Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned by William C. Dietz

make their jobs even easier.”
    Booly remained silent, which meant that he agreed. Villain cursed her own stupidity. Of course! Why use the machine gun when the laser cannon would do just as well? It made relatively little noise. And why fire at all? It had been a pook, for god’s sake, about as dangerous as a wild dog.
    She told herself that Booly had ordered the patrol to “blast anything that moved,” that she’d never asked to be a soldier, but rejected the excuses as quickly as they came. She had screwed up. It was as simple as that.
     
    Wayfar Hardman saw the first glimmerings of dawn off to the east. The view was somewhat proscribed by the homemade periscope that stuck up through the sand but was adequate nonetheless. At this point the new day was little more than a vague pinkness that separated earth from sky. Good. The humans would enter the kill zone at first light, time when eyes played tricks and minds made mistakes.
    He swiveled the periscope to examine the point where the canyon emptied into the desert. There were no signs of the trip wires, weapons pits, and warriors who hid there. All were underground, sheltered from IR detectors by a layer of uniformly cold sand, waiting for his signal.
    His body gave an involuntary jerk as his ears picked up the dull thump-thump-thump of heavy machine-gun fire. Had they been discovered? No, the sound was muffled, indicating that the legionnaires were at least a half kak away.
    So what was going on? Had the humans stumbled across some real outlaws ? No, that was impossible. His scouts would have found and dealt with them hours ago. It was an error, then, a mistake of the sort that youngsters make, and nothing to do with him or his warriors.
    Thus reassured, Hardman closed his eyes, tried to ignore the insect that had taken up residence behind his right ear, and settled down to wait. Judging from the sound of machine-gun fire, it wouldn’t be long.

    Villain felt her spirits soar as she rounded the last bend and saw the desert beyond. It, unlike the dark confines of the canyon, was beautiful to look at. The rising sun had glazed the top of things with a pinkish-gold light and infused the air with a magical softness. The distant foothills seemed to float on an ocean of nearly transparent ground fog and the air hummed with the sound of newly aroused insects.
    Villain gloried in the moment and left fear behind as she entered the desert. She was still enjoying it when Wutu emerged from the canyon, took one last look to the rear, and backed into the kill zone.
    A warrior named Joketeller Nosmell peered through his periscope, waited for the cyborg to arrive at exactly the right spot, and flicked a switch.
    The twenty-five pounds of carefully hoarded cyplex explosives went off with a tremendous roar. The force of the explosion removed Wutu’s right leg and arm. What remained of his body tumbled high in the air, fell straight down, and hit the ground with a distinct thump.
    Nosmell pushed himself up and out of the depression. He had won a great victory and sought to enjoy it. He was smiling happily when Wutu rolled onto his damaged side, activated his machine gun, and pumped a five-round burst through the warrior’s chest. Then, hosing the area with suppressive fire, Wutu used his remaining leg to inch himself forward. Chemical inhibitors had blocked the pain, but that wouldn’t last forever.
    A lot of things went through Booly’s mind. The realization that he’d been suckered, the fact that this was a full-scale tribal attack, and the knowledge that he was about to die. The plan was obvious: kill the last cyborg, kill the first cyborg, and trap the rest of the patrol in between.
    Booly had leaped away from Villain, and was falling towards the ground, when the shoulder-launched missile struck her chest and exploded.
    The noncom never saw the tiny piece of metal that spun away from the explosion, glanced off the side of his skull, and buried itself in the sand. Darkness