hole in the universe and hurled us through it. Into nothing, nothing to see because nothing was there. We all felt it, though. There was a kind of pressure that closed in on you, and seemed to reduce your field of vision a bit. I asked one of the techs if the dimension we were traveling through had existed before or if we had created it-and why was it that there was nothing in it but us? He looked at me with pity and just shook his head. I resigned myself to my fate. I was a great believer in fate.
The void between the stars is like the hand of death. I was a spark, hurtling into the dark, my past forever gone. A bitter cold numbed my bones. My soul froze, I think, but not from the cold. I knew we were never coming back.
I thought a lot. I had plenty of time to think, lying in my bunk, staring at the overhead. I’m not sure, anymore, whether or not thinking’s good for you. As best as I can recall, every time I’ve gotten in trouble, it was preceded by heavy bouts of thinking. I’ve got to give it up one of these days. But not between the stars.
Atom’s open mess was full of Legion troopers in camfax fatigues and black-suited Fleet Command personnel; FleetCom vacheads, we called them. It wasn’t lunchtime but every table was taken and there was an awful racket. I spotted Warhound sitting alone, writing something with a lightpen on a starlink datascreen. As I approached, he shifted a hand to conceal the screen.
“What you doing, Warhound?” I asked as I pulled out a chair.
“I was…just writing my mom.” He lowered his eyes. Warhound was a good kid with sandy hair cut close to his scalp. Sunken, pale blue eyes dominated a rugged crudely-cast face.
Writing his Mom. Deadman! Many of the younger troopers had only known a mother’s love, never a lover. We’re innocents, I thought, in the service of a savage god.
“How’s the headache?” I asked. He seemed to suffer more from the effects of our wormhole transit than most. Priestess had given him medication for the pain. Stardrive sure didn’t help. The pressure made it hard to take even without a headache.
“Better. Thanks.” Warhound resumed writing his letter, forming the words carefully.
I called up a dox from the table menu and popped the cap. Breaking the seal heated the dark liquid instantly and the rich, sweet aroma flowed over us. Hot dox. Undoubtedly better than sex!
Warhound may have been an innocent, but I knew that, if need be, he would die for us, without hesitation. He was as loyal as a dog. Warhound was not the brightest star in the heavens but he was one of us now. He knew, after Planet Hell, that we’d die for him, too.
As I sipped my dox, my mind drifted. This trip wasn’t a pleasure cruise. If Outvac Sector Command wanted to retask Atom’s entire group to the far side of the Outvac, there must be more at stake than they’d told us. A couple of vacheads at the next table chatted about how unprecedented this deployment was, and I listened carefully. According to them, moving Atom would leave a huge gap that would have to be filled with forces drawn from elsewhere, and moving those forces would require further adjustment. Command was spooked about something and very little spooked the Legion.
“Hi, guys.” Ironman joined us, setting down a tray with ice water and a power bar. Ironman was Beta’s youngest soul, just out of mid-school and still growing. He faced the future with hope and faith. Long brown hair hung over one eye as he stirred his ice water with a straw. Strikingly handsome and superbly fit, Ironman was a lifter, proud of his growing physique. I happened to know that he came from a Legion world, a privileged world. What a fool! He was underage, why had his parents consented? Bright, dynamic, handsome, strong-he had it all, his whole life ahead of him. Everybody liked Ironman. What in the name of Deadman’s death was he doing here? The Legion wasn’t for innocents like Ironman. The Legion wanted the dreamers, the drifters, the doomed and the lost.
“Is everything tenners, Thinker? Something wrong?” Ironman smiled tentatively, revealing even white teeth.
“No. It’s nothing, Ironman.” I felt very protective of him, though I’m not sure why. Every night I prayed to Deadman for his soul. But then again, I prayed for everyone in Beta.
I found our pilot, Redhawk, in Spawn’s aircar bay with his lover. A long line of fearsome black birds filled the bay, gleaming with slick, silent and deadly. My blood stirred, just looking at those lovely ladies. I located our own car by the tail number-24B. Coiled like a snake, ready to strike. I ran my fingers over her wet, icy cold skin.
I loved aircars. They could hover like bees with the airblast from fans hidden under the fuselage or hurtle through the sky like a fighter. Fully armored and heavily armed, the assault aircar was a true battlefield superiority weapon. Aircars were equipped to insert a squad into the target area as well as provide tactical air cover and retrieval.
“Don’t touch my girl.” Redhawk stepped out of the shadows under the fuselage. Tangled red hair fell to his shoulders. His pale splotchy face was spattered with slick. His sparse mustache and scraggly beard looked even rattier than usual. Clad in filthy sleeveless coveralls, he clutched an angular tool I couldn’t identify.
“How’s she doin’, Redhawk?” I gave him a big grin. I couldn’t help it. I really liked the guy.
He laughed. “She’s hot and wet. No foreplay required. Give us the word, we lift.” He looked up at the car with fierce adoration, scratching his chin absently. Redhawk was a free spirit. He could work on the aircar for days without sleep or sustenance. At other times, he would collapse in a stupor, seemingly developing laziness as a serious art form. Once in the cockpit, however, his genius came to light.
“Come on in, Thinker.” Redhawk stepped up through the open assault door into the aircar. I joined him, settling back into one of the crash seats. Laughing, he produced two icy cans of dark bitter from a refrigerated equipment rack, and tossed me one. I popped the cap and let the freezing lager sluice down my throat. Bitter was illegal in the aircar bay but Redhawk had never been bound by the rules.
I had to stop thinking about my fate, about Command’s fears and my own. Lost, hopeless and undoubtedly insane, I had been drawn to the Legion, as if sleepwalking. It seemed as though the twin angels of Love and Death haunted me day and night. In my dreams of home, Tara beckoned to me, a symbol of my lost life. She’d laugh at me, and say I was too soft. I wanted only to forget her, but I couldn’t. Death, my other angel, stalked my dreams as well.
“Getting scared?” Redhawk asked. He draped himself over his seat lazily, his coverall zip half open, exposing a sweaty, hairy chest.
“I get braver with every sip of this stuff,” I replied.
“I ran into Valkyrie in Supply,” he said. “She asked about you.”
I hesitated. “Yeah? What did you say?”
“I told her you had some serious second thoughts about the relationship. And I reminded her that I was available and damned good in bed. She told me to…well, never mind what she told me. It wasn’t very ladylike. So I guess she’s still stuck on you.”
Visions of Valkyrie, Gamma Two, came to me, faintly. What kind of dark magic, what kind of evil alchemy, could find love in the Legion? Visions of silky golden hair, and a great hush. We’d slept out under the stars, on Hell. I’d been Gamma Four then-it was before I was transferred to Beta Squad. Once, we’d camped by a cold, black ocean with luminous silver waves and a beach of silver sand, with death waiting in the night. I blessed the Gods when she first came to me, but it got to be lonely after awhile. She was always there, but her thoughts were far away. For all I knew, she could have been a biogen. But I knew she wasn’t-I could understand biogens.
“Thinker, you still with us?” Redhawk slouched in his seat, finishing off his bitter. “Man, you’ve got it bad!”
I smiled. “Yeah. I guess so.” Here, even Hell seemed like the distant past-a previous life.
The rumor mill spread the word long before the official announcement: We were about to exit the wormhole and re-enter normal vac. I was lost in a crowd of troopers facing a giant d-screen in one of the rec rooms when I heard a faint whining. Reality languidly stretched in on itself. The pressure that had given us all mild tunnel vision abruptly vanished with a jolt. For a moment, I fought for control of my stomach. Then it was over. The ship shuddered and groaned, and the screen filled with stars. A savage cheer ripped through the ranks.
This was routine for the vacheads but good news for us. We made it! The future was dark, but we were right on course.
Troopers pointed excitedly at the screen amid cries of, “Look at that!” and “It’s beautiful!”
