The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

  She gave her people a few moments to absorb the enormity of this vital mission. Just long enough for them to start asking themselves the question: why?

  “Many years ago, at the gates of the imperial capital, the Human Legion split.” She paused to consider her next words carefully. She hadn’t been born then, but for many in the troop compartment the wounds from the rupture still festered. “Our dream was to push on beyond the frontier, and establish a new civilization, free of the Cull, at Far Reach. So why are we here in the Solar System? Given the painful memories of invading alien soldiers the Earth people have endured, only Homo sapiens personnel have been picked for this mission. That means for us, this is personal. This is the birthworld of our species, and yet I myself have asked, why should we help the world who gave away our ancestors as slave tributes? Here is my answer. If we don’t stop Tawfiq in the twenty-eighth century, then the New Order will grow into an unstoppable plague that will one day engulf Far Reach. We are the descendants of a generation wronged by humankind. Let us right that wrong. Today we carry out this mission so that tomorrow our descendants – and, yes, the children of Earth too – shall walk the stars in freedom. That is all.”

  She glanced at the other flight crew, who appeared to have taken her words in their stride “Well?” she demanded of Jackson. “How did I do, Andy?”

  “Very impressive,” he replied, “although in my version of the future you’re a general, not a captain.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, Andy. We haven’t screwed with history. I started off piloting boats like this. Karypsic might not be a ship of the line, but on a mission like this, she deserves to have a captain.”

  Commanding a boat like this is also a position I know I’ve earned, she thought, though she kept that to herself.

  From the troop compartment, the commander of the Marine contingent chimed a comm request

  “Go ahead, Morris.”

  “Captain, I mean no disrespect, but do I have the full picture here? I command three half squads of ten Marines. That’s plenty enough to shoot the hell out of a few senior monkeys and blow up some high-value shit, but you talked of supporting an uprising, a war of planetary liberation. I can do a lot with thirty Marines, ma’am, but that might be pushing it.”

  “My apologies, Lieutenant. You speak the truth. Once I decide we are safely clear of New Order listening posts on Mars, the command team will meet on the flight deck. But I will say this now. We are not alone in this endeavor, Lieutenant. We are one half of a pincer attack, and if the other mission succeeds, then our sister team will support us at Victory City.”

  “You mean the drop capsule? The one the flight techs were calling the Saravanan? You could maybe squeeze eight Marines in there, but they’d not have enough room to scratch their butts, let alone be fully equipped, not with all the real estate these time intercalators take up.”

  Grace grinned. “If I’m right, then those numbers will grow. By the time we hit Victory City, we should have millions of warriors by our side. We’ll be hard pressed to give Tawfiq time to realize her defeat before she’s torn limb from limb.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right, Captain. And if you’re not, we still have thirty Far Reach Marines hungry to put an end to Tawfiq. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Amen to that, Lieutenant Morris.”

  Grace was relieved to sense the fragility to the lieutenant’s bravado. Despite his words, he understood that this was not going to be easy.

  But it had to be done.

  –—

  Grace Lee-McEwan

  Karypsic.

  Earth orbit

  It took Karypsic four days to reach the target. The jump had shifted them 22 years into the past but kept them in the same location relative to Mars. However, Mars took nearly twice as long to orbit the Sun as Earth, and the two planets were now in very different positions relative to each other, meaning the dropship’s journey to Earth took half the time it would have done in 2739. It was a small detail, but Grace was encouraged that the orbital arrangement of the planets matched the schedule Greyhart had described for the Battle of Cairo.

  Boats of Karypsic’s class normally launched an attack directly from orbit after disgorging from the bellies of larger craft. With a full troop compartment, and a journey time measured in days not hours, Karypsic was stuffed full of ripe bodies fired up for the attack but with nowhere to go.

  But flare-ups were rare and they made the best use of their time in training and planning, with plenty of rest periods to enjoy games of poker, skat dice, and Danish murder. Alcohol, though, had been banned by Grace until their return.

  Grace knew she wouldn’t let these people down, and that included herself. This jaunt into Tawfiq’s bunker was exactly the kind of escapade her parents had gotten up to in their youth, and she was determined to live up to their reputation, daunting though that would be to most people.

  But she was Grace Lee-McEwan.

  She wasn’t most people.

  Hour by hour, the blue planet of their ancestors grew larger in the viewscreens on every bulkhead. Grew larger in the minds of everyone aboard Karypsic too, as the moment of their reckoning with Tawfiq drew near.

  They slipped through the orbital defenses, directly under the enemy’s snouts, then dropped through the air their distant ancestors had once breathed.

  To make a stealthed descent while neither burning up in flames, nor revealing your position, required exceptional piloting skills, and Grace knew she was the best in the fleet. They dropped safely below cloud cover, heading east over night-time Central Asia.

  “The ground… it’s lifeless,” remarked Jackson. “I can hardly see anything.”

  “We’re traveling through the night,” Francini pointed out.

  But Grace realized what he meant. “No lights,” she said. “No civilization.”

  Intel said the Hardits lived underground and the human civilians on the surface. This lack of light was proof of the consequences. A dim glow corresponded to the city of Tashkent, but only at pre-industrial levels. The rest of the planet’s surface appeared cold and lifeless. Had the spirits of the civilian survivors been as easily quenched?

  “Incoming!” warned Francini. “Able-class fighter bomber squadron. Hong transports too. Scores of them. It’s an airborne army. Plus fighters of unknown configuration. I’m counting four hundred aircraft.”

  “Any reason to think they’re for our benefit?” queried Jackson.

  “Impossible to say.”

  “Until we’re registering missile locks,” said Grace, “we shall assume New Order air deployments are a response to the operation around Cairo.”

  They headed over the darkness of China and out into the Pacific with the flight deck in a dense silence. The Hardit air formation was not headed for Cairo and Africa, but neither did it seem aware of Karypsic. She passed within a hundred miles of the New Order formation over the mid-Pacific. The enemy was on a course to Antarctica for unknown reasons, but so long as they were moving away from Victory City, Grace didn’t care why.

  She took them down to two hundred feet above the waves and continued east to catch the dawn over Victory City.

  ——

  Grace Lee-McEwan

  Karypsic.

  Approaching Victory Mall

  The orbital descent had been tough enough, but ground level stealth flying on a boat of this size was a delicate balance. Her flight instructor had likened it to making a soufflé in zero-g. Push too hard with the force keels that extended into the lower dimensions, and energy would leak back into conventional space-time to draw the attention of any Hardit anti-air defenses. The force keel technology was stolen from the New Order after all, so they should know what they were looking for. Too light a touch on the conventional thrusters and Karypsic would stall; too much and the disturbance in the air would be noticed. Then there was the mucking around with gravity that entwined with the other elements of Karypsic’s propulsion and left her pilot sweating with conc
entration.

  Nonetheless Grace snuck in low under the New Order defenses that ringed Victory City. They passed over a once-ornate white building with a large dome that had caved in, presumably during the invasion. She didn’t recognize the building but knew the Victory Mall area was filled with ruins that had carried great significance to the humans who had lived here centuries ago. The one building she did know was a little to the northwest of the mall, a bombed-out ruin called the White House. Even today, the human who called himself Governor of Earth lived below its ruins, and she wondered what manner of man he was. But Romulus was not the target today. She dropped her altitude to 90 feet and banked around the end of the target zone to come in from the east at a steady 10 feet-per-second.

  “I don’t like that pillar up ahead,” said Lieutenant Morris over the command channel.

  Grace agreed. The obelisk dominated the area, and far from being bombed out, it looked in good repair.

  Jackson data-delved for information on this observation post that hadn’t shown up in the mission briefing. “Records show it’s a 19th-century monument with a viewing platform on the top. Nearly 600 feet high.”

  “I want a team in there controlling the high ground,” Grace told Morris.

  “Already assigned and ready to jump, ma’am.”

  “Wait for my mark,” she responded, reducing gravity’s grip on Karypsic so that the dropship gradually climbed another hundred feet. “Go!”

  ——

  Corporal O’Hanlon

  Vengeance Squad

  Approaching Victory Obelisk

  Gliding through the crisp early morning air in his Armored Combat Exoskeleton (Scout-variant), O’Hanlon was struck with the serene beauty of the place. Jumping out of a dropship in ACE armor was normally a loud and frantic experience, what with the fire coming up to swat you out the sky and the rain of dirt thrown up by explosions. True, this Victory Mall was peppered with shell holes, but that was from the New Order invasion many years ago, and they’d been softened into well-tended flowerbeds and the whole area grassed over. The only thing he could hear outside of his suit was a squadron of ducks coming in to land on the rectangular pool of water that stretched out to the west. And with his two buddies who’d dropped with him running silent, it appeared to be just him and the ducks.

  This place wouldn’t stay serene for long, though. Not if he had anything to do with it.

  But first they had to take the obelisk.

  He bled off speed and flung his hands wide as he smacked into the white marble about halfway up on the east side. Despite all the incredible stealth tech on the ACE-6(S) suit, as he waited for his grip to firm, he could still hear two soft slaps as Jintu and Bryan landed a little farther down the obelisk.

  Then they were scurrying like geckos up the outside of the sheer tower, taking just over two minutes to get into position.

  After he’d ascended a hundred feet, he deviated to the side of the pillar to check they were still unobserved.

  Yep. Still just him, the ducks, and beyond the pool of water was the white marble of the target. Of the Karypsic there was not a sign… until the ducks suddenly ruffled their feathers, and gentle ripples spread out along the pool despite the absence of wind. The disturbance persisted for a few seconds before serenity claimed the scene once more. And that was the only sign that a 245-ton dropship laden with Marines had passed over.

  That boat still gave him goose bumps

  They’d come a long way since the crude drop pods the White Knights had begrudged their human Marines when he’d first started in this business.

  He felt a hand bump into his foot and set off again for the top. Took him thirty seconds.

  There were observation ports cut into the pyramid atop the obelisk. O’Hanlon stretched a finger just below the lip of the eastern one and extended an invisible camera from the fingertip.

  Inside was a hollowed-out space. Looked like there had originally been a complex honeycomb structure, but that had been taken out for renovations being carried out to Hardit tastes. O’Hanlon couldn’t give a frakk about the fancy leather strips that covered the floor, or fake rocks glued to the wall that would make it look like an underground cavern once they had been painted. But he did approve of their redesign: the open space meant he could look out both viewports at the same time, and he could also see the place was deserted.

  He hauled himself into the open space and activated an SBN secure battle net link to the other two Marines.

  “Set up the M-cannon at the west viewpoint,” he instructed, and began retrieving components of the crew-served gun from the storage area inside his ACE-6(S).

  “What kind of perverted frakks chose this for their carpet?” said Bryan.

  Now the SBN was active, he could see her outline painted in his HUD busy unloading her part of the gun, just as they’d all trained on the way over from Mars. “Keep your mind on your task, Bryan. Let’s get this baby operational before we start thinking of a chat over coffee and donuts, eh? It’s just… leather…”

  But it wasn’t. He saw now that the rectangular strips of leather hadn’t been dyed different shades of white and brown. They hadn’t been dyed at all. It was human skin.

  “Makes no difference,” O’Hanlon growled, slotting together segments of the gun’s tripod. “We’re here to kill Hardits, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “New Order Hardits, Corporal,” Bryan pointed out.

  She was young; born after the Legion split. But she’d learn. “I never met a Hardit I liked,” he told her, “except ones I’d killed first. That’s all I’m saying. Now, help Jintu activate the targeting system while I fix the barrel.”

  Another twenty seconds and the M-cannon was ready to fire.

  Captain had ordered them to keep hidden, to keep their powder dry until she told them the time was ready to unleash on the enemy.

  But O’Hanlon and his crew were ready now.

  Boy, was he ready.

  ——

  Sergeant Kraken

  Arrow Squad

  Flying west over target zone

  “Arrow Squad, jump!”

  A hole irised beneath Sergeant Kraken’s boots and he fell through the underside of the Karypsic, the camo extrusion field sucking at him as he passed through.

  Immediately, the squad SBNet established itself, and while his ACE suit sensors scouted for the presence of hostiles, he mentally called out the names of his squad that his HUD had found and labeled: Malgra, Fallaw, Spurrell, Raschid, Malinga, Bunny, Zsoldos, Thongsuk, and his sister, Giant.

  The two siblings had grown up into the war. It was all they had ever known but they had survived it all, even a decade serving in Lee Xin’s personal special ops team that had once rescued Arun McEwan from right under Tawfiq’s ugly snout. And now they were jumping to end Tawfiq in the past, and on a mission commanded by the daughter of those two Legion generals.

  It was a crazy galaxy, all right. He bit his lip and let his gaze rest over the pale blue outline his HUD was painting him of Giant falling like deadly snow.

  She’d survived the war, but the cancer she’d developed in her second-tier brain augments would soon be the death of her.

  “Will you look at that?” Giant said over a private channel. “Makes me wanna hurl.”

  She was painting the target in his HUD, the entry point down into the Hardit burrows where they hoped to find and kill Tawfiq. I know you wanna get her real bad, sis, but you don’t need to tell me where we’re headed.

  But then Kraken saw what she meant. Their intelligence had been patchy; all they knew was to head for a statue of a seated figure set in a shrine behind a marble colonnade. Nothing prepared them for the sight in real life. Tawfiq Woomer-Calix sprawled arrogantly in a massive seat, glaring with contempt out of her three alien eyes at this human world, daring all to defy her.

  “We’re on it,” he told her. “Tawfiq ends here, today.”

  By the time Kraken hit the ground, his knees bending only slig
htly to absorb the gentle impact, he had already read the ground and made minor updates to his squad’s deployment orders by thinking them to his AI. Within seconds they’d all landed safely and were racing west to secure the target.

  ——

  Corporal Giant

  At the base of the Tawfiq Memorial

  Giant hugged the white marble in the northeast corner of the temple her HUD labeled as the Tawfiq Memorial, keeping overwatch on the approach across the parkland from the north. Why the crazy monkey-frakk would name a memorial after herself when she wasn’t yet dead made no sense, but was an inconsistency Giant’s team was eager to correct.

  In the distance she could see a few lights in human civilian buildings that must have predated the invasion. It felt strange to think that out there so close were human civilians, and that at the end of her life she would come home to Earth of all places.

  Earth was never my home, she reminded herself.

  She shook her head and groaned as a lance of agony shot through the diseased parts of her brain.

  “You okay?” asked Fallaw, from his position twenty-five feet away.

  “What’s that Fallaw? You want to take me out for a coffee to cheer me up? Keep your eyes on the prize.”

  He was a good kid, Reed Fallaw, but he needed to stop worrying about her. She had wanted to run this mission with clean veins, but it looked like it wasn’t going to be. She allowed her suit to administer a limited dose of targeted pain meds.

  She took a moment to study the overhead view of the target area, which occupied the bottom-left section of her HUD.

  Behind her and Fallaw, through the colonnade and up the steps to the central area of Tawfiq’s temple were two hostiles. Her brother and the rest of the central team would have them in their sights, but no one was making a move until the enemy sensor system protecting the memorial had been taken out of action.