Sword of the Legion (Galaxy's Edge Book 5) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Victory Squad

  01

  02

  03

  04

  05

  06

  07

  08

  09

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  The Crew

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Epilogue

  More Galaxy's Edge

  Join the Legion

  Honor Roll

  SWORD OF THE LEGION

  By Jason Anspach

  & Nick Cole

  Copyright © 2017

  by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  All rights reserved. Version 1.0

  Edited by David Gatewood

  Published by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  Cover Art: Fabian Saravia

  Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services

  For more information:

  Website: GalacticOutlaws.com

  Facebook: facebook.com/atgalaxysedge

  Newsletter: InTheLegion.com

  DARK OPS KILL TEAM

  VICTORY SQUAD

  01

  The planet Rawl Kima.

  Captain Chhun lay on his side, using the almost-meter-high wall at the edge of the roof to shield him from the barrage of blaster fire raking up from the street below. “Booker!” he shouted to the Repub Navy attaché. “Find out what the hell is holding up the Illustrious.”

  Positioned in an attack orbit, visible overhead, the Illustrious was the sub-destroyer-class capital ship that had jumped the Victory kill team into Rawl Kima. Another of the endless missions to capture Mid-Core Rebellion VIPs. This had been the familiar pattern for Chhun’s kill team over the past several cycles: identify VIP, abduct. Repeat ad nauseum. It had gotten to the point where Chhun would go out of his way to get his kill team attached to a Legion company and set up sniper overwatch, advance recon, and short force penetrations just to change things up.

  This mission looked to be another success. The target, a rotund dwahser, sat in the middle of the roof. A plus-sized isolation hood, large enough to contain her trunk, had been fit firmly over her head, and her portly gray arms were ener-chained behind her back.

  Now the mission was in jeopardy. Illustrious needed to hurry up and send down fighter support. Or at the very least, an evac shuttle to extract the team and target. The shuttle that should have been waiting for them in the first place. The closer one got to the core, the more the Republic military seemed incapable of basic military procedures.

  Swarms of MCRs spanning the biological spectrum were surrounding the building that, prior to the kill team’s op, had served as the local MCR militia headquarters. But Chhun and his kill team had the high ground, controlling the roof of that building, the tallest building in the modest urban sprawl that populated whatever town this was. Kahl, Chhun thought it was called. Not that it mattered. They just needed to get out of there—either that, or get some help killing bad guys.

  There were a lot of bad guys.

  Booker, the navy liaison, looked at Chhun from deep beneath his helmet, his eyes draped in shadows. If the thing were pulled down over his head any tighter, you’d think he was a war tortoise. “Holding up what, Captain?” he asked. “The evac or the bombing run?”

  A spray of blaster fire chewed into the building’s façade, with some shots streaking up so close that Chhun could hear the sizzle through his bucket. “Both or either, Booker. I don’t care! Just get some—”

  A fragger arced overhead, thrown from the street below. Whoever tossed it had quite an arm. Or trunk.

  As the Dark Ops legionnaires watched the grenade fall, their buckets mapped its trajectory and probable landing spot, accounting for any bouncing rebounds on the surface of the rooftop. Through some kind of Republic coder magic, the bucket HUDs also identified the amount of time left on the fuse. A newer feature the kill team was happy to have.

  “I’m on it,” Masters called, running toward the fragger as it landed and setting up a mobile containment bubble around it. They called it a bubbler—a thick blue energy shield capable of withstanding physical trauma as effectively as two feet of impervisteel. It formed a dome around the fragger with seconds to spare.

  Chhun watched the grenade as his HUD ticked down the final second. The primary and secondary explosions gave a muffled bamf beneath the containment bubble. “Nice work, Masters.”

  “Thanks, Cap.” Masters powered down the bubbler, allowing a thick cloud of smoke to rise heavenward. Where the bubbler had been, the roof was scorched and piled with a layer of now harmless shrapnel. A number of other similar scorch marks and shrapnel piles already dotted the roof. “But at some point these mids are gonna get one that explodes before I can reach it. Can’t keep this up forever.” Masters shrugged. “At least they’re too dumb to throw ’em all at once.”

  More likely, the ill-equipped rebels—they’d never recovered from the loss of Scarpia—didn’t want to part with their fraggers unless they were sure it might save their lives.

  “We need to re-take the initiative,” Chhun said. “Pin them down. Fish!”

  A leej in the black armor of Dark Ops hustled to Chhun’s position from his station on the opposite side of the roof. A poorly aimed rocket streaked over their heads and landed a kilometer away with a faint crump.

  Sergeant Andrevel Fisher threw himself against the roof wall beside Captain Chhun, his rapid-fire SAB at the ready. “Sir?”

  “I need you and Averill to keep those mids pinned down and quiet for a while. I’m gonna try and convince our target to call off her dogs, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “We should just throw her over the edge and get out by foot,” offered Fish.

  “Today, Fish,” Chhun said, his voice betraying a smile.

  “On it,” Fisher answered. He waited for Sergeant Averill—Sticks—to join him on the side of the roof where the blaster fire was thickest, counted to three over L-comm, then sprang up, unleashing fury through the barrel of his SAB while Averill picked off targets with his N-4.

  With the rest of the squad keeping the MCR honest from all four sides of the building, Chhun approached the dwahser, who sat oblivious to the firefight, thanks to her isolation hood. Chhun had just reached out to remove the hood when Sticks shouted an urgent heads-up.

  “Three mids made it inside the front doors!”

  A rumbling boom erupted from below, shaking the foundations of the building.

  “And they found the A-P mines,” Masters quipped over L-comm. He replenished a charge pack, leaned over the edge, and continued firing on the rebels below.

  “Right where I left ’em,” answered Bear, a two-meter leej who looked like he could do more damage with his hands than his N-6.

  Chhun grabbed the top of the target’s isolation hood and pulled it off like the lid to a covered dish dinner. The sudden transition from absolute stillness, devoid of all light or sound, to the bright
sunshine and brilliant noises of combat caused the dwahser’s eyes to grow wide in panic. The MCR cell leader spouted a nasal alarm through her trunk, then began to frantically slap at Chhun’s chest and bucket.

  “Hey—stop!—knock it off!” Chhun grabbed the nose-like appendage and drew the Kublaren tomahawk Masters had bought for him years before. “I’ll cut that thing clean off if you don’t stay still.”

  The dwahser stopped fighting. She fixed a hateful gaze at the legionnaire. “Urah trah trah.”

  “Where’s the stupid translator bot?” Chhun called out. His bucket could translate the dwahser’s insults just fine, but it was painfully slow. A bot was still the better option.

  A cylindrical robot hovered over from a hiding spot somewhere on the roof. “I am here, Captain Chhun,” the bot said, flashing blue lights accenting each syllable.

  Chhun was thankful his team had been given a bot with repulsor functionality. Most beings of the galaxy might be more comfortable with bipedal machines, but taking stairs was a hell of a lot simpler with this model. “What’d the target just say?”

  “Death to tyrants,” the bot answered.

  Good, it was translating the same as Chhun’s bucket. The kill team had run into a situation a few months back where a translator bot wasn’t calibrated for the proper regional dialect—and as a result, Chhun accidentally spent ten minutes making romantic overtures to a zhee cell leader. Worse yet, the zhee seemed to be into it. It looked like its little donk heart was broken when the bot’s software updated.

  Heart-breakers and life-takers.

  Chhun gritted his teeth. He had hoped for a more compliant captive, but this sort of resistance wasn’t uncommon from the MCR. Well, not from the alien ranks anyway. The humans tended to roll over the moment Republic pressure was applied.

  “Today might be your lucky day,” Chhun mumbled to himself. To the translator bot he said, “Tell her the blaster fire coming our way is just as likely to get her killed, and she needs to order—”

  “’Nother fragger coming in!” shouted Fish.

  “I can’t get to this one!” called Masters.

  The fragger bounded onto the rooftop. Legionnaires dove onto their stomachs in an attempt to avoid as much shrapnel as possible.

  Boom!

  A shower of debris tinked against Chhun’s armor. The shrapnel blast of the fragger had missed him, and fortunately this model of grenade only exploded once, unlike the Legion’s standard ordnance.

  “Everyone all right?” Chhun asked his team, allowing his voice to transmit over both L-comm and externals.

  One by one, the kill team called out affirmatives and went back to their firing stations. Masters was the last to reply. “I mean, nobody important got dusted,” he said.

  Uh-oh, thought Chhun, scanning the rooftop for the naval liaison. “Is Booker—?”

  “He’s fine,” Masters said. “It’s the target who took the brunt of it.”

  Chhun looked down beside him. The dwahser was severely perforated and bleeding heavily. He nudged her with his foot, and the MCR leader rolled onto her back. Clearly dead.

  Chhun whistled at his luck. The rebel’s girth had absorbed almost the entirety of the blast, and had probably saved his life.

  Booker was still lying prone, covering his head with his hands. “Hey!” Chhun shouted at the liaison, snapping him out of the concussive daze caused by the fragger. “Really could use some support from your friends up in the Illustrious right about now!”

  Booker nodded and keyed open his comm, covering one ear to better hear above the din of blaster fire. “Agro Seven to Virtue One, come in.”

  Chhun’s Dark Ops–enhanced L-comm ported the comm transmission into his bucket’s receivers.

  “We hear you, Agro Seven.”

  Booker shouted into the comm. The fragger must have damaged his hearing. “Requesting immediate orbital support and exfiltration. Transmitting current location.”

  “Where’s our ride out of here?” called out Bear, his voice every bit as large as his physical size.

  There was a pause, as though the comm station officer aboard Illustrious was considering. Then: “Request is denied, Agro Seven.”

  Chhun didn’t wait for Booker to plead his case. He broke in over the comm. “This is Captain Cohen Chhun—what the hell are you talking about, ‘Request denied’?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Legionnaire.”

  Unbelievable.

  “Listen, whoever you are,” Chhun began, fuming with anger, “you get support down here right now or the first thing I’ll do when I reach the ship again is hunt you down so we can talk about ‘my tone’ in person. You got that?”

  No one in their right mind wanted an angry leej gunning for them. Especially not a Dark Ops leej. When the comm officer spoke again, his voice sounded much more charitable. “Sir, I have orders that outrank yours. We are not to send any craft into the region. No exceptions. Sorry, Captain.”

  “Unreal,” Chhun muttered to himself. He opened up his squad comm. “Wrinkle in the op, Victory Squad. We’re gonna have to get ourselves out of this. Illustrious says they can’t send down fire support or an exfil shuttle.”

  “Are they thinking that would be too easy?” Masters said. “Because I don’t mind the easy way. Really.”

  “So we kill ’em all,” said Bear, jamming home a new charge pack into his weapon. “Would have been nice if they let us do that in the first place instead of that smash, grab, and dash crap. Could have set up a nice ambush, have these mids all dead in the street by now.”

  “Typical point garbage,” Fish responded, switching out his own charge packs. “Hey, I’m chewing through these. Booker! Bring me that satchel with my extras. And keep your head down.”

  Booker grabbed the pack carrying the extra charge packs for Fish’s SAB and sprinted toward the legionnaire, keeping low, but still clearly above the roof line.

  “Keep your head down!” warned Fish a second time.

  An MCR blaster bolt struck the navy trooper in the temple, killing him instantly.

  Fish hissed in anger and crawled to reach the satchel of ammunition.

  “Move it, Fish!” called Sticks, his firing partner, as he cut down an MCR peeking from around the corner of an alley with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. “We need that SAB to keep them back!”

  “I know, I know!” Fish shouted. He scrambled rapidly in monkey crawl. “Any of you guys notice that the closer to the core we operate, the worse trained our attachments are? I mean, I feel bad for the kid, but…”

  “Stay focused,” Chhun said. “We’ve got enough charges to keep what’s in the streets busy well into the day.”

  So long as MCR reinforcements don’t show up. Chhun resisted the urge to shake his head. His team had been in tighter scrapes than this—the runaway corvette-of-death came to mind—but knowing that didn’t make the situation he was in look any better. This was bad, and it didn’t promise to grow any better with time. So far, the MCR didn’t seem to have a mortarbot or any repulsor vehicles at their command, but it hadn’t been all that long since his kill team drove into the city in an unmarked repulsor sled to apprehend the dwahser target. Resistance could still be scrambling for a counteroffensive.

  Chhun ran through scenarios. The best bet would to be forget the capital support ship and go directly to Dark Ops. No way they’d let a team hang out to die. They might already be scrambling. L-comm should be able to reach the deep space orbital platform hosting the Dark Ops command center for this section.

  “Major Owens,” Chhun called into his command L-comm, trusting the message would get through. “Illustrious doesn’t want us tracking our muddy boots back on her decks. We need some relief up here.”

  “I know,” came the Dark Ops controller’s voice. It sounded crystal clear. Modern technology was a beautiful thing. “I’m watching the whole thing via remote peeper. And trust me, I chewed enough point ass to make ’em need a rabies shot. But they aren’t budging.
Damn fool captain agreed to a cease-fire designed by the MCR to get you guys isolated and killed, and he ain’t breakin’ it. Good news is that a contingency plan is already inbound. Can you hold off another fifteen minutes for an updated status report?”

  “Gonna have to.”

  “Roger,” Owens answered. “KTF.”

  02

  Deep Space Supply Station 9

  Dark Ops Headquarters, Galaxy’s Edge

  90 Minutes Earlier

  Major Ellek Owens fumbled his cup of caff on the way to the conference room. It was hot, but not enough to elicit anything beyond a disgusted frown from the Dark Ops sector commander. He switched his mug into a dry hand and shook the drink from his fingers. Six cups this morning and he still didn’t quite feel awake.

  “Weak,” he mumbled to himself.

  The station’s beverage dispensers seemed incapable of delivering caff that was either hot enough or strong enough. Owens dreamed about past rotations on super-destroyers and the first-rate meals those ships provided. At least the Republic Navy got that much right. Then again, there were leejes in the field who didn’t even have time to drop a caff tab into a water unit. Owens knew he shouldn’t grumble about the station’s weak coffee, cold showers, or rickety hull structures. Embrace the suck and remember that Dark Ops never promised a life of ease. Owens had it better than most in his role as a sector commander, essentially tactical field commander for this section of the edge. Though he had finagled his way into remaining the team controller for Victory Squad, which kept him from feeling completely isolated from the action.

  He put his dripping mug on the conference table. He did not use a coaster. Flopping into a chair, he leaned back and looked down his nose, acting as though he had only now noticed the woman already seated at the table. He hooked a finger on his sunglasses and pulled them down to reveal his dark eyes. “Thought you were off station?”

  Andien Broxin, the lone Nether Ops agent Owens had ever liked or found helpful, offered an unapologetic smile. “That was the plan. But so many field reports have chimed in the last few hours that it seemed like a good idea to stay in one place a little while longer.”