Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (29 page)

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When I’d been told we could build an aircraft out of a drone, I’d visualized something like a flying carpet. Instead, we ended up scudding over the forest floor on an uneven platform that looked more like a homemade raft than anything else.

Just hanging onto the damned thing when we had to swerve to miss a fern branch was difficult. Claver wanted to fly the contraption, but I didn’t let him. I had Natasha do it instead as she’d supervised the rushed conversion process. She knew best what her hay-wired vehicle was capable of.

We weren’t an hour into the journey before we were all questioning the wisdom of the entire adventure.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Carlos demanded. “There aren’t any officers on this little jaunt. You caught the significance of that, didn’t you? This is a suicide run. A joke in poor taste.”

My eyes slid over to him then back to the forest, which was as endless and green as ever. We skimmed along at a good clip, covering a couple kilometers every minute.

“You’ve got a point,” I said.

“Damned straight I do. Here’s their bullshit excuse: ‘We wanted our best to save the day! That’s why we’re sending
you
clowns to certain death.’ Sure, right... You want to know what I’d have asked our grand Imperator, McGill? I’d have demanded to know if
she
, our glorious leader, was willing to go along on this mission.”

One thing that made Carlos possible to listen to, if you didn’t take him too seriously, was his tendency to answer his own questions immediately after he asked them. That made him tolerable as long as you weren’t the type who got annoyed quickly.

“Why isn’t Turov here horning in on the glory this time?” Carlos asked Kivi. She rolled her eyes, but he answered his own question anyway. “Because we’re all as good as dead, that’s why!”

He kept complaining, and I kept scanning the horizon. The worst part of the trip so far had been the first moments after we hit the cool green gloom of the forests. The walkers lurking at the edge of the tree line had tried to catch us, reaching up with impossibly long arms that went on and on.

Hundreds had shambled after us, but only one had gotten close. It managed to snag one of the skids of the undercarriage with a finger that was as thick as a baseball bat, but we hacked it off and kept on humming.

Now, in the deep emerald gloom of the rolling land, we seemed to be beyond their reach. Only rarely did we see any of the enemy. When we did, it was always a lone spider or lost walker. They barely had time to register our approach before we were gone, doing about seventy knots over the whipping ferns.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you, McGill?” Carlos demanded at last.

“Nope.”

“The next time I get the chance, I’m going to let you die.”

“Same here.”

He finally shut up after that. Ten minutes later, I scooted myself carefully over the lurching, vibrating surface of our make-shift vehicle and joined Claver and Natasha in the front. Natasha was driving while Claver navigated.

I noticed, as I approached them, that the front end was taking on more fern-strikes. They slapped and rustled as they beat against the prow.

“Dammit, McGill,” Natasha said. “I can feel the whole nose dip down when you come up here. Hold your position in the stern, please.”

I scooted my butt back to the rear of the ship and used my suit radio to contact her instead of tapping on her shoulder. The drone’s engine buzzed under our butts, generating a level of noise that was close to that a helicopter.

“How’s it going Natasha?” I demanded. “Is Claver bullshitting you, or are we really headed somewhere that looks promising?”

“I’m not sure, actually,” she said. “As far as our scans go, the region he’s taking us to has no contacts at all. No spider-fields, no walkers—nothing but ferns and tree trunks.”

“That’s just grand.”

“The good news is we’ll be there in less than an hour.”

Time crawled. Over the next hour, we grew tired of the novelty of traveling on our flying pig.

Finally, as we neared our destination, Claver carefully climbed his way back to me. He had Carlos go forward to balance out the ship—I can’t say I was sorry to see the specialist move out of earshot.

“McGill,” Claver said, looking at me seriously. “We need to talk.”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“I need a favor,” he said. “I need you to give me a shot at communicating before you do anything nuts.”

Shifting uncomfortably, I gave him a shrug. “Sure. Negotiate away. That’s what we’re here for.”

He eyed me distrustfully. “I’m not an idiot, McGill. I wasn’t born yesterday, remember? In fact, I was born almost a century ago. You remember how I was called Old Silver before you got me killed and brought back a few times?”

I smiled at the memory, although it was probably rude to do so. Claver had been called Old Silver when I first met him because his body was physically about fifty. That was very unusual in the legions. He’d worn his silver hair like a badge, proudly showing the world he hadn’t died for a long, long time. Actual gray hair in the legions was almost unknown. People tended to die often. When they were later revived, their bodies were regrown as they had been when they were last stored. Only a man’s mind was backed up regularly. The effect prolonged our lives by many years. Claver had gotten his youth back all at once on Tech World—with my help.

“You like being young again?” I asked him.

“Sometimes—but it still pisses me off that I lost my silver hair and my nickname.”

I smiled. “Glad to be of service.”

He gave me a sour glance. “Look, my point is I’m older and wiser than I look. I know how things are going to go when we get to the nexus plant. You’re going to try to kill it. What I’m asking you for is a little time, a fair shot at talking to it first.”

My grin faded. His request was a serious one and not entirely unreasonable. Moreover, I was impressed he’d figured out what I was planning to do.

“How long?” I asked.

He stared at me for a second, dumbfounded. “Dammit! I was only fishing. I hate when I’m right! You’re honestly planning to kill the biggest brain on this planet, aren’t you? Of all the crazy—”

“Why else would Turov send me?” I asked him reasonably. “I’m better at blowing things up than I am at talking to them.”

Claver studied his hands, frowning fiercely and muttering curses. He was dejected but thinking hard.

“Okay,” he said, nodding to himself at last. “Okay, I have to prove my case to you, that’s all. I get that. Maybe I’m lucky it’s you. Anyone else would follow Turov’s orders blindly. They’d shoot and ask questions later. But you, you’ve got that independent streak. How many times have officers ordered you to slaughter helpless civilians only to have you refuse them?”

I blinked a few times. I wasn’t quite sure if he was playing a game with me or if he really meant what he said. “You’re claiming that this plant species is innocent? They killed your whole crew. They permed my folks back on Earth.”

“There have been misunderstandings, certainly. That’s normal when two wildly diverse species meet up for the first time. They’re a hive-minded species of self-mobile plants, for God’s sake. But I’m hoping you’re a better man than most. A man with a big heart and an open mind.”

“Ten minutes,” I said after thinking it over. “You get ten minutes to talk to your plant-buddies. After that, I’m making a salad.”

“That’s not enough time. I can’t do it. Just connecting with the plant takes a ritual of sorts. It’s like hypnotizing a deadly snake. You don’t just walk in there, shake hands, and start jawing like an auctioneer. You have to gain trust, exchange fluids and scents—”

“Okay, okay. How long?”

“An hour. Probably ninety minutes to get a coherent reply. It could take longer, but I doubt it. The good thing is we’ll only have to talk to one plant. The top brain has the authority to speak for the others. It won’t have to relay the message and request a vote or anything like that. If we can agree on a negotiated peace, we’ll know their answer right off.”

Heaving a sigh and throwing up my arms, I almost told him ‘no’ on the spot. Stalling for an hour and a half was going to be nearly impossible. Turov was watching, after all. She knew where I was on the map. She probably had drones searching the area intently. When we got there, she expected fireworks to start. If they didn’t, she’d know I was disobeying her orders.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t have time for a tea-ceremony. Get in, say your piece and get out. I’m not losing my stripes by disobeying orders to make you happy. You get half an hour, tops.”

“Okay,” he said quickly, slapping his hands together. “Thirty minutes will do fine, thanks.”

He was grinning again, and he seemed excited. He turned away to go back up to the prow, but I landed a heavy gauntlet on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“What the hell?” I asked. “What was all that business about ninety minutes being the minimum?”

“I’m a trader,” he said. “I always ask for the Moon and then settle for Delaware. That’s my actual motto, in fact.”

I shook my head sourly and let him go. He scooted back up to the front of the vessel, chuckling to himself. I’d been scammed already, and I had a bad feeling about the rest of the afternoon.

We arrived sometime later and landed at the edge of a gully. Claver asked us to wait on the drone, but there was no way I was going for that.

“Right,” I said, “like we’re going to sit out here in the car while you handle everything. Start walking, and don’t make any funny moves.”

“You promised, McGill,” he chided me. “Don’t forget.”

“You’ll get your minutes. The clock is ticking right now.”

Claver set off at a trot, and we had to move quickly to keep up. I shouldered the rucksack of explosives and grimly brought up the rear of the group.

We walked down a long, curving ramp of black earth. I quickly realized why we hadn’t seen anything special in this region. There was a big, deep hole in the ground. At the bottom of the pit, I could see slushy mud. The opening wasn’t very wide and was overgrown with those damned ferns. From the air, the buzzers and probes had missed the spot and marked it as nothing special.

“Turov’s on my tapper,” Natasha said, looking at me worriedly. “Should I answer?”

“Don’t touch it!” I said. “Mine’s beeping too, and I’m ignoring it. That’s why she’s calling you now. Listen up everyone, the story we’re going with is that we weren’t able to get clear reception down here in this hole. Ignore your tappers. That’s an order.”

“McGill, McGill, McGill,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “What kind of a fresh Hell are you leading us into this time?”

“Just keep an eye on Claver,” I told him.

We reached the bottom of a muddy ramp and stood in about a half-meter of swamp water.

Claver sloshed forward in a crouch. “You see it?” he whispered.

“See what?”

“That bulb over there, dummy. The one with the spines.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, feeling like I wanted to belt him one. I resisted the urge and let him sidle forward.

“Better wait here,” he said. “She’ll get nervous otherwise.”

“She?” I asked.

“These plants spawn spiders, and they have a definitely feminine twist to the mind. I think of them as female.”

“Whatever turns you on, Claver,” Carlos interrupted. “Get on with it. My trigger finger is aching, and I don’t care much if I shoot you or the cactus.”

Claver gave him a sneer, but he quickly scuttled ahead nonetheless. We watched as Claver approached the plant and caressed a few leaves then stabbed himself with one of the meter-long spines. He allowed droplets of blood to sprinkle onto the leaf he’d touched, which was rustling on top of the water now.

“Is he feeding it blood?” Carlos said. “That’s sick. I’m glad I’m not a trader.”

“He’s gaining its trust,” Natasha said, recording the entire affair. “I wonder who told him how to do it. I don’t think he’s the type who could figure this out by himself.”

“I bet the squids told him,” I said.

They looked at me in alarm. “The squids?” demanded Carlos. “Are you sure they know how to talk to the plants?”

“The squids are the reason we’re on this mission instead of just using missiles to wipe out the brain-plants.”

No one knew what to say to that. We hunkered down and watched Claver and the cactus. For a couple of minutes, they exchanged fluids. Claver let the thing burn his arm with acid, then he spit on it and suchlike. It was disgusting.

After that, he sat down in an odd position and tilted his head up toward the shrouded sky. The cool gloom of the gully showed him only in silhouette.

Six minutes passed, then ten more. My team became restive, and I couldn’t blame them.

“Let’s blow it up,” Carlos suggested.

“He made me promise I’d give him a chance.”

“He’s had his frigging chance. He’s been sitting down there in the mud for twenty minutes!”

Realizing Carlos was right, I figured I had to do something.