Armor World Read online

  I didn’t know where he was going with this, but I was already frowning. I knew I didn’t like where he was headed.

  Winslade began to grin. Before, his lips had been curving in a tight line—but now, they split open and showed his gray-white teeth.

  “So?” Harris asked, unable to contain himself. “So what’s the deal?”

  “So the suggestion was made that superior weaponry would be given to the higher level officers to even the odds.”

  “The suggestion was made?” Leeson snorted. “By you?”

  “I might have had some input on the details,” Winslade admitted. “But the officers as a whole made the decision. In any case, I’m looking forward to the event. See you on Green Deck.”

  He walked away, and my boys fell to muttering. Even Barton looked irritated, and she was normally a straight-arrow.

  Winslade was a master at pissing people off.

  “He’s gonna cheat,” Harris complained. “He’ll come out wearing power armor and give us sticks to fight with. You watch.”

  No one argued with him. We’d all begun to suspect the worst.

  -24-

  When we assembled on Green Deck, we learned the rules of today’s very special contest. Tribune Armel appeared on the walls of every ready-room adjacent to the large chamber we called Green Deck.

  “Officers of Varus,” he said with his French accent on full display, “as your legion’s officers are in today’s battle, I’ve been awarded the honor of playing referee.”

  Armel seemed very happy with his role. He had a thin, twitchy mustache and a drink that looked like iced tea in his hands. Being familiar with his habits, I suspected there was something stronger in that glass.

  “Today’s exercise will pit the lower ranked officers against those of higher rank. Essentially, the adjuncts and centurions will face your tribune and everyone of primus rank.”

  At face value, this sounded like a good deal. After all, there were way more centurions and adjuncts than there were upper ranks. I heard snorts and scoffs from other unit officers—but not from my group. We were sour-faced. We all waited to hear how Winslade had “weighted” these rules in his own favor.

  “Naturally, as the lower ranks badly outnumber the upper ranks, such a contest is inherently unfair. To remedy that situation, we’ve given the smaller team superior weapons.”

  He took a moment to slurp his drink and smile at us. “Now, as to the rules: they are simplicity itself. Whichever side kills the other in its entirety wins. And—one last note. Put on a good show, everyone. Every enlisted person on this ship is watching the proceedings with avid interest.”

  He threw down the rest of his drink and pushed a button on his desk. The scene rolled away, as did the door in front of us.

  Suddenly our tappers went dead. Men cursed on both sides. Apparently, we weren’t going to be allowed to have any outside help from spies, or even radio communications among ourselves. Not this time out.

  Each of the ten cohorts entered from a different door, with about forty officers in each group. My group was from 3rd cohort.

  In a rush, every junior officer I knew trotted into the room. We couldn’t see the other groups, however. They were a few hundred meters away in various directions.

  None of us had been issued weapons or armor before we walked onto Green Deck. That was normal for this kind of exercise, but it always left a man feeling vulnerable and almost naked at the start. Accordingly, when we found racks waiting immediately inside, we rushed to grab the new gear.

  Unfortunately, the pickings were very slim indeed.

  “Say what?” Harris demanded. “I get the jump suit I came in with… and a knife? Is this some kind of joke?”

  “A bad one, I’d say,” Barton said.

  I glanced her way. Her face was bitter as she picked up her combat knife and checked its balance. Her attitude surprised me as she wasn’t usually a complainer. Perhaps Winslade had managed to trigger a sense of injustice even in Barton—he had that kind of effect on people.

  On the forward rack, those of us who were of centurion rank stepped up and took our slightly better gear.

  “…fucking kidding me…?” Manfred complained. “This is balls, McGill.”

  “Yep. But don’t piss yourself yet. We’ll win.”

  He snorted, and together we pulled on breastplates and snap-rifles. That was it. We didn’t even get combat knives to put on our empty belts.

  “No grav grenades?” Harris complained. “No spears, even? This is bullshit. Us adjuncts are jokes even compared to you half-naked centurions. I might as well slice my own gonads off right now with this pig-sticker.”

  He waved his knife around in disgust, and I couldn’t blame him. I had armor and a snap-rifle. That wasn’t much—but it was a hell of a lot better than a knife and a thin cloth jumper.

  “Okay,” I said, “how do we decide who leads?”

  There were ten centurions. One of them spoke up immediately. “Let’s operate as squads,” she said. “Each centurion will lead their adjuncts as a team.”

  The other centurions nodded in agreement.

  “That idea sucks,” I said. “Let’s vote for one commander.”

  “I second the motion,” Manfred said. “I vote for McGill.”

  “I agree,” Harris said, “I say we all—”

  “Excuse me,” the first centurion said. “Adjuncts don’t get a vote. This is a military hierarchy—not a democracy.”

  Looking her over, I saw her name was Venner. I didn’t know her well, but I didn’t have any reason to dislike her.

  “Look, Venner,” I said, “are you suggesting just the centurions should vote?”

  “We should get a move on,” Manfred complained. “We don’t know what’s out there.”

  Venner scoffed. “There are only about twenty primus-ranked people on this entire ship. No matter what weapons they have, they can’t kill us all so quickly.”

  About then, I heard the crump of explosives. Everyone hit the deck and crawled for cover. The chatter of distant snap-rifle fire began a moment later.

  “Barton, scout for me,” I ordered. “Venner, I’ll vote for you if you like—we need a single leader.”

  She thought about that for a second, but she shook her head. “What’s wrong with operating as a set of tight teams? Maybe when we see what we’re up against—”

  “Off to the east,” Barton called back. She was crouching in the brush to our right flank. “There’s action over there. Do we advance to support?”

  “I say no,” Venner said stubbornly. “That’s 6th cohort. Let them dull the blade for us.”

  Harris, Leeson and I exchanged glances. My adjuncts were frowning, but they didn’t have the rank to argue.

  Accordingly, I stood tall. “I’m moving to support 6th cohort. Do you really think Winslade set this up so forty guys with pig-stickers can kill all twenty of them? If we let them take us out one cohort at a time, we’re doomed.”

  Manfred stood with me—he was a rare friend of mine among officers of any rank. “I’m with McGill.”

  Without looking back at the rest of them, we advanced. It was six of us against God-knew-what, but I would be damned if I’d sit on my hands while forty comrades got torn up.

  As we got closer to the action, we began moving from cover to cover. Our centurions with rifles calling overwatch as the next man advanced. To my surprise, I saw people joining us—it was Centurion Venner and the rest of the 3rd cohort officers.

  “You just had to start something, didn’t you McGill?” Venner asked me.

  She was hiding behind the same tree I was, and I thought about a few choice comebacks—but I passed on them. She’d come around and joined me, after all.

  “That’s my approach to life,” I admitted. “I’d like to think 6th cohort would come to our aid if we were in a bad way.”

  Venner snorted and rushed ahead. I followed a moment later.

  There were only bodies left when we arrived at
the entry door. Centurions with snap-rifles, adjuncts with knifes… they were all as dead as yesterday.

  “Holy shit…” Harris breathed. “This was a slaughter!”

  “What’s it been?” I asked. “Five minutes?”

  “About that, yeah,” Leeson said. “Since the first shots were fired.”

  Green Deck was big—but not as big as it seemed. Aboard Legate, it occupied about a square kilometer of space. It felt bigger than that due to the thickly overgrown trees and the holographic walls that projected grand, false vistas.

  My mind ran through those numbers, and I didn’t like the answers. This entire group had been butchered fast. That meant the enemy had overwhelming firepower.

  Now, I’d been under no illusions that this would be in any way a fair fight. First off, Winslade was in charge of the arrangements. Secondly, there was no way the higher ranks could win when outnumbered twenty to one unless they had some pretty big advantages.

  “They have grav-grenades?” Venner said. “Heavy armor with morph-rifles—at least that.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  Harris threw his knife down in disgust. Just when I turned to demand his “resignation” which meant I would execute him on the spot, he picked up a snap-rifle and breastplate from a dead centurion. Strapping on his knife again, he gave me a grin, and blood dripped from him.

  I grinned back. “You’re better equipped than I am now.”

  Venner scowled, then ordered her adjuncts to grab up better gear. Everyone got something, even if it was only a second knife.

  Slightly better equipped, we moved on, heading west again.

  Another group approached, and we went to ground. After a few moments of tense drama, we realized it was the officers from 9th cohort. We greeted one another like we were blood-brothers.

  Eighty strong now, we decided to move to the center of the field. That was sheer balls, but we could already hear fighting in that direction. The brass had caught up with another company of ours somewhere in the woods.

  “There’s no time to lose,” I said. “We have to hit them all at once, or we’re doomed.”

  No one could find much fault with my logic, not even Venner. We hustled to the mid-field, where a strange scene was in progress.

  The middle of Green Deck generally contained a quickly fabricated fortification. Today was no exception. A series of low steel shields, just the right height to fire over, had been erected to form loose walls. There were two rings of these shields, forming a very basic fort.

  The two barriers encircled an empty spot at the very center of Green Deck. The whole thing wasn’t much to write home about, each shield in the rings being a meter high and twice as wide, but they were better than nothing. They were built of heavy metal with supporting pylons.

  Circled up inside this primitive fort were at least three of our cohorts, over a hundred men in all. They were pointing guns in every direction, and they looked nervous.

  “We can’t go in there,” Venner whispered to me. “Every good firing position has been taken.”

  “Agreed. Let’s stay in the trees and act as reinforcements.”

  We didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes later one of the upper ranked officers strode out of the trees onto the field. He wore heavy armor, as I expected. But it wasn’t just a regular suit, he was in a full battlesuit, the heaviest stuff reserved for our weaponeers. It was the kind of armor I’d worn back in the day, or that Sargon often wore today.

  In that thick plate armor he might survive a strike from a light artillery piece.

  “Damnation,” Harris breathed. “That’s not fair at all.”

  “I think that’s Graves,” I said, squinting, “and they’ve targeted him.”

  The three teams in the center of the field had been sorting themselves out, taking up defensive positions as best they could. Now, they all shouted and directed a storm of fire against Graves. He bounded back into the trees, chased by countless streams of snap-rifle rounds.

  “Those sped-up BBs are never going to penetrate that armor,” Harris said.

  “They might get a lucky hit on his faceplate,” Leeson said.

  “Not when he’s got his ass pointed their way.”

  Frowning, I swept my gaze toward the opposite side of the field. Barton was already looking that way, and she pointed.

  The main attacking force emerged. There were ten more primus-ranks in full heavy armor—and something else walked behind them. It was a dragon. A walking, fighting machine that stood three meters tall.

  Riding inside, I saw a face I knew all too well. Tribune Galina Turov was at the helm.

  -25-

  Long ago, when I’d encountered my first dragon, Galina had been driving it. She’d gotten it on Tech World, and she’d kept it aboard our ship for emergencies.

  Striding through our transport Corvus, she’d been enraged with yours truly that day. She’d made Carlos her first kill, and I was her second.

  I almost shivered to see her in the cockpit, grinning and driving the dragon like a woman possessed.

  The central groups had spotted the approaching enemy by now. They were turning and scrambling on all fours behind their squatty walls to fire at the small charging group of armored men.

  Galina tilted up her shoulder-mounts and unloaded smart-grenades. These lobbed into the midst of the unarmored troops and popped with air-shivering reports. Picking up any debris, even flying bullets, the grav-grenades tossed them in random directions, shredding the men inside the fort.

  “That defensive position is a death trap!” Harris shouted. “All they have to do is sit back and bomb them!”

  But Galina didn’t. After showering maybe four glowing blue balls into their midst, she let the primus-ranks rush in to finish the job.

  “They aren’t firing,” Venner said. “Why not?”

  “No morph-rifles,” Leeson said. “Graves and his crew aren’t entirely unfair. They’re going into hand-to-hand with force-blades only.”

  It all made sense. They couldn’t give us garbage and give the higher ranks unlimited ammo. Galina probably had a limited number of grav grenades. The others had armor, but no guns.

  Fair? Far from it. But at least it wasn’t going to be a hopeless slaughter. Butchery, sure—but there was a dull gleam of hope.

  “Let’s pull around behind them and hit them in the ass,” I said. “Come on!”

  Manfred followed me immediately. Venner gritted her teeth, but then she sprinted in our wake, cursing.

  It’s hard to commit yourself to a charge that will probably end up with you being torn apart. Even knowing that you’ll catch a revive isn’t enough. Just try stabbing your hand with a knife because you know you’ll heal, and there’s nu-skin spray in the cupboard.

  You still won’t want to do it.

  But we had no choice. Over half our number was in this fight already. If we didn’t win right here, right now, the rest of us were going to be hunted down and butchered. It was as simple as that.

  Galina advanced in her dragon while we circled around. Graves had come back onto the scene as well. He led the rest of the primus-ranked knights, and they quickly reached the barricade on the other side. There was no escape for the doomed men inside their precious fort.

  Snap-rifles hammered, aiming at faceplates, but it took dozens of rounds to penetrate. We saw two of the higher officers falter and tumble—their ballistic glass punctured at last.

  The group in the middle released a ragged cheer. It was more of a growl of group defiance, really. They couldn’t hope to win. They’d lost half their number and only taken down only two of their attackers. But for all of that, they were game.

  Staying inside the treeline, we ran around behind Galina’s dragon then charged in from the flank.

  We almost took her by surprise. She was sidestepping her dragon eagerly, shouting orders to the armored men struggling in the fort.

  Galina spotted our rush at the last moment. She made a squawking sound of s
urprise and hopped backward to escape—but we were in too close.

  She released two more of her precious grav-grenades. Leeson ate one, Venner ate another. A dozen other adjuncts, looking pathetic with their knives out, died as well.

  Fortunately, I knew a few things about dragons. I’d practically lived inside one for months back on Machine World.

  One of their many idiosyncrasies was their tails. They weren’t just for show. Running around on two legs was difficult for a robot, and they used their tails for balance. The tails were, in fact, fully automated constructs, like segmented metal snakes that whipped and curled as needed.

  Hopping on top of her tail, I caused the machine to wobble as it tried to balance. The tail lashed, but I hung on for dear life. Not knowing what was wrong, Galina backed up. It was a natural response—but it was the wrong one.

  When she was off-balance already, I leapt off the tail and shoved it upward. The machine, trying to compensate, pitched forward. I thought I heard her squeak inside, but it could easily have been my imagination.

  Now, it should be said here that I didn’t want to kill Galina. I was kind of sweet on her, if the truth was to be told. We’d had an on-again, off-again relationship going for years. Call it a fatal attraction, or inappropriate romance—it was all of that and more.

  Whatever the case, I will forever be able to claim that I didn’t bring about her demise on that grim day. What happened—and this is the God’s-honest truth, I swear—is she panicked, just a little, and released two more grav-grenades.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem. In fact, it might have saved her. After all, our people were all in close, stabbing at every cable and joint with knifes, firing streams of snap-rifle rounds point-blank at her cupola. In that situation, a well-placed grenade might have taken out most of us.

  Unfortunately for Galina, when she released her grenades I’d just gotten done messing with her tail, upsetting the machine’s balancing algorithm. The dragon did a face-plant—and in that precise instant, the grenades burped out of the chest cannons, right into the churned up mud under the machine.