“Systie,” I began. “This is a combat tactical interrogation…”
“We understand,” he said. “We are a soldier, we understand. We will cooperate. We will tell it all we know.” He had the same accent as the other one.
“Prisoners!” Snow Leopard insisted. “Did you take prisoners? Speak!”
“Yes, at least one prisoner. We heard it on the net, but we did not participate. We think it was…yes, it was the Seventh, their security elements, the 3rd and 4th squads.”
“Details!” Snow Leopard was doing the interrogation now. I listened.
“They used a stunstar, and it worked. They only had a few marks to get back to the ship before launching, but they made it back with the prisoner. We remember they gave a cheer. That was their mission.”
“And the ship,” Snow Leopard asked. “What ship was it?”
“The Seventh was on the Preference. That’s where they took the prisoner-to the Preference.”
“Trooper,” Snow Leopard asked. “If we ask you about the purpose of this installation, are you going to die on us?”
The Systie took a deep breath. “We don’t think so. It knew it was coming, we could see that. It was a baser. But nobody ever told us anything important. We’re just a soldier. Fifteenth DefCorps, Stratcom, the Starfleet Commandos. It was a good outfit…” he paused, overcome by emotion. “We’re sorry about Legion comrade. System lost some good men, too.”
“So why is the System here? Why the base?”
“We’re just a soldier,” he repeated. “The base was highly classified. It was a horror show. They said the basers never left. They just stayed there, forever. Our outfit was here to provide external security and strategic defense. But it was a big operation. Lots of star carriers, coming and going. Lots of heavy equipment. It was a mining operation of some sort. Unitium, somebody said. We weren’t supposed to know. We never got near the mining area. They had their own internal security.”
“Unitium? What are you talking about? What’s unitium?” Snow Leopard sounded puzzled.
“We don’t know! And we don’t ask questions.”
Shocked expressions and a long pause followed.
“Unitium?” Merlin mused. “Let’s see-unitium is an extremely rare, natural mineral with some unique properties that looked theoretically useful for the acceleration of promat. At one time, it was of interest in connection with some containment problems associated with star drives. But we solved those problems, and we didn’t use unitium.”
“Why would the System be interested in this stuff?” Snow Leopard asked.
“I can’t imagine why they would,” Merlin replied. “They’ve already stolen all our stardrive technology. Nobody cares about unitium.”
Snow Leopard turned back to the Systie. “Where were you guys when we got here? This place was dead!”
The prisoner took a deep breath. “Legion really surprised us, when its starship hit the screens. We picked up that much. It was not expected! And it seems we were not supposed to be here, either, because we were all set. We went to dead systems immediately. The whole base was built for strategic deniability. It was a class camo job. But we never thought anyone would actually land here! So when Legion showed up, every major power system in the base and on the ships was cut. The whole time Legion’s been on planet, we’ve been sealed and dead, not a move, not a peep, just rotting underground, and the command so scared they wouldn’t even let us send out recon elements for the first few months. It’s been a stinking mess. We don’t know what they were planning. Surely, they didn’t think Legion was going to go away, not after we lost two of our recon units. Did Legion pick up on them? We figured it did.”
The prisoner wouldn’t stop talking, pouring out his frustrations. “After a while they knew Legion was homing in on us and the plan was to abandon the base, because we did not have the strength to fight. And we guess it worked, except Legion surprised us again, popping up in the middle of the base like that. We don’t think anyone knows how Legion did that, and we’d guess it interrupted the basers. Because otherwise we’d all be dead.” He wiped his face on his forearm.” The plan was to antimat the base.”
Antimat the base! It was one of those fascinating little bits of trivia that you’re really glad you didn’t know about beforehand. That would have ruined our whole day. I opened a canteen, took a swig, and offered it to the prisoner. He grasped it eagerly and drank deeply.
“Tell me about the exosegs, trooper,” Snow Leopard said.
The Systie stared vacantly at Snow Leopard. “Well, what does it want to know? All they told us was don’t ever leave the base. It seemed like good advice. The exos eat people. And worse. It’s an evil business. They have something to do with the levies. We didn’t ask.”
“Tell me about the levies.”
“We weren’t supposed to know about them, but it’s a small base. We’d see the natives-lots of them-men, women, kids-heading for the transports. It wasn’t voluntary, we can tell it that. They were in shock. Some couldn’t even move. Somebody once called it ‘the levies’. There was a connection with the exosegs. I don’t know what it was.”
“The exos are native to Andrion 3. Why are they here?” It was a dangerous question. I knew Snow Leopard very well, and he was about to decide whether or not this Systie was lying to us.
The Systie just looked at him. “Andrion 3? What’s that?” A tense little silence ensued, and then the Systie resumed, nervously. “Look, we don’t know any Andrion 3. In the System we do what we’re told, and we don’t ask questions. They told us we could call this world ‘Site X’. That’s all. We don’t have the slightest idea where we are. We never did. And we never heard of any Andrion 3. That’s the truth. Legion asked for the truth.”
Snow Leopard kept looking at him, silent. Finally he spoke. “What was your last port of call?”
“It was Coldmark, out in the Gassies. It’s a USICOM world. It’s the end of the line. We were on the Rule of Law, out of Port Promise. Very far out of Port Promise, we can tell it. We thought Coldmark was the armpit of the galaxy until we got to Site X. X was bad duty. It’s an evil place. We’re glad we’re done with it. Legion is welcome to it.” His head dropped again. He shivered. He was drained, and ready to crash. “Is it going to shoot us or not?”
Snow Leopard ignored his question. “What happened to you, trooper? Why didn’t you make it back to your ship?” Snow Leopard had decided the Systie was telling the truth, I could tell.
The Systie took a deep breath, and made another effort to control his emotions. “Some of our guys were trapped when the fifth level fell in. We knew the ship was launching, but they were still in there. We tried to get them out.” He hid his face from us. We did not ask him whether or not he had found his buddies. It would not have been polite.
Exhausted, I couldn’t even form a complete thought. I noticed Boudicca propped up against a wall, one armored fist on her brow, eyes closed, jaw clenched. Her other hand came up to her eyes and she sat there miserably, trembling. I could not see her face. If I had not known her so well, I’d have sworn she was crying.
That wave of dread returned and I suddenly knew. I took a deep breath. “So what’s all this about a prisoner?” I asked Snow Leopard quietly. “Who…who did they grab?”
He looked at me wearily, vaguely surprised. “You didn’t know? It’s Valkyrie. She’s missing. Looks like the Systies got her.”
The forest was burning in the night. That was the view when we reached the top. We had climbed all the way up through the shattered Systie base, threading our way through the twisted wreckage, avoiding the worst fires, crawling up like worms, alert for stragglers. But we found only the dead and what the living left behind. We also found mines and pockets of biogas. Lots of nasty surprises. Ironman had been evak’d by an amtac, slicing in from above.
We surfaced in a forest of flames, a charcoal forest glowing red in the night, burning brightly. Great torrents of sparks and incredible rushes of flames rose up to the heavens, sooty smoke hiding the stars. Fire lifted into the night, exploding wildly, a chilling, beautiful spectacle. We stood in the ruins, cracked our helmets open, and breathed in the hot night air, lush with smoke and full of the taste of ashes and death. The glowing bones of the base crawled with soldiers from the Third, dropped in from topside on the glowing aftermath of our antis, but we were the first to surface from below. We had crawled up through Perdition, and I never wanted to see it again.
The Systies had dug their base and unitium mining operation in from one side, leaving the forest above them for cover. Pits of flame glowed in the charcoal forest like volcanoes. Their ships had been well concealed under
