Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World

by B. V. Larson

  Our bodies were even easier to work with. Once the entire DNA sequence was input, only a few alterations had to be recorded. For example, a person might have had their wisdom teeth removed when they first joined the legion. It wouldn’t be helpful to revive such a person with a fresh toothache that would have to be surgically fixed every time, especially during a campaign. Using DNA blueprints to map out the basic design of the body, then storing changes that resulted naturally from age and artificially from repairs such as surgeries, the machine was able to reproduce a copy without the injuries that killed the person in first place.

  This had the side effect of being able to make a person younger after they died and were revived. If there was no good reason to save a person’s body, the system didn’t bother. The revival units just grew a new body that was often years younger than the original and put the freshly-copied mind into it.

  Anne finally noticed she was nude and climbed slowly down off the table. We held her up, but she slapped our hands away. Moving painfully, she got a fresh uniform wrapped around herself and let the flaps close and seal over her skin.

  “I need a shower,” she said. “Why am I so coated in slime? Oh, I get it. You clowns didn’t even drain the machine’s underbelly before you pulled me out, did you?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Amateurs! This is embarrassing. I’m probably operating on a bad grow. I think I have a fever. What about—?”

  Anne broke off and sucked in her breath in a horrified gasp as she finally took a good look at the revival machine itself.

  “What did you do?” she demanded. “Are you idiots or vandals?”

  “A little of both, I guess,” I admitted.

  Natasha wisely chose that moment to duck out of the room. “I’m going to report in,” she said as she vanished. “Drusus needs to know we’ve been successful.”

  Anne glared after her with baleful eyes. Then she turned her reddened orbs toward me.

  “The colonists damaged the machine during the battle,” I explained. “We came in here and killed them all if it makes you feel better.”

  “It does, a little,” Anne said. She walked to the machine and ran her hands over it, then reached inside and pulled something out. A gush of liquid flowed out of the maw and ran into a drain in the floor.

  I’d never been invited into a hospital maternity ward, and at this point I hoped I never would be. I had to remind myself that babies were supposed to be small, and this alien machine’s efforts were probably more disgusting than a normal birth would be. Still, I wanted to get out of here.

  “If you’re okay,” I said, “I’ll be—”

  “Forget it,” Anne snapped. “We’re the same rank, but I’m your senior. I need help. You know that by now. Start recharging the plasma tanks. These are no good anymore—you can’t leave the fluids hot and under pressure for hours. They turn septic.”

  That was how it went for me. I was in for the long haul. I resigned myself to my fate, and together Anne and I began reviving people. We started with Leeson, as officers usually came first.

  While I worked, I thought about the power these bio people really had in our legion. They decided—quite literally—who lived and who died. They could bring back whomever they pleased in the order they pleased.

  But the reality of this power was muted by the nature of the work. We weren’t playing god in this chamber—we were working our asses off. It was a hot, disgusting and thankless job. Almost always, the newly-reborn people were pissed off, sad, depressed or just plain stunned to be alive again. I couldn’t recall getting a single thank-you from any of them.

  After we’d revived about thirty people, everything changed. The first hint came when the bombardment outside on the cliffs halted.

  For the past several hours, we’d been listening to the steady snap-whine-boom of continuous, pounding fire. But it finally stopped.

  I looked up, sweating and fingers goopy. Anne didn’t seem to have noticed anything. She was pulling on a pair of feet and shouting for me to help.

  “They stopped,” I said.

  “Don’t you ever have your mind on the here and now?” she demanded. “I’m glad you aren’t an orderly, I’d write you up as the worst failure—“

  I reached past her, grabbed a foot and pulled. To my surprise, I recognized the body that flopped out. It was Carlos.

  “Ew,” I complained.

  “He’s no worse than any of them,” Anne said.

  “Yeah, yeah he is. He’s a lot hairier than average for one thing.”

  “Just get him onto the damned table.”

  I did as she asked. She frowned at Carlos, looking into his eyes and ears and checking out his vitals with various instruments.

  My attention wandered. “I’m going to have to go up and check this out,” I said.

  “Stand your post, McGill,” Anne ordered in a commanding tone.

  Technically, she outranked me, but I had no formal orders from an officer to keep reviving people with her. My place belonged with the combat arm of the unit if something had gone wrong.

  “Sorry,” I said. “If you need help, revive a trained orderly next. I’m checking this out.”

  I left her as she fussed over Carlos. She wasn’t happy, but she understood. She didn’t try to order me to stay again—which was best for both of us.

  I had to admit to myself, I had mixed reasons for exiting that chamber. I’d had about enough of regrows and recharges for one thing. But I also had an aching curiosity about the battle outside. Had the colonists waved the white flag? Had Della been killed?

  When I reached the ramp to the lifter, I was surprised to see it had been lowered. Leeson stood at the head of it looking down into the bluish light of dawn. I realized with a shock I’d spent half the night in the lifter, working that damned alien machine.

  “McGill?” Leeson asked, seeing me. “Is everyone back on their feet?”

  “No, sir. I came out to see what happened. Why did the primus stop hammering on the cliffs?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking worried. “The tribune called for a ceasefire. There’s something going on.”

  I dared to brighten. “A ceasefire? Has peace and sanity broken out on this forsaken rock?”

  He shook his head. He had the attitude of someone listening. I stopped bugging him, realizing he was concentrating on the command channel. As an adjunct, he wasn’t really expected to say anything on officer chat, but he was allowed to listen in.

  Suddenly, he looked at me with wide eyes. “Go out there,” he said. “Take your weapon. Look up, and tell me what you see.”

  I shouldered my belcher and marched out into the cool dim light of early morning. There was no direct sunlight, but at least the pools of shade all around the valley weren’t impenetrable to the eye.

  Gazing up, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’d expected something unusual, but not anything this shocking. There was a looming object lowering itself down silently from the skies.

  The ship was huge. It wasn’t any configuration I’d seen before, either. There was a dish-like silver structure at each end. These rippled with a quiet, powerful, amber light of some kind. I didn’t know what to make of it.

  But then I thought that maybe I did. I contacted Leeson.

  “Sir? There’s some kind of big ship out here—it must be a kilometer long. It’s coming down right next to the lake between us and the rest of the cohort.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Leeson said.

  Right then, I realized he was still up at the top of the ramp while I was outside. I was exposed to possible incoming fire, but I figured it didn’t really matter. If this monster decided to lay a salvo down on top of our lifter, there wasn’t much we could do. We’d be obliterated.

  “What do I do, sir?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. No one does. The commanders are all talking about it. We’re relaying the imagery to all the lifters.”

  I used the rangefinder on my cannon to
sight on the ship. It had to be about five kilometers off. That was too far for me to damage it from here.

  “Could it be that the Galactic Battlefleet has arrived? Is this what they look like?”

  “There’s a lot of talk about just that possibility. We don’t have a record of a ship with this configuration—at least, when we last saw Battlefleet 921 this type of vessel wasn’t recorded in orbit over Earth. But that was nearly a century ago. Maybe the Galactics have updated their vessels since the last time they came to this region of the Empire.”

  “Sir?” I said. “It’s down now.”

  I watched as the rippling amber effects around the two dishes stopped strobing. Beneath the ship, countless massive waxy flowers had been crushed down.

  I heard footsteps coming down the ramp behind me. A hand pushed my tube down. I looked at Leeson.

  “Were you about to shoot that ship, McGill?” he demanded.

  “It had occurred to me,” I admitted. “But it’s out of range.”

  “Don’t shoot anything without orders! If this is a Galactic vessel, you might screw up everything. Notice that they haven’t fired a shot yet? Whoever they are, they look peaceful. We’re not to take any chances.”

  Shrugging, I put the rangefinder back to my eye. “Safety’s on,” I said. “Just to be sure though—shouldn’t we abandon the lifter?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have any orders in that regard.”

  I looked at him. “The brass is going to be pretty upset if we lose the ship and the revival machine inside.”

  That got through to Leeson. In Legion Varus, we were all pretty much expendable. Even a permed unit was less important than just one of those precious revival machines. We couldn’t replace equipment like that, especially now that Earth was hard-up for Galactic Credits.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding half to himself. “We’ve got to take precautions. Let’s get that machine out of there. We’ll stash it in the rocks to the south.”

  I immediately thought of the colonists who liked to haunt the rocks all around their home valley. But I didn’t bring it up. Leeson looked worried enough. I knew his orders were to protect the lifter and the revival unit. He didn’t want to lose them both at once, no matter what happened.

  Leeson tramped back up into the dark ship and disappeared. “Stand watch out there,” he said. “Tell me if anything happens.”

  I watched the ship, feeling uneasy about it. The design was so alien, so different. I’d made a study of local shipping in the Empire as had every schoolboy from Earth. This thing didn’t look like anything I’d seen before.

  The ship didn’t do anything for several long minutes. Finally, a door opened on the side of the vessel. I stepped from foot to foot in anticipation. What kind of creatures would be manning a real Galactic ship? Would the crew consist of the spidery-looking guys I’d met before on Cancri-9?

  I watched for several long minutes and was disappointed when I saw a delegation of what appeared to be humans walk down the ramp and halt at the bottom. They moved with precision and it was clear they were soldiers. Nine of them stood in a perfect square three ranks of three. They wore what looked like armor, but it was black and shiny like the carapace of a desert beetle.

  Straining my eyes and adjusting the scope on my rangefinder I was able to see them with greater clarity. I had to go up the ramp a ways to get enough height so that my view wasn’t inhibited by the towering flower-like growths between them and my position.

  Then I began to frown. The flowers—could they be smaller over there next to the ship than they were here at my position? I stared, and my heart began to race. The men who had marched down the ramp and now stood motionlessly at attention were tall. They were about as tall as the flowers themselves.

  “Adjunct Leeson?” I called. “Something’s happened all right. A squad of men just marched out of that ship.”

  “Men? Did you say men?”

  “Yes, sir. Well, not exactly normal humans. They’re about three meters tall, all of them. At least, that’s what it looks like. It’s hard to tell.”

  Leeson came running down the ramp to stand beside me. He pulled out a scope of his own and stared into it.

  “You’re right,” he said. “They’re big, and they look human. They can’t be, though. If it’s a Galactic ship…”

  “Maybe they’re using some other race of humanoids from a distant star system for troops,” I suggested.

  Leeson looked baffled. “I’m reporting this. Keep watching. I’ve ordered the techs to send buzzers over there. We’ll have more info shortly.”

  “What about the revival machine, sir?” I asked.

  “Here it is now.”

  Several grunting troops in battle armor struggled and heaved a very large object down the ramp. One of them was none other than the freshly reborn Carlos. He looked at me in disgust.

  “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” he asked. “It has to be.”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I admitted.

  “Where are the pigs? Aren’t they supposed to be helping?”

  “Not this time. I guess they’re doing something else,” I said. The drones often helped with heavy lifting, and I had to admit that moving a revival unit qualified in that regard.

  “Where are we supposed to drag this monster?” Carlos demanded. “Grant is going crazy. She’ll recycle us all next time around, just for fun.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. Carlos and the rest dragged the machine down the ramp and off toward a sheltering circle of boulders. The group returned a few minutes later.

  “We’ve got it stashed in a safe place for now,” Leeson said, coming up to me. He was breathing hard. Everyone had to strain when carrying the revival unit. Even with exoskeletons to help out, it was heavy.

  I turned back to the strange visiting ship and as soon as I sighted on the ramp I knew things were heating up. Previously there had been a squad of nine giants standing outside the ship. Now, instead of a single squad, there were at least a dozen squads. Each group stood in a perfect square of nine. Another group marched down in locked step order as I watched. Their gait was so carefully timed, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were robots of some kind.

  “Sir?” I called to Leeson. “There are about a hundred troops at the base of the ship now.”

  Leeson came back to my side and stared through his scope. “That’s weird. According to command central, they’ve made no attempt at radio contact. They’re not listening to any attempts to hail them, either.”

  For perhaps the first time, I felt a little nervous flutter in my guts. Something was wrong. These guys—whoever they were—weren’t operating like Galactics or humans.

  Something occurred to me then. What if they were human colonists of a different variety? What if the local people that we’d been trying to blast out of these cliffs had more advanced brothers? This might be a rescue mission, come to save the local population. Or it might be that Della and her crew were really hunted like rats, and another group of aggressive colonists had come here to wipe them out.

  I wasn’t sure which hypothesis held water or if any of them did. But I was sure that the situation was a strange one.

  The procession continued and became even odder as it progressed. The troops stopped marching out of the ship and began unloading equipment instead. Huge boxes, taller than the giants themselves, were carried down and deposited on the ground. When there were about twenty of these lined up outside the ship, I heard a sound I didn’t want to hear.

  A hissing sound passed my faceplate. I saw the bolt in a flash, but it didn’t hit me. It struck the support arm of the lifter instead, uncomfortably close to my nose.

  I reached up and slammed down my visor. Turning in a crouch, I aimed my plasma cannon in the direction I thought the bolt came from. I scanned the foliage—but only briefly.

  A figure stood at the edge of the forest. She had a slip of white cloth in one hand which she was waving wildly. In the other h
and was a crossbow which she’d just used to shoot at me.

  I knew the woman by this time. It was Della.

  -19-

  Any thinking man would have melted that little witch down without hesitation, but I held my fire. I looked for her comrades but saw no one. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding somewhere nearby.

  I thought about contacting Leeson, but I was worried he’d freak out. I’d taught this girl what the white flag meant, and she’d now decided to use the technique on me. Would it be right to take revenge now?

  Heaving a sigh, I decided to take a chance. I knew I’d probably take another trip through the guts of that damned revival machine for my troubles, but for the sake of peace between the colonists and Legion Varus I lowered my cannon and walked toward her.

  Della withdrew a few feet into the flowers. I walked up to her and flipped open my visor so she could see my face clearly.

  “You are McGill?” she asked, staring at me warily.

  “You know who I am,” I said.

  She extended a long tan arm toward the alien ship.

  “Your littermates have come for you. Are you happy?”

  “I don’t know who those people are,” I said. “And I’m definitely not pleased about them crashing this party.”

  She stared at me oddly, turning her head this way and that, as if she was listening to my words and trying to understand if they were true or not.

  “How can you not know what they are?”

  “You’ve seen them before, that’s what you’re saying?” I asked.

  “Of course. They’re marauders from the stars. They come here on off-years when the planets align. They capture as many of us as their ship will hold and fly back into the heavens. We kill some of them—but they always come back, and they always take more than we can kill.”

  I frowned. “Is that right?”

  Looking at the ship, I got a creepy vibe from it. “Are you telling me these guys aren’t related to you? They aren’t your people? They look human enough.”