Sky World (Undying Mercenaries Book 18), page 15
A few of the grunts in the back of the group chuckled at that.
“I think Sargon is right,” I said. “You’d think that after all these years serving with Legion Varus, you’d have gotten over this kind of squeamishness. It’s kind of embarrassing to be honest, Carlos.”
Right about then, we heard a strange, loud noise. It was coming from outside the supply room we’d all hidden ourselves in.
“What the hell is that?” Sargon asked.
“I think they found us,” whispered Kivi. She had deployed buzzers in the big chamber above, letting them crawl all over the place, gathering data.
That was enough for me. I grabbed my bomb and twisted the knob all the way around, giving us half an hour before it went off.
“All right, enough flower-smelling,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Why the hell are we doing that?” Carlos asked. “We got one ticking. Let’s just set it off, and be done with it.”
“We don’t know how big this place is. We don’t know if this bomb will fizzle and just kill everyone in the room. We’ve got to be thorough, our orders are to drop them all over the place and make sure the station is a full kill. Come on.”
I climbed up, opened the hatch, and threw it clear with a clang. Looking around with my rifle in my hands, I didn’t see any bears. I exited the storage compartment and half-dragged my crew up behind me.
“More than one is just a waste,” Carlos complained. “It just increases the odds we’ll be found.”
I ignored him. “All right, you—what’s your name?”
“Vines, sir. Regular, First Class—”
“Yeah, whatever. Go over there to that cubby in the rock and plant one. Make sure to twist the timer hard, all the way around.”
Vines trotted away. I didn’t wait for him to come back. I began marching rapidly toward a dark tunnel mouth that led into the polished rock wall.
Sargon was right on my tail. “I think I get your strategy, sir. They can dismantle one bomb, but they can’t get all sixteen if we hide them all over their complex.”
“That’s right.”
An alarm sounded.
“Oh, crap,” Kivi said.
I began to run, and my squad all hustled after me. More alarms went off as we raced by, beeping and whooping at us in an accusatory fashion. There were even some flashing lights as well. Every time we found a storage closet, an unattended vehicle, or even a large ventilator shaft, I had one of my men twist the knob on their bomb and place it accordingly.
Carlos still seemed unhappy, but I barely cared. “You really are a firebug, aren’t you, Centurion? One of those crazies who gets sexual gratification from blowing things up.”
“Yeah, that’s it, Carlos. You should know this by now.”
We kept going and dropping bombs, but eventually we came to a door that didn’t open, and we decided to pass it by.
We trotted about another dozen steps when it popped opened suddenly behind us. Guns poked out into the corridor in our wake, and they immediately began to fire.
We returned fire, and a battle began. Bolts were spraying down both sides of the corridor. The tunnel wasn’t well-lit, and muzzle flashes were like lightning in the dark. Each bolt lit the place up with orange fire.
In the end, three Saurian soldiers lay facedown on the deck along with one Varus specialist sprawled near them.
I walked over to this pile of bodies and inspected the group.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, sir,” Sargon said, “but there are no bears in sight here.”
“You’re unusually observant today, Veteran,” Carlos said.
“Armel…” I said. “It has to be Armel.”
“What are you talking about, sir?” Sargon asked.
“Kivi,” I said, “they’ve got to have a communications system active around here. Try to hack in and find out who is aboard this station.”
She did as I asked, and while she worked, more sirens wailed. Groups of Saurian soldiers found us, but we ambushed them and mowed them down. After maybe five minutes had gone by, Kivi had managed to finish the hack. She was now perusing through contacts, looking for anything that we could understand.
“I’ve got a channel. It’s not Rigellian… I think it’s something Imperial…”
Sargon’s belcher flared white, releasing a massive surge of radiation downrange. Two Saurians were flash-fried in their scaly hides.
Kivi was pecking at my shoulder, so I leaned close to her. “What have you got?”
“Sir, I think I recognize this pattern. This is from Imperial equipment, but it’s a little different.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think it’s Saurian gear.”
I nodded. “That makes perfect sense. Armel is here somewhere. Locate him. I don’t know if he’s on this rock, exactly. But these Saurians are his mercenary troops, so we’d best have a look.”
She looked startled. “You mean like back on Edge World? Do you think he’s still working for the Skay?”
“Probably.”
Sargon came and squatted down with us. He tapped at his tapper, which was running a helpful timer app. “We’ve only got about twenty-one minutes left, McGill,” he said.
“Got it.”
I turned back to Kivi. “No way to give us any more time on those bombs?”
“Hell no, not now that we’ve dropped like ten of them all over the place.”
“Right. Okay, so we all know we’re dead in twenty minutes. Let’s do whatever we can.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said in a bitter tone, “let’s live big. I’ve got a huge personality, and I want to let all these aliens know about it.”
We took a new route through the passages we hadn’t tried before, and I used Kivi’s information to lead me. We found a region where there was a concentration of Imperial message transmissions.
That clearly wasn’t coming from any natives of Rigel.
We found yet another locked door. As we were under time-pressure, I just waved for Sargon with his belcher. He burned the door down without any preambles. When it fell inward, clanging into a large chamber on the other side, a storm of fire came back in our direction.
We threw in a few plasma grenades and spray from our morph-rifles, but neither side was landing any hits on the other as we were both standing well back from the entrance.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Let’s talk, lizard-breath.”
It was quiet for a few moments. Finally, a rasping reply came back. “What do you want, human?”
“I want to talk to your leader,” I said. “I want to talk to Maurice Armel.”
“Our tribune is not here.”
“Well, call him. Tell him James McGill wants to talk.”
“What would the purpose of this conversation be?”
“I’m not going to tell you, but if you don’t contact Armel, he’ll know about it. Then later on, you’re going to get your tail pulled off.”
“You could never do such a thing,” he said angrily. “My tail is far too strong. Far too well attached. Far too—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Just relay my message to your master.”
“My tail is incomparable, human!”
I was sorry I’d ever brought up tails. Saurians had a real thing about their tails. In human parlance, it was said that men liked to have dick-measuring contests. Well, amongst Saurians, they literally had tail-measuring contests.
“Just contact your master,” I shouted, “or you’ll be wishing you were still in your mama’s egg sack.”
There was some hissing after that, and no doubt foul words were spoken in his native tongue. But the Saurian did finally make an attempt to transmit a message. I had Kivi trace this while we all stayed way back from the doorway.
After a minute or so, a response finally came out of the chamber. “The master is coming. You have earned his wrath.”
“Sounds good!” I called back. “We’ll wait right here but tell him to make it quick.”
We waited for maybe two more precious minutes, during which Carlos went on about how useless this all was and how we were about to be blown up for nothing. Then, a blue flashing light appeared in the chamber.
A moment or two later there were sharp reports as boots struck the deck. In the smoking doorway, which Sargon had burned down with his belcher, a figure appeared.
The human had his hands on his hips. His guns were still safely located in their holsters, so we didn’t shoot him down. He looked around at the group of us humans with a sneer on his face.
“Legion Varus pigs?” he said. “Of course… I should have known. What to you rodents want here?”
“Hi, Armel. Remember me?” I stood up and, and I can’t swear he didn’t flinch in surprise.
“James McGill…” he said. “You are the bane of my existence. How long has it been, madman?”
“Too long. Way too long.”
I walked forward and offered him a hand to shake. He ignored this gesture for a few seconds, but he finally reached out and shook my hand.
“I imagine you are engaged in some farcical suicide-mission?” he asked.
“Just like you are!”
Armel smiled a bit. Both of us knew that we were going to die in some fashion or another in short order. But one thing about Armel that I appreciated was how little fear he had of death. He didn’t like the process, mind you. He would struggle against it as hard as the next fellow. But he was more worried about who won a given moment in time—a contest between two competing men—than he was interested in keeping his skin intact at all times. In a way, I could admire that about him.
“Why have you summoned me, McGill? Why don’t you just do whatever goofy display of futility Earth has ordered you to perform and be on your way.”
“I wanted to talk to you for a minute or two, sir.”
“Talk? That is not your usual ape-manner What do you wish to converse about?”
“Well sir, this whole thing seems kind of strange. What do you know about this new war starting up between Earth and Rigel?”
Armel shrugged. “I know almost nothing. I know that the bears sent a ship to implore your government to return to sanity. These diplomats were rudely rebuffed. Then, Earth has made a great show of blowing up its own fledgling and probably inoperable planetary shield in order to create an excuse for attacking Rigel.”
“Huh? Are you for reals? Are you saying this is a false-flag operation?”
Armel shrugged. “Take my words for whatever value you find in them. Rigel did not destroy your planetary shield.”
I flipped up my visor and one finger came up to my face, which was suddenly itchy. It got like that when I felt a thought coming on.
“Huh…” I said. “All right. I suppose the truth will come out in time. There’s an investigation going on you know.”
Armel laughed in my face. “McGill, your ineptitude is almost charming. There is always an investigation going on. All of them find what the investigators want to be found. How can you have lived so long and not figured that out yet?”
“Yeah, well, listen. There’s something else I wanted to ask you about.”
“Pray continue. You have not yet sufficiently wasted my time.”
“Do you know anything about some bunkers? Some old, old bunkers back on Earth. They’re full of military gear from before the Unification Wars, as far as I can tell.”
Armel blinked once, then twice. I could tell right off he hadn’t been expecting that question. He cocked his head and looked at me curiously.
“Have you found something dangerous, McGill? Looking at your simpleton’s face… yes. Yes, I do believe you have.”
“Sir,” Sargon said, “we’ve only got about nine minutes left.”
Kivi and Carlos were listening to me, and I could tell they were going to burst with questions.
But I didn’t care about any of that. We were all going to be blown apart, and we wouldn’t be able to remember any of this. Therefore, it didn’t matter what was revealed to anyone present.
Except for Armel, that was. His mind was being recorded right now, because this was his turf, his territory. Sure, we were all going to die, but he was on his own grid, he would remember this conversation. None of the rest of us would.
Armel regarded me closely with real curiosity. “You have intrigued me, McGill. I have not been intrigued for a long time. I’ve been bored to tears out here, sitting in this dismal star system with these nasty little bears and disgusting, retarded lizards. What good is vast wealth if you must spend your time with such deplorable creatures?”
“Eight minutes!” Sargon called through my headset.
“Glad I could be of service…” I told Armel, “but I don’t think we have much time left for gabbing.”
Armel nodded. “Will you come with me, McGill? To my ship?”
“Uh… what?”
“It’s an invitation. Must I engrave it for you?”
Carlos was listening in, and he turned his head to the others. “They’re exchanging rings, and they’re about to bone! I’m sure of it!” he said loudly.
Armel’s eyes narrowed. “I would enjoy shooting that man. A close and personal stabbing would be even more satisfactory.”
“You’ll have to take a number on that. Honestly, I would let you do it, but we don’t have much time. You said something about a ship though?”
Armel smiled. “This will be a matter of honor between us. I will talk to you, and afterward I will send you back to Earth in a nice, neat box. Just the way you like it.”
He held out his hand as if to shake again, but I noticed that his other hand was reaching a finger to touch a button on his harness.
Some of my troops saw this as well. They lifted their rifles, wheeling around. “He’s trying to perm McGill!” Carlos shouted.
I grabbed Armel’s hand, and he pushed the button. Blue lights flashed as we began to flicker away. All the grunts in the passageway were shocked, but not for long.
After seeing that both their commanders were going to skedaddle, chaos broke out.
The truce was over. Saurians and Earth men all began firing on each other at once.
Then, Armel and I faded from view.
-17-
A minute ago, Armel had been under our guns, but now the reverse was true. A pack of at least twenty oversized lizards stood all around us. Every gun in the place was targeting yours truly.
“Let us enjoy a beverage,” Armel said.
He beckoned, and I followed him to a table surrounded by vintage chests and cabinets. I eyed his cache of goods and furniture admiringly. “You brought this stuff all the way from Earth, didn’t you?”
“I certainly did. I believe it helps a man’s spirit to be surrounded by objects from his home.”
I looked around curiously. As far as living beings, I saw nothing but lizards, although, I had seen Armel use human staff members in the past as well.
“No… women?” I asked.
Armel pursed his lips under a wormy mustache. “I had one, but I believe she left my service to enter yours.”
“Oh yeah… Leza. Well, don’t worry about that. She didn’t stick around for long. I think she’s still part of Legion Varus, but I haven’t seen her on this deployment. For all I know she mustered out permanently.”
Armel nodded, and he poured me a glass of brandy. He drank his own with quiet sips while I gulped mine. “McGill,” he said, “let us be civilized. I assume that your raiding party came here for the purpose of sabotage, yes?”
“Uh…” I said thinking that over. I wasn’t sure if I should confess or not.
Finally, I shrugged and figured what the hell? “Yes, of course we did. You’ll never have time to find all the bombs. They’ve been set in too many places. And they’re all going to go off within the next few minutes.”
“As expected, Armel said. “I told the Rigellians that you would do this. I’m actually pleased that you came here to confirm my status as an oracle. They cannot go on without the likes of Maurice Armel.”
I frowned. He didn’t seem concerned at all. We were about to punch a hole in Rigel’s network of stations that surrounded their world. What’s more, it would be a larger hole than they had punched into our shield.
Each of their stations was larger and transmitted a projected shield over a comparatively larger region. Therefore, destroying one of theirs was at least equivalent to destroying four of ours, just because of the way each system had been designed.
“So, you predicted this move, and the bears didn’t care?”
“Hmm? Oh, they have a care, certainly. But you see, by now we’ve isolated where your little strike was going to land.”
“You what?”
“We’re able to disconnect any given station from the grid. With a little bit of thrust the station you’ve attacked is now heading out into deep space.”
My jaw sagged. “You like… pulled it out of the whole network of stations?”
“Exactly. Come, look out of this observation window.” He walked with me, and we stood before a very large, very tall pane of glass. I knew that it probably was a screen, not actual transparent material, but it looked real. I wasn’t even sure if it was real or not—and it didn’t matter. “There,” Armel said, pointing.
I could see quite clearly, one of the modified asteroid stations was moving out of formation. I wished right then that I could contact my men and tell them to set one of the bombs to one minute. We’d been fools to set so many and waste so much time.
Armel swilled more of his brandy. “What is it you wanted to talk about McGill? Realize that we don’t have forever if I’m to kill you and send you home. Once the Rigellians see your vicious act of sabotage, they will demand that I capture you and hand you over into their custody.”
I nodded, understanding his logic. “I was asking about bunkers. Back on Earth during the Unification Wars, certain secret bunkers were placed in remote locations. Do you know anything about that?”
Armel squinted at me. “This is a strange topic for you to pursue, McGill. Who has been talking to you?”
I shrugged. “No one. Imagine that I’ve found such a place, and I’m naturally curious about it.”
