The Legionnaires

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Twenty children huddled in a corner.

“We’re the Legion, Grandmother,” Toly said to me, “not a damn orphanage. This is a military post.”

“What else was there to do?” I asked. “Tell those things to go away until we can ship the children off planet? This was going to be a resort posting, five-star.”

When we initially landed in the Lavigne system all of us had been giddy. Who wouldn’t be? It was the first world with optimal conditions: the perfect climate, the perfect star type, and a soil chemistry almost identical to that of the south of France, just right to reestablish vineyards. A dream assignment. Nobody wanted Nimes Lointain again, the Legion’s training planet, the ideal place if you enjoyed marching all day with a full kit under two g’s. We had just come from Nimes; Lavigne was supposed to have been our vacation.

“How do they see?” I whispered. Out the firing port we could see an ocean of them, mante religieuse (French for praying mantis), huge insect-like things that had shown up that morning and slaughtered every single colonist—except for the kids in our bunker.

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