Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World (22 page)

-21-

“Good thing we pulled the revival unit out of the ship when we did,” I said to Carlos when he came staggering back to camp after his revival.

He was still dripping wet. He reached for his armor with numb fingers. I helped him with the leggings. That was always the worst part when a man was fresh from a revive. Your balance was one of the last things to start working right. The bio people said it was due to the excess liquids inside the sinuses, which clogged the inner ear. It took a while to drain out and clear our heads.

“No it isn’t!” Carlos complained. “If the cohort’s revival unit had been destroyed, I could have been revived in another valley—one where I wasn’t up to my ass in space-squids.”

I chuckled. “Most of them seem to be some kind of genetically-altered mega-humans,” I pointed out.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Carlos demanded, leaning on me heavily. “And how come you’re looking so smug?”

“What did you want?” I asked him, “a kiss on the top of your head?”

Carlos was quite a bit shorter than I was, and he always hated it whenever I brought up this obvious comparison.

“That’s all you’ve got?” Carlos demanded. “Smartass remarks? I died at your hands—
again
—and I don’t even get an apology? Nothing? Zip? Some friend you are.”

“I didn’t fire that big beam,” I told him somewhat defensively. “The squids blew you up, not me.”

I’d been getting accusations like this all afternoon. The platoon was looking at me like I’d personally executed them. I knew it was partly because I’d survived and they hadn’t. The guys who got lucky and lived through a bad fight always seemed like dirty, lucky pricks to the ones who’d died.

“You might as well have blown up the lifter,” Carlos retorted. “Yeah, yeah, I know, they attacked us first. But I heard about what you did.”

I eyed him coolly, trying to hide my concern. If Carlos knew that I’d shot down that enemy aircraft—well, I might as well broadcast vid of the event to the entire legion. There were many things Carlos was capable of, but keeping his big mouth shut wasn’t one of them.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you freckle-faced cracker,” he said. “The role of village idiot suits you, but it doesn’t fool me. I know you talked to that crazy little chick with the crossbow—that’s treason right there, did you know that? You arranged some kind of alliance with her, didn’t you? And now, all of a sudden, the aliens are shooting at us. What a surprise. Before, they’d been content to play slave-driver with the colonists, but noooo, you had to go and mess that up and drag us into this crap-stew...”

I stopped listening to his tirade around then. Carlos kept complaining, but I didn’t hear a word of it as I helped him into his armor. He was right, of course, but if he didn’t know
how
I’d pulled it off, it didn’t really matter. Suspicion wasn’t in the same league as evidence.

Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. Natasha seemed to be the only one who knew the full story. She’d seen me shoot the alien aircraft personally, but I was pretty sure she would keep quiet. After all, we already had a few secrets between us.

Carlos finally shut up when I put his helmet on. He lifted the visor and stared at me.

“You aren’t even listening, are you?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“I totally hate you.”

“I kind of figured. Close your faceplate, the enemy is using gas.”

Grumbling, he did as I suggested.

We got moving then, as Leeson was calling on all his able-bodied people to assemble. We were to advance and recon the enemy ship. Carlos wasn’t happy about these orders—no one was.

“This is just total bullshit,” he kept saying as we pressed our way through the thick, waxy leaves. We ran into a patch of different vegetation every now and then, stuff that looked like chard or spinach, but which was as tall as a man.

“We could make a nice salad with all this greenery,” I commented.

“Be my guest and eat some of it, McGill. I double-dog dare you.”

I chuckled and kept moving forward. Leeson wasn’t happy with me, either. He’d put me on recon and given me a three-man team. Naturally, the adjunct let the rest of his troops fall behind and linger. With me were only Carlos, Kivi and Hudson. None of them were smiling when they realized the four of us were getting close to the enemy ship alone.

Finally, Carlos kicked me in the ass. I turned around, my servos whirring. I straight-armed him, and he almost fell down.

“You left a gouge in my armor,” I complained.

“It was an accident, Specialist.”

We glared at each other for a second. Kivi and Hudson caught up, and Kivi rolled her eyes at us.

“You boys going to fight again?” Kivi asked. “Don’t be pussies this time. Use force-blades. You might both die that way.”

Carlos stopped glaring at me long enough to look at her. “Both of us, huh?” he asked her. “Aren’t you pissed at McGill? He got you killed along with the rest of us. And don’t pretend you don’t know it.”

Hudson took a step forward, but before he could speak I lifted a hand to silence the group. I was only a specialist, but I outranked all of them. They paused to look at me.

I could tell morale was low. That wasn’t unusual in Legion Varus, but I didn’t like being the cause of it.

“Look,” I said. “We’ve had a bad day, but we’re marching in the right direction now. We’re going to kill these squids and their pet freaks, not colonists from Earth.”

“That was your plan, wasn’t it?” asked Carlos, squinting at me. “I see it all now. You’re not just having fun—you’re on a crusade. Well, count me out. I don’t want to be involved with another of your lost causes.”

“You sure?” I asked him. “I’ve seen the colonist girls, you know. They’re pretty hot. They’ll be grateful if we save them all.”

Carlos chewed on that one. I knew he’d been having fantasies about innocent colonists all the way out here in
Corvus
.

“They don’t seem very friendly,” he said.

“Let’s find out.”

I turned and kept marching. The rest fell behind me. They were still grumbling, but at least no one was kicking me in the butt. I hoped we’d pull together before we made contact with the enemy.

My hopes were dashed when we reached the top of a rise and bellied up to have a look. I could see the ship and, at this close range, the shimmering shields were visible to the naked eye. The shields looked like a shell of rain that fell endlessly over the ship but never touched it.

“Turn on your suits and transmit,” I said quietly. I needn’t have bothered. Everyone was working their tappers, taking stills and transmitting vids.

Something strange loomed up among the thick foliage directly to the east of us. It wasn’t anything I’d seen before.

Impossibly tall, thin and man-like, the creature had dangling limbs with oversized hands and feet. Naked except for a flap of leathery cloth wound around its narrow midsection, it had no weapons that we could see. The face was even odder than the body. Nostrils the size of credit-pieces quivered in a nose that was as large and protruding as a normal man’s elbow. Red-rimmed eyes like coals stared at us over that nose.

I think it was as surprised to find us as we were to meet it. When it first appeared it had been walking on all fours, but it reared up when it encountered us, standing a dozen feet tall. 

Kivi’s force-blades sizzled into life extending from her wrists. I lifted my tube, but a huge hand lashed out and smashed it down.

The creature was skinny—but strong! My plasma tube went whirling away.

Kivi struck at that arm, quick as a snake. The oversized hand flew free with a spray of dark blood which splashed the foliage with a sound like falling raindrops.

The creature galloped back from us, scrambling and using its stump as well as its other three limbs. I went for my plasma cannon—but never managed to reach it.

An intense beam leapt out from the direction of the alien ship. It slagged my cannon and then swept toward me, melting earth and withering the giant flowers.

I raced back toward cover. I turned my head to see how the fight with the tall, skinny freak had gone—instantly, I knew all was not well for him.

They’d shot him down, and he’d been left quivering, slumped on the ground. I felt a pang of sorrow for him. He hadn’t seemed too bright. He’d been enslaved since birth, I felt sure of that.

My recon group ran farther into the brush. Whooshing, crackling sounds ripped through the plants over our ducked heads setting fire to the crowns of a hundred flowers with blossoms the size of umbrellas.

When we found a shallow depression and hunkered down inside it, Kivi spoke first.

“What was that thing?”

“Some kind of specially-bred human,” I said.

“Bred for what?” asked Carlos. “Reaching the top shelf?”

“I don’t know, but it was sniffing around. Maybe it was patrolling the area for stray humans. They’re here to collect slaves, remember.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s it. He’s like some kind of skinny tracking hound. He’s a slaver who runs people down after sniffing them out. I could see how that would be useful when they’re trying to dig people out of their caves.”

“A slaver,” I said thoughtfully. “As good a name as any.”

Carlos seemed to puff up with pride. He liked naming things and took credit for such honors whether he deserved it or not.

The beams from the ship soon stopped coming. We reported in via our suit radios, and it wasn’t thirty seconds later that the enemy found us again.

I think it was our transmissions that had screwed us. We’d forgotten these weren’t low-tech lizards in a forest. Whatever they were, these squids knew their tech.

This time, there were six slavers, not just one. They carried nets that crackled and sparked in gloved hands. With an odd, croaking series of cries, they sprang up all around us. I wouldn’t have thought such large creatures could move with such stealth. I swore later, as did the rest of my team, that they hadn’t made a sound or riffled a single leaf.

The nets launched, spread and floated down toward us. Electricity flowed in each metallic thread. I could see them spark and flash arcing with everything they touched. The nets floated downward slowly—as if they were made of feather-light material.

The look on the faces of the slavers was one of triumph. They seemed certain of victory. I guess that’s because they’d never fought with armored humans before. A group bearing crossbows and wearing leathers would have surely been in serious trouble.

My team faced them by putting our backs together. Carlos used his laser, beaming away at the face of the one nearest to him. The eyes smoked, and the man-thing fell back screeching and clawing at its face. Hudson and Kivi followed his example by trying to burn the other slavers. But they’d been warned and hunkered back hiding behind the fronds and stems of nearby plants.

The lasers still found them and burned smoldering streaks across their leathery chests. But they lived, even if they were left screaming and thrashing.

I didn’t have my cannon, so I went with force-blades. Looking back, I realized this was the right choice and probably saved my life. I directed the beams upward and squeezed my gauntlets, depressing the studs in the palms.

Twin blades shot upward
, and I kept squeezing, reaching for maximum extension. I’d realized that these guys were
tall
and I had to have as much reach as I could get to fight them on an even footing.

Before I could thrust my blades into the slavers that circled us, I heard a screech—a human sound.

I glanced to my left and saw Kivi sink to her knees. One of those falling, gossamer nets had touched her armor, and she collapsed under it, paralyzed.

Without even looking up, I slashed over my head with my force-blades. They crackled and snapped as they cut through the strange fibers of the net that had almost reached me.

The slaver in front of me plucked his shredded net in confusion. I’m sure he’d never seen a man defeat it before. His overly-long fingers reached out—but he didn’t get them back.

I cropped all ten of them from his hand with a smooth slashing motion using my left blade. Then I cocked the left blade over my head, as I’d been taught, to act as a guard. The right blade I thrust with, and its length pierced that skinny stack of ribs, opening up the slaver and spilling his organs over the mud. Twitching the tip upward, I ended his life, and he collapsed in a shivering, bony mass.

Two pairs of hands gripped me from behind a moment later. As I was dispatching the slaver closest to me, the others had leapt and grabbed me from behind.

They warbled and hooted in excitement. I felt my body lift from the ground. I had a hand as big as a basketball blocking my vision almost completely, as it had been placed over my faceplate. More hands had me under the arms of my armored suit, and with a grunt they lifted me. I was amazed they could manage it. They were strong, like apes, with muscles that jumped and rippled under their stretched skins. More hands had each of my wrists, holding them out so I couldn’t cut them with my force-blades.