Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (10 page)

“Seventeen hours according to the nav computer. Maybe twice that if we can get some braking jets to fire.”

“Do what you can,” Graves said. He turned and regarded the projected image of Turov, who looked stunned.

“This changes everything, Primus. I’ve just sent a priority code text to Tribune Drusus. He wants to talk to us in person.”

Turov’s teeth flashed. It wasn’t a smile; it was more like a snarl. But she controlled herself, and her lips quickly closed into a thin line.

“Excellent. That’s exactly what I would have done. Please move your unit off the bridge except for the tech. I’ve already sent our best people to help. They’ll take over. With any luck, we’ll turn this ship away from the star.”

“Moving out, sir,” Graves said.

After that, we were hustling down long, damaged passageways. Worried-looking techs hurried past us going the other way. They looked at the floating dead and frozen sprays of blood apprehensively.

I hoped for all our sakes they could repair the ship’s systems before it was too late.

-10-

Natasha was a good tech. Too good. She’d called it down to the hour. By the time the rest of the techs agreed, we only had thirteen precious hours left before we slammed into the local star.

It was already getting hotter aboard ship. Fortunately, we’d started off somewhere around negative two hundred degrees Celsius. Now that we were moving closer and closer to the central star, the temperature was naturally rising. At first, this would feel good…but in the end we’d burn up.

There was nothing that the techs could do to change our course. The aliens had been very thorough and from all indications the sabotage had been deliberate.

“It makes a strange sort of sense,” I told Carlos later when we reached the mess hall.

“How’s that?”

We’d taken showers, been issued new inner smart-cloth suits by the dispensers, and then been sent clanking along the passages in full armor to get some chow while we could. We still had no idea how the brass was going to handle the situation. I didn’t think they did, either.

“They attacked the ship as suddenly as they could,” I said. “They took
Corvus
out fast and scuttled it. Maybe they figured the Galactics would never find out what happened and they’d get away with this violation.”

“You think
that
makes sense?” demanded Carlos with a nervous laugh. “None of this makes any sense. It’s crazy. The squids are crazy, and our officers are crazier. Together they’ll get us all permed in the end, you watch.”

“What do you mean?”

Carlos put down his fork which had a chunk of pork and beans on the end. At least the food had been pressed into the general shape, color and texture of pork and beans. They hadn’t quite gotten the taste right, unfortunately.

He leaned close to me and spoke in a rough whisper. “I mean, my challenged friend, that it’s frigging obvious what we should do. We have to abandon ship.”

“And just let
Corvus
crash into the star?”

Carlos shrugged. “Better than letting us all die.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “We should revive the Skrull and give them a shot at repairing the ship. After all, it’s their vessel.”

Carlos had picked up his fork again. He waved it at me admonishingly. “There you go, thinking up High Crimes again.”

“Doing something to save yourself can’t be a crime.”

“Ha! Sure it can, dumbass!”

According to Carlos, if they ever put my brain into a monkey’s skull the monkey would walk backwards. His natural personality was often amusing, but not when I was stressed. I struggled with an urge to throw my pork and beans into his face. If I’d thought it would get him to shut up, I’d have done it. The miserable food wouldn’t have been a big loss.

When I’d controlled my thoughts of vengeance, I took a deep breath and asked him what he meant.

“We’re talking about the Galactics and the Nairbs,” he said. “The ultimate in government bureaucrats. As far as they’re concerned, you can be dead and still legally perform a capital crime while you’re sitting in your grave.”

I thought it over, knowing he had a point. “I see what you mean. We don’t have a license to use our machines on the Skrull. They haven’t licensed the technology for themselves, either. It still seems wrong that we can’t use machines we have on hand to fix our dire situation.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Carlos said. “Let’s say we’re willing to chance an Imperial crime for the sake of a few of these monkey-turtles. We can’t do it anyway. Their bodies have never been scanned, never been backed up.”

I leaned closer to him for a second. “I heard from some of the bio people we could still do it. With a dead body as a model, one that’s flash-frozen, you can get a reading and copy them. All you’d have to do is edit out the cellular damage. Just think about it. Most of them were turned into popsicles when the squids opened the hull.”

Carlos looked at me in concern. “Tell Anne Grant not to try it. Stay away from her, or together you two will mix up an entirely new stew of crazy and get Earth erased this time.”

I frowned and started eating my food. Carlos was right in his assumptions, and that bothered me. The bio I’d talked to was indeed Anne. She was someone who I knew from experience was willing to go out of her way and even break serious rules to save lives. She was probably the most likely person on the ship to violate a Galactic law—besides me, that is. What bothered me most was knowing that if Carlos could figure out Anne was behind the crime, others could figure it out, too.

“Listen,” Carlos said. “The Skrull are all dead. Leave them that way. Focus on the living.”

“What about the colonists?” I asked. “There are humans in this system somewhere, and we should be helping them.”

“Helping them?” Carlos snorted. “We’re here to exterminate them, remember? That’s why Turov was so happy. Her problem solved itself when those stupid squids attacked us.”

I ignored him after that. I liked Carlos, and he was a good man to have in a trench with you, but he was the kind who could easily write off anyone who wasn’t in his immediate vicinity. He’d risk his life to save a friend—but people a
kilometer away who he didn’t know personally would just have to fend for themselves.

That wasn’t the way my mind and heart operated. As a soldier from Earth, I felt a need to protect all humans. I could probably get attached to an alien race, too, if I spent enough time around them. I don’t know.

Chow time was over all too soon. We were sent to the armory next, and this had me worried. My suspicions were confirmed when our orders came in.

“Follow the arrows to yellow deck. Find your unit’s embarking station. Do not vary or stray from the path. Stay with your units, and do not stop for extra gear.”

A private contact came in from Adjunct Leeson shortly after that. “McGill? You fully operational?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good. When you board the lifter, park your butt next to mine.”

“Will do, Adjunct.”

I was breathing hard during the short jog past green deck, then past blue. We were going all the way down to yellow deck where the lifters were stored when in warp. None of this sounded good to me.

Carlos contacted me, helmet-to-helmet as we jogged.

“What the hell is happening?” he demanded. “I saw your com-light flash. Who’s talking to you? What are they saying?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “We’re going on a little jog to digest that lovely meal.”

“You’re such a dick,” Carlos complained. “How is our destination a state secret? Don’t even try to stonewall me, McGill. There’s no point.”

I kind of agreed with him. It looked to me like we were abandoning the ship, and if that was the case, it hardly mattered if the rank and file heard about it or not. Legion Varus didn’t believe in briefing their troops on details. They figured we weren’t the most obedient bunch, and keeping us in the dark was their way of keeping us from giving them trouble.

“We’re abandoning ship, if I had to guess,” I said.

“Abandoning ship? To where? What about our stuff? Damn.”

I snorted. Not ten minutes ago he’d been complaining that they hadn’t ordered us all to jump ship, and now that it was happening he had fresh complaints. That was Carlos in a nutshell.

Another thought occurred to me as we jogged down passages under flashing lights following yellow arrows. Yellow meant we were in a possible combat situation. I guess that fit.

“That’s why they aren’t telling us,” I told Carlos.

“What?”

“They don’t want you loading up on personal effects. We’re carrying full combat kits, and that’s it. We’ll board the lifters and we’ll be flying as light as possible. That’s got to be it.”

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. Why not come over the voice net and give us a pep speech about why we had to move to the lifters and exit the ship? Why hustle us to the airlocks without much more than a final quick meal? Because they didn’t want us to
get any ideas, that’s why.

I explained my thinking to Carlos.

“What bastards,” Carlos said with feeling. “That makes too much sense. I had a lot of stuff in my locker—private stuff, you know?”

“Yeah. Stolen vid files and that weird collection of hair from the girl’s shower drain, right?”

“Screw you, McGill.”

I chuckled, and he finally stopped pestering me on the private line. We went down the null-grav tubes directly, diving head first and pulling ourselves along the rungs on the walls. They weren’t even bothering with having us use the lifts.

I passed Veteran Harris at a junction. He took the time to shout: “Go! Go!” into everyone’s faceplate as we passed while whacking the back of each trooper’s helmet.

As a heavy trooper with a thick helmet, I could barely feel the impact of his gauntlet as it crashed into the back of my head, but it did create a ringing clang I could have done without.

“What’s the bloody hurry, Vet?” Carlos demanded.

Harris didn’t strike him again, as I’d halfway been expecting. His face looked a little worried.

“Don’t know. Just orders. Get the hell to the first seat you find and strap your ass in. They aren’t going to give you more than thirty seconds to stow your gear. Expect a hot release and drop.”

Those words surprised me.
A hot release and drop?
Were we under attack? I couldn’t figure it out. We still had more than ten hours before we reached the star’s corona—the point of no return for all spaceships.

After the long jouncing run, I was rewarded with a small aperture to pass through. It was a small hatchway on top of the lifter we all had to wriggle through. Normally, the lifters were loaded one at a time in the bays designated for the purpose, but that part of the procedure had apparently been skipped this time. We were
boarding through the top hatch because it would save time.

I opened a private channel to Natasha as I boarded and clanked down the ranks of huddled soldiers. Most
of the troops on the lifter were heavies, as this was a heavy cohort. But the row I was passing by was populated by auxiliary troops—bio people, techs and other support personnel. They were in their pajamas, as we called smart-cloth uniforms. They eyed me in quiet concern as I crashed by them.

Most people didn’t like to mess with heavy weaponeers. We had bad reps,
lots of body armor, and like me, we were generally the biggest guys in the unit. The only reaction I got from most of them as I passed was a desperate effort to pull back feet so I wouldn’t stomp on them too hard. My tube thumped into more than one unfortunate’s ribs, and they glared at me, suspecting I was bullying them. In truth, it was hard to maneuver quickly in heavy armor with a full kit without slamming into everyone I passed them.

It took me a while to find the seat I was supposed to sit in. Adjunct Leeson had requested me to sit by his side, and I wasn’t going to skip that invitation. I had a lot of questions about this entire exercise, and he might have answers.

I finally sighted Leeson with an open seat on his left. He waved me forward impatiently. I moved forward with purpose.

A girl’s foot strayed, and I
smashed it flat.

“Ow, you jackass!” raged the owner.

She rubbed her foot and glared up at me. She was blonde with a sharp nose and quick-moving eyes that reminded me of an excited bird.

“Sorry Miss,” I had time to say—
and then the world turned upside down.

Almost before I knew what was happening, I was lifted up and kicked down the
row of seats. I could have sworn that Harris had finally lost patience with me and given me a boot in the rear—but Harris had long ago found a seat and strapped in.

I fell forward, armor sparking, plasma tube
banging into helmets and knees as I hung onto it. The lifter was moving. We’d been dropped from the guts of
Corvus
and released into space.

Normally,
launch wouldn’t have initiated a series of violent maneuvers. But our pilot wasn’t screwing around. The second we were down and out in open space, she’d gunned the lifter. I could imagine the plume of exhaust we were leaving behind us in space. Wherever we were going, we were doing it in a big damned hurry.

A gauntlet reached down and grabbed me by the air hose as I slid by. Fortunately, the hose didn’t pop out.

Leeson hauled me up into the jump seat next to him.

“Quit screwing around, McGill,” he said.

I strapped in as fast as I could. “Sorry, sir. Just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a little fun.”

“Does your tube still work?”

I checked it quickly. “Passes all diagnostics.”

“Good,” he said. “I have the feeling we’re going to need it.”

“Sir, could you clarify a few things for me?”

Leeson
was a balding man with small, dark eyes. He gave me a hard stare. “I guess it can’t hurt now. We’re already underway.”

“Thank you, sir.”