Chapter Twenty-five

Are you worthy to be a legionnaire?

—Sergeant Georges Manue,
French Foreign Legion, 1941

The Sandrat was less than ten meters from Wolf, floating on its magnetic cushion with the turbofans cut back to a dead idle. With the vehicle dominating this side of the compound, the rebels could advance unhindered, supported by their comrades on top of the APC and their weaponry. Wolf knew, though he couldn’t see directly, that the second Sandrat was closing fast.

Time seemed to move in slow motion, and every thought, every action, had a crystal clarity about it unlike anything Wolf had ever experienced before. He could see the muzzle of the machine pistol coming into line with him, and could feel the soft stirring of the air kicked out by the slow-burning fans. Behind him he could hear someone shouting his name.…

Then, like the breaking of a dam, time returned to normal. Something struck him in the back just as the machine pistol spat, and a slug tore through the battledress fatigues just above his elbow. If it had not been for the shove Lisa Scott had given him, the bullet would have taken him square in the chest. As it was, fire burned in his arm, and it was all Wolf could do to keep from dropping the Fafnir.

Lisa hit the ground and rolled, coming up with her FEK whining on full-auto. The rebels on top of the APC both rolled back and off the vehicle under the intense impact of the high-velocity needle rounds.

He struggled to his feet and fumbled with the rocket launcher, cursing his throbbing arm. At point-blank range the computer targeting system was as useless as it was unnecessary, and Wolf had to override the settings and aim and fire strictly by sight. The Fafnir roared from its tube and streaked to the APC, striking it squarely above the driver’s hatch. The missile penetrated before it exploded, and the clang of debris ricocheting around the interior was audible where Wolf stood.

Slowly, painfully, the vehicle settled to the ground as the magrep fields collapsed. The fans continued their slow, rhythmic beating, but the APC was too heavy for the fans to lift.

Wolf staggered, caught himself before he fell, and tossed the empty launcher aside. Kern sprinted past and knelt by the wall, FEK blazing away at full automatic. The missile shot had knocked out one target, but there was still a battle out there.

Wolf kneeled beside the bloodstained form of Katrina Voskovich. Lisa appeared beside him, but he angrily waved her back to the wall. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “Pour on the fire! Go!”

The injured woman stirred at the sound of his voice. Ignoring the pain in his arm, Wolf half carried, half dragged her back to the slit trench. At least she would be out of the line of fire there. Dropping into the bottom of the trench beside her, he opened his first aid kit and put painkiller patches on her carotid artery and over the worst wound, a deep gash in her upper leg dangerously close to her femoral artery. Then he dug into the kit again for the roll of sterilite cloth. Working quickly, he wound it around and around the leg, finally cutting it off with his combat knife. As the woman’s body heat interacted with the bandage, it would tighten to conform to the shape of her leg, hopefully stanching the flow of blood.

He waited for a long moment, looking down at her. They had never been close, not since the day he had first met her back in the Legion bunkroom on Robespierre. But she was part of his lance, and it had been his decision to let her have the Fafnir that had led to this. His decision …

Then he shook off the mood. Wolf returned the knife to its sheath in the top of his boot and clambered awkwardly out of the trench. The rest of the lance was still in the fight. His duty was to them now.

* * *

The second Sandrat closed more slowly than the first, but the lower speed allowed a trio of rebels on the hull to maintain a steady fire as the APC approached. Needle rounds chewed at the berm just to the left of Myaighee’s position, and ky flinched once as tiny shards of duracrete rattled off kys faceplate.

Myaighee could feel the battle lust stirring once again just as it had back at Savary’s. Ky had started out a servant, not a warrior, but each time ky had gone into battle ky had lost control that much more easily. The lance couldn’t afford having one of their number out of control but Myaighee wasn’t sure ky knew how to keep from becoming lost in sheer savage fury.

Maybe the male-human Wolf was right after all. Perhaps the kyendyp race really was closer to its animal roots, its barbaric heritage. Ky had seen humans go berserk at the height of a fight, but somehow they seemed to channel it better. For all of kys progress these last two years, ky still hadn’t adapted to this strange world of gods and demons and forces beyond the comprehension of kys own kind.

Like Oomour …

Out in the valley the rebels were shouting epithets and curses as they ran, waving their weapons overhead. The protective fire from the Sandrat was making the defenders keep their heads down more often than they could shoot and the mass of the enemy force was pressing forward unchecked. This time they might carry the wall. When that happened, the battle would be over.

Ky fired again, trying to pick off the passengers on the hull of the APC, but the shot didn’t have any apparent effect. Myaighee swore, a human curse of the kind favored by Corporal Rostov back in Bravo Company. Nearby Kern was trying to lay down a sustained blanket of fire, but the big male-human was drawing unwelcome attention from the enemy. Myaighee lifted kys weapon again.

The second Sandrat put on a burst of speed, leaping straight for the gap the first one had opened up. It slammed into the grounded hull of the first APC and hovered for long seconds, as if the driver had been stunned by the collision.

Then Myaighee realized the real reason it had stopped. The rear door was dropping, and ky could see hulking shapes pushing toward the ramp.…

Ky hardly thought, letting instinct take over entirely Swarming over a pile of rubble, ky leapt for the top of the APC, a motion kys tree-climbing ancestors would have been proud to witness. Myaighee jabbed the muzzle of kys gun into the opening hatchway and squeezed the autogrenade launcher’s trigger tight. Round after round pumped into the rear of the vehicle, and the whole APC seemed to shudder as explosions ripped through it.

But at least half of the passengers had already dived out the back as they realized what the hannie was doing. One of them, an oversized Wynsarrysa with a string of human ears around his neck and a huge scimitar in one hand, swept his blade in an upward cut. The massive sword caught Myaighee in the stomach, and the force of the blow knocked ky off the vehicle.

Legionnaire Third Class Myaighee lay still on a mound of debris, staring at the open sky. Kys last thought before death claimed ky for its own was the knowledge that ky need worry no more about civilization or savagery, whether ky was bound for the Afterlife among the Blessed Sky Gods kys own people believed in, or the Heaven the chaplains preached about in the human Legion.

The long struggle was over.

* * *

“Fall back! Fall back!” Wolf shouted the order as Myaighee went down. The unexpected enemy APCs had wrecked his careful planning, drawing the recruits out of their prepared position at just the moment when the full shock of the rebel attack was sweeping toward them. Instead of a withering fire from the trench, the rebels would encounter nothing but disjointed, individual resistance.

The little hannie’s leap to the top of the Sandrat, and his grenade attack on the vulnerable interior, had been the acts of a real hero, but he—ky—had died nonetheless. So it would be with all of them. They could fight on with all the courage they could muster, but in the end Wolf’s faulty plan would bring them all down.

“Fall back!” he shouted again.

Kern had clubbed his FEK and was wading through a crowd of Gwyrrans. More were swarming over the berm, too. Wolf lost sight of Lisa Scott entirely.…

The high-pitched whine of another battle rifle took Wolf by surprise. He fired again, heard the loading mechanism shatter as his magazine ran dry. As he discarded the FEK, Wolf realized that the new firing was coming from the slit trench.

From Katrina Voskovich. Seriously wounded, she had still dragged herself upright. Now she was leaning against the lip of the trench, clutching her battle rifle like a talisman to ward off the pain and the terror and pouring autofire into the enemy ranks. As the rebels recoiled, Wolf ran for the trench. Kern followed, and after a moment Lisa Scott appeared, bleeding freely from a gash in her forehead but wielding a long, slightly curved sword like an outsized dueling saber and waving a Gwyrran pistol in the other hand.

“We’ve got to get back to the bunker,” Wolf panted. “We can block the door … try to hold the bastards a little while longer.…”

“Somebody has to stay and lay down cover,” Kern said. “So you three mag it out of here.”

Voskovich shook her head. The effort seemed to cost her most of her remaining strength. “I can’t run anyway. And I’d slow you down if you tried to carry me. I’m the one to stay.” As if for emphasis, she turned away from them and started firing again, cool, calculating. But Wolf could see the sweat on her forehead, the lines of pain around her eyes and mouth. It was a miracle she was still standing at all.

But she was right.

“Do what you can,” he said softly. “What you have to.” Wolf pushed Lisa out the rear of the trench. “Mag it! Go! Go!”

Bullets plucked at his uniform as he ran for the command bunker, but the only one that hit was almost spent. Beside him, Kern wasn’t as lucky. A bullet slammed into the redhead’s back. The big man stumbled and fell. Wolf threw himself down beside Kern, checking his back. There was no blood, no sign of penetration. The duraweave had saved his life.

“I can make it!” Kern snapped, rising unsteadily and plunging on. Wolf was right on his heels.

They had just reached the bunker when the firing slackened by the trench. Voskovich was out of the action. Dead? Or just exhausted at last, overwhelmed by shock and blood loss and the painkillers in her veins, lying in a heap at the bottom of the trench? It didn’t matter much now.

They closed the door and barred it, but there wasn’t much they could do now to defend themselves. The bunker hadn’t been designed to defend against a sustained attack … and they were down to their knives, a captured pistol and a bloodstained saber for weapons. The Wynsarrysa still outnumbered them despite the heavy casualties they had suffered in the attacks.

Now it was just a matter of time.…

Something thumped against the door, once, twice, and again.

“They won’t use explosives,” Kern said. “The bastards don’t know what our set-up is in here. Probably figure wrecking our new controls will keep the mines active.”

“Will it?” Wolf asked.

The big man gave a curt nod. “The way they’re set now they’ll go off no matter who goes through there. No recognition function.” His eyes met Wolf’s. “I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t wreck them ourselves. Our own people will be driving into those mines soon.”

“They don’t know that,” Scott pointed out. “Maybe we can cut some kind of deal.…”

Kern shook his head this time. “They won’t keep it. No honor. We’d be better off going out still fighting. If we’re captured … it wouldn’t be pretty.”

The blonde shuddered. Outside, the thumping continued, louder now. The door bucked and strained under the blows.

Wolf took the sword from her. “Then let’s do it.”

The door splintered. Wolf shouted a Germanic oath and leapt forward, blade slashing fiercely. The attackers gave ground, and he was suddenly outside again. The large Gwyrran who had killed Myaighee loomed in front of him, his scimitar a menacing gleam in the morning sunlight.

The other rebels were jeering and shouting, but none made a move against Wolf. The swordsman stepped closer, turning a casual-seeming move into a sudden blurring attack. Wolf’s blade flashed up to meet the sweeping cut. In the same motion Wolf pressed forward. Surprised, the Gwyrran gave ground, defending himself from Wolf’s sudden follow-up lunge. His left-handed attack seemed to have his opponent off-balance.

In Wolf’s mind he saw the duel with Neubeck again. He pushed the image away, launched a slashing attack that drew blood from the Gwyrran’s right shoulder. But the wound didn’t seem to bother the other at all. He counterattacked, a vicious, savage attack that pushed Wolf back step by step toward the door to the bunker. The Wynsarrysa was bigger, stronger, with a better weapon. He had all the advantages.

Just like Erich Neubeck.…

Then the alien slashed again and wrenched the saber from Wolf’s grasp. It spun, end over end, catching the sunlight. The crowd was silent for the first time.

“The loss is disgrace,” the Gwyrran rumbled in broken Terranglic. “In defeat … death.” He gestured arrogantly to a pair of rebels close by. “The human is taken. Bind him. The sport comes later.”

Wolf flinched as the Gwyrrans closed in, then staggered and dropped to his knees. In a single lightning-motion, he drew his combat knife and threw it. It sank into the Gwyrran’s back, just below the neck, and the rebel collapsed in a heap. There was a long, stunned moment when nobody moved.

Suddenly shots rang out as Lisa Scott came out of the door with the machine pistol blazing. The silence ended in shouts and screams, chaos. It was only a temporary respite, but Wolf smiled faintly anyway.

It had been like living through the fight with Neubeck all over again, but this time Wolf felt no guilt over lost honor. This time he hadn’t given in to hatred or instinct. He had done as he had been taught, and he thought his Legion teachers would approve.

The legionnaire fought to win, not merely to score points or prove superiority. And even if he died in the next instant, Wolf knew now that he had truly become a legionnaire.…

* * *

“Bank left! Over there!” Gunnery Sergeant Ortega tapped the pilot of the Pegasus on the arm and pointed, and the corporal nodded and followed his order.

The transport shuttle stooped low over Checkpoint Tatiana. The cluster of rebels around the command bunker had already started to break up, and the sudden appearance of the Legion craft, twin Gatling guns hammering into the crowd without mercy, was enough to keep them on the run. Two more shuttles swept over the humpbacked hill on the far side of the river, their own guns raking the enemy, to finish the job.

As they passed over Tatiana, Ortega saw the three ragged figures by the door. Delta Lance had done everything they had been asked to do, and more. Soon the main body of Czernak’s legionnaires would come up and round up the rebels who had fled.

A notable victory … won by a lance of recruits.

Ortega smiled. That was a story that would be told to future recruit classes … perhaps for as long as Mankind fielded a legion of foreigners.

* * *

They buried Myaighee at Checkpoint Tatiana, alongside the legionnaires who had died in the first surprise attack. He was the only one of the lance dead, though Katrina Voskovich’s fate still was far from sure despite the high-tech miracles of Commonwealth medicine. Wolf, Kern, and Lisa Scott had all been wounded in the fighting, but they were in attendance alongside the veteran legionnaires of Czernak’s strike column and an assortment of their fellow recruits who had been pulled in from the field when the exercise had turned real. The regen cast on his arm was an inconvenience, but Wolf steeled himself to keep from trying to scratch at the healing flesh encased in the cylinder.

Father Chavigny, as the Training Company’s chaplain, had been flown out to conduct the ceremony. He read the burial service in slow, measured tones, and Wolf found himself making all the appropriate responses right along with the others.

As Father Chavigny finished the service and put away his prayer book, Wolf couldn’t help but think of the funeral they had held for Antonelli. These honored dead were heroes of the Legion, and treated as such. He knew the difference now.

It was old Legion tradition for the lancemates of a dead legionnaire to divide up his personal effects among themselves. Kern had taken a length of rope Myaighee had claimed was used by another alien legionnaire to commit suicide, but Wolf had been interested in only one item the hannie had left behind.

As the service broke up he produced Myaighee’s tiny vial from under his shirt and took it off its thin chain. Wolf kneeled by the open graves, and put a tiny quantity of soft earth inside. He straightened up and drew out the medallion Lisa had given him. It had helped him find the balance in his life at a time when he had needed it, but in the past days he had learned that the true source of that balance was within.

He weighed the medallion in his hand for a moment, then tossed it into Myaighee’s grave. It was the last honor he could pay to a better soldier, a better legionnaire, than he would ever be.