Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle

by William C. Dietz

  The artillery barrage had created a moonscape of overlapping craters. They looked like an obstacle course. Raksala-Ba tried to decide which was worse, descending down into the holes where he had protection but couldn’t see the enemy, or climbing up out of them, when the enemy was free to shoot at him, but he could see them and fire back. The fact that cybernetic body parts lay scattered around the shell holes didn’t make his decision any easier.

  He climbed to the lip of a large crater, cursed the soil that crumbled under his pods, and peered over the top. Cyborgs to the right and left of him did the same. An order was given and they scrambled over the top. Shapes appeared through the smoke, etched themselves across his targeting grid, and became steadily larger. Firing solutions appeared down the right-hand side of his vision and priority targets took on a ghostly glow.

  Most of the targets were consistent with the cyborg’s expectations, but some—six, in particular—didn’t match anything in memory. Two hovered in midair, two advanced like miniature tanks, one slithered along the ground, while the last dodged this way and that, making good use of cover. The objects moved as if controlled by a single mind, and when they opened fire, the results were devastating.

  O’Neal saw the enemy cyborgs climb up out of the shell hole, sent the appropriate thought to her analogs, and watched the Hudathans run into a hail of lead and coherent energy. Many were killed or severely damaged. The rest seemed to falter, gain courage, and move ahead.

  The noncom glanced around, saw the quads lurch up out of the broken ground behind her, and open fire with their gatling guns. The slugs flew over her head but came within inches of the leather wings who hovered above. They directed screams of animal outrage through the interface and turned towards their attackers, a stupid thing to do since they were heavily outgunned. O’Neal fought to control them. “No! Do not fire! They didn’t mean to hit you . . . .”

  Raksala-Ba gave thanks for whatever it was that had distracted the enemy. He fired and experienced a powerful orgasm as a Trooper II exploded.

  Dirt fountained around O’Neal as the enemy opened fire. Something hammered against her legs, knocked them out from under her torso, and left the legionnaire staring at the sky. The microprocessors that controlled the lower part of her body sent pain through her feedback systems and were suppressed by her battle comp. The noncom projected herself up to the battle disks, saw what lay ahead through their vid cams, and ordered the analogs forward. The quads, gatling guns still firing, lumbered by, their footsteps shaking the ground.

  The enemy cyborgs were in the open now. They fired as they came. Still linked with the leather wings, O’Neal saw the borg known as Reaper fall, saw Booly jump clear, and urged her analogs to fire. They did, and the effect of their combined weaponry, along with their maneuverability, made the necessary difference. The enemy line paused, wavered, and fell apart.

  Raksala-Ba couldn’t believe the way his arm flew off, the way something smashed through his torso, the way that his head flew through the air, landed, and bounced towards the enemy. Darkness came and was supplanted by primitive black-and-white vision as the emergency power supply located at the base of his heavily armored brain box kicked in. So he lived long enough to see the sun, the quad that made it disappear, and the disk-shaped foot that descended towards his face. It was then, in the split second before he died, that Raksala-Ba remembered the first time he’d been killed, and wished it had been the last.

  Captain Cynthia Harmon didn’t take the threat seriously at first, not after surviving countless fighter attacks, and the missiles fired by larger ships, the most recent of which had holed the engineering spaces, just missed the habitat, and left the Nooni hanging motionless in space. But Duncan was insistent and she gave in. “All right, Tom, a Hudathan shuttle is headed this way, so what’s the big deal?”

  Duncan was used to Harmon’s sarcasm by now and ignored it. He issued an order to the ship’s AI and pointed towards the holo tank. “Watch this.”

  Harmon watched as every object represented in the holo tank went into reverse. It seemed silly at first, and the scientist was about to ask Duncan what he was doing, when she saw the shuttle back its way into a Hudathan ship, and not just any ship, but what had previously served as their command vessel, until the Say’lynt seized control. She was shocked. “But that’s impossible!”

  “Tell the pilot that,” Duncan said grimly, “because he thinks he can do it. The AI projects impact seven from now.”

  Harmon watched the holo fast-forward and drop to normal speed. The shuttle was represented by a small red delta and it looked closer than before. “Impact? He plans to ram us?”

  “I think that’s a distinct possibility,” Duncan said dryly. “I advise that you notify the admiral, call for help, and put every weapon you can on the shuttle. The pilot knows about the Say’lynt and is willing to die.”

  Harmon glanced at Chien-Chu. The industrialist cum military leader had taken the third officer’s chair and was locked in a discussion with senior members of the fleet. She released her harness and got to her feet. “No, you tell the admiral. I have a Hudathan to kill.”

  Poseen-Ka stared straight ahead, partly because that was his direction of flight, and partly because it required effort to turn his head. The force was growing stronger all the time. Because the sea creatures were closer? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter, because knowing wouldn’t make any difference. That, when he thought about it, had been the purpose of his life. To destroy those who could bring harm to his race, to impose order on chaos, to make a difference. And this, his final blow, would free the fleet to complete that work.

  Poseen-Ka watched as a spark of light grew into a large globe-shaped ship. Sunlight played across the surface of its hull and stabbed the darkness around him. The Hudathan wanted to jink from side to side, wanted to take evasive action, but couldn’t find the energy. The shuttle bored in.

  The turret had suffered a hit but the AI claimed it was operable. Harmon worked her way inside, freed a dead marine from the control chair, and took his place. The body drifted out through the shattered canopy and kept pace with the ship. Harmon adjusted the harness to fit her smaller body and wondered why her breathing sounded so loud. Then, secured to the chair, she took control of the weapon.

  The sight swung down in front of her helmet. It took a moment to find the enemy vessel and lock on. The shuttle was steady, which was good, but the nose-on approach made for a small target, and would require some skill.

  Harmon stomped on the right foot pedal, felt the cannon swivel in the direction, and swore when the grid stopped six inches short of the target. Something, a piece of metal or plastic, had jammed the track. Two extremely precious minutes were consumed freeing herself from the harness, finding the chunk of debris, and pulling it free.

  Other weapons were firing by now, crisscrossing the area around the shuttle, but to no effect. Harmon swore, clipped the harness into place, and stomped on the right-hand pedal. The cannon obeyed this time, stopped where she wanted it to, and spit bolts of coherent light.

  The energy bolts looked like blobs from Poseen-Ka’s perspective, and came his way with what would have been mind-numbing speed, had his mind been free to do as it wished. But it was elsewhere when the shuttle exploded, elsewhere when the body it had occupied was vaporized, safe within the memories Raft One had called forth.

  Poseen-Ka looked, concluded that the village looked no different than it had during his childhood, and ran down the cobbled street. It felt good to be home.

  Harmon felt a sense of exultation as she watched the enemy shuttle explode, quickly followed by a stab of fear, as large chunks of alien metal tumbled in her direction. The scientist’s eyes widened as her fingers fumbled with the harness release. It worked, but too late, as a large chunk of black fuselage hit the weapons emplacement and smashed the biologist’s body.

  Harmon had expected pain, darkness, or nothingness, anything but a warm sandy beach and softly surging surf. The voice came f
rom somewhere in front of her. “Come on! Hurry up!”

  The voice belonged to Valerie, her Valerie, and Harmon’s heart leaped with joy. She ran into the water, felt it close around her, and swam towards her friend. The sun was warm and there was no darkness.

  29

  . . . And so, having committed grave crimes against sentient life, the Hudathan people are hereby sentenced to imprisonment within their own system, until such time as they are judged fit for admittance to interstellar society.

  The Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  Resolution 2596/1089.8

  Standard year 2596

  Planet Earth, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  Moolu Rasha Anguar checked to make sure that the exoskeleton was operating properly, forced his facial muscles into the semblance of a human smile, and stepped out into bright sunshine. The day was beautiful by human standards but warmer than he liked. The president looked out onto thousands of upturned faces, a scattering of tall, skinny trees, and a circular lagoon. A breeze swept in from the ocean, roughed the surface of the water, and sent wavelets lapping at the beach.

  A battalion of Trooper IIIs, their analogs arrayed around them, crashed to attention. Platoon Leader Lieutenant O’Neal frowned as Frim and Fram sent waves of boredom her way, bullied them into submission, and scanned the ranks before her. They were perfect. Life was tolerable.

  The applause built and continued as cameras swooped in to capture the president’s image and send it out to the billions who watched from their homes. Anguar had appeared on twenty-seven planets, dispensed thousands of medals, and the victory tour was only half over. And while he hated the endless speeches, tributes, ceremonies, and monuments, he loved the wild diversity of the citizens who came to see him, resplendent in their multicolored skin, fur, feathers, and scales, noble behind their beaks, noses, and antennas, strong on the legs, arms, tentacles, and wings that had won the war.

  Anguar gloried in the fact that all of them were obnoxiously alive, scheming and conniving to get whatever they could, eternally at each other’s throats, whining about the things they lacked, already forgetful of the foe they had so recently vanquished. The truth was that they were nothing less than marvelous, and if holding the Confederacy together meant dragging his skinny ass all over the universe, then that’s what he’d do. The president held up his hands and waited for the applause to die down.

  General Marianne Mosby and President Marcus were seated a dozen yards away. They smiled at each other and looked down at their baby. She didn’t look like either one of them—not yet, anyway—and it didn’t matter in the least. The baby yawned, blissfully unaware of the scandal her birth had caused, the resulting upheaval, or the somewhat tenuous nature of the relationship between her parents. She felt warm, full, and just a little bit sleepy. There was nothing else that mattered.

  A little further out, under the awning rigged to protect ambassadors from the sun, the honorable William Booly, Sr., sat with his wife Windsweet, their son Major William Booly, Jr., and his fiancée, Captain Connie Chrobuck. Both wore newly purchased civilian clothes and looked slightly out of place. It would have taken experts to tell the difference between the woman’s natural leg and the one grown in the lab, or the man’s biological eye and the electronic prosthesis that filled one socket. But there was no mistaking the love between them or the determination to build a common future.

  Behind them, shoulder to shoulder with the Naa bodyguard named Knifecut Easykill, stood a tall, somewhat gaunt-looking human, with a face like death. He’d been a soldier once, that much could be seen from his carriage, but he looked comfortable in his civilian clothes. As others watched the president . . . he watched them.

  But it was beyond the last fringes of the crowd where the most exotic spectators lay, a small portion of their snow white fibers floating just under the lagoon’s surface, while the rest of their bodies extended far out to the sea. In spite of the fact that the Say’lynt were among the most decorated soldiers in the Confederacy, and the most loved, they were eager to return home. Home, where Rafts Three and Four waited, where Harmon would be buried next to her friend, and where a bugle would play taps for another unlikely hero. Anguar smiled and the ceremony began.

  Many, many thousands of miles away, in a village not far from the Mongol city of Hatga, a middle-aged blacksmith lit his welding torch and adjusted the resulting flame. The man, along with his distinguished-looking wife, had moved to the area only months before. First they built a home on a parcel of land that had been owned by the blacksmith’s grandfather. Then they opened a smithy. Not because they had to, but because they had worked all their lives, and thought of work as a privilege.

  A group of children watched in wide-eyed wonder as the man applied the blue-white flame to a shattered truck axle and began the time-honored process of joining metal with metal. The blacksmith remembered his grandfather, the extent of the old man’s expectations, and wondered how he’d done. Had he lived up to at least some of the old man’s standards? He hoped so.

  Both pieces of steel turned white hot and came together. The addition of filler metal from a welding rod completed the seam. A little boy sat back on his haunches, wiped his forehead with the back of a grubby hand, and nodded approvingly. “It will hold. You did a good job.”

  The blacksmith examined his work, smiled, and got to his feet. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

  Ace Books by William C. Dietz

  GALACTIC BOUNTY

  FREEHOLD

  PRISON PLANET

  IMPERIAL BOUNTY

  ALIEN BOUNTY

  McCADE’S BOUNTY

  DRIFTER

  DRIFTER’S RUN

  DRIFTER’S WAR

  LEGION OF THE DAMNED

  BODYGUARD

  THE FINAL BATTLE

  WHERE THE SHIPS DIE

  STEELHEART

  BY BLOOD ALONE

  BY FORCE OF ARMS

  DEATHDAY

  EARTHRISE

  FOR MORE THAN GLORY

  FOR THOSE WHO FELL

  RUNNER

  LOGOS RUN

  WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST

  WHEN DUTY CALLS

  AT EMPIRE’S EDGE