Legionnaire Read online

  All koob gunfire has ceased.

  “Go! Go! Get up that ridge!” I scream.

  The legionnaires with me have already started moving. We fly around the side of the rocky formation, six men in front of me and Rook, plus our heavy on my tail. An uprooted tree has fallen across the path. Legionnaires go over, around, and under it, then begin the desperate climb up the rock. Everything hinges on time right now, and these men know it.

  As I reach the log, something in its root system catches my eye. Several of the roots look cleanly severed, like they were cut with vibro-axes. The tree’s top end rests on a ledge.

  The bulk of my team have sprinted ahead and are already climbing. I make a split second decision and throw out my arm, stopping Rook and the leej with the missile. “Hold on.”

  The two stop. “What is it, Sergeant? UED? Mine?”

  “No. This tree. I think it leads somewhere. Somebody cut the root system so it would fall in a specific direction. See how it rests on top of that ledge?”

  “The three of us check it out?” Rook asks.

  I hop on the log and hurry on up it. “The rest of the group will reach the top eventually, but if this path is set up as a means of flanking, we need to block it and prevent our guys from becoming targets while they’re in mid-climb. Even koobs’ll be able to hit a legionnaire clinging to rocks.”

  We move up the log and step off onto a narrow trail, just wide enough for a standard human or near-human. It’s sheer though, a big drop straight down. Turning around, I can see the rest of my assault team still climbing, about a hundred yards away. If the koobs came this way, they would dust every one of us no matter how bad a shot they were.

  The trail leads up, but the incline isn’t steep. We aren’t following long before we’re easily twice as high as the climbing legionnaires. A switchback puts the rest of our team out of view, but I can tell that this thing goes all the way to the top. Probably into the midst of the koob fighting positions. About two hundred standard seconds have passed, and I still haven’t heard any koob gunfire. The double shot of ear-poppers must’ve done a number on ’em. Still, as the trail reaches its apex, I find myself wishing I had another one with me.

  Natural gray stone gives way to the tan square slabs used to build the koob walls and huts below. We’re now flanked by a stone wall one either side. The path is leading us into something made by koob hands. It’s like we’re climbing out of a cellar and into the open light. I can see the swaying of leaves above me. We’re going to come up right in the middle of Koobville.

  “This is it,” I say after double-checking that my external comms are muted. “Go in hard and KTF.”

  We burst through the trailhead. I’m acutely aware of the fact that we’ve made a time to the top that climbers won’t match. It’s just us and the koobs, and Oba, there are a sket-ton of koobs up here. Most are still shaking off the effects of the ear-poppers. I can see trails of phosphorescent blood trickling from the ear holes on the tops of their craniums and the slitted nostrils above their mouths.

  One of them seems to have come around enough to realize that we’re in his midst. We stare at each other for a split second, then the koob lets out a bellowing croak from his air sac and jerks up his PK-9A blaster rifle.

  “Dust ’em!” I hear Rook shout. My trigger finger has squeezed out two blaster bolts by the end of the second syllable, dropping the koob in a heap.

  We’re standing in the midst of probably one hundred and fifty koobs. There’s nothing to do but open up on them. If the warning croak of the koob I shot didn’t alert the others to our presence, assuming they can even hear, the deluge of blaster fire will do the trick. I discharge my N-4, and in this target-rich environment, I go through two charge packs in less than a minute. Rook’s SAB does the real grunt work, sending an unrelenting torrent of blaster fire into the massed guerrillas. Powered by a specialized pack carried on his shoulders, Rook can keep this up for a long, long time.

  The leej from Hyena puts his aero-precision missile on his shoulder and flips open the targeting reticule. The clear screen locks in on the koob tank and gives a beep, indicating that the intelligent rocket inside will find its way to that tank no matter what direction the operator fires, unless it’s directly into an obstacle. Of course, with the tank only twenty yards away, the leej would have to sneeze inside his helmet to miss.

  I won’t clint you. At this point I thought the three of us were going to take the entire ridge on our own. In disarray from the ear-poppers and the blaster fire thrown against them, the koobs are breaking into a full retreat in the opposite direction. They must’ve thought an entire RRE—rapid relief element—had arrived.

  But there are always a few who stick it out and fight. Like I said before, creatures all act differently when they realize they’re dead beings walking. A few koobs just stand there and discharge their weapons. I take at least three hits from the slug throwers. My armor absorbs the impact, but it still hurts like Stage’s Blazes. If you’re trying to get a sense for what it feels like to be hit by an old-fashioned hard-mass projectile while in full legionnaire kit, imagine being struck by a seamball from a big league thrower. Repeatedly.

  Any leej’ll tell you: Just because you wear armor, doesn’t mean you don’t get hurt.

  The heavy weapons specialist from Hyena, Kravetz, isn’t as lucky. A bullet strikes the armor protecting his inner calf and ricochets straight up, finding a gap between his protective pieces. He drops like a rock and I just know he’s gone. The sheer amount of blood pumping out of gaps and down his armor, staining it red, makes it obvious. His femoral artery was severed by the bullet. Out of the fight, Kravetz is not much longer for this life.

  There’s a proverb that gets repeated around all branches of the Republic military machine. “Expect the worst and you won’t be surprised.” It dates back to the Savage Wars. Probably longer than that. The reason this little adage has withstood the entropies of time is because of how true it repeatedly proves itself to be. I’m disappointed but not surprised when we lose the one member of our three-man advance team who can pop open that tank. And I’m not surprised when said tank swivels its turret to point directly at Rook and me.

  “Get down!”

  We drop to our stomachs just as the tank fires a shell that would have cut us in half if we were still standing. Eager to turn us to mist, the gunner must’ve made the mistake at aiming at us instead of the ground beneath us.

  I’m not complaining.

  The blast impacts the rock wall behind us, and the explosion hurls us several feet forward. We land with a crashing thud, tangled up with one another. Absent, thankfully, is the incendiary fireball that has taken the lives of too many legionnaires already. The koobs must’ve had a limited number of high-explosive incendiary shells. Rook and I benefit from a standard shell without the extra burn.

  My diaphragm spasms. The wind was knocked completely out of me. There’s a persistent ringing in my ears that renders all other noise muffled or mute. I know weapons are being fired, but their sound barely registers. Someone is speaking to me over the L-comm, but it just sounds like murmuring. I have no idea how Rook is doing, but my HUD shows his designation as green. Kravetz has slipped into black.

  And then the display itself flickers. There’s an electronic pop, and my bucket’s fan stops working. The smell of hot conductors, smoke, and blaster fire hits me. It’s a struggle to push myself up on hands and knees. I can see my N-4 lying on the ground a few feet in front of me. I crawl toward my rifle, vaguely aware of the bullets kicking up dirt around me. The koobs must’ve rallied when the tank fired.

  Everything is in slow motion.

  A bullet strikes my N-4, causing it to do a half spin. All I can think is, “I hope my rifle still works.”

  I check on the tank and see that its 120mm barrel is pointing down at my position. Seems like a waste of ammunition, but then again, legionnaires are hard to kill.

  There’s a sudden flash of light, and my visor goes bl
ack.

  05

  In the seconds before death all I had to say was an uninterested, “Huh.”

  My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I didn’t suddenly recall my father’s laugh or some forgotten face from primary school. No first kiss, first drink, first… anything. Maybe that stuff only happens in the moments you’re actually about to die. But how could your brain tell the difference?

  When the explosion came from the tank, I certainly thought I was going to die. Did my mind somehow know better?

  Chalk it up to another mystery of the galaxy.

  My HUD flickered, then went offline altogether. As the polarized lenses of my bucket cleared, I had the distinct feeling that I was still in one piece. I saw the tank, still pointing its smoothbore cannon at me. But it wasn’t a threat. Flames and thick, black smoke billowed out of every vent and opening. I could see the heavy metal hatch lying next to a dead koob about thirty meters away.

  Turns out, the blast didn’t come from the tank.

  The blast was the tank.

  Wraith’s team had found a similar trail on their side of the ridge, and every one of Wraith’s leejes had taken it. They’d blasted past a few disoriented koobs and poured out in full force on the top of Kr’kik Ridge. If Wraith’s legionnaires were surprised to see a wave of frantic koobs running away from us and straight toward them, they didn’t show it. With expected professionalism and calmness, they opened up on them. This second barrage of blaster fire sent the guerrillas even further into disarray.

  While the koobs scrambled for a safe place to run and hide, Exo armed his aero-precision missile. He thumbed the switch next to the trigger guard to manual fire. I don’t know if he saw the tank aiming at Rook and me, or if he just didn’t want to wait the extra few seconds it would take for the missile to lock on. But the decision to go manual saved two lives.

  I was out of it at the time, but the missile would have flown through the air at four hundred meters per second. An aero-precision missile makes a sound like a repulsor speeder whooshing past you in top drive at the Hendahl Raceways. It comes and goes so quickly that all you really see is the white vapor trail and the burning wreckage of its target.

  And man, did that tank burn. The missile shot through the MBT’s impervisteel armor and detonated inside. Secondary explosions in the tank’s magazine pretty much blew its treads off (I said it was an old tank) and just about severed the deck from the rest of the machine.

  At that point even the staunchest koob fighters had their flight instinct take hold. They threw down their weapons and croaked frantic cries of retreat as they dispersed, all of them running in search of at least one place on Kr’kik Ridge free of legionnaire blaster fire.

  They wouldn’t find it.

  Wraith’s legionnaires cut through the koobs with cold precision. Double-tap. Kill. On to the next target. That’s how we’re trained.

  Overwhelmed with battlefield terror, several koobs, their purple air sacs expanding and contracting as rapid as a heartbeat, scrambled to the edge of the ridge and jumped eighty feet down. A last, desperate hope that gravity would be more merciful than the legionnaires. For the most part, it wasn’t. The ones who broke their legs, hips, shoulders, and ankles, but otherwise survived, we killed with the koobs’ own slug throwers. Best to save our blaster charge packs. But that was later. After the fight on top of the ridge. After the descent.

  Most of the fleeing koobs, perhaps twenty survivors, made their way to the back of the ridge. Their timing and placement could not have been worse. The rest of my detachment of legionnaires had climbed to the summit just as the koobs began to move in their direction. The aliens’ flanks were exposed, and our nimble company of leej billy goats wasted no time in opening up on them. With legionnaire fire coming from their side, courtesy of my element, and their rear by Wraith’s, the koobs were completely dusted.

  “You all right, Sarge?”

  I look to the sound of the voice and see Exo holding out his hand. I take it, and he hoists me to my feet. I don’t have my bearings well enough yet to stand on my own. My knees are wobbly. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  We’re both yelling. Maybe the boom got through Exo’s noise dampers, too.

  “Yeah, you good.” I can hear the smile in Exo’s voice. He removes his helmet, revealing his sweat-soaked head so I can see the smile, too. “You good thanks to Exo. Shot like that? No comp guidance, full manual? Under fire? Squad leader in the big bad tank’s crosshairs?” Exo chuckles to himself, laughing at the situation. “I don’t care if he’s a legionnaire or not. No one’s making that shot… ’cept me.”

  I take off my helmet. The breeze on the top of the ridge feels invigorating, but it’s offset by the acrid smell of black smoke billowing from the tank and the peculiar fishy odor of the dead koobs. It’s easy to forget how sterilized the battlefield becomes to your senses with a legionnaire’s helmet over your head. I look behind me and don’t see the rookie. “Rook make it?”

  Exo points his head at a grouping of legionnaires. “Yeah, he’s over there fawning over the koobs’ old slug throwers with some guys from Hammerfall.”

  “Good.” I open my jaw wide to pop my ears, rubbing my temples in an attempt to make the ringing subside. “You did the Republic a great service, Exo, saving your squad leader. Expect medals. Parades, even.”

  Exo laughs incredulously. “Just be glad you ain’t point. I’d let the tank fire first and then I’d open it up.”

  I nod. He probably isn’t joking.

  Exo looks back at our distant line of combat sleds. “You see when Captain Devers’s CS got hit?”

  “Yeah.” Images of the Gold Squad legionnaires burning alive flash involuntarily in my mind. “I saw it.”

  Exo spits. “Only good thing ’bout today.”

  I’m not so sure about that.

  I pat Exo on the shoulder. “Well, I owe you one. What’s your drink, Exo?”

  “You know me. I just can’t decide, Sarge. I’ll have to sample five or six strains of core-world bourbons on the Chiasm. And then when I find a favorite, you can buy me that one, too.”

  It dawns on me that most of the legionnaires were inside the sleds when the Chiasm exploded, and everyone else was focusing on the battle itself. Am I the only who saw?

  “Sergeant.” The voice is coming through the external speakers of another legionnaire. Evidently I don’t find the source quickly enough, because the speaker repeats with further specification, “Sergeant Chhun.”

  I follow the sound and see Wraith, Lieutenant Ford, standing on top of the smoking, blackened tank. The flames are out, and there’s a powdery white residue around the hatch. Wraith must’ve thrown in an inferno quencher—a chem grenade that removes all flammable gases and completely extinguishes just about any fire. One won’t put out a building, but it will put out a room.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Come over here, Sergeant. I want your opinion on something.”

  I motion with my head for Exo to follow me. We climb up the tank and stand over the blown-out hatch. I can feel the heat of the impervisteel through the bottoms of my boots. “Sir?”

  He flips on an ultrabeam mounted to the side of his bucket. The clean, blindingly bright light shines into the darkened hatch. It stops on the dismembered and charred remains of the tank crew. “Those looks like koobs to you, Sergeant?”

  I squat down and peer into the macabre cavern. The crew is burnt up pretty badly. I suspect that Wraith saw something out of place or he wouldn’t have asked for a second opinion. I take it as a challenge to spot whatever his LOA—Legionnaire Officer Academy—educated brain discovered.

  A koob’s most distinctive feature is its air sac, but those would have burned away. I decide to count fingers. The first corpse has only one arm, but the expected three digits, same as any koob. My eyes scan the next body fragment. This one must have lost its hands from the blast, because there’s nothing there, shoulder down. But the frame seems… large. If this was a koob, it was a strap
ping one. The village tough guy. I squint. The shoulders seem to have… spikes. Like a horn pointing downward, armor-like. Puzzled, I look at what’s left of the neck and face. More spikes are protruding from the cheekbones.

  “One of them’s a koob, but the other has spikes. Looks almost like a kimbrin. That’s a mid-core species.” I look up at Wraith, squinting from the light shining down just past my head. “What would kimbrin be doing on Kublar, sir?”

  Wraith doesn’t provide any speculation. “Look at the third one, Sergeant.”

  I have to slide over a bit to get a better view. The body is lying supine on the floor, its hands across its stomach and chest like it was sleeping. I can’t see the head from this angle.

  Exo is looking over my shoulder. “What d’you see?”

  I count the blackened and charred finger bones.

  Five. Five fingers.

  I stoop down to get a look at the head. The cranium and dental structure… it’s unmistakable. I stand up abruptly, my stomach doing flips.

  “Human.”

  “Whaaaat?” Exo hisses the word, a long breath.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” Wraith looks me straight in the eyes, though his helmet is still on. “That was my assessment as well.” He hops off the tank, N-4 in his hands, and begins to walk away.

  “Sir?” Exo calls after him. “Why are there humans and kimbrins placing ambushes with the koobs?”

  Wraith stops and looks back at us both. “I don’t know.”

  Exo and I exchange a look. Things have been hot through galaxy’s edge for a while now. The Mid-Core Rebels have talked a big game, but to this point haven’t done anything planetary police couldn’t handle.

  Sensing our uncertainty, Wraith says, “We’ll have some basics pull out the bodies. For now… get some rest.” He places his hand to the side of his helmet, as if listening to an incoming L-comm transmission. “Sergeant, I want you to take one of those incoming sleds back to the caravan once they empty out. But still, try to rest up, okay?”