Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (35 page)

But Leeson never even suggested it. A limping McGill was better than nothing. The revival machines had to be used to churn out every soldier they could and get them back on the line. I wondered how many soldiers were hobbling their way to their next fight like I was.

When I found a suit of armor that would fit me, I climbed into it and strapped my beamer to my arm. It felt good to be encased in metal again. I checked the systems and found the suit was fully charged and equipped with shields. I smiled at that.

“As soon as you see the flash of enemy fire, switch on your shielding,” Leeson ordered, as if he’d read my mind.

“Can we gather any more of our people, sir?” I asked. “This all seems a little disorganized.”

“We’ll join our unit at their designated post soon enough. Graves has been charged with holding the entrance to the lower tunnels. It’s feared that the enemy will find a second entrance down there and flank us.”

I nodded thoughtfully and followed him down spiraling dark passages into the depths of the mountain. Above us, distant explosions rumbled. The walls puffed dust and showered pebbles onto our helmets and shoulder epaulets.

We met up with Graves and my old unit about seven levels down. The sounds of fighting above were distant.

Only about a third of Graves’ team was still riding a dragon. The rest had lost their mounts and were dressed in light armor. The only men in heavy armor were Leeson and I. Envious eyes crawled over our equipment.

“Where’d you two steal that?” Graves asked.

“Orders were to make do with whatever we could find, sir,” Leeson said.

“Yeah, fine. But turn off your nameplate, Leeson. It says you’re Specialist Jane Kinlan.”

“Sorry sir,” Leeson said, hastily turning off the letters which were emblazoned on his chest.

I’d already removed my insignia, and I couldn’t help but smile at Leeson’s distress. He was a relatively small man, and whoever Jane was, her armor fit him like a glove.

A few of the troops laughed. Our brief moment of levity was cut short when a warning came down from the upper tunnels. Saurian troops were approaching.

“If they’re coming down here,” Graves told us, “they must be seeking a way to flank, a new route through the tunnels. We can’t let them come up behind our lines. We’ll stop them, right here, or we’ll all die trying.”

There was a muttered chorus of “yes sirs” but it wasn’t enthusiastic.

We hunkered down in the dark, turning down all our suit lights to the barest glimmer and switched on our night vision.

No one talked about the enemy configuration or their numbers. Details like that didn’t matter. We were to ambush them and hold our position to the last man.

No one spoke at all as we listened in the dark. The tramp of heavily armored alien feet could be heard echoing down the dusty tunnels toward our position.

I gripped my rifle, and I waited in the dark. The only sounds were the hissing of oxygen from my tanks and the pounding of my heart.

-47-

Right from the beginning, the fight was intense. The two sides met in the darkness, and the ripping sound of gunfire rang from the tunnel walls. We ambushed them, and they used explosives to destroy our strongpoints. Then we fell back to our next defensive line and repeated the process.

Each time, both sides left their dead in the grit. The smoke was so thick, I’d have been choking if I hadn’t been wearing an airtight suit.

At one point, they rushed us. They sought to close with an elusive enemy that had been tormenting them.

Leeson was dead. I’d been cut off from the rest of the unit, and we were down to six effectives. As the veteran in the group, all their eyes looked at me for direction.

“Stand your ground!” I ordered my team, remembering how Graves had handled a similar situation underground, facing this same enemy back on Steel World. He hadn’t panicked, not even when it was clear we were about to be overwhelmed.

I powered up my shield, and it formed a glimmering shell of force around me. My batteries were low, but saving power wasn’t a good idea. It was use-it-or-lose-it time. I was the last trooper in heavy armor present—probably one of the last armored soldiers the legion had. The least I could do was put on my best showing.

My armor was getting pretty dinged up, but once my shield went on, smaller projectiles couldn’t penetrate. Taking point, I shed bullets, fragments of explosives and even the gravity-propelled pieces of grit from the tunnel floors like they were so many raindrops.

When they got in close, I dropped my rifle, rose up and extended my force-blades. I’d set them to be thick and short as we were in close-quarters. I didn’t want to accidently slash my own troops.

The enemy saurians came in a rush, but they weren’t a disorganized mob. They were warriors, intelligent and capable. They fought with greater strength and agility than a man could possess. What they didn’t have was shielding or the knowledge they’d live again if they died on this rocky ground.

A raptor engaged me, and all around me, others broke up into small individual melees. We thrust and cut. His twin daggers were high-tech metal, rather than energy, but they could still kill a man. One of his daggers struck home first, but my shielding deflected the blow. My return stroke with a power-blade went in low and took off his right leg.

He went down, but he didn’t stop struggling. Inside his helmet, I could see his teeth, his lashing tongue, and his black, jewel-like eyes. We went into a clinch, and my exoskeleton screamed with the force of it. Before the fight, I’d turned down the juice to my arms to a minimum so the power system could support both the force-blades and the shielding. The drain on my cells was still high—I couldn’t fight long at this level of power consumption.

A buzzing sensation and a warning light showed the lizard was driving a blade into my belly, intent on gutting me. The weakness of any shielding was a slow, steady attack. The thrust had gotten through to the metal already, and the blade had begun to vibrate. That was the buzzing sound I’d heard.

I finished him with a thrust to the throat, then straightened, sides heaving.

A two more saurians showed up. Behind them, on the ground, lay Gorman. I hadn’t even realized he was with my knot of troops. He’d been stationed with another group. He must have lost his position and been driven back to join me at my lonely outpost. He was dead, his guts spilled out all over the tunnel. A steady runnel of blood oozed out of his wrecked body and ran downhill behind me.

The two saurians had a plan, which they’d probably just worked upon Gorman to good effect. Each of them grabbed one of my arms and worked to drive a dagger into my guts. Seconds, that’s all I had. The shielding gave way steadily. The armor of my chest plate was thick, but the points of the enemy blades were soon buzzing and penetrating. Had they studied us? Had they brought these knives just to defeat human legionnaires?

The answers to these questions didn’t matter, so I drove them from my mind. I was about to die.

I took a chance. Using verbal commands, I ordered my suit to switch off my shielding and transfer all the power to my limbs.

This had two startling effects. Both of the vibrating blades rasped against my armor, slipping due to the sudden lack of resistance. But my arms, at the same moment, became more powerful than any saurian that had ever lived.

I didn’t have time for anything fancy. I slammed both the saurian soldiers together like a bully knocking together two boys’ heads. This had little effect as they were armored as well, but it did get those blades out of my gut for a moment, and it set the saurians up for my next move.

Slashing horizontally, I swept a force-blade across both their necks. The blade was driven with such force that it beheaded both. They toppled at my feet, and I reengaged my shields.

More came after that. Around me, most of my team died. Hudson, Kivi, Sargon—they all fell. In the end, only Carlos and I stayed on our feet. In the meantime, the attack had been repelled.

“I think…” panted Carlos, “I think they ran out of lizards.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s go find out.”

Groaning, he followed my advance. We paused only to touch the tappers of the dead and to lift their power-cells if they had more juice in them than ours did.

We only ran into the lizards one more time, and they didn’t want to engage. They were falling back, performing a fighting retreat.

We didn’t make it easy for them. We’d linked up with survivors from other squads and units. Graves himself had lived, altogether he led a force of fifteen-odd troopers, all that was left. We dogged the enemy all the way back to the smoke-filled central chambers.

The lizards were falling back, still in good order, but their lines were getting ragged with losses.

“Concentrate fire,” Graves ordered. “Aim for the legs to bring a target down then go to the next. Don’t pepper them all, they’re already retreating. We need to make them pay by taking down every enemy combatant we can.”

Coldly, we did as he ordered. It was a slaughter, shooting down fleeing saurians. They threw back fire now and then, but it was only to keep us ducking.

We kept advancing relentlessly. It seemed to take an hour to reach the surface, where we halted for fear they’d hit us with some kind of bombardment. A breathless cheer went up among the survivors as we viewed the aftermath of the battle.

Thousands lay dead, and the enemy was in full retreat.

“That was close, sir,” I said to Graves.

He looked at me. “Closer than you think. Most of our lines were broken. Your tunnel held, but it was a rare exception. Good job, McGill.”

I frowned. “Sounds like they were winning, sir. Why’d they pull out right before they finished us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe even an army of reptiles can have enough death to fill their bellies with fear.”

That didn’t sound like the saurian troops I’d met. They tended to fight to the death unless ordered to retreat by their masters.

Daring to advance further, I walked out upon the slopes themselves. Graves stayed in the shadowy tunnels behind me.

“You can dream about your death wish if you want to, McGill,” he called. “But you’ll do it on your own time. I forbid you to run out there into the open and lose a perfectly good suit of armor.”

“Thanks for your concern, Centurion,” I told him. “But you should really come up here and see this for yourself.”

Finally, he advanced and hunkered down beside me. Above us, an overhang of cracked rock projected. From the shadows underneath, we could see the mountainside. It ran down about two kilometers to the roiling edge of the thick white mists that covered most of the planet. Just before the edge of the mist, a battle was in progress.

“What the—are those machines?” Graves asked.

“Yes sir, I think they are.”

“What’re they doing?”

“Eating saurians, sir. By the hundreds—or at least, they’re eating their weapons, armor and equipment. They must be hungry.”

Graves looked at me, squinting. “Did you expect this?”

“Me sir? How could I know—?”

“The message you sent, using the young machine-creature. Natasha translated it. Didn’t she tell you?”

“There hasn’t been much time, sir,” I said. “I was revived and thrown straight into the fight.”

He nodded. “Natasha and Kivi worked on the translation for hours. They figured out it was pretty much a dinner bell, a summons to a feast. They thought it might be the message the squids used to get the machines to come here and chew on the mountain, exposing titanium veins.”

I blinked at him. “I had no idea—but it makes sense. Carlos was eaten for a reason after all. He must have accidentally promised that baby machine a dinner, and the machine figured he must have meant to eat his suit.”

Graves laughed then. It was a rare sound, an unpleasant chuckle. “Best thing Ortiz ever did. The baby machine took his message off to the nearest herd of native machines and—dinner time!”

Graves laughed some more. I grinned as well. We watched the chaos below for several more minutes before retreating. The saurians had been hit from behind by a hungry mob of machines. The only source of easy metal had been on the saurians themselves, who were new to this odd planet. Flanked by surprise, they’d called a retreat from our tunnels to deal with this new threat.

As far as I was concerned, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of lizards.

-48-

Getting slammed in the flank was too much for the saurian forces—or at least for their commanders. They’d been losing too much strength against us all along, but they’d been buoyed up by the certain knowledge they were driving us back, winning through attrition.

By the time I reached the core of our stronghold, seeking repairs for my equipment and sustenance for my body, Leeson had been revived. He met with me and shook my gauntlet.

“Well done, McGill. You held the line.”

“Thank you, Adjunct.

“Even better, they’re
still
retreating,” Leeson said. “Have you seen the vids coming down from the buzzers?”

“No sir, I haven’t had—”

“By damn, I still don’t believe it! Those cowardly lizards are tucking their collective scaly tails and running for their lives!”

I echoed his excitement and relief, but I didn’t think they were cowardly. Saurians were anything but. I’d once watched one self-execute without a qualm, just because an irritated Nairb had told him to do so.

“I think their commanders are losing heart, not the troops,” I said.

“What? Have you fallen in love with another alien race, McGill? How typical. Maybe you should run down this molehill after them and beg them to come back for tea.”

“Hardly, sir. I was just pointing out that saurians are very brave as individuals.”

“Why the hell are they running, then?”

“To my way of thinking, they’ve just realized this entire battle is becoming too costly. They’ve probably spent all their funding on renting ships and arms, not on revival machines. Those choices resulted in a much more powerful force, but a brittle one. They couldn’t absorb endless losses. They’re probably retreating now because they’ve lost half their troops. I don’t think they planned on that.”

“Hmm,” Leeson said. “You think their morale didn’t break, but the bank did? Interesting. I have to admit, their princes are more money-conscious than they are humanitarians. Well, either way, we’re all as good as dead now.”

This statement concerned me. Leeson still seemed happy, but I could see a hint of resignation there as well.

“We’re dead?” I asked. “Why’s that, sir?”

He looked at me in triumph, squinting his small eyes. “Ha! Don’t tell me you didn’t reason out their next move, Mr. Strategist?”

I frowned at him. Leeson had a naturally abrasive attitude, but he wasn’t dumb. I honestly wanted to know what he was thinking, despite his barbs.

“You tell me, Adjunct,” I said.

Leeson showed me the unit’s tactical display. He ran his finger down the slope toward the massing saurian troops at the base of the mountain. They’d managed to repel the hungry machines, but only after devastating losses. They hadn’t been prepared for such an enemy and lacked the heavy weaponry to deal with them. To kill the big machines, groups of soldiers were rushing in close and essentially committing suicide to stop them. I’d seen Centurion Belter employ similar tactics to good effect—but we could revive our losses—they couldn’t.

“Think about it,” Leeson said. “They’re beating the machines but preparing to pull out anyway. Why leave the mountain entirely? They could just siege us from down there. But instead, they’re setting up to have transports come down and pick up their battered troops.”

“Maybe they want to get out of this hell-hole, sir. At least, that’s what I think they’re doing.”

“Nah. They’ll pull up stakes, all right, but they won’t give up. They’ll unleash their big guns again. All of them, this time. Sure, that will destroy most of this mountain and the titanium mine. But the raw ore will survive. A hundred or so fusion shells, that’s what I expect will come falling our way once these lizards lift off. You see if they don’t.”

I was alarmed by his prediction. For one thing, it made sense. For another, there was no way anyone in legion Varus—cavalry or otherwise—could survive such a devastating attack.

“That means we can’t let them get back into space,” I said. “We’ve got to stop them.”

Leeson shook his head and cracked his faceplate open long enough to spit. “You let me know when you’ve figured out how to do that, McGill,” he laughed bitterly.

Turning away, I began to trot back down the tunnels into the mountain. My pace turned into a thundering run by the time I reached Drusus’ office. I’d adjusted my suit to power my legs, so I didn’t have to limp.

There were several techs in the tribune’s chamber with him. They were rolling up computer scrolls, and they moved with an air of purpose. They weren’t panicked yet, but they were sure in a hurry.

“Tribune?” I asked.

He looked up at me, but didn’t smile. In fact, his face scrunched up a bit like he smelled something unpleasant.

“What fresh disaster brings you here, Veteran?” he asked me.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“No time. We’re pulling out. Most of the troops won’t make it—I’ll have your people go down deep in the mines. To the very bottom, if necessary. Maybe a few will survive.”

I watched for a moment as he stuffed a computer scroll into a capsule, then another.

Tribune Drusus spoke to the techs he was working with. I noted with surprise that one of them was Natasha.

“Send out one of these with every flying drone we’ve got,” he ordered. “Send them in every direction.”

“Already programmed, sir,” Natasha said.

“Good. Fly those birds.”

Natasha rushed out with a capsule under her arm and a worried look on her face. Everyone looked like they were about to die—probably because they were.

“Natasha,” I said, catching up to her. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” she asked. “That’s a big word for this desperate attempt to survive. We’re sending out drones in every direction. They’ll fly until they run out of fuel then crash into the snow and wait. If they hear a friendly signal later on, they’ll start chirping, hoping to be found.”

“Okay…what’s in the capsules?”

“Data. Lists of the soon to be dead. Your name, your DNA, and mental backups. Mine too. If someone comes looking and finds them, well, maybe they’ll revive us out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“But Drusus said that he was sending the troops deep into the mines.”

“It won’t matter. Nothing will survive a steady bombardment by the broadsides. They’ve got seven capital ships up there, James. Grow up. We’re all as good as permed, whether we get buried in the tunnels or vaporized out on the surface.”

She moved as if to push past me, but I held onto her arm, and she looked up at me, reluctantly.

“Look,” I said. “We can’t let the lizards fire their cannons.”

“How are we going to stop them?”

“You’ve got to help me,” I said. “You’ve got to get me in touch with Claver.”

“Oh no, forget that,” she said, shaking her head.

She headed up the tunnels, and I followed. We reached the upper chambers and then the exposed, smoldering galleries. The mess outside was dramatic, and most of it was obscured by fog and smoke.

She set up and released her drone loaded with data scrolls. It looked like a messenger pigeon, but it buzzed rather than flapped. We watched as it darted into the smoke then appeared again. Suddenly, a beam lanced out from downslope and took the drone out. It fell in burning pieces which steamed in the snow.

Natasha made a sound of anguish. “It’s hopeless.”

“Come on girl, give my plan a shot,” I said.

She looked at me for a second then shook her head. “I don’t even know what your plan is, and don’t want to know. I’m following my orders this time, James. I’m sending out these drones. It’s our best hope.”

She knelt and began working on another drone. This time, she programmed it to climb up high, hoping to get out of the range of the enemy automated turrets. I didn’t think it would work, but she wasn’t going to stop trying.

“Look, I’ll do that,” I said, taking the hand-held terminal from her. “Just get your com equipment out and set it up.”

Heaving a sigh, she did as I asked. “You never give up on anything, do you?” she asked.

“No, I guess not.”

She got out her tech-specialist computer and put it down in the snow. A small dish extended from the core brick—but then she stopped.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to do this. I’m going to follow my orders, and that’s all. Why die violating my tribune’s final wishes? You’ve always gotten me into trouble, James. I see that now. I’ll never understand why I listen to you.”

This little speech of hers made me angry and desperate at the same time. My mind raced, trying to come up with something I could use to influence her.

I had the answer in less than a second, but I didn’t want to use it. Only the fact that the legion was facing a wipe, possibly a permanent one, caused me to say what I said next.

“Natasha,” I said. “You haven’t always followed the rules, you know. You’ve come up with some violations all your own. Remember back on Dust World? When you committed a stack of high crimes?”

“What? I did no such thing—not without your urging. It was
you
who shot a neutral air ship and started this war with the squids. That’s what I remember.”

“Yeah, but before that. You didn’t want to die on
Corvus
, remember?”

She looked at me with sudden concern. “You said you wouldn’t talk about that.”

“I’m just trying to make a point. You reached a situation that made you desperate, and you took your chances. In fact, you and your fellow mutineers took over
Corvus
and escaped into orbit around the local star.”

Natasha froze. She turned to face me, her cheeks red. “I didn’t do that. I told you I
planned
to do it. That
maybe
there was a twin of me somewhere out—”

“No,” I said, my voice becoming gentle. I took her hands in mine and looked her in the eyes. “You didn’t try to do it, you did it. Della told me. She knows you very well. That’s the real reason she avoids you. She knows your twin, and everyone on Dust World is grateful to her.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an odd look on a human face before. It was full of surprise, fear, horror and wonder all at once.

“Della told you this?” she asked in a small voice. “She knows—why didn’t you say something?”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Sick.”

“That’s why I kept quiet,” I said. “I’m only telling you now because we’re facing that kind of situation. We’re here, you and I and thousands of others. I don’t want to pretend this body doesn’t matter. I don’t have a copy out there on Dust World who will carry on in my stead. Even if I’m brought back to life some day, that’s not good enough. I want this version of me to live—just like you did back aboard
Corvus
.”

“Are you shitting me, James? Because if you are, I’m never going to forgive you.”

I shook my head. While she was thinking it over, I programmed and released the drone. It flew off with a buzzing sound and vanished into the smoke and haze. A moment later, it was shot down as well.

“I’m telling you the plain truth, Natasha. I’ve been carrying this secret with me for weeks now. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew it would freak you out. I apologize for telling you now.”

“Here,” she said, handing me a headset.

I looked at it and then at her. Her eyes were avoiding mine. I gave her a hug and a kiss on the top of the head.

“Just hurry up,” she said. “Whatever madness you’ve got in mind, I want you to do it and get it over with. Now.”

Oddly enough, it wasn’t that hard to get ahold of Claver. I knew his private channel, and it appeared that no one else was trying to reach him right now.

“Who’s this?” he demanded. “Get off the line if this isn’t official business.”

“It’s official, all right,” I said. “I want to negotiate a surrender.”

“Is this McGill? Ha! No dice, moron. First off, you aren’t in charge of jack-squat. Secondly, you’re gonna die today. That’s what every lizard wants to see, and that’s what we’re going to give them with these rented ships. I’m going to operate the broadsides myself. I’m their gunner, did you know that? I dropped that first one on your head, and I’m going to enjoy unloading all sixteen the next time.”

“Sir,” I said, “I’m not going to appeal to your humanity, just to your greed.”

Claver paused. “How’s that?” he asked finally.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and made my pitch. “I’ve got access to something you want. Something you would do almost anything to get your hands on.”

Claver was quiet for a few seconds.

“The key? Are you telling me Turov left the Galactic key in your country-bumpkin, manure-stained hands, boy? Because if that’s your game, I’m not buying it. Turov is six kinds of a bitch, but she’s not stupid. She’d never—”

“Sir, what I have is access to Turov, and
she
has the key. If you let us get off this world without operating those big guns for the saurians, I’ll procure it and hand it over to you at a later date.”