Edge World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 14)

by B. V. Larson

I stopped walking and my sides were heaving. I looked off to the west, then the east, then back west again.

  Walking wasn’t going to do it. I’d die of starvation long before I caught them. They had vehicles and they might be a thousand kilometers away. By the time I caught up, they’d be moving again.

  Putting down my gear, I sat on a rock and took stock of things. I had a teleport harness, two gateway posts and my armor. My only serious power supply was in my morph-rifle, unless you counted the small suit battery that ran my HUD and whatnot.

  The battery in my rifle wasn’t strong enough to power up the posts. That took enough juice to light up a city block.

  Nope, it had to be the harness. There was no other way.

  I eyed the thing dubiously. I’d had a lot of experience with such devices, but that didn’t mean I knew how to program one accurately. My big problem was navigation. I’d never been accused of being a math wiz.

  Still, I had to try. It was that or die out here with aliens beating on my starving, stupid ass.

  Heaving a big sigh, I took my best shot. I estimated the planet’s curvature, my current position, and the probable distance I’d have to go to find them after I got there.

  This kind of blind jumping was terribly dangerous. In the past, I’d merged up with all kinds of things—ceilings, floors, other people’s bodies…

  But there was nothing else to do. I did my best, taking a full hour to work on my tapper. At last, I came up with some decent numbers.

  During this process, I naturally looked up every few minutes. Mostly, I stared off to the west. I was worried that the single mummy-boy I’d let go would return with a hundred of his cousins, bent on revenge.

  Why had I let that skinny bastard go?

  No one came my way, however. Maybe I’d put the fear of the legions into their barbarian brains.

  Splicing wires that sparked white on contact, I got the battery port to accept power from my rifle and soon had a charge I thought would do the trick.

  Gritting my teeth and praying hard, I activated the harness.

  -83-

  I missed.

  My landing spot wasn’t way off—in fact, if I hadn’t been left screaming and pin-wheeling my arms in the air, I might have been proud of myself. After all, as a rank amateur at this game, I couldn’t expect miracles.

  By all rights, I should have permed myself. The possibilities were endless. I might well have popped myself right out of the atmosphere, even shooting myself into the local sun, or meeting any of another dozen disastrous endings.

  But my tapper’s mapping functions had given me some pretty reasonable coordinates. The trouble was I’d aimed a little too high.

  I’d been paranoid, see. I could calculate the curvature of this world fairly well with the help of my tapper and dead-reckoning, but I couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be a rise in the land at my exact point of arrival.

  What if there was a hill at that spot? Nothing too grand, just a hundred meters or so of stacked dirt? That would mean I’d pop into existence buried in the middle of a thousand of tons earth and stone. I’d be buried alive, unable to move, waiting to die…

  That fear got me to nudge up the estimates my tapper had given me. Consequently, I didn’t appear on the ground level, I popped out a good fifteen meters above the planet’s surface.

  Falling out of the sky, I howled on the way down. I tucked my head, pulled up my legs, and formed a ball.

  Thusly braced for impact, I punched into the roof of a building. It wasn’t a very sturdy roof, but it did stop my fall. Made of thin aluminum plates, the dome collapsed and I kept falling. When I hit the hard ground at last, I felt a few ribs crackle. I’d be sore in the morning, that was for sure.

  Climbing to my feet, I found a full family of Shadowlanders surrounding me, confronting me. They were chattering words at me and seemed really pissed off.

  Looking around, I tried to get my bearings. It appeared I was in the middle of some kind of family gathering. As there was a broken table under my boots, I had to figure I’d interrupted them at a meal.

  “Aw now,” I said, “I wrecked your dinner, didn’t I? I’m real sorry about this. Luckily, no one seems too badly hurt.”

  One of the women gestured wildly toward the head of the table.

  Turning painfully, I squinted—and I groaned aloud.

  A dead oldster sat there, crushed by the roof I’d brought down on their heads.

  “Damn,” I said, “I’m awful sorry about that, ma’am. I’m sure you can revive him though, right?”

  They pretty much chased my ass out of the place. It was a good thing I was wearing armor, or all those kicks to my hindquarters would have hurt.

  As I deserved the punishment, I didn’t fight back. I just kind of waded through the angry mob, accepting whatever abuse they felt like dishing out. They were all standing behind me, cursing in their strange language and rubbing at their bloody knuckles. My armor wasn’t as forgiving as I was, after all.

  Whistling a tune, I marched through the town. I soon came to find out it wasn’t the same town Helsa and Kattra were from. It was a smaller outfit, a village of sorts that handled moss-wrangling, or some such thing.

  They were able to tell me which way to go, and I trudged off into the twilight. After another few hours of marching, I reached what passed for a capital city on this planet.

  If I thought I’d received a cold welcome the first time I’d marched into this town, I was in for a shock. These people positively glowered at me. Could they have heard about the incident with the family and their dead patriarch? I wasn’t sure, and I soon lost interest anyway.

  Finding the dome closest to the center of town, I walked in like I owned the place.

  Kattra was there, with her squad of suck-ups circling around. She looked at me with vast disdain.

  “How is it you dare to impose on us again, human?” she demanded. “Haven’t you killed enough of our people? Haven’t you—?”

  “Look,” I said, cutting her off. “We don’t have much time. Listen closely.”

  I explained the situation to her, and she looked like I’d fed her a dog turd and forgot the mustard.

  “You’ve got to be joking. The Skay is coming back here? How did this happen? We’ve negotiated in good faith—the Galactics can’t do this. They can’t go back on their word!”

  “I know, I know,” I said sympathetically. “It’s not fair. Not fair at all. But sometimes they just do crazy things like this. Maybe the Skay reported back the deal he made, and his home government rejected it.”

  “That’s incredible… no, it’s unprofessional. I won’t stand for it.”

  “Uh… how’s that?”

  She got up off her throne, and she walked toward me. “We watched you shortly after you arrived, McGill. You fought a squad of bright-side scum single-handedly, and you slew them all.”

  “You saw that, did you?”

  “Yes. It was very impressive. Earth soldiers are tough, even vicious. We know how to do battle—but we’re not in your league.”

  She was walking around me now, running her hands over my armor. Now, I’m six kinds of a moron—just ask anybody—but I can tell when a woman’s buttering me up for something awful.

  “Those are mighty kind words, Kattra. But—”

  “Just listen for a moment. You and your people must stand with us, we can’t beat the Galactics alone. Together, we can begin a rebellion.”

  I thought that over for a second, and I nodded. “We surely could. In fact, we’ve considered that more than once. There’s this little problem, however—it’s the Mogwa and the Skay. They’ll come out here and crush us.”

  “But not for years. Maybe centuries. In the meantime, we’ll live gloriously. Isn’t it better to live a short, proud life? I would rather fight on my feet than to grovel and lick the boots of Galactics forever.”

  I heaved a sigh. I felt for her, I really did. I’d had just such feelings in the past, and I knew, at some po
int, I was going to go out that way. It was my destiny.

  “I do feel that way. In fact, I’ve rebelled in countless ways. I’ve killed Mogwa—lots of them. I’ve killed Skays as well.”

  She smiled. She reached up and tried to open my helmet.

  Just then, off to my side, I saw Helsa. She was stepping close on my six. She was coming at me the same way the mummy-people did. These Edge World types were all kind of sneaky, and they reminded me of various predators back home.

  “Get out of that armor,” Kattra said, still touching me. “I will service you—and my daughter will as well.”

  “That’s uh…”

  My big head swiveled this way and that. I noticed that the suck-up team had vanished. Just Kattra and Helsa were in the room now, and they were putting moves on poor old James McGill.

  Now, a better man would have shrugged these two off. He’d have known this offer couldn’t be on the up-and-up. It just couldn’t.

  But I’m a deeply flawed man, so I took my helmet off.

  The two ladies both smiled up at me with those weird, big, predatory eyes.

  -84-

  They moved on me. They came in real fast—but I was ready.

  I caught Kattra with my left hand, and Helsa with my right. My big fingers could almost touch my thumbs after going around those two long necks—almost.

  “Ladies, this is kind of rude. I’m a guest here, aren’t I?”

  Hissing and scratching my armor with their blades, the two of them went at me like buzz saws. Fortunately, the good Lord saw fit to give me the arms of a gorilla, and they just couldn’t quite reach. Still, I found myself wincing away from the glittering arcs their weapons cut through the air.

  “I’m becoming offended,” I announced to them, giving them both a light shaking.

  That settled them down, and they switched to working on my fingers. But that was even more hopeless than trying to shiv me. My hands were like steel collars, each pinning one ornery woman.

  At last they stopped struggling and glared at me, panting.

  “Damn, ladies. I once gave a pair of housecats a bath at the same time, and they were less trouble than you two.”

  “As the ruler of this planet, I demand that you unhand us, McGill,” Kattra said.

  “I will, I surely will. But first, you have to tell me why you’re trying to kill me this time around.”

  Helsa released a bitter laugh. “You must be joking. You doomed our world. The Skay is coming here to take possession of our planet and our entire people. Death is too good for you!”

  “Yeah… I can see that. Okay, I’m going to let you go, then I’m putting my helmet back on. Can you two keep yourselves under control for that long? I’ve got a solution to all your problems.”

  “That’s not possible,” Kattra said.

  “What is it?” Helsa demanded. “Another antimatter bomb? Perhaps you wish to irradiate another vast swath of our homeworld?”

  “Nope, nope—this is even better.”

  Slightly curious, they stood back while I carefully fastened my helmet into place again. Then I walked them outside and showed them the gateway posts.

  “You see these babies? They’re aligned with Central back home. All I have to do is power them up and any and all of your people can walk straight to Earth.”

  The two women stared at the contrivance.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Helsa told me.

  I laughed. “That’s funny, coming from you two.”

  “We can’t simply leave our home planet,” Kattra said. “We can’t give up everything we’ve ever known. We can’t—”

  I threw my big arms wide, and they both jumped a bit.

  “All right then! Just sit tight. Wait for the Skay—he’s coming. In the next few days, you’ll have a new moon up there in the sky.”

  Pointing up at the heavens, I let them ponder that, then I turned to walk out.

  “Where are you going?” Kattra demanded.

  “I’m leaving—I’m going back to Earth. My work here is done. I told them you were too proud and shit-off stupid to save yourselves, but I had to give it a whirl. Now that that’s over, I can go talk to some smart people.”

  Kattra showed me all of her teeth and got in my face. “You are the idiot here. Not us!”

  “That’s what people keep telling me,” I admitted, “but the proof says otherwise. Here I am, offering you freedom from slavery. Freedom from serving a giant machine intelligence. And it all stands right here in front of you.”

  “In your province, we’d serve the Mogwa instead,” Helsa said. “How is that better?”

  “Oh, it’s better. You’ve already been doing that all along. They’ve pretty much ignored you, right? That’s not how it is with the Skay.”

  “How would you know?”

  I laughed, and I lied big. “Because I’ve dealt with the Skay out in Province 926 many times. They’re vicious bastards. Heartless machines. They don’t even give the people a reason when they perm an entire species on a whim. It’s just BOOM! All over in a flash.”

  They were blinking and breathing hard. They were trapped, and I knew it. The devil you know is always better than the one you don’t.

  Kattra turned desperate eyes toward the gateway posts. “How could we do this?” she asked.

  “No, Mother!” Helsa urged. “Don’t listen to this man. He’s a fiend!”

  Kattra waved her back. “McGill? Answer me. You’ve brought a gateway that spans no more than a meter. We can march our people through it, but not our revival machines, our gear, our manufacturing vats—”

  “Don’t worry about none of that. Here’s how it will work.”

  I proceeded to tell them how we’d gotten the Blood Worlders to Earth the first time. How we’d first used this small gateway to bring through all the components of a larger one, a unit with a broad ramp that you could drive a truck through.

  After telling her all this, I got an idea, and I dug deep in my tapper’s history files. These days, they never seemed to run out of space. I found files showing the Blood Worlder invasion of Earth, and the day we’d shipped them all back to Nova Scotia by the thousands.

  “You see that? Heavy troopers two at a time. Giants walking through without even having to duck. It’s more than possible, we’ve done it before. All you have to do is give the word—but don’t wait. That Skay is coming.”

  I made a show of looking up at the sky, examining the horizons as if I expected to see the gray-white disk of the big Skay floating into view at any moment.

  “I will… I’ll step through your contrivance. I will see Central. I will see Earth—then I will decide.”

  “That’s more than fair, Ma’am.”

  Helsa seemed less happy about it than Kattra was, but about an hour later, I had them both following me through the powered-up gateway posts. They looked around in shock as I gave them the nickel tour. We walked through the upper floors, examining the sights. They were the most shocked by the vistas out of Central’s windows.

  “This structure… it’s impossibly huge.”

  “Nah,” I said. “It’s no big deal. All our cities have two or three of these.”

  My lies had the desired effect. They were overawed. As nomads, they’d never seen anything as grandiose as a bustling metropolis. They were hicks from the sticks in comparison, and they both knew it.

  As we’d come out at the upper levels, very near Drusus’ office, it was only right that we visited the big man himself.

  Now, some might say that Drusus is everything I’m not when it comes to diplomacy. He greeted them warmly and gave them gifts. He showed off his new aircar, his big desk and his row of statues—busts, he called them.

  Afterward, Helsa approached me. “This man, Drusus—he’s weak. He’s not like you. I could have killed him a dozen times since we got here.”

  I nodded. “That might be true. He’s more of a political animal. A leader and a thinker, not a killer.”

  Helsa gr
abbed my bicep. “I prefer killers.”

  “Is that right? Say, have you ever tasted alcohol? Beer, wine…?”

  She shook her head, and I smiled. I smiled big.

  “Would you like to see the city? The streets, the shops, the restaurants?”

  “What are these… restaurants? The word does not translate.”

  I laughed. “Girl, you are in for an experience. Come on.”

  We snuck out, leaving Drusus and his minions deep in negotiations with Kattra. They were going over possible worlds for emigration, rules of conduct, even lower prices for Earth on future revival machine sales. After all, there had to be something in it for us humans.

  Before we left Central, I saw Kattra’s team of underlings scurrying about. They’d come through the gateway posts from Edge World in her wake. They would draw up the details, the fine print. All that stuff made me want to yawn.

  In the meantime, I showed Helsa a real city, with real amenities. To her, our people were rich beyond imagining. Even though her folk had a valuable product to sell, the realities of endless warfare with two other tribes, plus the fact they had to pack up and move all the time, had kept them in a relatively primitive state.

  I assured her that once they had a nice, normal world under their feet, a place where they could set down real roots, their civilization could flourish and grow to heights they’d never imagined.

  By the end of the night, Helsa had been schooled on a wide variety of adult beverages, but she wasn’t to be easily outdone. She schooled me as well in various bedtime activities I’d been thinking about since I’d met her. We rented a fine hotel room with a view of the sea, and we spent the night together.

  We did have one bad moment, around about midnight. She’d strayed to the balcony and stood there, buck-naked in the evening breezes. The night was lovely and warm, wetter than she was used to. Her nose was up, sniffing the air, which was full of a dozen unfamiliar scents.

  The trouble came when our Moon came out from behind the clouds. She screeched at it, pointing and crying out in terror.

  I wrapped myself around her, and I assured her there was no danger. It took a few minutes, but at last, she relaxed in my enfolding arms.