'Yes! Yes! It's the Legion's doing!' He was wild-eyed and dripping sweat. He knew now there would be no evac for him.
'Look, Systie,' the Assidic responded patiently. 'We don't yet know the outcome of the battle for Uldo. That's why we're doing the evacuation. In the event we lose, at least some of the planet's human population will have been saved. But you have to realize we can only evac a very, very small percentage of the total. Well under one percent. The rest will all die, under the O's, if we lose. And there's nothing at all we can do to change that, if we lose. So you see we are under absolutely no compulsion, moral or otherwise, to evacuate anyone who asks. You've spent your adult life spewing hatred for ConFree and the Legion, and opposing everything we've been trying to accomplish. I can't think of a single reason why the Legion should expend any effort at all to move your fat ass off this planet. I'd suggest you take a walk, and ask the O's to stop the killing. Let me know what they say. Trooper, get this guy out of my sight.'
I hustled Fatso back out of the hall, through the frantic mob, and he was screaming epithets against the Legion and demanding justice. Justice! Justice was what he was getting—Systies shouldn't ask for justice. I felt really good when I tossed him out the door. It certainly made my morning.
###
'Nothing on scope,' Valkyrie reported. We were all on foot, A&A, carefully picking our way through the glowing rubble of Gadalpa. It had been Uldo's global governmental and administrative center. Now it was a flaming wilderness, scores of massive office mods looming above us under dark skies, enveloped in smoke, burning freely. The O's had been here briefly and the Legion had countered. We were far behind the attack, tying up loose ends until our recon mission was approved. I was on my knees by a tall, smoking stone wall. My armor glowed from the heat. The tacmap flickered on the lower left plate on my visor, and the safeties were off on my E. Valkyrie was right ahead of me, huddled against the wall, and Merlin was immediately behind us.
'It's good news, Thinker,' Merlin remarked. 'The fact we're here means the O's lost the engagement.'
'Then why am I so freaking scared?' I asked him.
'Cover me!' Valkyrie was off, charging ahead in a low crouch into the smoke, then falling onto a pile of rubble. I fired another deceptor and it exploded above her, a shocking phospho burst of dirty yellow smoke, screeching electronic gibberish, showering the streets with hot hail, scrambling our screens.
I ran into the mess hunched over, breathing hard, E up and scanning, boots slamming down onto powdered rubble. Sweety, my tacmod, whispered sweet nothings in my ears. 'All clear, all clear, no enemy in view. Systies remain in the records center ahead. Psybloc is close to max.'
A fiercely burning aircar, resting on its roof. I hit the dirt behind it, then crawled to one end for a look ahead. The energy field from the burning aircar was a good place to hide. My armor glowed red as the flames crackled around me. I spotted the records center, a massive low building of white stone. Smoke curled out of the doorways.
'Looks like a ten, One.' I reported. 'No O's.'
'All right, gang,' Snow Leopard replied. 'Our mission is to take that building. And don't forget there's a Systie squad in there. Let's do it.' Snow Leopard was up ahead, as usual. He took off, making for the building. I raised my E.
###
'We've been ordered to secure the records center, and relieve any System units here,' Snow Leopard explained to the DefCorps squad leader. 'Your mission is over.' There were six of them, clad in bronze-colored Systie A-suits, armed with SG's. We had found them in a great hall littered with rubbish, filling with smoke. We were all juiced up and had taken firing positions against the walls, centering the Systies in our field of fire. One wrong move and they would all die in a microfrac, torn to bloody shreds. I was already twitching inside my A-suit, my finger trembling on the trigger. I fully expected we would have to kill them.
'It doesn't know how good that sounds!' the DefCorps squad leader replied. 'We never thought we'd be glad to see the Legion! Are there any V's out there now?'
'It's clear from here to the causeway,' Snow Leopard said. 'We were told to ask you to rejoin your unit. They couldn't contact you because of the deceptors.'
'It doesn't have to say it twice! We're gone! Let's go, guys! We can hardly believe this! The V were all around us—we thought we were dead!' They hustled out the main entrance. Then the Systie leader turned back. 'There's some civs in the vault downstairs—Government people. Out of their minds—they're Cit's problem now. Good luck, Legion!' And then they were gone.
###
The vault was full of smoke. A large fire burned at one end and the air was charged with glowing fragments of ash. Thousands of empty safeboxes covered the floor, and we walked through miniature mountains of datapaks. A muscular man with no shirt wielded a shovel, feeding scores of datapaks into the flames with his every movement. A young Outworlder with thin sandy hair staggered around, his arms full of datapaks and datacards and books. His face was grey with fatigue and beaded with sweat. He paused when he saw us, weaving slightly, taking us in silently.
'The Legion,' he finally said. 'Perfect. A fitting end. Shoot us,' he said. 'Please. We want to die.'
'We're not shooting anyone,' Snow Leopard replied. 'What's the sit here, Systie? What are you doing?'
The young man gaped at One in astonishment, then looked around briefly at the smoky fire. His assistant stopped, leaning on the shovel, watching us. The young man wiped his mouth and laughed, turning back to One. 'What are we doing? What does it look like, Legion? We're burning history! We're burning books! That's what we're doing! Get back to work, Rigo! You're barely into the Second Millenium. Faster! We can't leave anything for the future. We leave a clean slate for whoever survives. Let them figure it out themselves! We wouldn't want them following our example, that's for sure!'
'Professor!' A girl, face streaked with charcoal, appeared suddenly out of the smoke, clutching a single, leather-bound book. 'It's the First Dynasty—the Ancient Books Collection—hundreds of them! Originals! Please let's save them, Professor—please! Nobody will ever know!'
'Give me that book, child!' He snatched it eagerly from her hands. 'The First Dynasty!' He stared at it greedily, enchanted. I could see the glow in his eyes, transforming his features. 'We'll never know such heroism in our lifetime, Janine. They dared everything and changed the world. Courage can bring down empires. We can't let such subversive ideas fester in our times, can we?' He hurled the book right into the fire, and it flared and burned brightly. The girl burst into tears and covered her face with her hands.
'The First Dynasty is gone!' the Professor exclaimed. 'By order of the System! Bring the rest, Janine, bring it all! Faster, Rigo! History is dangerous. Knowledge infects the mind, it wakes people up. But knowledge and history are easily lost—aren't they, Rigo? You're burning emperors and artists and gods, poets and explorers and philosophers, Rigo, you're erasing thousands of years of history, for all time! That makes you more powerful than all those old, dead kings, doesn't it, Rigo?'
'That's right, Professor,' Rigo smiled cheerily, the sweat streaming off his naked back. 'Whatever Super says!' He tossed another shovelful of datapaks into the flames.
'Why are you burning this data, Professor?' One asked.
'To prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, Legion! We wouldn't want the V reading about our past, would we? And what if the Legion got ahold of it? Oh no, better to burn it—burn it all! And it's our responsibility— ours, all ours! We're a historian, Cit knows—we've spent our life guarding the past for the System. History is a state secret under the System—did it know that? Yes, we're a historian. We're in charge of the past; we're the guardian of thousands of years of dangerous, subversive secrets. And it asks why we're burning it! That's what historians do under the System—we burn history! Bring us those books, Janine—all of them! Don't sub dare hide any! Who does it think it is—God? And stop crying! Does it think the past is sacred? It burns like paper! Try it itself!' He staggered, soaked in sweat and covered with ash, and I think he was close to crying, too. I turned my face away. I didn't want to see any more.
###
'Control, Black Jade. We confirm orders. Black Jade out.' We were committed now. Snow Leopard had just received the go-ahead from Recon Control. We were still in the records center, back upstairs in the main hall, taking a break, camped against the walls and sprawled on the floor, chewing on rations and sipping water from our canteens. It was already dark outside and fires burned out of control in the night. The great hall was cold and dark and full of smoke, and rubbish littered the deck.
