Legion of the Damned

Wayfar Hardman low-crawled to the edge of the cliff, found a gap between two pieces of shale, and looked down onto the plain below. The humans were little more than dots, spread out to lessen the impact of an ambush, moving forward at a good clip. The wind came from behind the aliens and brought their scent to his super-sensitive nostrils.

First came the plastic-metal-lubricant odor of the cyborgs. It was as strong and brutal as they were. Hardman made a face and wrinkled his nose. But there were more subtle flavorings as well. The tart, rather pleasant scent of the bio bods, the slightly corrupt odor of the corpse they were about to discover, and the clean-crisp flavor of the air itself.

Hardman gave a satisfied grunt. The humans would find the body, jump to the proper conclusion, and follow the carefully prepared trail. All the planning, all the work, would soon pay off.

He watched an airborne scavenger circle the corpse and land. The body was that of Quickhands Metalworker, his first cousin’s oldest son. The unfortunate youngster had died in a climbing accident, and with permission from his family, had been mutilated to resemble a murder victim.

And so it was that Metalworker had been left in the middle of a carefully prepared stage. A stage that begged the audience to become part of the play and in so doing, led them towards their own destruction.

Hardman realized that his thoughts had become somewhat pompous and smiled. Perhaps his daughter was right. Perhaps his sense of drama did get in the way at times. Still, the idea was new and therefore likely to succeed.

Hardman made a note to bury whatever was left of the body with high honors. He scooted backwards and stood. The Naa chieftain was about six feet tall. Hard muscle rippled under his white chest fur as he made his way through the rocks that littered the top of the low, flat-topped hill. The rest of his body was black with gold highlights and occasional flecks of white.

He wore a breechcloth, a weapons harness, and a headset copied from those used by the Legion. Thanks to it, and others like it, he had known when the patrol left Fort Camerone, and been informed of every move that it had made since then.

Hardman grinned. The humans might have machines that looked down from the sky, but he had eyes in the desert, and they missed very little.

Hardman was able to smell his warriors long before he saw them. The rich amalgam of dooth dung, self-scents, and gun oil hung over the ravine like a cloud. He made a note to thank the mother-father creator for the fact that humans had such a piss-poor sense of smell.

The war party seemed to pop out of the background as he scrambled down a shale-covered slope. The battle mounts surged slightly as they caught his scent. The length of their shadows signaled the end of another one-hour-and-twenty-one minute day.

The six-legged dooths were shaggy with winter hair and eager to leave. They were plains animals and disliked the ravine and the dangers that lurked there.

Hardman waved to his second-in-command, Easymove Nightwalker, picked a path through some boulders, and followed it with a series of graceful leaps. He knew the younger warriors were watching, hoping for a misstep that would signal the onset of old age, but his broad toeless feet found firm purchase among the rocks and landed him in the saddle with a satisfying thump. Challengers, if any, would have to wait for a while.

Wedgefoot, Hardman’s war mount, stirred uneasily and made the grunting sounds that were typical of its kind. Hardman patted the animal’s massive neck and activated his radio. The cyborgs would be scanning for traffic, so Hardman kept the transmission short.

“The humans are coming. We will have one cycle of darkness in which to reach our positions. Let’s move.”

The brief snatch of sound served to jerk Villain up out of the trance-like state induced by the monotony of patrol. It was encrypted, and therefore unintelligible, but important nonetheless. A low-power transmission on that particular band meant someone or something was within a fifty-mile radius of the patrol. She triggered her radio.

“Roamer One to Roamer Patrol. Cut the crap. We have some brellas feeding on something off to the right. Let’s take a look, Roamer Two.”

Servos whirred as Villain moved her head to the right. She saw the cluster of carrion eaters and swore silently. She was the one with the electro-optics, she had the point, and she had missed it. Damn Roller anyway. The bastard had a way of getting under her armor.

Villain started to jog, scanning the countryside as she did so, determined not to make the same mistake twice. With each step her metal feet broke through the crust of frozen sand and made a loud crunching sound. Booly clung to her back in the same way that her little brother had so long ago. The memory brought pain and she pushed it away.

Focus, she had to focus, had to see what was around her. Little tufts of vegetation dotted the plain, then disappeared as the ground rose, and funneled itself into a canyon. The sky had grown dark and started the transition into night.

Villain called up a satellite map, zoomed into the section she wanted, and saw that the canyon cut through the foothills to communicate with the desert beyond. The place was custom-made for an ambush. Exactly the sort of route to avoid if at all possible.

The brellas saw the Trooper II coming but were so gorged with meat that they had difficulty taking off.

The command came from Booly via intercom rather than radio. It was a kindness on Booly’s part. A recognition that she was green and still learning. Other noncoms, like Roller, for example, would’ve put the order on-air just to humiliate her.

Villain slowed and came to a halt. The last brella drew air in, pushed it explosively outwards, and lumbered into the air. The body it had been feeding on was that of a Naa, only slightly decomposed, but badly disfigured by scavengers.

“The body could be booby-trapped,” Booly said calmly, “or surrounded by mines. That’s why you stop to scope things out.”

Villain knew this was a valuable lesson and was careful to file it away. The sergeant major switched to radio.

Booly climbed down from his perch on Villain’s back and circled the body. He felt stiff and sore but was careful to conceal it. There was no sign of booby traps, but he did see dooth dung, scuff marks, and some empty shell casings. All pointed to a fight of some kind, and based on the way they were spread around, the legionnaire suspected a one-sided battle.

Wismer had been forced to run from the depression in which Gunner was crouched and arrived slightly out of breath.

A less experienced soldier might have wondered why the sergeant major had given the assignment to a bio bod when a Trooper II stood ten feet away. But Wismer understood. Booly was afraid the newbie would make a mistake and didn’t want to say so. Some said the sergeant major was a borg lover. This sort of thing proved it.

Wismer brought his energy weapon up to his shoulder and fired. There was a stutter of blue light, followed by a puff of steam and the glow of molten rock. Nothing happened, so he repeated the procedure, until the area around the body was pockmarked with shallow black holes.

Booly moved in for a closer look. He used the newly made depressions like stepping-stones, avoiding the unmarked ground and the possibility of an undiscovered mine. Heat seeped up through the bottom of his boots to warm his feet. The body was a mess and the smell made him gag.

Villain decided that Booly was a cut above other noncoms. She knew, as her peers did, that officers and noncoms were taught to sacrifice cyborgs rather than expose themselves to danger.

It made sense in theory. Given their armor, and considerable weaponry, the cyborgs were much more likely to survive than bio bods were. The only problem was that many officers and noncoms tended to ignore the fact that the destruction of cyborg limbs, armor, and sensors was experienced as pain. Pain equal to that felt by embodied brains.

The techies had designed borgs that way on purpose, to make sure that they took care of their expensive bodies, and as a means of discipline. Trooper Ils were heavily armed, after all, and more than a match for a squad of bio bods, so some sort of control mechanism was a must. Or so it seemed to the bio bods.

Villain remembered the zappers the DIs had used on her in boot camp and shuddered. She knew bio-bod officers were authorized to carry them but hadn’t seen one used since basic. She hoped she never would.

A host of tiny black insects acknowledged Booly’s presence by taking to the air, buzzing around in a seemingly random pattern, then settling down again. Booly knew that he should have sent Villain to examine the body but wanted to see it with his own eyes. What he saw, and more than that, what he smelled, made him sick. The brellas had gone for the eyes first. Then, following the path of least resistance, they had used the bullet holes to open the abdominal cavity and feast on the victim’s entrails.

The Naa’s clothing was tattered and stained with blood but told a story nonetheless. The braided armband, worn just above the right elbow, signified membership in the northern tribe. Not unusual in and of itself, since the members of the southern tribe stayed below the equator and didn’t venture north except for war and trade.

No, the significance of the armband lay in the fact that this particular Naa had been a member of a tribe, rather than a group of outlaws. That, plus the ceremonial beads that had been ripped from his neck and lay scattered on the ground, suggested an initiate.

Yes, Booly decided, chances were that the body belonged to a young male, undergoing the final rites of passage into adulthood, and unlucky enough to be caught in the open by outlaws.

His expression hardened. Naa outlaws were the scourge of both the tribes and the Legion. They took females, stole anything that wasn’t nailed down, and took great pleasure in torturing legionnaires. Some took days or even weeks to die.

Booly stood and eyed the gathering darkness. If he could catch them and put them six feet under, Algeron would be a better place to live. But it would be risky, very risky, since the trail led straight into the canyon, and the canyon would make an excellent place for an ambush.

But if outlaws had killed the Naa, there was no reason for them to expect a patrol to come along at this particular time, and therefore little or no reason for an ambush. That, combined with the fact that the patrol packed enough firepower to deal with anything short of a full-scale tribal attack, led to his final decision. They would risk the canyon, catch the outlaws, and send them to the Naa equivalent of hell.

“Roamer One to Roamer Patrol. It looks like some outlaws caught the poor slob, canceled his ticket, and took off through that canyon. We’re going after them. Same order as before, condition five, blast anything that moves.”

Villain felt emptiness where her stomach had been. She was about to enter what could be a trap. Not only that, but she’d be the first one in and the first one to take fire.

Villain remembered the impact as bullets hit her flesh, the wave of darkness, and the brutal awakening that had followed.

Anger rose to displace the fear. No matter what waited in the darkness, and no matter what happened beyond, she would live. Because then, and only then, could she hope to find the person responsible for her death. Find him and kill him.

Villain brought her weapons systems to condition five readiness, cranked her infrared sensors to high-gain, and moved forward. God help any Naa who got in her way.

Gunner waited for Rossif and Jones to move out, checked to make sure that Wutu was covering his ass, and stood up. His sensors probed ahead. The canyon looked dark and ominous. Booly was out of his fraxing mind. Good. This was the patrol he’d been waiting for. The one where he took a missile right between the shoulder blades. The armor was thinner there and more likely to buckle under the force of an explosion.

He’d have to unload the bio bods, but that was SOP and would happen shortly after the first few rounds were fired.

Gunner wondered what death would be like. His wife had believed in paradise, complete with angels, saints, and streets of gold. That would be nice, he guessed, especially if he could see her again, but darkness would be fine. An eternal darkness unlit by the flames that consumed his family’s flesh and empty of his children’s screams. Yes, he decided, this would be an excellent place to die.

Satisfied that the others had a sufficient lead, Gunner moved forward, his scanners running at maximum sensitivity and his weapons ready to fire. Wutu followed along behind, walking backwards half the time, watching to be sure that nothing approached the patrol from the rear. It was a shit detail but no worse than a hundred others he’d pulled.

It was times like this that Booly wished he was a cyborg, with a cyborg’s armor and a cyborg’s capacity to see in the dark. He wore night-vision goggles, and they were better than nothing, but hardly equivalent to the images that Villain saw, which were little different from those that she received during the day.

By taking the data provided by Villain’s infrared sensors, and combining it with the information provided by her light-amplification equipment, the Trooper Il’s on-board battle computer could “guess” how the missing information would look, fill the gaps, and feed the composite to her brain.

As a result, Villain could see their surroundings a lot better than Booly could, and had she been more seasoned, that would’ve been fine. But she wasn’t, and one slip, one mistake, could cost all of their lives. Still, this was exactly the kind of experience she needed, so Booly was reluctant to switch her with another cyborg.

The canyon rose around them. Everything had a greenish glow. The canyon’s right wall had received the full strength of the “afternoon” sun and was a good deal brighter than the left wall. Banks of still-warm dirt and shale skirted the cliffs, shimmered like luminescent fish scales, and twisted with the canyon itself.

A creek would appear when summer came but was presently trapped in the frozen ground. It formed a highway of darkness down the center of Booly’s vision and a background against which the slightly warmer dooth droppings glowed softly green. The outlaws had passed that way, all right, and were up ahead somewhere.

Booly felt the tension start to build. Where were the bastards anyway? Hiding around the next bend? Or out on the desert beyond ... huddled around a dooth-dung fire? There was no way to tell.

Booly shrugged with the fatalism of soldiers everywhere. What would be, would be. He stretched. His muscles ached and he was tired of riding Villain. He imagined Roller and the rest of the troopers lolling about inside Gunner’s cargo bay and felt a surge of resentment. He pushed the feeling back and clamped a lid on it. Rank hath privilege, but it comes with responsibility too, and this was his.

Villain was careful to scan rather than stare. Scanning made it easier to concentrate, was more likely to pick up movement, and covered a larger area. So her instructors had claimed.

A ghostly blue grid overlaid everything Villain saw. The point of focus was represented by a red X that traveled across the grid in concert with her electronic vision. Numbers shifted in the grid’s lower right-hand corner as range, wind speed, and various kinds of threat factors were computed and fed to the interface.

Villain saw movement to the right. Her left arm traveled upwards, as the bright green glow emerged from the rocks and turned its triangular head in her direction. The red X floated over the target and flashed on and off. Flame stabbed the night as the .50-caliber slugs drew a line between her and the small hexapod. It jerked under the impact, tumbled end over end, and exploded into green slush.

Villain stopped firing. She was surprised to find that she had enjoyed the feeling of power the moment brought her. The realization bothered her but there was no time to think about it. Not while they were in the canyon, not while lives were at stake, not while an ambush could wait around the next bend.

“Nice work,” Roller said sarcastically. “That should let ’em know where we are. Send up a signal flare next time. It’ll make their jobs even easier.”

Booly remained silent, which meant that he agreed. Villain cursed her own stupidity. Of course! Why use the machine gun when the laser cannon would do just as well? It made relatively little noise. And why fire at all? It had been a pook, for god’s sake, about as dangerous as a wild dog.

She told herself that Booly had ordered the patrol to “blast anything that moved,” that she’d never asked to be a soldier, but rejected the excuses as quickly as they came. She had screwed up. It was as simple as that.

Wayfar Hardman saw the first glimmerings of dawn off to the east. The view was somewhat proscribed by the homemade periscope that stuck up through the sand but was adequate nonetheless. At this point the new day was little more than a vague pinkness that separated earth from sky. Good. The humans would enter the kill zone at first light, time when eyes played tricks and minds made mistakes.

He swiveled the periscope to examine the point where the canyon emptied into the desert. There were no signs of the trip wires, weapons pits, and warriors who hid there. All were underground, sheltered from IR detectors by a layer of uniformly cold sand, waiting for his signal.

His body gave an involuntary jerk as his ears picked up the dull thump-thump-thump of heavy machine-gun fire. Had they been discovered? No, the sound was muffled, indicating that the legionnaires were at least a half kak away.

So what was going on? Had the humans stumbled across some real outlaws? No, that was impossible. His scouts would have found and dealt with them hours ago. It was an error, then, a mistake of the sort that youngsters make, and nothing to do with him or his warriors.

Thus reassured, Hardman closed his eyes, tried to ignore the insect that had taken up residence behind his right ear, and settled down to wait. Judging from the sound of machine-gun fire, it wouldn’t be long.

Villain felt her spirits soar as she rounded the last bend and saw the desert beyond. It, unlike the dark confines of the canyon, was beautiful to look at. The rising sun had glazed the top of things with a pinkish-gold light and infused the air with a magical softness. The distant foothills seemed to float on an ocean of nearly transparent ground fog and the air hummed with the sound of newly aroused insects.

Villain gloried in the moment and left fear behind as she entered the desert. She was still enjoying it when Wutu emerged from the canyon, took one last look to the rear, and backed into the kill zone.

A warrior named Joketeller Nosmell peered through his periscope, waited for the cyborg to arrive at exactly the right spot, and flicked a switch.

The twenty-five pounds of carefully hoarded cyplex explosives went off with a tremendous roar. The force of the explosion removed Wutu’s right leg and arm. What remained of his body tumbled high in the air, fell straight down, and hit the ground with a distinct thump.

Nosmell pushed himself up and out of the depression. He had won a great victory and sought to enjoy it. He was smiling happily when Wutu rolled onto his damaged side, activated his machine gun, and pumped a five-round burst through the warrior’s chest. Then, hosing the area with suppressive fire, Wutu used his remaining leg to inch himself forward. Chemical inhibitors had blocked the pain, but that wouldn’t last forever.

A lot of things went through Booly’s mind. The realization that he’d been suckered, the fact that this was a full-scale tribal attack, and the knowledge that he was about to die. The plan was obvious: kill the last cyborg, kill the first cyborg, and trap the rest of the patrol in between.

Booly had leaped away from Villain, and was falling towards the ground, when the shoulder-launched missile struck her chest and exploded.

The noncom never saw the tiny piece of metal that spun away from the explosion, glanced off the side of his skull, and buried itself in the sand. Darkness pulled him under.

Villain felt herself fall. Pain filled her chest. Something hard hit between her shoulder blades. She sent orders to her legs. They twitched in response. Damn. Something moved to the left. She brought an arm up. Light burped. A Naa ceased to exist. Villain felt it again. The power, the joy, the satisfaction. And why not? She was damned near immortal, wasn’t she? Villain saw another figure emerge from the ground, made the necessary computations, and killed it.

Gunner understood the situation immediately and lowered his body to the sand. By doing so he protected his vulnerable legs and allowed the bio bods to low-crawl out of his cargo bay, a rather wise decision since the air was full of flying lead and sizzling energy beams.

Gunner felt someone slap a ready button inside his cargo bay, released the hatch, and fired his main armament. The results were spectacular.

Like all quads, Gunner was equipped with four gang-mounted energy cannons. These fired in alternating sequence, but so rapidly that they appeared to be one. Sand melted, rocks exploded, vegetation burst into flame. Naa warriors stood, fired their shoulder-launched missiles, and vanished as blue death cut them down.

There was return fire as well. Explosions rippled across the surface of Gunner’s armor. Many hit the bull’s-eyes painted on both of his flanks, but none did any real damage. Once down, with weapons activated, an assault quadruped was like a combination tank and pillbox. Absolutely indestructible to anything less than heavy artillery, another quad, or attack aircraft.

Gunner sent a mental command. A hatch opened just aft of his weapons turret. An electronically driven gatling gun emerged, shot upwards on its heavily armored arm, and opened fire. Dirt fountained fifty yards away as a group of four Naa tried to position an antitank gun and failed. The gatling gun fired more than six thousand rounds a minute and simply erased them from the surface of the planet.

Roller edged his way around Gunner’s bow and took a look. Booly was down and probably out, Wutu was about 20 percent effective, and the newbie wasn’t much better. Both continued to fire but couldn’t move. Rossif had tripped on a cable but had escaped without damage and was kicking some serious ass. Jones had taken three missile hits, all within the space of about three seconds, and exploded. Sheltered by Gunner’s metal bulk and dug in around his sides, the bio bods were okay.

Roller sighed. Air support would have been nice, but the Navy was supposed to supply that, and they weren’t around. It seemed that the brass refused to provide them with security on the ground. It was all part of the eternal pissing match between the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Legion. He had damned little choice but to save what he could and haul ass.

“This is Roamer Seven. I have assumed command. Roamers Eight and Ten ... work your way over to Five and pull his module. Roamers Nine and Eleven ditto the newbie.”

Kato swore. silently and eyed the distance between Gunner and Wutu. If was fifty yards or so and looked twice that. She looked at Imai, he nodded, and they ran.

Wutu continued to fire, covering them as best he could, but the Naa were determined to bring him down.

O‘Brian and Yankolovich had worked their way around to the opposite side of the quad. Villain lay on her back, firing when the Naa made a run at her, but otherwise inactive. Successive missiles had destroyed both of her legs, and a small electrical fire was burning in the vicinity of what had been her right knee. O’Brian could see the sparks. Yankolovich looked his way, nodded, and they ran.

Villain looked up. She had damned little choice. The sun had cleared the horizon and was directing all of its strength into the vid cams that served as her eyes. She ordered them to iris down but nothing happened.

Bullets hit her torso, spanged off, and screamed away. They were annoying but no more harmful than insects. No, it was the missiles she feared, and one more should do the job. She wondered where it was. Did the Naa want her to suffer? Or were they running short of ordnance?

There was movement to the left. She raised a listless arm and fired. A Naa threw up his arms and fell backwards out of sight. Asshole. How much longer could this go on?

Villain tried to nod but found that her head didn’t work. Blue fire burped overhead as Gunner provided covering fire. Villain’s surroundings jerked, swayed, and moved as they pushed her over. The last thing she saw was stones. Each had its own shadow. A bug ran from one to the next.

Yankolovich flipped a protective cover out of the way, grabbed the red T-shaped handle, and gave it one full turn to the right. Then, using the same handle, he pulled Villain’s biological support module out the back of her massive head. Injectors pumped sedatives into her brain and the world faded to black.

A massive form materialized next to the bio bods. O’Brian gave mental thanks. Having Rossif there to provide additional cover would make the trip to the quad a lot safer.

Roller was waiting when O’Brian and Yankolovich returned. They ran full speed, dived, and slid the last few feet. Dirt geysered around them as bullets hit.

Gunner redirected the gatling gun towards the source of the fire, triggered a long burst, and watched a boulder disintegrate. Once revealed, the Naa lasted a quarter of a second. Fur, flesh, and blood sprayed outwards as the bullets hit.

Rossif and Jones stalked forward, fired missiles into the rocks, and followed up with machine-gun fire.

O’Brian pushed the biological support module in Roller’s direction. Except for the T-shaped handle and the six-pronged connector located on one side, the olive-drab case looked like a .50-ammo box. Roller grabbed it and motioned towards the hatch.

O’Brian and Yankolovich dropped into their padded seats and strapped themselves in. Roller entered and the hatch slid closed. Bullets clanged against the quad’s armor.

Roller dropped into a seat. His helmet was cracked where a piece of shrapnel had hit it. Blood streamed down the side of his face.

Gunner had anticipated the order and rose in one smooth motion. Explosive shells and shoulder-launched missiles sparkled across the surface of his armor. He staggered under the impact, damned the luck that had kept him alive, and followed Rossif out of the kill zone. This was the moment to unleash his massive firepower and the cyborg did so.

All four of his energy cannons spit coherent light, the gatling gun roared defiance, missiles lashed out in every direction, grenades popped skywards, and smoke poured from heavy-duty generators.

Hardman recognized what was happening and gave the necessary orders. “The humans are attempting to withdraw. Allow them to leave. It’s impossible to defeat the four-legged cyborg. Enough blood has stained the sand.”

A few die-hard warriors unleashed their remaining missiles anyway, but they missed, or exploded harmlessly on Gunner’s armor. Minutes later and the humans were gone, with only the wreckage of their cyborgs and a handful of bodies to mark their passage.

Hardman forced himself up out of his hiding place and out into the open. He searched his emotions for elation, for happiness, and found nothing but pain.

Dead warriors littered the ground around him. Blood dripped down the side of a rock. A hand lay palm-up as if asking for friendship. A piece of metal skittered away from his foot. The air smelled of smoke, explosives, perspiration, urine, and feces. Healers moved among the wounded, aiding those that they could, granting eternal rest to those that they couldn’t.

It was a victory, a great victory, but Hardman found no pleasure in the pain and death. A hand touched his arm. The chieftain turned to find Deathtricker Healtouch by his side. He was a small male with gray fur and streaks of black.

Hardman followed the healer back to the point where the battle had begun. A human lay crumpled on the ground, blood running down to pool around his head, his eyes empty of awareness.

Healtouch looked doubtful. “It is difficult to say. Would you like me to give aid ... or release him to the next world?”

The chieftain gave the Naa equivalent of a shrug. “Treat our wounded first. Then, if the human continues to live, see what you can do.”

Healtouch made a sign of respect, stepped over Booly’s unconscious body, and headed for the makeshift aid station. Hardman watched him go, then transferred his attention back to the body. Like most humans, this one looked soft and as helpless as a newborn infant. If only that were true.