Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (15 page)

-15-

I’ve fought and died on several planets in my lifetime, but Tech World had to be the strangest. About ten minutes after the battle was over, the death-officials arrived. As before, they didn’t ask questions or fill out reports. They made no effort to figure out what had happened or who was at fault. All they wanted to know was who had died and whether or not they could make a buck off of the corpse.

Apparently, the reaper had brought in a pretty poor crop this time. Unlike the relative excitement these ghouls had exhibited when our original clients had died on the steps to the bank, this time they were disgusted. They kicked at the bodies and shoveled them wholesale onto a skimmer. There would be no expensive revival processes tonight.

I approached the nearest of them, and he watched me warily.

“Speak English?” I demanded.

“Little bit,” he said. “No deals.”

Snorting, I reached out and showed him what I had in my
hand. It was a golden coin. An Imperial coin that apparently everyone on Gelt Station knew was priceless.

He snatched for it, but I was quicker. I closed my gauntlet over the coin and pointed to the skimmer they were loading with bodies.

“Give us a ride on that thing. You get this coin now and one more when we get home.”

“Two?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Two,” I said firmly. “Deal?”

His eyes darted over to the corpses. I knew he was calculating the profit he could make here, weighing it against what I was offering. I had to wonder what value a pile of still-warm corpses would bring on this station and to what purpose they might be applied. When credit-values were compared, however, there wasn’t any contest.

“Move, quickly,” he said, pointing to his skimmer and chattering into a communications device. Immediately, the ghouls reversed their work. They shoved bodies off the skimmer even faster than they’d loaded them a moment earlier.

I waved to my men. Each of us dragged one of our fallen troops letting weapons dangle from straps. We valued the dead even more than the ghouls did—we needed to recycle their equipment.

“Don’t leave a single bag of coins behind for these monsters,” I ordered.

No one argued. They followed me as quickly as they could. We slipped and staggered as we waded through bodies. When we were aboard the skimmer, I gave a coin to the guy who I’d cut the deal with.

“No funny business,” I said. “Or we kill you all.”

He sneered at me, spreading his mouth tentacles wide. “Nothing is funny here on Tech World, big man.”

We lifted off then, and I found Natasha tapping at me again.

“It’s Graves,” she said. “He wants another report.”

“Tell him we’re fine,” I said. “We’ll be home for breakfast.”

Air travel always seems like a miracle after a man has been slogging on foot. The skies were a different place, another world. We flashed at the usual madcap pace toward our destination. I now suspected that people on this planet piloted their vehicles like madmen for a good reason: they didn’t trust passersby not to attack them. It was difficult to accost a vehicle that zoomed by in the blink of an eye.

We landed on the roof of the square block of puff-crete that was our headquarters. Legionnaires were up there. Some were on guard duty while others were just taking a break. They eyed us in surprise and curiosity, but when they saw half of us were limp in our armor they rushed to help.

Our bio specialists are a unique breed of soldier. Part corpsman and part mortician, they patched the injured among us and stripped the dead. I eyed the corpses as they were hauled away below, especially Harris. It still felt odd to know he’d be yelling at me about something in the morning despite the fact he was flopping dead meat right now.

How different were we, I asked myself, from the death-merchants that swarmed any scene of violence on Tech World? They were seeking profit while we sought raw materials to rebuild a new version of every fallen man.

I knew more than most troops about the process. The bio people liked fresh bodies. They fed them into the maw of their machines like fresh wood cast upon a fire. They called it “recycling”, and thinking about the process could still make me shudder if I pondered it too long.

Finding my bunk at last after a few bites to eat, I patched up a few minor injuries and took a long draught on a warm beer. Then I crashed and fell asleep instantly.

A kick in the side awakened me in what felt like seconds later. I looked up fully expecting my tormentor to be Harris, but it wasn’t. It was Centurion Graves.

I probably would have told anyone else to screw off at that moment, but you just didn’t talk to Graves that way—not when his eyes were dark and his lips were drawn into a single tight line.

“Sir?” I asked, heaving myself awake.

“What happened out there, Specialist?”

I looked around the room blearily. It was empty. Several of my fellow troops had died during the long night, of course, but not all of them had. Graves must have chased them out before he prodded me with the loving tip of his boot.

“Lots of stuff, sir. Claver led us into a series of unfortunate encounters.”

Graves produced a gleaming golden disk. He tossed it to me, and I caught it. Curvy Galactic number symbols were engraved on both sides.

“Two to the tenth power worth of credits,” Graves said. “One thousand twenty-four, in our number system. Why are there twenty sacks of these in my office?”

“Only twenty?” I asked in alarm. “Every man had one…I hope none have found their way to another location.”

Graves waved his hand in my face as if to erase my words from the air. “I didn’t count them all. Tell me what the hell they’re doing in our possession.”

I gave him a full accounting at that point. I didn’t bother to add my assessment of Claver’s part which seemed obvious. Finishing up, I asked him if Claver had returned to headquarters.

“No,” he said in a venomous voice. “He’s rejoined Germanica. Oddly enough, he seems to be among the few Germanica legionnaires who are already aboard
Minotaur
. That’s where you come in, Specialist.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“In the morning, you and I are going to pay him a visit aboard ship.”

Grunting unhappily, I rubbed my eyes. “How long until morning, sir?”

“About two hours. Get some sleep.”

I flopped back onto my bunk and sighed until my lungs were empty. Sometimes I wondered if I even wanted to be revived the next time I was killed.

* * *

The next day dragged until we reached
Minotaur
. Watching Graves, I had to admit being an officer had privileges that often surprised me. Rather than taking public transport at his own expense, a pinnace was dispatched to pick up Graves and me.

We boarded the small ship just before noon and were whisked away toward the dark hulking shape that was
Minotaur
. From the outside, the warship was more imposing than I’d realized. She was fully armed with a broadside of heavy guns. I didn’t understand her armament, but I’d heard it was made up of accelerated particle cannons.

Earth had never had control of a real warship before, but now they were becoming increasingly common.
Minotaur
wasn’t just a transport, she was capable of battle in her own right. She was a capital ship, an engine of destruction.

Graves sat in a gloomy silence aboard the pinnace as it shuddered and lurched attempting to dock.

“Sir?” I asked. “Why are all
Minotaur’s
weapons on one side of the ship?”

He glanced at me as if remembering he’d brought me along. I could tell he was thinking hard about something. He’d been poking at his tapper and staring out the windows of the pinnace the entire time.

“That’s pretty standard design,” he said. “If they’re bombarding a world, the world is only on one side of the ship. If they meet enemy vessels in combat, a big ship generally places all of its heavy hull plating and weaponry on one side. The distances are so great it’s unlikely a ship will be surrounded by enemies and fired upon from more than one direction at the same time.”

“But what if that situation were to occur?”

“Then the ship is probably doomed, anyway.”

I nodded as I thought about it. Combat in normal space—the only place that combat could occur as far as I knew—usually played out at a range of one hundred thousand to one million kilometers. At that distance, only one
flank of each ship mattered.

As a result of her design,
Minotaur
was a lopsided vessel. It looked as if it had a huge hump on its back. We sailed around and underneath it into a bay located on the side opposite the weapon mounts.

Disembarking, Centurion Graves went first. He’d brought me along in full combat armor which even I knew wasn’t the norm when making a friendly visit to another legion’s territory. I hadn’t argued the point as I always felt more comfortable among unfriendly faces when I was packing firepower.

Minotaur
felt deserted as I walked through the ship’s gigantic hold. Our boots echoed and rang from walls a kilometer or more away. There was no one here to greet us, but that didn’t deter Graves. He marched resolutely toward the crew quarters as if he owned the place.

Five decks aft and two above the floor of the hold, we found three units from Germanica holed up. They were busy planning and arranging equipment. A centurion named
Dubois met us in the wardroom. He had a slight French accent and his demeanor was anything but friendly.

“Centurion Graves,” he said. “I understand that you have some kind of problem with your new contract.
This is unexpected.”

“I was under the impression that Germanica was to help us during the transitional period. Am I mistaken?”

Dubois shrugged. “We didn’t expect an experienced legion to make serious mistakes at such an easy post.”

Graves’ eyes narrowed. I could tell he was pissed, but it took experience to recognize the signs. He wasn’t an overly expressive man.

“Our trouble isn’t with the post,” Graves said. “It’s with our liaison. Claver has gone off the rails and as I understand it he’s hiding here on
Minotaur
.”

Dubois
laughed. “Hiding? Hardly. He’s busy performing last-minute critical adjustments to the biosphere. I’m afraid I can’t spare him.”

Graves took out a handful of coins and let them fall on the deck-plating. They rang and flashed with golden beauty. I’d never seen coins outside of a museum back on Earth and hadn’t understood their luster and mesmerizing effect.

Dubois wasn’t immune. He watched them until they stopped rattling and spinning.

“Is this some kind of bribe?” he demanded.

“This is what was in the last crate your man Claver had us transporting. The first crates contained weapons—weapons of unknown origin. They were transferred to a group guarded by Germanic troops down at the Vents. The gunrunners gave my platoon a great deal of illegal funds which my men neither understood nor approved of. My troops were later attacked repeatedly by thugs from every part of the city.”

“Nothing surprising about that,”
Dubois huffed. “Every fool knows you can’t walk around with that kind of money in any city, on any planet. You could hardly pick a worse place than Tau to pull such a stunt.”

Graves and I exchanged glances. “I don’t think you’re quite getting what I’m saying, centurion,” Graves said. “Your man Claver—”

“—is otherwise engaged,” Dubois interrupted, sighing. “Now, I must thank you for your visit, which is at an end. I’ll thank you again when you’re back on that pinnace and flying out of here.”

Graves shook his head slowly. “That’s not going to happen. If you aren’t going to take disciplinary action, then I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I want Claver. He was attached to my unit, and he was under my orders. As far as I’m concerned, he’s one of my legionnaires and he’s AWOL.”

Dubois laughed again, grinning. “I’m sorry, but I have to deny your request. His assignment with your unit has been terminated. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got a journey—”

“Not so fast. I’ve contacted Hegemony using an expensive FTL link system the Tau rent out for emergencies. They’re sending brass out to investigate the situation.”

For the first time, both Dubois and I were surprised.

“And why would Hegemony care about this situation?”
Dubois snapped.

“Because I reported a Galactic violation to them, and they had no choice other than to respond.”

Dubois’ face changed. His jaw sagged. “You did
what
? Don’t be absurd. This is Tech World, man. I can’t believe you’re going ballistic over a bit of gunrunning. There are bribes and illegal activities going on every day on this planet. Didn’t someone brief you?”

Graves nodded. “I was briefed. Apparently, it’s your legion that didn’t get the memo. Centurion, this isn’t about the gunrunning—although it is the height of insanity for a peace-keeping force to get involved in something like that. The problem is that Earth is now the Enforcement arm of the Galactics in this part of the galaxy. In case you haven’t heard, ownership and trading with Galactic credit coins is illegal in Frontier 921. It’s not just illegal on Earth. The coins have been outlawed by the Core Systems and mere possession constitutes a Galactic-level offense. An Imperial crime has thus been committed by the Tau and Imperial enforcement personnel—we’re now representatives of the Empire, remember? Your man Claver facilitated this operation. Are you listening, sir?”