“Good. ’Cause this is where things gets real wobanki hairball. I’m screaming at the general, and I’ll be real honest here, I’m calling him every name because he’s just killed us faster than any of them freaky Cybar, and gettin’ court-martialed would be a privilege compared to what was about to happen next. At the time I was sorta thinking, even though I was mad, that it wasn’t such a bad idea. Better than being turned into a host zombie by those alien robots. But no leej ever wants to die, amirite?
“Hells yeah I’m right!” roared the old man suddenly. He took a gusty drink even though his liver-spotted hand trembled as he held the glass up to his quivering lips.
“Tac Com comes back with the strike authorization. This means the battleship running alongside the carrier Orion is aligning its main gun for a strike that will hit within meters of the target. To be more specific—that means us. For all intents and purposes… we dead.
“I remember when I heard the support operator tell us to seek cover—‘Orbital Strike inbound’—that it was probably the last thing I was ever gonna hear. Except they’re way out in space. It’s gonna take a bit for that big old beam to hit us.
“‘To me, legionnaires,’ says the general. He’s got the girl over one shoulder and he’s dropping Cybars danger close with his sidearm.
“One of them Cybars grabs a hold of Ren, its tentacles all over him as it goes in to take a bite with its hydraulic jaws. Lieutenant Hilbert breaks away from our formation to go after him even though the weapon is about to hit us.
“The LT screams, ‘Not today, you piece of worthless junk!’ and he’s unloading full-auto point-blank. You know the old N-16s with the full-auto blast feature was real wonky. Hell, even we known they was dangerous. You couldn’t control the muzzle. He pulls Ren away from the flailing corpse of the dying monster and starts draggin’ Ren, who’s screaming like he’s just had the worst nightmare of all time, across this polished marble blue floor that seems like some map of a whole other galaxy. But you see weird stuff like that in ancient ruins all the time. Stuff that makes your head hurt to think about, so you don’t. And there’s all the bodies.
“Then one of them Cybars gets one of its tentacles around the LT’s throat. Opens it up with blood and everything right before my eyes. And I’m shootin’ at all the other Cybars tryna rush our position.”
The old man suddenly stopped. His eyes glazed over for a second as though some strange idea had just occurred to him.
“Did I mention the general’s gonna activate a personal force repulsor field? Yeah… I mighta mentioned that earlier. That’s real important to this story. That’s why the LT went out to drag Ren back in close. ’Cause there was a radius. And now that thing’s got ahold of him and it’s cuttin’ his throat. All ’cause he went out for a dumb-as-a-bag-of-spanners private. But that’s a leej for ya.
“Even with an orbital strike about to rain down on us and turn everything to little bitty pieces, the general thumbs a switch on this big old relic he’s usin’—a slug thrower from the Savage Wars was my guess. He thumbs it off full-auto to single shot. Cool as a Vanu courtesan dripping with jade lotus blossom he puts a bullet right in the main processor of the Cybar that’s cuttin’ the LT’s throat. LT stumbles forward, dying ’cause his throat’s been cut deep, but I slap a med-seal over him thinking he might live and set it for full spectrum pain relief and thermaheal. That’s when the strike hit us.”
The old man smiles like he’s about to deliver the punch line to a joke.
“You ever been inside a fifteen-story fortress when it got hit from an orbital strike by one of them big old Republican battleship main guns? Huh? You ever have that happen to you, Leej?”
The old man almost dies laughing. Then he starts coughing and hacking like he really is going to die.
“Didn’t think so. Well… the world made no sense after the bright light and searing heat of the strike. Suddenly everything’s going all hit-by-a-wave-of-deadly-energy. And that’s when the building collapsed in on itself. Millions of tons of rock went sliding down past us like a waterfall of debris mixed with brief glimpses of nightmare visions of dying killer biobots shrieking and screeching and being crushed and carried away while we’re inside this force-field bubble that will give out at any second. You know how that is. There was smoke and dust and debris everywhere. And then we were falling. Falling with everything else. And everyone, except probably the general, was screaming, leej or not. Because that’s what death is like. You gonna scream even though you told yourself you never would.
“When we came to, it was still raining debris and clouds of dust down on what was left of the general’s force field. Which was collapsing. The two suns of that planet, which had been close and burning directly overhead, now looked like distant red dwarfs at midnight.”
The old man paused and took another sip of his drink. He licked his dry lips and continued.
“Bad. Sure. That was bad. Except those Cybars don’t care about almost being killed inside a falling building. They’re coming at us across the piles of debris. Suddenly we’re in a firefight once again with dust and smoke everywhere. Optics and HUDs offline due to the EMP effects of the strike. So it’s all iron sights until the software reboots.
“I try to grab the LT, but he shrugs me off and tells me to cover the general. Except he croaks now like a frog ’cause his throat got cut. We lay down as much covering fire as we can, takin’ ’em out as the Cybar come at us across all this ruined end-of-tomorrow wasteland that was once Ancients’ ruins. We egress out of the AO and manage to get back to the road that leads out of Skaurvold’s pleasure palace. Which is now just a big old crater. We reach a raised thoroughfare that led out to the starport. Which was of course, five clicks back. All transport has been destroyed by the strike, so we got to go on foot. And because we got no electronics, we got no commo. Rescue can’t pull us off the battlefield. We got to make it to the LZ through this swampy jungle.
“Except now the Cybar don’t want to let us go. All the pirates is good and dead, but the Cybar on the other hand are coming at us in waves. And the waves are getting bigger and bigger as more and more of them gather and repair. At times they get danger close. And we get beat to shreds by the time we make it to the outer gate that led out to the starport above the jungle. The whole city behind is a smoking crater. Big old pirate raiders have been ripped to pieces and tossed out into the landscape like toys.
“In other words… we ain’t making it back to the LZ. There’s nothing but burning jungle between us and the rendezvous. Jungle’s on fire from the strike.”
The old man picks up his drink and considers it a moment as though waging some internal argument. Then he sets it down gently with some moment of finality.
“That was when LT tells the general to go on. He tells him we’ll try to hold the Cybar back long enough to let him and the girl get a head start. Did I mention she was a real looker? Then he asks the general something. LT says, ‘Sir, don’t let them kill her.’ He said that because she’d been right with us through the whole thing. Picked up an N-16 and started firing point-blank into those monsters. She’d’ve made a real good leej. So I guess we just couldn’t let the Repub kill her off.”
The old man at the bar nodded to himself. Just stared at something Exo couldn’t see and nodded to himself. Then he cleared his throat.
“General said he would send someone to pull us out if made it back to the LZ. He’d keep a dropship on station. But you know how promises are. And besides… we knew we weren’t gonna make it. But we buy ’em enough time so they might.
“And we did,” said the old man quietly. “We held the line. Ahamalee got it first. Those monsters just dragged him out of his position near the ruined gatehouse. Went down like a man. Didn’t scream or nothin’. Just waited till they were all over him and then he detonated his demo rig. Must’ve taken about twenty of them all at once. Didn’t matter much, because more of them just came on at us all over again.
“Me and the L
T and Ren fell back inside some kind of old temple structure and formed up around a bottleneck in a side passage. Until nightfall we held them there. Then Ren’s rifle malfunctioned, and about ten seconds later they got him. He screamed. Screamed a lot, in fact.”
The old man turns to look at Exo. His eyes are haunted by what he saw inside his memories.
“There’s some nights here, when the bars are all closed and I can’t sleep, that I’d like to forget that scream. Forget what he was begging for. Who he was asking for at the end. I’d like to forget that, and to tell you the truth, I hope that’s what death’s all about. Not nothin’… but forgettin’ the bad like it never was.”
For a long moment there’s nothing but silence in the bar. Beyond its walls, galactic civilization hurries on, heedless of the heroism and tragedy needed to maintain its thin veneer. But here in the shadowy cool bar… the memories are hauled out and examined once more. Debts paid are remembered.
The old man holds the glass to lips and takes a slow, small sip. He mumbles some words Exo doesn’t catch. They’re too low and too silent to be heard in the quiet of the bar.
The cantina is still in its perpetual night. But the clock on the wall reads afternoon Utopion local.
The old man swallows hard and rattles the few cubes in his glass.
“Another?” asks Exo hopefully.
The old man says nothing, just smiles sadly at the young leej. Sad for all the dead. Where have they gone, and, when will we ever learn, as they say.
“Almost time to go home,” whispers the old man. “My little granddaughter’s coming to stay with us tonight. I only ever just have the one here. It’s my last treat. And I know… I ain’t got much longer left this side of the galaxy. But thank you all the same. Your drills would be proud of you, Leej. You didn’t forget an old brother. And you were kind enough to sit and listen about times long gone. When we were young, and brave.”
“How did you get out of there?” prompts Exo after a long, quiet moment.
“LT carried me,” states the old man simply. “During our escape out of the ruins one of them got me in the leg pretty bad. It was half-hanging off. We tournicreted it. But I wasn’t using it anymore. Not ever again, really. I says to the LT, ‘We gonna die here, sir.’
“He says, ‘No way, no how, Sergeant.’ Except he can only talk in that whisper cause that thing half-sawed through his throat. He carried me through some sewers we found and out into the jungle. Full dark by the time we got out, but the whole jungle is still on fire. Them things is howling in the jungle like nightmares. But I told you that.
“LT was a real hero, Leej. Carried me out there and into the jungle, and I’m thinking, what the hell for? We’ll just die out here in a few.
“‘Let’s just set off our demo rigs, LT,’ I says to him. But he says we’re gonna make it. ‘Just hang in there, Sergeant. You don’t mind… it don’t matter.’
“We laughed because I’d lost my rifle when I spring-bayonetted a Cybar who got up close and personal. It was a real knife and gun show inside that temple. Then LT’s rifle malfunctioned and exploded a second after he tossed it away. He only had his sidearm.
“We were laughing because we weren’t gonna make it on our own. And we knew it. But that didn’t matter no how. Not to us. Not at that moment. We didn’t care about awards or ceremonies. Or medals. At the end… we were just two leejes who managed to be dumb enough not die up ’til then… and it was good to have someone to die with. No leej should ever die alone out there. Galaxy likes it that way though. Gets you all alone and makes you feel small. And then it kills you dead like you were never nothin’ to nobody. That’s the way the galaxy is. You’ll die all alone out there. ’Cept leejes stick together when everyone runs.
“The jungle was filled with them things,” the old man whispers. “It was a real nightmare. But General was true to his word. Search Air Rescue tac shuttle comes in all mounts blazing and clears off the LZ. We try to make it through the swamp we’re crawling through, and the blasts from the shuttle’s turbines are pushing us back. Door gunners are firing away in every direction, and by the flashing light of their heavy blasters I can see we’re surrounded by not just hundreds, but thousands of Cybars closing in on us.
“‘Don’t give up, Pappy!’ I’m screaming over the turbines. And out in the dark beyond the perimeter I see something bigger than everything else comin’ straight for us. Like the monster of all monsters. Galaxy’s a weird place. Sometimes it’ll throw some bizarre stuff straight at ya and ask ya how you like them tarpples.”
Pappy? Exo opens his mouth to give voice to the question in his mind, but closes it when he sees the old man’s look. He’s building to an end, reliving triumph through honor. Exo doesn’t interrupt.
“‘Leejes don’t give up,’ roars the LT. ‘Never,’ he croaks, and I see blood come from around the bandage on his throat. But we made it onto that shuttle, and we got out of there. Just barely. Things were holding on to the damn shuttle when we went to full throttle.”
The old man picks up his glass, forgetting it’s empty. He rattles the cubes, sets the glass on the bar, and stands awkwardly. He fishes an unseen cane from beneath the bar and hobbles over to Exo.
“I don’t know what the Legion is about any more than anyone else, kid. But maybe… maybe it’s not about dying alone out there. If it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Hilbert—we called him Pappy because he looked like an old man, gray hair at nineteen, you know the type. If it hadn’t been for Pappy I’d’ve never made it home. Wouldn’t have met my Zandra. No kids. No granddaughter coming over tonight to let me play Candyship with her. This leg never worked right again. They put me out of the Legion—and I loved the Legion. You never saw such a damn fine NCO, I can assure you that.”
Exo begged to differ, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
“They never gave us commendations, nor medals neither. They just wanted to cover it all up because it was really just a hit mission on that beautiful girl. Whatever happened to her… I’ll never know. I suspect General Rex did right. He was that kind of man.
“But Pappy didn’t let me die alone out there in the big dark. He was a real hero. Heroes like him may not ever get any medals, but he’s a hero all the same. My Zandra would tell him that if she ever met him. She’d tell him… thank you. ’Cause her sergeant made it back, mostly in one piece—though I suspect she wouldn’t care how many pieces didn’t come back.
“Me too. I’d tell him that. I’d tell him he was a real hero, never mind no cheap piece of metal they stick on your dress uniform.”
The old man patted Exo once on the shoulder. “Well. You take care, boy. I got to go home now.”
He continued on down the length of the bar. The door opened out into the last of the Utopion daylight, and the legionnaire was gone.
Prius Occidit Eos
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
PART ONE
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
CAMP FORGE
12
PART TWO
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Epilogue
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Legionnaire Page 22
