The Human Legion Deluxe Box Set 2

by Tim C Taylor

  An hour after waking from his final two-thousand-year sleep, and Arun’s world was still filled with things he could perceive and understand on their own, but not quite connect together. The way the water fell, though… he was sure this was significant.

  Seven thousand light years from home – a vastly greater distance than the extent of the Trans-Species Union – and Arun was standing in a coasting spaceship with hot water falling down from a shower head and dripping down legs planted firmly on a slightly angled tray that channeled water down a hole.

  Down a hole!

  Even the strangeness of his hairless legs with skin as smooth as a baby’s didn’t register on the weirdness scale as much as the artificial gravity. After all, when he woke from long cryo, he would usually forget he’d lost his legs and promptly fall over, but he had never forgotten life in zero-g. He was a Marine. He’d been born, raised, trained and engineered for a life without gravity.

  The high priority comm alert chimed in his cabin.

  Sighing, he switched off the water flow and pushed off through the drip containment field to coast through his cabin over to the comm station.

  And fell flat on his face.

  “Damn!” he growled, rubbing at his jaw. “Forgot the gravity.”

  The comm chime mocked him.

  “All right! I just got out of cryo. Can’t you give me an hour to get my head straight first?”

  He walked over to the comm screen.

  Incoming message. Audio only. Channel 114. Accept?

  At least he wouldn’t have to grab clothes first. “Accept,” he said and froze. That number! Channel 114. The call had come from the people he’d left behind. From the people who’d cast him out.

  “McEwan, go.”

  Silence.

  “McEwan here. You are unreadable. Say again.”

  But there was nothing.

  Barney, what the frakk is going on?

  Comm handshake is established, but there’s no associated data transmission.

  Why not?

  How the frakk would I know? We’ve just finished a 12,000-year journey. 7,500 if you take account of time dilation. Greyhart sent the fleet into the deep past so at journey’s end we would catch up with the moment of our departure from the Solar System. If I understood how chbit polarized entangled comms worked, maybe I could tell you why we can’t talk with home. But I can’t. When Earth encountered the TS-U, humanity’s science said entangled comms could never work without breaking the no-communication theorem.

  I know. They were wrong. But we’ve never figured out why. But we’ve loaded up with comm blocks entangled with home. We should be able to talk with Earth and Khallini across an instantaneous comm link. No one’s ever talked across 7,000 light years, though.

  Arun made full use of his new limbs and gravity to punch the bulkhead hard. “We’re cut off. Greyhart said we’d be able to speak with home and I believed him! I’ll never hear Grace’s voice again.”

  You told me you never wanted to speak with home again.

  This is not the time, Barney. Seriously, not… the… Wait! Arun had brought up the transmission info detail, and there spinning on the comm screen was some kind of callsign glyph.

  He peered at the screen. It was a golden sun around which a ring of planets orbited. He blinked away some of his cryo confusion and looked more carefully. The planets were familiar. He recognized Khallini. And there was Shepherd-Nurture too, and Earth. Obscured by the circling planets, a silver number was embedded in the sun. 412. He straightened his back. The 412th Tactical Marines. It was the old regimental banner he’d served under as a cadet.

  As had Springer.

  That callsign glyph. Barney, don’t you get it? We’ve never seen it before, which means it’s new information. It’s not audio, but if home can transmit information to us via the carrier signal we can figure out a way to carry voice. Right?

  Listen!

  Breathing. Arun heard the sound of human breathing catching on heavy emotion.

  “I didn’t think you’d answer,” whispered a tiny voice.

  “Springer?”

  “I called every day for three years. You never picked up.”

  “Uhh? We’ve only just arrived.”

  “We made contact on the day you were supposed to arrive. Furn answered. He was… not welcoming.”

  “Furn?” Arun tried rubbing sense into his head, but it was still too thick with cryo glue.

  Greyhart piloted one ship himself, Barney explained. It was due to make pickups on Khallini, where Furn was imprisoned, and the Far Reach proto-colonies too.

  “So I tried a direct call to you, Arun. And kept trying. It wasn’t easy, knowing you didn’t want to hear from me.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t I?”

  A minute ago, Arun couldn’t have said whether he’d rather hear from Springer or wring her treacherous neck. Now he’d heard her voice, all the anger flaked away, and he knew there was nothing more in the universe that he would rather listen to than that sweet voice.

  “Don’t stop, Springer. Every day. I want to hear from you every day.”

  “You don’t know how good it feels to hear you say that. All day long, the galaxy dumps its most intractable problems on me. Forget Earth and its many problems for now, there’s corruption in our core worlds on a scale we never suspected. I’ve formed an intelligence agency to–”

  “No! Stop, I can’t hear any of that. Sorry, Springer, it’s too raw. I can’t – and mustn’t. I have to spool my old mind up to face my own challenges. I can’t let it snag on yours. Far Reach and Legion Loyalists. Our fleets are combined, but now we’re here, do we split again? Where do we settle? I have to face these new challenges and you yours. One day, we could be each other’s closest advisers. Not today. I just want to hear your voice. That’s all I can cope with for now.”

  “Grace sends her love.”

  “No! It’s all too raw for me. Not yet. Not even Grace.”

  “I should go, Arun. Leave you to thaw in peace.”

  She was right, but Arun shook his head forlornly. Then he laughed, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Don’t go,” he said.

  “Let me help you. I hope.” She sucked in her breath sharply. “Greyhart and the Hummers have confirmed something Grace found out years before we met her, something Xin tried to tell me when she snatched me from Holy Retribution.”

  “Why are you telling me this? I don’t want to hear.”

  “Because I think you need to hear it. The planner AI inside your daughter’s head is able to run projections backward. Every time she re-runs the history of the Legion’s formation with the two of us being happy together, we’re wiped out before we turn the tide at Khallini. She sees only a handful of scenarios in which you and Xin become the axis that gives the Legion the ruggedness it needed to survive. Try to reconcile with Xin, Arun. We all owe her our lives.”

  “Do we? Or is it Greyhart we should thank for piloting us through dark waters to the version of history that suits his purposes. Man, I hate that creep, even if he did patch me up. I’m healthy again, Springer. More than healthy.”

  There was an awkward pause – it seemed that Greyhart was not a topic Springer was willing to discuss – before she changed the subject. “How’s Indiya?”

  Arun smiled because the news there was good. “I spent a lot of time with her on my last watch. That was two thousand years ago, and if she survived cryo then I find I’m looking forward to getting to know her as a friend. She’s practically a kid again, confused to be inside a middle-aged body. All her memories since the first mutiny on Beowulf and the destruction of Themistocles are… Well, not exactly buried. She remembers it all, but she says it’s as if it happened to someone else. I like the sound of her laughter, Springer. I need to be around someone I knew from the early years who can remember how to laugh.”

  His words dried up, and the weariness that had seeped deep into his bones shuttered his eyes and threatened to shut down his body.

&
nbsp; “I slithered out of my pod less than an hour ago,” he babbled in an attempt to stay awake. “I’m so lonely, Springer. Now that I’ve heard your voice, all I can think of is you, but the words won’t connect in my head. Not yet. I love you and I hate you, but neither as much as I want to go back to sleep, but you know the resuscitation techs always say to keep awake, and – look, this is all too complicated. Can you just be with me a while in silence?”

  Springer hesitated, but when she did reply, he could hear the dimples in her smile. “You know, Arun, I could tell from the beginning that you’d just thawed from a long cryo-sleep. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”

  “No. Brain’s still fuggy. I don’t follow you.”

  “Impaired cognitive function is not the only effect long cryo has on you. I remember what you were like when we woke up in Australia after a 3,000-year sleep, and it appears that nothing’s changed.”

  Arun paused. “How do you know?” he asked sheepishly.

  “The new legs suit you, by the way. Greyhart did you proud on that score. They’re still too smooth though. Shame I can’t come over and roughen them up.”

  Arun’s face flushed hot and he swallowed hard. Excitement began melting the glue that had locked his eyelids tight.

  “Maybe I can do something to help your resuscitation tension,” said his lover. With the faintest of hums, the sound of a holographic projector activating crashed through Arun’s awareness.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Phaedra Tremayne!” He had to stop to clear his throat. “You appear to have forgotten your clothing.”

  — Epilogue —

  Seven Years Later…

  President Tremayne

  HAR Government Complex

  HAR Federal Territory of Former Australia, Earth.

  Springer waved away the Gliesan senator and was rewarded with an angry wing shake.

  “I value your support, Senator Gjen-Hyush. I always have, but my mind is made up. I shall stand down after my ten-year term of office, and hand over to an elected successor.”

  “In an election that is deeply flawed. New Order raiders are still active in the fringe worlds. Corruption remains stubborn in the core. We are asking people to vote who have no tradition of democracy. Absolutely none. You cannot unravel the cultural scarring from thousands of years of White Knight imperial rule in just a few years.”

  “This is the first step. Dangerous and uncertain, but it must be made. I’m a Marine, Gjen-Hyush. I move when the time is right, not when everything is neat and certain.”

  “So was I, President. That does not excuse rashness.”

  Springer sighed. She’d miss the stubborn Gliesan. They’d been political sparring partners many times, but the respect had always appeared to be mutual. “In a thousand years, Gjen-Hyush, we will be long forgotten. Maybe my name will be remembered, but the real me behind the name will be rewritten to suit those who follow and then lost forever. As for the minutiae of government, they will be forgotten within the decade. But the stories we write now – the grand gestures – they will set the tone for the Human Autonomous Region unto the far future. We allowed the backbone of our navy to depart in the Perseid Fleet and nearly paid the ultimate cost when the Muryani sensed our temporary weakness. But that gesture will be remembered. In the same way, I will hand over power after ten years because that is the commitment I made in the Settlement of Vancouver. The ability for power to transition peacefully is a key test of a robust society, my friend. History will judge us on this first transition within the HAR. What kind of precedent would I set if I didn’t stand down as I promised?”

  “Noble words, President. I never doubted that you are courageous and principled, but maybe you are naive and irresponsible too. It is a fine line, and history will also judge which side you stand on.”

  Her piece said, the senator bowed in the formal Gliesan way, with wings slowly extended to their full extent. Springer saluted, and Gjen-Hyush departed her private office, hopefully in friendship.

  You see, she told Saraswati. It only reinforces the importance of the book project. And its difficulty. All I thought I had to do was order an official history to be written.

  Is that an apology? asked her AI sweetly.

  You were right all along, Saraswati. I admit it. I should have listened when you said how much work this would be.

  Would you like me to summon Councilor Hood from his labors?

  We both know he’s waiting outside. Just get the poor man in here.

  After Hood arrived, Springer gave him the courtesy of looking through the first printed draft for five minutes before telling him it wasn’t good enough. The truth was that she’d arrived at that conclusion within seconds.

  “The problems start here,” she said, opening the book at the title page. “The Annals of the Human Legion. Book 1: The Beowulf Mutiny 2566.”

  “The title does have the majority approval of the steering committee, and subsequently backed by focus group.”

  “Then I apologize, Hood, because I have failed in my duty to steer the steering committee. That’s going to change. The title is far too dry. Too academic.”

  “Then you need to help me to understand so I can serve you better. Because right now I see that as matching your orders, ma’am. You told me to deliver as accurate and balanced a story as we could piece together.”

  “Story, Hood! Stories hold more than facts and dates and events. Stories hit you here.” She thumped her chest over her heart. “And it is just as well they do, because if Arun hadn’t sold his story to us and the Littorane Queen, and all those who joined the Legion in its earliest years, it would have been snuffed out and already forgotten. You and I would be dead, Hood. It is stories that won our freedom, and stories that our descendants must remember as a bulwark against the potential tyrannies of the future. Arun was not an academic. Back in 2566 he was a cheeky no-hope greenhorn with a belief that anything was possible, and a kind of naïve charm that many of us couldn’t resist. That title isn’t him at all. I want something less academic, something simpler.”

  “You want the kind of thing a young Arun McEwan would have called it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “OK. Perhaps a call sign, or your squad name.”

  “Yes, something along those lines.” Springer paused because it still wasn’t what she needed. “The galaxy needs to understand Arun better,” she told Hood. “It is his story, after all.”

  “Ma’am? I seem to recall that you were there too.”

  “Of course I was. As were all the millions dead or yet living who played vital roles but the story will not find room for. Yet it was above all Arun’s story. Always was. Park this draft and go write the story of who Arun was before Beowulf. Start your account one year earlier.”

  “Ma’am, it would be dangerous to idolize the man. You said to present a balanced history… I mean, a balanced story.”

  “And that is exactly what you shall do. Write him the way he was at the beginning – as a lovable idiot. And start his story in the Trog nest below Detroit at the most embarrassing moment of his long life.”

  Councilor Hood allowed himself a smirk. “I think I know the incident in question, ma’am. And do you have a suggestion for the title of this new volume?”

  She grinned so deeply, she could feel the dimples pitting her scaly cheeks. “Damned right I do. We’ll call it… Marine Cadet.”

  Author's Notes: The Battle of Earth

  In 2017, following the launch of the third Revenge Squad novel, Second Strike (which I think is the best novel I’ve written to date), I approached The Battle of Earth with the intention of putting a cap on a series that was no longer selling well.

  I wanted to write a short book, because it’s not a small matter to spend months writing a novel when you are fairly certain that you will never earn back your cost of living while you’re at it. But it grew. It resisted all the constraints I tried to place on it.

  This was becoming a problem
because at the start of 2017, I’d written a novelette set in the Four Horsemen Universe (4HU) that appeared in an anthology during the summer (For a Few Credits More). Shortly after its release, I was chatting online with one of the other authors, Paul Corcoran, and the series editor, Chris Kennedy, to discuss the public feedback on our stories. Next thing I knew, we were talking about writing follow-up novels (Paul’s very good like that).

  I initially turned down Chris’s suggestion of writing a novel because I was committed to publishing The Battle of Earth to my Legion fans and couldn’t write an additional novel for him in the timeframe he wanted.

  In the end, Chris relaxed his timetable slightly, and I got back to finishing the Human Legion series before planning to switch to the novel that would become The Midnight Sun.

  If The Battle of Earth had stayed small, the schedule would have worked. But it didn’t, and I wasn’t prepared to rush it. So I put it on hold during the winter of 2017/18 and wrote a big 4HU book.

  That delay actually worked out well, because when I came back to The Battle of Earth I knew immediately that I wanted to do a really good job no matter what, and that meant events that I had intended to mention briefly in passing – such things as pulling donuts around the National Mall in Washington DC – I would now have fun and do them properly.

  One of the decisions I made was to split into two books. That was in part because as a single volume, it would be very large indeed. That doesn’t work very well commercially. In part because larger books earn less money relative to the time I put in to write them (and bear in mind that I didn’t expect to break even with these books). Also, I think large books increasingly put people off.

  But for me the biggest reason to split into two parts was an opportunity to highlight a pivot in my storytelling halfway through. In part one we see the war through the eyes of many characters, but primarily Arun McEwan. By this point he is worn out, probably dying, but he has one last brilliant plan in him. In his story, we encounter several unexpected echoes from all the way back in Marine Cadet, not least an unexpected re-examination of his stillborn relationship with Springer.