Ice World (Undying Mercenaries Book 16)

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  Star Runner

  Fire Fight

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  Swarm

  Extinction

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  Army of One (Novella)

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  Outcast

  Exile

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  Starship Pandora (Audio Drama)

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.

  ICE WORLD

  (2nd Edition)

  (Undying Mercenaries Series #16)

  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

  Armor World

  Clone World

  Glass World

  Edge World

  Green World

  Ice World

  Illustration © Tom Edwards TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2021 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.

  “The people must fight for their laws just as hard as they do for their city walls.”

  –Heraclitus, 502 BC

  -1-

  The Green World campaign ended with a bang, and I was glad it was over. The city of Central had suffered some serious damage—including my daughter’s first death. That was the hardest part for me and my family to get over.

  Normally, death was no big deal in the McGill clan. All of us had died and been revived—but this time it wasn’t routine. Not only was Etta young and emotionally unprepared, but she came back… different.

  Sensing she didn’t fit in, the girl had left Central City and gone off to live with her grandfather on Dust World. Many months had passed since then, but we’d finally gotten word she was back on Earth and coming down from the north to visit. The family was all smiles, but we weren’t totally comfortable about the situation. My mother wouldn’t stop fussing about it right down to the last minute.

  “James,” my mother said to me while we were waiting for Etta to arrive, “don’t you say anything wicked to that girl today.”

  “Don’t worry, Momma. It won’t happen.”

  She turned on my dad next, and she gave him a baleful look. “Not one negative word. That goes double for you, John.”

  “What’d I do?” my dad protested.

  “You were thinking it. The last time she was down here in Georgia, the air was thick with disapproval.”

  “If you just spoil the girl and don’t tell her what people are thinking, you’re inviting—"

  My momma’s finger came up. It was a stern, stiff thing, and I could tell you she meant business when she lifted it. “I’m damn near a century old now, and I don’t care to spend the rest of eternity with no one to visit me on Thanksgiving.”

  Dad muttered something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. “All right. I won’t say a thing.”

  Momma continued to eye both of us with suspicion. She was a trust-but-verify kind of lady.

  The problem had all begun a year back, when Etta had begun to… act out. She’d never been an easy-going girl, but now she seemed to be a little smaller and a little meaner than before. She’d ambushed Galina the last day before she left, and I was still hearing about it.

  After she’d left to go stay with her grandpa on Dust World, they’d gotten up to some strange goings-on out there. No one quite knew what they were working on, not even me.

  But although she’d left Earth behind, she hadn’t stopped getting into trouble. Somehow, being stewed up genetically from a half-dozen sources had left her in a state of being one-third me, one-third her mother Della… and another third that was mysterious.

  The Investigator had claimed he’d used Natasha Elkin’s DNA to finish the rough spots in her genes… but it seemed to all of us now it wasn’t that simple. I’d come to believe he’d used his imagination to finish some of it, because Etta wasn’t like Natasha. One would think Natasha’s genes would have settled Etta down some, but it hadn’t worked out that way. She was even wilder these days than she had been before she’d died.

  I felt bad for my daughter. She’d never had much chance of coming out normal in the head. Just having me and her mother Della in the mix was bad enough. We were two infamously ornery people. But that extra dash of salt… it was causing a new kind of trouble.

  I tried to ditch all these negative thoughts. From the very first day Etta had announced she was coming home to visit, my momma had become damned-well determined to make her feel welcome and comfortable. I told myself I owed it to everyone to give the girl her shot.

  Pop and I glanced at one another. We were both kind of worried.

  “There she is,” Momma shouted from the window. “See that aircar? That’s got to be her.”

  “Don’t know why the kid can’t just rent a tram from the airport like regular people,” my dad complained.

  Instantly, a sharp set of knuckles smacked him in the belly.

  “What was that for, woman?” he demanded.

  “No negativity. Put a sock in it. She caught a ride from James’ old friend, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  Dad grumbled something unintelligible, but he soon shut up.

  We left the house and walked outside. Soon, we were all standing in the backyard—the big yard between my shack and my parents’ old farmhouse.

  Normally, aircars were a rare sight down here in Waycross, but our neighbors had gotten used to seeing such gleaming vehicles gliding over the swamp and landing on a clearing just to the north of the house. Usually, Galina Turov was the one driving those sleek machines—but not today.

  “I don’t get why Carlos has an aircar,” my dad said.

  My mom’s hand twitched, but she didn’t slap him this time. After all, he was bitching about Carlos now. That man was fair game by anyone’s standards.

  “That seems a little odd to me, too,” she admitted. She eyed me. “James, that pug of a man isn’t interested in your daughter, is he?”

  I laughed. “I doubt it. He’s about six times her age.”

  “That never stopped you.”

  Shrugging, I didn’t argue because I couldn’t. “Yeah… probably not. He knows I’d kill him—and it would be a bad death, too.”

  This seemed to satisfy my mom, but not my dad.

  “I still don’t get how an ex-legionnaire suddenly starts to flash around a big wad of credits and buy fancy things.”

  “Well… I don’t know about that, either. He might be working odd jobs for Central. I’ve done that in the past for extra money.”

  “Don’t remind me…”

  “All right, shut up,” Momma said as the aircar dropped out of the sky. “Here they come.”

  The aircar landed with singing jets and puffs of exhaust. The landing was quicker and more
dangerous-looking than when Galina did it. She always landed with a dainty settling of the aircraft, while Carlos looked like he was sweeping in to drop off an invasion team. The car bounced and scarred up a black hole in the grass.

  “He’s gonna suck a bush into his air intake vents if he’s not careful,” my dad said.

  Once the vehicle was safely down with all four skids on the ground, we approached and smiled. The doors popped open, and a girl bounced out of the passenger side.

  For a single second—no, not even that long, it was more of a split-second—I didn’t recognize her.

  She had longer hair and tan skin. Worse than that, she didn’t move the way I remembered. It was more like she was Etta’s sister—a sister that had never been born.

  Naturally, I shoved all that nonsense right down flat. I threw my arms wide—which is pretty damned wide, as I have wings like a condor—and I grinned like a fool.

  Etta ran to me and jumped into my embrace. After a good long hug, I handed her off to my parents, who mauled her in a similar fashion.

  In her wake came Carlos. He looked kind of… fat. Way fatter than he had been a year ago, at least. He stumped around to the trunk and took out a stack of dusty bags. He carried these toward the family, and he looked this way and that curiously.

  “So… this is it?” he asked me. “This is what you killed to keep secret?”

  “My place was never any secret.”

  “You never brought me out here to meet the family before, did you? You just drink in town with me when I come down here. I’m not good enough for your real home, am I?”

  “I guess not.”

  We grinned and shook hands.

  “Thanks for bringing my girl down from Central, Carlos. The gateway posts are cheap to use, but door-to-door service like this comes at a premium.”

  He nodded and turned to point at his aircar. “Isn’t she a beauty? I just can’t get over how much fun this thing is to drive.”

  “I bet.”

  Soon, my parents dragged Etta away toward the house, while I naturally slipped away toward my shack. Carlos followed me, as he was more my friend than a friend of the family.

  He stood on the creaking floorboards of my sagging porch and made a big show of being nervous. “I can only imagine the regret women feel stepping over this threshold. It kind of gives me a chill just to think about it.”

  “You want a damned beer or not?”

  He finally shut up and stopped trash-talking. I gave him a beer for each fist and opened a couple for myself. He drank his with gusto.

  “What have you got to sit on besides that crusty couch?” he demanded. “I’m not going near that thing.”

  “Here,” I said, dragging a rocking chair in off the porch. “Happy?”

  “Ecstatic.”

  He sat in the chair, and we bullshitted about the legion for a while. It was always the same when I met up with another of my kind while the legion wasn’t deployed. We talked shop and drank. What else was there to do?

  At last, after we’d both had a few, Carlos leaned forward and studied my stained carpet. “McGill,” he said at last, “I didn’t just come down here to do you a favor.”

  “Aw no… here it comes. You’re broke, aren’t you? I told you aircar payments were just the beginning. There’s insurance, maintenance, registration, special flight-fees—”

  He glanced up and gave me a sly grin. “That’s the opposite of my problem, McGill. How’d you like to make some money? A whole lot of money?”

  I blinked at him, and my grin faded into a frown. What the hell was he talking about? My fertile mind invented a dozen scenarios—and none of them were good.

  -2-

  Carlos and I were in a pretty good mood after the first dozen beers were done and gone.

  “You know I quit Legion Varus, right?” he told me. “That I resigned? For reals?”

  “Of course I know. But what’s this business about making a lot of money? Are the payments on that aircar killing you?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. I paid cash for it. Tapper-to-tapper, no loans, no bullshit.”

  “Huh…”

  An aircar was a big chunk of change for a legionnaire. Some of us were pretty smart. Some of us had investments and whatnot. Being a long-lived man, you could stack up quite a bit if you worked at it—but neither Carlos nor I were that kind of guy.

  “Well, how did you blow your savings then?” I asked. “Why do you need more money? You could always become a hog or something if you need to make ends meet.”

  “Bite your tongue,” he said. “I’ll never be a hog—but we can still make some good money working for them now and then.”

  So that was it. Carlos was doing contract work for Central. I’d gone down that route before, and it had always turned out badly. Always.

  “I don’t know… I don’t want to get into some casting device and fly out to another ball-frying or perming session.”

  “This isn’t like that. It’s… unofficial.”

  He had my eyes narrowing in suspicion now. “What are you hinting around about? Are you doing tricks for the brass or something?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Okay, look. I’ve got a source of cash. A secret source.”

  “A secret source of money? Sounds like you must be selling stuff to Claver or something.”

  Carlos looked furtive. He didn’t meet my eye.

  “Wait… seriously? Claver? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I didn’t say it was Claver… not exactly. Claver was involved at one point, but he’s out now. It was a good guess, though.”

  Totally confused, I felt my mouth sag open and my eyes get squinty. “I think you should either fess-up or get out.”

  He sighed. “Okay, okay. Remember when we were on Tech World? Tau Ceti?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, we met up with Claver for the first time back then. Do you remember him having a whole lot of money?”

  We stared at each other for several long seconds. “Are you shitting me?” I asked him at last. “You’re talking about those Galactic coins, aren’t you? The big gold wheels? They’ve been illegal forever.”

  “That didn’t seem to bother the Tau any, did it? Anyway… I might have kept a few. For souvenirs, you see?”

  I shouted with laughter and downed half my beer in a gulp. Then I threw the bottle at the trash can. It hit the wall with a splintering crash, but most of the shards made it down into the can. It was one of those smart cans, so it started buzzing and sweeping around itself with little plastic arms.

  “You mean to tell me that you stole some of that illegal money? And you kept it secret all these years?”

  “Yeah…” he said. “I couldn’t very well go off and spend it at some casino or something, could I? I kept the coins, and when the time was right, I cut out of the legion and cashed in a few of them.”

  “Holy Moses. I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it.”

  “All right, all right,” I said wrapping my brain around the situation. “So why are you bothering me? You’ve got a buyer, obviously, or you couldn’t have been spending so much money lately. So what can I do for you, Mr. Money-bags? Other than keep quiet?”

  “You can do that for sure, but there’s more to it. You see… I might be in a little bit of trouble.”

  I slapped my knee and hooted with laughter. He frowned at me bitterly the whole time. “You screwed up! Big time, am I right? Who found out?”

  “No one—at least, I don’t think anyone did. But they suspect something. There’s a snoopy pack of hogs from Central asking questions. They’ve opened an investigation.”

  “Who has, exactly?”

  He shook his head. “The notice I got said it was from Drusus—from his office, at least. From headquarters.”

  I whistled long and low. Then I let out a belly-laugh. “You are so screwed. I can’t say that you don’t deserve it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. You want to know who
se name is on the investigation announcement with me?”

  “Who?”

  “One funny-boy officer named James McGill.”

  That got me to blinking and staring. “What? Why me?”

  “Because you were in command of that squad when the coins went missing. Because you were my officer for years afterward. They must think you’re in on it.”

  “Aw, come on. Drusus knows me better than that.”

  “You would think. But I’m not so sure. That dude has no chill.”

  I thought the situation over, and I found I didn’t like the flavor. “Carlos, this is your problem. I’m your friend, and I’ve died a dozen deaths to prove that—but you pulled this stunt all by your lonesome. You waved your dick in the face of the legions—then you stepped on it.”

  “Yeah, maybe… but you’ve got to help me out. I need to make a big score, move the rest of the coins, and go off-world.”

  “Why in the nine hells would I do that?”

  “Because we’re squaddies, man. We’re old war buddies. Pick your war, we’ve been in all of them together.”

  I shook my head. “This goes above and beyond all that. You can’t pull a favor on a deal like this.”

  “All right, all right, then do it to save yourself. The hogs are coming for us both—trust me on that score. There might even be Nairbs working the case.”

  That statement made my guts churn. The local Chief Inspector was a Nairb that really hated me. He had tried several times in recent campaigns to nail my hide to any wall he could find. Usually, he ended up dead somehow when he visited Earth to press one of his trumped-up cases—but he always seemed to come back for another shot at me a few years later. It was enough to make a man hate the fact that revival machines worked on aliens just as well as they worked on Earthers.

  “This whole farm—or swamp-rat ranch—or whatever you call it… It’s all in danger,” Carlos was saying. “You know the Nairbs. We’ll be lucky if they keep it down to burning Waycross off the maps.”

  I stood tall, and Carlos watched me with dark eyes.

  “If something bad does happen,” I boomed at him, “it will all be your damned fault. You should have left that dirty money alone.”