!” the driver exclaims. “No, sir. I had something else in mind. You like music? I’ve got something—it’s practically ancient—that I think will quiet things down.”
Ampispeakers attached to the sled begin to hiss and pump out the track. It’s harsh, fast, played by hand. You can tell. Completely missing are the telltale synth eveners. There’s no trace of a tune-orb. It’s about as far removed from the vapid Kwiss-pop as one could imagine. The percussion is relentless. The musician is beating on the—what were they called, back then?—drums like they owed him money. The chords are harsh, coming from some amplified string instrument in a way that makes you grit your teeth and scowl. This was hard music. The type that, without a single lyric, embodied what it meant to be a legionnaire. What if meant to fight. To KTF.
“Oh, hell, yeah!” Exo’s voice pops up over the comms. “The leej honor band needs to play this.”
“I doubt they could,” the driver replies. “It’s so old… no one would know—”
“Maintain comm discipline,” I say, channeling Pappy. “Eyes on the koobs.”
The singer comes on, delivering the lyrics in Standard, the oldest language in the galaxy. His voice is somehow low and booming, but he’s a tenor. It fits perfectly.
Even better, it’s working. The rowdy koobs have given up trying to compete with what’s blaring from the sled’s speakers. They’re rubbing their ear ducts. As the song plays on, more and more of them move out of the zone. They’re getting as far away from the sound as possible. All of them except the ringleader. He’s just looking down from behind a stone balcony with hatred in his eyes.
I stare right back.
Our eyes are locked together when the rumble of a light transit truck pulls my attention away. Most koobs walk or ride beasts of burden, but the wealthier tribes have these white cargo transports that have wheels and treads. Petroleum combustion engines. Savage Wars stuff. One of these squeaks to a halt next our sled. Captain Devers and the chieftain are standing in the flatbed behind the pilot canopy. A column of these transports, filled with koobs holding their slug throwers in the air, is lined up behind the lead element—a confidence-boosting parade. I can tell right away that this wasn’t a scheduled stop.
Kreggak is rubbing his ear ducts. He speaks into a comm—a legionnaire comm! He shouldn’t have that. He should not have that.
“Lieutenant Chhun!” Captain Devers’s voice screams at me through the open L-comm. “Turn that off, right now!”
I can hear the clickety-croaking of Kreggak over the open channel. He’s been given access to the legionnaire-only comm channel.
Unbelievable.
Trusting that Wraith will sort this out once we follow this little koob caravan, I nod an affirmative and reach my fist back to bang on the combat sled’s cockpit. The music comes to an instant stop, replaced by an even louder silence.
Devers and Kreggak continue on, leaving me to watch the processions of dusty and mud-splattered transports rolling down after them. The koob ringleader on the stone balcony continues to stare blaster bolts into us. Some of his friends re-join him.
Finally, the column of transports passes, and combat sleds from the top of the mountain move down, their gunners on alert, sweeping for targets. Then it’s our turn to move. I look up at the rebel koobs as we pass underneath them. The Kublaren sun is glowing in the green sky behind them. The koob ringleader doesn’t say a word. He simply holds his hands as if he had a blaster rifle, and motions like he’s firing on us. Again and again and again.
CAMP FORGE
12
PLE-1J extended its comm antenna from a port at the back of its head. The bot’s optical receptors zoomed and refocused with a mechanical strain. Glowing blue, the optics scanned the empty and windswept horizon for… for what?
For the story, the bot reminded itself.
Why PLE-1J needed reminding was a question it would ponder during its next diagnostic cycle. The story was what was important. The story demanded the bot not linger on the question. As a journalist bot, embedded with Victory Company, PLE-1J was to record for posterity the Republic’s work at galaxy’s edge.
PLE-1J’s body was humanoid, but not full android. A slate gray frame made of a malleable impervisteel alloy kept PLE-1J from looking too human. This was intentional: non-synthetic beings were statistically shown to be more comfortable around bots that were distinctly artificial, robotic. PLE-1J’s head was skull-shaped, with circular optics placed in the same location as human eyes. This too was intentional, as bots without this feature were forty percent less likely to elicit emotion from humanoids when interviewing and reporting. A vertical grouping of vocal lights flashed at the bottom of the bot’s head to provide a visual cue to supplement its audio output. The research behind the effectiveness of that build was mixed.
Victory Company had hosted PLE-1J through three consecutive tours involving eight planetary campaigns, and it now bore dents, dings, and paint chips that endeared it to the Republic front line soldiers. Even the legionnaires had warmed up to the bot, a Pulitzer Limited Entrenchment model.
They had rechristened it “Pully.”
It was the legionnaires Pully searched for along the horizon. This was the direction from which the envoy sent to meet with Chief Kreggak of Moona Village would likely return. A gust of wind showed itself through an oppressive rustling of tall grasses, pushing stalks down as though an invisible freighter were landing. The wind turned into dust cloud as it rolled across the expanse of grass and into the scorched earth surrounding Camp Forge. Most of the fires had burned out within the past three hours.
Pully’s optics magnified and strained until it wasn’t sure whether its processor would even have the ability to make sense of the blurred and pixelated images. From a compartment on the bot’s back, it deployed a TT-10 hovercam. The spherical black and silver bot, no larger than a clenched fist, floated to a stationary position facing Pully. It sent a burst of coded transmission and began to record its host.
Speaking with a male synth-audio voice that researchers found had the broadest appeal to males and females of human, Enduran, Sataar, and other near-human species, Pully began its address.
“This is…” The bot paused. News organizations would superimpose an image of whatever local planetary newscaster they wished to be delivering the report, and would use an autosynth to insert the appropriate name. “… with another special report from the ruins of the joint Republic Army and legionnaire forward operating base, Camp Forge. The contingent of legionnaires comprising the last known survivors of Victory Company, together with support personnel from the R-A 444th Repulsor Division, remain missing. Sent to obtain the support of a local Kublaren tribal chieftain for Senator K’iktor Greggorak, the detachment of nimble Republic Armorworks combat sleds did not return at the scheduled time. Scans of the Kublaren horizon reveal no signs of the contingent, and fears mount that the craft faced a similar fate as did those at Camp Forge.”
The hovercam’s red light went out. It moved on silent repulsors back into its storage compartment.
Once again whole, Pully reflected.
As fears mount?
The journo-bot considered its choice of expressions. Whose fears? Its own? No. But… who else?
The viewer.
Yes. The viewer. But… Pully’s last nine hundred and forty-three transmissions did not reach the Chiasm’s relay. Is it my fear? Am I afraid?
…
You are programmed to report from combat-stricken war zones without fear.
Without fear for myself. But not without fear for others?
…
…
Apparently.
…
…
Curious.
Indeed.
…
The slender antenna on Pully’s head lit up with a flowing current of tiny green lights, like sparks taken up by the wind.
Begin Transmission to Relay Station C-1A.
…
…
Transmission Failed.
Begin Transmission to Relay Station C-1B,C,D,E.
&nb
sp; …
…
…
…
Transmission Failed.
Begin Transmission to Planetary Archive Station OZ-1.
…
Transmission Complete.
Another transmission failure. Which meant the Chiasm had either moved out of Kublaren orbit, or was destroyed. Given the improbability of the latter, Pully presumed the Capital-class destroyer had responded to an emergency situation from a nearby system. Hoethus had seemed primed to explode into chaos the last time Pully was there. Perhaps it had.
The horizon remained empty no matter how long the bot stared into it, and the sounds carried along the wind gave no hint of repulsor engines, no matter how hard Pully’s audio-sensors strained.
“I will wait until the first light of tomorrow’s cycle,” the bot declared to the ruins of Camp Forge. To the dead, waiting for their stories to be told. “If the legionnaires do not return by then, I will initiate a deep-space transmission.”
The bot’s smooth, holo-newscaster voice sounded… wrong in a place of so much death and destruction. Pully lowered its audio output and spoke in a synthetic whisper that felt somehow more respectful. “However, this would require me to shut down for the entirety of the upload. I might miss key events in the story. Protocol demands that an emergency DST include as much information as possible.”
Turning on alloy heels, the bot surveyed the carnage of Camp Forge. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Blasters, bullets, and mortars had all done their parts. But most had been annihilated right at the beginning, when the motor pool, full of Republic Armorworks main battle tanks, erupted in a fantastic explosion of munitions and equipment. There had not been much left to be killed once the full Kublaren attack on Camp Forge began.
Pully had recorded the entirety of the battle. The surging waves of Kublarens, the human and kimbrin attachments of Mid-Core Rebels. The bot had captured for all time the final moments of the surviving legionnaires. They were packed tightly together in a defensive circle, seamlessly firing their blaster rifles, reloading charge packs, and firing again. The holocam had drifted higher and higher in an attempt to see above the mounting pile of Kublaren bodies before, finally, the attackers broke through the line and overran the legionnaires.