Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World

by B. V. Larson

  I think it was as surprised to find us as we were to meet it. When it first appeared it had been walking on all fours, but it reared up when it encountered us, standing a dozen feet tall.

  Kivi’s force-blades sizzled into life extending from her wrists. I lifted my tube, but a huge hand lashed out and smashed it down.

  The creature was skinny—but strong! My plasma tube went whirling away.

  Kivi struck at that arm, quick as a snake. The oversized hand flew free with a spray of dark blood which splashed the foliage with a sound like falling raindrops.

  The creature galloped back from us, scrambling and using its stump as well as its other three limbs. I went for my plasma cannon—but never managed to reach it.

  An intense beam leapt out from the direction of the alien ship. It slagged my cannon and then swept toward me, melting earth and withering the giant flowers.

  I raced back toward cover. I turned my head to see how the fight with the tall, skinny freak had gone—instantly, I knew all was not well for him.

  They’d shot him down, and he’d been left quivering, slumped on the ground. I felt a pang of sorrow for him. He hadn’t seemed too bright. He’d been enslaved since birth, I felt sure of that.

  My recon group ran farther into the brush. Whooshing, crackling sounds ripped through the plants over our ducked heads setting fire to the crowns of a hundred flowers with blossoms the size of umbrellas.

  When we found a shallow depression and hunkered down inside it, Kivi spoke first.

  “What was that thing?”

  “Some kind of specially-bred human,” I said.

  “Bred for what?” asked Carlos. “Reaching the top shelf?”

  “I don’t know, but it was sniffing around. Maybe it was patrolling the area for stray humans. They’re here to collect slaves, remember.”

  “Yeah,” Carlos said thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s it. He’s like some kind of skinny tracking hound. He’s a slaver who runs people down after sniffing them out. I could see how that would be useful when they’re trying to dig people out of their caves.”

  “A slaver,” I said thoughtfully. “As good a name as any.”

  Carlos seemed to puff up with pride. He liked naming things and took credit for such honors whether he deserved it or not.

  The beams from the ship soon stopped coming. We reported in via our suit radios, and it wasn’t thirty seconds later that the enemy found us again.

  I think it was our transmissions that had screwed us. We’d forgotten these weren’t low-tech lizards in a forest. Whatever they were, these squids knew their tech.

  This time, there were six slavers, not just one. They carried nets that crackled and sparked in gloved hands. With an odd, croaking series of cries, they sprang up all around us. I wouldn’t have thought such large creatures could move with such stealth. I swore later, as did the rest of my team, that they hadn’t made a sound or riffled a single leaf.

  The nets launched, spread and floated down toward us. Electricity flowed in each metallic thread. I could see them spark and flash arcing with everything they touched. The nets floated downward slowly—as if they were made of feather-light material.

  The look on the faces of the slavers was one of triumph. They seemed certain of victory. I guess that’s because they’d never fought with armored humans before. A group bearing crossbows and wearing leathers would have surely been in serious trouble.

  My team faced them by putting our backs together. Carlos used his laser, beaming away at the face of the one nearest to him. The eyes smoked, and the man-thing fell back screeching and clawing at its face. Hudson and Kivi followed his example by trying to burn the other slavers. But they’d been warned and hunkered back hiding behind the fronds and stems of nearby plants.

  The lasers still found them and burned smoldering streaks across their leathery chests. But they lived, even if they were left screaming and thrashing.

  I didn’t have my cannon, so I went with force-blades. Looking back, I realized this was the right choice and probably saved my life. I directed the beams upward and squeezed my gauntlets, depressing the studs in the palms.

  Twin blades shot upward, and I kept squeezing, reaching for maximum extension. I’d realized that these guys were tall and I had to have as much reach as I could get to fight them on an even footing.

  Before I could thrust my blades into the slavers that circled us, I heard a screech—a human sound.

  I glanced to my left and saw Kivi sink to her knees. One of those falling, gossamer nets had touched her armor, and she collapsed under it, paralyzed.

  Without even looking up, I slashed over my head with my force-blades. They crackled and snapped as they cut through the strange fibers of the net that had almost reached me.

  The slaver in front of me plucked his shredded net in confusion. I’m sure he’d never seen a man defeat it before. His overly-long fingers reached out—but he didn’t get them back.

  I cropped all ten of them from his hand with a smooth slashing motion using my left blade. Then I cocked the left blade over my head, as I’d been taught, to act as a guard. The right blade I thrust with, and its length pierced that skinny stack of ribs, opening up the slaver and spilling his organs over the mud. Twitching the tip upward, I ended his life, and he collapsed in a shivering, bony mass.

  Two pairs of hands gripped me from behind a moment later. As I was dispatching the slaver closest to me, the others had leapt and grabbed me from behind.

  They warbled and hooted in excitement. I felt my body lift from the ground. I had a hand as big as a basketball blocking my vision almost completely, as it had been placed over my faceplate. More hands had me under the arms of my armored suit, and with a grunt they lifted me. I was amazed they could manage it. They were strong, like apes, with muscles that jumped and rippled under their stretched skins. More hands had each of my wrists, holding them out so I couldn’t cut them with my force-blades.

  I struggled, but a second later I was lifted like a child by a kidnapper. I realized I was aloft and bouncing. They’d lifted me up and were carrying me away toward their ship, no doubt.

  Visions of slavery on a strange world sprang up in my mind. I quelled panic. I had to keep myself in as cool a frame of mind as I could. I wanted to shout and call for help—but I resisted the urge. The recon team was too far from the rest of the platoon. No one was going to come to my aid in time.

  As calmly as I could under the circumstances, I radioed Leeson and reported my situation.

  “Sir, we’ve been overrun. We killed two tall, skinny guys, but I’m the only man left conscious.”

  “What are you saying, McGill? Where’s the rest of the team? I’m only seeing your suit on my display.”

  Squeezing my gauntlets, I shortened the force-blades. As it was, they’d been cutting through the forest of growths like twin scythes. I figured I might as well save power.

  “Sir, they’ve been captured in some kind of metallic netting. Maybe it interferes with radio contact. We’re all being carried to the ship. We’ve been captured, sir—all of us.”

  “What? By a bunch of naked freaks? Kill them and free yourself. That’s an order, McGill.”

  I rolled my eyes as the channel closed. I tried to think, but it was difficult. There had to be something I could do. They were smarter than I’d assumed, and when they got me to their ship I was pretty sure they’d dismantle my suit and pull me out of it as a man might rip an oyster from its shell.

  In the meantime, the slavers weren’t idle. They must have noticed my force-blades had withdrawn. They forced my arms forward, and I strained against them—but not too strongly. I didn’t want them to know just how powerful my exoskeleton could be if I diverted all power to the enhancement systems.

  That was a mistake on my part because they touched my wrists together, and I heard a loud, metallic click.

  The huge hand that had been over my visor retreated. I was able to see my situation clearly. My wrists each had a circle
of metal around them. Two black rings that touched one another. I tugged, but my wrists would not come apart.

  I recalled then what Della had told me: They will place rings around your arms and touch them together. Then you will never be able to separate your hands from one another again until they will it.

  I stared at those rings around my wrists for a long second, then cranked my neck around. We were heading toward the ship just as I’d thought. I saw Kivi, Hudson and Carlos were all netted and being dragged behind the other slavers. My comrades appeared to be helpless, paralyzed by the effect of the nets.

  I wondered then if my first command was going to go down in Legion Varus history with a footnote declaring it a record-breaking failure.

  We’d made a sorry showing. We’d only killed two of our attackers, and they’d captured my entire team. As the only man who could still act, I was determined to put up more of a fight.

  The first thing I did was relax. I let the slavers carry me at a loping run toward the lowered ramp. Being carried like captive prey by tall skinny guys that were twice my height had to be the oddest ride I’d ever experienced. I felt like a little kid—something I wasn’t at all used to.

  We reached the force shields that encircled their ship. I felt the screens tingle against my skin as we passed through them. The slavers were forced to slow down and edge their way through. As we pressed into the shimmering zone of stilled molecules, I felt a chill pass through me, which was a side effect of shielding.

  I noted that the slaver carrying me made a mistake then. He let go of my clasped wrists. His huge palm, a webbing of bones and skin, reached up to press against the screens. It was a natural enough thing to do. People normally tried to touch the screens, as they felt odd against your face, like a mass of breaking cobwebs. Putting out your hand to brush them away never helped end the sensation, but people did it all the time anyway.

  Biding my time, I waited until the very moment we passed through the shielding. Force-blades didn’t operate properly inside a shield wall.

  Once we were through, the slaver’s hand came for my wrists again. I grinned inside my helmet. I squeezed my fingers closed inside my right gauntlet, and a shimmering line of force sprouted like a unicorn horn out of it.

  The slaver must have known what was coming. His red eyes widened, and I thought I heard a croak of dismay. I thrust my, short, thick blade home. The slaver crumpled, his legs going limp, and I crashed down five feet or more to the hard ground.

  I grunted, rolled onto all fours and struggled to my feet. Ahead of me, Kivi, Hudson and Carlos were all being dragged away. I reached for my sidearm, but it was gone. The slavers had been bright enough to disarm me.

  Glancing toward the shield that shot up into a high dome at my back, it occurred to me that I should be slipping back through it and running for the forest. Don’t think for a moment that this thought didn’t impinge strongly—it did. But against my desire for self-preservation was concern for my teammates, who were even now being carted toward that strange, looming ship. I stared after the slavers, watching my friends bang against their legs in sacks of metallic webbing.

  What would happen to Kivi, to Carlos? I didn’t know Hudson that well, but I knew he didn’t deserve this fate.

  The key problem was that they couldn’t be revived if they were captured. One of the chief nightmares of any Legionnaire was exactly this situation. There were few fates worse than being held captive and incognito on an alien world. Without a confirmed death, the legion couldn’t legally revive you—probably a good thing, in my estimation. Who’d want to try to live a normal life knowing that you had a copy of yourself screaming in a cell lightyears away, circling a distant star?

  “Ah, crap,” I muttered, and started after the trio of slavers. I cranked my exoskeleton to full power and diverted most of it to my legs. With leaps and bounds, I raced after them.

  They spotted me before I reached the ramp. The slavers were at the foot of that vast tongue of metal. Just the ramp by itself was impressive. It had looked small at a distance, but up close, I realized it was huge. The size of a basketball court at least.

  Above that tongue was a vast black mouth that yawned open. There was darkness inside, punctuated by brilliant points of white light. I didn’t know what they had in there, and right now I didn’t want to know.

  I concentrated on one thing: getting to my friends before they were dragged into that ship and forgotten forever.

  Very aware of my situation, I saw the big gun on top of the ship catch sight of me. Like a bird of prey, it tracked and swiveled. Could it have nothing better to burn than little old me?

  To give it something to worry about, I ran into a pile of crated equipment. The operators would have to make a decision; was a single man worth damaging their stockpile?

  The gun kept tracking me right up to the point where I set foot on the ramp. It never fired, and at that point shifted away toward more distant enemies. I didn’t have time to breathe a sigh of relief, however.

  In front of me, the three slavers turned around. They looked surprised to see me sprinting after them—even amused. Behind me, a squad of nine littermates who’d been standing in a perfect square like switched-off robots suddenly came to life. They turned together and approached. I imagined that someone in the ship had activated the squad to deal with the lone human inside their perimeter.

  It didn’t take a genius to realize I was trapped and screwed. The nine at my rear shouldered huge rifles, but the slavers lifted hands and chittered at them waving them back. They must have been happy to see a new captive who seemed intent on delivering himself into their vast hands.

  The trio dropped my friends like sacks of meal. Then they stepped apart, moving to flank me.

  This was it, I realized. It was time to do—and to die.

  Moments like this come to legion troops more often than old Earth armies. Knowing you’re going to come back to life after a fight changes a man’s calculations. Sure, plenty of times in history men have made the decision to go down fighting, to take as many of the enemy with them as they could, but with foreknowledge of resurrection, I think we were a little more likely to choose such a path.

  Legionnaires didn’t fall to their knees and beg for mercy from our alien foes. We didn’t embrace capture as a way out. Instead, we feared it as one of the worst possible fates.

  Knowing I was about to die freed up my mind and my body. I wasn’t afraid anymore—not exactly. I was intent on doing damage, as much as I could, before they brought me down.

  The slavers didn’t know any of this, naturally. They knew I could fight. They knew I was dangerous, but they couldn’t know they had a suicidal maniac charging toward them.

  I veered left, letting the center man maneuver to circle behind me. The man on the far right huffed and ran forward, not wanting to be left out of the capture.

  Take down one at a time, Veteran Harris had always said. The others guys can wait. Finish your target and move on only after you’re sure the first one is in the bag.

  To my pleasure, I noticed a hint of doubt in the expression on my targeted slaver’s ugly face. The tall, skinny monster on the left side of the ramp didn’t look as happy as the other two.

  Still, he postured himself gamely enough. His knobby knees flexed and bent. His arms flew wide—impossibly wide. He had a wingspan that would have made a condor jealous.

  Instead of extending two force-blades, I extended only one. After all, my wrists were still clamped together. I couldn’t work two weapons effectively if I couldn’t move my arms independently.

  I slowed down in the final moments of my charge. I leveled one long blade like a lance. Shimmers of dusky orange, magenta and neon green ran the length of the blade like electric flames. The colors reached the tip, then chased themselves back again to my gauntlet.

  Thrusting for the slaver’s midsection, I was surprised by his agility. He bounced backward, squirming in the air. I thrust and missed again, while he retreated fa
rther.

  His strategy was immediately clear to me. The other two were circling and closing in. They’d pull me down from behind, just as they’d done before.

  With a snarl of frustration, I shifted right toward my three helpless comrades. The slaver I’d been stabbing at gargled something in his throat and advanced to follow me.

  That was the move I’d been waiting for. I whirled back and thrust for him again—but this time I stabbed downward, lancing his foot. I pinned it for a brief second to the ramp itself.

  He struggled with a cry of pain and pulled away the smoking remnants of his injured foot. My blade flicked upward again—and this time he couldn’t dodge and hop away. I gutted him and left him flopping on the ramp.

  I turned with barely a second to spare. The center man, who’d been coming up behind me, closed his massive hands. His fingers enveloped each of my arms.

  It was a losing strategy for him. Force-blades don’t get pinned. They may take a few seconds to burn through a tough substance, but they always go through in the end.

  I cut the second man in half, from crotch to skull. Those big hands that gripped me fell away as lifeless as dead autumn leaves.

  The third and final slaver lost heart then. He pointed at me and turned toward the nine that stood in perfect formation at the foot of the ramp. He was obviously declaring me persona non grata. I couldn’t blame him for that.

  The front rank of the nine dropped to the ground, the second rank went down to one knee, and the three in back stood tall. Once in position, they lifted their rifles and sighted in unison.

  I hadn’t waited around while they created their own miniature firing-square. I ignored the last slaver and ran to my three comrades.

  My force-blade sank first into Kivi. It was a hard thing to do, let me tell you. I’ve slept with Kivi, and I’ve fought with her and died at her side. To kill her, to drive my lance into her back while she lay there helpless and paralyzed—I never wanted to do it again.