Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (31 page)

-41-

Imperator Turov’s idea of “covering up” was a little different than mine. She didn’t erase records or stage a hearing to clear my name. She just dropped the charges and ordered everyone involved to shut the hell up.

It was effective on a surface level, I had to give her that. The legion officials stopped trying to arrest me, and I was restored to my previous rank and position in Winslade’s cavalry cohort. I don’t think Winslade was too happy about that, but he didn’t say anything. He had to be wondering what kind of strange power I had over Turov.

No one said much to me at all, in fact. But they did stare, and a few of them sneered. They talked—oh yeah, they talked—but only behind my back.

Carlos was an exception to that rule. He didn’t just sneer and whisper, he came right out and bitched about what had happened.

“Another sleazy con job,” he said. “Or should I say, blow job?”

“What?” I asked, jolted out of my thoughts. I was running down the pilot’s checklist on my dragon. It was all shined up and ready for the parade ground. Not fighting a battle for a week had allowed us to repair and polish our deadly machines.

Carlos and I were standing in the mechanic’s bay under the bellies of our respective vehicles. Originally, I’d placed his dragon in a pod at the far end of the bay, but that hadn’t worked out. Sure, he’d been less annoying to me, but he’d irritated everyone else. Without me to shut his mouth, his naturally charismatic personality had driven the rest of my squad nuts. Consequently, I’d moved him right up next to me, so I could keep an eye on him.

“You heard me,” he said. “Turov still has a thing for you. It’s obvious and undeniable. If any of the rest of us had pulled shit like that, we’d have been permed instantly. Well, maybe not instantly. They might have tortured us for a while first.”

At the mention of torture, I bared my teeth. I could still feel Randy’s hot needle in my back. Anne had sprayed several layers of fresh cells over the puncture wounds, but they still ached and stung, especially when I stretched in the morning.

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I told him. “And you should stop talking before I stop you myself.”

For some reason, he got the message this time. He fell quiet, although he was still muttering to himself about how unfair the universe was. He opened the leg actuators on his vehicle to make some tension adjustments, and I left the bay.

I had a headache, a backache and I was pissed off. I went to see Anne, who looked me over doubtfully.

“I think you have an internal infection,” she said. “How did this happen, James? Did you report these injuries?”

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean? Are they from training, or working in the bays or what?”

Hesitating, I thought about my answer before I spoke. Finally, I shook my head. “The injuries were deliberate,” I said. “Courtesy of Legion Solstice.”

Anne was alarmed and angry about that. “You should report them. This goes beyond hazing and bar-fighting. This is abuse.”

She applied salves to my skin and gave me a hefty shot of antibiotics deep in my abdomen. The shot made me a little sick, and the long needle reminded me of Randy again.

She put a hand on my forehead then read the results that lit up her tapper. “Slight fever. Blood toxins are up. Are you sleeping?”

“Sometimes.”

She kept prodding me and checking me over. At last, I’d had enough of it, and I gently took her hands in mine.

“Let’s go on a date,” I said.

She looked into my eyes, still worried. “What happened to you? This could be serious—you didn’t have a bad revive again, did you?”

That made me laugh. “I had several of them, in fact. And I don’t want to take another trip through the revival machines, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I just need some cheering up and some time to heal.”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking down at her hands, which were still wrapped up inside mine.

“What? Why not? You promised me another date a while back, remember?”

She nodded, but she still didn’t look at me.

“This is the best shot we’re going to get,” I said. “Things are pretty quiet right now. Everyone’s been revived, even the tribunes. If we get into another fight, we’ll be separated again. If we fly back home—well, we might not see each other until the next campaign.”

Anne pulled her hands out of my grip and sighed. “I know. All right. I’m on break in an hour. Meet me then.”

Her words gave me the first smile of my day. I had something to look forward to. Even better, it looked like the general dislike and mistrust I’d been faced with everywhere I went didn’t extend all the way to Anne. I was glad about that.

I made some plans and special arrangements, and by the time I met her coming out of Blue Deck’s main hatch, I had a picnic basket on my arm.

She looked at it and smiled. “What have you got?”

It was a long list, and there were even a few special items like pickled quail eggs and a bottle of real wine.

“Where did you get all this stuff?” she asked.

“I pulled a few strings.”

She gave me an odd look. “With Turov?”

My mouth opened then closed again. I was stumped. Did everyone believe I was some kind of boy-toy for the brass?

“No, with the quartermaster. He owed me one. What kind of rumors have you been listening to?”

We walked together toward Green Deck as we talked. I was annoyed, but I tried to keep my voice light and unconcerned. Even I knew that yelling at your date in the first five minutes wasn’t a wise man’s opening move.

We came to the entrance, which was an overgrown arch of leafy vines. It had always looked strange as the vines were in stark contrast to the steel walls of the ship.

We passed inside before she reached out and touched my arm with gentle fingers.

“I’m not being fair to you,” she said. “We should cancel this.”

“What? These quail eggs aren’t going to eat themselves!”

“I know. I appreciate all the effort you’ve gone to, really I do. But I don’t know if I can go through with this today.”

“Aw, come on,” I said. “Let’s talk it out. First off, no, I didn’t screw Turov to get out of being permed.”

Her eyes were on mine now. She didn’t say anything, but I knew I had her full and undivided attention.

“Secondly,” I continued, “I didn’t kill the Nairb ship and doom us all.”

“You didn’t?”

“Well—hold on,” I said. “Okay, I
did
destroy their ship. But that’s been fixed. The Galactics believe it was the squids that did it.”

“How did you manage that?” she asked suspiciously.

I gave her the general story, leaving out many of the details. In my version, I was more of a secret agent sent to remove an obstacle than a crazy convict who managed to kill his executioners first.

“So,” she said, “that’s why you’re still breathing? Because Earth won’t be blamed?”

“That’s right. We’re in the clear.”

Now, you have to understand that I didn’t know any such thing. Not yet. The Nairbs were dead, and as far as anyone could tell, they hadn’t reported the details of their fate. The radioactive evidence trail had been effectively planted too, pointing a guilty finger at the squids. But the investigation hadn’t come yet, and hadn’t made any conclusions.

To my way of thinking, I wasn’t lying—but I was embellishing and extrapolating. The results I described weren’t certain, but they were likely and preplanned. When I was finished, I watched Anne to see how my words had been received.

She still looked wary, like a cat that just won’t come in the door because it suspects you’re going to grab it the second it does. She was right, but I kept on smiling and waiting like I didn’t have a care in the world.

Finally, she stepped closer and took my hand again. I sighed and we found a spot to eat. Together, we shared a few hours of happiness on Green Deck. No one bothered us, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

-42-

The only thing I hadn’t gotten out of Anne the night before was a promise of more romantic encounters. She’d enjoyed herself, we both had, but she’d stopped short of making a commitment.

In the morning, as I booted people out of their bunks and sent them reeling to the showers and breakfast, I was thinking of her. How was I going to entice her this time? I’d spent a lot of credits and good will getting that picnic together on Green Deck, but a man couldn’t pull that stunt every day. For one thing, I’d be broke before the week was out.

Fate had other plans for me in any case. Klaxons wailed, and we were called to battle stations at about nine in the morning. My team was busy doing calisthenics in our module, and we didn’t even have our dragons handy to jump into.

“You know what that noise means!” I shouted. “Move your butts, people. Everyone get down to the dragon bay. We’re not getting caught with our pants down this time!”

I knew things were bad when red arrows appeared on the deck, leading toward the lifters. I contacted Leeson immediately for directions.

“McGill, the legion infantry is doing a hot-drop. Get your dragons to the lifters, pronto!”

“Will do, sir,” I said, waving to my squad who were pounding along behind me at a run. “What are we up against?”

“Unknown ships have entered the system, and they’re heading for us. We’re deploying Legion Varus on the titanium mountain, with Winslade’s cohort to back them up. That’s all I know for now. You have your orders, Leeson out.”

How many ships?
That’s what I wanted to know, but he was off the channel before I could ask.

I relayed the information to my squad, and Sargon contacted me privately afterward.

“So Solstice is going to stay in space?” he asked.

“That part didn’t get past you, huh?”

“No, Vet. The way I see it, Turov clearly has a plan—and for once it makes a little bit of sense to me. She wants to protect her sole prize on the planet surface and at the same time hold a reserve force in space she can drop anywhere in response to an enemy attack. Our legions are only useful on the ground, so we can take it as something of a compliment that she’s chosen Varus to be deployed first.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” I admitted. “We’ll find out what we’re facing in due course, I’m sure. I’ll keep you informed, specialist.”

“I know you will. You’re not as smooth at this job as Harris was, not yet, but I like your style, Vet.”

“Thank you, Sargon.”

We disconnected, and I had to smile. Sargon was one of the few men in the unit who hadn’t doubted me, not even when I was accused of blowing up an Imperial ship and possibly causing the eventual demise of Earth. He and I understood each other. Sometimes, a man had to do what a man had to do.

We were busy after that, plugging our bodies into our dragons at the same time we were decoupling them from the ship. They came to life as we moved inside them. After having piloted one of these fine machines for months now, it felt like a second skin. When I moved my arm, my dragon’s long steel appendage moved. I felt like a giant made of fine metals—and that’s pretty much what I was.

Clanking down passages toward the lifters, we made good time. There were arrows to follow on the deck, but we knew the way by now.

The ship was venting and yellow flashers were spiraling around everywhere. It was enough to give a man a headache. The crew was scrambling just as much as the troops were. I knew what that meant, they were getting ready for some fast maneuvering. This might well be a space battle rather than a ground battle. If that turned out to be the case, my cohort might well be the lucky ones. Anyone up here could be caught and destroyed, helpless in their dragons.

When we got to the lifters a line of bios were there, waiting. They had a data system, and they demanded our data disks before we boarded.

At the start of this campaign, each of us had been issued a silver disk about the size and weight of a half-credit piece. There was nothing unusual about that. What was strange was that the bios were asking for them now. I surrendered mine, and the pretty little bio put it into a slot on a data terminal. I wondered if I would get it back—but I didn’t.

“Say, Specialist,” I said. “What’s the deal? Why are we giving up our disks to you shipboard people? Aren’t we taking revival machines down to the surface with us?”

“I don’t know about what equipment you’ll be issued, Vet,” she said. “But I know we’re supposed to update everyone’s data before they get on the lifters.”

She proceeded to scan me then, which amounted to plugging into the data ports on my dragon, which connected in turn to my tapper. All down the line they were stopping troops and making these transfers. It took about a minute per man, and I thought it was little strange.

“A full body-scan? Our most up-to-date data? Who ordered this?”

The Specialist pointed upward, at the ceiling. “Gold Deck. The very top.”

Turov. It had to be her. But why?

Events moved quickly after that, and I didn’t have much more time to think about anything. We were hustled aboard the lifter, with me doing plenty of the hustling for my own squad. I shouted until my voice was hoarse, if only to be heard over the general din of metal clawed feet slamming against the metal deck.

Soon, we were harnessed up and set free. The lifter swooped and shifted under my feet sickeningly. The pilot knew this wasn’t a drill, and she was giving it the gas. We were in open space for only thirty seconds before we hit the turbulence of the upper atmosphere.

It’s always hard doing a fast-insertion onto a planet. You can’t help but wonder if you’re were riding in the unlucky lifter destined to catch some flak and blow up. But even so, it’s better than being locked into a pod and fired at the surface like a cannonball, which is what was happening to the infantry.

Legion Varus had an unusual number of splats that day. Heavy and light troops alike flashed down, looking like white-hot streaks in the sky—but some of their pods never opened after landing. Some punched into the hard ground like bullets, their braking jets malfunctioning. Other men had been crushed when the two halves of their capsules slammed together. Blood that boiled away and burned into a dark stain on the sides of the pods told that story. Still others screwed up, opening their emergency releases too early, too late, or even jamming them and suffocating when their minimal life support systems ran out of oxygen. Such was the lot of the infantry.

Our lifter full of dragons screamed out of the sky like a diving eagle. I was able to watch some exterior events remotely via my tapper. It was when I looked up, craning the viewpoint around to look behind us, that I noticed something unexpected. I contacted Natasha right off. She knew things enlisted people weren’t supposed to know, and I valued her opinion.

“Natasha,” I said, “I’m getting some strange imagery.”

“Relay the feed.”

I did so, and she watched with me for several quiet seconds. The engines of
Minotaur
and
Cyclops
, the big ships we’d left behind, were flaring blue. Streaks of white gas and light were Stretched out behind them for a dozen kilometers.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked her.

“Undeniably. The ships are pulling out. That’s a full burn, and although I can’t be sure—I’d guess they’re moving to high orbit.”

“Where they’ll engage their warp bubbles and run?”

“That’s a pretty good bet, James. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Turov gave the order. I guess you don’t have to worry about her being sweet on me anymore. If she is, she’s got a strange way of showing it.”

“I can’t believe she’s running out on us.”

“How many ships are out there, Natasha?” I asked. “Do you know? What’s coming?”

She hesitated. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure, because the techs on the bridge who’ve blabbed sometimes exaggerate.”

“Just tell me. How many?”

“Seven ships, Imperial configuration. All of them are headed our way.”

I let out a long breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Seven ships.
That’s why Turov was pulling out. She wasn’t even going to fight them.

All of a sudden, the fact she’d dropped Legion Varus and Winslade’s auxiliary cohort on the titanium mine didn’t look like such a compliment. She was bailing out and leaving us behind to defend her prize alone.

It was clear to me now, as well, why the bio people had taken our data just before we dropped. We weren’t expected to survive being marooned out here. If we wiped, they wanted a good, clean copy they could use to revive us all at a safe distance.

The lifter touched down, landing with a bounce that made my teeth clack together, and I began unlimbering my dragon. My grippers worked like extended hands, and I felt a certain resolve growing in my heart.

We’d fight, and we’d die on Machine World, just like we were supposed to. But afterward, if by some miracle I wasn’t permed, I wouldn’t forget we’d been abandoned.