The situation room was nearly empty, containing as it did only three people. The lights were dimmed and one large section of wall had transformed itself into a video screen. An officer with a shaved head, black skin, and tired-looking eyes was talking.
“. . . so the star divers hit just the way Leonid figured they would, blew the battlewagons out of the sky, and saved the outpost. I’m sorry to report that he was killed when the geeks scored a direct hit on the linear accelerator. Leo was a civilian, and drove me crazy sometimes, but he was one helluva man.”
St. James touched a button on the armrest of his chair. The screen faded to black.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
The words sounded false even as St. James said them, for he knew that he wasn’t sorry, and was in fact rather happy. Not that a brave man had died, but that his wife existed and was technically free. But he must be careful, very careful, to respect her grief, and take whatever time was needed.
The strange part was that he’d seen Narbakov’s report long before the Chien-Chus had arrived, but had failed to connect the two.
Chien-Chu’s voice cracked when he spoke.
“Thank you, General. This was very thoughtful of you. I wish he were still alive, but it’s gratifying to hear that my son’s death meant something to those around him, and cost the enemy dearly.”
Tears trickled down Nathasha’s cheeks and she smiled apologetically. “Yes, General. Thank you. It helps to know the circumstances of my husband’s death.”
St. James resisted an impulse to take Nathasha in his arms and kiss the tears away. He gave an understanding nod, rose, and held her cloak.
Booly’s breath came in short angry puffs. He looked back over his shoulder. The trail was so evident, so clear, that a child could have followed it. It crested a rise, dipped out of sight, and reappeared a hundred yards behind him. A dooth appeared while he looked, followed by another, and still another. Not Surekill’s warriors, whom he’d managed to shake during the darkness two cycles before, but bandits who had cut his trail and decided to follow. The lead rider waved a weapon over his head, shouted something unintelligible to the others, and urged his mount down into the gully. The rest followed.
Booly squinted upwards at the sun, adjusted his direction slightly, and started to jog. The map that Windsweet had given him, plus a substantial head start, had enabled him to escape from the mountains. Camerone was fifty, maybe sixty miles away, which meant that the bandits would catch him within the hour.
He had the handgun that Windsweet had given him, the same one they’d captured him with, and two spare magazines. That gave him forty-five rounds, forty-four to use on the Naa and one for himself. The legionnaire remembered the way the Hudathan had died, head-down over the fire pit, and ran a little faster.
What he needed was a natural fortress, a spot where he could make good use of the bullets he had, and hope that the bandits would go away.
Booly skidded down a slope, regained his balance, and braked with his heels. The riverbank was steep, so he took it in a series of long jumps and gave thanks when the ice didn’t break. After skate-walking across to the other side, he encountered another steep embankment, used some rocks to pull himself up, and climbed towards the top. The slope was noticeable, but not too tough, and he jogged upwards. The wound had opened and his undershirt felt wet. He heard a shout as he topped the rise. A bullet buzzed by his shoulder and the report followed a quarter second later.
The legionnaire zigzagged towards some freestanding boulders, heard two additional rifle shots, and turned the corner. It felt good to have something solid behind his back.
A flat area lay up ahead, dotted with loose rocks and interrupted by a steep-sided flat-topped hill. The legionnaire remembered that hills of that type were called “kopje” back on Earth and had often served as ready-made forts. He headed for the nearest one, his breath coming in short gasps, his stomach on fire.
Snow crunched under his boots and he circled the kopje, reached the other side, and started to climb. A mixture of loose snow and rocks slid out from under him as he climbed. He swore, grabbed onto some rocks, and heaved himself upwards. More, just a little bit more, and he’d reach the top.
The legionnaire’s legs pumped, his arms pulled, and suddenly he was there, crawling over the edge and dropping into a slight depression. A wonderful place where bullets couldn’t reach him and air could enter his lungs.
Cold, almost numb fingers felt through his clothing, searched for the first-aid kit that Windsweet had included with his gear, fumbled with a zipper that got in the way.
The antiseptic burned like hell when he sprayed it on the wound, and the butterfly closures did a half-assed job of pulling the wound margins together, but he was in no position to be picky. A fresh ABD pad, followed by some gauze wound over his shirt, and the legionnaire was done. His weapons, or in this case “weapon,” was next.
Booly freed his gun belt, checked the spare magazines to make sure they were loaded and free of dirt, and made an interesting discovery. The two pistol-launched flares that he habitually carried on his belt were still there. He gave it some thought, decided that the bandits knew where he was, and thumbed the release. The magazine fell in his lap.
Booly blew on cold stiff fingers, slid two rounds out of the magazine, and replaced them with flares. Having done so, he slapped the magazine into the well, heard it click home, and aimed the pistol towards the sky. He pulled the trigger, saw the flare explode three hundred feet over his head, and did it again. Any patrol leader worth his or her salt would know what that meant. “I’m up to my ass in shit. Come quick.”
But would someone see it? Booly shrugged fatalistically, freed the magazine, and replaced both rounds. The bandits were closer now and he’d need every bullet he had.
Villain spotted the energy flash against the upper right-hand corner of her vision grid. Numbers appeared and changed as she zoomed in. She was surprised and pleased by her own professionalism.
“Roller Two to Roller One. I have a hot spot three miles ahead, vector seven, elevation three hundred and falling. Both heat and height correspond with a Legion-issue pistol-launched signal flare. Confirm?”
“That’s a roger,” Gunner said quickly. “Roller Three has it too.”
Salazar had seen the flash as well, but had mistrusted his sensors and remained silent. He swore at himself for being so stupid and gave thanks that they didn’t know, especially Villain, who’d done everything within her power to make his life miserable. Why? He didn’t have the faintest idea. Roller interrupted his thoughts. The orders were crisp.
“Roller One to Roller Patrol. We have a friendly in trouble. Implement condition five, repeat condition five, and keep your sensors peeled.
“Roller Three, feed the ops center a contact report and request a spy-eye. Not that the bastards will assign us one, but hey, we can ask.
“Roller Two, run the freqs, find the friendly, and make contact. I want an ID, sitrep, and background.
“Roller Four, watch the back door, and if we take one in the ass, make sure that you’re dead when the whole thing’s over.
“All right, people, move it out.”
Booly held the gun in his right hand and stuck the left into his right armpit. It felt good to warm his fingers. Snow had melted under his knees and soaked his pants.
Judging from all the noise they’d made, the bandits had arrived, found the spot where he’d climbed the hill, and were getting ready to come after him. He wondered how they’d go about it. One at a time? All in a rush? From every direction at once? There was no way to tell.
The legionnaire looked around, found a fist-sized rock, and threw it towards the noise. It hit about a third of the way down the slope, bounced, and clattered to the bottom. All hell broke loose as the bandits fired up towards the top of the kopje. The shooting should’ve stopped after a second or two, but didn’t, which meant they were coming after him.
Booly held the pistol in a two-handed
grip, waited for the firing to stop, and stood the moment that it did. The bandits were right where he’d expected them to be, about six feet from the top, completely exposed. Not only that, but the need to maintain a firm footing and use their weapons at the same time hampered their ability to fire.
Booly worked from left to right, aimed for their chests, and gave them two rounds apiece. Blood spurted out of their backs, arms flew upwards, and bodies tumbled backwards as the bullets hit.
In the fraction of a second between the time when the legionnaire killed the third Naa and the slug hit him from behind, Booly saw the dooths, the bandits, and something that wasn’t supposed to be there, but was. A Legion standard laser cannon, disassembled for transport, now in the process of being put together. How? Why? The questions blended together as the force of the bullet turned him around.
The bandit had a long piece of dirty white linen wrapped around the bottom half of his face. One end hung free and snapped in the wind. He stood on the crater’s edge, the assault rifle still at his shoulder, savoring his moment of victory.
The first slug hit him crotch-high, and the next three marched steadily upwards, ending when the fourth went through his heart. He was already in the process of falling when the last bullet hit.
Worried that others might be coming up the same way, Booly hurried to the other side of the depression and looked over the edge. The bandit was still tumbling down the slope, his ragged clothing billowing around him, blood marking the rocks that slowed his fall. There was no sign of others.
Four down and what? Six, eight more to go? The legionnaire was still calculating the odds when movement caught his eye. Someone or something was coming over the last rise. A Trooper II, by god! And a quad! With another Trooper II bringing up the rear! They’d seen his flare and were coming to the rescue.
But wait a minute ... what about the laser cannon? Properly handled, it could destroy a Trooper II and damage a quad. And where were the bandits? They should have charged him by now. Then he realized what had happened.
At least one of the bandits was smart, damned smart, and had used Booly to bait a trap. And the plan could work too, because the patrol would never expect a group of ragtag bandits to have a laser cannon and would charge straight into the ambush.
His shoulder ached, as did the wound across his stomach, but Booly jumped onto the kopje’s rim and waved his arms back and forth anyway. Blood, his blood, splattered across the tops of his boots. His vision went out of focus, the sky appeared over him, and a rock drove the air out of his lungs. Booly fought the blackness but it pulled him down.
Salazar saw something appear on top of the low-lying hill, move, then disappear? A man? He zoomed in but the image was gone.
“Roller Four to Roller One. I saw a bio bod standing on top of the low-lying hill. It could be our friendly. Confirm?”
“Roller Two, negative,” Villain said.
“Roller Three, negative,” Gunner added.
Roller was pissed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, which caused Villain to lurch unexpectedly.
“Watch the back door, damn it ... Rollers Two and Three will handle the rest. Two will go in for the kill while Three provides cover.”
Salazar swore silently. He couldn’t win for losing. But he had seen a figure on top of the hill, a human figure, though he wasn’t sure why he thought so, and it meant something. But what? He alternated between walking backwards and looking back over his shoulder, hoping the figure would reappear. It didn’t.
Villain savored the ass chewing that Salazar had received, and followed bandit tracks around the side of the hill. Her number three knee servo had started to overheat and sent jolts of pain up through her electronic nervous system. She forced herself to ignore the pain and brought her arms up into firing position. The movement saved her life, since the laser cannon had been sited low, behind a jumble of rocks, and the beam hit the cyborg’s right arm instead of her head.
While the impact of a bullet or a cannon shell delivers hydrostatic shock, the beam had no mass and did nothing to slow her down. Villain’s arm melted and drooped downwards, but she was otherwise unaffected.
Villain turned, tried to bring her machine gun into play, but didn’t quite make it. The grenade went off in the vicinity of her right ankle, blew part of her foot off, and caused her to come crashing down. Roller leaped clear.
“It’s an ambush! Give us some fire support, Three, and Four, take them from behind!”
Eager to die, and hoping that his time had come, Gunner dropped the bio bods and stalked forward. He made no attempt to use the cover that was available, and walked into the ambush as if on parade, his bull’s-eyes inviting the bandits to fire.
Fire they did, first with the laser cannon and then with a series of shoulder-launched missiles taken on the same raid that had garnered them the first weapon.
The quad staggered under the impact of multiple missile hits, gave thanks that his day had finally arrived, and slid nose-first into a shallow ravine.
It was only after he’d tried to get up that the cyborg realized that he’d been holed, and taken out of the fight.
They’d never kill him, not with the pop guns they were using but it didn’t make much difference. He couldn’t move and only 32 percent of his armament could bear on the enemy. He raised the gatling gun, turned it towards the bandits, and opened fire. A mixture of snow and dirt fountained around the rocks where the Naa were hiding, and one of them jerked under the multiple impacts, staggered backwards, and fell.
The bio bods, a man named Hutera and a woman named Briggs, hooked up with Roller and worked their way to the left. If they could flank the bandits and nail the gunner, the battle would be won.
On her chest now, crawling towards the enemy, Villain fired her shoulder-mounted launchers. The missiles hit, went off with a roar, and shook the ground. The explosion should have killed the bandits, should have finished the battle, but didn’t.
One of the Naa was still alive and determined to take Villain with him. Snow exploded into vapor and dirt turned to glass as he squeezed the trigger and traversed the weapon to the left.
Villain watched the geyser move her way. Shit! Shit! Shit! She was going to cook, going to die, going to ...
Rocks exploded under the weight of his pod-like feet as Salazar rounded the hill and probed for something to kill.
It had taken time to make his way around the kopje from the opposite side, more time than he would have liked, but it couldn’t be helped. Wait, what was that? An energy cannon, that’s what, concealed behind a pile of shattered boulders, traversing towards Villain.
Salazar fired both arms at once, the bullets hitting the Naa a fraction of a second before the energy beam, cutting him apart while the laser cooked the resulting pieces.
The cyborg skidded to a stop, checked to make sure that the bandits were dead, and made his way over to Villain.
“Are you okay?”
Villain gritted nonexistent teeth. “Shit, no.”
Salazar smiled inside. If Villain was pissed, then everything was normal. “Hey, what the hell are you complaining about? The techs will put you right in no time.”
Salazar helped the other cyborg to her feet and accepted most of her weight. She looked at him. “You took my life and gave it back.”
“I what?”
“Nothing. My arm hurts, that’s all.”
Roller’s voice interrupted their conversation.
“Nice work, Four. Okay. Hutera, Briggs, find the friendly and bring ’im in. Somebody fired that flare. Three, call for a lifter, and Two, sit your butt down. You look like hell.”
The vast majority of the Legion’s officers were with their units on the rim worlds or out on training exercises, so the O club was relatively empty. As if sensing their superior officer’s desires, those who were present had found ways to mind their own business. Music seeped over the sound system, voices murmured, and dishes clinked.
General Ian St. Jam
es looked across the snowy-white linen and decided that he was one of the luckiest men alive. Not only had Sergi Chien-Chu fallen ill and retired early, his daughter-in-law had chosen to stay.
While he should have invited his staff to dine with Natasha, he had intentionally failed to do so.
The result had been a marvelous two-hour dinner conversation. He had caused her to laugh on at least two occasions, victories planned as carefully as any battle, and had seen the woman she’d been. A wonderful creature, full of life, given to fun.
During those brief moments, St. James had dedicated himself to restoring her spirits and to winning her affection, for surely life offered no greater prize than the one before him. In fact, St. James was so lost in his thoughts of her that the corporal had to clear his throat twice to gain the officer’s attention.
“Yes?”
“A message from the com center, sir. The OOD told me to bring it over.”
St. James took the seemingly blank piece of paper, dismissed the messenger, and placed his thumb on the access patch. Words appeared. He read them, blinked, and read them again.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Natasha put her wineglass down. She frowned. “Is something wrong?”
St. James shrugged. “It seems that some Hudathan agents landed on the surface of Algeron.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yes, but a man long thought to be dead has come back to life.”
“And that’s good.”
“Yes,” St. James answered, pouring her some wine. “That’s very good.”
19
Each battle has three parts: the plan, which is forever changed by contact with the enemy, reality, which is never what it seems, and the memory of what took place, which evolves to meet current needs. Successful officers trust none of them.
Legion of the Damned Page 29
