Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 33
When I opened my eyes again, I saw to my delight that I was on Earth.
My face split into a wide grin. Nothing looks better than your home planet, especially when you contrast it with an alien hive full of death and dirt.
The next thing I noticed were the heavy troopers. They were Blood World types, standing in formation. A squid officer was haranguing them and gesturing with his tentacles. I got the feeling they didn’t want to step into the jump-gate.
“Hey there,” I called out. “What’s wrong?”
The squid turned, and I cocked my head. He had a red crest, the emblem of a centurion.
“Is that you, Sub-Centurion Bubbles?” I asked.
“That is an approximation of my name,” he said, rolling forward with that strange, multi-legged gait that Cephalopods used on land. “I see your identification patch—you are the McGill?”
“That’s right. I’m back home again. We’ve been sending buzzers through this gateway to test it—have you seen any of them?”
The squid shook himself. That was the squid way of shaking their heads—I supposed it was as close as you could get when you didn’t have a neck.
“That’s strange…” I said, “since I came through cleanly.”
Looking around, I thought I saw a silvery glint in the grass. I bent down and picked it up. Sure enough, it was a busted buzzer. I showed it to Bubbles.
“Someone has stomped on it, by the look of it.”
Bubbles examined it briefly then flew into an unexpected rage. He approached the nearest knot of Blood Worlders, and produced a long lash.
“Hey now…” I said, but he wasn’t listening.
Cracking the whip and slashing with it, he demanded to know what had happened. The troops milled and grunted in pain. They were about as bright as circus bears, and right now, I was tired of seeing them get abused.
When Bubbles again lifted his whip high to slash another trooper, I reached out and plucked it from his hand.
He did an about-face and stared, eyes bulging and sides heaving from exertion.
“Be careful, squid,” I told him. “You look like you’re going to hyperventilate.”
“You have shamed me in front of my underlings. What possible reason might you have for inflicting this humiliation?”
I thought about giving him some sort speech on ethics, but quickly passed on the idea. It wouldn’t have any kind of impact on one of his people. Instead, I decided to trump him at his own game.
“You’re wasting valuable time,” I said. “If these Blood Worlders destroyed our buzzers, it’s your fault as you’re the one in charge.”
He looked crushed to hear that. It was just the kind of thing a Cephalopod overseer would have said.
“I don’t have time for your failures and petty vendettas!” I yelled at him. “Legion Varus needs to escape Dark World using this gateway. They can’t do it if they don’t know it’s safe.”
“I have a solution,” Bubbles said, yanking on the collar of the nearest Blood Worlder. “I can tell this one is to blame. He does not meet my eyes. He will suffer in the place of the buzzer.”
Before I could offer a better idea, Bubbles kicked and prodded the Blood Worlder into a shambling run. The poor dumb bastard stepped into the jump-gate and vanished.
We stood around for about a minute, but he didn’t return.
“Odd…” Bubbles said. “I expected him to report back.”
“Well… you didn’t tell him to. He’s either confused—or dead.”
“Your logic is unassailable.”
“You know,” I said, “I couldn’t help but notice that there’s only one buzzer here. Natasha said she sent through at least ten of them. What do you think happened to the rest?”
“Perhaps these oafs ate them,” Bubbles suggested.
He retrieved his whip and approached the line of littermates menacingly.
I’d about had my fill of old Bubbles by this time. Coming to a decision, I snapped my fingers.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “You’re going through next.”
This got the sub-centurion’s full attention. He swung his eyes back to look at me.
“For what purpose?”
“When the general is unclear, it’s his fault—not the soldiers. I didn’t hear you tell that Blood Worlder what to do. In case he died already, it’s not really fair to send another servant, is it?”
“It’s definitely preferable,” the Cephalopod complained.
“Nope. I’m in charge,” I said. Human officers outranked all squid officers. That’s why they had the “sub” in their ranks. “You sent that poor sap through, now I’m sending you. If you can get back to us, try to do so immediately. Understand your orders?”
“Yes, but…”
Stepping close, I grabbed a tentacle and gave a small shove toward the jump-gate posts.
He gave me such a glare in return, I thought maybe he would attack me. Cephalopods were our servants now, but they were incredibly powerful beings. They had muscles like a bundle of gorillas, and even one tentacle was a match for a strong man.
Still, he was cowed. His people had been beaten by Earthmen, fair and square. Also, I think my logic as to how to proceed managed to penetrate that rubber-skulled brain of his.
“I will go on this mission, under duress,” he said.
“You can dress however you want to. Just get in there, pronto.”
With one last angry glower cast in my direction, he humped his way into the jump-gate and vanished.
-48-
When the squid officer didn’t return for five full minutes, I began to worry.
Not about old Bubbles—not really. He could take care of himself, or he could die as a charred pile of calamari for all I cared—but time was wasting, and this problem wasn’t solving itself.
There rose up within me a powerful, dark urge. I realized suddenly I could toss all this nonsense aside and just enjoy being back home. After all, just by reaching Earth, I’d done most of what needed doing. The others could be chalked down as dead, and if I had to, I could lie a little to make sure they all caught a revive.
But that didn’t sit well inside my mind. Natasha, Carlos, Cooper—even Winslade. They didn’t really deserve to be tortured to death by Rigellians just because I’d played a prank on our dear, hairless bear cub-looking friends.
Hmm…
“Troops,” I said to the milling soldiers, “watch this gateway. If anyone comes through, find me and report what you saw.”
They looked from me to the gateway, then back again. I left them there, staring at my back and the gateway intermittently.
The jump-gate was set up at the top of a grassy hill near a barracks building. Striding quickly to Bubbles’ office at the bottom of the hill, I found it unlocked. I pushed my way inside and began to rummage.
He had a com-link, but that was pass-coded.
“Paranoid squid,” I complained, cursing and throwing stuff around.
I didn’t find anything official I could use to contact Central, so I sighed and bit the bullet. Using my own tapper, I leaned way back in Bubbles chair and called Drusus.
Long before the call went through, I’d gotten up and abandoned that chair. It had a bad taint to it—fishy.
“McGill?” Drusus asked, incredulous. “Is that really you? How can you be so self-confident, so disrespectful of authority, so—”
“Hold on a second, Praetor,” I said. “I’m all those things and more, and I’m sure I deserve a good solid perming every other Sunday. But this is urgent, and it involves the safety of all Earth. Can I explain, sir?”
Drusus closed his eyes for a second. He breathed through clenched teeth.
“Did you miss out on some sleep last night, sir?” I asked. “You seem a bit out of sorts.”
His eyes snapped open again. “If I did, it was probably directly traceable to your actions.”
“Aw now, that’s unfair, sir.”
“Report—quickly.”
In as snappy and concise a way as I could manage, I explained that the last of the legion was buried on Dark World, and Nostrum had been destroyed.
“The ship… lost?” Drusus asked. He stared, but he didn’t seem to see me at all. “Two legions, wiped out? Whoever is left alive aboard the space complex… they can’t hold out without Nostrum’s help.”
“That’s about the size of it, sir,” I said. “On the bright side, we completed our mission by destroying the nest we landed on, and I managed to return with an artifact from the Rigellians themselves.”
I showed him the snake-bone necklace thing.
“This serves them kind of like a tapper,” I explained.
Drusus had a sagging mouth. I had that effect on a lot of people—it even seemed to infect me now and then.
“You had close personal contact with one of the enemy?”
“Yessir,” I said, unable to keep a hint of pride out of my voice. “I was close enough to kiss him—not that I’d want to, mind you.”
“But how… how did you escape?”
“Uh…” I said, thinking over my raft of lies and tricks. I gave my head a shake. “Sir, that’s complicated and interesting, but not critical right now. What I need is guidance and technical aid.”
“We haven’t got anyone up there who can troubleshoot a gateway that doesn’t work right,” he said. “Floramel’s team of scientists set it up and left months ago. It will take half an hour to get an air car up there from Central.”
“Okay… so technical help is out. What do we do? How can I save my legion?”
Drusus took a deep breath. “In all likelihood, you can’t, McGill. I know that’s a painful reality, but you’ve already sent through buzzers, a Blood Worlder and a Cephalopod officer. I think that’s about enough proof, don’t you?”
My face fell. I’d really been hoping this would go differently. What he was telling me was that my friends were as good as dead.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we can’t authorize revives for those who aren’t confirmed to be dead. That means… most of Legion Varus, I’m afraid.”
“What?” I demanded in shock.
“Yes… The Iron Eagles were aboard Nostrum, which your tapper feed—yes I’m downloading it now—confirms as destroyed.”
I looked down at my tapper. The damned thing was a snitch at times. I could see a red indicator of high traffic. Drusus was using some kind of override to dump my data.
About then, I stopped listening to Drusus, although he went right on talking.
The message was loud and clear. Anyone I’d not actually witnessed dying, or who wasn’t in some way confirmed dead by my tapper, was as good as permed.
Our ship had been lost, our connection to Earth had been a one way thing—but it hadn’t saved us after all. Even if the rest of my cohort did chance it and walk through, there were plenty more lost in that anthill who couldn’t prove they’d died to the satisfaction of Central.
I tuned back in, as Drusus seemed to be winding down.
“In short, we’ll watch the jump-gate. Possibly, more survivors will straggle through. You’ve done well, as it turns out. These shots of the enemy fleet—chilling, but very informative. I’m in your debt.”
“Well then,” I said, getting angry instead of depressed. “Help me get my legion out of purgatory!”
“It’s not that simple. Maybe, in time, Earth ships will venture to Dark World again. Maybe, if they find physical evidence, revivals can begin in future years. It’s hard to say.”
As he kept talking, I kept walking. Soon, I was out on the hillside with the littermates, who were still staring at the jump-gate as if they expected Santa Claus to step out of it.
“Anything?” I asked them.
They shook their heads in unison.
“Shit.”
“McGill?” Drusus said. “Where are you?”
“Outside with the Blood Worlders, sir. I have them watching the gateway for escapees.”
“Anything?”
“Not yet, sir,” I admitted.
“Yes… very unfortunate. Legion Varus is a cursed outfit, truly. We always suffer the most. We shoulder the greatest burden, and still, we—”
That was as far as he got—or at least, as far as I listened.
In the middle of his sentence, while the sun shined, the green grasses waved, and the littermates stared with baffled expressions—I stepped into the jump-gate and vanished.
-49-
Tumbling through the lightyears, it seemed to me I had a chance to ponder, however briefly.
There was simply no way I was going to leave the entirety of Legion Varus stranded on Dark World. First off, I hated the place. It stank, sucked, and was essentially a giant dirt-hole full of giant bugs.
But why use the jump-gate that had swallowed so many? One of my primary motivations for taking such a risk was the injustice of the situation. The Iron Eagles, Deech, Turov—oh, sure, they were all going to catch a revive.
But the actual grunts who marched into the anthill? Those who’d fought and struggled to the last with a gruesome task beyond all measure? Well, they were getting permed, or at least left on ice for possibly a decade or more. None of my friends were getting a revive until the brass back on Earth felt good and ready to investigate their tragic case.
That wasn’t good enough for me. I knew, as I stepped into the ether, that I might well be perming myself prematurely. It was quite possible this gateway went nowhere good. I had no way of knowing, but I decided to take the chance.
When I stepped out on the far side, I felt disoriented. I was standing on a deck, but it was dark.
When I say dark, I mean pitch-black and ice cold. There was nothing to see, and no one to share it with.
“Is this Dark World?” I asked. “Am I underneath another anthill?”
For some reason, my words elicited an unexpected response from the universe. A tentacle uncoiled and slammed into me, sending me spinning around.
I crashed onto my face, and it was only by the grace of the Almighty himself I didn’t crack my faceplate.
“McGill?” asked a voice in the darkness. “Is that the McGill-creature?”
“Bubbles?” I asked. “Are you here, assaulting a superior officer?”
“I—I’m sorry, Adjunct. My visual receptors have failed me.”
“No problem… It’s all right.”
I climbed to my feet and began searching the place. There were lots of things lying around, and the chamber was pressurized. Crawling on my hands and knees, I felt a few small, crunchy items.
Lifting one up, I tried to use my suit lights to see it—but they didn’t work. No form of light was working at all.
“The air is cold, but breathable,” Bubbles said. “I’ve been here several minutes. I’ve taken what measurements I could.”
“I think I found one of Natasha’s buzzers,” I said, daring to remove a gauntlet and touch the crinkled spidery drone. “The weird thing is this darkness. My suit seems to be operating. It’s pumping air and heat—but there’s no light. Nothing.”
“I can’t detect anything with my visual orbs either. The littermate in the corner seems to be similarly affected.”
“There’s a Blood Worlder in here?”
“Yes. You might recall that I sent him through first.”
“Ah, right. Can you see anything, soldier?”
The Blood Worlder was silent for a moment, but at last he spoke up. His voice was deep, and kind of sounded like croaking. It was the voice you might expect a giant bullfrog to have, if one of those amphibians could speak.
“No,” he said simply.
His kind weren’t conversationalists.
“Well,” I said, getting to my feet. I had my hands spread out, partly to balance and partly to ward off the unseen. “Looks like we have to move on. Maybe there’s a way out of here.”
“I don’t think there is,” Bubbles said. “We’ve explored by touch, and in every direction, a border is soon reached. At that point, the deck becomes ragged and freezing cold. It’s as if we’re on an island in the middle of an icy void.”
That gave me pause. “Uh…” I said. “How’s that possible?”
“The jump-gate technology is far from perfect. Perhaps this is a random endpoint in space-time. A juncture, or a seam, in what we think of as reality. I once attended lectures on these advanced transportational technologies. They’re reliable, as long as both ends are firmly tethered.”
I thought about what Natasha had done. She’d untied one end of a jump-gate and attached it to another one. Could she have done so in such a way that she created something new—something that couldn’t be easily escaped?
Putting my gauntlet back on, I slammed the two of them together, making a loud, popping sound. “Well then, what are we going to do now?”
“That noise is irritating. Please don’t repeat it.”
I slammed my hands together again—harder this time. “That noise?”
“Yes…” Bubbles said, his word dragging out into a hiss.
“Any ideas as to the future?” I asked.
“Eventually, I suppose,” Bubbles said in a philosophical tone, “discipline will break down. At that point, we will consume one another. When that limited source of nourishment is exhausted, the survivor’s existence will end.”
“I don’t much care for your depressing prognostication, squid.”
“And I don’t much care for your derogatory references, human. Remember, Earth is far away. Our former relationship was one based upon—”
His voice led me right to him. I’d already figured that if we were going to go down fighting, I might as well get in the first blow.
My fist slammed into the sharp beak that was doing the talking. Squids kept their mouths underneath them, right about where a human’s butthole might be. It was a sensitive spot, and I wanted to give him something to think about before I cut him into calamari slices with my combat knife.
But suddenly, before I could stab Bubbles, a massive hand closed over mine. It was a hand so big, so dominating—it had to be the Blood Worlder.
“Stand down, soldier!” I shouted.
