Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle Read online

  The charges had been read and the negative reinforcement began. Denied the high-tech dispensation of pain they normally preferred, the Hudathans had fallen back on older but still effective methods of punishment. The whip was made of hand-braided cord and ended in six knotted tails. Norwood knew that each knot would cut into the alien flesh in a most pleasing manner and produce intense pain.

  A ragged-looking noncom withdrew the whip from a scrupulously clean bag, handed it to the master-at-arms, and stepped back. The master-at-arms took his position, planted his feet, and flicked the whip back and to the right. His arm flashed forward. The whip made a swishing sound, followed by the crack of impact, and a grunt of expelled air. The blow left a pattern of crimson lines. The soldier jerked but remained silent.

  Yes! Norwood thought to herself. Each and every one of the aliens should be punished for what they’d done, made to suffer as their victims had suffered, then eradicated from the galaxy. Nothing less would make amends, nothing less would ensure safety, and nothing less would bring peace.

  The strokes came more quickly now, and Norwood’s hand moved to the same rhythm as the whip, her excitement building until a series of short but powerful orgasms racked her body, and she moaned in pleasure. All of the stress, all of the tension seemed to ebb from her body, leaving her adrift on a tingly tide. The crack of the whip took on a monotonous quality. Norwood closed her eyes and felt the heavy hand of sleep pull her down. Darkness wrapped her in its warm embrace and oblivion carried her away.

  Hundreds of miles from the room where the punishment took place, in a building that had originally served as a military museum, War Commander Poseen-Ka sat hunched over a makeshift table. It was huge and bore the considerable weight of a relief map made from hand-molded clay. A cone of sickly yellow light came from high above and threw short, stubby shadows across the make-believe land. Naval technicians had rigged the light from materials found in the ruins of cities he had destroyed. Power came from batteries and the occasional sunlight the humans were powerless to deny him.

  Long, hard years of imprisonment had trimmed a hundred pounds from the Hudathan’s frame and left him thin and gaunt. His skin was gray, almost black in reaction to the chilly air, and showed early signs of the striations that mark old age.

  But those who had fought under Poseen-Ka knew that the inner being was unchanged, except for the shame that accompanied defeat, and the passion it fed. A passion far more complex than simple revenge, because the war commander was too honest to blame the enemy for his failures, and too professional to let emotion govern his actions.

  No, the passion had to do with correcting a momentary imbalance, a time when one of the countless threats that confronted his race had gained the upper hand, a situation that could and would be reversed. If not by him, then by someone else. In fact, viewed from the perspective of a race used to a chaotic environment, the situation was normal. As was his response, which was to analyze his mistakes and figure out how to avoid them in the future.

  The fact that there was no future to speak of, beyond another twenty or thirty years of imprisonment, made no difference. The humans had a saying that went something like “Where there is heart there is hope.” A noble sentiment worthy of a Hudathan.

  Poseen-Ka stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and circled the table. It modeled a section of a planet called Algeron. This particular piece of terrain lay just north of the world-spanning mountain range known as the Towers of Algeron. They were represented by fingers of reinforced clay that pointed toward the smoke-stained ceiling and the surveillance cameras that crawled buglike from one side of the room to the other. The Hudathan hated the cameras, and the knowledge that Norwood could watch his every move, but was determined to hide such emotions. Especially in light of the fact that the human had been his prisoner once and comported herself with warriorlike dignity.

  The map had been constructed from memory, and was inaccurate to some extent, but not enough to matter. No, the foothills that fell away from the mountains, the plains that stretched to the north, those were as they had been. Would be if he returned. But what of the fort called Camerone ? And the damnable cyborgs that infested it? Had the fort been rebuilt? Were the man-machines waiting as they had been before? Such were the questions he would ask in the highly unlikely event that he received a second chance.

  A poisonous rain spattered against the plastic-covered door. The room felt suddenly small and confining. The war commander swept the plastic aside and stepped out into a bitter drizzle. Mud squished beneath massive sandals as he walked down a flight of steps and out into the military cemetery.

  Lighting strobed in the distance and served to illuminate thousands of crosses that had managed to stay vertical when all else fell. They marked the graves of soldiers killed in previous wars, when the humans had fought each other, arguing over who should lead. An understandable if somewhat self-defeating activity that plagued Hudathan society as well.

  Thunder rumbled across the land and Poseen-Ka looked upward. His eyes struggled to pierce the cloud cover and failed. The stars. What about the stars? Would he travel among them yet again? Or die on this accursed planet, his flesh and bones turning to soup, and seeping down to join the military dead? Acid rain spattered across the Hudathan’s face and made his eyes sting. Only time would tell.

  The Hudathan scout ship was small, fast, and lightly armed. It hardly even paused as it dropped hyper on the edge of the solar system, launched the Special Operations package, and disappeared back into the strange continuum where objects can travel faster than the speed of light.

  The package, no bigger than a soccer ball, had been fired in a manner that allowed it to join company with a meteor stream that, like Worber’s World itself, orbited the system’s sun. The stream, which consisted of debris strewn along the path of a well-known periodic comet, intersected the planet’s orbit a few weeks later.

  Technicians aboard the Old Lady detected the meteor shower long before it arrived, checked to make sure that it coincided with computer projections based on past activity, ran routine detector scans on ten percent of total mass, and cleared the shower for atmospheric entry.

  The Special Operations package, along with the true meteorites that surrounded it, entered the atmosphere at a velocity of approximately ten miles per second. Friction caused them to slow slightly while their outer surfaces melted and were swept away in the form of tiny droplets. Most of the heat was dissipated, leaving the inside of the objects cold. During the last seconds of flight a layer of solidified melt called fusion crust formed on the surface of the real meteorites while the Ops package exploded and scattered millions of peanut-sized metal capsules far and wide. The capsules spattered across the tortured landscape like metallic hail. Some ceased to exist. Some survived.

  In fact, a full 94.2 percent of the capsules remained operational after impact with the ground, a much higher percentage than required for mission success, and a number that would have pleased a war scientist named Rimar Noda-Sa very much.

  It took less than five seconds for the capsules to open and release their micro-robotic passengers. Designed to look like a locally mutated version of B.germanica, or the Earth-derived German cockroach, the tiny machines waited exactly ten minutes, identified themselves with a millisecond burst of code, activated their on-board navigation systems, and scuttled toward the primary assembly point. No one knew it yet, but the Confederacy of Sentient Beings was under attack, and would soon be involved in a full-scale war.

  2

  The only thing worse than the study of war, is the failure to study war, and life as a slave.

  Mylo Nurlon-Da

  The Life of a Warrior

  Standard year 1703

  Planet Earth, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  Danjou Hall, the traditional residence of senior cadets, boasted four gargoyles. Booly straddled the one located at the building’s northwest corner, just above the room he shared with Tom Riley. He wore black fatigues,
the kind favored by the 2d REP, the Legion’s elite airborne regiment, a climbing harness, and a day pack. His feet were bare.

  The carefully maintained grounds were seventy feet beneath him. The campus was dark except for the light from an almost full moon, some streetlights that had been placed with military precision, and a scattering of still-lit windows. Booly looked at his wrist term, touched a button, and saw the multifunctional dial appear. It was exactly 2359 hours. One minute to go.

  He took a deep breath and released a long, steady plume of lung-warmed air. His heart beat like a trip-hammer. It reminded him of how stupid he was. So stupid he’d allowed the very creatures Uncle Movefast had warned him against to manipulate his actions, because even though Booly was half-human himself, and therefore tainted with the blood of those who had tormented him for six long years, he thought of them as aliens. Aliens who wouldn’t mind if he plunged to his death, or was caught trying to reach the admin building, as long as it reinforced their rather shaky sense of superiority. This was an attitude Booly found hard to understand, since he’d been raised in an atmosphere where tribal needs came first, and what after all was the Legion, if not a military tribe?

  So there was only one thing left to do, and that was to succeed. Because if he made it to the admin building without getting caught, and hoisted the senior-class pennant to the top of the flagpole, he would not only uphold one of the academy’s most venerable traditions, he would disappoint the bigots and graduate at 1000 hours the next morning. But it wouldn’t be easy, because while hundreds of classes had tried to hoist their pennants, and roughly twenty-five percent of them had succeeded, all of them had moved their flags across the ground.

  The “aerial route,” as Riley liked to call it, was both untried and undeniably dangerous. Something the academy’s staff would officially disapprove of, even punish if they could, but secretly admire, because it was very much in line with the Legion’s culture of perseverance in the face of impossible odds, personal bravery, and death in battle.

  The bell tower was located on the far side of the huge quad on which he and his classmates had spent countless hours marching back and forth. And even though the chimes were muted during the night, the sound still surprised him. He jerked, swayed, and regained his balance. It was midnight. Time to get going.

  Checking to make sure that the pennant was tied around his waist, and the knapsack securely fastened to his back, Booty stood on the long, flat cornice. It received direct sunlight during most of the day and he could feel what remained of the warmth through the soles of his bare feet. That ability was a gift from his mother’s people, which, when combined with their superior sense of smell and the cape of short, thick fur that covered the upper part of his torso, accounted for much of the prejudice that he’d endured.

  The rest flowed from his stubborn “screw you” personality, something he’d inherited from his father, a onetime legionnaire, currently serving as Naa ambassador to the Confederacy.

  Like his classmates, Booty had spent a great deal of time in the field, learning how to move without being seen. But unlike his classmates, Booty had grown up on the planet Algeron, where tribe fought tribe, and bandits roamed the land. So it was second nature to avoid the skyline, to remain in the shadows, to seek warmth with his feet. He could almost hear his uncle saying, “Good rocks are like beautiful females, son—warm, clean, and pleasant to touch. Bad rocks are cold, wet, and slippery. Step on them and they will betray you.”

  The cornice felt like “good rock” and carried Booty to the northeast corner of the building, where the first of many challenges awaited him. He knew the gap between Danjou Hall and the library was less than six feet wide, a distance he had jumped countless times on the ground. But this was different. This was scary. He looked down, saw a flash of white as a legionnaire walked by, and jerked his head back. What was a drill instructor doing out at this time of night? Looking for him? No, checking the plebes, that’s all, and handing out gigs to the jerks on guard duty.

  Booty paused, brought his breathing under control, backed up about fifteen feet, and ran full tilt toward the abyss. His feet made slapping sounds as they hit the cornice. The edge appeared and he threw himself toward the library roof. It was made of copper and slanted up toward a highly polished dome. He hit harder than planned, felt the metal buckle slightly, and swore as he slid downward. His fingertips squeaked over bare metal and his toes sought something solid. There was a ridge, he knew there was a ridge, but where the hell was it? Finally. His toes hit the ridge and brought him to a stop.

  Had anyone heard? The last of the chimes were supposed to cover whatever noise he made. Had it worked? There was no way to tell. Booly remained perfectly still. His breath came in short gasps and fogged the copper in front of his face. He heard a voice. It was a long way off.

  “Sir! Cadet Private Maria Martinez, sir!” as a drill instructor ordered some poor slob to identify herself. The DI’s reply was barely audible. Booly waited. A dog barked, a door slammed, and a shuttle rumbled by thousands of feet above. Good.

  Leaning in toward the slanted roof, Booly edged his way to the right. It was dark, very dark, and hard to see. His toes were pressed against the ridge and hurt where the metal cut into them. The zipper on his jacket made a scraping sound and left a wavy line to mark where he’d been.

  He reached out, sank his hand into empty space, and damn near followed it. A pigeon burst into flight. Wings brushed his shoulder. Booly felt the bottom of his stomach fall toward the ground and pulled back from the void. The bird circled and flew away. This was it, the one gap that was too large to jump, where the plan called for him to descend and cross on the ground.

  Scared, and angry with himself for damn near shitting his pants, the cadet gritted his teeth. “The goal, stay focused on the goal, and the path becomes clear.” That’s what his uncle had taught him and it almost always worked. Booly visualized the admin building, saw himself raising the pennant, and felt his emotions steady.

  Days of careful reconnaissance had revealed that the library’s architect had provided present and future maintenance workers with a row of evenly spaced eyebolts to which they could secure safety lines.

  Booly reached up, grabbed the rope end taped to his right pack strap, and pulled it free. The line, which consisted of a half inch black, gold, and lavender kern mantle, had been “borrowed” from one of Staff Sergeant Ho’s supply rooms, and coiled into the pack lest it interfere with his running and jumping. The rope flowed smoothly as the cadet pulled it out.

  Booly reached up over his head, felt for an eyebolt, and found one. It was a simple matter to thread the rope through the hole and pass the slack out and into the void. Then, when the white tape that marked the kern mantle’s middle point appeared, the cadet reached into a pocket, felt for the figure-eight descender, brought it out, and pulled the rope through the larger hole and over the connecting ring. With that accomplished, it was a simple matter to secure the descender to the front of his harness with a locking D carabiner and test the rig with his weight. It held just as he knew it would. The fact that he had learned these skills while growing up, and again during his years at the academy, made them all the more familiar.

  He placed one hand above the descender and one below it. Confident that he could control what happened next, he backed off the ledge, swung in against the building’s side, and allowed himself to slide silently downward. The trick was to keep his upper hand loose while using his lower hand to control the rate of descent. Booly knew that moving his lower hand away from his body would increase his speed while bringing it closer would have the opposite effect. He kept it close.

  Suddenly, perhaps thirty feet from the ground, Booly smelled something that shouldn’t have been there. The strong odor of a rather expensive cologne. The kind worn by some of his wealthier classmates.

  Careful to make no sound lest it give him away, Booly stopped his descent, and used his feet to steady himself against the wall. The brick felt cold. H
e looked over his right shoulder. The shadows were ink black and impossible to penetrate. But the odor persisted, so he waited, and waited, until he began to question his own senses, and was just about to release some line when the sound of voices froze him in place.

  “Hey, Reggie, how’s it hangin’?”

  “Long and low. Now shut the hell up. The geek should come along any moment now.”

  Booly didn’t know a Reggie, and didn’t recognize either one of the voices, but it didn’t take a genius to know they were underclassmen, tipped off as to the route he would take, and eager to make a name for themselves by turning him in. Which would put a black mark next to his name and cause him to miss graduation as well. A graduation his parents had traveled millions of light-years to witness.

  Booly looked upward, saw that clouds covered the moon, and understood why they hadn’t managed to spot him. He couldn’t go up, not without attracting their attention, so the decision came easily. Booly used his left hand to reach up and pull the watch cap down over his face. It took a moment to adjust the eye holes. Praying that the line would continue to run as silently as it had before, the cadet lowered himself to the ground in one smooth motion, landing within three feet of a surprised underclassman.

  The plebe wore fatigues and the black arm band that signified guard duty. He saw Booly, opened his mouth, and folded with a knee in the gut. He was bent over, making retching sounds, when a blow to the back of the head put him down.

  “Reggie?” The voice was tentative and came from the right. Booly released the climbing rope and eased that way. The senior did his best to sound annoyed. “Yeah? What now?”

  The clouds moved out of the way and moonlight hit the plebe’s face. His eyes were like saucers. “You’re not Reggie . . . you’re—”

  Booly never got to hear who the cadet thought he was, because his hand went over the boy’s mouth, and a hip throw took him down. He wasn’t more than fifteen years old and a knee was sufficient to hold him in place. The senior barely had time to gag and hog-tie the underclassman when Reggie called for help. He had reached his knees and was struggling to stand. “Somebody! Quick! Over here!”