Legionnaire Read online

  Right now I feel like the partner waiting to be tagged in. I’m watching the leej assigned to watch Twenties’s back run up to the house we’ve occupied. The moment that leej, a kid from Magnum Squad, reports for duty, I’m gone.

  He makes his way in through a window. Time to go. Stairs take too long, and every second counts. I hop over the side and drop fifteen feet or so into what passes for a koob front yard.

  It’s that kind of stuff that’ll force me to get cybernetic knees before I’m thirty. But hey, what old soldier isn’t a cyborg?

  I sprint straight to the marshaling point and slam into the rock wall as a rough and ready group of legionnaires awaits the order to move out. An order that should come from the senior officer on site, even though the plan was orchestrated by me.

  “LS-55 reporting, ready to execute battle plan,” I say, slightly winded, to Lieutenant Ford—Wraith.

  The lieutenant looks at me a moment. “Still no comm connection to Camp Forge, so let’s not pretend we’ve got air or artillery. It’s all on us. Initial plan was yours, Sergeant Chhun. Give the word and we move.”

  I wish every officer was more like Wraith.

  “Roger,” I say, struggling to control my breathing so the other leejes don’t get the feeling I’m panting in their audio receptors like Uncle Creepy. “We push straight up and don’t stop until we reach the base of that ridge. Magnum takes left, Hammerfall right, and Doomsday up the gut. We’ll climb up on either side in a pincer maneuver and hammer them inward.”

  Twenty-three helmets nod in understanding. A comment comes on our mission channel. “We move too fast and the koobs’ll be firing at our backs.”

  Exo chimes in. “We don’t move fast enough and we’re going to lose the last five sleds bottled up here.”

  As if in confirmation, the tank booms again, missing its target high. The tank’s gunner has finally managed to make up his mind. He’s no doubt realized by now that the fast-moving sleds in open ground are too tough to hit, and can’t penetrate his armor with their twins. So he’s ignoring the sleds that were able to back out and is focusing on picking off the immobile vics one by one. The way they’re all lined up… not good.

  I offer the assault team clarification. “The tip of the spear—I need a sprinter to volunteer—will draw them out, eliminating targets of opportunity as they appear on the HUD. It’s up to the rest of us to drop those koobs before they have a chance to send a slug or a blaster charge into our runner’s back. Most of us will be able to keep moving, but I want Hyena Squad to stick around and verify clear all buildings and trenches while the main force continues to the ridge.”

  Wraith stands and checks his N-4. “That’s settled, then. I get my run in today after all. See you up top.”

  Before I have the chance to object to Lieutenant Ford assuming the most dangerous position in the assault, he’s up and over the wall without so much as an “Ooah!”

  The remaining legionnaires are stunned for perhaps a half second, but quickly follow, not wanting to leave him isolated.

  Wraith runs like he’s alone on a yellow sand beach somewhere in a subtropic system, the only sentient being for miles. His form is perfect and upright, and he’s moving at a pace that seems impossible to maintain all the way to the ridge. The idea was to move quickly but deliberately, making sure not to get too far behind enemy lines that we could be encircled. But Wraith has pretty much overrun the koob position singlehandedly.

  They just don’t know it yet.

  Between us and the ridge lies a small crop of stone huts and three-foot-high rock walls. Beyond all that is an open plain leading to the ridge, peppered throughout with craggy boulders.

  The tank fires again and hits its target, incinerating an empty CS.

  Impossible as it seems, Wraith is putting distance between himself and the rest of the legionnaires. He’s easily fifty yards in front of us now, approaching a low stone wall with yellow dots on the other side, signifying that koobs were spotted in that location before legionnaire suppressive fire made them one with the dirt. He hurdles the wall without breaking stride.

  I can see a trio of koob heads pop up in astonishment and turn to watch Wraith sprinting past them and toward the stone buildings.

  “Dust ’em!” I scream.

  So many legionnaires score head shots on these koobs that there isn’t much left of them except shredded air sacs and drooping shoulders. They didn’t even get close to bringing their slug throwers—and at least one PK-9A blaster rifle—to their shoulders.

  Legionnaires are expert marksmen.

  The run for the ridge continues at breakneck speed. I hear a loud krak-bdew a millisecond after seeing a blaster bolt strike a koob on a distant rooftop. Those blisters don’t seem to be bothering Twenties too much.

  Two koobs spring from around the corners of adjacent huts, looking to light up Wraith in convergent fields of fire. Effortlessly, Lieutenant Ford double-taps his N-4 and hits each koob center mass, dropping them. He continues unabated in his loping stride, clears the final field wall, and streaks across the plain toward the ridge.

  Men from Hyena fan out and make sure every last koob is eliminated while the rest of us do our best to keep up after Wraith. I can hear the booms of fraggers and blaster fire from the Hyena leejes behind me. Twenties is busy from his spot, too. Every single shot he takes removes a dot from my HUD.

  I reach the field. Wraith has stretched his lead to over sixty yards.

  “South wall is secure!” comes the call over the mission channel.

  Boom.

  That fast.

  Most beings in the galaxy aren’t going to stand up well against legionnaires in an open fight, even a species as warlike as the koobs.

  Running in the craggy field is difficult. Snaking beneath the wind-whipped sea of ankle-high grass is some kind of an old riverbed. It must have zigzagged quite a bit, because I can distinctly feel my boots curve around the smooth river rocks, like they can’t quite get a firm footing and are always slipping just a little bit. It’s definitely slowing me down, and by the number of green dots on my HUD, it’s slowing down the rest of the force, too.

  Except for Wraith. He’s going to storm the ridge by himself if this keeps up.

  Just in case I couldn’t tell that I was a step slow, my visor issues a stream of text, the temporary block I’d placed earlier now expired.

  LS-55, Sergeant C.Chhun.

  Advisory: Suboptimal speed.

  Legionnaires of DOOMSDAY squad are moving 7.82% slower than their last standardized PT stress run.

  Log for infraction review? Y/N

  “Combat override DS8-RV6!” I shout into my mic. Thankfully, these sorts of messages don’t pop up on every leej’s visor, otherwise our armorer would need a kip shuttle full of assistants to fix all the shots we’d absorb while barking cancellation codes. No, Repub-Tek just installed the software in the buckets of rank sergeant and above. The joys of being a squad leader.

  Combat override acknowledged. A record will remain on file for 15 days. This log to be transmitted to your OIC, Captain S. Devers.

  Joke’s on you, technological embodiment of meddling bureaucratic overreach. Point is dead.

  I expected we would lose at least two combat sleds before we reached the ridge. As I get within four hundred yards, I realize that the tank hasn’t fired a shot since it scored a hit on the empty sled just before the assault. Maybe Devers wasn’t far off and the koobs used all the shells they had access to.

  Or maybe…

  I flick open the Doomsday comm with my tongue. “Twenties,” I say between panting breaths, “tell me about that tank.”

  “On it, Sarge.”

  There’s a pause as Twenties looks through his scope at the archaic MBT, shrouded behind rock and branch. “Yeah, it ain’t interested in the sleds no more. Be advised, trajectory forecasts show that the main gun is looking to fire on advancing legionnaires.”

  “Roger.”

  I switch back to the assau
lt comm channel. “That koob tank is looking to send some heat our way! Don’t group up!”

  The green dots on my HUD spread out. Still, I see a concentration of about three legionnaires, all with the laughing skull of Hyena Squad painted on the sides of their buckets. I turn around for visual and see they’re bottlenecked by a series of boulders. Evidently the koob tank gunner sees the same thing. The tank rocks backward from the massive blast of its cannon, and the ground around the Hyena Squad trio explodes. It looks like a portal just opened up from the hells of the Arcturus Maelstrom. A grim rainfall of dirt, rocks, and pieces of legionnaire falls back to the ground.

  The tactical L-comm floods up with shouts.

  “Stay spread!”

  “Get some pressure on that ridge!”

  “Who has mortar bots?”

  “Mortar bots were on that last sled that blew.”

  “Oba!”

  The tank is looking for targets in the field of legionnaires, but there aren’t any groupings of leejes as sweet as that first one. As I move closer, I can see that the tank is equipped with a coaxial MG—slug thrower of course—but they must not have the needed caliber of ammunition. The gunner is trying to snipe us with high-explosive incendiary shells.

  The main gun booms again, and I can feel the force of the air as the shell blisters above me, exploding much too close behind me. I feel the ground shake. The heat from the torrid blast penetrates my armor’s cooling system. I feel like a skillet left out over a fire.

  That was too close.

  “This is Specter-1, I’ve reached the base of the ridge.” Wraith doesn’t even sound tired.

  Twenties’s voice comes up on the L-comm. “Copy, I have eyes on you, Lieutenant Ford. Looks like the koobs know you’re down there, too. They’re looking for an angle to engage.”

  “Copy.”

  The koobs don’t seem to be able to find a good line of fire on Wraith. But they’re right out in the open, croaking orders at each other, looking for that magic view that will kill them a legionnaire. These muck buckers have been pinned down for most of the assault by our rear line and sleds, but once our assault force got close to the ridge, the suppressive fire slowed for fear of leej-on-leej casualties.

  Unable to get a clean shot at Wraith, the koobs unleash a hellish volley of PK-9A blaster fire and slug-throwing machine guns on those of us still advancing. Red blaster bolts sizzle overhead, and bullets fly thickly. I’ve gotten used to the sensation of a nearby blaster bolt—the air sort of sizzles as the burning shot scorches by you. But having slugs flying around you is a totally different experience. The air seems to snap and crack each time a bullet whizzes past. More than the blaster bolts, this gets my adrenals fired up, and I run even faster to join Wraith at the base of the ridge.

  “Be advised,” Twenties says calmly from his position in overwatch. “I see a pair of koobs climbing a tree fifteen degrees left of Specter-1.”

  Krak-bdew!

  Twenties fires his N-18. “One koob eliminated, Specter-1, but I can’t get a shot on the other.”

  “Copy,” Wraith answers. “I’ll see if I can spot him.”

  Wraith rolls out away from the ridge’s sheer base and drops to a knee. His N-4 points upward in a fluid motion, graceful like a ballet dancer at Uynora Hall. He fires two blaster bolts into a part of the tree thick with green, triangular leaves, and spins back against the cliff. Koob counter-fire kicks up the dirt where he stood only moments before. A koob corpse falls out of the tree all the way to the bottom of the ridge.

  Wraith puts another round in it. Just to be sure, I suppose.

  I’m the third legionnaire to reach the base of the ridge. We found out later that the koobs call it Kr’kik Ridge in their language. I had no way of knowing that this was the beginning of an onslaught endured by Victory Company of the 131st Legionnaires. No way of knowing that the cost we would pay in blood and lives would make us famous throughout the galaxy.

  04

  Most of the assault team has reached Kr’kik Ridge and spread out around its base. But the koobs above us are keeping up a steady stream of suppressing fire. We’re pinned with our backs against the sheer rock wall.

  This poses a number of difficulties.

  First, our presence at the foot of the ridge prevents the legionnaires back at the line from firing on the koobs. The only exception so far has been Twenties and another sniper who set up inside a cleared stone hut, firing from a window. Most of the clean shots have already been taken. This ridge was prepared ahead of time for the ambush and for a defense. The koobs stacked rocks and laid trees over their blaster nests. Twenties and the other sniper are all scoped up with no one to shoot.

  And we’re pinned down. If the koobs were to descend the ridge and flank us, we’d be in a tight spot. I’m talking total team kill levels of tight. We can’t just sit here.

  And let’s not forget about the tank. Unable to stop our advance, it is once again focused on the trapped repulsor sleds. Another goes up into flames as we watch impotently from our place at the bottom of the ridge. We need to break out and shut that MBT down, or there won’t be enough operable sleds to return us to Camp Forge. That would mean hunkering down with limited supplies and no air support in hostile country while the remaining sleds speed off to send the relief message. I’ve stopped counting on getting any sort of reliable transmission to CF.

  Another day at the office.

  The men are doing their best to return fire and keep the koobs at bay, but stepping out and leaving the safety of the ridge isn’t exactly safe at the moment, so we keep our butts glued to the cliff side.

  “Sergeant Chhun, let’s get these men moving.” The voice is calm, but authoritative.

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant Ford.” I pull an ear-popper from my grenade belt. These detonate with a blinding flash of light and a truly deafening boom. The hearing loss is often permanent, and the flash can render some species blind or dazzled for up to five standard minutes. I don’t know how koobs will react to it, but their eyes are pretty large. I’m sure it’ll hurt.

  Wraith looks at the grenade and then at me. “That’s a hell of a throw you’re planning, Sergeant.”

  “I don’t have that kind of an arm, sir.” I switch on my comm. “Doomsday-4, this is Doomsday-1. Where are you, Rook?”

  The rookie’s voice comes back. “Western edge of the ridge sir. I’ve deployed my SAB and I’m laying down suppressive fire.”

  “Well I need you back here at center mass.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rook weaves his way through entrenched legionnaires, ducking his head instinctively as bullets chew up the ground. Each time he has to move around a dug-in leej, the hostile fire intensifies. They’re salivating up there at the merest glimpse of gray armor. Like sailors too long away from port.

  “Sergeant?” Rook reaches my position and rests his SAB against the rock.

  “Here,” I say, placing the grenade in his hand. “I want your servo-enhanced arms to chuck this thing up the side of this ridge and into the koob position.”

  “Ear-popper?” Rook looks to the heavens. “That’s about fifty meters, straight up.”

  “You think you can do it?”

  Rook pauses, looking at the top of the ridge. At the sky. “Never tried, but I think so, yeah.”

  “Here.” Wraith digs out his own ear-popper. “Throw this one in right after that. It’ll be a climb, and I want to make sure the koobs are still disoriented when we get up top.”

  Rook takes hold of the grenade in his other hand.

  The lieutenant points to the legionnaires spread out behind me. “Sergeant, I want you to go to the west side of the ridge with them. I’ll take the remaining force up the opposite way. Is there a heavy with you?”

  I turn and spot a leej from Hyena Squad with an aero-precision missile launcher strapped to his back. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I saw Exo from your squad make it to the ridge; he’s positioned to move up with me. As long as one of u
s gets a heavy to the top of that ridge, we can destroy the tank.”

  I nod.

  “Get moving the moment the ear-popper goes off.” Wraith begins to move toward his assault position, hugging the rocky side of the ridge. He stops to clap Rook on the shoulder. “Oh, and Legionnaire?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t let that thing drop back down on top of us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I swap out a charge pack on my N-4 and give orders that the rest of my team do the same. “Freshen your rifles up, boys!”

  A flurry of clacks marks the legionnaires’ assent.

  I look at Rook, visor to visor. “Okay, Rook. Let’s let those koobs know we’re coming up for dinner.”

  Rook pulls back his arm and hurls the first grenade in the air. It goes up like it was launched from a mortar bot. For a moment, it looks like it doesn’t have the proper angle and is liable to tumble back down on our heads. My visor’s display calculates the trajectory a moment before the grenade reaches the peak of its ascent. It’ll land just inside the koob position.

  “Now the second!” I call out as the first succumbs to gravity and begins its descent.

  Rook tosses the next grenade a little farther in.

  BRAP! … BRAP!

  The ear-poppers erupt within a few seconds of each other. The noise is so substantial that I can hear a whine inside my bucket’s transceiver as it dampens the decibels. The base of the ridge shields us from the flash, but the extreme brightness has enough power that even the ambient light blast we get causes our visors to darken.