Marshall Thomas: Soldier of the Legion

“Priestess, Thinker, take the first left,” Snow Leopard ordered. “We’re going straight.” My tacmap showed the plan. “There are several corridors branching off this one. Watch your map. It’s a real maze, and he’ll be trying to get past us. You’ll be in a blocking position there. The map still says there’s no way out.” He sounded excited, anxious to bag the Scaler.

Nobody said a thing about those great stone figures, although everybody had seen them. The Legion was very task-oriented. Lord, we are barbarians!

Another corridor loomed on the left. Priestess hesitated at the entrance, waiting for me.

Into the unknown, again, with just enough blood in my adrenalin flow to keep my systems going. We looked into each other’s eyes through our faceplates and struck fists. The Legion salute-we would return together or die.

A dead, dark tunnel of black stone, with wet rot coating the walls. We always fought the unknown in the Legion. Once we know our enemy, it is always so much easier. But dealing with the unknown is bad for the soul. The enemy might be a harried, helpless savage, or it might be a DefCorps squad, waiting in the dark to slice us into bloody pieces before we could even react.

The corridor widened. We stopped, every sense alert. Little warnings tingled in the back of my mind and my skin crawled, but Sweety was silent. A large stone chamber faced us, murky pools of black water on the floor, scraggly black vegetation growing up the walls and hanging from the roof. I did not want to go in there.

“Hold it,” I said. Priestess had already stopped. We paused at the entrance to the chamber. Ancient metal rings, coated with rust, studded the walls.

An empty chamber. “I don’t like it,” I said. “What do you suppose this is?”

“It could have been anything.”

“I don’t like it,” I repeated.

We scanned the chamber carefully. Sweety noted mold, tiny parasites, slugs, worms, and billions of airborne microorganisms. It looked all right, but it did not feel all right.

Suddenly our tacnet exploded and we could hear autovac, shattering the dark, echoing through the corridors.

Snow Leopard screamed, “Fire! Fire! Fire!…Stop! Cease Fire! Freeze!”

Priestess and I froze as well, listening to the transmissions.

“I got him!”

“Don’t move!”

“He went down!”

“Don’t move!”

“Where is he?”

“Cease fire! Cease fire.”

“He moved!”

“Tenners, cease fire!”

Priestess and I leaned against the wall, side by side, our E’s pointed into the darkened chamber.

“Sounds like they got him,” I commented.

“That’s good,” Priestess said. “Good.”

“Element, up! Lifies up! On me!” Snow Leopard ordered. Evidently they were securing the Scaler.

“Thinker, Priestess, remain in place.” Snow Leopard never stopped thinking. He didn’t need us. I let myself slide down the corridor wall to a sitting position, my muscles relaxing. Priestess did the same. I felt good, despite that awful tunnel. This empty chamber was creepy, but there was plenty of room so I could breathe. We weren’t going to be meeting the Systies after all-at least not today! It was wonderful, sitting there looking at Priestess. I felt the blood pumping through my veins. I had never been so alive.

Snow Leopard was in his element. “Careful, zap him if he moves. Medic up!”

Priestess’s arms twitched, a reflex to the call for a medic. The life team leader called his own medic, the other man on the capture team. Priestess started giggling. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. I just wanted to hold her, to look into her eyes. Even with the faceplate and the mud, even with the green glow and the dark, she was youth and beauty and life. We embraced, silently, awkwardly, and I swear I could hear her heartbeat. I never wanted to leave her.

I felt a faint shudder in the floor and we tensed, the moment of tenderness evaporated. Suddenly, the chamber floor erupted before us with a tremendous crack. Rock shrapnel ricocheted wildly in all directions, peppering us with jagged flecks of stone. Dust and earth filled the air. A scream echoed in my ears, and we were airborne. I landed on my back, breathless. I raised my head. Dust swirled all around me.

A new sound consumed the room, a metallic chittering, harsh and bone-chilling. I raised my E. The dust cleared. A grotesque, massive exoseg head appeared, covered with coarse black bristles, jerking from side to side in super-fast motion, giant bulging compound eyes glittering black. Long, nasty antennae probed and snapped like great whips. A hideous wet mouth emerged, pincers open, front legs brushing the rubble aside as the creature rose up out of the hole.

“Exoseg Gigantic Soldier…” Sweety warned me.

Too late, Sweety!

I stared stupidly at the impossible apparition. My comtop shrieked with alarms and Sweety relayed information to me in a rapid-fire staccato. I could not believe how calm she sounded.

The creature seized Priestess bodily in its two front legs, raising her in the air. She screamed a nightmare scream, arms pinned, her E still strapped to her chest. The creature opened its maw. It was going to eat her headfirst!

I came out of my shock at the last possible instant. My E had been aimed at the exoseg but I had been unable to use it. Now it was all instinct. I hit the trigger just as my thumb snapped the setting from v-min to xmin. I did not even think about it. There simply was no time. I aimed for the creature’s eye, just past Priestess’s struggling form.

The explosive round burst inside the creature and shattered half its head. The flash lit up the hideous scene briefly. The giant exoseg’s two front legs jerked apart, and Priestess fell to the floor. Ricocheting shrapnel peppered my faceplate.

That bone-chilling chittering-shrieking, freezing my blood. It was still alive! Something smashed against the back of my head, and I hit the floor face-first, stunned and bleeding. My faceplate was scarred and Sweety flashed me a warning. The darksight faded quickly. I groveled in the rubble, blind and helpless.

“Priestess! Priestess!” No response. Shrapnel had penetrated the darksight layer in my faceplate, but I still had my E. An icy fury convulsed me. We will die, but I will take that thing with me. I pointed my E into the smoking darkness and activated the light.

A nightmare scene. The sudden glare of my E’s white light, a chamber full of dust, the great grotesque exoseg snapping back and forth wildly above me in convulsions, its movements faster than the eye could follow, leathery chitin, gore and foam spraying through the air like a shower of meteorites. It was only halfway out of the hole in the floor.

“…exoseg still functioning…” Sweety told me that and a great deal more, but I was not listening.

“Thinkerrrr!” Priestess was trapped underneath one of the creatures black legs, crumpled in the smoking rubble at the lip of the crater in the floor-alive! Covered with blood and gore, she lifted her arms, reaching out to me.

I raised the E and aimed carefully again at the exoseg’s shattered head. I set it on auto xmin and fired. Multiple detonations annihilated the remainder of the creature’s head and brought down much of the ceiling as well. A white-hot pain burned into my left cheek. My litesuit was riddled with hits and the whole world shook. But still the exo did not die.

Headless, it groped wildly about with the pincers on its long front legs. Green pus spattered all over me. I screamed, overcome with horror. I held the E with both hands, the stock tight against my shoulder. My flash tore loose from my suit and triggered itself, bouncing around at my feet, casting giant obscene shadows that danced from wall to ceiling to wall.