Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (32 page)

-43-

It turned out in the end that there were seven ships approaching Machine World. They were Imperial capital ships—the same design as
Minotaur
and
Cyclops
. That’s why Turov had pulled out. In a way, I couldn’t blame her for that part. She had two ships, two sets of sixteen broadsides. Even if she’d wanted to tangle with these interlopers, she would be facing seven to two odds. There was no path to victory for Earth when our ships were outnumbered so badly.

What I wasn’t happy about was being dumped on this iceball and left to the slaughter. Turov had chosen to leave a garrison and pull out. Legion Varus was going to have to face the enemy alone.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have time to think about any of these unpleasant details when the lifter opened up and disgorged our dragons onto the steep slopes of Titan—which was what we’d named this mountain over the last week or so.

“All right, listen up,” Graves said in my ear as I rushed my people out into the snow. “We’ll start this by stealing a page from the squid playbook. We’re going to get everyone inside the mines. We’ll hide in there to keep the enemy guessing as to our full strength and composition. In the meantime, if they choose to bombard us, we’ll be reasonably safe.”

“Ha!” Carlos said after Graves dropped out of the channel. “The squid playbook—look how well it worked out for the squids!”

I had to admit, he had a point there. But I couldn’t openly agree with him on the chat channel, and besides, it was probably the best move we could make.

“Shut up in the ranks,” I said. “Dragons, form a wedge. We’ll stand guard at the entrance to the mine and cover the infantry as they get out of their drop-pods and try to get to safety.”

“What if they start dropping bombs on us?” Carlos demanded.

“Then we’ll run over the infantry stragglers to get into the mines. These dragon vehicles are more valuable than our flesh, remember that.
You
are expendable! But your vehicle isn’t.”

There was grumbling, but it was nothing they hadn’t heard before. No one in a real, fighting legion was uncertain about their lack of personal value to the Empire, or to Earth.

We stood outside in the hazy cold, watching troops struggling through the snow from every direction to the mouth of the mines. Thousands of them came in knots and bunches. No one ordered them to form ranks and columns to make an organized march of it—commanders didn’t know how long we had, and after the drop, the troops were scattered to hell and back anyway.

In my dragon, I kept one eye on the gray skies. It was pretty pointless to do so, of course. If the big invading ships rolled into orbit overhead, we probably wouldn’t see them from the ground in the daylight. If the ships did park on top of us and fire their broadsides, we would only be treated to a few seconds of brilliant falling stars. After that, everything for kilometers around would vanish as the fusion shells landed.

But I still found myself gazing up at the sky, and the rest of my squad mates were doing the same.

A channel request beeped, and I opened it without looking to see who it was.

“McGill here, go ahead.”

“You think they’re up there?” asked Harris’ voice in my helmet. “They say seven Imperial drop-ships, same as ours. What in the
fuck
is that about? Who would have the balls to bring troops out here and try to kick us off this planet?”

That was the real question we all had swimming in our heads. Harris had finally voiced it. What the hell was going on? This wasn’t supposed to happen. Sure, there were the squids and there were the pissed-off Nairbs. But how could either of them have brought in a force in response so quickly?

“I don’t know, Vet,” I said. “Could the squids have copied our designs?”

“I’d vote no on that theory. I’ve heard it before—Leeson seems convinced these ships are squid counterfeits, built to freak us out. But that just doesn’t seem right.”

“Agreed,” I said. “I don’t think it’s the squids. Copying another culture? No, that’s not their style. They’re too arrogant for that.”

“Then we’re in agreement. It has to be the Nairbs. They came to have a little show trial, then when that didn’t go the way they wanted, they called in back-up.”

I frowned inside my helmet and turned toward him. He was standing with his own squad about a hundred meters to the west. We were guarding both sides of this particular entrance to the mines. In between our two squads, a steady stream of infantry trotted over trampled snow, puffing with exertion.

He was looking back at me, but he was too far away for me to read his expression.

“Is that what you think?” I demanded over our radio link. “That my trial with the Nairbs triggered all this?”

“Well? Why shouldn’t I think that, McGill? It wouldn’t be the first time you screwed up and changed the fate of the human race, now would it?”

I heaved a sigh, and I almost closed the channel. Harris might have finally broken down enough to shake my hand and welcome me into the ranks of the Varus veteran society, but he still had a grudge going. I was the source of all evil in his eyes.

Looking up, I thought I saw something—something I hadn’t expected to see. “Harris, I think we’re going to have the answer to your question sooner rather than later.”

“Why’s that, McGill?”

“Because they’re dropping troops. Drop pods incoming—thousands of them. By God, they look like stones falling from the sky.”

Everyone was looking up, some of the troops paused to squint and point before running faster for the entrance.

I added Leeson to our channel. “I think we should hit them before they get their act together, sir,” I said.

“What?” demanded Harris. “Don’t hit them, fool! Adjunct Leeson, sir, these capsules must be more troops from Solstice, that’s all.”

“No Vet,” I said, “I have it on good authority our ships have pulled out. They’re fleeing the system even now. There’s no way Turov would have turned around to come back and drop another legion. Do I have permission, Adjunct?”

Leeson was inside the mines and couldn’t see the situation out on the slopes.

“Command your men and fight you dragons, McGill. I’ll bring the rest of the platoon out there in a few minutes. Leeson out.”

He dropped the channel, and I was left watching the first capsules as they struck ground.

“McGill!” Harris said to me privately. “Don’t you go off and do something stupid now, do you hear—?”

I cut him off. “Squad, limber up. We’re advancing downslope.”

My people had been lounging, but they perked up quickly when I gave the word. My squad was smaller now that I’d lost Della and the rest of Harris’ people, but I’d gained Sargon and every one of our dragons was in prime fighting condition.

“Work your battle computers,” I said. “Filter out the troops that are already on the ground from those dropping. Mark the new arrivals as hostile until we know the score.”

By the time I’d deployed downslope, Leeson came thundering out with another full platoon. Graves and even Winslade himself followed with more dragons.

Our questions concerning the nature of our new arrivals were answered almost immediately. Firefights broke out in a dozen places all around us. Our infantry were caught up in a dozen small gun battles with the invaders. They were definitely not friendly.

“Which squad has anti-air cannons on their backs?” Winslade demanded. A squad from another platoon reported that they did, and Winslade ordered them to shoot down every pod they could get a bead on. Almost immediately, small missiles created plumes of gas and flame. Missiles streaked up to meet the drop pods. A hundred of the pods were converted into fireballs before they reached the mountainside.

The troops who’d been trotting for the mine entrance at our backs now became a fleeing mob. Their only orders were to get under cover since they didn’t have any weaponry that could shoot down a falling drop-pod.

Our AA cannons missed as many drop pods as they hit, and they kept on coming down. Soon, enemy infantry were climbing out of the pods all around us. Some were kilometers off, others were right in our faces.

The troops—at first, I didn’t know what to make of them. They were physically larger than men. About two meters tall and bulky. They stood as dark humanoid hulks outlined against the snow. They had heavy projection weapons, and they wore armor. We faced a heavy cohort—but not a human one.

Then I saw the tails, and I knew.

“Saurians!” I shouted over the unit channel. “Sirs, they’re saurian troops! No juggers, just basic raptors.”

“We’ve figured that out, McGill,” Graves answered. “The enemy are saurians from Steel World. They’re not authorized to breathe on this planet. We’re going to correct the error.”

“What’s that mean?” Sargon asked.

“That means we’re supposed to kill all the lizards, you big moron,” Carlos said.

I winced when I heard that. Sargon wouldn’t do anything now in the midst of battle, but there was sure to be a fresh ass-whooping waiting for Carlos after this was over. Some people never learned.

“Squad, we haven’t got any AA,” I said. “We’re going to use our spinal cannons to blast any group of saurians that gets their act together and forms a cohesive force.”

It didn’t take long. After about three minutes of total confusion, our troops stopped streaming into the mine. The rest that were still out on the slopes had either been shot or were pinned in defensive positions by the enemy. The steady drumbeat of drop pods from above showed no signs of letting up.

We soon identified organized groups of saurians who had formed up, taken cover and now were laying fire down on our position. My team had gone with heavy armament as our mission this time out was supposed to be a defensive one, not a fast-moving recon effort. Our load-out choices paid dividends today as I ordered my squad to switch on their shields and fire their heavy guns at enemy concentrations.

Troops melted away under fragmentation shells. Rarely, a group of saurians charged in to close with us, but we repelled them with grenade fire at point-blank range.

As we fought, organized Varus infantry came out to help. Centurions led them, and soon, a full unit was supporting every squad of dragons.

The saurians soon figured out they weren’t going to take us out with an all-out wave assault. Surprise had helped them initially, and we’d lost a lot of men and dragons out on the slopes. But these gains were easily balanced by the carnage our dragons reaped against their unsupported attacks. It was a slaughter, and my squad only lost three machines while killing several hundred attacking troops.

Finally, the saurians pulled back. The drop pods no longer came down directly on top of us. When new arrivals climbed out of their pods, they ran away, disappearing over the folds of the mountain.

When it grew dark, we retreated as well. We posted guards at the mine entrance, and my squad was relieved. We walked our creaking dragons into the caverns and got out of them, aching and complaining.

“You did well out there, team,” I said. “I didn’t see a single mistake. Well done, well fought.”

My troops beamed and clapped one another on the back.

One clap came down a little too hard on Carlos, however.

“What the fu—?” Carlos demanded. His voice was cut off by a pair of huge hands that encircled his windpipe and began squeezing.

Carlos looked at me plaintively. I looked at him and his assailant. Then I nodded to Sargon.

“Proceed, Specialist,” I said.

Sargon beat on the smaller man for a full minute. Carlos got in a few good licks—he always did. Sargon looked surprised when his genitals took a hard yanking for example—I could have told him to look out for that one. But in the end, Carlos was down on the ground, heaving, crawling and puking.

I sipped a hot cup of caf and pretended I hadn’t seen anything. Sometimes, the life of a Veteran-rank noncom had its little rewards.

-44-

By morning the next day, we were surrounded by around sixty thousand saurian troops. They were crawling all over the mountaintop. Some were above the mines, and some were below us, maneuvering along the ridges and escarpments, hugging stone and ice for cover. A siege had begun, and without support from space, we had no way of knowing what the enemy was up to. Our buzzers had managed to count the enemy troops, but that was all. The tiny spy drones were being caught and destroyed as fast as we could send them out.

After a sleepless night of barricading the mine entrances, the officers were busy filing our unit’s after-action reports with Winslade, and I’d been repairing our dragons. We kicked off our platoon’s morning briefing at ten a. m. sharp.

“Sixty frigging thousand!” Leeson marveled when we were done with the boring parts. He gave a long, low whistle that made me clench my teeth. Sometimes, when a whistle comes in through sensitive headphones, it’s pretty annoying.

“They say they had
seventy
thousand when they first dropped,” I pointed out.

“That’s right,” Leeson said pointing a gauntleted finger at me. “You boys did well. Altogether, our anti-air fire combined with our quick counterattack cost them dearly. Their initial assault was meant to catch us by surprise, but it was an utter failure. They lost the equivalent of a full legion. Just think of it!”

“A lot of those were splats, sir,” Sargon pointed out.

Leeson shot him an unhappy look. I caught that, and I think Sargon did too. He shut up in a hurry.

“Sure, sure,” Leeson said, “half those deaths were due to splats, I’ll admit that. The lizards are new to this game. I bet not one of their troops had ever crawled out of a pod into a firefight before. But we gunned down five thousand, we estimate. That’s astounding!”

Leeson sounded excited, bloodthirsty even, but I had to feel a small pang for the lizards that’d died yesterday. They’d fought well and fearlessly. The question in my mind—and everyone else’s—was why they’d come here to fight us at all?

Leeson thought he had an answer for that. “The best part is these clowns will all be permed for this. They’ve over-reached this time. They’re obviously trying to stop Earth from grabbing a competing source of metals. Hell, their entire sweat-box of a planet might not survive once the Nairbs pass their judgment.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t want to go up against my commander in an argument that was pointless. If this had been a matter of tactics and survival, sure, I’d speak my piece. But not when we were talking about whether something was true or not. Truth had a way of sorting itself out in time, and yapping about it never changed the answer.

“We whooped them,” Leeson continued. “That’s what it comes down to. And when they come into these tunnels to dig us out, we’ll smash them down again. They don’t have a chance!”

A few ragged cheers went up from the group. Suddenly, it dawned on me what Adjunct Leeson was doing. He was trying to build up morale. Seen in that light, his rhetoric suddenly made good sense.

These people needed a pep-talk. Anyone with half a brain could see we were all totally screwed, that we were going die in this hole like it was the biggest warren full of rats in history—but it was equally undeniable that troops with hope fought harder.

Accordingly, I stood up and banged my gauntlets together. Harris joined in immediately. Sargon looked startled, but then he stood up with us. He was still walking funny after yesterday’s encounter with Carlos, but he was game.

I’d noticed that Sargon was doing everything Harris and I did lately, trying to support us. As a man bucking for rank, that made good sense. In contrast,
my
methods to achieve promotions were unconventional and even accidental.

Graves joined the group, and the applause grew louder. He stared around the team flatly, then nodded when we’d quieted.

“That was well done yesterday,” he said. “Our defensive rearguard action helped get as much equipment off those slopes and into the mountain as possible. As far as I’m concerned, we accomplished that mission.”

That was vintage Graves. Lives? Deaths? Those meant nothing. Hardware was what he cared about. In his calculus of war, our blood meant about as much as our spit—and probably a lot less. We had more blood in us than we did spit, after all.

He went on to talk about deployments, defensive preparations and supply rationing. After the meeting, we broke up and were assigned specific duties. As my team had taken losses in battle yesterday, so we were spared guard duty. I told everyone to go on break and relax but to keep their dragons ready to roll. We could get called back to the front lines any minute.

“Hey, McGill,” said a gravelly voice.

I turned to see Carlos. He was in pretty bad shape. His right eye was swollen shut, and his lips were split and as red as raw meat.

“Ouch,” I said. “You fit to fight, soldier?”

“You challenging me again, Vet?”

“No,” I chuckled. “What’s up? And why haven’t you gone to the infirmary to get some skin sprayed over that?”

“It’s no big deal. I’ve been too busy.”

“Doing what?”

He smiled, and the blood that outlined his teeth made me squinch up my eyes.

“Kivi, for one thing. She thought it was cool that I stood up for my rights with Sargon.”

“Did she hear what you said to him to get your ass whooped?”

“No—and don’t tell her about that part, okay? She thinks I was a total victim.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I think you’ve paid enough for that mistake already.”

“Okay, cool. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“I’ve got something to show you, Vet. I guarantee you’re going to like it.”

Figuring I didn’t have much to lose, I followed him as he walked painfully down into the guts of the mountain. I was expecting more vids of squids on their home worlds, or possibly another giant squid in a tank. What I got was something entirely different.

The mines themselves were largely unexplored. We’d checked out the upper levels, where there were smelters and transportation systems for ore and titanium bricks, but we hadn’t spent much time in the lower tunnels where the actual mining had been done. Carlos led me deep into the uncharted depths.

“Here is the limit,” Carlos said, pointing down into dark shaft that led downward at a thirty degree angle. “This is about as far as anyone has ever been in Mount Titan.”

“That’s because the rest of the mine is empty,” I pointed out.

“No, not entirely. Kivi and I found some equipment down there. More stuff that belonged to the squids.”

“Why mess with that?”

“What are you? Stu—?” he began, but stopped himself, taking a breath.

That was possibly the first time I’d ever seen him edit himself. Carlos always insulted people who were bigger than he was—hell, that behavior was practically stamped in his DNA.

He shook his finger at me and his split lips parted into a ghastly grin. “No, no way. Not this time. I’m not giving you another excuse. Not so soon.”

“Just tell me why you brought me down here.”

“Look, the squids had the native machines working for them, right?” he asked.

“Yes, seems like they did.”

“And therefore, they had to have a way to tell the machines what to do, didn’t they?”

I thought about it. After a few seconds, I nodded. “That stands to reason.”

“Exactly. And let me tell you one of the prime rules of tech development: if it’s already invented, copy someone else’s work. Don’t invent your own. It’s much easier that way.”

I chuckled. “All right then. Did you find a translation device?”

“We did. We found something that appears to be a communication system. Unfortunately, we can’t get it to work yet.”

Frowning, I turned that statement over in my mind. He led me into a large, dark chamber. There, deep in the guts of the mountain, was a strange workshop. Something was down there—something that moved.

That’s when the light went on in my head. “You aren’t telling me you’ve got one of the native machine-creatures down here, are you?”

“Yep. How else could we be testing the translation system?”

That was what I’d been thinking about. “When you said you hadn’t got it to work yet, I was wondering how you would know if it was working at all.”

“This little guy. He’s the answer. Only, he’s not talking.”

Carlos approached a small native machine-creature. It was one of the young that I’d met up with back along the river and had a drawing contest with. He was a few meters long and about half a meter thick. Like a metal caterpillar, he wormed his way over the stony floor, making scrabbling sounds.

There was a chain welded to his carapace and burn-marks all around the chain.

“We had a hell of a time getting him under control,” Carlos said. “We’ve spent all last night trying to get this moron to talk, but no dice. He might be a dud.”

He gave the machine a kick, and it humped and scrambled away to the limits of its chain—which wasn’t very far.

“Have you been abusing this thing?” I asked, frowning.

“Abusing it? Sure. Whatever works—but nothing does. We’ve tried to tell it to eat, to turn around, to play dead. We’ve worked this translation box sixteen different ways, and this dipshit—”

He moved to give the machine another kick, but I grabbed him and gave him a shaking instead. I wanted to do more, but he was pretty well beat up already.

“Carlos,” I said, controlling myself, “I think someone with a gentler hand might do better.”

“That’s what Kivi said. That’s why I brought you down here. But James, please, if you
do
get him to talk, you’ve got to let us have some of the glory. Don’t hog it all, okay? I didn’t even tell Kivi I was going to show you. She doesn’t trust you at all.”

“Don’t worry.”

To start with, I drew pictures. The machine looked at them, but didn’t dare draw its own. It had been traumatized. It shook and squirmed, but wouldn’t draw a damned thing in response.

“How much did you beat on him?” I demanded.

“Hardly any,” Carlos said. “Okay, maybe a little. But I don’t think it was us. I think it was the squids who really did a number on him. See his tail-section and his undercarriage? There are burn-marks and dents everywhere. Maybe he wouldn’t work, so they tortured him.”

“I’m glad that wasn’t all you,” I said.

I spent several hours with the little machine that day. I even took out titanium shavings and fed them to him. That got him interested. After a while, I came up with a plan.

“He’s not going to communicate out of curiosity,” I said. “We’ve got to get him to cooperate with rewards.”

“And punishments?”

“No. Just the withholding of rewards.”

Carlos heaved a sigh. “Sounds slow.”

“Go get me a bag of titanium shavings. I’m going to run out.”

He left, and I tried my best. I drew simple shapes then fed a shaving to the machine when I showed him a circle, for instance. The machine studied it, ate the shaving—but that was about it. I began to think maybe we did have a dud like Carlos had said.

But I kept at it. After drawing the same circle, feeding it a shaving, then erasing the circle and drawing it again about four times, I stopped feeding the machine and began to pretend to feed myself.

Each time I pretended to eat a shaving, I drew a square instead of a circle on the ground. The machine watched raptly as I did this. I slowly drew the square and fed myself another, then another.

The machine watched me move chip after chip up to my faceplate. I secretly dropped them into a fold of my suit, then took another out of the bag.

Finally, the machine lost it. The poor thing was starved. He scuttled forward and erased the square I’d drawn, and scratched out a circle with his feet. As with the first machine I’d managed to contact, his circle was perfectly round. I promptly fed him a shaving. We had made a breakthrough. Circles meant the machine was fed, squares meant I was fed. We had a language of our own.

By the time Carlos returned with a fresh bag of shavings for the machine, we were drawing things back and forth. I would draw a shape then it would draw the same thing—only better than my version. Then I would feed him a shaving.

The machine backed away when Carlos came near, and I pushed Carlos back.

“He doesn’t trust you,” I said. “Stay over there.”

Eventually, Kivi showed up. She was pissed off immediately.

“You brought McGill down here?” she demanded. “We’ve been working on making a breakthrough ever since we were first posted on the planet, and you’re going to let him show it to the brass and take all the credit again, aren’t you?”

“I’m just drawing things,” I said. “Relax, Kivi.”

“No girl can relax around you,” she said.

I gave her a glance then shrugged. She was glaring at me. She might have heard about my recent dating activity with Anne. That was typical for Kivi. She’d carry on with other men, but when I dated a new girl she may or may not display a fit of jealousy. If she was in the mood, she’d get mad at everything I did without bringing up what was really bothering her. I guess that came with the territory when you had an on-again, off-again relationship with a girl.