Spiral of Light

Chapter 10: The Piddle Bucket Incident

"Centuri, spray down!" Moloch commanded.

He pulled a small aerosol puck of pheromone blanker; and gave himself a generous spray over the front of his armor; then he turned and got Krasus' back for him, Krasus did the same for him. Down the line, the rest of the Legionnaires followed suit. Hybrids had exceptional senses of smell, and if they had a chance of getting the drop on them, they would need to mask their scent.

"Standard bearer; sound dampening protocols!" Krasus called out. The standard bearer, who held their cohort's Legion standard, moved forward. He interfaced with the controls on the handle of the standard, which was a pole of about a meter in a half long, and as thick as his wrist. The legion standards had many uses, but their most notable feature was that they were enlivened by the Temples of the Holy Fire.

The temple used the spirit of the first fallen legionnaire from that cohort; and bound him to the standard, giving him an anchor to the physical plane and a home from which it could draw power and sustain its lifeforce. The living legionnaires would make offerings to the spirit, providing it with succor and honors and in turn it would help guide the squad in all manner of useful ways. As theirs was the first cohort of the first legion, their standard spirit was one of the oldest and most powerful of all the many legions that the Republic possessed.

The Standard bearer finished his inputs on the control panel of the standard and immediately everyone's ears popped, as if they were adjusting to a difference in altitude. One of the other functions of the Standard was that it could be programmed to project a muting barrier that could muffle the sounds of the Legionnaires if they were near it. This also muted their capacity to speak with one another.

"Switch to helmet comms!" Moloch commanded with a few quick motions, using Legionnaire's argot; a sign language that everyone who served in the legion was taught and knew well. If the situation necessitated it, they could hold entire silent conversations without having to speak a word. The Legionnaires turned a small dial on the exterior of their helmets, which connected them to the standards comms channel. It allowed them to hear one another with perfect clarity, despite the sound muffling field of the standard.

Krasus pointed forward with his fist. The legionnaires stacked up on him as they moved silently across the caliginous trash strewn street, the standard bearer falling in line in the middle of the Legionnaires. They made their way around the side to the service entrance that Forrester had indicated. It was a wide door that was rusted in its track, the input pad beside the door that under normal circumstances would open, for legion credentials was unlit and dead, the bionic mind that ran and maintained the building was long since deactivated and likely parted out for scrap by the building's new occupants.

Legionnaire Trench pulled a small pry bar from his pack and gently tried to pull the door apart. As he went about his work, it made a horrible grating sound, as the stuck doors refused to move and screeched in protest.

"Well - this is going to require a different approach." Trench said as he rummaged around in his pack.

"Heh, found it." He said holding up a compact industrial disintegrator. Then he put it to the seam of the side door, and began cutting it out of the frame, the hot blue-white beam of the disintegrator, slicing through the resisteel with silent efficiency.

"Quietly lads, we don't want these stinkards to hear us coming."

As Trench made quick work of the door, two other Legionnaires stepped forward to catch the falling piece of metal and they silently whisked it away, gently laying it against the far wall of the alley.

As soon as the opening was made, the Legionnaires quietly rushed into the habitation hive. Taking quick soft steps to fan out and establish a firing line, Moloch and Krasus went in last, with emitter pistols and void gladius drawn.