Dust World Read online

  When I’d controlled my thoughts of vengeance, I took a deep breath and asked him what he meant.

  “We’re talking about the Galactics and the Nairbs,” he said. “The ultimate in government bureaucrats. As far as they’re concerned, you can be dead and still legally perform a capital crime while you’re sitting in your grave.”

  I thought it over, knowing he had a point. “I see what you mean. We don’t have a license to use our machines on the Skrull. They haven’t licensed the technology for themselves, either. It still seems wrong that we can’t use machines we have on hand to fix our dire situation.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Carlos said. “Let’s say we’re willing to chance an Imperial crime for the sake of a few of these monkey-turtles. We can’t do it anyway. Their bodies have never been scanned, never been backed up.”

  I leaned closer to him for a second. “I heard from some of the bio people we could still do it. With a dead body as a model, one that’s flash-frozen, you can get a reading and copy them. All you’d have to do is edit out the cellular damage. Just think about it. Most of them were turned into popsicles when the squids opened the hull.”

  Carlos looked at me in concern. “Tell Anne Grant not to try it. Stay away from her, or together you two will mix up an entirely new stew of crazy and get Earth erased this time.”

  I frowned and started eating my food. Carlos was right in his assumptions, and that bothered me. The bio I’d talked to was indeed Anne. She was someone who I knew from experience was willing to go out of her way and even break serious rules to save lives. She was probably the most likely person on the ship to violate a Galactic law—besides me, that is. What bothered me most was knowing that if Carlos could figure out Anne was behind the crime, others could figure it out, too.

  “Listen,” Carlos said. “The Skrull are all dead. Leave them that way. Focus on the living.”

  “What about the colonists?” I asked. “There are humans in this system somewhere, and we should be helping them.”

  “Helping them?” Carlos snorted. “We’re here to exterminate them, remember? That’s why Turov was so happy. Her problem solved itself when those stupid squids attacked us.”

  I ignored him after that. I liked Carlos, and he was a good man to have in a trench with you, but he was the kind who could easily write off anyone who wasn’t in his immediate vicinity. He’d risk his life to save a friend—but people a kilometer away who he didn’t know personally would just have to fend for themselves.

  That wasn’t the way my mind and heart operated. As a soldier from Earth, I felt a need to protect all humans. I could probably get attached to an alien race, too, if I spent enough time around them. I don’t know.

  Chow time was over all too soon. We were sent to the armory next, and this had me worried. My suspicions were confirmed when our orders came in.

  “Follow the arrows to yellow deck. Find your unit’s embarking station. Do not vary or stray from the path. Stay with your units, and do not stop for extra gear.”

  A private contact came in from Adjunct Leeson shortly after that. “McGill? You fully operational?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good. When you board the lifter, park your butt next to mine.”

  “Will do, Adjunct.”

  I was breathing hard during the short jog past green deck, then past blue. We were going all the way down to yellow deck where the lifters were stored when in warp. None of this sounded good to me.

  Carlos contacted me, helmet-to-helmet as we jogged.

  “What the hell is happening?” he demanded. “I saw your com-light flash. Who’s talking to you? What are they saying?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “We’re going on a little jog to digest that lovely meal.”

  “You’re such a dick,” Carlos complained. “How is our destination a state secret? Don’t even try to stonewall me, McGill. There’s no point.”

  I kind of agreed with him. It looked to me like we were abandoning the ship, and if that was the case, it hardly mattered if the rank and file heard about it or not. Legion Varus didn’t believe in briefing their troops on details. They figured we weren’t the most obedient bunch, and keeping us in the dark was their way of keeping us from giving them trouble.

  “We’re abandoning ship, if I had to guess,” I said.

  “Abandoning ship? To where? What about our stuff? Damn.”

  I snorted. Not ten minutes ago he’d been complaining that they hadn’t ordered us all to jump ship, and now that it was happening he had fresh complaints. That was Carlos in a nutshell.

  Another thought occurred to me as we jogged down passages under flashing lights following yellow arrows. Yellow meant we were in a possible combat situation. I guess that fit.

  “That’s why they aren’t telling us,” I told Carlos.

  “What?”

  “They don’t want you loading up on personal effects. We’re carrying full combat kits, and that’s it. We’ll board the lifters and we’ll be flying as light as possible. That’s got to be it.”

  The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. Why not come over the voice net and give us a pep speech about why we had to move to the lifters and exit the ship? Why hustle us to the airlocks without much more than a final quick meal? Because they didn’t want us to get any ideas, that’s why.

  I explained my thinking to Carlos.

  “What bastards,” Carlos said with feeling. “That makes too much sense. I had a lot of stuff in my locker—private stuff, you know?”

  “Yeah. Stolen vid files and that weird collection of hair from the girl’s shower drain, right?”

  “Screw you, McGill.”

  I chuckled, and he finally stopped pestering me on the private line. We went down the null-grav tubes directly, diving head first and pulling ourselves along the rungs on the walls. They weren’t even bothering with having us use the lifts.

  I passed Veteran Harris at a junction. He took the time to shout: “Go! Go!” into everyone’s faceplate as we passed while whacking the back of each trooper’s helmet.

  As a heavy trooper with a thick helmet, I could barely feel the impact of his gauntlet as it crashed into the back of my head, but it did create a ringing clang I could have done without.

  “What’s the bloody hurry, Vet?” Carlos demanded.

  Harris didn’t strike him again, as I’d halfway been expecting. His face looked a little worried.

  “Don’t know. Just orders. Get the hell to the first seat you find and strap your ass in. They aren’t going to give you more than thirty seconds to stow your gear. Expect a hot release and drop.”

  Those words surprised me. A hot release and drop? Were we under attack? I couldn’t figure it out. We still had more than ten hours before we reached the star’s corona—the point of no return for all spaceships.

  After the long jouncing run, I was rewarded with a small aperture to pass through. It was a small hatchway on top of the lifter we all had to wriggle through. Normally, the lifters were loaded one at a time in the bays designated for the purpose, but that part of the procedure had apparently been skipped this time. We were boarding through the top hatch because it would save time.

  I opened a private channel to Natasha as I boarded and clanked down the ranks of huddled soldiers. Most of the troops on the lifter were heavies, as this was a heavy cohort. But the row I was passing by was populated by auxiliary troops—bio people, techs and other support personnel. They were in their pajamas, as we called smart-cloth uniforms. They eyed me in quiet concern as I crashed by them.

  Most people didn’t like to mess with heavy weaponeers. We had bad reps, lots of body armor, and like me, we were generally the biggest guys in the unit. The only reaction I got from most of them as I passed was a desperate effort to pull back feet so I wouldn’t stomp on them too hard. My tube thumped into more than one unfortunate’s ribs, and they glared at me, suspecting I was bullying them. In truth, it was hard to maneuver quic
kly in heavy armor with a full kit without slamming into everyone I passed them.

  It took me a while to find the seat I was supposed to sit in. Adjunct Leeson had requested me to sit by his side, and I wasn’t going to skip that invitation. I had a lot of questions about this entire exercise, and he might have answers.

  I finally sighted Leeson with an open seat on his left. He waved me forward impatiently. I moved forward with purpose.

  A girl’s foot strayed, and I smashed it flat.

  “Ow, you jackass!” raged the owner.

  She rubbed her foot and glared up at me. She was blonde with a sharp nose and quick-moving eyes that reminded me of an excited bird.

  “Sorry Miss,” I had time to say—and then the world turned upside down.

  Almost before I knew what was happening, I was lifted up and kicked down the row of seats. I could have sworn that Harris had finally lost patience with me and given me a boot in the rear—but Harris had long ago found a seat and strapped in.

  I fell forward, armor sparking, plasma tube banging into helmets and knees as I hung onto it. The lifter was moving. We’d been dropped from the guts of Corvus and released into space.

  Normally, launch wouldn’t have initiated a series of violent maneuvers. But our pilot wasn’t screwing around. The second we were down and out in open space, she’d gunned the lifter. I could imagine the plume of exhaust we were leaving behind us in space. Wherever we were going, we were doing it in a big damned hurry.

  A gauntlet reached down and grabbed me by the air hose as I slid by. Fortunately, the hose didn’t pop out.

  Leeson hauled me up into the jump seat next to him.

  “Quit screwing around, McGill,” he said.

  I strapped in as fast as I could. “Sorry, sir. Just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a little fun.”

  “Does your tube still work?”

  I checked it quickly. “Passes all diagnostics.”

  “Good,” he said. “I have the feeling we’re going to need it.”

  “Sir, could you clarify a few things for me?”

  Leeson was a balding man with small, dark eyes. He gave me a hard stare. “I guess it can’t hurt now. We’re already underway.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “We’re abandoning Corvus,” he told me.

  I almost rolled my eyes at him, but I controlled the urge.

  “That makes sense, Adjunct,” I said. “But why the hurry? I thought we had at least ten hours to go.”

  “Yeah, sure. We’ve had ten hours before we reached the critical point of no return and got sucked into the star. But did you stop to think about our position in this system? Once the decision was made to jump ship, we realized we had to move as fast as possible.”

  I frowned. “So we have another ship we’re trying to rendezvous with?”

  This amused Leeson. “Right, sure,” he laughed. “There’re like fifty luxury cruise ships from the Core Systems hanging around out here circling this shithole frontier star in case lost troopships happen by.”

  “I take that as a no, sir.”

  “A big no, Specialist. We jumped off Corvus because the only places to run to consist of a few scrubby planets. Two of those are in the Goldilocks Zone. We’re aiming for those worlds and we couldn’t wait any longer.”

  After he said this, the race to get off the ship made more sense. I knew enough planetary astronomy to know that the Goldilocks Zone was the region of space around a star in which liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Earth was in that zone as were almost all inhabited worlds.

  “I get it, sir,” I said. “The only place we could run to consisted of the local planets that are inhabitable. We’ll need air and water to survive.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, I’m assuming we’re making planetfall on that ocean planet the colonists were sent to years back, right?”

  Adjunct Leeson shook his head. “No, afraid not. That was considered and rejected.”

  “Why?” I asked, my heart sinking. I’d been entertaining visions of warm oceans and even warmer beaches.

  “Where do you think those damned squids came from?” Leeson asked me.

  I thought about it. “They did seem to be aquatic, at least originally. But are we sure they’re native to this system at all?”

  Leeson lost patience with my battery of questions. He’d never been a patient man. Competent, yes. Calm and collected, no.

  “Look,” he said, “I have no idea why they decided to bail out and head for the dust world instead of the water world. And I didn’t order you to plant your butt next to mine so we could have this little bedtime chat, either. You’re here for one reason.”

  He pointed at my plasma tube.

  “I want that,” he said, indicating my weapon. “I want you and your weapon as close as possible to my position. From what I’ve heard, only heavy weapons damage these squid things, and you’ve already had combat experience with them.”

  “That’s true, sir. Just one more thing?”

  “What?”

  “You said something about a ‘dust world’?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The brass looked at all their options and narrowed them down to three. One was to try to invade the water world. That idea was dropped because those oceans are probably teeming with massive squids. The second idea was to hang around space and broadcast an S.O.S. That was rejected too, as the enemy would doubtlessly hear the signal and come to wipe us out—assuming we could even survive in open space long enough to be rescued in the first place. Fortunately, there’s another world in the Goldilocks Zone in this system.”

  Dust World. It had a certain ring to it, I had to admit. Unfortunately, the name conjured up a vivid image—an image I didn’t like in the slightest.

  “Sir? What’s this Dust World place like, if you don’t mind my asking? I’d been kind of hoping to take a bath, if you know what I mean.”

  “Look,” he snapped. “It’s a frigging rock in space, okay? A dry rock with a little air, a little water, and a whole lot of dust. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get to make mud when we land and you can take a bath in that. Now shut up. I’m listening in on command chat.”

  I fell silent and endured the Gs as the lifter maneuvered and rocked. I had time to ponder my choices in life, and I had to admit I was full of regrets today.

  -11-

  A banging sound on my helmet made me open one eye. I’d been sleeping—which wasn’t easy to do in heavy armor aboard a lifter.

  Adjunct Leeson’s face stared into mine. Our visors were open, but we’d kept our helmets on. That was SOP in dangerous systems.

  “Sir?”

  “Let’s go. I’m supposed to move forward and attend a briefing. You’re coming with.”

  I didn’t argue. I removed my straps and got to my feet, groaning. The internal joints of metal armor always created sore spots that dug into my flesh and cut off circulation. I was all but dragging my left leg behind me as I set off after the adjunct.

  We traveled to an open ladder and hauled ourselves upward. The hatch at the top was tight for a weaponeer, and my kit scraped and banged as I slipped through.

  On the upper deck things looked different—very different. I’d never been anywhere on a lifter other than down inside the troop pods. The upper decks were reserved for the crew and the higher ranking passengers.

  The deck we stepped onto wasn’t as big as the lower troop bays, but when compared with the rows of bare metal jump seats it was luxuriously appointed. There were swiveling chairs with actual cushions. These seats even had armrests with cup holders attached to them. Leeson directed me to an out of the way chair with a wave of his gauntlet. I settled into it happily even though my thick armor kept me from enjoying the upholstery.

  Centurion Graves was there as were a lot of other adjuncts and centurions. Leading the conversation was Primus Turov. She strutted around a central planning table and gave everyone the evil eye. My visor was up, but I kept
my face well back inside my helmet. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize me.

  “Let’s get started,” Turov said.

  The rest of them stopped talking and took seats. There weren’t enough to go around, and some of them had to stand. I felt self-conscious but didn’t move from my seat in the back. Adjunct Leeson had ordered me to sit here. That was my story, and I was going to stick to it.

  There were a few other non-coms in the room, but I was the only weaponeer. The others were veterans along with a few techs. The techs operated the planning table by working on their hands and knees around it, coaxing the system into displaying graphics that showed our position. I looked for Natasha among them, but I didn’t see her.

  On the planning table, our small fleet of lifters resembled a school of tiny green fish traveling in a slow orbit around the central star. The target world was represented by a burnt-orange ball. It didn’t look to me like we had far to go.

  “Here’s the good news,” Turov said, “we’re going to make planetfall soon. There’s no question of that. There’s no sign of pursuit, either. The enemy fleet—if they even have one—isn’t intercepting us. What we’re here to do now is decide where on this Garden of Eden we’re going to land.”

  Adjunct Toro, a woman who’d never liked me since we’d first laid eyes on one another, raised her hand.

  “What is it, Adjunct?” Turov asked her.

  “Sir? Is this really the only choice we have? Just about anything else looks preferable.”

  “I agree,” Turov said. “I argued all along that our top choice was to bail out and stay in the space-lane to see if the techs aboard Corvus could pull a miracle and regain control of the ship. In fact, I wanted to put all our technical people on that task. But the Tribune felt it was too risky. He believes the enemy might be waiting to finish the job by ambushing us in space.”

  I frowned as I listened to her talk. I gathered from her statements that there were still techs aboard Corvus. The idea was alarming. People were on that ship, sailing into the star, still trying to fix it? If so, they had only a few hours left to live.