Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (10 page)

I was immediately envious of the other group. There were six more lifters there, all clustered up in a valley.
Cyclops
only had ten lifters, so most of our troops had to be there. I scanned the map for the rest of the auxiliary cohort, but I didn’t see it.

“Legion Varus is planning to land here, at the main camp, tomorrow morning,” Graves told is. “Since the ships took out the moon base, we’ve seen no other resistance. The infantry have naturally chosen to reinforce Winslade at his largest concentration, making that our beachhead.”

Frowning, I almost raised my hand. I managed to stop myself in the nick of time, and I was proud of that. To my relief, an adjunct beat me to the punch and asked the question I had rattling around in my head.

“Sir? Why don’t we just get back aboard the lifter and fly there?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do—when our current mission is finished, that is.”

The adjunct looked confused, and I joined him. Graves continued with a sigh. “We’ve been ordered to mount a rescue effort first. Remember Legion Solstice? The survivors abandoned
Pegasus
. They’re scattered to the north of us, just past this big lake.”

“How many, sir?” asked the adjunct.

“About two thousand of them.”

The adjunct whistled. I grimaced and gnawed at my lower lip.
Thousands?
That was a lot of troops, and they were probably spread out over a large area. All of us were wondering if it might not be better to let them and their equipment go, and churn fresh troops out of the revival machines.

“These men are the last of Legion Solstice,” Graves said, reading our expressions. “They’re still alive, so we can’t just write them off and revive them. Accordingly, we’re going out there to render assistance. They’ve reported encountering some kind of mechanized resistance at their location. They’re avoiding further radio transmissions, claiming it attracts danger of some sort.”

“Danger? What kind of danger?” blurted Adjunct Mesa.

Graves gave the adjunct a stare. He swallowed and apologized.

“We don’t know,” Graves answered finally. “They’ve suffered casualties. They’re spread out and unable to form a nice cozy camp like this. I asked if we could bring the lifters over to pick them up, but the request was denied. Command doesn’t want to risk losing more of our assault vehicles.”

“Command” meant Winslade,
I thought to myself. I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t mind risking his cavalry, just the lifters he needed to get back off this rock. That was typical for any officer, but the ruthless ones were worse than others. They valued expensive equipment more than human flesh.

“This is where we get into the game, troops,” Graves said, standing up and raising his voice. “We’ll ride to the rescue in the morning. And by the way, this is a fast-rotating planet, so night is only about nine hours long. Get to bed as soon as you can.”

We broke up and headed to our bedrolls which were alien-made products especially designed for humanoids suffering in cold climates.

“You know what the quartermaster told me?” Carlos asked as we bedded down. I didn’t answer, but he kept going as if I had. “These sleeping bags are made from alien spider-silk. They can keep you warm down to negative two hundred degrees C, and they weigh less than a kilo. Perfect for troops on icy little shit-holes like this one.”

“Thanks for the infomercial, Carlos, now let’s get some sleep.”

He finally shut up, and I was left to ponder Graves’ words. What had he said? Something about Solstice having encountered some kind of mechanized resistance? I had to wonder what that was all about—but I didn’t wonder for long. I was snoring within three minutes after sliding into my toasty-warm spider-silk bag. It was nice, and it had me jealous of all those bugs who’d died in cocoons like this one. I’d never known what I’d been missing.

-13-

In the morning, we saddled up our dragons. We had some tough choices to make regarding load-outs.

These walking death-dealers were much more advanced than the one that Turov had used to such great effect aboard
Minotaur
back on Tech World, and they came with optional equipment. Even the armament had a variety of configurations. You could pack on extra generators, which gave the machine a shorter recharge time and more hours of running around, or you could take along extra ammo for the chest-guns instead. Another option was to adopt a more defensive arrangement, which meant about an inch of electromagnetic shielding that covered the hull, protecting the system from small arms and the like. Yet another choice involved a longer range gun system that rode on the spine of the vehicle and fired right over your shoulder.

“How should we do this, Adjunct?” I asked Leeson. “What kind of equipment does the brass want us to carry?”

“Well, we don’t really know what we’ll encounter,” he said thoughtfully, “so I think we should go with a mix. I’ll have Harris carry heavier generators with his squad, along with longer-range weapons and shielding. In contrast, your group will run light. No extra armament but extra cells instead, for endurance and plenty of speed.”

I frowned but nodded. It was his call. Personally, I didn’t think we should take the longer range weaponry at all. So far on this planet, I hadn’t been able to see farther than a hundred meters from my nose. There was too much swirling mist. If we did run into a fight, it was going to be like having a battle in a blizzard. I didn’t much like the idea of moving faster and rushing around blindly either, but Leeson was in charge.

We loaded up, and I rode out on point. Graves had organized his three platoons with two of them split light-heavy like mine, but 3
rd
platoon was all heavy. That amounted to four squads of slower machines in the center, and two faster squads flanking. The other units were farther off to either side of us. They were going to take separate, parallel paths.

On our screens inside the cockpit, it was pretty easy to keep track of where everyone was. I knew that if those screens and sensors ever failed, however, we’d be lost very quickly. Our GPS systems weren’t working due to the strange atmospherics and the heavily metallic composition of the planet. We had compasses and scratchy radio, neither of which was one hundred percent reliable—and that was it.

The journey up north to the methane lake took hours, and it was a strange experience. Our light dragons could run at about fifty kilometers an hour, double that for short bursts. They could spring over obstacles, climb steep hills and even ford streams. But when traveling at high speeds, we were running blind. The mist and precipitation caked up on our visors and external camera pickups. Even under the best of conditions, we couldn’t see far into the soupy air.

We reached the lake and turned east. After about an hour of running along the lakeshore, we ran into our first serious obstacle. I pulled up short and called it in.

“Leeson? This is 1
st
Squad. We’ve hit a big river, sir.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know—I can’t see the far side.”

He cursed for a few seconds then relayed my unwelcome news up the chain of command. When he finally got back to me, he had new orders.

“We’ll be up to you pretty soon. 2
nd
Platoon just reported in from further south—same thing. We want you to scout the river for depth, McGill. Don’t let that methane get up past your legs to the core of your chassis.”

“Uh…right sir.”

I wheeled my dragon to face the others who had gathered up and were letting their cells recharge off their fusion generators while they waited for new orders.

“We’re going to find out just how deep this river is,” I announced.

“Oh really?” asked Carlos. “Let me guess—it’s my turn to die already, is it?”

“It would be, but I need your dragon,” I told him. “Anyone feel like going for a swim?”

Dragons roamed along the shoreline, looking at the silvery surface of rippling methane. No one said anything. This must be why Harris had never asked for volunteers, I realized.

“Gorman, Roark—you’re on,” I ordered.

They groaned and cursed but wandered down to the edge of the flowing liquid. They both put in that first metal foot like they could feel the cold.

I goaded my machine up behind them. “Spread out!” I boomed. “I don’t want you both going into the same hole. Kivi, Carlos, attach a tow cable to each of these brave souls.”

With a steel cable taut on each machine, we watched them step out into the moving liquid.

“Ever seen a methane-drinking shark before?” Carlos called out to Gorman, who he had on his tether. “I hear they like shiny objects.”

“Shut up, Ortiz,” I heard myself saying. I had to admit, each day I spent as a veteran made me feel more sympathy for Harris. Could it be that this job shaped the man as much as the other way around?

I didn’t get much more time for introspection, unfortunately. Roark ran into trouble about ten meters out. His machine went down on one leg, even though the river hadn’t looked to be that deep. One minute he’d been in about a meter of water, and the next he was floundering.

“What’s got you, Roark?” I demanded.

“Not sure, Vet. One foot must have stepped into a deep hole.”

“Shark! Shark!” shouted Carlos unhelpfully.

“Kivi, haul on that cable,” I said. “Take the slack out of it.”

She did as I asked, backing her machine up the bank. She pulled, but Roark’s dragon wasn’t budging.

Inside my machine, I clenched my teeth. This wasn’t the sort of problem I could afford to kick up the chain of command. I should be able to handle it myself.

Gorman had retreated out of the river and joined the group looking out toward Roark with concern. Instead of ordering Gorman back into harm’s way, I marched out into the river after Roark myself.

“Careful Vet,” Gorman said, eyeing my rescue attempt. “I got a feeling there might be more holes out here.”

I moved warily. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. The machine didn’t have sensors in the bottom of its feet. I had to feel my way like a man driving a car over uneven ground, hoping he didn’t get stuck.

As a precaution, I had my tow-line hooked up to my troops on the shoreline.

When at last I made it to Roark, I managed to use my arm segments to latch onto him. Bending my legs into a crouch then standing erect, I hauled him straight up.

There was resistance, that much I was sure of. Whatever he’d found, it wasn’t just a simple hole. Something was trying to keep him down.

When we were both mobile again, I noticed that Roark still had trouble. His dragon tottered to the shore. I accompanied him in case he went down again, figuring his leg actuator might have gone bad.

“What is
that
thing?” Kivi asked.

I stopped and rotated my chassis to get a good look.

Kivi was right. There was something attached to Roark’s machine. It was like a cylinder wrapped around the lower leg section, and there was a glowing amber light on top of it, too.

“What the…could that be a mine?” Kivi asked.

“Back up! He’s gonna blow!” Carlos shouted.

The group scattered like hens. I stood there with Roark, who was trying to escape his fate. He had his grippers on the top of the cylinder, pushing down.

I reached out, seeing a group of wires on top. They were crude, thick wires. I snipped them with my grippers, and the amber light died. Using my dragon’s powerful arms, I ripped the thing loose and dropped it on the rocks with a clang.

“Well,” I said, “if that was a mine, it was a pretty piss-poor one.”

The squad wandered back to us, looking paranoid. I decided it was time to report in.

“Adjunct Leeson, sir? The river is a problem. There seem to be devices in it, buried in the water. I don’t know their function or who put them there, but they seem to be traps. They might disable anyone who tries to cross.”

“Roger that, McGill. We’ve had other reports of a similar nature. Like that battery you found yesterday. Lots of discarded hardware. Command is suspecting that this planet was once inhabited, or maybe still is, by a technologically savvy species.”

Who could it be? I thought of the squids right off, but it just didn’t seem to be their style. This whole planet wouldn’t have been appealing to them for colonization, just for resources. Who else might be living down here on this cold, mist-covered rock?

We were ordered to abandon our attempts to ford the river. It was too deep, too treacherous and too wide. Instead, we angled south off course and ran along the shoreline. Behind us, the main mass of troops arrived. I left the artifact we’d found on the beach for them to examine.

About a half-hour’s run southward, we ran into something new. There was a cluster of low metal domes near the river. Don’t get me wrong, the domes didn’t have the fresh-forged look of our ships and machines. Instead, they were dirty and corroded. Everything about the place looked unfinished and crude. The domes were close to the methane, arranged in a semi-circle. We didn’t march right into the middle of them as we were wary by now.

“What the hell is this?” Carlos asked. “Some kind of fishing village?”

When he said that, it struck me that he was right. That was
exactly
what it looked like. A fishing village.

“Carlos, check that hut up there on the hill.”

“ Shit…” he said then trotted his machine to the structure I’d indicated. There was a door of sorts, consisting of two heavy metal plates piled over one another. He levered it open, and it clanged and clattered to the ground.

“I didn’t say to tear it up!” I shouted after him. “If natives live here, you’ll scare the living—”

That was as far as I got. A figure sprang up out of the door of the shack and scuttled away. Now, when I say
figure
, you have to understand I’m not talking about a humanoid. I’m talking about something that looked like a centipede built out of rusty garbage cans with churning metal struts for legs.

“Holy crap!” Carlos shouted. “Did you see that guy? Did you
see
that?”

“Yeah, we sure did.”

Carlos took off after the thing. It wasn’t small, but it was a lot smaller than he was. Lengthwise, it was probably two meters long and a half-meter or so wide. Carlos caught up to it and launched himself up into the air, coming down on its back. He forced it down into the dirt, where it squirmed and kicked.

“Why’s he killing it?” Kivi demanded.

“Carlos, she’s right. Don’t harm it. That thing must be part of the native population.”

Carlos came back to us, holding the thing in his grippers. It squirmed and twisted but couldn’t get away. It didn’t make any sound other than desperate scrabbling noises.

“If this is a native, this is one weird place,” Carlos said. “This—listen people—this is a
machine
.”

We examined it, and we quickly realized he was right. The creature was all metal with cameras for eyes and jointed struts for legs. It looked like it had been assembled out of spare parts. There had to be some level of AI inside the brain-pan, however, as it was clearly pitiful and distressed.

“We should take this back to Natasha,” Carlos suggested. “She’d get a kick out of dissecting it.”

“I think we should let it go,” Kivi said.

Something in her voice made me turn to look at her. She was staring back behind us. I turned around and followed her gaze.

There, looming out of the mist beyond the shacks, was a massive figure. It came up out of the methane river and moved like a rolling mass of interconnected plates. Shaped like a slug, it undulated to and fro as if uncertain. It seemed to be studying us.

“Carlos, put the caterpillar-thing down,” I ordered. “Gently.”

“Aw, I wanna keep him.”

“Do as I order, or I’ll fire on you!”

“Sheesh, all right. What’s the—oh…”

He’d finally caught sight of the thing we were all staring at. He put the small machine down on the ground, and it scuttled off toward the bigger one.