Guard at the Gates of Hell (Gladius Book 1)

by George Olney

  For a few seconds, everyone stared at the naked body bleeding out on the floor. Then Shyranne knelt down and picked up the man's head, looking carefully at his face. "Oh... Lord... Above," she breathed quietly.

  "What is it, Shyranne?" Lane rumbled.

  She was still staring at the severed head in her hands. "I thought they were legend," she said. "They're real. I'm holding the head of one."

  As she carefully put the head down and stood up, Lane asked. "What legend? What are you talking about?"

  She looked at him grimly. "There were always stories in the Corps about the lost legion, the Hispania. The Hispania was an unlucky legion in the old Roman army, supposed to be cursed. In our stories, the Corps Hispania went to serve the Emperor as an Emperor's Guard then vanished. The name was retired. That's why there isn't a Hispania today, or so the story goes.

  "Nobody now knows if it was true," she continued. "That happened just after the Corps was originally formed. Nobody has seen a Hispania trooper, or any sort of Emperor's Guard, in over a thousand years. Now it appears they are real. Shangnaman had them brought back from wherever they were. Major Passant just killed one."

  Jandrews gave her a piercing stare. "Are you sure?"

  Shyranne turned her calm, grim gaze at him. "Our language, doctor, is a highly modified version of Old Latin with a great many invented and borrowed words because of our military life. Probably only twenty percent is still from Old Latin, but we can still recognize and understand it. What he was speaking was a much earlier version of the Corps language than ours, but with some differences. I could still understand him. His battlecry translated as, 'Hail the Emperor.' Also, I can recognize racial kin now that I'm looking for it."

  Lane commented. "It sounded as though he was calling you the Predator in Unispek, Major."

  Passant was cleaning the blood off his ax with one of the room's towels and still looking at the man's body. "He wasn't, Admiral. 'Prodator' is from Old Latin. The word means traitor. He saw your gray uniforms and our khaki ones. Gray meant a different Fleet, thus an enemy. Gladius khaki also meant an enemy to be eliminated. That man knew the political situation when he went into stasis ten years ago, and the destruction of the Corps and 'disloyal' Fleet units was probably already in the planning stage. To him, any military not part of the Imperial structure - and the Emperor specifically excluded the Corps from that structure - was classed as an enemy and a traitor by definition. He knew exactly where he was and who we were as soon as he opened his eyes. We're lucky he attacked first, instead of playing us as a member of the Corps would do."

  "As soon as you analyze his genome, doctor," Shyranne said, "I think you'll find he's the original type of the Gladius, before we modified ourselves and other differences grew up. That man is our basic stock, the original genetic modification that produced the Corps."

  Lane spoke decisively. "Shyranne, we have to discuss this. Ancel, Passant, you too. Let's get back to my office."

  Jandrews leaned over and picked up the severed head. "Meanwhile," he said with grim satisfaction, "I intend to dissect our friend here until I know everything about him." He didn't like having patients attack him or his people.

  "Be very careful, doctor," Shyranne said. "I expect everything in his body that might be some form of secret has already self-destructed. Even then, there are probably booby traps, concealed weapons, and anti-capture devices. We have them. Do your dissection via remotes and under a heavy suppression field. There will be surprises."

  "Oh, yes," the doctor said abstractedly, still examining the head, "I will be most careful. He won't be allowed to kill anyone."

  #####

  In the event, the discussion was delayed to allow the doctor time to finish his dissection, giving everyone time to change into uniforms without blood spatters. There was also time for other senior Legion and Frontier Fleet officers to be gathered.

  Doctor Jandrews made his presentation first, detailing what he'd found as the body was reduced to components. "We destroyed the remains after extensive recordings," he finished up. "As you said, Legion Commander, he was full of little items that were reduced to lumps, but we could mostly deduce what they were for by placement, if nothing else. I ordered the body destroyed in case there was something we missed, but also because a capsule we hit released some form of nannies as soon as it was touched by a scalpel. They were contained, but I saw no reason to take any more chances."

  Lieutenant Colonel Camille Paten was in the meeting as Support Group Commander, and she was still thinking about the genome chart on one of the doctor's displays. She'd seen it before, somewhere. It would come to her, she knew, but the thought bothered her.

  Lane spoke. "Thank you, doctor. Good brief."

  He looked at the people seated around the table. "We've all had a little time to digest this. Thoughts, anyone?"

  Major Passant spoke up. "Admiral, Commander Ancel and I have been brainstorming, trying to fit this man into various scenarios and we think we've got something plausible. With your permission?"

  Lane settled back into his chair and nodded. "Continue."

  "Aye," Passant answered. "Briefly, it appears the Emperor possesses a military force of these people. How large it is, we aren't prepared to state, but the thousands of embryos in stasis, much less the adults, are very indicative. We have to assume there are many more embryos and adults, possibly children, on Central than there are here. We also know conclusively they are the ancestor type of the current Gladius. These people were the soldiers that founded the Corps and we should treat them with a great deal of caution. Their counterparts in the early legions were extremely capable and created our traditions.

  "However there is a critical difference. While the Corps is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Empire - now humanity as a whole since the Empire has rejected us - these people are devoted to the protection and preservation of the Emperor, in all probability fanatically devoted. You will see evidence in a few minutes that will back up that conclusion.

  "Looking at the situation objectively, I can't see Shangnaman having more than a legion's active strength on Central and being able to keep it hidden. If he had them, my guess is we would have seen them on Tactine. Possibly, he's still growing the bulk of his Guard from embryos raised normally while the ones we've found were force-grown. Certainly, the ones in the cache appear about twenty standard years in age, none older, and, judging from the one we woke, fully trained. We also assume they're trained as ship crews as well as ground forces, given that the ship crews had to come from somewhere. We doubt Shangnaman expected to bring many New Fleet spacers if he was making an escape.

  "Forced growing has very severe limitations," he continued. "It limits the life experience of the subject, reduces life span, and reduces mental capacity by a measurable fraction. To have the best soldiers, Shangnaman would have to let them mature naturally. That tells us that the Guard on Central has a generation naturally maturing while the bulk of his current fighting force is force grown. Today's Gladius is fully trained and capable at seventeen, so the younger generation may be coming into the Guard force structure soon. How soon, we can't tell since we don't know when this program was started. There's a good probability, looking at the time the stasis chambers were emplaced and the age of the occupants, that naturally grown soldiers are already in the pipeline. In essence, the Emperor's Guard probably consists of older soldiers with slightly lesser ability and younger troops with little to no experience but more capabilities."

  Shyranne asked, "Major, under your scenario, how would you match the fighting ability of their younger troops - I will not call them Gladii, no matter their genetic makeup - against our young legionnaires?"

  "About on a par, Senior Officer, with an edge to our youngsters since they've been trained by combat veterans and have a millennium's Darwinian selection behind them. However, I have to emphasize that the Emperor's Guard is the most capable force we've ever faced. We have to look at them as an even match."

/>   Passant looked around, but the table was silent, digesting his last statement. "Now Commander Ancel has more to tell you." His expression said they weren't going to like it.

  "We went back and found another little room off the main chamber," Claude spoke up, his face carefully expressionless, "and we've solved the mystery of how the frigates are intended to be run. I suspected as soon as those receptors were found in the subject's head that the ships were designed for a mental tie-in by the crew but there were fittings for additional augmentation for the AI. We went looking for the reason for the augmentation and we found it."

  He leaned forward and looked at each person at the table in turn. "That room contained half measure sized cubes with attachment points for the AI. When we scanned the cubes, we got human life signs. The cubes are just the right size to hold an immature human brain, probably from a child. Those ships are cyborgs, designed to use a programmed human brain. That accounts for their small crews."

  Shyranne sucked in her breath in horror. It took a lot to shake a Gladius, but she was shaken. "That's a violation of every ethical code in the Empire! To intentionally do that to children! Shangnaman is a monster."

  Claude nodded. "Monster, yes, but a monster with a highly effective military force that's fanatically loyal to him."

  One of the cohort commanders spoke up. "Where in hell did he get the genetic material for all of this? None of those embryos are clones."

  Claude picked up the display control. He started running through a series of tridio stills as he spoke. "Remember we told you the lost legion became something dedicated to the preservation of the Emperor. Once we digested that, we found them. We got these from the carrier's library and from the Information Net on Cauldwell. As you all see, they're public shots of past Emperors, and they all contain one major indicator, no matter how old they are."

  He stopped at one. "Here's a good example. This is Claudius XII." Suddenly, there were individual yellow circles around faces surrounding the Emperor. "Look closely at the Emperor's security people."

  "That was over five hundred years ago," Lane rumbled.

  "And those look remarkably like our friend, Admiral," Passant said dryly. "It appears the lost legion was never lost, simply transformed and kept very, very secret. We told you of their dedication to the Emperor's person, and now we know how they were used - for an utterly reliable security force. Used that way, and in small numbers, they were under everyone's radar. Nobody has ever asked how Imperial Personal Protection was staffed. IPP was simply there. They were completely separate from any other Imperial entity. They spoke to no one but the Emperor, interacted with no one. Now we know why.

  "Apparently, Shangnaman hit on the idea of expanding their mission. They were devoted enough to the Emperor's person to go ahead with his plan to the fullest degree. Commander Ancel and I now believe the original security force is the source material for what appears to be a totally new factor in the Imperial equation. Sperm from the men and ova from the women, in vitro fertilization, and you have what we have in those caches in the Emperor's hideout. The initial generation was force-grown to hurry things up and make the plan practical. All very technical and unhuman. The Corps now has more against Shangnaman than pillage, rape, and murder of his own citizens. We can also assume he has a highly capable force nearly the equal of our own, a deadly enemy to the Corps, the Frontier Fleet, and all we represent."

  "This makes our planned attack on Central extremely problematical," Lane told the group. "We have to do a lot of work to decide how to handle the possible capabilities of this Emperor's Guard."

  "They are dangerous," Passant spoke up, "highly capable, but inexperienced. The man I fought knew what he was doing, but it was obvious to me that he'd never been in a real fight with a live blade. We have centuries of combat experience to draw upon. They don't."

  "Possibly something we can play on," Lane said, "but we need to wargame this carefully, and train with these people in mind. Those frigates, for instance, are far more dangerous for their size than any ship type we have. Our pocket battleships might be able to take one out, but not on a one-on-one basis."

  He sat forward and said decisively, "Shangnaman is widely known to be brilliant, ruthless, and paranoid. Given that paranoia, it's natural for him to keep the Guard close to him, for protection if nothing else. I don't think he'd want them out from under his personal control. He wouldn't use them for anything else unless he had a great many of them and a very important reason. That, by the way, speaks against their use on Tactine."

  "So now we have something very important to train towards," Shyranne mused aloud. "We didn't know about them, but they knew about us. Now we know about them also, but we have combat experience they lack. They're new at the Gladius ancestral trade."

  She looked pensively down at the table for a moment. "There's a full legion's combat strength in the cache. I wonder just how many more of them are out there."

  Camille's eyes suddenly shot wide and she gasped. The action was so totally uncharacteristic of a Gladius that everyone stared at her. "I think I can tell you," she finally said. "I've seen that genome before, in one of our troops. We have one of the adults here at the base with us.

  "Cadet Shana Ettranty."

  #####

  Shana raised her hand and knocked on the OCS Commandant's door. She knew perfectly well she was standing near the top of her class and hadn't screwed up anything lately, so the summons was a mystery. A voice came from inside, "Come."

  Shana marched in and started to report, but it wasn't Major Bellows behind the desk, it was Lieutenant Colonel Paten, and sitting next to her was Sergeant Major Olmeg. Correcting herself with only an instant's hesitation, she snapped out, "Lieutenant Colonel, Cadet Ettranty reports."

  Camille looked up at the legionnaire at attention in front of her. OCS apparently agreed with her. Her uniform was its usual immaculate self, with a senior cadet's blue tab in place of her rank badge and a cadet rank brassard on her left sleeve showing a Captain's three pips. She was the designated class leader. Camille now had a good idea why. She also felt slightly sick at what she was about to order. Thank the Lord Above the Sergeant Major was here to take over this triple damned duty. "Cadet Ettranty, I told you once we would look into the matter of your mother. We've done so, but that raised a number of urgent questions that now need to be answered. I'm ordering a full medical and psych examination of you. The results will answer those questions. Legion Sergeant Major Olmeg will take you to the hospital for that examination. After it is over, you will be brought here and all of your questions, including the need for this examination, will be answered. Is that clear?"

  It wasn't clear to Shana, and her expression made that plain, but an order was an order. "Aye," she said.

  "Move out with the Sergeant Major, Cadet, the doctors are waiting."

  "Aye." Shana spun on her heel, waited for the Sergeant Major to heave himself out of his chair then followed him out of the office.

  After Shana left, Camille crossed her arms on her desk, put her head on them, and fought the nausea down. Ettranty was a good trooper, one of the best. And this whole triple damned situation forced her to lie to her. That lie went directly against everything in her nature as a Gladius. Thank the Lord Above the girl was following orders. If the examination turned up nothing, Camille owed Ettranty a full explanation.

  If the wrong things turned up, Second Lieutenant Ettranty's body would be burned with honors.

  #####

  "What's this all about, Sergeant Major?" Shana asked as they left the office.

  The Sergeant Major looked at her as they walked. He finally admitted to himself she was the daughter he'd always wanted. His wife and both his sons were dead in the battle to get them to Cauldwell. Now he had her - and she was doing well. He was proud of Shana, damned proud, but he'd also been in the meeting on the Emperor's Guard. This girl could be one of the best officers in the Victrix one day or a deadly threat right now. They were on their way to find
out which. "I can't tell you, Cadet. It's classified. Big stuff. Let's get this poking and prodding out of the way and get back so Lieutenant Colonel Paten can tell you. I can't."

  That was all he'd say until they got to the examination room. Once a very puzzled Shana was lying on the pad, he leaned over as she started to lose consciousness. "You've done me proud, girl," he said in a husky growl.

  He went stumping back into the control room where various doctors and technicians sat looking at monitors and took a seat where he could see through the window to where she lay. He hated misleading her, but he was pragmatic and experienced enough to know it was necessary. Olmeg was perfectly certain there wasn't a disloyal thought in Shana's head, but there was no telling what was buried in her subconscious, or what would trigger something that might be buried. There was certainly no device in her body that the Victrix hadn't put there. The operations that gave her Gladius physical capabilities would have revealed anything.

  Likewise, when they'd tweaked her mind to improve her natural mental sensitivity, nothing was out of the ordinary. In fact, she was more sensitive than normal to begin with and possessed other mental capabilities the Corps wanted. He and the Legate had felt them when they met her, and that was why Corona chose her. Now the Sergeant Major knew why she had those capabilities. She was from ancestral stock. The question was what had been done to her by the Empire and this examination was looking for the answer. Another question was why Ettranty had the girl as a daughter, but that could wait. There was a reason, of that he was sure.

  Sergeant Major Olmeg wasn't a deep thinker. He left that to the officers while he and the rest of the decurions got on with the business of running the Corps. Shana, from her first day with the Victrix, was the responsibility of the decurions. She still was, as far as he was concerned, especially once she finished OCS and mounted that pip on her collar pronouncing her a Second Lieutenant. Then she became a decurion's responsibility to continue training until she grew up eventually and became a good officer. If this examination turned out right, Olmeg had no worries on that score.