The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

  Timing would be critical in the subsequent battle for the empire. To show her hand too quickly would split the army before the Legion had even arrived. But without McEwan, she could not afford to delay too long, either.

  She hailed the only person in the galaxy in whom she placed her trust.

  “Yes?” replied the Hummer, from its station beneath the Earth’s surface.

  “I fear the Legion attack will collapse sooner than planned. Should we change the timetable?”

  “The enemy blocks our foresight. I cannot perceive the strands of possibility that could bind into a stable future.”

  Tawfiq snapped her jaws. The alien’s words were as expected, but still disappointing. “Then I shall depend on gut and wit to smell the way forward. Accelerate the production of my New Corps. Have them ready four weeks ahead of schedule.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  One of the most appealing aspects of the Hummers was that they did not weigh down their words with meaningless protests of loyalty. Nor did they feel the need to point out that accelerating the growth of her new race of soldiers would leave many with brain damage and deformities. Hummers did not care or even acknowledge the lives of unimportant people. The aliens could barely perceive the irrelevant masses who did not warp the future around themselves.

  Tawfiq cut the connection and settled back to enjoy the return trip. Closing her eyes, she imagined breathing the scent of dismay when the ambitious senior Janissary commanders realized their supreme commander had outmaneuvered them, and that their executions were inevitable.

  But the imaginary scene didn’t give her the pleasure it would once have done.

  I’m beginning to think like a Hummer, she thought, rolling this new idea around her mind. She decided this realization pleased her. Although they would be important in the coming battle with the humans, her military commanders were nonetheless short-lived creatures. The future did not bend around their destinies. She flicked her tail and curled her upper lip with pleasure.

  The future was already warping around Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. She wouldn’t just create the Hardit Empire, she would rule it until all opposition throughout the galaxy had been crushed. And if that took ten million years of war, so be it. Only she could progress the war through to the end.

  Tawfiq was not like the irrelevant little people who busied themselves around her like flies. Here today, dead tomorrow.

  She was different.

  She was becoming immortal.

  — Chapter 16 —

  They woke up screaming in an ice cavern lit by a pinkish glow that oozed through the walls.

  Thawing from cryo was never easy but coming out of this emergency fast freeze was brutal. Arun released his harness and tumbled to the ice floor, where he promptly deposited the contents of his stomach, most of which consisted of glossy blue gel that he hoped was a byproduct of the fast freeze.

  “Hey, did I just vomit?” he croaked. “I thought that had been engineered out of us.”

  The Barracuda subframe on which two of the crew positions were mounted, had been placed on an ice shelf. Lissa hung her head over the back of Arun’s seat, having just decorated his station in various shades of lurid blue. “Does that answer your question?” she said with far more good humor than he expected.

  There was no welcoming party, but there were rags nearby to wipe down their bodies covered in cryo slime, and clean warm clothing, which was just as well because their flight suits disintegrated into powder as they moved.

  As they cleaned themselves, Arun noted Lissa clutch the jewel of her necklace. It looked unharmed.

  There was one more item waiting for them in the ice chamber. The hover chair for Arun. They hadn’t loaded that as part of the sacrificial Misfit Flight, which meant that the outer arc of the Rainbow Bridge was operational. Was it also evidence that the Night Hummers were upholding their part of the bargain?

  The passageway ended in a bulbous chamber in which an orange ball of pulsating flesh hovered at head height.

  Are you correctly functioning? the Hummer asked inside Arun’s mind.

  “We’re good,” answered Lissa for them both. “How ready are you?”

  Interesting. You, the not-McEwan, wish to meet your new personnel without delay. But the McEwan wishes to inspect the bridge and the facilities first. It is the McEwan who swore the oath binding our peoples.

  “So you keep reminding me,” said Arun.

  And it’s his wishes we satisfy first.

  “Well, if you’re doing requests,” he said, “any chance of bacon and eggs? Maybe some coffee too? Now I’ve got rid of that awful blue gunk, I’m famished, and I expect the lady is too.”

  We also have desires.

  Arun froze. Was this the moment the aliens turned on him?

  You swore an oath to protect our species and nurture us into continuance.

  Arun thought back to underground tunnels beneath an unremarkable asteroid in the Tranquility system that hadn’t merited a name. He’d been seventeen, a scared and hungry cadet, but even then he had a sense that his oath would have consequences. Some of them still haunted him, but he’d always known those consequences had yet to fully play out.

  “I did so swear,” he acknowledged.

  This is why we planned for you to be the one who would command on this rock. We need a home. We choose this site. When your Legion establishes dominion over this system, the rock you called Ceres shall be the new home of the Night Hummers.

  “Agreed.”

  Arun wondered at his lack of hesitation, but there was a sense of inevitability, that this was the right thing to do – never mind the Hummer’s talk of dominion as if the people of Earth were merely swapping one tyrant for another.

  Or was that the Hummers messing with his head, manipulating him as they had so many others? But, no. His thoughts carried the scent of brass and hot lubricant that was all his own. If the Legion won the battle for the Solar System, the Night Hummers would be on his side, and he might need them as a counterweight to whatever happened on Earth.

  The creature led them away, floating as if in zero-g. Ceres wasn’t far off at only three percent of Earth’s gravity, but such micro-gravity made locomotion difficult for humans. The Hummers had provided a charged strip through the floor that gripped the soles of Lissa’s boots.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I was worried about the Blood Virus, and everything else was happening so fast, but… I know there’s no excuse. I should have told you everything that I had planned. I should never have secrets from you, Lissa. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged, not faltering in her march along the passageway. “Don’t worry about it”.

  Arun regarded her suspiciously. “You’re taking this very well.”

  She came to a halt and studied him through narrowed eyes. “Saraswati and I are having a deep conversation. Your name keeps popping up.”

  “Drent! She hates me.”

  “No, that’s not true. Saraswati despises you. Not the same thing at all. Luckily, she adores me.” Lissa gave him a teasing smile, but no more words.

  “So…” he chanced, “is there something I should know?”

  “Yes. We’ve come to a decision. About you. If we are in absolute privacy, and so long as both our AIs confirm that we cannot be overheard – and I mean that, Arun – then you may call me Springer.”

  Arun sagged in his chair. She wasn’t offering much, but he’d take anything. “Thank you.”

  As swiftly as if she were charging a line of Janissaries, Lissa leaned down, kissed him on the lips, and then sprinted away after the Night Hummer, which had carried along the passageway oblivious of the irrelevant doings of humans.

  It all happened so fast. Arun hadn’t had a chance to enjoy it.

  Did that really happen, Barney?

  Did what happen?

  That! Springer…

  Oh, for sure. She said you could call her Springer. I didn’t notice anything else of interest. Did you?

&nb
sp; You do realize, the other Misfit AIs will have been recovered, and they’ve never been paired with a human. I could replace you, you know? Go for a younger model.

  Barney responded with a barrage of good-natured abuse, but Arun was too happy to pay attention.

  —— PART II ——

  THE PRICE

  OF

  KNOWLEDGE

  — Chapter 17 —

  The sea of human soldiers regarded each other warily, aggressively in some cases. The habit of absolute obedience in the face of brutal discipline was just enough to keep them peaceful for now, but they were a dangerously mismatched group and would soon learn that they had thawed into a universe that would have been beyond their comprehension when they went into cryo. How would they react to that?

  Arun had just a few months to turn this mob into an effective fighting force that could take on Tawfiq and win. He’d always known it wouldn’t be easy, that molding them would require an unconventional approach.

  But he hadn’t considered the possibility of failure until he’d actually encountered them face to face.

  For a very long time, he’d taken the obedience of his Legion Marines for granted. But these people had never heard of the Human Legion. It was the only way to be sure none of them had been infected by the Blood Virus. They were from the sleeping legions secreted by the Hummers and their allies throughout the empire.

  Springer – he could no longer think of her as Lissa – sensed his anxiety and rested a supportive hand on his shoulder.

  And then snatched it away. This wasn’t the time or place.

  Below them, early human soldiers were backing away from their closest descendants, and with good reason. These brutalized, half-lobotomized attack dogs had been the empire’s punishment troops, some of whom later became the Wolves. There were Marines too, superficially like the 421st Tac Marines he had grown up with on Tranquility-4, but some had tattoos showing loyalties he didn’t understand, or bulges in necks and heads betraying augmentations in which he was completely ignorant.

  Ethnicity was something much in evidence too. Arun had known friends and comrades who had claimed to be French, Chinese, Turkish or any one of a number of heritage routes traced to regions on Earth. Most of that had been fantasy, the symptom of the desire to belong somewhere, no matter how possibly distant. On the other hand, the very first Sleeping Legionary Arun had awoken had been a Spanish speaker.

  Maybe it was the proximity to the mother world, but for the first time in his life, Arun pondered his own ethnicity. Did he even have one?

  He sensed Barney laughing at the absurdity of his question. Of course he did, but it had broken its connection to specific regions of Earth many generations ago. He was a Marine, and that was the end of it.

  One group among the milling crowd claimed origin on a different planet from Tranquility altogether, a world called Nanatsu. He’d served with Nanatsuans before, but these came from an earlier era. They shared the darker skin of his friend, Zug, and sometime ally and sometime enemy, Nhlappo. They knew no Standard, speaking only a language they called Kiswahili.

  The lack of language standardization amongst these earlier humans was something Arun and Springer had anticipated. The no-longer sleeping legionaries paraded not according to heritage, training, or body type, but language. Based on what the Hummers had told them, nearly a third had little or no Standard – the language Arun discovered had been based upon English – but most of these spoke one of four languages: Spanish, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, or the Kiswahili of the Nanatsuans. Arun tried not to rest his gaze on the Chinese speakers who reminded him in their look so much of Lee Xin, the woman had broken his heart and the Legion fleet on the same day.

  While Arun surveyed this fighting force, the group grew impatient. Finally, someone voiced the question Arun had waited for, the question on everyone’s mind. “Who the hell are you? Where are the officers?”

  The heckler was someone of Arun’s vintage, a man with narrow hips – relatively speaking – that emphasized the huge breadth of his shoulders. The man flicked back his hair and glared a challenge directly into Arun’s eye.

  Arun frowned and pointed at the disruptive soldier.

  Springer shot him, and he fell to the ground.

  “I am your new commanding officer. My name is General Arun McEwan.”

  Most of the assembled legionaries tightened their stance and kept eyes rigidly forward, their merciless upbringing giving many of them experience in the executions that were the consequence of any and all hints of insubordination.

  But the anger of the people around the shot man only grew. Dangerous murmurings erupted in one of the pockets of Chinese speakers.

  It had been Springer who’d insisted that she and Arun must remember the dark days of their youth, raised as slave soldiers by aliens who placed no value whatsoever on individual human lives. If they were to get through to these thawed slaves, then they would have to speak the old language of brutality.

  Springer raised her carbine and let rip, scything down around twenty people in the most disruptive group.

  There were gasps. Fists were bunched. The tense atmosphere swung between anger and being cowed. “Listen up,” said Arun. “You are still in the military. This is not the old days. Those insubordinate frakkers were shot with neuro-gel rounds. They will wake up.”

  “But not the next frakk I don’t like the look of,” growled Springer. “I’m switching to antipersonnel darts.”

  “All of us here are part of a long-term plan, a plan for freedom laid down before any of us here were born. Officially you are dead. All the White Knight records say so. For those of you who served in the now-defunct Human Marine Corps, your service record says you were recycled.”

  “As you can see,” said Springer with a smile, “aliens are lying bastards.”

  The soldiers looked at each other, surprised. There was a lot to take in, most of all for humans to openly mock aliens. This was inconceivable.

  “A lot of things have changed,” spoke Arun into the microphone built into his chair. “You were put to sleep as slaves, but you woke up free men and women. Well, almost free. You are still under military discipline, but after a life of service to the Human Legion, the organization you now serve, instead of being fed into the recycling engine your records say was your fate, you will retire. Retirement is no longer a euphemism for death. Not anymore. Those who serve with honor will retire with a pension, and land if you choose to settle the frontier worlds.”

  “Sir, permission to ask a question, sir?”

  The speaker was a woman, near the front. “Go ahead.”

  “Who’re we gonna fight? Where and when?”

  “Don’t you want to know why you fight?” asked Arun.

  “No, sir.”

  Arun grinned. He’d forgotten how vicious human fighters could be. He’d been around aliens too long, and for all their military prowess, they often lacked the fighting spirit of the humans. No wonder the Night Hummers had chosen his species to liberate them. “Your enemy are the Hardits.”

  There was a howl of anger, and he realized there was nothing more motivating he could have said. “And the planet where we will fight them is Earth.”

  Arun enjoyed the looks of utter shock. The woman who had asked the question looked utterly dismayed at the prospect. He realized that her blood lust had been an act; that she was trying to impress him.

  “What’s your name, Marine?” he asked her.

  “Corporal Horden, sir.”

  Horden? Interesting. “Well, Corporal, the monkey-frakkers have captured the Earth, raped our homeworld. The civilians – those who survived – have suffered greatly. Maybe some of you think those civilians deserve this. They are the descendants of the frakkers who sold out our ancestors to the White Knights in order to save their own skins.”

  Arun allowed a growl of anger to wash around the chamber. Horden remained stony faced.

  “But I say they have suffered enough. We’re going to r
eclaim our birthright. And if we prevail we will no longer be slaves. Freedom can be won!”

  The sea of faces looked up at him blankly.

  “Freedom!” shouted Springer, her amplified voice almost obliterating everyone’s eardrums.

  “Freedom!” chorused the motley army.

  Arun looked across at Springer and reveled in her magnificence. It was no wonder the soldiers were responding to her so enthusiastically. She’d never been a leader.

  But she was now.

  Arun packed away his admiration for this woman – a pleasure to be enjoyed later – and turned his full attention on the roaring crowd. He had five months, three days and four hours to turn this savage heap of soldiers into the most important fighting force in human history. He already had his eye on a few potential officers.

  Heaven help us, he thought as he got to work by joining in the chant: “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”

  — Chapter 18 —

  When he reached the top of the steps carved into the artificial heights of Mount Pit, Leon darted behind the moonlit rubble that had once been the rear gateway into the transit station. He strained his ears, listening hard for sounds of pursuit.

  Furtive scurrying came from another occupant of the old station, animal claws skittering over rubble and the concourse floor, snuffling snouts where, long ago, arrivals at Halifax–North End had streamed out from the hyper tube capsules.

  Raccoons maybe. Not dangerous to him.

  He directed his attention to the stairs, but he heard only the swell out in the Narrows, the waves lapping against the derelict waterfront at Tufts Cove.

  The waves’ lullaby song beckoned him – lured him out from his dusty hiding place. Let me wash you clean of your troubles, they seemed to say.

  Leon snorted. If only the oceans of the Earth did rise up – they would sweep away all traces of the fucking Hardits. And if the remaining humans were drowned too… well, that would be a small price to pay.