Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “Here they come,” Del said. “Everyone stay calm and out of sight. Hold your fire until I give the signal.”

  He stepped back into the shadows of the Stork’s interior, relying on the sensor nodes he’d scattered around the deck to give him a view of the approach corridor.

  Instead of a flood of Hardits in their flea-ridden rags, he saw three human Marines. His suit AI swiftly identified them as Spartika, Jennifer Boon, and Deacon. The three resistance fighters looked around the hangar, as if they were searching for something.

  Del stepped into the light: “What’s going on?” he asked Spartika. “Where is the enemy?”

  “They’re right behind,” she replied.

  “What about Lieutenant Brandt and the others?”

  “Dead. All dead,” said Spartika, limping as fast as she could toward Del’s Stork.

  The shock of hearing that hit him hard, but there was something about the Resistance leader’s words that Del didn’t like. “How can you be sure,” he queried, “when the enemy is jamming our signals?”

  Spartika stormed through the open hatch and into the Stork. She dropped her carbine and grabbed Del-Marie about the shoulders. It was so unexpected that he didn’t have time to fight her off.

  Blanking her visor revealed the mad look on Spartika’s face. “I saw them die,” she snapped, her mouth trembling. “We were overrun. All the others… dead.”

  “Then the plane’s our only chance,” he said, not that it was much of one.

  “I’m done running,” said Spartika. “You go, we’ll cover you. Take good care of my people, Lance Corporal Sandure.”

  He considered this change to his plan. Three armored Marines… They can hold up an army… for a minute or so.

  Del nodded. “I will,” he said. He stayed put long enough to check Spartika’s group were taking up positions in three Storks, and then gave the order for his refugees to evacuate to the plane.

  The hangar erupted into motion as the able-bodied broke cover and rushed out of the Storks to help the sick and wounded onto the waiting plane.

  Del wanted to join in but he trusted to the rehearsal drills and their common sense. He had a special role.

  He was the pilot.

  As he climbed into the flight cabin, he felt the heavy responsibility of that role weigh upon him. When they took off, everyone on that plane would trust their lives to him, even though he’d never flown an aircraft before. Not outside of a simulator.

  Small void craft were a different matter. As part of the major’s insistence that Marines helped out with the gaping holes in the Navy crew roster, Del had clocked up many flying hours in space. …

  Threat alerts sounded in the cabin. Hardit small arms fire was ricocheting through the hangar.

  And Del’s doubts vanished, replaced by diamond-hard concentration. It was now or never.

  He raised the main engine thrust to launch level and eased back on the brakes.

  As the transport aircraft shuddered and began to move, Del hooked into the camera network to see what was happening behind.

  Dozens of Hardits were swarming through the hangar, but Del only had eyes for one individual. The one with a missile launcher.

  “Shoot the launcher,” he shouted through BattleNet at Spartika’s rearguard. But the armored Resistance fighters couldn’t hear him. They were off the net. Where had they gone? The Hardits weren’t acting as if they were facing any opposition. All it would take were a few railgun bursts from the rearguard and the enemy would keep their heads down long enough for the aircraft to escape.

  But the suppressive fire never came.

  The Hardit with the missile launcher took time to brace and program its targeting system. Scores of rifle-armed Hardits advanced along either side of the hangar, hugging the walls to give the missile specialist a clear line of fire.

  Perhaps Spartika was leading the Hardits on… would emerge to take them by surprise. Shoot! Damn you!

  But that sinking feeling in his gut told Del that his rearguard had deserted.

  “Hang on,” Del shouted into the in-plane comms. Abandoning everything he’d learned in safe takeoff drill, he gave the engines full throttle.

  The plane lurched forward. Even in his acceleration-hardened battlesuit, Del felt himself being slammed back into the pilot’s seat. But from the rear of the hangar, he saw the backblast from the missile launcher. There was no way he could evade that.

  He felt rather than heard the drumming as his plane passed the hangar’s entry barrier of falling water. The downforce pushed the aircraft down. In his control console holosphere Del saw the Hardit missile flash through the curtain of water in pursuit, but the waterfall didn’t give it the same amount of downward push – the missile passed a good twenty meters above the plane.

  Hope blossomed in Del’s breast. If he could put a mountainside between the aircraft and the missile, they might just survive. He banked the patched up aircraft as tightly as he dared, making the airframe scream in protest.

  The missile slowed… and then slewed around to follow Del’s maneuver. It was hopeless!

  “We’re going down,” Del told his passengers. “As soon as we stop, grab your weapons and make for the trees. I’ll cover you fro–”

  The missile hit.

  The blast ripped off the starboard wing and flipped the plane over.

  It was still corkscrewing when it hit the ground.

  — Chapter 62 —

  Arun breached the surface of the lake, pushing through the scum of dead fish and birds that were slowly simmering in water still hot from the projectile’s impact. He hurt in more ways than he knew a body could hurt, but, up above, a welcome sight greeted him. Engines purring as it hovered, the Stork dangled three Marines on the end of rescue cables. One of the cables snaked his way, and within moments a Marine had reached down to grip Arun’s hand and haul him out of the lake.

  He refused to acknowledge the additional stab of pain this caused, striving to keep his voice steady as he said, “Thank you, Lieutenant,” to Nhlappo when the cable had reeled him up into the hold. He noted the equipment crates were back and secured aft. Hopefully they were filled with the materiel for which they’d come to Beta.

  “Don’t thank me,” Nhlappo replied over a private channel. “I ordered Dock to make straight for Detroit. Little veck maintained I wasn’t his line officer and insisted on coming back here in case you’d survived.”

  Arun ignored her for now, peering out the hatch at Xin and Umarov who were being reeled up too. They looked in bad shape.

  “What’s the situation in Detroit?” Arun asked Nhlappo.

  “The enemy has established complete air superiority. Brandt is fighting off attacks from the surface and from beneath the lower Detroit levels. Heavy casualties all round. It doesn’t look good, Major.”

  “Ensign Dock, can you hear me?” asked Arun.

  “Here, Major.”

  “As soon as we’ve sealed the hatch, set course for Detroit with all speed. We’ll reassess the tactical situation when…” Arun tried to swallow back a coughing fit, hoping the others wouldn’t notice the blood spattering from his lips. “…when we’re nearer.”

  “Back to Detroit, aye.”

  “And, Ensign…”

  “Yes?”

  “Didn’t know you cared so much for me, Dock. But I thank you for rescuing us anyway.”

  “You’re very welcome, sir. But you were right on the button beforehand – I don’t very much like you, Major. But I know others do. I’d never hear the last of it from Captain Indiya if I’d left you behind to die. I must admit that when I first set eyes on you, I thought…”

  But Arun never heard what Dock thought.

  The Navy ensign’s words drifted away, replaced by a vague sense that Barney was communicating with him, floating beneath the calm seas of Arun’s subconscious. The AI brought up a memory of the liberated slave, Rohanna, rocking her baby to sleep. That’s what Barney was doing now – putting his human to s
leep, while he did what he could to patch up his wounds.

  But this wasn’t Barney’s role!

  Arun rose part of the way back to full consciousness. His calm seas grew stormy.

  Why isn’t Puja doing this? he asked Barney. Is she okay?

  sighed Barney.

  Who put you in charge?

 

  Arun tried to protest, but Barney could be very firm. Arun’s mind snapped shut and he knew no more.

  — Chapter 63 —

  Arun’s eyes jerked open. It felt as if Barney had rammed a high tension power cable up his butt, and his lungs were fragile constructions of millennia-old desiccated paper that had just been ripped into dust.

  It took several seconds of his brain being crudely beaten back into shape with a planishing hammer, before he could work out what the frakk was going on.

  He’d been out for about six minutes. Barney was still in the midst of patching him up, but had rebooted his body early to answer an incoming FTL transmission.

  The call was from Brandt.

  Arun tried to acknowledge his friend but had to first spend valuable time coughing out the blood that was clogging his throat.

  “Are you dying, Major?” asked Brandt.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Just me then. Still, I request you relay my transmission to everyone on your flight. They’ve got a right to hear, and I’m not convinced you’ll be able to tell them. You sound like you’ll die before me.”

  Arun linked Brandt’s signal to a ship-wide comm channel. “It’s done, Brandt. Speak now.”

  “The Hardits have broken our defenses in the lower levels. Spartika’s fighters gave a good account of themselves, but when the monkeys brought in their elite with heavy weapons and drones, we knew our time was up.”

  “Can you get out?” asked Arun.

  “Del’s going to try to get the wounded out on an airplane that we’ve lashed together from the wrecks in the hangar. The rest of us are cut off. The enemy have pushed us to the lower levels. We decided to make our last stand here, surrounded by thousands of icers in their smashed cryo pods.”

  Arun gave a phlegmy gurgle. “Good luck, Marine,” he said, wishing he could think of something more worthy than platitudes. “Die well.”

  “Frakk that,” said Brandt. “I didn’t choose to spend my last moment saying goodbye. We found something, down here in the cryo storage levels. We tried burrowing down, scooping out a bolt hole. Worked for you once. We found secret levels, deeper down.”

  “Secret spaces,” said Arun, hope filling him that Brandt might yet get out. “The Hardits might not know about them. Use them to sneak out!”

  “That’s what we did at first. Slipped through our gap, sealed it as best we could from behind, and then blew a hole in the floor of our new level to repeat the process. But we only found another secret level below that. And another below that. This shit goes on for miles. Who knows how many levels are really down here?”

  “Hide in the tunnels” said Arun. “We’ll wait until the Hardits relax their attention and then we’ll come to rescue you.”

  Brandt wasn’t paying attention to his CO. Instead, the occupants of the Stork overheard Brandt’s side of a conversation taking place in the bowels of Detroit.

  “Thank you, Corporal DeBenedetto,” Brandt was saying. “It’s been an honor serving with you. Set charges to blow in thirty seconds.”

  “Brandt,” shouted Nhlappo. “What charges? Report!”

  “The secret levels,” continued Brandt ignoring Nhlappo, “hold undamaged cryo boxes. We’re estimating millions, Arun. Millions of human Marines. Our best guess is that when the Jotuns told us they were shipping out fresh Marine units, they were lying. I wonder whether they were fooling the White Knights too, but I guess I’ll have to leave that mystery for someone else to solve. Been doing this for centuries, Arun. Millions of icers. Millions!”

  “A legion,” breathed Arun.

  “Exactly.”

  “Can you revive them?”

  “Negative. The ice pods are self-powered, but will need proper resuscitation systems and a helluva lot of power to revive. And we’re out of time.” Brandt paused. Even muffled as it was, they all recognized the repeating whine-pop as Brandt fired his railgun.

  “We’re going to blow this level, collapse the levels above us. The hidden legion will be buried. They could last centuries more, buried deep underground. Don’t forget them, Arun. Brandt out.”

  “Edward,” said Nhlappo in a sudden panic, “where are the refugee children?”

  Brandt came back online. “Del was trying to–”

  They heard an instant of fizz and rumble followed by… silence.

  — Chapter 64 —

  That silence suffocated the flight back to Detroit. The Marines were still locked in the horror of that awful moment when they’d lost contact with their home. Visors were dark, shielding Arun from the stark expressions of betrayal and recrimination that he was sure were chiseled permanently onto the faces behind.

  Even Nhlappo of all people had lost it, wailing something about losing her son before disconnecting herself from the comm network.

  Clutching at the thread of hope Brandt had thrown out when he said Del-Marie was evacuating civilians, Arun had ordered Dock to continue on to Detroit. They needed more of a plan before they got there, but that could wait.

  With everyone so reluctant to speak, Arun took advantage of the lull by slumping into semi-consciousness while Barney continued emergency repairs to his body.

  It wasn’t until they were thirty minutes out from their destination that Gupta decided to end the silence. “Major, we need reminding what we’re fighting for. The others have had all the time they’re going to get to absorb the shock.”

  Reluctantly, Arun agreed. He took a moment to rev his brain up to speed. Then he opened a general comm channel and spoke his mind. “Lieutenant Brandt said he’d tried to evacuate civilians. We’re on our way back to locate and rescue them. Then we’ll return to Beowulf to regroup. This isn’t over. We will return, and the Hardits will pay dearly for their atrocities.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Umarov, “but will you let an old grumbler speak his mind?”

  Arun smiled, so tired that he was beyond caring what Umarov had to say. “Go ahead, old man.”

  “I admire your words, sir. All the same, what you just said is still class-one bullshit. We fought hard and we fought well. We nearly won too. But with half of us dead, and the Resistance and slaves we liberated all but wiped out, we’re not going to win this campaign. I say we go down fighting right now. Take as many of the vecks with us as we can. I’d rather die with a combat blade in each hand, atop a heap of slain enemies, than bleed out all alone in the bottom of a muddy ditch, or escape to the Beowulf and die centuries from now in a cryo pod. If we can’t win, then I don’t want to run or hide.”

  “Go out in a blaze of glory?” said Arun. “Don’t be a fool! There’s no glory in death.”

  “I didn’t say anything about glory,” Umarov retorted. “I just want to take as many of the bastards with me as I can. Won’t you let me go out fighting?”

  “Understood,” said Arun. “Request denied. We still have a ship in orbit filled with materiel. We still retain orbital superiority. We return to Beowulf. If we can take the moon, Antilles, then that gives us another military base filled with supplies, and we may be able to construct our own mass driver to rain rocks down
on the Hardits holding Tranquility.”

  “If I can just butt in here–” interrupted Dock.

  “Not now,” snapped Arun. The Navy flier had impressed him, but he was far too in love with his own voice.

  “We retain critical assets,” Arun continued, “not least the legion of frozen Marines Lieutenant Brandt discovered. On Antilles I’m certain we can gain more. We’ve suffered tragic losses. I don’t deny that, and I don’t shirk responsibility for the consequences of my command decisions.”

  “Oh, Major,” sang Dock.

  “What?”

  “Just one little detail you seem to have forgotten. If we’re lucky, and don’t get shot down, I can maybe locate the transport plane Brandt talked of and set down nearby. But that’s it. We’re out of juice. To reach escape velocity to rendezvous with Beowulf, I need at least half a tank of fuel. With Beta destroyed there’s only one place on the planet with enough fuel. Detroit.”

  “Surely Beowulf has fuel?” queried Nhlappo. “She could ferry down enough.”

  “Not enough. The old girl uses different fuel. Not safe for use in atmosphere, you see. Same with all the other void-only small craft.”

  “The other Storks?” prompted Arun.

  “All donated their fuel to get us down so we could haul your ass out of the fire.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say?”

  They could hear Dock sniff. “You never asked. And we were rather busy, you know?”

  “What do we do?” asked Nhlappo. The question felt like a knife thrust into Arun’s back.

  “Same as we already planned,” said Xin. “Set down near Del’s aircraft, pick up any survivors, and then head back to Beowulf. The only change is that now we also sneak into Detroit and steal enough fuel to top up our tanks.”

  “Without us or the Stork being detected by the Hardits,” added Nhlappo. “Without us being blasted into atoms.”

  “Well,” said Xin, “there’s that too.”

  “Enough chatter!” snapped Arun, aware that everyone was listening in. “Our first task is to make contact with any survivors from the fall of Detroit. Then we lie low as best we can for a few days before grabbing the fuel and withdrawing to orbit. The enemy has no orbital or air surveillance, and will drift away back down their holes if they think we’re dead. We can do this.”