Rogue World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 7)

by B. V. Larson

  She picked up the disks in my hand, fascinated. “How’d you have these made?”

  “It was a show-and-tell. My parents wanted to see where my career in the legion had all started.”

  Anne snorted. “What bullshit… but you’ve got me thinking. Could it be done?”

  “Only one way to find out!”

  The next several hours were long indeed. We’d arrived on Sunday after dinnertime, and we had to clear out of this place by morning whether we succeeded or not.

  “James,” she said, clasping my wrist. “This might get ugly. There might be mistakes. I—I don’t know if you want to stay here.”

  Setting my jaw, I shook my head. “I’m in. I’ve helped bio people with difficult births on ten worlds, at least.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “don’t tell me later that I didn’t warn you.”

  Anne went to work after that, and I soon realized the girl was a certified genius. Rather than trying to print out limbs and organs and assemble them all into one, she just loaded the full file and began printing.

  At first, the sprayed-on bone cells shaped up nicely. It wasn’t until we got to the meaty parts, the sinews and muscle fiber, that things got messy.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” she confessed at last. “The unit isn’t big enough to put a whole body into—the chamber is only about a meter long.”

  “Yeah…” I said, seeing that all the pieces laid out weren’t going together right. “Let’s reroll, and this time—”

  She pulled off a blue, snappy glove and put her hand on my cheek. It felt hot, and sweaty.

  “James, I can’t do it. You’re going to have to face facts. You—you killed them and they’re gone.”

  I stared at her for a minute, but I shook my head. Lifting up the two shining silver disks, I showed them to her.

  “Their bodies are right here. Every cell. Their minds are stored in the data core at Central. We can download the files and install them through their tappers. Don’t give up, all we have to do is get a bigger printing chamber.”

  “I don’t know how to do that!” she said, throwing up her hands. “I’m a bio, not a tech!”

  That gave me an idea. I contacted another girl from my past—Natasha.

  She was too far off to help us in person, and she looked annoyed as soon as she learned Anne was with me. But the description of the tram accident and what we were trying to do changed her mind.

  Natasha had always loved a technical challenge.

  Using my tapper to show her a live vid feed, I panned it over the steaming mess we’d created.

  “Your trouble is that chamber,” she said. “It’s only big enough for about half an adult.”

  “Right,” I said, “what can we do?”

  “Show me what else you’ve got in the vicinity.”

  I walked around the storage room, showing her cartons of old junk. She had me stop when I passed a suit of battle armor. It was an antique, earth-made using heavy steel and rubber.

  “That’s it,” she said. “Your parents aren’t fat, are they?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “But they should fit inside there if we squished them some.”

  “Send me the files. I’ll edit down their BMIs.”

  I used my tapper to read the disks and transmit the massive data file. It was a good thing we’d recently upgraded our Wi-Fi at the Legion Chapter House.

  “Okay…” Natasha said some time later. “I’ve got a new version. Get out an old tech’s box and we’ll store it there. I don’t want to overwrite your original files.”

  “Got it.”

  We worked for another hour refitting the battlesuit. At last, the girls declared we were ready for another attempt.

  “James,” Anne said gently. “We’re low on bone meal.”

  “Uh…” I said, looking at the time. “We’ve only got four hours left. Besides, I can’t buy any more locally—”

  She put up her hand to stop me. “I know all that. We’re going to have to recycle what we already printed.”

  My eyes drifted to the skeletons we’d managed to assemble on our first try. They didn’t look like my parents, although they were the right size.

  That made me gulp hard, for some reason. I could recycle this. Hell, I’d recycled any number of soldiers on the field. But I realized that if we were short on materials on the next step, we might have to do this again. That meant I might have to take a full limb and run it through the system.

  A little sickened, I took the stick-like bones and ground them up, forcing them into the input chute of the printer.

  Natasha had helped us recalibrate the spray heads and position them correctly over the battlesuit. This old type of unit allowed you to lift away the front portion of the breastplate like two halves of a clamshell. That really helped us get it straightened out.

  Sometime after three am, we got down to some serious printing. The machine hummed and stuttered. It produced a strange, hot, meaty smell that I didn’t like, but I’d smelled it before.

  “We’ve got a full skeleton again,” Anne said breathing with excitement. “I’m going to engage the program for vascularity and musculature next. The organs go in last. Fill the suit with fluids, James.”

  It was soon a horrible stew. If you’ve ever looked inside the human body—I mean really, deep inside, it’s not pretty.

  Hours later, we were left slumped from exertion and stress. We had less than two hours left.

  “It’s my dad, isn’t it?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. Bigger skeleton.”

  The skin went on next, and the whole process sped up.

  “What about their minds?” I asked Anne.

  “Every tapper is organic,” she said, “and it contains a base-line mental program. Enough for the body to breathe, pump blood, etc. We can load the full file afterward.”

  “Um… okay.”

  We kept working, and my dad became a person in that suit. He was thinner, and cleaner-looking than he had been. There was no body hair, other than a shock of gray on his scalp. We were always reborn without body hair—that had to grow in naturally over time.

  Anne loaded him with a basic mind, and he began functioning. We watched in amazement. I’d participated in this process countless times, but more than ever before, I felt like we’d created a living person from scratch.

  When he was shivering and wet, I took him out of the soupy suit and flushed it out. I almost dropped him on the concrete, and Anne yelled at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, “he’s slippery, and I’m tired.”

  “This was your damned idea, James!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I pressed him into a pile of spare, stale-smelling blankets from the emergency supplies and left him as comfortably positioned as I could.

  Anne inserted the silver disk and started the mental upload, but I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “What are we going to tell him when he wakes up?” I asked. “The last thing he’s going to remember is that day we visited the Mustering Hall.”

  Anne made a piffing sound. “That’s your problem. I’m just here to make them live again.”

  Resignedly, I helped her get the second body going in the printer. It was my mom this time, and the printing went faster due to her smaller size.

  After another ten minutes or so, my dad opened his eyes and groaned. I knelt beside him, and I don’t mind telling you, I teared up a little.

  “Pop?” I called to him. “You okay?”

  “James?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “We had a little accident with the tram. We’re taking care of it. You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t understand. What—where are we?”

  “Down in Waycross, Pop. Not far from home.”

  “I don’t remember any of this,” he said, looking lost. “We were at your Mustering Hall. It seems so much colder now—is it still summertime?”

  He was befuddled, but I got him to lie quietly and rest. T
hat was for the best. I didn’t want to hit him with the truth yet. I wanted that to seep in slowly.

  Dying your first time around was always hard. It was even worse when you remembered how you’d died. At least, in this case, that memory had been lost forever.

  Anne worked with tireless professionalism. She did a great job, and I realized I now owed her a debt I could never fully repay.

  My mom began to take form inside the old battlesuit, and to me that was ironic. For one thing, she’d birthed me once, and now it was my turn. In addition to that, I had to wonder how many times this suit had been used to kill in the distant past. I didn’t know the answer to that, but I was fairly certain this was the first time it’d ever been used as a vessel to create life.

  -66-

  After I revived my parents into slightly younger, definitely healthier new bodies, you might think they’d have been grateful—but you would have thought wrong.

  “What the hell were you thinking, James?” Mom demanded.

  “Momma, I did what I had to. You’ll live now. No more nanites, no more scarring—all that was edited out by the system automatically.”

  “That’s great. I died in a fiery crash I can’t even remember, and now I’m living in the wrong time. Everything’s wrong. What happened at thanksgiving? Did Aunt Clara come over?”

  “She sure did, and she loved the cooking.”

  She slapped me, hard.

  “Stop lying all the time,” she said. “Clara never appreciates anything.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I helped her out of the car. She could walk again, but not even that seemed to cheer her up.

  “It’s all wrong. It’s not supposed to be so cold and dark out. I missed an entire fall season. I’ll never get that back.”

  “Momma, come on,” I pleaded. “You’re alive and well again. You didn’t lose anything, you’ll have a healthier, longer lifespan now.”

  “What good is that?” she groused.

  But then Etta came running out to greet us. Everyone got a desperate hug.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” the little girl said. “I thought I would have to fend for myself.”

  “No,” I told her, “I’d never leave you, doll. Not forever.”

  We went inside and were surprised to find the place was trashed. Etta had taken over the living room and the kitchen table with her bony exhibits.

  Momma gritted her teeth and gave me an up-down motion of the eyebrows. I knew that meant she wanted me to act as the heavy and kick out the girl’s nasty toys.

  After some gentle effort, I managed to do so. It was clear to me that the girl had thought she owned the place, and she’d immediately taken over the main house.

  Trying not to get angry, I helped her remove all the offending skulls and other things she’d gathered and moved them into the backyard where they belonged.

  After a few days of settling into their new bodies, my parents began to cheer up. They were upset all over again by the following Monday, however.

  “Our claim has been denied!” my father shouted. “I can’t believe this—I paid for over thirty years, I have a legit death certificate—everything!”

  “That’s insurance for you,” Mom said. “They always weasel.”

  “Are you talking about the tram, Dad?” I asked in concern. “Is the insurance going to replace it?”

  “What? Well, sure. They will, despite the fact you were driving. But it’s my term life I’m talking about. They reviewed my case, and they’ve denied the claim.”

  I blinked at him then laughed out loud. “You tried to make a claim against your life insurance?”

  “Of course. I died, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, Dad, but… you’re alive again.”

  “Does that matter?” he said, smacking the policy with the back of his hand. “The contract says it pays in the case of unexpected death. If that’s not what happened, I don’t know what is. I’m looking into this. I’m getting a lawyer.”

  Shaking my head, I walked away. I could have told him the company would never pay. They’d known about legionnaires and our special ways to cheat death for a long time now. There were sure to be clauses to prevent shenanigans like what he was describing.

  That night, I slept hard in my shack—but a tiny sound woke me up.

  I sprang to my feet, fumbling out a combat knife. The lights went up, and the snarl on my face died.

  “Etta? What are you doing lurking around here at this time of night? Get back in the house and go to bed.”

  She looked outside the cracked open door, then looked back at me. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  Frowning and scratching, I went to the fridge and dug out a beer.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. What are you looking at? Another fox in the yard?”

  “Possibly… but she could be much more dangerous than that.”

  I whirled around, spilling my beverage. Moving to the door in three strides, I pulled it open and flung it wide.

  There, lying face down on the porch was a young woman.

  “What’d you do, girl?” I demanded, giving Etta a shake.

  She glared at me, trying to remove my grip, but I didn’t let her squirm away. She wasn’t good with authority figures, and she had a bad temper in her.

  I checked the woman on the porch and saw with relief she was still alive.

  “She was trying to sneak up to your house,” Etta said. “I acted to save the family.”

  Snorting, I lifted the woman’s hair to one side. It was about then that I recognized her.

  “Sarah?”

  “You know this person?” Etta asked.

  “She’s from my unit. What’d you do to her?”

  “A strike from behind works wonders. I didn’t hit her hard—her brains shouldn’t leak out.”

  I glanced at Etta. “Sometimes, girl, you’re too ornery for your own good. This lady was just shy, and she probably came to see me privately.”

  “Why?”

  “Um… well, sometimes ladies and gentlemen—”

  “Sex?” Etta asked. “You think she wanted sex? That’s disgusting. I’m glad I hit her.”

  “Etta, you’re going to stay here and apologize. She’s coming around.”

  “I won’t,” she said, and then ran off into the darkness.

  My teeth were clenched with anger. I’d brought home a monster, a barbarian that bashed people’s brains out in the middle of the night.

  Sarah groaned awake and sat up.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Did you hit me, Centurion?”

  “No. I have an overactive guardian living here with me. Come on, let me help you up.”

  She brushed away my hands and got up on her own. I appreciated that. After all, she was a Varus regular now. A knock on the head was no big deal to anyone from my legion.

  “I heard you were in an accident,” she said, massaging her neck. “That you were presumed dead, but you survived the crash.”

  Glancing down at my fresh body, which wasn’t scarred, bruised or even abraded in any way, I felt embarrassed.

  “I caught a revive, actually,” I admitted.

  “Well then…” she said stiffly. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Centurion. I’ll be on my way.”

  “Hey,” I said, calling her back.

  She turned slowly, eyeing me over her shoulder. She had narrow shoulders, wide hips and a face like a pixie. It was a look I appreciated.

  “Come on in and have a cold one,” I suggested. “After all, you came all this way. We can talk about the campaign.”

  Sarah paused, despite the fact we both knew what her decision would be in the end. Still, she rubbed her head and pouted in the yard.

  “I didn’t hit you, girl,” I said.

  But she still didn’t move.

  “Ah well,” I said. “Do what you want.”

  I went back inside, put a second beer on the table, and sat down on the couch. I’d left my door ajar.

  Soon, a sm
all attractive face poked its way inside. She reminded me of the foxes Etta kept locating somehow.

  The night wore on, and Sarah kept me company. By morning, we’d both forgotten our troubles, our ranks, and the whorl of bright stars overhead that one day soon would call us back to fight among them.

  THE END

  From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed ROGUE WORLD, the seventh book in the Undying Mercenaries Series. If you liked the book and want to read the story to the finish, please put up some stars and a review to support the series. Let me know what kind of world you’d like McGill to discover next.

  -BVL

  More SF Books by B. V. Larson:

  The Undying Mercenaries Series:

  Steel World

  Dust World

  Tech World

  Machine World

  Death World

  Home World

  Rogue World

  Rebel Fleet Series:

  Rebel Fleet

  Orion Fleet

  Star Force Series:

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Rebellion

  Conquest

  Army of One (Novella)

  Battle Station

  Empire

  Annihilation

  Storm Assault

  The Dead Sun

  Outcast

  Exile

  Demon Star

  Lost Colonies Trilogy:

  Battle Cruiser

  Dreadnought

  Star Carrier

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.