The Legion of Nothing

“You’ve got an inventory list?” I asked.

“Close enough,” Cassie said. “I’ve got multiple inventory lists, all of them protected from the different Abominator clone lineages by security that we’d never get through—except now everyone’s dead. Thanks to Abominator inheritance law, the property, including intellectual property, reverts to the eldest clone lineage within the same group of sublineages. With everyone dead, all of it reverts to the control of anyone left with a Citizen’s Mark. As the last remaining representative of the Abominator civilization, I inherit everything.”

“Unless Victor’s still here,” I said.

“Right,” Cassie nodded, “unless Victor hasn’t gone back in time yet, but it’s no problem even then unless he shows up on the Moon.”

“So we won’t call him,” Rachel let her arms fall to her sides and stretched out her legs. “Get on with it, please.”

The touch of sharpness in her voice reminded me that the sooner we got this over with, the sooner we could leave and get her healed. It must have reminded Cassie too because she closed her eyes and said, “It’ll be a second.”

As Cassie looked through her lists, I asked Rachel, “Are you okay? It’s not getting worse, is it?”

Rachel shook her head, “It’s not worse, but I’m still sore and it’s not better.”

While she talked, Jaclyn took a few steps closer, “We can still leave and come back.”

Rachel shook her head, “We can’t. There’s no time.”

Frowning, Jaclyn didn’t try to argue with her, “You’re right, but don’t suffer if you’re hurting.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “I’m not going to let myself die.”

That chilled conversation for a few minutes as everyone thought about Travis. I did, at least. It wasn’t in a guilty way, but three days ago he was alive. It seemed impossible that he was gone now. Especially in the group's early days, he’d pushed us to be more professional and take it seriously. It wasn’t always realistic to expect that of high school students, but he wasn’t wrong.

He also seemed to imagine that he might be the leader the team needed—at least in the beginning. He wasn’t pushing for it after the first few years. Maybe he could have been.

“Alright,” Cassie said, giving a wave. “Over here, everybody. Bad news. When the Russians came through, they grabbed the best candidate. The Abominators had a device they made for finding Artificer technology, but according to the security logs, the Russians grabbed it when they came back in… 1981, I think.”

“The Russians have it?” Jaclyn shook her head, “I don’t think they’ll let us borrow it.”

I thought back to Stapledon, “Remember when Blue almost fought that Russian team? Rhino got a message from a member through backchannels asking if it was us. We might go through him.”

“I remember it,” Marcus said, “I was flying the jet. There was a wizard on a flying carpet, people in powered armor, normal super types, and we were flying over a desert on the other side of the world… It was weird.”

From her seat on the floor, Rachel said, “Going through the Rhino’s friend sounds good. We don’t want to break into the Kremlin or wherever they keep it.”

Cassie waved a hand in the air, “Whoa, everyone, we’ve got another option.”

“Better than sneaking into Russia?” Jaclyn asked, “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Cassie laughed, “They’ve got another one, but it’s not on the Moon. It’s on Mars.”

I raised my hand, “The other Abominator base? I heard Victor tell Rook about it once.”

“That’s right,” Cassie said, “I was there when you heard it, but yeah. When the Abominators moved out of the Moonbase, they went to their main base. The Artificers left tech on Mars which is what attracted the Abominators here. They removed some of it to the Moon to study, but not everything.”

Marcus stood up from where he’d been sitting near Rachel, “Let’s go, we shouldn’t have to fight anyone on Mars. Russia could get messy. The Dominators and the Nine could be anywhere.”

Glancing over at Rachel, Jaclyn said, “We shouldn’t have had to fight anyone here, but Shift still almost died. Ghost could have died too. I’m not saying we absolutely shouldn’t, but anything we found here could be on Mars. We’ll be going from weird alien stuff to more weird alien stuff. Worse, Ghost is injured now. It shouldn’t be a snap decision.”

“I don’t feel that bad,” Rachel said. “I feel sore, but I can handle it for a few hours. Let’s go there and get it over with. Shift’s right about Russia. The Dominators could have turned anyone. On Mars, it will be dangerous, but we won’t have to worry about people betraying us.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “With the right kind of time travel shenanigans, Victor could be on Mars too. I mean, that's obviously not likely, but Rook sounded like he wanted to go and that was a few years ago now. He’s had all the time he needed if he wanted to loot the place.”