Storm World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 10)

by B. V. Larson

  “Lord help us…” Leeson said, but they all obeyed.

  That’s what Legion Varus troops were really good for: a solid fight to the finish, no matter the odds. We were a strange bunch. We were disrespectful, but highly skilled and willing to die on command.

  Barton made it to the smoldering wreck of the tower—but no farther. Enemy guns took her team out to the last man when she tried to press inward.

  Slogging through the mud was slow-going. Every step was a challenge. Overhead, the enemy had climbed the damaged walls and manned the towers that still stood intact. They raked our advancing lines, killing dozens.

  Harris made it to the breach first, and he managed to score some hits—but it was too little, too late. The enemy had formed up a half-circular firing squad in there. They executed my men as they rushed through the hole.

  “Sargon!” I shouted, grabbing his arm.

  He whirled to face me. “We’re all going to die in there, sir,” he said.

  “That’s right. But I’ve got an idea: I want you to overload your last belchers and throw them into the breach.”

  He blinked at me. After a second, he understood, and he grinned.

  “You’re a first-class asshole, sir.”

  “Better than being a third-class kiss-up. Can you do it?”

  “With pleasure—but Graves isn’t going to like the property damage.”

  Sargon’s weaponeers were shocked by the orders—often, equipment was valued more than human flesh in Legion Varus, and that went double during exercises.

  But in the end, they followed my orders happily. Everyone wanted to do these Blood Worlders some serious harm by now. We were hunkering outside the walls, pinned down by fire from above, facing certain death in the breach ahead—but at least we now had a plan.

  As one, Sargon’s team rushed up and heaved their belchers. Sargon himself was hit as he made the final, squelching run.

  He spun around and went down.

  Encircled in his arms was a hot belcher, glowing and pulsing brighter blue every second. The fallen weapon was right in the middle of the last knot of troops I had.

  Scrambling, I got to the belcher on all fours. I picked it up and made for the breach to heave it inside.

  But as I got there, the timers began to run out. The belchers the other weaponeers had tossed inside went critical. A sweeping, overlaid series of blasts shook the place. Troops were knocked off their feet and killed all over the place.

  I fell as well, slammed down by a rolling blast wave. I spun around, slipped and fell, still hugging Sargon’s belcher.

  One of my eyes wasn’t operating—I didn’t want to know why—and my ears were ringing and singing—but I didn’t care. I had to toss one last bomb into the stew.

  Cradling Sargon’s weapon, I felt it go hot in my arms. With a desperate motion, I tried to toss it far into the fortress.

  Then it went critical too, and I was obliterated in an explosive gush of radiation.

  -17-

  When I next became aware of my surroundings, I don’t mind telling you I was concerned.

  I’d gone off the rails big-time in the exercise room. I knew that, and I was willing to own up to it. My only hope was that I wouldn’t be punished too harshly for my actions.

  Graves presided personally over my birth. That was a bad sign right off the bat. He never came down to greet newly hatched subordinates without a very good reason. In my case, I didn’t think he was down here on Blue Deck to wish me well.

  “McGill?” Graves said.

  I felt fingers digging into my arms, but I didn’t move a muscle.

  “Can he hear me? Is this a bad grow?”

  “Shouldn’t be, Primus,” a nervous sounding bio-girl answered. “All his numbers look good.”

  A fist slammed into my belly a split-second after she said this, while the other fist nailed me in the ribs. A sick explosion of pain snapped my eyes open and set me to coughing and curling up on the gurney.

  “Primus!” the girl complained.

  “Playing opossum isn’t going to get you out of this one, Centurion,” Graves told me.

  His face had to be close, ‘cause I could hear him breathing. My eyes fluttered open. The room was too bright, and Graves’ craggy face was almost in kissing range.

  “Morning, sir,” I croaked out. “I must have overslept.”

  “Get off that table and get into uniform,” he ordered, letting go of me and stepping away. “Gold Deck in five minutes. Be there.”

  A much more attractive person came close then, and she peered at me in concern. She ran deft fingers and instruments over me, casting angry glances over her shoulder after the primus. Either Graves didn’t see her do it, or he didn’t care.

  I took the occasion to call out after Graves. “Give red team a hardy congratulations from me on winning that exercise, sir,” I said to his retreating form. “It was quite an honor to do battle with them.”

  Graves flipped me the bird without even the courtesy of turning around to do it. The door swished shut in his wake, and he was gone.

  “One cracked rib,” said the girl working on me. She massaged my aching chest tenderly. “No sign of a punctured lung or hemorrhaging… You should be okay.”

  Grunting, I sat up and groped for my uniform. The bio-girl came at me with a patch before I closed the top, and I let her put it over my bruised mid-section.

  “This is a smart-patch,” she said, as if I’d never been injured before. “Leave it on for three days, and it will fall off in the shower on its own.”

  “Say…” I said, catching her small hand as she pulled away. “You wouldn’t be looking for date later on, would you?”

  She gave a small, surprised snort. “I don’t know.” Our eyes met for a moment.

  My face split into a grin, despite my aching ribs. Anything less than a flat no was a good sign in my book.

  “What’s your name?”

  She touched her patch.

  “Adjunct Kelly Walsh,” I read aloud. “That’s a nice sounding name. I always come back to life hungry, Kelly. You want to share dinner with me tonight?”

  Kelly flashed me another glance, then she looked around behind her as if suspecting someone might be listening in.

  She shook her head. “You’re trouble, McGill,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “Well now, don’t you worry about old James! When I’m in trouble, I always find a way to dig myself right back out again.”

  She flashed me a small smile. “I don’t know... Talk to me in a week—if you haven’t been permed yet.”

  “You’ve got it, girl!” I said, staggering out of the room. “I’m gonna hold you to that, Kelly!”

  Leaving, I wandered down the passages of Blue Deck, whistling an old tune. I felt pretty good, all things considered.

  Sure, Graves was pissed off, my ribs hurt, and the rest of the legion brass was probably hating on me right now as well.

  But I’d shown those Blood Worlders what a human legion could do. If that battle had been remotely fair, we’d have cleaned their clocks. I was certain of it. As it was, a quick check on my tapper showed we’d killed over half of them. By my accounting, we’d done ourselves proud.

  Hitting the elevators, I checked my tapper again.

  That was a downer moment. I’d expected there would be an unpleasant message or two in my inbox, but damn! There had to be at least fifty red-liners. They just kept coming, too, cascading in from the local server after having waited around for me to get revived again.

  Getting the gist of them in a second or two, I ignored most of the texts, swiping them away to oblivion without reading more than a few words.

  There was even one from Floramel. That surprised me. I almost opened it when I caught sight of the length. It was frigging long. Way too long. There were no pictures, either. Just words.

  Sighing, I figured she’d outdone herself, giving me some hundred page text-wall. Most likely
, it was full of her feelings, thoughts, and lots of recriminations as well.

  Shaking my head, I knew I just wasn’t in the mood. In fact, I knew myself well: I would never be in the mood to read this.

  Accordingly, I swiped once and deleted the monstrous message. Whatever manifesto she’d sent me, I made a mental note to pretend it was riveting and thought-provoking the next time we met. After all, the girl had obviously worked hard on it.

  But then I saw one from Graves. Apparently, there was a party arranged up on Gold Deck, and I was the guest of honor.

  Frowning for a moment then giving it a shrug—after all, what was done was done—I marched to Gold Deck and touched my hand to the plate. There was only one option for that part of the ship, so I took it and was whisked away toward the upper decks.

  What had that little cutie Kelly Walsh said? Something about me not being permed in a week?

  Could she know something I didn’t? It wouldn’t the first time I’d walked into an ambush.

  Frowning a little, I slapped the elevator plate. The car stopped, and I dinked around with the control panel.

  There was no way to redirect it. That was the kind of crap they pulled on legionnaires these days. They didn’t trust us to tie our own shoes. Frustrated, I tapped at the plate until the emergency screen came up.

  “What’s the nature of your emergency, Centurion McGill?” the AI asked me.

  “I’ve just been revived, and I suffered an injury in the process. I need to go back to the infirmary.”

  To my surprise, a scanner flashed over me. “No serious injury has been detected. Skin is unbroken. Internal organs appear—”

  I didn’t listen to the rest. This damned machine wasn’t going to make this easy on me. But where there’s a will, my Daddy always said, there was a way.

  Wincing, I ripped off the smart bandage Kelly had put there, I drove in a fingernail, digging for gold. It took a second, but I had a few drops of blood and a bruise underneath.

  “Scan me again. You missed it,” I told the AI, which had been droning on about protocol for nearly a minute now.

  “Minor injury found.”

  “I’m bleeding, dammit. Take me back to Blue Deck.”

  The elevator sat there for a second, as if weighing its options. At last, it reversed course and bore me back down to where I’d started off.

  When the doors swept open, my smile faded.

  Two specialists stood there, dressed in white. They were Blue Deck goons, the kind of men who shoved people into recyclers when the mood struck them.

  Neither man had his gun out, however, so they clearly didn’t understand the kind of mood I was in.

  My smile grew back. I walked forward, leaning and dripping blood. “A little help, boys?” I asked.

  Surprised, they reached out their arms, and I leaned on them heavily.

  Now, as I might have said before, I’m a large man, easily taller and heavier than ninety-nine percent of Earth’s sons who were fit for duty.

  The man on my left was relatively small, and his legs almost buckled when I put fifty kilos of force on his shoulder.

  But what really surprised him was my left foot, which snaked out and hooked his ankle. He hadn’t been expecting that at all.

  He did a facer, and I went down on top of him. I planted a knee in his back, and I could have sworn I heard a crackling sound.

  The second man was getting smart about now. He reached for his belt. I grabbed his wrist and kept that gun planted in its holster. Getting to my feet, I made short work of him. These Blue Deck pukes weren’t seriously combat-trained, after all. They usually fought the helpless while mouthing hushed platitudes.

  When the second guy was on his knees, I plucked out his gun and backed onto the elevator again.

  Examining the gun briefly, I was surprised. It wasn’t a needler, standard-issue side arm or even a laser pistol. It was a kill-gun—the kind of thing that shot a bolt into the skull of an animal in a slaughter house.

  “By damn…” I said to no one.

  Then I applied my hand to the plate, but the AI didn’t want to cooperate.

  “Injury detected. Blue Deck return and replace authorized.”

  Return and replace? Shit. Could that mean those guys really had intended to recycle me and send a fresh McGill upstairs to whatever special fate awaited him on Gold Deck?

  “Override,” I said. “I’m feeling better. See?”

  Clumsily, I put the bandage back into place and smiled for the scanner. After another ten second delay, during which I sweated a few greasy droplets, the damned machine finally began going back up again.

  I tucked my half-assed weapon into my tunic and enjoyed the rest of the ride up to Gold Deck. After all, it was likely to be a one-way trip.

  Thinking of Kelly Walsh and the missed opportunities she represented, I felt a pang of honest regret.

  -18-

  On Gold Deck I was greeted with guards that impressed me. Two hulking brutes took me by the elbows and guided me down the passages.

  They were Blood Worlders. The smell alone would have identified them at a hundred paces. Coming from a desert climate on a planet not well known for amenities of any kind, these near-humans weren’t big on deodorant—or bathing in general, for that matter.

  Half-dragging me like a kid between them, the two troops marched me to a conference room. Once inside, I was allowed to stand on my own.

  My eyes swept the room. Graves sat on the right. Turov sat on the left.

  But… there were only two?

  My face almost split into a grin, but I managed to stop that. I looked worried instead.

  Internally, I relaxed. You see, in order to properly perm a man, our Hegemony bylaws clearly stated you had to have a quorum of three officers in the defendant’s chain of command at the trial.

  And unless someone was visiting the head, I only saw two in the room, which meant perming was out.

  Now, sure, it was true that these two didn’t look especially happy to see me. But there were only two of them.

  Demotion, I thought to myself. That’s what I was facing, I was ninety-percent sure of it.

  To be honest, the thought bothered me a little, but not too much. I’d been demoted before, after all. When you spent your life in the service of a notorious military outfit like Varus, there was bound to be misunderstandings and hiccups in any man’s career.

  “James McGill…” Turov began, sighing. “Destroyer of worlds… That’s what they call you back at Hegemony, you know. Those who have managed to trace the wreckage you leave behind back to its original source, named you that years ago.”

  My mind seethed with retorts. After all, Turov’s half-assed leadership had resulted in any number of serious military disasters over the years. Hell, she was largely responsible for the near-capitulation of Earth back when Home World had been invaded by the squids. And that was just to name a single occasion.

  But I didn’t bring any of that up. Sour grapes weren’t called for today. This was an occasion requiring a dash of solemnity, along with only a hint of my usual defiant attitude. Just enough to make them feel certain I’d felt the stern lashing I was about to receive.

  “I do believe that’s an unfair characterization of my record, Tribune,” I said.

  Graves blinked. Were my words too tame? Maybe he’d expected fire and brimstone—but he wasn’t going to get any of that out of me today.

  “If anything, my rebuke is too mild,” Turov said. “Let us review today’s damages.”

  She started listing things then. Lost equipment, dead near-humans—it was an impressive laundry list of broken and expired stuff. Under different circumstances, I might have been prideful.

  But I tamped those urges down. I did my best to look forlorn, like a dog left out in the rain.

  At some point, Turov strutted around to the door behind me and opened it. She looked up at the two Blood Worlder guards and waved at them, her nose wrinkling.

  “Out, you two,
” she said. “Stand guard outside.”

  They lumbered away, and I was glad for it. They stank, and I knew the scent had finally driven Turov to action.

  As she retreated toward her desk, I took a long, lingering glance until the moment she was safely out of my view again.

  “McGill!” Graves said loudly, and I tuned in to hear what he was saying, just in case he was saying something I cared about. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Those Blood Worlders aren’t coming back. Only the squids are being revived.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “What Graves is telling you is correct,” Turov said. “You have permed nearly a cohort of our new Blood Worlder legion.”

  “Why permed?” I asked, feeling a churn in my guts. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say.

  “Because we don’t have the facilities to revive them all. Hell, even if we had a stack of revival machines big enough to get their stinking carcasses all processed by the time we reach M244-H, it would cost too much. We can’t afford it.”

  My mouth hung open. “I know you weren’t reviving them on the last campaign…” I said, feeling a little lost. “But I figured you must have sorted that out by now.”

  “No, McGill, we haven’t,” Graves told me.

  “Well then why the hell did you have them fight us on the exercise deck?” I demanded. “That’s kill-or-be-killed, sir. What did you expect a Varus army to do?”

  “I expected you to follow orders. I don’t know why, but I did. Maybe I’m the one that should be permed.”

  “But if you’re not going to revive them all, how are they going to deploy on the target planet?”

  Even as I asked this question, the answer occurred to me. “Wait… you’re going to use gateway posts, right? Shipping fresh troops from Blood World directly to our landing zone. Is that it?”

  “That’s the plan,” Graves said. “Didn’t it occur to you, McGill, that we were making the battle easy on the Blood Worlders precisely because they couldn’t be revived? Humans come back, Blood Worlders don’t. If there’s to be any use to a training, it has to be nonlethal for their side.”

  “That’s why you held us back…” I said, feeling the puzzle pieces fit together inside my thick-skulled brain. “You wanted them to slaughter us on the walls, learning to fight our way, figuring you could revive us. You had us play the part of target practice dummies.”