Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (30 page)

“Stott,” I said. “Show me the way out. Show me a path close to the ship, and we’ll leave. We only want to get closer to the ship so we can attack them.”

“That’s a bad idea,” he said.

“Do you have a better one?”

“Yes,” said Stott earnestly. “Give them people. Give them a few hundred of your best wives and children. Once their hold is full, they will fly. They won’t come back for a long time.”

I frowned at him. “Yeah, that’s great for you, but what about our people? The ones we send off into slavery?”

Stott sidled a little closer, but he was still far out of reach. I sensed that he could dart away any moment if he wanted to.

“That’s the center of my plan,” he said. “You don’t care about your people. You can just make more. When the littermates and their masters leave, bring the lost ones back to life.”

I had to admit, it would probably work. Stott made me feel a mixture of disgust and pity. Submission, hiding—these were the keys to survival among a beaten people.

I shook my head. “We can’t do that,” I said. “We can’t make a copy of a person unless we know they’re dead.”

“Ah, that’s too bad…but wait! Just tell them to kill themselves. Nothing could be easier aboard the great ship. All you have to do is disobey enough times and they will end you. Staying alive is much harder than dying.”

“Yeah? What do you know about it?”

He sidled closer. I could almost grab him—almost.

“I’ve been aboard,” he said in a whisper. There was a slightly mad gleam in his eyes. “The last time the great ship came. I was found unsuitable and dumped from the ship after failing their tests of the flesh.”

Tests of the flesh?
Did they check genetics, and reject the losers? I guess it made sense. How else could they have bred such specialized versions of humanity?

“What’s it like on the ship?” I asked.

“It’s madness. It’s like the worst of dreams where you can’t awaken.”

I nodded. “Well, Stott, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we’re Earthmen. We fight, we don’t surrender. If someone tries to capture us, it is the same as trying to kill us. Either way, we fight to the death. Just tell me how to get close to them, and we’ll leave you alone.”

Stott looked thoughtful. “You experienced Della, didn’t you?” he asked me.

“Uh…”

“She told me you did. She said I would never be considered again and to stop asking.”

“Yeah…well…Look, are you going to help or not?”

A strange light came into his face. “I think I will,” he said. “I came here to kill you, you know. But that was before I knew what you wanted in my world. Now that I understand, I have a better fate for you than the screaming death.”

“That’s great. Listen, I have to—”

“Don’t go that way!” Stott whispered, as I turned to continue my exploration.

“Why not?”

“That way lays the next trap. I set many of them. You’ll never get out of here without my help.”

I stared at him. “
You
set traps? Inside your own tunnels?”

He nodded slowly.

I pulled out my gun. I should have shot this bastard the second I’d seen him. He’d managed to kill me once and now Perez. He didn’t deserve to live.

“I see you understand,” Stott said. “But you don’t
fully
understand. I don’t want you to find my traps now. I want you to find the ship. I want you to go inside. I want you to be tested and taken from this world and never brought back to life.”’

Stott was right. I
did finally understand him. He wanted me to find the way to the alien ship. He wanted me to do it, so I could be tormented and abused the way he had been at some point.

I pointed my gun at him and gestured with it meaningfully. “Lead the way. Show me how to get to the ship.”

“I will find the closest exit. I know them all. Better than most.”

“Stott,” I said as I followed him and called for Harris and the others to follow me, “if you screw me, I want you to know, I’m going burn you down before you can get away.”

Stott laughed. It was a weird, haunted sound. “Don’t worry! I don’t have to harm you. To kill a fool, all one has to do is lead him to a cliff. You’re a special fool, since you demand to be guided there.”

I followed him through dark tunnels for several minutes. As I went, I dropped beepers: small devices that marked the path for the rest of the troops I hoped would follow soon.

Stott occasionally giggled, and he crept along on all fours as often as not. As I followed him deeper, going downhill toward the giant ship, I had to wonder which of us was the crazy one.

I didn’t trust our guide. How could I? The man had shot me in the back only a few days ago. I’d caught him planting booby-traps that had already killed one of my comrades. What’s more, he knew about Della and me. Our little get-together in the hot springs had become front-page news. That alone might be enough for him to try his luck at killing me again. Who knew? Maybe it would stick this time around.

But I didn’t have much choice in the matter. We had to find a way out of these tunnels that reached closer to the ship—either that or my commanders were going to send us on an insane charge right at that shield. We’d squeeze through the dome of force, dying as we went, and probably finish up on the ramp in a heap of fried meat.

I knew Stott might be leading us to our deaths, but I felt like I had to take the chance. Hell, we were all about to die anyway. At least this way, I figured there was hope.

So, I led the way. I didn’t tell Harris about Stott—who he was, and what kind of a sneaky little psychotic bastard he really was. I figured they might turn around if I did, and I wouldn’t have blamed them for it.

We pressed ahead into the darkness. Every time dirt sifted down from the crumbling roof of the tunnels, dribbling onto my helmet or armored back, I figured that was it. The cave-in was finally letting go, and I’d screwed up royally.

But instead, the tunnels just went on and on. When I was just about to give up, and Harris was reminding me we only had a few minutes left, Stott stopped. He felt around in the dark. I cranked up the beams on my helmet lights and tried to peer past him, but I couldn’t. The tunnel had ended.

“What’s this crap?” I demanded.

We were down on our hands and knees now because the ceiling was low. I scrambled up to Stott and grabbed him around the throat with steel gauntlets. He began keening, sounding like a rabbit in a snare.

“Hey, hey,” Harris said, coming up behind me and giving me a shove. “What the hell is wrong with you now, McGill?”

“He led us into a dead end. There’s nothing here.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“He hates me. I—”

Kivi came up to us then and kicked me. “You screwed his girlfriend, didn’t you?” she demanded. “That’s why he’s here. That’s why he came looking for you in your crazy love tunnels. This is all bullshit, Harris. We’ve got to get back to the surface and rejoin our unit. The attack will come soon, and we’ll be stuck down here.”

I pushed Kivi off me. “It’s not that way at all,” I said. “But I do think he’s screwed us over.”

“This is just like when you came down here to find your new girlfriend,” Kivi went on. “Why die in battle if you can have a little fun in the dark instead? I thought you were moving kind of fast—I bet you were trying to lose the rest of us in this maze. Admit it!”

Kivi wasn’t always a reasonable person. When she got jealous, every butt in sight got a dose of her foot.

Harris pushed the two of us apart.

“Shut up!” he roared. “Look up, you fools!”

We did and gaped at what we saw. There was a crack, not much more than a slit, in the limestone ceiling. Stott had jammed himself into it and was squeezing upward as we watched.

“He’s getting away,” Kivi said.

Harris bashed her one on the helmet. “Who cares? That’s got to be the way out. Kivi, you’re the smallest. Get up there after him. Scout and report. You’ve got one minute. McGill, unlimber that cannon of yours. We can’t get out through this exit if it’s so small. I’ll report in. If Graves approves, we’ll melt the walls back a little and make more room.”

“You really think he’s found it, Vet?” I asked, incredulous.

He gave me a quizzical frown. “Was Kivi right, boy? Were you really down here looking for booty the whole time? Of course he’s found it. What the hell else are we doing down here?”

“Right,” I said, pawing at my kit. I had to clear off the dust, connect the cables and test-fire the unit. I checked the power-levels…they looked good.

In the meantime, Harris used a guide-wire we’d left in our wake to talk to Graves. Radio didn’t seem to want to penetrate these stone walls.

Kivi crept up the hole after Stott, cursing and squirming.

“I’m stuck,” she said, sending down a cascade of dust into our faces. “Oh, shit, I’m stuck!”

“Calm down,” Harris said. “What do you see up there?”

“Uh…not much. There’s light ahead. Must be daylight. That colonist weasel is gone.”

“Follow him.”

“I won’t be able to get back!”

“That’s an order!”

More squirming, churning and dust: I could tell she’d turned on her exoskeleton and goosed the power. Her limbs churned with strength she couldn’t have mustered otherwise.

“I hate you, McGill!” she called down.

“Join the club, girl,” Harris answered. “Any progress?”

“Yeah. I’m up at the top. I’m under some kind of big rock. We can’t charge out of here. We won’t be able to move fast enough. They’d nail each of us as we came out once they figure out where the exit is.”

“What about our guide?” I called.

“He’s—ah, hold on, I see him. They’ve got him! I think he tried to run, and two skinnies ran him down. Permission to fire, Vet?”

“Denied,” Harris said firmly. “We can’t give away our position. We aren’t ready.”

I shook my head. Despite my dislike of Stott, I felt a little sorry for him. His worst fears had been realized. He’d been caught and dragged into that ship of nightmares again. Whatever he’d done in the past, I knew he had only one life to give. He’d played us fairly.

“Vet, we’ve got to go after him,” I said.

“You crazy?” Harris asked. “I thought you hated him anyway.”

“Yeah, but he’s a civvie. And he did what he said; he played his part.”

“Okay then. You want to go up there, McGill? Be my guest.”

I stood and shoved myself up into the tunnel. It really was a tight squeeze.

Harris yanked me back down. “I was kidding, fool. The only way you’re getting your little buddy back alive is when we take this ship. Focus on that, and stop with the suicidal heroics. Man, if there is anything I can’t stand, it’s a goddamn hero.”

He fumed and complained like that until Graves called back with the verdict. Harris listened, and his face fell.

“You sure, sir? Absolutely sure? It’s just that I can’t advise…yes, sir.”

“What?” I asked him.

Harris looked depressed. “It’s a go. Start burning this tunnel wider. Graves is sending our whole unit down here and two more behind it. They figure it’s a better shot than charging across open land. We’re going to storm your ship, McGill, using this pathetic gopher-hole. I hope you’re happy.”

I smiled at him. “Actually, Vet…I am.”

-28-

The next few minutes stretched into twenty, then became an hour. By the time we were prepped and ready to go, I figured we might as well have dug our own tunnel to the ship.

What really helped finish the job was a drone team that had come along with one of the units in the second wave. They had to crawl on their bellies, to burrow through the tunnels.

When they came to a spot that was too narrow, their usefulness became even more apparent. They could dig. We usually used drones to move earth, build bunkers, or carry heavy loads over rough ground. But with careful instructions and operators who knew their business, they could be used as tunneling machines.

The walls at my end of the tunnel were already as slick as glass due to countless bursts from my plasma tube. It had helped, but wasn’t an elegant solution. Digging with a cannon was kind of like—well, digging with a cannon: Messy, dangerous and only half-effective.

The mechanical pigs did a much better job. They could really tear apart loose earth and softer types of stone. Fortunately, Dust World’s crust seemed to consist of little else. I’d come to believe there wasn’t much in the way of hard granite on this planet. Whatever wasn’t sand was sandstone, limestone or clay.

The aliens in their ship above us plotted and waited for us to come out of the rocks they’d cornered us in. They thought they had the upper hand. Rather than attack us, they were waiting for us to make the next move. As we geared up to explode back out onto the surface, I sincerely hoped the aliens had no clue as to how we planned to hit them next.

The only good thing about the delay was that it gave me time to recharge my pack and replenish my ammo. After about ninety minutes of digging and massing up in the tunnels, Graves finally made a fateful announcement.

“Good news, people,” he began. Honest to God, the man’s voice sounded like he really
did
think he was relaying good news. “3
rd
Unit has been given the honor of going in first! The entire cohort will follow up on our charge. The Primus herself insisted our unit was to lead the way.”

“That bitch,” Leeson complained in the dark nearby.

I had to agree with Leeson’s assessment. Going first up a ramp into an alien ship full of vicious squids and their slave troops didn’t sound like an honor to me.

Harris clapped his gauntlets together, making a ringing sound that echoed painfully from the tight walls of the tunnels.

“Listen up!” he boomed.

Adjunct Leeson sidled forward like a crab and crouched in the middle of our platoon. There were less than twenty of us left. I found myself wishing Carlos had survived long enough to see this thing through to the end with me.

“This is do or die, people. Maybe both. We’re going up and out of that hole above your heads. The buzzers have reported back that there is a handy circle of rocks, and we’ll probably be under the firing cone of their main gun. The second you see daylight, spread out and head for cover in every direction. Our initial mission is to set up firing positions. We’ll be playing overwatch for the rest of the troops as they come boiling up out of this anthill behind us.”

We gave him a ragged cheer, as he seemed to be expecting it. The sound was lackluster, but he didn’t make an issue of it.

“Now, this next part is important: If the enemy doesn’t seem to notice our movements, don’t fire on them. I repeat,
do
not
engage
unless we’re attacked first. Command is hoping for surprise. We want every trooper up on the surface before we hit them, if possible.”

“Sir?” I asked. “The buzzers didn’t show there was enough room in that circle of rocks for all the troops.”

Leeson looked at me with dark eyes. “Yeah, I would agree. But you have your orders. Just set up and cover everyone coming up to the surface.”

“But sir,” I said, pressing the point. I’d been watching the vids from the buzzers for nearly an hour now, having had little else to do. “A fast strike might be a better—”

“For the sake of every legionnaire that ever died on an alien rock like this, I want you to shut up and follow orders, McGill. Shock us all, just this once.”

“Glory hound,” said someone off to my left. I thought it might have been Kivi, but I hoped not. She knew me better than that.

“Yes, sir,” I said with a sigh.

A timer beeped a thirty second warning in my ear. My tapper had been engaged remotely and was counting down the seconds until we were to make our first push up to the surface.

I had to admit, I was feeling a little keyed up. Maybe it was sitting down here in close quarters—or maybe it was the complete insanity of what we were about to do. I’m sure men had felt like this throughout history while gearing up to storm a beach, charge up a fortified hill or drop onto an alien world. You couldn’t help but sense your heart hammering in your chest until it felt like it was coming out of your mouth.

Finally, it was go-time. Everyone’s beeper sang, and we were all up and rushing through the fresh-dug tunnel to the surface.

I was about the seventh man to reach daylight. We hadn’t dared to put scouts up ahead of time, relying on the vids from our buzzers to do that job. The whole point of this exercise was to catch the enemy off guard.

My legs were stiff from crouching for so long, but I forced them to work when I reached the surface, goosing the power in my suit and transferring it to the legs. I had my cannon on my shoulder, bouncing and clanking. Seeing a pile of loose rocks about as big as a house, I broke left and rushed to cover, putting the stones between me and the ship.

The enemy wasn’t caught napping, unfortunately. I don’t think they knew we were coming, but they figured it out in two minutes flat. A squad of slavers was nearby, and they set up a screeching, warbling sound. They lifted their huge hands to their pursed mouths and called toward the ramp of the ship which, I now realized, was a fair distance away.

The only good news, as I saw it, was that we were inside the force dome, and it looked like their main gun couldn’t dip down enough to hit us here so close to the hull.

I threw myself flat and set up my weapon, cranking it to long range since there didn’t seem to be any immediate resistance. Behind me, troops kept bubbling up out of the ground at a rate of one every three or four seconds.

Harris came close and threw himself down beside me. He looked at what I was doing with a suspicious frown.

“McGill, have you seen any incoming shots fired yet?”

“No sir,” I said. “But those slavers over there have seen us. I’m sure of it.”

He gave me a hard stare, then looked at the enemy in question. There were four of them in a cluster. They were standing tall, looking like meercats straining and sniffing the air.

“They don’t see us yet,” he said. “They probably smell us, though.”

I sighted on the closest, most exposed man. At this range, I couldn’t miss with a tight burst.

Harris bashed my shoulder spoiling my aim. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Preparing to fire, should the need arise. Could you get your gauntlet off my pack, Vet?”

Harris clearly suspected me of all sorts of craziness. I felt wronged. Sure, I’d gone off track now and then, but to assume I’d disobey a direct order right off—that didn’t seem right.

“Okay,” he said, digging out his scope. “I’ll sight for you.”

That happy period of cooperation lasted about a minute longer. After that, events changed on the battlefield around us.

Two more ramps extended silently from the ship. One was far off to our left. The other was closer to amidships on the huge vessel.

It was immediately clear to everyone present that the enemy had noticed our position and was responding to it. They’d decided to up the ante.

Down each of these three ramps came six squads of heavy troopers. The littermates marched in strict box formation with their lockstep, easy pace.

But it was the immense creatures that followed the
littermates that surprised us. They were true giants. There’s just no other word one could apply to these monsters. They were twenty feet high and almost as broad as they were tall. They moved like sumo wrestlers and carried huge guns that were grafted onto their arms.

S
taring at these three beings, one of which had emerged from the ship at the top of each ramp, I realized the giants only had one serviceable hand each. The other had been removed and replaced with a weapon that dwarfed my own plasma cannon.

“Giants,” Harris said, staring. “They bred
giants
. I don’t frigging believe it.”

I didn’t either at first. But there they were, blinking and yawning with wet mouths full of jagged teeth.

“Hold your fire!” Graves roared in my earpiece. 

All up and down the encircling rocks, troopers were now aiming their weapons toward the enemy carefully. Almost everyone aimed at the giants. They were terrifying.

“I see a white flag,” Graves said. “Let’s give them a chance.”

I craned my neck and, sure enough, the team of slavers that had first scented us came galloping forward on all fours. The leader, who I’d been targeting had a white flag up, and it whipped in the wind as the group of four approached us.

Such strange creatures. They disgusted and intrigued me at the same time. Did they think like we did? Did they experience feelings like love and sadness, or just rage? They were like specially-bred dogs, but molded by direct genetic manipulation rather than selective breeding. Anne Grant had told me there couldn’t have been enough generations for the squids to change a human’s physiology so drastically. They must have spliced in the traits they wanted artificially to produce these abominations.

Flapping ears spread wide, then drooped as they gathered not a hundred feet from my position. The leader of the slavers stood taller than the rest, rearing up on his hind legs while the others moved restlessly behind him on all fours.

“We speak!” shouted the leader. “We speak!”

I looked up and down the line. Who the hell was going to…but then I saw him. Graves rose up from our line and marched calmly out to meet the skinny who called to us. I was proud to see he didn’t cower. He looked as if he were taking a stroll in the park. I doubted I could have looked so self-assured, and I was doubly glad it was Graves who had stepped forward rather than me.

“I’ll talk to you,” Graves said. “Tell me what you want.”

I glanced over my shoulder and smiled. While Graves talked peace with these freaks, our troops were still coming out of that hole. We were starting to get crowded a
mong the rocks, and our pigs were already throwing up fresh barriers at the open spots by tilting up boulders to block laser bolts and other incoming fire—just in case this little chat went badly. Watching all this, I understood Graves’ motivation. He was playing for time.

“You must drop your stingers,” said the skinny with a fluting voice that was strangely high-pitched for a being of his size. “Stingers not allowed in the ship.”

“Stingers?” Graves asked mildly. “You mean our guns?” He drew his sidearm but didn’t point it at the slaver.

In reaction, the slavers squirmed and milled uncomfortably.

“Stingers must be cast aside. It is commanded, and it must be so. Otherwise, you will not be allowed stay alive in the ship.”

Graves smiled. “What if we don’t want to live in your ship?”

“Wasteful,” said the slaver, suddenly spitting a gob of juice on the sands. “Unpleasant. Hopeless.”

Graves shook his head. “We enjoy our freedom. We will not throw down our weapons. We will not walk aboard your ship like sheep.”

The slaver tossed his head and looked at his fellows who made chattering sounds. I realized they were amused. The leader turned back, and his face suggested he was speaking to a lost child who did not yet understand the way of things.

“There is no freedom. You live here only because the masters allow it. Today is the day your herd must be gathered and taken home again. Do not waste your lives—you are of value to the masters only when you serve them.”

“I see we don’t understand one another,” Graves said. “We will never give in to your demands. We are not native to this world. We are from outside this star system. Our Empire is vast, much greater than you or your masters can imagine.”

More twittering and grunts ensued. Finally, the slaver turned his attention back to the tiny man at his feet. “The masters know of your Empire. It is sick and weak. You are to be
our
slaves, now. Not theirs.”

For the first time, Graves didn’t answer right away. I was stunned as well. Could these aliens and their slaves know
about the Galactics? If so, why didn’t they show the proper fear and respect that extinction should rightly instill in any thinking being?

I turned to look at Harris, and he glanced back to me. We were both frowning, but we didn’t say anything. Either these aliens were crazy, or they knew something we didn’t.

Graves decided to make another attempt. “Be that as it may,” he said, “let’s talk about the here and the now. We are strong, not weak. We are also your brothers, tall man. Look at me. I’m human, just as you are. Your masters have changed your form, but I suspect there is a strong heart beating in your breast, a brave heart.”