Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (35 page)

“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 had 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.

The Investigator was back inside his labs. He wasn’t in a good mood. As I approached, I heard him throw out an assistant. He poked his head out, glowering, but then he saw me. His expression changed to a look of curiosity.

“The schemer,” he said. “The runner, the fornicator. What do you want here? You’re like a ghost that haunts my world.”

“Sorry about that, sir,” I said. “I had to come. I had to warn you. Uh—did you say
fornicator?
”

“Yes. My daughter brags of little else. She’s determined to have your child, you know.”

“Uh…” I was honestly at a loss for words. He had to be talking about Della. Why hadn’t someone—
anyone
—told me she was his daughter?

The Investigator walked out of his lab and cocked his head, staring into my face. It was a disconcerting behavior pattern, and I realized now that I’d seen it before. Della had done that more than once. I’d thought it was a cultural oddity unique to the colonists. Now, I suspected it was a family trait.

“Warn me about what, runner?”

“Sir…” I began, and I told him the whole thing. I tried to put a good face on it. I tried to explain that the universe was a harsh, cold place and my people weren’t any more heartless than the next band of interstellar mercenaries—but I wasn’t even buying it myself.

The Investigator seemed to be taking it all in with a remarkable lack of concern. But then I got to the part about how Legion Varus planned to kill the colonists.

“Did you say they want to
blow up
my ship?” the Investigator boomed suddenly.

“Yes, sir. The whole valley. It won’t be long now. You have to pull your people out of this cave. You need to run somewhere—up to the surface, maybe. You have escape tunnels that lead up to the polar deserts, don’t you?”

The Investigator stared at me with distant eyes. To me he looked at least half-mad, but I’m not the best judge of other people’s state of mind.

His hand lashed out and grabbed up my shirt. The
smart-cloth squirmed and writhed in protest, trying to smooth itself out again.

“
No one
is blowing up my ship!” he boomed.

Then he pushed past me and ran off, shouting. An alarm went off soon thereafter that sounded like a ship’s klaxon going off. People in
on the lower decks began moving quickly after that.

I stumbled after the Investigator, not knowing what to think. The people I saw weren’t grabbing up kids and belongings and making a run for it—quite the opposite. They were gathering weapons, painting their faces black and applying fresh nanites to their bolts and swords.

Finding the Investigator, I walked up to him and got his attention.

“Sir,” I said. “What’s going on? You have to get out of here.”

“No, traitor. No, thing that crawls in the dark. No mercenary Earthmen are going to blow up
my
ship. We’re going to take possession of her, as I should have from the very beginning.”

“But sir, the legionnaires—”

He grabbed onto my arm with surprising strength. I saw that light in his eyes again, and I was pretty sure now that it was the cold, clear light of madness.

“We’re
not
running,” he told me with absolute certainty. “We’re attacking. Flee if you want to, but don’t interfere.”

He left me standing there and rushed off with a growing mass of men and women behind him. I remembered then that these people who’d been left here in the darkness were the rats who liked to fight. All the others had long since been enslaved. Only the hardest hearts among the children of Earth’s lost exiles still survived.

Even if it did all make a certain kind of sense, I was left wondering as I trotted after the swelling army about just what these people thought they were going to do with an alien ship…

Following the colonists, I had to admit I felt more than a little sick inside. I’d come here to save them
after all, to warn them. Instead, I’d apparently kick-started the war I’d previously hoped to postpone in the end. The truce was over between my people and theirs, that much was clear.

As we marched, we came upon two teams of legionnaires. I felt sorry for both groups. The first was a trio of heavy troops in armor who’d no doubt been sent here to hunt me down. They went down hard in a storm of fire with nanites eating away their eyes and throats. I made sure I touched my tapper to theirs so the death would be recorded. They could be revived once I told the camp about it. 

The next group was even more shocked. They were techs, and they’d already dropped their equipment and begun running. No doubt their buzzers had seen the colonist army on the march.

The techs didn’t make it very far. I’d thought I’d become pretty good at navigating the tunnels, but watching the colonists I realized I was a clumsy surface-dweller. They seemed to know every stalactite and spur of limestone. They vaulted over obstacles with ease and ran full-tilt until they brought down the fleeing techs in a brief, furious action.

Following, I touched my tapper to each one in turn, shaking my head. At least I could make sure they wouldn’t be permed.

A shadow watched me work as the rest of the colonist throng pressed ahead. A voice spoke, and I was surprised to realize I knew its owner.

“What kind of death rite is that?” Della asked softly.

I looked up, startled. She was standing over me, her long legs exposed and dusty.

“Exactly that,” I said, “a gesture of respect for our dead. I’m wishing them well in their next lives.”

She turned her head the other way and didn’t say anything for a moment as I touched the last of the dead techs with my tapper.

“I chose poorly,” she said. “I thought you were a great warrior—but now you’ve embarrassed me. If your seed quickens within me, I shall cut it out.”

This statement got my attention. I straightened. “I was only trying to help,” I said. “If you’re pregnant, don’t blame the kid for the sins of his father.”

“His? Are you so sure I’ll bear a son?”

I chuckled. “I don’t know anything about that. But I came here to warn your people.”

“You’re a traitor to your own kind, an embarrassment.”

I stepped closer to her, and her knife appeared in her hand. I ignored it.

“Look, we’re all the same people. That’s why I’m here. Our real enemies aren’t human—and believe me they outnumber us a billion to one. We don’t need to fight amongst ourselves. We can’t afford to. The way we bicker and kill one another—that’s the embarrassment.”

I pushed past her and didn’t look back. I heard soft footsteps after a few minutes, but she didn’t say anything.

I had to hand it to the colonists. They had serious balls. These people didn’t know they couldn’t win this fight. They didn’t seem to care. They were all about their feelings.

Wondering about them, I figured they’d been changed somewhat by their circumstances. They’d come out here as a sophisticated group: Educated, trained and intelligent. But years of travel and a harsh life on Dust World had changed them. They’d become almost tribal—one might even say savage.

When darkness fell, they boiled out of the same hole we’d originally used to get close to the ship. They managed to creep on their bellies to within a few meters of the bunkers before they were spotted.