Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (24 page)

“Very interesting,” she said dryly. “Perhaps I’ll write an academic paper on the subject when we return to Earth.”

“Uh…well, there’s more. The particular projection that all these alien rebels are currently displaying isn’t in any of the guides. We think it means they’re off the rails—outside their societal norms.”

“Really?” she laughed. “What was your first clue?”

Her attitude was getting to me, but I persisted. “Look, sir, this is important. If we can understand what’s making these aliens go crazy, if we can figure out how it spreads, we can stop the riots.”

“Whoever said I wanted to do that?” she asked me.

We stared at each other for several long seconds. There was something going on here I didn’t understand.

“You indicated you manipulated events to lure me here,” I said. “Why?”

Turov pointed up toward the corners of the ceiling. “I have pinhead cameras recording up there. Let me ask you some questions. Did you or did you not break into a secret storeroom in a shopping area and remove certain valuable items?”

“Yes,” I said. “I took one of the holographic display units I mentioned earlier. For research.”

“And what about the other alien artifact currently on your person?”

I looked at her blankly for a moment then searched my pockets. I dragged out the shell-like thing I’d planned to give to Natasha at some point. “You mean this?”

“Hand that to me,” she snapped.

With reluctance I did as she asked. She smiled and toyed with it. “Do you know what this is, James?”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t believe you. I do not understand this device, but I know it is alien, and not a registered trade product. Therefore, it’s illegal to possess it on this planet.”

My frown intensified. “How’d you even know I had that object?”

“There are such things as scanners and buzzers. Since my arrival, I’ve taken great care to watch your movements.”

“That’s very flattering, sir,” I said.

“It’s not meant to be. Your criminality has been proven time and again. You’re a threat to everything we hold dear, whether you know it or not.”

Stunned, I leaned back in my chair. “I’m sorry you feel that way Primus—I mean Imperator.”

My misstatement had been an honest one. For years, I’d known her as my Primus. Her recent promotion hadn’t sunken into my mind yet. But I could tell she’d taken my words as a personal, purposeful insult. Her easy demeanor, which up until now had appeared to be something similar to the attitude a cat might have toward captured prey it was playing with before devouring, changed into something much worse.

“You represent a rash of mistakes to me,” she said in a harsh voice. “I should have made sure when we executed you the first time that you stayed dead. You’re irreverent and dangerous to our entire species. Constantly interfering with the plans of others, you’ve served as an unwitting tool to anyone who bothers to push your so-obvious buttons.”

Blinking in confusion, I was beginning to think she’d lost her mind. “Uh…if you say so, sir.”

Turov waved the shell-like thing and kept talking. “The interference with the Galactics, the rule-bending, the vote-fixing, the continual disregard for authority—it all ends here.”

She quickly drew her sidearm and aimed it at me. I was honestly taken by surprise. I knew Turov didn’t like me much, but I didn’t think she’d resort to murder in her office.

“Is this petty vengeance, sir?” I asked. “The cameras are rolling—you said so yourself.”

“Vengeance? Far from it. Your confession has been recorded.”

“Witnesses, sir. You need human witnesses to legally—”

Doors opened silently behind Turov. Two figures stepped out. I’d expected them to be the Veterans I’d met outside, but they weren’t. Instead, my eyes widened as I recognized none other than Tribune Drusus, commander of Legion Varus. He looked troubled, but resigned.

The second man was even more surprising. It was none other than Adjunct Claver—Old Silver himself. His expression was easy to read. He was grinning at me—broadly.

“An execution?” I guessed, getting to my feet.

Turov stood smoothly as well, keeping her gun trained on my chest.

“Yes,” she said. “Have the dignity to accept this legal verdict without a fuss, James.”

I ran my eyes over the officers. There were three of them, and my heart sank to see it. An execution in the field required three officers to make the verdict stick. I recalled this from the first time Turov had attempted to end my existence.

“Looks like you’re finally getting your way at last,” I told her. “I’ll take solace in the fact I’ll bleed all over your nice new rug.”

As I spoke, I was gratified to see they were all slightly nervous—especially Turov. I guess I had something of a reputation for violence under these circumstances.

The truth was I was pretty much out of ideas. I was in the mode of grasping at straws, and figured that saying anything I could to keep them talking could only increase my odds of finding that proverbial straw.

“I’ll take his weapon, sir,” Claver said, stepping around me in a broad circle. He darted in and grabbed my gun, and I put my hand reflexively onto his wrist.

“Freeze, Specialist!” Turov shouted.

I eased my hand away again, and Claver took my sidearm. He stepped back to my right side and aimed my own weapon at my head.

“By the authority invested in me by Hegemony and the Galactics,” Turov began, “I hereby—”

Indicating Claver with a jerk of my thumb, I sneered. “Doesn’t anyone feel like shooting this crazy smuggler instead? He’s caused way more trouble than I have. As far as I can tell, he’s the one behind the riots. He armed them using illegal credit coins to do it. He—”

“The accused will be silent!” Turov shouted. “Adjunct Claver’s actions have been duly noted, be sure of that. He will be dealt with as Galactic Law requires. But this is
your
trial, Specialist McGill, not his. I hereby sentence you to execution for your crimes.”

“I’m not guilty, and I’m filing a grievance with the Nairbs!” I shouted.

Turov shook her head, chuckling. “Such hubris. So noted, McGill. If the Nairbs take up your case, you might get a revive and a second execution out of the appeal process.”

She took a tighter grip on her pistol, and I knew this was it. I locked eyes with her, but I could tell I wasn’t going to intimidate her that way. She meant business. I wondered if I would have the good fortune to catch a revive this time around. My prospects didn’t look good, I had to admit.

A pistol went off. I honestly thought I was hit for a second even though, as a man who’s been shot dead many times, I should have known the difference.

The Imperator sank down to her knees and flopped onto the alien tapestry on the floor
, sprawling limply. There was a perfectly round hole spouting blood in the middle of her forehead.

Tribune Drusus went for his gun, but it was too late. The pistol blazed again, three times. He went down with a gargling sound, flopping over Turov’s corpse.

I looked over my shoulder. Old Silver stood there with my own pistol in his hands. The stink of burnt air and blood stung my nostrils.

“She shouldn’t have said she was planning to prosecute me as well,” he said. “That’s when I knew she had to die.”

Claver flashed me a grin.

-25-

Two of the highest ranking commanding officers in the system lay dead at my feet. I was in shock, but I watched Claver closely.

“You’re in the shit now, McGill,” Claver chuckled, keeping the gun trained on me. “Just you and me, two rats swimming in the sewer together.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Ha! You think that matters at this point? Give me that device.”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the shell-like thing Turov had taken from me.
I reached down and retrieved the item from Turov’s hand. In her other hand was her pistol. She’d never even gotten off a shot.

Claver must have sensed my hesitation.
Maybe he figured I was considering a grab for Turov’s gun—and he was right. I felt the hot barrel of my own gun as he pressed it into my ear.

“Give me the key,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“What do mean ‘the key?’ Why do you want this thing?”

Claver laughed. “You’re even dumber than I thought. You don’t even know what you have, do you, boy? Wow, I thought I’d seen luck before…well, let me clue you in. That shell-like thing is what they call a Galactic key. It opens things. Now, hand it over.”

I handed the seashell-thing to him. He aimed his gun at me with clear intent to kill. I glared at him and lifted my chin, daring him to do it.

After thinking for a
second or two he lifted the gun toward the ceiling and stepped back. “It’s your lucky day, McGill. I’m going to leave you alive. You can stay here holding this big bag of crap for me. Talk hard and long when they bust in here. Maybe someone will believe you.”

Holding the shell-like
thing he’d called a “key” in one hand, he stepped quickly to a door and tapped the lock with the device. The door opened and he stepped through, disappearing as it shut behind him.

I looked after him in confusion. My mind was racing. Here I was with two cooling bodies at my feet and blood everywhere. The Veterans outside weren’t going to like this. They’d probably shoot me down as an assassin and ask questions later. Probably that’s why Claver had left me alive. He wanted me to slow down any pursuers.

My first instinct was to call for the guards, claim innocence, and show them where Claver had run. But I knew he was harder to catch than a shithouse rat and nearly as nuts. He’d slip away, and I’d be left to face execution all over again.

One of my natural traits is impulsiveness, and I’ve always been that way. As a kid, I spent all my money on something cool the day after Christmas. As an adult, when I got close to a woman I liked I made a play for her. And when I faced death, I’d always chosen to act rather than to stand around waiting for things to just happen.

In a rush, I scooped up Turov’s gun which was still lying in her lax fingers and dashed after Claver through the closing doors.

Half-expecting to be blasted by him the second I entered, I crouched and swept the room while looking over the muzzle of Turov’s gun.

The room was
nice
. The outer chamber had been only a taste-treat compared to this. A full bar stood to one side, and a holographic command table glowed in the center. All around were self-contouring chairs and the walls were lined with trophies.

I recognized some of the heads on the walls. Like Drusus’ collection, they were all alien species and presumably sentient. First there was a crimson raptor head, proud-looking with skin like an oiled snake. A mantis head was next to that, then a shaggy lump of hair that looked like the rump of a sheepdog, and finally the head of a Tau.

This last surprised me. How could anyone expect to do business with a member of a species if you stuffed their relative’s skull with fiber and hung it on the wall?

Below this last trophy was something that caught my eye. There was a panel, and it slid closed as I watched.

“Damn,” I said and ran for it. I caught the edge of the panel with my fingers, but it was thick and the motors whined steadily. I had to pull my hands out before I lost my fingertips. It clicked shut, and I was left panting and staring at a blank wall.

I rushed back to the central console. There were a lot of controls there. I tapped at them wildly and ignored most of the responses. The room’s lights brightened then dimmed. A gentle sound like that of wind blowing came on and then the room immediately freshened. I realized the chamber had a fragrance-producing air conditioning system built it. Man, these officers had raided the piggy bank
for Galactic credits—or had the Imperator taken “gifts” from the locals like Claver? It was hard to say.

A hammering noise began on the door behind me, and I knew what that meant. The Veterans had found the bodies and were demanding entrance into the council chambers.

They’d soon unlock that chamber door, and I had to be gone by then. My actions thus far were only serving to make me look guiltier than ever. They weren’t going to make this a calm, smiling arrest. They’d be coming for me with guns drawn.

Why would there be a secret panel in the council room of the command center? I racked my brains for an answer. I could only think of one reason: an emergency exit.

At the command table, I searched for an icon that looked like an escape symbol. I finally found a picture of red flames and touched it.

An alarm sounded, and the door rolled open—but so did the one that led out into the waiting room. Not happy about my prospects of surviving in a firefight with two Veterans, I rushed to the yawning panel and threw myself into the darkness beyond.

I don’t know what I’d expected to find back there, but a chute down into an abyss probably wasn’t it. Tumbling and sliding, I dropped down a metal slide that never let me get turned around. Headfirst, I launched out of the bottom of the tube and splashed into a pool of dank, oily liquid.

Coughing and sputtering, I broke the surface. I’d lost the pistol on the way down and couldn’t see it in the dark water around me.

Treading water, I looked around, gasping. I was in the lower tiers of the megahab. It didn’t smell as a bad as the sewer had days before—but it wasn’t fresh, either. I figured it was probably some kind of cooling agent.

The sloping walls above me were barely visible in the wan light coming from the top of the shaft I’d fallen down. I could see I was inside a larger tube about ten meters across. It was deep enough to require me to swim, and after a second I realized there was a gentle current. I let the water take me where it would.

After a few seconds of staring and paddling, I heard a clattering sound and a splash. A cold burst of light followed almost immediately.

Plasma grenade.
The sights and sounds of such weapons were seared into my memory. I plunged away and stroked hard downstream but didn’t completely escape the effects.

Apparently, the guards above had noticed my escape hatch and dropped a gift down the shaft after me. The effects were muffled in water, but still effective. Grabbing up anything it could, the grenade transformed bits of grit and even droplets of the water itself and shot them outward in every direction. My feet were pierced by needles.

I’d been hit by this kind of makeshift shrapnel effect before. The weapon usually wounded rather than killed at a distance, and this case was no exception. I knew that walking was going to hurt for the next few days, but the liquid I was immersed in had saved me from more serious injury. If I’d dived underwater, the concussion would likely have blown out my eardrums at the very least.

Paddling painfully and ignoring the echoing shouts behind me, I soon lost them. The pipe twisted, turned and finally split into three directions.

I cursed and looked around uncertain as to which path I should take. The only light I had now was the glimmer coming from my tapper’s backlit screen. It wasn’t much, but I could tell the tubes led right, left, and directly upward.

The upward branch had a ladder attached to the wall. I was tired of being down here so I took that direction. My right foot felt like someone had stabbed it about twenty times with a carpet needle all the way through, but it held me up.

Burning in pain, cursing and bleeding, I struggled up the shaft. If I’d known how long it was going to take to climb to the top, I’m pretty sure I would have taken another route. But there was no turning back, so I struggled onward.

When I came up at last to an open grate, I overheard a voice.

“Don’t tell me that! There are no valid excuses, only valid actions. Get to my location immediately, or you’re fired.”

It was Claver talking into his tapper. I had no idea who he was talking to, and I didn’t much care. I heaved myself up the final rung of the ladder, and my soaking head popped up over the rim of the open shaft.

Trying to move silently so he wouldn’t hear me, I paused to catch my breath. I watched him with one staring eye.

He was alone. We were at the street level about a kilometer from legion headquarters. Claver was checking his tapper and scanning the skies intermittently. I figured he’d called for someone to pick him up and was anxiously awaiting rescue.

Crawling out of the shaft, I almost made it to him. I was about halfway out, looking like a drowned rat after a rainstorm, when he finally turned to see what was creeping and sloshing up behind him.

Sheer surprise saved me, I think. He still had my gun, but it was on his hip in a holster rather than in his hand. I lashed out with one long arm and snagged his ankle. He was as wet as I was, and he slipped when I yanked his foot out from under him.

I’m a big man even without my heavy weaponeer’s armor to emphasize the fact. Claver was many things, but he wasn’t terribly strong.

Using his body to climb like a ladder, we soon both had a hand on the gun in his holster. I tried to pin his hand so he couldn’t draw it while he struggled to pull it loose.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Claver hissed. “How’d you find me?”

“They say I have a gift, sir,” I said, squeezing his wrist.

He must have realized he’d never get his gun out into line with my head, so he pulled the trigger blindly.

The gun flashed
and a hot streak ripped down his leg touching my left hip. A strip of my skin three inches long furrowed up and began to bleed. My lips pulled back from my teeth in a grimace of pain.

After that, I
slammed his head into the pavement until he stopped moving.