Chapter Two
You legionnaires are soldiers in order to die, and I am sending you where you can die.
—General Francois de Negrier,
French Foreign Legion, 1883
“Keep firing, dammit! Maintain your fire!” Lieutenant Colin Fraser staggered and swore silently as a bullet slammed into the plasteel chest plate of his battledress. He dropped to one knee behind an improvised barricade. “Trent! Where the hell is Dmowski with the heavy weapons?”
Gunnery Sergeant John Trent fired a burst from his FE-FEK kinetic energy assault rifle before answering. “He’s on the way, L-T.” He sounded strangely calm and unemotional, as if oblivious to the firefight raging around them. “Five more minutes.” Trent raised his voice abruptly but lost none of his detached, professional manner. “Come on, Krueger, get with it! You’ve got grenades—use ’em!”
Fraser flipped down the light intensifier display on his helmet. Chaos reigned within Fort Monkey. Panic gripped him with icy fingers, but Fraser forced himself to follow Sergeant Trent’s example and remain outwardly calm, in control. The men are looking to you, a stubborn inner voice reminded him. You’re in charge until Captain LaSalle gets back.
If LaSalle was coming back. In the ten minutes since the first attack by Dryien troops, every effort to raise LaSalle and the diplomatic mission in the Fortress of Heaven had been answered by crackling static. And even if the captain was all right now, how was he supposed to reach Monkeyville in an unarmored staff car when what looked like half the yzyeel’s army was trying to overrun the Legion garrison?
A native machine gun hammered from the top of the north wall, its muzzle flashes showing on LI as a strobing beacon in the gloom. Legionnaire Krueger raised his FEK and triggered a three-round burst of 1cm rocket grenades. They arrowed toward the target with a hiss, impacting in a neat pattern just below the stuttering MG. With a scream, the hannie soldier spun backwards over the parapet and out of sight, kys weapon tumbling to the ground inside the compound.
Two more bullets flattened themselves against Fraser’s battledress in quick succession, one against his chest plate, the other on the duraweave material covering his left arm. The second one stung, and Fraser’s heart beat faster.
The hannies were primitive by Legion standards. Their technology was roughly equivalent to mid-twentieth century Terrestrial standards, with weapons that would not have been out of place in either of the first two World Wars. Their equipment was eight centuries out of date even measured against the cast-offs that made up the bulk of Legion gear. It would take a lucky hit for conventional munitions to penetrate issue battledress, with or without plasteel armor plates augmenting the protection of the tough fatigue uniform. But sooner or later one of the hannies occupying the northeast tower was going to score that lucky hit—if not on Fraser, then on one of his men.
Even if the hannies were primitive, they outnumbered Bravo Company by at least ten to one. The legionnaires just couldn’t afford to take casualties … any casualties.
“Sergeant!” Fraser tried without much success to make his orders sharp and crisp. “I want that tower cleared now. Those snipers are getting too good a view.”
“On it, L-T,” Trent responded. He sprinted down the defensive line in a half-crouch, bawling orders as he ran. “Recon lances! Time to earn your pay, you lazy buggers!”
Fraser’s FEK whined on full auto, sending a stream of needle-thin slivers hurtling from the muzzle at over 10,000 meters per second with scarcely any recoil. He swung the rifle in a smooth arc, laying down fire across the ragged line of hannies at the foot of the north wall. This fight wasn’t so much a battle as a slaughter, but there were a lot more native soldiers out there to replace the ones who fell.
The first attackers had burst in through the north gate, apparently admitted by one of the company’s hannie servants or auxiliaries without raising an alarm. If Sergeant Trent had not been making the rounds of the barracks area when the first shots were fired … Fraser didn’t want to think about that. Alerted, with high-tech weaponry and uniforms virtually impervious to small arms, the legionnaires could beat the monkeys easily.
But the natives had the advantage of numbers … and they were on their home turf, with supplies and reinforcements close at hand. The legionnaires couldn’t even raise their captain. Or Charlie Company, scattered in outposts deeper in the Dryien jungles to the west. He glanced at his command/control/communications technician. If only she would get through to someone.…
As if in answer to Fraser’s unvoiced thoughts, the C3 operator looked up from her field communications pack and grinned at Fraser. “I’ve got something, Lieutenant!”
“What is it, Garcia?” Fraser ducked down behind the barricade. Around them the other legionnaires kept firing.
“A transport lighter … Ganymede.” Angela Garcia made a quick adjustment to the console and handed Fraser a patch cord. “They’re in the capital harbor.”
He plugged the cord into a terminal on the side of his helmet, switched on his commlink, and spoke aloud. His throat mike picked up his words. “Ganymede, this is Alice One. Do you copy? Over.”
“Alice One, Ganymede. Reading you five by five. Hold for Captain Garrett.”
Static crackled on the line before a new voice cut in. “Alice One? What’s your situation?”
Fraser winced as machine-gun fire rattled off the barricade. “Ganymede, we’re under attack by an unknown number of native regulars. Nothing but infantry so far, no armor, air support, or heavy arty. At least not yet. We’re holding our own, but …” He trailed off.
“Roger that, Alice One,” Garrett responded. “We’ve had trouble here, too. Native troops attacked our shore party about half an hour after we set down. We’ve also had reports from the Fortress of Heaven of a massacre of Terrans at the diplomatic reception. Those are unconfirmed, repeat, unconfirmed.”
Fraser bit off a curse. A massacre …
If it was true, then Captain LaSalle wouldn’t be coming back. Fraser recoiled from the thought. For a long moment everything—the Legion, the battle, the bullets slamming into the barricade in front of him—all seemed remote. He fought to get his whirling feelings back under control.
“Acknowledged, Ganymede,” he said at last. “Have you had any orders from HQ?”
Garrett sounded grim. “They’re ordering an evac, Alice One. We’re checking for Terrans in town now. Then we’re coming to pull you people out.”
“Sounds good to me, Ganymede,” Fraser said. “You have a timetable on that yet?”
“We’ve got a couple of hundred civilians to pull out here, Lieutenant,” Garrett replied. “I’d say we’ll be stuck here ’til morning, unless the lokes bring in artillery our hull can’t handle. We’ll keep you apprised.” There was a pause, “Ganymede, out.”
Evacuation. The word echoed in his mind.
Unless they drove back the hannie attack, though, an evac was going to be tough to manage. And the heavy weapons and the Legion’s fire support vehicles still hadn’t come up. Damn it! Where the hell are they?
Colin Fraser braced his FEK on the barricade and opened fire again. Right now, the legionnaires needed every rifle they could muster if they were going to hold off the hannie attack.…
O O O
“Keep down, Honored,” the native hissed. “Down!”
Lieutenant Kelly Ann Winters, Commonwealth Space Navy, nodded and hunkered lower behind the rocks, her fingers tightening around her LP-24 laser pistol. Hardly daring to breathe, she waited. Seconds dragged by.
The cluster of buildings that made up the Enclave Rezplex were lost in the darkness less than a kilometer behind her, but they remained a looming, half-felt presence, a grim reminder of danger. It was hard to keep memory at bay, to hold back the terror of the massacre there. All those people slaughtered …
Kelly gripped the pistol harder, forcing the picture out of her mind. She couldn’t give in now, or she’d end up like the others. Somehow she’d won free of the rezplex and onto the rugged slopes of the plateau. Above her, on the highest hill of the Enclave Heights, lay Fort Monkey. Safety … she hoped.
“Azjai-kyir zheein sykai,” the native said at last. “They are gone, Honored. We must move before another patrol comes.”
Nodding reluctantly, Kelly rose to a half-crouch and followed the native. Ky was right; they had to keep moving. But every instinct rebelled at leaving cover. That rocky outcropping hadn’t offered much protection for a human, but it was better than nothing.
The native moved rapidly, barely pausing to check for signs of Dryien troops. Can I really trust one of them? After the horror of the native attack, it was hard to see the hannie as a friend. But ky did save me from the soldiers. Why?
Maybe it was safest to accept the native as an ally. If ky hadn’t been friendly, ky wouldn’t have helped Kelly in the first place. The local, a native servant working for a Terran xenobotonist, had spotted the native troops as they crept into the rezplex, overheard their officer ordering the Terran demons slaughtered. Kys employer was in the capital tonight, at the banquet being thrown in the Fortress of Heaven. It had taken time for the servant to locate another Terran to warn Kelly … and by that time the shooting had started.
She’d been able to escape in the first moments of the attack. With the native’s help, she’d evaded the soldiers in the streets of Monkeyville and the patrols beyond. Ky seemed to like the Terrans … or perhaps ky hated the soldiers more.
The little servant made an unlikely ally. She didn’t even know kys name.
“Hykwai! Hykwai!”
Kelly dropped and rolled as the shouts echoed behind her. Autofire rattled, the bullets passing over her head. Acting more by instinct than training, Kelly opened fire. The LP-24 pulsed once, the invisible shot burning a hole through the throat of the closest hannie soldier. Three more were still on their feet, shooting wildly.
The natives, their eyes adapted to Hanuman’s bright F7V star, were ill suited for night fighting. I’m not much better, Kelly thought, firing twice more and rolling to one side so the natives wouldn’t locate her position. I’m supposed to be an engineer, not a combat soldier!
Her next two shots missed, but the sixth caught another hannie in the leg. The soldier screamed, firing a long burst as ky fell. Behind Kelly there was another cry. The two remaining soldiers rushed forward, sweeping the ground with autofire. A bullet plucked at her uniform as she rolled to the left and fired again, catching one of the attackers square in the chest. An unpleasant smell of burning flesh stung her nostrils.
She fought down her nausea and squeezed off another shot. The laser pulsed again, then died. Empty … and she didn’t have a fresh cell.
And the native soldier was still on kys feet still firing randomly. If she didn’t act fast, the whole Dryien army would be here soon, and she’d never escape.
Kelly screamed as autofire probed toward her. Then she lay still, moaning softly.
The soldier advanced slowly. She watched as the hannie’s figure emerged from the gloom, kys weapon pointed straight at her. Her heart beat faster. If the native decided to be thorough, she was dead.…
She stopped moaning and tried to keep still. What would the native do?
The soldier stood over her, prodded her once with the barrel of kys autorifle. With a quick motion she grabbed the rifle with both hands, pulling the soldier down on top of her. The rifle rolled free. Kelly lashed out with her forearm, trying to crush the native’s windpipe. Pain lanced through her arm.
The neck ruff! Those sharp quills were like dozens of tiny knives. The soldier sprang back as she cried out, drawing a long knife with a lightning motion. Ky leapt to the attack again, but her foot arced sideways and caught the soldier in the back of the leg. Kelly rolled as the native fell, still trying to slash at her with the heavy blade.
Something hard and metallic tripped her as she tried to scramble to her feet. The hannie rose slowly, deliberately, weighing the knife in one hand as ky stalked her. Kelly’s hands groped on the wet ground, closed on the rifle …
With a screech, the hannie charged. The alien weapon was heavy, awkward. She fumbled for the trigger, but the unfamiliar design balked her. Kelly swung the rifle wildly and caught the hannie’s knife arm. There was a sickening crack of breaking bone, and the native screeched as ky dropped the knife. Kelly swung again … again …
The native fell, blood oozing from kys head. She backed away, feeling sick.
There was a moan in the darkness. “Honored … Honored …”
Kelly rushed to help. Her native ally was huddled in the grass, clutching a wounded leg in both hands. She shied away at the sight of more blood, then forced herself to act. Dropping to one knee, she tore a strip of cloth from the sleeve of her uniform jacket and bound the wound.
“Leave me, Honored …” the native gasped, weak.
“Forget it,” Kelly answered in Terranglic. She glanced away, straining all her senses to detect signs of more hannie soldiers approaching. There wasn’t much time. “I’ll carry you,” she told the native in kyendyp. “But you’ll have to guide me.”
Her arm still hurt from the soldier’s quills, but Kelly ignored the pain. I have to work fast. We can’t stay here.
O O O
Gunnery Sergeant Trent peered over the top of the low drainage ditch and pointed. “Braxton, your lance on the left. Clear the top of the wall and keep it clear. Got it?” He didn’t wait for Corporal Braxton’s nod. “Strauss, your boys’ll go up to the ladder under Braxton’s cover fire. Secure the tower. Pascali’s lance stays at the bottom of the ladder to keep the hannies busy. Any questions?”
The three corporals shook their heads.
“Right. Get your boys and girls together and get ready to move.” Trent continued to scan the north wall as they crawled off to join their lances. The eerie green images on his IR readout seemed oblivious to the legionnaires in the trench. They’d worked their way along it from the barricade in silence and were now poised less than twenty meters from the ladder that led to the northwest observation tower … and the hannie snipers.
He had fifteen legionnaires against … how many? It looked like there were fifty or sixty hannies fanning out along this stretch of the wall, and probably more coming fast. Pretty good odds, Trent thought. With surprise, and with their high-tech weapons, the three recon lances would cut through the locals easily. As long as they don’t start bringing up the heavy stuff, he added grimly.
As if in response, a deep-throated wham-WHAM shook the compound. A two-meter section of the wall collapsed inward in a shower of loose masonry. One hannie soldier was buried in the tumbling debris; another, dodging the danger behind, ran directly into a stream of FEK fire and was flung back against the rubble, screaming. The explosions showered dust and debris over Trent.
Behind the dying native, a squat shape clanked slowly forward on broad treads, the barrel of its fixed-mount 8cm cannon poking through the hole, questing, searching. The self-propelled gun was primitive and ungainly by Legion standards, but its shells could turn the tide against Bravo Company.
Tanks breaking through the wall, he thought. Hell, that’s all we need.
But the noise and confusion could be turned to good advantage. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, waving the legionnaires forward. They rose from the ditch with a yell and rushed forward. Trent fired his FEK as he ran, sending needle-sharp slivers slicing into the natives on full-auto. Nearby, Legionnaire Rydell dropped to one knee and raised his Whitney-Sykes HPLR-55. The laser rifle pulsed invisibly, but a hannie at the top of the wall screamed and toppled over backwards. Laser rifles weren’t as common in the Legion as they were in regular Commonwealth Army units, but Legion snipers like Rydell made every one count.
Trent reached the ladder first and fired upward, catching a native soldier who was having trouble with rungs spaced too far apart for kys compact body. The hannie lost kys grip and fell in an untidy heap near Trent’s feet. He ignored the twisted body and sought out new targets among the natives swarming through the opening behind the lumbering SPG thirty meters away. More soldiers from Pascali’s and Strauss’s lances joined him under the looming shadow of the tower.
“Get your people moving, Strauss!” Trent shouted. “The rest of you spread out and cause trouble. You boys know how to do that, don’t you?”
Corporal Helmut Strauss, a burly native of Neusachsen with a bushy blonde mustache, grunted acknowledgement. “Ve climb,” he said harshly. He spoke Terranglic, like every soldier in the Legion, but eight years in the service hadn’t softened his accent much. “You, nube, first.”
Trent hid a smile. As long as there were NCOs in the Legion, the nubes—the raw recruits—would always get ridden the hardest. Strauss’s victim, a kid who looked no older than sixteen, slung his FEK and started climbing the ladder. Darkness quickly swallowed his black, chameleon fatigues.
The sergeant turned his attention back to the problem at hand. While Strauss and his lance climbed, the rest of Trent’s men had to occupy the hannies … without drawing too much attention from the self-propelled gun that was slowly forcing its way into the compound. Trent switched from infrared to light-intensification vision and signalled to Corporal Pascali. Move out.
Pascali’s lance fanned out in a loose arc around the base of the tower, weapons probing the darkness. Trent caught movement on the wall to the left on his LI display, dropped sideways and rolled, triggering a short burst on his FEK as the barrel came into line. Behind him, he heard the whine of Legionnaire Cole’s weapon. A chorus of shouts and screams answered, then the stutter of native autoweapons returning fire.
Bullets ricocheted off the base of the tower and raised gouts of dust around Trent’s feet. He fired again, a long burst this time, then shifted to a quick spread of grenades. The ripple of explosions along the top of the wall illuminated the hannies better, and he fired again.
“Look out, Sarge!” Cole yelled. The legionnaire knocked the sergeant down, sending him sprawling in the dirt. As he fell, Trent saw a hannie stepping from the shadows behind the vehicle. The native was balancing a heavy tube on one shoulder, one of the primitive rocket launchers the Legion referred to as blunderbusses. Flame spat from both ends of the tube and the rocket leapt across the compound. Too late, Cole tried to roll aside. The rocket caught him in the back, tearing through plasteel and duraweave cloth before it exploded. Sickened, Trent turned away from the bloody remains and flipped his FEK to full-auto. The launch tube rolled under the treads of the tank as the local’s face and throat were shredded by dozens of needle-thin metal shards.
Trent crawled to where Cole had fallen. There wasn’t much left of the legionnaire who had saved the sergeant’s life. You are soldiers in order to die. The saying had been part of Legion tradition for centuries. It seemed grimly appropriate now, an epitaph for Legionnaire First Class Arthur Cole … or whatever his real name had been, before he’d sought the anonymity of the Legion.
The sergeant reloaded his FEK and fired again; smiling grimly as hannie soldiers took refuge behind the bulk of their big vehicle.
Then the smile faded as the clash of changing gears and clattering treads deepened, and the vehicle began to turn. The cannon barrel was swinging slowly, relentlessly toward Trent.…