Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned

by William C. Dietz

  But Windsweet had changed all that. He could not only imagine having sex with her, he wanted to have sex with her, a fact that surprised him to no end.

  Of equal interest, however, was the tenderness he felt towards her, an emotion he’d never felt for the female legionnaires that he’d slept with.

  All of which was extremely troubling, since it was Booly’s duty to escape, and his desire to stay.

  9

  The currents carry us where they will, and we are grateful, for life is motion.

  The Say’lynt Group Mind known as “Raft One”

  As dictated to Dr. Valerie Reeman

  Standard year 2836

  Planet IH-4762-ASX41, the Human Empire

  The cobalt-blue sky hung over the ocean like a huge umbrella. It was marbled here and there with streaks of white. Some of the streaks were made by cirrostratus clouds, but others had been left by Hudathan attack ships, and it was these to which the Say’lynt had turned their collective consciousness.

  There were three main rafts, plus two lesser bodies, not sufficiently mature to take part in the decision-making process.

  Each raft incorporated billions of individual phytoplankton and covered more than a thousand square miles of softly undulating ocean. The rafts were three feet thick, acquired most of their energy from the sun, and dominated the oceanic food chain.

  It had taken millions of years for the parent raft to develop the thousands of brain nodules that, when linked together by endless miles of thin, almost translucent fiber, constituted a group mind. And it had taken millions more to create two additional beings and attain full mastery of the seas. For everything in the world-spanning ocean lived in harmony with the Say’lynt and depended on them for existence.

  There were the lesser plants that fed off the more highly developed plankton’s waste products, the zooplankton that fed on them, the larger zooplankton that ate their smaller cousins, and so forth, all the way up to some large but relatively mindless vertebrates that swam the depths of the Say’lynt’s watery domain.

  But the air was a different matter, lying outside of the Say’lynt’s native element, impervious to their direct control.

  Yes, the phytoplankton had made significant progress towards the control of the water cycle, aided by the fact that land occupied less than 2 percent of the planet’s surface, but control of the atmosphere lay thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years in the future.

  Not so for the humans, and more recently the Hudatha. They had machines that allowed them to command the skies in ways that the Say’lynt had never imagined.

  The humans had arrived first, their aircraft screaming across the heretofore undisturbed sky, spewing poison into the air.

  It was, the Say’lynt soon learned, typical of the way that the aliens behaved. They moved quickly, acted on impulse, and could accomplish many things in a short period of time.

  It took the humans less than five planetary rotations to map the world’s surface, analyze its composition, occupy one eighth of the existing landmass, and discover the Say’lynt.

  The discovery, if “discovery” was the right word, occurred when a biologist named Reeman attempted to take a sample from Raft Two in the northern hemisphere. Understandably annoyed, Raft Two had struck back by seizing control of the biologist’s higher thought processes. Though not especially unusual from a Say’lynt point of view, the seizure, and subsequent release, had proved fascinating to the humans, and an agreement had been struck.

  A limited number of humans would be allowed to stay on the planet and study the Say’lynt, if they agreed to leave the environment exactly as they had found it, and were willing to be studied in return. Though clearly unused to being the object of study themselves, the humans had agreed, and kept their part of the bargain.

  So the subsequent arrival of the Hudathans, the ceasing-to-exist of their human friends, and the related damage to the environment had angered Rafts One, Two, and Three, causing them to seize control of a low-orbit space machine and take a position in a war they.didn’t fully understand.

  Raft Two adjusted to a storm that had disturbed the southern portion of its enormous anatomy, formulated a question, and sent it towards the others. Both were thousands of miles away.

  “The ones who call themselves ‘Hudathans’ say we must release the ship or suffer massive damage to ourselves and the environment.”

  “It could be true,” Raft Three added slowly. “You saw how quickly the humans were destroyed.”

  “Yes,” Raft Three put in, “but Dr. Valerie and the others were what the humans call ‘scientists.’ The outcome might have been far different if some of the specialists they call ‘soldiers’ had been present.”

  “And that was our fault,” Raft Two thought. “The humans offered us a contingent of soldiers but we refused.”

  “Yes,” Raft Three agreed. “That was an error. The humans are strange but preferable to the Hudathans. But what can we do?”

  Although the question was not addressed to Raft One, all three of them knew that by virtue of its age and greater experience, it was most qualified to answer.

  “I have given this matter some consideration,” Raft One answered. “Given the fact that this situation lies outside the realm of our experience and involves a conflict that we do not fully understand, we could use some expert advice. A human soldier seems best, but failing that, one of the experts that Dr. Valerie referred to as ‘slimeball politicians.”’

  “Yes,” Raft Two agreed, “but can we obtain such advice? We are unable to leave the environment, and the Hudathans have surrounded the planet with their war machines.”

  “Which,” Raft One thought calmly, “is why it will be necessary to make the Hudathans get one for us.”

  “But how can we do that?” Raft Three asked.

  “By threatening to seize more of their ships,” Raft One answered easily. “Like the humans, the Hudathans find our ability to control their brain nodules to be very frightening.”

  “True,” Raft Two responded, “but we are unable to reach further than the ship already under control. It was in what the humans call ‘low orbit’ when we struck. The rest are beyond the extent of our influence.”

  “I am aware of that,” Raft One replied patiently, “but the Hudathans are not.”

  “Ah,” Raft Three thought. “You propose to use the strategy that Technician Henza referred to as a ‘bluff.”’

  “Exactly,” Raft One responded smugly. “Skills gained through the game called ‘poker’ have many applications. The humans lacked the strength to defend us, but they gave us weapons, and it is our responsibility to use them.”

  War Commander Niman Poseen-Ka held the terrarium up to the light, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and admired his latest handiwork.

  The original kit had not included mountains, or the materials necessary to make them, but some malleable plastic requisitioned from the engineering department, plus some other odds and ends, had been sufficient to the task.

  The mountains were gray, like the ones near his native village, and tipped with white.

  Poseen-Ka put the terrarium down with an audible sigh. He had put the moment off as long as he dared. There was work to do and decisions to be made.

  The war commander stood and approached the holo tank. A likeness of the planet that the humans had designated as IH-4762-ASX41 hung in midair, rotated before his eyes, and challenged him to make a decision. It was blue, with wisps of white, and relatively unimportant in and of itself.

  True, the Say’lynt had demonstrated some unprecedented mental powers, but weren’t much of a threat. Yes, they had taken control of a Hudathan cruiser, but he could lose the ship and still brag of a casualty rate that was 82 percent lower than predicted.

  As for the Say’lynt’s threat to take over the rest of his fleet, well, he doubted their capacity to do so. After all, why threaten that which you can actually do? No, it was a strategy intended to force compliance with their request. A
nd a strange request it was.

  The Say’lynt wanted a human soldier. Or, failing that, a politician, although the war commander wasn’t sure that he understood the difference. They hadn’t said why, but Poseen-Ka assumed that the phytoplankton wanted military advice and had chosen this method to obtain it. It was a request that he would deny under normal circumstances, but was now tempted to grant, since doing so would take a day and maybe more. He had time to burn.

  With the exception of the Say’lynt, and some rather stubborn humans on an asteroid called “Spindle,” the campaign had been a tremendous success. His ships had laid waste to seven systems, destroyed hundreds of ships, and taken so many outposts, research stations, fuel depots, and other installations that he’d lost count. There had been little more than scattered unorganized resistance. When would the humans finally respond ?

  The question filled his thoughts while on duty and his dreams while asleep. He should have been happy, joyful even, riding the wave of a great victory. But nothing was sufficient to rid himself of the constant angst that rode in the pit of his stomach. The feeling that terrible tragedy lay somewhere up ahead, that they were moving too fast, bypassing too many planets, overreaching their supply lines.

  There were others, though, like Lance Commander Moder-Ta and his mentor, Grand Marshal Pem-Da, who thought things were going well. Extremely well if the congratulatory message torps were any indication.

  It was clear that Pem-Da and the others felt the joy that had evaded him, relished the victories that left him feeling hollow, and lusted for more. They opposed a delay of any sort and, had they been aware of his true feelings, would have held them up to ridicule.

  But Poseen-Ka believed in his instincts, believed that the basic fears that had guided his race for so long were a blessing rather than a curse, and he was determined to take them into account.

  So a strategy was in order. Something that would seem legitimate and buy some time. The Say’lynt were the perfect answer.

  Poseen-Ka turned, lumbered across the command center, and sat in his chair. He touched a button and a noncom hurried to respond.

  Norwood was doing push-ups when the guard arrived. She did them every day at exactly 0900 and had been able to increase the total number of reps from twenty to twenty-five.

  It was all she had to show for the last few weeks. The exercise had started out as a discipline, a way to restore strength to her tortured body, but had become something more important. The push-ups were a statement of optimism, of progress, of hope for the future. The hatch opened without warning and she forced herself to ignore it.

  “... twenty-two ... twenty-three ... twenty-four and twenty-five.”

  Norwood made a show of jumping to her feet. If the Hudathan was impressed, his face didn’t show it. Another guard stood right behind him.

  Norwood was naked from the waist up, which meant nothing to the guards, but bothered her. She reached for one of the olive-drab T-shirts she had requisitioned from Baldwin’s supplies and pulled it over her head.

  “Yes?”

  The Hudathan blinked. His voice was a sibilant hiss. “You will don whatever equipment you deem necessary for a trip to the surface and accompany me to the launching bay.”

  “Trip to the surface? Why?”

  “Because the war commander has ordered it,” the Hudathan said simply. “You have five units of time in which to prepare.”

  The Hudathans left the compartment, the hatch hissed closed, and Norwood finished dressing.

  She knew very little about the planet below, except that it was inhabited by some sort of intelligent plankton and had been home to a small group of human scientists. They, like all the humans encountered so far, had been ruthlessly exterminated.

  So what the hell was going on? There was no way to know, but one thing was for sure: after weeks spent cooped up in her tiny compartment any sort of outing would be welcome.

  Norwood checked her wrist chrom, made sure that she had exceeded the time limit by at least two minutes, and left the compartment. There were four guards, SOP since the death of Keem-So, and at least two more than was really necessary. Two marched in front of her and two behind. It made an impressive sight, and everyone below the rank of lance commander hurried to get out of the way.

  The hallway was a lot like the other passageways on the ship. There were the usual pictograms, including one that consisted of an oval with a delta-shaped ship passing through its center. A symbolic representation of the launch bay, no doubt, and judging from the increasing number of Hudathans dressed in flight suits, it lay just ahead.

  The hallway narrowed in a manner that would force boarders to attack single file, broadened out again, and ended in front of a lock. It was open and Baldwin was waiting.

  Norwood hadn’t seen him since the torture session. He looked tired, tense, but otherwise unchanged.

  “Colonel Norwood.”

  “Baldwin.”

  Baldwin noticed the omission of his rank but chose to ignore it. “You’re looking well.”

  “Thanks. I work at it. What’s going on?”

  Baldwin shrugged. “It seems that the Say’lynt have some unused mental powers. They took control of a ship and refuse to release it until the Hudathans allow them to speak with a human soldier.”

  Norwood raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? So where do you fit in?”

  Baldwin shook his head sadly and stepped into the lock. A guard motioned for Norwood to do likewise. She obeyed. The hatch closed and another slid open.

  The launch bay had been pressurized. It was a huge space, full of ships, technicians, robots, and heavy equipment. The air was warm, as if it had been in there for a while, and heavily laced with ozone, a fact that didn’t bother the Hudathans since they had an almost nonexistent sense of smell.

  A guard gestured towards a heavily armored shuttle and the humans headed in that direction. Norwood was the first to speak.

  “So what do phytoplankton want with a soldier? Human or otherwise.”

  Baldwin frowned. “Advice seems like the best bet. The Say’lynt liked the scientists, came to rely on them, and took possession of the Hudathan ship after they were killed. The result is a trump card they don’t know how to play.”

  “And you’ll help them solve the problem,” Norwood said sarcastically.

  “I’ll offer some advice,” Baldwin said calmly.

  “Like what? Surrender and commit suicide?”

  “No,” Baldwin said stoically. “I’ll suggest that they release the ship, limit the use of their mental powers, and form an alliance with the Hudatha.”

  “And if they refuse?”

  Baldwin shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. War Commander Poseen-Ka had a suggestion, though.”

  “Really? What was that?”

  “He suggested that I shoot you as an example of what happens to those that resist Hudathan rule.” Baldwin pulled his jacket open.

  Norwood looked and saw that the other officer had been entrusted with a sidearm. It was of human design. Fear rose to constrict her lungs. She forced it back down. “I see. Is that what you plan to do?”

  They had reached the shuttle. Baldwin stopped and turned in her direction. He looked pained. “No, of course not. What do you take me for?”

  Norwood looked him in the eye. “I take you for a man who has willingly, knowingly, participated in the mass murder of millions of human beings. What possible difference would one more make?”

  Anger filled Baldwin’s eyes. “Don’t push your luck, Norwood. I could change my mind.”

  A guard motioned with his blast rifle and the humans entered the shuttle.

  No effort had been made to hide the conduit that ran along the bulkheads or to cushion the metal decks. The seats were of the tubular variety favored by military minds everywhere and large enough for two average-sized humans.

  Norwood sat down, pulled the harness as tight as it would go, and found it was still loose.

  The trip to
the surface was completely uneventful. The Hudathans talked among themselves, Baldwin stared at the seat in front of him, and Norwood contemplated ways to get her hands on his gun, none of which seemed practical.

  Just prior to touchdown, Norwood would have sworn that she felt something feathery touch her mind. It was a strange sensation, unlike anything she’d experienced before, and gone so quickly that she wasn’t sure it had actually happened.

  The shuttle landed with a gentle thump and the entry port hissed open. Air flooded into the passenger compartment and Norwood drew it deep into her lungs. It was clean and cool. She liked it and needed no urging to release the harness and make her way outside.

  The shuttle had landed on a tropical island, replete with lush foliage and a crystal-clear lagoon. Not even the lumps of heat-fused sand, the slagged dwellings, or the freshly dug graves were sufficient to ruin the beauty. It was quiet—so quiet that she could hear each wavelet lap on the immaculate beach, a sound so peaceful, so soothing, that she wanted to take a nap.

  The others must have felt the same way, because the Hudatha had decided to lie down in the shuttle’s shade, and Baldwin had made a place for himself in the warm sand. It felt perfectly natural to settle down beside him, snuggle into a more comfortable position, and drift off to sleep.

  The dream was flooded with light: beautiful, warm, life-giving light that streamed down from the sky to bathe her body in its yellow-orange goodness. Her body was a huge undulating mass. It covered thousands of square miles, was constantly mending itself, and was linked to the life around it.

  Norwood found that her intelligence was everywhere yet nowhere at all. It felt strange because she was used to having her thoughts centered in one single place rather than dispersed over an area the size of a small country. But she liked it and found the sensation to be quite comfortable.

  “So you like the Say’lynt and would like to live as we do?”