Soldier of the Legion by Marshall S. Thomas Read Free Book Online

take your comtop off and keep your nose above the water. Push the comtop ahead of you, then pull yourself through with one arm.”
    I heard a chorus of off-channel curses up ahead of me. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear either.
    We moved on, water rushing past me. Suddenly the tunnel narrowed drastically. My comtop struck the limestone ceiling. Priestess’s boots thrashed in the water, glanced off my faceplate.
    She cried out, gurgling, “No!” I grabbed her boots and tried to steady her.
    “Priestess, are you all right? Answer!” I felt the beginning edges of panic. I triggered my flash. It lit up the water, and sent eerie liquid shadows flickering over the rocky ceiling.
    “I can’t do it, Thinker!” She gasped, hyperventilating. “I can’t get through! I can’t move!!”
    “Priestess, Thinker, Snow Leopard—you still with us?”
    “Nothing to report,” I replied.
    “Get out of there,” he ordered. “Now! We’ve all done it, even the techs. You have to take your comtops off, or you won’t have room to get a grip on the rocks and pull yourself through.”
    “Priestess...” We were stopped and my claustrophobia closed in. “We’ve got to get out of here, Priestess! Have you taken off your comtop?”
    “No.” She almost sobbed.
    “Do it! Mouth against the ceiling! Then move out. I’ll be right behind you!” I knew if she didn’t move, we were probably both going to die. Miserably. I forced myself to unlink my comtop. Icy water poured in. I shook uncontrollably. Wrenching the comtop off, I slammed my face up to the bitter stone roof, sucking desperately for air. Only a few mils clearance, a few mils between life and death. I saw Priestess’s pale, frightened face, a fragile mushroom in a river of ink. She’d done it.
    “Oh, my God.” A horrified whisper, barely audible. We both felt the cold wings of the angel of death.
    Priestess kicked off into the dark, leaving me alone, numb with terror.
    I took a deep breath and forced myself forward, the water swirling all around me, into the narrowest portion. Tons of rock above me, an immense presence, the tunnel almost full of icy water. Blind and deaf and shaking with fear, kissing that obscene stone, I heard the music of the stars. I felt the slimy walls. The earth held me in its teeth. My hands tore at the rocks, and now I edged forward, slowly. I forced my head between two great rocks, thrust the comtop ahead of me, and pulled myself through. I popped up into a wider portion, water streaming from my face. Air! An unfocused green glow. A limestone shaft, heading gently up.
    “Thinker! Are you all right?” Priestess’s voice echoed down the shaft.
    “I’m fine,” I gasped, stretched out on the rocks, exhausted. “Be right there!” Eagerly, with shaking fingers, I put my comtop back on.

###
    We made our way out of the stream and eventually found ourselves walking upright but slightly stooped due to the low ceilings, deep within the cramped catacombs, the bowels, of the dead city. We fanned out through the corridors.
    “Beta, Snow Leopard. Keep alert. Fire v-min at any movement.”
    Ghostly stone doorways loomed all around us, leading to past worlds, deep inside the earth. Only the dead lived in the dark of this tomb.
    Priestess and I moved in tandem. More chatter crackled on the net, the lifies moving into position, Coolhand and Psycho tracking the Scaler. My tacmod silently extended the tacmap. Doorways and corridors branched off everywhere. Priestess and I moved along a wall, scanning our surroundings carefully.
    It was a silent, dead underground city, glowing a faint green through our faceplates. A phantom city carved from stone, empty doorways gaping blindly at us like the eye sockets of ancient skulls. The rot of history covered this world. We could sense it, we could see it all around us, crumbling under our boots, floating specks of the past, settling on our litesuits. The air carried the cold breath of the dead.
    We turned a corner