Chapter Fifteen

 … brutal and undisciplined, but ready to encounter anything.

—Legionnaire Clemens Lamping,
French Foreign Legion, 1840

“Join the Legion, they say. Adventure. Excitement. Why the hell did I ever listen to that shit?”

Wolf smiled as the other legionnaire, a massive, shaven-headed black from Uhuru, spat expansively without missing a beat in his grumbling commentary. Volunteer Otema Banda had raised discontent to an art form, but somehow never seemed to run afoul of the NCO instructors.

“Ah, but just think what you would’ve missed by not signing up, laddie.” That was Robert Bruce MacDuff, Banda’s lancemate. “Why, who would have believed you could stuff ten healthy soldiers into such a small space and expect them not merely to survive, but in fact to fight like demons when they emerge? Mind you, it’s my theory that anyone would go out and defy death in battle knowing that the alternative is climbing back into one of these floating coffins!”

Laughter filled the compartment. Ten recruits from two of Second Platoon’s lances were crowded into the back of the M-786 Sandray armored personnel carrier, and although it was supposed to carry twelve plus a crew of two in “ordinary field use,” the vehicle was by no means spacious. Even though the platoon was getting used to the routine of recon exercises after more than a week at Fort Marchand, no one claimed to find the confining ride in a Sandray comfortable.

Today’s mission was a typical one-vehicle, two-lance patrol. Wolf and the rest of Myaighee’s Deltas were equipped as a heavy weapons lance again, with Antonelli carrying the onager and Wolf the Fafnir launcher just as they had before. They were accompanied by Charlie Lance, from the platoon’s first section, and for a change Corporal Vanyek wasn’t supervising the exercise. This time they were under the orders of the assistant platoon leader, Sergeant Baram. Vanyek was conducting a separate exercise with Echo and Foxtrot lances somewhere else in the far-flung Archipel d’Aurore, and Wolf for one was glad to be out from under his stern eye for a change.

It was the first time in weeks that Wolf had been thrown together with Robert Bruce MacDuff, and that was another welcome break in the routine. Though they were members of the same platoon, they rarely saw one another. Most of the time exercises were performed by individual lances, or sometimes by sections, and it was only since the start of the second phase that they had started to work in two-lance groups like this one. By the end of their stay at Fort Marchand they were supposed to be into full-platoon operations, which would be considerably more complex.

For the moment, though, the chance to renew the acquaintance with MacDuff was enough of a boost to Wolf’s morale to let him put aside concerns for the future. The young Caledonian, irreverent and carefree as ever, seemed to have adapted well to the training program.

The Sandray lurched, throwing Wolf sideways against Lisa Scott. He straightened up quickly, but not before she elbowed him just under the chest plate. It was just typical recruit horseplay, nothing serious, but it was a hard enough jab to make him grunt. That brought a laugh from some of the other recruits.

“Goddamned student drivers,” he said, bracing himself with one hand on a strap beside his head. The contingent acting as the platoon’s transport unit was drawn from veteran legionnaires who were going through advanced training as vehicle crews, and some of them still hadn’t learned how to control their responsive charges. The APC rode on magnetic suspension fields, moving under the thrust of powerful turbofans, but sudden shifts in direction were just as violent for the passengers as anything an old-fashioned groundcar would have caused. Wolf noticed that Antonelli, the full body armor that went with his onager complete except for helmet, gauntlets, and power pack, was looking distinctly pale at the uneven motion. He’d earned himself a hundred push-ups two days earlier after throwing up during one exercise, and Wolf hoped the younger recruit wasn’t going to be sick again today.

At least the exercise wasn’t likely to offer any surprises. These practice recon runs went down pretty much the same way each time. The Sandray carried two lances out to some remote island, the troops practiced quick deployment under simulated combat conditions, and then proceeded to conduct reconnaissance and attack exercises in a variety of different terrain conditions. The tacdata briefing chip for today’s mission had indicated they’d be focusing on movement through marshes and thick secondary jungle, and that didn’t sound like it would offer any unusual complications. Wolf was beginning to get an old hand’s tolerance for the repeated exercises.

The Sandray skewed sideways at high speed, an even more violent motion than before, and recruits around the rear compartment cursed and held on.

“Listen up, back there,” Sergeant Menachem Baram’s voice crackled in Wolf’s headphones. He was in the cab up front, with the driver, occupying the seat that would normally have been reserved for a gunner for the Sandray’s kinetic energy cannon. “We’re diverting to check out a possible trouble spot. When you get the order to dismount, do it fast and clean. This won’t just be another exercise. So don’t screw it up!”

The channel went dead, and for a moment everything in the troop compartment was quiet. Then Banda spat again. “Yeah. Right. I guess they think we’ll jump through hoops for them if they peddle this ‘not just another exercise’ shit. Bastards just don’t give up.”

“I’m not so sure,” Kern said softly from his seat beside Wolf’s. He had flipped his helmet’s faceplate down. “Take a look at the feed from the forward cameras.”

Wolf fumbled for a moment getting his own faceplate down and patched into the Sandray’s video system. Suddenly he was gazing across a broad expanse of ocean at a humpbacked island swelling noticeably as the APC sped toward it. Most of the visible land was covered by a dark tangle of jungle. Numbers scrolled along the bottom of the view, readouts of the vehicle’s speed, course, and precise location, but he paid only minimal attention to any of them.

It was the black smear of smoke coiling above the island that held Wolf’s attention. He let out a low whistle. “I don’t like the looks of that,” he said somberly.

“Me, neither,” Lisa Scott said, her voice muffled by her own helmet. “From the grid coordinates, that would have to be the Ile de Mouton, wouldn’t it?”

Wolf checked the numbers unreeling across the lower left-hand corner of the display and tried to match them in his mind to the area map they’d been studying for the past week, but he wasn’t sure enough to verify her conclusion. She was better at map work than he was, and he suspected that her excellent memory was the product of a computer implant in her brain. Frustrated, he cut the feed and raised the faceplate.

“Ye’ve got that right, lass,” MacDuff said a moment later. He flipped his own faceplate up. “Right there on the map … not very large, but there’s a plantation marked on the northeast side. It just calls the place Savary’s here.”

“It could just be a fire,” Katrina Voskovich, another member of Charlie Lance, spoke up. Like Myaighee, she had come to training from Colin Fraser’s Legion company, but she didn’t carry herself like a veteran. Her tone was more hopeful than convinced. “The briefings said that arbebaril sap is flammable.…”

“Yeah … but the fire could’ve been set, too.” Kern snapped his faceplate up again. So did Scott. “By rebels. We’d better figure on hostiles in the neighborhood. If it turns out it was caused by a careless foreman with a narcostick, then we get a pleasant surprise. But it’s better to be ready for the worst.”

“Like the man said, it isn’t just an exercise this time,” Engaged Volunteer Yen Chen, acting lance leader of Charlie Lance, said. He was a small Oriental whose talent in hand-to-hand fighting was a legend in Second Platoon, and Wolf had heard him described as completely unflappable. But he sounded tense and preternaturally alert now.

No one else spoke as the APC continued on its way. Each of the recruits checked over weapons and field kits, actions they’d performed hundreds of times under the cold eyes of their instructors but which seemed somehow different, more urgent, now that the drills had become terrifyingly real.

Even Antonelli seemed to have his mind completely on the job for a change. Kern and Myaighee were helping him into the last of his onager armor, finishing up by settling the heavy helmet over his swarthy features. Unlike the standard combat helmets, the rest of them wore, Antonelli’s didn’t have a movable faceplate. It covered his whole head and fastened to the collar of his chest armor, providing a sealed environment that was proof against any atmosphere as well as the incredible heat generated by the plasma rifle he carried. With the addition of air tanks to replace the filter intakes at the rear of the helmet Antonelli could have worn the same garb in vacuum.

The Italian checked the power connections on the onager and powered it up just long enough to confirm it was fully charged, then safed the weapon and sat down again on the bench. The extra practice he’d been putting in, Wolf thought, was paying off now.

Wolf checked his Fafnir just as carefully, but not without a wistful glance at the FEKs most of the other recruits were carrying. The Wynsarrysa guerrillas didn’t have access to the kind of heavy equipment the missile launcher was designed to counter, and it was likely he’d have little to do in the event of a firefight. The thought reminded him to check his FE-PLF rocket pistol, the backup weapon he would use in case of a close-in threat. The laser sniper’s rifle MacDuff was carrying would have suited him far better.

“Approaching target,” Baram reported from the driver’s cab. “We’ve got fires and heavy smoke around the OZ, so go to Echo Charlie Three and set your vision circuits to Image Enhance.”

“Echo Charlie Three, Image Enhance.” Myaighee, as the ranking recruit lance leader, repeated the orders back. Environmental Condition Three called for lowered faceplates and the attachment of a breathing filter across the lower portion of the combat helmet, while image enhancement would use computer processing to improve the quality of helmet-mounted video cameras using normal light and magnification settings.

Wolf unhooked the filter attachment from his web gear and snapped it into place, taking a few deep breaths to make sure it was working properly. Then he dropped the faceplate into place, turned on the cameras, and switched to the image enhancement mode. The image flickered, but in the well-lit compartment there was nothing for the computer to interpret and the view didn’t change noticeably. All around him the others were going through the same drill. They were ready.

Or at least as ready as they could be.…

The whine of the turbofans rose in pitch as the Sandray slid crabwise around some obstacle. Then the vehicle halted suddenly and grounded with an abrupt jar. “By lances, deploy!” Baram shouted over the comm circuit. “Standard dispersal and perimeter! Mag Out!”

The rear door was dropping as he spoke, and Voskovich and one of her lancemates, whose name was Owens, were already on their feet and moving before the ramp reached the ground. FEKs at the ready, they scrambled out and took up crouching positions on either side of the Sandray. Yeh Chen and Banda followed moments later, to take their places as the first two fanned out further. MacDuff, his laser sniper’s rifle cradled in his hands, was next out.

Then it was time for the Deltas to go. “Delta Lance, move out,” Myaighee ordered calmly.

Antonelli, with the heaviest firepower, followed MacDuff, moving more slowly than the other recruits but secure in the knowledge that there were few weapons on Devereaux outside of Legion arsenals that could have penetrated his combat armor. He was followed by Myaighee and Scott. Kern, carrying the bulky MEK, and Wolf with his Fafnir, dismounted last.

He dropped to one knee beside Scott at the base of the ramp and scanned the terrain cautiously. The computer chip in his helmet needed a few seconds to fully interpret the smoke-obscured surroundings, but it slowly began to fill in the details as he looked. The effect was like having a haze slowly lifted under the morning sun.

It was a scene from hell.

The plantation consisted of a broad clearing holding five prefab colonial buildings surrounded by orderly rows of multitrunked barrel trees. At a guess, Wolf estimated it would have housed twenty or thirty people, and given the Commonwealth’s tendency to use rembots for manual labor instead of lower-class workers that would have been about right for a midsized Devereaux plantation.

Not one of the buildings was intact now. The two-story manor building directly in front of Wolf and Scott was burning fiercely, and most of the doors and windows had been shattered. He thought he could identify the pockmark cratering on the wall around the main door as the scars from a wild barrage of 1 cm grenades fired from an FEK on the full-auto setting. Off to the left the blackest roil of smoke came from a windowless building that looked like a storehouse, where there were probably tanks of sap still smoldering.

But the real horror had nothing to do with the buildings. Eight bodies lay between the recruits and the manor house, and the sight of them made Wolf turn his head away for a moment before he could force himself to study them objectively.

From the look of it none of them had been killed there. They had been dragged from other parts of the compound, stripped, and laid out with arms and legs spread-eagled. Even from a range of twenty meters Wolf could see that the bodies had been mutilated as well.

Bile rose in his throat.

“Report!” Baram’s voice was sharp, jerking Wolf back to reality. The savages who had done all this might still be somewhere near. He focused his attention on a thorough scan of the surrounding jungle as Yeh Chen’s recruits made their observations in the order they had debarked.

“Charlie Two,” Owens said. “No sign of life. Just burning buildings and … bodies.”

“Charlie Five.” That was Katrina Voskovich. She sounded sick. “That’s all I see. Nothing moving. Nothing alive.”

The others had the same negative reports. Even MacDuff’s usually jaunty manner was distinctly subdued, and Antonelli didn’t speak at all when his turn came.

Myaighee, on the other hand, was matter-of-fact, stepping smoothly into the awkward silence left by Antonelli. “Delta Leader. I see nothing in motion. Two groups of casualties, one north of the Sandray, one southwest. Eight bodies in each. All buildings showing smoke, but fires seem to have died out. My estimate is that it has been several hours since this area was attacked.”

The rest of the Deltas added nothing significant. Antonelli, when he finally managed to make his report, was barely able to speak, and Lisa Scott broke off halfway through, gagging. Wolf was last. “Delta Four,” he said harshly. “I concur. Whoever was here is gone now.”

“An observation based, no doubt, on your vast experience,” Baram said sarcastically. He appeared in the rear door, in full kit with an FEK held at the ready. “Reassuring as Volunteer Wolf’s opinions may be, I want this area searched. Thoroughly. Charlie Lance will carry out the recon in pairs, while Delta maintains overwatch from here. MacDuff, you’re with me. Myaighee, you take your orders from Legionnaire Yancey. Understood?”

There was a chorus of acknowledgements. As Baram and the five recruits from Charlie Lance split up and moved cautiously away from the APC, Legionnaire Second Class Yancey spoke up. “Wolf, Scott, take a closer look at the casualties,” the Sandray driver ordered. “Helmet cameras on relay. I’ll record from here. The rest of you maintain watch. Mag it!”

Wolf handed his Fafnir to Kern and drew his rocket pistol. While Scott stood watch with her FEK, he moved cautiously to the first line of bodies and dropped to one knee beside one of them.

“Booby traps,” the blonde said curtly.

He nodded, remembering a lecture Gunnery Sergeant Ortega had given early in Basic regarding the ways an unwary soldier could be maimed or killed by carelessness in the field. He studied the body carefully, trying to block out the grisly reality and concentrate on the task as if it was just another Legion exercise. But it wasn’t easy.

The body was a man’s, eyes still wide open and staring at the smoke-filled sky. He had probably been killed by surprise, judging from the way his throat had been slit. The other wounds had apparently been inflicted later—the ears and nose had been cut off, and a deep gash in the shape of an inverted V had been cut in the stomach and chest, with the point over the breastbone. A glance left and right showed that all of the victims had that same incision no matter what other wounds showed.

“I’ve seen that work before,” Legionnaire Yancey commented over the commlink. “It was rebels, all right. The damned savages like to leave us … messages like that.”

“I see no signs of booby traps,” Wolf said, trying to keep his voice even.

“You probably won’t,” Yancey replied. “Not when the bodies are laid out like that. But be careful anyway, nube. There’s always a first time.”

All of the bodies in both of the groups were much the same as the first one, but repetition didn’t make the examinations any easier. Twelve men and four women had been treated the same way. Sergeant Baram reported finding three more bodies barricaded in one of the burnt-out buildings. From the signs, Baram said, the fires had been set during the fighting, and the humans had preferred to burn to death rather than fall into the hands of their assailants.

Baram and the recruits from Charlie Lance confirmed that the plantation was deserted. Returning to the APC, the sergeant spent ten long minutes in the driver’s cab, putting in a call to higher authority at Fort Marchand. When he finally emerged, looking grim, he called them all together.

“This is a bad business,” he began. “The bastards that did this might be a few hundred meters away, or they might have magged out entirely. There’s no way to be sure without searching this whole damned island, and two lances of nubes ain’t my idea of a proper search party.”

“So what are we gonna do, Sarge?” Yancey asked.

“First thing is to bury those poor devils we found, and smother the fires that are still smoldering. With one lance keeping watch while the other works that’s going to use up most of the daylight we’ve got left.” He frowned. “Unfortunately they’ve had some other problems with rebels around Marchand today, and they won’t be able to spare any more troops to check out this area until tomorrow. We’ve got orders to remain in place here until a regular patrol can relieve us.”

“What the hell is there to guard, for Christ’s sake?” Banda burst out.

The sergeant didn’t react the way Wolf expected. Instead of a reprimand or a quick stroke of his stun baton, he simply shrugged. “There’s gear in the processing shed that’s worth a lot of credits. Robotics. The rebels even left a couple of floatcars in the repbay. Ordinary marauders would leave that stuff if they were in a hurry, but they could just be waiting for a chance to bring a boat in and haul off everything that isn’t nailed down. Anyway, even if there wasn’t anything they wanted, they could still move in after we left and prepare a nasty reception for the next bunch that comes in. I’ve seen them do that a time or two … let an area be pronounced clear and then set up an ambush.”

“So we stick it out until tomorrow,” Yancey said.

“That’s the size of it. After we finish the burials we’ll deploy remote sensors out in the jungle in a perimeter line to protect the clearing here. If they do try to pay us a visit, they’ll run into a hell of a lot of firepower.” He glared at the recruits. “Think you nubes can handle it all?”

Myaighee replied before anyone else could respond. “It doesn’t sound like we are in that much danger, Sergeant,” he said softly. “It isn’t that much different from an overnight route march.”

“Yeah … except for the fact that there are real hostiles out there somewhere,” MacDuff added from the far edge of the semicircle of recruits. “But aside from that little detail, it’s just a bleeding picnic.”

There were a few laughs at that, but it was nervous, uneasy laughter.

Wolf, thinking about those mutilated bodies, didn’t join in.