by Tim C Taylor
They have over a thousand registered religions, but the dominant pair are the Di-Bju, who believe that God birthed them from the poop hills, and the Xi-J’uon J’uan, who think the exact same thing, except disagreeing over some detail about who qualifies for the afterlife that escapes me. I sure didn’t qualify. We’re all blasphemers to them.
So what the hell were we doing there?
We were the Eighth Legion. Specifically, Bravo Company, 3rd of the 62nd—a company performing the role of a battalion because, as everybody knows, the federal military budget invariably flows away from the Legion and toward the Militia. Legion cruiser FRS Majanita with Bravo Company aboard had showed up the month before to keep the peace between the two main religious factions after a particularly nasty bout of ritual disemboweling started disrupting the supply of manta-bat poop, and that would have inconvenienced the local Militia officers or sector governor who no doubt controlled the trade.
That’s the official reason. Unofficially, our intel said the rebels were sinking arms and people into Bisheesh and making inroads in persuading the locals that the only answer to the endless religious strife on the planet was politics. Specifically, their politics.
The merits of competing religious doctrines? The sanctity and purpose of life? We leave all that to God. It’s not our place to interfere in His business.
But take up arms against the Federation? That’s different. Even the divine acknowledges that’s Legion jurisdiction. And the Legion is not like God.
We never forgive.
* * *
The deep sonic mapping of the caves carried out from orbit by FRS Majanita had done us proud. We positioned ourselves in one of the chambers that ringed the central cavern. A tunnel that fed into it passed by the chamber, and we entered by scrambling through an opening cut through the wall like a window.
A similar window looked down onto the main cavern.
If they ever commercialized the caverns, this alcove space would be perfect to serve up fat-laden fast food paired with hard liquor. But once we’d rearranged some of the loose rocks inside into firing steps beneath each window, we were ready to deal out something more immediately deadly than burgers and grax-gin.
With periscope cameras poking through each window and linked to our helmet HUDs, we waited.
In isolation.
And that was starting to worry me. Since Flare had warned us of the approaching sweaty rebel squid scout, we’d had no contact with the rest of the company. We’d expected signal disruption inside the caves, but not this.
Then the noises began.
At first, I thought it was more of the rumblings from the living mountain, but it was Empties who first voiced what we had all been thinking: they were howls. And screams. We knew the caves were a place of worship for a cult that had been sweeping the continent. Had we interrupted a freakish ceremony?
At first, I’d assumed the cult was a get-rich-quick scheme for its populist leader, Santohl d’Jek. To the Anori, the appeal seemed to be that the Jekkists were neither Di-Bju nor Xi-J’uon J’uan, with the bonus that in holo-ads that ran every night, d’Jek guaranteed that all his adherents would leave the petty concerns of everyday life behind within hours of joining.
But over the past few nights, the Rebellion had been pouring people into these same caves. Whatever was going on here was beginning to look more like a recruiting funnel.
“Movement!” warned Crow from the opening looking down on the central cavern.
“Panhandlers?” I queried.
“More like a freak parade.”
Crow shifted the focus of the periscope feed and I saw what he meant.
Leading dozens of his muttering followers was d’Jek himself, wearing nothing but a feathered headdress.
The Anori like to go naked, and the procession was no exception, clad only in boots and cloaks, although their transparent skin appeared to be smeared with something.
“What’s that they’re wearing?” asked Empties. “Manta bat dung?”
“Nah,” replied Redwing. “They’re hairs.”
My attention was on the tunnel, not the cavern of freaks, but the idea of hairy Anori worried at me. What were they? A baboon cult drinking the blood of Jotuns? But the ancient Jotun warrior race, with their shaggy pelts, was a rarity in the modern age, and the next hairiest species I could think of was my own.
Were they merging their genetic material with humans? That would explain the recent disappearances.
I told Crow to magnify the image of the cultists, who were setting up an altar in readiness for something I was sure would be diabolical.
Closer up, I could see that the cultists were not covered in hair but fine, downy feathers.
Redwing, however, saw something else altogether.
“Monkey!” he cried excitedly. “It’s Monkey.”
I was about to ask what the hell he was prattling on about, when I remembered that Monkey was the call sign for Sergeant Chinook.
Monkey had disappeared a few days after my arrival, a complete mystery because he was a dutiful legionary and hadn’t strayed from the safe areas around the base. Security sweeps had revealed nothing, and we had begun to suspect that the Panhandlers had upped their game and kidnapped him.
“Magnify his chest,” I told Crow.
Sure enough, the sergeant who had adopted the clothing-optional fashion of his new Jekkist friends was displaying chest plumage of dark feathers patterned with bright rusty chevrons.
“Contact,” said Redwing from his post watching the tunnel.
A party of rebels was advancing cautiously toward the central cavern. The squid woman was with them, but two males—a human and a Gliesan—were taking point, blaster pistols at the ready. Forty yards behind them, a fourth rebel watched their rear with a light blaster rifle and, of all things, a sword sheath worn diagonally across her back.
She held her body loosely as she watched for danger out of eyes that glinted with lilac flashes in the glow coming off the cave walls. Redwing and I were both watching her now— me through a worm camera extending out of a fingertip, and he through the periscope that zoomed in on her shapely backside as she passed.
“She’s a rebel, not a potential date,” I berated Redwing, retracting my fingertip camera. “A waste, but don’t forget that. Keep alert. Captain Wayland will be moving in to flush out the rebels any moment now.”
Right on cue, the sounds of battle erupted up the tunnel.
It was a cacophony of noise, but I had the experience to dissect it.
Orders were being shouted in the human tongue. Screams of pain and death were mostly nonhuman. I heard the tchew… tchew… tchew of blaster bolts searing flesh and deflecting off rock walls.
But what I didn’t hear was the pop-whine of legionary PA-71 railguns, and the company channel in my helm remained silent.
There came a lull in the fighting, followed by the sound of boots pounding the rock, headed our way.
I left Crow watching the main cavern. Redwing, Empties and I were on the firing step beneath the tunnel opening, ready to shred fleeing rebels with our PA-71s.
The first target appeared in the periscope view.
It was the girl with the beautiful eyes.
“Hold your fire!” I ordered.
“Seriously?” questioned Redwing. “What, we don’t shoot our enemies now if they’re smoking hot?”
“No,” I replied angrily, “because we’re off plan. It’s not our team who flushed them out.” The girl had passed us; more people were headed our way. “I want to know who did.”
“Sarah!” called an alien voice from the direction of the inner cavern. “Help us!”
The girl ran back across our position and moments later, the tunnel lit with flashes of blaster bolts.
In the main cave, the Jekkists lit a circle of blue flames and began ritual chanting, seemingly unconcerned with the battles just outside. Other windows like ours looked into the central area, and these too flashed with blaster fire. It
seemed the Panhandlers were taking a pasting all over the caverns, but not at Legionary hands.
Vaanesh Zill fled our way, firing blaster shots behind her wildly as she slithered as fast as she could.
And now I saw that it was Jekkists who were pursuing the squid woman. Heedless of the bolts that seared blackened channels through their transparent flesh, they swarmed upon the rebel, pinning Zill to the floor.
Then they waited.
The sounds of battle around the cavern died to an eerie silence punctuated by screams of sheer horror.
An Anori cultist, sturdier than others of her race and with elongated fangs, approached Vaanesh Zill. She displayed feathers on her arms that were iridescent blue, but with the same rusty chevrons as those Sergeant Chinook had sprouted.
Leaving Crow to cover the main cave, I waited with Redwing and Empties for the horror about to play out.
With Vaanesh Zill screaming all the way, the feathered cultist drew her fangs deeply across the squid woman’s neck, licking the blood off and waiting patiently for Zill’s struggles to fade and then die.
And when the rebel scout lay lifeless on the rocky floor, the Jekkists abandoned her and walked away in the direction of the main cavern… straight into a volley of blaster fire.
It was the human girl, Sarah, and her Gliesan comrade, his wings useless in the tight tunnels. The periscope didn’t give a good view of the battle up the passageway, but it was the Jekkists’ turn to flee, one of the relatively normal Anori guarding his fanged senior. The other Jekkists and the Gliesan rebel hadn’t survived the latest firefight.
The guard succumbed to blaster bolts and fell on Zill’s body. The feathered cultist knew she couldn’t escape and turned to face her death.
Death wore a pretty face with an upturned nose and lilac-flecked eyes. And her name was Sarah.
“You monster,” she yelled, and pulled the trigger.
Her blaster clicked. Empty!
The cultist grinned, a gesture that would bare fangs if they weren’t already visible behind transparent lips. “How unfortunate for you,” she said and advanced on the girl.
Sarah strode forward. “Not a problem,” she said, drawing the sword slung across her back.
She dispatched the cultist with a simple thrust straight through the heart.
The damage as the organ burst inside the Jekkist’s body was fascinatingly visible.
“Surrender!” called Anori voices from not only the main cavern but the direction of the cavern exits too. “You will not be harmed.”
Sarah grimaced and regarded Vaanesh Zill’s body.
“Surrender!”
She considered the opening to our hidden alcove, but she was short, and I could see in her face that she didn’t think she could make it.
“Grab my legs,” I told Redwing and Empties.
I stood up and leaned out through the gap.
“Give me your hand!” I shouted at the girl.
“Legion skragg-head.” She brandished her sword. “Come get me.”
“I can shoot you in the leg first if it makes it easier for you to see sense.”
Sticky Anori footsteps were nearing from both directions.
She squealed with frustration but sheathed her blade and leaped for my outstretched hand. I hauled her to safety, just in time.
“What are they doing?” I hissed.
Her eyes shot defiance and her lips trembled, but no words passed through them.
I almost removed my helm. The desire to bare my face to her and reveal myself as human was an irresistible itch, but then a voice called out to us from the main cavern.
“Legionaries of the Eighth! Do not be alarmed.”
“It’s Monkey,” whispered Empties.
“Join us!”
I took my place at the inner-cavern firing step. Sergeant Chinook was down there on the cavern floor about twenty feet below our height with arms outstretched like a prophet.
“That’s not your friend,” said Sarah.
“That is Monkey,” snapped Redwing. “Best sarge I ever had. Saved my life—”
“No!” I looked at the girl. Her whole body was trembling now, and I didn’t think being captured by legionaries was the thing freaking her out. “Honor your friend if you survive these caves, but he is dead.”
“Come to us in peace,” urged Monkey, taking a step toward our window.
“That thing out there,” Sarah pointed at Monkey, “is a genetic hybrid, bound forever to d’Jek. Your man is dead.”
“How can you say it’s not Monkey?” Redwing was covering the passageway, but he sounded about to put a dart through the rebel girl.
Sarah brushed aside my rifle with her body and grabbed my shoulders. “If you’re going to interrogate me, you’d better do it real quick.” Her eyes blazed with anger, the lilac flecks literally glowing in the dark. “And when you’ve finished, shoot me before they get to us. I don’t want to be turned into a thing.”
“Stand down!” shouted the figure with the feathers growing out his chest.
“Either you’re a foul alien parasite,” I shouted down at him, “or you’re a traitor. Either way, my response is the same.”
I lifted my rifle, aimed at Monkey’s center mass, and…
“No!” shouted Redwing.
…and fired. Into a mob of Anori cultists who had somehow jumped twenty feet into the air to provide an inhuman shield for the man who had been Monkey.
Bloodied Anori fell out of my vision, leaving my line of fire clear to… an empty space. Monkey had disappeared.
And then the bio-lume we’d taken for granted vanished, leaving a dull red throbbing in the walls, and sulfur pits burning with the same violet as the flecks in Sarah’s eyes.
I switched to infra-red and looked down below the window onto a writhing sea of cultists. Some dead, some acting as humanoid ramps for the Jekkists to assault our position. We rained frag grenades down on them and then fired into the survivors as we had trained so many times. Aim, short burst. Aim, short burst.
But they kept coming, swarming our position.
How many of them were there?
And why didn’t they care how many of them died?
“I’m not going gently,” screamed Crow. He fired on full auto but sprayed most of his darts harmlessly over their heads.
Then I was wrenched back and fell off the firing step. It was the rebel girl!
I thought she was taking this chance to kill a legionary before we all went down beneath the cultists, but she’d saved me.
Two cultists stumbled onto the firing step where I’d been a moment before, slashing with electro blades into thin air where they’d thought to jump me. Sarah calmly sliced their spines open with her sword, and then screamed as she was tackled to the ground by a mob of Jekkists pouring in through the opening from the passageway.
I saw Crow shot by a legionary rifle.
I never saw what happened to Empties and Redwing.
An unstoppable tsunami of cultists had overwhelmed us and… with my rifle gone and pinned flat on my back, curiously the energy of their surge subsided a little.
I was aware that alongside me Sarah was struggling furiously against them. The Jekkist numbers thinned, and those who remained ignored our curses with serene indifference.
“They’re going to turn us into zombie cultists, aren’t they?” I said.
“Genetic hybrids,” Sarah replied. “That’s just the start of it. We discovered them too late. Tomorrow d’Jek moves to the next phase.”
“Which is?”
“His influence goes viral. This was our last chance to save the planet.”
I howled with frustration. “Why the hell didn’t you warn the Legion? We’re the only ones with the firepower to stop this.”
“Yeah, but would you have believed us? That’s why we led you to d’Jek.” She laughed bitterly. “What? Did you think we didn’t know you were following?”
Half-truths spun into glittering lies were stock in trad
e for the Rebellion. Sarah sounded convincing, but was I being swayed by a pretty face and clever tongue?
Santohl d’Jek himself walked in and studied his two prisoners. Given the number of his own kind who had died, he seemed surprisingly satisfied by our capture.
His acolytes began stripping me of my armor. I let them remove my helm, then seized my chance, leaping at d’Jek with arms outstretched and enough augmented power in my suit arms to crush his neck into powder.
My armor died. A tang of ozone reached my nose, but by then I was already crashing helplessly back onto the floor.
As d’Jek studied me, I did the same to him, and began to understand. What I had thought was a feathered headdress was no such thing: the feathers were growing out of his head. His jaw was articulated the wrong way. And when he moved, his body seemed to flow from one position to another as if he weren’t entirely anchored in this reality.
The other Anori were fascinating to watch as their muscles bunched and twitched with every movement. But d’Jek? His muscles did nothing. I don’t think they were real, just camouflage for his true nature.
No wonder he didn’t care about the scores of dead Anori. He wasn’t of their race. He was something… other.
“What are you?” I hissed.
He came closer and regarded me with narrowed, bloodshot eyes.
“Your destiny,” he said through lips that did not move. His voice was the smooth menace of the calm before a cataclysmic storm.
Then he reached inside me and closed his fist around my guts.
When I stopped screaming, I looked across and saw Sarah’s body was arched in struggle. The front of her jacket had been ripped open and d’Jek was running a teasing claw down her flesh. He tightened his grip over her belly, and when he removed his hand, I could see the silky coils of her intestines. If I’d had the courage to look down at my belly, I knew I would see the same hideous violation of my own flesh.
D’Jek grunted in satisfaction and walked off, bringing his followers in his wake.
My comrades and the cultist corpses had already been removed.
