Rogue World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 7)

by B. V. Larson

  A few seconds later, we were all down, breathing hard.

  “Everyone okay?” I asked.

  They were all good. I dared to grin.

  “I think the buzzers got three,” Natasha said, “but it’s hard to tell if they struck their target and destroyed it, or they were knocked out at the last second.”

  I nodded. “Kivi, fly one buzzer straight up. Let them all shoot at it. I want to count the surviving guns.”

  She did so, and we soon had our number. There were only seven left.

  “One more time,” I told my team. “Mark your targets… Go!”

  The buzzers went out, sailing high into the brown sky. They soon plunged down again on Kamikaze runs.

  “The buzzers are taking hits!” Natasha called out.

  “Up!” I shouted, and my weaponeers popped up to play our little trick again.

  I sighted, I pulled the trigger—and something hit my belcher. The man next to me cried out, and spun around with a hole in his faceplate.

  “Down!” I roared. “Everyone down!”

  We scrambled back down from the rim again, and no one else was taken out. But I was left shaken.

  “How’s that possible?” I demanded. “It should have worked even better the second time—there were only half as many turrets.”

  Natasha looked at me strangely.

  “James,” she said, “I think they adapted and changed tactics.”

  I squinted at her, understanding what she meant.

  “You’re thinking these turrets are smart?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They learned—from one mistake, they learned.”

  “Hmm…” I said. “I know plenty of troopers who wouldn’t have figured out what to do that quickly.”

  She nodded and stared up at the ruddy brown sky. “Yeah,” she said. “They’re quite impressive.”

  I phoned in the report of our progress to Graves, and he listened quietly.

  “We’re getting similar reports,” he said. “Automated defensive systems that change tactics—but this is the first I’ve heard of self-learning weapons. Isn’t that an advanced machine function?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Well, have you got any troops left?”

  “Yes sir. Most of them.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Finish your mission, McGill, or I’ll relieve you of your command.”

  “On it, Primus.”

  Harris came crawling over to me. His eyes were big around, and I could tell right away he didn’t like this planet, or the sneaky machines guarding it.

  “What’d he say?” he asked me.

  “He told us to stop pissing in our pants and get on with the show.”

  “Yeah… that’s what I thought he’d say.”

  “McGill?” Kivi called to me. “We’re all out of buzzers.”

  I looked at her and nodded. “That’s great. What have we got left?”

  Harris looked around and shrugged. “Well… We’ve got recruits.”

  That gave me a chill for some reason. Mind you, it was a normal thing for a Varus officer to say. Graves would have given the order without a qualm. But somehow, when it was my turn, it felt different. This centurion business was cold-blooded.

  -26-

  It took about thirty seconds to steel myself enough to do it. During that time, I made double sure my techs were out of buzzers—and fresh ideas.

  “All right,” I said, “I want all my light troopers to advance to the top of the ridge. When I give the signal, rush forward. Spread out, keep low, try to scramble for cover. You can crawl if you want to.”

  Sarah and her comrades looked sick. “What are the rest of you going to do?” she asked.

  It was something the old James McGill would’ve gotten in trouble for asking, so I didn’t yell at her.

  “We’re going to knock out the turrets while they’re shooting at you guys.”

  The light troopers were almost hyperventilating by the time they snaked their way to the top of the crater and waited for the word. The rest of my people didn’t look all that happy, either. After all, if the turrets had learned the last time, what would keep them from realizing the more heavily armed troops were the bigger threat?

  “This plan depends on the light troopers drawing fire from those turrets,” I broadcast to the group. “Don’t worry if you go down, all that means is a quick revive back on the transport. Frankly, this might be excellent timing. We haven’t got a revival machine operating down here on the surface yet, so for the foreseeable future, you’ll be on vacation.”

  Sarah’s eyes were big, her lips were parted, and she was blowing steam on her faceplate.

  “Harris!” I said, “issue every light trooper a single grenade. If you get within throwing range, take your best shot.”

  They nodded and we all moved up close to the ridge, muscles tensing.

  “On the count of three,” I began, “I want every light trooper up and over the rim. On a count of five, everyone with a heavy gun is to stand and unload on the turrets.”

  No one said a damned thing. That was fine with me—Legion Varus for sure wasn’t full of whiners.

  “One… Two… Three!”

  The light troopers, God bless them, did as I ordered. I was amazed and humbled. I wasn’t even sure I would have done it back on my first deployment.

  They scrambled up, showers of black dirt coming off their boots and knees. Most ran forward in a crouch and dove flat behind the nearest sizable rock.

  I kept counting, and I knew by the shouts of pain that the turrets had come alive again.

  “…Five!” I roared, and the heavy troops and weaponeers stood. We all sighted on turrets and blazed away. Even before we got them all, two of the lights managed to throw a plasma grenade that struck home. Before it was over, we had five dead recruits, but every single enemy gun was knocked out.

  “Okay…” I said. “Harris, take what’s left of your platoon and scout. The rest of you, fan out and follow me. Be ready to drop if we find another ambush.”

  We advanced a few hundred meters over the rough landscape, but no more turrets lit us up. We could breathe again.

  “Centurion,” Natasha said, “we’re in range of that big cannon up there. We have to be—but it’s not firing at us.”

  Peering, I zoomed in with my faceplate optics. She had to be right. I could see the thing now. It was shaped like a cone at the base, all shiny bluish metal. The turret on top was a big, ugly tube that swiveled around steadily. Past the big turret was the dome itself.

  The dome wasn’t glass, and it wasn’t just an energy screen, either. It looked like some kind of crystalline surface—but that wasn’t possible, to the best of my knowledge. Who would make a dome out of a single sheet of—whatever that was.

  Putting the dome out of my mind, I focused on the turret. We had to get past it first.

  “It’s just sitting there,” I said. “Did someone blind it, or knock its brains out? Have we had an orbital strike I didn’t hear about?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Natasha said. “It looks fine, and the dome would be damaged if there had been a wide scale attack. They aren’t dropping any bombs because the big turrets are too close to the dome walls. They didn’t want to rupture the complex entirely and kill all the people inside.”

  “I’d welcome a little retribution from above right about now.”

  Natasha shook her head. “It’s not coming. The tribune has ordered the ship’s planned bombardment to stand down.”

  When we got closer, I could see the cover had been cleared from about five hundred meters out. There was nothing bigger than a fire hydrant to hide behind all that way in.

  “It’s waiting for us to get close,” I said, feeling certain I was right. “It’s holding its fire, baiting us in close. Once we advance into the open—maybe a hundred meters in, it will slaughter us.”

  Leeson walked up to me, peering at the alien-looking machine through his own optics. “I think you’re rig
ht, McGill. That damned thing is smart—I can feel it too.”

  “We need something heavy,” I said.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Leeson said. “The dome is right behind it—if we miss, we’ll knock a hole in that sucker as big as a truck.”

  “Yeah… I don’t care. Who’s your best weaponeer? What do you have with you?”

  “Belchers. We’re traveling light.”

  “We’re in range. Set up every weaponeer you’ve got, everybody is to melt that tube from here with a focused, four-second burn.”

  “That might damage their weapons!” Leeson complained.

  “We’re going to get wiped if we don’t do something quick-like.”

  He didn’t grumble. He shook his head a little, but he followed orders. I was beginning to see what Graves had liked about the man.

  The rest of the unit halted and stood around while the weaponeers adjusted their tubes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “Keep moving. Advance slowly. Head toward cover. When we fire, dive low and stay down. You can’t do anything from here against a hardened target with rifles.”

  They began shuffling forward again. No one wanted to get closer to that big turret. We all knew it was watching us, and no one liked it.

  “Ready!” Leeson called out.

  “Burn it!”

  The weaponeers shouldered their tubes—and the turret reacted at last.

  Had it been waiting for this precise moment? Or was it just triggered because one of my men had moved in too close? I would never know, but the evil machine came to life and began to move with unnatural speed.

  “Fire dammit! Fire!”

  Several beams lanced out together, converging on the structure. They all hit the target, and it began to spark and burn. Not everybody knows this, but metal burns just fine if you can get it hot enough. Multiple belchers generated a lot of heat when concentrated on a single point, and that did the trick.

  The turret, however, had its own ideas. The barrel of that big gun started unfolding and rolling around, and it swept a beam over my advancing troops. Many of them had taken cover immediately—but not everyone.

  Some men had nowhere to go. Like troops in a musical chairs contest, they dove and scrambled desperately—but the big blue beam of energy reached out and burned them down.

  Such power! That cannon had the kind of impact I’d only seen on gunships up in space. It struck with so much force and heat that the dirt itself exploded under our feet. Eyes were blinded right through tinted faceplates, and troopers had the skin on their cheeks smoke, bubble and curl up—clean off the bone.

  A massive roaring sound was all I could hear. That had to be the beam sweeping over my unit, annihilating my troops.

  To their credit, the weaponeers stood their ground. They kept up that barrage of focused counter-fire for the full four-second burn I’d ordered them to release. By the time that short period was over, one of the weaponeers had ceased to exist. He’d quite literally been turned to ash.

  The rest of us, though, were spared. The turret continued rotating, but the beam died. We’d knocked out the projector.

  “Advance!” I roared. “Let’s finish it!”

  Charging, my men bounded up and rushed the turret. We felt like ants coming out of our tiny hill to bite a giant’s foot. The turret reacted, moving and trying to target us—but we’d fried that big gun on top. It couldn’t get out a beam to stop us.

  When we got close, we threw grenades and destroyed the whole thing. It was pretty tough, but we managed it. Inspecting the smoldering crater we’d created, we found no operators, no rogue scientists were present.

  “It was fully automated,” Kivi said. “Just like the smaller ones.”

  “It was too clever by half,” I told her. “It should have burned us the second we got into range, but no, it got all cocky and figured it could wipe us all out if it drew us in.”

  Kivi nodded. “Maybe the next one will be even smarter.”

  That idea disturbed me, because it was a real possibility.

  -27-

  We reached the dome’s lower edge. It really was an impressive structure. At least three hundred meters high, it encompassed a vast area inside. Through the bluish-tinted crystal, I could see buildings, vehicles—but nothing was moving.

  “Where are they?” Carlos asked, walking up to stand next to me. “They must not be total morons. They’re not out in the open.”

  “That’s right, they’re hiding. Probably below ground level. The briefing indicated the lab complex was more extensive under the surface than it is up here.”

  “Why don’t we just crack this dome, then?” he asked reasonably.

  I shrugged. “Tribune Deech said no.”

  “Sounds like our tribune needs some of your special magic, McGill. Why didn’t you put the make on her when she came to see you last night?”

  He’d caught me there. I’d hoped no one had known about Deech’s visit to my quarters.

  I blinked in surprise but recovered quickly. Upon reflection, I realized that within a small tight group like my unit, secrecy was pretty hopeless. Worse, if Carlos knew about it, then everyone did. He wasn’t a man who could hold onto a bit of gossip for more than a few seconds.

  “Deech isn’t a very good listener,” I said. “But she gave me clear orders. We’re getting into that dome without leveling it. We’re to arrest everyone we can, and kill only if we must.”

  “Those are pretty words,” Carlos said. “It figures we’re hamstrung by rules while these killer turrets chew us up and shit us out of the revival machines.”

  “Well then, you know the score. Now, shut up.”

  We walked to the base of the dome while we talked. According to common sense we weren’t going to be circling around looking for a door. That would only lead us into more turrets—something I wasn’t anxious to do. We’d already suffered a thirty percent casualty rate.

  “You looking for a secret entrance?” Carlos asked. “Or…?”

  I was freshly reminded about how much of a pain in the ass he could be when you were trying to do something serious.

  “Natasha,” I called out repeatedly over the unit channel.

  She showed up, and we examined the situation with her equipment. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I guess we could climb up onto the metal base and burn our way in,” she suggested.

  “With a belcher?”

  “Sure, it’s worth a try. We could plug the hole with some smart-fabric and hope it holds without depressurizing the whole thing.”

  Nodding, I called in the idea to Graves. He roared back at me.

  “No, no, no!” he told me. “Under no circumstances are you to damage that dome, McGill.”

  “What are we supposed to do to get inside then, sir? We reached our waypoint, and we’re already ten minutes late. We can’t get in.”

  “Did you check the destroyed turret?” he asked.

  “Check it for what?”

  “For a service tunnel or something!”

  “Oh… uh, no sir.”

  “Get it together, McGill! Graves out.”

  Sending a few light troopers over to scout the damaged turret, they gingerly investigated the structure. Heading around to the far side, they vanished from sight.

  “Centurion!” Harris called out to me a minute or so later. “They found something. There might be resistance.”

  “What kind of resistance?” I asked.

  “The kind that just wiped out three of my recruits.”

  “Got it. Toro, deploy your heavies and advance. Search and destroy.”

  “On it, sir.”

  She trotted out there, flanked by a full squad in armor. At least she was game. Heavy troopers had powered armor and plasma rifles instead of accelerated projectile guns, otherwise known as snap-rifles. They were our regular troops, the backbone of any legion.

  Advancing, they encircled the dead turret, looking for an opening, a downed ligh
t-trooper—anything. As they split now into two groups and continued to advance, Carlos shouted behind me. “McGill—Centurion, I see them!” Carlos wasn’t with the rest of us. He was way back, behind me in the rear of the formation. He was pointing into the blue-glass dome.

  I followed his gesture, and I saw them too. Several humanoids had pulled up inside the dome with a power-truck. They were unloading basketball-sized objects from the bed of the truck.

  Frowning, I walked back toward the scene, straining to see them clearly. The glass—if it was glass—was very thick. The blue-tinted figures inside looked translucent.

  These tech-smiths were tall. From what I could see, they were at least my height—some of the males were even taller. And they had long limbs, longer than was normal for a human.

  I thought that would make them gangly and slow. But instead, they were graceful, and I watched as they dumped their globes into a chute on the far side of the glass.

  That chute could only go to one place that I could imagine.

  “Team!” I shouted. “The enemy seems to be deploying some kind of unfamiliar device. They can’t be explosives—not unless they want to destroy themselves, too.”

  “Kivi,” I said, “report this to Graves. Relay video of those packages they’re using.”

  While she worked to comply, I watched the enemy drop the last of their spheres into the chute. Then they got into their power truck and zoomed away.

  Graves called me personally a few moments later.

  “McGill,” he said, “I’ve got reports back from the far side of the dome. Get your men well back, form a wide firing field. They have drones. Don’t let them get too close.”

  “Drones, sir?” I asked. “What kind of drones?”

  “They’re spherical, ground deployed drones. They’ll attack with startling speed. Get your men—”

  “Toro!” I roared. “Where is she?”

  “They went inside,” Natasha said. “They found a crawlspace or some kind of duct that accesses the dome.”

  I began to run toward the disabled turret. I didn’t see Toro or any of her heavy troopers. “Back!” I shouted at the rest of the complement. “Fan out. Light troops, weaponeers—Harris, Leeson, get your people to form a half-circle around the base of this turret.”