“You have killed it, Slayer!” Deadeye held an ancient trident. He was clad in loose camfax, his face smeared with dirt.
“It’s still alive, Deadeye.” We faced a huge exoseg deep inside the hive, just the two of us, running on adrenalin and terror. I had just zapped it with biobloc. “Snow Leopard, Thinker,” I said, as calmly as possible. “I’ve got one exo that’s trying to kill me. It’s kind of annoying.” We were assaulting a big exoseg hive deep underground, and we thought we had all the exits blocked. If so, many exosegs would surely die. And possibly some Legionnaires-starting with me.
The leviathan had stopped, stunned, filling the tunnel before us. It shuddered, briefly, then moved backwards and stopped, twitching. My flare crackled away, harshly illuminating the ugly creature.
“What are you using, Thinker?” Snow Leopard appeared, his E raised, ready to fire. His pink eyes glowed behind his faceplate.
“Nice of you to drop by,” I replied. “I’m using biobloc. It’s a driller. No sign of the soldiers yet.”
“Lasers?” Merlin moved up, prepped to fire.
“No, I think it’s dying,” Snow Leopard said. We watched. The beast shuddered again, twitched, and stilled. The flare hissed noisily. All of Beta had arrived by then, lining up against the tunnel walls.
“Command, this is Beta. We’ve got a dead driller blocking the tunnel. We are investigating.” Snow Leopard reported our situation to our CAT commander.
“Confirm.”
“Let me have the next one, Slayer,” Deadeye pleaded. He had wanted the creature himself. I decided he was a perfect Legion auxiliary. Completely insane, just like us.
“Command, Beta. We’re advancing. We need a probe here.”
“Tenners.”
“All right, let’s go. The sensors show there’s nothing there-let’s just squeeze past.”
Snow Leopard and Coolhand led, burning off legs to make room. The raw earth of the tunnel pressed against my back and the great dead body plates of the creature pressed flat against my chestplate. We clambered over burnt, smoking leg parts. My muscles began to shake, involuntarily. Slime, all over my A-suit.
“I hate this.”
“Deadman!”
“Deto!” I shot back. That was a fairly mild curse, considering my intense desire to resolve the problem with a suitable charge of high explosives.
“What’s that noise?” We emerged at the driller’s rear, into the tunnel. Snow Leopard and Coolhand crouched just ahead of me, green shadows in my darksight. We could almost stand, in the tunnel. My skin crawled. A metallic chirping filled the air.
“We’re close!”
“Ohh, listen to that!”
The rest of Beta emerged, and we lined the tunnel, backs to the wall, E’s pointed downtunnel. The chirping continued, like a million metallic birds swarming in some nightmare nest. We rechecked our equipment very, very carefully.
“The readings are off the scale!”
“Where’s that probe?”
“Can I have one of those flashes?”
“Psycho, I want you up front with that Manlink.”
“Can I be excused for the rest of the afternoon?”
“Don’t forget-xmax, lasers and flame. I don’t want any more biobloc. And be careful with the lasers!”
“Deadeye, keep your head down!”
“I will be beside you, Slayer.”
“Beta, Command, sitrep.” Our CAT leader wanted a progress report.
“Nothing to report.” Snow Leopard almost whispered it. Nothing to report! It was an old Legion tradition, still very much alive: nobody needed any help. It slowly began to dawn on me that Snow Leopard wanted all the exos for himself.
Snow Leopard fired a burst of flame down the tunnel. It illuminated filthy dirt walls. The walls teemed with worms and miniature insect life and slime. The floor was littered with debris.
“What is that stuff?”
“Body parts and dead flesh. Food-and scavengers.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Advance.” The chittering became louder as we moved forward. My boots crunched and snapped, crushing nameless creatures of the dark underfoot. Snow Leopard and Coolhand sent short bursts of orange flame swooshing down the tunnel ahead from time to time. Smoke swirled all around us. I decided that I much preferred busting Cultists. But Central Command wanted a maximum effort to learn all we could about the exosegs, and Beta had been sucked in.
We came to more tunnels, intersecting our own. The chirping was driving me mad. Somewhere nearby, we would find a huge hive. We huddled where the tunnels crossed, and shot great rushes of flame down them, probing for life.
“Alert!”
“Life form!”
“Exoseg…”
I did not hear the rest. It charged down a side tunnel right at us. Astounding how fast it could move. It bounced from side to side off powerful black exoseg legs, a green hulk, flashing reflections in my faceplate in a dream-like, slow-motion sequence. I fired xmax at the same instant as Warhound. The double explosion brought down the tunnel on top of the creature. Snow Leopard, Coolhand, Merlin and Dragon blasted it with flame, and the tunnel filled with burning smoke and flying dirt. Sheets of flame reflected off my faceplate, and shadows darted wildly all around us. The tunnel shuddered with the blasts and I feared it would collapse on top of us.
“Whoo! What was it?”
“It was a breeder male, Thinker,” Sweety informed me.
“Breeders!” somebody exclaimed, “We must be close to the hive.”
“When did you first begin to suspect it?”
The tunnel echoed harshly with that metallic chirping. Breeders-they were supposedly harmless, they didn’t even have pincers, but without them, the exos could not reproduce so our orders were to terminate them all.
“Advance. On me.” Snow Leopard moved forward. The sensors showed the exos right up ahead! We would have to kill them all to stop that noise. We fired more flame downtunnel, a river of fire for our advance. The air around supercharged with heat.
“Put on your breather, Deadeye.” He slipped it on, his face already black with soot.
“Alert!”
“Life form!”
“Exoseg…”
We ignored the rest of the report. Snow Leopard, Coolhand, Psycho and I all triggered our E’s, firing on xmax as the exosegs appeared. We followed up with bursts of raw flame, splattering liquid fire everywhere. A burning shock wave hit us, a backblast of heat.
“…a whole bunch of them…”
“Exoseg Gigantic Neuter.”
“Are you guys all right?”
“Take it easy! Those are neuters, they’re not dangerous.”
“Keep firing! There’s more of them!”
We used the flame-it seemed to do the job. We advanced slowly through a tunnel of fire, flames now burning right into the dirt, running past our boots, flickering all around us. We passed the massive, shredded corpses of exoseg neuters, spitting flames.
“Beta, Command, sitrep.”
“Nothing to report!” Lunatics, we were all lunatics. I could have been a librarian, stacking cubes in a conditioned room, slowly turning pale and soft, eating well and sleeping all night. And knowing I’d be there, the next day, safe and sound.
“I think this is the nutrition chamber, Snow Leopard!” Coolhand sounded tense. Xmax blasts echoed all around us, drowning out the noise of the exosegs. Lasers flickered on my darksight. Coolhand and Warhound and I were so close we could have been grafted at the hips. Snow Leopard and the others remained slightly behind us, blasting neuters, firing down into another tunnel. We had just cut our way through several exosegs with lasers, and as the leading element, we had to force our way through the mess. My whole body shook. I took another mag but it did not help.
“Look at this! Deadman help us!” Warhound sounded horrified. He shone his flash up ahead. The hive burned, spitting blue-hot flames from our attack, the fire spreading, a fierce white glow reflecting off Warhound’s faceplate, illuminating his harsh features. The chamber, an underworld labyrinth constructed by the breeders from their own secretions, revealed many animal species from the world above, stacked carelessly for eventual consumption by the exos. I spotted one of those spidery, scaled treecats, frozen in death. What a sad end for a creature of the sunlight.
Eerie images danced on my faceplate. Coolhand peered cautiously into the nutrition chamber and raised his E to his shoulder. He triggered another burst of flame, liquid fire splattering everywhere. Snow Leopard crawled past me, the flames reflected on his faceplate. Behind it, his face could only be described as ecstatic.
“Command, Beta. We have reached the hive, cords as shown. No resistance.”
“Confirm Beta has located the hive. Stand by, Beta, we’re on the way.”
“Take your time, Command. We’re doing fine.” Sometimes I wondered about Snow Leopard, but being crazy was one of the job requirements. He was clearly over-qualified.
Deadeye pulled at my arm, his face blackened, breather firmly in place. “Slayer, remember my people!”
Remember his people-kill the exos. Yes, one at a time. There was a very good reason why we could not simply burn these vile nests out from above ground, why we risked our lives below ground.
“We have to check every one of these holes, guys-don’t forget!”
“Terrific.”
“Move! Let’s do it. And go easy on the flames.”
“Alert!”
“Soldiers!”
“Exoseg Gigantic Soldier…”
Someone let loose on xmax auto. I turned and found myself shoulder to shoulder with Warhound and Deadeye, just behind Snow Leopard, Coolhand and Psycho guarding the tunnel. The chirping rose in intensity. Closer! Closer!
“Xmax, gang!”
“Ten, sir!”
“Xmax auto!”
“Try and stop me!”
Smoke and flame, slowly clearing, and Exoseg Gigantic Soldier appeared, huge and black and horrible, twitching downtunnel, antennae cracking. Two, three…more! Pausing, for just a frac. Magnificent, perfect creatures, perfect killing machines.
“Die, you slime!” Snow Leopard, Coolhand and Psycho fired and a phosphorescent orange glow outlined them, crouching, molten statues of gold. They sent bursts of flame after the xmax blasts.
Sweety squeaked in my ears. I could not understand a word.
Dragon had me by the arm, and Deadeye danced hysterically around us, pointing into the nutrition chamber.
Priestess stood over one creature just past the treecat, her E pointed down, the light triggered. Deadeye raised his stabbing spear and shakily pointed it out to me. Priestess made a trembling gesture toward the creature with her free hand, and turned her face away, abruptly. I cautiously approached and I saw it. Eyes, open and staring. A Sunrealmer boy, covered in slime and filth, as still as death. The eyes were glazed, motionless, the eyes of the dead, the boy caked in congealed blood and covered with debris. Long dead, he had to be long dead.
Sweety spoke. “A Taka child,” she informed me. “The boy appears to be paralyzed. It is probably intended as food for the exosegs.” The boy could only stare blindly into our light, helpless and hopeless.
Deadeye lifted him off the floor. The boy was covered with filth and sores and rot, a lifeless corpse, surely, the arms flopping loosely, mouth gaping. Priestess cradled his head, pressing a biotic charger into one arm.
His eyes flickered. A spark, still alive, in the dark. A human heart, beating, alone, in the house of the dead.
No longer alone.
Ironman fired down the corridor, holding off more exoseg soldiers.
Snow Leopard reported our find. “…Beta. Repeat, one Taka recovered from the hive, alive. Exos are attacking. We could use some bodies to search the hive. Where’s that probe?”
“Beta, Command. Confirm you…”
Search the hive! We wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. But I didn’t mind, not any more. Perhaps there were more Taka to be found. No, there was no rush.
Numb, we watched as the smoke cleared ahead, Snow Leopard and Coolhand on my left, Psycho on my right with his Manlink, and the rest of Beta close behind us. We stood in a fighting circle, surrounding Deadeye and the Taka boy. The writhing heart of the hive burned brightly. The dismembered bodies of an army of exoseg soldiers surrounded us, burning at the edges. From time to time someone snapped off a burst of laser, or shot a fireball into the quivering dark, or blasted some movement with x. Exhausted, silent, and covered with filth, I could barely see out of my gore-smeared faceplate. There was no more emotion left.
We had fought our way into a large chamber, now veiled with smoke. We peered around cautiously. Past the dead and dying exoseg soldiers, the chamber was filled with Breeder males, motionless, all on their backs, legs upraised like tree branches. They appeared to be dead, lined up in orderly rows.
“What’s this?” Ironman asked shakily.
“This is the nursery,” Merlin replied. “And these are the breeder males-performing their last function.”
“What’s the last function?” I asked.
“Look out!” Psycho warned. Three strange-looking exosegs scuttled along one wall and disappeared into the dark, clacking their mandibles. With narrow waists, long legs and large heads, they appeared quite formidable.
“It’s all right,” Coolhand said. “Those are the females. They won’t hurt you.”
“The breeder males mate with the females here,” Merlin said. “It happens quickly. As soon as the egg is fertilized the breeder tries to separate and escape but he usually fails. The female uses a barb on her thorax to inject him with a powerful paralytic agent. Then she injects the fertilized egg into him. The breeder is dragged into the nursery with the other doomed males and is kept alive until the pupa develops and eats its way out, killing the host.”
“That’s the way these things have sex?” Psycho asked. “I think I prefer our own method!”
“I don’t know,” Priestess said thoughtfully. “Making the male carry the baby has a certain appeal.”
“The pupa develops into breeder, neuter or female-probably depending on what the hive needs. There’s not so many females.”
“What about the Soldiers and Dominants?” I asked.
“They’re a separate exoseg species. They all cooperate for…”
“Cut the chit-chat,” Snow Leopard demanded. “Those females are still in there, I can hear ‘em. Let’s burn it. Just burn it all.”
We all fired, a firestorm, a holocaust, and the last three females died almost instantly. We watched them burn without emotion. Maybe that damned noise would stop now.
In the long still hours of the dead of night, we gathered around the tacsit monitor in the squadmod, drinking dox. A faint green glow and the muted peeping of the monitors served as backdrop to hushed conversation. Priestess and I had the duty. Snow Leopard, Psycho and Dragon had bedded down in the lounge, but Coolhand, Merlin, Warhound and Ironman were still with us. I was hoping they would go to sleep so I could be alone with Priestess.
We had all cleaned up, but sleep was not easy with all those images from the hive darting around inside our heads. I had spent a long time in the shower trying to scour away the exo filth. Of course, I had been in armor while in the hive and nothing had touched my skin except my own sweat, but I still felt filthy. It had been that kind of place.
Coolhand had played a sad, lonely tune on his lektra but now he stopped. The quiet intensified the memory of the horror.
Priestess’s silky dark hair was still wet from the shower. She appeared fresh and innocent and her eyes could change a man’s life. She seemed completely unaware of her own powers.
“How’s the survivor? The boy?” Merlin asked. No one mentioned the fact that the boy had been the only survivor found. There had been enough bones and remains to fill a thousand nightmares.
“Back with his people,” Coolhand replied. “Deadeye says it was quite a scene. He escorted the kid back to the village unannounced, and the whole tribe went into shock. They’d already done the death ceremony.” Coolhand thought it all faintly amusing. As a matter of fact, Coolhand found just about everything faintly amusing. He took life very calmly.
“How is he mentally?” Merlin worried about the boy. Merlin always worried about something.
Priestess responded. “We identified the paralytic agent used by the exos, and countered it.” She paused to sip her dox. “Deadeye said he was in the hive about a week. It’s incredible how he survived. I can’t imagine what he ate, or drank, or how, as he was paralyzed. I don’t think I really want to know.”
“I think I would have freaked in a few hours,” Merlin said. “I almost lost it when those Scalers grabbed me, and they were humans.”
“It’s funny,” Coolhand said. “His people were so glad to get him back, yet they were planning to send him back to us. They said he belongs to us now.”
“He’s yours, Priestess,” I said. “You got your wish. Didn’t you want a Taka man?”
“I wanted a man, not a boy!”
“Deadeye followed orders and wouldn’t tell them who it was,” Coolhand said, “so we don’t have to worry about it.” He smiled again. His fingers toyed with the lektra, and a plaintive wail ran over my skin, a single, pure note.
“You know, it’s remarkable,” Coolhand added. “His people are hostiles, marginally allied with the Priests. And Deadeye said their council was going to meet on whether or not to surrender to us. The Taka don’t believe in words, they believe in deeds. We kill the exos, and return their boy. He confirms it. That’s all they need. All of them may surrender to us shortly. And all because of this boy.”
A silence settled over us again. The glow from the monitors added an eerie quality to our gathering. Another magic note arose from Coolhand’s lektra, like a bell sounding once in a still, cold night.
“How many more hives are there, do you think?” Warhound asked.
“Plenty,” Merlin replied. “Enough to keep us gainfully employed for quite awhile.”
Warhound sighed. “When I was in there,” he said, jaw muscles tightening, “I wanted to kill everything that moved. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just stay upstairs, and fill all the tunnels with gas, and explode it. I didn’t really believe anyone could be alive down there. Not until I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The Takas think the same way you do,” Coolhand commented.
“Take a look,” Coolhand said. He set aside his lektra, and spread a fotomap over the tacsit console, a brightly colored tacmap of the Sunmarch, Andrion 2’s primary continent. “The red areas represent exoseg territory-that’s the death zone. The Taka don’t go in there.”
“It’s quite an empire,” Ironman said.
“Right. And growing all the time. This is just an estimate, of course-but we’ve got a pretty good idea from debriefing the Takas.”
“What’s the purple area?”
“That’s the Realm of God. It has also been expanding-until recently. They’re pushed out by the exos, you can see. But check out the chronology-you can see where the exosegs appear to have started from.”
Someone read the legend out loud, “The Forest of Bones?”
“That’s what they call it. That’s our next target. It’s going to be a big op.”
“Terrific. Can’t you get us put back on Taka duty?”
“Sorry, gang, I just work here. Besides, it’ll be fun.”
“Right. I’ll get my party hat.”
The others drifted off to the lounge to sleep, leaving me alone with Priestess. I sat close beside her at the console and put an arm around her shoulders. I felt as if I were floating, alone with an angel, my own angel.
“What are we going to do, Thinker?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What are we going to do about Valkyrie?”
“How’s your eye?” I massaged the back of her neck.
“It’s better,” she said. “Do you think I was wrong-to love you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“We’re only human,” Priestess said. “Is it wrong to fall in love?”
“We’re not human,” I responded. “We’re soldiers of the Legion. Nothing we do is sane. I don’t blame us for falling in love. I don’t blame Valkyrie for being upset. She’s perfectly right. And we’re perfectly right as well. We’re all insane-understand?”
“You say such strange things sometimes, Thinker. I’ve always believed in the Legion.” She paused, her eyes unfocused, staring into an unseen world. “Will you always be mine, Thinker?”
“We’re immortals. We’ll live together for a billion years.” We kissed, and I closed my eyes, and the world spun softly around us.
She let go, gently, and sank back into her chair. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Why are you crying?” A stupid question to ask a girl.
“I’m not crying.”
“All right, you’re not crying.”
I stood and picked up my E from the weapons rack and went outside, leaving the door open behind me. A faint breeze rushed lightly over my skin. The east glowed purple but the west remained cold and black and full of stars. I sat down on the steps, the E in my lap. Priestess joined me, hugging herself in the sudden cold, eyes sparkling.
“I was very lonely in Hell,” Priestess said. “I was just trying to keep up with everyone. I thought I wasn’t good enough-I had these nightmares where people would be crying out for the medic and I would be paralyzed with fear, or too exhausted to move. Terrible nightmares. I was always afraid that I would fail-and I thought everyone knew it. I thought they knew that I was too soft, too weak.”
“What nonsense. You graduated Planet Hell, along with everyone else.”
“Yes, and I was terrified the whole time.”
“You think everyone else wasn’t terrified? Remember the snake cliff? Remember the swamp suckers? I’ve still got the scars.”
“People were always helping me. I never could have done it by myself.”
“That was the whole idea-working as a team. Everyone helping everyone else. Now we don’t even think about it, we just do it.”
“I used to dream about you at night,” Priestess confessed. “Remember the Wilderness? When the whole world was on fire? Sometimes you’d sleep nearby, and I would dream that you would come to me in the night, and make love to me.”
“Yeah, that’s funny. I was too tired to move.” But I had been dreaming of Priestess as well. I looked up and could almost feel the starlight, hitting my skin. A billion stars, glittering cold and hard, an endless, milky stream of stars. I did not want to face the future without Priestess. She gave me something to live for. I wanted to live a million years just like this, with Priestess’s hypnotic eyes burning into mine. A meteor shot across the sky, trailing a sparkling wake through the dark.
“Oh, it’s lovely.” Priestess seemed totally relaxed.
An alert tone pinged once. Behind Priestess, the tacsit console suddenly glowed red. She got to her feet and went back into the tac room. I followed.
“What’s this, Thinker?” Priestess stood poised over the main screen, reading the data. I joined her.
Two targets glowed on the screen. Humans, obviously, moving slowly through the forest along the ridge that faced us across the valley. I read through the data.
“What’s that they’re carrying?” Priestess asked. She settled into the duty chair.
ANOMALY, the screen told us. UNIDENTIFIED DEVICES, AS MARKED. UNSTABLE READINGS, UNKNOWN MATTER. The visuals showed the targets as heat images, humans, each carrying something that registered as an irregular, shifting blob of light.
“The sensors can’t ID it,” I said.
“It just means we haven’t seen it before,” Priestess commented.
“Still, it’s odd.” We watched them, two glowing heat images, moving up the forested slope, heading up to the ridgeline. I picked up a comset.
“Deadeye, Thinker.” I spoke in Taka. “Come in, Deadeye.”
“Deadeye here! Speak, Slayer!” Deadeye loved the comset. He thought it a marvelous device. He slept with it.
“Deadeye, are any of your people on the ridge across the valley? We see two unknowns in the forest, climbing up to the top of the ridge.”
“Is it the ridge with the yellow stone?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“No, Slayer, we have no warriors there.”
“Well, there’s two people there. Near the top.”
“The top! We will catch them, Slayer!”
“Let us know what you find.”
“Thinker, Deadeye out, tenners, tenners! Goodbye, Slayer.”
Deadeye’s auxiliaries camped not far from us. They would certainly track down these two intruders-probably Cultist stragglers, out to recon our squadmod. They just wouldn’t give up.
“Should I wake up Snow Leopard?” Priestess asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s just a couple of Taka.” I re-read the data. We watched the two unknowns, slowly approaching the top of the ridge. The trees masked the images much of the time. Deadeye’s auxiliaries were moving briskly down our ridge, heading for the valley. It would be quite a chase. The console continued to glow red. Suddenly it pinged again.
ANOMALY, the screen warned, POSSIBLE CAMFAX IMAGE SUPPRESSOR.
READINGS STILL INCONCLUSIVE. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE REACTION.
My blood went cold.
“Thinker!” Priestess stood up in alarm.
“The aircar!” My fist went down on the alarm, and the red alert claxon shrieked to life. I charged out the door, snatching up my E. I reached the aircar in an instant, leaping in as the assault door snapped open, Redhawk thrashing to life from an airbunk in the aisle. He slept in the car.
“Scut!” Redhawk cursed, “What is it?!”
“Move!” I said, “We’ve got targets!” Redhawk scrambled into the pilot’s seat and started flipping switches, tangled red hair flying as the car came to life, a sharp whine building to a throaty roar. The squad charged through the door as the aircar left the ground in a rising cloud of red dust. Dragon, Coolhand, Psycho, then Ironman, then Snow Leopard, then Merlin and Warhound scrambling in last. Nobody was dressed for combat but we were all armed.
“Count!” Snow Leopard, looking around wildly, no shirt, slipping into a camfaxed coldcoat.
“All here except Priestess on the tacsite!” Coolhand replied.
“Go! Go! Across the valley,” I urged Redhawk. The assault door slammed shut.
“Brief me, Thinker,” Snow Leopard ordered, fully alert and clutching an E.
“Two guys on the ridge over there. Scanner says they may be carrying image suppressors.”
“Image suppressors!” The squadmod had slipped away beneath us and suddenly the valley was below. The thickly forested ridge came right at us.
“Have you got ‘em?” Snow Leopard asked.
“I’ve got ‘em,” Redhawk replied. I could see the two figures on the cockpit scope, nearing the ridgeline.
“Comtops!” Warhound started tossing the helmets out of the storage bins. We lost altitude quickly, approaching the treetops. I slipped a comtop over my head, and the darklight lit up the dimmed interior of the car, a ghostly green world, swirling with phantoms.
“They hear us! They’re running.”
“Splitting up!”
“Form two elements for foot pursuit,” Snow Leopard commanded.
“Deadeye, we’re after them,” I said. “Keep coming!”
“We are coming, Slayer! Thinker, Deadeye, out!”
The assault doors snapped open and the night wind whipped into the car. A wild-looking bunch, we had dressed for a quiet night in the squadmod, but we all had E’s and comtops, and our targets were in terminal trouble. Coolhand pulled on his liteboots. Psycho leaned out the door with his Manlink, grinning like a hungry cannibal. He hadn’t even put on his comtop. We saw nothing out there except a dark sea of writhing treetops.
“Hit ‘em with stunstars, then insert us,” Snow Leopard said.
“I’ve got this one,” Redhawk said. The forest flashed brightly beneath us and a thunderclap split the night.
“Get the other one.” The aircar banked steeply and we held on tight. I could see the second target on the scope, darting past the trees. Redhawk fired again, and the screen erupted in a sheet of light. A second thunderclap sounded.
“Get us down there, Redhawk!”
“I can’t get through the trees-I’ll put you down on those rocks.”
“They’re both still moving!”
“The stunstar’s weakened by all those trees!”
“Decar!” The aircar hovered dizzily as Snow Leopard leaped into the dark, clutching his E. I followed Coolhand and Dragon, dropping down onto solid rock. My darksight lit up the night, the aircar hovering in a storm of green dust, tall trees all around us, Psycho and Ironman suddenly beside me, then Warhound and Merlin-all there! The aircar shot skyward again. We had been dropped onto a great cliff of yellow stone, at the top of the ridge overlooking the valley. We hustled down into the forest.
“Priestess, Snow Leopard. We’re on the ground, going after the targets.”
“Snow Leopard, Priestess. Tenners.”
I ran crashing through thick shrubbery, between tall black trees, under a tangled canopy, along the ridgeline. Cold and dark and wet, a forest for winter wolves, a place for hunters and prey, a bad place to die. I saw one of the intruders, magnified on my faceplate, sprinting down the opposite slope. Dragon and Psycho charged along beside me, and now we hurtled downhill, a wild fall, bouncing off trees and branches, tearing through nasty spiked bushes.
“Eeyow!” Psycho was in shorts, his legs suddenly cut and bleeding.
“Stunstars and V,” Snow Leopard ordered, “nothing else!” Psycho raised his Manlink and fired a stunstar, splitting the night, a tremendous flash and bang, the concussion hitting me right in the chest. I slowed briefly, aimed at the fleeing target, and fired a burst of auto V, V-min. Dragon fired V as well. We ran forward, again. Suddenly I careened down a steep dirt cliff, grasping at roots and branches, falling heavily into a tangled mass of vegetation. I struggled to my feet and forced myself forward.
The target, still on scope, weaved and danced. Psycho fired his Manlink again, the stunstar ripping through the air, the forest erupting ahead of us, a tremendous crack.
“He’s down.” Another flash, off to the left, and the aircar whistled past overhead. The car fired at the other target, whirling around for a second pass, an evil bird, glinting starlight.
We approached the target carefully. He was down, not moving.
“Careful! Keep it on v-min.” Psycho and Dragon and I had him bracketed. Coolhand caught up with us.
The target was face down in the muck, limbs askew. We would not even have seen him without the darksight. He wore camfax, head to foot. A cylindrical package laid a few marks away, also camfaxed. I took hold of his shoulder and turned him over as Dragon and Psycho stood over him with their weapons. His head rolled back loosely, his face plastered with mud and leaves. I brushed them away. An Outworlder! His eyes were open, glazed.
“He’s not breathing!”
“I’ve got him!” Coolhand was with us, and pulled a medkit from his coldcoat. He slammed a biotic charger onto the man’s chest and triggered it. The shock coursed through the Outworlder’s body.
“No response!” Coolhand tried it again. The body twitched, without life signs.
“Deadman!” Coolhand tore off his comtop and tossed it away. His narrow face streamed with sweat, and his curly brown hair was plastered to his brow. He checked the life signs, then triggered the device again and again, until smoke began to rise from the body. The Outworlder’s eyes remained open, his mouth agape. His body twitched, but the life signs did not change.
“No response,” Psycho said. “He’s dead, Coolhand.” He was on one knee, kneeling by his Manlink. Coolhand finally pulled the device away.
“Deto!” Coolhand was furious. The biotic charge should have worked.
“That’s an Outworlder,” I said.
“That’s a Systie,” Dragon said. Full body camfax. Good stuff, but he couldn’t hide from the Legion.
“What killed him?”
“Must have been the stunstar.”
“Snow Leopard, Coolhand. We’ve got our target. Looks like a Systie-stone dead! We couldn’t save him.”
“What? Death’s gate!” The response came immediately. “Ours is dead, too! He won’t respond to the biotic charge.”
“What the hell, over?”
“Don’t know, Coolhand. Investigate thoroughly.”
“Tenners.”
“The star shouldn’t have killed him,” Psycho said.
“Well, the V shouldn’t have killed him either,” Coolhand said. “Look-a cold knife!” A big, nasty blade, strapped to his waist. “That’s not Systie issue.”
“He’s got to be a Systie!” I said.
“Certainly,” Coolhand replied. “Let’s examine him carefully.”
“No wounds.”
“No comtop.”
“What’s in the bag?” The lightweight nitex pack contained dried rations. A canteen was strapped to the pack.
“That’s civilian ConFree camping gear, gang. And the rats are also ConFree.”
“Wonderful. No other equipment! Except the knife.”
“That’s good camfax.”
“It’s not Systie made.”
“It’s not standard issue, we can say that.”
“He dropped something,” Dragon said. He stood over a cylindrical package wrapped in camfax.
“Careful with that!”
Dragon opened it gingerly. A soft, camfaxed weapons sleeve, covering an image suppressor case.
“Well, that’s something!”
“Any markings?”
“This looks like a standard civilian suppressor case, available in any good ConFree tech store.”
Dragon opened it slowly. It contained a V gun.
“Deadman!”
“A V gun!”
“Blackstar Industries, M-92 Guardian heavy-duty V gun,” Coolhand said, “freely available to any ConFree citizen. A very low-profile weapon. I believe we’ll find the ID strip has been scrambled.”
“The image suppressor is what did them in,” I said. “They needed the V guns, I guess, to deal with the Taka. And they had to hide the image from us.”
“No other equipment. Not even a chron!”
He had been a young man-a soldier, surely. But he was nothing now. His body was empty, as inanimate as a rock, the eyes vacant. The eyes of the dead. The person who lived there had gone. Death, for all his efforts. I wondered what had motivated him to risk his life for the System. I wondered why he had died. I could feel only admiration for him. Surely he recognized it as a perilous mission. He had gone anyway.
“The boots?”
“Ultra-light armorite,” Dragon said. “I don’t see any markings.”
“Looks like civilian hikers.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“Nice. You don’t get much more low-profile than this.”
“Coolhand, Snow Leopard.” The tacnet crackled. “How did your guy die?”
“We don’t know, Snow Leopard. There’s no wound.”
“Troubling,” Snow Leopard said. “This is not good.”
“Could be Systie commandos,” Psycho said, “using ConFree equipment.”
“Could be just about anybody else, too!”
“Two of them. Reconning the squadmod.”
“What killed them?”
“How could both of them die?”
“Where did they come from?”
“These are our Systies, guys!”
“Yeah. Yeah. So where’s the rest of them?”
A shiver ran over my skin. “Don’t know. Let’s call in the aircar.
It’s getting cold.”