THE LOST LEGION

CHAPTER 1 PREVIEW

Check out the first chapter of The Order of the Centurion: The Lost Legion before it hits the shelves on OCT 17, 2024!

1

Sergeant Carson Metzger fell flat a moment before the incoming artillery round went off. His Republic body armor was good, not great. There were plenty of gaps where hot shrapnel could penetrate and make his life miserable. Before he had joined the Republic military, he had assumed that artillery rounds killed with their spray of deadly shrapnel. That was true, but the concussion from the blast killed just as many warriors.

That knowledge couldn’t help him now; it was a momentary flicker in his mind that he wished he hadn’t remembered.

Ever since their drop on Frixon, things had been… chaotic. Combat was always a blender set on high and mixing mayhem and madness with death and destruction. This landing was a little more tumultuous than usual. Most of the members of his unit, the Republic Army’s 444th Infantry Division, summed it up with a short phrase: “The frellin’ Frix.”

Republic infantry divisions were numerous and often seen as expendable. Ask any R-A grunt if even the Legion saw them as anything except fodder, and you’d get one, universal answer: Hell no. But if there was an exception, the 444th—“Three-Fours”—was different. They were fighters. Survivors. On Durral II, Okem, Ramstein, and half a dozen other worlds, they had fought with precision that garnered respect.

And they had lived to tell the tale.

The reputation afforded to a Three-Fours trooper was one of the things that Metzger loved about being in it. He had tried to join the Legion, but had failed the murderous selection process. He strove to be the best where he landed. Partly for himself, because that’s the kind of man he was, and partly to maybe one day prove the Legion wrong for telling him he couldn’t hack it.

To rub their noses in it.

Metzger was aware of that particular weakness of his. He enjoyed rubbing it in, more than he did proving people wrong. His father had constantly chided him for it, as had his sergeants and superior officers. But a man can’t change who he is, and Metzger saw the frellin’ Frix as an opportunity to show that he was, indeed, one of the best of the best. Frixon would be added to the litany of worlds stitched on the 444th’s battle flag, and Metzger would be part of that story.

All that remained was the business of finishing the job, which proved easier planned than accomplished.

The dominant species on the planet, the Frix, had been chafing at Republic oversight of their manufacturing operations for a decade. During that time, reports had come back that they had been arming themselves, purchasing munitions and weapons—preparing for war. The House of Reason saw these efforts as a sort of bargaining chip to be expected. Lots of Republic protectorate worlds talked tough—it was part and parcel of being a planet on galaxy’s edge. But when the consequence of an open rebellion against the Republic was a visit from the Legion… talk was usually all it was.

This time, though, the politicians guessed wrong. Frixon was one of those disgruntled worlds ripe for manipulation by outside agitators looking to spread their own rebellion beyond the mid-core and throughout the galaxy at large. “Outside agitators” of course meant the MCR—the Mid-Core Rebellion. And that in turn meant… a fight.

Good. That’s why Metzger was there. He didn’t care about politics—he was a sergeant who knew what his responsibility was. He had just one job to do: stack ’em high and stack ’em deep.

But ever since he’d arrived on planet, he couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would fight for this place. Rock-sown deserts with massive buttes and stony plateaus rose up against a cloudless purple sky.

You fight for what’s familiar, he supposed.

When he talked to his LT about what a wasteland Frixon was, he was told they were actually landing on the planet’s garden spot.

If this is the lush garden spot, I’d hate to see what the rest of the world looks like.

Metzger’s unit had been held back as a reserve until this most recent clash, so he’d gotten plenty of time to take in the scenery and the locals. All the Frix he’d seen prior to this point, though, had been dead. They pretty much looked like the mission briefs said they would—thick-headed aliens capable of living in a wasteland like Frixon. They had gray hide—a sort of natural armor that could resist light-to-medium blaster fire. Thick, stubby fingers. Small, curved horns and a bony ridge that protruded up their thick skulls. Big eyes, each with two lids, one for normal wetting, the other for protection from the random straight-line wind gusts that were a hallmark of Frixon. Their bulk didn’t slow them down much; a Frix warrior could easily outpace even a leej on open ground.

Their native tactics were crude. If the MCR had done any training prior to helping arm the Frix, it didn’t stick. Where most enemies equipped with modern weapons attempted to do their killing at a distance, the Frix liked getting up close and personal, even when it wasn’t necessary. The armored Frix delighted in the charge, letting their thick hides and armor soak up blaster shots as they rushed in to stomp and shoot their foes at point-blank range. For the fire teams of the 444th, that was perfect—it meant their targets were coming to them, making them easier to eliminate.

The Frix attacked as though their hides were invulnerable, but something heavy like an N-18 or concentrated fire from a Miif-7 would take them down before they thought to fire a shot. The only problem was numbers. If enough charged so that some did get up close… from what Metzger had seen, they were brutal in-fighters. Best to kill them first—as it always is.

A Repub regiment had been garrisoned on Frixon with the idea that a military presence might somehow calm the situation. Maybe that was the belief of an R-A general, maybe the order of a politician—sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. For Metzger, this was a typical civilian political response—putting troops in danger to make a point. A regiment wasn’t enough to be intimidating. All the assignment had done was give the Frix a target, one they gleefully lined up in their scopes.

A minor policing incident was used as the impetus for the Frix to go after the garrison.

To the credit of the garrison commander, an appointed officer, the location of his base had proved defendable, but the siege that was laid on it was long and arduous. Surrounded in the rugged Blitzen Pass of the Pikes Mountain Range, they were being whittled down, bit by bit, each day. Someone had to come in, rescue and resupply them, and send a clear message to the Frix that further rebellion would not be tolerated. So the 444th were hot-dropped into the foothills. Their mission was simple: take out the Frix leadership, cripple the natives’ supply lines, and relieve the Repub garrison.

On datapads, it sounded easy. The problem was, the Frix refused to cooperate.

Metzger raised his head, looking out at the newly formed crater, smoke still rising from its blasted and scorched center. “Anyone have eyes on where that artillery is coming from?”

“This is Ringo 517,” a voice responded. “I just scouted the ridge to the northwest and have tagged all the enemy gun emplacements there. My data upload link to the battlenet is out, but I have what you need.”

Dropping down his HUD, a small holoscreen lowered from his helmet to feed data directly into his eye, he spied Ringo 517’s location on the battlefield map.

Five-One-Seven was an HK-SW—a Hunter-Killer Scout Walker, a mech that consisted of an elevated seat, a motivator unit, a power plant, and two bird-like legs. It was armed with only a pair of small blasters, hardly enough to make mounting them worthwhile but still something. The Republic military used them for scouting missions, and the pilots were considered a bit crazy—you had to be. Unlike the larger Hunter-Killer Planet Pounders (HK-PPs), the scout walkers didn’t have the firepower needed in a hot combat zone; they didn’t even have an enclosed cockpit to protect the pilot. Sitting up a few meters over the ground, running, they were often targeted. They might as well have been painted fluorescent orange with a big bull’s-eye on the side. But they were designed to move, and move fast. “Speed is our armor” was the oft-repeated tagline of mech jockeys and light repulsor tankers.

Metzger had heard a few combat sled drivers take the motto up as well. In all cases, it was the truth.

Ringo 517 was moving about three kilometers away, using a twisting and turning gully for cover. He was way out there, no doubt on a forward reconnaissance mission. Then the HK-SW stopped. And not the good kind of stopped. A flicker of crimson on Metzger’s tiny HUD feed indicated that either the mech was damaged or the pilot was injured. Maybe both. Usually both, because even when those things just tipped over, the pilots got their asses broken up.

Another explosion went off some eighty meters away, throwing dust and dirt into the stiff wind, turning it into an impromptu sandblaster. Metzger’s combat armor showed signs of the stiff winds and dust, with much of his camouflage pattern having been air-blasted off. In the back of his mind, he knew what was coming, but he didn’t dare speak it out loud. Maybe they won’t pick us for this.

It wasn’t fear talking—not fear of danger, anyway. Metzger was worried that he’d be called on to perform a recovery mission, which most likely meant missing the fight that was brewing.

The LT, an appointed officer named Dickerson, came on in Metzger’s right earbud, speaking through a micro-comm. “Sergeant Metzger, I need you to take three fire teams and execute a recovery and exfiltration. Get to Ringo Five-One-Seven’s position, pull his data core, and get him out of there. Pulling the core is going to take some time, but we need his targeting data for counterbattery fire on the enemy’s tubes.”

Dickerson was relatively new to the 444th but had done well so far. Replacement LTs could be walking disasters. Dickerson was not that officer. As Metzger’s buddy Welch put it, “It’s cute that he cares.” There was something to be said about that. Dickerson was meticulous and careful.

“Copy that.” It was hard to escape the feeling they had drawn a crappy assignment.

“Be advised, sat feeds show enemy grav armor operating in the grids just beyond your objective,” Lieutenant Dickerson added. “We’re painting two to three tanks—one of which engaged and took out Ringo Five-One-Seven.”

Oh. Well, sket. This might be interesting after all.

The excitement at getting in the fight was dampened as Metzger thought about the potential vulnerabilities such a small team would face. Surely the Frix knew that they’d downed a scout walker and that Repub procedures were to move in and try to recover.

Things could get ugly in a hurry.

Using his forearm control, Metzger switched comm channels to the tactical platoon—TAC-P—frequency. “Listen up, we just got our orders. We are moving to grid coordinates Golf-Sixteen-Eighteen. There’s a downed HK-SW there—Ringo Five-One-Seven.” He glanced at his HUD feed. “Our job is to get the pilot and recover his targeting data.”

“We can’t just remote transmit?” asked PFC Hoehn, one of the younger team members.

“Assume that if we could, we would, Johnny,” Metzger said, not truly believing it. “Either way, we gotta go in there for the pilot. Same as we’d want done for us. Now I want Charlie fire team to move fast and secure the hilltop to the south at the waypoint. You will provide overwatch for us. Bravo fire team, you will move to the east and take the high ground.”

Through a series of retinal focusing and defocusing, he highlighted the grid coordinates he wanted Bravo at and sent it to them, then continued. “I’ll take Alpha with me. We drop into the gully and move up on our target from the south. Be advised, enemy grav armor is operating in our battlespace. It’s old tech, but not so old it can’t kill you. Make sure each team has at least one anti-vic weapon.”

All three fire teams confirmed, and Metzger moved out from his position as Alpha formed up on him, moving fast and reducing their target profiles. He skirted around a thicket of brush-like trees, their sharp thorns scraping against his armor, managing to find his synthetic body suit and stabbing through it as he moved. On his tiny display, he saw Bravo moving quickly toward their objective.

Another artillery round went off near where he had been hunkered down just minutes before, throwing bits of blasted rock and sand everywhere. It was a good thing the Frix didn’t have enough cannons to deliver a proper barrage.

The squads continued to shift to the west, finally arriving at the gully. The creek cut into the sandstone rocks and was easily three meters down. It meandered through tight twists and turns, with a small sandy shore on either side. Metzger dropped down onto the sandbank and sank deep, up to his shins. Sket! He had learned his lesson with the local mud during the first few hours of deployment. Attempting to pull one foot out would only sink the other deeper. Instead he spread out his weight, dropped to his knees, and crawled through the khaki-colored sand until he got to a firmer bank. Glancing back, he saw the rest of Alpha working their way to firmer ground as well.

It was smoother traveling after that, with no hostiles to be seen until they’d crept deep into enemy-controlled territory, near the downed HK-SW.

Flashes of blaster fire abruptly darted both directions over the coulee, mostly from the direction where Bravo had taken position. Things had kicked off.

“Talk to me, Bravo,” he transmitted.

“Two squads coming from the north, converging on Ringo Five-One-Seven’s position. We are laying down suppression fire,” came back Corporal Shaneal’s crisp voice.

A crack and hiss, followed by a dull blast, this time hitting some forty meters off, showered down bits of stone even in the depths of the creek bed. The sound of it was different though. Experience told him it wasn’t artillery, but blaster cannon fire. “Where did that come from?”

Charlie’s squad leader, Delannon, came on. “Enemy grav armor, two vehicles, moving in from the north. We’re pushin’ forward of our position to get a shot at ’em.”

A check of Metzger’s HUD showed that Charlie was moving in quick short bursts, from cover to cover, to where they could be closer to Ringo 517’s position and possibly get a better angle. “All right, Alpha, tighten up on me, come on.” He moved quickly, priming his Miif-7—the R-A just called them “Miffies,” “Miffs,” or “sevens”—as he moved out, keeping low, rounding every sharp twist and turn of the gully with his blaster ready to fire. A gust of wind above, one of Frixon’s famous straight-line blasts of hot air, sent dust down on him and made an almost mist-like fog in the narrow confines of the creek bed.

As he rounded one twist, he saw that the coulee had opened up, the banks spread wide. It was almost open enough to be some sort of ford, except the east bank rose up several meters. And lying there, some thirty meters in front of his position, were the toppled remnants of the HK-SW. One blackened and charred bird-like leg was extended, twitching slightly; the other limb was blown out at the knee, the actuator still kicking out a thin wisp of white smoke. The lower part of the damaged leg was several meters away on the embankment, standing upright where the last footfall had come before its destruction.

Metzger focused his view on the cockpit. The pilot was bent in half at the waist where the walker had fallen and hit the sandstone embankment. Blood oozed through the gaps in his body armor, and the blown dust clung to the gore, highlighting the pinkish hue. His lips were blue and his skin pale. He hadn’t survived.

“Alpha, you have incoming grav tanks—two of them, moving from the west in echelon,” came Delannon’s voice. As Metzger and his team went low in the coulee bank for cover, Delannon’s voice rang out, “Missile loose.”

A high-pitched whooshing sounded as the shoulder-launched aero-precision missile streaked out overhead. There was a distant explosion, but Metzger’s HUD showed that the vehicle was still moving. The Frix tanks were built like their race—thick hides, dull brains. At least now the beast was on fire, though.

“No joy,” Delannon called. “I swear this whole damn batch is defective. Missile loose,” he called again as Metzger eyed his objective. Another missile whooshed over their position, followed by another blast. “Splash one,” came Delannon’s voice. “Second tank is going evasive. You have your shot now, Alpha.”

“Copy,” Metzger said. “Lobo and Preger—with me. The rest of you, provide cover.” He and his team dashed over to the fallen HK-SW, taking cover behind the extended leg.

Metzger skirted around to the back of the mech, to where the data core module was. It wasn’t big, but it was in a shielded box. A few hard jerks couldn’t pry it open, so he unsheathed his tactical knife, which he’d nicknamed Prick, from his right shin and used it for leverage. He longed for an audience he could crack a joke with about having issues taking his Prick out, but that kind of thing would get you mandatory sensitivity training in the R-A. At least if a point overheard you.

The module was a small cube, just under four centimeters in size. As he reached for it, Corporal Shaneal’s voice came over his micro-comm. “Alpha, you have an incoming grav tank, moving fast, coming from the west.”

Bastard doubled back on us.

“Target confirmed,” Delannon said.

Bursts of blaster fire filled the air over Metzger. He tuned it out. What mattered was the mission, and he trusted his brothers and sisters to do their jobs and protect him. Reaching down, he grabbed the module and pulled, but the small ceramic cube held fast.

Lobo and Preger shifted position, moving to flank the low portion of the ford, should the grav tank make that approach while the rest of Alpha held back near the canyon-like portion of the gully. Metzger hoped the tank would do its fighting at distance, but he also knew the Frix loved it up close and personal.

“What’s goin’ on, Sar’nt?” Lobo asked.

“Stuck,” was Metzger’s one-word answer. The cores were supposed to slide right out, provided you had the proper clearance code. Metzger had that, but something about the crash or attack had locked the damn thing in place.

A massive roar of the grav tank’s cannon confirmed that the fight was getting close. A flash of yellow light from the tank tore out toward Bravo.

“Redeploying,” called out Corporal Shaneal.

Another AP missile streaked overhead.

“Last round, downrange,” Delannon called out.

Metzger repositioned his grip and threw his entire body back, and the core finally yanked free. He fell against the embankment, and for just a moment he was staring at the bent and shattered body of the pilot.

“No joy!” Delannon called out. “Alpha, you need to haul ass.”

Cannon fire from the tank sent a large yellowish burst of energy-tinged death over Metzger’s position to where Charlie was firing from. He couldn’t see the results of the shot, but the explosion on the high embankment told him all he needed to know.

Pushing off the sandstone, he got to his feet and clipped the core to his shoulder armor. Suddenly Alpha opened fire, and he saw it—the Frix grav tank, roaring straight down the shallow slope from the west. It was a hulking thing, a gray monstrosity, boxy, with no sense of streamlining at all. Its turret was wide but not tall, mounting a massive blaster cannon that was slowly traversing as the tank headed right at him. Smoke rolled from the top right side, probably from one of the aero-missile hits that had failed to take it out. It made a throbbing sound, low and deep, as the grav units and inertial compensators were still in operation.

Typical Frix—charging at us like herd animals.

Metzger’s mind instantly crunched the math of his predicament. Climbing up the embankment was no good, nor was trying to duck behind the fallen walker for cover, given its lack of armor and the firepower of the grav tank coming at them. Lying flat risked being crushed under the tank; a cruising grav tank exerted enough downward pressure to crumple even the best leej armor, and he wasn’t in leej armor. The low-tech crap the Republic gave the infantry regiments would break apart at the seams.

That left a dash upstream as his best option. His legs were already in motion by the time his brain arrived at that conclusion. He had to get out of the path of the approaching behemoth. Alpha’s blasters were ineffective against the tank, and Metzger hoped they knew that. He hoped they were just valiantly attempting to draw the tank’s attention away from him for the sake of the mission.

He splashed in the shallow creek as he ran. The mud and the knee-deep water slowed him.

Metzger caught a glimpse of the tank starting to bank, slowing as much as it could. Was it trying to chase him down, or did the driver realize he was about to slam into the embankment and was trying to avoid it? The laws of physics were the wicked mistresses of grav tanks. As it turned, the inertia still carried it toward the embankment, arcing toward Metzger and his team. Preger dove for cover off to the side. Lobo hesitated, only for a moment, but it was enough for the tank to clip him mid-arc-turn. Lobo’s body was thrown over a dozen meters into the embankment, and his body armor made a sickening crunch.

Metzger was running as Lobo flew; there was no option left. A part of him believed he would get clear of the tank before it slammed into the embankment. What he felt wasn’t quite glee, but the euphoric exultation that he had acted fast enough. In his mind, he was going to beat the fast-moving tank. He was pure self-confidence.

He was wrong.

Metzger could feel its presence the moment before it collided with him. There was just enough time for him to turn and face the hulking enemy vehicle as the tank’s armored front stabilizer slammed into his right leg, pushing him into the sandstone embankment.

The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he panic-gasped for air. Pain, excruciating, crimson-flared, engulfed his body. There was an instant crunch, crack, the distinctive sound of bones shattering. Metzger didn’t fall—instead he was standing, his right leg pinned by the grav tank into the wall right at his hip.

His eyes couldn’t avoid looking at the injury; the leg was nearly severed. The pressure of the tank pinning him to the wall was probably the only thing preventing him from bleeding out. He knew from experience that between the stone and the tank, his leg was pulverized into a meaty paste. It could be no other way.

A strange sense of déjà vu washed over him. Memories of Durral II returned, riding the pain he felt. He started to hyperventilate and pulled up his visor to get more air to fight the agony.

His vision tunneled; he struggled to form words. His gloved hands trembled in his sight—no doubt from the adrenaline surging in his blood and the realization of his predicament. He needed medical evac, and someone needed to blow this tank.

Alpha broke out from their position, swarming on top of the grav tank. Richards set up a hatch cutter, waited for it to slice open a small hole in the tank, then tossed a grenade in, screaming, “Frag out!”

Metzger heard the muffled blast from within the tank, and felt a bit of satisfaction knowing that the crew that had crushed his leg would meet their gods before he met Oba.

Smoke rolled out of the hatch, rolling over him and up the embankment. The tank was still hovering, still throbbing. The crew might be dead, but the repulsors were still powered. Their throbbing reverberated throughout his body. It was agony near the pulverized leg and up to the groin, but the pain was a reminder that he was still alive.

How the bulky vehicle had missed his left leg was a mystery. The grizzled sergeant wondered if he should consider himself lucky. A fresh wave of pain radiating from his lower body told him the answer: No! Hell no!

He saw Corporal Richards and waved the man over, growing agitated that the man wasn’t immediately in front of him—the pain making him irritable and ornery. “Richards—Richards! Take the kelhorned core and get it to the LT.” He fumbled to open the pouch as Richards got close. “Link up with Bravo and whatever’s left of Charlie.”

“Kark, Sar’nt,” Richards said, taking the core but never removing his eyes from his sergeant’s pulverized leg. “You gonna be okay?”

“You’re not if you don’t haul ass, kelhorn,” Metzger said as a cold sweat washed over his body. The pain radiating from the pinned leg made him feel as if he were on fire. Every muscle flexed as if to suppress the pain, a battle they lost. He felt light-headed. A part of him wanted to rip his helmet off, but he drove those thoughts down deep.

Richards took off, and Preger came up next to Metzger. “This is beyond what I can fix, Sar’nt. I called in for some help to get you unstuck and stabilized.”

Metzger shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Preger. I’m not going anywhere. Check on Lobo.”

It was getting hard to form words through the pain.

“On it.”

Preger moved, and Metzger struggled to get air, despite attempts to slow his breathing. He looked down at the leg he knew to be a total loss.

What was it with that damned leg?

The sounds of battle bounced and roared around him as he slid into unconsciousness. The fight was still on. Somewhere out there, his buddies were mixing it up.

Gordon. Tang. O’Keefe.

I hope they’re doing better than me.

That was his final thought before the darkness overtook him.