The door to the passenger compartment snapped open—that was it! A crew member, a Cyrillian, peering in. Dragon caught him behind the ear with a vicious roundhouse kick that drove him to the deck like a falling tree. We burst through the door past three passengers, startled, two males in khaki, one female in white, biogen. I was past them in a flash and tore open the door to the control room, the pilot, startled, stared back from his chair. I snapped the near-invisible angel wire over his neck and dropped, putting my full body weight behind it. Blood cascaded down my arms as he convulsed silently, his arms flapping wildly. I got a glimpse into the passenger compartment. Psycho was slitting a male Systie's throat with a ceremonial cold knife he must have snatched from the Systie. Blood poured down the Systie's chest. Valkyrie used her angel wire on the second male, riding him like a horse as he collapsed into the aisle, face purple, scratching at his bloody neck. Priestess and Scrapper struggled with the biogen girl, clinging to her like a pair of killer dogs on a jungle cat. She shook them off, then attacked Priestess. Dragon landed on the biogen's back, jabbing at her with a shockrod he had taken from the Mocain. Psycho jumped on her head, plunging a bloody knife into her back. She snapped to her feet, dumping Dragon and Psycho, holding Priestess in a stranglehold under one arm, reaching behind her to pull the knife from her back, then slamming Priestess to the deck and plunging the knife hilt-deep into Priestess's belly. Priestess screamed. Something exploded. Scrapper leaped on the biogen's back, snapped the angel wire over her neck and yanked. The biogen released the knife, squirming wildly, going to her knees, white blood splattering everywhere. Scrapper was ripping the biogen's head right off—where the hell was Priestess? Dragon pounded at the biogen's face, reducing it to a greasy white pulp. A voice from the cockpit console was demanding a sitrep. The station—how could we dock? I caught a glimpse of another sub, spiralling our way. A bloody, hopeless screwup—criminal stupidity! A horrid clang rang out and the ship lurched. A deafening bang, and the passenger hatch was blown away and a squad of armored Systies charged in, firing vac wildly.
The ES snapped off and we were back in the holo chamber, lying where we had fallen. I was shaking with horror and rage and fear. Priestess was crying in terror and frustration, but there was no knife in her belly. The blood was fading from my arms. The door snapped open and Millina stalked in.
"Crap!" she screamed, livid. "That was pitiful! Amateurs! Fools! How have you survived? Put me in the strike force! You idiots can't handle it! You're all dead! Understand? Dead!"
"Shut the hell down!" I shouted. "Nobody asked you!" My heart still pounded. We had decided to exclude Millina from the strike force because a Mocain could not disguise herself as a VS, and anything else would draw too much attention.
"That was not so good," Dragon said grimly.
"God damn it! Why the hell didn't you…"
"Can't you take out a bloody robot?"
"I didn't see you…"
"Shut down!"
"She's right! That was crap!"
"Shut down!" I screamed again. "Just shut the hell down!" A sullen silence settled over the ES chamber.
"All right," I said. "This is why we're doing these exercises. We're going to do it better next time."
"That's not going to be too hard!"
"Critique, Thinker." Snow Leopard demanded. He stood in the ES doorway, as calm as ice.
"That was stupid," I said. "We weren't thinking. Valkyrie—if that happens in real life, you let him rape you."
"Let him rape me!"
"That's right! Our mission is to get inside that station and kill KCA. Only that. Nothing else is of any importance. If it gains us some time, let it happen."
"Easy for you to say!"
"You can cut off his cock after we reach the other side. Until then we keep quiet. It was working until then. That was stupid—we were all stupid."
"You were in charge, Thinker," One said. It hurt.
"Right. Absolutely right. My fault. Scrapper, nobody asked you to get out of your seat."
"We just let him rape her?"
"That's right!"
"I thought we were going to kill Systies, not service them!"
"We do whatever has to be done to insure the success of the mission. That's what we do."
***
We got better. I got a lot more demanding, and we got better. The envirosim chambers were totally realistic. It was exactly like real life, and I set the controls to reflect everything that might possibly go wrong. We learnt fast. At first the angel wires had ripped our hands to shreds. Now we all had thick calluses on our hands—like real manual laborers. Artificial, but undetectable.
The practice was hell. It was not going to end until we were ready for anything. They ended up hating me, but I didn't mind.
We were going to kill a God—and we had to do it right.
We drifted around the Gassies on vac drive. I didn't want to go stardrive until we were ready. There wasn't much down time but when there was, I would spend some of it on the bridge, looking out at the stars. When I had been a regular trooper, I hadn't known or cared where the Legion was sending me—but now I had to know everything. The stars were like milky highways through infinity. We floated along the edge of the Outvac like a microscopic fleck of metal; we had a damned good view. Out one port ConFree's home stars burnt a lovely pattern into the dark—the Crista Cluster, a glorious spangle of silvery dust. Hundreds of stars. Home—home to us all. Veltros, Hell, Korkush, Quaba, Mica—they were all there. I couldn't look at the Crista without feeling a warm thrill on my flesh and a fierce determination that no intruder was ever going to threaten us without one hell of a fight. Those stars—we'd die for them.
We were so far from the Inners that it was not really comprehensible. You could say the distance, but you couldn't really grasp it: 1,400 light years from the Inners. We were way, way out there.
By turning my head just a bit, I could see another stunning cloud of icy, swirling dust and softly burning stars embedded in the cloud. It was the Donatei Cluster, on the other side of the Outvac, considerably further out than the Crista. New stars still formed there. It was a galactic nursery, glowing hot and bright, encased in a glorious bubble of glowing gas. And on one starry edge of the cluster, the Blood Star burnt a brilliant red—a warning, to our enemies. God's work, on display for all to see, even bacteria like us, and it surely was a marvelous sight. It always put things into perspective for me.
And, an impossible distance away, Deneb burnt like an arc light, a brilliant phospho blue-white supergiant, casting a welcoming glow to our tiny corner of the universe, a lighthouse for the Outvac, watching over us all. Deneb had always been there for us. But where we were going, it was just another distant star. We were Deneb's seed, I thought, launched on a holy crusade, into the infinite dark.
***
I staggered out of ES, exhausted, my rags both scorched and soaked. I collapsed against a wall of the squad room and slid to the floor, my limbs twitching. So real! I had been terrified, the whole time.
The others appearing, excited, shouting to each other, still pumped full of adrenalin. Snow Leopard stepped in from the Control Room, clad in faded camfax, standing straight and tall, as cold as ice, watching us without comment.
"Element Beta all present or accounted for, sir!" Dragon shouted to me, crashing down to the deck.
We're all here, One," I said wearily. Deto! Another royal screw-up! The bastard had shot me right in the head and I hadn't even seen him. Deto!
Everyone was on the floor or braced against the walls, totalled, still panting, awaiting the word from Snow Leopard.
"Acceptable," he said. The squad erupted, howling like wolves. Dragon pounded my back, ecstatic.
"What happened, Dragon?" I asked. I had missed much of the action.
"Greenie and I cornered him after they took you and Psycho out. We wasted the body guards and then we wasted him. Man! What a charge! He fought like a tiger! They killed Valkyrie when we were taking the esca
pe pod. Acceptable, Three! Our first acceptable!" He was beaded with sweat—ecstatic.
Got him. A first. I was so tired I could not really appreciate it.
"That was good, Thinker." Snow Leopard squatted beside me, totally calm. "They're getting it. It's coming together." I nodded, mute.
"It will have to be better," he said. "There was a lot of luck, this time. They'll have to get better."
"Yes," I said. "We'll do it."
"I killed the creep that got you, Valkyrie," Scrapper said. They were side by side against the cenite wall, sharing a canteen. Valkyrie was totally dejected. Nobody liked to get killed—even as a Holo-X.
"Not bad, Legion," Millina said to Valkyrie. "I liked the way you handled that officer." Millina was clad in STRATCOM red. She was proving to be most helpful, once we had decided to take advantage of her ethnicity rather than fighting it.
"You enjoyed killing that female, didn't you?" Valkyrie's face was completely blank. She had been that way ever since Millina had walked into the squad. Cold, detached hostility. Millina had raped and degraded Valkyrie on Coldmark and later saved her life on Mongera. Valkyrie had slit Millina's throat on Coldmark and later saved her life on Mongera. They were even.
"Yes I did," Millina replied, pouring the rest of her canteen over her head. "I enjoy killing Systies." She said it as matter of factly as if she had just been asked if she liked snow cream.
"Hey, Priestess—I thought you were watching my back," Psycho complained. He was standing, a little shakily, one hand on his hip, the other clutching a canteen.
"I'm sorry, Five. There were two of them, and I was unarmed. I took down the first one, but she was a biogen. By the time I had gouged her eyes out, the kid was on you."
"The little runt knifed me in the back! Scut! Creepy little dwarf! Don't nobody teach kids manners any more?"
"Listen up!" I struggled to my feet. The chatter slowly died. "All right, that was acceptable," I said. "We killed KCA. We did the mission—but at unacceptable cost. We had three killed. That's not acceptable to me."
"Come on, Thinker," Psycho replied. "We got the bastard! And we're Holo-X's! Who cares about casualties? It doesn't matter if we all get killed, as holos! Just so long as we get King Rat. Right?"
"Wrong! It was too close. We've got to do better. We've only got one chance at this target. We've got to do it right! Three casualties are three too many! I want zero casualties! And I want a clean escape."
"Why? Once the job is done, turn the holos off. Why escape? Who cares?"
"I'm not arguing with you, Psycho. We're going to do this a lot better. Zero casualties—and a clean escape. Dragon, Snow Leopard—let's go over the action. The rest of you, one hour break and stand by for the debriefing."
A chorus of groans greeted my announcement. I didn't care. We were going to do it right.
***
"Hi, Westo. You busy?" Millie stood in the doorway to my little cube. They had forced me to take a cube and I was glad to have a place to go over the ops plan on my own, completely alone, free from all interruptions—well, almost all.
"Come in, Millie." I had been hunched over a little built-in holo walldesk, going over the attack plan again. It was starting to all blur together. Perhaps I needed a break. She stepped in and sat on the open bunk, her knees brushing mine as I sat in the little wall chair. She was in her whites. A wisp of hair fell over one eye. She brushed it back.
"I've missed you," she said. "You've been so busy."
"Yeah. I guess so." Busy—and exhausted.
"Do you miss them?" She was gazing at a little holo of Moontouch and Stormdawn that I had put up on the wall.
"Of course." They haunted me. I couldn't even sleep any more. But I had vowed to do it—for them.
"How's the jump going?"
"Fine. No worries."
"How far in are we?"
"About half way to the first target. It takes a few days."
"Why do they call a star jump 'vac run red'? We're not really in the vac, are we?"
"Actually, we are. But it's not normal vac. It's an artificial wormhole—an antimat powered shortcut between two distant sections of our own universe. I don't know where the term came from. I think it's left over from the days before star flight."
She looked at me with those big brown eyes, a ghostly smile at her lips. "Do you still love me?" she asked.
"You don't have to ask that. Why do you ask that?"
"You didn't want me to come with you."
"I don't want you to die."
"Do you really think we're going to die?"
"We're going right into the Inners—like a bullet in the heart of the System. We may get in—but getting out will be the trick. Yeah. I think we're going to die."
"Then why go?"
"We're going to kill Satan."
"Is that so important?"
"Yes. It is."
"I don't care," she sighed. "Can I sleep here tonight?"
"You don't have to ask, Millie." I reached over and pulled her to me—head to head. I breathed in her scent, a faint, fresh perfume. What bizarre fate had brought us together? God? KCA? Tara? Millions of dead? Who could read Fate?
"Hi, gang." Priestess stood in the doorway, hair wet, bloodshot eyes, wearing faded camfax. "Can I crash here, Thinker? Psycho keeps trying to get my pants off and I'm really tired. He's so damned annoying."
"Sure. You can sleep with Millie. I've got to do just a little bit more work here. I'll, uh…I'll sleep on the floor."
"Thanks!" Priestess fell into the bunk, kicking off her boots. It had been a hard day.
"Why don't you join her, Millie? I won't be much longer." I doused the lights, leaving only the glow from the holo. I had to look at the milbase floorplan one last time.
"She's asleep," Millie whispered. "Wow."
I tried to concentrate on the holo map. Millie stripped off her whites, revealing tight panties and minibra. I tired to ignore her long, lovely legs and ample breasts as she pulled a blanket out from the drawer under the bunk.
"I may join you on the floor later if it gets too crowded up here," Millie said, snuggling in next to Priestess and pulling up the blanket.
"Sure. No monkey business, though. I've got to get some sleep."
"No monkey business. Tenners."
I went back to the map. I was tremendously weary, but I had to get this last part resolved. If we got stuck in the warehouse, we'd never even get into the sub. It seemed largely a matter of luck whether…
"Westo?"
"Yes, Millie."
"Maybe just a little monkey business."
***
"That's the supergiant," One said. "See it?" We had just popped out of stardrive and were approaching the Parsi Cluster. There were several inhabited worlds here, firmly controlled by USICOM and the United System Alliance. The supergiant was a brilliant gold, a lovely cosmic jewel. To us it was just another sinister landmark on Atom's Road. It was chilling to actually see it that close. The Parsi Cluster was the gateway to the Inners. The System had made a major effort to reestablish control here, and it was now firmly back in the Systie camp. Up ahead—still unimaginably distant, but getting closer every instant we were in stardrive—was the Dark Cloud, welcoming us to its dusty domain, where new stars were burning brightly in their cosmic womb. Beyond was the Pleiades, misty blue emeralds, beauty to strike you dead. And beyond that was the Hyades Federation—our target.
"Yeah. I see it." Snow Leopard and I occupied the VIP chairs on the bridge, watching the screens.
"This place is crawling with Systie ships. We're in the Inners now."
"Cloaking fully active. Standing by 100 percent combat alert," someone announced.
"Continue recon run," the captain ordered. "We'll just see how good this cloaking is."
We had just made a star jump across 1,100 light years, and we were now well within the boundaries of Systie vac. The mission here was to test the effectiveness of our cloaking—against live bad guys. I had agre
ed it was probably a good idea. We wouldn't want to arrive at the Hyades without confirmation that the cloaking worked against Starfleet. We knew it worked against Fleetcom—but we weren't targeting Fleetcom.
"Entering Parsi Sector defensive fields. 4S systems coming on scope now." I could see them on the sector map, scattered carelessly through the vac like evil little red gnats. But there was nothing careless about it. 4S stood for Space Superiority Sector Sensors, and it was a notoriously dependable and effective early warning system designed to detect intruding starships. We knew it was good because the Systies had stolen the technology from us.
"This is crazy," I muttered.
"What have you done since joining the Legion that hasn't been crazy?" Snow Leopard asked. I had no answer.
"We are within the det field of the nearest sensor. Cocooning nicely. No trail. Cloaking appears to be 100 percent effective."
"That's nice."
"This is the point where they'd normally be in a frenzy, crash launching everything within range and siccing their tacships on us."
"No defensive reaction so far. Starfleet units in system defwatch continue normal routine. No downside targeting. Battle Fleet on combat patrol has not reacted. Two cruisers, one assault carrier, tacship screen, all on normal ready status—as marked."
"Terrific." The images of the Systie fleet put a little chill to my blood. This was definitely their vac. We didn't belong here.
"Captain?" Snow Leopard inquired.
The young captain turned, grinning. "They don't see us."
"Good. That's good."
***
Cross of the Legion Page 33
