Chimera Company: Rho-Torkis. Issue 1.: A sci-fi adventure serial Read online

  SEASON-1: RHO-TORKIS

  ISSUE-1

  Copyright © Tim C. Taylor 2019

  Artwork by Vincent Sammy

  Edited by Lauren Moore

  Published by Human Legion Publications

  All Rights Reserved

  For a free Tim C. Taylor starter library, join the Legion at HumanLegion.com

  Welcome to Chimera Company

  “That down there – that’s danger. It’s something we never saw. It’s something we never discuss. Understand?”

  “Sergeant Sybutu,” she said with drunken solemnity, “often the most dangerous things in the galaxy are also the most beautiful.”

  Welcome to the launch issue of Chimera Company, in which a team of Legion sappers is sent on a mission that makes no sense in a galaxy that’s gone mad.

  With a new issue out every Tuesday, Chimera Company delivers a satisfying dose of science fiction adventure that can be read in a single sitting of roughly 75 minutes (though people’s reading rates vary a lot). Initially, issues will be available in Kindle Unlimited. By the end of the 8-issue season, a box set will be available so those who want to can read all the issues in one go, an audiobook too if we’re ready in time. Then, after a short break, we blast off into season 2.

  But now it’s time to don your glacier goggles, check your blaster charge packs, and step into the ice world of Rho-Torkis for Issue #1.

  — Tim C. Taylor, April 2019

  ISSUE 1

  “You know the Federation’s touring all five hells in a handbasket when even the Littoranes fire upon the Legion.”

  Sergeant Osu Sybutu glared at Yergin’s back while the sapper sealed the final replacement pipe in the meltwater drainage system.

  Did Yergin tense his neck and shoulders, knowing he had gone too far in his grumbling? It was impossible to be sure, swaddled as he was in the thick padding of the cold weather gear. In any case, legionaries were trained to think – it was what set the Legion apart from the Militia – and Yergin was only giving voice to a thought that had run through every sapper’s mind in the unit.

  “How’s that, Yergin?” Osu challenged. He had no choice; Lieutenant Stuart wanted a lid kept on this particular train of thought.

  A hush descended over the other sappers as Yergin abandoned his task and stood to face his sergeant. Sapper of the Legion Marc Yergin was an old sweat, though he was new to the 27th Independent Field Squadron (Legion Engineers), having only joined during their transit to this ice world of Rho-Torkis.

  Osu could barely make out the man’s features, shrouded as they were by his heated tunnel-like hood and glacier glasses, but he recognized a challenge in the set of the man’s shoulders.

  “At the very beginning, the Legion was Littorane, barring a few human kids. What went wrong, Sergeant? What in Orion’s name are we doing here?”

  “Were you abandoned in deep-cryo and forgotten about for thousands of years, SOTL?”

  Osu itched to check on the work party perimeter guard, not lancing this boil, but he waited for an answer as if he had all the time in the galaxy.

  “No, Sergeant,” Yergin answered.

  “I’m glad to hear it. We’re not in the Orion Spur now, Yergin. You’re talking about events over three thousand years ago that were written up centuries later by self-serving politicians. I don’t know why Littoranes rarely sign up to the Legion anymore, nor why the slime-munchers of this world hate us so much. So long as they keep away from Legion country, I don’t care. And while it’s true that Littoranes have fired upon us, the colonel says the individuals who did so were planted here by the Rebellion. As for why we are here… we’re sappers, Yergin. And what is it that sets us apart as superior to regular Legion units? What is the fundamental underpinning of civilization that only we can be relied upon to get right?”

  “The drains, Sergeant. We’re out here beyond the isolation zone in order to fix the drains.”

  It was true. The 27th had inspected the surrounding area on the first day since their arrival that the snow storms had cleared enough to move out from the ASI-39 dig site. When they had discovered the inadequacy of the meltwater drainage system, Major Cartwright had conveyed his professional opinion to Colonel Malix using every ounce of his considerable skill in creative cursing.

  But that wasn’t what Yergin had asked.

  What was the Legion doing on this damned planet? Every legionary not directly involved in the dig teams asked themselves that question every day. And with two full brigades here, that meant a lot of jacks with time on their hands scratching their heads and wondering what was going on in the restricted areas of ASI-39.

  What set Osu apart from all those scratching jacks was that he knew the answer.

  Not even the lieutenant knew that.

  He growled inwardly as he waved Yergin back to the task of sealing leaking collector pipes before reburying them in gravel. A little knowledge was a painful burden, and his sat heavily upon him as he set off to inspect the perimeter guard out in the surrounding trees.

  Two thirds of the sappers were tasked with protecting the safety of the other third repairing the pipes, protecting them from the same Littoranes he’d just told Yergin not to blame for everything. Suited up in battle armor, the sappers in the assault sections were up in the trees and patrolling farther out. The two armored wagons that had brought them here were monitoring surveillance drones and manning the gun turrets, all to watch out for the seven-foot long, six-legged giant newts that were officially perfect friends and hosts of the Legion. In ancient times, Littoranes had built and crewed the Legion’s navy. Now they had mostly retreated into themselves, desiring to be left alone to fight their endless religious wars and listen to the song of the universe.

  “They’re not to blame for everything,” he told himself.

  The newts hadn’t even sabotaged the drainage pipes, as everyone had first assumed. That had been down to a far more deadly foe: the planet Rho-Torkis itself. The gene-modified conifers all around pushed their roots through tens of meters of ice to extract nutrients from the ground below. Compared with that, even the tough flexi-ceramalloy of the pipes could put up only token resistance.

  It wasn’t exactly the first time in history that tree roots had played havoc with drains.

  “We’re ready to leave in five mikes,” Osu told the lieutenant as the sappers began packing the gear away.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  The day’s work felt like an anti-climax to Osu. He tried to tell himself that he’d earned a little boredom after the adventures of the previous posting – a skragg-ball mess of a world called Irisur – but he wasn’t buying it. So it was with a vague sense of disappointment that he began checking Corporal De Ketele’s orderly withdrawal back into the beetle wagons.

  Without warning, Lieutenant Stuart looped him into a radio conversation.

  “Please say again,” requested the lieutenant.

  “RILs have eyes upon you,” said Captain Ankhbayar. “RILs have eyes on your grid from all directions. We see twenty armed with light blasters and… tail clubs.”

  Osu’s pulse quickened. RILs. Legion speak for Religious Insurgent (Littorane). So, it wasn’t the Rebellion who was hunting them today. That was good, because Osu’s religious belief was a match even for the most fanatic Littorane.

  His religion was the Legion.

  And it was his religious duty to smite the Legion’s foes.

  “They’ve reinforced their numbers over the last ten mikes,” said the captain, but they do not appear to be at ambush strength. “My guess is that they will be taking a
pot shot at you on your way home to make a point, and then fade away. But be prepared for anything. They’re Littoranes. We see religious symbolism prominently displayed and nothing of the Rebellion’s emblems. I would dearly like to know why they are attacking us, but I see nothing to indicate a reason. Safe journey.”

  ——

  “Beetle-1 feels dead,” Lieutenant Stuart informed Osu twenty minutes later on a private link from the other wagon.

  Osu boosted the signal to better cut through the rumble of the CEGP-2 “Beetle” Utility Wagon as it powered its way along the lakeside track, headed home.

  The lieutenant laughed. “You’d think I’d served up month-old rat carcasses and ordered them to eat every last morsel. Is Beetle-2 any more upbeat?”

  The crew in the forward compartment of Osu’s beetle were alert and pensive, thinking about what dangers the journey home might bring, and he assumed the other wagon would have the same atmosphere. The only issue here was the lieutenant’s inexperience.

  “Sir, I’d describe the men’s demeanor as professional.”

  “Good. I wasn’t sure if I should try to rouse morale or whether I’d just make myself appear a pompous asshat.”

  A grin softened Osu’s face. Stuart could never be the LT they’d lost at Irisur, but he’d as good as asked his transport sergeant for advice. He’d do.

  “You’re fine as you are, sir. I’ll be sure to inform you when you’re being an asshat.”

  “Make sure you do, Sergeant… Hello? What’s this?”

  “Beetle-1 slowing,” said Krynox, Beetle-2’s driver.

  “Tree’s blocking the path,” added Jonson from the forward turret. “Freshly cut, it’s an–”

  “Ambush!” exclaimed the lieutenant.

  The sound of splintering timber announced another tree falling to block their retreat.

  “Get off the track and onto the lake,” Stuart ordered.

  The beetle weighed 48 tons unladen, and in its three articulated compartments, it carried not only its five crew, six sappers in work gear, and racks of equipment, but the aft compartment also carried an assault section of a dozen legionaries in armor. That was a lot of weight to drive over a frozen lake. But as the nose rose and the 36 Haisan-Linc Industries 71T motor cells crescendoed into a frisky whine, it wasn’t the thought of falling through the ice that worried Osu.

  “We’re being herded,” he told the lieutenant as the vehicles powered through the trackside foliage and over the moraine ridges, scattering rocks in all directions. “We’re where the RILs want us to be.”

  “I know,” answered the lieutenant. “I’m counting on it.”

  The vehicles moved onto the ice, which immediately began making the sound of shattering glass, although no cracks appeared on its surface. It was holding. But the cracking continued.

  Twelve fat wheels on each wagon extruded new tire surfaces to maximize grip, and Beetle-2 accelerated away for the center of the lake. Krynox could selectively reduce grip too. In fact, Osu trusted him to pirouette the three sections of the armored utility wagon more gracefully than any ice skater.

  Which is what he might be called upon to do in the next few minutes.

  Lake Gamma-37 lay across the southern perimeter of the isolation zone around the dig site. Shaped like a pair of fleshy lips, it was 1.6 klicks wide and 3 long, and was formed from freshwater accumulation that had frozen on top of a glacier. Now that Rho-Torkis was emerging from its long nuclear winter, the lake was no longer frozen all year round.

  “Ice depth approximately four meters,” said Zavage from signals and sensors.

  Four meters! That was much too shallow. “Slow down!” Osu warned.

  But it was too late.

  With an extra ear-splitting crack, the ice beneath Beetle-2 exploded, sending a spray into the chill air to freeze before it splashed into the water lapping at the edge of what looked like a bomb crater. This was blowback: pressure waves forced by the beetle’s considerable weight had reflected off the shoreline and erupted like a geyser.

  “Angle your heading to the south,” ordered the lieutenant, “and restrict speed to 15mph. We’ll angle north. Meet at the lake’s center.”

  Driving out onto a lake following a shallow angle to shoreline was standard practice on thin ice, but it felt ever more like they were dancing to a RIL tune.

  “Contact,” announced Stryker from the mid-turret. “Unidentified drones closing fast from west. 400 meters.”

  “Dust ’em,” instructed the lieutenant, a fraction before Osu could give the same instruction, albeit in more colorful terms.

  The beetle’s mid-section didn’t just house blasting charges, micro-dozers, ice manipulators and the like, its turret housed a quad-barrel rapid-fire railgun optimized for anti-air defense. Then there were the four ordnance launch tubes, all of which now sent a missile whooshing into the air.

  As the two beetles crawled across the frozen lake, a furious battle of maneuver took place in the sky above. The drones had multiple duct fans on 3-axis gimbal mounts, blast jets, and gravitic nudgers to lurch, spin on a fingertip and bob up and down like a drunken uncle.

  Even the trained human eye struggled to track them.

  But the AL-6 missile boasted 2000G acceleration and variable thrust rocket nozzles that fed out from its base like a tubular river delta.

  A sequence of aerial flashes marked the death of each drone. The whole process had taken four seconds.

  “We cannot permit enemy aerial observation,” said the lieutenant squad-wide. “However, I remind you that ground targets are not to be engaged with accurate fire without my permission.”

  “Understood, sir,” Osu replied. “You heard Lieutenant Stuart,” he added on Beetle-2’s channel. “Make like you’re the Militia.”

  All three sections exploded in jeers and hoots of laughter.

  The two beetles were coming together again at the center of the lake when a line of ice plumes erupted in front of them.

  “Contact! Contact! Wait out,” called Narvik, Zavage’s opposite number in Beetle-1, who was playing his part by allowing panic to edge into his voice. He wasn’t fooling anyone who knew him, but BattleNet encryption had been designed by a largely Littorane team a very long time ago. It was conceivable that the RILs were listening in on broadcast frequencies, and the Lieutenant didn’t want his sappers to appear too confident.

  The wagon drivers skewed their vehicles around, sliding out their rear sections before reapplying traction and powering away from the gap in the ice that had just opened up.

  Osu trusted the maneuvering to the expertise of the drivers. He had other concerns. “Turrets, report!”

  “I can see water through the trench,” said Jonson in the forward turret.

  “Indirect fire inbound on our position,” said Zavage. “Coming from the west.”

  Osu grinned, able to try out the newfangled system on these uprated beetles. “Lima Victor Delta,” he said.

  The Low Velocity Deflector system deployed over each of the three compartments. They looked like pitched roofs made from wire netting, but as bombs rained down, the wire contracted like twitching muscle just before each projectile impacted. A combination of locally applied repulsive charge and the released tension of the wire deflected some bombs away, and those that exploded in the netting were kept well away from the Beetle’s upper armor. Damaged netting was no problem. When the party returned to base, they would simply slot in replacement LVD panels as required.

  “Looks like they’re tossing homemade explosives,” ventured Jonson.

  “Even without the snowshoes over the roof,” said Stryker, “they would be nothing to worry about.”

  “Forget the roof,” said Osu. “What’s happening to the ice?”

  Before they could reply, low-slung figures emerged from the tree line near the western shore. Littoranes. Immediately, the giant newts used their long tails like slingshots to fire a volley of objects hundreds of meters away into the path of the wagons.


  “Give those RILs something to stir them up,” ordered the lieutenant from Beetle-1.

  Osu grimaced, uncomfortable with what he knew Stuart was asking him to do. If you bore arms against the Legion, the Legion would kill you without delay or hesitation. Didn’t matter whether you were a Federation citizen or acting on behalf of an external power. That simple equation had kept the Federation together for 3,000 years, but now the beetles would do something different. Even if only temporarily, it still felt wrong.

  He tapped the forward turret cage occupied by SOTL Jonson. “Turret one, tickle them.”

  Jonson sent twin lines of heavy blaster fire into the shoreline, causing the RILs to scatter among trees whose lower branches were catching fire. And the highly visible bolts of induced plasma made it obvious to Osu why the purple-green needles of the trees were alight: the gunner was firing over the heads of the enemy.

  But not entirely. Jonson dipped the stream of bolts for a moment and alien screams pierced the woods.

  “Sergeant,” said Zavage. “The ice… the bombs aren’t targeting the vehicles. They’re cutting through the ice.”

  The volley of slingshot bombs landed in a ring around the two wagons, surrounding them in a sheet of fire and ice.

  Plasma grenades.

  The fire was soon overcome by dense eruptions of steam that condensed almost instantly into an impenetrable fog that wiped out all visibility.

  Krynox flung the legionaries hard against their straps as he slewed the wagon around to avoid the melting ice.

  “You command the wagon,” Osu told Lance Corporal Aronov and headed aft, unclipping his helm from his belt while he set his earpiece to a private link to the commander. “We need to take these RILs seriously. Recommend deploying assault sections immediately.”

  He jumped over the violently moving inter-compartmental joint and through into the mid-section.

  “Agreed,” replied the lieutenant. “But we’re bait and that’s always a dangerous game to play. We cannot show too many teeth, Sergeant. Deploy your assault section. I will keep Beetle-1’s in reserve.”