126652.fb2 Soldier of the Legion - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 3

Soldier of the Legion - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 3

Chapter 2: Year Zero

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.

I had to stop thinking about my fate, about Command’s fears and my own. Lost, hopeless and undoubtedly insane, I had been drawn to the Legion, as if sleepwalking. It seemed as though the twin angels of Love and Death haunted me day and night. In my dreams of home, Tara beckoned to me, a symbol of my lost life. She’d laugh at me, and say I was too soft. I wanted only to forget her, but I couldn’t. Death, my other angel, stalked my dreams as well.

“Getting scared?” Redhawk asked. He draped himself over his seat lazily, his coverall zip half open, exposing a sweaty, hairy chest.

“I get braver with every sip of this stuff,” I replied.

“I ran into Valkyrie in Supply,” he said. “She asked about you.”

I hesitated. “Yeah? What did you say?”

“I told her you had some serious second thoughts about the relationship. And I reminded her that I was available and damned good in bed. She told me to…well, never mind what she told me. It wasn’t very ladylike. So I guess she’s still stuck on you.”

Visions of Valkyrie, Gamma Two, came to me, faintly. What kind of dark magic, what kind of evil alchemy, could find love in the Legion? Visions of silky golden hair, and a great hush. We’d slept out under the stars, on Hell. I’d been Gamma Four then-it was before I was transferred to Beta Squad. Once, we’d camped by a cold, black ocean with luminous silver waves and a beach of silver sand, with death waiting in the night. I blessed the Gods when she first came to me, but it got to be lonely after awhile. She was always there, but her thoughts were far away. For all I knew, she could have been a biogen. But I knew she wasn’t-I could understand biogens.

“Thinker, you still with us?” Redhawk slouched in his seat, finishing off his bitter. “Man, you’ve got it bad!”

I smiled. “Yeah. I guess so.” Here, even Hell seemed like the distant past-a previous life.

The rumor mill spread the word long before the official announcement: We were about to exit the wormhole and re-enter normal vac. I was lost in a crowd of troopers facing a giant d-screen in one of the rec rooms when I heard a faint whining. Reality languidly stretched in on itself. The pressure that had given us all mild tunnel vision abruptly vanished with a jolt. For a moment, I fought for control of my stomach. Then it was over. The ship shuddered and groaned, and the screen filled with stars. A savage cheer ripped through the ranks.

This was routine for the vacheads but good news for us. We made it! The future was dark, but we were right on course.

Troopers pointed excitedly at the screen amid cries of, “Look at that!” and “It’s beautiful!”

Andrion 2, itself in orbit around Andrion’s yellow dwarf star, grew larger and larger, glowing on the screens. It was truly lovely, truly marvelous, with great luminous green oceans and continents covered with brightly tinted forests. Rugged black mountain ranges spawned cold blue rivers that traced aimless patterns through endless flowerfields. Vast silver deserts of sand dominated cold plateaus. The polar areas gleamed white, and wispy clouds streaked brilliant skies. It reminded me a little of Veltros, and I tried to put the thought away. My heart beat faster. The future would depend entirely upon us.

Back in my cube, I collapsed onto my bunk, slid a datapak off the shelf and triggered it. I must have seen it a hundred times, but it still stirred my blood. A thin, silvery line, almost invisible, etched into the dark. It was the long-range image of the Systie antimat track entering this system. No doubt it was very much like the one we had just made on our wormhole exit. It was why we were here, prepped to drop onto this far-off world.

Outvac Sector Command-Starcom-had detected the Systie track quite by accident, in the vicinity of the Andrion System. When a ship exits an artificial wormhole, the negative energy slams the portal shut and the ship leaves a searing antimat trail-an unmistakable footprint on the cosmos-as the ship powers onto vac drive.

Why would the Systies be interested in the far rim of the Outvac? The Andrion System was the only habitable system in the sector, and we could think of no conceivable reason for a System starship to be here. It was, after all, deep in ConFree territory, our territory, and the Systies had seriously breached the treaty by intruding. CI had concluded their target was Andrion 2-what else could it be? There were no other obvious choices. The Legion had reacted immediately. ConFree had had no active colonization plans for Andrion 2, a Phase Four planet. The Systie antimat track changed all that.

Our mission: seize the planet, repel any Systie intruders, establish control, and find out what they were up to.

ConFree and the System were not officially at war, but the Legion and the DefCorps knew better. In this uneasy truce, both sides knew that only the survivors compiled the incident report. Regs were regs, and we took them seriously in the Legion, but when we were in a remote sector and up against the DefCorps troops on the far side of the Outvac, there weren’t any rules. It didn’t matter what the diplomats said later.

“You still lookin’ at that?” Coolhand stood in the open door to my cube. I always left it open to make the tiny cube a bit less claustrophobic.

“Hi, Coolhand, come on in.” Coolhand had earned his name by his relaxed attitude to our dangerous profession.

“They’ve launched the recons.” He pulled the little wall seat open and settled his lanky frame onto it. His knees hit the edge of my bunk.

“Yeah? Are we going to see it?”

“I’m afraid the reserved seats are all taken, Sir. Standing room only.” He laughed easily. My first friend in the Legion, Coolhand was a tall, handsome youth who always seemed to have the answers. As our Two, he served as Snow Leopard’s backup. I admired him, and trusted his judgment.

Star Survey had mapped Andrion 2 decades before, and that’s all we had. That, and the Systie antimat track. Sending another automated probe would only have postponed the problem-so ConFree sent the Legion instead.

The probes brought back a lot of data, but I knew we couldn’t trust the probes. All the biotech in all the sensor systems wouldn’t provide the kind of information that one Legionnaire plodding along in the mud could.

Andrion 2, the second planet of a seven-planet system, orbited a single, hot-yellow prime, similar to Veltros. Only two of the seven planets interested us, the second and the third. Both were in the life zone. Andrion 2’s status had been rated Class A despite its somewhat lighter-than-standard gravity. We knew from the probes that it was inhabited by human stock.

We had only a few, fleeting images of a frail, savage-looking race, apparently dwelling in the deep flower forests like animals. They had not always been savage. A great pre-industrial civilization had once flourished here. There were hundreds of ancient, crumbling cities and fortresses of stone, all deserted, dotting the planet, disappearing in the tightening grip of the forests, or stark and lonely on high plateaus and mountains. This had once been a growing culture, laid low by some unknown disaster. A warning for us. We had many images of strange texts carved in the stone, but no one could read them.

I knew the images of the natives by heart; we all did.

I’d made a solid of two of them frozen in mid-leap. I kept it on a little shelf above the fold-down desk. A young female, dressed in a ragged, filthy tunic of animal scales, fleeing the probe in terror into a tree line, long tangled dark hair streaming out behind her. She wore a gold bracelet on her left arm. Another scale-clad savage, a male with matted brown hair, looked up from a forest clearing, yellow teeth bared, clutching a crude metal-tipped spear.

Coolhand followed my glance to the solid and plucked it off the shelf. “She kind of has your nose, Thinker, she could be your sister. So marriage is out…sorry!” He chuckled. I had a reputation as a lover, because of Valkyrie. “Remember, they’re mortals. This shot was taken long before you were born, so she’s a wrinkled grandmother by now. Maybe even dead.”

Images, at the end of infinity, to tell us what we had to know. A dead civilization and savages in the forests and a Systie antimat track. What possible interest could the System have in this world? The natives are delicately built, I thought, not quite as tall as we are. Clean features, pale brown skin. The male had cold grey eyes; hers were a smoky brown. No records in the history of how they got here. Had they sprung from forgotten, kidnapped slave labor? Someone had brought them here in the dim past, but it was not a unique story. It had taken the Systie intrusion for anyone to take an active interest.

The human stock on Andrion 2 had sprung from the warm, shallow seas of ancient Planet Earth, like all of us. I could trace my ancestors to the Inners, but when had Andrion 2’s human ancestors departed Earth? It sent a chill down my spine.

In stark contrast to Andrion 2, Andrion 3 was a violent, volcanic world, bleeding flame and lava from millions of glowing wounds, cloaked in eternal clouds of thick, black, poisonous smoke, and rocked by spectacular explosions from great volcanic mountains. Andrion 3 was also inhabited: by exosegs. That would have been bad enough, but these exos were giants, horrific primeval eating machines. Planet Hell had swarmed with exosegs, but I didn’t mind them; they seldom grew larger than my foot. I prefer foot-sized exos, they’re easier to squash.

Andrion 3’s exos were a nightmare. I hate exosegs. I especially hate large exosegs. And very large exosegs terrify me. The techs labeled them Exoseg Gigantic.

Tens of thousands of different species thrived on Andrion 3, mindless swarms scrambling about madly through a world on fire, feeding off whatever lived in the bitter, black, rocky soil and off each other, most of them burrowing deep underground to live in teeming hives in total darkness. I wanted no part of them.

Survey had noted a dominant species. It held the edge over the others in intelligence as well. These two factors do not necessarily go together, but in this case they did. My programming warned me to be suspicious of any creature that shows the slightest spark of intelligence, and especially of a dominant species that is intelligent as well. The Dominants had established a total control over the other species, which they used to perform a variety of tasks for them. We had no idea where the basis for control lay, but it was not physical size or strength or aggressiveness, for the Dominants thoroughly controlled a larger soldier species which should have been able to tear them to pieces at will.

A hive life! My skin crawled every time I looked at the images. We had no plans to visit Andrion 3, but it was always a good idea to know the neighborhood.

There was nothing of value here, yet the Systies were evidently interested in something. If they seized power on Andrion 2, the inhabitants were doomed.

The System, we called them Systies, was a vast, rotting galactic empire, ruled solely by force. It spanned more than half of the inhabited galaxy. The Mocains, the dominant race, were humans, but they sure didn’t act like it. Slavery nurtured the System, and the Legion was their nemesis. We killed slavers whenever we found them, and left their ships running red with blood. Justice obsessed the Legion and we were utterly merciless. The memory of the faces of those tortured slave-girls haunted me. I had no doubts. We were on the side of the angels. Avenging angels.

Atom’s recons darted into orbit around Andrion 2 and proceeded to do a fastmap. The results showed no power systems, no Systies, and no human stock.

I admit that I felt a little relieved. No Systies! Perhaps ConFree had over-reacted. Maybe the Systies were not interested in Andrion 2 after all. But where were the natives? We could only assume they had hidden in the forests. It seemed strange that a total sweep of an inhabited world had turned up not a single sign of the most advanced species on it.

I didn’t like this, not one bit.

Nearing assault orbit, we took every precaution. Four cruisers detached themselves from Atom and launched a swarm of smaller ships. Fleets of scouts and fighters and probes swept near and far throughout the system. Nothing stirred. Only the noises of nature, hissing and chirping and whistling into our sensors. A task force of fighters orbited Andrion 3, just to be sure. Recon dropped into the atmosphere of Andrion 2, and swept over the planet.

We watched the show on the d-screens in the aircar bay, next to those sinister rows of armored aircars. Snow Leopard expected something. Our whole Combat Assault Team had gathered, all seven squads, and the other CATs in nearby bays. The tension built.

A sacred moment, I thought, quietly watching the flickering images. Great forests covered the land. Ponderous, ancient trees covered with brilliant multicolored blossoms towered into the sky, bursting with fruit and seeds and festooned with long tangles of hanging vines and moss. Rolling flowerfields of scarlet and gold and blue and silver reflected every color in the spectrum.

Small, leathery birds with great translucent wings glided effortlessly high above the trees. Under the forest canopy, the probes revealed an endless variety of delicate plants and animals crawling and climbing and hiding in the vegetation.

Out on the plains, diaphanous flying creatures floated silently on the wind like angels, awash in sunlight. Light grav, atmix close to perfect. A tranquil, dreamy world, the sky a brilliant blue, flecked with powdery white clouds.

Legion paranoia clawed its way through the fairy-tale scenes. My skin crawled. Who could believe such images?

A rainstorm swept past one of the scouts, and a rainbow glittered in the spray. The pilot shouted for joy. We found no sign of Systies. No sign of the natives. We swept the spectrum. No advanced signals of any kind. A primitive, quiet, virgin world. More perfect than we ever dared imagine.

I didn’t believe it for an instant.

Recon darted over the forests, swooped low over great raw mountain ranges, and flew over vast deserts of black sand and frozen wasteland. Nothing. Where were the natives? Survey had originally spotted them in the forests, and I had a view projected on the bulkhead over my desk that showed three separate smoke trails rising from a vast forest. I thought it quite a shot. But there were no smoke trails now-only silent forests.

Firefall, the expedition leader, didn’t like it. Nobody liked it. It was very peculiar.

Off to one side, a shout drew our attention. Squad Delta surged over to the arms lockers, excited.

“Listen up!” Snow Leopard raised a hand as he listened to the command channel on his headset. “All right, here it is. Command’s sending a heavy task force down to launch a max-assault on our initial objective. Beta will be participating! Move it, troopers! Armor and arms-NOW!”

We scrambled to the lockers. The whole aircar bay surged as Legion troopers fought to get at their A-suits and weapons. It looked like the entire CAT was going!

“Seal the car! Lock restraints! Night vision! Beta! Count off and weapons report. Mark!” The overhead lights flickered and went red as we counted off in response to Snow Leopard’s shouted commands. In my armor, I strapped into the seat, my E glowing softly at my chest, all systems green. My adrenalin was already flowing for the long ride down.

“Sir, Beta is A amp;A, aircar sealed.” Snow Leopard reported our status.

“Tenners, Beta. Pilot, AC gate is open. Roll to launch tube.”

“Rolling!” The aircar jerked forward abruptly and shot along the guide rail. We sluiced into the tube with a deafening metallic shriek, slamming us against the restraints. We were now in our assault carrier, and it would deliver us and the other six aircars of CAT 24 into the lower atmosphere of Andrion 2. I had no idea how many other CATs were participating, and I knew better than to ask.

In assault orbit, we watched the screens, A amp;A-armored amp; armed. All systems on, blood pounding in my ears, breath echoing in my helmet. My comrades rode beside me in their gleaming black armor and glowing red faceplates. As cold as death and all juiced up, every nerve ending on full alert. Our assault carrier slowly fell out of orbit, into the dark side, leaving Atom’s Road far behind. A glittering armada of death followed us, a night sky full of fighters and assault craft, alien warriors from far across the galaxy, come to stay. The date on my chron read 312/10/02 CGS, but I knew that was crap. It was Year Zero for Andrion 2.

And for us.

The chosen landing zone was a great, flat, flowered plain. Good killing ground and lots of room. We christened it ZA, Zero Alpha. It reminded me of all the ZAs on Planet Hell.

Being creatures of the great dark, we brought darkness with us. And light. Yes, we certainly brought light. We watched them prep ZA on the screens. Eye-searing antis flashed to life in the dark, again and again and again, turning the night into day. The planet shuddered. Antis scared me. We used antimatter for our star drives, our vac drives, and to settle serious arguments-it was nasty stuff. The screens gave us a view from the Ship, tiny intense brilliant white pinpricks burning on the night side of Andrion 2. The Hand of God, glowing with irresistible power in an alien night.

Come on, Systies-show yourselves!

We dropped opvacs onto ZA, great vacuum bombs, punching huge holes in the atmosphere, creating a horrific windstorm. Then we lit it, a flaming sky, burning it all, right down to the bare rock, a great searing white glow in the night. Then gamma, saturating the landscape, enough to fry the very microbes. Then biobloc-every bloc we could imagine, in the human range. Biobloc was even scarier than antimat-if it was set to your genetics you died a horrible death. We threw in everything we had. We did not want any opposition in ZA.

“Thinker, why are we doing a max?” Merlin was on the private channel. “Doesn’t that mean we’re expecting opposition?” Merlin took everything very seriously, even his occasional bad jokes. He was basically unfamiliar with reality.

“It could be they just don’t want to take any chances. Don’t worry, we’ll do all right, Merlin.” I wasn’t sure we’d do all right, but I wanted to think so.

Ironman broke in, also on private. “Thinker, keep an eye on me on the tacmap, will ya?” He was just a kid-like my little brother.

“Tenners, Ironman. No worries.”

Snow Leopard stepped on our conversation, cutting in on the override squad command channel. “We got it, gang!” He was brimming with confidence. “First wave. We all know what to do. I want this to be better than any of the drills we did on Planet Hell. Beta rules, all the way down-and no chitchat. We do it right!”

When we entered the atmosphere, the assault craft shuddered, and bounced wildly. We were totally helpless. If anything went wrong, we would all die, burnt to cinders, with perhaps an instant or two to realize death was at hand.

The drop song came on. It drove me crazy, I hated it, but they played it every time.

“The past is dead and gone,

The scent of flowers in a tomb,

A half remembered tune,

From a half-remembered time.

Open your eyes, cast off old dreams!

A New World awaits you-

A New World to love you-

Drop, drop, drop!

The Past is dead and gone!”

I switched over to my own sounds. I closed my eyes, and the music of the stars overwhelmed me. I had stopped listening to other music on Hell. Now I had only the music of the stars, hissing and humming and roaring in my ears. Sweety played the recording on demand and it was quite an orchestra, the high pitched howl of blue-white supergiants, the crackling hiss of yellow primes, the awful shriek of stars being ripped apart by black holes, awesome rumbling from gas clouds giving birth to young stars, the hopeless moaning of a black dwarf-it wasn’t really music but I loved it.

As the assault craft approached the target, we saturated the area with opstars, tactical nukes, just in case. This set off another massive firestorm, a great ring of fire all around ZA. Then we blitzed the atmosphere with deceptors. The fighters rushed into the center of the target and left behind long lines of fire, greasy black smoke roaring up into the night, highways of fire for our attack.

The general order from command swamped all channels, “Launch aircars!”

We launched with a lurch and bang that rattled my teeth. It looked like we were invading Dante’s version of Hell. We fell into a roaring inferno, an evil night sky blazing brightly with the flames of Armageddon over a glowing, blasted wilderness of black smoking rocks and burning earth.

Despite my fears, I felt right at home. As we rode the flames to our assigned objectives, a wild cheer burst into my ears.

Snow Leopard barked the warning, “Prep to decar!”

We crowded by the assault doors underneath the glowing red tac lights.

The assault doors snapped open and Snow Leopard led the way into the darkness beyond. “Decar…death!”

We burst from the car into the smoking night, weapons ready, equipment dangling. The firestorm raged around us. Legion fighters blasted overhead, punching holes in the sky. Aircars shot past us, kicking up a wake of black dust.

We dashed to our assigned positions. Oily black smoke hung close to the ground.

“Command, Snow Leopard. Beta is in position!”

We were arrayed in attack formation, tingling with anticipation, weapons at the ready. Nothing stirred, except the Legion. We could see everything, and there was nothing to see. All around us, the land smoked in the darkness. We’d blasted a healthy chunk of real estate into a lifeless moonscape and landed in force, and there was no one there to fight.