Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned (50 page)

Gunner was shouting as he lurched out of the river, fired his energy cannon, and charged the Hudathans.

“Here I am! Shoot me! Kill me! Blow me up! Come on, you chickenshit bastards, you can do it, you can ...”

The Hudathan missile launcher had been built to kill tanks. Three heat-seeking fire-and-forget missiles hit Gunner head-on, blew holes through his armor, and detonated inside his cargo bay. He felt a moment of warmth, followed by pain, followed by complete liberation. There was darkness, followed by light, and the family he had waited so long to see.

Baldwin saw the quad explode, heard himself scream, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and felt the APC rock as the auto cannons fired in alternating sequence. He looked left and right. His armor was rolling now—what was left of it anyway—dodging boulders in the dark, and firing at anything warm.

Orange-red tracer drifted overhead. Explosions threw troopers into the air. Bolts of coherent energy sizzled back and forth. A quad stumbled, fell, and continued to fire. Flares went off, turned night to day, and fell from the sky with casual slowness. A Hudathan weapons carrier ran off a hidden ledge and pinwheeled across a sandbar.

Then a new threat appeared as man-shaped cyborgs rose from their various hiding places, extended their arms like sleepwalkers, and opened fire. Something hit the APC with a loud bang. It lurched but kept on going. Hot metal touched Baldwin’s cheek and blood trickled down his neck. All of the hatred, all of the resentment, bubbled up, and something akin to madness gripped him. The war cry was equal parts joy and pain.

Booty rode a cyborg named Rogers. Villain was off to his right, with Salazar to his left. They advanced together, like giants from a children’s story, stepping over boulders as if they weren’t even there. The cyborgs fired their missiles, machine guns, and energy cannons and rarely missed. Vehicles exploded, weapons were destroyed, and Hudathans died.

Booly saw that the quads had punched a number of holes through the Hudathan line, leaving clusters of troops and vehicles behind. More aliens had rushed forward and were plugging the gaps. Booly spoke into his mike.

“BK-One to BK-Force. Watch the gaps. They’re trying to plug them.”

Cyborgs and bio bods alike redirected their fire and the Hudathans took more casualties.

 

The APC ran up onto a ledge, left the ground, and flipped on its side. Baldwin was thrown clear. He scrambled to his feet and looked around. Flares bathed the battlefield with an eerie light, vehicles burned li
ke so many bonfires, and tracer floated by as if reluctant to reach its destination. Panic rose and tried to overwhelm him. He forced it down.

The threat was obvious. Once the line was broken, his troops would rally around the nearest armor, and his command would be reduced to isolated clusters. Defeat would certainly follow. He gave the necessary orders and hoped they’d be followed.

“Hold the line! Plug the gaps! Don’t let them through!”

The Hudathan troopers were tough and they rushed to obey Baldwin’s orders. They had a plentiful supply of SLMs and used them to good effect.

 

Booly felt Rogers stumble as an SLM took a leg off. He tried to jump but didn’t quite make it. The Trooper II hit hard, sat up, and continued to fire. Shaken but not seriously hurt, Booly hit the harness release. A quick check via his night-vision goggles showed that the Hudathan troops had filled most of the gaps and were holding the line. It was now or never. The Naa weren’t much for radio procedure, so he let it slide.

“Okay, Hardman ... take them.”

The warriors rose up from the shelter of the riverbank and ran forward. Most had taken full advantage of the Legion’s arsenal and were festooned with a wild variety of weapons and ammunition. They were like shadows at first, flitting from boulder to boulder like spirits of the dead, firing when sure of their shots.

But it wasn’t long before the Hudathans spotted them, opened fire, and took their toll.

Sensing that speed would lessen the number of casualties that he took, Hardman ordered his forces to charge, and fired his assault rifle. Shapes rose to oppose him, flame stabbing at where he’d been, falling as his bullets cut them down. Then he was among them, their stench filling his nostrils, harvesting their lives one after the other.

The bullets came as an unpleasant surprise, entering through his back, exiting from his chest. It took the chieftain three seconds to die. It was more than enough time to fall forward and drive his knife through a Hudathan throat.

 

The Naa fought like demons, using skills honed through combat with the Legion, pushing the Hudathans back. The aliens held, and held some more, but a renewed assault by the surviving cyborgs made the critical difference. Salvaging what crew-served weapons they could, the Hudathans rallied around what was left of their armor.

Baldwin knew that defeat was certain as he backed away from the oncoming Trooper IIs and fired from the hip. He had seventy, maybe eighty troopers left, and it wasn’t enough. He could fight on for a while but there was very little point in doing so. He used the command frequency. His voice was heard by every Hudathan still alive.

“You have fought honorably and bravely, but there is no hope of victory, and more deaths would be pointless. The humans not only accept prisoners of war but have a long tradition of treating them well, and may even send you home. Cease firing and place your weapons on the ground. I repeat, cease firing and place your weapons on the ground.”

The troopers looked to their noncoms, received noncommittal gestures in reply, and did as they were told. The incoming fire continued.

Baldwin followed his own orders by placing his assault weapon on the ground. Then, switching from frequency to frequency in hopes of finding one that the Legion monitored, Baldwin declared his willingness to surrender. His fifth attempt met with success. An officer who identified himself as Major Booly agreed to a cease-fire, told Baldwin to meet him next to a burned-out quad, and ordered his troops to stop firing.

It took a moment to locate the quad. A flare went off and turned night to day. Baldwin thought it strange that the cyborg had a half-scorched bull’s-eye painted on its right flank. A man he assumed was the major had started towards the wreck in the company of two Trooper IIs. Baldwin did likewise. He was about halfway there when Tula-Ba removed the remote from his belt pouch, aimed it at the human’s back, and pressed a button.

Baldwin recognized the pain the moment that it began. Someone, Tula-Ba most likely, had activated his implant. They wanted him to die without dignity, to flop around on the ground like a just-landed fish, to scream for mercy. Well, they could frax themselves.

Baldwin did an about-face so that the Hudathans could see him, jerking slightly as his muscles spasmed, and pulled the sidearm from its holster. He was proud of the way the weapon came up to his mouth, proud of the way he pulled the trigger, and proud of the way he died.

Baldwin slumped to the ground. There was total and absolute silence. Booly stepped behind Gunner’s burned-out hulk, unsure of what had happened, half expecting the Hudathans to open fire. They didn’t. Hesitantly at first, and then with growing confidence, they stood with palms outwards. Booly gave a sigh of relief, reminded Villain and Salazar to use their scanners, and waited for one of their officers to arrive. He wondered if any of them spoke standard.

 

Norwood gestured towards the lock and Poseen-Ka obeyed. He had little choice. A squad of marines surrounded him. Against all odds and logic the humans had prevailed.

It seemed impossible given the fact that they had initially allowed him to take hundreds of their worlds and kill millions of their citizens, yet it was true. Though vastly incompetent and mostly disorganized, the humans were talented soldiers. The apparent contradiction served to explain how they had forged their empire and why it had fallen apart. All things he would share with his superiors if he lived to do so.

The Hudathan stepped into the lock, waited for it to cycle closed, and stared at the bulkhead. There was an odd sensation in his abdomen and a distinct weakness in his knees. Poseen-Ka was afraid and, knowing that, wished that he was dead.

The lock opened, a marine poked him in the back, and he stepped out. It was the first time he’d been aboard a human battleship. Humans stopped, gaped in open amazement, and watched him pass. Poseen-Ka remembered how Norwood had performed under similar circumstances and made a conscious effort to imitate her poise. He kept his head up, his eyes straight ahead, and his steps even. In spite of the fact that she hated him, and would cheerfully put a bullet through his head, the Hudathan felt better knowing she was there. Only she could understand the pain of his loss, the disgrac
e of being alive, and the loneliness of captivity. He knew it was wrong to feel that way about an alien but understandable in one as obviously flawed as he was.

A pair of marines snapped to attention as they approached the wardroom. The hatch slid open. The lighting was unpleasantly bright and the furnishings looked small and undersized. A mixed contingent of Navy and Marine officers backed out of the way. Poseen-Ka tried to place his back against a wall and stopped when a marine shoved him from behind. He tried to spot their commanding officer, the man or woman wearing the fanciest uniform, but couldn’t find anyone that fit the bill.

The Hudathan was surprised when a diminutive man, who was clearly overweight, stepped forward and held his hands palms-outwards. He wore simple nonmilitary clothes and radiated the same kind of strength that Norwood did.

“Greetings, War Commander Poseen-Ka. I apologize for the fact that I’m unable to speak your language and compliment you for knowing ours. My name is Sergi Chien-Chu. Colonel Norwood informs me that your traditions are different from ours. She says that you tried to exterminate the entire human race and, given the chance, will try again. Is that true?”

Poseen-Ka thought about it for a moment, decided that the strange little human would see through whatever lies he told, and opted for the truth.

“Yes, that is true.”

Chien-Chu nodded soberly. “Good. The truth makes a sturdy bridge. Let’s see if we can cross it together.”

About six miles south of Fort Camerone there is a military cemetery. The graves are arranged in concentric rings. There are hundreds of rings, and thousands of graves. At the center of the rings stands a fifty-foot stainless-steel obelisk. An identical inscription can be found on all four sides of the monument. It reads:

And here they lie, their blood forever mingled, the Legion of the Damned.

 

 

 

 

 

St. James had climbed the rocky spire so many times that doing so required hardly any thought at all. His hands and feet seemed to find the proper outcroppings, handholds, and fissures of their own volition. The journey was part play and part work, since he enjoyed the process, and could inspect the construction when he reached the top.

The final part of the ascent required the legionnaire to reach up, place both hands on a piece of overhanging rock, and pull himself up. He could have left a rope to make the task easier, but took pride in the strength involved, and enjoyed the element of risk.

He made the necessary reach, allowed himself to hang free, and pulled himself up. When his chin was level with the top of the ledge, it was necessary to hold with one hand while reaching forward with the other. He did so, felt the usual lurch in the pit of his stomach, and hooked his fingers into a crevice. Once that was accomplished, it was a relatively simple matter to swing his right leg up and over, pull himself away from the precipice, and roll onto his back.

He rested for a moment, completely unaware that Natasha had watched every move from the camp below, ready to call for help if he fell. She had disappeared by the time he stood and looked around.

A great deal had changed during the last few months. A war had been won, the first campaign anyway, winter had given way to summer, and Fort Camerone had risen from its own ashes. Though no
t complete, the underground complex had been refurbished, and three of the outer walls had been restored.

Rows of inflatable shelters started near the bottom of the spire and marched almost to the fort itself, where they gave way to the countless cranes, dozers, robots, cyborgs, and bio bods who labored to restore the damage done by Poseen-Ka and his fleet.

St. James smiled. The concept of turning what was left of Worber’s World into a vast prisoner-of-war camp had originated with Colonel Natalie Norwood. The irony of it appealed to him, and to Chien-Chu as well, for the chubby little man had wasted little time in approving the proposal and assigning Norwood to implement it. Who better to entrust with such a weighty responsibility than the officer who knew the Hudathans best? And understood what they were capable of?