Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle

by William C. Dietz

  It took hours for the messenger to relay the instructions it had been given and to answer Poseen-Ka’s voluminous questions. During that time the unlikely pair circled the huge graveyard many times. Their feet left tracks in the alien mud and destroyed what little ground cover there was. Finally, when the officer had asked every question he could think of, and planned for every contingency that his highly intelligent brain could come up with, the time came for them to part. Poseen-Ka knew the messenger was a machine, but saw it as a savior, too, and thanked it accordingly.

  Unable to feel emotions, or to gauge the manner in which its actions would impact the future, the machine acknowledged the comment and left. It took two hours for the messenger to find a suitable hollow in the ground, to pull a layer of debris over its chest, and deactivate its CPU. The resulting fire burned white hot, showed up on of the Old Lady’s detectors, and disappeared. A report was submitted, ignored, and systematically filed in memory. Life such as it was went on.

  8

  Death holds no fear for those who died before.

  Master Sergeant Frank Kagan (ret.)

  The Legion Is My Country

  Standard year 2172

  Clone World Alpha-001, the Clone Hegemony

  Booly got lost in spite of the fact that he had taken the precaution of downloading a nonclassified schematic of the ship into his wrist term. The optimistically named Warm Wind That Blows Happiness Throughout the Galaxy was better known to her crew as the Iron Bitch, and was absolutely huge. So huge that a substantial number of her crew had never seen the entire vessel or each other, for that matter. All of which meant that Boolyʼs self-assigned mission had a somewhat quixotic quality.

  Still, the borgs were his responsibility, and a visit was the right thing to do. Assuming he found them, that is, which seemed less likely all the time. His wrist term contained the information he needed but insisted on presenting it via naval jargon and hard-to-read schematics.

  Booly saw a weapons tech coming his way and flagged her down. She wore a buzz cut, a navy-issue temple jack, and bright red lipstick. He produced his most dazzling smile and was pleased to receive one in return. “Iʼm looking for Compartment D-4/G-3 . . . where the hell is it?”

  The tech laughed. “Well, you’re on the correct deck, sir, but you need to head in one corridor, turn to starboard, and watch for passageway G. G-3 will be the third compartment on the left.”

  Booly thanked the tech and did as she had instructed. Much to his surprise, it worked. After a short walk down zero-g-equipped luminescent hallways, the young officer found himself standing in front of a hatch marked Cybernetic Life Support. He palmed the access panel and waited for the door to slide out of the way. A chief petty officer looked up from the skin fax he was reading, saw the lieutenant, and swung his feet off the desk. He had a paunch and it strained the front of his shirt as he stood. His voice was slow and close to insolent. “Welcome to the CLS, sir, what can I do for you?”

  Booly nodded. “My name is Booly. You have three of my people down here. I came to say hello.”

  The CPO’s eyes narrowed and nearly disappeared into his doughlike face. “Yes, sir. Well, that was thoughtful, sir, and I’m sure your borgs will appreciate the effort. I’ll tell them the minute they wake up.”

  Booly knew that cyborgs were normally transported in racks of fifty, their brain boxes connected to a computer-controlled life-support system, their minds subsumed by an ocean of drugs. But his troopers had been awakened in preparation for the planet fall, which was twelve hours away. Or should have been, since Alpha-001 was classified as a class-III combat station, requiring all members of the Confederacy’s armed forces to land ready to fight.

  But Booly had heard stories about naval cyber techs who minimized the amount of time they had to deal with the sometimes contentious borgs by waiting until the very last moment to bring them back, a practice that could severely impact a cyborg’s readiness to fight when it hit dirt. The young officer fought to keep his face completely impassive. “Really? Well, that would be extremely unfortunate, Chief, because those borgs were supposed to be conscious six hours ago. Or didn’t you read your orders?”

  The chief pursed his lips and a pair of well-built ratings drifted into the compartment. Booly felt his heart start to pound. They wouldn’t really attack him, would they? Striking an officer was a court-martial offense. But how would he prove that they were the ones? Especially if they lied, which they were certain to do? In an effort to make sure that no single arm of the military would grow strong enough to challenge his power, the now-dead emperor had fostered interservice rivalries, and that could still be seen, heard, and felt in the schisms between the Navy, the Marine Corps, and Legion.

  Booly heard the hatch open behind him and felt a wave of cool air touch his neck. More ratings? He had just started to turn when a now-familiar voice put his fears to rest. “There you are, sir . . . Good thing you know your way around. We damned near got lost.”

  Booly completed his turn and there stood Corporal—no, a third stripe had mysteriously appeared on his sleeve—Sergeant Parker. He was expressionless as usual. Four tough-looking legionnaires were right behind him. They crowded through the hatch. The compartment got smaller. Booly turned to the CPO. “So, Chief . . . where were we? A difference of opinion, as I recall?”

  The petty officer’s tongue slid back and forth across suddenly dry lips. “No, sir. A mix-up, that’s all. Come back in a couple of hours and your borgs will be ready to go.”

  Booly nodded. “Excellent . . . Sergeant Parker and I will see you then.”

  Parker barked, “Make a hole!” and the legionnaires stepped away from the hatch. Booly stepped out into the corridor and the others followed. As soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the CLS, Booly stopped and looked Parker up and down. The other legionnaires hung back. “It’s good to see you, Parker. I like the additional stripe. Where the hell did you come from?”

  Parker raised an eyebrow. “Earth, sir, same as you.”

  Booly frowned. “Cut the crap, Sergeant. You know what I mean. How did you wind up here at this particular moment?”

  The noncom shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Yes, sir. I requested assignment to Alpha-001 and somehow wound up in your platoon. I called, learned where you were headed, and came down to say hello.”

  Booly knew bullshit when he heard it. He punched up the main menu on his wrist term, chose the command function, and selected TO or table of organization. The name General Marianne Mosby appeared at the top and he scrolled down past his company commander to his own name. And there, in charge of the bio bods in squad one, was Sergeant (provisional) Sean Parker. The officer knew damned well the NCO hadn’t been on the list the day before, so where had he come from? The most likely place was the unassigned draft that had been sent to Alpha-001 to replace legionnaires who had been wounded in action, killed in action, or were due for rotation. Once aboard ship Parker had used his connections and almost magical understanding of how the Legion worked to get the assignment he wanted. Provisional rank included. Booly nodded towards the others. “And your friends?”

  Parker peered out of deeply set sockets. “Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, sir, but when a junior LT arrives straight from the academy, there’s a distinct tendency for the riffraff to accumulate in his or her platoon. That will still happen to some extent no matter what we do . . . but I took the liberty of recruiting a few vets to even things up a bit.”

  Booly shook his head in amazement. “Sergeant, I don’t deserve you, but I sure appreciate your help.”

  Parker glanced down corridor and back again. “Only one officer out of ten would come all the way down here to check on his borgs . . . and that’s the kind of officer I respect. Now, unless something changed since this morning, it’s time to prepare for dinner. I’ll meet you down here when the shindig is over.”

  Booly laughed at the noncom’s command of his itinerary. “What? No advice on how to behave at dinner
?”

  The cadaverlike face remained serious. “Yes, sir. If you want some, sir. Lieutenants, especially new ones, should be seen and not heard.”

  The dinner prior to planet-fall was a naval custom and one rigidly adhered to except in times of war. Every officer not required for duty was invited, and they filled the generously proportioned wardroom to capacity. Side tables stood heaped with the ship’s best silver, appetizers, and bottles of wine. Marine sentries, their uniforms impeccably blue, guarded the doors, and naval ratings, all dressed in white, had replaced the usual service bots. The table looked as if it were a mile long. Precisely aligned settings gleamed against snowy linen, and candles flickered at two-foot intervals.

  Booly, extremely self-conscious in his brand-new dress uniform, felt his stomach start to growl and wished he were somewhere else. His place was at the very foot of the table, safely removed from the dangers inherent in conversing with senior officers, and equally removed from the interesting things they might say.

  Or so he assumed until a chime sounded and the multitude sought their chairs. Each stood behind his or her chair and awaited an entrance by the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Moshe Dinara. It was only then that Booly learned that tradition called for either the ship’s executive officer, or the highest-ranking officer of a sister service to be seated at the other end of the table, both as an honor, and a means of exercising whatever wit the junior officers could bring to bear. All of which meant that he and a nervous-looking ensign would be seated right next to General Marianne Mosby, one of the most famous and some said infamous officers the Legion had ever produced.

  Booly felt his jaw drop as the general entered the compartment, walked up to her chair, and nodded left and right. Though he was not normally interested in middle-aged women—the young officer was awestruck by the combination of her beauty, poise, and the authority inherent in the stars that rode her shoulders. “Good evening, Ensign. Good evening, Lieutenant. I see the gods of war have seen fit to grant me two handsome dinner companions.”

  With those words, and the smile that accompanied them, Mosby enslaved both men. And not just because of her physicality, which was considerable, but also because of what she had accomplished. Everyone knew, or thought they knew, that she’d been one of the emperor’s many lovers, that she had tried to convince his not altogether sane mind that the empire should fight the Hudathans from the very beginning, and had been sent to a military prison for her efforts. Historians also gave Mosby credit for a massive prison break, for fighting her way to capital, and for driving the emperor off planet. His first defeat and the one that ultimately led to his death.

  The rest of the facts were a good deal less clear. Some said the general was a libertine, indulging in all sorts of sensual pleasures, not all of which were appropriate to an officer of her seniority. Others said she was ruthless, and more than a little willing to throw lives away, especially if doing so led to victory and enhanced her career. But Booly didn’t know or care, not at the moment anyway, because Parker’s words echoed in his head: “Lieutenants, especially new ones, should be seen and not heard.” Good advice . . . but impossible to obey seated where he was.

  Boolyʼs thoughts were interrupted by a commotion at the other end of the wardroom and a stentorian announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen . . . Captain Moshe Dinara.”

  Dinara was a small man, so small that he looked like a teenager dressed up in his father’s uniform. But whatever he lacked in size he made up for in stature by projecting his personality into every comer of the room. Though technically on a par with the Legion’s legion of colonels, the captain outranked everyone aboard while under way, and there was no mistaking the aura of power that surrounded him. The naval officer had eyes the color of well-washed denim, and they missed nothing as he strode to the head of the table, stepped in front of his chair, and sat down. There was a massive rustling of fabric, the low murmur of conversation, and the clink of dinnerware as the other officers took their chairs.

  What followed was as orchestrated as a classical dance, starting with wine, the obligatory round of formal toasts, and the arrival and clearing away of the first two courses. Booly was far too nervous to notice what kind of food he ate and wondered later on. But even military rituals run their course, and by the time the main dish arrived, the guests had engaged those around them in polite conversation. General Mosby had the right to guide the conversation any way she chose and lost little time in doing so. Where another officer might have been shy about bringing up Boolyʼs ancestry she was refreshingly direct.

  “So, Lieutenant Booly, you grew up on Algeron, I presume?”

  Booly swallowed a bite of half-chewed food, started to choke, and managed to control it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And your father was a legionnaire?”

  “Yes, ma’am. A sergeant-major.”

  General Mosby had a heart-shaped face; full, sensuous lips; and a firm chin. High-quality perma-dye treatments effectively hid the gray that would have otherwise dominated her hair. She smiled and revealed a line of perfect white teeth. “Really? What’s his name? Maybe we served together.”

  Booly gulped. Although his father’s status as an ambassador forced most people to overlook the fact that he’d been a deserter, it was still embarrassing. Especially in the Legion. “Bill Booly, ma’am. Same as mine.”

  Mosby looked blank. “No, I can’t remember anyone by that name . . . but it’s a big Legion. Congratulations on your graduation from the Academy.”

  Booly mumbled something appropriate and took refuge in his meal as the general turned her attention to the now red-faced ensign. But the intermission didn’t last long and she was soon back to him. “Well, Lieutenant. It looks like you and I will be working together. Have you looked at the interim TO?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And?”

  The question wasn’t absolutely clear but seemed to call for some sort of strategic summary. Booly chose his words with care. The objective was to provide enough substance to prove that he had looked at the TO and given the matter some thought without seeming presumptuous. “The TO indicates that we are fifteen percent short of full strength, and while I’m not very experienced, that seems dangerous on a class-three planet.”

  Mosby nodded her agreement. “Well said. And that’s not the worst of it. From the sitreps I’ve seen . . . our troops are poorly positioned, indifferently led, and subject to low morale. A situation you and I have been ordered to reverse—and damned fast, too.”

  Booly knew the “you and I” bit was calculated to make him feel good and discovered that it worked anyway. A fact that he stored away for future use on the people he led.

  The main course was removed and the dessert arrived. Dinara stood and a new round of toasts began. Saved from the need for further conversation, Booly and the now-sweat-drenched ensign regarded each other with expressions of mutual relief, and turned their attention to the light frothy green concoctions that had appeared in front of them.

  The whole thing was relatively easy after that, but by the time Booly was allowed to stand and had waited for his seniors to leave the wardroom, he felt as though he had been in combat. And while he hadn’t exactly won, he hadn’t lost, either, which felt just as good.

  Long, thin fingers of pain reached down into the darkness where Starke hid, found his soft, vulnerable brain tissue, and squeezed. Pain lanced the center of his being as the fingers pulled him up out of the warm, comfortable darkness and into the relentless light of consciousness. “No!” he screamed. “Let me die! Please let me die!” But the fingers were made of chemical compounds and had no choice but to interact with what remained of his body in ways dictated by what? God? Evolution? Or one of the countless regulations that governed the Legion? There was no way to tell.

  Thus a cyborg named Starke and two of his companions were brought on line and readied for installation. They were awake during the first stage of chemical conditioning but unable to access the outer worl
d without benefit of the vid cams and sensors built into their Trooper II bodies.

  Starke hated the first stage for a variety of reasons, not the least of which were the feelings of vulnerability, claustrophobia, and guilt that it produced. With nothing to distract him, the past had a way of closing in around the legionnaire, confronting his mind with images he wanted to forget, forcing him to relive the same horrible episode over and over again.

  He’d been an engineer on the grav train that ran from old New York to San Diego. A good job, hell, a great job, that required little more than staying awake, since computers handled the whole trip all by themselves. Yes, his one and only job had been to function as the ultimate fail-safe in case the triple-redundant systems managed to fail.

  For the first two years Starke had performed flawlessly, staring out the control compartment windows as dark wilderness alternated with the blip, blip, blip of small-town lights, the long, drawn-out smear of the middle-sized cities, and the brightly lit splendor of huge metro-plexes. He had watched the control board that never lit up, the idiot lights that burned eternally green, and the com screen that scrolled endlessly redundant routine messages.

  Then Linda had left him, and he had found what he thought at the time was temporary solace in the arms of street comer chemicals. The relationship had grown deeper and deeper until it consumed all of his pay, and all of his time, and left him dog tired. So tired that he took little naps in the control compartment, always careful to set his battery-powered alarm clock and to pick the least dangerous sections of the journey in which to sleep.

  He had gotten by, until the night when whatever gods ran the universe decided to destroy him, and an electrical fire consumed the number one guidance system, and the number two system failed for reasons they never did figure out, and the number three system, which was located in Omaha, and capable of running the train from there, went down in a localized power outage, and the batteries he had meant to replace, but never got around to, finally ran out of juice. Yup, the dead batteries, and the ensuing head-on collision, had killed his alarm clock, him, and 152 men, women, and children.