Ghost Legion (2 page)

"You're not being just, Maigrey," Platus interrupted
sternly. "You know that isn't true. Man brings his suffering on
himself. They grieve to see it, as they grieve to see your suffering,
my sister. I grieve to see you bound to him. I sometimes think it
would be best if you would let go—"

"I can't!" Maigrey turned on him, her hand on the hilt of
her sword. "I won't."

"No, I know you can't. Nor should you." Platus sighed.
"Derek Sagan stands upon a precipice. Your hand is all that
holds him back, keeps him from falling past redemption. You are the
one bright star in his darkness. But now you must consider this,
Maigrey—if you fall, what will happen to him?"

She was angry. Her lips parted to make a sharp retort.

Platus held his ground before her anger, did not return it. Once he,
too, had been unable to let go.

Maigrey wavered, broke, lowered her defense.

Platus slid in past it. "The covenant was not a trick, sister.
You knew when you made it that sincere repentance was his only hope.
Together you walked the paths of darkness, as the prophecy said. Now
he must walk the path alone. You can light the way for him, but you
can't lead him by the hand. He has to find the path to redemption
himself."

"Or lose it utterly," Maigrey said, trembling. "And
it's not fair!" Her fists clenched. "They slant the path
upward, make it easy to fall, far more difficult to climb. They place
temptation in his way. They did not show me
this
when they
urged me to make the covenant.

"And what
of
Dion?" she demanded before Platus could
answer. "What about the danger
he's
in? Aren't you
worried about him?"

"I have faith in Dion, Maigrey, to do what's right—'

"Implying that I don't have faith in Sagan!" she retorted
bitterly.

"Do you?" Platus asked.

"Yes," Maigrey answered, eyes gray as a storm-ridden sea.
"I have faith in him. In
them,
I don't!" She pointed
her gloved and armored hand at her brother. "And you can tell
them that. And you can tell them something else. That if he falls, I
go with him."

"Maigrey—" he began, but she cut him off.

"Don't worry. I will keep the covenant, for the time being. I
will not speak to Sagan or reveal my presence to him. But remind them
of this, Brother—I made no such promise concerning Dion. And if
I can help him .. ."

With a sharp, cold nod, she turned, the pale hair whipping about her
like a fierce wind. Hand on the hilt of the bloodsword, she stalked
away, the stamp of her booted feet striking like steel against an
anvil through the vast vault of heaven.

"You may help Dion," Platus said softly. "But who will
help you?"

Home—none. Wife—none. Kids—none....

The Magnificent Seven

Xris adjusted his eyesight to night vision; the "meat"
locker was impenetrably dark. Corasians, with their sophisticated
sensing devices, have no need or use for light to see by. In some
areas—the munitions factory Xris had just been in, for
example—the Corasians install lights for use by their human
slaves. Lights were unnecessary in the locker. The "meat"
had no need to see, were probably thankful they couldn't.

Xris's augmented hearing detected no sounds except those of intense
human misery and terror, and those he was coldly and purposefully
ignoring. He knew that he'd tripped the security alarm, if it could
be called that. He couldn't hear it, no matter how sensitive his
augmented hearing. Each individual Corasian is a single part of a
collective whole, as individual cells make up an entire body. The
deaths of the two Corasian guards, gunned down by Xris at the back
entrance to the tunnels, had set off an alert that vibrated or
jangled or twitched—however these fiends reacted—throughout
every other Corasian in the place.

He was counting on the fact that the Corasians would be forced to
search innumerable levels to find him, and once they did find his
tracks, his body readings would throw them off— hopefully for
the few precious moments he needed. Expecting a human—the two
dead Corasians would have reported that they were being attacked by a
human—the enemy would be looking for human readings. They
wouldn't be looking for a human who was mostly machine.

Keeping watch for the telltale red glow that presaged the coming of
the fiery, amoebic Corasians, Xris stopped in front erf a computer
terminal located at a junction of intersecting tunnels and activated
the system. He knew how it operated, the uncreative Corasians having
been forced to steal their technology from the human life-forms in
the neighboring galaxy. Xris had encountered a Corasian computer
system one other time before on a mission with the late Lady Maigrey
and he knew what to expect—a system that was out of date and
primitive. He called up inventory.

The Corasians kept strict records. The "meat" was a
valuable commodity, to be shipped out to those planets in dire need
of either food or slave labor—or slave labor that would
ultimately become food. Each "carcass" was numbered when it
arrived and carried that number through to final consumption.

Xris located the number—her number. Activating his own internal
computer, the cyborg brought up the diagram of the locker tunnels,
studied the screen embedded in his wrist, and located her cell. One
level up and three compartments down, to the right. He moved, just as
the red glow began to light the far tunnel behind him.

He found her—that was the easy part. Now for the hard. She
wasn't alone. She was inside a cell with five others—a man and
two women and two children.

Xris shorted out the force field, walked into the cell.

Dull-eyed, stupefied with terror, the six stared at him. They didn't
believe in him ... at first. Then she recognized him. Her eyes
widened, color flooded her pale cheeks. Her lips parted. She rose to
her feet.

The others didn't know him, but they understood. Hope lit their eyes.
The kindest thing he could do for them was to end it, swiftly.

"Sorry," he said. "I can only manage one."

He reached out, took hold of her, pulled her to his side.

"If my team was with me, I could—"

He stopped. Explanation was time-consuming, unnecessary.

"My children," pleaded the man, shoving a pair of ragged,
sleepy, and frightened kids toward Xris. "It doesn't matter
about me, but take them with you. Please, for the love of God—"

She was pleading with him, too. Urging him to take the others, no
matter that it would endanger them all. And there was no arguing with
her.

A needle flicked out of the palm of his mechanical hand, punctured
her skin. She was startled at the sudden sharp pain, but before she
could cry out, he shot her full of the drug She sagged against him.
Her eyes closed; her body went limp.

He picked her up with his mechanical arm, thinking, The last time I
touched her with this hand, she flinched.

"Shoot us, then," said one of the women, gathering the
children close, holding them tight. "That's the least you can
do."

Yeah. It was. It would take time, time he didn't have. But it was the
least he could do. Xris took aim and shot them, shot them all.

Then, carrying her in his arms, he headed for the exit.

A red glow flooded the tunnel, blocked the way. The Corasians opened
fire. Laser light flared around him.

"Hit," came a synthesized voice. "Two kills."

"Damn," Xris muttered.

He holstered his lasgun, checked the clock, shook his head. He had to
get out faster. He needed to cut at least forty seconds off his time.

Deactivating the dummy in his arm, he dropped it to the floor and
crossed over to the control panel located on a far wall of the target
range. He hit a switch. The red glow died. The holograph people and
the children disappeared. Forty seconds. Where the hell was he going
to pick up forty seconds?

A blue light began to blink above the door.

"Visitors," the synthesized voice informed him.

Xris looked out the observation window, saw two people—at least
he guessed one was a person—standing in the hallway. Raoul and
the Little One.

The cyborg muttered a curse beneath his breath. He hadn't expected
them back this soon. He had planned to be long gone before they came.

He considered sending them up to report to Harry; then it occurred to
the cyborg that Harry was probably the one who'd sent them down here
to report to him. If Xris refused to see them, they would grow
suspicious, and the last thing Xris wanted was to rouse suspicions in
these two—particularly the Little One. Best to see them, hear
them out, act as if nothing was up, give them their orders, send them
away.

He hit the switch, opened the door.

The two entered. Xris shut the door behind them.

"We'll talk in here," he said. "I can seal it off."

Raoul nodded complacently. Raoul would have nodded complacently if
Xris had told him he was intending to blow off his head. Raoul was an
Adonian—a human race noted for then-beauty. He was also a Loti,
so called because he lived, thrived, and survived on mind-altering
drugs. He drifted through life in a state of euphoria, never
frightened, never upset, never disturbed by anything. At least, that
was how Raoul claimed he lived.

Xris was beginning to wonder.

During the past three years, Raoul had worked with Xris, been one of
the team. They'd handled several dangerous assignments and Xris had
seen Raoul in action, seen the Loti react to the unexpected swiftly,
alertly—too swiftly and too alertly for a doped-up Loti. And
yet he never lost the glassy-eyed gaze, the vacuous expression, the
isn't-the-world-a-beautiful-place smile. Not even when it seemed
likely that they were all about to die.

Raoul glanced around in bored fashion as he minced inside the target
room, shuddered delicately. "A Corasian meat locker. How truly
ghastly."

Purple-drenched eyelids fluttered. He smoothed his long black hair,
which had been ruffled by the slight breeze created by the opening of
the door. "You do find the most remarkably ugly places in which
to play your games, Xris Cyborg."

Xris shrugged. Pulling out a particularly noxious form of cigarette
known as a twist, he stuck it in his mouth, lit it, breathed in the
foul-smelling smoke. "A little target practice, that's all."

He was aware of a sudden change in Raoul's partner, known only as the
Little One. Two bright and intense eyes shifted their curious gaze
from the target range to Xris's face.

If Raoul was a mystery, his partner was an enigma.

No one had ever seen the Little One; no one had ever heard him speak.
No one knew his race, creed, color. All anyone had ever seen of him
was the raincoat, a pair of small humanoid hands, and those
penetrating eyes—the only portion of the small creature's face
visible from between the pointed collar of the overlarge raincoat in
which the empath habitually enveloped himself. All topped by a
battered fedora.

Xris couldn't even say for sure that the Little One was a he, except
that Raoul termed him a he. But, given the Loti's own androgynous
state, Xris wasn't at all certain Raoul knew the difference.

The Little One was getting too damned interested in Xris's insides.

The cyborg did what he could to adjust his thought pro-cesses, but
this wasn't as easy as adjusting a cybernetic leg or hand. Too bad.
His brain should be a machine, like the rest of him.

Erase. Shut down. Switch off.

No more pain. No more hurt. Disk drive empty.

"Too bad your late boss didn't set up a target range for
poisoners," he commented, taking a drag on the twist.

"What an extraordinarily interesting idea," said Raoul,
struck. "Still, I don't quite see how it could have been
possible—considering the quiet nature of my profession—to
create that atmosphere of violence and excitement that you all seem
to find so attractive—"

Raoul paused at this point, glanced down at the Little One. The Loti
looked back at Xris, and the shimmering, drug-vacant eyes didn't
appear to be quite as vacant as the cyborg would have liked.

"The Little One says you are not seeking thrills this day, Xris
Cyborg," said Raoul, flipping his black hair over his shoulders
with a graceful motion of his delicate hands.

He looked around at the target range, at the elaborate sets designed
to replicate perfectly the inside of a Corasian "meat"
locker, at the scoreboard that registered two kills for the
Corasians, at the dummy—dressed to resemble a human
female—lying huddled on the floor of the cell.

"You are practicing here with serious intent," Raoul
observed.

"Special job," Xris commented briefly, hoping this would
end it. He took the butt end of the twist out of his mouth, ground it
on the concrete floor with his good foot.

Raoul gave him an exasperated glance. Reaching down gingerly, he
picked up the twist between thumb and index finger, and—making
a face—threw it in the trash compactor.

"What about your assignment?" Xris asked, changing the
subject. "Since you're back early, I take it you completed it
satisfactorily."

"Most satisfactorily:" Raoul gave him a charming smile.
"The Little One says you are going alone."

Xris fixed the Little One with a look that caused the empath to
literally shrivel up. The raincoat actually seemed to deflate; the
eyes disappeared beneath the brim of the fedora.

"I thought he was an empath—soaked up feelings. Since when
did he get to be a goddam mind reader?"

"It comes with age, among his people."

"What?" Xris grunted, eyed the fedora. "You serious?"

"As serious as possible in an absurd world. But I think you are
attempting to change the subject, Xris Cyborg. You are going alone on
a mission that is fraught with deadly peril. This is not good,"
chided Raoul, gently sighing. "This is not worthy of you. Or
wise of you. And so the others will feel, once I tell them—"