Storm World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 10)

by B. V. Larson

  “But I told him… dammit!”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” I said. “Take Legate and pull out before those missiles hit.”

  “So you do care if I live or die? That’s sweet. Rest assured, I will survive. Make sure you do the same after the enemy land.”

  “Uh… what?”

  “Didn’t you recognize these ships? They’re Rigellian transports. They’re coming to Storm World to push us off, just as they did at Dark World.”

  “Oh…” I said.

  I opened my mouth to say more, but the channel was dead. Then the streaming video from the heavens died, too.

  Pacing on the battlements of Armel’s castle, I stared up at a fresh, churning storm. The clouds began to roil and they spit rain at my visor in gusts. I couldn’t see any ships through the storm, neither theirs nor ours.

  Without input, my mind was free to ponder grim possibilities. Why had the feed cut out so suddenly? Was Legate already a spinning wreck up there above the endless clouds? Was Galina dead?

  If she was, we were all likely to join her soon.

  While I stared upward, I saw an alarming sight. A white zone of luminescence appeared, lighting up the clouds.

  Harris and Leeson rushed outside to crane their necks and watch. The white oval of light streaked off to the west then vanished. It was like the biggest spotlight in the universe had just swept over the hanging storm clouds—but it had been shining on the top side of the clouds, from up in space.

  “Holy shit!” Harris said. “Was that lightning?”

  “Nah,” Leeson said. “That was a warp bubble seen from way too close. Turov probably fried our nads with radiation when she hit the gas.”

  Harris looked at him in alarm. “A warp bubble? Legate has ditched us on this mud pit?”

  “Looks that way.”

  They moved off to attend to their respective platoons while I marshaled my troops and placed them as I saw fit.

  The Wur were out there in the dripping forest, gathering strength, but they hadn’t seen fit to attack us yet. That said, no one knew how much longer we had.

  Then, about ten minutes after Turov had left with our ride home, Tribune Armel contacted me.

  I was surprised to hear from him directly.

  “What can I do for you, Tribune?”

  “You can tell me the truth, for once,” he said. “I’ve traced down all the recent communications with Legate—her last call with the planetary surface was to you. Imagine my astonishment upon learning of this...”

  “Uh…” I said, trying to think fast. I couldn’t come up with a good reason to dodge him, so I went with the urgency of the situation. “That’s extremely interesting, sir, but you could just send me a few replacement 88s—”

  “If I relieve you of your command, you will not need them. Now that Turov has fled, or died, or whatever, I’m in total control of this ill-fated garrison.”

  My heart sank a little. Mostly, because he was right.

  “Okay sir. But if I cooperate fully, can I have two 88s at the gatehouse?”

  “Fine,” he said in disgust. “Now, tell me the truth.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did the tribune choose to call you, rather than Graves or myself?” he demanded.

  “She didn’t, sir. I called her.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Uh…” I said, thinking hard. “Well see, when a man and a lady are intimate, Tribune, the nearness of death sometimes causes them to yearn for one last contact before—”

  “That’s absurd,” he said flatly. “I’m not buying any nonsense about you two being madly in love. She’s a manipulative harlot, and you have no more emotion than a rutting boar.”

  “I’ll be sure to share these opinions with her the next time I see her.”

  “If you don’t start being more forth-coming, you won’t be seeing anyone soon.”

  “Well sir,” I said, “I don’t know what else to say. I’ve told you the God’s-honest truth, whether you like it or not. Galina was in danger, so I called her to suggest she should run from the system. She took the call for the same reason I made it—we both care about each other.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Is this really the story you wish to employ? This amounts to a blatant refusal to answer a simple question from your commanding officer. That’s a punishable offense, you know.”

  “Blatant refusal? That’s a gross mischaracterization, Tribune,” I said sternly. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  And I was, to some extent, telling him the truth. I felt somewhat annoyed with him for taking such a hostile position—but then, I knew he was pissed off that his efforts to get into Galina’s pants had failed. There was plenty of bad blood between us besides that, but he was just going to have to suck it up and get over it.

  “Very well,” he said. “Remember your choices today, McGill. You may come to regret them.”

  Frowning, I began to speak further—but he was already gone.

  Harris came near then, grinning.

  “Natasha told me you were talking to Armel. You guys are soul mates now, right Centurion?”

  “We’re blood-brothers now, Harris. That’s what I’d prefer to call it.”

  He kept grinning. He was getting pretty good at deciphering my bullshit at times like this.

  “Well sir, the enemy is on the move.”

  “The Wur are coming?” I asked, checking my tapper. The motion sensors, drone-scouts and satellite feeds were all blank. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Not them, sir. I’m talking about the Rigellians. While you and Armel were squabbling, Natasha tapped into the feed from our spy satellites in orbit.”

  He showed me his tapper.

  “Pass me that feed,” I ordered. “Now.”

  He did so with a few swipes and a tap. He grumbled a little. “I never get to see any of this cool hacker-shit. Does Armel know you’ve been watching and listening to encrypted channels?”

  “Nope—and I want you to keep it that way. Dismissed, Harris.”

  He stalked off with a dissatisfied air, and I watched the feed.

  It displayed the two transports the Rigellians still had gliding above Storm World’s clouds. Instead of chasing after Turov, they were unloading troops—thousands of them.

  As far as I could tell, they were coming down right on top of us.

  I thought about talking to Armel again, but I passed on the idea. There was no way he wasn’t watching this same feed by now, and there was no point in letting him know I had unsanctioned connections with the best of our tech specialists.

  Instead, I watched the skies. It took a few minutes, but soon the telltale streaks of reentry were undeniable. The Rigellians were using drop-pods, invading Storm World just as we had done some weeks ago.

  The first pods landed inside our walls four minutes later, and the battle was on.

  -49-

  Fortunately, no matter how much Armel hated me, he did send two 88s down to bolster my position at the gatehouse. He was a real dick sometimes, but I was grateful for the support anyway.

  “Leeson!” I roared. “Get those 88s turned around! Aim down into the compound!”

  “On it, Centurion!” he shouted, and said something else, but the whipping winds of the storm made him unintelligible.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, sir,” Harris said, standing by my side. “The Wur are marching, too. They’ll hit us from the forests. We’ll be squeezed in-between.”

  “I’m well-aware. But we have to take out the internal enemy first. If the fort is to stand, we can’t have troops in our midst. Killing them is our first priority.”

  “Roger that—but sir, there’s something else I have to tell you.”

  “Spit it out, Harris. I’m hoping for good news.”

  “Um… it’s about your army of skinny snake-men—they’ve vanished.”

  I turned slowly and met his eyes. He didn’t look like he was kidding. Th
en I examined the muddy ground at the base of our walls, where I’d last deployed them. The region was empty.

  “All of them?” I asked, crestfallen.

  “As far as I can tell. You think they’re in on this? With Rigel, I mean?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense…”

  “You know what doesn’t make sense? These stupid Rigellians dropping right into the center of our base. They’ve got to be the most arrogant, crazy sons-a-bitches I’ve ever laid eyes on—except I haven’t really seen them yet.”

  “They’re either crazy or highly confident. We’ll see which it is in about a minute.”

  Harris left me, and he soon led a platoon into the open on the inside of our walls. Rippling snap-rifle fire was going off now, firing orange streaks through the pouring rain. I couldn’t even see what they were shooting at, so I switched my faceplate to night vision mode and examined the scene.

  Standing out in bluish-white and black, the night scene was almost as clear and clean as it would have been at high noon back home. Dozens of drop-pods were landing in groups, a full squad coming down together every few seconds. But these Rigel-made pods didn’t operate quite the way that ours did.

  Each pod landed with a gush of retros, thrusters flaming so as to slow down their descent. This was normal, but I noted that the jets had the side effect of kicking up a hellacious amount of smoke and steam. Each area where the pods landed was immediately shrouded in thick mist.

  Our troops were firing into each LZ anyway, sending bright lines of accelerated steel into those billowing regions of mist.

  I crouched on the wall, adjusting my own morph-rifle to fire long-range bolts. I waited until I saw a target before sending any bolts downrange.

  There was a good chance, of course, that I would never see this enemy in the open. Rigel often deployed Vulbites to do the fighting. Vulbites were insectile creatures with pinchers, about a hundred legs and a bad attitude.

  Vulbites were also masters of stealth, possessing gear like Cooper’s ghost shroud.

  That thought reminded me: I needed intel.

  “Cooper!” I boomed.

  To my surprise, he popped out of nowhere at my side. Suddenly, several things made sense. Could he have gotten orders from my own officers to spy on me? They’d been very noisy lately about my hacked vid streams.

  Not for the first time, I felt myself commiserating with Graves. He’d run this unit of devious misfits before me, and he’d suffered a lot due to our naturally inquisitive natures.

  “Get out there, Ghost,” I told him. “I want intel. Penetrate those misty areas and report.”

  He looked like I’d sentenced him to death—which I probably had.

  “Is this about the spying, sir?”

  That confirmed it. He had been tailing me, probably reporting on who I was talking to back to Harris and Leeson. Sneaky adjuncts. You’d think a pack of experienced soldiers could fight and die at my whim without pulling shit like this—but then, I’d never played it that way.

  “Of course it is,” I lied. “Now, get out there and report!”

  He vanished again. I saw a few splashy steps on the wall’s walkway, but then I lost him.

  “Leeson,” I shouted again. “Have you got those 88s turned around?”

  “I do, but the angle is bad. I don’t recommend—”

  “Don’t give me that,” I said. “You see those Blood Worlders closing in on the nearest patch of mist? Help them out. Light up that steam with a warm welcome for our guests.”

  “Roger that.”

  The 88s blazed into life a few moments later. The results were dramatic. Broad beams of intense heat and radiation struck a lot of raindrops, then a dense mass of mist. The beams were partially absorbed and deflected—but they were too powerful to shrug off entirely. The enemy LZ was lit up, and the mists expanded into hot steam.

  It was like firing spotlights into a dense fog bank. To us, it looked like a wall of white had suddenly appeared.

  “Sir,” Leeson called out. “We’re just making the mist thicker.”

  “Give it another sweep,” I ordered. “Cross-wise, this time. Slice-and-dice.”

  Leeson sighed, but he gave the order. Soon, the zone hissed and roiled again. It was like the biggest damned kettle of dry ice the universe had ever seen.

  Finally, fleeing figures appeared. They were coming out of the mist, rushing toward our walls. They seemed disorganized, almost panicked.

  “Are those Vulbites?” Harris demanded on tactical chat.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They’re not stealthed, and the shape is wrong. They look like small men.”

  “You sure they’re not our troops?” Leeson demanded. “Aw, dammit. Armel will have me up on charges if—”

  “They’re too small,” I said, getting a close-up view with my HUD. One of them had run past a pig, and I’d gotten a quick comparison. The fleeing soldier was just over a meter tall, if I had to guess.

  “Barton!” I shouted. “Take every light you’ve got and advance. Cut them off—don’t let them get up onto the walls with us.”

  “On it!” she called back, and as if she’d been waiting for the order, I saw her group spring out of the base of the gatehouse and sprint forward.

  “Look at that, Harris. That’s how a Victrix girl leads troops.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” he said.

  Harris had been in charge of my light platoon for years, but his troops had never looked so eager.

  My morph-rifle was taking shots now, driving bolts into the approaching line. The first three shots missed—but then I nailed one.

  He flipped and rolled, knocked right off his feet by the force of the bolt. I whooped—but the battle cry died in my throat.

  “He got up!” I shouted, pointing in surprise. “Did you see that, Harris? That little bastard got right back up after taking a bolt in the chest.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of that. They’re all getting back up. Plasma bolts don’t seem to stop these little bastards.”

  For the first time, I felt a thrill of concern go through me. It wasn’t fear—not exactly—but I was worried. Real worried.

  Then I realized Barton and her eager-beavers were colliding with the enemy line. Light troopers weren’t going to stand a chance against these invaders. I thought about calling for her to retreat—but it was already too late.

  Putting my rifle to my shoulder, I fired bolt after bolt. Sometimes, I knocked one of them flat, but they almost always got back up.

  Barton and her troops put up a good show. Snap-rifles blazed away on full-auto—but nothing seemed to stop the advancing line of mini-troops.

  In response, the advancing devils were shooting powerful one-blast guns. Something like a shotgun, or a small belcher. Each shot that landed not only killed one of my troops, it blasted the body to smoldering fragments.

  In the chaos of the one-sided battle, I came to several quick conclusions. For one thing, our opponents seemed to have very tough, light-weight armor. Compared to our breastplates, it was dramatically superior.

  The second thought that occurred to me was this: why did they have single-shot super-powered shotguns as weapons?

  After a moment the answer seemed obvious: they were geared to fight their own kind. Since they wore battle suits that were almost impenetrable to small-arms, they carried serious guns designed to penetrate tough armor like their own.

  The final, sad thought that came to me as I witnessed Barton’s platoon being blasted to pieces one man at a time on the battlefield, was that we were all well and royally screwed.

  -50-

  We discovered several key things over the next few minutes.

  One was that these troops were actual Rigellians. Now, that made purely good sense to me. In order for those vicious bear-like people to be ruling one hundred-odd star systems, they had to have something on the ball. You didn’t just dominate and rule a race like the Vulbites, for instance, without being a pretty damned mean kil
ler-species yourself.

  We’d all seen the captured vids. Rigellians looked like under-age bears. They were just over a meter tall, but estimated to be about the same strength as a full-grown man—as were juvenile bears back home on Earth.

  They might look cuddly, but such looks were grossly deceiving. They tormented the species’ they enslaved, snipping off body-parts when displeased by a servant. They were tough, well-organized, and just plain mean.

  All that said, we’d never met them in open battle before. This was our first direct encounter—and we were being humiliated.

  The biggest problem was both sides were geared to fight troops that matched their own capabilities. We had guns that did pretty well against humans and other races similarly equipped—but the Rigellians had never seen a human fight before.

  Mentally, I corrected myself—they had seen us fight.

  Back on Blood World, Rigel had sponsored the Vulbites to fight for them. That must have meant they’d watched and analyzed our capacity for close combat. Then on Dark World, I’d met up with one of their kind and bamboozled him into letting me escape.

  Even so, what had he been doing there, on the front lines inside a Vulbite mound? Why, gathering intel of course. He’d as much as told me so. He said he’d hoped we’d be easier to deal with, that he was disappointed… that extermination of Humanity looked like the only viable option.

  Had that moment translated into this? A scene where their troops were mowing ours down with ease? It was hard to know. Possibly, this was how Rigel’s troops always operated. It seemed pretty damned effective to me.

  The key to their kit was that suit. I didn’t know what it was made of, but if any man could shake off a direct hit from a plasma rifle, well, only our artillery hit harder than that.

  “Primus Fike?” I called as the enemy finished off my light troops and began assaulting the entrances to the gatehouse. We’d buttoned up and locked them out—but I doubted that would last long.

  “What is it, McGill?”

  “We’re under assault here, sir. The gatehouse might fall.”

  “Listen to me, Centurion. You will not fall. You will stand. You will fight, and you will die, but you will not lose your position. If you do, the Wur will roll right through us when they get here.”