Guard at the Gates of Hell (Gladius Book 1) Read online

  GUARD AT THE GATES OF HELL

  By

  George W. Olney

  BOOKS BY GEORGE OLNEY

  FRENCHY series:

  FRENCHY

  FRENCHY II: Having a Blast

  FRENCHY III: Deathcults and Dancers (Forthcoming)

  GLADIUS Series:

  Guard at the Gates of Hell

  Our Doom and Pride (Forthcoming)

  Copyright 2016 by George Olney

  All rights reserved. Portions of this book may be reproduced for purposes of reviews or marketing. All characters depicted in this book are fictional.

  This story, greatly expanded and developed, is based on a novella by the author published in ANALOG YEARBOOK II.

  Cover by Acapella Book Cover Design.

  With gratitude to the folks on Baen's Bar, especially Edith Maor, for their enthusiastic help.

  In the end though, this book is dedicated to all of those that have worn the uniform. Been there too.

  I am a Gladius.

  I stand guard at the Gates of Hell.

  Nothing will pass and harm

  those I am sworn to protect.

  My life is nothing.

  My duty and purpose are everything.

  If my life is called for,

  it will be given gladly.

  I go now to face my enemy.

  I have seen him, and I know him.

  He will not see the dawn.

  -The Oath of the Gladius

  CHAPTER 1

  LEGIO XV RHIANNONITHI

  (RHIANNON'S OWN)

  3224 IMPERIAL COMMON ERA

  The greatest political structure in human history was dying... and trying to take all of humanity with it.

  The grandly misnamed Empire of Ten Thousand Suns really wasn't an empire and it never had more than three thousand planetary systems under its control. Now, after more than a thousand years, it was rotten and collapsing. The Empire had major internal problems, but protected by the Frontier Fleet and the Corps of Imperial Gladius, it was still safe from external threats.

  Shangnaman the Mad wanted both military organizations destroyed.

  Emperor Shangnaman XI was a paranoid sociopath, a danger to his Court, his people, and what remained of his fragmenting Empire. In an ironic - but probably inevitable - twist, he focused his fears on the Frontier Fleet and the Corps. Shangnaman felt they were too dangerously independent, which made them a threat. He gave orders to destroy the threat. His staff evolved a plan to set Frontier Fleet against the Corps, hoping to kill both. They succeeded in all too many cases.

  A surviving - fleeing - fragment of a devastated legion stumbled on a situation in deep space. When they did, they honored the Oath.

  Aboard the nearly empty troop carrier, in Tachyon Field Drive but hidden by its suppresser field, there was agonizing frustration on the control deck as the situation unfolded. Staring intently at the big tactical monitor on his bridge, Fleet Lieutenant Albert Kavasos decided the people on the liner were about to die and there was triple damn all he could do about it. That was a Kayelen destroyer preparing to capture the liner. The destroyer wasn't going to damage the big passenger ship all that much; it was too valuable. On the other hand, he doubted the people on board were worth anything to the Kayelen. He didn't know much about the Kayelen navy, but he was certain that destroyer was packing more firepower than the Fleet troop carrier he was currently "commanding".

  "There's nothing we can do?"

  The soft feminine voice spoke Unispek in the calm, unemotional tones of a Gladius. Kavasos spared the woman a look, secretly glad to turn his eyes from what was happening on the main monitor. He shook his head. "Nothing."

  She stood there in the short sleeved khaki blouse and ankle-length flowing skirt of her uniform, with her flat topped, water drop shaped cap worn over long, straight, pale blonde hair. Her cap was canted slightly to one side to show she was a veteran of low intensity combat. The deadly arm dagger of the female Gladius was clamped to her left forearm. Round faced, short, and curvy like all Gladius women, she had the nearly colorless gray eyes of her people. Her dignified professional manner, underlain with the subtle melancholy and deadly aura of the Gladius, would keep anyone but a total madman from calling her "cute".

  The contrast between a short curvaceous Gladius woman and her large, muscular male counterpart was something that long ago ceased to surprise Lieutenant Kavasos. On the other hand, he considered both sexes as unemotional as robots and capable of violence on a scale that still awed him. That dagger of hers was not a decoration.

  Her measured, expressionless look seemed to be weighing him. Weighing him and finding him wanting. The strain of the last seventy two hours finally got to him, triggered by that look. "Damn it! What the hell do you want me to do!?! We all got out of that mess on Tombele by the grace of the Lord Above! I have forty-six personnel to run a ship that needs a crew of a hundred and nine! Your people are mostly children! In case you've forgotten, this is a troop carrier, with nothing but some 10 centimeasure guns and no armor worth a triple damn!"

  He turned back to the screen. "Which is nothing," he continued softly. "Not compared to a destroyer. All we can do is continue on to Niad and hope the base there hasn't already been trashed. If it has, we're all as dead as those people."

  Major Camille Paten made no answer. She was only a Centurion 4 herself, a Major with a responsibility that by rights belonged to the legion's Commander. But Legion Commander Poranis was dead with her husband, and Camille's husband, and the rest of the XV Legion, buying time for them to escape the death trap that was Tombele when the New Fleet ships came and the legion's assigned 15th Fleet Support Group joined them, turning their guns on former comrades. Camille was now in command of what was left of the XV Legion, the Rhiannonithi, Rhiannon's Own.

  Her mind ticked down the personnel roster, a task that was as automatic as breathing to a female Gladius. There were two hundred and seventy five children and teenagers, a hundred and ninety women, and fifteen men. All that was left. Until the attack, the XV Legion had an operational strength of over twenty thousand.

  Now, they were escaping to the 10th Fleet Support Group base on Niad, also the current base of the X Legion, Valeria. The only hope Camille could see for the survival of her little group was to find an intact legion. She said a silent prayer that the madness infecting the Empire hadn't touched Niad. If the Valeria was destroyed, a possibility that frequently kept her sleepless, she had no idea what to do next.

  She let none of her worry show. There was a situation in front of her that had to be dealt with immediately. Imperial citizens were being attacked by the Predator and it was the duty of a Gladius to protect citizens. It was the Fleet's duty, too.

  With what? Fourteen men and a damaged troop carrier that was no match for a corvette, much less a destroyer, in combat?

  She glanced sidelong at Lieutenant Kavasos. The tortured set of his shoulders betrayed the direction of his thoughts as he watched the slow, inevitable, capture of the liner. Those on the troop carrier were invisible, safe behind their suppresser screen, and she knew his ship's safety was another torture to the Lieutenant. He was hiding as he watched innocent people - people he was sworn to defend – condemned to death. The Lieutenant was an honorable man, taking the carrier out when the Commander that was its proper captain was either dead or in a new uniform. He deserved well of her. The Fleet, too, had its honor and its charge.

  Camille took a deep breath and straightened her spine. They had First Cohort's brushara, the legion's Sunburst, a few of the legion's adults and - miraculously - many of the younger children. The legion still lived. It was time, and past time, t
o start acting like it.

  The Predator was out there and the legion, however reduced, still existed. The Oath still held. Do something, Camille, she thought. Slowly, a plan took shape. Thank the Lord Above this was a troop carrier.

  "Lieutenant," she began with a soft voice, one that turned softer still as the man turned to face her and she clearly saw the expression on his face. "I understand what you are saying, and I’m not criticizing you."

  "But we can't do anything!" he nearly yelled, waving his hand at the screen in a gesture of pure frustration. "We can't fight a destroyer." He said his last sentence in a low defeated voice. "We don't have the weapons."

  "Yes, we do." She saw the frustration leach away from his eyes, to be replaced by curiosity and hope. "This is a troop carrier. You forget what our primary weapon really is."

  #####

  The Narsim Clarine Femiam knew what was happening. As a former political leader of the Empire of Ten Thousand Suns, she knew trouble when she was in the middle of it.

  She and her daughter Lana were passengers on this ship to Cauldwell, but passengers with a difference. Of average height, elegantly mature with a not quite slim but still graceful carriage, black haired Clarine was the physical embodiment of the Empire's aristocracy. Her rise to the top was aided when opponents underestimated the intelligence, drive, and ambition hidden behind her beauty. A short fashionable marriage had brought her Lana, a teenage version of her mother, and the entry she schemed to get into the inner circles of Court power. Finely honed political ability and a strong instinct for survival kept her there. Until everything blew up.

  That instinct for survival led to this trip. A few rumors and a whispered word were enough to tell her she'd made a fatal misstep in that snake pit of intrigue on Central. Emperor Shangnaman thought she was on the wrong side on the Restructuring Question, but that was enough for that paranoid bastard and his Office of Investigations. Clarine shuddered. When OI got you, nobody ever saw you again, even if you were General Secretary of the Progressive Conservative Party. Clarine and Lana were only one jump ahead of pursuers, but that jump and the ones that followed were enough to make it to this antiquated liner headed for the back of beyond.

  Clarine shook her head. General Secretary no longer. She was gone from the halls of power. Gone but alive, thank the Lord Above. She and Lana had little enough luggage, but at least she had a strongbox in secure storage with enough bullion and Imperial securities to live comfortably, thanks to the Prog-Comp treasury. She also had a cousin, Matic Ettranty, highly placed on Cauldwell. Once solidly entrenched on Cauldwell, she could start back upward again far enough away from Central to remain unnoticed by the Emperor. Now it was beginning to look as if money and political contacts were moot. Somehow, they'd been tracked.

  The cabin door slid open noiselessly and her teenage daughter entered. A younger version of her mother, her classically beautiful face betrayed a tense urgency under fierce control. "Mother," the girl asked in an only slightly shaky voice, "what's happening? What's that vibration? I know something's wrong. What is it?"

  Clarine looked at her, wondering how much to tell Lana. What was happening was obvious enough to her. Unless they were very smart or very lucky, they were going to die soon. She decided on the truth. Let the girl have that. "We're being attacked. That vibration is gunfire on the ship's drive field."

  "Gunfire? Why?" Tension made Lana's voice flat and curt.

  Clarine shook her head. "Pirates. Or whatever. They're trying to collapse our field and capture the ship intact. If the field gets too weak, the crew will drop us into sub-light drive and whoever's doing the shooting will board us."

  Lana looked astounded. "Why go sub-light? That's just giving up!"

  Her mother's expression was grim. "If the crew didn't decelerate, a crash translation at this speed would kill everyone aboard."

  Clarine's voice became brisk. Survive first, worry about everything else later. "That's irrelevant. What we have to do now is figure out how to get out of this. The escape pods might work, but even if we weren't in TFD, we can't eject while that pirate or whatever can see the pod leaving. I think our best bet is to try for one when they board the ship. They'll be too close to see the pod."

  Lana’s words betrayed the fact she still hadn't completely accepted the situation. "You really think they're going to do that? Board us?"

  "If they weren’t going to board us," Clarine replied dryly, "we'd be dead right now."

  #####

  The Kayelen commander was considering boarding action at that moment. His orders were explicit. There were two human females he had to obtain then that liner was his by right of capture.

  He reflected that the Empire was not only turning soft, but corrupt as well. His superiors were arrogantly contemptuous of this particular mission, but pleased with the Imperial bounty offered for the two females. A hint of greater concessions after the successful capture pleased them even more. Someone in the human Empire apparently wanted these two badly.

  He spared a moment from monitoring the chase to study the solidioptic of the two females. They looked ugly to him. No proper jaw ridges and they totally lacked the feathery topknots that were a sign of Kayelen beauty. Still, they were valuable for some reason. The boarding party would need this representation to identify their quarry. Humans were too weird looking. Best to ensure the right ones were brought back, more or less alive.

  He ordered the assault boarding tube readied then fell into a reverie of upcoming wealth. Once all but the two designated humans were out the airlock, the whole lovely ship in his screen was his.

  He felt uneasy for a moment. For over a thousand years, what he was about to order was as good as a death sentence and racial memories died hard. Still, there was nothing left in that corrupt, crumbling human sphere to threaten him. He was soon going to be rich.

  #####

  Camille eyed Lieutenant Sharon Ariel and Sergeant Domnik Passal as they stood at attention in front of her. Ariel was in the same uniform and looked much the same as she herself did. A normal female Gladius. The Sergeant was a typical male Gladius: tall, muscular, with short cropped colorless hair under his flat topped, slightly conical duty cap. He was wearing male duty uniform: short sleeved khaki shirt, khaki kilt, and a weapons belt supported by cross straps with a bolt pistol on the right and his compact battle ax, resembling an ancient "tomahawk", and short sword in a double holster on the left. Both sexes wore tractor-presser bracelets that allowed them to control their thrown blades like live things. Camille said, "That's how we’re going to do it. Those hell spawn bastards think they can prey on innocents without risk. They're wrong. Any questions?"

  They were speaking Copio, the Corps language, and she was carefully studying Sergeant Passal as she asked. There was a problem with him and Camille could see it. Culture and tradition were at war with necessity behind his pale gray eyes. The decurion was relieved to have an officer in command, but Camille suspected he was bothered because Lieutenant Ariel was a female officer. She supposed it worried the decurion to risk a female officer in combat. A woman personified the future of the legion, never risked in battle after she survived her Virgin Mission. Men did the fighting and dying. Women kept the legion alive. That was Sergeant Passal's world. Risking Lieutenant Athan meant risking the legion's future, what they had left of it, in his eyes.

  Camille decided the decurion had best get over it. She was prepared for Passal to protest having a female officer to command the little ad hoc unit and she already had her answer ready. Lieutenant Athan was a fully trained Gladius officer - if a bit rusty in combat operations - and she was needed. She was the last junior officer left. She would command, with or without combat command experience. It was just that simple. Sharon Ariel was needed and she was the best choice from the surviving officers.

  Passal, only a Decurion 5, was the senior male Gladius left alive in the legion. As such, he had the duty of providing the experience his lieutenant lacked - something a bit above his pay
grade - but he was going to do it to make this mission happen. The XV Legion had a duty to the citizens on that liner.

  Camille was surprised at the decurion's reply.

  "Major", he began, "Lambro and Kain aren't fit for combat. That leaves me twelve men for the operation. Four teams. I’m short enough as is."

  Camille nodded. Sergeant Passal had something in mind. Normally, if there were only twelve, twelve would go.

  He took a deep breath. "Major, I know you're not going to like this, but I need another team to do this right. We have three Recruits just about ready for their Virgin Mission. Kardo, Smythe and Chofal. Let me have them."

  Camille was shocked for a second. A Gladius normally went on his or her Virgin Mission, the first combat mission of all Gladii, at seventeen. The boys he named were years younger than that. Why, Smythe was only fourteen!

  Camille closed her eyes for a moment. The boys were too young, but duty to citizens and the legion took precedence. All three were mostly trained. Not fully trained Gladii, but... well enough trained.

  It bothered her. Passal was right. He needed another team. She had to give them the best chance she could, but it hurt.

  Triple damn Fate! As much as Lieutenant Ariel, those boys represented the future and survival of the legion. But, if the situation was bad enough for Ariel to go, there was reason enough to send them. She replied in a low voice. "Assemble them with your squad, Sergeant."

  He saluted and his eyes showed he knew what he was asking - and its price. "Aye. Assembly will be in thirty minutes."

  Lieutenant Ariel also saluted. "We'll be ready, Major."