Chapter 11
A Fine Place to Die
I awoke in a firefight, laser snapping past my helmet, auto xmax bursting off the walls and the water boiling with shrapnel. Tara pulled a biotic charger away from an access port on my armor and shouted something but I could not hear it. Twister was against one wall, firing auto x. I came back to life quickly, my body shrieking objections.
"Cease fire, Black Jade! You're firing on a friendly unit!"
"Wester, Merlin is hit bad!" Tara informed me. I turned. Merlin was propped against one wall, chest-deep in a spreading pool of blood, fused whitened armor revealing a chest hit. He was in shock, deathly pale. He opened his mouth weakly but could not speak. I screamed in horror and turned to face the Blue Gold troopers. Tara thrust an E into my hands.
"Let's get out of here!" she urged me.
And something snapped inside me. It all just went red, and I stepped forward right into the line of fire, sloshing through the waist-deep water. I raised the E to my shoulder and fired, auto xmax. I was consumed, transformed, overcome with hatred and rage. I screamed, hysterical, running right at those Legion troopers, sloshing through the sewers like a wild man, burning out my E, finger holding the trigger down all the way, full auto x, blind rage. The world exploded ahead of me and I was taking hits, laser and x, banging and hissing into my armor, but I kept on going, totally insane, and I caught little glimpses behind me, Tara and Gildron and Twister following, E's blazing auto x and laser. The air around us was a glittering highway of death, laser and x, and I was not going to stop until I was dead.
And then I was down in the water, exhausted. Dead—surely dead. I struggled to my feet, gasping. We were surrounded by shattered Legion A-suits, smoking, blistered Legion armor. Four of them. No insignia.
Twister staggered, sobbing. "Legion troopers—they're Legion troopers! They're just like us, and we killed them. We killed them!"
Tara made the sign of the Legion over the nearest glowing A-suit. "May the Gods protect your souls. We will pray for your journey—you fought bravely! Deadman forgive us!"
One of them moved. An arm, twitching. I was on him like a wolf, pulling him up against one wall. "Who are you, you bastards? Answer me! Who are you?"
He was in shock, spitting blood. I snapped up his visor. A young, pale Outworlder trooper, blinking nervously.
"Am I going to die?" He coughed, spitting more up blood. We stood waist-deep in a widening pool of bloody water. I did not want to look at his injuries.
"Yes," I answered. "We're sorry. Please tell us who you are, and why you're here." My heart pounded raggedly.
"The ship," he said dreamily. "The mission was the ship."
"Yes—that was our mission! The ship! Why are you fighting us? We're all with the Legion! Why!"
"Water," the trooper choked. Tara brought a canteen up to his mouth. He took a swig, then continued. "We're not with the Legion," he said. "We're with ConFree. Special Mission Strike Force. Our mission was to stop you from securing that ship."
"ConFree! My God! Why? Why? It's crazy! The Legion takes its orders from ConFree!"
The trooper coughed again, and spit up more blood. "ConFree wanted the System to secure that ship."
"You must be insane!" I seized him by his shoulder and he shrieked in agony. "Why? Why? Why would ConFree want the System to secure an Omni starship? The System hates everything ConFree and the Legion stand for!"
The young trooper looked into my eyes and blinked away tears of pain. "I'm dying," he said in disbelief. He looked around wildly, then turned back to me. "We're fighting…for the future. ConFree believes the Legion has become too powerful. To counter the System…ConFree created the Legion. But the Legion has grown into a titanic, invincible monster, an instrument of blind aggression that ConFree can no longer effectively control. The System is doomed. Next, the Legion will turn on ConFree. That's what they told us. The Legion is now an instrument that is directing itself. And our mission was to redress the imbalance of power in the galaxy. Strengthen ConFree by strengthening the System. Oh, I'm going, Deadman, we believed…we believed…" And the life just slipped out of him. I saw it leaving his face, just like that. I slowly released my grasp on his shoulder and his body slumped back against the wall. I was overcome with horror.
"ConFree," I muttered, in shock. "We're fighting ConFree."
"He was absolutely right about the Legion," Tara said. "We are monsters. And they made us. Now they're afraid. And they should be!" Tara made the sign of the Legion over the dead trooper's face, tracing the cross in the air. "May you fight on in another world! Brave troopers, my God, what a waste! What an awful, criminal waste!"
"ConFree! Those dirty bastards!" I exclaimed, overcome with revulsion. "They send us out to die for them, fighting the O's, fighting the System, and then they want to strengthen the System? Sending people to kill us? Deadman, I can't believe it!"
"Believe it," Twister said mournfully. "These troopers died for ConFree."
"Merlin!" I suddenly remembered. We hastened back up the tunnel to our old position. He was still alive, against the wall, barely keeping his helmet above water, deathly pale. I gently took him into my arms.
"Thinker…" he said weakly, "I wanted to see that ship. More than anything…take that ship, Thinker. Don't let them get it!" And he gasped and died, right in my arms. My eyes filled with tears. Merlin, our holy, beloved tech. Merlin, who had risked everything for us on Mongera. Merlin was gone.
"Kill me," Dragon said. I turned. Dragon was propped against the opposite wall, his arms secured behind him.
"He's no longer in the autohypnotic trance," Tara said. "But it could return at any time."
"Kill me, Thinker," Dragon repeated, his face twitching. "I betrayed our mission. I got Merlin killed. The bastards must have done me after I was wounded on Coldmark. I couldn't do a thing, Thinker. I was totally psyched—I remember it all now. All I wanted was to stop you all, and turn you over to Blue Gold. It must have been me that did that nova beacon, too—but I don't remember that."
"It's all right, Dragon," I said. "We're all slaves. We're all psyched, by somebody." Yes, I thought, we're all slaves. I was a slave of the Legion—and my mission was that Omni ship. If it wasn't there, after all this, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But I did know that a lot of people were surely going to die. And I also knew that, just as ConFree had feared, I was no longer under their control.
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"You are approaching the lower levels of one of the Omni column buildings," Sweety informed me.
"Terrific! Can you give me a fix on that O?" We were wading knee-deep in a sluggish stream of black ooze, on darksight, groping through the sewers of the Mound. Cold cenite walls coated with freezing scum hemmed us in. And at least one O was tracking us down.
"Negative, Thinker, the deceptors are extremely heavy." I popped another deceptor. Twister tossed a psybloc grenade behind us. It was ludicrous—we needed the psybloc to shield us from the O's psypower, but the blasts were giving away our position. Gildron roared again, furious. I had concluded that he was a dead loss—a lot of noise and not much action. Tara looked around us warily, poised to fire. Well, she was getting what she wanted, marching in the mud—Deadman! We didn't know what had happened to the rest of the squad, Snow Leopard and Priestess and Valkyrie and Scrapper. We were on blackout and dared not transmit.