Rogue World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 7)

by B. V. Larson

  Shock and understanding filled his face. Then, he was gone.

  All the way back to Nostrum, I felt a little low. I knew I had to give up Winslade, he was our scapegoat, and he deserved death a hundred times over. But to let a man be tormented to death by aliens—that was beyond the pale. Sure, he’d have done the same to me in a heartbeat, but I was the one who had to live with myself after today.

  The flight back to Nostrum wasn’t a long one, but I came to a decision before it was over. I reached out and switched off the radio. It was only going to start squawking and complaining. I didn’t feel like listening to an endless stream of orders telling me to come back to base.

  I tilted the angle of the vessel and dipped it down into the atmosphere. It was shaped like a tiny version of a lifter, with just enough space aboard for a squad to fit if they squeezed.

  When I landed just outside the dome, I left the snoring veteran in his vac suit aboard the small ship and walked to the dome walls.

  “Floramel?” I broadcast with my suit radio. “Are you here? This is James McGill. I’ve come alone, and I wish to talk.”

  It took a few minutes, but she finally answered.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “Why not? We’re not enemies today. I’m not going to shoot anymore of your people.”

  “We don’t have revival machines, James,” she said. “The people you killed on your last visit cannot come back. Their families are despondent.”

  I understood, but I didn’t care. I kept tapping on the dome and broadcasting her name until she showed up. A delegation of rogue scientists backed her up as they cautiously opened the dome and let me inside.

  They encircled me, searched me, and took my weapons.

  “Floramel,” I said, “I’m sorry about our conflicts, but that’s all in the past now. These Galactics in the sky—they mean business. We’ve managed to convince them not to burn Earth, but they are still determined to destroy you and this planet.”

  “Why don’t they come near and do battle?” she asked.

  “Because they’re cowards. They’ll either wait for us to defeat you, or they will wait even longer for their battle fleet to arrive and permanently exterminate you from the comfort of space.”

  “And what would you have us do?” she asked.

  “Take me to your deepest tech vaults. To the places where you hide your best secrets.”

  She frowned, creasing her lovely face with lines. “What for? Do you still lust to steal our achievements? If so, we’d rather die with them.”

  “No,” I said, “but I know someone who does.”

  Floramel needed a little more coaxing, but she finally led me underground. The lab was really located there, inside a dozen subterranean vaults. It was when we reached the deepest, darkest of these chambers that I saw what we were looking for.

  “Where are the abercronders?” demanded an acolyte. He rushed forward, greatly disturbed. A spot on the floor was dust-free, and it looked like something large and heavy had once sat there.

  “I don’t know what abercronders are,” I said, “but I take it that they’re missing?”

  “Yes—” he said, but then another man cried out across the dim-lit room.

  “Warren! Over here! More theft!”

  There were artifacts missing here and there all over the place. The rogues were outraged. At first they accused me, but I managed to reason with them.

  “If I was stealing all this stuff, do you think I’d fly down here and parade myself in your face?”

  They had no answer, but they were full of despair.

  “What would you like to do to the man who stole your tech gizmos?” I asked them.

  The acolytes and even Floramel quickly listed a surprisingly nasty series of abuses.

  “Well then,” I told them. “I’m the man who can help you out. Let’s set up a trap for this sneaky bastard who’s stealing your goodies.”

  We worked together, and it took several hours. We left our traps here and there all around the basements of various labs. Every passing minute was filled with fresh anger, as the tech-smiths kept finding new items that were missing. A tech trove to fill a king’s vault had been stolen.

  At last, as we were setting the seventeenth trap, Floramel shrieked.

  I turned to her in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  “We caught something. Back in bay five—how did someone get in there?”

  Chuckling, I left her behind. “Stay here,” I said. “This rat is dangerous and clever. Let me handle him.”

  Upset but uncertain, they let me go it alone. With vast care, I trotted to bay five, threw open the doors, and stared within.

  There stood Claver in an odd, off-balance pose. His body had been ensnared in a stasis field. He wasn’t entirely motionless, but he was vastly slowed down.

  I could see his eyes. They blinked once, in slow, slow motion. By the time they’d completed the movement, I’d approached to where the stasis projector hummed, and I placed a hand on it.

  “Gotcha, rodent,” I said, grinning at Claver.

  -47-

  Naturally, I was overjoyed to have captured Claver, but I was even happier to gain a teleport suit.

  “I don’t understand,” Floramel said, coming up from behind me and looking at Claver with curious eyes. “How can this man have stolen so many of our artifacts?”

  “He’s a dirty one, Claver is,” I said. “See that suit he has on? It’s a teleporting suit.”

  She stared. “I’m familiar with such technology,” she said. “We’ve developed it ourselves, but it only works when you have a powered device at each end of a hyper-spatial link.”

  That got my attention. “You developed such a thing? Are we talking about projectors, maybe this high?” I gestured with my hands, and she nodded.

  “I’ll be damned…” I said. “That’s what the squids used when they invaded Earth a few years back. They marched millions of heavy troopers onto our planet, and they nearly took us out.”

  “Oh…” Floramel said, looking down at the deck. “We must apologize, in that case. We were the primary developers for the Cephalopods when they ruled us.”

  “Right,” I said. “Before Earth opened this lab here in our local space.”

  “No,” she said, “not exactly. We came here using a gateway such as you describe. The Cephalopods gave us to your world as a form of tribute.”

  “Slaves, huh?” I asked.

  The Cephalopod Kingdom had an odd culture. They didn’t understand concepts such as individual rights, democracy, etc. In their universe, you were either a slave or a master—or both depending on what company you were keeping at the moment. There was no other social role possible between individuals.

  “Of course,” she said, “we served them as we served Earth, until we learned you planned to kill us all.”

  “Let’s talk about politics later,” I said. “What we all want now is to survive the day. To do that, we have to take out that Nairb ship up there.”

  “You can teleport to the ship with that suit,” she suggested.

  “True… But one man will have a hard time annihilating an enemy force so large. We’ve only got one suit—unless you can make more?”

  She shook her head. “This is Galactic technology. We’re good, but they’re better, with a million planets worth of resources to draw upon for such an effort. Even if we could fabricate such a system, it would take months of research.”

  “Right, new developments won’t help… We have to use what we’ve got now—and quick. A first strike, if you will.”

  During our conversation, Claver seemed to have finally taken notice of us. His eyes had finished a blink, and now they were sliding with infinite slowness toward ours. We probably sounded like buzzing insects to him.

  Was his head beginning a long turn in our direction? Maybe… it was hard to tell.

  “What about bombs?” I asked her. “Big bombs—anti-matter, maybe?”

  She
shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she’d picked up that mannerism from me, or she’d always had it. She’d only begun to do it recently.

  “No,” she said. “Such devices were removed with the initial group of refugees. We have many curiosities, but few weapons. That’s why we made so many fleshed drones to defend our compound.”

  “Right, a few powerful weapons… What about one of these gateways you talked about?”

  She frowned, and checked her instruments. Unlike humans, the rogues didn’t have built in tappers on their forearms. They had several devices instead that wound around their bodies on a central wire. It looked kind of creepy—like they had a snake hugging up to them. These harnesses even moved on their own to stay tight, reforming to the bodies twists and turns.

  “We have a few gateway units left. An old, simple model. It only links two points in space—you can’t reset it to a different destination without dismantling both ends.”

  My eyes grew big, just as Claver’s were beginning to do. My mouth spread into a grin.

  “That will do fine!” I said. “Let’s get it.”

  “What about him?” she asked, pointing at Claver.

  “He’s all right for now. As long as his hand doesn’t reach up to touch that dial on his chest. If he gets close—cut off a finger or something.”

  Floramel stared at the immobilized thief and again considered appropriate abuses. She then left instructions with a pair of guards to prevent Claver from escaping us.

  We found the equipment she spoke of deep in the recesses of the dark chambers under the dome. She showed it to me doubtfully.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her as I inspected it.

  “I believe I know what you’re planning—and the thoughts disturb me. We never wanted to release savagery upon others. That wasn’t our desire. We invented things to expand the mind—to delight, and fill beings with a sense of wonder.”

  My mouth made a rude, blatting noise. “A sense of wonder?” I laughed. “What good is that? We’re all about killing each other. You ever met a species that wasn’t?”

  She shook her head sadly. “Not many,” she admitted.

  “I bet not. Either you kick the other guy’s ass, or he kicks yours. Cooperation is possible, mind you, but only as long as you’ve got a mutual enemy to struggle against. Look at the Galactics. They had it all, so what did they do?”

  Floramel looked at me curiously. She had no answers. In some ways, her race was made up of innocents. They were smart, but they weren’t very realistic.

  “They got into a war for supremacy, that’s what,” I told her. “They all wanted to be King of the Hill. Imagine, ruling an entire galaxy and blowing it all for petty spite.”

  “You think such things are intrinsic within intellectual beings?”

  “I guess,” I said, messing with an actuator. “I’m not much of a philosopher. But I do understand the basic nature of thinking beings. Look at it this way, if you’re competitive and mean, you rise to the top. If you aren’t, you serve those who are. Or maybe, you’re killed off. Who could possibly become the masters of the cosmos other than the biggest, meanest bunch of bad-asses among the stars?”

  Floramel looked at me thoughtfully. “In that case,” she said, “you humans might someday inherit everything.”

  “Nah… We’re mean, but I’ve seen worse. The stars are chock-full of interstellar assholes.”

  We stopped talking philosophy then and got to work. She demonstrated the gateway—but it didn’t operate.

  “It takes a vast amount of power,” she said. “We’ll have to connect couplings under the dome itself—you damaged one of our generators last time you were here, you know.”

  “Yeah… sorry about that.”

  “If we weaken our shielding, you might take down our dome entirely. Or, you might have been sent here by the Nairbs to cripple us.”

  I met her eyes. She had a new look there, one of suspicion. I felt bad, having brought so much discord to her intellectual race. I wasn’t sure if I was doing them a favor by explaining the universe in realistic terms—or performing an ethical crime.

  “Look,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and giving her a tiny squeeze. “We’re not here to kill you—not now. We have to kill the Nairbs, or we all die. That’s how true allies are born—in fear of a greater predator nearby.”

  She didn’t look at my eyes, but instead at my hands. “Are you attacking me?” she asked curiously.

  “Uhh…” I said, dropping my hands away. “Sorry. Sometimes, humans touch one another in order to make a point.”

  “I found it distracting. I barely heard what you said.”

  “I was trying to explain that allies—”

  “Yes,” she said, “I got your message. Our people only touch when it is time to mate. Were you attempting to mate with me?”

  “No… as I said…”

  My face turned red, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was still staring at my hands.

  “That was a very unusual, sudden, forceful contact,” she said. “I’ve never been approached that way.”

  My ears thought they heard a little something in her voice. “Did you like it?” I asked.

  Floramel thought about that, and at last, she nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  That was it for me. We’d been working in this dark tomb for hours. I was tired, and thirsty, and… It didn’t matter. She was beautiful, and this version of James McGill was a virgin.

  I just had to break him in, and I did so with relish. She seemed to like it too, but I think she was used to a much more stately process.

  When I make love, a woman knows what happened—if you know what I mean.

  It took a while, but Floramel finally melted and got into it. An excellent time was had by all, and it wasn’t until later that I realized I was still thirsty.

  Along about half-way through the love-making, I figured out Floramel had to be human. I mean, there are only so many ways to shape feminine body parts, but hers were just too similar to what I was used to for the whole thing to be some kind of evolutionary coincidence.

  Quietly questioning her about it, she explained that her people were descendants of neuro-typical humans. Their ancestors had been stolen from Dust World, just as the litter mates, trackers and other types had been. Bred for brains, they’d come out looking a little different from the human norm, but no more so than one race varied from another back on Earth.

  Somehow, I felt better knowing I’d just made love to a real live woman. Leaving her curled up on a cot we’d found in the chamber, I went searching for a drink.

  -48-

  Unfortunately, it seemed like the rogues had never discovered alcohol, or at least they didn’t bother to drink it for fun. When I’d finally given up asking nerds about it, I headed back through the maze of equipment toward the love-nest I’d set up with Floramel—but I never made it back there.

  “McGill!” hissed a voice from the dark.

  I whirled and drew my pistol. I couldn’t see who was talking, but I knew a snake when I heard one.

  “Claver?”

  “You fuck up,” he told me. “How’d you get these lab-monkeys to catch me? They’re smart, but not like that.”

  While I responded, I picked my way through the mounded equipment and junk that was piled high in the room. I circled a motionless drone, and I thought I had him—but he wasn’t behind it.

  “I told them what you’d come to steal next,” I said. “They set up the trap.”

  “Hmm…” he said. “A simple appraisal of trading value? That’s what it was? Am I that transparent, even to a man of your low intellect?”

  “You’re like a bay window drinking in a sunny morning,” I told him. “As clear as glass. How did you get away from those rogue guards, anyhow?”

  He made a snorting sound. “That was easy. They turned off their stasis field and tried to arrest me. Like most tech geniuses, they’re gullible fools when it comes to practical matters—but I can�
��t get off this planet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Their stasis device drained the charge in my suit, and I can’t jump. I can’t even find a charging port that will fit.”

  I smiled. I’d taken the precaution of telling Floramel exactly what kind of fitting we used. I’d had them remove that connection point from every portal down here.

  “That’s a damned shame,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I can do for you,” he said. “I can make you rich, McGill. I can get you off this rock in order to spend it, too. You’ll live on even if every other human in the galaxy perishes.”

  “Sounds pretty good!” I said in an upbeat tone.

  That’s when he finally revealed himself. He stepped out into the open and gave me a big smile.

  “I’m actually glad to see you, boy,” he said. “These people give me the creeps. They’re too honest and thoughtful. It’s weird.”

  I took a step toward him, lowering my weapon. We were both smiling like it was our wedding day.

  “Show me a matching power-coupling,” Claver said, “and I’ll give you coordinates to safely port out of here.”

  “Throw in a suit, and you’ve got a deal,” I told him.

  I stepped forward, and he reached out a hand to shake mine.

  Now, I’m no genius, but my momma didn’t raise no fool, either. Claver’s suit was Earth-made, and I’d traveled using similar suits a number of times. The charging meter on his chest was clear and easy to read. It had a full charge, with a green LED glimmering on the front panel.

  Accordingly, my hand moved forward to meet his—but it never got there. Instead, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward me. My other hand came up balled into a fist, and I punched his lights out.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d abused one version of Claver or another, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. He fell, rolled over, and I checked to make sure he couldn’t reach the teleport button. I stripped off the suit, and he groaned awake on the deck during the process.

  “What was that for, you ape?” he demanded. “You just wanted to rob me, didn’t you? I can’t believe I fell for it.”