March of the Legion

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Ridan and its logo are copyrighted and trademarked by Ridan Publishing. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

A Ridan Publication
www.ridanpublishing.com
www.soldierofthelegion.com

Copyright © 2010 by Marshall S. Thomas
Cover Art by Michael J. Sullivan
Starcharts by Hatton Slayden
Editing by Carol Woods
Layout Design by Michael J. Sullivan

ISBN: 978-0-9825145-7-3
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
First Printing: May 2010

Dedicated to:

Kim Lien

Praise for Marshall's Soldier of the Legion Series

"It's been a long wait for the second in this exciting series of sci-fi books. I must admit that the attraction for me is Marshall Thomas's writing style and story telling ability. This book picks up where the last left off, with the Legion facing a scourge that threatens all life forms throughout the universe — the Omnis. Once again, the action is heart pounding, the characters believable and well developed. This time, adding interest to the plot, the Legion juggles political intrigue and betrayal along with fighting the Omnis…
"Readers experience breath taking action and frightening battles on alien worlds…Sci-fi fans or readers who enjoy good writing should love this book. This series is highly recommended."

— Midwest Book Review

"…a deep, rich story that captures the heart of Sci-fi…a perfect story…captivating…moving. I highly recommend SOLDIER OF THE LEGION, one the best books I've read this year!"

— MyShelf.com

Books in the Soldier of the Legion Series

Soldier of the Legion

March of the Legion

Slave of the Legion

Secret of the Legion

Cross of the Legion

Curse of the Legion

An Introductory Note from the Author

I have been gratified by the popularity of the Soldier of the Legion series since the publication of the first book, Soldier of the Legion, in 2002. Now the series is complete, in 2010, with the recent publication of the sixth and final book in the Series, Curse of the Legion.

Why, then, am I republishing the second book, The Black March, as a new volume, March of the Legion: The Author's Cut? Two reasons: first, my new publisher, Ridan, is re-releasing all my previous books with attractive new covers and artwork. Second, this gives me a chance to fix a historical problem with my first two books. What happened is that my first publisher decided that Soldier of the Legion was too long and so I was forced to cut the story back and repackage the last part of it as The Black March. That was fine, but the cut was made at an awkward point in the story. I didn't like it much, but as a new author at the time, I had no choice.

With the latest edition of Soldier of the Legion: The Author's Cut, the problem is fixed. And with this latest edition of March of the Legion: The Author's Cut, you now have the new version of The Black March, and it too now appears as it was originally created.

I look at The Black March/March of the Legion as Soldier of the Legion's little brother.

My thanks to my new publisher, Ridan Publishing, for all their work. I am thrilled to see my creations reflected accurately as they were first written.

Table of Contents

PART I—THE FORGE
Chapter 1: The River of Doom
Chapter 2: The Kitchen of the Gods
Chapter 3: In the Camp of the O's
Chapter 4: The Souls of the Dead
Chapter 5: Under Strange Stars
Chapter 6: Oplan Gold
Chapter 7: Death's Cold Road
PART II—GHOST RIDERS
Chapter 8: King of the Dark
Chapter 9: Volunteers
Chapter 10: Mongera
Chapter 11: Advice for the Dead
Chapter 12: Ghost Riders
PART III—FEVER DREAMS
Chapter 13: Cold New Worlds
Chapter 14: The Trouble with Katag
Chapter 15: Biergart
Chapter 16: The Mask
Chapter 17: The Sandman
Chapter 18: Satan's Spawn
GLOSSARIES

Crista Cluster, 1,400 light years from Sol

When the first Outworlder refugees approached the Outvac fleeing System oppression, the Crista Cluster beckoned them onwards with a view that appeared to form a starry cross in the vac. ConFree's ancestors settled those worlds as a free people and vowed in a Constitution written in blood to uphold liberty, justice and freedom, no matter what the cost, and to remain eternally vigilant against all forms of tyranny and slavery. The ConFree Legion was formed to accomplish those objectives.

Black March:
"Black March" originally referred to the Diaspora of Outworlder and Assidic refugees fleeing System slavery and oppression by seeking new worlds and a new life in the unexplored reaches of the Outvac frontier. Here they discovered and settled scores of uninhabited but primeval virgin worlds in the Crista Cluster. When System forces threatened to intrude, they declared their independence, forming the Confederation of Free Worlds in Year One, CGS. The successful but costly efforts of Fleetcom and the ConFree Legion to drive System DefCorps units from the Outers were also referred to as the "Black March" because of the terrible casualties suffered by our forces during the campaign.

Veltros Training Command—Basic—Intro—History.
Date: 312 CGS.

Chapter 1:
The River of Doom

"We're in the at!" There was no need to announce it—the assault carrier shook scarily in the atmosphere, vibrating all the way into our bones. In armor, strapped down in the aircar, we felt helpless in our death suits, black armor and red faceplates. Our assault carrier fell nose first, punching out a deep, hot combat drop into the atmosphere of Andrion 3.

All of
Atom's
strike force accompanied us, falling into the black skies of this unholy world like a plague of fireflies, a meteor shower of tiny hot sparks in a hostile night. Four squadrons of fighters from
Atom's
cruisers: the
Spawn
, the
Spider
, the
Sparta
, the
Specter
, supported us, thirty-two fighters in all, with another thirty-two from
Atom's
four organic squadrons, tacships and assault craft filled with aircars and the aircars filled with Legion troopers, more than five hundred and sixty of us praying to Deadman, scouts and transports and swarms of recon probes and thousands of deceptors, falling, burning, glowing, shaking, still on
Atom's Road
, doing
Atom's
will.

The O's awaited us. The Omnis were deadly alien warriors with immense psychic powers, invulnerable mag fields, and lots of experience in killing humans. We had never had any success in killing O's, but their intrusion into ConFree vac had to be countered. And there we were.

I listened to the music of the stars, roaring inside my helmet, incredibly beautiful, the stars hissing and booming as the assault craft bounced and shook, carrying us down to an unknown fate.

"Aircars—prep for launch."

"Beta Air ready for launch." Redhawk's armored fingers flew over the console, and all the lights glowed green. Snow Leopard sat beside him, still checking out the squad.

Snow Leopard began his pre-launch sermon, "Psycho, if it moves…"

Psycho seemed edgy, "It's dead. I know—tacstars, all the way!"

"Thinker, we'll be depending on you!" Snow Leopard's voice had a very hard edge on it, with more urgency than I remembered hearing before.

"I'll be there, Snow Leopard," I said. I was oddly calm. Determined. Doomed.

"Warhound, there won't be time to double-check anything. If it moves…"

Warhound snapped back, "Kill it. I've got it, Snow Leopard. Don't worry."

"Priestess…"

"I'll be as close as I can get, Snow Leopard. Don't worry."

Command interrupted, "Launch aircars!"

The lights flickered and an alarm shrieked once again. It felt as if the gravity god were smashing me right through my armor. A great roar as the aircar jets erupted to full power, the console aglow, my entire body trembling from the vibrations. The aircar fell wildly into the dark, bouncing and shaking in unstable air. It appeared pitch black outside, but soon weak flickers of light were visible—sparks, lost in the awful night. Black clouds, flashing past us. A tremble of lightning. A glow, somewhere ahead and below. A soundless explosion, lighting up a sudden jagged black horizon, the lightning of the Gods. A dark volcano erupted, glittering streaks of golden lava bursting up into the night in heart-stopping slow motion.

"Look at that!"

"It's beautiful!"

"Thinker, I'm listening to the stars." Priestess, a dreamy whisper. Priestess. Fragile Priestess. My hope. My strength.

"I'm with you, Priestess. I'm with you." The car shook wildly, the engine shrieking, seemingly out of control.

"To the death…to the death…to the death…" Someone prayed quietly. And suddenly the Drop Song came on.

"The past is dead and gone,
The scent of flowers in a tomb,
A half-remembered tune
From a half-remembered time
Open your eyes, cast off old dreams!
A New World awaits you—
A New World to love you—
Drop, drop, drop!
The past is dead and gone!"

I tuned it out. I wanted to listen to the stars.

"Heads up, gang!" Redhawk warned us, snapping me out of my reverie. "Here comes the antimat!" We fell through that evil night like a great cenite bat. The aircar's tacsit screen glowed hot with Legion aircar markers. The grav pulled at my restraints as the car buffeted wildly. Thick clouds edged with burning embers flashed past the plex. I caught a quick glimpse of another aircar, a sinister black bird, cutting through the soup, then gone. Up ahead, two glittering phospho white tracks relentlessly traced their way almost straight down towards the shrouded surface.

A blinding blue incandescent flash suddenly lit up everything, freezing it all into my retina, a fraction of time caught forever—a world afire below, dull red volcanoes belching fire and ash, ochre rivers of lava burning their way in great loops through that hellish underworld. A titanic blast of glittering orange lava shot skywards as the initial flash faded, a spectacular eruption, millions of dazzling streaks rising, growing, forming a massive fireball rising high into the atmosphere, blasting a shock wave of smoky debris ahead of it. My eyes were still dazzled by the flash—I couldn't see the target.

"It's headed for the vac!" Warhound shouted.

Then the shock hit us, flipping our car like a toy as the crack of doom resonated with my armor and rattled my teeth. Upside down, we hurtled to our death—until Redhawk regained control and righted us.

"That was the first anti!" Snow Leopard shouted. "Take a look!"

"I never woulda guessed it!" Psycho quipped, "Thanks for enlightening us!"

Everyone ignored him—we had a pretty scary view all right. The spectacular geyser of lava blasted its way completely out of the at with cosmic force, filling the sky, erupting from a giant irregular lava lake set at the foot of a bleeding volcanic mountain chain. There—that was the target! I could see nothing of the starport but as I watched, a heavy lava rain showered the lake, falling from the antimat blast.

Much of the surface of the lava lake had disintegrated or was still heading skyward, but there was plenty left. Nobody had ever before used antimat on an Omni starport hidden deep under the surface of a moving lake of lava. Command believed two strikes would shatter the upper portion of the Omni installation and probably kill a great many O's. We certainly didn't want the entire starport destroyed. It was an incalculably valuable prize of war, if we could win it. We had no idea of the size or structure of the installation—the lava was good camfax. We knew so little about the O's it was well worth the risks—that's what they had told us. The mission was to record and exploit everything we found, and recover what we could. If the antimat strike prompted the O's to retreat, we'd seize and hold. If they survived and rallied, we'd retreat rapidly. And all this to be done with lava presumably pouring into the base! Life ain't easy, as Snow Leopard often said.

I prayed that
Atom's
simulations were accurate and that Command's decision to send us in after only two strikes was the right one.

"Look out!" An irresistible fist of gas hit us and a hailstorm of lava and pumice and ash peppered the car, screeching and pinging off the armored skin. We flipped again, my stomach swirling unhappily as I prayed to Deadman. In an instant, we were back on track, more or less right side up.

"I'm approaching the zero," Redhawk reported. "There's antimat number two—stand by!"

"Oh, no!" somebody objected.

The second of those awful phospho tracks was about to hit target—right on the Omni starport. I saw it coming down, the finger of God. Another elemental, eye-searing flash lit up the world, an antimat sun, an artificial comet impacting to shake the planet with cosmic force. The lava lake blew open with a mighty crack, punching a gigantic gassy plume of smoking, burning debris into the upper atmosphere while ejecting a stunning display of white-hot lava contrails ripping out in all directions—how could anything survive? The O's must be history! I gritted my teeth. The car rattled and lurched wildly, and my head snapped back and forth in my helmet.

"What's that?" Snow Leopard asked, pointing straight ahead.

Smoky clouds ahead of us were filled with incandescent little green tracers, meandering around lazily—as if looking for something.
Atom
was wrong. Command was wrong. The Omni base had survived
two
antimat hits and they were still fighting! This was madness! We couldn't fight the O's! Nobody could fight the O's!

"They're shooting at us!" Redhawk sounded shocked—as if it were not allowed. He snapped the car in a turn that must have been greater than 90 degrees, but I couldn't tell exactly because I lost consciousness when the gravs on my body exceeded the weight of a neutron star—or at least it felt that way to me.

When I came to, we were dropping like a meteor, and those green bastards were following us down like a swarm of bees. Then my heart leaped to my throat and the adrenalin cocktail shocked me awake as it all came into focus. The armored plex was riddled, streaks of blood shot past on the inside of the plex as I watched in amazement, trying to understand it. Redhawk's blood! He screamed in agony, his armor smoking as the planet's poisonous air roared into the cabin. A section of the armored wall had peeled open and loose junk whipped past me. The readouts on the cockpit all glowed red, an electronic crackling indicated the aircar's instrumentation was fried, and Sweety was calmly relaying it all.

"…brace for crash landing, recommended, emergency navcom still functioning, pilot is unconscious, flight controls are partially responding. Hit! Hit! Hit! Major damage, land and abandon vehicle to…"

We were dropping fast! My seat was right behind Redhawk and he was slumped down in his seat. I activated the emergency release on my restraints and vaulted over Redhawk's bloody armor to seize the controls. I managed to veer the car away from a sheer cliff—just in time! Warhound and Priestess frantically hauled Redhawk out of the cockpit as I forced my way into the pilot's seat. The controls vibrated harshly and I could barely hold them steady even with Sweety's help.

"…EMERGENCY LANDING SYSTEM FAILING!" the car announced. I struggled to gain lift as the aircar fell like a brick towards the surface. It was all dark out there except for a wide river of glittering golden lava—we were headed right for it!

"Look out, Thinker!" Snow Leopard warned. A slice of velvet suddenly split the river and I pointed the car's nose right at it—we were going down and I didn't want to land in the lava. I prayed our target was flat land and not a pile of slag floating on top of the lava river.

We hit with a bone-jarring impact and skidded out of control through a stony surface as I struggled to stay conscious. Dead! We were dead!

###

"It's an island—just as Sweety said," I told Psycho. "And there's no way off." Psycho and I lay motionless in a field of pumice, under a smoky night sky full of burning ash. Our recon was over—and the result was not good. Our aircar had crashed onto a long island of volcanic rubble set in the middle of a wide, relentless, white-hot river of lava that ground past us with elemental force. The rock around us steamed, poisonous yellow gases hissing. A phosphorescent red glow lit up the lava river. Pumice glittered like glassy diamonds on the shore. The ground shook like jelly as we watched, and an awful shrieking, grinding noise set my teeth on edge. A hot breeze blew against our faceplates—a dull roaring and crackling. The temperature kept rising—our armor glowed.

"They'll spot us out here," I observed.

"You're a real strategist," Psycho replied. "Nice work on picking this spot to land. How come you're not an officer?"

"It's because I don't want to have to deal with people like you! Shut down, will ya?" I snapped. I was getting sick of his jibes.

"Let's get closer!" he said, snaking forward.

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.