The Bastard Legion

Book 0: The Bastard Legion

by Gavin G. Smith

Genres: Action & Adventure; Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

'High octane SF adventure with Smith's trademark twist' Jamie Sawyer 'An exceptional talent' Peter F Hamilton Four hundred years in the future, the most dangerous criminals are kept in suspended animation aboard prison ships and "rehabilitated" in a shared virtual reality environment. But Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker with a background in black ops, has stolen one of these ships, the Hangman's Daughter, and made it her own. Controlled by explosive collars and trained in virtual reality by the electronic ghost of a dead marine sergeant, the thieves, gangsters, murderers, and worse are transformed into Miska's own private indentured army: the Bastard Legion. Are the mercenaries just for fun and profit, or does Miska have a hidden purpose connected to her covert past? 'Gloriously action-packed and often brutal military SF adventure . . . This series launch will keep readers turning pages, eager to see what bloody adventure awaits and how the legion develops into a force to be reckoned with' Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

Release date: January 26, 2017

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter 1

Pounding drums and screaming guitars filled her lightweight spacesuit. It was supposed to be a stealth observation mission but Miska Corbin had grown bored as she closed with Faigroe Station. Her laser carbine became her air guitar as she windmilled through space, trusting that the suit’s reactive camouflage would render her invisible despite her frantic movement.

Far behind her the debris field around Tau Ceti made the small yellow sun appear as if it were caught in a pollution haze. It reminded her of the cities of Earth, not that she’d ever been there. Below, she could make out bands of red, brown and white clouds in the atmosphere of Tau Ceti G, the gas giant she was orbiting at some speed. A super-storm was forming among the clouds, slowly, like a huge whirlpool. It was beautiful, Miska supposed, but she’d been looking at it for a long time.

‘Pumpkin?’ The voice crackling over her comms link had become a low growl from years of shouting. It was a voice used to being obeyed – but somehow it was always soft when it spoke to her. She shut down the music.

‘Dad!’ Miska hissed. ‘Don’t call me that when we’re running ops.’ The assault team in the shuttle trailing her wouldn’t have heard, but the pilot and co-pilot would have.

‘What would you prefer? Agent, warden, general, legatus legionis?’ he asked.

It was something she actually was going to have to think about, but perhaps not right now.

‘What about a cool codename like Sabre, or Domino?’ she suggested.

‘Where’s my targeting package?’ her dad asked. Apparently he’d had enough of mucking around for one operation. The ugly, potato-shaped rock that was Faigroe Station was much closer now. From her slightly lower orbit Miska found herself looking up at the asteroid mine. She could see the underside weapon emplacements, mainly point defence lasers and railguns, but more significantly she could make out a missile battery as well.

‘Working!’ Miska sang over the comms link. She suspected her reply wasn’t going to particularly reassure Gunnery Sergeant Jonathan Corbin, United States Marine Corps, retired. Her father. As she readied her carbine she noticed movement in the clouds far below her. Looking down she saw a number of bulky, though still aerodynamic, craft with wide, mouth-like fuel scoops rising out of the swirl. They were drone craft sent down by the station to harvest the gas giant’s combustibles, to help fuel the mine. ‘Interesting,’ Miska mused as the craft rose up towards her, their manoeuvring engines burning hard.

‘Miska?’ Her dad’s voice was sterner over the comms link this time. He had access to the lenses in her suit, he could see that she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing.

‘All right, all right,’ Miska said, though she chose not to say it across the link. She brought the laser carbine up to her shoulder, using the suit’s compressed-air manoeuvring system to stabilise herself. Dialling down the carbine’s destructive power but increasing its range through the smartlink, she used the laser to passively ‘paint’ each of the weapons emplacements. This allowed her spatial positioning system to work out the exact coordinates of the weapons, which she then transmitted to the Hangman’s Daughter. The prison barge’s own targeting systems would then adjust for the station’s movement.

‘Targeting packages sent,’ she said over the comms link.

‘Received,’ her dad said. Then, after a few moments: ‘Looks good.’

‘Guys, come and pick me up,’ she said to the shuttle pilots over the comms link.

‘On our way,’ the pilot replied. As it always did, a brief bio appeared in her Internal Visual Display. McMasters, Jon. Sentenced for thirty years in the ultramax prison barge for human trafficking.

Miska returned her carbine to its combat settings as she waited and magnified the rear-facing lens on her suit’s helmet. She could just about make out the large, squat, ugly mass of the hundred-year-old surplus military assault shuttle, which had been repurposed as a prisoner transport. The shuttle was over the planetary horizon now, which meant that even the rudimentary scanners of the asteroid mine would be able to pick it up. Miska checked the civilian frequencies.

‘Unidentified shuttle, this is Faigroe Station Co-operative’s traffic control. We’re going to have to ask you to cease your approach.’ The woman’s voice was calm but Miska could hear the tension in it, even over the comms.

‘Faigroe Station traffic control, please be advised we are political prisoners who have escaped from the prison barge Hangman’s Daughter. We request sanctuary.’ The voice belonged to the co-pilot. Gleave, Jeff. Ten years for fraud. He didn’t really belong in an ultramax prison but had been sent there after a number of successful escapes from various planetary prisons. He had been chosen as co-pilot for two reasons: he had enough neuralware in his head that skillsofts, such as the ability to pilot a shuttle, could be uploaded into his brain; and he had been a conman. If he couldn’t talk his way onto the asteroid mine then Miska and her dad hoped that he would at least get them a little closer.

‘Faigroe Station to unidentified shuttle, we sympathise but we’re going to have to ask you to stand off. As I’m sure you can imagine, we’re a bit tense at the moment so unless we know you, you ain’t getting on board.’

Miska checked the shuttle’s position. It was directly below her and getting larger, the manoeuvring engines burning hard on the end of their arms.

‘Faigroe Station, please! You’re our only hope! We’re low on fuel, we need food and medical supplies, we have a number of casualties in critical condition on board … the guards … during the mutiny … they were brutal.’ To give Gleave credit he was really selling the story. Maybe a little over the top.

Like all good lies, their cover story contained an element of truth. Although to be fair there hadn’t been a mutiny; she had just stolen the prison barge and nobody had got hurt. Not during the theft, anyway.

When Miska glanced down at the shuttle it suddenly looked much bigger, and it didn’t seem to be getting any slower.

‘Guys, I don’t mean to tell you how to fly but shouldn’t you be slowing down now?’ she asked. One of the problems of using smugglers to fly shuttles was that they all thought they were still hotdog pilots running orbital blockades. She triggered the compressed-air propulsion system on the suit, shooting upwards as the shuttle caught up with her. It lessened the impact as she hit the top of it. It still felt like the bones in her legs were trying to get into her ribcage as the air was battered out of her. She bounced off the top of the shuttle but it came up to meet her again. Miska managed to twist and use the pads on her hands and knees, each covered in tiny molecular hooks, to adhere herself to the top of the shuttle.

‘Ow!’ she snapped over the comms link.

‘Sorry, Pumpkin,’ McMasters replied. She could hear the laughter in his voice. She couldn’t really begrudge him petty acts of revenge after what she had done to him and all his fellow prisoners. Calling her Pumpkin, on the other hand …

‘You know I can blow your head up with a thought, right?’ Miska asked as she started crawling across the top of the shuttle even as it rose towards the underside of the asteroid. McMasters decided not to answer.

‘Faigroe traffic control to unidentified shuttle, if you do not cease your approach and stand off we will open fire!’ It sounded like Gleave’s powers of persuasion hadn’t done the trick. Miska increased her pace as she heard Gleave’s reply. She didn’t want to be outside when …

The darkness of space glowed bright red for a moment. The shot across their bows from the station’s underside laser cannon had almost been close enough to toast her.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ she said, not realising that the comms link was still open.

‘Miska, language!’ her dad snapped. She suspected it was an automatic parental reflex.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Miska demanded. ‘Someone’s shooting a fucking laser cannon at me!’ She felt doubly aggrieved because part of the job description of a USMC gunnery sergeant was to take swearing to hitherto unexplored heights. Something her dad had excelled at, according to those he had trained.

It looked like a shower of falling stars was heading for the shuttle. Miska knew it was tracer fire from the station’s railgun emplacements. She managed to make it to the airlock. Just.

‘I’d really like to come inside now!’ she shouted. She was caught in a silent rain of phosphorescent sparks as the rounds disintegrated against the shuttle’s thick armour, leaving little pockmarks all over.

‘With you in a moment,’ McMasters said nonchalantly. It was largely luck that she hadn’t been hit yet. There was another flash of light, this time coming from the planetary horizon. She was too far away to see the ship, but she knew that far behind the shuttle the huge prison barge, the Hangman’s Daughter, had just heaved over the horizon and used the targeting information she had provided to fire on the asteroid mine. Light stabbed out high above the gas giant as Miska clung to the side of the moving shuttle, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. There were explosions on the asteroid, fountains of newly molten rock quickly cooling in the vacuum. The airlock opened.

It wasn’t often that Miska got angry, but she was reasonably cross now. She also wasn’t often frightened, but she didn’t deal well with feeling helpless. She was self-aware enough to realise the irony of this as she pulled herself into the airlock and artificial gravity. The external hatch closed and the airlock started cycling air in.

‘Gleave?’ she asked the co-pilot over the comms link.

‘Er, yes Pump … Misk … Miss?’ he managed. He sounded shit-scared. She could hear the hard percussion of the railgun rain against the shuttle’s armour. Outside the small porthole in the airlock, space glowed red again; moments later the railgun fire ceased.

‘Miska’s fine. I need you to take over piloting, understand me?’ she said as the inner airlock hatch opened and she stepped into the corridor that led to the shuttle’s prisoner bay. The laser-cutting torch that the Tau Ceti Company had given them was bolted to the ceiling on an extendable arm just outside the airlock.

‘Erm … don’t you want me to speak to traffic control?’ Gleave asked.

‘Negotiations finish when they start shooting at you,’ Miska told him. ‘Do it now.’

‘Hey, wait a second!’ McMasters said. ‘I was just messing around!’ Miska opened the comms link so the assault squad waiting in the prisoner holding area could hear her.

‘If I die then you kill everyone. Not just me, not just you, not just everyone on the shuttle, but all six thousand prisoners on board the Hangman’s Daughter.’

‘No wait, I’m sorr—’

Miska shut the link and sent the detonation code to McMaster’s collar. He had been sorry too late. She didn’t even hear the explosion. She was, however, slammed into the corridor wall as the shuttle veered suddenly before Gleave, presumably terrified by the explosive decapitation of the man who’d been sat next to him, managed to regain control of the shuttle.

All eyes were on Miska as she walked into the prisoner holding area. Her helmet visor slid over her head, collapsing into the suit’s collar. Twenty faces stared at her as she ran her fingers through her unruly, almost spiky, dirty blonde hair. Some looked impassive, others frightened. A lot of them looked angry, but no matter how well hidden it might be, she knew that the one thing the majority of the prisoners, her convict soldiers, had in common was their hatred of her and her dad.

Constructed from scuffed black metal and hard plastic composites, the prisoner holding bay contained four staggered rows of secure seating on each side. Each row had twenty-five seats. The twenty-four prisoners who formed the assault team were sat close to the thick blast door that led to the cockpit.

‘Hello everyone,’ Miska said cheerfully. ‘It’s very exciting outside at the moment!’

Nobody said anything, but forty-eight hard eyes belonging to criminals dangerous enough to be sent to an ultramax prison barge stared at her. She knew that the only things keeping her alive were the explosive collars around their necks.

‘This is our first time out, so I’m going to go over the plan one more time. The miners on Faigroe Station, employees of the Tau Ceti Company, have illegally taken control of the asteroid. The company is paying us—’ she thought about this for a moment, ‘well, paying me, since you guys are doing it out of the goodness of your hearts and because of the collars round your necks – to get their property back. Our plan is terribly, terribly simple. We’re going to dock with the station, cut our way through the airlock, and occupy the cargo bay long enough for me to trance into the net and use the command codes the Tau Ceti Company provided us with to take control of the station’s systems and lock it down until company reinforcements can reach us.

‘R.O.E!’ Miska shouted. ‘We’re expecting spirited but weak resistance. These guys are miners. They’ve got next to no access to weapons other than the few they’ve taken from company security personnel. They do, however, have access to mining equipment. This includes cutting lasers. You answer force with force. Someone gives you shit, give them shit back. They attack you, put them on the ground. They try to kill you, you kill them first. That said, I don’t want a blood bath if we can avoid one, and I know the difference between a genuine threat and you trying to justify killing someone for the hell of it. I hope that the lesson McMasters just taught us all isn’t lost on you.

‘I’ll be operating independently but you follow the drills we did in the run-up to this and you’ll be fine. Any questions?’

‘What does R.O.E mean?’ Prola, Massimo. Consecutive life sentences for multiple counts of first-degree murder. There were some laughs at his question. An olive-skinned man in his early forties, he looked out of place in the repainted riot armour that had once belonged to one of the Hangman’s Daughter’s guards. Once a button man, the Mafia term for a hitman, in the Cofino family on St Barnard’s Prime, he would have been much more comfortable in a suit, wearing gold chains and rings. It had been the uniform of a lot of the La Cosa Nostra thugs she’d had to deal with in her life.

‘Rules of Engagement, Mass. Wanna explain to Gunnery Sergeant Corbin why you weren’t paying attention?’

Massimo chuckled. ‘I’m just messing with you, Miska. Good to go … or whatever.’ He looked at her just a little bit too long. They’d called him the Fisherman back on Barney’s Prime, because he liked to gut people with a hooked knife. It was kind of obvious what he’d like to do to Miska, given the chance.

‘You going to kill the other pilot?’ Torricone, Michael. Ten years for grand theft auto, then another thirty years and transferred to the Hangman’s Daughter for the second-degree murder of a fellow inmate. He was an attractive Hispanic guy in his late twenties, dark eyes, tattoos crawling out from under his explosive lowjack collar and his helmet, a tear just below his left eye. Miska turned to look at him. He held her look. She saw no fear there, but more unusually if there was hatred then it was buried deep. He came across as very serious, maybe even sad.

‘If need be, and anyone else,’ she told him. ‘But seriously, why don’t we try and enjoy ourselves?’

Torricone’s answering laugh was devoid of humour, and he turned away from her. There was something off in his expression. She wasn’t sure if it was disgust or pity, but it left her discomfited for just a moment.

‘I’m going to release the restraints. Weapons hot, so if you want to get it all over and done with then you can just shoot me in the back.’ Miska turned and headed towards the corridor that led to the airlock. This was the most dangerous part of the mission. She heard the bars across the seats flip open. Heard the familiar shuffling of armoured soldiers as they grabbed their M-19 assault rifles from the clips next to the seats. Just as her dad had drilled them, they checked the weapons, albeit with varying degrees of clumsiness.

‘Fuck you, bitch!’ The scream didn’t sound entirely sane. She heard answering insults from the other convicts. Miska stopped and sighed theatrically. Secretly, she was relieved. The assault team hadn’t seen McMasters. It hadn’t been immediate enough. An example still had to be made. Miska turned around. Not for the first time she realised that her five-foot-six-inches meant that the majority of prisoners were a lot taller than her.

‘I’m not going! I’m not going to die for you!’ Chaver, Brian. Serving a life sentence for some particularly brutal home invasions. He had gang tattoos and the emaciated frame of a habitual drug dealer, though her dad’s physical training regime had been starting to bulk him out a little. The enforced cold turkey of prison hadn’t got rid of his jitters, however. His M-19 slugthrower rifle was levelled at her.

‘Put it down!’ Mass shouted, his own M-19 up at his shoulder. Miska smiled at Chaver as she walked towards Mass.

‘Rat motherfucker!’ one of the other convicts snapped at Mass.

‘You know who I am!’ Mass snapped back but he didn’t take his eyes off Chaver.

‘Don’t fucking move any closer, bitch!’ Chaver screamed, the barrel of his weapon tracking her.

‘Seriously. This won’t help, mano,’ Torricone said quietly. He was still standing quite close to Chaver, though other prisoners were shuffling away.

Miska reached up and pushed the barrel of Mass’s weapon down.

‘You’re going to let us go or I will put this entire magazine into you. Do you understand me, bitch?’ Chaver shouted.

‘She’ll kill us all, asshole!’ Mass told him. A number of the other assault team members seemed to be in agreement.

‘That’s bullshit, man!’ Chaver screamed. ‘It’s a bluff, she’s not a monster.’ Miska was taken aback, insulted even. And she hated home invaders.

‘Yes I am,’ she said and then smiled sweetly at the man holding a gun on her. ‘Brian. Can I call you Brian?’

‘Junior C to you, bitch!’ Chaver screamed. The barrel of the M-19 was shaking.

‘Fair enough. You see, Brian, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill every last one of you. You need to believe that. Well, you don’t. It’s too late for you.’

‘I’m going to give you to the count of three!’ he screamed. ‘Open the collars!’

‘Don’t do this, man,’ Torricone said.

‘Three!’ Chaver shouted.

‘Two,’ Miska said, drawing her sidearm. Her augmented reflexes meant that she moved faster than Chaver’s cheap cyberware could make him react. She pressed the barrel of the pistol to her own head. ‘You see, Brian, if I’m going to be killed it won’t be by someone like you.’

His eyes went wide as he stared at her. Torricone looked away, shaking his head. Even Mass looked surprised.

‘One,’ Miska said, and pulled the trigger on the pistol at the same time as she used her smartlink connection to safety the weapon and sent the detonation codes to Chaver’s lowjack.

The gangbanger was just starting to squeeze his trigger. People dived out of the way as the collar blew with a muffled crump, and his head went tumbling into the air. Miska took the safety off her gauss pistol and then holstered it. Chaver’s body rocked backwards and forwards for a moment and then fell. Blood spattered Torricone’s face but he didn’t move.

‘Any more questions?’ Miska asked cheerfully. Faces were appearing from behind the secure seating.

‘Don’t blow my head off or nothing,’ Mass said, ‘but I think there’s something wrong with you.’

Miska grinned up at the Mafia hitman. ‘Thank you!’ she said and then leaned in close to him. ‘I understand that this is a bit of a shitty situation for you guys but I promise you, you’ll never be bored,’ she whispered, loud enough to be heard by everyone.

‘Right. C’mon guys, let’s stack up!’ Mass shouted, apparently having decided to take on a degree of command. Miska turned and walked up the corridor towards the airlock.

‘We’re about to dock,’ a terrified Gleave said over the comms link.

‘Miska,’ her dad said, opening a private comms link to her. ‘I don’t want to see you ever put a loaded firearm to your head again, understand me?’ He would have seen everything through the lenses in the prisoner holding area and those mounted on the assault team’s helmet.

‘Yes Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ But he didn’t understand. It was just her here. She had to be the biggest psycho on board and there was a lot of competition. Chaver may have been a home-invading piece of shit but she was pretty sure he hadn’t been one of the killers. He hadn’t been capable, and they wouldn’t have committed suicide like that. No, they’d be keeping a very low profile. As the assault team raced past her for the airlock she felt eyes on the back of her head. Somehow she knew it was Torricone.













Chapter 2

Miska watched Mass attach the hydraulic ram to one of Faigroe Station’s cargo airlocks. The strobing beam of the cutting torch illuminated the convicts in harsh red light as they divided themselves into two squads.

Miska closed her eyes but the hellish glow still crept through her eyelids. Any computer and many electronic systems were accessible via the net. People like Miska who had an integral computer and a neural interface implanted in the meat of their brain were capable of complete sensory immersion within the electronic realm. Through their icons they could influence, manipulate and at times control their virtual surroundings, and through them the real-world systems the constructs represented. All she had to do was get into the station, connect to and enter the virtual reality representation of the asteroid mine’s systems, and use the codes provided by the Tau Ceti Company. It sounded easy enough but Miska didn’t like things that sounded easy. So she had checked out the codes, and they had seemed legit. She had researched Faigroe Station and what she had found out supported the intelligence that the company had provided. It had seemed like an ideal first mission for her fledgling mercenary penal legion.

The torch stopped cutting, molten metal running down the inside of the hatch.

‘Remember, all you need to do is hold the space long enough for me to take control of the station’s systems,’ she said.

There were a few grunted affirmatives that were drowned out by the hammering of the ram. The laser-cut piece of hatch fell into the station’s cargo bay. Miska glanced in through the hole, moving slowly so that her suit’s reactive armour had time to blend in against the background. The cargo bay was dark and quiet but her modified eyes amplified the ambient light, making it look almost as bright as day. She saw crates of supplies stacked in haphazard rows. In the centre of the bay was the six-legged, beetle-like form of a mining mech. Its maw was a series of rock-crushing drills. There was no movement. Miska cursed the fact she had to wear a helmet for the reactive camouflage to work. The suit’s audio sensors were good, but not as good as her enhanced hearing.

‘So why is nobody waiting for us?’ Torricone asked quietly over comms.

‘They’re just miners. Pickaxes against guns. I guess they didn’t like the odds,’ Mass said, though he didn’t sound convinced.

Carbine at the ready, Miska moved slowly through the still-glowing hole in the hatch, half expecting to get shot the moment she showed herself. Nothing happened. She was on the asteroid now. Miska moved slowly to her right into a row of stacked pallets filled with ration packs.

‘I am an awesome space ninja,’ Miska said quietly to herself. She checked the row thoroughly and then moved back to a space between two of the stacked columns of pallets and climbed into it, letting the reactive camouflage do its work and render her effectively invisible.

‘Deploy,’ she said over the comms link. For a moment she had been tempted to leave them in the airlock, do the job without them and only use them if things went wrong, but part of the reason for taking this job was proof of concept. Could a penal mercenary legion, with its myriad of drawbacks, actually work? She checked the windows receiving the feeds from the assault teams’ helmet lenses in her Internal Visual Display. They almost looked like a military unit as they came through the airlock and took up defensive positions in a semicircle around the hatch.

Miska closed her eyes and her neural interface went looking for net access. This was when she would be at her most helpless but the asteroid’s rock was too good a shield for her to gain access from the outside. There were other ways she could have done this, snuck in through a comms connection perhaps, but such channels were heavily protected, and it would have meant a slight delay in her reactions. Given the speed at which things happened on the net, even an infinitesimal delay could spell disaster.



It went wrong quickly. The web architecture of the station was completely different to the simulation that the company had provided her with. It was supposed to look like some kind of retro, toxic theme park. Instead it looked like a high quality animation of a seventeenth century Caribbean pirate port. In parts she could see the old architecture underneath the pirate port. It looked as though it was corroding, being eaten away by the new code. The surrounding space was the black, glass-like ocean lapping at the white beach. There were tall ships in port, and other islands in the distance, presumably other stations orbiting Tau Ceti G. An angular fort sat atop a cliff overlooking the harbour. Behind her the shuttle was represented as a prison scow.

Miska was a tiny, spik. . .