Legion Of The Damned - 01 - Legion of the Damned Read Free Page A

long enough to do so.
    The technician released the final restraint and Baldwin sat up. The alien backed away, careful to protect his back, always ready to defend himself—a reaction so ingrained, so natural, that the Hudathan hadn’t even thought about it.
    He was seven feet tall, weighed about 350 pounds, and had temperature-sensitive skin. It was gray at the moment, but would turn black under conditions of extreme cold, and white when the air surrounding it became excessively warm. He had a large humanoid head, the vestige of a dorsal fin that ran front to back along the top of his skull, a pair of funnel-like ears, and a frog-like mouth with a bony upper lip, which remained stationary when the creature talked.

    “Do you have needs?”
    The human swung his feet over the side and addressed the technician in his own tongue, a sibilant language that sounded like snakes hissing. “Yes. A cigarette would be nice.”
    “What is a cigarette?”
    “Never mind. May I have my equipment, please?”
    The Hudathans had no need to wear garb other than equipment such as armor, which explained why the word “clothing” had no equivalent in their language.
    The alien made a jabbing motion that meant “yes,” and disappeared. He was back a few moments later with Baldwin’s clothes.
    “The war commander requests your presence.”
    Baldwin smiled. The humans had arrived, just as he had predicted that they would.
    “Excellent. Inform the war commander that I am on my way.”
    The Hudathan made no visible response, but Baldwin knew that his message had been subvocalized and transmitted via the technician’s implant.
    He zipped the uniform jacket, wished that he could see himself in a mirror, and made his way out into the corridor. It was taller and wider than a human passageway.
    His guard, a huge brute named Nikko Imbala-Sa, was waiting (still another precaution to make sure that the human-thing remained under control). Baldwin moved towards the core of the ship. Imbala-Sa followed. The Hudathan equivalent of argrav had generated a rather comfortable 96.1 gee.
    This corridor looked exactly like every other passageway on the ship. There were evenly spaced light strips on ceilings and bulkheads, identical junction boxes every twenty feet or so, and gratings that could be removed to service the fiber-optic cables that lay beneath them. Baldwin thought the sameness was boring, but knew that the Hudatha found comfort in the uniformity, suggesting as it did a well-ordered universe.
    They arrived at an intersection, waited while a lance commander and his contingent of bodyguards passed by, and approached the lift tubes. There were eight of them clustered together. Four up and four down.
    Baldwin waited for an up platform, stepped aboard, and knew that Imbala-Sa would take the next. Each platform was intended to carry one passenger and no more. The human had noticed that Hudathans had a tendency to avoid unstructured group situations whenever possible.
    The platforms never actually came to a stop, so it was necessary to watch for the deck that he wanted and jump. Baldwin made the transition smoothly, waited for Imbala-Sa to catch up, and headed for the battleship’s command center.
    There were four sentries outside the war commander’s door. All were members of the elite Sun Guard and were heavily armed. They made no attempt to bar Baldwin’s way but omitted the gestures of respect that would be afforded to a Hudathan officer. Baldwin ignored it. He had no choice.
    The airtight hatch disappeared into the ceiling and Baldwin strode through the newly created opening. Imbala-Sa was right behind him.
    The command center was oval in shape, with fifteen niches set into the outer walls, one for each member of the war commander’s personal staff. The cave-like seating arrangements gave the aliens a sense of security and served to protect their backs. Seven of the seats were , filled. Baldwin felt fourteen sets of cold, hard eyes bore their