Oba.

  All those bodies.

  So many in one place.

  The bodies of several family units clustered around the apartment’s communal bedding. The families had been killed the old-fashioned way. No, killed is too soft a word. What happened to them was barbaric.

  “Damned mass-execution. In all my years… worst I’ve seen.”

  I looked at Virgil in surprise. He’d been around the Legion for decades. Close to retiring even. He’d seen some stuff in his time on active duty. If Virgil thought this was the worst, it carried some weight.

  “Gather whatever intel you can, Legion Command is gonna want it. Let’s search the rest of this floor as well.”

  “Roger, Sergeant,” I said, forgetting which one of us was supposed to running the show.

  Everyone else in the room hopped to as well. Luckily for us, if you can call it that, one of those apartments belonged to the building manager, and his dwelling had cameras installed.

  “Padagas, get up here,” I ordered over the L-comm. “I need you to gain access to this feed.”

  “On the way, sir!” Padagas replied.

  “Dwyer, prioritize what intel the points are going to want.”

  What I was looking at, all the dead, it was butchery. Not just a blaster bolt to the head. These Arthava had been ripped apart. Picture an artillery strike with no explosions, no burn. Just the twisted flesh and gore.

  “Check your HUD,” Padagas said, cutting off any reply Virgil might’ve had. “Transmitting feed from the apartment’s cams.”

  The recording was cued up to show the Arthava cowering together, like this was a last stand—more like a final hiding place. And then a pack of hyena soldiers rushed into the room. They tore into the huddled natives with claws and teeth. I still have nightmares from watching that security video.

  However the MCR had gotten into the building, either by collusion or stealth, they’d tied up the families around the poisoned air scrubbers. Then one of those walking mongrels, I couldn’t even guess its gender, cut a baby apart while the hyena’s compatriots ripped into the mewling Arthava cubs. The holo footage was vivid; I could almost smell the fear. And if the corpses at my feet could draw a breath, I’d guess they could smell the fear in me.

  “They’re torturing those cubs,” Padagas breathed.

  “By Oba,” Corporal Singh whispered.

  I could hear several of the leejes who had chosen to watch the holovid puke inside their buckets, spraying their disgust in the worst way imaginable.

  After they’d tortured the young cubs while the parents watched, the soldiers had their way with female captives. I had to look away; I wanted to scream and rage at this perversion. The Arthava rapists wore a mix of MCR uniforms and cultist robes as they repeatedly ravaged their loyalist prey. It was brutal, but quick. When it was over, they murdered the women and then the men.

  I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident, but the continued search through Kusiba proved otherwise. In their fanatical pursuit of power, the MCR had slaughtered two million loyal citizens of the Republic.

  “We won’t forget this,” Virgil grimly said. “We won’t forget nothin’.”

  10

  It took us the rest of the day, and two more, to clear the city. We took big risks and ended up sending one leej per floor in most buildings. Some of the floors were cleared entirely by the drones. Our searching only confirmed what we’d already learned. The MCR had massacred two million sentient beings—men, women, and children. The rebel scum hadn’t discriminated.

  During the search, we sought refuge from the cold in an abandoned residential building. It was another of those massive numbers, but we were able to open the windows to fumigate it. Once it was safe, we turned it into a fort Legion Commander Keller himself would’ve approved of.

  “Santos, look after the leejes,” I told him. “Dwyer, Chaos Squad, on me. We’re going on a resupply run.”

  “Anywhere in particular, sir?” Virgil replied.

  “Affirmative, I marked them on your HUD. There’s a sporting goods store and a local police garrison.”

  “Roger, let’s make a point of not just grabbing charge packs. Grab food, weapons, and anything else which could augment our basic kit. Not everyone’s rucks survived the landing.”

  Sket, why didn’t I think of that? Blasters wouldn’t fire indefinitely, I knew that. But it hadn’t occurred to me to consider food. The Legion always resupplied us on our training operations. But now we were on our own. We’d have to forage what we could, even if that meant riffling through alien garbage.

  “All right, let’s make it happen,” I said, and moments later we were scanning the deserted gray streets.

  In the end we got lucky. Thanks to the Arthava’s cultural fascination with shooting things, we found an overabundance of civilian knockoff legionnaire blasters. Rearmed by the locals, we were ready to avenge their ghastly murders, all two million of them.

  “We’re gonna need a larger work detail, Top,” I called in to the first sergeant. “We hit pay dirt on charge packs. Could you send more leejes to my location? LR-24, out.”

  There was some grumbling, but Top Walden did send leejes to be my mules. We carried the supplies once Virgil said we’d cleared everything useful from the stores.

  I sent a HUD update to the company commander.

  “LS-001 this is Lieutenant Ocampo. Resupply complete and preparing to rejoin the 9th, over.”

  “Negative, Ocampo.”

  “Sir?”

  “Just got off comms with Fleet and the navy has its hands full with an ad hoc MCR force.”

  That sounded crazy. I mean, the Republic Navy has no equal in the galaxy. But then it dawned on me that this wasn’t the Republic Navy that was constantly appearing in so many holos meant to show the breadth, scope, and might of the Republic. This was our Navy. The thrown together Caledonian fleet made up of Ohio-class battleships that were inferior to modern capital cruisers in just about every way but size. And all the advantage that gave them was that it took ’em a while before they blew up.

  So if Cally could put some Ohios in the field, why couldn’t the MCR? And if they did… yeah, that would be a fair fight.

  “Fleet’s not dealing with pirates,” Captain Archer continued. “This is a fight to the death up there and they’ve got no word when a destroyer might show up and help them clean house. We are to continue on foot toward the planet’s orbital defense cannons. The Republic has numbers but those guns are what’s tipping the fight to the MCR.”

  “Yes, sir.” I quickly muted my comm and called on externals, “Everybody up. Sergeants, get your men up now.”

  Captain Archer relayed our objective in my HUD. Intel said that those guns would be well defended. With insurgents dug in with the hopes of surviving the inevitable orbital bombardment and bombing runs—the ones that never came because of the fight that began the moment we reached the system. So now it was up to us. And we had to do all of that… alone. Two leej companies against the unknown.

  “Again, I’m counting on you and your men to get this done,” said Archer. “Get. It. Done. LS-001 out.”

  By now my men were gathering around me, standing behind their squad leaders.

  “Listen up, Rage Company. I want blasters cleaned and serviced. I want an updated count of your charge packs. Verify whatever your bucket tells you with visual inspection.”

  “I’ll take care of redistributing charge packs,” Sergeant Dwyer volunteered.

  “Good call, LR-57,” I replied. “Everyone else, eat your rations and tend to your wounds. We’ll be pushing hard to the next objective the moment we’re able.”

  Taking charge and seizing the initiative was starting to get easier. Giving orders to a leej with decades more experience in the Legion than I had alive still felt weird. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but it had to be done. We wouldn’t have a lot of time once the commander acted on the orders from above. I’m glad that I did, otherwise our boys wouldn’t have eaten.

  Captain Archer was a driven man, as ambitious as he was competent. And anyway, those guns were a real problem. There were men dying above us and they were powerless to do anything about it but stay and keep fighting (and dying) or cut and run, leaving us stranded on-planet. Archer knew that as well as I did and wasn’t willing to let it happen. We’d lucked out getting him. I know I’m not a seasoned legionnaire by any stretch, but I’d never heard of a point working out. Ours was.

  My HUD pinged and I was taken into a secure L-comm channel with the captain and my fellow officers. I felt out of place.

  “Gentlemen, our next objective’s a beast,” said Archer solemnly. “We’re to take out those orbital defense guns, and I suspect it’ll be heavily defended. The MCR think they can push us off this rock, and they went all in here.”

  “How’d they muster up enough troops to pull this off?” asked Captain Hatton, Dragon Company’s commanding officer.

  Archer spoke with the surety of a prophet. “The MCR stoked up these lunatic cultists to do their bidding. Once we capture these guns, we will karball ’em to the next planetary system before reporting in for our next objective. We will move as fast as the slowest wounded leej can travel, but we don’t have time to dawdle. You are to move out in five mikes. Make it happen, Leejes.”

  A moment later, orders were sent to each unit. Once again, my team was taking the lead. I keyed in a comm line with my NCOs. “Listen up, 1st Section. We’ve got point. I expect you sergeants and corporals to do your thing. And with so many sergeants lost on the Cambria, each leej has to carry his own weight. LR-24, out.”

  In a story as old as the Legion itself, the real work was done by those still wearing the stripes. The House of Reason gave me the medal, but those boys did all the heavy lifting.

  “Where are the guns, sir?” Padagas asked.

  I took the opportunity to uplink a battle map to each leej under my command. “The orbital defense guns are due south, about twenty klicks.”

  His groaning was silenced, probably by an elbow to the gut. Likely some Legion sergeant stepped in to administer discipline. But inside, I was groaning too. The march to the guns was going to be a stretch. Our leejes were exhausted, pushed to the breaking point, but we didn’t have a choice. The sooner we got to those guns, the more likely our ride back home would be safe. Those navy boys were counting on us, and when crap hit the fan, the Legion delivered.

  With the comm still live for my entire team, I broke down what to expect. “I’m gonna be straight with you, Rage Company.” I looked what legionnaires I could see in the eyes. “This march will be tough, but it won’t be worse than Corporal Santos and his friends in the 71st running us back in Cally!”

  “Least it’s not uphill,” Santos quipped, laughing with us.

  I wait for the laughter to die down, replaced by that awful, nervous purgatory before the start of a mission. When warfighters remember that they’re also sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers… and they worry about those who see them as such. “We’re going to be okay, and these traitors are going to experience firsthand what happens when you square up with the Legion.”

  After checking the strip map overlay the commander had sent, I saw that Santos wasn’t just making a joke about the route. We spent most of the exhausting jaunt skirting one of the largest ridgelines of the Bevak Mountain Range. There no longer was an uphill climb—we would be able to take surface roads to get near the guns.

  But that didn’t mean the journey would be easy.

  We double-timed along one of the winding roads, not expecting trouble for several klicks. It was brutal; running in full kit with wounded leejes was never easy. We knew we didn’t have a lot of time. Every second we delayed meant more rounds fired at our ships.

  The cultists would’ve had to seize those guns from under the noses of the citizens of Kusiba. Likely around the same time they’d committed their genocide of Republic loyalists. That gave me some hope. The massacre was fresh; the murderers likely wouldn’t have had time to fully make use of the gun emplacements or defenses. Those systems take time to learn, and saying security on a planetary defense system is tough to crack is an understatement. But again, that didn’t mean it would be easy. I had to assume that the MCR and the Arthava cultists were at least as tactically proficient as I was. During my years breaking up fights among drunk restaurant patrons, I’d learned that you underestimated your opponent at your peril, and I didn’t plan on letting my hubris cost the lives of any of my leejes.

  Our usual forced march pace was definitely slowed by the wounded. Rage Company normally marched six klicks an hour; we only managed half of that.

  “Keep it moving, Leejes,” Captain Archer told the company. “A few more klicks and we’ll rest. Never been prouder of a leej company!”

  Our wounded did their best during the march, but they were only human. Their bodies had limits and we were all operating on very little food and sleep. Under ideal conditions, we’d have sent our wounded to field hospitals, but this battle wasn’t ideal. If anything, it was a textbook case of what not to do from start to finish. I was learning the hard way what every real leej knew: no battles went down as planned. Like I’d been taught at the NCO Academy, war was a democracy and the enemy got a vote.

  While my squad leaders managed their small units, I tried to maintain my situational awareness. I monitored the world around me, observing my surroundings. If we were attacked, I’d need to quickly formulate a response. I constantly checked on the location and vitals of my leejes, paranoid that I’d left one of the wounded behind.

  “Sergeant Conn,” I called over the L-comm, “check on Sterns. He’s lagging.”

  I could see that the leej’s vitals were close to WorryVille.

  “Already on it, sir. Organizing litter detail now.”

  I had good leej NCOs, best in the business.

  After I’d cared for my leejes, I took it all in. I couldn’t help but notice how stunning the Bevaks were. I wished I could come back when the dust settled, show my wife and unborn son.

  If I ever do go back, I’ll definitely bundle up better. My LARK struggled in the cold. Some leejes reported cracks in their seals and electrical issues. The longer we were exposed to the snow, the thicker the layer of ice on our armor got. This caused us to use more energy to simply move forward. But after seeing the beauty of the trees and snow-covered mountains, I knew why the Arthava thought they were worth fighting for.

  “Keep going,” Archer called out. “Hot kaff to the leej with the first kill!”

  “Rum, if the traitor is an officer!” added Top.

  I don’t know if we had any booze with us, but we didn’t care. Top had lightened the mood enough to bolster our flagging spirits. Onward we pushed, our walking wounded desperately trying to complete the mission.

  “Think of home,” I added over the company L-comm. “It’s warm back in Cally!”

  “How’s that one weekend a month treating you right now, LT?” Top joked.

  I blinked in surprise but rolled with it. “Think that recruiter deserves a punch in the gut, Top!”

  Top was right—this wasn’t what any of us had expected when we’d enlisted. Most of us joined up on a lark. Life as a reservist would be a grand adventure without any of the risks of actual service. We’d been promised one weekend a month and three weeks in the summer. For most of the 9th, it was easy money and a chance to get away from the monotony of daily life.

  The joke was on us.

  Like soldiers since the dawn of time, we got screwed by the small print of our enlistment contracts. Ama always said the devil was in the details. Boy, was she right about that. The Repub included a clause that let them activate us without warning… for the good of the Republic, of course.

  And maybe, when I really think about it, that was the difference between what I was—what I am—and the real Legion. There’s no trickery with them. No one is there because they want to get out of a prison sentence or because it was the only way to get some benefits package. They were legionnaires because they wanted to be. Because they believed in it.

  “Halfway there, Leejes,” Archer said. “Head on a swivel now, boys!”

  I reinforced the message with my boys. “1st Section, slow and steady from here. This is where things start to get serious. We’re within range of the guns’ defenses.”

  I hoped I sounded tough, the real deal leej. That guy who could KTF in his sleep.

  Even though we’d already fought the charka, this would be our first battle with an armed enemy. Surely there’d be cultists or MCR troops waiting to kill us.

  I swear, tree slugs moved faster than we did at that point. We spread out, wary and watchful. The enemy could show up anywhere. If it were me in charge of those MCR orbital guns, I’d have had scouts out, with several fallback positions already located. Defense in depth. Make the invading enemy pay for every inch.

  But that’s not how whoever was running this rebellion was doing it. At least not that I could see. If there were scouts about, we’d need eyes in the sky to spot them.

  “Olvera, we need overwatch. Keep the drones high enough that their roving patrols won’t look for it,” I ordered.

  “And beneath the window for any high altitude sensors watching out for the big guns,” Dwyer added. “We don’t want them to know we’re here.”

  “MCR is definitely here,” Santos said. “My team’s spotted footprints in the snow. Fresh.”

  I was right to be cautious. I raised my right hand, halting my section. Kneeling in the snow, I looked around. I quickly tuned the noise actuators on my bucket to max and gestured for my leejes to do the same. I was hoping to detect the enemy before they identified us.

  And then we heard it, the crunch of heavy boots tramping through the frozen underbrush. An enemy patrol was nearby. The entire section began scanning the area around us, looking for the threat. Our HUDs were acting wonky; the LARKs couldn’t seem to process the extreme temperatures of the Rhyssis Wan. And a nagging worry wondered if that same cold would sap the strength of our blasters again after such a long period of inaction. If so, we’d have to hope killing the Arthava cultists or MCR or whoever was out there would warm them up.