Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (6 page)

-6-

Despite my orders to the rest of my squad, I moved to the middle of the mud. You see, I’m an extremely tall man. That meant that while the mud came to a short person’s waist, it only went to just above my knees, giving me a distinct advantage in mobility.

I honestly expected to see Harris rush into the center and meet me, but he didn’t. Instead, he sprinted around the rim where it was just deep enough to get his ankles sloppy. He went for my weakest fighters, the ones that were hanging back uncertainly.

Harris wanted to teach me a lesson—I realized that about ten seconds into the fight. He was a masterful warrior, but that didn’t mean he liked to die. He’d deliberately chosen a grim scenario, one sure to result in horrible moments. He’d also chosen a setup that would play to his own personal strengths. He liked knives and hand-to-hand combat because he was deadly in close.

Harris met Gorman near the edge of the circular pool of mud, and Gorman went down after three cuts. Harris moved away with a bloody line across his chest but nothing more. Gorman was flopping and shivering in mud at his feet, trying to make it to the edge of the pit. If he could climb out under his own power—well, he might live. Harris danced past him and moved on to the next closest opponent, Kivi. She gave him a harder time, but he put her down pretty fast too. Crippled and making a lot of noise, she crawled for the edge holding in her guts with one hand.

In the middle of the pit, I had my own problems. Seeing me isolated, three of Harris’ fighters rushed as a team to meet me. I stood my ground, ready.

Fighting with knives is different than fighting with swords or clubs, especially when you’re stuck in mud. Reach is a critical factor. Although the three men who came at me tried to time it so they hit me at the same moment, one of them slipped and fell behind his two charging comrades. The other two—well, they didn’t have the reach I did, and they couldn’t move their mired feet as fast, either.

With my arm outstretched to its maximum length, I planted my knife in the neck of the leader. His eyes bulged, and he tried to get to me, even though he was dead on his feet. I applauded the effort, but retreated and let him die face down with bubbles farting up around his grimy head.

The second man came in before I could retreat and managed to score. He got a shot into my ribs—but there’s a reason why we have ribs, they’re built to deflect weapons and teeth from our inner organs. I was hurt, but the thrust hadn’t punched deep.

He had his arms wrapped around me, and we did the bear hug thing, struggling to keep on our feet and roaring.

In return for the blade in my side, I brought mine down two-handed, driving it into the shorter man’s skull. His eyes rolled up, and he slipped away bonelessly into the muck.

The third man, the one who’d slipped while charging with his two fellows, couldn’t help but notice I’d nailed both his wingmen and was still standing tall. He turned and slogged away as quickly as he could. I didn’t blame him.

Instead of following the runner, I moved to meet Harris at the edge of the pit, where he was now sparring with Carlos. Whatever else Carlos might be, he’s not a slouch when it comes to a hard fight. The two of them were in a clinch, each holding onto the other’s knife hand and straining.

Carlos couldn’t hope to win the struggle. Harris was bound to overpower him in the end, despite the fact he was bleeding now from a few wounds of his own.

What Carlos needed was a quick rescue, and I came up on the two of them from behind, planning on an easy kill.

Harris didn’t give it to me. He got his foot hooked behind Carlos’ ankle and sent him down on his back. A quick stoop, thrust, and Carlos was out.

I tried to slosh my way up to Harris before he could turn back around, but he must have heard me coming. He spun around and grinned with blood in his mouth.

“Why are we always meeting up like this, McGill?”

“At least this time it was my idea,” I replied.

“See you in Hell, boy!” he shouted, and threw his knife at me.

It was a surprise move and expertly executed. The blade flipped once and drove right toward my chest. Our knives are sharper than simple steel, and I knew that if that point hit dead-on with that much force, I was going to be taken down.

Twisting with all the speed I had left in me, I took it in the shoulder. My right arm was numb after that, but I managed to grip my knife in my left.

Advancing, it was my turn to grin. Harris had disarmed himself.

But Harris didn’t miss a beat. He stooped and grabbed Carlos’ knife out of his dead hand. How had he managed to find it in an instant under a foot of mud? I don’t know, but I’d always thought Harris was a man who could fight like the devil himself.

Around us, the wild roars and screams of battle had died down. Many of the combatants on both sides were dead or too injured to continue. Most of the survivors were busy dragging themselves out of the mud-pit. Only a few were still in the game.

Harris and I slashed and circled, shuffling awkwardly in the mud. I kept backing up, drawing him toward the deep section, which had been my original plan. To some degree, it worked. He snarled and fought to take me down quickly with lunges and thrusts, but I stayed in the fight.

My right arm hung, almost useless. My left was bleeding too, having picked up a slash somewhere along the line.

“You’re the one who will bleed out this time,” Harris said, grinning at me.

He was right, but I didn’t bother to reply. The last time we’d fought with knives, he’d had the upper hand, but he’d lost too much blood and passed out. This time, it looked like I would suffer the same fate.

But I had a plan, of sorts. I kept retreating, drawing him into the deepest mud. He followed with a greedy light in his eye. He wanted to see me fall.

When I figured it couldn’t get any deeper, I made my play. I reversed myself and came on hard, making wide, sweeping slashes. My arms are longer than an ape’s, according to every schoolmate I’d ever scuffled with, and those slashes were hard to avoid.

Now, you have to understand something about Harris: he doesn’t like to get hurt. He likes to win as cleanly as he can. His first instinct, therefore, was to fall back before my onslaught and look for an opening to dart into and finish me.

When he took his first backpedalling step the sucking mud pulled at his legs, locking him in, slowing him down. I switched tactics again, stopping the slashes. I made an my all-out lunge while he was off-balance, and I saw the shock in his eyes.

I’d planted my blade in his chest, stopping his heart. Even so, he got his knife around to stab me in the back. The move opened me up, but didn’t quite put me down. Harris sank, slowly.

Roaring and grinning, I lifted my knife and whirled around, looking for fresh challengers.

At first, I thought there wasn’t anyone left. About half the combatants were dead and floating. Most of the rest were lying on the shore around the pit, struggling to breathe.

Bio people had shown up from somewhere. They were like vultures when anyone died. They were tending to those who could easily be patched up and hauling the rest away to the recycling center.

Then I spotted a figure. She was relatively near, but I hadn’t noticed her because she was as motionless as a tiger in tall grass.

It was Della.

My heart sank, and I felt a little sick. In my rage and frustration, I’d forgotten that she was part of Harris’ squad.

She came toward me, realizing she’d been spotted. She watched me with predatory eyes and moved like a cat stalking prey. Somehow, even bare-breasted and covered in filth, she still managed to look graceful.

I let her approach. I didn’t move except to follow her as she came close and began to circle. She stepped around me carefully, and I thought she might throw her weapon the way Harris did—but she didn’t. She gazed up to me with deadly serious eyes.

Tossing my weapon aside to the edge of the pit, I stood still. She followed my knife with darting eyes. She looked at me in puzzlement and cocked her head.

Stepping close warily, she dared to speak. “What are you doing? Everyone is watching. Thousands of eyes are on us.”

“I don’t care. I can’t kill the mother of my own child.”

She licked her lips and stalked closer. I stood, watching her, wondering what she’d do.

“You’re dishonoring both of us,” she hissed.

“Why don’t you just kill me then?” I asked her. “Are you afraid?”

Della kept her eyes on my hands, flicking her gaze from one to the other. I could tell she didn’t trust me at all. This wasn’t our first fight, you have to understand.

“A little,” she said. “But the real problem is I don’t want to kill you, either. Why did you start this stupid fight? What was the purpose?”

I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. When we came to that first star system, I was so ready to catch the raiders and kill them... I wanted blood. I guess I started this out of frustration.”

“A stupid move. I should kill you just for that.”

She came at me then, but her arms moved slowly. It was only a fractional difference, but I could see it. A play thrust, not even on target.

I caught her wrist and pulled her off-balance. A moment later I had my knee on her back and her knife-hand stretched out away from both our bodies.

“Yield,” I said.

“I will not,” she said angrily.

“You won’t? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“I won’t,” she hissed. “Not unless you admit I could have killed you.”

I laughed. “All right, I admit it. I’m as good as dead on my feet. Happy?”

“Not at all—but I yield.”

Getting an arm under her waist, I straightened and tossed her onto dry land. She landed on her feet and dropped her knife in the blood-soaked dirt.

The mud-pit battle was over. I walked wearily to the bio people who tsked with disdain and sprayed me with cleansers and nu-skin.

Della returned to her own squad, and I looked after her thoughtfully. She’d never passed up a solid opportunity to kill me before.

People congratulated me on the victory and even cheered me. I didn’t feel like I deserved their praise, however. I felt spent and almost as frustrated as I’d been when I’d started this mission.

A few hours later, Graves summoned me to his stark office again. I went with my arm in a sling and my left eye swollen almost shut.

He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t congratulate me when I got there. I stood at attention until he told me what he wanted.

“At ease, Veteran,” Graves said at last. He walked toward me and looked me over. “You’re in sorry shape.”

“Nothing a few layers of fresh cells won’t cure, sir.”

“I don’t mean your body. I’m talking about your mind. I thought you’d take your losses in stride—but I was wrong. You let your emotions make your decisions for you today.”

I didn’t say anything. We both knew he was right.

“Well,” Graves said, “despite its questionable effects on morale, it was an effective training exercise. Mud-pit fights to the death? That’s the sort of thing we usually reserve for recruits and candidates seeking promotion. Let’s not have a fresh challenge from you next week, clear?”

“Clear. Nothing like this will ever happen again, sir.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

Again, I said nothing. I don’t like to lie without a good reason.

Heaving a sigh, Graves returned to his desk. “Here’s something that might cheer you up. We’ve decided to pass up the second star system we were targeting. The techs have run all the numbers. They think the second star—a binary system—is very unlikely to be the raider’s base. Odds are we’ll find them at the last star in the line, which is right at the squid border.”

He had my interest now. I shuffled to his desk where he had displayed the local stars. I tapped at the binary system we were supposed to pass by. It had the generic name of L-374. It contained an orange-colored K-class star circled by a smaller M-class companion. The last star in the line, the one we were to visit next, was yet another of the ubiquitous red dwarfs.

“Sir?” I asked. “We’re really going to skip this orange star? Why?”

“Why skip L-374? Because Gold Deck says so. Remember Veteran, I’m not in command of this expedition—and neither are you.”

“But what if we don’t find them in the third system? What will we do then? If we have to backtrack to the K-class, they might have had time to slip away.”

Graves shook his head. “We won’t bother. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll check the last system and give up. Turov will turn us around and head home again after that.”

“She’d give up? She’d actually be willing to go back to Earth empty-handed?”

He shrugged. “What else would you suggest?”

“I think we should keep searching until we find them,” I boomed. Letting my voice rise more than I’d meant to. “There has to be a fourth star somewhere along this line… Somewhere else to look.”

Graves studied me for a moment before speaking. “If you kept following this course—which we don’t know is the correct one anyway—you’d enter enemy space. After passing through the entirety of the Cephalopod Kingdom, we’d come out on the other side, near the core of the Perseus Arm.
There
we’d find another star to check.”