I Am Legion
by David
Barber
When the intruders fell
from the sky, I warned my Lord that the Old
Ones would be angry. My Lord led the attack himself.
They were soft and slow,
My Lord declared afterwards, the fight not worthy of a song. Not even
good prey animals. The meat made his warriors sick.
******
The Legion dropship discovered why the Research Station had fallen
silent: the entire science staff had been butchered and partly eaten.
When Officer Chen’s men clamoured for revenge, he silenced them. The
Legion would make those responsible pay, there would be justice, he
gave his word.
Morale 101 taught the value a legionary placed on the ethical stance of
its officers.
"You don’t see the bigger picture, Officer Chen," confided his
superiors. A small army was on the march towards him.
"Teach them the difference between massacring civilians and attacking
the Legion. Then we can demand those responsible are handed over."
It was a host from the Middle Ages. Those in front rode huge scaly
mounts, wore iron plate and wielded lances and wicked blades. Behind
them was a motley horde on foot.
When the cavalry lumbered into a charge, Chen shrugged and enabled the
autoguns. Above the whine of munition-feeds, he could hear the donk,
donk of rounds striking armour, an anvil worked by a madman. Sensing
the eagerness of his men, Chen ordered them to open fire too.
Afterwards, there was a moment of silence, before foot-soldiers spilled
over the heaped bodies and sprinted towards them, waving knives and
spears and howling like wolves.
In the end there were no survivors to hear Chen’s demands, and even
when they pounded a nearby castle into rubble, no one sued for peace.
Walking amongst the bodies, Chen toed open a visor. He had been told
they looked like reptiles. This one practised the empty look of all
dead faces.
******
I am made to wait outside. Every passing servant snaps and
snarls at me. When this Lord rides out I take my chance and clutch at
his mount.
These intruders are different, I cry. My Lord ignored me and they
slaughtered him and all his host.
His pack drag me away but this Lord stops them before they find my
throat.
The Old Ones are wakening again, I warn, but he already senses this. He
has felt the murmuring in the back of his skull.
He asks what must be done, as if there was any choice.
These intruders must be killed or driven back into the sky. Their
technology is an offence to the Old Ones, and we know the consequences
of that.
He marks me with his scent and I have a new Lord.
******
"How did you capture a newt?"
The hologram of the Legion Colonel had an annoying flicker. His
superior spoke from the Legion ship in orbit.
"Sleep agent G, sir."
The creature snarled and bounced off the bars of its cage. Chen weighed
a grenade in his hand, demonstrated pulling the pin, then flung it as
far as he could.
The newt’s head snapped round to follow it. Fast, very fast. Hand to
hand would prove interesting. There was a bang and a satisfying spew of
dirt.
"You see the others in there with it?"
"Yes, what are they?"
"She laid eggs after capture. Those are her offspring." He tossed the
second grenade underarm through the bars. The newt plucked it from the
air and with a howl yanked the pin.
"Didn’t know it was a smart grenade. Would have sacrificed herself and
her children to kill me."
"And what does this prove?"
"That they will fight to the death."
The Ship AI broke in. "It shows their biological imperatives are
different. If humans spawned young as reptiles do, they might also
disregard them."
"Thank you, Officer Chen," continued the Colonel smoothly. "But they
must learn we are not prey."
Watching from orbit, the AI had detected another army assembling. It
was the time of the blue sun, when Chen nagged his men to stay under
cover and wear dark goggles. Even so, the nuclear strikes lit up the
horizon.
Chen’s force was redeployed to threaten the largest city on the
continent, his superiors judging this would force the newts to
negotiate.
A week of skirmishing achieved nothing, so he was told to raid the city
and abduct its king, who would then order the carnage halted. Perhaps
this ruler would say sorry and they could all go home. The newts did
not respond to offers of truce, peace talks or surrender. Increasingly,
the voices from above described another world, a different war.
Autoguns rattled through the night, shredding nocturnal fauna. Chen
hardly noticed any longer. He nursed a bottle.
Everyone knew newts put no value on life, not even their own young. He
allowed himself these moments of clarity. At one time he would have
chatted with legionaries on his rounds, a touch of Chen in the night.
Now he avoided them.
The newts had learned from suicidal charges into gunfire, and pounced
from ambush instead, inflicting the Legion’s first losses.
The newts were warned that a habitation would be destroyed for every
Legion casualty. A rash of craters replaced small towns. It made no
difference. Now geigers cautioned against the rising radioactivity on
the wind.
The Research Station records had been uploaded to the orbiting ship,
but Chen scrolled through them himself, looking for clues. It was not
his business, but he sensed that victory here would be elusive.
A few things stood out. Even the xenologists at the Station seemed
appalled by the newt’s religion. Nothing but pain and fear, as if their
deities hated them. The personal log of the Chief Scientist ended
abruptly. Perhaps this was the moment the newts broke in and
slaughtered them.
The blue sun had set, leaving the red sun to own the sky for a time.
First would come clouds of tiny motes, eager for open mouths and eyes,
then the red-bias foliage would unfurl and the landscape take on the
look of an abattoir as rain dripped from fleshy crimson leaves like
blood. Human vision was not well-suited to this light, and it washed
out infra-red sensors. In the end Chen switched to night vision, and
with the battle-suit’s power-assisted limbs, strode like a titan
through a lurid landscape.
As he wrenched the city gates from their hinges, newts surged from
hiding, straight into the withering hail of bullets from the second
battle-suit's Gatling.
Chen ordered the legionary to cease fire and went on alone, venturing
down streets littered with the victims of sleep gas. The Palace
entrance was too small for his battle-suit, so he punched through walls
instead.
If any of the sprawled figures in the Palace was the king, he could not
tell.
"... got hold of me!" cried the legionary he had left guarding his
exit. Then the comms died.
******
"And you just used sleep gas?" The Colonel in the orbiting ship sounded
incredulous.
"The alternative was to depopulate the city," repeated Chen woodenly.
"And you wanted their king as a prisoner."
They played back recordings from his suit, heard his orders to stop
firing, then paused on the pictures of the smashed battle-suit.
"Here is the feed from that suit," interrupted the Ship AI.
The legionary had positioned himself at the gates, covering Chen’s
retreat. The feed went on for uneventful minutes, and Chen was about to
speak when newts poured from the city.
"Not an attack," observed Chen as they fled in all directions.
Abruptly, the battle-suit was hurled against the city wall; there were
glimpses of ground, then sky, then a shadow fell across the lens,
something massive that could crush titanium-steel armour.
"What... what was that?" asked Chen. "Was it an animal?"
"There is conflicting data," admitted the AI. "The indigenes lack the
technology to destroy a Mark 7 battle-suit."
"Was there satellite surveillance?"
"Tasked elsewhere," said the Colonel. "This mission was supposed to be
routine."
"They won’t stop." Chen was certain of it. "This is a holy war now. Or
we triggered a territorial reflex. Or..."
"That is not your concern, Officer Chen. Not your area of expertise."
"So, we keep on killing them?"
"Keep on killing them, sir."
"Officer Chen," said the Ship AI later. "This is a secure channel."
Chen was puzzled. The newts did not have radio.
"I wish to speak about this new threat. Your superiors conjecture it is
a trained war beast, and their answer is more firepower."
Chen grew uneasy. Why was the AI confiding in him?
"I am tasked with finding targets for nuclear retaliation. This is a
satellite view of a newt town."
It was all ruins, stumps of towers, flattened masonry. A kiloton
airburst would do this.
"We have not nuked this town," added the AI.
"Are you sure?" Of course it was sure. It was the
Ship AI. "So what do my superiors say?"
"The war is not going well. They do not concern themselves with towns
that no longer pose a threat."
"Then I don’t understand."
"Perhaps the indigenes fight on because they fear something more than
the Legion."
Chen watched two of his legionaries patrolling the smart wire perimeter
of the fort. They met and talked briefly, then parted. Security was
provided by automatic weaponry, but the Legion liked its traditions.
He couldn't help himself. "And what do they fear?"
"Their religion seems full of sacrifice and cruelty. Always placating
their gods. Perhaps their mythology warns them of invaders like us."
"But why are you telling me this?"
"The ruins are not far from you. Since you can conduct reconnaissance
on your own initiative, you could investigate what happened there."
Chen stationed his patrol on the outskirts of the ruins and walked his
battle-suit in alone.
This was not caused by an air-burst. Amongst the rubble, individual
buildings stood untouched. A cluster of vegetation in the town square
waved in the wind. A row of pots. It was the kind of random damage a
squad of battle-suits might wreak.
After a while his uneasiness grew. Something was not right here. He
turned on every sensor the suit had, gain at maximum. They could pick
up crawlers in the grass, avians on the wing, body-heat a hundred
metres away. He listened to the wind noise in his external mike.
Then his suit’s motion sensors alarmed and he spun, weapons powering
up. A single newt was watching him and he dropped it with a sleep gas
cartridge.
Prisoners were taken away for medical experiments at Camp Mengele. That
was the rumour amongst his legionaries, so he would question this one
himself.
He cracked open his suit and crouched over the newt, tightening cable
ties round its limbs. Though it was the size of a child, he could see
why his men called them newts. He set down the translator and waited.
Go, go, go (verb, motion away, from a place)
Go, go, go far away (verb, motion upwards, into the sky?)
Kill, kill, kill (verb, to kill, possibly, be killed)
The translator did not recognise much of the howling and snarling.
Perhaps they were just howls and snarls.
The newt, wrestling ceaselessly with its bonds, suddenly fell still.
******
My Lord does not know I am here. When the Old Ones destroyed
this place in a single night, I knew it was a harbinger of worse to
come. The Old Ones blame us for the intruders.
Warriors wield the blade and will only listen to the voice of a foe in
submission. This fight will end in mutual destruction. So I must make
the foe understand, make them take their forbidden technology back into
the sky before it is too late.
Out of its armour, they are soft and slow. Without their devices they
would be easy prey. I begin difficult explanations, but it seems after
the Old Ones wrecked this place, they waited.
I sense them emerging.
******
Suddenly there were alarms, gunfire, and men's cries filling the comms.
What saved Chen's life was his prisoner gnawing through its restraints.
He grabbed for the newt before it could bolt, and the four-tonne empty
battle-suit cartwheeled over his head into the wall of a building.
For a moment he was enveloped in dust and silence, before the newt
struggled free of his grasp, then there began a slow collapse of
bricks, an avalanche of masonry, and pain and darkness everywhere.
"Your casualties were unfortunate, Officer Chen," said the Legion
Colonel. They spoke face to face; Chen having limped from the Ship’s
Hospital to the Colonel's office. "But at least we have satellite
surveillance of the threat that faces us."
They watched the mayhem in silence. Battle suits tossed in the air like
toys.
"There," Chen pointed. A blur on the screen. "Can you enhance that?"
"Enhancement does not help. The AI speculates stealthing of some sort.
Very advanced. Which changes everything."
Chen clamped his teeth. He and his men had been bait for these pictures.
The AI interrupted. "Perhaps there is a cloaked ship in orbit. A
presence down on the planet. We cannot tell. There have been no replies
to our broadcasts."
"The newts were never the real enemy," mused the Colonel. "Still, we
must maintain credibility while we shift our focus to this new threat.
Officer Chen, until you are fit for active service, you will take
charge of Camp Mengele."
"Airborne radioactives are becoming a problem," explained the AI. "It
was hoped nerve agents offered an alternative, but they proved
ineffective against newt physiology."
Chen didn’t ask how it knew. AI’s sounded human, but they weren’t.
"Chemical weapons need testing," the Colonel continued. "And you have
experience obtaining prisoners."
Nerve agents may not have worked, but phosgene gas did, and it was
thought the oozing flesh of survivors would be a deterrent.
The Legion had never lost a conflict, yet who guessed the newts would
fight so desperately, or that the Legion roll of honour would grow so
long? Was Chen the only one who remembered the massacred scientists?
He was in orbit when Camp Mengele was attacked. He watched satellite
coverage of the destruction. Men, buildings and equipment smashed by
something the cameras couldn't quite see.
Only once afterwards could he bring himself to speak with the AI. "You
think the enemy is from off-world?"
"And not just this new threat. Before it was destroyed, research at
Camp Mengele found the indigenes are not native either. Habitable
worlds are rare, perhaps they were drawn here like us."
Chen digested this news, but realised it made no difference. He
believed there was no victory in this conflict and was content that the
Legion was deploying back into orbit. Perhaps with the Legion gone, the
newts could live with their ancient fears.
"But if there are aliens here," the AI added. "Hostile, technologically
advanced aliens, the first we have ever encountered, then of course the
Legion will have to go back down." Subsequent reviews found Necrobacillus
was a harmless human microbe that had jumped species, and not the
result of deliberate weaponizing. It was getting difficult to find
healthy newt subjects, and besides, they were not the problem now so
Camp Mengele was never rebuilt.
His superiors insisted this was no reflection on Officer Chen’s
achievements.
******
She speaks.
The intruders have returned to the sky, but too late for us. The Old
Ones smite us with a pestilence.
Long ago we came to this world, and legend tells us the Old Ones
resented our presence, but resented our technology more. In time we
discovered what was permitted and what was not. We once wielded more
than blades and spears.
Let us pray these intruders suffer much before they learn that lesson...
THE END
© 2022 David Barber
Bio: David Barber lives in the UK. His ambition is to continue doing both these things.
E-mail: David
Barber
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