The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

  “Hey, Springer! You busy?”

  She sighed, pissed off both because she could never make the Khallenes understand she now preferred to be called Tremayne, and because trying to explain she was off-duty and entitled to some relaxation was also beyond their comprehension – or so they preferred her to believe. “Nothing that can’t wait,” she said. “How may I assist?”

  “We want Romulus assigned to us for medical analysis. We need to deep scan him.”

  “Oh-kay. Is he sick or injured?”

  “No, he’s healthy.”

  “I am unfamiliar with this ‘deep scan’. Can you tell me what it is and how long it will take?”

  “No.”

  No. Conversation with the Khallenes was tricky at best, but Tremayne was more adept than any other human. Her gut said the current communication difficulty was rooted in the subtle identity of what lay behind that Mobius strip. Sometimes it claimed to be the combined essence of several Khallene individuals, and at other times it would describe itself as nothing more than dumb software.

  She tried again. “If I were talking with a Khallene technician who intends to carry out this deep scan, would she be able to explain the nature and duration of the procedure?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And would she be willing to explain them?”

  “I should think so.”

  “But you are not.”

  “Correct.”

  “Please speculate. I understand your statements may be inaccurate, but in this circumstance a degree of inaccuracy may be tolerated.”

  “No problem.”

  Tremayne punched the air in triumph. Yeah, still got it.

  “Deep scan is a term I made up,” explained the mind behind the strip. “Basically, they’ll use every tool they’ve got to dissect Romulus and put him back together again as good as new. Could take hours or days. Don’t know until they try. The poor guy will probably sting a little after, but even his girlfriend won’t be able to tell the difference because we’ll take extra care to make sure we put all his bits back in the right order.”

  “Thank you, that’s very helpful. But you’ll have to give me a more tangible reason for wanting Romulus if I’m going to convince his CO to hand him over.”

  The Mobius strip took on a crimson hue. It was blushing. “It’s not my fault. They made me promise not to say, but, they’ve been trying to hack your comm tech for years. Very impressive your tech is. Highly desirable to the mudsuckers who built me. It’s not to steal your secrets, you understand, just to learn. Always they lust for new ways to do things, and… for you to leave such shiny tech on open display was such a tease. Please don’t be angry.”

  “I am not angry. I am bewildered. You already know our comm tech. Your Khallene engineers enhanced it, gave us the design we’re using to speak to each other right now.”

  “Not that comm tech. I mean the nano-scale broadcasters hidden in your blood.”

  An icy chill crawled up Tremayne’s back.

  “Springer? Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

  “Do… do I have these broadcasters in my blood?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “How many humans do?”

  “They’ve spotted 212, mostly senior commanders.”

  “And Romulus has this?”

  “Look, Springer, maybe this is me interpreting your words the wrong way – you alien humans are pretty unfathomable, and all that – but you don’t seem to know about this comm tech.”

  “I don’t. Now answer my question.”

  “We spotted unidentified nanotechnology in his blood when Romulus spent time in the infirmary after the Hardit attack you call the Third Battle of Khallini, but his setup was not the same as the other 212 individuals. Romulus was something different, which is why we never connected him.”

  “I still don’t understand. Why do you want Romulus so badly? Why now?”

  “Because as of three minutes ago Romulus acquired the same intoxicatingly new comm tech as the others, and used it to begin broadcasting a message.”

  “To whom? What does it say?”

  “Unknown on both counts.”

  Suddenly the deck rumbled, and the general address system wailed through a piercing three-tone alarm. General Quarters!

  All over Lance of Freedom, Marines and sailors were rushing to their posts. Not Tremayne, though. Ever since she had been booted out of the Marines, she was a non-combatant. Her General Quarters station was her cabin, where she was supposed to keep out of the way.

  Text describing the situation scrolled across every display on the ship, including Tremayne’s cabin.

  “I can’t see,” complained the Khallene contact. “What’s it say?”

  “We’ve been boarded,” Tremayne replied. “Marines have been killed. General McEwan is missing.”

  Tremayne shook her head in disbelief. “Please tell me this is a coincidence,” she whispered. They had come so close to victory in this war of liberation. Should have known it wouldn’t be easy.

  “Ahh… not sure if you’re being rhetorical,” said the Khallene. “If not then I decline. All 212 with the tech just initiated high-bandwidth communications simultaneously. The datasphere’s lighting up like there’s a supernova in every CIC and bridge team. I can see General McEwan very clearly.”

  “McEwan? Where? Show me.”

  “I can’t show you a visual of McEwan, because he is hidden behind some highly unusual stealth technology, but I can trace the emanations from his blood. Look, here he is…”

  The Khallene construct brought up a tactical map showing McEwan just outside Lance of Freedom and moving away fast.

  Tremayne brought up a comm link to her superior, Ambassador Sandure, but cut it dead before he answered. C’mon, Tremayne. Use your brain!

  “Does Ambassador Sandure have this tech in his blood?” she asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  Frakk! Even Del-Marie is compromised. “Who is the most senior officer onboard who does not carry this tech?”

  “Lieutenant-General Xin Lee.”

  Oh, it just had to be her. The Universe is wetting itself laughing at me.

  While she tried to raise Xin, Tremayne asked the Khallene representative to transfer a list of individuals carrying this tech – a list of the people who could not be trusted. It was pretty clear that they had identified the security breach.

  To her relief, Xin answered her call.

  “Make it snappy, Tremayne,” Xin sneered. “Kind of busy.”

  Tremayne hesitated. The voice transmission was encrypted but from what the Khallenes had let on, their security had been blown wide open. She’d have to choose her words with great care.

  “I’ve been thinking about Scendence,” she said. “Last games we played, I was in Moscow Express and you were in Team Ultimate Victory. Let’s combine teams. And to start us off, I’ve an idea for our Deception-Planning player. I know where there’s a good one floating around in the vicinity. We can grab him if we’re quick enough.”

  Xin said nothing. She didn’t shout and she didn’t cut off the link, which meant she was thinking over the cryptic words. Lieutenant-General Lee had a great many faults as far as Tremayne was concerned, but stupidity was not one of them.

  C’mon, Xin. Work it out!

  “Meet me in the tertiary hanger,” said Xin, and cut the link.

  Tremayne bolted out of her cabin on her way to meet the woman who had destroyed the old Springer’s life and parked herself on what Springer had thought of as her territory. Together they were going to haul Arun’s ass out of the fire, almost like old times – except for the mound of bitterness she carried around with her that was so massive, it could trap an atmosphere in its gravity well.

  — Chapter 17 —

  “I hesitate, and I do not understand why, Sub-Leader Taniss.” Tawfiq Woomer-Calix, the supreme leader of the Hardit New Order twitched her tail as she fought against the temptation to order her pilot to turn the hid
den shuttlecraft around and return to Taniss and the main fleet. “Is this indecision, Taniss? Cowardice, perhaps? I am not used to such vacillation.”

  “Be reassured, Supreme Leader. As you say, your indecision is uncharacteristic. The root cause is your revulsion.”

  Tawfiq growled. This all smelled wrong. On this matter, she didn’t trust her own judgement. Still less did she trust the foreseer – the being the humans would call a Night Hummer – who had suggested she initiate this course of events, but Taniss she did trust to speak naked truths, untarnished by sycophancy or politics. And even the foreseer’s advice had been apt, so far.

  “Consider,” continued Taniss, “the humans will soon find themselves blocked. Without our help, they will eventually withdraw from this star system, unharmed. Far better to let all of our enemies butcher each other until they are weakened. We are not as strong as we appear.”

  The arguments were familiar, but hearing her trusted subordinate speak them was the reassurance Tawfiq needed. What she was about to initiate could harm the New Order significantly, but the destruction of humanity was a decades-long project that demanded she display the kind of patience characteristic of a foreseer. For now, there was only one human who needed to be destroyed without delay – that pustule of stinking excrement whom she had numbered slave 106, but who now called himself a general.

  “Very well, Taniss. Send the transmission to the humans. Let the game commence. They are so ignorant, I doubt they will understand it anyway. Tawfiq out.”

  Tawfiq ground her jaws together, but the deed was done, and the unsettling thought came to her again that the course of events she had been directing for decades had gained yet another slug of momentum. She scratched behind her ears, as if dislodging ticks, but she couldn’t shift the nagging doubt that said events were directing her, and not the other way around.

  Too late now, she told herself, we are committed.

  She willed her arms to rest comfortably on her thighs and managed to ignore the phantom itch behind her ears, because there was a matter to attend that would be a welcome distraction.

  She opened a secure comm link to the interrogation compartment of the commando ship. “I shall meet the prisoner in ten minutes,” she informed the janissary who answered. “I want him conscious enough to appreciate my complete victory over him and his rabble. That is all he needs to do. His life expectancy extends for a maximum of five minutes after he encounters me, so for the prisoner to be dying when I meet him would be pleasantly efficient.”

  Tawfiq flicked her long tongue around her lips, eagerly anticipating the final encounter with the upstart, 106.

  The itch behind her ears had disappeared.

  — Chapter 18 —

  Tremayne swallowed her impatience while Xin read over the data she had shared using a secure data slug passed directly into the universal port of the Lieutenant-General’s battlesuit. They were in the tertiary hanger, an area of Lance of Freedom she had never visited before. The main two hangers were given over to the X-Boat fighters and fighter-bombers that represented the light carrier’s principle means of aggression. Behind the iconic X-Boats, the primary and secondary hangars both housed less glamorous craft: transports, shuttles, and the plethora of auxiliary ships that could mine for raw materials in asteroid and Kuiper belts, and also refine them in situ before transporting the results back to the resource-hungry fleet.

  The tertiary hanger housed everything else: garbage scows, short haul ammo carriers, tugs, and mobile platforms for space-worthy equipment crates used by the teams who maintained the huge spacecraft’s exterior.

  “I see,” said Xin, “you did well to come to me, Deputy Ambassador. I choose to believe in the accuracy of the location tracker your mudsucker friends are feeding me, which is telling me they haven’t taken Arun far. Our opponents could be feeding us a false trail, of course, but if they are, Arun is already lost to us. I know you’re in a hurry to rush after your old friend, but I would rather wait to acquire the best pilot in the fleet before flying out blind, even though he’s no longer a Navy pilot. Officially. Luckily, Dock has given me just such a pilot. The Wing Commander owes me a few favors, you see.”

  The general was encased in her battlesuit, which had been set to a matt black that made it tricky for Tremayne to focus on her shape. But Xin’s helmet hung from her hip, and Tremayne could see her eyes defocus as the field officer shifted her attention elsewhere.

  Tremayne gasped. “You don’t mean Romulus, do you?”

  Xin slowly slid her gaze back to Tremayne. “And what is your problem with Romulus?”

  “The Khallenes think he is the most compromised of all, maybe the source of the cyber infection.”

  “I can’t raise him… he’s AWOL. Shit! Romulus knows about the 850.”

  “The what?”

  Xin ignored her. “Sergeant Majanita, you getting all this?”

  If there was a reply, Tremayne didn’t hear it, but Xin continued, “Change of plan. Get your butt in the pilot seat. We leave now.”

  Xin started jogging into the poorly lit recesses of the hangar.

  Tremayne followed, cursing her prosthetic leg, and wishing even viler thoughts upon Xin for causing her missing leg to be a problem. After a couple of turns in the labyrinth of little boats, she lost sight of the general. Tremayne stopped and listened. She could hear Xin’s boots thundering along the deck, but the sound echoed, making it impossible to pinpoint its location. But beneath that sound, she identified the throbbing of a powerplant and hurried in that direction. Soon she stumbled upon a boat with an open entry ramp and a lit interior.

  Could this be Xin’s vehicle? It looked like an old ammo carrier, the kind you’d need in an emergency to resupply a warship’s gun and missile batteries from the outside if the internal ordnance logistics system failed for some reason. A backup system you tested from time to time, but hoped you’d never use. If you wanted to hide a special vehicle in plain sight, masquerading as an old ammo carrier was a perfect way to do so.

  Tremayne hurried up the ramp and into an airlock. With a whirr of motors, and hiss of pressure exchange, the ramp raised up and sealed itself as soon as she was on board.

  “Welcome to the TS 850,” Xin said through an overhead speaker. “Get aft and strap in. With Majanita at the controls, this could be a bumpy ride.”

  As she made her way to the rear of the little craft, Tremayne noticed the light diffusing into the corridor from the bulkheads flickered as the main power grew in intensity until the boat was rattling. Over the years Tremayne had gotten used to the signature of different types of power unit. This one sounded like nothing she’d heard before.

  The hold was just as she imagined an ammo carrier’s to be. Ammo racks were bolted into the stained bulkheads. Loading trolleys were folded away and clamped against the overhead. Metal boxes painted red, but showing slight signs of corrosion on the handles, were attached to one corner. The only thing out of place were the two rows of three acceleration couches, and the four Marines already strapped into them. Ammo carriers did not carry out high-gee burns and there was no need for couches. Nonetheless, she lay down in a vacant couch – which was oriented with its back against the deck and its base toward the external hatch in the aft bulkhead – and began strapping herself in.

  Her gut fluttered when the boat lifted off and began its delicate maneuvering out of the maze of small craft.

  Suddenly the boat lurched, and Tremayne heard the dull thud of a collision.

  “That bulkhead came out of nowhere,” said Xin, deadpan, through an overhead speaker.

  The next few moments were a sequence of disconcerting jumps and twists, punctuated by collisions.

  Tremayne glanced at her traveling companions. Two sat beside her and two behind. None paid her any attention. In her last assignment, she had been part of the then Colonel Xin Lee’s personal bodyguard, and she assumed that was the same elite group she’d temporarily rejoined. Chances were, she knew some of the Marines she sat b
eside, but she wasn’t going to beg for recognition. Xin had probably poisoned their minds against her anyway.

  The key point was that her companions weren’t bothered about the crazy boat’s maneuvering, and so Tremayne decided she needed be either.

  “I hope you are enjoying the flight, Deputy Ambassador,” said Xin over the speaker. “Our new pilot is making an acceptable fist of things but expect… turbulence as we leave the hangar. Setting course is always a fragile collaboration between the ship, the pilot, and the forces of Chaos… and that’s with a pilot who knows what they’re doing. As for speed… that’s whatever the boat feels like it should be. But her stealth is incomparable. Most of the time the 850 exists outside of the physical universe, or at least the version we laughably refer to as reality. It’s based on Hardit stealth tech but taken in a new direction.

  The 850’s course smoothed for a few seconds. Then her main engines must have cut in because the sustained acceleration pushed Tremayne back against her couch with such ferocity that she felt sure her internal organs had been left far behind in this strange craft’s wake.

  The acceleration glued the back of Tremayne’s head to her couch but the Marine in the couch to her left lifted their head slightly and turned to regard her.

  “You are Phaedra Tremayne,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. “You are a former Marine private, and now deputy ambassador following your conviction of conspiracy to murder the Lieutenant-General’s biological children.”

  Adrenaline shot through Tremayne. It sounded like these Marines, loyal to Xin, were spoiling for a fight. But against powered armor, Tremayne would be helpless even under normal gravity. As the 850 sped away in pursuit of Arun’s kidnappers, it was all she could do to swivel her eyes around to look at this Marine.

  “However,” he continued, “we prefer to recall your actions at the Second Battle of Khallini where you saved the general’s life at least once.”

  “Personally, I count three occasions when you saved her life,” said the female Marine on the far end of Tremayne’s row.