Slave of the Legion (12 page)

"Deadman's death," someone said quietly.

"My holy God."

We made our way carefully into the room, stepping between the children. They were all very young—toddlers and pre-schoolers.

"Oh no. Look!"

A whole corner of the hall was covered with rags. But they were moving, mewing, whimpering. Tiny pink fists, clutching at nothing. Babies!

"Go away! You can't have them!" A little girl in a torn dress, enraged, stood amidst the babies. Her arm went back and she hurled something at us. It bounced off my A-suit. And suddenly the air was full of missiles, all sorts of junk, empty ration cans, old shoes, plastic dolls, baby bottles, rattling off our armor. The older children were struggling to their feet, throwing anything they could find, crying and screaming. A gang of dirty-faced girls snatched up the babies, then ran to a corner, clutching the squirming infants to their bosoms. And that one defiant child stood before the remaining babies like a guardian angel, crying and trembling, screaming her rage and frustration and hate, ready to die for her charges.

"Go away! They're only babies! Leave us alone! Go away! Go away! Go away! If I were big, I'd kill you!"

"Somebody take the Systie outside and kill him," Snow Leopard ordered quietly. Psycho seized the Systie and dragged him out to the corridor. The last I saw of him he was screaming for mercy as Psycho activated his hot knife.

Priestess removed her helmet. The hail of missiles ceased as the children slowly realized she was a female.

"We're here to help the babies," she said. "We're here to help you all." She reached out and the child threw her arms around Priestess's neck and cried a river of tears.

"That kid belongs in the Legion," I said. I had never seen anything as heroic as that little girl, defying a whole squad of armored killers.

"We need rations—canteens—now," Priestess ordered. We were ripping open our ratpaks when Sweety interrupted.

"Alert! I detect a full squad of Systies, fully armed and armored, approaching the Mound!" Sweety had nothing but good news for us.

"I have to stay here," Priestess said immediately.

"Valkyrie, these folks are going to take out the main doors and come in after us. I want you to take an element, go back to Processing—the room where we arrived by elevator. Clear out the civilians—put them in the halls. Then mine the room. I want it to go up as soon as the Systies are inside." Snow Leopard never hesitated. He always seemed to know exactly what was necessary.

"I'll use displacement triggers and vulcans," Valkyrie said. "I want Twelve, Four and Eight. All right?"

"That's fine. When the room goes up, I want you to attack, and finish off any survivors—get them all, then rejoin us."

"Tenners. Where will you be?"

"We're going after the ship. Keep in touch."

"Will do."

###

"He's right up ahead," I said. Sweety had the Systie zeroed on my tacmod. We had chased two Systies down the corridor, cleaning up the last of the Systies assigned to the Mound, in and out of rooms, while Valkyrie's group was still waiting in ambush to get the new bunch. Now this one was trapped. The bastard had an SG, and wasn't shy about using it—he had almost hit me. I was still twitching, inside my armor.

"Well, shoot him!" Snow Leopard suggested. I raised my E and fired auto xmax. The room exploded and filled with smoke. When the dust settled, Sweety discerned no life signs.

"Keep an eye on the ceiling," Snow Leopard added. We did not like the ceiling. It was studded with what looked like hatchways or emergency escapes, but Sweety had no further readings for us.

The Systie was torn to shreds, a bloody hunk of meat. He had not been in armor. We had still not heard from Valkyrie about the new squad of Systies. They were in armor, and ready for a fight.

"What the hell is this?" Psycho asked. I suddenly realized that the entire room was ankle-deep in discarded clothing. I picked up one item with the tip of my SG—a child's pink sweater. I let it fall back to the floor. How many hopes and dreams died in this room, I wondered. How many families, delivered up to the O's by the System?

"Look," Snow Leopard said. He stood before a sealed cenite door. The Systies had sprayed another message, on the surface: LAB—PACKS ONLY.

"I detect faint life readings within," Sweety reported. "Humans, unarmored."

There were only six of us now—Snow Leopard and Psycho and the new girl, Twister, Tara and Gildron and myself. Valkyrie was still at the ambush site with her buddy Scrapper and Merlin and Dragon. Priestess was off by herself, nursing the babies.

"Attention! I have a reading from Reception!" Sweety said. "The main door has been breached! Repeat, the main door to Reception has been breached! No further readings!"

"Deto," Psycho said. "It's the Systies." The new Systie squad had just blown its way into the Mound.

"Packs only," Snow Leopard said, ignoring Sweety's report. "The Systies don't go in here. This is the interior. We're going in."

We're going in—Beta One was always able to get our attention. He didn't even have to raise his voice. Only a few words, we're going in, and there was so much adrenalin in my system I swear I could taste it in my mouth. Snow Leopard reached for the door panel and pressed it.

A wave of icy air rolled out slowly as the door slid open—the armored skin on my A-suit was suddenly wet. We moved in like jungle cats. It was a large darkened hall full of glass, tall gleaming glassy columns and cubicles wreathed with mist, reaching up to a dark ceiling. A spidery framework of metal wiring ran around the crystal columns.

"Life…" Sweety said. "Thirteen…the count is unclear. From ten to seventeen humans. Suggest further investigation."

An icy metal catwalk, a glassy translucent column. Something inside, a lazy movement. I brushed away a coating of frost. There was a body within, a naked human female body, floating in liquid—a headless body. A mass of tubing led from the neck up to the top of the cylinder and I knew instinctively that the body was still alive. I hardly dared look but I could see there were two large glassy globes atop the cylinder. Two heads, my God! The first one, a male, blue-grey skin, clearly dead. The second head, a female—eyes open, staring at me. Below, the arms suddenly moved.

I backed out quickly, terrified, my heart thumping wildly. Our psybloc units cracked on, spitting light.

"Alien life-form readings one level up."

Snow Leopard tossed a psybloc grenade out ahead of us. It lit up the cylinders until we could see what was in them. There—a man with no limbs. Gasping, helpless, a trunk with a head, floating in his own filth. The bastards were experimenting with us, playing with us!

"Thinker…look at this." Psycho pointed out something with his Manlink. A grey mass in a frosty globe of bloody liquid. A human brain. I knew it was alive.

"That O was moving fast," Snow Leopard said. "Stand by!" Our tacmods suddenly filled with chaff—totally unreadable.

"Enemy deceptors—I have no further readings," Sweety said. "Warning! An Omni attack is likely!"

I hurled another psybloc grenade into the dark. It exploded white-hot, burning like a star. The O was using deceptors—we were blind.

"It's got us zeroed," Snow Leopard said. "Weapons on canister X. We make our stand here." A faint shudder ran over our armor. Then a distant, rumbling explosion.

"Element attack!" Valkyrie hissed, springing her ambush on the Systie squad. The mines had gone off.

"Deceptors," Snow Leopard commanded. Psycho shot them off, and they cracked to life. Now the O would be blind as well—we hoped. There was no way of knowing for sure.

"Movement!" Sweety reported. Our tacmods flashed phospho red to pinpoint the source, at the far end of that nightmare hall. I snapped my E up to my shoulder and fired auto canister X. We all fired, and the darkness erupted, a swirling, dazzling white-hot fireball, spitting hundreds of tracks of glowing hissing shrapnel, the blast and the sound rocking us simultaneously, the air suddenly full of sparkling glassy debris.

The room exploded, a titanic flash and boom and I was down, groveling on my back like an armored bug. I was in the core of a star, blue hot flames consuming me utterly, the skin on my A-suit suddenly glowing cherry-red. The warning indicators on my faceplate lit up like fireworks.

"NOVA WARNING! Exterior temperature has passed acceptable tolerances for cenite armor! Your armor is melting! Recommend immediate retreat!" I scrambled up from the deck, frantic, enveloped in flames. My armor was already white-hot.

"Get out! Get out!" Snow Leopard ordered. "Back the way we came! Keep firing!" I fired into the flames, auto canister X, walking backwards in roaring sheets of flaming gas.

"Tacstar, Five—I want everything in there to die!" We made it back to the door somehow and Psycho raised his Manlink and the tacstar ripped its way through the holocaust and exploded, a nuclear flower, annihilating it all, blowing a wild storm of debris through the doorway. The door slid shut, sealing us off from the flames.

"Is everybody here? Five, Three, Cinta, Gildron, Thirteen, all here." One sounded shaken. Our A-suits were burning and smoking.

"Did you see that brain?" Psycho asked.

"We're just lab animals to them," Snow Leopard said. "The only way out of here is to kill O's!"

"What the hell was that weapon?" I asked.

"That was starmass—they used it in the Plague War," Snow Leopard responded.

"Look at your armor! Do you know what temperature it takes to affect A-suit armor? That was like being in a star!" My armor was burnt grey, scarred and pitted, smoking freely.

"Did we get the O?" Twister asked.

"No way of knowing—not in that mess," I answered.

"I think we upset it," Psycho said.

"No! What makes you think that?"

"I can tell when somebody's upset. It didn't like the canister." Our helmet units were still spitting psybloc so we knew the O's were in the area. Gildron snarled and raised his E, covering the ceiling.

"Continuous psyprobing," Tara reported. "We've got their attention!"

"Eleven, report!" Snow Leopard demanded. The response came at once.

"One, Eleven. We killed five Systies. We have possession of Processing. There's more of them downstairs, but they've split up. Probably looking for an alternate way to get to us. Do you want us to pursue them?"

"Damn! Negative, Valkyrie. Re-mine the room and rejoin the squad, now. Priestess, get back here."

"I can't, One." Priestess replied wearily. "I can't! I have to look after the babies, the children—they're dying, they're all dying, I have to keep them alive."

"Deadman. All right, Nine, keep alert! Follow me, gang. We've got a mission!"

Chapter 10
Blue Jade

"It won't open," Dragon reported. The door had a Systie message sprayed on it—DISPOSAL. The squad was together again except for Priestess, who was still watching over the children. Dragon took his hand off the tab. The doors were no longer working. Things were starting to get tense. The O's were using deceptors and our tacmods were close to useless.

"They've sealed all doors," Snow Leopard said. "They know there's some new people here. Psycho, open it. Valkyrie, take your element and move up corridor—I want to know what's up there. Watch out for the Systies."

"Tenners. Twelve, Four, Eight, let's go."

We huddled under cover as Psycho opened the door. A tacstar isn't subtle, even on minimum power, but it always works. When the echoes ceased, we walked in past the glowing edges of the massive hole Psycho had punched in the cenite door. We found a room with a scattering of shocked, twitching civilians. They had been at the far end of the room and had escaped death but they were in bad shape from the blast. They were all completely naked, males and females, huddled against the wall, shivering. It was dark and cold. The ceiling was full of those damned escape hatches. It made us nervous.

"Psycho, you've got the ceiling."

"Thanks. I appreciate that."

There was another sealed door at the far end of the room and a message: PACKS ONLY.

A little naked girl came out of the shadows and looked up at Snow Leopard, completely unafraid. "Our mommy went in there," she said. "Can we open it?"

"Aw scut," Psycho said.

"Thirteen, on me," Snow Leopard ordered. "You've got the techprobe Mark 2? Can you open this door for us?"

"I can open it, One," Psycho said cheerily.

"I know, Five. I was thinking about something a little less noisy this time."

"I'll try, One." Twister went to work on the activator with the techprobe.

"Heavy and continuing deceptor activity," Sweety announced. "This may precede an Omni attack!"

I approached the nearest adult civilian, a male. They had all struggled to their feet and were standing patiently, as if waiting for an airbus.

"What goes on here?" I asked. "What's beyond that door? Do you know?"

"That's where we're going, Cit," the man responded, "in there. We have to go in there." He looked into my eyes, dead serious.

"But what's in there?"

"We don't know, Cit. But that's where we have to go." He seemed totally convinced. "We hope it can open the door for us."

"They're psyched," Tara cut in, "totally psyched. Going into that doorway is all that's in their minds. The O's don't even have to be here. They use the Systies to divide up the civilians the way they want, then they psych the different groups to go where they're supposed to go. I hope we get a chance to kill some O's while we're here. I think that would make me feel very good."

"I believe you're going to get your wish."

###

"Bring us back a souvenir, Thinker!" I was backing down the drop on the end of my climbing cable and my boots were sliding freely over the oily surface. The door had revealed a steep slide, falling down to an invisible room far below.

"Just don't let go!" I pleaded.

"Can I have Priestess if you don't come back?" Psycho asked. He was on the other end of the line. I was sweating ice, and in no mood for humor. My boots shot out from under me and I landed on one hip.

"Damn! I can't even stand up here!"

"Can you see anything below?"

"It's hot down there—there's steam rising!"

"I think it's time to re-negotiate that hundred credits you claim I owe you. What say, Thinker?"

I landed almost waist-deep in a pool of sticky, viscous liquid. My darksight was on. It was almost pitch dark except for the flashing from my psybloc, which cut through it all like lightning. Things were moving slowly all around me. It was some kind of awful mechanism.

"No life," Sweety reported. But it was all moving. I eased forward, sloshing through the mess. Something flashed out of the dark and banged off my armor, raising sparks, sending me to my knees. It whirled and circled back. A mechanical device. I avoided it the second time—it hissed harmlessly past me. Something brushed up against me in the water. I glanced down. A body, swollen and putrefied, half submerged. My skin crawled. I pushed it away.

Something moved up ahead, a dull red glow. I sloshed forward. A horrific scene came into view. A line of corpses, bloody meat, stripped of all skin, dangling from hooks. An assembly line—a meat factory. I stopped. I did not want to see any more.

"There are no O's here, One," I reported. "Only bodies—lots of bodies."

"Return, Three—fast!"

"Gladly!"

###

"Valkyrie's found something," Psycho informed me when I crawled out of the chute. "Let's go." The rest of the squad was gone, the room deserted.

"What's she found?" I asked.

"A way in, we think. What's down there?"

"You don't want to know." We stepped out the hole Psycho had blown in the outer door. The civilians stood around outside, naked, shivering, their skin turning blue. The little girl who had asked about her mommy stepped past me into the room. I managed to grab onto her arm.

"Hold it! Where do you think you're going?" I hauled her back into the corridor.

"We're going to see our mommy," she said gravely. She was so cold her teeth were chattering.

"Excuse us," another civilian said. It was the man I had talked with earlier, now stepping into the doorway. Psycho pulled him back roughly.

"What's the holdup, Psycho?" Snow Leopard asked on the tacnet. He was getting impatient.

"Stop! Everybody stop! You can't go in there! You'll all die in there!"

"We have to go in," the man responded. There were nods of agreement from the rest of the civilians.

"The inner door's open," Psycho said, "and it won't close!"

"Deadman! Snow Leopard, we've got a problem!" I suddenly realized that the corridor was filling with civilians—they were coming along the corridor from Processing, where Valkyrie had cleared the room. Men, women and children—with only one thought in their fully-psyched minds.

Priestess suddenly appeared, running up the corridor past the civilians. She knew something was wrong.

"Thinker! Where are they going?"

"They're going to die if they go into this room." The civilians were trying to push their way past us. I swung a left at one particularly aggressive fellow, and my armored fist crushed his nose and hurled him across the corridor. It made no difference. They were frantic to get in, clawing at our A-suits.

"Stop it! Stop it! Go back! Go back!" Twister called out, frantic, recognizing the problem immediately, running back and throwing herself into the crowd. She hurled bodies left and right to clear them away from the door.

"We've got to get that ship, guys!" Snow Leopard told us on the tacnet. "Get back here now!"

"The ship is not important!" Twister cried out. "We have to save these people!"

"She's right, One," Priestess added. "The ship is not important! These people are important! They're human beings—and they're going to die if we don't help them!"

"Get in here, Twister!" I said. "Get that inner door closed! Then laser it shut!"

"I'm on it!" She scrambled past me.

"Priestess—get out of the corridor! In here!" She forced her way in, past the frantically struggling civilians. Psycho blocked the doorway.

"Psycho," I said. "Do a low-power stunstar in the corridor."

"You're right!" Psycho said. "It worked on that Systie! It'll scramble the psych programming!"

"Three, Five, Thirteen, Nine, rejoin the squad immediately!"

"We're on the way, One!" I responded.

"Attention! One-two-three Systies in armor, in the corridor, near Holding."

"How did they do that?"

"The children!" Priestess called out.

"Heads down!" Psycho fired the stunstar. It was the thunder of the Gods, a great fist from the sky, flattening everyone in the corridor. The echoes rolled away. When the dust cleared the civilians were all out cold, sprawled everywhere.

"The psyching will be gone when they regain consciousness. Have you got that door yet?"

"It's done!" The inner door snapped shut, closing off the slide to Hell.

"One, we're attacking the Systies!" Psycho said, stepping out the door with his Manlink raised.

"We're on the way, Psycho! Clear the corridor!"

"Can you see anything?" I burst out the door and rolled over to the far side of the corridor, snapping the safety off my E. My tacmod was trash. The corridor was full of unconscious civilians. Our psybloc units were flashing—it was bad news all around.

"I don't have to—tacstar!" Psycho aimed the Manlink. Then the world exploded, a dazzling supersonic crack and a titanic boom, and my armored fingers clawed at the air. My faceplate lit up with warning lights and the corridor walls and ceiling were suddenly shredded and smoking. A quick glimpse of Priestess and Twister standing in the center of the corridor wreathed in smoke, E's at their shoulders, firing auto xmax almost as if they were on the range back at Basic. Then my hearing came back and the noise overwhelmed me.

"Give me that Manlink!" Dragon snatched Five's weapon and snapped it up to his shoulder. He fired immediately and the tacstar ripped open the universe. It exploded with a merciless crack down corridor, lighting everything up with an eerie incandescent glow. I couldn't figure out why Dragon was firing Psycho's weapon.

"Psycho, lay down a suppressing fire with the Manlink," Snow Leopard ordered. "Beta, on me. We disengage—we've got a mission! We've got to find that ship!"

"Thinker, are you hurt? Thinker!" Valkyrie clawed at my armor. Tacstars shrieked and exploded down corridor. The rest of the squad let loose with auto xmax and lasers—the Systies would be keeping their heads down.

"I think I'm all right. Deadman! What happened?"

"The Systies fired a tacstar—you're lucky! Get up! Disengage! Beta, disengage!"

"Five! Oh no!"

"Psycho's hit!"

"Priestess, we've got a casualty!"

I struggled to my feet. My E was at my chest and an SG still dangled from one shoulder. Something was wrong with one leg of my A-suit. I was having trouble moving the joint. Then I saw that my armor was riddled with hits, pitted with smoking holes.

Psycho was on his back, his armor smoking. One leg was gone, blown away above the knee, his blood squirting all over Tara's armored fingers as she struggled to get a field dressing on it. I could hardly comprehend it. Psycho, the invincible, was down. Psycho, who had emerged unscathed from Andrion 2 and 3, from Coldmark, from Mongera—Psycho was down.

"Attention! Legion squad approaching the Mound!"

"Damn! Now what?"

"That's got to be Blue Gold!"

"Psycho! Psycho! Can you hear me?" I bent over his helmet. Priestess was suddenly there, dropping her E, taking over from Tara, working on Psycho's wound. I snapped open his visor. He was in shock, pale and twitching. His lips moved.

"Bastards got me…" he gasped.

"No, they didn't, Psycho!" I insisted. "It's a God-damned scratch! Don't be such a pussy!"

"I'm finished…" I could barely hear him.

"You can't die, you jerk! You owe me a hundred credits! Quit whining—Priestess is patching you up right now!"

"Psycho, your wound is not fatal," Priestess reported. "Your right leg has been damaged. The Legion will build you a new one, trooper—no worries! Try and relax!"

"Relax! Scut, how are my balls? Tell me the truth!"

"Your balls are fine, Psycho," Priestess replied. She was almost laughing.

"You've got it cracked, Psycho!" I said. "You're off to the body shop—you're a damned hero, those little nurses will be fighting to see who gives you the sponge bath. Stay awake, Psycho!"

"Don't lose my Manlink, Dragon!" His Manlink! he's lost his leg, and he's worried about his Manlink. Only in the Legion!

"I have multiple tacstars, one level down," Sweety reported. What the hell? We could feel them, the vibrations rumbling up through the deck. A fireball erupted down-corridor. Dragon had the Manlink on autoflame—everything down there was wreathed in burning gas. The heat lit up our A-suits.

"Deadman, the civilians…" We had barely had time to glance at them. The Systie tacstar had blown them to shreds. The corridor was littered with shattered, twitching bodies, the walls spattered with blood. Dead—all dead. The little girl was back with her mommy, at last.

"Move, troopers! Back to Export—now! Bring Psycho!" Priestess and I dragged Psycho along the deck as the others fired everything they had to cover us. There was nothing at all we could do for the civilians, not now.

###

The Systies had marked the door EXPORT. We weren't sure what it meant, but we were hoping it would lead to the Ship. Merlin had already opened it. We tumbled in, dragging Psycho behind us.

"Damn it! Take it easy!" he complained.

"Eleven, Twelve, Eight at the door," Snow Leopard ordered. "Keep their heads down."

"Tenners!" It was another freezing metal room, coils of oily cenite twisting up the walls to a dark ceiling. Four bizarre chest-high solid metal structures rose from a slick wet floor. Tables, I thought, for the O's. There was another door at the far side of the room—PACKS ONLY, it read.

"All right, this is it. Get it open, Merlin."

"I'm on it." Merlin popped the panel, picking at the device with his techprobe. Our psybloc crackled away and my tacmod was still unreadable. Systies or O's could hit us at any time. Dragon fired another tacstar. The micronuke flashed white-hot in the corridor and the shock wave buffeted the room. That should slow them down!

"I have broken the Systie comnet," Sweety announced. That was a good trick, considering the deceptors. She immediately fed us what she had caught.

"…can't hold downstairs!" a Systie said. "How's your attack?"

A burst of static, then the response. "…outflanking them. We've got…" More static, an overwhelming roar.