Blood World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 8)

by B. V. Larson

  Maybe I’d misjudged how much Natasha cared about minor hook-ups. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Hey,” I said, “we can do this trip to the engine room some other time.”

  “No,” she said. “Let’s do it. I want to know what happened, too.”

  “Okay. Glad you’re coming along. I feel like we’re missing something.”

  “I feel it too.”

  When we reached Engineering, I right off knew my instincts had been proven correct. Something was very wrong down here in the aft of the big ship.

  The guards outside the main hatch were lying on the deck, and both of them were stone dead.

  -19-

  The bodies were posed in a way that told me instantly it hadn’t been an accident. Someone—or something—had killed the guards.

  “My tapper is dead,” I told Natasha. “I can’t report in.”

  “Mine too—it’s some kind of stealth-jamming. Hold on.”

  She worked on her tapper, which was connected to a larger, portable unit in the small ruck she always carried. Every tech had a real computer on their backs, not just a standard-issue tapper.

  My gun came out, and my visor slammed down. I stepped toward the bodies in a crouch. I didn’t see any clear cause of death. They were lying on their backs, hands held up rigidly in front of them. Their mouths and eyes were open, staring at nothing in surprise.

  “Don’t touch them!” Natasha said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at her and withdrew my gauntlet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sensing high voltage—the bodies are flowing with current. They’re cooking even now.”

  I stood up and retreated.

  “We’ve got to report this,” I said. “We’ve got to back up to where our tappers will work again.”

  “Hold on, I’ve penetrated the jamming field.”

  “Good, patch me through to Graves on Gold Deck.”

  Natasha worked for a second then gave me a nod.

  “McGill?” I heard a fuzzy voice in my helmet. “What’s this about?”

  “Emergency, Primus. I’m down in Engineering and—”

  “You’re not supposed to be in Engineering, McGill.”

  I opened my mouth, but then I halted. Could this all be some kind of on-going game?

  My mouth twisted up with disgust. I flipped up my visor again, shaking my head.

  “It’s not safe, Centurion,” Natasha hissed at me.

  “Yeah, right…” I said. “Primus Graves, I have to protest. You really should announce these oddball contests.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the electrocuted crewmen at my feet. If you’re going to have combat trainings live onboard ship, you really should—”

  “Where are you again, McGill?”

  “At the entrance to Engineering, sir. Like I said.”

  He was quiet for a second. “No trainings, drills or other special events are scheduled for that zone. In fact—I can’t raise Engineering at all. Are you doing that?”

  “Uh…” I said, flipping my visor back down again.

  I stepped away from the bodies on the deck. All of a sudden, they were even more alarming than they had been the first moment I’d spotted them. If Gold Deck really didn’t know what was going on down here, well, the whole ship was in danger.

  “Sir, we’ve got a problem—a serious problem. Tap into my vid feed from my body-cams.”

  Graves did as I asked, and soon he cursed. “Alright, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m mobilizing a unit and sending them down there to back you up. In the meantime, advance and investigate. Graves out.”

  A few moments later, yellow flashers began to spin all along the passageway. At least Graves had sounded the alarm.

  Looking at Natasha, I shrugged. “We’ve been ordered to investigate. Contact everyone in our unit. Tell all the adjuncts to bring my people down here.”

  “Didn’t Graves just say that he was sending back-up?”

  “Yes, he did, but he never said I couldn’t call my own. Bring them down, Natasha, that’s an order.”

  She worked her tapper after that without complaining. That was one thing I liked about her. She could get kind of prissy when it came to other women in a social situation, but when the bodies hit the floor, she was all business.

  With my sidearm in my hand, I advanced to the main hatchway alone. I stepped over bodies, one at a time, with great care. When I turned back to look at Natasha, I saw the wires she’d been talking about. Cables were running to each of the dead crewmen, and they’d been carefully hidden on the far side of the corpses, so anyone approaching wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

  They were wired up like Christmas trees. Tracing the wires to some open panels in the bulkheads outside of Engineering, I reached in and grabbed up a handful of copper and optical fiber cables.

  Yanking loose a meter or so of copper wire, I carefully dropped it so it made contact with the hatchway and the metal deck.

  The results were both spectacular and immediate. A blue flash sparked, and the copper wire curled up, glowing white hot and burning away the insulation.

  “There’s voltage in the hatch,” I said, “Natasha, can you fix this? I can’t get in.”

  “James, why don’t you wait for back-up? Whoever did this might be waiting on the far side with a weapon.”

  “True, but I’ve got my orders, same as you.”

  “All right.”

  She came forward, worked on an open circuit panel and soon pronounced the power had been cut off. I touched the door by flicking my finger across it, and I felt no jolt.

  I put my tapper up to the touch-plate lock, but there was no reaction.

  “It’s not going to open automatically,” she said. “I had to kill the mechanism. The hatches are on pure manual now.”

  “Right,” I said, and I tried not to wince as I applied my shoulder to the hatch. Spinning the wheel, I heard gears roll and click. The hatch swung slowly open with a groan of metal.

  There was something inside—a whole bunch of somethings.

  I gaped at them in utter shock. They were small—less than a meter tall, but they looked somewhat human. They were thin and wiry, with stringy, overly-long arms and legs. Their muscles were starkly outlined on their bodies, as if they had very little body fat. They didn’t wear much for clothes, either.

  “What kind of freaky goblins are these?” I asked no one in particular.

  They scattered as I forced my way through the hatch, which only opened about a foot. A few were working on a panel nearby. They had tools, and they seemed intelligent and organized.

  I heard a click, and I felt a squeeze. The hatchway I’d just forced open had begun to close again.

  “You little pricks,” I said, and aimed my gun at the group at the panel.

  They raced off in every direction, like a pack of monkeys rushing up trees. One ran down the hall away from me, another ran past me, under my feet, and out into the passage behind me. Still another raced right up the wall, using just about anything for a handhold. I remembered seeing a rat race up a ladder into my grandma’s attic years ago, hopping from rung to rung like he was built for it. This sight was just as startling.

  Pressing and straining, I tried at first to get through the hatchway. But it was no use. I wasn’t strong enough, and after a second, I realized I was pinned.

  Sighting my pistol on the nearest little gremlin, I nailed him.

  He must have thought he was safe, watching me with those big wet eyes from the roof of the passage—but I’m a pretty good shot, even when my ribs are beginning to crackle.

  He shrieked when I burned him and fell dead onto the deck.

  That’s when I noticed there were more bodies—full-sized human bodies—all over the deck. Our engineering crew had been slaughtered.

  Struggling to pull back, I almost made it. The pneumatics powering the hatch popped and hissed, trying to force
the hatch shut. I got one foot back, then the other. I felt a little tug on my hand, and I figured it had to be Natasha, trying to help.

  But in the end, it was my helmet that screwed me. It was too big and bulbous to get through the hatch. I would have taken it off, but I couldn’t do that either, as my arms were pinned.

  Then, my ribcage gave out. The air was driven from my lungs, and I could feel my spine cracking. Breathing in little gasps, my vision went in and out in waves.

  Something ran up to me, and I saw it was a gremlin. It had a cord in its hands with a long needle at the tip. It came close, wary, walking in a crouch as if ready to spring away.

  I tried to lift my gun. Lord, how I tried. I would have done just about anything to even twitch my fingers up enough to aim and fire my pistol one more time—but I couldn’t. My hands were numb, and my pistol fell to clatter on the deck, having slipped free from my squirming fingers.

  The creature dropped the cable and sprang away for a second, but then it crept back again. It looked up at me, and it gave me a small, happy grin.

  Then it jabbed that needle into me, and it applied the juice.

  I heard Natasha, as my body danced and fried and began to steam a little. She must have been outside, pulling at my exposed limbs, trying to pull me back to her side of the hatch.

  Trying to help.

  But she’d become attached to me, her muscles as rigid as mine.

  Helpless, we died together in a deadly embrace. My final thought was that we’d become a new trap for the next victims to encounter.

  -20-

  Revivals aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. I’d avoided dying for nearly two full years now—and I’d almost forgotten the sights, the sounds, and the nauseating sensations…

  Of all my senses, my ears started working first. That wasn’t unusual. Balance, vision, clear thought—these things came later.

  “We’ve got a big one,” a female bio said. I didn’t recognize her voice.

  “It’s McGill,” a familiar voice said. “Get him on the gurney. I need information.”

  That was Winslade. I’d have known his voice anywhere. To me, it wasn’t even slightly surprising to hear him speak as I returned from whatever Hell I’d been languishing in.

  “McGill?” Winslade said, near at hand. “Can you hear me? We’re under some kind of attack. Snap out of it, man.”

  “He can’t talk yet, Primus. Do you mind?”

  A bright light shined into my eyes. It was painful, shocking. I tried to roll my head and squinch my freshly-grown eyes shut, but the bio kept blinding me.

  One of my big hands came up almost on its own, and it grabbed her wrist. I gave her a light squeeze, and she hissed.

  “You’re breaking my wrist!”

  “Sorry,” I rasped, and I let her go.

  She flicked off her light and retreated.

  “He’s always an ape with women,” Winslade said. “Remember that, in case he asks you for a date later on.”

  “You should look out for yourself, Primus,” the bio warned him.

  Behind him, I’d risen from the gurney like a reanimated corpse—which was, I guess, a pretty accurate description of my current state.

  My heavy hand landed on Winslade’s shoulder before he could turn or scoot away. I pulled him close, and I gave him a one-armed bear-hug that pushed the air out of his lungs.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, McGill?” he demanded in a gasping voice.

  “I’m giving you my report, sir,” I said. “That’s what it felt like—but a hundred times worse. That hatch… It just kept squeezing and squeezing until I was as dead as dead can be.”

  Releasing him, I let him take a breath, cough, and glare at me.

  “You’re a bad grow,” he pronounced. “You’ve got to be. You’ve assaulted two people in your first two minutes out of the revival machine.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Man-up. I was just having a little fun.”

  I grinned at him, my bleary eyes still squinting and blinking.

  He sneered, but he lifted his hand off the butt of his sidearm.

  Figuring I wasn’t going to be recycled right away, I got off the gurney and stood. I forced myself to balance through sheer will.

  Winslade took another involuntary step backward.

  “Things are bad, McGill,” he said. “We’ve lost Engineering.”

  “You don’t say? What was it, those little gremlins?

  “Gremlins?”

  “That’s what everyone calls them,” I lied.

  Winslade looked confused for a moment, but then he shrugged. “Fine, gremlins it is.”

  “So you’re telling me you didn’t invite them aboard? I’ve been telling everyone they’re your best friends.”

  “You what? Oh—I see. Another misguided attempt at levity. Well, listen-up Centurion. Graves is dead. Half your unit died with him. Is that funny too?”

  “What happened?” I said, frowning in real worry.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said between clenched teeth. “Graves took two units down there—one of them yours. After seeing several dead bodies—including yours—they formed up and assaulted the hatches.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “They failed. Engineering, as you may or may not know, is built to withstand a serious assault.”

  “Two units failed to retake the ship?” I asked, whistling. “I don’t see how they could. Those little gremlins are tricky, but they don’t seem that dangerous.”

  “I’ve sifted through the after-action reports of the survivors, and I understand the enemy employed numerous deadly traps.”

  “Yeah,” I said, putting on fresh clothes and digging my Centurion’s bars out of the rank-insignia box. “The gremlins are tricky little buggers. Let’s go talk to Floramel.”

  “Whatever for? Haven’t you been listening? We have a tactical situation on our hands. I haven’t dared send in a larger force with heavier weapons for fear of destroying our engines entirely.”

  “So, they haven’t damaged the Alcubierre Drive?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Good,” I said, walking out into the passages of Blue Deck. “God, how I hate the smell of this place.”

  Winslade followed me as he clearly didn’t know what else to do.

  “I think we need to talk to Floramel,” I told him, “because these gremlins are hers. Her tech-smiths made them. They’re some kind of relative of ours, like the littermates and the slavers.”

  “But they’re so small. You really think they were genetically bred from human stock?”

  “I’d bet on it. The way that last one grinned at me as he rammed an electrified needle into my shin—yes sir, only a human could be that gleefully evil. By the way, Primus, where’s Tribune Deech?”

  “She’s seen fit to place me in charge of retaking Engineering.”

  I glanced at him and gave him an up-down appraisal. “I’ve heard she operates like that. She doesn’t like to take on dangerous, failure-prone tasks on her own.”

  Winslade stiffened as if slapped. “That’s absurd. She’s delegated the task to me because of her absolute confidence in my leadership skills.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We’d reached the labs by this time, and I could hear a large number of troops had gathered below on the aft decks. There must have been a full cohort down there.

  I shook my head. “That’s too many men. They’ll just get in each other’s way.”

  Winslade gave me a sour look. “They’re placed here defensively. I wanted to make sure the gremlins can’t penetrate the rest of the ship. They’re small and thin enough to wriggle through the ship’s conduits like rats.”

  “Interesting…”

  The labs were full of techs, every one of which was working in a fever. After all, Engineering was part of their territory, so to speak. They’d taken this attack as an assault on all of them.

  We found Floramel in her office. I knocked polit
ely, but when she didn’t answer, I waved to Primus Winslade. He used his tapper to override the lock, and I stepped inside.

  The interior was dark. A tall, shapely figure was seated at Floramel’s desk, but she didn’t move. Right off, I feared the worst.

  “Floramel?” I asked.

  “Oh, please,” Winslade said, and he snapped on the lights with a flick of his fingers.

  Floramel was sitting there, with her face in her hands.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  Winslade made an odd sound. He was sucking air through his teeth in disgust.

  I waved him back. Rolling his eyes, he retreated and stood in the doorway, assuming a bored pose.

  “Floramel?” I asked. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  In the back of my mind, I was thinking of the gremlins. They seemed to like tricks. It would be just like them to have propped Floramel up as another booby-trap.

  Then she moved, and I breathed a little easier.

  “It’s all my fault,” she said in a husky voice.

  “How could it be?”

  “The homunculi—they were my project.”

  “Uh… you mean you made these things? Personally?”

  “Yes. I oversaw their development. They were one of the last experimental designs we created for the Cephalopods. I never thought I’d see them again. They were all shipped off-world, and I—”

  “What were you thinking?” Winslade demanded suddenly.

  Floramel jumped a little. I don’t think she’d realized he was still standing in the doorway.

  I gave him a deadly stare. “Do you mind, sir? The lady is in a bad way.”

  Huffing, he turned on his heel and left. “You have five minutes, McGill. After that, I’m going to apply my own methods.”

  Not liking the sound of that, I worked hard to keep my expression pleasant when I turned back to Floramel. In return, she studied me fearfully.

  “What a horrible man. What’s he talking about?”

  “Yep, he’s horrible. But he’s in charge today, so we have to pull ourselves together.”

  Her lip trembled a little.

  “You died down there,” she said in a hushed voice. “I watched it. They transmitted it all over the ship. I hated myself when I watched you die. I even felt bad for that grasping woman—Natasha.”