Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle

by William C. Dietz

  Such seemed to be the case as the lights that represented individual human fighters winked out one by one, and the battle station’s main batteries were engaged. Not without loss of course, because the assault cost Rula-Ka a carrier, a cruiser, and two light destroyers, some twenty-five hundred lives in all. But well worth the price. The Hudathan forced himself to relax and savor the moment. The old saying was correct. “A dish delayed tastes all the sweeter for the waiting.”

  Poseen-Ka wound his way through a maze of crumbled walls, rusted vehicles, and twisted steel. The human bodies, interspersed here and there with their Hudathan counterparts, were like a bloody trail that led towards the airstrip. There were a great number of them and it seemed unlikely that anything more than a handful had escaped the second ambush.

  As the Hudathan war commander reached what had been the outermost line of human defenses, the scene changed. Here the Hudathan bodies lay like waves lapping on a beach, each having conquered just a little more sand, until the last line of bodies was intermixed with those belonging to the defenders.

  Poseen-Ka passed what remained of a burned-out Trooper II, its massive body dwarfing the three- and four-hundred-pound Hudathans who lay dead around it, a giant among Liliputians.

  Then came the weapons pits, which would also serve as ready-made graves for the men and women who had died in them, and a series of serpentine skid marks. Poseen-Ka could imagine the humans, many of them wounded, dragging their heaviest weapons back towards hastily prepared backup positions, and firing till attrition wore them down. Now they lay alongside their enemies, an interspecies jumble of arms and legs, their blood commingled in the dirt beneath them.

  Poseen-Ka paused, looked out over the battlefield, and waited for the sense of jubilation that should surely come. It didn’t. He felt only sadness at the use to which his intelligence and creativity had been put.

  The war commander continued his walk. A berm stood in the way and he climbed to the top of it. Two ships had been destroyed and were still on fire. The rest stood untouched and were the subjects of intensive scrutiny by teams of pilots and technicians who hadn’t flown Hudathan ships in twenty years, much less human models, all of which were reasonably new.

  But it had to be done. Horrible though the slaughter was, even more would be necessary. The battle station was a threat, and threats must be destroyed.

  A trooper approached. His body was filthy, and blood stained his rags, but his weapon was clean. His salute was crisp with reborn pride. “Three of the humans continue to live. Do you wish to interrogate them?”

  Poseen-Ka had little interest in whatever the humans might have to say but wanted to see them. He followed the trooper to a place where three humans sat propped up against some sandbags. Guards stood all around. There were two males and a female. All had been wounded. It took him a moment to recognize Norwood. She had aged since the last time he had seen her and was white from loss of blood. Her eyes were as he remembered them, though, filled with intelligence and carefully focused animosity. She spoke his language with a heavy accent. “You survived.”

  “As did you.”

  “But not for long.”

  “No,” Poseen-Ka agreed soberly, “not for long. It was a mistake to let you live. I won’t make it twice.”

  Norwood nodded. “I didn’t think you would.”

  The Hudathan drew his never-before-fired side arm, released the safety, and aimed it at her head. Norwood spent the last microsecond of her life wondering why she had been destined to survive the first battle for Worber’s World only to die in the second. She took the first bullet, followed by a semiconscious Meyers, and a tight-lipped com tech. It took three additional hours to load the human ships, lift, and close with the battle station.

  Clemmons lived long enough to see the end. There wasn’t much need for electronic warfare specialists after the main batteries were destroyed and the aliens forced their way in through Lock Number 4, so the technician donned her space armor and joined the marines. Energy weapon in hand, she followed a ragtag squad of volunteers down a smoke-filled corridor, and wished she were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  Everyone knew the Hudathans didn’t take prisoners, not because they were cruel, but there was no logical reason to do so. After all, the Hudathans reasoned, why risk your life to kill the enemy, then allow them to live? It didn’t make alien sense.

  Besides, live prisoners were a continual threat, and anyone who didn’t believe that could take a look at the gaunt scarecrow-like figures who had made their way up from the planet’s surface and forced their way in through Lock Number 12. Not that it got them very far, since they lacked space armor, and were temporarily trapped in a single airtight compartment.

  The formerly clean, almost sterile corridors were gone, now filled with portable fire-fighting equipment, makeshift com centers, aide stations, emergency rations, ammo boxes, and recently dead bodies. There had been wounded hours? Or was it days ago? But most had been killed when the sick bay took a direct hit from a Hudathan torpedo. Now, with sixty percent of the Station’s airtight compartments holed, even a wound meant almost certain death.

  Clemmons felt a tremendous almost overwhelming sense of sorrow. Sorrow for herself and the others as well. Tears ran down her face but she didn’t care. She would do her best, and kill some Hudathans if she could, but there was no point in hiding what she felt. There wouldn’t be anyone left to criticize her before long.

  The squad stopped in front of a black-and-yellow-striped hatch. Clemmons recognized it as providing access to the flight deck, where the aerospace fighters, shuttles, and hundreds of lesser craft were normally kept. A pair of tough-looking legionnaires guarded it. Her squad leader, a lance corporal up until an hour ago, gave a password and ordered the legionnaires to open it. They obeyed.

  The lock contained six dead bodies, or what remained of six bodies, since there wouldn’t be much more than mush inside the decompressed suits.

  Clemmons didn’t look, didn’t want to know what would happen to her, and bit her lip. The outer hatch opened and the squad stepped out onto the flight deck. With the exception of a pristine shuttle known as “the hangar queen,” and some skeletal maintenance sleds, the normally crowded space was completely empty. Everything that could fly, armed or unarmed, had gone out against the Hudathans and never come back. The corporal’s voice was artificially gruff and made the technician jump.

  “All right, people . . . form a single rank. That’s right . . . your other left, dip shit . . . that’s better. At ease.”

  Clemmons had always known that the grunts were crazy and this proved it. A drill for God’s sake!

  But it wasn’t a drill as the men and women soon found out. A marine lieutenant and an MP appeared. They dragged a space-suited figure between them. Judging from the noises coming over the suit-to-suit tac frequency, the prisoner was male. The words were punctuated with sobs.

  “Please! Don’t shoot me! What’s the point? We’ll die if we stay. Why not escape? That’s our duty, isn’t it? To escape and fight another day?”

  “You make me sick.”

  Clemmons assumed that the second male voice belonged to the marine lieutenant, and the impression was confirmed as the officer continued to speak. He scanned the helmets before him. “You’ve been summoned here to act as a firing squad. The thing in front of you is named Alan Rawley and used to be a lieutenant. He left his duty station, tried to activate a life pod, and was found guilty of desertion in the face of the enemy. The sentence is death.”

  Clemmons could hardly believe it. Lieutenant Rawley of all people! Sentenced to death, just like the rest of them. The technician’s name had been printed in block letters across the front of her suit. Rawley saw it. “Clemmons! It’s you, isn’t it? Tell them I’m innocent. Tell them what a good officer I am!”

  The corporal’s voice was hard like the sergeant he’d copied it from. “Atten-hut!”

  Clemmons snapped to attention. The deck shuddered under her b
oots and tilted to port. She leaned the other way to compensate.

  “Prepare to fire on my command!”

  Clemmons-brought her weapon up and tried to hold it steady. The sight drifted back and forth across Rawley’s chest.

  “Ready!”

  Clemmons fumbled with the safety and managed to release it.

  “Aim!”

  Clemmons wondered if she should sight on Rawley's head instead of his chest. She moved the sights and was surprised by the fear that appeared in the officer’s eyes. “No! Please! I beg you!”

  “Fire!”

  Clemmons allowed the barrel to drift off target and pressed the firing stud. The energy bolt passed Rawley’s helmet and scorched the paint on the bulkhead beyond. Not everyone was so kind. Clemmons closed her eyes as Rawley’s chest exploded inwards and his suit decompressed. The body was left where it fell.

  A Hudathan shuttle landed on the flight deck twenty minutes later. The officer in charge timed his troopers and noted that they were able to kill the human defenders in record time. Still another example of Hudathan superiority. He hardly even noticed Clemmons as he stepped over the technician’s decompressed body and headed for the blast-damaged hatch. The battle was over.

  12

  The principal study and care and the especial profession of a prince should be warfare and its attendant rules and discipline.

  Niccolò Machiavelli

  The Prince

  Standard year 1513

  Planet Earth, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  The police came for Sergi Chien-Chu while he was welding a strut. They didn’t wear uniforms or wave badges, but there was no mistaking what they were. The short hair, hard eyes, and plastic good looks were dead giveaways, as was the fact that they were cyborgs and entered the vacuum chamber without suits.

  The Viper was nearing completion now and would be removed within the next day or so. Men, women, cyborgs, and robots walked, climbed, scurried, rolled, and oozed over the hull as they hurried to complete their last-minute tasks. Chien-Chu stood at the point where a short, stubby wing intersected the ship’s hull. A mask covered his face and metal glowed blue as he worked a seam. The industrialist became aware of the police when a voice came over his seldom-used transceiver. “Sorry to interrupt your work, citizen James, but we would like a word with you.”

  Chien-Chu turned, saw what appeared to be two impossibly clean people, and knew who they were. Police. Not the “chase a purse snatcher down the street” type, but the high-level “I wear suits, too” variety that had guarded him when he was president, and spent a lot of time looking under beds. But why him? He killed the torch and was amused when they moved closer. The agents received his thoughts as electronically transmitted words. “Me? What on Earth for?”

  The male looked around as if checking to see who might be equipped to listen in. “Can we discuss this privately?”

  The industrialist shrugged and ordered his face to smile. “Sure . . . if such a thing exists.”

  But the police had little interest in debating questions of personal freedom, not with their supervisor spot-checking their electronic conversations, and a tiny pinhead-sized microbug roaming around the top of Chien-Chu’s helmet. They waited patiently while the industrialist gathered his tools, made his way across the equipment-strewn floor, and entered the lock. The three-way silence was more than a little uncomfortable by the time they had cycled through.

  Co-workers stared sideways as Chien-Chu opened his locker, replaced his tools, and removed his overalls. The industrialist could practically hear their thoughts: I wonder what the poor schmuck did? I hope they don’t search my locker. . . . Damn, that cop looks good . . . I wonder if?

  But their questions went unanswered as Chien-Chu led the agents out into the hall and looked around. It was temporarily empty. “Okay, whoever you are, this is as far as I go without some I.D. and a lot more information.”

  The cops held up their hands palm out. Badges had been woven into the plastiskin that covered their wires, cables, and servos. The oval areas contained a back-lit confederate seal, a number, and a bar code. They looked authentic. But looks could be deceiving. Still, one of the agents activated a high-end portable scrambler, and Chien-Chu had the feeling they were for real.

  The man spoke without moving his lips. He had police-issue black hair, non-confrontational brown skin, and hazel eyes. “My name is Lopez. Her name is Johnson. The president wants to see you.”

  Chien-Chu was surprised and allowed it to show. “The president? As in President Anguar? You’ve got to be kidding. What would the president want with a welder?”

  Johnson was pretty in a predictable sort of blond way. Her voice was firm but respectful. “Please, citizen Chien-Chu, we know who you are, as does President Anguar. He sent a note.”

  Chien-Chu felt mixed emotions as Johnson unsnapped her belt purse and removed an envelope. Anger at the violation of his privacy, fear of what it might portend, and curiosity regarding the note she handed him.

  The industrialist saw that his real name had been handwritten on the outside of the envelope and recognized Anguar’s semi-incomprehensible scrawl. He tore the envelope and removed a heavily embossed card. The words sent synthetic adrenaline coursing through what was left of his circulatory system.

  Dear Sergi,

  Sorry to bother you, but the Hudathans

  attacked Worber’s World, and I could use some advice.

  Respectfully Yours,

  Moolu Rasha Anguar

  One aspect of his personality experienced a mixture of emotions, including anger, sorrow, and fear. The rest, the part that had run a large company, and been head of an interstellar government, focused on the intellectual side of things. Who won the battle? How many casualties had been suffered? When would the Confederacy respond?

  Of more importance, however, was the question he didn’t ask because the answer was so apparent. The Hudathans had attacked because they had no choice. They believed that any sentient represented a threat, so a Confederacy of sentients represented multiple threats, and must be destroyed. Not just the government, but the member races as well, until all were eradicated.

  Chien-Chu felt his knees grow weak under the weight of the guilt that rode his shoulders. Many of his advisers, General Norwood among them, had urged him to attack the Hudathan homeworlds immediately after the victory on Algeron.

  But in spite of his son’s death at Hudathan hands, and the deaths of billions more, Chien-Chu had resisted their counsel, and pursued what he believed was the wiser, more humane course. By imprisoning the Hudathan POWs on Worber’s World and dismantling their war fleet, he sought to bring their leaders to the negotiating table. Yes, the Hudathans might choose continued isolation over membership in the Confederacy, but surely they would see the error of their ways and forsake conquest as the means to physical and psychological security.

  But negotiations had dragged on, years had passed, and it now seemed that the Hudathans had used the time to build another fleet. A fleet with only one purpose, murder on a scale never seen before. So, like it or not, the responsibility was his, and Anguar would have his help. He looked from Lopez to Johnson. “The president wants to see me. Let’s get going.”

  Even with a high-priority clearance it still took the better part of four hours to reach the spaceport, make their way through security, board a six-place shuttle, and blast up through the atmosphere. The government was in session aboard the Friendship and there was a constant flow of ships in and out of the ex-battleship’s overcrowded flight deck. Finally, after sitting in a holding orbit for more than thirty minutes, the pilot received permission to “come aboard.”

  Computer-controlled co-orbiting robo-beacons lit the way and outlined a path so clear, so obvious, that even the most besotted fly-it-yourself senator should have been able to land without crashing into the larger ship’s hull. A few still managed to do so, of course, which explained why the spacegoing capital boasted twice the number of re
pellerbeam projectors a ship of her size would normally carry, plus six search-and-rescue craft all ready for immediate launch.

  But their pilot was sharp and ran the beacon-lit gauntlet with the surety of the ex-fighter pilot that she was, slowing her craft just so, and dropping the shuttle into the exact center of their designated parking space.

  It took the three cyborgs only minutes to cycle through the ship’s tiny lock and step down onto the repulsorblackened flight deck. There was motion all around them as space-suited bio bods hurried to service newly arrived ships, robotic hoses snaked their way towards waiting fuel tanks, and small two-person maintenance sleds zipped over their heads. But outside of a wealth of radio traffic that Chien-Chu could access if he chose, the motion produced no sound.

  A path that consisted of two equidistant yellow lines led them through a maze of spacecraft and equipment towards an official-looking hatch. Chien-Chu watched as a methane-breathing senator, safely ensconced in its own portable environment, was welcomed and ushered into the lock.

  Then it was their turn. Coded radio transmissions zipped back and forth between the agents and the officer of the guard. Four Trooper IIs, their armor buffed to a dull sheen, snapped to attention. Machine guns were extremely dangerous aboard any sort of habitat, so the borgs had been equipped with two arm-mounted energy cannons instead of just one. Their elbows came forward and their forearms went vertical.

  Chien-Chu realized that he’d been honored with the Trooper II version of a rifle salute and nodded in response. Everyone seemed to know who he was. So much for his carefully constructed cover.

  Like the Confederacy itself, the Friendship had been the subject of many compromises. Signs of that were immediately visible in the large, immaculately clean lock. Rather than the animated holo-art humans might have chosen for the bulkheads, or the multicolored gas swirls favored by the Dwellers, a numerically small but still influential race called the Turr had thrown their support behind an increase in the heavy metals export tax in return for the infrared diorama that occupied all four walls. Never mind the fact that only the Turr, specially equipped cyborgs like Chien-Chu, and certain classes of robots could see the ever-changing panorama of blue-green blotches, Turr honor had been served. That, and countless episodes like it, were a major reason why Chien-Chu had exited politics as quickly as he could.