March of the Legion

by Marshall S. Thomas

  The lava river rumbled past us, a fiery torrent of glittering, molten lava. Massive chunks of golden goo bobbed and churned in eerie slow motion, hissing and sparkling. A mighty, magical river of liquid stone, flowing into the unknown. Hot volcanic winds roared all around us. Sparks filled the air. Fire and brimstone, a glittering, luminous river from the heart of Hell. We watched the molten rock grind past, flickering and spitting, and listened to the roaring of the wind.

  "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Psycho sounded completely content.

  "Psycho, look at the tacmap," I said. "This river flows down towards the Omni base. It empties into the lake."

  "Who cares?" Psycho asked. "We're trapped like rats. We're going to have to go back to Snow Leopard, confirm there's no way out, and then all we can do is wait for somebody to show up—and if it's the O's, we're cooked. So say your prayers."

  He was right. If we called for help, or signaled a nova, the O's would have us.

  A double blast echoed above us. Golden laser tracks flickered high above through the smoke. The fighting was going on without us and the flames from our aircar wreck would be an effective homing beacon. Sooner or later, someone would come down and investigate. I feared it wouldn't be the Legion. Every extra instant we spent on this island brought us closer to death.

  "I suppose so," I responded. "I suppose you're right."

  "You can bet your next watch on it. We're all going to die, just like the Second said, but I promise you, we're going to take some O's with us. You can bet on that, too." Psycho's boyish features twisted, behind his faceplate—an evil grin.

  I looked again at the river of lava. Surely this was the River of Doom, where the souls of the dead board the ferryboat to the Underworld, leaving the shores of life behind them forever. I had no coins for the boatman. A shiver ran over my body. My armor glowed from the heat, but my blood ran icy cold. Then, the idea hit me. I knew what we would have to do, and it was terrifying.

  ###

  "You're completely out of your mind." A river of molten gold reflected off Snow Leopard's faceplate. His pink eyes burnt with emotion. We were all gathered together. We'd carefully dragged Redhawk all the way from the aircar to the shore of the glowing river. His armor was riddled with holes, but we had sealed it. He was badly wounded, but Priestess was taking good care of him. I had no doubt Snow Leopard had already made his decision about my idea, one way or the other, but we would have to go over it again. Snow Leopard wanted to be sure he was right.

  "We can do it, Snow Leopard—we can do it!" I insisted. "It's not that wide. All we have to do is reach the far shore! It'll get us there!"

  "It'll kill us. You're crazy. There's no guarantee it'll work!"

  "There's no guarantee in your Legion contract either," I quietly reminded him. "You always told me that."

  "We'll sink! Like a stone!"

  "No, we won't, we'll float! Sweety's done the calculations. We laser the parts from the fuselage of the aircar. Then we weld it together with the plasma, fill in the gaps, and we've got a cenite boat—a raft. We can even rig up a tiller! We can build it in no time, and then we can move off this rock! We can reach the other side and hide or continue the mission, whatever you want! Redhawk can just lie there in the boat, and we'll be off! Otherwise, we're dead!"

  More Legion fighters and Omni tracers streaked overhead. I pointed at the burning hulk behind us. "Sooner or later someone's going to have time to check that out."

  "This is the craziest idea I've ever heard." Snow Leopard stared at that awful river, hypnotized. The mountain trembled. An explosion of yellow sparks glittered over the lava. A deep rumble shuddered in our bones.

  "It's a great idea," Psycho said dreamily. "It's the best idea Thinker has ever had. We ride—we ride the fire, right into Hell."

  "It's insane," Priestess said quietly. "But everything we do here is insane—I'm for it, because it means easy transport for Redhawk. We can't carry him much further. We just can't. And it doesn't matter if we die, does it? We die anyway."

  "You're all nuts," Warhound declared. "This must be a psycho ward. Why don't we just jump off the cliff into the lava and swim there? Huh? Maybe that will work, too. How long do you think our armor will hold out?"

  "We should name the river," Psycho said, ignoring Warhound. "Beta River. How's that? Beta River—our very own river. I never had a river before."

  The lava groaned past us, great glowing chunks of semi-liquid rock, bobbing along in slow motion in a glittering red-gold river of liquid sunshine, volcano blood. Snow Leopard silently gazed into the river. Finally he stirred.

  "It's insane," he said. "We do it. Let's get started on the boat."

  ###

  Adrenalin flooded my system as we launched the boat. I was certain we would all die, but I didn't care—I was proud of that crude, ugly boat. A beautiful boat, I thought, perfect for our needs and fitting for a Legion squad. We installed some railing for handholds and a tiller. We had several long cenite poles, which we hoped would be useful for steering and to avoid floating boulders of semi-solidified lava. It was a primitive, functional metal boat, scarred and burnt white by our plasma welding, watertight and lavatight. Priestess had traced a giant Legion cross onto the deck, and Psycho had named our boat, bold white letters lasered onto the side: BEYOND. It was an altogether fitting and proper boat for our last ride.

  "All right," Snow Leopard ordered, "let it go!" We eased off on the cables and the boat splashed into the lava. The bow disappeared immediately under a wave of glowing red lava. For an instant I thought it would go under, then the bow popped up again, shedding streams of liquid rock. The aft remained secured to our launching site by scavenged power cables. The boat floated, buffeted back and forth in the flow, lava breaking over the sides and oozing over the decks, spitting and hissing. It was my idea but I could hardly believe it. It was floating!

  "It's working!" Priestess exclaimed.

  "Lord! I thought it would sink like a stone!" Warhound said.

  "It's floating—look at that!" Psycho seemed delighted and amazed.

  "Deadman's death! It's working!" I confirmed. I was just as amazed as Psycho.

  "Tenners, get the equipment on board," Snow Leopard ordered. "We're moving out!"

  ###

  I leaped onto the metal planking, supercharged with adrenalin, the last one on board. Redhawk lay on the deck, conscious and raving, with Priestess on her knees, holding him down. Our gear surrounded them. Snow Leopard held the tiller. Psycho and Warhound wielded long metal poles, on their knees, arms wrapped around the railings. The boat lurched and jiggled shakily as I played out the last cable securing us to the shore.

  Snow Leopard shouted, "Cast off! Let it go!"

  I released the cable. It slid out of my grasp and snapped loose. The boat lurched away from the jagged shoreline and into the center of the river. I dropped to my knees—loose, free, floating, a chip of life on a river of death. Now we moved with the lava. A great groaning assailed our ears. A sudden eruption from the river showered us with flaming debris. Sparks filled the air. The boat lurched and shuddered. Snow Leopard squatted by the tiller, leaning first one way, then another. The island disappeared behind us. Psycho and Warhound tested the poles, and soon they glowed. I seized another one.

  "Make for the shore!" Snow Leopard ordered.

  "Watch that rock!" I said. A huge, rolling, glowing boulder of half-solidified lava bore down on us like a titanic floating mountain. A fireberg! Warhound and I reached out and touched it with our poles. The poles sank into the soft rock.

  "Careful!" Snow Leopard warned.

  "We're sinking!" I shouted.

  "Going under!" Warhound confirmed it.

  "Move to this side!" Psycho urged us. One side of the boat went under, waves of lava pouring over the edge. We shifted to the other side and the lava slid off and the boat stabilized. The mountain floated off to one side—we now moved at the same speed, and it no longer seemed a threat. We drove our p
oles into the molten rock of the lava river, searching for bottom.

  "All right, head for the shore," Snow Leopard ordered, "Now! Otherwise, we take that drop into the lake!"

  Two black furry shapes flashed over us.

  "What was that?"

  "Look out!" Another, a flickering, snapping blur, whistling through the air just above our heads. And another, shooting right past my faceplate, lost in the shadows.

  "It's a bird!"

  "A bat!"

  "It had wings!"

  Volcano birds! Satan's vultures, the Deathbirds, looking us over. My skin turned ice cold.

  Irritated, Snow Leopard cut us off. "If you're all through nature watching, we've got a problem. The pressure is too strong. We can't control the boat."

  It was bad news, but true. I had just about reached the conclusion myself that the poles were useless. We couldn't find the bottom.

  We floated downstream, helpless. We kept trying, but our efforts to control the boat were futile. I knew what it meant—we were headed for the falls I'd seen just before we crashed, a great lavafall where this hellish river made a sheer drop into the lava lake. Six lost souls, drifting on Death's Road.

  A hot wind suddenly struck us from above, a high pitched whining, the lava river rippling from the pressure. I looked up. A great starship passed slowly over us, hovering, a blunt triangle of blackened metal, scarred and burnt by many fiery drops. I recognized the type immediately. "Class Z Omni starship," Sweety announced. "This type is a troop carrier capable of softlanding downside."

  Oh no, I thought. Where did it come from? Are the O's landing more troops?

  "That's an O starship!" Snow Leopard shouted. "Psycho, tacstars! Get 'em! I want that ship!"

  Psycho raised his Manlink and let loose a sharp volley of tacstars. The micronukes burst on the underside of the O ship amidst a violet haze as the ship's force field reacted. White-hot tracers ricocheted everywhere. The O ship continued on, ignoring us.

  Redhawk shouted, hallucinating from his medication. Priestess tried to comfort him. Psycho shot off another volley to no avail. The starship glided serenely over the lava lake ahead of us, hovering slightly, nearing the shore. A Legion fighter shot out of the clouds and unleashed a tremendous barrage of opstars, then darted out of sight as the O ship's counterfire activated in a shriek of antiship missiles. The opstar mini-nukes detonated like Armageddon, bracketing the O ship, then writhed upwards as glowing fireballs, riding a lightning storm. The power of these opstars dwarfed Psycho's tacstars but as the fireballs dissipated we observed the undamaged starship touch down on the far side of the lake. The ship was beautiful, I had to admit, shimmering a cloudy agate and glowing a faint violet haze from the mag field as it set off a windstorm of ash and pumice on the shore below. Beautiful, indestructible…gigantic! As it hovered there, I peered at it in awe through the E's scope. I noted a long boom jutting out from the nose, capped by a bulbous tip. The ship was a brutal, chilling, perfect tool, built by an alien race of merciless extremists to hammer the galaxy into submission. It was absolutely lovely!

  An O starship! What a prize that would be! We knew very little about them. The Legion had never captured an O starship. It was tops on Starcom's list of Things To Do Today. The O's must be desperate to risk a starship downside in the midst of a Legion attack. Maybe we hurt them after all! Maybe…

  "I want everybody on image and record!" Snow Leopard said. "Nobody's been this close to an Omni ship!" I was not sure who was going to see these images, but Sweety had been recording since it first appeared.

  "We're approaching the falls, Snow Leopard!" Priestess warned.

  "Look at that!" I said. The O ship had dropped a ramp. There was movement on the shore. Suddenly a long line of O's hustled out of an entrance in a cliff wall I hadn't noticed before, heading for the shuttle.

  "They're extracting their guys!" Warhound exclaimed.

  O's! I had never seen so many! I don't think anyone had ever seen so many—and lived. There must have been ten, twenty, more, running in their peculiar armor, individual force fields activated. These were humanity's sworn enemies. They were huge, strong creatures, long spidery arms and legs with joints in all the wrong places, bulbous helmets hiding their awful split heads. The individual details were hard to make out at our range and the swirling violet force fields made it harder. They were swarming like ants! My skin crawled at the sight.

  "Commence firing," Snow Leopard said, snapping his E to his shoulder. "Xmax and laser. Don't worry, I think they're beyond psych range for now. Psycho, keep firing tacstars at the ship, you might get lucky. Let's see what we can do."

  Don't worry! Yes, sir! The falls roared ahead of us. I thought briefly that we were certainly insane. But at least we'd go out fighting—the Gods would not deny us that! I fired auto xmax and walked it down the line of fleeing O's. Some of them had already made it to the shuttle. A few went down under my x but they all got up again, apparently unscathed. Nobody was shooting back at us—they were busy! I tried laser—it simply ricocheted off the force fields. They were ignoring us! I raged, "Come on, Deadman! Give me a kill!"

  "Snow Leopard!" I shouted. "Cease fire! Look!" I pointed at the O's. There was someone else with them—humans! Humans in E-suits, emergency vac suits, running alongside the O's to get in the ship.

  "Cease fire!" Snow Leopard ordered. "Damn! What the hell are they doing?"

  "They're Systies!" Psycho said. "They've got to be Systies! Let's blast 'em!"

  "We don't know who they are!" Snow Leopard replied. "Don't fire!"

  "Snow Leopard, they could be captives, they could be under psycontrol!" I said. "If I was a captive of the O's I'd want to die! I'd want us to shoot! Maybe we should!"

  Snow Leopard raised his E, hesitating.

  "Snow Leopard!" Priestess called again. "We're at the falls!" The roar overwhelmed us now, penetrating to our very bones. The O ship was still on the ground ahead. What a prize that would be!

  "She's right, Snow Leopard," Warhound said. "We're going over."

  Psycho lowered his Manlink. "Can I be excused for the rest of the evening?"

  Helpless, we huddled in our places on the raft. The ship, the O's and the E-suited humans were now forgotten. A fierce wind of supercharged volcanic heat rose from the falls with an ear-splitting thunder. We shot forward to the edge of the falls. Hot liquid rock hissed and spat all around us, gathering strength, a mighty, irresistible wave of lava spraying through the air, and fleet, black, death-birds shot past, gliding on that volcanic wind and calling to each other, a reptilian screeching. It put a cold thrill to my flesh. I knew we were bound for Hell.

  A lavafall, a firefall, the end of our ride, the end of Beta River, the end of Beyond, the end of Squad Beta Two Four, Second of the Ship, and the end of all of us. Death's Road ended in a final, terrifying fall amid the blood of the Mountain. We were going to be buried under hopeless megatons of liquid rock, crushed forever, never to stir again.

  Eerie laughter. Psycho, in his own fantasy.

  "Hang on!" Snow Leopard, his last command. The lava river shuddered. Our tiny boat teetered on the brink, then shot forward, caught in the surge. We lurched over the side of the falls and fell, hissing through the air, in a shower of white-hot lava. A scream echoed in my ears.

  It must have been me.

  Chapter 2:

  The Kitchen of the Gods

  I awoke to a great light shining directly into my eyes. My body ached, but it was beyond pain, just as I was beyond pain. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. I was stunned.

  I was clad in my A-suit on a black beach on the shore of a vast, luminous white lava sea that glowed under dark skies. Little volcanic islands rose here and there in the sea, smoking. On the lake's distant shores, great steaming slabs of tortured rock rose almost straight up to an opaque sky. Overhead, evil clouds streaked the sky, clouds with glittering edges of fire, a volcano sky.

  The lava lake, this was the lava lake. The surface move
d in a slow, relentless flow towards a thunderous roar where the lake dropped over its edge to some hellish conclusion.

  The river had spit us out, right into the lake.

  All of the 12th had dropped on to Andrion 3, but for us that only meant Squad Beta, CAT 24, Second of the Ship. One under-strength squad, that's all we were; and to us it didn't matter who else was out there. It was only us, against the O's. Only six of us remained from our original squad of ten. Coolhand's leg was still mending, and Snow Leopard had refused his request to accompany us. Merlin and Dragon remained in the body shop, and Ironman was back on Atom—we had been stuck in the Spawn and had not had a chance to visit him.

  The mission was clear. The Second had clarified it for us, back on the Spawn: "Our mission is to die for the Legion." Well, we were almost there, already.

  The squad! I struggled to my feet, dizzy and weak.

  There was no sign of the Beyond. The earth shuddered and a flight of leathery birds shot past me, screeching. Lightning arced down into the lake. Thunder reverberated. It was a wide lake of bubbling lava, several K across, the far walls misty and indistinct. I was alone, horribly alone, on a beach of black pumice, at the end of the Magic Road. My E was still strapped to my chest, but I knew that would be no help if the O's found me. With every passing instant, the danger grew—movement, heat, metal, energy—even in this hellhole, the O's would find me. I knew it.

  Stunned and despairing, I staggered along the beach; the pumice crackled underneath my boots. Thunder rattled my bones. Lava rain hissed down from the skies—fire in the heavens, rolling overhead. A distant volcano was erupting. A geyser of lava boomed out of the lake near the far shore, lighting up the scene. There was no life except for the deathbirds wheeling and croaking in the sky. Even the exosegs did not venture this far—this was a planetary graveyard, fit only for deathbirds and Legionnaires.

  Past a steep rock wall, I found the falls—a golden, glittering torrent of molten lava shooting over the caldera's face, falling almost straight down to the lake, awesomely beautiful, hitting the surface with a continual thunder. How could anyone survive such a fall? How had I?