Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World

by B. V. Larson

  “Not expecting a counterattack? Or a second ship How about an attempt by the natives to remove this vessel from our possession?”

  The Primus’ mouth opened and shut again. To me, she looked like a curiously attractive rock-fish.

  “Unacceptable,” Drusus said. “Set up the perimeter now. I want a bunker at the base of each of these ramps that leads into the ship. No, let me correct that. I want two of the three ramps retracted. The last one, the one in the center, is to stay open for now. We’ll set up bunkers with clear firing paths in all directions. Construct a few on the far side of the vessel. For all we know, it might be possible to open this ship on the other side as well.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Primus said. She turned and relayed the orders to her staffers, who ran off like their butts were on fire.

  Drusus walked toward the knot of officers I stood behind. “Graves? I might have known you were the one leading the charge into this behemoth ship. Congratulations.”

  Graves shook the tribune’s hand. “I can’t claim that honor, sir,” he said. “Leeson was in command of the final push. I died right here on the doorstep.”

  “Pity,” Drusus said, stepping up to Leeson. He had a frown on his face, as if he smelled something a little past its sell date. “Congratulations,” he told Leeson, eyeing him.

  “Thank you, Tribune.”

  “What are you doing here, McGill?” Drusus asked next.

  Leeson opened his mouth to answer, but the Tribune stopped him with a raised index finger.

  “Let the man talk, Adjunct. He’s good at that, as I recall.”

  “Sir!” I said snapping to attention. “Centurion Graves asked that I come along.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  My eyes slid toward Graves, but I could tell I wasn’t going to get any help from him. He was watching us detachedly.

  “I was one of the first into the ship—and probably the first man to set foot on the bridge at the end. That might be why, sir.”

  “Not just that,” Drusus said. “You also organized local resistance to aid us. Without their help, we would have failed in our attempt to capture the ship. I’m sure you’ll have valuable input before this gathering breaks up.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “The colonists really helped.”

  I wondered why he’d asked me if he already knew all that. But maybe he’d wanted to hear how I explained it. Sometimes, I found my officers tricky and tiresome to talk to.

  Primus Turov had returned during our interchange and overheard us. She looked like she’d swallowed a bug.

  “That’s an overstatement of the colonists’ contribution, sir,” she said crisply.

  “Not from what I’ve seen and heard,” Drusus said, still looking at me. Finally, he turned toward the Primus. “Turov? Where were you during the assault?”

  She looked startled. “At the final stages, I was marching through the ship to the upper decks,” she said. “I led the relief forces that—”

  “Yes,” Drusus said in a voice that suddenly seemed bored. “Of course, I’ve read your report. Your cohort did very well under difficult circumstances. You’re all to be commended. Now, do you have a secure location for us to discuss serious matters?”

  “We don’t have a bunker, sir. The big drones will take about an hour to complete the first of them, but we can go into a tent or the ship itself.”

  “Go into an alien ship with unknown properties? Are you serious?”

  “We could go back to our camp, sir. It’s behind that ridge.”

  Drusus followed her gesture and looked annoyed.

  I don’t know why—I really don’t—but when I see a problem and I have the solution in my head, sometimes I just can’t keep it from coming out of my mouth.

  “We could go down, sirs,” I blurted, “into the tunnels. They’re quite roomy and secure.”

  “What tunnels?” Turov asked acidly.

  “The ones we used to get under the enemy dome,” Graves answered. “That’s an excellent idea. Before the attack, they served us as a bunker for several hours.”

  In the end, we all went to the circle of rocks where our invasion of the ship had begun. Drusus surveyed the battleground with interest.

  “There are laser strikes everywhere. This was a hard battle long before you reached the ship. What were your total revivals by the end of the assault?”

  Primus Turov looked concerned. “We had somewhere over a thousand, sir.”

  Drusus whistled. “Effectively, you wiped.”

  “Not at all,” Turov snapped back. “At any given time, the cohort was never below half strength.”

  “That is a technical distinction but an important one. You’re all to be commended for a hard-fought victory.”

  He’d already said this, but I felt that he really did mean it this time. He looked troubled. He faced us all and spoke to the group.

  “Look,” he said. “Whatever happens, you did your jobs. Not everyone sees it that way, but I do. Other cohort commanders have second-guessed every decision made here, but that’s only to be expected.”

  Frowning, I followed the group after the Tribune’s strange little speech into the cool gloom of the tunnels. What the hell was the Tribune talking about? Why had the other cohort commanders seen fit to complain about our actions? I wasn’t in love with Primus Turov, but we’d won in the end under her command. I didn’t like the idea of other officers trying to nitpick our difficult battle when they weren’t even here to participate or support us.

  The tunnels were dry and sandy. They smelled better than I remembered. Drusus circled up the officers, but I hung back in the shadows near the exit. I felt out of place.

  “Turov,” said the Tribune. “Have a security team explore each of these tunnels a hundred meters back. I don’t want anyone listening in. Use buzzers as well, and do an electronic sweep. Oh, and everyone should put their tappers into conference mode.”

  These orders took several minutes to follow. Drusus waited until all of the security people were back out of the tunnels before he got around to the point.

  He faced the circle of officers with a very serious expression on his face. “The Nairb ship has arrived,” he said.

  This caused a visible reaction. We’d all known he had to have a reason to bring us down here. The arrival of any Galactic ship was good news, in my opinion. Why all the secrecy?

  These thoughts rang out in my head, but I said nothing. I could tell the other officers weren’t clear on what the big deal was, either.

  “Excellent news, sir,” said the Primus experimentally. “We’re as good as rescued.”

  “Not at all,” Drusus said. “Tell me, Primus, how will the Nairbs judge our actions here in this system?”

  “Uh…I’m not certain, sir.”

  “Exactly,” Drusus said, nodding. “What if they find our efforts lacking? What if they decide the system is to be expunged?”

  “It’s just the Nairbs, sir,” she answered. “Surely, the Galactics themselves will come to make their own decisions.”

  Drusus shook his head. “No. That’s not how it will happen. The Nairbs will perform their investigation. They will make their decision, and then they will call for the Battle Fleet. At that point, action is almost assured.”

  “Why’s that, sir?” Graves asked.

  “Please understand that due to my office, I’m privileged with information that the general population is not aware of. Hegemony follows cases like this very closely to make sure we know how to behave ourselves.”

  I frowned, as did Graves. “Are you saying Hegemony has access to information outside our home system? To information that isn’t publicly presented by the Galactics for general consumption?”

  “I would never suggest such a thing,” Drusus said sternly. “That would be a violation of Galactic Law. And none of you had better breathe a word of it, either.”

  “Of course, sir,” Graves muttered.

  In my own case, I felt like a light ha
d gone on in my head. Of course we were spying on the Galactics as much as we could. It would be madness not to. But it was dangerous to do it, too. I had to wonder who these spies were and how they operated. To me, that was a ballsy job that made mine look easy. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a revival unit waiting around to make a fresh copy of our failed spies.

  “Don’t concern yourselves with how we gather intel. What we’ve learned from the process is alarming enough. When the Battle Fleet is called for a second time to any system, they sterilize every rock in orbit around the local star. Every. Single. Rock.”

  “But why, sir?” Graves asked.

  Drusus shrugged.

  “Could they simply be lazy?” Turov asked. “Or irritated at having to leave port and fly out to do their jobs?”

  “Actually,” Drusus said, “we suspect it’s a matter of efficiency. The Empire’s resources are always stretched thinly here at the rim of the galaxy. They can’t afford to come all the way out to a system and do nothing. They know there’s a strong possibility they’ll be called back years later to the same system if they take no action. So they don’t fool around. When the Nairbs make a call, that’s good enough for the Galactics. They wipe everything.”

  “I understand,” said Turov in a haunted tone. “Why bother to take a second look around and decide justly? Who cares if it’s a questionable case? Safer to err on the side of caution and be done with it. An extinct species can’t appeal a verdict and can’t cause further damage.”

  “Exactly.”

  I felt a sinking sensation in my gut as I listened to the officers discuss the matter. I knew Drusus was right in my heart. The local Battle Fleet had only made one trip to Earth, long before I was born. During that visit, the Galactics had given us their ultimatum. If they ever returned to Earth’s skies with their countless silver hulls shining above the clouds—well, that would be the end of everything. As a kid back in school, I’d longed to see those ships, just once. Now, I hoped I never would.

  “If the Nairb ship is in the system, how long do we have?” asked Turov at last.

  “Less than a day.”

  I turned my wandering attention back to the conversation. The officers were leaning forward, almost huddling. They looked like a pack of conspirators plotting something.

  “That puts a new light on the matter,” Graves said carefully. “If we want to make any ‘edits’ to the situation, we have to act fast.”

  “Corvus was lost, so we can’t run out of the system,” Turov said.

  “Obviously not,” Drusus said.

  “What if we all self-execute?” asked Graves. “Right now.”

  This question stunned me. I stared at each man in turn, wondering if it was a joke. From the look on their faces I figured it wasn’t.

  Drusus shook his head. “Not good enough. There would be bodies everywhere. The evidence would be indisputable. The Nairbs won’t care about that level of sacrifice. The crimes they’ll discover are too large. They can’t be erased by a few deaths. The colonists who live here aren’t authorized to be outside of our system. That’s a serious violation.”

  Primus Turov leaned forward. Her eyes were shining and decisive. “To save Legion Varus, we’re going to have to erase the evidence before the Nairbs get here.”

  “I agree,” Drusus said. “The action is regrettable but necessary.

  I couldn’t’ believe what I was hearing. I’d worked so hard, and the colonists had come so far. They were our allies now, our own flesh and blood. Our long lost kin.

  “How could we do it fast enough?” Turov asked.

  “The answer is the alien ship,” Drusus said. “We’ll never figure out how to fly it in time—but we just might figure out how to blow it up.”

  The group broke up into harsh whispering. By the time they’d formulated their plan, I was already backing down one of the tunnels.

  I overheard the details of their plans to kill all the colonists as I began trotting quietly away. They were going to overload the alien ship’s engines and turn this valley into a smoking crater.

  As I got farther away, I moved faster. Dust fell over me, and I tried not to choke on it.

  I thought I heard someone calling my name—but my tapper was off, and I was pretty far down the tunnels by then, taking random turns to lose any pursuers.

  -33-

  At moments like this, I wonder if I’m crazy. I think I probably am.

  What was I going to tell my fellow legionnaires if I ever went back to Legion Varus? “Sorry sirs, I had to run off to take a piss…and then I got lost, see…”

  I wasn’t really angry with the legion’s brass. After all, they’d been given a tough decision. The way they saw it, either we were all going to get permed; or the colonists had to die. For most people, situations like that turned into relatively easy decisions. They’d simply opted to live and let someone else die instead.

  But it was different for me than it was for the rest of the officers. I knew these colonists personally. Sure, they were weird and some of them were assholes, but couldn’t the same be said of any group of humans?

  Most of all, I couldn’t swallow the idea of turning my hands against a local population. It was just plain wrong, and I wasn’t going to do it.

  When you’re on the run in a series of dark tunnels, it’s hard not to feel fear grip your belly. I didn’t have anything other than a sidearm, and I barely knew where I was going. Fortunately, I had a compass built into my tapper. I was able to use it to steer me toward my destination, which was the wreck of Hydra, located behind the northeast wall of the valley.

  Sands shifted under my feet as I made rapid progress. I wasn’t running—not quite. I was trotting in the gloom, keeping my suit lights dialed down to their dimmest illumination levels. I wished I’d had armor and at least a rifle—but there was no way I was going back to camp for equipment now.

  I knew that if Legion Varus ever caught me, I’d probably be executed as a deserter. I had to admit they had good cause for that. Probably, any Nairb in the Empire would have recommended it to them.

  The situation was much bigger than my own personal life, however. I didn’t want Legion Varus to get permed on this rock, but I didn’t want us to survive by killing off everyone who’d been born on this world and lived a harsh life here. It was just plain wrong.

  First, Earth had sent the colonists out here and forgotten about them. Then, we’d come along unannounced and started bombing their pathetic clusters of rocks. Now, after saving them from alien slavers, we’d changed our minds and decided to kill them after all.

  “No,” I said aloud to the echoing walls.

  My plan was simple. I was going to warn them. I knew where the Investigator’s lab was. I would convince him to take his people out of the valley, then deeper into the local tunnels or out into the badlands around the polar surface of the planet. My fellow legionnaires would never find them in time.

  They only had to evade death long enough for the Nairbs to get here. After that, everything would be recorded. Killing the colonists wouldn’t solve anything at that point and might even worsen the situation.

  Would I get justice out of the Nairbs in the end? Maybe not, but it was worth trying. I’d talked them into letting me survive all their legal mumbo-jumbo before, and I was willing to give it another shot.

  I followed the dark tunnels for what seemed like hours but was probably only about twenty minutes. I found the first of a series of apertures that looked out over the valley. I took a second to gaze down at the alien ship and the legion camp.

  Feeling a pang of remorse, I wondered if I turned around right now and wandered back to camp, would they take me back? Maybe they would after a demotion or a good old-fashioned beat-down by Harris?

  Shaking my head, I steeled myself. I had to warn the colonists. Then I could go back and give contrition a try. I doubted it would work. Turov hated me under the best of circumstances. Graves and Tribune Drusus were no dummies, either. They might like
me, but outright mutiny wasn’t going to sit well with either of them.

  I forced myself to move faster. When I was moving along at a fast trot, turning up my light levels so I wouldn’t trip, I heard something.

  It was a soft, buzzing sound, not unlike that of a housefly coming near. But it wasn’t a housefly. I’d heard buzzers too often before to be fooled.

  I threw myself down in the dirt and rolled over onto my back. I couldn’t evade it that way because buzzers had infrared and olfactory sensors. There was no way they’d miss a sweaty man down here in this tunnel. But my plan wasn’t evasion.

  Drawing my sidearm, I cranked the aperture open as widely as I could. Then I waited as the buzzing got louder.

  Even with a diffuse spread, it wasn’t easy to hit the buzzer. Fortunately, it slowed down as it sensed me and tried to figure out why I was lying there on the ground.

  I fired my weapon. It took two tries before I nailed the buzzer. I’d always been good at swatting flies, and I smiled as the tiny singed drone did a spiraling nosedive into the dirt and died.

  Jumping up, I stomped on the metal bug until it stopped protesting, then began running again. The buzzers couldn’t be operator-driven directly when they worked in tunnels because the signals wouldn’t penetrate thick stone walls. Whoever had sent this one would wait for it to return, eventually being forced to give up.

  But that wouldn’t be the end of it. If one had been disabled, more would follow.

  The techs were after me. I could feel it. They wouldn’t stop until they’d found me. There wasn’t much time now. I forgot about dim lights and quiet steps. I was running all out scrambling over dirt and stone. I left bits of skin and blood on the sharpest protrusions from the tunnel walls.

  A crossbow bolt snapped out of the darkness ahead and nearly took me full in the face. I tripped and went sprawling.

  “Hold on!” I shouted. “It’s me, McGill. I’m here to see the Investigator.”

  A pair of cautious colonists crept forward, aiming their black-tipped bolts at me. It took a bit of convincing, but they finally led me to Hydra. I felt anxious every step and kept looking behind me, ears straining to catch the whine of another buzzer.