Clone World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 12), page 19
“Another mission, sir?”
“That’s right. I want you to ferret out traitors—before they make their move to join Claver. Identify them and give the information to Graves. He’ll take care of the arrests, and he’ll do it quietly so as not to scare the rest of the fish away. Not until we have them all.”
“Uh… that’s great, sir. How do I do it?”
“You’ve been cleared, but your part of this campaign isn’t finished yet. Your new orders are to return to your unit via a gateway connecting Central to Legate. All transports have them now.”
“Of course, sir. But what I meant was how do I find the traitors?”
“You’ve already identified several. Use your judgment. I can’t afford to lose any more officers.”
“Anything else?” I asked with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
“I think that’s sufficient. You’re dismissed, Centurion. Head down to Gray Deck for processing.”
And that was it. Without so much as a handshake, he kicked me out of the revival room, out of Central—and off Earth itself.
-33-
When I got back to Legate, Graves was waiting for me. He didn’t look even half as happy to see me as Drusus had been.
“Great to be back with Varus where I belong, sir!” I told him, giving him my heartiest grin.
Graves shook his head. He was watching something on his tapper—it looked like the destruction of the team he’d sent down with me to Clone World. He glared at the flashes of fierce combat.
“All right,” he said at last. “Drusus claims you’re not a traitor. I’ll take his word for that. But if you’re not a traitor, you’re an idiot.”
“Uh…” I said.
“Follow me, Centurion.”
I walked after him unhappily. I’d kind of hoped to sneak away and get some much-needed bunk time. “No time for a shower, huh?”
“No, dammit. Come on!”
I walked after him, with my new body feeling all sticky inside my uniform.
“Uh… what’s the hurry, Primus?”
“The hurry is that we’re not getting anywhere. This mission has stalled. We’re in enemy territory and every move we make fails.”
I thought about that. Turov and I had come up with a list of plans of action over the preceding weeks. So far, she’d only tried the tame moves. I knew that it would soon be time to try something more drastic.
“How many revival machines do you think Claver has in this system, McGill?” Graves asked me suddenly as we reached the lift and stepped into it.
“Well sir, I only saw the one—the one I came out of.”
He nodded. “That makes sense, but it’s too bad you didn’t see more details while in his fortress. You’ve been here several times, as I understand it, and you’ve never done a good job scouting the place.”
I recalled those prior visits vividly. Every time, the security had been tight. Claver-Threes had literally glommed onto my arms. I hadn’t been able to take a step on my own to investigate the place.
Graves looked up as we reached Gold deck. He gave me a hard stare. “What has Turov got planned?” he asked me.
Shrugging, I blanked my face. “How would I know anything about that, sir?”
Graves snorted. “Come on, give me a break. What’s next on the menu?”
“Well sir…” I began reluctantly. I was thinking of some of the crazy things we’d come up with. “I think that’s better heard coming from Turov herself. After all, she’s the mission commander.”
Graves looked pissed. “McGill, has it occurred to you that I’m second in command of this legion, and yet you seem to know more about our commander’s plans than I do? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“Well sir… we’ve had loyalty problems. Not with you, of course, but the more people who know what’s coming…”
I trailed off, and he gave me a hard look. At last, he nodded. “All right. I get it. She trusts you to keep quiet—which seems odd on the face of it, until I consider all the times you’ve kept a secret by lying and playing the fool… All right.”
That was the end of it. Graves finally stopped grilling my ass, and that was an honest-to-God relief for me. I didn’t like lying to Graves. It was like lying to my parents. Sure, I still did lie to them—all the time, actually. But I’d never enjoyed the process. It just felt wrong, somehow.
When we reached Gold Deck and the bridge, Turov was there, strutting around like a prized hen at the fair. She didn’t care if she was breaking traditions, stepping all over the toes of Legate’s captain—she was running this show directly.
“Perhaps, Tribune,” began Captain Merton, “if you could allow me and my crew—”
“Forget it, Merton. I can’t let amateurs run this show. Not today. We’ve lost too much already. Here’s the plan: you will bombard the planet with the broadsides.”
“That has been considered, sir,” Merton said carefully. “But it’s quite impossible. We can’t get close enough—not by several million kilometers. If we try, the enemy’s defensive batteries will destroy my ship long before we’re within range.”
“You’re under my mission command, Merton,” Turov said dangerously. “And you will follow my orders accordingly.”
Merton straightened, and he seemed to grow a spine. “You are the mission commander, but I’m specifically allowed to override your orders if I see them as unacceptably dangerous to this ship and crew.”
The two squared-off. I was smiling, ready to applaud. Old Merton had been a whipping-boy the whole trip out. It was good to see him finally grow a pair.
“Captain, I—”
“I do not have to endanger this ship,” Merton interrupted. “I see your orders as suicidal, therefore I won’t follow them.”
“And if I have you arrested?”
Merton paused for a moment. “Then you can explain that action to Central, should any of us be lucky enough to make it home alive.”
Turov nodded. “All right. You win. We won’t approach and fire. Instead, we’ll warp from here to orbit, then fire and land. Does that make you happy?”
Merton blinked repeatedly. “That’s against regulations. The radiation released by a warping ship near an inhabited world is strictly—”
“We’re not coming here to colonize!” Turov reminded him. “We’re coming to bomb them!”
I understood Merton’s difficulties. Normally, Earth legions didn’t go in for total war options. We fought limited engagements. Our broadsides were rarely used, and usually only on fortifications if we’re talking about firing on a planet. Once a missile battery or other installation was destroyed, we usually invaded and conquered.
This was different. This was a rogue planet. The people down there were human, technically, but they were all illegal clones.
Still, hearing Turov’s plan, I was left frowning. We’d discussed this one, but it was indeed extreme. She’d gone right from regular operations to opting for total destruction. She was gambling with the ship, with her legion—with the entire mission. Maybe that was due to Merton’s resistance, I wasn’t sure.
“Uh…” I began, thinking to make a calming suggestion.
Graves hushed me by snapping his fingers in my face and shaking his head.
I shut up and watched.
“Well…” Merton said, “that’s dangerous for the ship, highly irregular and—”
“But will it work? Can you steer this whale well enough to pull it off?”
Merton nodded. “We can do it. We’ll have a window—perhaps three to five minutes—before we’ll have to warp away again to stop the enemy defenses from taking out the ship.”
Turov smiled and began to strut again.
“That’s right,” she said. “We’ll do it. This is a stalemate, and I’m going to put an end to it. Graves, put everyone you can on a lifter. Legate will warp into position, fire a barrage to take out the defensive batteries, then your job will be to drop from orbit and mop up the resistance.”
“Will you be dropping with us, Tribune?” Graves asked.
Turov gave him a glittering stare. She didn’t like to get down in the dirt. She liked that fact being pointed out in public even less.
“Yes,” she hissed after a moment’s hesitation. “I will be dropping with the legion.”
She looked back at Merton. “Will that be alright with everyone? Or should we put this to a vote?”
Captain Merton was blinking in surprise. Slowly, the realization that he was getting rid of Turov—possibly on a permanent basis—was dawning on him. He began to smile.
“No need sir!” he said. “I’m in complete agreement. Don’t worry, Legate will stay out of harm’s way.”
“That much I’m sure of,” Turov said sarcastically.
After that, things got crazy. The big ship swung around and accelerated. Her warp engines shimmered into life.
All over the ship, Legion Varus was called to action. We were ordered to Red Deck.
We were landing within the hour.
-34-
After scrambling to Red Deck, we found the lifter pilots were prepping to launch as well. I tried to contact Graves, but he was too busy to brief the curious.
“I’ve seen this before,” Leeson said. “Back about a decade before you joined up, McGill, we had a short drop-window like we do now. To speed things up, not everyone will be deployed with drop-pods. To get all the manpower and equipment off the transport as fast as possible, they’ll dump three or four cohorts with drop-pods. The rest of the troops and all the heavy equipment will come down on lifters.”
“That’s dangerous,” Harris said. “Lifters are too big, too easy to hit with defensive fire.”
“Then let’s pray the broadsides do their job and destroy those defensive gun batteries,” I said.
They looked glum enough to pray, but no one did it out loud among the officer’s ranks.
3rd Cohort was lucky enough to get drop-pod duty. I call it lucky because we couldn’t get wiped out with one well-aimed shot.
We got into position, geared-up and sweating in our suits. After forty-one minutes of that crap, the ship jumped. I’d been waiting for the moment, and we finally slipped into a warp bubble and sped toward our destination.
Turov had pulled it off beautifully, in a way. We suspected we had spies aboard Legate, which was why Claver had always been one jump ahead of us on this campaign. But since we were far out in the system, even if someone wanted to warn Claver about our surprise, there wasn’t time.
This was due to the limitations of radio transmissions. Radio traveled at the speed of light, and we were more than a light hour out from Clone World. Even if someone had reported the moment Turov announced our intentions, a radio signal didn’t have time to get from Legate to the target planet.
It was possible, I supposed, that a secret enemy deep-link unit was aboard Legate—but I highly doubted it. They were too expensive, too large. It wasn’t something you hid aboard a ship without people noticing.
As Legate formed its warp-bubble, scooting through space much faster than light could travel, we reached our destination before any traitorous signals could arrive to warn the enemy.
Materializing in low orbit, our big guns swung and locked on target. They fired in unison, and the men who were already being chugged out in drop-pods were jostled and nearly lost their footing.
It was Leeson’s turn, in fact, when the big guns spoke. They knocked him half off his stride, and he went into the tube kind of off-balance.
My mouth split open in a sympathetic grimace, and I made a hissing sound. Poor Leeson. This wasn’t his lucky day.
The two halves of the capsule slammed into his body as he dropped out into open space under the ship. I saw it on my tapper, and it wasn’t pretty.
The trouble was Leeson hadn’t come down the chute nice and straight. He’d fallen down at an angle. He’d tried to right himself, throwing out an arm to brush the side of the chute and steer himself back to center—it was a desperate, but logical gamble. Sure, he was bound to lose an arm doing that, but he’d at least avoid the worst.
Unfortunately, the worst happened anyway. He was sideways when the two halves of the capsule smashed into this body. His head and one arm were crushed on one side, while both feet were chopped off at the other end.
Harris glanced at me grimly. “At least it was quick.”
“You’re up. Go!”
Harris stepped out and vanished. There was a pro for you. The last man was hamburger, but Harris took his turn without hesitation. It made me proud to see it.
Behind me, I heard Veteran Moller shouting and slamming her gauntlets into various troops’ skulls. She had to keep them moving. There couldn’t be any backing up, no recoiling in horror, no panic in the tubes. You just had to take your turn, and you had to do it on time. The machinery was relentless.
It was my turn next. I stepped into space without a moment’s hesitation. I hoped my example would calm the troops and keep them coming.
A moment later I was cocooned in titanium. My body was spun around, my legs bent at the knees, and the inevitable hammer-blow to my boots came a half-second later. I’d been launched out of Legate’s belly.
All around me, I knew, men were falling like swarms of tiny bomblets, and lifters were screaming toward the planet. The broadsides were firing over and over as fast as they could to destroy the enemy fortifications. With any luck, their shields would be overwhelmed and their defensive installations reduced to rubble.
The plan had called for Legate to stay over the target for no longer than four minutes—but Captain Merton hung there for six. I could only surmise that Claver’s defensive people were as surprised as we’d hoped they would be, and they had to retarget our ship in a panic.
“Two minutes,” I said to myself as I screamed down in my pod, the capsule growing hot from the steep angle of reentry. “It must have taken them two minutes to aim and fire…”
We’d calculated that Claver’s missiles could reach the Legate in four minutes. But they must not have launched the moment we appeared over their base. There must have been a much-needed delay.
Still, this was war at a lightning pace by any definition. The sky cracked open before I reached the LZ, and Legate winked out as suddenly as she’d appeared.
We were on our own. I shrunk down all my thoughts of the battle to my own situation. Theory, strategy, planning—they were all useless if you were dead in your boots.
The pods rained down in a swarm and landed not far from our last LZ. The difference was the area had been struck by heavy bombardment before we got there.
When my pod slammed into the dirt, I winced, but I didn’t pop the hatch—not yet. I took a radiation reading first.
“Four hundred rads…”
Not good. Three hundred was a deadly dose. We’d have to keep our helmets on and breathe canned air, at least until the wind changed.
“Team,” I broadcast to my unit, “keep your kits buttoned up. We’ve got some hot rads to worry about.”
Popping open the hatch on my pod, I climbed out and surveyed the area. A strong, blistering wind was blowing. Trees were down, and everything organic about this place looked dead. The air swimmers had been incinerated. The leafy fronds of the jungle had been transformed into black finger-bones. They rattled and clawed at the radioactive winds.
We’d really done a number on this place.
-35-
Harris landed a big gauntlet on my shoulder. I spun around, frowning.
“Look…” he said, breathing hard. “The enemy’s innermost dome—it’s still up.”
I looked, and I marveled. I saw a glimmering dome of force. It didn’t have that glossy solid glass-bowl look anymore. Instead, it was shimmering, crawling, running with a weird effect that reminded me of heatwaves coming off a highway in summer… but it was still there.
“Shit,” I said.
“Agreed.”
“Get the men together,” I told Harris. “Put Sargon in charge of Leeson’s platoon.”
Harris rushed to obey. I took stock of our status on my tapper. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great. We’d lost thirteen souls in the drop. We were down to about a hundred and ten effectives.
But any Varus unit could take a hard knock and keep marching. We gathered up what we could and advanced toward the dome. The forest we’d used for cover the first time we’d come here was gone—at least it was absent outside the central dome.
All around me, in a circular region some ten kilometers across, troops were hustling to encircle Claver’s fortress. Behind us, the lifters roared down and landed. There were dozens of them, and I was glad to see them all make it safely to the ground.
“Hey,” I said to Adjunct Barton, after checking all the reports, “we didn’t get through all their shields, but we did manage to destroy their anti-space batteries. They didn’t shoot down a single lifter!”
She gave me an honest grin. We both passed the info on to everyone in the unit. They could use some good news about now.
Harris caught up with me a few minutes later. “What’s the op plan now that we’re on foot, Centurion?”
“We’re going to advance and mop up. Anything that’s still alive gets shot.”
“That’s it?” Harris asked in dismay. “No organizing, no forming proper lines—”
“Harris, we just gave them a surprise punch in the mouth. We’re the shock-troops, the first ones to rush in to prevent them from recovering. When you’ve got an enemy down, you keep on kicking until he gives up.”
He knew I was right and that Gold Deck had made the right choice this time, but he didn’t like being part of any mad rush. Participating in such actions frequently resulted in death. Grumbling, he marshaled his platoon and trotted ahead.
We marched forward in a ragged line. As we got closer to the dome, the destruction got worse. The hot bed of radiation got hotter and the dust got so thick you could hardly see your gun in front of your visor.
