Cross of the Legion (7 page)

"All right, that's it. Pits, let's go. Mams, work out that perimeter."

"Tenners." I got up, my cloak soaked in muddy ash. It was raining hard. Lightning flashed overhead, lighting up the grim scene briefly. The thunder sounded like artillery. I moved, forward, my mind raging.

"Thinker—" Priestess was on private to me. "What do you think?"

"Stay alert, Priestess. Stay alert!"

"This is crazy!"

"That's a ten!"

***

"That's an O," Dragon said. I raised my E and the scope brought it right to me but the image was blurred and misty behind all that rain, blocked from time to time by the dead trees around me. I could barely make it out—a tall, hulking yet spidery creature, moving leisurely—walking? My finger caressed the trigger.

"There's two of them," Psycho added. "Not shielded—no armor. Scut, they're not even armed! Let's blast 'em!" Our psybloc units throbbed on our helmets. Psycho had a point. Psybloc was critical, but it had given away Legion units more than once. Every instant that passed increased the danger that we'd be spotted. We were still dispersed but nearing the tree line.

"Negative, no movement, stand by, Phantoms," Dragon countered. I strained to make out the other Omni—there he was! Two of them. They were almost staggering along in the distance, now side by side, two great tall Omnis. I knew the creatures better than I cared to. They had killed over two billion humans, and they had almost killed me as well. They were extremely dangerous, and regarded us as annoying vermin. I felt nothing but fear and hatred for them.

"Looks like they're headed for the port."

"Fine, let them go. Don't interfere." They were headed away from the school, to my great relief.

"All right, Pits—on me." Dragon was off again. I moved cautiously from tree to tree. We were nearing the school, and my adrenalin level was edging upwards. The rain eased slightly but I was still wet and miserable.

***

"Dragon, on me," I whispered. I was pretty shook up. I had the thing centered in my sights, but it was clearly not a threat. The trouble was, it was so terrifying that I was starting to shake.

It lay flat on swampy ground, and it was shaped like a human, but had no features. It was a pulpy, human- shaped mass, a wet, yellowish-grey growth, almost like a decaying human vegetable, utterly rotten, sopping in the rain. It almost looked like some primitive's attempt to manufacture a human out of mud and clay. If there had ever been a human in there, it was now clearly dead, but so featureless I could not tell if it was lying on its belly or its back. Its arms were flung out to the sides. I had never seen anything like this before.

"What the hell is that?" Dragon covered it with his E.

"I don't know." I was glad Dragon was there. Let him take care of it.

"DD, get over here," Dragon ordered.

"It's human," Doctor Doom said, squatting by the corpse, reading his medprobe. "A human corpse, covered by…some kind of fungoid growth. Medprobe says it's a fungus, unidentified variety, unknown origin. It appears to have spread over the entire body." DD stood up, ignoring the corpse, still focusing on the medprobe. "That's funny. The probe says the corpse is only a few hours old. I don't see how that could be."

"All right, let's get outta here. Take a sample, Doc. Pits, resume advance."

We splashed forward, nearing the edge of the fossil forest, glad to leave the horrid corpse behind. The school was right up ahead, in an open field. A range of mountains dominated the horizon.

"Movement! I've got…"

"Human, unarmored, unarmed, zeroed." Sweety highlighted the image. I knelt by a scorched tree and brought my E up. The scope showed what looked like a female, falling abruptly to her knees in a dark grassy field between our tree line and the school. I did not like the look of it.

"No life in the school. No other life in the vicinity. Sky is clear."

"Thank you, Sweety." No life in the school—deto! That was where the Nova had come from. Yes, it was a young female, moving her arms, rocking back and forth on her knees.

"Psycho, on me," Dragon ordered. "We investigate. Cover me. Pits, cover us."

"Tenners."

We broke out of the cover of the dead forest and approached her, striding through scorched grass. It was still raining lightly. My skin crawled. We were totally exposed out in the field. I kept her covered with my E as Dragon advanced on her. She was a slim young midschooler with shoulder-length brown hair, clad in a thin sleeveless pullover, shorts, and liteshoes. She did not even appear to be aware of us. She was examining her arms. Then she snapped her head up, spotted us, and froze.

"We're the Legion," Dragon said. "Don't be afraid. You'll be all right now. Are there any other humans in the vicinity?" She stared at him like a bird facing a snake. Then she suddenly began to tremble, raising her shaking arms convulsively. Her face and arms were covered with scratches. Her mouth opened and emitted an agonized whimper. She began scratching frantically at her forearms, moaning wordlessly. Then she presented them for us to see. Her twitching arms were covered with scratches and welts.

"What's the matter?" Dragon asked, lowering his E. "What's wrong with you?" She burst into tears, balled her hands into fists, and screamed, an unearthly shriek of horror. She resumed scratching desperately at her arms, drawing blood, ripping long deep scars in her flesh with broken fingernails.

"Stop it," Dragon said, seizing her by one arm. "What's wrong? We can help you—DD, on me!" She screamed, fighting to escape Dragon's grasp, tearing at her face, thrashing around in the grass. Doctor Doom came running and I helped Dragon hold the girl down as Doom examined her. She screamed, hysterical, struggling frantically to escape.

DD gave her a sedative and she slowly calmed down but still rolled her head around, moaning in agony.

"What's wrong with her, Doc?"

"Look at this, Dragon," DD said, examining one of the girl's arms. I bent closer to see it. The arm was covered with little greenish-white spots. As we watched, more of them began to appear. The girl shrieked again. She was in agony.

"Deadman! What is that crud?" I gasped. Priestess appeared, shouldering me aside, ripping open her medkit.

"Fungus!" DD exclaimed, reading his medprobe. "It's the same thing! She's in shock."

"Zeomax and cyro," Priestess suggested. "Anti-infection and anti-shock. No choice!"

"Yes," Doom replied. "Do it!" Priestess zapped the girl with a fast field injection. It resulted in another horrifying scream. The girl's body arched up and began trembling violently.

"My God—look. Look!" DD had ahold of her arm. The fungus spread even as we watched, crawling over her twitching body with astonishing speed, the white spots joining, reaching out for each other, merging, thickening, advancing—over her flesh. We held her tightly—her screams were freezing my heart.

"Deadman! Can't you do anything!" Dragon exclaimed. DD hit her with another sedative. It had no effect. She continued screaming, totally out of control, thrashing violently in our arms. The stuff was appearing all over her body now—arms, legs, face—it was multiplying with astonishing speed.

"There's no cure," DD said grimly. "This is brand new. The probe can't even identify the fungus! We can't do better than zeomax for massive infection—it's extremely powerful!"

Priestess brushed some of the stuff off the girl's arm with her armored fingers and slapped on a medgel pad—it made no difference. The fungus continued growing under the pad. All four of us held her down. The stuff sprouted all over her face. Her eyes were frantic. She shrieked, in total agony. My heart was racing.

"Is she going to die?" Dragon asked.

"Yes," Doctor Doom replied. "Definitely."

"Yes," Priestess said. "I'm afraid so."

"Stand back." We released the girl, and Dragon shot her in the head with a single round of xmin. She twitched once, and a shocked silence settled over us. We stood back. The fungus was consuming her utterly, completely covering her body. She didn't even look human any more. The fungus was thickening, building into an awful, pulpy mass, splattering as the rain hit it.

"Scut," Dragon said. "All right, Pits, we take the school. I want everyone to be 100 percent alert!"

"That's a ten!" I was almost in shock myself, backing away from that horrifying corpse. The damned thing was still growing, larger and larger. I moved on the school compound, 100 percent alert, my blood like ice, all sensors on max. The rain slowed to a miserable drizzle. The sky was a soupy mess.

We assaulted the school in textbook form, blasting the doors open with vac, Trigger standing by with the manlink, Mams back there watching the perimeter,
Kiss
and
Little Miss Miss
floating somewhere off in the distance, guarding the sky. The school was a wreck but the structure was tough and most of the buildings were still standing.

"Psycho, take a look," Tourist said. He peered around a corner, looking out at a walkway running between two buildings. Psycho moved up, and I covered them, straining to see it. A corpse—no, two corpses—fungus cases, both of them, swollen grotesquely, rotting in the drizzle. One of them was very small. It could have been a child.

"Leave them alone," Psycho ordered. Then the largest corpse exploded violently with a dull plop, spraying fungus everywhere like shrapnel, filling the air with millions of tiny fragments of fungus, floating gently down to the gravel.

"Deto!" Tourist exclaimed. His armor was covered with the stuff. "Get it off me!"

"Stand by!" I raised my E and hit him with flame and a horrendous burst of burning gas exploded violently on his A-suit. When his armor began to glow red, I eased off on the trigger.

"That'll do it," I said.

"Thanks! Man, that was scary! What the hell did that?"

"According to my tacmod, the Nova is in the basement," Dragon said from inside the nearest building, "and there's no life down there."

"Do you think they're dead?" Psycho asked.

"Don't know. Val, Dragon, sitrep."

"Dragon, Valkyrie, all quiet out here."

"All right, we're going down. Thinker, Flash, Sweats, on me. Psycho, secure our rear and don't let anything near the school."

"Don't worry about your rear," Psycho said. And a little chill shot through my veins. I could see him in the Mound, one leg shot off, sitting with an E behind a pile of contac grenades. 'Don't worry about your rear,' he had said. We had almost lost him there.

The signal led us into a basement corridor, completely blacked out. Our darklights activated and it was all bathed in cool green—a corridor littered with fungus-covered corpses, five of them. As I took it in, I realized it was a scene of considerable violence. The tile walls were smeared with blood and marred with scratches—fingernails, I realized. Two of the people had died in each other's arms, clutching each other for solace as the awful growth took hold.

"Keep away from them," Dragon warned us.

We stopped when we came to the sixth corpse. It was an O, just as dead as the humans. A giant, spidery frame, huge arms thrown out in front of it, all covered with rotting, pale white-green fungus.

"Redhawk, you getting all this?" Dragon asked.

"It's clear, Dragon. We're getting all your transmissions. Scut!"

I kicked in a door and it was a storage room, full of supplies. The Nova was on the floor, still active.

"That's probably them out there in the corridor," Dragon said, looking around the room.

"Probably," I said. "I guess we just missed them." To have come all this way and to miss them, possibly by moments. What a shame. I thought briefly about Tara. She had disappeared somewhere on this world. I should have known. The chances of running into her were about a million to one. I was a fool to have even dared to hope it.

"All right, let's go. We're here, and they're not," Dragon said. "We've done our part."

"Alert! Alert! Intruder, Omni aircraft, as marked!"

"Kiss is on it!"

"Miss has it zeroed, moving to attack! It's an airtank!"

"Ahh, scut!"

"Zeta Unit Area Superiority Heavy Armor Shuttle in mobile fortress mode, altitude twenty two mikes." Sweety flashed a diagram of the airtank on my faceplate. It was a massive, brutal roughly saucer-shaped shuttle that was designed to roll along at low altitude, annihilating anything that moved to impose instant area superiority in the designated target zone. It was very effective. Once it targeted you, you were gone.

"Mams has it on scope, prep to fire!"

"I've got the bastard zeroed," Trigger said. "Lockon!"

"Don't fire unless it goes after us, guys," Dragon gasped. We sprinted up the steps from the basement. We were up in moments, skidding along the upper corridor and bursting out the doorway into the rain. I shouldered my E and set it for canister. I knew canister wouldn't hurt a Zeta heavy airtank but if it discharged a squad of O's I was going to give them something to think about. Adrenalin pumped wildly in my veins. The Zeta was highlighted on my tacmap, a phospho pink glow.

"It's turning, coming our way."

"It's headed right for the school."

"I confirm it's…"

"Probing! It's probing the area!"

"Kiss, Miss, Dragon. Fire," Dragon said quietly.

There was an instant's silence, only the patter of rain on my faceplate. Then an awful, multiple shrieking erupted. It sounded like the very fabric of reality was being violently ripped open. A titanic explosion followed, a blinding flash that lit up the sky for an instant like a bolt of lightning, followed by a deafening crack and a shock wave that rattled my armor.

"Look out!" A thunderous roar hit us and the sky was suddenly full of flaming wreckage, massive chunks of fiercely burning junk leaving long smoking phospho trails against the sky. It impacted all around us. I dived into the mud against a wall for protection. Wreckage ricocheted everywhere, crashing into the school buildings. Thank Deadman for the Phantoms! Without them, we would have been almost helpless against a Zeta unit.

"Is everybody all right? Pits, count off!" We did a count, and everyone was there. Flames crept up the walls. The school had been hit and was starting to burn.