Wood creaked as Corporal Bairamov slumped down in the chair beside Logan. As his fireteam leader, Bairamov was easy enough to get along with, so long as you didn’t cause trouble, but could be hell if you did. Logan’s body had bulked up in training, but three years of combat in the Legion had stretched Bairamov’s arms until they were as thick as Logan’s thighs. No wonder the wood and nails of Bairamov’s chair were struggling to support the weight of his muscles.
As the other Legionnaires jostled for the best seats around them, Bairamov nudged Logan’s side, and flashed a wad of banknotes from his pocket.
“I made a thousand francs on the way down.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dead pool. I’d bet Johnson would go first. And he did.”
Betting on death wasn’t the worst thing Logan had seen or heard in his months in the Legion. But it was close. They’d asked if he wanted to join the pool, but he’d refused. He wasn’t going to profit from a fellow Legionnaire’s death, even if the man was a newbie. When he joined up, the instructors had warned them that half of the newbies wouldn’t even survive the first year, let alone the full length of their contract.
“You people are sick, you know that?”
“Gotta pay for my entertainment somehow.”
“What about McClain and Hoffman, when they fell?”
“They were alive until they hit the ground. Medics said so. Johnson didn’t last ten seconds after the shrapnel cut his head off.” Bairamov ran his fingers across his neck. “Why do you think they use the guillotine back in France?”
Logan shivered. He knew what they used the guillotine for. Maybe if he survived as many years in the Legion as Bairamov had, he’d be as blase about death.
But, damn, please say he’d never sink that low.
“They just got unlucky. It could have been you or me, if we’d been sitting where they were.”
“But we weren’t, were we? Someone’s looking out for us.”
“Shame they’re looking out for Poulin. How’s Adamski?”
Bairamov shrugged. “He’ll live. But he won’t be walking again for a few weeks. Hurt his spine pretty bad when he smashed into those crates. Medics will have to fix it before he comes back.”
“So the team has no grenadier?”
Bairamov chuckled as he slapped Logan’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you decided to volunteer. I thought I might have to carry that thing myself.”
Crap. That was another fifty kilos to haul around. And the Legion weren’t heavy infantry. Their combat suits were built for manoeuvrability and stealth, not to carry the kind of heavy loads the regular infantry might drag into combat. They didn’t even have grenade launchers built into their suits like the army, which was why someone had to carry one.
“So, what are the odds on me?”
“Better than most of the other newbies.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re a stone-cold killer, kid.”
Bairamov might be right. Logan might be the only killer among the new recruits in the company. Probably was. But stone-cold?
He hadn’t meant to kill. It just happened. If he could go back… no, he’d do it again. The cops might have called it murder, but that asshole deserved a good beating, and just got unlucky that he picked the wrong guy to get beaten by.
Was that why Bairamov had taken to Logan since he joined the platoon? He figured Logan was a reliable killer? He shivered at the thought. That wasn’t how he wanted to be known. Not even in the Legion, which was full of them
Poulin strolled across the front of the crowd.
Ah, crap.
Having to listen to Poulin for half an hour was the last thing they needed after being shot at and irradiated that day. But she’d obviously cleaned up, and no longer had Johnson’s blood splattered across her face.
And had stopped screaming.
“What about our beloved politico?”
“Poulin? Who cares? Maybe she’ll go running back home to Papa, and leave us in peace.”
“They’ll just send another one to replace her.”
“But the new one could hardly be worse, could they?”
He had a point. The political officers in the training camps had done their best to indoctrinate the new recruits to worship the aristos, but those officers had spent years in combat units out on the frontiers, and knew what a pile of bullshit most of their propaganda was.
Few recruits had joined the Legion because they wanted to be hired killers for the aristos, to make them wealthier and more powerful. He certainly hadn’t. He’d kill to protect the innocent and his own comrades, but screw the politics.
Poulin climbed onto the stage and sat on a chair near the back wall, beside the company’s other political officers. She faced the assembled crowd as she sat, crossed her arms, and tapped her feet on the floor, staring at the Legionnaires as she did so. The men ignored her. She wasn’t going to live down her behaviour in the shuttle any time soon.
A man walked through the open door. Short, moustached, with a suntanned face below tightly-combed brown hair that was turning grey at the fringes. He adjusted his suit jacket as he strode toward the stage. The hubbub of conversation slowed as he climbed the low steps onto the stage, nodded toward the political officers, then turned toward the crowd, and smiled.
“Good afternoon, Legionnaires,” he yelled.
He waited for the conversations in the crowd to die away, then turned his head from side to side, scanning the assembled mass. Then spoke again.
“As mayor of Estérel I would like to welcome you to our lovely town, and to New Strasbourg. And apologize for what happened earlier today. The Compagnie d’Etoile has done its best to keep the insurgents away, but with these budget cuts…”
He raised his hands, and shrugged.
“Here here,” one of the politicos said, and clapped, slowly.
Whatever budget cuts the Mayor was talking about, any savings they’d made had to have been wiped out by the cost of sending a regiment of Legionnaires to the planet to deal with the problems those cuts had created.
And, wherever the other companies of the Legion regiment might have landed on the planet, they were probably listening to the mayor of whatever town they were now stationed in make the same excuses.
“Some of our lovely local girls wish to welcome you in their own way.”
The Mayor held out his right hand toward the open door, and a hundred male heads turned that way. The rest joined them as they heard the wolf-whistles and admiring comments from around the room.
A dozen girls marched through the door. Most looked around Logan’s age, with long, bare, tanned legs running from high heels to short skirts.
Thin white blouses bulged out around their chests below long hair, red, pouting lips, and faces glowing with makeup. The girls sauntered toward the stage, waving tricolour French flags above their heads, then formed a line behind the mayor, and smiled at the men.
The mayor opened his mouth, and took a deep breath. The girls began to sing the first words of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, as they waved the flags high. The Mayor’s rattly voice followed along.
Two hundred and fifty men rose to their feet, scraping their chairs on the floor, and slowly joined the song with their deep, out-of tune, voices. They shuffled back and forward and side to side as they peered past the rows of men in front, trying to keep their eyes on the girls.
Logan did his best to ignore the Legionnaires’ singing as he joined in. The booming voices of the men drowned out the high-pitched singing of the girls, and the sound echoed back from the concrete walls and roof, rising and falling in volume, until he could barely even make out the words any more.
But he could hardly ignore the girls. Aside from Poulin, who’d spent most of the time since he met her trying to be a man and failing at it, he’d barely seen a girl in the last year.