by Tim C Taylor
The Hunndrin & Rax HC2 blaster. Named by its manufacturer as the ‘Penetrator,’ presumably to run interference for the fact that the HC2 had the penetrating power of a wet mouse. At least it was the most accurate weapon in the H&R armory.
I saw hordes of cultists chanting over their master who lay motionless, arms crossed over his chest, on a platform in the center of the cavern. D’Jek was perfection. He was as natural and pure as a law of nature.
I spotted Sarah and fixated on her.
She’s the beautiful one, I told myself. Not that evil thing!
She was short, but as the only fully clothed figure, I could see her through the transparent flesh of the Anori hybrids, many of whom seemed to have decided that even wearing a cloak was now overly modest.
But the Jekkists weren’t all Anori. I recognized Doran and some of the other legionaries from the raid. Vaanesh Zill was there too, reverently undulating her head tentacles.
Not all were lost in this false religious fervor, though. Two perimeter rings of armed cultists stood alert, Sergeant Chinook among their number.
Maybe she had been right to take my place, because Sarah had used her smaller stature to shield herself from view behind the cultists and was now penetrating the inner perimeter.
She had her back to me, but I could picture the snubby upturned nose and the light in her eyes.
My own peepers must have been red-rimmed. It was so hot that sweat stung my eyes. They were also burned by the sulfur fires around the outside of the inner chamber.
I had to look away to wipe them on my jacket. When I sighted the freaks in the chamber once more, I knew there was trouble.
The cultists were on a wave of hug-thy-neighbor. A human hybrid, who the day before had been Lance Corporal Zhallow of Blue Squad, picked Sarah. If it weren’t for the fact that all the cultists not on guard were indulging in the same pawing, I would say that Zhallow was a filthy groper. He certainly got a good feel of her bomb jacket.
Sarah wriggled out of his grasp, but Zhallow suddenly sobered and waved for the attention of the nearby guards.
She’d been made.
“Sarah!” I screamed. “Watch out!”
The chanting ceased. Guards went for their weapons.
I shot Zhallow, the nearest armed guard, and then used my blaster bolts to clear a path of falling bodies between Sarah and the monster who had caused all this death.
She turned and caught my eye across the fifty yards of smoky cavern air, giving me a look laden with meaning that I would spend years trying to interpret.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, and then dove down beneath the legs of the milling hybrids, some of whom I had shot with this ridiculous rifle.
Return fire came my way.
Angry shouts too.
Cultists were being marshaled into units by their armed seniors.
I ducked beneath a flurry of blaster bolts, rose up, and snapped off a few shots of my own. I don’t know if I hit anyone because my full attention was on looking for Sarah, even though the legionary part of my brain knew she would never surface again.
For a few more moments, I stood with my back against the rock as bolts flew in through the opening. My mind had been corrupted first by an alien takeover, and then a rebel girl with pretty eyes and tidy swordwork.
But not anymore. I was Legion again.
“Hold the line!” I shouted against the volleys of blaster fire, meaning to honor the girl with the Legion battle cry, though in retrospect probably pissing her off.
Overloading one HC2 so it turned into a small bomb of my own, I threw it out into the passageway. Anori screamed as it exploded.
Then I scrambled down and fired into the smoke. More screams.
Managing a fast limp, I fled, telling every cultist I met that we were under attack and then shooting them in the back.
So what? They were going to die anyway.
I made it to the alcove where we’d split up earlier, the blood from my leg still drying on the warm rock floor.
Sarah exploded the bomb.
I felt the ground tremble and threw myself down into a ball.
A firestorm raged down the passageway, propelling screaming hybrids along its wavefront. Sections of the ceiling fractured, shattering onto the ground and covering me in a shallow shroud of rock.
And then… a terrible silence punctuated by the moans of the wounded and a curious whoosh like a gas jet coming from the main cavern.
I was being roasted alive. Gasping. Head swimming.
There was not enough oxygen. I couldn’t breathe!
Just before I passed out, I attached the mask from the pack of survival gear that should have been Sarah’s and breathed in cool air.
I’ve seen the images. The explosion at Azoth-Zol was visible from space, the violet plumes of sulfur-rich fire shooting out from the main chamber and rising into the sky through fissures in the rock above. The flame curtains burned for days.
Inevitably, the Di-Bju and Xi-J’uon J’uan claimed it was a divine message and went to war over its interpretation.
But I knew the truth. The violet flame… it was a testament to the true Hero of Azoth-Zol. The girl with flecks of burning sulfur in her eyes. Not the story they made me recite for the holo cameras.
5
I was momentarily lost in the memories.
But that’s all they were. Memories. Lessons from the past to help me survive a hostile future.
Such as being surrounded by Sarah’s friends in a bar at the back end of nowhere.
“I’ve told you the truth,” I lied. “Now it’s time to end this.”
“Before we do,” said Cato Jarvik, “I want the answer to one more question. You’re a hero celebrated on the holo-feed.” He reached slowly for the jacket pocket where I’d planted the bomb. I raised the dead man’s switch in front of him.
Jarvik kept his hand still. “You’re paraded in front of cheering citizens, grateful to be saved from the Rebellion by your glorious legionary bravery. So why do I find you here in this cantina?”
“Psych evaluation says I’m too full of survivor’s guilt,” I replied, and that part was true. “They worry that I’m going to do something stupid in order to not be a survivor any longer. Something stupid that gets other people killed and makes a mockery of the legend they wrote for me. They can’t have that. They will have planned a glorious death for me, so I can continue to work with them as a posthumous hero. Failing that, an obscure death in a small cantina on a remote world would do nearly as well. Officially, I’m on two-month enforced leave. Unofficially, they told me to run, and now they’re coming after me.”
“Too dangerous to live, eh? Survivor’s guilt can be cured, you know?”
I brandished the switch. “Copy that.”
“I can offer you another way,” he said hastily.
“How?”
“Redemption,” he said, drawing something out of his jacket. He placed it next to my drink.
I stared at it and I could sense the little weasel enjoying my stunned reaction.
It was a feather. Crumpled. Colored in fuzzy smears of faded red and blue but overlaid with brilliant rusty chevrons.
“Look familiar?” asked the little skangat.
I had no doubt where this had come from. “How?” I shook my head. “The explosion burned everything. How did you get this?”
“This isn’t from the beast you encountered on Bisheesh.”
“There are more? How many?”
“We know of six encounters with these creatures, each on a different world. And of those, three attacks were beaten back, though with great loss of life. No doubt there have been more, but we are not exactly privy to intelligence updates. We’re with the Rebellion, remember?”
“Those worlds… taken by the beasts. I never thought… I didn’t know.”
“Why would they tell you? You’re a legionary. To the masters of the Federation, you’re a simple tool. Nothing more.”
That wasn’t true. Fo
r Bronze, yes, but I was Hines Zy Pel, Special Missions Operative. Placed on Bisheesh to test the rumors of Legion corruption and caught up in an altogether different nightmare. I had been briefed with many dark secrets that must never be revealed. How could I not know this one?
“Far Reach Federation is under attack,” said Jarvik. “Whether we swear our allegiance to the Legion, the Militia, the forces of progressive rebellion, or the Smugglers Guild, do you imagine these monsters care? We’re bio-matter to them. Raw material to be converted. Nothing more. We’re under attack and your government and your military high command hide this from its own people. This is why we’re here, Bronze. This is your chance of redemption. There’s another attack underway right now on one of our strongholds. Help us defeat the beast and Sarah’s memory will let you free.”
“What makes you think I would make a difference?”
“The beast and its followers will trust you because you have its scent.”
“The beast on Bisheesh, perhaps.”
“All the beasts. They’re clones. Bronze, you can do more for the Federation working with us than you ever could with the Legion. Do it for Sarah.”
I realized that within the spew of drent flowing out of Jarvik’s mouth, there was one truth he was speaking. This was a route out of melancholy that I hadn’t considered, and there’s an ancient Legion saying we’re still taught: when a true legionary glimpses an opportunity, they seize it with all six limbs. Like a lot of early Legion doctrine, it clearly came from non-humans, but the modern Legion owns it anyway. Which meant no true legionary would pass up this chance.
So I placed the dead man’s switch on the bar next to the feather, and deactivated it. “Where are we headed?” I asked.
“Dama Prime,” Jarvik replied, practically sighing with relief. I still had three blaster pistols aimed at my head, though. “It’s in the L’Oaug Sector, just six jumps from here.”
The hotshot rebel rose to leave, but I wasn’t going anywhere yet.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I said.
He frowned, but when I pointed at the Zhoogene behind the bar, he dropped some credit chips on the counter.
“And to compensate Crymona for the disturbance?” I said.
Jarvik added a few more. Tight skragg.
I left a generous hundred credits of my own, prompting Crymona to raise whatever you call a botanical eyebrow made from micro-scale hedgerow.
“I expect you’ll have to bribe the homicide department to ignore the bodies,” I told her casually, and added another two hundred. “That should cover it.”
Jarvik hesitated.
His sort never learns. Amateurs.
“Get down!” I shouted at the woman in the red jerkin.
She blinked in confusion before firing at the space I’d left on the barstool. But I’d already gone, barreling into Jarvik while grabbing for his blaster.
While on the floorboards, wrestling with the rebel leader, I took out one opponent with a concealed dart thrown through his eyeball, and shot the woman in the jerkin.
I sent a volley of bolts after the other rebel, but she’d fled out the front entrance.
Cato Jarvik rolled in pain on the floorboards beneath my newly acquired blaster.
I rested the muzzle between his eyes. “You knew Sarah personally, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he groaned. “We used to be—”
I silenced him with a hefty whack from the barrel. I didn’t want to know what they had been to each other, but I let him live for her sake. Probably. I’d gone for a stunning blow, but knocking people out without permanently damaging them was not an exact science.
His life for mine. I didn’t owe Sarah anything now. I was free of her.
Now what?
Hearing rebel reinforcements massing by the entrance, I sent them a bolt to give them something to think about and jumped out the window onto Chan Yoon Street. I sprinted for a side alley and made it a split second before pursuing rebels sent blaster fire up the street.
I progressed about ten yards before slamming on the brakes.
Skragg it!
I’d forgotten something.
I turned and charged back into Chan Yoon, firing into some very surprised rebels and jumping back through the cantina window.
Jarvik was sitting up, rubbing his head. I helped him back down again with a kick to the spot he’d been rubbing, and then retook my place at the bar.
“Whiskey?” asked Crymona.
“Another time, Green.” I added a hefty fifty-credit chip to the pile on the counter. “That’s for the window.” Another hundred. “And that’s to remember me by until I come back,” I said with a wink.
Then I picked up the item I’d forgotten. The feather.
I took a good look at it, marveling at the secrets it held. It smelled of sulfur and fear. And duty.
I brushed past Crymona on my way to the rear exit, breathing in her lush alien aroma.
But to me, she smelled only of Sarah.
Dama Prime.
Never heard of it.
But the Federation needed a new idol, a Hero of Dama Prime. And this time I was determined to earn that accolade.
Alive or dead.
And I would do it all for her.
Author’s Notes: The Hero of Azoth-Zol
Chimera Company is my currently active Human Legion Universe project.
Classic Star Wars, Traveller RPG, Firefly and Serenity, Doctor Who, Ark Royal by Christopher Nuttall, Fallen Empire by Lindsay Buroker, Galaxy’s Edge by Nick Cole and Jason Anspach, and, yes, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: I took all the sense of fun and addictive adventure from these great examples and unleashed it onto the page.
Chimera Company is fast and addictive to write. It’s got rogue smugglers, a cynical Legion dark ops spy, a secret alien invasion (or does it?), and the abandoned stellar engineering of ancient alien civilizations.
I love writing it. Hopefully, people like reading it too.
The final chunk of my inspiration comes from a comic that isn’t particularly well known outside the UK, but which played a big part in shaping a certain kid growing up in the 1970s who became a science fiction writer decades later. I’m talking about 2000 A.D., whose most famous character is Judge Dredd.
From the 70s through 90s, when the weekly edition of 2000 A.D. dropped through my letterbox, I knew I would read it cover to cover before bedtime. And that easily digested weekly thrill was what I wanted with Chimera Company.
So the first two seasons came out as novelettes, self-contained episodes that take about 90 minutes to read and were released once per week. It’s very much like a modern TV series with individual episodes as part of a series arc.
Doing it weekly didn’t capture enough readers’ imagination. As I write these notes in April 2020, I’m considering falling back on a plan B of releasing Chimera Company as a series of short novels instead, although I’ll still write them in an episodic way.
Not sure which way I’ll go. Why don’t you read Chimera Company and get in touch with what you think?
I mentioned Galaxy’s Edge a few paragraphs ago. I love the Ansbach and Cole series, and a little birdie informed me a while back that the co-creators were inviting authors to write Galaxy’s Edge stories for an anthology called the Order of the Centurion.
Okay, I thought, I’d give it a go. After all, something similar had worked out well for me with the Four Horsemen Universe.
So I spent a couple of my Monday Pub Writing nights sketching out a story of ‘leejes’ and ‘points’. It was great fun writing in the style of this other Legion.
The story stayed on the shelf because I was too busy with Four Horsemen Universe and The Battle of Earth to write up.
Turned out, I had gotten my wires crossed anyway. The Order of the Centurion project became real but as a series of novels, not as an anthology.
By the way, one of the Order of Centurion novels is the very excellent Reservist by JR Handley (who, of course,
was my little birdie). JR has written lots of good stuff since doing Sleeping Legion for me, and the Reservist is his best yet. Go check it out.
In my experience, stories left on the shelf should usually stay there. Believe me, I have many of them. But in this case, the idea was too good to waste.
So when JR started publishing anthologies himself and put out a call for stories for Backblast Area Clear, I thought I’d help him out with a story. I retooled my Galaxy’s Edge idea to make it work in the Chimera Company setting.
One of the ideas of Chimera Company is that it’s set in a galaxy that’s a bit of a mess with various competing factions vying for power. I guess it’s rather like the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which from the beginning had different factions that corresponded to the armies you could play in the miniatures game.
I wanted to get my setting right, so I wrote introductory stories to two of those factions (the Legion and militia) and added them to my Legionary starter library (for people who sign up to join the Legion at humanlegion.com). The Hero of Azoth-Zol showcases another faction: Legion Naval Intelligence.
As I write these notes, I’m on light duties because I’m recovering from a nasty virus that’s almost certainly COVID-19. Once I’m better, I’ll cowrite another Four Horsemen Universe novel with Chris Kennedy. I’m totally stoked to be doing that, but I have to admit the most exciting writing project I have planned for this year is to return to Chimera Company. It’s sheer joy to write.
I hope you get a fraction of that pleasure in its reading.
Tim C. Taylor – April 2020
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That's it! The complete seven-novel Human Legion series concludes with the novels in this boxed set, but there are plenty more stories yet to be told in the Human Legion Universe, as well as Revenge Squad, Sleeping Legion (written by JR Handley), and Chimera Company.
You can always see the latest news and book details at humanlegion.com, or have a chat at the Human Legion Facebook page.
