Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (38 page)

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“You’ve
got
to be shitting me!” Carlos said to me a few short hours later.

“I shit you not,” I replied, chewing my first square meal of
the day. “We’re ‘enforcers’ now.”

We were sitting together in the mess tent in the valley we’d help liberate so recently. Overhead, the skies were clear. The Nairb ship had vanished back into space from where it had come. I, for one, hoped it would be a long time before I saw another of their hulking vessels.

“Enforcers…what the heck does that
mean?
” Carlos demanded.

“I don’t think anyone fully understands it all yet. But I know that we’re the only local species with two populated worlds
in this slice of the frontier, which makes us somebody special. This far out along the galactic rim most species are discovered before they get to the point of colonization. After you join up with the Empire, it’s illegal to colonize a second world, and therefore illegal to qualify as a level-two civilization.”

“Yeah, yeah, but what are we enforcing? Who do we get to lord it over?”

I frowned at him. Leave it to Carlos to start right in with an immediate plan to abuse our new position.

“Basically,
” I said, “we’re not mercenaries anymore. We’re regional sheriffs. We’re supposed to help other races when they get in trouble—and that doesn’t just mean beating on them.”

“This is so weird. We’ve been doing this mercenary thing for like, a century. How can that all
have changed overnight?”

“It’s still the same day, actually.”

“Funny,” he said, “very funny. Spoken like a true Nairb at heart.”

“Hardly,” I laughed.

Later, I spoke with Natasha. She was in a far more convivial mood now that the Nairbs had left Dust World.

“You know, James, I was certain you were going to be executed when you were summoned into that ship.”

“It’ll never happen,” I assured her.

“It already
did
back on Steel World!”

I shrugged and smiled at her. She was sitting beside me, and the stars were out. We were on a boulder near the lakeshore. The rock-fish blew bubbles and stared at us from the inky black water.

“What I want to know is how we’re going to get back to Earth,” I said.

Natasha laughed. “We’re not going in that ship,” she said, indicating the cephalopod vessel that sat like a pool of shadow near the shore.

“Why not? Does it smell too much like rotting squid?”

“All the techs have new orders. We’re to help the colonists figure out how to fly it. We don’t own the ship anymore. Drusus gave it to them. That’s why they opened the hatches again and came out.”

I eyed the ship thoughtfully. Natasha watched me.

“
Are you getting ideas about that Della character?” she asked.

I was startled, but I covered smoothly. This girl was telepathic.

“Don’t worry,” I laughed. “If I get near her again, I’m keeping my armor on. She killed me twice, you know.”

“Good.”

* * *

When I finally did approach the
cephalopod ship, I didn’t run into Della right away. Instead, I met up with Centurion Graves. He was there, watching the colonist fighters walk back and forth to their caves. They seemed to be carrying a lot of equipment out of the hollowed out
Hydra
to this new ship.

“Was I supposed to report here for duty, sir?” I asked him.

“No, McGill. I purposefully didn’t call you.”

It was dark again, and the bizarre insects of Dust World were creaking and blatting in the brush at our feet.

“I understand, sir. I have a history with these people.”

“That’s right. We didn’t want them to get upset
again. The truce is working for now. I heard some crazy things about your little conference with the Nairbs, by the way.”

“All encouraging words, I’m sure
.”

Graves laughed. “Yeah, right. Everyone
said they could taste their own balls, they were so scared. When you started mouthing off, they all thought they were dead. But somehow, our whole planet got promoted at the end?”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Diplomacy is an underappreciated art.”

“Okay, all bullshit aside McGill, do you know anything about the pull-back? I’ve heard that the Empire is falling apart.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t know. The Galactic said Battle Fleet 921 was
ordered out of our area and sent to the Core Systems. That does seem kind of strange. Do you think
all
the Battle Fleets have been pulled back home?”

“Yes, I think that’s exactly what’s happened.
We’re on the fringe. If you’re calling in reinforcements from the very edge of your territory, you’re calling in everything.”

“Yeah…you don’t think it’s serious, do you? The Inspector said something about millions of ships like raindrops.”

“That sounds pretty serious to me. Worse, they put us in charge locally. That’s got to mean something. Why put an irritating species like ours in charge of local law and order?”

“Because you don’t have anyone better who can do the job?” I suggested.

“Exactly. What else did the Inspector say?”

“Nothing much. Are we talking about a civil war in the Core Systems, sir?”

“I hope not, for the galaxy’s sake. It probably hasn’t gone that far yet. I’m hoping they’re just getting nervous. Maybe some of the ancient races are having a little squabble over who gets what.”

“You know what I think?” I asked him. “I think the Empire
is
going to fall apart. How can it survive forever when it’s so damned big? In Earth’s history, huge empires always fell apart eventually.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope it
doesn’t happen in our lifetimes.”

“Why not? I’m sick of Nairbs and snooty Inspectors.”

“You’d rather have rolling fleets annihilating populations? Destruction on a planetary scale? Black holes nudged toward inhabited systems for the purpose of swallowing entire stars?”

I stared at him but didn’t answer.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think you wanted to see that. No one does. We all hate the Empire. It sucks. But it
does
provide order. Don’t ever believe chaos is better, McGill. We aren’t all from the same species. There won’t be anything holding us back once we start going for our neighbor’s throat. You see how the cephalopods treated the local humans?”

“We’re just animals to them,” I admitted, “dogs to be domesticated and enslaved.”

“Right.”

“Speaking of which, what are we supposed to do about the cephalopods?”

“They’ve attacked an Imperial ship. They aren’t part of the Empire. They must be put down. What did you think the burden of the Enforcer meant? It means no mercy, no quarter.”

I looked up into the sky. I could see the warm-water planet that shared the Goldilocks Zone with Dust World. Reportedly, it was far more temperate and friendly than this planet. Unfortunately, it was inhabited by a particularly mean species.

“How can we even reach them?” I asked. “We only have a single legion, and nothing but lifters.”

“You’ll see,” he said.

Troubled, I left him there manning the ramps. A shadow approached me soon after I left the ship.

“I thought you were coming to see me,” Della said.

“I ought to burn you down where you stand.”

“Would you revive me, if you did?”

I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure what I’d do. I knew I was angry with her.

“Don’t try to stab me again,” I said. “I’m wearing my full kit now.”

She walked alongside me in the dark as I headed back toward camp. She didn’t speak.

“Della, I don’t know what you want, but I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

“I accept your offer.”

“Ha! No way.”

“You’re angry?” she asked in surprise.

“Hell yeah, I’m angry! You
killed
me, girl. I trusted you, and you stabbed me in the back—literally.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Of course it hurt. Are you crazy?”

“You remember the pain?”

“Yes.”

She walked in the dark beside me for a time. Finally, she sighed softly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew you would come back. I didn’t think you would remember the final moments.”

I heaved a sigh as well. “It’s nice that you apologized and everything, but I don’t think I can get over being murdered so easily.”

“You were turning away from us. It was my duty.”

She stopped and stood in the dark. I stopped a few paces farther on and looked back at her.

“Good bye, Della,” I said.

“Good bye, James.”

And that was it. I marched back to camp, flopped onto my bunk and tried to go t
o sleep. Even though I was bone tired, my mind wouldn’t shut down for a long time.

When my dreams finally did come, they were troubled.

* * *

About a week later, we left Dust World. On the second day of the journey, Graves called me up to the top deck of the lifter without telling me why.

I knew that we were scheduled to fly to a rendezvous point where we would be picked up by a transport flown by the Skrull. It wasn’t going to be a nice, custom-built ship like
Corvus
—God how I missed that ship. It was just going to be a no-frills cargo vessel. But it was reportedly big enough to carry all of us back to Earth.

“Come over here,” Graves said, leading me to a porthole.

I gazed out into the dark beauty that we called space. Timeless, silent and infinite—I was immediately captivated.

“The ship i
s going to roll over,” Graves said. “Look down.”

I did, and the disk of a blue world hove into view. It was covered in oceans and streaked with white clouds.

“Is that the cephalopod planet?”

“No,” he said quietly. “Not anymore it isn’t.”

I saw them then. Hell-burners. They fell from the aft end of each of our nine surviving lifters. They weren’t very big—but I guess they didn’t have to be.

Hell-burners were something I’d read about, and I knew that few
humans from Earth had ever seen them fall on a world. They weren’t fusion bombs—they were much more terrifying than that.

Back in school I’d read of neutron
warheads, weapons that killed by burning an area with intense particulate radiation. Neutron weapons left buildings upright, but killed everything that lived and breathed on the surface. The hell-burners were like that, but they worked on a global scale. Most forms of plant life, microbes and buried insects would survive. But anything sophisticated, anything with a brain, was wiped out.

The atmosphere
glowed redly until I couldn’t see the oceans below us anymore. The destruction of life so complete and yet silent. Stunned, I watched as a species was erased forever.

I swallowed, stared and swallowed again.

Graves clapped me on the shoulder. “Remember hating the squids?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about them anymore. That Nairb ship wasn’t entirely empty. They brought just enough bombs to do the job.”

“
What I just witnessed—it was so
wrong
, sir,” I said.

He frowned at me. “It was them or us, soldier. The Empire lost a ship in this system. Somebody had to pay. Just be glad it wasn’t either of our two planets.”

I didn’t answer. I nodded and went below. There, I stared at a rusty bulkhead while the rest of the regulars around me slept and played games on their tappers, oblivious to the dead world in our wake.

Did I feel sorry for the
squids? No, not exactly. They’d been vicious bastards who would have done the same thing to us in a heartbeat. But to wipe out an entire living world…

I had to admit to myself, I now hated the Empire even more than I hated the squids.

* * *

Earth changed after we
reached home. Mostly, it was a good change.

There was energy in the air, and ships came down from space almost every day to deliver exotic goods. Wealth was flowing again, wealth like we’d never seen before.

I learned that part of becoming the local Enforcement world involved an Imperial stipend. I’m sure the credit amounts would have been sneered at in the Core Systems, but out here in our little ghetto of stars, it was an undreamed of fortune.

People had jobs again and hope.
We were building things everywhere: Spaceports on the ground and shipyards in space.