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  STORM WORLD

  (Undying Mercenaries Series #10)

  by

  B. V. Larson

  The Undying Mercenaries Series:

  Steel World

  Dust World

  Tech World

  Machine World

  Death World

  Home World

  Rogue World

  Blood World

  Dark World

  Storm World

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Iron Tower Press, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  “No one can say with confidence they will still be living tomorrow.”

  Euripides – 401 BC

  -1-

  During my many long years of living with my folks down in Georgia Sector, I’d brought home any number of ladies to visit. I think my parents had long since given up on the idea of me settling down and raising a proper family. But they continued to mention it, from time to time, so I knew my habits still bugged them.

  The day they discovered Galina Turov staying with me in my shack, however, was a shocker even for them. My long-suffering mother in particular couldn’t believe it.

  We were standing on my porch, with my dark doorway yawning open behind me. The interior of my little house was always full of shadows—I liked it that way.

  “James…” Mamma began in a falsely sweet tone. “Isn’t your guest… an officer?”

  “Yes, Mamma. Just like I’m an officer. She’s in my legion, too.”

  She exchanged glances with my dad, who shrugged his shoulders. Then she reached out and pinched him just behind the elbow.

  Frowning, he rubbed at the spot and sighed. “Son, would you and your guest like to come out to breakfast with us? We’re thinking of driving into Waycross and getting some waffles before church. There’s a fine platter being served every Sunday at—”

  “This is Sunday?” I asked.

  “Why yes, son. It sure is.”

  Just then, we all stopped talking. Someone small had stepped out of the dark interior of my shack. She blinked like a sleepy cat in the morning light.

  “Hello,” Galina said, “you must be the McGills.”

  “Uh…” my dad said, blinking.

  He was thunderstruck, and I knew what the problem was right off. Galina Turov was many things, but she wasn’t a shy woman. This morning, she was wearing one of my tee-shirts—and nothing else.

  Barefoot—and almost bare-assed—she looked like a runaway cheerleader. In reality she was at least ten years older than I was, but she looked like a kid because she kept her body stored at around nineteen years of age. Whenever she managed to get herself killed—not a difficult thing to do in the legions—she came out alarmingly young again.

  “Mom, Dad… this is Galina Turov. I’ve known her for years.”

  “Really?” Mamma said. “She looks like she just joined up.”

  “She has the same problem I do,” I said. “I’m twice as old as I look—at least.”

  “You’d never know, James,” Mamma said.

  Galina laughed at us. She reached out to grab one of the posts that held up my sagging porch, and she began to stretch.

  “We’ll do it,” Galina said.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Go to eat with your parents, of course. You never listen, James.”

  “Oh…”

  Now it was my turn to look shocked. Were we really going to do the meet-the-parents thing? Really?

  Galina’s stretches started off politely enough, but they quickly became dramatic and even startling. I realized she was doing a sequence of yoga-type moves, saluting the morning sun that glared onto my porch in a reddish slant. By the time she slipped from the mountain, to the cat… or the monkey—or whatever the hell people called these poses—both me and my dad were grinning. Broadly.

  Everyone seemed to be enjoying the show, in fact, except for my mother.

  “Hey!” Dad complained, rubbing at his arm again. He gave my mom a reproachful look. “Um… well kids, what do you say? Should we get going?”

  “James…?” Mamma said, still using that sweetness-and-light tone.

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe you should take your friend back inside and get freshened up. If she doesn’t have anything proper to wear, I could—”

  “That’s very kind,” Galina said, interrupting. “But I always travel with a full kit. Here James, get my bag out of the back of the air car.”

  She tossed me a capsule-shaped key, and I caught it out of the air.

  “Galina?” Mamma said. “Would you mind if my Frank here took a look at your air car?”

  “Hmm? Why no, not at all. In fact, I’ll take us all to Waycross in it for breakfast.”

  “Ooooo!” my dad said enthusiastically.

  My mamma soon shoved him, and he tottered after me, crunching over the leaves and sticks that always seem to cover my sorry excuse for a yard.

  “This one is quite a looker, James,” he said when we were at a safe distance.

  I glanced at him. He looked pretty happy. From his point of view, this Sunday morning was shaping up nicely. He had an air car ride, waffles, and an extroverted young lady to look forward to.

  “She is that, Dad. But I’m a little surprised she’s interested in the family.”

  My dad’s face fell. “What? Are we lame hicks from the sticks?”

  “Yeah…” I said. “But that’s not really the problem. You see, she’s my tribune.”

  He blinked at me, and he stopped walking. “What are you telling me, boy?”

  “Just that. She’s the CO in charge of Legion Varus.”

  “Not just any tribune then… she’s your tribune?”

  “That’s right.”

  He shook his head. “Hard to believe. She looks like a kid.”

  “Yeah… She’s ambitious, see, but she’s also kind of vain.”

  My Dad frowned. He shook his head. “Why can’t you ever get involved with an honest, normal woman, boy?”

  I shrugged. I’d asked myself that same question many times.

  “Well sir,” I said, “it probably has something to do with my chosen profession. Normal people can’t deal with it. Legionnaires who marry outside the service always end up quitting or getting divorced. Imagine if I came back from deployment, and my wife was three years older, while I was a couple years younger than the day I left?”

  He thought that over, shaking his head. “They do have longevity drugs now,” he said. “They slow down t
he aging process. I’m over seventy, but I feel like I’m fifty.”

  “That’s great, Dad,” I said, and I turned away toward Galina’s car again.

  It was hard for people to understand the life I led. In a way, I’d given up a normal existence for the legions. My old friends from school—they were growing big guts and bald heads. They had grandchildren, some of them.

  And me? I was almost as bad as Galina. I’d frozen my body scans at about twenty-six. I figured I was in my prime then, and I was sticking with it. Hell, I still got my tapper scanned whenever I bought beer.

  While I dug Galina’s bag out of the trunk, my dad crooned over the sleek air car. He ran his leathery hands over the fenders like he was touching an idol of carven gold.

  “This is one sweet ride,” he said, his eyes glowing.

  Half an hour later we parked at Banjo’s, a waffle place near the puff-crete highway on the north edge of town. It was a dive, but the food tasted good and the interior was well air-conditioned.

  Unfortunately, we didn’t get all the way through the meal before one of my many lies got everyone at the table tangled-up.

  It had been bound to happen, of course. I’d even vaguely worried about the possibilities.

  You see, I tended to tell different groups of people different things, according to my personal mixture of whim and circumstance. In this case, the topic was Etta, my daughter—and no one at the table except for me knew what had actually happened to her.

  “…and I wanted to say,” Galina told my parents in a hushed tone, “I understand why James sent Etta away to Dust World. It was a good move—a safe move. I plan to check up on her personally through government channels when I get back to Central.”

  My parents took about three seconds to digest her statement. During the interim, they blinked and stared, like two robots that had just been reset.

  The problem was a layered one. In cases like this, I hadn’t actually lied to anyone—not exactly. I simply hadn’t bothered to correct them on their false assumptions concerning Etta.

  It was a flaw in my character, I suppose. I’m a man who lets things slide if sliding is at all possible. Dishes had to stink before they got done, for instance—and maybe not even then.

  As a result of my general sliding through life, I tended to allow people to believe whatever the hell they felt like believing about any given situation—especially if their mistaken impressions were better than the actual truth.

  In Galina’s case, she’d assumed earlier that I’d sent Etta away to Dust World to keep her safe. When she’d initially made this assumption, I’d liked the sound of it, and I’d decided on the spot to let her run with it. As far as she was concerned, it was the God’s-honest truth.

  Unfortunately, my parents were following an entirely different—but no less false—logical track. They thought Etta had gone to visit her grandfather on Dust World because he was feeling poorly.

  That too, of course, was total horseshit.

  The real truth was this: Etta was a brat. She was mad at me for interfering with her plans to join Legion Varus, and so she’d sold a valuable book to Claver and taken off with the money.

  But that version of reality wasn’t going to make anyone feel good, so I hadn’t bothered to explain things to anyone.

  “Uh…” I said, unable to come up with a distraction or a smooth cover. “Are we going to church after this?”

  “Wait just a damned minute!” my mamma said. “What’s this about Etta being in danger? James? You didn’t say anything about that. Are you hiding something from us?”

  My father narrowed his eyes. He’d never been easy to fool—possibly, that was due to having a solid fifty years of experience with my particular brand of shenanigans.

  “James,” he said sternly. “I recall now… When Etta first vanished, you called me over and over that night, and you raced back home from Central. Etta’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, shit…” Galina said quietly.

  I glanced at her. She looked embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, James,” she said. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Well James?” my dad demanded. “Tell us what the hell is going on!”

  “Uh…”

  I might sound like a dullard much of the time, but in actuality my mind is often racing. It was a rare and unpleasant circumstance to be caught in a lie by several people at once, each of whom was even now calling into doubt the version of events they’d believed up until this very moment.

  Glancing toward Galina helped me make my choice. She looked upset and willing to help. Therefore, in this instance, she was likely to back anything I said.

  “I was worried,” I said firmly. “That night when Etta left… there were… threats.”

  “Threats?” my mamma gasped. “Against your family? By who?”

  “It wasn’t just us,” I said. “There were threats made against Varus officers in general. Still, I thought it might be best for Etta to leave town.”

  “To leave the planet, you mean,” my dad added.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Mamma squawked. “To threaten a young, innocent child? It’s barbaric.”

  “There are people out there,” Galina said, surprising me by joining in. “People who oppose us for political reasons, petty jealousies and even personal gain.”

  “But who?” Mamma insisted. “Who did this? I demand to know!”

  Galina caught my eye. She had a questioning look on her face. “Do you want me to tell them, James?”

  “Um… sure,” I said, wondering what she’d say next.

  Galina turned back to my parents, and she spoke a name in a hushed voice.

  “His name is… Claver.”

  She said this as if she were speaking the name of a fork-tongued devil.

  Perhaps, in a way, she was.

  -2-

  My parents, for their part, seemed resigned to another weird, short-lived relationship between Galina and me. They’d seen plenty of girlfriends over the years, and I guess they’d given up hope that their only son would have a normal home life.

  None of this bothered me much. I was just happy that no one had freaked out completely. When the subject of Etta had come up, I’d expected someone to lose it and blame me for lying. But they hadn’t. They’d made up their own explanations, and I’d nodded and grunted in agreement.

  I think it had to do with Etta being a young girl. I had a certain degree of automatic sympathy from all interested parties, as they knew I was raising a teen alone. Accordingly, Galina figured I’d done all I could to protect an innocent from that evil-doer Claver. She also realized my parents were in the dark about the Mogwa connection, the genocidal poisons and all the rest of it, and she was smart enough not to bring any of that stuff up.

  My folks, on the other hand, figured I’d been protecting them by not mentioning the stranger known as “Claver”. They were used to me keeping legion business under my hat, and assumed I’d been skipping details because it was all classified and hush-hush.

  When they suggested such an explanation, Galina had blinked twice then nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s exactly right. I shouldn’t have brought it up at all. James was only following orders.”

  My parents ate that up, but they were still worried that Etta was somehow in danger.

  Galina stepped up again, helping me out. She explained that she’d only assumed I’d sent Etta away due to a security risk. The fact that Etta had left for unrelated reasons was clear to her now.

  After that, we ate our food awkwardly and tried to smile. Everyone seemed disturbed—except for me. I’d dodged two bullets, and I couldn’t help but grin about that.

  We headed back home, and my parents went to church. Galina stayed with me instead, apologizing for messing up my morning.

  Pretending like I was feeling upset about things, I suggested we should indulge ourselves with a nooner.

  She played coy for about five secon
ds before I grabbed her.

  The day got old after that and slid away from us. It finally died in the west and became dusk. To my surprise, Galina didn’t climb into her air car and fly back to her home in Central City. She said she had a lot to do, but she was enjoying her quiet vacation with me.

  She began making various suggestions about our evening entertainment. Dancing, watching a feely, talking to my parents about boring stuff—but none of her ideas struck home with me.

  Then, I got an idea. I dragged out Etta’s autoscope and set it up on the porch.

  It was an expensive, alien-made piece of scientific equipment. Galina watched me, intrigued.

  “I’ve heard about these things,” she said, “but I’ve never seen one outside of a lab.”

  “If you’ve got the credit,” I told her, “you can buy damned-well anything these days. Check this out. Just tell the unit what you want to see.”

  She looked at the autoscope, then back at me me, then the autoscope again. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.

  “Scope,” she said, “show me Zeta Herculis.”

  I glanced at her in surprise as the scope immediately began to whir and slew around toward the southern horizon. It seemed to be aiming at the tops of the trees—but it soon displayed a glowing image anyway.

  There it was, on the primary screen. An orange-colored K-class star, Zeta Herculis was a little smaller than our home sun.

  “Are you upset?” Galina asked me. “It was just the first star I thought of.”

  “No,” I lied. “I’m not upset. You want to zoom in and see the planet itself?”

  She blinked at me. “What? There’s no way this tiny device could have the resolution to…”

  “You’re right,” I laughed. “It’s not real—not exactly. I mean, the scope cheats. It picks up data from the Galactic net and fills in details of the imagery it can’t actually pick up with its limited optics.”

  “Ah…” she said. “Very clever.” She addressed the auto-scope again. “Scope, show me Dust World.”

  The scope whirred a tiny fraction, but seemed not to move at all visibly. Only the focusing knobs spun.