America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 3: Silent Invasion (4 page)

“I do refuse!” said the spider marine. “My
dragon Satan is a champion. I will not throw his life away for
money!”

“The gambling on this fight has gone
planet-wide,” said the spider bodyguard. “There is now too much
money involved for us to let this go to chance. Your dragon must
lose, because the smart money says so.”

“I do not care about your betting,” said the
marine spider. “Who are you to expect me to do the bidding of the
human pestilence? You are a disgrace.”

“This is not about the human pestilence,”
said the spider bodyguard. “You say you do not care about money? Do
you care about the safety of your family on Inhabited Planet
#3?”

“How do you know about my family?” asked the
spider marine. “What are you?”

“We are La Cosa Nostra,” said the spider
bodyguard. “Our organization operates on both human and Arthropodan
worlds. We will kill you and your entire family if we can not come
to an understanding here and now.”

The spider marine looked to his comrades.
“Don’t do it,” said one of the other spider marines. “Death to the
human pestilence!” The others joined in the chant.

The spider bodyguard shot the chanting marine
in the head. He turned to the dragon handler. “Please, it does not
have to end this way. Everyone can be happy and make a profit. It’s
just business.”

“Okay. I agree,” said the spider marine,
patting Satan on the snout. “You win.”

* * * * *

An hour before the fight, an Italian named
Gino walked into my office like he owned the place and tossed two
duffel bags full of cash onto my desk.

“What’s this?” asked Lieutenant Lopez.

“It’s both of your cuts,” said Gino. “Fifty
thousand dollars each.”

“For what?” I asked, examining the
duffel.

“For the fight,” said Gino.

“What about the fight?” I asked. “It’s legal.
I’m not shaking you down for a payoff.”

“It’s the law,” said Gino. “The commanding
officers get a cut whether you do anything or not. We prefer you
don’t do anything.”

“Thanks. I’ll take the money,” said
Lieutenant Lopez. “I’m not turning down free money.”

“Nothing is free,” I said, putting my duffel
under my desk. “I’ll take my cut. But, when the fight is over, you
will conclude your business in Camp Alaska and get back to New
Memphis where you belong. Next time, get permission from me before
entering Legion territory, or I will hunt down and kill all of you
vermin who stray into my territory.”

* * * * *

The two dragons pulled at their leashes.
Guido and the spider marine let them close enough to almost taste.
Both dragons wanted a kill. Both were released at the same time, to
the cheer of the crowd. Spot drew blood first, striking with
lightning speed at Satan’s throat. The lunge missed, however, and
Spot was only able to bite Satan’s shoulder. Satan shook off the
smaller dragon, muscling in for the kill. The poison took hold,
shutting down Satan’s brain just as he was about to finish Spot.
The hesitation allowed Spot to tear out Satan’s throat, abruptly
ending the fight. Guido pulled Spot off the dead dragon and led him
around the ring to the cheering of the crowd. The spider marine
knelt down to hug his fallen dragon, and to cover Satan with a
tarp.

The crowd went wild as Guido continued
parading Spot around the ring. They gave Spot a standing ovation. I
clapped and cheered, too. I thought I was going to lose my money
tonight.

Suddenly, a spider next to me gave me a
shove. “Watch where you are going, clumsy human pestilence!” yelled
a spider, reaching out with his claw. The spider was jostled by the
crowd just as he was about to strike. His claw went wide,
scratching Gino instead. Gino fell to the floor in spasms at my
feet, and died. Lieutenant Lopez shot the spider in the back of the
head. The assassin fell dead on top of Gino. The crowd kept
cheering, not noticing my close brush with death.

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Contents

Chapter 3

“I want to know what happened to Gino,”
demanded Carlos Bonanno, pointing his finger at me. “You were
responsible for security. That’s what you got paid for.”

“Gino was killed by a nerve gas agent placed
on the tip of a spider assassin’s claw,” I replied, tossing the
claw on my desk. “The assassin meant to kill me. Gino was killed by
accident when he got too close to the scuffle.”

“I want justice for Gino,” insisted Bonanno.
“Not Legion excuses.”

“I shot and killed the assassin,” said
Lieutenant Lopez. “How much more justice can you want?”

“It would have been better if you took the
assassin alive, so I could find out who sent him,” groused Bonanno.
The mobster turned his full attention to Lieutenant Lopez. Lopez
was quite a sight, with half his face still bandaged from his
previous burns. “What happened to you?”

“War wound,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “A rocket
fried me and my tank.”

“Who do you think sent the assassin?” asked
Bonanno. “There’s a long list of people and bugs who would like to
see you dead, Czerinski. Who did you piss off this time?”

“It was probably either the Arthropodan Fleet
Commander or his Special Forces Commander,” I speculated.

“Aren’t you going to do something about it?”
asked Bonanno.

“Of course I am going to do something about
it,” I said. “I’m going to kill someone. But I am not going to do
it now, and it doesn’t concern you. If there is going to be killing
done in Camp Alaska, it will be done by the Legion. Not you or any
other wise guy.”

“It’s a large galaxy,” threatened Bonanno,
getting up to leave. “I will respect your territory, but I will
avenge Gino.”

“Keep the claw as a souvenir,” suggested
Lieutenant Lopez, handing it to Bonanno. “Be careful of the tip. It
still holds enough nerve agent to kill an elephant.”

“I give the Fleet Commander his cut, then he
violates our goodwill, and the law, by ordering a hit at the
fight,” commented Bonanno, as he picked up the claw and handed it
to a bodyguard. “He will pay.”

I watched Carlos Bonanno and his thugs drive
away in the stretch limousine. “What do you think he will do?” I
asked. “Whack the Fleet Commander?”

“I hope so, but I don’t really care,” replied
Lieutenant Lopez. “I’m more interested in what you are going to
do.”

“Not that much,” I answered. “I’ll probably
just start another war.”

* * * * *

The Empire claimed a large portion of the
Arctic oil fields. They sent armored vehicles and Special Forces
marines from Camp Alaska to expand their zones of influence. Spider
checkpoints did not block traffic or in any way hinder oil rig
operations, but taxes were collected on all imports and
exports.

General Kalipetsis was furious. He demanded
that United States Galactic Federation control be restored in the
Arctic. After more negotiations, however, new borders were drawn
reflecting the new reality and new spider zones of control.

Lieutenant Lopez took the armored car out to
escort Legion survey teams putting up new boundary markers. He met
spider marines placing their own markers. The spider markers,
however, were twenty miles in error. The difference was important
because it put an important oil field inside the spider zone of
control. Lieutenant Lopez confronted the spider survey team on the
matter.

“You are trespassing by twenty miles,”
accused Lieutenant Lopez. “Leave now or face arrest.”

“Our survey is correct,” responded a spider
team leader. He reached for his rifle.

Lieutenant Lopez shot the spider team leader.
Sergeant Green killed the rest of the spiders with the mounted
machine gun. A lone spider escaped by hiding behind the armored
car, then running to the forest. As Lieutenant Lopez prepared to go
after him, the spider screamed. The sound of wolves tearing the
spider apart echoed through the forest.

“That spider is wolf shit now,” commented
Lieutenant Lopez, straining to see through the trees and
underbrush. “No soldier should die like that.”

“I hate it out here in the sticks,” said
Sergeant Green. “There is nothing but wolves, rain, snow, mud,
jungle, and big old scary looking trees. It looks like something
from a Euro-trash fairytale. Give me concrete below my feet any
day.”

A Legion surveyor tapped Lieutenant Lopez on
the shoulder. “I was twenty miles off on our survey,” he advised
sheepishly. “Sorry about that. The spiders were right. My bad.”

Lieutenant Lopez’s jaw dropped. He looked
back at the dead spider marines. “You have got to be kidding. This
is a joke. Right? It better be a joke!”

“Oops,” said Sergeant Green. “You screwed up
again, sir!”

“I just checked the satellite GPS,” said the
surveyor. “The spiders’ survey was right.”

“No, the spiders were wrong,” insisted
Lieutenant Lopez. “You change your survey findings. We will move
the spiders’ markers twenty miles north as planned, and put our
markers next to them. Understand? You better.”

“But that would be an inaccurate survey,”
argued the surveyor. “It would violate the Surveyor’s Code.”

“It’s too late to quibble about small
details, unless you want to join those spiders,” threatened
Lieutenant Lopez. “Drag those spiders out into the woods and let
the wolves eat them. We will hide their truck at our repair shop at
Camp Alaska, and sell it for parts. No one needs to know what
happened here.”

* * * * *

A supply ship from Arthropoda docked with the
Fleet Commander’s Flag Ship. Much anticipated personal letters and
packages from home accompanied the supplies. One such package was
addressed to the Fleet Commander and dropped of at his cabin, being
that the Fleet Commander was on the planet’s surface, negotiating
boundary disputes with General Kalipetsis.

The backpack-sized nuke in the package was
programmed to explode when opened. Because the package was not
opened, a separate timer exploded the nuke anyway. The entire Flag
Ship was destroyed, along with its crew.

Another package was sent to the Special
Forces Commander, containing the assassin’s claw and a single sheet
of paper displaying a black hand.

* * * * *

“The Legion is responsible for the
destruction of your Flag Ship,” said the Special Forces Commander.
“Proof is this package they sent me. This claw belongs to my team
leader. Only Czerinski could have cut it off and sent it to me. And
see that black hand on the paper? It’s a human hand.”

“State Intelligentsia is investigating the
matter,” said the Fleet Commander. “Both packages were mailed from
Arthropoda.”

“Impossible,” said the Special Forces
Commander.

“I have made discrete inquiries,” said the
Fleet Commander. “Your team leader’s body was cremated. The black
hand is a universal sign for the Mafia.”

“That proves my point,” said the Special
Forces Commander. “The Mafia is a figment of human pestilence
imagination. It’s just a bunch of human thugs doing the Legion’s
bidding.”

“The Mafia does exist.,” advised the Fleet
Commander. “Even on Arthropoda.”

“Human pestilence and spiders working
together in an elaborate criminal enterprise?” asked the Special
Forces Commander. “Not likely. Surely you do not believe in such
conspiracy theories. Are we being spied upon by black space ships,
too?”

“How else can you explain a nuke being mailed
from Arthropoda?” asked the Fleet Commander. “Do you think the
Legion can do that?” And on such short notice?”

“Yes, with the help of Green traitors,”
insisted the Special Forces Commander. “We have allowed too many
Green spiders to immigrate to New Colorado. The traitors are even
forming their own Foreign Legion units. We should have killed them
all when we had the chance.”

“You would set up death camps for the
Greens?” asked the Fleet Commander. “Sociologists say the more
contact we have with the human pestilence, the more we think like
them. Your last statement seems to prove them right.”

“What do a bunch of think-tank eggheads
know?” chided the Special Forces Commander. “The irony is that the
human pestilence will eventually turn on the Greens. They have
already put the Greens on a reservation located on unwanted
desert.”

“I heard Waterstone is a thriving independent
country,” commented the Fleet Commander. “And it has been allowed
to expand its borders.”

“Whatever,” said the Special Forces
Commander. “Let the Greens bunch up in one place. That will only
make it easier to nuke them when the time comes.”

“I am not interested in your radical
politics,” said the Fleet Commander. “Order your troops to interact
with the human pestilence at the zone gates. Make inquires about
the Mafia. I want to know more about the Mafia. Lately our military
intelligence has been weak.”

“I still do not believe the Mafia exists,”
said the Special Forces Commander. “What about the gamblers? Maybe
they are upset about something?”

“I do not see what the gamblers would be
upset about,” replied the Fleet Commander, glumly. “They took all
my money.”

“I lost my money, too,” said the Special
Forces Commander. “In fact, the gamblers took everyone’s money. How
did our champion lose? It was a sure thing.”

“Sure things are always a sucker’s bet,”
lamented the Fleet Commander. “I want you to talk to our dragon
handler. I smell something rotten in Camp Alaska.”

“That reminds me. I have a survey team
missing. A locator beacon on their truck shows it is now in the
human zone of Camp Alaska.”

“All I care about is that the border gets
established quickly. If your survey team got lost or killed, you
handle it. Get another team out there.”