Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (30 page)

“Here,” I said. “Set up explosives on this ramp and string them around the gully.”

“In case spiders show up?” Carlos asked. “I’m on it.”

While Carlos and Kivi busied themselves with the explosives, I got up and moved forward in a crouch.

The nexus leaves rustled and slapped the water as I approached. It was weird to watch stuff that looked like it belonged in a giant pumpkin patch moving and shivering on its own.

“Claver, time’s up,” I hissed.

He didn’t say anything. I reached forward and shook his shoulder.

He turned around, smiling up at me.

“So peaceful,” he said. “The toxins are poetic at times. When you exchange fluids—you should try it someday, James.”

I don’t think he’d ever called me ‘James’ before. I didn’t like the change. I didn’t like the glassy look in his eyes, either.

“You’re high,” I accused him.

He nodded languidly. “All part of the package when you talk to the Wur. Call it an unintended perk.”

“Your time’s up, dammit!”

He laughed and almost fell backward into the mud. Then he got up, staggering a little.

“It’s
your
time that’s up,” he said.

My eyes grew steely as I followed his outstretched hand. I wasn’t sure what I’d see. Maybe spiders climbing down the walls or something like that.

But instead, I saw the last thing in the world I’d expected: Squid troopers. Dozens of them were coming down the ramp behind my team. They were fully armed and armored with mesh suits. They carried weapons that looked like snap-rifles, and they were moving with that odd, humping gait they always used when hustling.

My first instinct was to turn and kill the brain-plant, but Claver’s hand came up with a single index finger unfolded.

“Ah-ah!” he said, smiling. “None of that, now. The squids are watching. Remember what they said: you can’t damage the Wur. That’s goes double for this nexus.”

“Carlos, Kivi, on your six!” I shouted in my suit radio and threw myself down in the mud.

My team had been busy stringing explosives, as I’d told them to, but they spun around and engaged the squids like the professionals they were.

There were only four of us, but we had better gear. We’d been issued morph-rifles and armor. Our guns were configured for rapid-fire, and we hosed down the first squids and sent them thrashing to the ground.

The havoc these new weapons wreaked on squid troops was very satisfying. Snap-rifles were garbage compared to these guns. Up until now, I hadn’t understood the difference as we’d been using them on walking trees.

Flesh is a lot softer than cellulose. Compared to the pod-walkers, which were capable of absorbing a thousand rounds or more before going down, the cephalopod troops fell like they’d been hit by a truck. When shot, pulpy explosions appeared all over the enemy, and less than a second afterward they sprawled limply.

“Short bursts, make them count!” I shouted. “They’re on the walls!”

More squid troops were descending all over the walls of the gully. They wormed among the ferns up in the forest, then dropped down into the pit with us on long shining strands of monofilament. It was as if we were being attacked by a hundred giant silkworms all at once.

The multi-legged cephalopods loved the water. Once they were down in the cold muck, they rippled forward as fast as a man could run across an open field.

“Light them up, Carlos!”

He hit the detonator without hesitation. A sheet of fire gushed up followed by steam and calamari. Two dozen squids died. A hot wave went right over my body, and I had to hold my rifle over my head to keep it from getting soaked.

Claver stood back up, sputtering from the mud. “Impressive,” he said. “But that was only the vanguard. They’ll put you down with snipers now.”

True to his word, my armor began to spark orange with snap-rifle hits. The squids had taken up positions around the upper rim of the gully over our heads. They were firing down at us, partly obscured by the ferns that festooned the cliff edge.

I could see we weren’t going to get out of this alive. The explosives had been my big play. We’d killed scores of squids, but I suddenly realized there might be a thousand more in the forest above us.

Grabbing Claver like a rat and giving him a shake, I put my rifle against his neck. The hot muzzle burned a mark into his throat.

“I’m killing you right now,” I told him.

“That’s been factored in,” he said calmly. “Checkmate, McGill.”

I threw him down with a growl of frustration. Ignoring him, I marched several squelching steps toward the nexus plant.

“McGill!” Claver shouted at my back. “You’ll kill your whole legion! The squids won’t permit you to—”

What I did next might seem extreme to some. But those that know me well wouldn’t have been surprised.

All my life my teachers, my counselors and even the principal of my elementary school herself had never liked me much. By the time I’d hit first grade, I’d been banned from the school bus—for life. When a teacher turned her head toward the vid screens up front, she’d often caught me trying to climb out a window when she looked back.  I’d also enjoyed barking like a dog while crawling around on the carpet for laughs. It’d all been in good fun back then.

In short, while I’ve grown up plenty since my early days, I’ve never been a man who could completely control his impulses. Today, well…today I was truly pissed off.

It was Claver who’d pushed me over the edge. He’d been pushing my buttons all day. First, he’d gotten me out here on false pretenses. Along the way, he’d hinted I was as close to mental retardation as a man could be without crossing over that nebulous line. As a final insult, he’d flat-out tricked me and gotten himself high as a kite in the bargain.

I couldn’t abide the idea of him sitting in the mud, laughing and uncaring about whether he lived or died because he probably had a clone of himself squirreled away somewhere—I just couldn’t let that go.

So I marched to that big, spiny plant, reconfiguring my weapon into shotgun-mode as I approached it. I placed a boot up against the thick, melon rind-like base of it. Then I shoved the wide-mouthed barrel of my morph-gun between the spines.

My plan was to apply maximum impact low on the central node—wasn’t this plant full of liquid, after all?

Claver tackled me at the last moment. Squid snap-rifle rounds showered my back at the same time.

Shrugging all off, I pulled that trigger, and I held it down. In shotgun mode, the morphing gun could operate with fully automatic action if you squeezed the multi-stage trigger all the way.

I held that trigger down, and I drilled myself a hole.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

-39-

Stuff gushed out of the hole I’d blasted into the nexus brain-plant. The liquid wasn’t warm, like blood. It wasn’t slippery, either. Instead, it was thick, gray-green and cold. The closest substance I could think of was pond water—from a pond with too many ducks living nearby.

I staggered as thousands of gallons gushed out over my armor, but I stood tall and grinned.

Claver was ape-wild all this time. He’d been trying to pry my hands off my gun with fanatical strength, but he’d failed. Even without my exoskeletal armor, I doubt he could have stopped me. I was twice his size and angry enough to snap him in two.

Grabbing him by the neck with a steel gauntlet and holding him away from me, I turned around to survey my situation. The tactical display on the interior of my helmet’s visor told the tale.

There were four names superimposed on my vision by my armor’s computer. Except for Claver, all of the names were blinking red. My squad mates were down and out.

The squid troopers were in the gully now, approaching me warily from every direction. Crouching down low in the muddy water, they looked more at home to me than they’d ever looked on land or in a spaceship. They moved with a fluid grace that was smoother than the motion of any human ever born. Not troubled by bones, their odd tentacles dragged them along with only their upper bulbous bodies exposed.

They all had snap-rifles aimed at me, but they weren’t firing. It took me a second to figure out why not, then I had it: the brain-plant was right behind me with a hole exposing the meat inside. Any miss would hit their ally.

I grinned, and I held Claver up to them like a trophy. Gripping him by the collar, I gave him a shake. His attempts to wriggle free were unsuccessful.

“You can have this traitor!” I shouted at them. “You can have your brain-plant, too, but I doubt you can save it.”

A score of them approached slowly in two ranks. They were tense, and their slanted eyes blinked and squinted wetly. Bubbles popped in their suckers as they rose and fell, dipping into the muck. None of them spoke, but that wasn’t a surprise to me. They probably didn’t have translation devices.

I pondered my next move. Kill Claver? Take as many squids down as I could? It had to be something like that. Whatever I did, I wanted to make sure I died in the process. I didn’t want to get captured by these bastards.

Squids were slavers. They liked to capture, torment and breed other beings to their liking. Worse, I couldn’t ever get revived if I was captured. Without a confirmed death, I was as good as permed, except I would spent the rest of my days living in bondage.

Claver couldn’t talk because I had him by the collar and, if the truth were to be told, I had his neck wrapped so tightly he was turning purple. Still, he reached for my face with twisting, dripping fingers.

Holding him farther away, I shook my head. “This is my time now, Old Silver. I’ll see you next go-around, if we catch a revive.”

“Wait,” said a soft voice.  “Do not harm yourselves.”

At first, I thought Claver had spoken or perhaps Kivi. But it wasn’t either of them. Kivi was face down in the mud and dead, having fought to the end. Claver—well, he wasn’t even making croaking sounds anymore.

It was Claver’s bulging eyes, though, that clued me in. I followed them and saw a squid of a different sort.

Wearing a colorful suit of deep blue with a gold collar, this squid was a fraction bigger than the troops around it. Standing well back from the half-crescent of soldiers that surrounded me, the leader appeared to have a translation device.

“What do you want, you damned squid?” I asked it.

“There’s no need for sacrifice. We are honored by your actions.”

Frowning, I stared at those surrounding me. They slowly lowered their weapons.

Claver went into convulsions about then. Grunting, I eased up on his collar. A thread of drool slipped out of his mouth and dripped onto the dirty water. His eyes were slack, but the color slowly returned to his face, and raspy breathing began. I lowered him to my side but held on. He looked like a half-empty sack of potatoes.

“You’re honored by my actions? What the hell does that mean? Are you happy I killed your brain-plant?”

There was a pause, maybe for translation or for thinking, I wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” came the response.

That surprised me. I gave my head a little shake. “Well, if you wanted the plant dead, why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“We were sworn not to.”

I squinted, trying to take that one in. “Okay. You wanted the plant dead…but you couldn’t do it yourself. Why didn’t you tell us that? We’d have taken care of it, rest assured.”

“That would have been dishonorable. We are sworn to protect the Wur. To defend their core beings with our lives.”

“Why would you do that if you don’t even like them?”

The squid squirmed forward, moving closer. I tensed up in reaction. I’d been jerked around quite a bit lately, and if this was all an elaborate trick to get me to lower my guard and get myself captured—well, let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood for any more shenanigans.

“Be at ease,” the squid said. “I’m Torrent, the Captain of the ship that orbits this world. These are my crewmen.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I understand you’re from the ship. What I don’t understand is why you’re happy the nexus plant is dead. I also want to know what you’re going to do next.”

“Next? I’m going to answer your questions. But first, creature, I must ask you to swear you will not tell another of my answers.”

My head turned to one side, then the other. Was this squid serious? His talk of swearing, honor and the like—these concepts didn’t match up with the way I thought of the cephalopods.

But then I recalled they were subjects of a Kingdom. They believed in old-fashioned concepts, I supposed. How could you swear fealty to a king and follow his edicts if you didn’t have some sense of honor? Maybe it only extended to their own kind, but I could tell they
had
to have honor.

“Okay,” I said. “I so swear. I will not tell anyone what you’re about to tell me.”

“And your suit-recorders?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, shutting them off with one of Natasha’s illegal apps. “Talk to me. We’re off the grid.”

“You have given me freedom from my servitude, that is why I honor you by granting your request, land-creature.”

“I get that.”

“Good,” Torrent said. “It is appropriate that you understand the value of this gesture on my part. My ship was assigned to defend the infections in this region of space. I was summoned, and I served my duty.”

“Okay…” I said, frowning. “But why does it make you happy that I killed the nexus?”

“I found my duty oppressive. This planet will now die in its entirety, and it’s all due to your action. I’m therefore free of a service I never wished to perform.”

“I think I’m starting to understand,” I said. “But please give me a little more information, if you would. Our languages and customs aren’t the same, and I’m still confused on a few points.”

“You will have plenty of time to learn our ways,” Torrent said. “You fought well, and I believe you’ll make a delightful slave. In fact, I’ve decided to capture you personally. I shall breed you to create a new and superior strain of warrior. You will make me wealthy, creature, and you should feel prideful in that knowledge.”

“Uh…that’s great, Torrent. How about a few more answers, first?”

The squid’s tentacles writhed as it considered. “I will grant this request, but my patience is growing thin. I hope you’re not a stubborn beast. Do you like to mate?”

“Oh yeah, I love doing that.”

“Excellent. Ask your question.”

“You squids—you cephalopods—you’re slavers, right? Your culture is all about slaves and masters. Why would you serve as the slave of a plant? I’d think that sort of thing would be beneath one of your race.”

Honestly, I expected my question would enrage the squid. That was part of my goal. But instead, it only squirmed and studied me.

“Your question reveals a shameful truth. I will only answer because I have said I would.”

“Yeah, well?”

“The plants—they infect many worlds in our kingdom. They have gained possession of many of our queens on their thrones of cold stone. We can’t reproduce without our queens—therefore, they’re in a position to make demands.”

“You mean, they’ve enslaved
you
,” I said.

Captain Torrent’s eyes narrowed in a brief moment of hate. “Your insults have earned you pain. Your training will not be easy, I can see that now. I will enjoy watching my beast-handlers break you.”

“Slaves and masters,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s what your culture is all about. See this man here?”

I held Claver aloft. He dripped and slumped. “He’s my property,” I said. “I own his ass.” A broad smile lit up my face then, but I doubted the squids knew what that meant.

“You are mistaken,” Torrent said. “You’re both
my
property. Now, surrender yourself. You’ve cost me too many crewmembers already.”

I shook my head and chuckled. Using both hands, I broke Claver’s neck and dropped him into the slime.

The squids surged forward, but I lifted my hands high. In my right was a plasma grenade. It was already active, and the blue-white glow rapidly grew in intensity.

“Good bye, squids!” I shouted.

My last moments were happy ones. I got to watch about twenty squids go humping and splashing away from me like a herd of jackrabbits crossing a brook.

Then the blue-white flash enveloped my reality, and I stopped existing for a time.