crawled at the sight of them. My heart raced, adrenalin shot through my veins.
We fired simultaneously at the first two exos, laser light ripping the air violently, dazzling our eyes, sizzling and burning, raw energy from the heart of a star. We sliced the creatures, from top to bottom, from front to rear. They disintegrated, quickly, screaming, a high-pitched squeal, grating to our ears. Their bodies, suddenly sliced into many pieces, simply fell apart, burning at the edges, smoking, the internal organs ripping out to fall among the rest of the wreckage. We ceased firing. A horrible stench suddenly hit us like a physical blow.
“Deadman!”
“It works!”
“I love it! I love it!” Psycho was ecstatic.
“Get the others!”
Three, four, more! More exosegs, picking their way in fast motion over and around the steaming carcasses of those we had killed, twitching and snapping, reaching out for us with their antennae. We had no real reason to fear them, despite their terrifying appearance. Our fighting lasers cut through them like paper.
Overcome with loathing, I fired again. Psycho and Priestess fired simultaneously. Merlin kept the light on them. It was a horrible orgy of death, a blind slaughter, a pitiless, deliberate massacre. I saw it through burning red eyes, and I loved every frac. I bounced the E up and down, and slashed from side to side and the creatures walked right into our firestorm and disintegrated, all those separate body parts falling down sizzling to steam and hiss in the water covering the stones of the chamber floor, yellow viscera suddenly free, spilling hot and steaming into nothingness.
A hulking, smoking pile of obscene exoseg parts lay scattered all around us. A head, lying on one eye, glared at us, mandibles still twitching. The lasers did it all, an elemental force, the power of the stars at our fingertips, as we stood fast against a tidal wave of nightmare, grotesque alien creatures from the edge of the universe.
I felt like a God. From the corners of my eyes I spotted Scaler warriors behind us, forming a human wall of tridents and spears, in front of their huddled women and children.
More of them, a new exoseg come to die, its antennae lashing out among the fallen corpses of the others.
“Take the Manlink, Merlin.” Psycho handed it to Merlin, who snatched it eagerly. Psycho stepped out to face the exoseg. He crouched, his black armor catching the reflections from the flares, his hot knife outstretched before him, already triggered, burning a blue-hot flame.
“Hold your fire!” Psycho demanded, “Let me take him.” The exoseg paused for an instant, focused on him.
“You maniac!” I gasped in horror, suddenly realizing his intent. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” I shrieked and pressed the trigger. The giant exoseg disintegrated in an irresistible, glittering stream of laser bursts, its burning remains showering down on Psycho.
“You subnorm earther reject! Get your ass back here, Psycho!” I could hardly believe he had actually done it. What a raving lunatic.
“Damn it, I had him! Why’d you fire?”
Two more exoseg soldiers jerkily picked their way over the great mound of stinking body parts, vacant compound eyes winking evil. We vaporized them, hitting them head-on with the lasers, slicing them up lengthwise. They exploded, green and yellow puss spraying outwards in an obscene halo of death.
We ceased fire. A great silence settled over the chamber. I heard my heartbeat, and the sputtering of Scaler torches, the whimpering of children, and the hissing of our flares. We slowly re-formed our fighting circle, without words. The great hall was littered with unconscious Scalers, the victims of our V bolts. Beyond the bodies, a strong, straight line of Scaler warriors faced us, stretching all the way across the chamber, shoulder to shoulder, behind a wall of long heavy tridents and spears. The women and kids were behind them, in the shadows, all talking at once, shouting at each other. They may have been debating whether they wanted us medium-rare, or well done.
“Don’t fire yet,” I said. “Let’s see what they do.”
“Can we fire after they kill us all?” Psycho was still unhappy because I had terminated his exo.
“Tenners, no more games. If they attack, we keep the E’s on laser.”
“I don’t think they’re going to attack us,” Merlin said. “Look!”
A Scaler warrior stepped forward. He was small but well built, with hard flat muscles and great scars on his chest. An ornament of gold glittered at his throat. He held aloft a heavy blackened metal trident, grasping it with both hands, keeping it parallel to the ground.
“Watch him…”
He walked towards us, fearless, and paused, almost arms-length away, the trident overhead. Three lasers pointed at his belly. He looked right into my eyes, and I knew he could see death, looking out at him. His eyes burned. He was not afraid. He had already decided what to do.
He knelt, and brought the trident down, slowly, holding it out, to us. Presenting it, to us.
“He’s surrendering,” Priestess whispered.
I reached out to take it, in a daze. It was heavy. A sun symbol engraved the metal shaft, a sun with a single rune on its face, radiating light. The long line of Scaler warriors carefully laid down their weapons on the flooded stones of the great hall. I could hardly believe it.
“Cease firing, Snow Leopard,” Psycho suddenly exclaimed. “The Scalers in the great hall have just surrendered to us.”
“What do you mean, Psycho?” For an instant, I did not understand.
“It’s Snow Leopard,” Psycho replied. “CAT 24 has broken through, they’re on the way. Engagement in the tunnel.”
Priestess’s arms snaked around my waist and she buried her face in my chest. I balanced the E on my hip and tried to comfort her. A great relief flooded over me. I was suddenly very conscious of her very naked body, pressing close to mine.
“Let’s see if we can find Priestess’s litesuit, guys, uh, and maybe mine and Merlin’s, too.”
Chapter 7: The Mark of the Beast
Seven weeks later:
I awoke warm and comfortable. Completely relaxed, I wanted to stay in dreamland forever. It slowly dawned on my fuzzy mind that I was on the floor of the squadmod lounge, lying in a confused tangle of motionless bodies. I had not the slightest idea why. This has to be a dream, I thought. It felt so damned good just to be lying there, warm and lazy and mindless, that I wanted to continue like that forever. And it had to be a dream. The Legion does not sleep.
The bodies around me gradually came into focus. Squad Beta, asleep. Sleep, a forbidden drug. Priestess lay beside me, a blanket up to her chin, breathing deeply. In the dark, her face seemed faintly luminous. An angel, asleep. There, that angular shape against the sofa-Coolhand, his face sunk into a cushion, out like a stone. The others were on the floor, under blankets or pillows, sleeping where they had fallen.
Memory crept in like a grey ghost. We had been busting the damned Cult of the Dead for weeks. It seemed more like a hundred years. Flying on mags and biotics, we had become spirits, biogens, walking tirelessly through a ghostly dreamland, our souls watching us from far away. Then the unbelievable had happened, another squad flew in. Beta had been ordered back to the squadmod and told to sleep.
We collapsed when we reached the lounge. We all had our own cubes, but we didn’t make it. We crashed to the deck of the lounge, fumbled at our boots and armor, somebody doused the lights, cushions came off sofa and chairs, blankets appeared. The cubes all had bunks, but they were seldom used. I had not slept in a bed in some time. I did not trust them in any case; we knew that Atom’s wisdom came to us in our sleep from the bunks. We had enough wisdom already.
Sleep. Unbelievable! Every muscle in my body ached, but I felt as if I had been reborn. All the exhaustion was gone. It had been there for weeks, a constant presence, a dull ache behind my eyeballs.
Bodies, in the dark. I could see them now, dimly. Warhound laid flat on his back on the floor, still in his litesuit, not even a blanket, his mouth open. Merlin and Psycho lay in a tangle of equipment between two chairs. I
