The Stellar Legion

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Wilson, an unwanted waif of the generation-long war of unity, spends his boyhood in forced labour and persecution. Rebelling, he is sent as a convicted murderer to the newly colonised penal world of Stellar. He survives to win promotion in the Stellar Legion, the most brutal military system ever founded. Laurance, Director of the Federation of Man, is afraid of the thing he has helped create, and tries to dissolve the Stellar Legion. He pits his wits against its commander, Hogarth, terrified lest the human wolves trained and hardened in blood and terror should range the defenceless galaxy . . .

Release date: January 30, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 74

Sample

Fruits of warfare

He was born in the midst of pain and terror, on a planet ripped and torn by war, and the arrogant throb of atomic destruction made a savage accompaniment to his baby wail. His mother never lived to suckle him, she, along with fifty million others died in the unleashed hell of the last missile raid on Earth and his father had vanished, a nameless memory, somewhere in the wastes of outer space.

Before he was a year old his skin had been seared by the agony of radiation burns, his food reduced to a nauseous mess, his comfort far less than that of the infinitely more valuable farm animals. He never knew love or affection, the gentle touch of a mother’s hand or the riotous fun of parental play.

He never had a toy, a nurse, a playmate or the understanding of an adult dedicated to his welfare.

They washed him, fed him, dressed his wounds, and then they left him, one of a hundred others, to live or die as nature saw fit. Soon he learned that crying only brought harsh words and rough hands so he ceased from crying and lay, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, staring with bright baby eyes at the low ceiling of the hospital, listening to the sobbing moans of men blasted beyond all semblance of human beings.

That he managed to heal his tormented body was a wonder. That he forced himself to walk, to see, to hang grimly onto his awareness was something never to be understood. That he lived at all was a miracle.

When he was eight they put him to work, toiling among the shattered ruins of cities, helping the broken remains of what had once been men to clear away the debris and build anew. The war had receded from Earth by then, the great ships of space were locked in conflict above the planets of alien suns, and other men and women, other children learned what it was to cringe helpless as atomic missiles drove in from the night of space.

When he was ten most of the independent worlds had fallen and now smarted beneath the rule of Earth, their fleets broken, their soil burned, their proud men and women accepting the inevitable and relinquishing their dream of self-rule. They grumbled, glowered, then, as reason returned and the ghastly price of liberty cried in pain-filled voices around them, swallowed their pride and set to work to build the Federation of Man.

When he was twelve they took him from the cities and set him to work at reclaiming the poisoned soil. He had a name by now, and a number, and of the two the number was the most important.

He worked from dawn to dusk, shovelling the radiation-tainted dirt into great hoppers where it was neutralised, enriched with humus and fertilisers, and replaced ready for the planting. It was hard work, thankless work, and dangerous. The radiations, even though nullified by the passage of time, still retained enough force to inflict ugly burns, and he sweltered in heavy protective clothing as he worked on the edge of the blue-limned desert that had once been Kent.

He had an overseer, a tough, scarred veteran of space, a man embittered by his own incompetence and in perpetual pain from his badly fitted artificial legs. A short, stocky man, addicted to crudely distilled spirits and with a sadistic streak to bely his outer manner. A man, who for some obscure reason, hated the thin, grey-eyed, dark-haired boy with the blue scar of an old wound marring the side of his neck and blotching his cheek.

“Hey, you,” he yelled. “Wilson.”

“Yes?” Wilson stood, fighting the sudden knotting of his stomach muscles, the thick hood of his protective clothing thrown back from his pale, blue-scarred features. The overseer snarled and walked painfully forward.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you swine? When you speak to me you call me ‘sir’. Get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s better. Now grab some food and get back to work. We’re behind schedule and the inspectors will be coming to examine progress in a week or two. I want to show them that we can do our share.”

Wilson hesitated. “I’m due for a rest period, sir.”

“Are you arguing with me?” Anger convulsed the overseer’s heavy features and his right hand clenched into a club of bone and sinew. “You heard what I said. Eat and get back to work.” He glowered at the other nine boys making up the work party.

“That goes for you, too. All of you. I’ve had my eye on this group, idling and wasting time when you thought that no one could see you. Well, now you’re going to pay for it, and you’ll work double shifts until I tell you to stop.”

Silence fell over the little group and one of the boys, a delicate-faced youngster with a twisted leg and a hunched back, began to cry. The sound seemed to touch off a devil in the stocky man’s heart and he swung, his muddy eyes glinting as he stared at the clustered youths.

“Who’s whining?”

They shuffled, trying not to meet his eyes, and yet trying not to betray their comrade.

“I said, who’s whining?” The overseer smiled, a savage twisting, of his lips utterly devoid of humour, and something animal-like and sub-human shone redly in his eyes. “So it’s you, Carter, I might have guessed it.” He jerked forward and grabbed the sobbing boy by the arm. “What’s the matter, son?” he purred. “Did your mummy forget to tuck you in last night? Did your daddy forget to kiss you?” He laughed and, sycophantically, a few of the boys laughed with him.

They didn’t mean to be deliberately cruel, but to them the concept of ‘father’ and ‘mother’ was utterly foreign. Most of them had been alone ever since they could remember and, unlike the sobbing boy who had only been orphaned a few months, to them the crude jest seemed meaningless.

“How old are you, son?” Still the mockery purred in the thick voice and Carter wiped his eyes as he stared up at the big man.

“Thirteen, sir.”

“Almost a man aren’t you? In a year or so you’ll be inducted into the army, or you would have been if it hadn’t been for that twisted spine of yours.”

The big hand tightened on the frail arm. “You’re not strong enough to work on the deadlands, son. You’d better come with me, I need a batman and I can use you. The last one died on me, fell over in the dark and broke his neck.” The purr in the thick voice deepened. “You want to serve me, don’t you?”

“I don’t know, sir. I…”

“Do you want to work yourself to death, boy? Do you want to go as these others are going? You know what happens out there, you know how the radiations burn and blind, sear and distort. Be my batman, son, and you’ll miss all that. Well?”

Carter licked his lips with a nervous gesture and stared appealingly at the blank faces around him.

He was a stranger, someone fresh from a life none of them had ever known, and they had long since learned the lesson of minding their own business.

They avoided his eyes.

“Yes, sir,” he said helplessly. “I’ll be your batman.”

“Good.” The overseer grinned and thrust the youth towards a huddle of low buildings. “Go and clear out my hut, you know where it is, and make a good job of it.” He turned to the others. “Now you fatherless scum, get back to work, and work hard. If you don’t…” He lifted his big fist and spat on the dirt at his feet. “I’ll make you wish that you’d never been born.”

He turned, walking with his jerking awkward stride towards the huddle of buildings, and silently the boys watched him go.

“The swine,” said Wilson emotionlessly. “The dirty stinking swine!”

“Yeah.” One of the others twisted his lips in contemptuous disgust. “I’ll be glad to get the hell out of here. Nothing could be worse than this, not even the attack forces.” He stared enviously at the blue-scarred boy. “You’re lucky. Another year or so and you’ll be old enough for the Fleet, they’re taking them in at fourteen now I’m told.”

“Maybe.” Wilson shrugged and turned towards the mess hut. “The war may be over by then.”

“It won’t be,” said the boy with quiet conviction, and shuddered as screams echoed thinly from the huddle of buildings. “The damn thing’ll go on forever.”

He was wrong.

Peace was declared two years later, signed and ratified over the smouldering ruins of the last desperate battle, and the Federation of Man was a cold fact. It had taken twenty years of constant struggle to weld the scattered colonies into a homogeneous whole, to break forever the stubborn pride of local groups and to end the inevitable threat of warring empires and divergent cultures. Now, after a generation, it had been accomplished, and the Federation of Man, born in hate and fear, in struggle and death, ruled the known stars.

There were splinter groups, of course, isolated planets with a single city and perhaps a few space ships, but they didn’t count. What did count was the fact that the independent colonies now recognised the Mother Planet and acknowledged Earth as their nominal ruler, and, for the first time in a generation, men breathed the sweet air of freedom and the huge inter stellar ships traded once more between the stars.

Three years later, when Wilson was seventeen, the war was a thing of the past. Men streamed home and took up the reins of a disturbed existence, satisfied to farm and till, to work and build, their past forgotten, the ethics of the war, ignored, the long-term policy submerged in day to day interests.

Machines, turned from war-potential, cleared away the rubble and turned the revitalised soil. Cities reared towards the stars and the great warships lost their guns and atomic missiles, were ripped and altered, turned into harmless cargo vessels and passenger ships, sent to the outposts of the new Federation and once again all men were brothers.

Almost.

For still the unwanted remained, the children of war, the parentless, the waifs, the orphaned young and the footloose adventurers. They knew nothing these people, nothing but toil and the trade of death and in a peaceful world they were unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous. So they were forgotten, ignored, their existence denied, shelved as an unfortunate problem which time would solve, and the new-born Federation unified itself and turned from war to peace with an energy born in dreams and a generation-long reaction from enforced discipline and conscription.

With peace came a revulsion of all things appertaining to war. The Terran fleet melted as its personnel dispersed, and men regained their personal liberty in a derision of all things military, so that a man in uniform became a thing of amused contempt, and the stiff discipline of armies a hateful burden.

Peace came.

An Admiral speaks

Three men sat in a luxurious room at the summit of the highest building in rebuilt London.

From high windows the dying light of the setting sun threw long streamers of red and gold, orange and pink, yellow and soft amber across the polished surface of a paper-littered table, reflecting in warm hues from the panelled walls. As the light died selenium controls clicked and subdued fluorescents restored the illumination.

Admiral Hogarth sighed and picked up a thin sheaf of papers from the pile before him. A tall man, his back die-straight and his thin shoulders square to his slender body, he fitted his neat uniform as though born to the black and gold.

Sparse white hair swept back from a high forehead and his eyes, pale, washed out blue, glittered from either side of a high-bridged, hooked nose beneath which his thin lips made a tight gash.

“It is decided then?” His voice was harsh, cold, emotionless and with the whip of ingrained command. “It is final?”

“It is.” President Marrow looked at the third man. “Both Director Laurance and myself agree with the findings of the Committee and they are final. The Terran fleet is to be dispersed. . .