The Last Legion: Book One of the Last Legion Series (7 page)

Garvin smelled the flower-scented air in the soft wind from the sea, the newness of his uniform, and his own sweat.

“Men of Swift Lance,” Williams’ voice boomed from his throat and eight thousand belt speakers. “We have come to honor three who’ve chosen to join us.

“Garvin Jaansma, Petr Kipchak, Njangu Yoshitaro, five paces forward! Colors!”

Two flagbearers marched out, one with the Confederation’s flag, the second with the Force’s. Without a command, the Force guidon-carrier lowered his banner until it was level with the ground.

“You men, put your hands on the flag!”

They obeyed.

“Repeat after me. I,
Caud
Jochim Williams, do swear by all that I hold sacred, whether God or gods or my own honor, I will obey the lawful commands given me by my superiors and swear to defend the Confederation, its life-forms and its way until death, or until I am released from this vow.”

As they finished the oath, the band crashed into the Confederation’s “Galactic Anthem.”

“I wonder if there’s any pickpockets working the crowd and if we can get a cut on the action?” Njangu whispered.

“Shut up,” Garvin whispered fiercely. Yoshitaro glanced sideways and noted his friend’s Adam’s apple working convulsively and what he thought to be a tear running down one cheek.

Garvin noted Yoshitaro’s surprise. “It reminds me of the circus, and he’s a great ringmaster,” he managed, sheepishly.

“Quiet!” Petr snarled.

The band finished, and minor cheers rolled across the parade ground. “Flags … return!” someone shouted, and the two bearers about-faced and returned to the guard.

“
Mil
Rao!” Williams shouted. “Arm these soldiers!”

Prakash Rao, the Force executive officer, came out of formation carrying three leather cases. He gave one case to each man, returned to his position.

“Be worthy of this honor,” Williams said. “Train hard, serve well, be a credit to the Force.” He stepped back, saluted. The recruits returned the salute.

“Unit commanders … take charge of your men and dismiss the Force!”

Yoshitaro opened his case. There was a cap emblem and two collar insignia, each a lance with a shock wave spraying from the tip, and a knife. Surprisingly, instead of being a stylized parade-ground device, it was a lethal fighting blade about 18cm long, single edged with its curving top edge sharpened about 7cm back from the point. The handle was leather, and the butt cap and hilts were silver. It fit his empty belt sheath perfectly.

“Strange,” he said.

“What?” Petr asked, an edge in his voice.

“I’m not slanging anybody,” Yoshitaro said hastily. “But we get these emblems, which are all flash and filigree, and then this knife, which is damned practical.”

“So?”

“Which is the real Force?”

Kipchak looked uncomprehending.

“Never mind,” Njangu said. “Let’s go learn how to sojer.”

C-Cumbre

Jord’n Brooks let the drill yammer against the rock, blinking sweat back from his eyes. Grit swirled in the dusty air, caked on his face, dusted his hair gray. The stope he lay in was barely a meter high, half that wide, room enough for himself, the endless-belt carrier for the ore, and his drill. The rock under him, wet, hot, shuddered as someone in another drift set off a charge.

Brooks was very much at home in the mine, had been for twenty years.

He pawed rock back onto the belt, pulled back the sleeve of his insul-suit, checked the time. He shut off and slung his drill, wriggled back from the stope until the tunnel widened enough for him to get to his feet, his back just brushing the rock above him.

He went down the rise to the substation, the overhead taller and reinforced with steel beams. The air was a little fresher there, a conditioner chugging away beside the bank of controls.

His shift boss stood beside the vertical shaft, and a lift was waiting.

“You’re covered,” she said, and Brooks took off his breather, set the airpak and drill down, got in the lift, and it shot upward. The shaft ended half a mile above, and he went through an airlock and transferred to a slidecar that took him to the mine’s main shaft. He crowded into a cargo lift with twenty other men and women, boisterous and dirty, coming off shift, and it took him to the surface.

Harsh floodlights made him blink as he came out of the top airlock. Somehow Brooks always expected day when he came out of the mine, in spite of what the clocks might say. He inhaled air that was only dusty, dry, and cold instead of hard, oily, compressed, shivered a little until the insul-suit adjusted.

The other miners started for the gate and security. Brooks ducked around an orecar and slipped through shadows past the half dome of the mine’s entrance, then high piles of spoil. He used an automated oretrain for a ride once, then continued walking. Twice he stopped, waited until the predicted security patrols passed, then went on. The night was lit with flaring burnoffs from other shafts not many kilometers away.

Beyond a second mine entrance he followed lift rails past more spoil until he came to a half-underground semicircular concrete bunker. Signs were posted:

Brooks went to one of the bunker’s entrances. He took a strangely shaped key with four differently shaped and fingered arms from a hidden pocket in the leg of his insul-suit, fit it carefully into a slot in the door. He didn’t notice a small crescent mounted above the door, just in line with the lock, didn’t hear it click.

Brooks turned the lock once right, half back to the left, then to the right once more. The door clicked open.

Brooks heard the whine of a lifter, slid into darkness, watched the unlit vehicle ground five meters away. Two figures got out, came toward him. Both had guns ready.

“The Task,” a woman’s voice came.

“The Duty,” Brooks answered.

The woman put her pistol away, came closer. She was Jo Poynton, and had once been part of his Fold, the ’Raum congregation. She was slender, medium height, in her mid-twenties, small-breasted, with surprisingly full lips that looked like they wanted to smile if their owner would ever let them.

“Were there any problems getting on world?”

“None,” Poynton said. “How long before you’re missed?”

“I’m covered through the end of the shift,” Brooks said.

“We aren’t that clean,” the other man said. “The security tech we bought can only keep his radar down for another hour.”

Brooks recognized him by the livid scar down his cheek as Comstock Brien, who’d left the ’Raum almost five years ago, one of the first of The Movement to go into the hills, now regarded as its most dynamic war leader. He was not tall, above average for a ’Raum, once stocky, heavy-bodied, but the time in the jungle, the time running, had worn him down to gauntness.

“Is it open?”

Brooks slid the door open. Brien took a lantern from his belt, turned it on, and they entered.

“A candy store,” Poynton said.

Brooks made a noise like laughter.

“Telex there, Blok over there, and the primary ignitors are in this room here.”

“Get the detonators first,” Brien said. “With those we can make anything go up.”

Brooks and the woman carefully took padded boxes of various detonators, carried them to the gravlighter, came back for another load.

Poynton had just stepped out of the bunker when a light blazed, and a voice said:

“Move and die.”

Both stopped.

“Mellusin Security,” the voice said. “Put the boxes down. Slow. There’s two guns on you.”

They obeyed.

“Five steps forward,” the security woman said. “Prone on the ground, arms and legs extended.”

Brooks knelt, went on his face. A second lightbeam came on, pinned the two against the muddy ground.

“You,” the woman said. “You in the bunker. Come out. Slow. Guess you three didn’t think we’ve got our own snitches out listening for when somebody asks about explosives. Or that we’d set some extra alarms on the demo supplies just to make sure.”

Brien came out, hands half-raised.

“All the way up.”

His hands moved … and he dived forward in a shoulder roll. The guard’s blaster went off and the bolt crashed above Brien’s head into the bunker. Flame flashed, and smoke boiled as an alarm seared the night.

The guard spun, aiming again at Brien as he came to his feet, and Brooks was on his hands and knees, bear-walking forward into the woman’s legs, sending her sprawling. The other guard’s light flickered toward Brooks, just as Poynton got her pistol out and shot him.

The woman was rolling onto her back, both hands on her blaster, trying to aim, but Brooks was on her, hands clawing at her face. The gun spun out of her hands, and he had her throat and squeezed, squeezed, and felt bone crack, her heels drum against the ground, and smelled shit as she died.

He was off the corpse and on his feet. Another alarm screamed from a distance, matching the bunker’s fire warning.

“Let’s go,” Poynton said.

“No,” Brooks said firmly. “We’ve time for one more load. And we’ll take the guards’ sled with us.”

His voice was calm, emotionless. The other two stared in surprise, then obeyed. Brooks trotted back into the smoky bunker, ignored the growing flames, draped slings of explosive porta-paks on his arms, staggered out, and dumped them into the back of the security lifter.

“
Now
let’s go.”

“What about you?” Brien said. “I can’t see how you’ll be able to get back to your shift with the hue and cry out.”

Brooks got into the pilot’s seat of the sled, examined the controls. “It seems the One has decided I’m now on the run, like you.” He shrugged slightly. “What happens, happens. Let’s lift!”

He started the sled, brought it clear of the ground. The others jumped into their lifter, started its engine.

The air shock-waved as something inside the bunker exploded.

The lifters came off the ground, swung, then went to full power, banked around a rusting conveyor way. Jord’n Brooks followed, and the two craft fled into the night.

The only thought in Brooks’ mind was:
Wish I’d had time to say good-bye to my children.

Three minutes later the bunker exploded, destroying a square kilometer of the mine’s aboveground equipment and buildings, and killing forty-five ’Raum miners, a dozen supervisors, plus nearly fifty security and firemen just short of the bunker. It was a month before that division of Mellusin Mining was able to resume operations.

“Looking for a
dec
named Ben Dill?” Garvin inquired of the legs sticking out of the Grierson’s drive compartment.

“Inside the tin can,” the muffled voice came. “Tell him from me he’s a dirty bastard.”

“Uhh,” Garvin responded, and went to the rear of the assault vehicle. As he did, an antenna swiveled, tracking him, then waggled back and forth like a hound who’s just lost the scent.

The ramp was down into the troop compartment, and inside was a man wielding a broom with great vigor. He was possibly the largest humanoid Garvin had ever seen outside the circus.

“
Dec
Dill?”

“That’s me,” the man said. “Armed, dangerous, and attitudinal with your basic Mark 1 Bristle Boomer.” He put the broom down and came out of the AV. Dill was in his mid-twenties, already balding, and had an amiable grin on his face. Garvin decided he didn’t want to be around when Dill lost the smile. He guessed he wasn’t supposed to salute, but brought himself to attention.

“Recruit Garvin Jaansma. Reporting.”

“Oh yeh,” Dill said. “You’re gonna be my new gunner. Relax. I ain’t an officer — I know both my parents. Welcome to Third Platoon, A Company, Second Infantry, and may the gods have mercy on whatever pieces you’ve promised them.” His voice easily changed to a bellow. “Awright, everybody! Unass the can!”

The legs came out of the drive compartment, became a grease-covered stocky man about Garvin’s age.

“Stanislaus Gorecki,” Dill introduced. “He’s the driver/wrench, mostly wrench.”

“So it’s my fault this pig runs one time out often?”

“Got to be somebody’s fault,” Dill said reasonably. “Not mine, ‘cause I outrank you, and sure can’t be the assholes in the Confederation who decided to issue us Mod. 2 Griersons instead of something livable, now could it?”

“Don’t complain,” Gorecki said. “We all could be crunchies, couldn’t we?”

“Strong point,” Dill said. Garvin was lost, and the vehicle commander took pity.

“Here’s the drill,” he explained. “Pigs though they be, there’s eight Griersons in each company. Takes two assault teams — that’s twenty muddy infantrymen — crunchies. One Grierson per platoon. The other four are Company headquarters, heavy weapons, maintenance/recovery, and signal vehicles.

“We’re part of A Company, and this Grierson is Third Platoon’s. But you don’t see the rest of Third Platoon hanging about here, do you? And if you look down the hangar, you see no more’n five people, plus idiots like the maintenance sergeant and his pukes, lurkin’ about, trying to appear busy. You know where the rest of the platoon is?

“Today they’re out painting rocks in front of Regimental Headquarters. Definitely part of learning to be a combat soldier.”

“I got you,” Garvin said.

“Study hard with us,” Gorecki said, “or you, too, could carry the mil-specialty of Shit Shoveler First Grade.”

Gorecki eyed Garvin. “You’re the guy we paraded for day before yesterday?”

“I am,” Garvin said hesitantly.

“I owe you one. I was supposed to orderly for
Mil
Fitzgerald’s mess, but she went and et with the
caud
at headquarters, all ‘cause of you.”

“Glad I could be of service.”

Garvin heard a clang from inside the Grierson, and a small woman with archaic glasses and straight shoulder-length hair that looked like it’d been styled with a butcher knife came out. She wore the three rank slashes of a
finf.