Rogue World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 7)

by B. V. Larson

  “Freaky,” Claver said. “Can you walk, boy?”

  Experimentally, I climbed off the table and moved around the room. The toes weren’t only shrunken, they were tender.

  “They feel like the skin has been peeled off,” I said.

  “That’s a bad break,” Claver said, shaking his head.

  I could see him clearly now. He was in a uniform—a Hegemony uniform. He had rank insignia, too.

  “Who made you a frigging Primus?” I demanded.

  “God did, as far as you’re concerned,” he told me sternly. “Now, if you can’t walk, we’re going to have to trim those off. Bio?”

  She approached, looking worried. “I’d suggest a regrow, but something’s gone wrong with the revival machine. It seems to be idling. I’ve punched in the next order several times.”

  “You don’t say?” Claver asked her. “Well, try a full cold reset, and I’ll report it up the line. We’ll send some techs down here to fix it right up.”

  The bio looked offended. “We don’t let techs touch these. Only our own people are rated to work on them.”

  “Ah, right. Well, good luck with that. McGill, come on. Crawl if you have to.”

  Unsure of what the hell was going on, I dressed and pulled on boots. That was agony, but I did it anyway and followed him out of the bunker in a stumbling gait.

  “Damn,” Claver said he led me outside, “getting pulled out early really messes a man up—or maybe it’s just you. Are you some kind of weak-sister? Some kind of—”

  I’d had about enough of him by this time. Actually, I had enough for five minutes or even five years by then. Grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around, I pulled him close to me and got into his face.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Claver?” I demanded. “You’d better start talking to me, and you make sure you give me a damned good reason not to strangle you right now.”

  “Be careful you ape,” he said. “This rank is real.”

  “I’m a bad-grow,” I told him, “you said it yourself. I’m liable to do damned near anything. Now, start talking.”

  He tried to pull a weapon, but I batted it away.

  “Nice reflexes,” he said. “You really are McGill, toes or no toes.”

  “Talk!”

  “All right, settle down. It’s kind of complicated. Just let me say that I have the best interests of you, Earth, and all humanity clearly in my mind today.”

  “Bullshit. Why are you really here?”

  “To talk to you, like I said.”

  “Why pull me out early to do it?”

  About then, a bio rushed by us in the passageway. I saw him racing through the bunker back toward the room we’d just come out of.

  “See that?” Claver said in a hushed tone. “That’s why. The revival machines have been shut down. The bio people are panicking.”

  I looked around, still a little confused. I let go of him, and he smiled.

  “That’s right,” he said in a soothing voice. “Just let old Uncle Claver take care of everything. It’s going to be all right.”

  “This isn’t my cohort’s lifter,” I said, looking around. “It’s a bunker… How long was I gone?”

  “About six days as I understand it,” he said.

  My mouth fell open. “Why? Why’d they wait so damned long?”

  “I think you pissed off Winslade—or maybe it was Graves. Could have been either of them. You always have to give people the finger, don’t you boy?”

  Peering up and down the passageway, I was beginning to catch on. “This is Winslade’s bunker, isn’t it?” I asked him. “You revived me here, because this whole thing was unauthorized.”

  “You see that? Even a monkey can get one right now and then. You’re right on the money.”

  My toes throbbed, and I hissed in pain. “But why didn’t you let them finish growing me?”

  “Couldn’t wait any longer,” Claver said. “Everything is being shut down. If I’d waited for you to get one of those all-natural, massage-therapy kinds of births, you’d be stillborn back in that chamber, dead and down the chute to the mulcher.”

  He began walking again, and I followed him. I didn’t have much choice. What he was saying was perfectly possible. Winslade was a vindictive man, and he might have decided I’d failed twice in a row. Pushing me to the back of the queue—that could have taken six days, easily.

  “What about my unit?” I asked him. “Are they back yet?”

  “Oh sure. They’ve been up and fighting and dying for days. They only iced you.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  The lights flickered then went out. We were cast into darkness. Our suits automatically glowed with LEDs to show the way.

  “You see that?” Claver asked. “We’ve got to secure the power station first. They have a backup that’s not Imperial, but it won’t provide enough juice to run everything.”

  I grabbed him again, and he looked at me with a weary expression.

  “Why did you want me?”

  “Because the Galactics have arrived in orbit, boy. Not the whole battle fleet—not yet. But the Nairbs are here. They’re scouting for the fleet. You didn’t think they’d send the whole battle fleet out here blind, did you?”

  “Battle Fleet 921?”

  He sighed. “Am I speaking English, here? Are you really that addle-brained? Maybe I should have let them dump you down the chute after all.”

  “All right,” I said, trying to think clearly. “The Nairbs are here, I get that. They shut off all our Imperial gear—I get that too—but what do you think I can do about it?”

  Claver smiled, and I began to understand as I looked into that devious face of his.

  -38-

  Claver and I went a long way back, all the way to Tech World. That had only been my third major campaign, but I’d been much the same man as I was today.

  Claver, as far as I could tell, had been a wily, henhouse-thieving fox from the day he was born.

  One point of conflict that had come up between us during our frequent—and often violent—encounters, was something known as the Galactic Key. He’d stolen it originally, and I’d taken it from him. We’d repeated that process any number of times since then, with Galina Turov taking a turn holding the key here or there.

  The Galactic Key was a total secret to most humans as it was an extinction-level violation in physical form. It was a hacking device that allowed the user to bypass security on any technology that was made by the Empire—which included just about everything worth having.

  “You want the key, right?” I asked. “Do you think turning off a few machines is going to make me cough it up?”

  Claver narrowed his eyes. “Now, what’s this new tone and attitude I’m seeing? Don’t be thinking you’re going to out-scheme me, McGill. Don’t even go there. You’re not smart enough for that.”

  Claver had never had a high opinion of me. He thought of me as cunning, rather than intelligent. In his mind, I had good instincts and tended to get awful lucky sometimes, but I wasn’t anything like his equal. I’d never bothered to correct him on this since his arrogance had given me an edge from time to time.

  “I’m just asking questions,” I told him.

  “Sure… well, here’s your answer: I know you have the key, yes, and I think you’re capable of comprehending how important it is right now. The Nairbs are in orbit. They’ve been watching the whole shit-show down here. We can reasonably assume they know the full story.”

  I frowned. That could be bad. “Why haven’t they done anything yet?”

  He shrugged. “You know the Nairbs. They like to hide and get a full accounting first. Every violation they see runs a little thrill through their bloated, slimy guts. They’re up there all right, probably having too much fun to lower the boom on us yet.”

  “Maybe…” I said, feeling my brain finally beginning to work, “or maybe they’re waiting for the full battle fleet to arrive.”r />
  “Could be,” Claver said, shrugging. “Doesn’t matter much to us.”

  “How can you say that? You know what they’ve seen. You know what they’ll do—Earth won’t survive.”

  “That’s possible,” he admitted. He made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the bunker, the legion and presumably the whole planet. “This is all as good as gone. Graves, and Harris and all your Varus turds. Those… people in the dome, too. The battle fleet will arrive, get the report from the Nairbs, and the Mogwa captains will melt this world down to bedrock inside of an hour. Hell, we’ll be lucky if they don’t burn down all of humanity for this stunt.”

  “How do we stop all that from happening?” I asked. “Even with the key I don’t see how—”

  I stopped talking, because Claver was laughing at me. He wasn’t just chuckling, either, he was belting out a full-fledged belly-laugh.

  “You dumb-shit,” he said, “I’m not trying to save any of these rubes! I’m trying to help you and I. That’s it. That’s the deal. I have teleport suits, and I—”

  “Suits?” I asked. “Plural?”

  “That’s right,” Claver said in a sly tone. “The new kind that are made for humans.”

  “I thought we’d lost them all—and I thought you were in prison.”

  He chuckled. “How do you keep a man imprisoned if he’s in several places at once? Especially if he has teleport suits and knows how to use them better than any hog does?”

  I nodded slowly. Claver was a strange, slippery man. I’d always suspected he had a secret lair somewhere. A cave, maybe, on some forgotten corner of an uninhabited world. He must have his own revival machine there and other tech gadgets like the teleport suits. I reminded myself that the first time I’d seen a suit, it had been on Claver’s back.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me see if I’m understanding your offer… You’ll get me off this rock, and we’ll both live. In exchange, you want the Galactic Key.”

  He smiled. “I wronged you, boy. I’ve often compared your intellect to that of a gibbon. But you’ve got—at the very least— the brains of a chimp. One of those smart ones that can do sign-language, even.”

  My hand came up slowly to rub at my chin, as if I was having myself a think—then I shot out a nasty hook with it, nailing him.

  Claver had never been able to take a hard right to the jaw. Today was no different. He spun around in shock and went down. I gave him a couple more blows to the head, and he stopped moving.

  Disarming him carefully, I found all kinds of interesting gear, including two needlers. I kept everything. Then I dragged his sorry ass into a side passage full of ammo and water cans and sat on the floor.

  Damn, my toes were hurting! While Claver gurgled and bled throughout his nap, I took the time to dig out a small first aid kit and used up all the bandages to bind up my ridiculously small toes. That helped a lot. They weren’t happy, but at least I’d be able to walk with less pain.

  Claver groaned awake a few minutes later.

  “I was wrong,” he grumbled. “You are a gibbon.”

  “Sorry Claver,” I said, adjusting my boots on my feet. “But your plan is unacceptable.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t have the key, you shithead. I don’t have it on me—it’s not on this world at all.”

  “Failure,” he grunted. “Give me a needler.”

  “Right, sure,” I laughed.

  “You can hold it under my chin if you want. This ‘Claver’ is a failure. I’m taking him out of the gene pool.”

  “Suicide? Just like that? Is that how you gather all your toys—by offing yourself if you fail?”

  “Precisely.”

  I chewed on that for a second. Claver seemed dejected. I came close to feeling sorry for him. He crawled up into a sitting position and looked at me. “Well?”

  “I’m thinking...”

  “We don’t have that kind of time, boy!”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m not going to use threats or torture. That won’t work on a head-case like you. But even though you are a sneaky, black-hearted son-of-a-gun, I’m willing to offer a deal.”

  “You just said you have nothing.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” I said. “I stashed your two teleport suits nearby. Don’t you want them back before the fleet blows this rock to glowing slag?”

  He smiled at me. “You think I didn’t consider that, dummy?”

  I didn’t let on, but my hopes sank a bit. He seemed to have thought this all through. Maybe, if he didn’t return in time, another Claver would come along and retrieve the suits. Or maybe, all this talk of teleport suits was just bait to get me to give up the key.

  Whatever the case, I knew this version of Claver wasn’t going to help me any further. I lifted one of his needlers and aimed it at him.

  He didn’t even complain. He just watched me with this creepy, knowing smile on his face.

  After I shot him dead, I ripped the rank insignia off the uniform he wore and tucked the body under a pile of junk. I didn’t know if he really was a primus or not, but I had a lot to do, and I couldn’t afford to be arrested for killing an officer.

  My first call was to Natasha, and she seemed relieved to hear from me.

  “James,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The same ridge—the same camp,” she explained in a weary voice. “We need your help. We’ve sent down troops, but we can’t get through the caves. So many of us have died… so many times…”

  Her report made me angry. “Winslade can’t mistreat my unit like that,” I said.

  “Well, he’s doing it.”

  “I’ll fix that soon, but we’ve got to tackle some more serious problems first.”

  “Does this have anything to do with these power outages and equipment failures?” she asked. “The weaponeers say their 88s are dead.”

  “I can’t talk about that online.”

  She fell quiet, but only for a second. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll meet you on the ridgeline.”

  I fitted myself with a helmet and sealed my suit. Making my way out of Winslade’s dark bunker, I found it was brighter outside, but not by much. Dawn was breaking, and it was cold.

  Natasha met me along the ridgeline. We talked in person, faceplate-to-faceplate. No radio transmissions could be considered safe. I quickly explained the situation to her, and she filled me in as well.

  Winslade had ordered various elements of my unit to keep trying to penetrate the dome. With me gone, Leeson had led the troops. He’d sent in Harris’ light platoon, mostly, and many of them were close to breaking.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  Quietly, she led me to the side of the mountain nearest Winslade’s bunker. I saw Harris lying there, facedown. He was dead and flat-looking, like a housecat on a highway.

  “Why hasn’t he been recycled yet?” I asked. “That gear looks good.”

  “I marked the body as lost when I called it in,” she said. “Take a look at this.”

  She showed me the back of his helmet. A tight cluster of snap-rifle rounds had punched through it. The signs were unmistakable—this was murder.

  “Huh…” I said. “He’s been making friends again, I see.”

  “The light troopers are breaking. This is their first deployment, you know.”

  I nodded, thinking that over.

  “All right,” I said, “you go see if you can find where those teleport suits might be hidden. Look for a signature that matches the ones we built at Central. I’m going to go have a talk with the troops.”

  She nodded and went to work.

  When I met up with the light troopers, they were huddled around a rock-heater. They stood up at my approach.

  “Sir,” Sarah said. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Me too,” I told her. “Sarah, would you take a walk with me, please?”

  I turned away, and she followe
d me on quick feet. While we walked I checked on Natasha every minute or two. So far, she’d had no luck finding Claver’s stash.

  “I just found Harris,” I told Sarah. “He’s stone dead. It wasn’t an alien monster that did that to him, either. The back of his helmet was so full of snap-rifle rounds it looked like a porcupine’s ass.”

  “Is that right, sir?”

  Something in her tone made me turn around to face her. She stopped in her tracks, and her eyes were guilty. They looked down, then to the left. They were darting everywhere, but they weren’t meeting mine.

  As a near-famous liar myself, I knew a guilty person when I saw one. Sarah knew what had happened.

  “Who did this?” I demanded. “I know you have the story. Let’s hear it.”

  Sarah sighed. She met my gaze at last. “He called me skinny,” she said in a weak voice, “and he volunteered my squad for everything.”

  “You?” I asked angrily. “You fragged him?”

  “He laughed when I requested he send another squad,” she said. “I died three times yesterday. Three times! He thought that was funny! He ordered us to scout again this morning—and I couldn’t take it.”

  “Yeah… Harris can be like that,” I told her. “He’s new at running a platoon, but he’s a good man under serious fire. He was better as a veteran, if you ask me…but what you did was still wrong.”

  She stared up at me. “What now?” she asked. “Are you going to perm me?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said after a moment’s thought. “I just checked on my tapper, and Harris came out of the oven before the machines shut down. He’ll be back here soon, wanting blood.”

  “The revival machines have shut down? What do you mean?”

  “Never mind… the short version is, he’ll soon come back to this spot and figure out what happened. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Her eyes looked full and wet. I didn’t allow myself to feel sympathy—at least, not much. I’d killed Harris plenty of times myself, often just because I was pissed off like Sarah was.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh, “look, we’re going to call this a bad-grow-day. You were a little off this morning, and you took it out on your commander. The next time we revive you, I’ll move you into Toro’s group.”