“Anybody know where we are?” Nobody answered Warhound. The temperature was plummeting as night fell. Glacial winds whistled through the vast slums of Coldmark City and plastic and paper trash drifted lazily in the air. The natives shivered in threadbare cloaks and huddled around fires of burning garbage. It would snow soon, and the suffering of the people would increase.
We had no time to worry about them; we had our own problems. Four of us, bundled up in USICOM coldcoats, trotted through the back alleys of Old City, the nastiest part of Coldmark. Massive, crumbling prefabs towered all around us, peeling from age, caked in generations of accumulated dirt. The Old City was the original Coldmark. It had long ago disintegrated, and now served as the home of the most desperate elements of Coldmark’s increasingly desperate society.
“Here!” Coolhand led us. We darted into the next alley. I could barely see, and we did not dare use any lights or night vision gear. I followed Coolhand’s tall, unmistakable figure, with Warhound and Priestess just behind me. Before dropping us off, our aircar had darted through alleys so narrow, we left a trail of destruction in our wake. Overhead another Legion aircar lit up the Old Town with a sky full of deceptor bursts. We wanted to pass as USICOM types to the casual observer, so there were no comtops this time. It limited us. I felt naked.
Somewhere back there a Systie aircar had, hopefully, just lost us. In a few moments our own aircar would pop out of the other side of Old Town, and the only way for the Systies to find us would be to flood the area with troops. Somehow, I did not believe the natives would be overly cooperative with the Systies.
“Left! Here!” The street was slippery with slime and refuse. We passed another miserable group of Coldmarkers, gathered around a pitiful little fire. They all held out their hands, palms open. Three little street urchins exploded out of the group, running toward us, palms out.
“Credit-food! Credit-food! Credit-food!” An insane chant. Priestess stopped. She gaped at a shrunken, wrinkled old woman sitting by the fire, her face pinched with untreated advanced age and hunger and longing, her hand out to Priestess. Sensing weakness, the kids latched onto Priestess, seizing her legs, thrusting their open palms toward her face.
“Credit-food! Credit-food, pretty girl! Rich girl! We die from hunger, rich girl! Credit-food!”
“Move it, Priestess!” Warhound seized her by an arm, tearing her away from the kids, pulling her into the next alley. She came, running silently.
“This is it!” Coolhand paused by an open doorway in a tall, featureless building; it looked like a warehouse. The number 78 was scrawled crudely in white paint on the wall by the doorway, over a pile of fresh garbage.
Coolhand stepped into the doorway. I followed him, cautiously. I caught a movement to my right. I whipped the mini over to cover it and when my eyes adjusted to the dark I found the barrel of my handgun was hovering a few mils from the forehead of a very surprised Coldmarker. He sat on the floor against the wall, wrapped in a cloak, his empty hands exposed. He was young and had dark brown skin and glittering black eyes. He looked far too alert to suit me. Warhound and Priestess popped into the doorway.
“Apartment 2010?” I asked him, keeping the mini centered on his forehead.
“Second floor,” he gasped, pointing a trembling finger up a staircase. “To the left.”
“Thank you,” I answered. I stepped back, set the mini to V, and shot him in the chest. He jerked once and slumped, unconscious.
“That was really subtle, Thinker,” Coolhand said.
We moved up the stairs, minis up. Nothing stirred. We crept past doors, all closed, some with numbers, some without. We found 2010, and took up positions silently.
Most people knock, but not the Legion. We blow away the freaking door, even when we’re invited. It’s an old Legion tradition. We didn’t have our E’s and it looked like a substantial door, so Warhound used a V charge, squeezing it onto the center of the door. Then he triggered it and it flared briefly and the door exploded inwards with a shattering roar and a white flash, and we barreled in all together, guns up, Snow Leopard, Thinker, Warhound and Priestess, the Legion hello.
A young lady with a baby sat cross-legged on the floor by a hissing heating element, a young man rose up suddenly from a pile of blankets.
“Don’t move!” Coolhand shouted the warning. Coolhand and I covered the man, Warhound and Priestess had the lady and the baby. They froze. It was dark and cold, the floor littered with clothing and blankets, filthy walls, the heater spitting and glowing red. A single room, two closets for the kitchen and toilet. The baby stared at us, mouth open. The lady had been feeding it, and she had dropped the food. They were Outworlders, not Coldmarkers. I frisked the man and his immediate surroundings. No weapons. Priestess frisked the lady and the baby. No weapons. Warhound waited by the door and scanned the corridor. Priestess stayed by the lady. Coolhand and I squatted by the man. We had him sit on the floor.
“Are you Brandon Terrio, Defcom 80147-41?” Coolhand asked.
The man hung his head, sighed deeply, and answered wearily. “It knows perfectly well who we are.” The lady gasped, and tears suddenly began to trickle down her cheeks. The baby looked up at her curiously.
“I haven’t the slightest idea who you are,” Coolhand insisted. “Did you send us this note?” He dropped it before the man, a crumpled scrap of paper with a few lines of handwriting.
The man stared at it briefly, then his head rose and he looked at each of us in turn. The light of understanding slowly began to glow in his eyes.
“It’s not with USICOM!” he declared.
“No, we’re not,” Coolhand replied. “We’re with the Legion.”
“The Legion!” He gasped it. “The Legion! It got my message! My God, we never thought it would work, we thought it was with the System, we thought they had intercepted the message. The Legion! My God! Tinlan, our guests. Make some tea for our guests!” He trembled with emotion and excitement. He was a young man, but he appeared ill, stricken with some terrible, primitive disease.
“Thank you, but we don’t have time for tea,” Coolhand said. “We don’t have much time at all, you see, and if they trace us here, you will have plenty of questions to answer. Now, what does this list mean, who are you, and what did you want to tell us?” Coolhand held up the handwritten message. It read simply:
Brandon Terrio Defcom 80147-41
Aeria
Preference
Galleon
Consensus
Tranquility
Old Town, 78 Cargo D, Apt 2010. Nights.
The list had piqued our interest. The five ships listed had all hard-launched from Andrion 2 in the teeth of our attack.
“We wrote it,” the man explained. “Brandon Terrio was our friend, a Sector Starfleet records officer with Coldmark Port. Our name is Tharos Cyprio, but that’s not important. We just want to give Cit what Brandon gave us.”
Cit-a Systie term for citizen.
He paused briefly, short of breath. His wife had dried her eyes and was feeding the baby again. It was a beautiful, bright-eyed baby, smiling at everything it saw, opening a mouth full of mashed food and cooing. Priestess appeared fascinated by the baby, her gloved fingers still hesitating to touch it.
“Brandon discovered something it was not supposed to know. It was an accident. It was into some highly classified fleet programs, and there was a screw-up in the access, and its work got it into an area where it should not have gone. It should have backed out immediately, of course. But Brandon was always curious. It went into it further, and got itself in trouble. It copied the data.”
The man looked up, and examined Coolhand and me in turn. “We served together since Basic. From the same world. It was like family to me. They killed it when they came after it. It must have tried to resist. Brandon was a hothead. They killed its wife and kids too. Just blew them away, and tore the place apart looking for the data. Probably the SIS. But they didn’t find it, because it wasn’t there. That was two days ago. Brandon wanted to give it to the Legion. We stopped believing long ago.” The girl held the baby close to her, moaning sadly.
“Tinlan knew its wife, of course. We were very close. The only reason we’re not dead is the System doesn’t know where we are. But they’ll get us, we imagine, in a day or so. We deserted the same day they killed Brandon. Deserters don’t last long here, not even in Old Town.”
The baby gurgled, giving Priestess a big smile, waving his hands. His mother was quiet, her eyes closed. It was all over for them.
“We don’t have much time,” Coolhand repeated. “What is it you wanted to give us?”
Tharos Cyprio got up and rooted around in a pile of junk. He came back with a minicard, and handed it to Coolhand. “That’s done,” he said. “Done. It’s what Brandon wanted. It’s our death, and Tinlan is against it, but we have to do it. We have to. Does it understand?”
“I understand,” Coolhand said. “What’s in the card?”
“It’s a list of ships,” Tharos replied. “Over seventy of them, mostly star carriers. They all called at Coldmark, and they all left on classified missions. That’s what ‘CM’ means. Cit will see it on the readout. Over seventy of them, with full crews. And Cit will see the dates. The earliest are dated right after the Outvac Wars, long before we were born. The mission has been running for close to a hundred stellar years. Many of the ships never come back. But some of them do, from time to time. They leave with full crews, but they return with minimum hands, and stay in distant orbit, and nobody ever goes downside, and all commo is down. Then they take on new crew, and leave again. Ghost ships. A ghost fleet! That’s what Brandon wanted to tell the Legion. A ghost mission, for a hundred years. Generations of officers and men, disappearing into the vac. Countless ships and men, swallowed up by this endless, ghost mission. It’s something important, it said, and something evil. Those were Brandon’s words-’something evil’. We think it knew more than it told us. It wanted to tell the Legion itself, but it can’t. So that’s it, the list it gave us, and that’s all it is, a list of ship’s names, and we hope it helps Cit. Now Cit had better leave.”
He sat down wearily, drained. “We’re sorry, Tinlan,” he said to his wife. “We’re sorry.” She did not reply. She cried again, quietly, holding the baby to her bosom.
Coolhand slipped the card into a pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “The Legion thanks you.” He handed something to the man. Tharos Cyprio looked at the credmark in his hand. It was Legion gold, a flaming Legion cross on one side and the Goddess of Liberty on the other, and after the credits were exhausted, it could be sold for the gold. It would change their lives forever, in that rat world. It would buy them years of comfort and security.
Tharos Cyprio slapped the credmark back into Coolhand’s hand. “We don’t want its money! We did this for Brandon! We did this for ourself! We’re doomed, and Legion money isn’t going to change anything! Go! Go in peace. And use the information to bring down the System. Bring it down, does it hear us? Bring it down!” He was losing control.
“Movement,” Warhound said, guarding the door, looking down the corridor. His jaw muscles clenched. Warhound was as solid as a rock. I knew we didn’t have to worry about the corridor.
Coolhand passed the credmark surreptitiously to me and I slipped it to Priestess. We were pretty sure his wife would take it; women are always more practical than men. But Priestess did not pass it on to her. Priestess latched on to Coolhand’s arm.
“You’re not going to leave them here?” she hissed at him in astonishment.
“We don’t have any choice, Priestess,” Coolhand whispered back. “We can’t let the Systies know we have this info. We can’t touch him. The best thing we can do is get out fast, to protect them. Thinker, call in the aircar.”
I raised the comset. “Tango, Redstar. Your package is ready.”
The answer came immediately. “Redstar, Tango. Confirm.”
“You haven’t been listening, Coolhand!” Priestess snapped back. “They’re after him already! When they catch up, they’ll find out everything! All they have to do is follow the bodies and go in the door that’s got the Legion trademark on it. This hasn’t exactly been a covert mission! Wake up, Coolhand! They helped us! And they’re dead unless we help them! And the System finds out either way! At least if we take them with us, the System doesn’t know what he passed on to us. If we don’t, they do!”
Warhound fired, auto V, and the thunder echoed down the halls.
“Decision time,” I declared.
“They’re Outworlders,” Priestess added, her final argument.
Coolhand paused only for an instant. “We’ll take them. Let’s go!”
“Come with us!” Priestess shouted. Tharos Cyprio raised his head, mouth open. Tinlan whimpered, and scrambled to her feet with the baby. She made a move to get something from the floor.
“No time for that,” I said. “We leave now! Let’s go! Priestess, escort them!”
Warhound fired again. “It’s just locals,” he shouted. “Follow me!” He proceeded down the hall, past bodies sprawled by the stairs, Coldmarker civilians, out cold. They looked like tough customers.
We scrambled down the stairs and the Coldmarker I had shot was still unconscious, slumped against the wall. We burst out into the street, guns up, and the cold hit me like a hammer. I could see my breath frosty in the air.
“Faster!” We ran down a dark alley, heading for the rendezvous with the aircar. Coolhand and me first, then Warhound and Priestess and Cyprio and Tinlan and the baby. The night sky suddenly lit up, lightning crackling everywhere. Deceptors! The Legion was with us! We charged around a corner and past the familiar group of beggars still huddled around their little fire.
“Priestess! What are you doing?” She had skidded to a halt by the beggars, and pressed something into the hand of the old lady. Then she broke away and rejoined us, into the shadows. An aircar flashed overhead, right over the tops of the buildings.
“Got you in sight, Tango!”
“Where the devil are you?”
“Land, Tango! We’re on the way!” We exited an alley into another narrow street. A gleaming Legion aircar hovered there, sleek and beautiful, the plex shining like black diamonds, a blizzard of trash and dust whirling all around it.
The assault doors popped open and Snow Leopard leaned out with an E, his blonde hair rippling in the breeze, with Psycho right beside him, his Manlink at his shoulder, scoping out the streets. Merlin and Dragon grabbed on to us as we piled in, and Tharos Cyprio, his wife and baby were lifted bodily into the car.
“Go!”
Redhawk shook his shaggy head and gave us a twisted grin and rocketed the aircar up into the flashing night. They would never get us now!
Priestess fell into my arms, her face shining with emotion. “We did it! We did it! They’re free! We did it, Thinker!”
I laughed. “No, Priestess, you did it! It’s you they should thank. What did you give that old lady?”
“I gave her the credmark, Thinker. Legion gold, for the poor of the System! We did it, Thinker! I feel wonderful!” She trembled with emotion. I held her tightly.
“You’re amazing, Priestess. You’re really amazing! You want to personally save the entire galaxy, don’t you?”
“I just want to help,” she replied. “I just want to help!”
Chapter 16:
Dead and Gone
“Go right in, Citizen. The Captain will see it now.” The exec of the Personal Ship Maiden was a slim, attractive female with wispy blonde hair, clad in the ship’s phospho violet uniform and carrying a shockrod. The door slid shut behind me as I stepped into the cabin, leaving the exec outside.
It was a mystery to me why Snow Leopard had ordered me to visit this slave ship-he gave no explanation other than a cryptic order that under no circumstances was I to be surprised by anything I saw. That, and an official invitation from the ship’s captain for a representative of the Spawn to visit the ship. I knew it meant trouble. The Maiden was orbiting Coldmark and the natives evidently wanted the cargo badly. Coldmarkers filled the corridors, bidding for slaves and sampling the merchandise. It made me nervous-the Legion’s role was to kill slavers, not sample their obscene hospitality. I wore civvies at the Legion’s insistence and was glad of it.
Her face a rigid mask, the captain sat on the edge of her desk dressed in dark violet, waves of auburn hair gleaming in low light, exotic Assidic eyes blinking like a caged beast. High cheekbones, a narrow, delicate nose, a wide mouth, and pale brown velvet skin. She was a vision from another world, all the secret memories of the vanished past. I stopped, stunned. Tara! She came to me in my dreams, sometimes, but I had tried hard to forget her. Priestess had made the process easier.
“It is…Beta Three? Of the ConFree Legion?” She spoke in the Systie dialect with a flawless accent, yet it was still her voice. A hard voice, as cold as the vac. Her eyes glinted with a resolve as unbreakable as Atom’s keel. She knew perfectly well who I was! And why the accent? Then it hit me, and it nearly knocked me off my feet. I could see it all right there in her eyes, everything that had happened to her since she’d vanished from my life. A psycher! The legion had trained her and flung her into the deep. Of course! Deadman! Tara is a Legion asset! How long must it have taken her to rise through the ranks of these degenerate slavers and gain their trust? How long for her to make her way to the top-how many throats cut and how many risks taken? How many hopeless slaves delivered to their doom?
Get a grip, Thinker! Watch your words-the Systies have probably got this room wired!
I swallowed hard, “That’s right,” I replied warily. “And you?” I could hardly believe it! The cabin gleamed with rare woods and stones, but I did not take it in. I could only stare, transfixed by this vision from the past. I had thought I’d love her forever. What in Deadman’s name is she doing here? How has she changed? What must it be like for her? How can she survive, alone?
I had Beta and the Legion to back me up. What did Tara have?
She smiled softly. “We command the PS Maiden. Cintana Tamaling, at its service. Please call us Cinta.”
“Ah.” I stalled for time, trying desperately to figure out how to keep us both alive in this perilous situation. “You’re the commander of the Maiden? You’re the captain? Sorry, I’m not familiar with your uniforms.”
She laughed, a little-girl laugh of pure delight, though her eyes did not soften. “That’s right, Beta Three!”
“You’re a slaver?” I asked stupidly. What am I supposed to do here, Tara?
“That’s what the Maiden does, soldier-exotic flesh, from distant ports-evil cargo for evil stars-children and virgins, fresh flesh for decaying mortals. Youth, for wealth-new hope for the dead! Eternal pleasure, love and hope and happiness for sale-yes, we’re in the happiness business! But Cintana Tamaling is not just a slaver-we’re the best slaver in the galaxy! There’s a price on our head that would buy a small world. Would it cut off our head, and present it to the Legion? Think twice first-we can double their price, easily!”
I know you’re a psycher, Tara, I know you can read my thoughts. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you got in so deep. Did you ever dream you would live this long? Did you ever expect to rise this high? I understand-the longer you are in, the more valuable you become-to both sides.
I knew we were in very deep waters. She must be risking her life, just talking with me. “What do you want from me, Cintana Tamaling?” I almost whispered it. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I joined the Legion and I was certain that Tara never expected to last this long without being discovered. I sensed a great weariness behind those cold, hard eyes. And suddenly I wanted to seize her, to tear her away from her nightmare and spirit her off to some Legion world where she could live a quiet life. I resisted the impulse. What would I know of a quiet life? Tara was in it a lot deeper than I, and there was nothing at all I could do to help her. She held up a minicard, looking right into my eyes, and slid it wordlessly over the surface of the desk to me. I picked it up.
“A memento,” she said, “of the PS Maiden. Please understand-we view this as a rare opportunity to show the Legion that we’re not monsters. Here in the System, Voluntary Servitude is encouraged and appreciated-it’s a civic duty. We hope the visit was enjoyable. Perhaps it had best leave now-before our other visitors discover we have a Legion guest! Give our best wishes to the Legion. Tell them all are welcome.”
Tara, I know you are trapped here and you will stay as long as you can. You know how I feel about you. I want you to remember one thing. The Legion doesn’t forget its own. When the time comes, the Legion will find you, we will kill these subhuman slavers and you can go home!
Another sad smile-almost like a saint. Those smoky eyes met mine and she nodded, ever so slightly. I saw a lot in those eyes-grief, pain, anger, and icy self-control. It was clear she could say nothing-and neither could I. It only remained to bid farewell.
“Goodbye…Cinta.” I made the sign of the Legion, tracing it in the air. Her lovely face shone with love, and fate, and tragedy. I would never forget it.