Marshall Thomas: Soldier of the Legion

Suddenly Snow Leopard appeared, stepping out of the smoke like a phantom, firing one-handed down the corridor just like on the range, seizing me by one arm to guide us into another room. A tremendous crack from up above. “Legion on the roof. We’ve got the roof! Fight your way out, guys! More Systies on the way!”

“Where’s the Mocain?” Lowdrop looked around wildly. Merlin screamed. Priestess bent over him, frantically working on his legs.

“The Systies have her!” I replied, stepping up to confront him. “It was Gravelight and Priestess alive, or all three of them dead! Don’t you understand? We’ve lost her!”

He turned from me. “Gravelight, did you get anything?”

“I don’t know!” she moaned. “It was a bloody mess! I don’t know!”

“All right, evac! Unit evac! Lowdrop calling…”

Sassin blew a massive hole in the roof, showering us all with debris. He didn’t need any further invitation. Boudicca crouched in the doorway, firing auto xmax down the corridor. An aircar hovered right overhead, firing chainlink laser. More debris came raining down. An A-suited Legionnaire appeared in the hole in the ceiling, covering us all with his Manlink. Evac lines came shooting down, crashing onto the floor, steaming. The smoke was so thick I could hardly see, even with the darksight.

“Out! Out! Evac!” The A-suit boomed. “Snap on and pull!” We got Merlin tied on immediately. Priestess went up with him, shooting up through the rafters abruptly. The Legionnaire in the A-suit came crashing down to the floor and took up a position by the door, firing a Manlink. Boudicca abandoned the doorway and seized one of the evac lines. I pulled and went shooting up into the rafters, beams crashing into my comtop, flames whooshing past me.

I shot into the aircar’s open assault door like a rag doll, landing breathlessly on top of Sassin. Two A-suited troopers from CAT 21 worked the extractors, hauling us in like fish. The car had been stripped for evac duty. Lasers flicked past the outside, smoke filling the cabin, and I could hear xmax peppering the skin. Boudicca and Snow Leopard came hurtling in, slamming against each other. Then Lowdrop cartwheeled right into me.

“Two’s free!” the aircar’s pilot spit out as he shot away from the building, hauling the A-suited trooper along behind on the evac line, dangling in the air, a wild ride through bleeding skies. The snow had stopped.

“Opscon to Downside. Recall! Recall! All units evac Coldmark. Immediate recall, all units evac. Recall! Recall! Quit fooling around and get outta there!”

A flaming aircar went hurtling past us, disintegrating. The crew reeled in their Two and he crashed in and the assault door snapped shut immediately. We arced into a power climb.

Snow Leopard wrenched off his comtop and threw it angrily to the floor. Her hands scarlet, Priestess desperately worked on Merlin. His lower legs had been shredded. She was covered with blood.

“Save him!” Lowdrop and I tried to help her with Merlin, but my fingers did not work.

“Did Warhound get out of the aircar?” Snow Leopard demanded.

“I didn’t see Warhound or Dragon,” I answered.

“Coolhand made it,” Priestess responded. “How about Redhawk? How about Psycho?”

“Redhawk got out,” I replied. “Psycho was in the courtyard when the Systies strafed it with their lasers.”

“Deto!” Snow Leopard almost bit the curse in two. “How is Merlin?”

Gravelight furiously confronted me, face ashen, eyes wet and swollen. “We could have had the Mocain!”

“Shut down, you raving lunatic! You and Priestess would both be dead if it wasn’t for me! I don’t give a damn for your Mocain!” I was in no mood for this nonsense.

“You ignorant fool! You have no idea how important she is!” Gravelight trembled with rage and frustration.

“I know how important Priestess is! The Systies were in the doorway, psycher! I killed one just as he shot at Priestess! It’s a miracle he missed! There was no way we could have recovered that Mocain!”

“That’s enough!” Lowdrop cut in, pulling Gravelight away from me. “He’s right, Gravelight. You would have died, too. You all did your best! It’s over!”

Boudicca wrenched her comtop off, revealing a flushed, sweaty face, bright red hair and the Legion cross on her forehead. She collapsed against the aircar’s fuselage beside Snow Leopard. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders protectively and pulled her to him, hiding nothing.

“Hey, girl-how you doing?” His face was grim.

“Hot and wet, kiddo. Hot and wet. I could use an ice-cold shower.”

“Well, we’ll do one together.”

“You’re on, kiddo. You’re on.”

Priestess continued working on Merlin. There was nothing I could do to help. There was nothing for me to do at all. I closed my eyes, exhausted and overcome with anger and frustration. Deadman works in strange ways, I thought. He works through us, but he doesn’t make it easy. We had saved Valkyrie from the grasp of our foes, and saved Merlin from an awful death. Maybe it was up to us…to do what we could, for those we love.

“Does that hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Come back in ten hours. You’ll be called. Next!” We looked around the body shop of the Spawn. I could hardly believe we had made it back, but the fighters had kept the Systie fleet very busy. Now we were on vac run red, and my hands were encased in biogloves, one arm was bandaged and my torso covered with burn pads. The body shop was very, very busy.

“Thinker! How are you?” I wandered in a daze. White-suited lifies and medics rushed around urgently with biopacks and wheeled the casualties into the operating rooms. I looked up. Boudicca sat on a table with one arm draped around Valkyrie. Boudicca still wore her litesuit, peppered with shrapnel hits and scorched from the fire and splattered with dried blood. Valkyrie was still in the dark monk’s robe, bleeding from the lip.

“Valkyrie! It’s good to see you.” I reached out and took her hands in mine. Her emerald eyes flickered, and once again it was just the two of us, against the world. She didn’t say anything at first. I noticed a lot of blood on her robe.

“Hello to you, too, Thinker!” Boudicca said sarcastically. “Appreciate your concern. I’m all right, thank you. She may have broken some ribs. We have to wait a bit to find out.” Boudicca seemed perfectly happy, with her Two at her side.

Valkyrie turned from me, with dull eyes, talking slowly, barely whispering. “She raped me, Thinker. She degraded me. She annihilated my soul. She turned me into a slave, a cipher. I wasn’t Gamma Two any more, Thinker, I was Gamma Zero. I did whatever she wanted. I was a good slave. Everything they told us about the Systies is true.”

I swallowed hard. I said nothing. What could I say?

“But I got my soul back, Thinker. And it felt so good. I’m going to kill Systies for the rest of my life.” Her gaze swept over the body shop. Over in the corner they were cutting someone out of a fused A-suit.

“So many casualties!” Valkyrie whispered. “So many…how many dead?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I responded quickly.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? How can it not matter?”

“It doesn’t matter!” I insisted. “We got you back, that’s what’s important. We took you back! And the entire galaxy will know it!”

“But look at the cost! How many dead? It’s crazy! You should have left me! All these wounded troopers. They don’t even know me. They must hate me!”

“Don’t you understand anything, Valkyrie?” It bothered me that she could not see it. “That’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter who you are, or whether it was just you or a hundred others as well. The point is, you’re a soldier of the Legion. And the enemy had you. And the Legion was going to get you back. And nobody was going to count the cost.”