“Zavage is right,” said Bronze thoughtfully. “Any course of action will be highly dangerous. However, all of them would be more likely of success if we were equipped with Legion armor.”
“Don’t tell me.” Sybutu rounded on Bronze. “You want to top Zavage’s crazy plan by walking up to those… infected legionaries and asking them to hand over their armor?”
Bronze sucked in his cheeks. “Yeah. That’s about the strength of it. It worked with Meatbolt.”
Osu narrowed his eyes. “You told us Meatbolt was dead. No, never mind that. Will it work?”
Zavage couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nor what he was sensing through the kesah-kihisia organs on his head: Bronze and Sybutu were serious about this.
“It might work.” Bronze sounded less certain now. His mind was seeping doubt too.
Zavage couldn’t stand it anymore. He backed away from the mad humans and kept watch for any more rebel scouts.
“If it doesn’t work, then I’ll be dead or captured,” said Bronze. “But you can stay away at a safe distance. But if it does, then everything else from that point is much more likely to succeed. Look, Sarge, if you want minimum risk, then we follow the Militia and hope we catch up with them. You want the maximum chance of making a difference, then let’s see if I can rustle us up some proper fighting armor.”
BRONZE
“Hold the line,” Bronze murmured.
It seemed like the kind of thing he was expected to say, but he’d been so many different people over the past twenty years that it felt like someone else’s words.
“HTL,” whispered the other two, and Bronze headed away from the entrance to the pleasure pool a block away from Vortex Plaza.
When they had arrived and quickly scouted out the civic amenity, Zavage had heard noises beneath the water of the entrance pool. They had decided to hope these were the sounds of Littorane citizens trying to hide from the massacre of Bresca-Brevae.
Bronze put the noises from his mind. The biggest dangers to be faced over the next few minutes were all his own.
Seeking cover as best he could, using the poles that curved over the streets like giant naganita, he made his way back to the plaza.
Bodies were strewn along the streets. Most of them were Littorane civilians, both Corrupted and those for whom death had spared them that fate. There were also a few rebel corpses in light armor and one Corrupted human legionary slumped against a wall that had been mostly demolished by heavy blaster fire.
Bronze made a quick inspection of the corpse who had once been a man. The armor and the flesh within had been holed by heavy caliber slugs, which meant there was no point stripping this armor. The helm looked undamaged, but Bronze couldn’t bring himself to remove it. He feared what he might see inside.
He guessed that rebel light armored vehicles advancing through the street had used a vehicle-mounted gun to deal with the Corrupted man. The sounds of battle, however, were coming from the spaceport and the western approaches to the city. All he could hear from the plaza were screams and keening wails; they were more than enough.
Thankfully, the mobs of Corrupted Littoranes who had guarded the entrances to the plaza had dispersed, allowing Bronze to slip inside and spy out the area from the blasted ruin of a building that fronted the open area.
The smoking ruins of three rebel armored hover carriers stretched in an arc across the plaza’s center. The infantry squads they had transported hadn’t made it far from their vehicles before being cut down, but they’d taken a terrible toll in Corrupted legionaries. He felt the bile rise in his throat at the way the dead from both sides had been abandoned. Some of the downed legionaries were groaning in pain, wounded but seemingly left to die alone by their own comrades, now that their usefulness was at an end.
Bronze fancied himself a worlds-weary cynic, but he was sickened by the way these travesties of human beings dishonored the Legion armor they wore. Of course, they were victims of the Corruption themselves, but seeing the way they abandoned their wounded made it personal.
But then, it had always been personal. Ever since Azoth Zol.
What made it worse was that Bronze could do nothing for the wounded either; to be seen to try would jeopardize his already near-suicidal plan.
Littorane screams from the temple pierced his red shroud of rage and he assessed the scene more carefully. If he survived to make a report, what he saw here could be vital in learning to defeat the Corrupted, because they evidently did not operate as other soldiers.
Civilian bodies were heaped around the steps to the temple, the grim result of the massacre he had witnessed with Enthree and Fitzwilliam, but the temple still thronged with terrified civilians seeking sanctuary within. Frightened, but unhurt.
Now that the legionaries in the square had other objectives, they were no more interested in the civilians than in their own wounded. They bunched behind and on top of the ruined hover carriers with rifles trained on the western approach to the plaza.
It was as if they had room in their minds for only a single task at a time, and they had forgotten the order to murder the civilians.
That wasn’t all they had forgotten. Smoking craters contained mangled anti-air guns and SAM pods, together with the ruined bodies of the crews who had served them. But some of the anti-air assets still looked functional, their crews lying dead around them and the legionaries behind the hover carriers uninterested.
If the men and women inside the armor had originally been legionaries, then they would have been trained in the use of all but the most specialized equipment. And real legionaries certainly wouldn’t wait in the open for the return of rebel aircraft while ignoring their air defenses standing idle just yards away.
It made no sense.
But, Bronze reminded himself, they only looked like legionaries. Behind the helms were mindless drones who had expected to encounter only defenseless civilians.
What’s more, he knew he wasn’t actually facing the Invaders. This was a softening-up operation to disrupt an enemy before the real invaders made their move.
He shivered at that thought, but he couldn’t help that now. Besides, he desperately wanted to be wrong.
Eyeing Corrupted marksmen positioned on the rooftops looking down on the plaza, Bronze readied himself for the gamble he was about to take.
Act as if you own the place.
HTL. Oorah!
He strode out into the open.
Immediately, rifles shifted to cover him, but the legionaries weren’t sure what to make of him.
Could they detect the scent of Corruption upon him?
It was with the group of legionaries sheltering behind the farthest hover carrier that he saw what he wanted. Several of them wore the insignia of the 62nd Brigade: his old unit.
He made it to the ruined carrier without being shot into a smoking ruin, but behind their opaque legionary helms, he felt every pair of eyes upon him. A hush came over citizens sheltering in the temple, as they too waited to see what would transpire.
“You, you, and you.” Bronze pointed out three individuals in 62nd armor. He knew that each invader left a unique odor with the individuals they corrupted. He hoped those who had been captured at Azoth Zol would be attuned to his own scent.
“Come with me.”
A single legionary took a step toward Bronze. Then another step. Then a third that brought it close enough to lean forward and bring its helm an inch from his face. It seemed to be sniffing him.
After passing his head over Bronze’s face like a security guard using a threat-detector wand, the Corrupted straightened up and gurgled in its throat.
It sounded as if the once-human voice had seized up from disuse, almost gummy with resin. If their airways were really like blocked sewer pipes, did that mean they no longer needed to breathe?
“Yougghh. Ouughhh. Youuuhh. I. Know. You. Bronnnnnze.”
“I was Bronze. Yes.” It was ironic how this name from his past would not release him. “You have
not seen me for a long time because I have served our purpose elsewhere. Follow me!”
He walked back the way he’d come as if he expected instant compliance.
The confidence he projected was entirely false, but three pairs of armored footsteps marched behind him nonetheless.
His plan had worked.
So far…
——
“We need to go incognito,” Bronze told the former human legionaries when they had reached the temporary safety of the pleasure pool entrance. He felt Zavage’s mind touch his, but Sybutu and the Kurlei remained out of sight. “Remove your armor.”
“Yes, Bronze.”
They obeyed without question.
The helms came off first, revealing hideously disfigured faces of what had once been men. Their canines had grown into miniature curled tusks and their concave noses looked as if they had been melted into their heads. Instead of hair, their skulls were entirely covered in downy feathers like a human duckling.
One of the three looked familiar…
Obscenities though they had become, they clearly remembered some of their training, because gauntlets, arm segments, and torso armor were rapidly stripped off in the sequence mastered by every legionary during basic training.
Bronze had eyes for only one of them. “Empties?”
The Corrupted man grunted ambiguously. But it was him. This was Empties, his squad mate when he’d played the role of Jonathan ‘Bronze’ Marquez. Or rather, this had once been Empties. Now his friend’s body was twisted into an S-shape that made him wonder how he still fitted into the armor. If he were human, a malformed spine like that would make him an invalid, but though his shape was distorted, Empties looked strong and ready for his new instructions.
“Empties, lift up your shirt.”
Bronze wanted to retch at the sight Empties revealed, but he needed to see if he’d changed like the first to be infected on Azoth Zol. Sure enough, his chest was coated in chest plumage of dark feathers patterned with bright rusty chevrons. He’d known this man. Called him friend.
Empties had been captured with Bronze and one other legionary: Redwing. Bronze looked into the faces of the other two, but they were too far gone to tell whether he’d once known them.
I must have known them once, he told himself. They’re wearing the same camo I did.
It would have been easier if all three had remained anonymous monsters, but he kept searching the features of the other two, trying to find familiar features. He owed it to Redwing and the others to try, so he could honor their memories properly.
And then the armor was off and Bronze was forced to consider the three Corrupted legionaries as a dangerous liability that had to be removed.
It had been the case since they’d removed their torso armor. If they had turned on Bronze after that point, Zavage and Sybutu would have shot them from cover. But the creatures who had once been men were as compliant as good-natured babies.
“Face the plaza,” he told them.
They gave no indication they had heard.
“Turn around!”
This time, they complied.
“I won’t make the mistake I did with Meatbolt,” Bronze whispered.
He drew his crescent blade – a relic from an ancient era in which his distant ancestors had known only war – and dispatched all three, slicing their throats so they lacked the ability to cry out.
The blade ran thick with blood that soaked his sleeve. He stared at it for a while. It looked like human blood, but he told himself it was not.
“I know how difficult that was for you,” said Zavage, startling Bronze who hadn’t noticed the other two appear.
Bronze felt the Kurlei put a hand on his shoulder and attempt to smooth his mind, but they lacked a deep enough connection for either to work.
“When this is over,” Zavage said, “you can talk to me about what you just did at any time. Just one thing, brother. Don’t ever tell me it was no big deal, because I could sense what you felt.”
“One day, maybe I will.” Bronze tapped his head. “Locked away in here I have a lot of tales I’m not ready to face and are too dangerous to unleash now.” He drew a deep breath and regarded the fresh corpses. “Their tales are finally at an end. Help me, Vol.”
With Sybutu standing guard, the two of them laid the former legionaries out respectfully.
Bronze took a moment to stare into the face of the man who had been Empties. “Go in peace and honor, brother.” He closed his comrade’s eyes.
He repeated the words over the other two, trying and failing to recognize the person they had once been before shutting their eyes.
In silence, they put on the discarded armor and set off for the spaceport.
VOL ZAVAGE
By the time the three of them left the city, they’d switched their captured helms to a supplementary comm channel over which Sybutu told them to speak openly. Not that the other channels were exactly cluttered with chatter. They’d heard a few grunted phrases on Channel Zero, the default wide area Legion signal, but even that had sounded more like a very sick person talking in their sleep than the kind of orders and reporting you would expect with a battle raging.
“Bronze, you’re the one who’s partway on the journey to being one of them,” said Zavage. “They’re meant to be an army. How are they coordinating when no one’s talking?”
“I don’t know. Enthree said she could smell the infection – the Corruption, she called it. My guess is it’s some kind of pheromone control. Like ants. That’s my guess, but being sealed up in armor with a legionary helm ought to kill any pheromone control dead. Makes no sense in a way, but these were once legionaries and carry a memory of what it was to be a legionary.”
“You mean that even though it cuts them off from orders, they don’t want to take off their armor for anything?”
“Precisely. The habit is too ingrained.”
They jogged away from Bresca-Brevae, piercing the city force dome and emerging into air that was bitingly cold and clear after the smoky atmosphere they’d left behind. But their armor rapidly adjusted its heating and insulation settings, and their helms increased their visor polarization against the white glare.
With their HUDs identifying battlefield objects of interest, they quickly pieced together the situation as they merged with streams of other legionaries headed without any apparent coordination toward the spaceport. They were not challenged.
The Rebellion had clearly made an attack on the spaceport. Probably they had expected only token resistance but had hit a Corrupted advance reaching for the same objective. The rebels had been repulsed, but it looked to Zavage as if they were only temporarily regrouping before throwing in a fresh assault.
Corrupted dead and wounded lay scattered around the snow, ignored by their comrades who rushed to join the force milling around the spaceport that was exchanging sporadic fire with Lieutenant Kulm’s garrison.
“What are they waiting for?” asked Zavage.
“Those perhaps?” said Bronze. He pointed to a heavy weapons squad headed on a parallel course about thirty yards away. There was more of a sense of purpose to this squad, perhaps because they had been given specific instructions. They’d been supplied with special weapons, too: four partially dismantled MM-7s, which would be plenty enough firepower to obliterate Kulm’s main gate.
The MM-7 was an infantry support gun from the post-Orion Far Reach era, but it used alien-designed components from before even the days of the Human Legion, components whose design secrets had been lost long before. If Lord Khallini was supplying the rebels, who was supplying the Corrupted with these treasures?
“We need to move away from them,” said Sybutu. “I want at least 150 yards separation from those guns.”
They pivoted east. Sybutu didn’t need to explain his reasoning. If a Corrupted squad ever deployed those guns, it would become target number one for any enemy in range.
“Anyone have experience firing MM-7s?” Zavage asked.
“Virtual simulation only,” replied the sergeant.
“Same here,” added Bronze.
“And me,” said Zavage. “But I’ve fired MM-17s on the range, which is basically the closest the modern Federation can get to making an MM-7. As for GX-cannon, I’ve fired them in an anti-air role for real.”
“Is anyone suggesting we steal those guns?” Bronze sounded unconvinced of the idea.
“I don’t like it either,” Zavage replied, “but it’s the only weapon I can see nearby that could defeat an army on its own. An uncoordinated army of zombie humans, at any rate.”
“Fair point,” said Sybutu, “but keep your distance from them until I say otherwise.”
Suddenly, the edge of Zavage’s helm visor flashed red, and a very specific warning tone sounded. The one for incoming missile attack.
He tensed. Calculating impact zone… was written across his HUD.
Run or drop? Come on… what’s it to be?
The HUD showed its calculation, adding red hatching to the ground over an area several hundred yards across.
“Drop!” he shouted and flung himself at the snowy ground.
He did his best to screw himself into the snow in the remaining moments before impact.
Then all he knew was noise and heat as he was flung through the air in a spray of snow and steam, cosseted inside his armor by automatic impact buffer foam.
“Call in,” said Sybutu. It wasn’t until then that Zavage realized he had landed.
The HUD was showing minor damage to his armor. Despite the buffeting he’d suffered, and the static stuffing his ears, the armor didn’t find any damage to Zavage’s body worth reporting.
Of course it doesn’t, he cursed. His armor was set up for a human legionary. He had to hope it didn’t misread healthy Kurlei life signs as a critical injury and pump him full of drugs designed for a different species.
“I’m good,” he reported over the radio.
“Just a cracked rib,” said Bronze. “Armor’s injecting painkillers.”
Chimera Company - Rho-Torkis Box Set Page 31