March of the Legion

troop carrier capable of softlanding downside.'

Oh no, I thought. Where did it come from? Are the O's landing more troops?

'That's an O starship!' Snow Leopard shouted. 'Psycho, tacstars! Get 'em! I want that ship!'

Psycho raised his Manlink and let loose a sharp volley of tacstars. The micronukes burst on the underside of the O ship amidst a violet haze as the ship's force field reacted. White-hot tracers ricocheted everywhere. The O ship continued on, ignoring us.

Redhawk shouted, hallucinating from his medication. Priestess tried to comfort him. Psycho shot off another volley to no avail. The starship glided serenely over the lava lake ahead of us, hovering slightly, nearing the shore. A Legion fighter shot out of the clouds and unleashed a tremendous barrage of opstars, then darted out of sight as the O ship's counterfire activated in a shriek of antiship missiles. The opstar mini-nukes detonated like Armageddon, bracketing the O ship, then writhed upwards as glowing fireballs, riding a lightning storm. The power of these opstars dwarfed Psycho's tacstars but as the fireballs dissipated we observed the undamaged starship touch down on the far side of the lake. The ship was beautiful, I had to admit, shimmering a cloudy agate and glowing a faint violet haze from the mag field as it set off a windstorm of ash and pumice on the shore below. Beautiful, indestructible…gigantic! As it hovered there, I peered at it in awe through the E's scope. I noted a long boom jutting out from the nose, capped by a bulbous tip. The ship was a brutal, chilling, perfect tool, built by an alien race of merciless extremists to hammer the galaxy into submission. It was absolutely lovely!

An O starship! What a prize that would be! We knew very little about them. The Legion had never captured an O starship. It was tops on Starcom's list of Things To Do Today. The O's must be desperate to risk a starship downside in the midst of a Legion attack. Maybe we hurt them after all! Maybe…

'I want everybody on image and record!' Snow Leopard said. 'Nobody's been this close to an Omni ship!' I was not sure who was going to see these images, but Sweety had been recording since it first appeared.

'We're approaching the falls, Snow Leopard!' Priestess warned.

'Look at that!' I said. The O ship had dropped a ramp. There was movement on the shore. Suddenly a long line of O's hustled out of an entrance in a cliff wall I hadn't noticed before, heading for the shuttle.

'They're extracting their guys!' Warhound exclaimed.

O's! I had never seen so many! I don't think anyone had ever seen so many—and lived. There must have been ten, twenty, more, running in their peculiar armor, individual force fields activated. These were humanity's sworn enemies. They were huge, strong creatures, long spidery arms and legs with joints in all the wrong places, bulbous helmets hiding their awful split heads. The individual details were hard to make out at our range and the swirling violet force fields made it harder. They were swarming like ants! My skin crawled at the sight.

'Commence firing,' Snow Leopard said, snapping his E to his shoulder. 'Xmax and laser. Don't worry, I think they're beyond psych range for now. Psycho, keep firing tacstars at the ship, you might get lucky. Let's see what we can do.'

Don't worry! Yes, sir! The falls roared ahead of us. I thought briefly that we were certainly insane. But at least we'd go out fighting—the Gods would not deny us that! I fired auto xmax and walked it down the line of fleeing O's. Some of them had already made it to the shuttle. A few went down under my x but they all got up again, apparently unscathed. Nobody was shooting back at us—they were busy! I tried laser—it simply ricocheted off the force fields. They were ignoring us! I raged, 'Come on, Deadman! Give me a kill!'

'Snow Leopard!' I shouted. 'Cease fire! Look!' I pointed at the O's. There was someone else with them— humans! Humans in E-suits, emergency vac suits, running alongside the O's to get in the ship.

'Cease fire!' Snow Leopard ordered. 'Damn! What the hell are they doing?'

'They're Systies!' Psycho said. 'They've got to be Systies! Let's blast 'em!'

'We don't know who they are!' Snow Leopard replied. 'Don't fire!'

'Snow Leopard, they could be captives, they could be under psycontrol!' I said. 'If I was a captive of the O's I'd want to die! I'd want us to shoot! Maybe we should!'

Snow Leopard raised his E, hesitating.

'Snow Leopard!' Priestess called again. 'We're at the falls!' The roar overwhelmed us now, penetrating to our very bones. The O ship was still on the ground ahead. What a prize that would be!

'She's right, Snow Leopard,' Warhound said. 'We're going over.'

Psycho lowered his Manlink. 'Can I be excused for the rest of the evening?'

Helpless, we huddled in our places on the raft. The ship, the O's and the E-suited humans were now forgotten. A fierce wind of supercharged volcanic heat rose from the falls with an ear-splitting thunder. We shot forward to the edge of the falls. Hot liquid rock hissed and spat all around us, gathering strength, a mighty, irresistible wave of lava spraying through the air, and fleet, black, death-birds shot past, gliding on that volcanic wind and calling to each other, a reptilian screeching. It put a cold thrill to my flesh. I knew we were bound for Hell.

A lavafall, a firefall, the end of our ride, the end of Beta River, the end of Beyond, the end of Squad Beta Two Four, Second of the Ship, and the end of all of us. Death's Road ended in a final, terrifying fall amid the blood of the Mountain. We were going to be buried under hopeless megatons of liquid rock, crushed forever, never to stir again.

Eerie laughter. Psycho, in his own fantasy.

'Hang on!' Snow Leopard, his last command. The lava river shuddered. Our tiny boat teetered on the brink, then shot forward, caught in the surge. We lurched over the side of the falls and fell, hissing through the air, in a shower of white-hot lava. A scream echoed in my ears.

It must have been me.

Chapter 2: The Kitchen of the Gods

I awoke to a great light shining directly into my eyes. My body ached, but it was beyond pain, just as I was beyond pain. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. I was stunned.

I was clad in my A-suit on a black beach on the shore of a vast, luminous white lava sea that glowed under dark skies. Little volcanic islands rose here and there in the sea, smoking. On the lake's distant shores, great steaming slabs of tortured rock rose almost straight up to an opaque sky. Overhead, evil clouds streaked the sky, clouds with glittering edges of fire, a volcano sky.

The lava lake, this was the lava lake. The surface moved in a slow, relentless flow towards a thunderous roar where the lake dropped over its edge to some hellish conclusion.

The river had spit us out, right into the lake.

All of the 12th had dropped on to Andrion 3, but for us that only meant Squad Beta, CAT 24, Second of the Ship. One under-strength squad, that's all we were; and to us it didn't matter who else was out there. It was only us, against the O's. Only six of us remained from our original squad of ten. Coolhand's leg was still mending, and Snow Leopard had refused his request to accompany us. Merlin and Dragon remained in the body shop, and Ironman was back on Atom—we had been stuck in the Spawn and had not had a chance to visit him.

The mission was clear. The Second had clarified it for us, back on the Spawn: 'Our mission is to die for the Legion.' Well, we were almost there, already.

The squad! I struggled to my feet, dizzy and weak.

There was no sign of the Beyond. The earth shuddered and a flight of leathery birds shot past me, screeching. Lightning arced down into the lake. Thunder reverberated. It was a wide lake of bubbling lava, several K across, the far walls misty and indistinct. I was alone, horribly alone, on a beach of black pumice, at the end of the Magic Road. My E was still strapped to my chest, but I knew that would be no help if the