Soldier of the Legion by Marshall S. Thomas

Author:Marshall S. Thomas [Thomas, Marshall S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-06-07T13:06:35+00:00

Chapter 11:

The Delegate from the Past

“We all here?” Snow Leopard looked us over critically.

We gathered around the table in the squadmod tac room.

“Beta here,” Coolhand confirmed. Merlin had been pondering a miniscreen full of data; he slipped it into a pocket. Psycho had a disassembled Manlink on the table; he continued to fool with it. Warhound and Ironman gave Snow Leopard their attention. Dragon brooded over a cup of dox at one end of the table. Priestess sat beside me, silent.

“If you’re through, Psycho, we’d like to begin.”

Psycho put down the parts and grinned. “Sorry, Snow Leopard. I try to keep occupied during these staff meetings so I don’t fall asleep.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Psycho, but nevertheless I would like your full attention, if you don’t mind.” Snow Leopard really had a way with words.

“Sure. Sure. You got it.”

“All right,” Snow Leopard began. “We don’t have these meetings as often as we should, but as you know we’ve been rather busy lately. The Second—Cubes—recently briefed all the CAT commanders, and our own Two Four—Lowdrop—briefed me and the other squad leaders. So I’d like to bring everyone up to date on the sit. Feel free to break in with questions. All right, I’m going to summarize this. These meetings go on for hours but generally contain about three to five marks worth of useful information. So I’m going to leave out all the nonsense.”

“We appreciate that, Snow Leopard.” Psycho gave him his best grin.

“And also we’re hoping that Psycho can stay awake throughout the meeting if we keep it short enough. All right, first subject—the mission to Andrion 3. There’s a lot of nonsense making the rounds about what was found and what wasn’t.

“The truth is as follows: The Fourth, that’d be Mobius, did the mission—CAT 44 downside and CAT 43 as backup topside. That’s a lot of people. Nobody called backup—in the best Legion tradition. The mission was bad, and so was the planet. It’s even more hostile down there than it looks. Even without the exos, it’s a struggle just to stay alive, and with the exos it’s quite a challenge. Mobius called it ‘interesting’ and if you know Mobius, you know that’s not the sort of place you want to visit.”

Snow Leopard had our undivided attention.

“Despite this, they had no serious casualties. Two main points. First, the environment was so bad—so noisy—it was not immediately possible to learn much more about the planet than we already know. Command has not yet reached any new conclusions. In other words, anything could be hiding there—even power systems.

“Second, 44 did capture some Dominants. They also picked up live samples of all the other non-indigenous species we have so far identified here on Andrion 2. Testing is still underway, but forget all that speculation about superior intelligence. Initial readout is the Dominants control the other exos through biochem. There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about the Dominants, except their ability to manipulate other exo species.”

“So there was no sign of the Systies?” Merlin asked.

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