Read Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle for Free Online Page A

for that reason.
    Anguar had done his homework and knew that the personage the clones referred to as “the Founder,” an award-winning geneticist named Carolyn Anne Hosokawa, had chosen Alpha-One, Two, and Three personally, seeing each planet as a sort of creche for her clone-based society, and spreading them out to increase their chances of survival.
    Then, having chosen their homes for them, and seeded them on multiple planets, Hosokawa had further assisted her creations by planning exactly how they would live, including a ban on reproductive sex, the establishment of highly efficient agro-industrial sectors, a carefully designed transportation system, and a gridwork of cities so similar that a person “grown” in one town would know the others equally well.
    And while Anguar found the whole thing depressingly regimented, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the efficiencies gained through the Hegemony’s rigid top-down style. It would be comparatively easy to lead a society like that, Anguar thought enviously, rather than cope with the diverse mishmash of races and cultures he dealt with.
    Of course it would be boring, too, especially if he had to cope with two versions of himself and listen to their speeches. The president smiled at the thought and felt the weight of an additional gravity settle on his narrow shoulders. He would have been crushed if it hadn’t been for the exoskeleton.
    A thin layer of fluffy white cloud rose to meet the shuttle and momentarily obscured the president’s vision before vanishing from sight. A neat patchwork quilt of farmland appeared, each field exactly the same size as the ones that bordered it, all fed by ruler-straight irrigation ditches.
    Farmland gave way to housing, but it was nothing like the fanciful resin-reinforced rammed-earth homes that his people preferred, or the wildly diverse structures he’d seen on other human-settled planets. No, these were concretegray high-rise buildings, each as identical to all the rest as the people who lived in them.
    The shuttle dropped even lower and started its final approach. Anguar saw carefully spaced parks, broad avenues, and man-made lakes. They were pretty, and he said as much to his military aide, a marine major named Stephanie Warwick-Olson. She sat opposite Anguar, with her back toward the cockpit, and turned to look out the window. She was pretty by human standards, though too fleshy for any self-respecting Dweller, and somewhat intimidating. Her voice was calm and matter of fact. “They’re pretty, all right, but I notice that the parks command the high ground, the streets are wide enough toaccommodate heavy armor, and the traffic circles could be used as choke points. Very professional.”
    Anguar looked out the window again and found that Warwick-Olson had somehow transformed the previously pleasant scenery into a potential battlefield. Repellors flared as the shuttle hovered and touched the ground five hundred feet from the terminal building.
    The next fifteen minutes or so were filled with hurried comings and goings, confused multilingual babbling, and the genial anarchy that accompanied the president everywhere he went. His multiracial staff provided him with reminders of protocol (all three of the Alpha clones must be addressed as “Mr. President”), a list of primary objectives (secure Hegemony support), and a review of secondary objectives (evaluate the Legion’s commanding officer in light of allegations regarding his conduct).
    And then, just when Anguar thought his head would explode, the hatch cycled open and he stepped out into bright sunlight. Cameras swooped in, hovered, and captured the carefully managed moment. He squinted, pulled his thin, almost nonexistent lips into a human-style grin, and made his way down the roll-up stairs. Flags snapped in the breeze, rows of identical soldiers stood at attention, and a pylon in the shape of a double helix twisted up towards the sky. The exoskeleton performed