Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3)

by Tim C. Taylor

“Don’t give me that drent, Springer. You’re my best friend, and I need you more than ever. Just for tonight, forgive me for becoming an officer.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, sir.”

 

  Relaxing her posture, Springer took her AI’s advice. Saraswati might be a little crazed around the edges, but so far her advice had been good. “I’ll be there, Arun. On one condition.”

  He frowned, immediately suspicious. When had he gotten so paranoid? “Go on…”

  “You get the first round of drinks.”

  He laughed. The tension vanished. For a moment, McEwan was unchanged from her 17-year-old buddy — the novice boy who’d whooped for joy when he’d heard that not only had he and Springer both graduated as cadets, but that they would be sharing the same dorm room.

  Putting aside the dark knowledge that sharing a dorm had been no coincidence, Springer managed a semblance of a smile long enough for McEwan to say: “It’s a deal.”

  He grinned, nodded, and walked off. The instant he did, Springer’s expression soured.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She’d get through this.

  She had to.

  — Chapter 77 —

  Arun chased his quarry along the Cryo Deck walkway as the charged metal lattice curved up and around to service another row of empty icer pods.

  “Slow down!” he yelled, laughing. Now that Beowulf had reached safe intra-system cruising speed, she wasn’t due another engine burn until they left the system. The ship had returned to zero-g, which made thundering along the walkway a clumsy business. How much of his swaying was down to the lack of gravity and how much to the alcohol he’d consumed was anyone’s guess.

  Arun halted and creased his forehead. Springer had disappeared!

  Where the hell had she gotten to?

  The answer came clear as his quarry let out an ululating battle cry that jerked Arun’s gaze upward. Springer had clambered onto a bank of pods and was leaping down at him with arms outstretched before her.

  Without gravity, her mock attack looked hilarious. Springer drifted down into his arms like a lazy feather, Arun laughing all the way.

  She flicked her hair from her eyes and looked up at him from his embrace. And burst into uncontrollable fits of giggle.

  “You’re drunk,” he accused.

  She poked him in the nose. “No, you’re drunk.”

  Arun’s laughter choked off. He wasn’t seventeen any more. He didn’t know if he could still play this kind of game. Seriousness kept ambushing him. “Why bring me here?” he asked.

  The drunkenness drained from Springer’s eyes. “Remember when your bad twin had us frozen here, you and me?”

  “And the rest of Indigo Squad.”

  “Yes, but when Indiya’s team freed this strange young Marine, Arun McEwan, who seemed so important, you insisted they free me too.”

  “And I was right to do so.”

  “I want to remember how it felt.” She gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “You and me together. A team. One last time.”

  “Don’t say ‘last time’ as if you mean it. Night Hummers, Conspiracies. Hardits. I have enemies on every side, my first campaign was a disaster, and the more intelligence I gather, the more I understand that I’ve been following a set of instructions written down long before I was born. I need you more than ever, Phaedra, because you are the only thing in this frakked-up galaxy that feels real.”

  She pressed a finger to his lips, and shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it, Springer, what’s wrong?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve been playing you for a long while, Arun. The Colonel ordered me to befriend you. To protect your body and your mind. A long, long time ago.”

  “When? What?” He thought a moment. “When you were moved to my novice class?”

  She nodded dolefully. “I was ten, Arun. You used to say we were built for each other, but I was only ever borrowing you. You were built for a great destiny. You were never really mine, even as kids. There would always come a time when I’d have to let you fly free.”

  Arun grabbed her face and stared into those violet pools. “Springer. You were a ten-year-old obeying an alien so fearsome that he used to make veteran Marines crap themselves. I had to face Colonel Little Scar’s wrath once, so I know. Hey, is this the secret your mad AI was talking about when we were cooped up on the Reserve Captain’s hidey-hole on the hull?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said, though truthfully it was too big a shock for the hurt to penetrate yet. “I love you, Springer. I don’t care about destiny. Even supposing I really do have some great role to play, you mean more to me than my place in history.”

  Hurt clouded her eyes.

  Hell, what had he done wrong? Hadn’t he just said the right thing, and through gritted teeth too?

  “I’ve had my time with you,” Springer said, as if each word were coated in the poison that tipped Umarov’s combat blades. “And now you must soar to meet your destiny… with someone else at your side.”

  “No. No! I’m not buying it, Springer. This sad-mouthing isn’t you at all.”

  Still in his arms, Springer turned her head away. “Don’t let it end on a sour note, Arun. Our memories are worth more than that. You’ve always had an eye for exotic women. Look Indiya up. Since she vaped Themistocles, she’s shut down inside. You’d be good for each other.”

  “Indiya doesn’t need me. She has control over her hormone system. She can make herself happy on demand.” Did he really just tell Springer he loved her?

  “She doesn’t feel she deserves to be happy,” said Springer.

  “I don’t want Indiya.”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

  Why was Springer being such an annoying little skangat? “If you’re trying to test me then let’s not forget Puja, because I never have. She’s smart and a little too beautiful, if you know what I mean. But, hey, I could live with that. And those icers that we start thawing tonight. If they’re ancient, they’re going to be close to baseline Earth humans. That makes them exotic, which is kind of my thing, as you keep telling me. Gotta be some hot girls in those ice boxes. I can’t help finding them exciting.”

  “Of course you can’t! It’s the way you’re built, a breeding engine for long–laid alien battle plans. You’re not programmed to be a one–woman man, McEwan. You can’t help it.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you in my clumsy way. I can help it, Springer. It won’t be easy, but nothing of value ever is. I don’t want them. I choose you.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re an officer. I never will be.”

  “For frakk’s sake, stop pushing me away! We can do this, Springer. Together. Who cares what others think?”

  “Oh, Arun, you’re so simple.” She began to cry, but Arun couldn’t tell whether they were tears of happiness.

  He shifted her down into a standing position on the charged walkway, and closed his arms around her, wrapping her into an embrace that fitted together so perfectly. How had he forgotten how right this felt?

  He’d hoped to calm her, but his hold had the opposite effect, releasing a trembling such as he’d never known from her.

  The moment stretched uncomfortably; Springer’s sobbing showed no signs of calming. Arun nuzzled her neck, breathing in her heady scent.

  If he could, Arun would mingle his tears with hers.

  But he couldn’t.

  Because Arun wasn’t human. He was a machine, engineered and bred. Selected emotional responses had been cut from him, replacements spliced in their place. The conspiracy within a conspiracy had cut open the standard Marine design and grafted a supercomputer onto his mind. Inside him the pain of loss piled up onto the guilt of failure, weighing him down but whatever channels drained the pain from normal humans wer
e dammed up in him.

  His nuzzling grew more urgent… until suddenly he snapped his head back as if punished by an electric shock.

  “What is it, Arun?” snuffled Springer.

  How could he answer truthfully? To feel gorge-rising distress at the sight and sound of a weeping woman was hard-wired into him. But the intimacy of comforting Springer, the sense of connecting to another person he cared so much about was so powerful that it was arousing. How had he been corrupted into a man turned on by a woman’s tears?

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “Never,” he answered. Words were Springer’s domain. Instead of saying more, he replied by nuzzling her again, burying his nose into her short auburn curls, and layering caressing kisses against her neck. His kisses became urgent, angry.

  At first, Springer responded in kind. She soon escalated, grabbing the hair that had grown while Arun was on campaign, and he’d never thought to shave away.

  Her kisses against his neck grew frantic. She sank her teeth into his ear, making him yelp.

  Blood bubbled from his ear, growing into a crimson globule.

  He remembered Indiya biting his ear in a tiny compartment in this same ship. Could Indiya ever find release? Her burdens were even greater than his.

  Springer slapped him. “Don’t you drift away,” she growled. “I want you here and now. I want you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  She looked up at him with eyes blazing with violet. “Love me! Switch off your frakking planner head and love me now.”

  A serene calm softened Springer’s face. She pulled away and looked up at him, her eyes gleaming sapphires, shining through a glaze of tears. A dimple came to the undamaged side of her mouth. A classic Springer challenge.

  He gave a deep sigh of pleasure. “Follow me,” he said.

  He backed away off the charged metal walkway that ran alongside the bank of empty cryo pods and carried them both into the empty space of the cryo deck’s interior, drifting serenely through the air.

  Her smile spread to her eyes.

  Arun locked his legs around her hips. His fingers undid the clasp at the neck of her Marine fatigues, undoing the fasteners, working down from her neck to her breasts, and onto her belly, caressing each newly uncovered marvel of her flesh.

  “Life’s too short to skirmish around your objective, Arun.” She thrust herself out of her fatigues, before attacking his clothing, stripping him with frantic urgency. She paused, suddenly. She brushed her fingers over the three diamond-shaped scars on each of his broad shoulders.

  “General McEwan,” she whispered, kissing his diamond welts. “I forgot you were scarred too.”

  “I’m not scarred where it matters,” he said with a grin.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Neither am I.”

  Arun had to fight to retain his grin. There was a painful darkness behind Springer’s playful words.

  Springer seemed to shake away whatever was bothering her. She peeled away her underwear and squeezed out of his embrace, floating nakedly in front of him.

  “Well?” She challenged.

  The way her breasts floated in zero–g mesmerized him. Springer seemed to delight in his fascination, and began jiggling her body. The globes of her breasts squashed and bounced wildly, free of gravity’s pull. Arun couldn’t keep his eyes off her display, and the fact that one breast was puckered with burn scars meant nothing.

  Springer pointedly looked down at his groin. “I can tell you like what you see.”

  “Oh, yes. But…” his words faltered.

  Worry made her frown.

  “I have my own confession,” Arun whispered.

  “Go on…”

  “I’m a virgin.”

  She exploded in laughter. “Only in zero–g, lover. No matter. We can learn together.”

  He reached for her, to pull her into his arms, but she too far away. He flailed, but the bulkheads, deck, and overhead were all too far away to push against. She was out of range!

  Springer rolled her eyes. “You’re such a man, Arun. Here, stretch out your arm.”

  He reached out his arm and she did the same, linking fingers and drawing them together.

  She whispered into his ear. “Relax, Arun. I told you we’d learn this together.” A hungry look came into her eyes. “But don’t relax too much,” she growled, reaching down to grasp his manhood.

  ——

  After a blissful age floating in a post-coital ball, Springer peered into Arun’s eyes and whispered: “I’ve seen the future.”

  He smiled. “Endless diaper changes for our legion of children?”

  Pain flickered across her face, worse than if he’d slapped her.

  “What?” Arun frowned. He couldn’t work this out. “I know you talk often of children, Phaedra. You’ve been dropping it in the conversation ever since our cadet dorm room back in Detroit. I have noticed. I’ve always had such a hard time believing I would live past the next few waking months that the idea of raising my own children seemed the ultimate hubris. But since I met Romulus and Remus… Lately, I’ve been thinking strange new thoughts about having children of my own… of our own. Our children, Phaedra.”

  “I’m sterile.”

  “What?” A sense of horror scratched its way up his spine… “But…?”All those little clues he’d missed now seemed clear. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “I lost a leg. I’m badly scarred. In an existence where adult life expectancy is measured in months, it didn’t exactly top my list of injuries.”

  “I’m sorry, Springer. So sorry.” He moved to nuzzle her, but she dodged her head away. “Isn’t there a way? Artificial gene-combing to splice your DNA with someone healthy? A womb-pod?”

  His words dried up. The distant stare in Springer’s eyes told him that the answer was no. She’d explored every medical avenue and they all ended only in darkness.

  She explained in a monotone. “The plasma blast I took on Antilles corrupted my DNA. The Reserve Captain has given me self-replicating medical nanobots to war against cancer. It’s a constant rearguard battle, a fight that I can never win, and will only end when I die. And if it weren’t for the bots, I’d be dead within months. I can persist. But a next generation of Springers…? Nothing can repair me to that extent. I’m broken, Arun. Broken!”

  He felt acid in his stomach.

  “Hide your pity, Arun,” she said. “Please. That wasn’t what I meant when I told you I’d fore-seen. Saraswati is helping me make sense of my pre-cognitive sense. I can finally see things that haven’t yet happened. And you, Arun, start a ruling dynasty.”

  “What? Like an emperor?”

  “I don’t know the frakking details!”

  “An emperor would need an empress, or a… What were they called? A queen.” He gave a half-smile, desperate to ease away from the cloying mood of tragedy. “Queen Phaedra the First,” he announced formally. “Hey, that means we get to wear crowns, and sit our butts on an ornate–”

  He never saw the punch coming. In zero-g without a solid surface to push off against, Springer’s fist packed little power, but enough that he could smell the blood streaming from his smarting nostrils.

  Her eyes glowed with a far deeper pain than he felt in his nose. “I don’t know who your queen will be, Major. Queens, actually, if my vision is right. But neither can possibly be me. Dynasties aren’t about titles and crowns, they’re about lineage, and I’m sterile. Remember?”

  Arun wanted to tell her he was sorry, that they would work it out… But he finally understood. There was no way out of this.

  “That’s right,” said Springer without rancor. “Let me go while the memories are still beautiful. If we took the easy path, I’d only be marking time for my replacement – your first queen that history will write about. I’m just the little girl you fooled around with as a kid. A short paragraph in the opening chapter of your biography. The knowledge would eat me up inside worse than the cancer. Let me be, Ar
un.”

  Without warning, she kicked out at Arun’s gut, not to hurt him but to steal enough momentum to scoop up her clothes and glide to the walkway.

  As he floated to the opposite bulkhead, Arun turned his back on Springer so he wouldn’t have to see her leave.

  Eventually he crashed in slow motion into a power conduit, and hung there naked because he couldn’t think of anything that mattered enough to do. He knew he was supposed to be somewhere, to do something… to be someone. But whatever it was, it couldn’t fix his world.

  Twenty minutes passed. He heard footsteps below him, but ignored them. Whoever those footsteps belonged to chose well when they decided not to ask Arun what he was doing. They soon departed.

  But only for a few minutes, replaced by a lighter footfall.

  “Major McEwan!” announced Umarov. “You’re wanted over on Deck 6. The Navy have slowed the thawing as much as possible but this guy, Matias, is going to revive within the next ten minutes. With or without you.”

  “Matias?” The name was enough to start Arun’s mind rebooting.

  “You remember?” Umarov prodded. “The climax of the big party? Matias is the first of the ancient icers to wake. All we know is his name. Figured you’d want to be there to learn more.”

  “Matias! Yes, of course. Help me get my things.”

  “One step ahead of you, Major,” said Umarov, throwing a thruster belt up to Arun’s position.

  — Chapter 78 —

  Before the Navy crew had revived the ancient human, they had known two things about him, assuming the writing on the icer pod was accurate. The occupant was male, and his name was Matias.

  The first part was evidently true as they all watched the naked man blinking at the small crowd of officers gathered around the walkway on Cryo Deck 6.

  And they had learned a third fact too. The figure was puny. Short and skinny, lacking the elfin grace of the Navy or the ruggedness of Arun’s generation of Marines. He didn’t look like a fighter, and Arun wondered how much of the more deeply hidden re-engineering of modern Marines was absent in this earlier model.

  Arun tried to keep the disappointment from his voice as he began the debriefing. “Matias? Can you hear me, Matias?”