Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (26 page)

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Long after dark, my squad marched back to the lifter bone-tired but feeling victorious. Sure, we’d lost the ship, and the walkers had killed half our troops. Despite these realities, we’d managed to defeat the enemy and kill some of their commanders.

When I got to the lifter and we passed through the outer defenses, the troops in the ditches eyed us in concern. We must have looked a sight. We had tarnished, half-melted armor, dirty faces, and plenty of wounded troops.

A runner came down the ship’s ramp before my squad made it half-way through the camp.

“Veteran McGill?” he asked me.

I recognized him then. It was none other than regular trooper Lau. How many times had this poor bastard died on Death World, mostly under my command? I didn’t even want to start counting.

“What is it, Lau?” I asked him.

“Graves is out of the oven. He wants you to attend an officers’ meeting, upper deck.”

I heaved a sigh. “What the hell for?”

Lau shrugged. “I guess because he died and didn’t see the end of the battle. Winslade is up there, too. Both of them missed it, but they know you were there.”

“Right. Okay—thanks Lau. Get some food and rest. That goes for the rest of you, too.”

Kivi, Sargon and a few other survivors of the long day moved tiredly toward the chow line—which was long, but not as long as it should have been. We’d lost a lot of people today.

Kivi walked up to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and gave me a worried look. “Don’t let them blame you for anything, James,” she said in a low voice. “You fought well. You did the best job you could have done today.”

“Thanks Kivi,” I said, “but I doubt they’re angry. Hell, we’re the ones who broke the attack in the end.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, and she walked away to join the chow line.

I looked after her with a frown on my face. She was a tech. That meant she had a special line on inside rumors. Techs chatted and texted one another all day long like birds on a wire. What could she know that I didn’t?

Resolutely, I mounted the ramp and marched up to the upper deck. When I got there, a tight group of officers were sitting in chairs, chatting. Graves was there but not Leeson or Toro. So many people had been killed they were reviving just one top officer from each unit and building up the rank and file regulars first before popping out the adjuncts. Someone had to man those trenches outside, after all.

Notably missing were Turov, Drusus and Winslade. I knew Winslade had died—but the other two should be here.

I didn’t have long to wait. I found a Danish and shoved it into my mouth, then gulped some sewery coffee when everyone jumped to attention.

Drusus walked in and ran his eyes over the crowd. “At ease.”

I chewed fast, gulped, and put my cup down. Drusus walked right up to me, which I hadn’t been expecting.

He looked me over. “McGill…” he said, as if he were looking at a puzzle. “You lived through the battle, didn’t you?”

Nodding, I dared a brief smile. The tribune didn’t return it. Instead, he made a sweeping gesture toward the rest of the group present.

“Do you realize that none of the others present here today made it to the end of the action in the forest? They were all either killed, or they didn’t go on the mission in the first place.”

Glancing around, I noticed for the first time that no one else looked like they’d been sweating in the mud all day. There wasn’t a scratch or any sign of oily sweat in the group. Fresh revives and loungers, the lot of them.

“Huh,” I managed. “That’s against the odds, I’d say.”

Tribune Drusus nodded, eying me closely. His stare wasn’t an accusatory one. He just looked at me thoughtfully.

“That’s what I thought at first,” he said. “That you’re survival was against the odds. Unlikely, even. However, I now believe it was due to an enemy tactic.”

I hardly had time to absorb what he was talking about before Imperator Galina Turov showed up next. She looked as pissed as a short-tailed cat. She put her fists on her hips and stared at us.

Everyone jumped up again, standing at attention. We didn’t salute because we were in a combat-zone. All that was normal, but what surprised me was that she didn’t tell us to stand at ease.

She walked among the group, eyeing us like we’d all screwed up. Finally, she stopped in front of me and aimed a finger into my face.

“This man,” she said, “has shamed you all. That’s what’s going into my after-action report. You died like rats in a ditch. It was a grand embarrassment for the lot of you. On top of that, Graves managed to burn up the only other functional transport on this planet. I’m disgusted.”

Eyes wide, I tried not to look at her disrespectfully when she turned around to glare at the rest of the officers. Keeping my eyes high and locked was always hard for me to do when Turov was around. We’d had a few inappropriate encounters in the past, and she was looking mighty fine today.

Sometimes being revived and given a young body again was confusing when it came down to appearances. In Turov’s case, it was worse than usual. She was far older and more politically dangerous than she looked. She held the rank of Imperator, which meant she could command multiple legions in the field. The ancient Roman rank was the equivalent of a two-star general in the pre-empire armies of Earth.

Dangerous, powerful and manipulative, she was also a rather petite woman with calculating eyes, short hair and a finely shaped rear end. After her last revival, she’d come back looking like a twenty-year-old. That was a disturbing appearance for any high-level officer under the best of circumstances.

“That’s right,” she said, running her eyes over me speculatively. “While the rest of you died out there, or didn’t bother to go, this country bumpkin
lived
—and not by hiding under his desk in the lifter.”

“Sir?” Graves said. “May I say something?”

“If you must, Centurion.”

“You’re mischaracterizing the situation. We fought hard on the battlefield. McGill lived, but I agree with Drusus. He survived due to enemy tactics, not some innate virtue on the veteran’s part. By saying that, I don’t mean to lessen the importance of McGill’s role, but I feel we should clarify things.”

“Nonsense,” Turov said. She put a hand up to silence Graves, who was about to speak further. “Yes, I know about the theory that the spider-creatures that command the enemy forces targeted our officers purposefully. I’m not entirely convinced that’s true—but I am convinced that McGill targeted
their
officers in return and broke the enemy by doing so.”

I blinked and looked around the room. She was right, of course, but I wasn’t sure how she’d analyzed the details of the battle so quickly. We’d only just returned and made preliminary reports. There were suit-cameras, of course, but going through all that data took time.

Turov made a gesture indicating we should be seated. We all found a chair and sat down—there were plenty to go around with so many people still stuck in the revival queues.

She began to strut around the tactical display table while we all stared at her.

“This situation is intolerable,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time before the enemy marches out here in strength and finishes us off. It’s my firm belief that they’re reluctant to leave the shade of their forest, and that’s the only reason we’re still breathing.”

She tapped at the tactical display system, and it sprang to life. The lifter had been set down in the center of the region destroyed by the broadsides. The forest appeared as a green half-crescent around our position with the sea at our backs.

“If I’d known when we first arrived in this star system what I know today,” she said with feeling, “I would have flattened every inch of the forest without mercy.”

No one said anything as she tapped here and there on the table. Red shapes appeared. They were oblong blobs representing enemy troop-masses. There were an alarming number of blobs.

“Thousands,” she said, “more pods are hatching every hour. Our buzzers are working overtime just cataloging them all. We’re detecting numerous varieties of enemies as they hatch: walkers, the smaller acid monsters, spider-commanders and other types we’ve yet to encounter in battle. Some of them fly, a few even swim.”

More blocks appeared behind us in the sea. I’d been of the opinion that was a safe zone for us, a last-ditch area to retreat. Such hopes were quickly dashed as she kept tapping and revealing more enemies.

“I now wonder if the assault ship was set up as some kind of decoy,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter at this point. We’re going to be wiped out within the next hundred hours. They could probably overwhelm us much sooner, if they all decided to march at once. But they’ve demonstrated some degree of caution since their first encounter with the lifter’s defenses.”

“How do you suggest we defeat them, Imperator?” Tribune Drusus asked. He’d maintained a quiet presence this whole time.

“Since the moment when I was finally revived,” she said, giving him a dark look, “I’ve been dedicating my strategic thinking toward that end. My first thought was to retake
Minotaur
. That’s why we attempted to capture their invasion ship. Although we lost that gambit, at least we destroyed their flight capacity. If we regain control of
Minotaur
now, we control this star system. They will be at our mercy.”

“You’re certain they don’t have any other ships?” Drusus asked.

“Yes. The techs have used suborbital drones to sweep most of this planet. As far as we can tell, they don’t have any more ships nor do they have another shipyard facility. We destroyed their colony base, their factories, their refineries, etc. We crippled them. Unfortunately, we’ve also crippled ourselves with losses. We have only one lifter and half a cohort of troops.”

Drusus cleared his throat. “We can still launch this lifter up into space and take back
Minotaur
. If we win the assault, we win the campaign.”

She nodded briefly. “This is true, but I still think it’s too risky. Failure means utter destruction for the entire legion. For now, I’ve ruled out such a direct approach.”

Several of the officers present squirmed in their seats. They clearly didn’t agree with her but were too cowed to speak up.

“Well,” Drusus said, “if surface-to-space assault is off the table, what other options are there? They continue to grow new pods every hour. We can’t revive troops fast enough to keep up. Additionally, our ammo and equipment levels—”

“I know all that,” Turov snapped. She turned to point at me again. “McGill has given us the answer.”

No one in that room could have been more surprised than I was at her statement. I swallowed and put on my best poker face. Every officer gave me a flat stare—except for Turov. She gave me a fleeting half-smile.

“That’s right,” she said. “Crazy McGill may have saved us. Observe.”

She began to play vids then. I recognized the clips. First, she showed a shot of me burning spiders and ordering Sargon to shoot the cactus-like nexus in the deep forest. The officers watched with interest. Some winced as Claver explained the dangers, but I killed the plant-brain anyway.

After witnessing this, several officers looked at me in astonishment. This was their first exposure to my performance in the field. My butt seemed to want to crawl out of my chair, but there was no escape for either of us.

“Next clip,” Turov said, “this one is from today’s action.”

She played another vid, again from Kivi. I suddenly understood why Kivi had been trying to warn me I might be in trouble. She’d probably been ordered to surrender these clips to Turov and had surmised I was to be investigated.

This clip showed our final, valiant charge up the root to kill the spiders.

“Impressive,” Graves said. “You attacked with the ferocity of soldiers who know they’re about to die and yet want to strike one final blow. I see in your troops no hint of breaking morale. They followed you up there knowing they would probably die. By doing so, they took the initiative from the enemy without hesitation.”

I nodded. “My squad is the best, sir.”

Turov pursed her lips and froze the clip on the singular image of a spider, dying and curling with acid and bullets destroying it.

“This then, is the essence of my plan,” she said. “We need to take the fight to the enemy—the real enemy. Those who are making the strategic decisions. Claver calls this varied species Wur. Like a hive full of social insects, they have several forms, and all of them serve a purpose.”

As she spoke, she displayed examples of each of the aliens we’d encountered. “These plants have a critical weakness,” she said. “Most of them don’t possess much in the way of a brain. The hierarchy goes something like this: at the bottom are the ferns, which are consumed by the mobile creatures. Next up are the trees. The purpose of the trees is to produce pods and provide a livable environment for the rest. Above them, the spawn of these trees are pod-walkers and other stupid creatures. Commanding the spawn of the trees are these spiders. They are local, tactical leaders.”

The group followed her presentation, nodding with interest. It was compelling. I’d experienced most of what she was talking about, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time figuring out the details of the ecosystem or the enemy’s social structure. I’d been too busy trying to stay alive.