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  A koholmany was an Avernite expression, an ultimate invention that exhibited the wanderer’s essence of being. Greco didn’t know what kind of koholmany he would invent, but he had begun to have an inkling in what direction the ultimate invention would take. Greco was the best drummer of his tribe. After smoking cigs and drinking brandy, he loved nothing more than pounding the drums. He had concluded three months ago that something about the vibrations going through his body while he drummed delighted him.

  As Greco stood on the ramp, feeling the space marine’s chain-gun rip it up, inspiration struck. It must have had something to do with the trick sprinter literally flying across the ground toward them.

  The Remus legionnaire must think he was trying to rescue them. It was something out of a comic book, which Greco loved to read. He imagined the running man should have been wearing a fluttering cape. That would have made it perfect.

  A chain-gun ripped it up again. Greco liked those, as he could feel the noise through his body. The ground spurted up as shells struck just behind the runner. The spurts closed the distance to the sprinter—

  Abruptly, the space marine’s helmet exploded. The chain-gun stopped, and the space marine toppled onto his back, dead.

  Greco realized the flying runner had friends. It was obvious now. Running man was the distraction.

  While most Avernites loved peace, Greco had grown tired of these just arrived flatfoots. He didn’t know about the murders in the nearby depot, but he didn’t like how the exo-armored ones shoved them around. Even more, he hated these handcuffs.

  Suddenly, all of these things combined in one drumming moment of time. Greco lifted his face toward the clouds and hooted wildly. With a surge of adrenaline strength, he burst the chain linking the handcuffs. Those of Avernus were far stronger than flatfoots.

  “Let’s fight!” Greco hooted. “Don’t let our allies find us tied up like shrikes.”

  The hairy, bow-legged apeman of Avernus ran down the ramp and leaped onto the back of a space marine. Howling, Greco ripped away the marine’s visor. As the enemy marine reached up to grab him, his servomotors whirred with power, Greco used his stiffened fingers to jab the flatfoot in the eyes.

  The space marine went down, howling, clutching his face as he rolled across the fungus grass.

  Other Avernites stared at the space marine in shock.

  “Fight!” Greco shouted, taking up the fallen chain-gun. He was sure he could use this. Aiming at another space marine, Greco let it rip.

  The gun nearly shook out of his grip. This was crazy, the vibration making his teeth chatter. At the same time, bullets drummed against space marine armor, finally breaking through and taking another enemy combatant out of the fight.

  All this happened as Tanner’s feet touched down, as he ran as hard as he could but slowed just the same through inertia.

  The other two members of the space-strike team continued to use sniper-shots, taking out enemy marines. On and around the ramp, more apemen howled, attacking other armored enemy.

  Tanner drew his monofilament knife. It was fashioned out of a special alloy and had an edge one molecule thick. He wanted to test it against space marine armor.

  ***

  The monofilament knife worked like magic. With it, Tanner hacked through space marine armor. In the confined corridors of the lifter, he was like a man amok, stabbing, slashing and eviscerating the enemy.

  In the end, with the apemen’s help, the three-man strike squad did the impossible, overpowering the more numerous Coalition marines. Unfortunately, before all the marines died, they turned on the Avernites, killing many of them.

  That made the surviving apemen angry.

  “Why did you attack?” the oldest Avernite demanded of Greco. She was a bowed elder with more gray fur than brown. “You excited the others. You should have remained where you were and let the flatfoots fight it out amongst themselves.”

  “The space marines murdered others,” Tanner said.

  The elder whirled on him.

  “In the other encampment,” Tanner said. “I saw them shot-down in cold blood.”

  “Why would the Coalition marines do that?” the female asked.

  “Who can know the mind of a thug?” Tanner said.

  The elder cocked her head, considering. “What do you suggest we do now?”

  “That’s up to you,” Tanner said.

  Pugio cleared his throat.

  Tanner looked at the strike leader.

  Pugio shook his head.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Tanner asked. “We’ve lost the war. Do these people really want to come to Remus with us? Maybe they want to slink away and remain free on their own world. I doubt the Coalition is going to try to settle on Avernus.”

  “Centurion Tanner,” Pugio warned.

  Tanner knew these were special apemen, smart as hell and given to flights of fancy that often produced technological miracles. The monofilament knife was one of their inventions. The war-leaders on Remus wanted these apemen to produce a last minute miracle to turn the tide of the war.

  The burned back must have done it. Tanner couldn’t stop the words from flowing. “The war’s over. We all know that, right?”

  The Avernites listened to him attentively. “Why do you say this?” the elder asked him.

  Tanner told them about the giant Coalition fleet that had invaded their star system. The Remus space force had fought back gamely but had been severely outnumbered. In a few weeks, the enemy fleet would finally reach Remus itself for the final siege.

  “This flatfoot is a truth-teller,” the elder announced. “I trust him. I will do as he suggests.”

  Everyone stared at Tanner.

  He had to concentrate. He needed more cream on his burned back. “Here’s my counsel,” he said. “Come with us if you want to keep fighting. I’m never going to quit. But if you’ve had enough of bullets and blood, go hide in the jungle.”

  “Which of you will remain with the flatfoots?” the elder asked the others.

  Only Greco came forward. He wanted to wander so he could fashion his koholmany. Maybe wandering off-planet would allow him insights he’d never find elsewhere.

  “It is decided,” the elder said. “The rest of us are leaving.”

  “Not so fast,” Pugio said, fingering his weapon.

  “No,” Tanner said. “It’s their decision. Let them go.”

  Pugio stared at Tanner. “You really don’t know what it means to be a legionnaire, do you?”

  “Does being a legionnaire mean I lie?” Tanner asked.

  Pugio reddened, looking away.

  After the other apemen left, leaving Greco with them, Pugio went to the lifter’s flight compartment.

  “That was amazing,” Greco told Tanner.

  “What part?” Tanner asked. “Telling your people the truth?”

  “Don’t all of you tell the truth?”

  Tanner shook his head.

  “Oh,” Greco said. “Why don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “All the time?” Greco asked.

  “No, not all the time.”

  “Do all flatfoots lie some of the time?”

  “I don’t know all flatfoots,” Tanner said.

  Greco hooted with delight. “That’s spoken like a true thinker. I like you, Tanner.”

  Tanner grinned, deciding he liked the hairy apeman in return. “We’d better get buckled in,” he said. “We’re going to lift off soon.”

  “Will the enemy allow that?”

  Tanner shrugged. “We’re going to find out real soon, now aren’t we?”

  “How do you mean?” Greco asked.

  “Come on,” Tanner said. “Let’s find a seat.”

  -3-

  The Coalition captured Avernus, but at a high cost. The endless flocks of SSMs combined with mass accelerator cones took out several Coalition warships and damaged others. The real prize was obliterating two troopships and all the space marines aboard.

&n
bsp; During Avernus’s final hours, the hijacked lifter roared into orbital space. The three strike members and Greco used a small thruster sled to reach the stealth boat waiting for them.

  No one else of the Remus AirSpace Service made it off the planet.

  By the time the stealth boat reached Remus orbit, the main Coalition fleet began its final drive. They’d conquered, captured or destroyed everything else in the star system. Now it was Remus’s turn.

  The last of Remus’s space fleet worked closely with the surface defenses. They scored kills, good ones, and that angered the Coalition.

  The enemy dropped nukes. One of those slammed into Vesuvius, Tanner’s home city. The final days slaughtered Remus pilots. They had never been that numerous. During the last week of the war, Tanner found himself a VTOL pilot. He flew recklessly and remorselessly, deciding if Remus was going down, he was going to take as many of the enemy with him as he could.

  ***

  The underground hangar shook from another surface explosion as the young centurion saluted. Lights flickered, gravel fell from the ceiling and mechanics stopped to look up, seeing if the cavern would collapse this time to bury them.

  No. The rock ceiling held. The war wasn’t over for them yet. The bleary-eyed mechanics resumed working, readying the few VTOL fighters left for another sortie against the space invaders.

  The centurion lowered his arm. He stood before a makeshift desk in a far corner, out of the way of scrambling legionnaires.

  Tanner wore an oil-smudged Remus AirSpace Force uniform and had dark circles around his eyes. During the invasion, he’d become an ace, having obliterated an incredible seven Coalition dropships. He’d done it while they’d carried their hatred cargoes of space marines, too, not after unloading the killers when their protection became lighter.

  The Coalition had complete space superiority. Their heavy orbitals had systematically knocked out one Remus SSM site after another. At the same time, Coalition battleships had launched massive space-to-ground missiles. Vesuvius was gone, a radioactive graveyard for ten million citizens. Pilots like Tanner flew compact VTOL fighters. They were outgunned, out-armored and outnumbered ten-to-one.

  Consul Titus Flavius Maximus of House Tarentum sat behind the desk. He was a squat man with a bloody rag around his head in lieu of a proper bandage. Since the nuclear bombardment of the capital, he had become the supreme leader for Remus’s dwindling forces.

  Tanner had no idea why Consul Maximus had summoned him. It made no sense. The great man had vastly more important things to do than talk to a lowly centurion. The war was almost over. He would have thought Maximus would have already spoken to the Coalition leader regarding terms.

  The idea of surrender made Tanner scowl. After everything everyone had done…the hated Coalition had still reached the homeworld. All the years of sacrifice, all the lost lives, and now the oppressor would put his jackboot on their neck, trying to crush the soul out of a defeated people with their social unity ideology.

  The consul studied a tablet in his thick-fingered hands. The older man seemed to wrestle with a thought.

  Tanner glanced over his shoulder at a fighter being wheeled toward a launch pit. If he could get the interview over with soon enough, he might make one more sortie today. Despite his exhaustion, he yearned to climb back into the sky, to knock down another dropship. Two years ago, a Coalition strike on Cestus V had killed his sister and her husband-to-be at their wedding, along with the majority of the wedding party.

  “Centurion,” the consul said.

  Tanner faced forward, standing stiffly at attention.

  The consul eyed him curiously before glancing at the fighter. Finally, he indicated the tablet. “It says here you never went to the Academy.”

  “No, sir,” Tanner said.

  “You have a sketchy bio. I can’t tell if you have any advanced degrees or not.”

  Tanner didn’t know what his bio had to do with anything. Had the head wound scrambled the consul’s thoughts?

  “I never attended a university or a trade school,” Tanner said.

  “Yet…you destroyed seven dropships with your fighter, only one of the kills made with a missile. You used your autocannons to knock down the others?”

  Tanner nodded.

  The consul tapped his chin. “You’d have to get awfully close to a dropship to penetrate the hull armor with 40mm cannons.”

  “I suppose,” Tanner said.

  The consul frowned at him.

  Tanner almost shrugged. He was dead tired and surprised that he was still alive. He knew the war might end any hour. The overwhelming enemy force had embittered him. He could not foresee a life after the war. The Coalition was a vengeful organization with its social unity policy. There would be reeducation camps for many, enforced speech codes and deviant occupiers molesting their women. Instead of talking with the consul, he’d rather take a few more of the enemy with him before he died.

  The consul had become curious. “Explain to me how you managed to destroy these heavily armored dropships with your cannons.”

  Tanner stared into the older man’s eyes. He saw someone weighing him, judging his worth. That ignited indignation in Tanner’s heart. The old man sat down here in safety while giving orders to others—

  Tanner opened his mouth to speak. There weren’t any fancy tricks to what he’d done. It had been the simple determination to take out a dropship any way he could. In his mind, that had meant ramming the bastard. He’d prepped each dropship with his autocannons first and they had each happened to come apart before he could smash through them.

  Remembering whom he addressed, Tanner adjusted his words at the last moment. “A dropship’s exhaust tubes lack hull armor, sir. If you fly right behind one—”

  “That’s suicide!” the consul said, interrupting. “Their coaxial lasers would have shredded your fighter in seconds.”

  A hard grin touched Tanner’s lips. That might be true sometimes, but not if the Coalition gunner was too busy pissing himself seeing a Remus fighter crawling up the tailpipe.

  “Timing helps,” Tanner heard himself say.

  The consul eyed him differently now. It seemed as if the older man had almost come to his decision. “Where did you learn to fly well enough to time lasers?”

  “The best place of all, sir, the school of hard knocks.”

  The consul set the tablet on the desk, maybe the better to regard Tanner. “You drew a gun on a flight deck commander two hours ago.”

  So that’s what this was about. “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t it in your report?”

  Instead of enraging the consul, the answer seemed to amuse the man. “I want to hear it in your own words, son.”

  Did the old man mean that?

  “I think this is it, sir, the end of the war. That means this could be the last day of aerial combat. The flight commander told me to wash up, get some chow and rest. I told him I wanted to go back up. He said I was crazy. Well, if I was crazy, then I might as well do what I wanted. I drew my gun and told him I’d kill him unless he let me into a ready fighter.”

  “Would you have killed him?”

  “I like to think I would have come to my senses, sir.”

  The consul leaned back in his chair.

  “I’ve been reading your bio, Centurion. You grew up in the Vesuvius slums, the worst on the planet. With minimal schooling, you picked up advanced concepts of electrical engineering. According to the bio, you were a hands-on practitioner and that made you important to certain criminal elements. When the war started, you gave that up and passed some tough entrance exams to join the AirSpace Service.”

  “I came from the wrong side of the tracks, but I’m no criminal, sir.”

  “I wonder about that,” the consul said.

  If the way the consul said that was meant to goad Tanner, it worked. His face heated up as he said, “I’ll tell you something, sir. A fine pedigree and fancy schooling counts
for less than nothing against Coalition drones and lasers. Only results matter. This street kid gets results.”

  The consul smiled without humor. “You have spirit, young man, and I think you have the right attitude. You might do.”

  Another surface explosion shook the underground hangar. The lights flickered worse than before. More gravel showered down from the ceiling, trickles of it raining onto the desk.

  The consul stared at the grit before standing. He came around the desk, approaching Tanner. The older man held out his hand.

  Tanner looked down. There was a small unit there.

  “Take it,” Maximus said.

  Tanner did, looking up questioningly.

  “That will allow you to draw credits from the Markus Bank on Excalibur,” Maximus said.

  “One of the Sword Worlds, sir?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes,” Maximus said. “There are ten thousand Coalition credits stashed there. You will use them to keep your Gladius-class recon-raider serviceable.”

  “What raider, sir?”

  “The one you’re going to slip through the Coalition blockade.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, son. Remus has lost this round. The conventional war is almost over. The secret battle to restore our world has just begun. My secretary informed me a few hours ago that the Dark Star’s crew is dead. That’s the name of the special raider.”

  Tanner nodded.

  “I’ve been looking for a new captain, for the right replacement for the last three hours.”

  “Me?”

  “Son, this is going to be a long, hard slog. I need a fighter, a bitter man who refuses to quit. You seem like that. Drawing the gun on the flight commander was the kind of attitude I’ve been looking for. People are already making plans for the peace—for the coming subjugation. You aren’t one of those, though, Centurion Tanner. You want to keep fighting.”

  A flush swept over Tanner. He couldn’t believe this. It meant…he might not die today. Then, a sobering reality came over him.

  “You want me to raid the Coalition planets after they find someone to sign a peace accord?”

  “No!” Maximus said sharply. “That’s not it at all. The Occupation Force would simply gather people to execute, killing twenty of ours for one of theirs. Besides, the Coalition would soon hunt you down or send bounty hunters after you. What I envision is longer-termed and more subtle. Firstly, you won’t be the only one out there. There are others. More than anything else, your existence will help to keep our dream alive as you hunt for ways to free our beloved planet.”