“Shitty, but that’s life. You want the usual?”
“Yeah.”
Foss looked down at the console and used his index fingers to peck at the keys. “I heard about the ambush ... sorry you survived.”
“Yeah,” Gunner responded, “it’s gettin’ so a guy can’t even get killed in this borg’s army.”
Foss grinned. “Well, it seems that we’re at war with some kinda geeks. Maybe they’ll cancel your ticket.”
“Here’s hoping,” Gunner said matter-of-factly. “Which room?”
“Number six ... and that’ll be fifty imperials.”
“Put it on my tab.”
Foss sighed. “You don’t have a tab. What you have is a massive debt.”
“I’m good for it.”
Foss sighed again. “Okay, but make a payment soon, promise?”
“You got it.”
“Good. Have a nice time.”
Foss watched the cyborg make his way down a darkened ramp. He shook his head in amazement. Gunner was strange, even by cyborg standards, and kind of sad.
Gunner paused in front of room 6, waited for the door to hiss open, and glided inside. The room was dimly lit and empty of all furniture.
“Hello,” the voice said, “and welcome to the Dream Master 4000. The Dream Master represents the culmination of a thousand years of scientific achievement. You are about to relive the happiest, saddest, most exciting, or most peaceful moments of your life. Now, listen carefully, and follow these easy ...”
The control panel glowed softly. Gunner extended a leg, bypassed the first few steps of the computerized sequence, and jacked a cable into the side of his triangular head. Light exploded inside his brain, color swirled, disintegrated, and coalesced into abstract shapes. They drifted on a field of black. The voice returned.
“... you are ready to choose a memory. You may do so by recalling those images or sensations that most typify that particular experience.”
Gunner knew that many, if not most, of his peers would have chosen a sex act, a drug-induced high, or the excitement of battle. But he chose the memory that he’d always chosen before and would always choose in the future.
Gunner remembered the zoo, packed with animals from a dozen earth-type worlds, and thick with their native foliages. He remembered the smell of animal dung, the warmth of the sun on his neck, and what it felt like to hold his wife’s hand. He remembered how the birds made strange belching sounds, how his children had screamed with laughter and his wife had told them to quiet down.
And Gunner was gone, transported back to the happiest moment he’d ever experienced and a life that had ceased to exist.
Cissy Conners checked to make sure that the store was empty, locked the till, and made her way to the storeroom. It was dark inside and deliciously cool.
She selected a case of soft drinks and picked it up. It was hot outside and the cold stuff was really moving. Cissy envied them, the ones that were out in the sun, and looked forward to joining them. Her relief would come in an hour or so, and she’d be free, until night school, that is, and another evening of classes. A degree in business, that was her dream, and in two, three years at the most, she’d have it.
Her expression brightened. Mark had made a point of sitting next to her the night before. Would he do it again? The thought filled her with delicious anticipation.
The cool-case was heavy and took all of Cissy’s strength. She carried it to the front of the store and noticed that two customers had entered during her absence. She put the case on the floor and slid behind the counter.
One of the customers, a woman, stood at the rear of the store and was scanning that morning’s printout of a popular news-magazine. The other customer, a man, stood a few feet away, and judging from the way that he looked around, was nervous about something. Not only that, but he wore a ball cap and wraparound sunglasses, as if he were trying to look cool or conceal his identity. Cissy felt her heart beat a little bit faster. She forced a smile.
“May I help you?”
“Yeah,” the man said, doing his best to sound tough. “Keep your hands where I can see ’em and give me everything in the till.”
The gun looked huge. It wavered slightly.
Cissy knew what she was supposed to do. Give the man the money, wait until he was gone, and call the police. She moved her hand towards the till, remembered that she had locked it, and reached for her purse.
The first slug hit her arm, tore its way through, and punctured a coffee urn on the shelf behind her. Blood pumped and Cissy screamed.
The second slug punched its way through Cissy’s shoulder, threw her backwards, and smashed her into the wall.
The third slug struck her chest, and she wanted to scream, but dead people can’t scream. Can they?
“Hey ... give us a break, Villain. What the hell is that anyway? Your idea of a joke?”
Villain awoke, looked around, and found that she was in bay 4, slot 7, of Fort Camerone’s cybernetic maintenance facility. There was a shortage of Trooper II bodies, so they had installed her in an antiquated bi-form and attached her to the 1st RE.
The Trooper II across from her had lost an arm and was looking in her direction.
“Sorry, I had a bad dream.”
The Trooper II leaned back, allowed the supportive cradle to accept its weight, and let its vid cams go out of focus.
“All right, then. But have the decency to kill your transmitter.”
Villain checked, found that her transmitter was on, and turned it off.
She remembered the face that had killed her and wondered where he was. The Legion was careful about that sort of thing ... about making sure that you didn’t know. It was part of the process, of leaving the past behind, of starting over. They wanted her to let go of what had happened, to place herself in their hands, to live in the present.
So the man could be serving time in prison, or dead, having been executed for her death, or in the streets killing for the pure pleasure of doing so. That was what she felt deep inside, that the man was alive somewhere, untouched by what he’d done.
Villain had nine years, two months, and four days left before her enlistment was up. And the moment that it was, she’d find the man who had stolen her life, and deprive him of his.
Booly donned his uniform, minus weapons, of course, and stepped through the beadwork curtain that separated the underground sleeping chamber from the dwelling’s main room. The living-dining-cooking area was circular, with a combination fireplace-furnace at its center and a walkway all around. Odors filled the room, carefully blended to please Naa noses, and heavy with meaning.
The room smelled warm and cozy, and looked the same way, which took Booly by surprise. It was nothing like the interspecies whorehouses of Naa town or the hovels that he’d searched during sweeps.
He saw two males and a female, all in their teens, preparing food in the area immediately around the fireplace-fumace. Their curiosity was plain to see, along with a tiny bit of fear and a certain amount of revulsion.
Booly understood. He was the enemy, after all, the boogeyman come to visit, and the youngsters weren’t sure how to react. He smiled at them, thankful that the expression meant the same thing in both cultures, and made his way towards a vertical ladder.
The ladder was made of wood, was well constructed, and creaked slightly under his weight. The legionnaire noticed that the structure had been built double wide, a design that permitted one Naa to go up while another came down, or in the case of an emergency, would allow the entire family to exit in a hurry. It was smart, a word that he’d never thought to apply to the Naa before, but seemed increasingly appropriate.
The ladder terminated at a broad platform, about six feet short of the surface, and off to one side from a second ladder.
The human didn’t understand the design at first, until he considered it from a military point of view, and realized how hard it would be to fight an invader from the top of a ladder.
A nice sturdy plat
form would be much better, allowing more space from which defenders could fight, and providing them with a natural rallying point. Not only that, but a heavy curtain made from tanned dooth hide would serve to screen the second ladder off from interior light and keep the heat in. It was rolled at the moment and secured to the ceiling via two Legion standard pulleys.
Booly made his way up the second ladder and stepped out into bright sunlight. It was cold and his breath fogged the air around him.
A single glance told him why Naa villages were so hard to find without the help of a spy sat. Unlike the adobe domes of Naa town and the hovels that the outlaws threw together, there was nothing to see except for some holes in the ground. And there weren’t very many of those. Twenty-five or thirty at most, widely separated from each other, so they looked natural, especially when surrounded by jagged foothills already full of holes, crevices, caves, and the like. A fire pit occupied the exact center of the village but looked largely unused. It would be barely visible from the air.
Still, good as things were, they could have been better. Booly frowned as he saw the well-beaten path that led away from the immediate vicinity, towards a narrow passageway. The damned thing was like a gigantic arrow that pointed where? Towards water? A food source? Whatever it was offended his sense of military propriety and made him angry at someone’s stupidity.
Booly caught himself and laughed. Since when was it his responsibility to protect the enemy? If the Naa were stupid enough to reveal their position to satellite photography, then so much the better. He’d like nothing more than to see some members of the 2nd REP fall out of the sky.
“You laugh, human. Does that mean you are brave? Or just very, very foolish?”
Booly turned to find himself face-to-face with a Naa warrior. It wasn’t Windsweet’s father, but a younger male, with orange fur and the beads of an initiate. A warrior, then, and well armed, including a .50-caliber recoilless pistol that had formerly belonged to one of the Legion’s NCOs. That, plus some baggy pants, a leather harness, and a quilted vest completed the outfit.
Booly shrugged. “Doesn’t one presuppose the other? Would a sensible male be brave?”
The Naa laughed. “Spoken like a true warrior. I am Movefast Shootstraight, Windsweet’s brother and Hardman’s son.”
They touched palms in the traditional Naa greeting. Booly gestured towards his surroundings.
“Tell me something, Movefast. Where am I allowed to go? And where’s my guard?”
The Naa laughed and his eyes twinkled. “You may go wherever you please, human, as long as your return within two settings of the sun. As for guards ... they are all around you. What’s more, they never sleep, can’t be bribed, and are eternally loyal.”
The human looked around, saw nothing but craggy ridges, and understood what the warrior meant. The hills were like guards, hemming him in, limiting his movements. Not only that, but the Naa had walked every ridge, every canyon, and would have little difficulty catching him. And, judging from Movefast’s expression, would enjoy the chase.
Booly grinned. “I see what you mean.”
Movefast smiled. He had nice teeth. “Good. I’ll see you at main-meal, two settings from now.”
The human nodded and watched the warrior walk away. There was pride in the way that he held himself, grace in the way that he moved, and strength in the way that he leaped to the top of a boulder and scrambled up a scree-covered slope.
It suddenly occurred to Booly that the Naa would make damned fine troops.
He filed the thought away, followed the well-beaten path to a fissure in the rocks, and mounted a series of well-placed stepping-stones. By leaping from one to another, the Naa were able to avoid the thick layer of dooth dung that covered the floor of the passageway below.
The path zigged and zagged for a bit, each angle creating a natural defensive point, before emerging into a large open area. It was beautiful in its own way, covered with knee-high yellow-gray grass that sparkled with frost.
A herd of shaggy-looking dooth could be seen in the distance, heads down, grazing on the winter grass. Warriors ambled along beside them guarding the animals from carnivores and outlaws.
Booly shook his head in frustration. The path, the field, and the dooth would all show up in a satellite photo, had shown up and been filed away under some sort of code name. That was the silly part, that the Legion knew where most of the villages were and left them alone. Just as the Naa knew where Fort Camerone was but never tried to destroy it.
It was all part of the strange relationship that existed between the Legion and the Naa, a relationship built on a curious mix of respect, hatred, trust, and fear. It was, Booly suspected, a measure of how alike the two races were and how stupid the continual warfare was.
The main path spilled out onto the plain, separated into numerous trails, and disappeared into the grass. Booly stayed left, chose a path that cut across the face of a scree-covered slope, and set out to get the lay of land. Rugged foothills or no, it was his duty to escape, and he had every intention of doing so. Not today, but soon. After he had recovered, after he had acquired some supplies, and after he knew his way around.
The trail had been created by countless generations of wild animals and improved by the Naa. Why was not exactly clear, since the path had no particular military value and was too high off the valley floor to be connected with food. But a path generally has a destination and Booly had nothing better to do.
He had walked for thirty minutes or so and worked up a good sweat when he saw the archway. It was a natural feature, left when softer material had separated from hard, and then enhanced with some judicious pick work. Voices could be heard and the tunnel served to funnel them in his direction.
“Why not? It’s not as though you’re a virgin or something. The entire tribe knows that you had sex with Keenmind Wordwriter.”
“Because I don’t love you. It’s as simple as that.”
“Don’t love me?” the first voice asked incredulously. “Don’t love me? And you loved Wordwriter? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to say,” the female voice said firmly. “Now, get your hands off me.”
“What if I don’t? What then?”
Booly frowned. The female voice belonged to Windsweet. There was no doubt about that or the perfume that drifted his way. He stepped through the archway and out onto a sun-splashed ledge. He saw a spectacular view, a carefully spread doothskin robe, and a picnic lunch. His arrival caused quite a reaction.
A warrior, larger than average and heavily armed, scrambled to his feet. He wore a breechcloth, weapons harness, and lace-up sandals. His otherwise handsome features were contorted with rage. “Explain your presence here!”
Booly felt adrenaline enter his bloodstream and struggled to control it. The Naa was armed and sure to win a fight. The noncom smiled blankly and waved towards the panoramic view. “I came to look around. Wonderful place for a picnic. I can see why you chose it.”
“Yes,” Windsweet said, getting to her feet. “It is pretty, isn’t it? We were just about to leave. Would you like to accompany us? The sun will set soon and the trail can be dangerous.”
Booly had no difficulty reading the gratitude in her voice, or the anger on the warrior’s face.
“Enough of this nonsense. I have work to do.” The Naa grabbed the blast rifle that had been propped up next to a rock, stomped through the archway, and hurried down the trail. Both the dooth hide and picnic lunch were left behind for Windsweet to handle. She started to pack and Booly hurried to help.
“Thank you.”
“For what? Interrupting your picnic?”
Windsweet paused and looked him in the eye. “How much did you hear?”
Booly did his best to look innocent. “Hear? I didn’t hear anything.”
Windsweet shook her head sadly. “Why do you lie so much? Ridelong is obnoxious, but he tells the truth.”
Booly shrugged. “I�
�m sorry. I wasn’t sure what you wanted to hear.”
“The truth,” Windsweet said softly. “I want to hear the truth. Lies have little value.”
Booly looked at her kneeling there in front of him, with the vast sweep of wilderness behind her, and decided that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. The words came of their own accord.
“The truth is that you are the most beautiful female that I’ve ever seen.”
She reacted with pleasure that quickly turned to concern. “You mustn’t say things like that.”
“You told me to tell the truth.”
“It isn’t true, and besides, we are of different races.”
“Not so different that we can’t see beauty in each other,” Booly replied.
“No more,” Windsweet said sternly. “I forbid it. My father would kill you if he knew what you just said. And mark this, human: Ridelong doesn’t dare bring me harm, but he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you.”
“All right,” Booly replied, “on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a name, not as pretty as yours, but a name nonetheless. It was taken from an ancient song. My name is Bill. Say it.”
“Bill.”
“Good. Let’s have an agreement. I won’t refer to you as ‘Naa,’ and you won’t address me as ‘human.”’
Windsweet laughed. The legionnaire loved the way that her eyes danced and was nearly overwhelmed by the smell of her perfume.
“It shall be as you say, Bill. Now, let’s go. It will be dark soon and the trail is difficult.”
Booly helped her pack, shouldered the dooth hide, and followed her through the archway. There was grace in the way that she moved down the trail. His eyes were drawn to the movement of her well-shaped head, the sway of her narrow hips, and the flash of down-covered legs.
Part of what he felt was a sexual desire so strong that it almost hurt.
Most of his friends had made use of the prostitutes in Naa town and told extravagant stories about how attractive they were, but Booly had listened with little interest. The very idea of having sex with an alien had seemed wrong and twisted somehow.
Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned Page 13
