The Legionnaires

by T. C. McCarthy

  “Take us in.”

  I was nervous. My groups moved to their assigned locations and there shouldn’t have been anything to worry about, it was just another training exercise—our last. But it wasn’t. The excitement of completing basic evaporated, replaced by a sense that something was off, like maybe we had always been cursed and only now would it hit. Jennifer moved her team atop one of the waste-containment berms overlooking the main entrance. She stumbled up the slope. It took them longer than the others to set up their auto-Maxwell, and while I scrambled up to join them I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to go wrong.

  Once the teams had settled into their positions, I passed the word to activate chameleon skins. Our suits functioned the same way real combat ones did, so had been coated with a polymer that, when activated, mimicked the wearers’ immediate surroundings. By now I should have been used to it. But when one by one my people disappeared, their suits masking all thermal emissions and the skins making them completely invisible, I felt alone. Only blinking dots on my map said otherwise.

  “Positions set,” I announced, and the lights blinked from red to green.

  Then we waited. Winds picked up so that whenever a gust blew across the mine entrance it howled, and at first I heard the sounds of Buttons and her teams as they moved their way deeper into the mountain. A second later we lost them in mid-transmission.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  Jennifer stirred next to me but all I saw was a patch of shimmering air. “What’s wrong?”

  “Relays. We forgot the relays.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Negative. Send your—”

  Before I finished, a craft appeared on the horizon, and our perimeter warning alarms tripped, piercing my eardrums with a loud beeping until I cut them off. The alarm meant that whoever was coming, they weren’t supposed to even be on the planet.

  “Anyone see who that is?” I asked, and one after another the girls radioed in that they couldn’t tell. A second craft appeared then, larger than the first, and as soon as I saw it—a huge ore transporter, almost two hundred meters long, that settled with a boom near the main entrance—I knew things had just gotten worse. Toly confirmed it.

  “Raiders.” Her voice over the radio startled me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Raiders, Grandmother—they’ve come to scavenge for equipment, ore, whatever they can get their hands on. Might be Chinese, you can’t tell from the ship but trust me, I know. I used to be one. This is bad. They’ll kill rather than be taken.”

  Unease turned into fear, which then shifted into terror. Everything moved in slow motion, and when the transport’s loading ramp lowered to release a gang of men I thought they looked strange; I almost didn’t recognize them as human. All of them had a dirty appearance, unshaven, and I had spent so much time in the Legion now that their bearing screamed disorganization—telegraphed a lack of discipline. But none of that helped. Toly’s announcement had sent a shock through me, and sweat covered my palms, making the insides of my gauntlets feel slick and uncertain. This was the real deal, and despite the fact that we had spent the last two months training for exactly this—combat—my mind turned into concrete. A wrong decision would kill everyone.

  “Grandmother?” Toly asked. “What do you want us to do?”

  Half the men were armed, some with Maxwell carbines, others with grenade launchers, and they took up defensive positions as the rest offloaded equipment. There was no way to get into the mine now, no way to move in and relay communications with the rest of our unit, with the corporal. Buttons was cut off.

  “Grandmother? Goddamn it!”

  Toly’s anger made something click. I had begun to shake and my breathing had gotten so loud that it was all I heard until a calmness swept over me, melting the sensation of horror and paralysis. I recalled the hundreds of times we had trained for contact, mentally ticked through the checklist, and repeated the words over the radio.

  “Maxwells at full power, safeties off.”

  I checked my map. The other ship was out there, but it was obvious we hadn’t been spotted. Most of my girls held positions at the mine’s secondary entrances, far from the main one, and would be of no use unless I got them closer.

  “Teams one through four, move to new positions.” I marked spots on the map that would surround our visitors, and sent the updated tactical plot.

  It all happened slowly. The green dots turned red again and crept over my heads-up display, and I heard the men’s voices as they relaxed and began talking. The terror almost returned. Waiting for my girls to move left plenty of time to convince myself that our visitors would notice us and open fire, and I began to think we should run.

  The dots finally turned green, and Toly clicked back in. “We’re ready, Grandmother.”

  “Open fire.” It didn’t even sound like me when I said it.

  The auto-Maxwells functioned on the same principle as our carbines. A ceramic-encased alloy barrel wrapped in a series of electromagnets propelled a stream of flechettes down its barrel at high enough velocities that the projectiles cracked when they broke the sound barrier. But with the auto-cannons the flechettes were huge. And every other round was a high-explosive armor-piercing one, which, as I watched, tore the men apart. One man disintegrated as he sprinted for the ship’s ramp. Another screamed just before his head popped from his shoulders and rolled along the ground to stop against the mine railway, a grimace frozen on his face.

  When our rockets slammed into the ship’s sides I realized I had forgotten something, and radioed back to base that we had made contact with an unknown enemy.

  “Is this a training exercise?” a voice asked.

  “No it’s not a damn exercise,” I shouted and then ended the discussion. Who cared what they did with the information? Our base was too far for them to offer rapid assistance anyway.

  We had begun to get the upper hand when the ship overhead roared in. Things happened so quickly that it was hard to focus on any one event, the chaos making me chew the inside of my cheek until it bled. Then one of my green lights blinked out at the same time that I saw an explosion, and the ship banked away to turn for a second pass, to target another of our positions. Jennifer’s auto-cannon zipped loudly nearby, and it looked as though the ship had zeroed in on the firing signature so that when the craft grew larger in my faceplate I buried my head in the dirt, hoping that I would sink into the ground, willing myself to become smaller.

  Nothing happened. I looked up to see the ship wheeling silently, end over end, before it slammed into one of the waste ponds along with two rockets that chased it.

  “Grandmother,” said Toly, “we need Buttons.”

  I ran. I couldn’t even see anything except tracer flechettes as they cut the air, sounding like angry hornets if they got close enough. By now the men had organized a defense and there were more of them, their volume of fire getting heavier. It didn’t matter that we were invisible. Our flechettes and rockets traced back to the weapons, and another of our positions went silent when one of the men fired a salvo of grenades that landed dead on. Before I knew that I had even made it I was inside the mine entrance, my vision kit shifting to light amplification.

  At first I heard only static. But once far enough inside I got through to the corporal and told him what was happening. The air grew heavy then, and my vision blurred so that I had trouble deciphering the damage report on my heads-up: three hits on my left leg. Funny, I thought, just before passing out, I never even felt them hit.

  The battle ended almost as soon as it had begun. We held the first wave of mantes using a heavy volume of fire, but soon we had to limit our shots to short bursts, then singles when the ammunition had all but run out. One of the girls screamed. A mante had jammed its foreleg through a firing port, skewered her through the chest, and was trying to pull her outside where it would tear her to pieces. Lucy yanked out her combat knife and chopped its leg off, too late. The girl d
ied before we got her below.

  “Retreat,” I ordered, and punched the command into the net just in case my voice didn’t carry.

  I wanted to go first. The urge to dive through the floor hatch nearly overcame me, so that I had to force myself to stand still as the girls disappeared through the hole. All around, mantes shoved their forearms through the ports, doing their best to get at me, and I noticed that with each push their claws dislodged concrete. What were those things made of? Whatever it was the stuff was strong enough that eventually they’d break through and I already heard them working at the roof hatch, slamming their claws on the steel. Finally it was my turn and I closed the floor hatch behind me, so that the sounds became muffled.

  Heidi waited for me at the bottom of the ladder. “You want the good news or the bad?” she asked.

  “Dammit, Heidi…”

  “Fine, fine. The good news is that I finally got through and made contact with orbital. They’re sending an attack ship down, and it should arrive in twelve hours.”

  The girls closest to us popped their helmets and grinned, hugging each other at the news. I didn’t feel so happy; it wasn’t clear that we would last twelve hours.

  “The bad news?”

  Heidi frowned. “We just lost the communications tower.”

  “So now all we can do is stay alive.” I left and found Lucy on the other side of the chamber. “Move everyone down to the lower level, kids first. I want a four-man team positioned up here so they can fire on anything that tries to come down here from the bunker. Give them all remaining ammunition.”

  Lucy passed on the order and then looked at me. “What will we use if they get us in the lower level?”

  “Knives.”

  Eight hours later we heard the mantes in the bunker above. I had stayed behind with the fire team and we sealed our helmets again, never taking our eyes off the tiny hatch a hundred meters overhead. The mantes pounded on it, sending bits of concrete to patter on the floor.

  I wasn’t scared this time. On my orders Lucy had taken a Maxwell with a full hopper of flechettes, and if they broke through us she was to kill the children as quickly as possible—so they wouldn’t suffer. The rest of the girls would overdose on combat drugs. All I felt was a kind of happiness, that in a few hours either we would be saved or I’d have a reunion with my children and husband. It wasn’t a bad situation at all, I decided. Either way I won.

  Three hours later the hatch slammed onto the floor next to us, and my team opened fire. Mantes fell down the ladder, their limbs clanking against the rungs, and collected inside the safety rings so that within ten minutes the ladder resembled a soda straw that had filled with gray crud. Then they got creative. The ones still at the top hacked at the steel rods connecting the ladder to the ceiling, the pinging noise so loud that it overloaded our audio pickups. My girls fired at them, carefully aiming at the exposed limbs. It didn’t matter. As soon as one was injured another took its place, and eventually the ladder groaned as it swung over in the huge chamber, smashing an entire row of bunk beds when it hit.

  Mantes rained down from the ceiling. The fall injured most of them but one clambered over the wreckage and directly toward me. I fired my carbine on full auto, watching as the tracers cut into its head, punching through to the other side.

  “Fall back!” I shouted, just before being knocked off my feet.

  One of the things shrieked from above. At first I thought it was the signal for them to continue their attack, but no more dropped from the ceiling hatch and when a muffled blast sent chunks of concrete to the floor I realized what had caused me to fall. Bombardment. The attack ship had arrived, early, and was bombing the ground above us, clearing the topside of mantes. My girls stood as best they could amid the tremors, and moved through the remaining creatures, finishing off any that had made it down, and a few minutes later it ended. We were safe.

  The shouts of joy from my helmet speakers made it hard to concentrate.

  “Great,” I said, to no one in particular. “There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that, Grandmother?” Lucy had sneaked up from below, and one by one the others joined us.

  I pointed to the crumpled ladder. “How do we get out?”

  “Grandmother, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. But right now there’s a little boy down there who keeps asking to see you.”

  I ran to the floor hatch, screaming for the girls to make a path, and all I thought of was that for the children it was just beginning, that living might be more difficult than dying. They’d be all alone now.

  The corporal stood alone on the parade ground, his uniform gone and replaced by a dirty-white set of pajamas. Colonel Jordi, the base commander, read aloud from the podium.

  “A casualty report from the 108th Training Battalion, resulting from enemy action at Nimes mining station twelve, on June twelfth, 2497, Earth calendar. Twenty volunteers from the heavy weapons section. Shinja Nikito, heavy weapons specialist, died of enemy fire. Francine Fillipovich, heavy weapons specialist, died of enemy fire…” As the colonel read through all the names I felt my knees begin to buckle. The doctors had allowed me to stand with my unit, but my leg injuries hadn’t yet healed and I leaned forward on a pair of crutches. He read Jennifer’s name. Cause of death? Drowning. I hadn’t noticed during the battle because of the chaos and terror, but even before the action had started Jennifer got scared and decided to run, making it about fifty meters before the berm collapsed beneath her. She rolled into one of the waste pools and eventually suffocated.

  By the time he finished reading the names tears were streaming down my face.

  “Corporal Fedorov, I accuse you of gross negligence and failure to carry out your duties in combat, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of Legionnaire volunteers. Do you dispute this charge?”

  Wind whistled over the girls’ armor, and dust got in my eyes, making it hard to see. At first the corporal didn’t say anything. Then he looked up and met the colonel’s stare.

  “No, Colonel.”

  “Fine.” He tucked the digital pad into a pouch at his side and clasped both hands behind his back. The colonel’s kepi was jet-black. Its color fixed my attention because it looked as though the material soaked up the very light, a black hole so strong that it dimmed the air around us in an attempt to suck the life from Nimes itself. “You deserve death. But since your record speaks for itself, a lifetime of exemplary service, it is my decision that you shall serve four weeks of corporal punishment, followed by expulsion from the Legion and loss of all privileges. Dismissed.”

  Two military police grabbed the corporal’s arms to lead him away and for the first time I saw that his ankles had been shackled. I was about to leave when I noticed my unit. Toly popped her helmet and walked closer, the rest of her friends following.

  “You froze out there, Grandmother.”

  “I know.”

  “You could’ve killed us.” She spat on the ground and my skin went cold. Toly didn’t have to tell me what I had done. After I came to in the infirmary it only took a day to convince myself that Jennifer was my fault, that I should have seen her cowardice and alerted the corporal. From there it was an easy step, no leap at all. They were all my fault.

  I started crying and she slapped me. “Cut that shit out, you wanted the Legion and now you’ve got it.”

  “I killed them. It was all because of me.”

  A group of girls arranged themselves between us and the camp so that others couldn’t see what was happening, and the chill became a horrifying thought: they were angry enough to murder.

  “It was all because of me,” Toly repeated, mocking. Her fist slammed into my gut, knocking the crutches away so that I collapsed in the dust, the wind knocked out. “Francine is dead. Not because you froze, because you forgot to set up relays.” Her boot smashed into the side of my face then and I nearly blacked out. “That was for Francine.”

  The other Russians followed. One after another they took turns beati
ng and kicking me, their curses interlaced with spitting so that by the end of it I was covered with mud and dust, blood streaming from my mouth.

  The others left and Buttons knelt by my face. “They’re wrong, it’s not your fault, but you needed this lesson.”

  “What?” The tears wouldn’t stop. Being beaten didn’t bother me, if anything it helped because it felt like I had paid at least some price for what I had done. If I’d learned nothing else during my experience at the mine, I had learned one thing: I was part coward too, like Jennifer. What Toly and the others had done was how the Legion took care of cowards, and in a way the process served as a kind of absolution, a bless-me-for-I-have-sinned kind of thing where their beatings took the place of Hail Marys and Our Fathers. I was half crying from relief.

  “I said it’s not your fault, none of us expected combat so soon and what happened to you could have happened to anyone. Yeah, you forgot the relays. But so did everyone else, we were exhausted, had no business being that far out. Yeah, you froze. But then you got moving and made the right calls. You screwed up, took your punishment, and now we forgive you, but this is what will happen next. When you return to the unit, you’ll have already lost control of the heavy weapons section to Toly. We have a new corporal and it’s already been arranged. Then you do as you’re told and all will be forgotten. You’re back in the family now, Grandmother, this is just another lesson. Got it?”

  I nodded and Buttons helped me to my feet, handing me my crutches. When I made it to my bunk a nurse saw the new injuries and called the doctor, but luckily I passed out before they asked how I got them. In the end nothing else happened. Two weeks later we found ourselves in a transport bound for Lavigne, a kepi blanc perched atop my head. It felt awkward—as if I didn’t really deserve the cap or the title of Legionnaire. For the briefest moment I thought about those mistakes again, thought maybe I wasn’t the best, maybe I had screwed up and was more than part coward, and a glare from Toly underscored my doubt, bringing back the corporal’s first words.