The plan made sense. He’d speak to Surekill in the morning. A feeling of peace and tranquillity flooded Hardman’s soul. It felt good to solve such a troubling problem. He stood, welcomed Booly to the stage, and swept the audience with his eyes.
“An enemy stands before us, but he fought bravely and deserves our respect. He, like the wind, the rain, and the snow, was sent to strengthen us, to make us hard. And we are hard. Hard enough to survive where other creatures die, hard enough to fight the Legion, hard enough to win our planet back!”
The strange undulating cry came from deep within a thousand throats, echoed back and forth off cavern walls, and sent a chill down Booly’s spine.
General Ian St. James raised his wineglass. The man on the other side of the snowy-white tablecloth did the same. His name was Alexander Dasser, eldest son to the famous Madam Dasser, and formerly a lieutenant in the 3rd REI. He still wore his hair high and tight, kept his body trim, and knew how to drink.
“Vive la Legion!”
“Vive la Legion!”
The men drained their glasses, put them down, and grinned at each over the dinner table. They had been friends since entering the Legion together many, many years before. Dasser had served his time and resigned his commission to run part of the family’s far-flung business empire.
St. James had stayed, risen steadily through the ranks, and become a general. He smiled.
“You look well, Alex.”
“And you, Ian.”
“And your family?”
The merchant shrugged. “We live in troubled times, my friend. We are extremely concerned about the Hudathan menace.”
St. James nodded soberly. “So are we. I have orders to prepare for a possible withdrawal.”
Dasser smiled grimly. “Yes, I know. General Mosby has fought against it, as has my mother. But Admiral Scolari keeps pounding away, and the Emperor is weak, if not entirely out of his mind.”
St. James felt his heart beat just a little bit faster at the mention of Mosby’s name. His eyes narrowed. He looked around the candlelit room. There were about thirty tables and half were occupied. No one seemed especially interested in the general or his guest, but it paid to be careful.
“Careful, Alex. The empire has many eyes and ears. Even here.”
Dasser nodded noncommittally and poured some more wine.
The officer struggled to keep his voice neutral. “How is General Mosby doing with her new assignment?”
The other man chuckled. “Well, that depends on how you measure success. The general is bright, and an extremely capable officer, but I’m afraid that it’s her body that the Emperor likes best.”
St. James felt himself drawn like a moth to the flame. Sensing the danger, feeling the heat, but unable to resist.
“General Mosby and the Emperor?”
Dasser nodded. “That’s what they say. My mother hopes that it’s true. The Emperor’s bed is one battlefield on which Mosby should be able to defeat Scolari hands down. Or bottoms up, as the case may be.”
St. James fought for control. Dasser didn’t know, couldn’t know, about his affair with Mosby, and hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. But the pain was just as intense as if he had.
“In any case,” Dasser said, “here’s a little something from the general herself.” He pushed a data cube across the table.
St. James was far from surprised. The Legion had long maintained channels of communication separate from those provided by government. Some of those channels were electronic in nature, some were robotic, but the most useful tended to be living, breathing human beings, ex-legionnaires mostly, but others as well, which taken together were part of a vast interlocking network, built on loyalty, trust, and a thousand years of tradition.
The officer reached out, took the cube, and slipped it into a pocket.
The rest of the meal was pure hell. St. James wanted to leave the table, wanted to rush to his quarters, wanted to see Mosby’s face on his ceiling. But that would be unseemly, and more than that, downright rude, so he forced himself to stay.
The conversation went on and on, the courses came and went with maddening slowness, and the cube seemed to press against his skin. Taunting him, teasing him, robbing him of all reason.
St. James knew it was stupid, knew that the contents would leave him disappointed, but couldn’t help himself. Fantasies flooded his mind. He had visions of an apologetic Mosby, contrite after her fling with the Emperor, begging his forgiveness. He saw the two of them coming together, getting married, and having children. Even if it meant their careers, meant leaving the Legion, meant living as civilians.
Dasser droned at him all the while, talking about the Hudatha, walking the thin edge of treason. He didn’t say so in as many words, but hinted at a secret cabal, a group with plans to overthrow the Emperor.
The message was clear. The Legion should align itself with the Cabal, should oppose Admiral Scolari, or plan on dying with the rest of the empire. The Hudatha were strong. The Hudatha were ruthless. And the Hudatha were coming. Any sign of weakness, any sign of retreat, would serve to bring them on that much faster.
St. James believed the other man, and agreed with him, but couldn’t wait for the conversation to end. The fantasies were too strong, too compelling to ignore.
The meal was finally over.
The men rose, embraced each other, said the traditional goodbyes, and headed for their separate quarters, Dasser to add to the encrypted notes in his minicomp, St. James to play the data cube.
The officer forced himself to be patient, to walk slowly, to return the salutes, to enter his quarters as if there was nothing on his mind, nothing burning a hole through his pocket, nothing urging him to run and cram the cube into the player.
Then he was in his room, lying back on his bed, staring upwards as the ceiling blurred, divided itself into a million bits of light, and coalesced into a likeness of Marianne Mosby.
She was as beautiful as ever, but all business, and not the least bit apologetic. What she said echoed what he’d heard at dinner.
Conditions had become steadily worse. The Hudathans had taken more of the outlying planets. Scolari continued to recommend a retreat. A retreat that would leave even more frontier worlds vulnerable to attack, that would force the Legion to abandon Algeron, that would centralize power in the admiral’s hands. No one knew what the Emperor thought, or would finally decide, but it didn’t look good.
When the recording was over, and the ceiling had returned to its normal appearance, St. James allowed himself to cry. Not for the empire, not for the Legion, but for himself.
They woke Angel Perez, now known by his nom de guerre, Sal Salazar, with little or no ceremony. One moment he was nothing, a mindless, shapeless, colorless mote floating in a sea of darkness, and the next moment he was himself again, a cyborg, conscious of the systems that were coming up all around him, racking focus to see the med tech’s face. She was middle-aged, had a scar across her face, and the words “cut here” tattooed around her neck. She looked into his vid cams as if aware that he was looking at her.
“Welcome to Algeron, home of the Legion, and all that other crap.”
Then it came to him, his graduation from boot camp, acceptance into the Legion, and departure for Advanced Combat School on Algeron. A departure made simple by adding his brain box to a fifty-borg rack, hooking him to a computer-controlled life support system, and sending him to la-la land on a tidal wave of drugs.
After all, why ship big bulky Trooper II bodies all over the place when you didn’t have to? It was cheaper and easier to ship brain boxes separately and plug them in when they arrived.
Salazar was about to reply to the med tech’s greeting when he realized that something was wrong. Very wrong.
The feedback, the readouts, the sensors, none of them were right. He ordered his left arm to move, looked for the air-cooled, link-fed .50 caliber machine gun that should have been there and saw a Class Three, Model IV, cyber hand with t
actile feedback and opposable thumb instead.
“What the hell?”
The med tech shook her head sympathetically. “Don’t panic, big boy. We’re running a bit short on Trooper IIs, that’s all. Should get a shipment any day now.” The woman straightened and put hands on her hips. “Hey, big boy, you tell me. Which is better? A bi-form or a whole lotta shelf time?”
The idea of sitting helpless in his brain box, listening to neuro-fed music or playing electro-games made Salazar’s nonexistent skin crawl.
“I’ll take the bi-form.”
The med tech nodded. “That’s what I thought. Now, take a break while I check your systems.”
The systems check was over fifteen minutes later. Salazar received a temporary assignment to the 1st RE and headed for admin.
It wasn’t difficult to find his way through Fort Camerone’s labyrinthine passageways thanks to the schematics available from the bi-form’s data base. No, the hard part was getting used to his insubstantial body.
Intended for light utility chores, and completely unarmed, the bi-form weighed about 250 pounds, one-quarter the weight of a fully armed Trooper II, and was therefore a good deal more maneuverable. Salazar felt like a truck driver in a sports car.
He was a bit clumsy at first and had a tendency to overreact, but soon got over it. He missed the Trooper II’s bulk, however, and the sense of power that went with wearing one, especially when he saw veteran borgs swaggering down the corridors.
He knew that most of them were jerks, like the men and women he’d known in boot camp, but that didn’t stop him from admiring their style. The worn armor, the carefully maintained body art, the equipment mods, all the little things that set them aside and marked them for what they were—survivors. Something Salazar wanted to be as well, which meant that he’d have to separate the substance from the swagger and keep the part that had value.
Of equal interest were the khaki-clad bio bods, the camopainted robots, the murals depicting glorious death, the holo pix of dead heroes and heroines, the animated dioramas of battles past, the E-boards listing that day’s events, a heavily armed patrol clumping towards an elevator, and in one hallway, the sight of two handcuffed Naa warriors, heads up, eyes bright, being led towards the intelligence section.
Yes, the hallways were fascinating, which made the admin section all the more boring. It was huge, and divided into subsections with names like “Logistics,” “Supplies,” “Intelligence,” “Budget,” and “Personnel.”
The latter seemed like one of the most boring places to work, so it was only natural that a bio-bod noncom named Dister would assign him there and place him under the direct supervision of a borg named Villain.
Dister was a stumpy little man with protruding ears and a huge nose. His uniform was wrinkled and strained where a sizable potbelly pressed against it. His voice was loud and easily heard over the humming noises made by the computers that surrounded them. Everything was white, blue, or gray, and shaped like a box. The noncom spoke and Salazar listened.
“The work is relatively easy-hell, real easy after boot camp-and certainly won’t overload your circuits. You’ll find that Villain is competent enough, though crabby as hell and a bit short-tempered. She was hit first time out and hasn’t recovered yet.”
Salazar wanted to know more, wanted to hear about the battle, but Dister turned a corner and another bi-form appeared. Except for an ID plate that read “Villain,” it looked exactly like he did.
Her bi-form stood six feet tall, had an ovoid head, side-mounted vid cams, a lightly armored chest cage, skeletal arms, equally skeletal legs, and a pair of four-toed feet. They were encased in rubber and squeaked when she moved. She nodded towards Dister.
“Corporal.”
Dister gestured towards Salazar. “Meet your new assistant. Name’s Salazar. Straight from boot camp. Show him the ropes.”
Salazar noticed that Villain didn’t even glance in his direction. Her vid cams whirred as she zoomed in on Dister. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want an assistant.”
The bio bod’s eyes narrowed. His voice grew softer instead of louder. “Oh, really? Well, I don’t give a shit what you want. Salazar is your assistant, so get used to it.”
There was moment of silence, and for one brief second Salazar felt sure that Villain would object, but the moment passed. Her voice was dead, empty of all emotion. “Yes, Corporal. Sorry, Corporal.”
Dister nodded. “Good. Now, get your chrome-plated butt back to work. Good luck, Salazar. Let me know if she gets out of line.”
So saying, the little legionnaire did a neat about-face and marched down the hall.
It was, Salazar decided, just about the worst possible thing that the noncom could have said, almost guaranteed to piss Villain off. He wished he could smile disarmingly, knew he couldn’t, and chose his words with care.
“Sorry about that.”
Villain shrugged noncommittally. Her reply came via radio. “It doesn’t matter. Just do what I say, keep your mouth shut, and we’ll do fine.”
Salazar started to reply, made the decision to nod instead, and waited for Villain to give him some orders. This, he decided, was only marginally better than boot camp, and in some ways worse. He made a note to find out when the Trooper II bodies would arrive and see if there was a way to get the first one they activated.
Ryber Hysook-Da gloried in the life-threatening plunge down through Algeron’s atmosphere, a plunge carefully calculated to simulate a meteor shower and fool the human detection systems. His insertion pod was equipped with a specially designed ceramic skin. It glowed where air molecules rubbed against its surface. Some of the heat found its way inside and turned the Hudathan’s skin white.
Hysook-Da activated the mind-link and checked his detectors. There were no signs of pursuit. Not that they had much to pursue him with. Maybe the humans were as stupid as everyone said. After going to the trouble and expense of building a military base on Algeron’s surface, they had neglected to surround the planet with warships.
What were they thinking of anyway? Intelligence claimed that the problem stemmed from some sort of political rift between the Navy and a force called “the Legion.” But that was too silly, too fanciful to believe, so there must be another more credible explanation. Well, no matter, the humans deserved to die, so he’d help them on their way.
The pod bucked, rolled, and righted itself. The Hudathan checked the progress of his team, saw that all five of the entry pods were tracking along behind his, and gave a grunt of satisfaction.
This was a glorious moment, the first step in what Hysook-Da felt sure would be a rapid ascent to power, followed by a long and successful life.
First would come the completion of his mission on Algeron, followed by at least three celebrations of valor and rapid promotion to spear commander.
But that would be only the beginning. With the human empire in ashes, and his military record as a springboard, Hysook-Da would enter the dark and labyrinthine world of Hudathan politics. Then, through a combination of cunning and absolute ruthlessness, he would rise to the very top!
Just the thought of it left the young warrior nearly dizzy with lust.
A buzzer buzzed, a warning light flashed, and a tingling sensation ran the length of his left arm. Had the humans detected their presence? Were missiles rising to intercept them?
Fear flushed the dreams of glory from his head. A naturally produced stimulant entered his circulatory system. Training took over, readouts snapped into focus, and he scanned them for danger. It was there but not in the form of incoming missiles.
The outer surface of the pod’s ceramic skin had started to overheat. A minute correction in the angle of attack was sufficient to silence the buzzer, darken the light, and rid himself of the tingling sensation.
The overheating persisted, however, and held just below the critical level as the pod smashed its way through two layers of air and entered a third.
Algeron filled his mi
nd-screen. An artist might have gloried in the way that the sun washed the clouds with pink, and a geologist might have marveled at the mountaintops that reached up to touch space itself, but Hysook-Da saw none of that.
What he saw was a target, a military objective, swarming with life-forms that threatened his kind. Not through anything they’d done, or were likely to do anytime in the near future, but what they could do, might do, would do, if given enough time and freedom. Yes, as with any potential enemy, the time to stop them was now.
Clouds whipped up around him, a crosswind pushed the pod sideways, and the outermost layer of ceramic skin flaked away. The pod’s on-board computer sent a tingling sensation down his arm and put a message in his brain.
“PREPARE FOR INSERTION STAGE THREE.”
Hysook-Da checked the other pods, saw they were still in place, and ran a hand-check on his gear. Webbing ... check. Main chute ... check. Reserve chute ... check. Weapons ... check. And so on, until each piece of gear had been touched, and where possible, verified. He sent a message back.
“Ready for insertion stage three.”
“STAND BY ... THREE UNITS AND COUNTING . . .”
A digital readout appeared in the corner of Hysook-Da’s vision. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as the numbers became steadily smaller. Five ... four ... three ... two ... one.
Bolts exploded. Large sections of what had been the pod’s skin were blown outwards, fell, and exploded yet again. Nothing larger than a rivet would survive to reach the ground.
Hysook-Da extended his arms and legs, felt air rush by his neck, and hoped he was on target. The still-functioning computer claimed that he was—not that it made a great deal of difference, since it was too late to correct his course anyway.
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