I drew her to me silently, and she rested her head on my armored shoulder. Her hair smelled like morning rain. “It’s all right,” I said. “You would have done the same for me. I was lucky. We both got lucky.” Priestess would not let go, but I didn’t really mind.
Finally she spoke. “Thinker, I want you to be extra careful on this op. Please don’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you, Priestess.”
“I want to be close to you. I think…something may happen. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’ll lose you.”
“We’ll stay as close as they’ll let us.” She knew it wasn’t really up to us.
She looked up at me, a new light in her eyes. She tried a smile, and it worked.
“No worries…Priestess.” Nothing mattered, I thought. I did not want to resist. We kissed, and a meteor shower flashed through the quiet sky, just before the dawn. And for the moment, the future did not matter.
A kiss in morning starlight. The start of the Scaler Campaign. We had only the vaguest glimmering of the horrors that awaited us all. As a newborn warrior from Planet Hell, a Soldier of the Legion, I thought I understood Evil. But I was a child without the slightest concept of the real fabric of terror. I had not yet tasted of Evil. Exosegs weren’t evil, they were mindless. Evil awaited us all, holding its breath in the dark.
The Inners never understood Evil. Their worlds had been purchased in blood by the Legion, generations in the past. It’s easy to lose track of reality if nothing has ever tried to eat you alive.
We faced the cold wind of the stars; we reached out and touched the sworn enemies of humanity, and killed them where they stood. We faced the Systies, the slavemasters, and held their corrupt empire at bay, allowing ConFree to prosper. At the gateway to infinity, the Omnis writhed, an alien scourge. Facing the O’s was like facing God. Our fathers had died like bacteria in the Plague War, but the Legion had finally shattered the Omni fleets. It had been a total war, a war of extermination, wherever they appeared. Grim, fantastic battles fought far, far away in the Outvac, in the empty spaces between ConFree and infinity. The Inners never knew or cared, not about Legion blood. They would never know, not unless the Legion died. Only then would the Inners learn about Evil. But it would be written in the heavens for them all to see, long before it happened to them. They would have time to think. They would look up from their fat, safe, happy little worlds, and see the stars burning brightly in the night, a new universe of supernovas. For we would go down fighting.
Chapter 5: Gravelight
Ahead of a storm front, squad Beta dropped right into the crumbling heart of a dead city. We came by aircar in the still dark hours just before dawn, with the temperature dropping and rain on the way. Sweety flashed a weather scan in a corner of my faceplate. The cloud deck was thick, and the frontal system extended across a quarter of the continent. Lightning flashed silently far away to the north of us. We swept into the ruins, a phantom fleet of alien aircars hissing past scores of massive, ruined towers, hovering over great courtyards overgrown with wild waist-high grass.
The assault doors opened and we emerged like alien warriors, glittering in black armor, bristling with weapons and sensors. Pilgrims of violence on an unholy mission of war. That’s how the Scalers see us, I thought, as alien invaders. But there were no Scalers in sight. They were the mission now. We’d tagged and set the Boy Scaler free, and tracked him here.
I landed running from the aircar, just behind Coolhand, and we rushed through tall grass and brush to our positions. My faceplate lit up the dead city for me in false colors, shaded for IR emissions. Power, EM or other emissions would show up in high contrast. Huge, grotesque ruined towers loomed all around us, covered with vegetation. This was Site 2012 on our charts, a vast ruined tomb, once a massive fortress dominating a high plateau that overlooked a great river cutting through a trackless jungle. All this, now only a semi-fossilized memory. The people who had once lived here in power and comfort had vanished ages ago. Now it belonged to us.
“You are in position.” Sweety spoke in her calm, clear, feminine voice.
“Thanks, Sweety.” There was no need to answer, but the truth is that I felt rather close to her. I remembered some graffiti I’d seen in a latrine on Planet Helclass="underline" ‘I think I’m falling in love with my Persist’. But it was true, Sweety understood me. I knew I could depend on her. She was always on top of things. Of course, she was only the outcom of my tacmod, a cleverly bioteched micromass of artificial smarts, but to me she seemed a lot more than that. Sweety had developed a personality as well.
A temple loomed in front of me against the dark sky. Lightning lanced through the night behind the structure. Sweety automatically dampened the brightness of the flash enough to protect my eyes. Even so, the electric brilliance briefly froze the temple against the night. Great, grassy stone steps led up a massive, elaborately-carved artificial mountain of rock to four great domed cones of crumbling stone, fringed with moss and vines. I stiffened as a deep rumble rolled overhead.
“Thunder,” Sweety explained. I did my tac check and nothing stirred, only the Legion, now moving into position. A night breeze rustled around me, blowing aimless patterns through the tall grass that filled the courtyard. A few drops of rain spattered against my faceplate while the tacsit map glowed on the lower corner. There were plenty of entrances to the structure. Our probes cautiously advanced inside. No action yet. A shadow in the sky, glowing, growing silently in my faceplate.
“Aircar,” Sweety told me. She normally would not have mentioned it, but my adrenalin had given her a little jolt.
“Normal vision,” I whispered. Sweety cancelled the darksight, and darkness rushed over me. Lightning strobed, illuminating the temple, a flock of fleecy angels and a handful of passing aircars. It hurt my eyes a little. The trees danced in the rising wind.
“Restore it,” I commanded. My faceplate lit up again. I liked little glimpses of reality from time to time. But too long could get you in trouble. Sweety didn’t like it because it affected my eyes’ sensitivity to her carefully selected palette of enhancement colors and shades.
Tacsit showed that the probes had uneventfully progressed to the planned distance and depth for us to proceed. The probes kept moving and it was time for us to move as well.
“Beta, assault.” Snow Leopard ordered, already moving up the stairs. “Command, Beta…we are assaulting Structure 02.”
I moved up the stairs to his left, all sensors on max, my E at the ready, set on v-min as ordered. Steep stairs, weak grav and powered armor. I felt like a God. We arrived at the top in moments, not even breathing hard.
We had a tremendous view from atop the temple, huddling against the gritty stone walls of four towering domes. The plan was to follow the probes into the heart of the temple and then down further, into the underground. The probes now swarmed far below, mapping a subterranean world. Somewhere down in the bowels of the temple, the Scalers were waiting.
“Command, Beta-we’re in place on Structure 02.”
There was no hurry. CAT 24 was swarming all over the bones of this dead city, and Beta would hold its position until we got the word. We settled in, moving into the gaping doorways of the domes to get out of the rain, and found comfortable positions in the rubble.
Snow Leopard moved around the temple’s edge restlessly. Coolhand posted himself on the west side, observing the progress of the assault. I squatted just inside one of the domes, watching the sky. The wind and the rain hissed gently.
“Ahh, death.” Psycho settled himself down near me and rested his Manlink against the wall. I did not say anything. Priestess stood beside Ironman in the doorway of the opposite dome, her E at the ready.