Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (10 page)

-10-

On our way to our new duty station that afternoon, Carlos fell into step beside me. We were marching down a very long, gently curving street. Only losers walked on Tech World, and we were right in the middle of them.

Aliens who resembled animals, insects, and just plain freaks hobbled by. All of them looked destitute and sour. They scuttled out of our way like cockroaches when we came near them in clanking armor.

As per Centurion Graves’ orders, 3
rd
Unit had split up into platoons. As I was part of Adjunct Leeson’s platoon, I followed him and Claver into the city.

“Can you believe this joker named Claver?” Carlos demanded, gesturing to the front of the column where the officers were walking. “Old Silver is a good nickname. He must be ninety-nine years old!”

“I bet you’re close to right,” I said, “at the very least, he must not have died for thirty years or so in order to look that old. No one in Varus has silver hair.”

“Might be kind of cool to get old,” said Carlos in an uncharacteristically thoughtful tone of voice. “I’d be willing to try it just once. Then I’d get myself killed at around forty to start over fresh.”

“I have to admit that sounds like more fun than dying all the time.”

“Platoon halt!” came the order from up ahead.

We all stopped marching and shuffled ourselves back into an organized column, two abreast. I was at the midpoint of the column, and I felt secure enough to do a little sightseeing.

Unfortunately, the best vistas were above us. On the street-level, I felt as if we were walking in the gutter. There was trash everywhere, and aliens slept in makeshift shelters against the foot of every towering building.

Tilting my head upward, things looked better. A false sky hung about two kilometers above our heads. Soaring structures loomed all around us reaching for that synthetic heavenly blue.

The buildings we passed were like buildings on Earth. They were more open than structures on my homeworld as they didn’t need to be completely sealed the way a building had to be when it was on a planetary surface.

The towering structures resembled networks of girders built with puff-crete and metal struts. There were gaps in the walls—big ones. Rather than going to the trouble of building a true window or door, the natives often just left a large square missing. These gaps were up to several meters wide and served the purpose of allowing entry, exit, and ventilation. There were a lot of balconies too, as there were great views to be had everywhere on the station.

In between these towering mountains of metal and puff-crete, vehicles buzzed. Walking on the street, we were a good fifty meters below the lowest echelon of air traffic. There was occasional ground traffic as well, mostly made up of cleaning machines and rickshaw-like carts pulled by the poorest of folks.

The column was called upon to halt, and we were left standing in line. Up ahead, Claver and Leeson were talking. As grunts, it was our job to stand around and wait for orders.

“Do you think it ever rains in here?” Carlos asked me.

I shrugged. “How the hell should I know? It’s plenty big enough to have water condense up high, I guess. But they might employ enough reprocessing systems to stop it.”

Carlos pointed to the structure we had halted at the foot of, and I saw what he was talking about. There was a large thick pipe that ran down from a kilometer or more above us. The pipe opened with a flared tip at the bottom. I could see liquid dribbling from it in a trail to the gutters and drains that lined the street.

“That pipe could be for rain,” I admitted. “Or, it could be a cheap, alien-waste removal system. We seem to be in the low-rent district.”

Carlos made a sound of disgust as he stepped gingerly out of the pools of unknown liquid his boots were soaking in.

“Back in line, Ortiz!” shouted Harris.

Grumbling, Carlos stood in the puddle again. “What the hell are they doing up at the front of the column?” he demanded.

Being a head taller than anyone else between ourselves and the officers, I was able to give him a report on the situation. “Looks like they’re arguing about something.”

“That’s great. I’m standing here in alien piss and Adjunct Leeson is bitching out Old Silver.”

“Shut up in the ranks!” shouted Harris.

Carlos and I both knew that the next step would involve Harris breaking ranks to come close and chew on us, so we fell silent. Staying quiet had always been hard on Carlos in particular, but fortunately, the line began moving again soon.

The column took a right-angle turn into the structure that loomed overhead. Old Silver seemed to have gotten his way as he was leading the platoon inside through a wide opening between two massive metal struts. The struts were rusty and thick liquids trickled down both of them onto the sidewalk from God knew where above.

“What is this place?” demanded Carlos. “An alien poorhouse?”

“Beats me,” I told him. “I thought we were supposed to be guarding a fancy-pants merchant prince.”

Things went from bad to worse once we were inside the building. It looked like an abandoned skyscraper, and we were on the ground floor. Things that must have passed for rodents hopped and scurried around us—but they weren’t mammals. They were more like beetles or cockroaches the size of rats. They had horns, too—honest to God
horns
on their heads—right between their feelers.

“Ugh,” Kivi said, pointing her weapon at one that reared up and gazed at us in silent, frank appraisal.

“You think you can take him, Kivi?” I asked. “I hear that’s a new kind of citizen down here.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Bastard.”

She moved off, and I shrugged my armored shoulders. I followed her with Carlos right behind me. Kivi and I had an on-again off-again thing that had been going on for years now. I knew I wasn’t the only man in that category, either. The nature of our interactions all depended on how annoyed she was with me on any given month or day. Taking her measure, I judged I was out of favor with her on this mission—but you couldn’t blame a guy for trying.

Water—or something worse—dribbled from the ceiling onto our heads. People cursed and flapped their gauntlets all up and down the line.

An order soon came down the column from the front: “Helmets on, visors open!” 

Everyone complied quickly enough, but I adlibbed and slammed my visor down too. My suit air conditioners kicked in on automatic, and I felt better immediately. Being inside my suit was almost like driving a small car through the nasty building. It gave me a feeling of comfortable distance from the exterior world.

It got darker, and danker, and then we finally reached a downward slanting ramp.

“Oh,
hell
no!” Carlos exclaimed, echoing my own opinions. For once, Harris didn’t tell him to shut up.

Suit lights snapped on. My twin beams bracketed my helmet and shone brilliant light wherever I turned my head. Like most of the troops, I sent my lights stabbing down toward the bottom of that ramp.

We all stared down into what could only be described as a brownish-green river of slow-moving sludge.

Leeson must have sense our mood, so he clicked onto the general tactical channel and started talking. He spoke calmly and matter-of-factly sounding to me like an airline pilot discussing a passing cloud.

“What we have here is a mission-barrier,” he said. “Adjunct Claver has informed me we need to cross this barrier in order to reach our objective.”

“Uh, sir?” came a voice. I recognized it as Veteran Harris. “Just what objective can be found on the other side of this shit-river, if you don’t mind my asking? Some of the boys were wondering.”

“Our clients are waiting on the far side,” Leeson said flatly.

We all looked at one another in surprise and confusion.

“Good thing I spent an hour polishing my armor,” Kivi said bitterly.

“Now
this
is Legion Varus’ luck in action, people,” Carlos said. “We got ourselves hired by some kind of sewer monster. I bet it wants us to lather up in this river of filth then it’ll ask us to escort its slimy butt to the fanciest hotel in town.”

“Shut up, Ortiz,” Harris ordered without conviction. We all knew Carlos could be right, and Legion Varus’ misfortunes
were
legendary.

How can I describe the next step of our mission? Crossing the shit-river was grotesque and humiliating. We held our weapons over our heads and waded in. Fortunately, the current was slow and no one got sucked under. They even ordered the troops to clamp their visors
down tightly—mighty nice of them to think of that.

When we reached the far side
there was a ramp going up and lights ahead too. We struggled out of the muck onto the ramp, cursing and slipping.

A gush of mist sprayed down onto us without warning. I wasn’t the only one who had his weapon out, aiming this way and that—but there were no enemies in sight. The spraying system seemed to be automated, and I had to admit it was cleaning off my armor.

“Keep moving! Up and off this ramp, people!” shouted a now-familiar voice. It was Old Silver himself.

We marched upward, and it was like walking through a carwash. At the top, we gathered and stood more or less in a square. Everyone had their weapons out and cradled. We weren’t aiming at every shadow, but we were alert. This wasn’t our first mission after all.

A hissing release of gas sounded, and a whirring sound followed. A large portion of the ceiling lowered itself slowly into our midst. We backed up, forming a circle around it. We watched these developing events with unblinking eyes.

Creatures stood on the platform as it came down. There were six of them, and they were all Tau. Bug-eyed, they were well-dressed in shimmering riots of color. Tau didn’t wear clothes—at least, the rich ones didn’t. They wore projected articles of clothing in various colors. An illusory mass of moving shapes and designs. I could tell from what little I knew of Tau society that these guys were rich. They had a color shield that was very thin—but completely opaque. Illusionary suits that were both thin and opaque cost the most.

The details of the suits each cost extra as well. If you wanted shoes of a certain style and form, you could have them. But it would cost you. It was all artificial, of course, and sometimes Tau hacked their suits and displayed wealth they didn’t have. To be caught doing so was a humiliation, however.

The six aliens eyed us critically.

“Weapons aimed down with safeties on, fools,” Harris said to the troopers as he strode along the front of the line.

Soldiers reluctantly aimed their weapons away from our benefactors.

Old Silver himself stepped up to greet the six aliens. He buzzed and clicked, and after a second I realized he must have a personal translation device on his suit. That was unusual and expensive.

My next thought was to wonder what exactly these characters did to amass wealth and why the heck they had to have us march through a sewer to meet them.

“This stinks worse than the shit-river,” Carlos said to me.

“My thoughts exactly.”

Old Silver turned around and smiled at all of us. In his hand was something—could that be a credit stick? It vanished before I could identify it with certainty.

“Platoon,
” he said, “you’re the luckiest men on this station. These clients understand the rarest of customs here on Tech World:
tipping
.”

We looked at one another in bewilderment. Were we soldiers or waiters?

“All we have to do to conclude this contract is escort these gentlemen—or ladies as the case may be, I’m not always sure with these guys—to The Vents then back up to the financial district. That’s it. We’ll be done in few hours. After that, you can all spend your share of the credit anyway you wish.”

“How big of a tip are we talking about?” Carlos asked.

Harris didn’t shout at him, which surprised me. I guess he wanted to know, too.

“Uh…” Old Silver said, looking around at the assembled troops. “I’ve got enough to distribute two thousand to each of you. Double that for your commander.”

The reaction the sum generated was immediate and gratifying to Claver. The assembled troops whooped and shook their gauntlets over their heads in approval. Two thousand Galactic credits was a lot of money to us. Translated into local cash on Earth it would be worth millions.

Only I and a few others reacted with comparative reserve. I looked at Leeson. He was quietly frowning at the aliens. Harris looked absolutely paranoid, and he wasn’t even looking at the Tau. He was staring around us into the surrounding subterranean darkness.

I considered the offer. It sounded like easy money for a tour of the sewers, the banks, and the bad side of town. A nice Sunday stroll in combat armor.

All you have to do is look the other way and take your bribe, trooper.
Nothing funny going on here!

I didn’t like it—and I finally said so when Old Silver came close to transfer my share of the credits from his tapper to mine.