Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 7
“Then we’d kick some alien tail!” I shouted out.
A few laughed, a few frowned. I didn’t care. I’d already lost my rank. They could bust me down to recruit if they wanted to. I was done with being quiet.
Drusus gave me a slightly pained smile. “Right. So that’s the essence of the plan. We need to capture a world close to Blood World and make it an advanced base for the construction of a fleet. There are more reasons for this—other than needing the production capacity.”
Now this was interesting. I shut up, and I listened. Drusus explained how the advanced base had to be close to Blood World to protect our new troop planet.
It took weeks for our fastest ships to fly from Earth to Blood World. Any enemy who decided to capture or destroy the place could do the dirty deed before we could get there if we kept the whole fleet in orbit above Earth.
It occurred to me that this exact problem had once faced the Empire. At some point in the past, they’d realized they needed local defense stations and fleets. That’s why they’d built Battle Fleet 921 and sent her to patrol our province.
All that seemed to be history now, however, as the Empire was crumbling. Earth, at the fringe of the fringe, was starting to break away. I could feel it happening now, having lived a long time and fought on many worlds.
Back in the old, old days, when Europe had first conquered the Earth, they’d been forced to colonize and maintain local garrisons of troops and ships. Traveling from England to America, for example, took weeks. Enemy raiders would come and go, plundering valuables long before a distant Imperial force could respond.
Local strongholds. A fleet and an army, in the heart of the disputed territory. I was intrigued, and I’d begun to wonder why I’d been called here today. Why legion Varus officers were present—and no one else.
“Now,” Drusus said, “in order to continue, I must swear you all to secrecy—but don’t take this oath lightly. The penalty for violating it is perma-death.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s that important. Let’s have an oath. Show your hands if you pledge to defend what you’re about to learn with your life—all your lives.”
My hand shot up. Slowly, dozens of others did the same.
“Very well,” Drusus said, running his eyes over us proudly. “Let me explain. We’re exposed out there at Blood World. We’re in the middle of forming a beachhead, and we have many enemy powers to worry about. We’re weak right now because we’ve just begun the effort. If they hit us today, before we can establish ourselves—we’ll be wiped out.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
When you start talking about perming people, legionnaires tend to shut up and listen. We all knew Drusus was a praetor. He had the power, the will, and the right to carry out his threats.
“In short,” he continued, “Earth’s entire effort to exert control over this vast swath of territory can be easily derailed at this point. We can’t allow that. One step we’re taking involves subterfuge. Secrecy. Stealth.”
Graves raised a gauntlet. Everyone looked at him.
“Yes, Primus?” Drusus asked.
“Sir, may I suggest a more private meeting? If you’re going to go further—to tell us something critical—”
“No,” Drusus said. “I want you all in on this. I want every officer in Varus to hear me, and hear me well. We’re putting everything on the line today—and it will be your responsibility, collectively, if we fail.”
People started muttering, but they shut up when Drusus spoke again.
“So,” Drusus said, “we’re in a sealed room. Your tappers have been disabled, and you’re all disconnected from the grid.”
I glanced at my forearm. Everyone did—it was reflexive.
Drusus had spoken the truth. My tapper was disconnected.
“Just so you understand, if these details get out, you’re all dead. I can say this is fair, because I’ll know for certain that one of you let it get out. You will all share in that guilt. So… suspect one another! Make sure no one else is playing a dangerous game with your life.”
The crowd shifted and murmured. We weren’t happy. How could we be? Hell, there were plenty of weasels in Varus.
Tribune Galina Turov had been quiet all this time, but she’d worn a frown that seemed to grow in intensity with every point Drusus made. Finally, she raised her hand.
“What is it, Tribune?”
“Perhaps you should offer the group an out, sir,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“Let them resign—now, no repercussions. If they feel they can’t uphold the group, they can exit gracefully.”
Harris, in particular, was nodding to himself as he heard this idea. I wondered if he’d actually offer his own resignation over this—or if he was hoping others would.
Drusus seemed to consider the idea, but at last, he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I need you all, and you’re being collectively made privy to the mission for good reason. There’s no turning back.”
A few people eyed the exits, but no one made a run for it. For that, I was thankful. It would have been a shameful thing—something a hog would have done.
“I’m trusting you,” Drusus continued, “because you have honor and grit. I’ve come to ask Legion Varus to make sacrifices because you’re our best commandos. Our dirtiest of dirty fighters, veterans of conflicts most people don’t even know occurred.”
It was all true. We already had so many secrets entrusted to us, it was hard to count them all. The least of these might cause the Mogwa to burn Earth to ash if they found out about them.
How do you get a man to keep a secret? Put a gun to his head. That was the Legion Varus answer. That was the Varus way.
“Time to reveal our destination,” he said. “This is the target star.”
Some people winced and squeezed their eyes almost shut. Harris and Leeson were among these. I wondered if they figured they could save themselves from a treason charge if they squinted hard enough.
The displayed star system was unremarkable. It was only six lightyears away from Blood World.
“We’ve chosen this target because—”
“Hold on!” Winslade interrupted. “Praetor, sir? Did you say ‘we’ have chosen the target? How many other Hegemony officers are privy to this vital secret?”
I knew what he was doing, of course. He was setting up doubt ahead of time. Nothing motivated Winslade like threatening his precious skin. In this case, he’d gotten the bright idea of identifying another possible scapegoat for the future.
“Very well,” Drusus said, “you’ve caught me in a lie. No one else knows this destination. I’m revealing it to you for the first time. It took me years to choose this spot.”
Winslade crossed his arms and cinched up his mouth in disappointment.
Drusus began to pace. “You have to understand, troops, that Earth has had plans all along—contingency plans, you might call them. We knew that the Empire might someday sputter out. That day seems uncomfortably near. For now, they’ve given us the right to conquer neighboring suns—that’s all well and good, if it ends there. But it might be more than that. It might be the beginning of the end.”
I spoke up again. It was as if a devil inside me opened my mouth and forced words out.
“Tribune?” I asked. “How long have you been planning for this?”
“Years. A decade—maybe longer. These steps—they’re not random. Notice, we first captured a planet full of mineral wealth, and we established ourselves as a two-world civilization—that part, I admit, was somewhat random. But more recently, when we took a world with great technical prowess and brought back their discoveries to Earth, and when we captured a planet full of ready-made soldiers—these steps were foreseen. Never in the exact details, but definitely in the manner one plots to conquer a child’s puzzle by locating the corners first, then completing the frame, then filling in the middle.”
Somehow, I found his speech comforting. It was good to know someone was minding the store. Accordingly, I shut up and let him finish.
“Here,” he said, making the target near Blood World’s star light up. He gestured, and the system zoomed in. “This is our target: 39 Eridani. It’s is a binary star, approximately 206 light-years from Earth. There are a lot of binary stars in this region of space. From our point of view, it’s visible only from the southern hemisphere.”
He lit up scores of other systems nearby. They were all numbered and collectively called “Eridani” stars. All of them were doubles or even triple-star systems.
“In any case,” he said, “we’re going out there because we’ve learned of a large superstructure orbiting the target world. It’s an amazing industrial facility in space. A giant space-dock. The Cephalopods built it, but it has fallen into disrepair. We’re going to capture it, repair it, and liberate the strange people who live out there.”
How are they strange?
I wanted to ask that. I really did, with every fiber of my being, but I managed to keep quiet. I’d spoken up enough at this meeting, which had kicked off with a threat of general perma-death for the lot us.
“That’s all for now. You’ll be shipping out in ten days. Your cover story involves a deployment to Machine World—which is partly true. You will go there, make an appearance for the miners, then vanish in an unexpected direction, heading deeper into the disputed zone. Hopefully, no one will be the wiser.”
-8-
After the meeting we were all irritable and glum. We’d been informed yet again of our possible doom due to the leaking of information by any single member of the officer core, then dismissed.
“Why the hell did he bother to tell us where we we’re going at all?” Leeson wanted to know.
He had a bottle of beer in each hand, and the corners of his mouth were wet.
“Maybe it’s a trap,” Harris said. “A test. Maybe he showed us the wrong world. Maybe he just wants to see if one of us leaks it, so he can find the leaker and squash him.”
Leeson swilled down six fast gulps from the beer in his left hand. I’d noticed he’d been favoring the left one lately—it was almost empty.
“Either, that,” he said, “or he’s set us up to fail. A hundred people can’t keep a secret like that. This is all an excuse to perm the officers of Varus—a clean sweep! A purge!”
He slashed his right hand, armed with a full bottle, across our shared table. He nailed my beer in the process, and glass broke and tinkled to the floor.
“Nah,” I said, signaling the annoyed waitress for a fresh brew. “Drusus isn’t sneaky like that. If he wanted us dead, he’d just kill us straight out.”
They both nodded in agreement, but no one seemed especially happy.
Later that day, I returned from my lengthy lunch to the recruiting booth. Winslade came in late for his shift, too. I complained at him about it, but he just sneered at me.
“At least I got some sign-ups last night,” he said.
He slid a tablet my way. I caught it, and I reviewed the names. Three candidates had signed up the night before, after I’d quit for the day.
A moment’s thought made me realize why it had gone that way. I recalled my own experiences in the Hall, many long years ago. I’d tried every reputable, famous legion upstairs first. After having washed out, I’d eventually found my way down to the loser legion booths downstairs, under the main floor.
We were huddled around the train station, hawking to those who came in on the train or those who were on their last legs and heading home. As a refuge of last resort for the desperate, it only made sense we’d get most of our sign-ups in the evening.
“See there?” Winslade boasted. “Three sign-ups! More than you managed all day long.”
I slid the tablet back toward him, and he barely caught it before it went off the edge of the counter.
I didn’t bother explaining to him what had happened. If he thought he was a great salesman with a gift of gab for young recruits, I’d let him have his—
“Just a second,” I said, reaching over and plucking the tablet back out of his skinny fingers.
I paged through the contracts, one, two, three…
There he was. His face wore a crooked, knowing, smug expression I wouldn’t soon forget.
It was none other than Cooper. The ass-hat who’d so pissed me off on my first day in the booth.
I laughed loud and long.
Angrily, Winslade took the tablet back from me. He didn’t get it, and I didn’t care to enlighten him.
Instead, I daydreamed about the special surprises we had in store for Cooper in what passed for boot camp with Legion Varus. It might even be fun to watch this time around.
Several days rolled by, and we got a few sign-ups every evening. As we were missing our quotas, it was announced that we could offer signing bonuses. That kicked it up a notch. Two hundred thousand credits didn’t go far these days, but to some of these kids, it was a fortune.
On the last day before we were to ship out, the shock of my life came.
It was about six p. m. After a day in the booth, I’d gone to the Overlook Café and had myself a few beers and sandwiches. When I was about to leave and go back to Central—I’d taken up residence in the barracks there since renting hotel rooms every night was breaking me—I realized I’d forgotten my coat.
Riding down the escalator, I noticed a young female recruit was standing at the Varus booth, talking to Winslade.
He was all charm. His toothy smile and raised eyebrows told me he thought he’d caught a live one.
I frowned, because something was familiar…
Halfway down the escalator, I began bounding down the rest of the steps, bowling aside innocent people. I’m a big man, and when I’m coming down a set of steps and blindsiding people—well, they go down like wheat in the path of a scythe.
I tried not to step on them, as a few were facedown and yelling. But most rode the escalator to the bottom on their bellies.
When I was about four meters from the bottom, I vaulted over the side of the escalator, landed on my boots and charged the booth.
I think the thing that surprised people most was I wasn’t shouting. Many people in a hurry to prevent a catastrophe shouted a lot—but it wasn’t going to help in this case. It might even, in fact, cause that darned girl to go faster.
At the end, Winslade caught sight of me. His eyes widened when he saw me tearing up behind the girl he was talking to, boots hammering on the puff-crete. My clenched teeth were all exposed in a snarl.
“What the…?” he began, but I was there already.
Both Etta’s hand and mine made a reach for Winslade’s tablet.
We lunged right at him, and Winslade must have thought he was a dead man. He recoiled, and the tablet he’d been paging through slipped through his fingers.
I leapt over the countertop, caught the tablet, and lifted it high.
“Dammit, Daddy!” Etta complained, snatching at the tablet. “That’s my contract! You haven’t got the right!”
“Daddy?” Winslade echoed, his jaw sagging.
“That’s right,” I told him angrily.
I ignored the girl hopping and grunting. She was still trying to pry the tablet from my fingers and sign it. She’s got the Devil in there, I’ve always said it.
“Winslade, meet Etta McGill.”
“Etta McGill? That’s not the name she gave me.”
“Of course not,” Etta said. She’d stopped hopping and stood with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed in rage. “I’m not a total fool.”
“What’s more, she’s underage,” I continued. “She must have hacked the door recognition system somehow.”
“I thought you were off-shift by now, Dad,” Etta complained.
“I am, but I forgot my jacket. Winslade, if you’d be so kind?”
He handed over my jacket, bemused and stunned. “Your daughter is trying to sign up with the legions, and you don’t approve, is that it?”
“Not exactly,” Etta said. “I’m trying to sign up with Varus. Only Varus.”
“And they would have taken you,” I said, “but only for a few days until someone figured out who you were and got you dismissed. You’re underage, girl.”
She crossed her arms and shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “You ship out soon… what if I was already aboard Nostrum?”
“It says she’s eighteen here,” Winslade added unhelpfully. “Everything appears to be official.”
“So give me something to sign,” Etta said.
Winslade looked like he was considering it, but one glance at my angry face changed his mind.
“Sorry,” he said.
“How’d you manage to change your age? You’re not even fifteen yet.”
Etta shrugged. “I’m a Dust Worlder. We’re born when we want to be. There’s no official record—not until you make one.”
I set my jaw in anger, but I realized like a zillion fathers before me that I had to tread carefully. Young women held lots of cards when they dealt with their parents in their teen years—some of those cards they usually weren’t even aware of.
“Does your grandmother know you’re up here, pulling this?” I demanded.
She hung her head a little. “No,” she admitted. “She’s under the impression I’m on a school trip.”
“Uh-huh.”
While she was looking down, I tapped on Winslade’s tablet. I erased the contract, canceling it, and handing it back to Winslade.
He released an unpleasant laugh. “You know… There’s nothing you can do legally at this point.”
I looked at him, stunned. “You mean she already signed?”
“No, no… but you can’t really stop her. If she wants to sign, and she’s eighteen—”
“She’s not eighteen, dammit!”
Winslade shook his head. “I’m trying to be helpful here, McGill. The computer says she’s eighteen. That makes her eighteen. At some point, when you’re not here…”
