Curse of the Legion

by Marshall S. Thomas

  "I am here, my Queen! I did not abandon you!" Deadeye shouted.

  "Mommy! Mommy! I love you! You are safe now! Come with us!" Stormdawn urged her.

  She rose from the bed slowly, as if in a trance, as if in a dream, reaching a slim arm out to me—hesitating, for an instant, as if she did not quite believe it. I gently pulled her to me with my free arm, taking in her unearthly beauty again, falling right into those dark hypnotic eyes, together again, on the edge of the galaxy, never again to be separated, never, never, never!

  "I knew you would come," she whispered. Only that. It was enough. I turned to the doorway. One of those giant Daz'ra stood there, blocking our way, and I knew he had no intention of moving. I raised my E and pointed it right at his head. Moontouch leaped from my arms towards the Daz'ra and whirled around, throwing up her arms to shield him.

  "No, Slayer! They are protecting me! I owe them my life!" She turned and gently touched the creature on his hairy chest with her slim fingers, urging him to stand aside. He did. That big female Daz'ra came out of nowhere and hugged Moontouch. She hugged back. I dragged Moontouch towards the doorway. Stormdawn and Deadeye and I squatted there, facing the storm, with Moontouch protected by our armor. The rain was still pouring down, churning up a sea of mud. I had Moontouch by one hand and wasn't about to let go. Countdown was O2/05, two marks and five fracs—not bad! All we had to do now was wait in the doorway for evac. I didn't want to interfere as I knew everyone was busy but I had not been concentrating on the tacnet and needed to know what was happening.

  "Dragon, Thinker, report!"

  "Thinker, Dragon, we're on target, collecting our sheep. Five outworlders, seven Taka, all here." Dragon and Rabies were at Site B, consisting of two huts. Good!

  "Element C entering Target," Sweats reported. I could hear the vac as he blew away the door. Sweats and Viper were targeting three Outworlders and eight Taka in two other huts.

  "Element D! Prep for decar!" Redhawk ordered. Tourist, Jo-Jo and Doctor Doom would be rounding up twelve Taka from that stone longhouse. 02/48 and counting! The sky flashed white and a jarring boom shook us.

  "Lightning," Sweety explained.

  "Slayer!" Moontouch exclaimed. "You must save the others—my people, and your people! They are all around us!"

  "A second launch, Thinker," Sweety cut in. "The O's are launching a transport, Variant 5, from their starport." I could hear a deep rumble in the distance.

  "We're on it, Moontouch," I replied. "We're collecting them, right now. Don't worry."

  "Twenty-eight Taka, Slayer, and eight of your people."

  "Attention all!" Sweety's calm voice interrupted abruptly. "Two armored Omnis on foot, exiting the hive, now turning to face the Daz'ra target area." They appeared on my tacmap, two flashing red dots. "Mag shields not activated, Vulcans on safe," Sweety added. A blinding lightning hit cracked the sky open like a strobe light, illuminating a sky full of frozen rain. I raised my E to my shoulder.

  "Redhawk, Thinker. Two O's approaching from the hive, A&A. Prep to fire but do not fire unless we are fired upon. All elements acknowledge and report, now!"

  "Thinker, B. We're all set for pickup. We see the targets." Dragon sounded perfectly calm.

  "Thinker, Sweats. We've got all our targets and are prepping for pickup."

  "Slayer, there are…"

  "Not now, Moontouch! Just a…"

  "Thinker, Tourist. We're inside the longhouse, collecting the catch. Redhawk is still outside, I can hear him. We'll be ready in fracs."

  "Have you got all twelve Taka?"

  "That's a ten."

  "Attention all!" Sweety cut in again. "Another Omni ship is launching from the spaceport. That's three. This is a troop shuttle, appears headed for orbit."

  "Redhawk," I said, "all right, confirmed we've got Moontouch, twenty-seven Taka and eight Outworlders confirmed at the sites, be ready to engage the O's but pick up the…"

  "Slayer! There are twenty-eight Taka, not twenty-seven!"

  "Twenty-eight including you, Moontouch! Please be quiet! Redhawk, be ready to…"

  "Attention!" Sweety announced. "Three more Omnis, armored and armed, on foot, approaching from the hive, safeties off! Total of five Omnis."

  "Slayer! There are twenty-nine Taka including me, not twenty-eight! You must save them all or the Undead will…"

  "Thinker, Redhawk! We're boarding Site D! Ready in a frac!"

  "Be prepared to zap those O's, Redhawk, but don't do it unless they fire first! Board everyone soon as you can!"

  "Slayer!" Moontouch was scratching at my armor, becoming increasingly frantic. "Do you hear me? There are twenty-nine of us, Slayer, altogether! We must not leave anyone behind!"

  "O's approaching on foot!" Sweety warned. I could see them on the tacmap, awful creatures, force fields not yet up, probably puzzled by all the activity, they could let loose at any instant, what a nightmare! Snow Leopard had prepped me well for this. In the sim, Moontouch became increasingly irrational, demanding we evac all the Taka, all the Outworlders, then all the Daz'ra in her hut, then all the Daz'ra in the vicinity, then all the Daz'ra children. I had vowed to stun her if necessary. What the hell did she mean, twenty-nine? There were a total of twenty-eight!

  "Moontouch, we've counted carefully. There are twenty-eight of you, including you. Where is this other Taka? We see no one else."

  "Thinker, Countdown is 03/40!" Sweety reminded me. Deto! Running out of time!

  "He is with the Undead, in their home, over there." She pointed calmly at the O hive, a misty silver, barely visible through the driving rain. "It is Love's Child, a beautiful little boy of ten summers, and I will not face his parents if we leave him behind. If you leave him behind, you leave me behind, Slayer!"

  "Fire psybloc, deceptors and smoke," I ordered. "Give us some cover." The psybloc erupted all over the field between the O's and us, flashing and popping. It would protect us from their psych projections and give them a blinding headache too. The deceptors screeched wildly, shooting all over the field. The smoke rounds burst in gigantic fluorescent multicolored clouds, screwing everything up beautifully even in that heavy rain and wind. We were going to be hard to spot. I almost hoped it would goad them into firing. That way we'd be able to blast them to bits.

  "Omnis have ceased advancing, Thinker, mag fields now going up, no psych projections yet." Sweety reported. Her sensors were better than mine—the deceptors hid us from them, but hid them from us as well.

  "Thinker, Redhawk. D has boarded. We're now boarding C."

  "Thinker, countdown is 04/12."

  "Redhawk, prep for a hostile air attack," I said. "They've got to know we're here. Crash load! Fast as you can!" I was stalling for time, something we didn't have. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew it would all be up to me—and me alone.

  "Countdown 04/37."

  "Thinker, Redhawk. C's boarded. All right, crash load! Get 'em on board, Dragon, now now now! Boarding Site B, tenners, yeee-ow! B has boarded, confirm, tenners, boarding A, where the hell are you, Thinker?" We burst out of the doorway into a strong gust of almost horizontal rain, a rising mud storm swirling all around us as the Kiss winked in and out of visibility, balanced on air, splattering us with debris. The crash door was wide open and I picked up Moontouch bodily and tossed her in—Dragon caught her and threw her into a tangled mass of bodies like a sack of grain. Rabies and Jo-Jo grabbed Deadeye and Stormdawn and hauled them in like fish. Somebody else yanked me in when I jumped, I don't know who. The crash door slammed shut. The interior was jammed with a squirming mass of bodies, female Takas and Outworlders, half of them on top of the other half, screaming and crying with shock and joy and relief and terror.

  "Countdown 04/48!" Two fracs to go and this place will be history!

  "Redhawk!" I shouted. "Cancel launch! Your new target is the hive! Get over there right now, the far side, main entrance, hover right in front of it and prep to blow it all to hell but hold your fire."

  "Wh
at the hell, over?"

  "You heard me! Do it—now!"

  "Countdown 05/00! Recommend immediate evac." Perfect, I thought. We're all going to die.

  We ripped right over the smoke and psybloc and deceptors and the five armored O's and cut our way through that wild rain as more lightning lanced down to illuminate the horizon. Redhawk brought the Phantom down gently to hover just like a gigantic, invisible bat, a few marks above the muddy turf, roaring like a volcano, the earth and the hive vibrating like an earthquake, the Kiss unleashing a tornado of swirling mud and rain and dirt. All the power of the Legion was focused on that great, crystal silvery hive—every shining facet was humming with our coiled, awful, elemental, fatal power, the power of a star, just instants, just fracs away, just one finger's gentle touch and it would vanish in microfracs, antimat annihilation, a blinding flash and all your worries were over, forever.

  "I'm going in, Redhawk," I said, popping the crash door open and leaping out to land in a splash in a flooded field of mud. It was still raining, but it seemed to be letting up a bit. "If the O's fire, just blow the whole hive away and don't stop until everyone is dead." I felt as calm as if I was in a dream. None of it seemed real to me. Weak lights from the hive lit up the main entrance. The area outside the entrance was littered with trash and debris—all sorts of discarded equipment and containers, empty and full. An air effects sled shot away from the building, only half full of what looked like dropboxes, pursued by a couple of O's on foot who were paying no attention to me or to the invisible tornado that was ripping up their front lawn.

  "Thinker, Dragon. Moontouch is going crazy. She wants to join you. What the hell are you up to?"

  "Let her go, Dragon. If we die, you're in charge. Zap the hive, then get topside fast as you can."

  "Countdown has concluded! Counting up 05/11. Alert! Alert! Recommend immediate evac topsides."

  "Slayer! I am here." Moontouch stood by my side, soaked through, her thin garments clinging to her, long hair plastered to her face and neck, bravely facing the hive. Her head was held high, and her eyes were blazing. A queen, I thought, a true queen for her people. Deadeye and Stormdawn were suddenly there too, guns up, Legion armor and Taka death paint. Good lord—of course! What the hell did I expect, that I would die alone? The whole family was here! Two giant Omnis ran from the entrance, ignoring us, hauling some bizarre equipment.

  "Attention! Another Omni ship is launching from the port, headed topside."

  "Thinker, Redhawk. Any idea what's going on?"

  "Yes. We're going after Taka number twenty-nine," I replied.

  "What do we do, Slayer?" Deadeye asked.

  "Follow me," I said. We walked stiffly towards the giant doorway, E's pointed ahead of us, safeties off.

  Chapter 18

  The Monkey

  When we actually entered the hive, it all suddenly became real to me—it wasn't a dream any more. We found ourselves in a giant hall with a high ceiling lost somewhere overhead, those crystal exterior walls glowing a soft pale white, facing a shiny gem-hard black cliff of an interior wall lined with tall, vertical openings about twice the height of a man. The floor was a pale pink stone, generating its own light. Off to one side, an airy waterfall crashed down from the heights, thundering into a dark pool, generating a misty cloud that drifted over a grove of dark leathery trees. A giant Omni popped out of one of the doors in the black wall, not even in armor.

  "Omni! Unarmored, unarmed, shields down, no psyprobe." Sweety reported, but I didn't need it. Adrenalin flooded my veins as I swung the E over to target the O. It ignored us, scampering over the slick floor awkwardly, its limbs bending in all the wrong places, hustling over to the main entrance and out into the dark. What the hell were we doing here, I asked myself. This is insane. We're going to die here. Fleetcom is going to attack in instants and we're all going up in atoms. Why haven't they attacked yet?

  "Where do we go, Slayer?" Deadeye asked. Good question. I had no plan, I was just doing what had to be done before we died, improvising as I went, walking through the gates of Purgatory with no map. There were maybe fifteen of those doorways, they evidently led into the interior of the hive, and I had no idea which one to take.

  "Attention! Countdown has concluded. Counting up 05/38. Recommend immediate evac topside. Fleetcom attack is overdue."

  "Sweety? What do you see? Lifeforms, please." I asked.

  "Thinker, Dragon. Sitrep, please."

  "Nothing to report!" I snarled.

  "I cannot see within the hive, Thinker," Sweety said. "The walls are evidently honeycombed with deceptors. Please see the tacmap. As you see, it is very general in nature." The tacmap was trash—almost worthless!

  "Eyemotes! Give me some eyemotes. Now!"

  "Thinker, you will remember that the eyemotes cannot enter the hive either. They are filtered out in the entry hall."

  "Thinker, Dragon. You need any help?"

  Moontouch had drifted away, wandering casually through the hall, close to that evil black wall. The glowing pink floor was littered with unidentifiable debris—stuff that clearly did not belong there. Something had definitely gone wrong with the O's neat little base on Mantis.

  "Give us a few more fracs, Dragon," I said. "We're not quite through." Why should they die with us? All those innocent captives—I should tell Dragon to leave us.

  Moontouch paused by one doorway, raised her hand briefly, and stepped in.

  ###

  We walked down a gently sloping corridor on softly glowing pale pink stone, between two sinister walls of shiny black marbled material under a dead dark ceiling. It led us down into the netherworld, far below the hive, and there was a light frost glistening on the walls. It was cold. Moontouch shivered and clutched her thin garments tighter around her but continued marching forward without a single backward glance, walking right into Hell, all alone or leading a squad of avenging angels, it made no difference to her. She knew exactly where she was going. It was dark except for that soft pink glow from the floor. Deadeye and Storm and I hustled to catch up.

  "Thinker, Dragon. Sitrep, please!"

  "Get out, Dragon!" I said. "Take your folks and get out! There's no need for them to die. Come back for us if you can. I'm not sure…if we're coming back."

  "We'll be right here, Thinker! Move it!"

  "Get out, Dragon! That's an order!"

  "Sorry, you're breaking up. I can't read you." Damn it! Hopeless! Did I really think Dragon would leave us? Scut, he'll probably send in an extraction team!

  The corridor opened into a circular hall, faintly lit from above by a ceiling that glowed green. As Sweety adjusted my faceplate I saw a wondrous green sky, shot through with drifting silvery clouds. The O's home planet! I had seen this green sky before, in the Mound, on Uldo.

  The hall was built around a mysterious greasy dark mechanism in the center, and it was ringed with a circular structure that could have been a table or counter, and circular rows of what looked like benches with built-in high-backed support structures—probably chairs for the O's. I had seen similar structures in an O starship, at a particularly bleak point in my short but eventful life.

  Moontouch made her way to the weird metallic object set in the center of the main table. Deadeye and Storm and I covered her, scanning the hall carefully with our E's. We couldn't see anything that looked dangerous.

  "Report, Sweety."

  "Heavy deceptors, Thinker. I detect no life."

  No life. It was hopeless. A lost cause. As I gazed at the black, filthy object in the center of the hall, it slowly dawned on me what it was that I was looking at. It squatted over a black pit, and the pit and the structure and the table were splattered with congealed grease. A black metal grill, covered with sticky burnt debris, lay over the pit. Bits of burnt flesh and scorched bones were scattered over the table. A very faint orange glow flickered deep within the pit.

  "It is a feasting chamber, Thinker," Sweety answered my unasked question. "The Omni barbecue their victim
s here, and consume their flesh. I detect many bones—and two skulls—in the pit."

  A tingling wave of horror crept through my veins. Deadman, I pray for all those hopeless souls who died here, victims of the O's. Grant them eternal peace and happiness.

  Moontouch had wandered over to another dark mechanism off to one side that appeared to be connected to the first. It resembled a great rectangular coffin of black metal, sealed shut. Moontouch stood by it, gently touched it with one hand and then, for the first time, turned and looked at us.

  I found what looked like a locking mechanism and lasered it open. The whole top slid away, revealing a pool of sticky, inky liquid. Floating in the pool on her back was an angelic young Outworlder girl, blonde hair soaked in black grease, icy white skin, filmy blue eyes staring into infinity. She was naked, and clearly dead. Then the whole world started to go black, and all I could see was that holy corpse, tunnel vision, the dead girl and nothing else. I could feel the lava, moving in my veins. I reached out one hand and traced the Legion cross over her face. We hadn't even known about her. How many other Outworlder and Taka had they taken?

  The pool of greasy ink moved. Something slithered along past the girl's feet. It surfaced and I was about to blast it but I hesitated. It looked just like a little monkey, soaked in filthy black grease, blinking big eyes. A little boy—a Taka boy. He reached out his arms to Moontouch and she snatched him up eagerly and crushed him to her bosom.

  "We can leave now," she whispered.

  ###

  We ran back up that corridor to Hell, back towards Salvation, guns up, adrenaline surging, Deadeye and Storm and I in the lead, Moontouch following with the kid clinging to her. Just as we reached the great hall Sweety sounded off.

  "Attention! Omni approaching, A&A, mag fields up, psypobes active, Vulcan scanning, safeties off, I am countering with psybloc, recommend…" I didn't need her recommendations and I didn't give a damn for our orders either, not any more, one stinking O between us and salvation, between life and death for us all, my whole family, everyone I loved, Moontouch, Storm, Deadeye, Priestess and Millie, Lester and Andrea, my squad, all those poor Outworlders and Taka and the Ghost Legion, all those dead Legionnaires who had gone before us, for just this one moment. As the O appeared before me the sight gave me a terrific jolt of adrenalin and terror and my finger tightened on the trigger. The O was a horrific vision, its armor all blurred behind the pulsing electric violet haze of its mag shield, the faintly burning tip of the Vulcan moving my way, pointing right at me, the O's split armored head moving, taking us in, I knew we had only fracs to live, Don't fire unless fired upon, don't fire… an insane chant. I fired canister auto xmax and Storm fired too and Deadeye fired too. The O erupted, an awful electronic shrieking and popping as the canister darts ripped into its force field with a terrifying buzz, taking it down almost instantly, and auto xmax exploded all over its armor, blinding deafening explosions, spraying cenite shrapnel, green blood and alien flesh all over the hall, the twisted remnants of the O spinning in dizzying circles on the floor, blasted armor smoking and glowing white-hot. It hadn't even had a chance to fire its Vulcan. I gave it a burst of laser just to be sure.