Marshall Thomas: Soldier of the Legion

“Stun rounds!” Psycho quipped. “Yes, sir! We sure wouldn’t want to hurt anybody.”

What a bloodthirsty little smartass. Psycho was a mental case. Snow Leopard spent a lot of time holding him back, but he was smart and fast.

I was not happy about the V-min, either. V rounds would stun and normally induce unconsciousness but minimum power didn’t pack much of a punch. I exited the aircar, adjusted my gloves, draped my E across my chest and yanked at the jumble of equipment strapped to my waist.

Snow Leopard looked appraisingly at the extra equipment I carried and cracked a grin, letting his guard down for a moment. “You look like a military surplus sale, Thinker.”

Dragon chimed in, “Hey, Thinker, can I borrow something if I need it down there? You know I don’t like to carry stuff.”

Psycho could be more obnoxious than Dragon. “Hey, Thinker, can you haul my gear, too?”

“Blackout, will you?” I didn’t mind. I always took as much stuff as I could carry. I knew the only way I’d really need something was to leave it behind.

The forest darkened. I glanced up at the clouds blotting out the sun. Violet shadows and a fine mist filled the air. Angel wings hovered above me. We’d named the delicate, jelly-like creatures air angels.

The entrance lay at the edge of a blackened, crumbling, dead city, choked with vegetation. Enormous tree roots snaked around the city, strangling it with glacial patience. Massive green trees rose amid the shattered stones of a fossilized past. Tiny, colorful flying creatures glided past, trailing the air angels. A stronger breeze stirred the forest. Nothing on screen.

We stood in the heart of the past. Broken stone blocks rested all around us, the tomb of a city, now part of the forest. It was officially designated Site 5543. The mist turned to pelting rain. Perfect-the tunnel will fill up with water and we’ll all drown.

We gathered around the entrance, along with a few life techies that had just arrived in another aircar. Then Squad Alpha arrived to guard the area and watch our backs. It could be a trap. We still didn’t know what we were up against or where the damned Systies were hiding. This tunnel or passageway would be a lovely spot to trap and kill a few Legion troopers.

Our camfax automatically blended with the surroundings. At that moment, we looked dark and wet. I re-ran the system checklist on my comtop. The darksight worked fine. So did the breather and the comset. We wouldn’t need the breather except for the water. Unless the tunnel caved in. Or they used gas. Or smoke.

Hardly anything to worry about.

“This could be tremendously amusing.” Coolhand had perfected his rather grim sense of humor on Planet Hell. A tall, slim youth, he came from some lost, hopeless spacer ratworld. Curly dark brown hair, friendly green eyes, a narrow, clean-cut face, tanned a pale brown. He was a musician, happiest when strumming his ionic lektra, his only real possession. In the field he was cautious, but good, so they made him a Two.

He looked up as three more aircars converged on our location from different directions-the clearing would soon run out of room. “I feel kind of sorry for this Scaler,” Coolhand said, gesturing towards the aircars. “All this attention. I think the brass are upset ‘cause they haven’t found anybody to shoot yet.”

There had been no opposition to our landing. No evidence of Systie intrusion at all. The fireworks had been for nothing, but we had no regrets, not for an instant. There is only one way to land on a new, potentially hostile, planet-successfully! And that meant kill anyone or anything that got in the way. There’s no time to quibble over philosophy, or to chat with the natives, discussing your benign intentions.

Back on Atom, during the long voyage, I’d admitted the truth to myself. I’d loved Hell. It was my darkest secret. I must be insane, I’d thought. Somehow I slipped past the psych tests. Would they send me back? Eventually, I discovered the others were just as crazy. The Legion knew exactly what it was doing. We were the scum of the Outers, the dreamers and the lost. We looked up at the stars and found the Legion gate. It was a one-way gate-no one who went in ever came out. No information ever came out, either-except what the Legion wanted to tell.

Whatever you want, you get. That’s what they told us as recruits. I didn’t believe it, of course. Nobody did. It was a complete shock, then, when we discovered it was really true. Whatever you want, you get. We could write our own ticket, and if the final stop did not turn out to be quite to our liking, we had no one to blame but ourselves.

Hunting Scalers-nonsense! The Systies were the only real objective. But we hadn’t found them, so we’d find the Scalers, and interrogate them.

“It looks scary, Thinker.” Priestess spoke on private to me. Priestess had walked into the face of death for us on Planet Hell. We all loved her, but nobody had yet touched her. I guess we didn’t want to spoil it. This way, she belonged to us all and us to her.

“That’s a ten,” I responded, pleased she had confided in me, and not somebody else. “I’d rather stay here.” She knew I did not like tunnels. The nasty, nasty, narrow tunnel made its way down to a very unpleasant-looking underwater stream.

It would be difficult. Difficult, but probably possible. Probably possible, a favorite phrase from Planet Hell, used as a prelude to many grim adventures. A wave of fear edged its way into my bloodstream as I watched the scan again on my faceplate. My legs turned to jelly.

“Tenners, let’s go.” Snow Leopard slipped into the hole, crawling in head first, followed by two Life Science techs.

We had been through a lot with Snow Leopard, and trusted his judgment. He was from Magna 4, a gigantic iceworld best described as a hostile environment. He resembled a white shadow, with blue-veined, almost translucent skin, pale pink eyes, and hair so blond it looked almost white. We knew we could trust him to do the sensible thing. He had changed since the early days in Providence. They did strange things to those that they made a One. Some members of the squad thought that he was no longer quite human, but we’d all follow him anywhere.

Into the dark, headfirst into that evil hole, squirming down at a steep angle. I was in the rear, following Priestess. Wet, muddy earth, all over my suit. The darksight on my faceplate adjusted gradually and soon everything appeared to be glowing a faint green. It was an incredibly tight fit, my comtop pressing against the tunnel ceiling. There was barely room to move my arms, barely room to breathe. I felt awkward with my weapon cradled in my arms and my equipment scraping the walls.

The dark closed in, and there was only me, crawling, and Priestess, ahead. I can do this forever, I thought. Just don’t stop; if I stop it will close in even more. My claustrophobia had amused my instructors in basic.

“Beta, Snow Leopard.” The voice crackled on the tacnet. “The probes we sent ahead have been hit, they are blind. Coolhand, Psycho, move in and let’s take that Scaler.”

I cut in, “What do you mean ‘hit’? Hit with what?”

“Don’t know.” Snow Leopard didn’t waste words on bad news.

A voice I didn’t recognize interrupted, “Keep it on v-min, guys.” Must be one of the techs getting anxious about his specimen.

I kept crawling.

Snow Leopard grunted over the comm and I heard a splash. “Damn it. All right, gang, I’m in the stream.” More splashing. “It’s a little slippery.”

I willed myself forward. Priestess’s boots were right in my face. The blood rushed to my head, my heartbeat pounded in my ears. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.

The boots disappeared and suddenly I was sliding and falling. An instant later, I landed in an icy black stream on top of an indignant Priestess. We scrambled apart and I followed her again, swimming like a snake in a sewer pipe.