Andromeda's Fall Read online

  Simek tapped a couple of keys, and the likeness of a young woman blossomed over the desk. As he spoke, the disembodied head began to rotate. “During the lead-up to the explosion on the fifth floor of this building, she was called away. Unfortunately, all of the people who knew why she was called away are dead. However, there’s reason to believe that someone warned 2999. Because when she reentered the ballroom, and spotted some of your kind, she was visibly alarmed. Then a synth named Varth took a shot at her and missed. You might be interested to know that the unit was wiped and recycled. Perhaps it will be reborn as a dozen garbage cans.”

  If Fyth was troubled by Varth’s ignominious fate, there was no sign of it on his smooth, nearly featureless countenance.

  “That was just the beginning,” Simek said grimly. “Half a dozen of your mechanical brethren went after 2999, and she managed to elude them all. A society girl, for God’s sake! But a resourceful one. She ran, bought new clothes, and was hiding in a third-rate hotel when a desk clerk saw her image on a vidnet and turned her in.

  “More synths were dispatched, and she not only disabled one of them but acquired a weapon in the process. A nightstick, which she used to kill the hotel clerk. We know because her prints were on the handle.

  “Are you seeing a pattern here?” Simek inquired rhetorically as he caused Catherine Carletto to disappear. “The score is something like society girl ten, machines zero. But you don’t feel any shame, do you? Because at the end of the day, you’re a thing. Well, thing, see if you can succeed where the rest of your kind didn’t. Twenty-nine-ninety-nine was wounded during her escape from the hotel. And, judging from the amount of blood she left behind, the cut went deep. A defensive wound most likely. So even if she’s wearing a disguise, there could be one or more partially healed lacerations on her hands or arms.

  “But first you’ll have to find her,” Simek added. “And that won’t be easy. Because after fleeing the hotel, the bitch disappeared. So either she’s here on Esparto, or she found a way to get off-planet. Maybe she sold some jewelry, or sold herself, and is hiding out on some shit-hole rim world by now. That’s my theory.

  “There is another possibility, however, and you’re going to check it out. After sifting through 150 terabytes of data, an AI employed by the local security service noticed that the Legion processed a draft of recruits during the days immediately after 2999’s disappearance. That raises the possibility that she enlisted, and they shipped her to Drang for basic training.

  “So get an oil change or whatever it is that you do between assignments and go to Drang. If she’s there, take care of it. If not, we’ll focus on the rim worlds. Do you have any questions?”

  “Just one,” Fyth replied. “If she is on Drang, what about the rest of the soldiers?”

  It was a reasonable question and a tricky one. Because while it was one thing to scrub 1012 and his family, Tarch Hanno might object to Fyth taking out an entire contingent of legionnaires. Assuming he could, which would be difficult unless Simek brought the navy in and authorized them to attack the Legion base from space. But then there would be an investigation plus a shipload of navy personnel to eliminate, and that would create even more problems. So Simek delivered his answer. “If you find 2999, leave the rest of them alone. But bring some of her DNA back for verification.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Fyth . . .”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t screw up. You’ll wind up as scrap metal if you do.”

  ABOARD THE IMPERIAL TRANSPORT ETA TAURI,

  IN HYPERSPACE

  McKee was working on a spider form with her father, and he was talking. Telling her something important. But try as she might, she couldn’t understand him even though she knew it was vitally important to do so. Then the scene began to fade, the drone of his voice started to recede, and someone pushed one of her eyelids open. A bright light flicked back and forth. “She’s back,” a female voice announced.

  McKee saw two hazy-looking blobs, blinked them into focus, and found herself looking up at Sergeant Hasker and a medical officer she’d never seen before. She tried to sit up, but the pain hit, and she was forced to let her head fall back against the pillow. Everything hurt. Her face, her torso, even her legs were sore. One eye was swollen shut, and she winced as she reached up to touch it. “Take it easy,” Hasker advised. “Nothing was broken, but somebody kicked your ass.”

  “I’ll get something for the pain,” the woman said, and disappeared.

  Hasker looked away and back. “So, McKee, who beat the crap out of you? Give me a name. I’ll have their ass for dinner.”

  McKee wanted to give him a name. Wanted to see Larkin and his toadies go down. But as she looked up into the noncom’s eyes, she saw sympathy combined with something else. Curiosity? Yes. Hasker was waiting to see what she would do. To rat or not to rat. During the last week, she and her fellow recruits had been required to learn all sorts of rules. Some directly and some indirectly. And even though no one had said as much, McKee knew that legionnaires didn’t rat on legionnaires. Problems, especially interpersonal problems, were handled without going up the chain of command. It was a far different world than the one she had grown up in. One in which she’d never been struck. Not once. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a croak. “I don’t know who attacked me, sir. They came from behind.”

  McKee saw disbelief in Hasker’s eyes. But respect, too. And the complete lack of follow-up questions served to reinforce her decision. “That’s too bad,” the noncom responded. “The doc tells me you’ll be up and around by tomorrow. I’ll put you on light duty for a cycle, and we’ll see how you feel after that.”

  “Sir. Yes, sir.”

  Hasker said, “Get some rest,” and disappeared.

  The doctor returned, gave McKee a couple of pills and a glass of water. “Take these. You’ll feel better. And you’ll look better in a couple of days. All except for the nose, that is. It might be a little flatter than before.”

  McKee managed to prop herself up, put the capsules in her mouth, and take a sip. Some of the liquid went down the wrong way and caused her to cough. That hurt, and it felt good to lie down again. The lights dimmed, the pain began to recede, and sleep pulled her down. She went looking for her father but couldn’t find him.

  * * *

  Two “days” had passed since the beating and, while still sore in places, McKee had returned to full duty. That included two sessions of PT per day, an hour of marching, and a couple of classes. Some had to do with the Legion, but most were focused on a swampy planet named Drang. It was inhabited by a race of primitive amphibians that lived in beehive-shaped mud huts and steadfastly refused to do any of the things that a succession of interplanetary governments demanded of them. Like paying taxes and obeying Imperial laws. The result was an often-violent stalemate.

  Such were the facts. But what McKee couldn’t understand was why. The orientation materials made no mention of exploitable natural resources, geopolitical strategy, or other factors that would explain why the Legion was required to occupy a worthless rock.

  So as a session on Drang’s often-dangerous wildlife came to a conclusion, and the usual Q & A period began, she raised a hand. Hasker, who was standing at the front of the auditorium, aimed a laser pointer at her. A red dot wobbled across her forehead. “McKee, go.”

  “Given that the locals hate us, and there has been no mention of a strategic objective where Drang is concerned, why station troops there?”

  Hasker smiled grimly. “Well I’ll be damned. One of you pukes has a brain! Well, I ain’t no general, but here’s my take. First, Drang is pretty close to a jump point our Hudathan friends would like to own.

  “Second, even though the people who run things like to use the Legion for a variety of purposes, they’re scared of it, too. Because any organization with a motto like ours could be dangerous. So they figure it makes sense to keep us busy on puss-ball planets like Drang and Algeron.

  “Th
ird, there ain’t no better way to learn how to fight than to spend some quality time with the frogs. Those water-sucking bastards are tough, and if you survive basic, you’ll be a combat veteran. So pay attention, people. What you learn here could save your life.”

  Class was dismissed after that, and McKee was in the mob of recruits headed for the mess deck, when someone shouldered her aside. It was Larkin. “Hey, watch where you’re going, bitch . . . Or do you want another ass kicking?”

  Then the bully was gone as he pushed his way toward the front of what would soon become the chow line. McKee felt a sudden surge of anger and battled to tamp it down. She couldn’t take Larkin head-on. She knew that. But I will take him, McKee thought to herself. It’s just a matter of time.

  IMPERIAL PLANET DRANG

  Thunder-and-lightning storms were common, and the shuttle shook like a thing possessed as it dropped into Drang’s troposphere and entered its final approach. There was less airsickness this time, but half a dozen recruits had been forced to barf into their helmets and looked up in surprise as Hasker announced that “The ship’s about to land—so put those brain buckets back on.”

  That got a big laugh from all the recruits who hadn’t thrown up. But their moment of joy was short-lived as the shuttle fell into an air pocket and lost one hundred feet of altitude before lurching forward again. After another three minutes of flight, the pilot said, “Hang on to your panties,” and the skids hit hard. As the repellers shut down, McKee heard the sound of rain drumming on the hull and knew it was going to be miserable outside.

  “Welcome to Fire Base Charlie-Four,” Hasker said cheerfully. “Or what will be FBC-4 once you pukes build it. Because right now, it ain’t nothing but a clearing in the jungle. Release your harnesses and follow me.”

  McKee saw a rectangle of light appear as the noncom clomped down the stern ramp into the pouring rain. He was wearing a bush hat, a poncho, and jungle boots. An assault rifle and a wicked-looking bush knife completed the outfit. Humid air flooded the cargo compartment, and the mutter of distant thunder was heard as Corporal Anders hollered, “What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Get your asses out there.”

  McKee felt the rain pelt her hat and poncho as she followed the first group of recruits out onto soggy ground. What she saw was depressing to say the least. FBC-4 was nothing more than a landing pad and a pile of cargo modules sitting on a patch of high ground. And as far as she could tell, the “high ground” wasn’t all that high—being only ten or fifteen feet above the dirty-looking swamp water that lapped all around it.

  Heavy equipment had been used to strip all of the vegetation off the roughly circular plot of land, an electrified fence had been installed around the perimeter, and the soft glow of pole-mounted lights could be seen through the gloom. And of special interest, to McKee at least, were the Carletto Industries Trooper Is that could be seen patrolling just inside the fence.

  Each cyborg was eight feet tall and weighed half a ton. And, because the war forms were intended to be intimidating, they had ovoid heads with smooth faces. Their bulky wedge-shaped torsos were designed to take lots of punishment, and their hydraulically operated limbs were thick and sturdy. A Trooper I could run at speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour for sustained periods of time and operate in a variety of other environments, including vacuum and Class I through Class IX gas atmospheres. Plus, each cyborg could carry a bio bod on his or her back.

  McKee wanted to go over and inspect one of the cyborgs up close but was forced to put that desire on hold, as Hasker and his fellow NCOs began to holler orders. Anders pointed at a large stack of cargo containers at the center of the compound. “Unload those mothers or sleep in the mud. The choice is up to you.”

  Thus began a grueling sixteen-hour battle that McKee would never forget. The containers were numbered, and there were four powered exoskeletons in unit 001, three of which turned out to be operational. The loaders had civilian equivalents, so some of the recruits knew how to operate them, and it wasn’t long before the eight-foot-tall machines were hard at work moving materials from place to place.

  Once the exoskeletons had been put to work, it was time to open container 002, which held the first of four metal frameworks that needed to be bolted together. Unfortunately, the power wrenches that came with the kits weren’t waterproof and had a tendency to short out. That forced the recruits to tighten a lot of fasteners by hand and torque them down.

  About three hours into the construction process, dozens of three-foot-long blood worms came wriggling up out of the water-saturated soil and went on the attack. It wasn’t clear whether they had been disturbed or always came up out of the ground at that time of day. Not that it made much difference. McKee swore as one of the fleshy horrors attacked her left boot. She hit it with a crowbar.

  That put the creature down as Hasker and the other NCOs strolled about shooting the worms with short bursts of auto fire. “Pile ’em up!” Hasker ordered. “We’ll cook the bastards for dinner.”

  So McKee forced herself to pick up her worm and carry it over to a quickly growing pile. “That’s the ticket,” Corporal Anders said approvingly as he began to gut one of the creatures. “They might be ugly, but they taste a lot better than MREs.”

  After that, it was time to put the roof panels in place and screw them down before starting on the siding. Each four-foot-by-eight-foot sheet of metal was equipped with what one recruit recognized as a bullet-resistant liner. That prompted McKee to ask the obvious question when Hasker passed by. “Sir, what’s this stuff for? According to the orientation materials, the locals are Class Five indigs.”

  Class Five civilizations were almost always preindustrial, which meant that firearms if any were produced by hand and, therefore, in short supply. Hasker grinned. “Good one, McKee. The frogs are Class Five. Only trouble is that gunrunners can slip past the single ship that the navy keeps in orbit, put down in the bush, and trade cheap weapons for bales of sneeze. That stuff grows wild here—and a single hit can cost as much as a hundred credits on Earth.”

  McKee knew that was true because she had tried some of the drug while in college. “So they use the guns to shoot at us?”

  “Every chance they get,” Hasker answered cheerfully. “And that makes it real hard to sleep sometimes.”

  He might have said more except that a Klaxon sounded. Two or three blocks of F-1 had been placed on a piece of sheet metal and lit. The bricks continued to burn in spite of the rain that fell on them. A makeshift grill had been set up over the fire, and it was crowded with steaming worm carcasses. The smell was heavenly, and like all the recruits, McKee was hungry.

  So even though she had some misgivings about eating worms, McKee took a foot-long section of the smoking meat. It was served on a freshly cut stick. The skin was crispy, and the flesh was firm, with a taste reminiscent of pork. She surprised herself by eating the whole thing and washed it down with swigs of bottled water.

  Then it was back to work as the rest of the siding went onto the buildings, floors were laid, and the plumbing was installed. Floodlights bloomed as the sun went down and the surrounding swamps came alive with the sounds produced by a small army of nocturnal creatures. There were croaks, grunts, and what sounded like some very human screams.

  Occasional bursts of gunfire were heard as the T-1s sought to keep the worst of the local fauna away from the fence, and there were occasional flashes of light as night wings attempted to land on the electrified fence and burst into flame.

  Finally, after what seemed like a week of struggle, the exhausted recruits were allowed to lie down on their recently installed bunks with their muddy uniforms still on. McKee had never been so tired. Something screamed out in the swamp and was answered from half a mile away. Light could be seen through gaps in the siding as a computer-controlled beam swept across the compound, and another woman began to snore. Boot camp was under way.

  * * *

  The rain had stopped, and occasional rays of s
unlight were touching down here and there, as the NCOs began to pound on the metal siding with their rifle butts. “Up and at it, people . . . Inspection in thirty minutes. That includes you and your shed. So turn to.”

  All of the females were housed in building three. And all of them were as filthy as the interior of their shed. So the first step was to place their gear on the top racks and wash the place down. A process made possible by the presence of hoses, plenty of hot water, and drain holes in the floor.

  Working under the supervision of the so-called HPIC (Head Puke In-Charge) the women went about the process of scrubbing the decks. Once the dirt had been loosened, it was time to spray the place down.

  The HPIC for building three was a beefy woman named Nora Pachek. She had tattoos all over her face, neck, and arms. She was buff, very buff, and had already served a tour with the marines. Why Pachek left the green machine for the Legion was a mystery and likely to remain so because none of the other recruits had the guts to ask her about it.

  Though not a member of Pachek’s all-female posse, McKee liked her straight-ahead style and had been careful not to complain when she drew various shit details. Maybe that was why Pachek assigned her to scrubber duty. It was hard work. But once the job was done, the scrubbers could hit the showers, and the first ones in were the first ones out. That meant they would have more time to prepare for inspection. And one of the many things that she had learned over the last few days was that little things could make a big difference.

  So she was able to enjoy a hot, if somewhat brief, shower before putting on the uniform of the day, which consisted of a tank top, shorts, and barracks boots. The latter was for show and, as one wag put it, “to piss us off.”

  After that, it was time to go outside and line up. The sun was out, a swirling mist hung over the swamp, and the day feeders were in full cry as the inspection began. The cacophony of hoots, howls, and gibbering sounds was a constant reminder of the fact that FBC-4 was a very small island in the middle of a very large swamp.