Slave of the Legion (21 page)

"You're bleeding," Tara observed.

"Sorry." I continued honing the knife. The damned thing was beautiful—like a woman.

"You'd better calm down, Wester."

"I'm calm."

"No you're not—your mind is very tense. Please try to relax. We'll be out of here shortly."

"Out of here…right. Where shall we go?"

"Anyplace on the other side of the galaxy would be an improvement. I can set the nav function for anywhere."

I held up the knife to examine the edge. There was blood on the blade. "I'll tell you exactly where we're going," I said.

A harsh buzzing. A light popped to life on an overhead control panel, flashing on and off. The buzzing continued.

"Now what?" I put the knife down again.

"There's no way of knowing," Tara said calmly.

"Wonderful," I said. "That's just great! We're getting set to do a blind star hop on an alien ship, with no idea what we're doing, and now something else is wrong. That's just terrific!" I stood up. Something snapped past the viewport, outside. I froze.

"Calm down, Wester. Please! I'm starting to worry about you."

I reached for an E and picked it up.

"What are you doing, Wester?"

"There's something out there!"

"What?"

"There's something out there!" I strained to see out the viewport—nothing. Only the stars, and the dead world we were orbiting.

"What do you mean?" Tara watched me warily.

"Something flashed past the viewport, Tara. I'm not imagining it. Something small and dark—and fast."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure!"

"What did it look like?"

"I don't know! It was too fast!"

Gildron was with us now, picking up his E. Willard was awake and not happy about it.

"Tess!" Tara commanded her Persist. "Scan near and far space. What's out there?"

"No life detected. The exterior configuration of the ship has recently changed."

"What? Show us the change." I picked up my tacmod. The changes were highlighted—five little protrusions, scattered randomly on the hull.

"Analysis, Tess."

"First object examined is ninety-seven percent iridium mixed with silver, rhodium, palladium, gold, traces of other metals. Objects are bonded to the ship. Origin unknown. Further information required."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means someone's going to have to go out there," Tara said, "and see what it is. Iridium…hmm. According to Tess, it's a natural metal, found mostly in asteroids. But Tess says it shouldn't be ninety-seven percent—that's much too high. I don't know what this could be."

"I'll suit up," I said. Under siege—we were under siege. The bastards just wouldn't leave us alone. When was it going to end? And how?

"No, Wester. I'll go. You…stay here. Just stay here."

"I'm all right."

"I know you are."

"All right, I'm not all right. But I'm going out there anyway—no arguments! Help me suit up."

"Wester, please—let me go."

"I'll go. We can't afford to lose you, Tara. I can't pilot this damned ship. I'll be all right! Quit worrying!"

###

Outside in the vac, I chewed on mags. I was ice cold, but I felt just fine. I walked the skin of the Omni ship like an intruding insect. The ship was a massive, triangular wedge of blackened cenite with a long nose boom.

I had come out an airlock topsides, but I was well back of the front viewport—I was alone. Cold stars burnt overhead, a magnificent panorama of alien constellations, strange nebulae of silver dust and a faint glowing road in the sky.

Atom's Road, I thought. It was the nucleus of our own galaxy, seen from the wrong side. And all we had to do was follow the stars to the other edge.

"Play me the stars, Sweety." The music of the stars, crawling over my skin. Sweety knew—she knew me better than anyone. I snapped the safeties off my E. The right leg of the A-suit was dead, but it was all right—I could still walk.

"Turn off that music, Wester. Can you hear me?" Tara, right in my ears.

"I hear you fine, Tara. You see everything?"

"The monitor's clear, Wester. The first one is right up ahead—be careful!"

I had a great view of the dead world we were orbiting. This was surely the last stop, the last world, on the very edge of our galaxy. After this there was nothing. After this, you would die from the distance. It was a massive, cold, dark rock pitted with the scars of the dust of the cosmos. Last stop, I thought. Omega Spiral, Null Six Sector, a dead world with no name. Last stop, for the Legion. I looked into the pocked face of that nameless rock and saw our God, the Legion's harsh God, looking right back at me.

I turned my face away. The first protrusion was right up ahead. I approached it carefully, my E on laser. Tara could see it clearly in the tacmod; she could see everything I could.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know. Let me get closer."

Whatever it was, it put a chill to my flesh. It was a dark metallic lump, delta-shaped, a little over a mike long, with a thin extension at one end—like a tail. A black star howled in my ears.

"You getting that, Tara?"

"I see it."

"You ever see anything like this, Sweety?"

"I cannot identify this creature, Thinker. However, I now detect a living core—it is alive."

Alive. The stars burnt silently overhead. I had it centered in my sights.

"It's made of metal, Sweety. How can it be alive?"

"I detect extremely powerful molecular acids, Thinker. It appears that the cenite hull is under attack."

"Under attack? You mean this thing eats cenite?"

"Wester!" Tara interrupted, urgently. "The New Worlds!"

"What about the New Worlds?"

"That's one of the things they reported—flocks of weird metallic parasites cruising deep space, suddenly attacking the ship, eating the hull. Our tacmods don't know about it because nobody else ever reported it. The information from the New Worlds had been getting so bizarre, it was hard to judge what was real and what was not, so it was never added to the database. But I remember it now, I read every one of those dispatches. Iridium! What did they call them—vac leeches, that's it. The damned things are so dense they can survive in the vac. They can sleep for millions of years, then awaken to vector in on an approaching source of metal. And they feed off the metal, producing everything they need from the chemical reactions."

"Vac leeches," I said quietly. Wonderful.

"Get them off, Wester! We've got to kill them all, or they'll eat right through the hull. This is their new home—they're not leaving. Kill them, Wester!"

"Sure you wouldn't rather try and communicate with them?"

"Use the laser, Wester. Drill holes in the damn' things, then cut them off the hull. Make sure they're dead, then toss them into the vac. It they're alive, they'll come back!"

"How about keeping one for a souvenir? Something that can live in the vac might be of great interest to the Legion."

"I don't care about that, Wester. Just kill the damn' things, and get rid of them."

"You've changed, Tara."

"So have you! Get to work!"

"Yes sir!" I drilled the first creature from side to side with the laser. It took awhile to burn all the way through. A spray of evil gas burst out the other side, but the creature did not move. It remained stuck to the skin of the ship. The tail snapped off and drifted away.

"These things are not too smart," I reported.

"Do you think it's dead?" Tara asked.

"It's made out of metal—how do I know? I can't find a pulse."

"Separate it from the hull."

"Whatever you say." I grabbed ahold of it and pulled. Nothing—it did not budge.

"It's fused to the hull," I said.

"Use the laser!"

I cut it off with the laser and lifted it up in one hand. The hull was scarred and pitted. The underside of the creature was pretty awful, covered with puckered little round holes that looked like suckers or probes. Nothing moved. I tossed the thing off into the vac.

"Leech One gone," I said. "Let me know if it comes back, and we'll try something else."

"Get back here, Wester!" Tara sounded frightened.

"What? I've got four more of these things to go."

"Get back here now! Quickly!"

I hustled. What else, Deadman? What the hell else?

Chapter 17
Silver Bullet

I stepped out of the airlock back into the ship, my A-suit suddenly running with moisture. Tara was right there, E in one hand. Willard huddled in a corner and Gildron crouched in a doorway, E at his shoulder, covering the corridor. A psybloc grenade was popping and spitting out there.

"What's the sit?" I asked, snapping off my helmet.

"There's something in the ship, Wester," Tara said. She was pale and tense.

"What is it?"

"We don't know! Movement, midships."

"Sweety—report! What have you got?" I joined Gildron by the door to the corridor with some difficulty, dragging my dead leg, pausing in the doorway with my E at my shoulder.

The psybloc grenade was still burning.

"No life, no movement, situation normal," Sweety replied calmly.

"There's nothing there, Tara."

"I know! But there was something there. Movement! A great deal of movement—Tess reported it!"

I took a deep breath. "I see," I said.

"It was mid-ships, Wester. Movement! Let's go—we've got to investigate!"

"Terrific," I said. "I suggest we resolve this before those vac leeches eat through the hull. Help me out of this A-suit—I can't move in this grav."

###

In the heart of the ship, everything changed. The corridors were still round but they were dark and cold and wet, built of coiled cenite, a road for the dead, the overhead bristling with awful, nameless devices. I had been in corridors like this before, in the Mound on Uldo and in the O's starbase on Andrion 3. I had felt then that we were in the entrails of some gigantic beast. Now, creeping down that obscene road, I felt the same. It was dark. There was just enough light to find our way around. I pulled the pin on a psybloc grenade and clutched it in my left hand. All I had to do was release my grip and the grenade would fall, and activate.

"We've only got three psybloc grenades left," Tara whispered. "We can't fight the O's without them."

"There's nobody here, Tara," I said, "so quit your whining."

Willard was with us, sticking close to Tara, hiding behind her legs. He was a little young for a recon mission, but Tara refused to leave him behind.

Icy drops, splattering in my hair, running down my face. My heart pounded. Movement—what could it have been?

"Report, Sweety."

"No life, no movement—situation normal."

"It was right up ahead," Tara said.

"Isn't this where we stashed the O's?"

"Yes. Yes, it is." We had dragged the four awful corpses into a room midway between the bridge and the stardrive and left them there. A present for the Legion, should we ever return.

"Tara, you'd better stay with the kid. Gildron, come with me."

"Be careful, Wester!"

"You should have told me that before I joined the Legion."

###

There was alien blood all over the corridor—pale whitish sticky blood, more than I remembered. The door snapped open as Gildron and I approached, our E's pointing into the darkness within.

I stepped in, cautiously. The room was dark. No life, Sweety said. I scanned the room with the light from the E. Three dead O's on the deck, shot all to hell. A horrible stench. Cold sweat, trickling down my temples. I backed out of the room into the corridor. Gildron and I scanned the corridor. Nothing.

"Zree V," Gildron informed me calmly. "Zree!"

"Well?" Tara was against a corridor wall, shielding Willard with her body.

"One of our O's went for a little walk," I informed her.

"What do you mean?" She hissed it.

"There's only three bodies in there," I explained. "There should be four."

"That's impossible!" she gasped. "Tess, scan the ship! Find the missing body!"

"The body is not present within the ship," Tara's tacmod replied immediately. Tara was speechless, for the very first time. I was breathing a little faster than normal, I'll admit. Under siege—yes, we were certainly under siege. Vac leeches outside, and something else roaming around inside.

"We'd better get back to the bridge," I said. Tara did not respond.

"Wester to Tara. You still with us?"

"There's no other exit from that room, is there, Wester?" She sounded perfectly calm.

"Not as far as I can tell."

"Then we weld the door shut. From the outside. Let's do it!"

"Let's just forget about it, all right, Tara?"

"No—we weld the door. Now!"

"I think we should get back to the bridge."

"We will. But I don't want a repeat of this, whatever it is. Weld the door."

"Weld the door." I sighed. "Good idea."

###

"Did the V come back?" Willard asked. We were on the bridge, awaiting our fate. We had not only welded the door, we had booby-trapped the corridor. Anyone approaching the room with the bodies was going to get one big, nasty surprise.

"We're not sure, honey," Tara responded carelessly. She was working on the controls again, and she was not happy. I was not happy either. Gildron and I crouched by the main door to the bridge with our E's. We had left the bridge door open—we wanted a clear field of fire down the corridor. I had a live psybloc grenade clutched in one hand, and another at my waist. Tara had the third one. My E was set on auto canister x, safeties off. Just a single twitch of my finger and the entire corridor would erupt—nothing would survive. Nothing! Several contac grenades were lined up before me on the deck, ready to go. I was slick with sweat.

"Can we help?" Willard asked. He dumped the contents of my toolpak all over the deck.

"Sure," I said. "You can be chief of security. And Gildron, here, he's in charge of strategic planning. Is that all right with you, Tara?"

"Fine," she snapped back, "and what do I do?" She was still fooling around with the controls.

"You're the bus driver, Tara. You're in charge of transportation. You're supposed to get us out of here. But you can be my One, too, if you like. Sure, why not? I'll promote you—you're now acting One of Squad Beta, Second of the Ship. I don't want to think any more, I'm sick of it. You're in charge, Tara."

"I'm honored," she replied coldly. "And what about you? What are you going to do?"

I laughed, and snapped the E up to my shoulder, aiming it down the corridor. The scope brought it right up to me—perfect.

"I'm your E, Tara," I said. "I'm your weapon. Just aim me at the O's when they come. Just throw me at them. I'm your attack dog. I'm a mindless biogen, totally expendable. I'm a silver bullet, for alien intruders. Just give me the word, Tara—just set me loose! I'll kill all your enemies, I'll tear out their throats and come back happy and lie at your feet. Just feed me ammo—that's all I need." I cradled the E in my arms. It was cold—I was shivering. The E was all I really needed, in this life. Who could possibly want anything else?

"Wester, I'd like you to take an icer." Tara had left her post by the controls and was rooting around in a medpak.

"I don't need an icer," I said. "An icer is the last thing I need. I've been chewing mags like candy."

"I know you have, Wester. And you've got to calm down! We're all in this together. We all depend on you, Wester. Please?" She knelt beside me, holding the little green tablet in her fingers. I took it from her and popped it into my mouth.

"You can be the medic, too," I said. She didn't move.

She just knelt there, hanging her head. Gildron gazed at her curiously—he knew her moods better than I did. Willard banged away with the tools on the deck.

"Something wrong?" I asked. It was probably the most idiotic question of the year, considering our situation.

She shook her head wearily, continuing to stare at the floor. "I can't do it, Wester."

"You can't do what?"

"The controls. It's not going to work. Your theory is right—I'm sure it's right, and so is Tess. But it's not enough. A great deal is missing. I can't integrate the nav function with the stardrive controls. I'm not even sure I've found the right controls yet! It's all so complex! We're just guessing what does what. I've tried everything—there's no way of knowing what's right, and what's wrong. And if we do it wrong, we die."

"I see." I still clutched the psybloc grenade in my left hand.

"I'm sorry, Wester. I've failed. I'd only be kidding us both if I said there was any hope. There's no way out."

"Well, I appreciate that input. Thank you for keeping me informed." Cold sweat, trickling down my face. I carefully slid the pin back into the psybloc grenade and set it on the deck. Tara did not move. It was not like her. I shifted the E to my left hand and raised her chin with my right. She didn't look too good.

"When was the last time you slept, Tara?"

"I really thought we could do it, Wester. I really did."

"I don't believe you're going to give up."

"I wanted to do it for Willard—if not for us. Just to give him his life back. Only that."

"You need some rest. You can't think straight like this."

"I can't rest, with vac leeches boring holes in the hull, and…whatever else…loose inside the ship."

"The leeches can wait. It'll probably take them months to actually cut through the hull. You need some rest—now!"

"I can't rest!" Her eyes blazed again. "We've got to get out of here, Wester! But there's at least four different ways I've come up with to sequence the launch procedure. And probably others I haven't thought of! And they all could be wrong! I have no idea which, if any, will work!"

"Look—if we stay here, we're dead. Let's just choose one—any one. Blind fate. We go with the Gods, we live or die. Do you really think any of this is up to us, Tara?"

She shuddered. I put an arm around her shoulders and gently drew her to me. Silky hair and sweet, faintly musky sweat. Gildron leaned forward and put one massive hand lightly on Tara's head. Our guardian angel. Willard joined us—he knew something was wrong. "We want to come, too," he said quietly.

"A roll of the dice," I said, "and we live, or die. No regrets. We go together. All right?"

"Together," Tara said quietly.

"Together!" I declared.

"Do gaza," Gildron said.

"And us, too," Willard added.

###

But it wasn't quite that simple. Tara kept working, determined to improve our chances. I lost track of time; I have no idea how many hopeless hours we spent on that alien bridge with Tara at the controls, working grimly on her tacmod, muttering under her breath like a witch brewing up some unholy spell. A dark infinity, as I squatted by the door sweating, while wild fantasies danced in my mind and Gildron stared sightless into space and Willard whined and cried, tired and scared, and Tara moaned away, cursing herself.

I finally forced her from the controls, insisting she rest, and she cuddled with Willard on the deck under a blanket and the two of them were asleep in moments. I rejoined Gildron at the door. I peeled off my tunic and threw it in a corner—it was soaking again.

Gildron was awake, but dreaming. I don't think he even saw me. He was a strange creature, a massive rocklike body with a bony, craggy face, prominent brow ridges and sunken, dreamy eyes. His body was covered with tangled hair. According to Tara, he was smarter than we were. I can't say it showed.

I drifted off with my E in my arms and grenades on the floor. Cold sweat slowly trickled down my cheeks and I slept an exhausted, fitful sleep, propped against a wall by the door. At first Gildron's face kept coming back to me in silent, rushing waves of sleep, and then he faded away.

Priestess appeared suddenly in roaring white-hot flames, screaming in agony, shrieking for help, enveloped in the fiery breath of the O, her A-suit glowing and spitting, her Persist calling out the warnings as she staggered blindly, lost in the flames, her armor fusing, death only instants away. She flamed brightly, burning like a star, lost and doomed, running blindly to her death, and only I could help her. I threw myself into the flames, enraged, adrenalized, and Sweety had her on scope. Priestess was screaming my name—Thinker! Thinker! Thinker! Help me! Thinker! Thinker! Thinker!

"Thinker! Thinker! Alert! Alert! Movement!" I snapped awake—Sweety called me back to reality. Gildron leaped to his feet with his E, standing in the doorway, a gigantic warrior poised to smite our foes. I scrambled to my feet—Tara threw her blanket off, stunned into consciousness.

"Report, Sweety! Where is the target?"

"Midships, Thinker! Lower level, as marked!" Sweety's response was immediate. "The target appears to be an Omni. No life." I snatched up the tacmod and looked at the reading.

It was nowhere near the room we had stashed the O's. Now what?

"Explain!" Tara snapped. She was standing by my side, E up and safeties off.

"The target is moving," Sweety said. "Positive reading! Visual and thermal image is that of an Omni. However, I detect no life signs. Image does not correspond with a holo projection!"

"Wonderful," I said. "Let's go!" I picked up the psybloc grenade and pulled the pin. Gildron was beside me as we stepped into the corridor.

"I'm taking Willard!" Tara exclaimed. Willard was on her like a leech, pale and silent—he knew where we were going.

"Suit yourself," I said. I was convinced we were all going to die—it didn't much matter where Willard met his fate.

###

Midships, lower level—we paused by a tall guardrail.

It was a vast, cavernous hall of metal, an icy cathedral for the walking dead. We could see up at least four levels, and down several more. We had taken an elevator down. The deck was a metal grate, slick under our boots. The air was charged with moisture—mist rose overhead, a faint rain, icy drops bursting on my naked shoulders. We were all ready to fire, our E's tracking the darkness for a target. But there was nothing there.

"The target is no longer present, Thinker," Sweety said calmly. "This is the target's former position."

I looked over the railing. Nothing. I was freezing—but the water felt good on my wounds.

"You should have brought your tunic," Tara said. "You're going to get a chill."