Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 30
I lowered my rifle and strode confidently into the middle of the group. Standing between the humans and Silt with his Blood Worlders, I raised my palms gesturing for calm.
“Everyone, just settle down. We’re going to get out of this.”
“Are you promising to lead us up?” Silt asked, raising a tentacle aloft. The tip pointed to the dusty roof. “Back to the sunlight—such as it is in this pathetic star system?”
“Eventually, sure,” I said. “I’ll do my damnedest to get all of you out of here.”
“He lies,” Silt said. “He will take you further down—into the depths.”
Turning to face him, I stared down the muzzle of his gun. “Squid, you’re getting on my nerves.”
“Nonsensical insults. Vague promises. A leader takes action, and he never shows fear—”
Reaching out, I slapped his gun aside.
Cephalopods had bad tempers and bad attitudes—well, they were pretty much the assholes of the galaxy in my experience. Silt was no exception when it came to these character flaws.
He lashed out with a tentacle, which caught me a glancing blow in the breastplate.
A lesser man would have been knocked flat. As it was, a crease appeared in my armor.
Still, Silt had made an error. If he’d killed me in that instant, possibly the Blood Worlders would have backed him as he would have been the leader in their eyes.
But what they saw was a subordinate attacking an officer.
Quick as a cat, one of them drew his thick saber. It flashed through the dusty air. The tentacle that had dared to strike me was sliced clean off.
It fell to the floor, where it writhed like a giant, dying worm, caked up with blood and dirt.
That was it for good-old Sub-Veteran Silt. The Blood Worlders reached out with their massive hands and latched onto him.
Silt tried to get his rifle in line with my body, but while he could have overpowered any single trooper, he couldn’t handle a squad of them. Struggling, cursing and spilling ink and blood, he put on quite a show.
The hulking Blood Worlders all looked at me like grade-schoolers for orders and guidance.
It was an unfortunate moment for old Silt, because I was ready to take the chance they would have me for the new boss. Setting my jaw, I made the hard call. The one that Graves wouldn’t have hesitated to make.
“Execute him,” I said.
They went straight to work. Their sabers rose and fell, flashing and thudding into meat. He was hacked apart and soon converted into the biggest pile of raw calamari I’d ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on.
“Oooo,” Carlos said, walking up behind me. “Remind me to stay off your shit-list.”
“You’re a permanent fixture there, Ortiz,” I said.
“How did you know?” Cooper asked me.
“Know what?”
“That they’d follow you? That these retarded apes would turn on the squid, and not you?”
Now, as most folks who know me well might suspect, I hadn’t known exactly how things would play out. Quite often in fact, when I pulled a ballsy showdown stunt like this, I ended up as dead as that fish-smelling meat-pile in the dirt behind me.
But admitting such a thing wouldn’t do anything to raise my mystique. Accordingly, I shrugged, and I lied.
“You’ve got to read your troops, Cooper,” I said. “These are men. They might not be summa cum laude, but they’re men just the same. Earlier today I threw your ass down into a pit they’d fallen into, and I charged after. Action, you see? You don’t earn respect through words and rules alone. You earn it by taking action they respect.”
“You had their back, so they have yours? Is that it?”
“Yeah…” I said, and I brushed past them all. Walking to the darkest tunnel I could find, one that was pretty much a shaft straight down into blackness, I pointed.
“That’s where we’re going,” I said. “Straight down. Straight into the queen’s chamber.”
“I totally fucking knew it,” Carlos muttered.
“You and me both,” Cooper chimed in.
I ignored them. They could complain if they wanted to. In the end, they’d follow me—and that was all that mattered.
-43-
Our approach became simple as we advanced deeper into the nest: whenever we found a steeper, darker tunnel—we took it.
Using this straightforward rule, we managed to plunge rapidly into the ground. I had no idea how deep we were after an hour or so—and I don’t think Kivi did, either, despite her casual estimates.
“We have to be below ground level,” she said, “as much as a kilometer below, by my calculations.”
“What are you judging that on?”
Kivi shrugged. “My pedometer, the average angle of descent and a few other things, like the temperature of the dirt.”
“Yeah, but you can’t go by Earth-normal on all that. We could be—”
“I know, I know—it’s my best guess.”
She seemed a little snappy, so I let it go. Maybe it would be good for morale if at least one of us pretended to know where we were.
It was at the start of the second hour that we made contact with the enemy again. I had a few probing scouts ahead of us, and one of them ran back puffing.
“Sir!” she said, “we’ve got something below, in the next chamber down.”
“What’d you see?”
“I don’t know. Lights, noise. It sounded like… drilling.”
I squinted at her. “Cooper!”
He trotted right by me without stopping.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“To go die in a hole. You were sending me down to investigate, weren’t you, Adjunct?”
“Uh… yeah. Go ahead.”
We halted our march, set up for an ambush and waited for Cooper to come back—or not. I had Kivi tail him with a buzzer, so I was able to see what he discovered only a few minutes after he found it.
“Lights…” Kivi said. “Vulbites don’t use lights underground. Do you think—?”
“Just watch. Let him do his job.”
We watched tensely, and at last two light troopers spotted Cooper sneaking up on them and almost shot him dead. He surrendered, identified himself, and then a figure came marching up.
I whistled long and low. “Graves! Would you look at that?” I spun around, showing my tapper feed to anyone who seemed interested. “You think I’m crazy? Do you? Look at this! Graves is below us. He’s been moving faster. You’re a bunch of whiners.”
Marching down the steepest path, I soon caught up to Cooper, who was reporting to Graves.
“Ah, McGill,” Graves said. “About time you got down here. We’re close to the queen. Every indicator shows it.”
“Um… what indicators are those, sir?” Kivi asked him.
He looked at her flatly. “You should know. Insects release heat, smells. We’ve been using our tappers to measure bodily odors and rising heat-levels. That’s how we know something big is ahead. A large concentration of the enemy at the very least.”
Kivi squirmed and nodded. She escaped as soon as she could. She hadn’t thought of any of those things.
Surprising no one, we discovered Natasha was guiding Graves. She’d always been a more capable tech than Kivi. Fortunately, Kivi wasn’t too jealous about that. She only got jealous of another woman if too many guys were checking her out.
“Cooper here tells me you had some trouble with your Blood Worlders.”
“Sub-Veteran Silt was the troublemaker, not them,” I said firmly. “These boys were loyal. They corrected Silt, who now sees the error of his ways clearly.”
Graves chuckled. “He does, does he? Good. Come on.”
Graves showed me his set up. He had about two full units worth of troops with him. Winslade, to my surprise, was one of the centurions who’d survived.
It didn’t shock me to find Winslade was still breathing. He was a clever weasel. What did surprise me was he hadn’t managed to slip away and vanish yet.
Graves seemed to read my mind. “A man tends to be very loyal when he faces a solid perming. I think he suspected that if he had, ah, reversed course, I might not report the body scan if he turned up dead.”
“As good a theory as any, Primus.”
“Anyway, I’m glad you made it this far, McGill. It took you long enough to get down here, seeing as your unit was one of the first to enter the cone and invade the nest... but I guess you had a rough time of it, is that right?”
“Right, sir,” I said. I was annoyed at his unspoken suggestion my team had been lollygagging, but I managed to keep my voice neutral. “What’s the plan going forward?”
“It’s pretty simple, really. We’re going to march down into the queen’s chamber and take her out. We estimate there’s no more than a thousand Vulbites with her—sort of a last ditch royal guard.”
“Uh… did you say a thousand, sir?”
“Nothing wrong with your ears, at least. Now, do you want to know who’s taking point as we assault the egg chamber?”
I blinked, and then I got it. “Um… my team, sir?”
“That’s a generous offer, McGill. I expected nothing less. But no, no, your team can’t do it. Hell no. All you have is a bunch of lights and a half-wild squad of littermates. I’m sending a weaponeer platoon with a full unit of armored troops. I want to light up these bugs with heavy guns right from the start.”
“Ah, I see, sir.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, utterly misreading my expression. “You’ll get your chance for revenge before we’re through.”
Suddenly, a throat was cleared behind us. We both looked and saw Winslade standing near.
“Excuse me, Primus,” he said smoothly. “But do I understand that the term ‘leadership’ is involved here?”
“What do you want to say, Centurion?” Graves demanded.
“Just that if there is to be a secondary prong to this attack, I should be commanding it. I am, after all, the second-highest ranked officer present.”
“A glorious charge?” Graves asked. “Certain death with distinction? That’s what you’re demanding, Winslade? I’m impressed.”
“Ah… perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, there has been. Now, go manage those weaponeers. Make sure they lay those charges right, or you’ll get to set them off with your own sidearm.”
Winslade beat a hasty retreat, and Graves turned back to face me. “Do we understand each other, McGill?”
“Um… we sure do. But is there no way we can discuss surrender with these beings, sir?”
Graves gave me a hard look, just as he’d done with Winslade. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, McGill. I’m also going to pretend I’m not having second thoughts about your leadership skills right now. Is that clear?”
“Crystal, Primus.”
“Good. Take a short break and organize your men. Have you got any wounded?”
I hesitated. Being wounded wasn’t the best thing to be when you were near Graves.
“No, sir,” I lied with bright confidence. “Our wounded didn’t make it this far down.”
“Okay, that’s for the best. I plan to put Harris’ worst cases on our front lines to absorb the initial shock of their counterattack.”
“We’re expecting a counterattack?”
He frowned up at me. “Of course. This is the queen’s egg chamber. These bugs are going to go suicidally ape when they realize we’re here to destroy it all.”
“Stands to reason… How are we going to deploy, sir?”
He pointed to a series of squatting weaponeers. They were working with the floor of the chamber, scraping at it and setting cubes in the dirt. Winslade was directing them, which they didn’t seem too happy about.
“Charges?” I asked. “They’re setting up charges?”
“Right. The egg chamber is directly below us. We’ve been using sensors to assess the shape and general layout. The main assault troops are going to rush the chamber down that wide tunnel over there. But you—you’re going down even faster.”
I eyed the weaponeers as they set their charges. “You’re going to blow the roof open? What if it collapses?”
“Even better,” he said. “Our work will be done for us.”
“Okay…” I said, taking a deep breath. “Assuming we get down there alive, what are our orders?”
Again, he looked at me oddly. “To kill everything that crawls—what else?”
“Everything?”
“Everything—don’t miss a single egg. We can’t tell which one might be a new queen.”
My mouth set to a firm line, but I nodded.
I didn’t like killing civvies. Not even insectile ones. But this was a desperate moment, and I could hardly pretend I was some kind of saint. After all, I did help vaporize the last Vulbite nest from orbit with Nostrum’s broadsides.
“What if they try to surrender, sir?” I asked. “What then?”
Graves shook his head bemusedly. “When you see them hold their pinchers up over their heads, you can arrest them, McGill.”
I nodded in disappointment. Graves was right. In my long years, I’d never seen a colony of biting ants “surrender” to an exterminator.
They always fought to the bitter end.
While the troops worked to prepare, I talked to Natasha. She was full of information, as usual.
“Nostrum is on point above this spot in orbit. She’s waiting with her broadsides trained on this nest,” she said. “They aren’t going to allow us to fail. If we don’t report back that the queen was destroyed—with proof—they’ll blast this hive open.”
“And us with it,” I said glumly.
“That’s right. Apparently, you started a trend.”
“Yeah. I think that’s why Deech let me catch a revive. It’s her way of admitting I was right without saying it. But… hey, how do you know what’s going on aboard Nostrum? We don’t have radio contact, do we?”
She smiled. “We’ve got something better. Come look.”
She led me to a pair of humming jump-gate posts. Between them hung a cloudy region of pink-gray light.
“These connect to Nostrum’s loading deck,” she explained.
“We can get reinforcements, then?”
“If Deech would release more of them, maybe we could,” she admitted. “But the word is the brass on Gold Deck figures they’ve spent enough time and equipment on this hole in the ground. There are a lot more nests left after this one. If we don’t finish soon, they’ll use the guns again—end of story.”
I walked up and marveled at the posts. Such small, simple-looking devices. As alien tech marvels went, jump-gates were hard to beat.
“At least we can retreat through them back up to the ship, right?” I asked.
“If we kill the queen, I’m sure we can.”
For just a second, I considered taking another unscheduled jaunt. But I knew that wouldn’t work—not this time. There were sure to be troops up there waiting, and Deech wasn’t the kind who took jokes well.
“The charges are set!” Winslade shouted triumphantly.
“Time to report our status to Nostrum,” Natasha said.
She dug out a buzzer from her pack and set it on the ground near the jump-gate. Shivering its wings as it walked, it traveled through the gateway and vanished.
A few seconds went by. I checked my guns, and I almost walked away to marshal my troops—but then I noticed that Natasha was frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“My buzzer should be back by now,” she said.
“That quick?”
“Yes. It’s programmed to walk through, transmit my report, and then turn right around and walk back. Ten seconds, tops. It’s been gone nearly a minute.”
I looked at the gateposts. What could be going on aboard Nostrum?
“Why don’t you step through and have a look?” I suggested.
“That’s against orders. Deech is all paranoid about unauthorized use of the jump-gates for some reason.”
That made me give my head a scratch. Could she know—or at least suspect—that I’d used these jump-gates improperly on several occasions? It wouldn’t be the first time an officer invented a rule of conduct forbidding something I’d done.
Losing patience, I stepped toward the jump-gate.
“Don’t, James! You’re already in enough trouble!”
“What’s Deech going to do? Bust me down to specialist?”
“Maybe…”
“Stop worrying. I’ll be right back.”
So saying, I stepped into the pink-gray, shifting haze—and I vanished.
-44-
An instant later, I was back on the deck of Nostrum. I don’t mind telling you, it was a good feeling to be out of that hole in the ground the Vulbites called home.
Just in case there were surprised guards on the far side, waiting for some kind of unplanned bug invasion, I had my rifle slung and my hands up.
But there was no one there to greet me.
Instead of personnel, I saw flashing lights and wailing klaxons. The floor was lit up with a dozen different colored arrows, showing where techs, soldiers and regular crewmen were supposed to report.
“…Battle Stations…” the ship’s computer said. “All personnel are to report to Battle Stations.”
Confused, I took another step forward—and that’s when I heard a crunch.
Looking down, I saw my foot had located Natasha’s buzzer. It had been doing three-sixties, crawling around in a loop. Probably, it had been attempting to deliver what it considered a critical message—and failing to do so.
My tapper lit up about then, as it synched with the ship’s network. I used it to catch the emergency feed.
A vid began to stream on my forearm. It showed the scene outside, but it was too small to make out much.
With a tossing motion of my arm, I relayed the stream to the walls of the chamber I was in. Every blank surface aboard Nostrum was a kind of screen, if you wanted it to be. We usually used them to display the stars outside in a scenic fashion—but they could also be used to deliver briefings or other information.
What I saw outside in space, beyond Nostrum’s hull, made my jaw sag wide.
