Marshall Thomas: Soldier of the Legion

Not anymore. The final string was cut and I was suddenly dizzy.

Then Psycho was shoving me, “Come on, Thinker, wake up! Time to go and get out of these stinkin’ suits and grab some eats!”

The meeting was breaking up and I was impeding the rough flow of tired, armored troopers making their way out of the Captain’s office.

“Yeah,” I said. “Time to go.”

As we approached Atom’s Road on the Spawn, I found a small viewport. Atom hung silently in space, a blinding silver dart that reflected all our hopes and dreams. As we drew closer, Atom’s immense size became clear. Two other cruisers were already affixed to their docking blisters, and they looked almost like toys in comparison to Atom. Deadman, she was lovely-crafted by the Gods! I knew she was also the ultimate killing machine, capable of knocking a planet out of orbit. We all knew her mission and her stats, but I best remembered that last line of the official description: “The C.S. Atom’s Road represents the united power and resolve of the citizens of the Confederation of Free Worlds.” She was ours-and she was a mighty weapon.

“Stand by for vac run red.” A star jump! The announcement found me in my tiny cube on Atom, trying to activate the wall desk. I knew that all elements of the 12th had arrived, all four cruisers were secure and power was building to open the artificial wormhole. Atom would hold open the dimensional vortex all the way to our destination, where it would slam shut behind us with a light show that would announce to everyone in the sector that we’d arrived.

At first, I assumed I would be sharing my cube in shifts, but Priestess had burst in, almost giddy with the news that they were our own cubes. We weren’t used to such luxury.

Without fanfare or further warning it came, with a great shudder and a high-pitched whine. Atom poked a hole in the universe and hurled us through it. Into nothing, nothing to see because nothing was there. We all felt it, though. There was a kind of pressure that closed in on you, and seemed to reduce your field of vision a bit. I asked one of the techs if the dimension we were traveling through had existed before or if we had created it-and why was it that there was nothing in it but us? He looked at me with pity and just shook his head. I resigned myself to my fate. I was a great believer in fate.

The void between the stars is like the hand of death. I was a spark, hurtling into the dark, my past forever gone. A bitter cold numbed my bones. My soul froze, I think, but not from the cold. I knew we were never coming back.

I thought a lot. I had plenty of time to think, lying in my bunk, staring at the overhead. I’m not sure, anymore, whether or not thinking’s good for you. As best as I can recall, every time I’ve gotten in trouble, it was preceded by heavy bouts of thinking. I’ve got to give it up one of these days. But not between the stars.

Atom’s open mess was full of Legion troopers in camfax fatigues and black-suited Fleet Command personnel; FleetCom vacheads, we called them. It wasn’t lunchtime but every table was taken and there was an awful racket. I spotted Warhound sitting alone, writing something with a lightpen on a starlink datascreen. As I approached, he shifted a hand to conceal the screen.

“What you doing, Warhound?” I asked as I pulled out a chair.

“I was…just writing my mom.” He lowered his eyes. Warhound was a good kid with sandy hair cut close to his scalp. Sunken, pale blue eyes dominated a rugged crudely-cast face.

Writing his Mom. Deadman! Many of the younger troopers had only known a mother’s love, never a lover. We’re innocents, I thought, in the service of a savage god.

“How’s the headache?” I asked. He seemed to suffer more from the effects of our wormhole transit than most. Priestess had given him medication for the pain. Stardrive sure didn’t help. The pressure made it hard to take even without a headache.

“Better. Thanks.” Warhound resumed writing his letter, forming the words carefully.

I called up a dox from the table menu and popped the cap. Breaking the seal heated the dark liquid instantly and the rich, sweet aroma flowed over us. Hot dox. Undoubtedly better than sex!

Warhound may have been an innocent, but I knew that, if need be, he would die for us, without hesitation. He was as loyal as a dog. Warhound was not the brightest star in the heavens but he was one of us now. He knew, after Planet Hell, that we’d die for him, too.

As I sipped my dox, my mind drifted. This trip wasn’t a pleasure cruise. If Outvac Sector Command wanted to retask Atom’s entire group to the far side of the Outvac, there must be more at stake than they’d told us. A couple of vacheads at the next table chatted about how unprecedented this deployment was, and I listened carefully. According to them, moving Atom would leave a huge gap that would have to be filled with forces drawn from elsewhere, and moving those forces would require further adjustment. Command was spooked about something and very little spooked the Legion.

“Hi, guys.” Ironman joined us, setting down a tray with ice water and a power bar. Ironman was Beta’s youngest soul, just out of mid-school and still growing. He faced the future with hope and faith. Long brown hair hung over one eye as he stirred his ice water with a straw. Strikingly handsome and superbly fit, Ironman was a lifter, proud of his growing physique. I happened to know that he came from a Legion world, a privileged world. What a fool! He was underage, why had his parents consented? Bright, dynamic, handsome, strong-he had it all, his whole life ahead of him. Everybody liked Ironman. What in the name of Deadman’s death was he doing here? The Legion wasn’t for innocents like Ironman. The Legion wanted the dreamers, the drifters, the doomed and the lost.

“Is everything tenners, Thinker? Something wrong?” Ironman smiled tentatively, revealing even white teeth.

“No. It’s nothing, Ironman.” I felt very protective of him, though I’m not sure why. Every night I prayed to Deadman for his soul. But then again, I prayed for everyone in Beta.

I found our pilot, Redhawk, in Spawn’s aircar bay with his lover. A long line of fearsome black birds filled the bay, gleaming with slick, silent and deadly. My blood stirred, just looking at those lovely ladies. I located our own car by the tail number-24B. Coiled like a snake, ready to strike. I ran my fingers over her wet, icy cold skin.

I loved aircars. They could hover like bees with the airblast from fans hidden under the fuselage or hurtle through the sky like a fighter. Fully armored and heavily armed, the assault aircar was a true battlefield superiority weapon. Aircars were equipped to insert a squad into the target area as well as provide tactical air cover and retrieval.

“Don’t touch my girl.” Redhawk stepped out of the shadows under the fuselage. Tangled red hair fell to his shoulders. His pale splotchy face was spattered with slick. His sparse mustache and scraggly beard looked even rattier than usual. Clad in filthy sleeveless coveralls, he clutched an angular tool I couldn’t identify.

“How’s she doin’, Redhawk?” I gave him a big grin. I couldn’t help it. I really liked the guy.

He laughed. “She’s hot and wet. No foreplay required. Give us the word, we lift.” He looked up at the car with fierce adoration, scratching his chin absently. Redhawk was a free spirit. He could work on the aircar for days without sleep or sustenance. At other times, he would collapse in a stupor, seemingly developing laziness as a serious art form. Once in the cockpit, however, his genius came to light.

“Come on in, Thinker.” Redhawk stepped up through the open assault door into the aircar. I joined him, settling back into one of the crash seats. Laughing, he produced two icy cans of dark bitter from a refrigerated equipment rack, and tossed me one. I popped the cap and let the freezing lager sluice down my throat. Bitter was illegal in the aircar bay but Redhawk had never been bound by the rules.