Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 11
“Have a little faith, Adjunct,” he said. “I’m sure they’re planning something incredible up there on Gold Deck.”
I heard a hint of hurt pride in that statement. After all, a few months ago Winslade had a higher rank and a choice spot at a desk up there on Gold Deck. Down here in the modules—or dungeons, as the troops called them—we were clueless and confused.
“I’m going upstairs,” I said. “Any objections, sir?”
He looked at me seriously for the first time. After considering it, he shook his head.
“Who are you going to pester? Primus Graves or the tribune herself?”
“Either one—I was kind of hoping you’d give me an excuse, sir.”
Winslade shrugged. “I’ve got no pretext to go where I’m not welcome. I’m already slumming it down here, and I don’t want to see a further demotion. Of course, I realize such thoughts have never stopped you.”
“No sir—but maybe I can give you something to help us both out.”
Then, I told him about our single revival machine capable of spitting out squids and heavy troopers.
“Are you certain?” he asked incredulously.
“Absolutely, sir.”
“That’s quite an oversight.”
“Not at all. It’s sheer cheapness. The legion was given these new troops, but they shorted us the equipment we need to properly support them in the field. The first hard battle we might lose half of them and wait a week to get them all back out of that machine.”
“Yes…” he said thoughtfully. “All right. You can inquire about the slow revival rate of the alien troops, and how we’re expected to adjust to the consequently slow trickle of reinforcements we’re predicting. Just don’t use my name unless asked directly.”
“Got it. Thank you, Centurion.”
He dismissed me, and I hustled to the elevators before he could change his mind.
-14-
At the lobby in Gold Deck, I expected to be challenged, and I was.
“Adjunct McGill?” asked a non-smiling veteran. “State your business, sir.”
“I’m here to see the tribune—if she’ll talk to me. Centurion Winslade sent me.”
“Huh…” the veteran grunted, paging through a contact list on his tapper.
He shrugged. “Nothing here about you having an appointment—but there’s nothing about you being banned, either. Her office is at the end of the passage. Good luck.”
When I got to the last door, I figured out why he’d wished me luck. There were six other guys in line ahead of me, and that was just to get past the first door.
Groaning aloud, I almost ditched the whole thing right then and there.
However, an attractive young adjunct stepped up to me before I could do an about-face. She asked me my name and business.
I stated these, as I had before. She tapped them in, scanned some results, and raised her eyebrows. She looked up at me in surprise.
To be honest, I figured I’d popped up on the “no way” list—but that wasn’t it.
“This way, Adjunct,” she said.
With a surprised smile, I followed her. I had to crowd past the people standing in line.
“Hey!” a centurion complained. “Why’s McGill moving up? I’ve got an appointment, and I’ve been standing out here for forty-five minutes!”
“McGill has a priority appointment,” the adjunct said.
“You’ll get your turn,” I told him. “In time, all things come to a patient man.”
He glared at me, and I gave him a smile and nod as I slid past.
When we got into the outer office, which had been redecorated since the days of Deech, I noticed there was no one else waiting there.
The adjunct pre-screener dropped me off, and I watched her go back out.
“James McGill?” the secretary asked.
There was a sneer in that voice, and I turned to look at him. I recognized him immediately. He was the same pretty-boy who’d been posted outside Galina’s office back on Earth.
“That’s right. Should I take a seat?”
He set his mouth in a disgusted expression. “No. Go on in.”
“Uh… isn’t she with someone else?”
He shook his head and pointed at the door.
Shrugging, I straight-armed the door and it swung wide.
Turov’s office was full of wispy curtains, incense and expensive-looking art. Head-and-shoulder statues of various Hegemony leaders were posed in alcoves with lights shining down on them.
Galina herself wasn’t in sight, so I figured she must be in the bathroom. She always had an office with a private bathroom. Rank did have its privileges.
I walked over to check out the various statues, and I took snapshots of the plaques with my tapper. I figured she was displaying the likeness of people who had been her supporters. Researching their names might teach me a thing or two.
“I see you’re admiring my art collection,” Galina stated suddenly.
She’d popped up behind me. I turned around, a little confused. I hadn’t seen her come out of the bathroom. Did that mean she had a secret passage in here somewhere? I wasn’t sure.
“Uh… yes,” I said. “I think I recognize some of these guys.”
She was out of uniform—way out. She wore nothing but a slinky one-piece with lots of sparkles on it.
“Is that why you came here?” she asked, stepped close and touching my chest with one finger. “To admire my busts?”
“Your what? Oh… no, Winslade sent me.”
For some reason, this threw her into a small fit. I wasn’t the best at figuring out the motivations of moody women, but this behavior was strange, even for her.
“You mean to tell me you skipped ahead six places in line to complain about your new recruits?”
“Uh… No, sir. Not exactly. But we’ve noticed there’s only one revival machine aboard that can support the Blood Worlders. What happens when we get into a serious fight?”
She laughed at me and shook her head. “Can you really be so naïve?”
“Uh…”
She put a hand out and touched my chest plate. I thought that was odd—her mood had shifted again.
“This foolishness makes you seem cute to me. I’m almost willing to forgive your rudeness.”
As a man who constantly needs to be forgiven, I didn’t want to blow any opportunity.
“Thanks,” I said in a neutral tone, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was forgiving. “But can you just tell me what the plan is with the Blood Worlders? These new machines are slow. If we lose a thousand of them, it will take weeks to get them all back.”
Galina sucked in a breath and sighed.
“Think, James,” she said. “You were involved in taking Blood World. You saw their vast armies firsthand.”
“Yeah,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the memory of watching thousands of the brutes march by. “I can remember the smell, too.”
“The point is, they’re great in number. We’ll make up for our losses with fresh troops, rather than bothering to revive them all. It’s much cheaper.”
I blinked at that, but slowly, I got the message.
“Seriously? We’re going to let them get permed?”
“Throughout history, troops have normally died once. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Yeah… but it seems wrong knowing that I’m going to be brought back, and they aren’t.”
“Yes. That’s why it’s your job as the officer in the field to make sure they don’t die.”
“But how are we going to get replacements out here? They’re all back on Earth—or home on Blood World.”
She pointed a finger at me. “Keep thinking. You’re doing so well. I can almost see the smoke coming out of your ears.”
“Um… are we going to use the gateway posts? To walk them through when we need them?”
“Ha! You’ve got it. The gateway will be set up in a separate module. When men die, they will be replaced.”
“But how can I train new people all the time?” I asked.
“That part is inefficient,” she admitted. “What we’re doing in secret is sending back vids of the training you and other officers are providing. Back on Earth, in their base camps, teams are training with the Iron Eagles. They will come through knowing what is expected of them.”
My confused stare transformed into a solid frown. The more I heard about this scheme, the less I liked it. They’d turned the Blood Worlders into second-class troops. It didn’t seem fair, and it didn’t seem like it would work very well, either.
“Are you finished asking dumb questions?” she asked.
“Yeah… I guess so. But I didn’t like the answers much.”
“Do you even know why I was angry when you first arrived?”
“Um… no, not entirely,” I admitted.
She sighed and clucked her tongue. “Do you remember the last time we were together in my office?”
“Sure.”
“You understand that it was an embarrassing moment for me, right?”
“Uh… of course.”
“Now, what was I supposed to do if I wanted to see you again?”
“Um… send me a message?”
She shook her head. Her voice took on a tone that was like that of a lady talking to a dumb kid who just wasn’t getting it. I’d heard that tone before plenty of times.
“I’m under investigation for harassment, remember?” she asked.
“Oh… sure. I remember something about that. From Winslade.”
“There you go. So, how would it look if there was a trail of online communications between me and you—initiated by me?”
“Bad,” I admitted, and finally, I was starting to catch on.
Galina had been avoiding me like the plague. I’d figured that was because she was embarrassed, or angry about something.
But that wasn’t it. She’d been covering her shapely ass all along. She’d dropped me because of Winslade’s legal challenges—not because she wasn’t interested. Suddenly, a whole bunch of things made more sense to me.
Smiling at last, I encircled her with my arms.
“You’re doing this of your own free will, aren’t you?” she asked me.
“Damn straight!”
“Good,” she said, and she kissed me. Her lips were buttery-soft.
Then, she pushed a button on her tapper, and she slid out of my grasp.
“That’s good enough,” she said, her tone suddenly business-like.
She walked back behind her desk, while I stared after her, dumbfounded all over again.
“What the hell…?”
Galina was staring down at her desk intently. She brought up a window and began pecking it with her fine fingers. She made a shooing motion with her other hand.
“Dismissed.”
“Hold on a minute!” I said. “This is bullshit! You just wanted to get me to say that? You recorded the whole thing on your tapper, and now you’re going to use it as evidence against Winslade, aren’t you?”
She glanced up at me. “Of course. Grow up, McGill. I’m too busy for sex today. Did you see that line out front? Did you seriously think I would be entertaining you in here, in the middle of the afternoon, while a crowd waited outside?”
“No…” I lied.
That was exactly what I’d thought—and hoped for—after she’d teased me.
“Very well then. Crawl back to that worm Winslade and tell him the good news. His worries about reinforcements are unfounded.”
I was mad. She’d tricked me, teased me, and used me. I thought about threatening to testify against her—but I couldn’t quite get myself to do it.
Heaving a sigh, I gave myself a shake and headed for the door.
“James,” she called after me.
“Yes, Tribune?”
“You don’t have to be a stranger. If you want to see me at a more opportune time, well… I might be more receptive.”
“I’ll think about that.”
Exiting the office and the outer office, I again pressed past the gaggle in the passageway. They looked at me with hate in their eyes.
“Well?” asked the centurion who’d complained to me before. “Can we go in now?”
I glanced around. That little adjunct who’d been playing hostess was nowhere in sight. Maybe she was taking a break now, too.
“It’ll be a bit,” I announced to them loudly. “I just finished her daily afternoon rub-down, and so she’s relaxing with some nice whale sounds and hot rocks—you know the routine.”
They looked at me, astounded. “Whales sounds? What are you? Her masseur?”
“Uh-huh.”
The centurion shook his head in amazement. “No wonder it’s taking so damned long to get in there!”
“Well now,” I admonished him, “don’t be rude. You can’t rush these things. That will spoil the whole effect. A stress-relief session with aroma therapy, a foot massage, and all the rest of it will be spoiled if you let people with petty problems barge in afterward. No sir, it’ll probably be another half-hour or so.”
Then I walked off toward the elevators. Behind me, I heard them mutter angrily among themselves about Turov. My ears almost stung from all the bad words.
People will say awful things when the object of their scorn is safely out of earshot.
-15-
The next day we arrived at the target planet. There were no defensive barrages fired up at us, so we slid into orbit right on top of the target factory complex, which hung in space a good four hundred kilometers above the surface of the world itself.
As an officer, I was allowed to access a vid feed from outside the ship. I’d expected to jog aboard a lifter—but that wasn’t how they wanted to play it this time.
“Troops,” I announced to my platoon, “we’re headed for Red Deck. We’re getting into capsules, and we’re going to make this drop look picture-perfect.”
They looked at me, scared. Even Cooper was worried.
“But we’ve never dropped before, Adjunct,” he said.
“That’s right—but fortunately, there’s nothing to it! Moller will go first, and I’ll bring up the rear, shoving.”
“Don’t you want me to get them loaded into the cannon, sir?” Moller asked.
I glanced at her. She was right—normally the noncom stayed with the troops, slapping the chicken out of any of them that felt like hanging back.
“Nope,” I said. “I want to watch firsthand to see how they perform.”
She nodded and didn’t complain. I liked that about her. She wasn’t full of color and spice, but she got the job done, and she didn’t argue all the time. Harris had been more of a smart ass—even worse than Sargon. Moller was strictly business.
“Follow the red arrows!” she boomed, trotting ahead. “They’ve started flashing. That means we’ve got five minutes before we drop.”
For my own part, I was a little excited. We hadn’t dropped like this on a world we hadn’t mapped out in a long, long time. What’s more, I couldn’t recall the last time we’d hot-dropped on a satellite structure at all.
When we hustled them all up to the tube-like loading bay, we soon had them in a ragged line. Each trooper clutched onto their equipment like they were facing execution—which, by the odds, some of them were.
“This is it,” Moller said, pointing at a round hole in the deck.
It was about a meter wide and six times as deep. The hole was black, but ran with a few blue lights. Artificial gravity tugged hard on anyone who stepped over the chute, and you could hear a gentle sucking sound. They maintained negative air pressure here to make sure anything and everything that they wanted to load got down there in one balled up mass.
“The first chance you’ll get to kill yourselves today is right here,” Moller said. “You want to step out into the middle of the chute. Don’t be grabbing the sides, or getting twisted up. You’re going to drop down into open space, and two halves of a capsule will slam down over you. At that point, if you haven’t had an appendage chopped off, you’ll be taking a gentle ride down to the target.”
I watched the troops. Some of them looked like they were hyperventilating. Others looked like they weren’t breathing at all. The sight made me smile, remembering my first drop.
“On the way down, you got no control,” I said, stepping in. “Just enjoy the ride, and read the data stream if you want to. If you hit the explosive bolts early, you’ll splat for sure.”
“That’s your second chance to die,” Moller said. “Once you’re down and out of your capsule, killing you isn’t our job any longer. That’s up to the enemy. Any questions?”
They were all staring at the hole, mesmerized.
The red arrows began blinking in unison, and a klaxon sounded, making all the recruits jump. The hole clamped shut with a powerful blast of released gas.
“Okay, watch me!” Moller said, stepping up to the line. She had to shout now to be heard over all the active machinery. “Timing is critical. After you see me go down, the chute will close, then the outer hatch will open below. Only one hatch opens at a time—because we don’t want to depressurize the whole frigging ship. About once every three seconds, this hatch will open and shut again. When it opens, drop in and don’t screw up!”
As she said these words, the hole shot open again. She stepped neatly out into space and vanished. She fell faster than was normal, due to the enhanced gravity and the sucking vacuum draw of the loading tube.
The hatch sliced closed, hard and fast, and we heard something like a cannon firing below.
“She’s away!” I boomed, stepping up and grabbing the shoulders of the first recruit in line. She was young, female, and terrified.
I wondered if I’d have to push. I wanted to make sure she didn’t screw up right off—it would be harder to get the rest into the chute if they had to step over a lot of splashy gore.
The chute opened, and the girl stepped out into the center, just like Moller had done. She gave a little squeak of fear as she was sucked down into darkness. The doors scissored shut again, and I turned a broad grin to the rest of the platoon.
“See that? Nothing to it! This is fun once you get the hang of it!”
