Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (36 page)

Glaring lights flared brightly, and bolts began to snap and sizzle. The front line of colonists fell, but the rest charged in closer. The colonists were too numerous, too close. They shot down the troops in Turov’s makeshift bunkers and slid into the firing slits. A brief struggle inside ended with the colonists victorious.

“Damn, damn, damn,” I said, staring and grimacing. “This is all wrong!”

I turned toward the distant camp. There had to be a patrol out here, something. Someone I could talk to. Things were spiraling out of control.

She was fast and almost silent. I hardly knew she was there until she slipped her nanite-blade into my back and shoved it deeply into my organs.

Gasping, I fell on my face, rolled over and clawed for my sidearm—but she already had it in her hand.

“Della,” I gasped.

She bent and kissed me in the dark. I felt searing agony and cool lips at the same time.

“You can switch sides again,” she said. “You’ve chosen to go back, so I’ve helped you on your way.”

And then that evil little witch shot me in the face with my own damned pistol.

-34-

“Catch him! Don’t let him roll off the frigging gurney, Charley. He’s a big one.”

Groaning and curling up into a wet, slimy ball, I howled in remorse and anger. I couldn’t recall having felt so betrayed by one of my murderers before.

“What a bitch,” I breathed, trying to get air. I felt like I was drowning in thick fluids. I coughed and retched.

“Come on, McGill,” the bio said, slapping me twice with a hard hand. “Get up and off my table. This isn’t your first rodeo.”

I got unsteadily to my feet. “Anne?”

“What is it, Specialist?” she demanded, checking my eyes with a blinding light.

Why the hell did they always do that?

“Charley,” she barked over her shoulder. “Recharge the calcium. I’m getting a one-point low read on bone-density.”

“On it, Specialist,” said a haggard-looking orderly. He rolled a dolly around to the far side of the revival machine, and I heard the glugging sound of liquids loading into the back of it.

“The smell of this place…” I said as the world became more steady and distinct. “How can you stand it, Anne? So sour…like piss and vinegar mixed with bacon grease.”

“It beats being on the line,” she said, then her voice softened for a second. “It’s not always this bad—it only gets like this during a pitched battle. Most of the time, we bio-types have nothing to do. How’d you die, James?”

“My new girlfriend knifed me in the back.”

This brought chuckles from everyone present. I dragged on some sticky clothing. Then I remembered to check my tapper, and I did a U-turn.

“Anne,” I said. “There are a lot of recorded deaths in my tapper from the tunnels.”

“So? Report them to central. They’ll be put in the queue with the rest.”

I hesitated. “I’m disconnected from central. Can’t I just give you their IDs directly?”

She came to me, frowning. The machine behind her was churning out a fresh body, and I tried not to look at it.

When Anne came close, she touched her tapper to mine; and the information was passed.

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she said.

“Just see that these people get revived, okay?”

“Will do.”

I hesitated. Anne Grant had helped me to live again on more than one occasion when I shouldn’t have. She’d presided over my birth many times more than my own mother.

“Anne? Do you know anything about the attack on the ship?” I asked her.

“Yes, well…just what’s on the feed. Those crazy colonists broke in and holed up inside. They closed all the ramps up tight. Turov is royally pissed. She’d massing up troops to retake the hatches.”

“Damn. Can’t anyone get along on this planet?”

Anne stepped close and looked up at me. “I saw something about you on the feed too, James,” she whispered. “They’re looking for you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a legion favorite. Can you forget to report my revival for a few minutes? Maybe mark me down as a recycle?”

“All right. You’ve got thirty minutes. Make them count.” She squeezed my hand, gave me a worried, searching look and then disappeared back into the revival chamber.

After gearing up in armor and finding a new heavy weapon, I walked all the way out of the camp and back toward the ship. This wasn’t anything unusual, fortunately. Plenty of people had been killed tonight, and the processing was expected to go on for hours. Walking in twos and threes, we were to report back to the ship as soon as we could to help with the new assault.

I caught up with a man I recognized as I came close to the ship. He loomed in the darkness like an artificial mountain: A hulking mass of metal from the stars.

“Carlos?” I asked.

He wheeled around in surprise. “McGill? You frigger, I
hate you
so much
. Can’t you just die and stay dead?”

“That’s not in the cards, my man,” I said, and I clasped arms with him.

Carlos suddenly turned serious and lowered his voice. “Might not be so easy to waltz home this time. The Primus really has her cute, tight little butt in a knot.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “It’s all a big misunderstanding. It’s my fault, really. I was led off by a colonist…but this time, she killed me.”

Carlos stared at me for a second. Then he grinned. “You’re
so
full of shit! Your eyes should be as brown as mine. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah…can you help me out?”

“I’ll try to play along. But I’m not getting permed for you. I’m not getting permed for anyone.”

That was Carlos in a nutshell. He’d die for you—but not permanently. His loyalty had its limits.

It was almost dawn when we reached the ship. The day was clear, and it became oppressively hot as soon as the sunlight slanted down hitting the high walls of the valley a kilometer or two above our heads.

I quietly rejoined my unit, which had gathered around Graves. I stood at the back. None of the officers seemed to notice immediately. With a set of steel armor on, one man in 3
rd
Unit looked a lot like the next.

I’d yet to dare turning on my tapper because everyone would know where I was the moment I did.

“Okay, troops,” Graves said. “This is going to be rough. We’ve got less than an hour to take this ship. Gear up lightly. Just marching all the way up to the bridge will take half that time.”

Carlos’ hand went up. I could have shot him. He was standing right next to me, and the first thing he had to go and do was call attention to himself.

“What is it, Ortiz?” Graves said.

“Sir, we can’t possibly sweep the whole ship in that amount of time. This thing is huge, sir!”

“Yeah, I know. But we’ve got a time constraint, and we’re going to meet it. Hopefully, the rebels will meet us in battle, lose and have the sense to surrender. I don’t have to—” he broke off then and stared right at me. “Good God! Is that you, McGill?”

“Sir, yes sir. Reporting back from revival, ready and geared as—”

“Get up here, you crazy bastard!”

The jig was up. I was in full bullshit-mode, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to work unless Graves wanted it to. He was a very hard man to bamboozle.

I trotted around the gathering, while troops stared and buzzed. I ignored them all and put a serious expression on my face as I approached my superior officer.

To my chagrin, Harris appeared, trotting alongside me. He had a grin on his face that was predatory.

“I told you I was gonna get you, McGill,” he said. “I told you.”

“Good to see you too, Vet.”

When we reached Centurion Graves, Harris had his sidearm out. He flipped off the safety and kept grinning. “With your permission, sir!” he shouted.

Graves frowned at him. “This isn’t Christmas, Harris. Have some decorum.”

“My apologies, sir!” he shouted, grinning all the while.

Graves sucked in a huge breath and let it out again. “McGill, walk with me.”

Harris looked disappointed as I went for a little stroll to the base of the ramp with Graves. I didn’t say anything. I knew I really didn’t have to.

“What’s your line, McGill? Do you even have one?”

“Line sir?” I asked as innocently as I could.

I can lie, just ask anyone from my school days. I’m not a master like Carlos, but I can pull off the look and sound of an innocent man. I worked that angle now, as hard as I could.

Graves shook his head. “That’s not going to fly. There’s no way you’re not getting permed without an airtight alibi. I know you don’t have that, but you’d better at least try.”

“Sir? I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about. I’d like to make a report on recent events, however.”

“You do that.”

“Well sir, it was like this: when our meeting in the tunnel was getting to the interesting part—well, I felt the urgent call of nature.”

Graves put up his hand to stop me. “Are you shitting me?”

“Uh…”

“Seriously, McGill? You ran off into the tunnels and fomented a deadly attack on your own people because you had to take a crap? That’s your story?”

“Not exactly, sir. While I was relieving myself, I was approached by a certain colonist who knew me.”

Graves stared at me. “That crazy mother? The Investigator?”

“No sir, the colonist in question is his daughter.”

Graves was frowning now. I knew that was a good sign. When you bullshit somebody and they start to believe, they always frown because they’re beginning to doubt themselves.

“His daughter?”

“Yes. Della, the scout-woman, the person I first contacted. Anyway, we discussed matters, and I was taken hostage. The enemy was angry about our taking of the ship, and they were preparing to storm it.”

More frowning from Graves. I dared to feel hope.

“You’re trying to tell me you followed some chick off into the dark and screwed her, is that it? And then what—you got lost after that?”

I hesitated. Graves made a hissing sound through with his teeth.

“You’re such a pain in the ass, McGill. Do you know that we had a lot of troops out looking for you? Also, a team with techs and buzzers were searching those tunnels? They go on forever. And you were playing footsies with the locals. Our search party never came back, and we can’t revive them without the confirmation of their deaths.”

I held up my tapper until I got his attention again. “I’ve found a solution for that, sir. I met up with the search team as I was dragged along with the colonists. They killed three heavies and several techs. I recorded their IDs and reported them to the bio people. They’ll be out and back on the line in an hour.”

Graves narrowed his eyes, looking at my tapper. “How come your tapper hasn’t identified you to the network?”

I shook my head and eyed my forearm. “It’s the damnedest thing, sir. The organic circuitry must not be working—not even on this copied version. I’ll have to have the techs look at it.”

“All right,” Graves said. “Your story is bullshit, but at least it’s attractive bullshit. Maybe we can get past the Primus eventually, but you’ll have to be demoted in rank. You’re a regular again. You can still carry your heavy kit for the rest of this mission, as you’re trained for it, but you’re not a Specialist any longer, McGill.”

This pronouncement gave me a pang of regret. I nodded.

“I understand, sir,” I said. And I really did. Graves hadn’t believed me. Not for a second. But he was willing to play along in order to not lose a good man on a lonely planet.

“Off the record,” Graves said quietly, “I didn’t think it would be right to kill all these colonists just to save our own hides, either. But I wasn’t calling the shots when the decision was made, and it might be too late now. They’ve screwed up by taking the ship rather than running off into the desert. Now everyone in the legion wants them dead.”

I nodded, looking up into the pinkish-blue sky overhead. Graves frowned at me.

“I’m letting you off easy McGill,” he said. “The least you can do is pay attention.”

“Remember what you said about running out of time, sir?” I asked, pointing upward.

As he looked up, his face sagged. There was a shadow coming over the valley. It soon darkened the skies and then the entire valley.

The Nairb ship had arrived.

-35-

The Nairb ship wasn’t a battlewagon. Bureaucrats usually didn’t carry a payload of Hell-burners with them ready to fall on our heads.

We feared them all the same. The power of the Empire was behind every word any Nairb spoke to a lowly species like ours. They didn’t have to wield force directly; they ruled through the threat of a vast power that might be unleashed should we fail to please them.

Being an unimportant species on the fringe of the galaxy was both good and bad. As long as no one noticed us, we were effectively invisible to the great races of beings in the Core Systems thousands of lightyears away. Staying invisible had become our best trick. It was the goal of any world like ours.

Today, however, the cold light of Nairb logic was to shine down upon us. Once the ship had darkened the skies of Dust World, all attempts to hide the truth ended abruptly. We stopped fighting with the colonists and ignored them in their stolen ship.

Instead, we focused on organizing ourselves. Lifters rolled in from other valleys all day long, as the Legion gathered its full strength. We didn’t know if the Nairbs would want to perform a headcount; but if they did, we were ready.

Within ten hours after the Nairb arrival, every legionnaire had been revived and given a full kit. We’d polished our gear, and the lifters had come from every valley on the planet to unload full cohorts on the open polar deserts. There we stood in ranks waiting for inspection.

I was near the end of a line of troops that had to be a kilometer long. Fifty ranks stood ahead of me and twenty or so more behind. We stood in the blazing sun with dust whipping into our closed visors. I had to admit,
we were a pretty impressive sight standing at attention in our thousands.

The first four cohorts were light troops—those sorry bastards: Soft gear, cheap
smart-cloth and substandard air conditioners. They cradled their snap-rifles with what had to be aching arms. My armor was much heavier, but I had better temperature controls and an exoskeleton to hold up the weight.

Each cohort was broken into ten units of a hundred troops, led by a centurion. Every unit had a flag, just as the Romans had so many centuries before us. The flags were red with gold print that identified our units. These days, of course, we didn’t need flags to show us who to follow on the battlefield. We had tappers, heads-up-displays inside our helmets and a dozen other pieces of high tech gear to serve that purpose. But on special occasions like this, when we wanted to dress up and show off, we still broke out the old gear and unfurled the banners.

As the most senior non-com in the unit, Veteran Harris had the honor of holding up our unit’s flag. It was emblazoned with the wolf’s head emblem of Legion Varus and our cohort and unit numbers. Seeing the banner flapping there in the strong, hot winds gave me a moment of pride.

After a solid hour of standing around in the sun, however, my pride was fading. I waved at a tech running down the ranks offering power to any trooper who was running low. To my surprise, it was none other than Natasha.

“Hey, pretty lady,” I called.

“Need some power, McGill?”

“Sure, give me a boost.”

I let my plasma tube down to touch the dust that now covered my boots entirely and offered her an arm. She had a drone following her that was loaded with power-packs. She plugged into my external port and I watched my gauges turn green as the juice flowed.

“Talk to me, Natty,” I said. “What the heck is going on inside the Nairb ship? Is the brass going to keep us standing out here until we’re buried under a sand dune?”

She cast a nervous look over her shoulder toward the ship. It had landed on the planet’s surface up above the valley floor. Naturally, we’d been obliged to come up here and stand in parade in front of it. We were arranged in a massive square between the hulking ship and our swarm of nine lifters.

“Let’s just hope they let us live, James,” she said quietly, not looking at me.

I reached out and grabbed her hand as she disconnected me. I made sure I didn’t squeeze too hard. Powered gauntlets could crush a person’s bones.

“You know something, don’t you?” I asked. “Tell me about it.”

She glanced at me worriedly and shook her head. “It’s best I didn’t.”

“Come on,” I told her. “Things could hardly get worse. Either we’re screwed or we’re not.”

“I’ve only caught bits and pieces from officers as I’ve juiced them up. I think things are going badly. The Nairbs want to know
everything
. They aren’t buying any of our cover stories. They want to investigate the colonists who are still holed up in that alien ship. They want to talk to the aliens, the colonists—everyone.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound so good.

“They might burn us all down, James,” Natasha said, sounding scared. “They might want to burn us all.”

“The whole legion?”

“For starters. Earth could be in danger, too. We’re not supposed to be colonizing new planets. We’re not really supposed to even be out here.”

“Yeah, I know. Hey, since this might be our last hour under the sun, how about you and I have a little good-bye kiss?”

Natasha snorted in disbelief. “As if I would—can you guess what Kivi told me?”

I sighed. “I have a pretty good idea.”

Natasha walked off, laughing. I watched her go wistfully. It wasn’t long after that when a peculiar call came in to my helmet. I answered and became concerned when I saw the caller’s ID: It was Primus Turov herself.

“McGill? Get your ass up here, right now.”

“Sir? Where’s ‘here’, sir?”

“The Nairb ship, you moron! Get to the entrance. The Nairbs will direct you.”

I lurched into motion. My legs were stiff from standing so long, but I ran anyway. Graves came to intercept me and got into my face.

“Leave your weapon—and your sidearm.”

I knew what that meant. The officers didn’t want a scene in case I was to be executed.

The look on Graves’ face was as hard as his steel-gray eyes. I gave up my guns and trotted off at a steady, ground-eating pace toward the ship. I ran first down the ranks, then up between the units. I passed Natasha along the way, and she stared at me.

“Should have given me that kiss while you could!” I shouted.

Hustling up to the hulking Nairb ship, I had to wonder exactly what they might want with little old me. I didn’t think Legion Varus could place all their sins on my head and get off with a warning after perming a single soldier. And the Nairbs had no reason to want me dead in particular. They didn’t think in terms of individuals when meting out punishment, anyway.

With nothing to go on, I dropped my worries. I’d play this game when I learned what it was about. Until then, I’d keep my mouth shut and act the part of the eager legionnaire.

Despite what Turov had said, there weren’t any Nairbs to greet me at the hatchway. All I found was a series of flashing green lights on the floor. That was typical of Nairbs, they didn’t make things personal.

As I hustled along, following the lights, I noticed that they vanished behind me. I passed what seemed like endless bulkheads and cavernous empty holds. I had to wonder why they’d brought such a big ship out here. Could they really be planning to rescue us and give us a ride home? That would be nice—if uncharacteristic of the Nairbs.

At the end of a particularly long passage, I finally found Primus Turov. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites all the way around. I wasn’t sure if she was scared or pissed off—I thought it might be a little of both.

“Good of you to take your sweet time getting here,” she said.

“It was so nice outside I hated to come in.”

She stared at me for a second, then shook her head bemusedly. She looked over my armor and dusted it off. While we spoke, she worked to clean my armor, which I thought was sort of weird. I’d never been spruced up before by someone who flat-out hated me.

“Don’t even open your damned mouth in there unless called upon, McGill.”

“Wouldn’t think of it, sir.”

“And don’t accidently kill anyone, either.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

At last, the final hatchway opened. I walked inside, taking two steps forward, and then stood at attention.

I looked around, knowing that they probably couldn’t see my eyes moving through my visor at this distance. The chamber was unlike any I’d seen yet aboard this ship. There were fat, fluffy chairs everywhere. On most of them were Nairbs, draped over their furniture like seals on rocks.

The Nairbs were an odd race. They were green-skinned and green-blooded. They reminded me of living beanbags. They’d reportedly started off as an aquatic race, but had evolved into a tool-using species with curling flippers that could manipulate objects with great dexterity. These days, they were the local accountants for the Empire.

Unfortunately, in an organization as large as the Empire, accountants and bureaucrats had grown in power. Every race we’d ever met lived in fear of the Nairbs and their heartless regulatory powers.

When I stepped into the room, a few Nairbs turned to look at me. They soon turned their attention back to the Tribune, who was the only other human in the chamber.

Tribune Drusus didn’t look happy. In all the times I’d seen him, he’d always come off as a paragon of calm judgment and wisdom. Today, he looked like a perp in handcuffs—a guilty man who knew he’d finally been caught.

“This is the man,” Drusus said to the Nairb Prefect. “He’s the only one that might get an answer out of them.”

I glanced at Drusus, hoping for a clue concerning what I was supposed to be doing here, but he gave me nothing.

“Self-execution would be far less time-wasting,” said the Prefect.

This gave my heart a squeeze. It began pounding in my chest.

“I’m within my rights,” Drusus replied.

The Nairbs translating device made a rattling sound. I think it was trying to translate a grunt of disgust.

“Very well, tell it to speak.”

Drusus turned to me. “James McGill. We need you to contact the humans inside the alien ship. Who was their leader?”

“You mean the Investigator, sir?”

“Yes, that’s him. Get him on a com line.”

“Uh…” I said, at a loss. “I don’t think he’s going to answer my—”

“Please try, McGill.”

A com-link with an outside hook-up was brought to me. I removed my helmet and set it aside. Putting on the com-link, I tried to open a channel. We’d left our com equipment inside the ship before the colonists had retaken it—but, really, I thought it was a longshot that they were listening at all.

To my surprise, the channel did open. But no one answered my call.

“Hello?” I asked. “Can I talk to someone, please?”

Drusus looked impatient. “We’ve tried that. The communication is getting to the ship, but it isn’t being answered by anyone.”

“They might not even be listening—” I began to point out.

Drusus made a rapid hand gesture, as if he were erasing my words out of the air. “McGill, they
are
listening. The trouble is that we haven’t said anything yet that they wish to respond to. Do you understand?”

I was beginning to. Drusus had made some kind of commitment to the Nairbs with regard to the colonists. Maybe they’d demanded to talk to them, and so far no one had been listening to our demands.

For a second, I considered the problem. Sure, there might not be anyone around to pick up the phone, but I had to try. I could tell from the Tribune’s attitude that it was of the utmost importance that I succeed.

“I understand, sir,” I said.

After a moment of thought, I opened the channel again. As before, it opened, but no one said anything.

“This is Specialist James McGill,” I said, then paused. “Correction, I’m Legionnaire James McGill of Legion Varus.”

Drusus made a rapid hand gesture that indicated I should get on with the show. I tried not to look at him.

“I need to talk to the Investigator,” I said. I wracked my brain, trying to come up with something that might get the man on the phone. I didn’t have much on him. “This is of great importance. It is in regards to Della, your daughter, sir. Please speak with me.”

I waited for several seconds, but there was no response.

“Maybe you’d like to use code,” I said, grasping at straws. “If you’re having trouble with your com equipment, try keying the transmit button to inform us of that fact.”

Drusus looked alarmed. The Nairb Prefect perked up.

“They have failed to comply for an extended period,” said the Nairb. “Criminals frequently seek to evade justice through hiding in ridiculously obvious places. This case is no different.”

“Please, Prefect,” Drusus said. “Allow us a bit more time.”

“Irritating. You have reached the end of your useful—”

“Please, sir. I beg of thee.”

“Beg? You plead for Imperial Mercy?”

“Yes.”

The Nairbs barked at one another for several seconds.