Dust World Read online

  After my tapper died, I spent most of my time dozing on beaches with my head on my ruck. This wasn’t as peaceful as it sounded as I often dreamed about lizards tearing off human limbs and making excited gurgling noises as they fed.

  The summer days were fairly enjoyable for me despite my dreams. I felt like I was experiencing Earth. There weren’t any officers yelling at me or worried parents eyeing me oddly. I felt like a ghost gliding through the world, and I kind of liked it that way.

  I usually wore my fatigues, but as a precaution I covered my legionnaire’s patch. The wolf’s head of Varus was on far too many net broadcasts lately—and never with a happy story attached.

  My wanderings drew me farther north every day. I knew where I was going: back to the Mustering Hall where this had all started. The legion people would be there. They’d know what the score was. They’d know when we were going to ship out again. It was all supposed to be a secret—but someone always knew what was really going on.

  -2-

  It was a Monday night when I arrived in Newark. The tram dumped me on a street I didn’t know. I’d never liked this city; the best I could say was it wasn’t the worst place on the planet. These days, most of Newark looked more like a warzone than some of the warzones I’d walked through. People said there were nice areas, but I’d never seen one. I guess if you’re rich enough every town has a nice section—but I didn’t know any rich people.

  I headed through darkening streets looking for the Mustering Hall. The Hall’s doors were automatic, and I knew that the building would be closed to the public after eight, but I thought maybe the doors would let me in because I was a legionnaire. The only other option would be to find a room to rent, which was going to be hard. Without my tapper, I couldn’t access my account. I didn’t have much cash left on me, and I’d decided it would be best if I let my folks have the rest of the credits left in my account, anyway.

  They were going to need all of it if the news reports were right. The crash was looming closer every day, and people were already hardening their hearts and scrambling to move their money someplace safe.

  My own account had once contained genuine Galactic credits. They were hard currency, good anywhere in the Empire on any planet. But by decree, the real money had been swept from my account and exchanged for Hegemony credits. Hegemony cash was better than district money, but it was only good on Earth. As my parents might be in trouble, I’d let them keep most of it. All their accounts were in District money which was spiraling lower in value every day. With Hegemony cash to draw on, I was at least fairly sure they wouldn’t starve.

  I found the big building at around nine p.m. and tried the doors. They flashed up my info, but they didn’t open. Instead, the door buzzed and flashed a red hand at me, the universal stop symbol. I wasn’t getting in tonight. The door didn’t even talk to me or give me a reason. It was one of those older, dumber, not-so-smart-doors.

  Turning around and muttering curses, I froze. I wasn’t alone.

  Three figures stood near. They weren’t in my face. They were standing back a ways, keeping out of the circle of concrete covered by the security camera over the door. I could tell by their easy stances they had this down to a routine. They knew where they could be seen and recorded. They’d probably followed me from the drop-off point and knew that the door wouldn’t let me in.

  I had a few choices now, I realized. I could try to bluff my way through them, or I could call the police on my tapper—but that wasn’t working. Besides, the police might not be getting paid anymore. Maybe they wouldn’t come down here, and these thugs knew it. Maybe the muggers paid the police more than the Local Gov did, and the cops were never going to come even if they did get my distress call.

  My third option was the least appetizing. I could stand close to the door and the camera, shivering here all night, hoping they’d keep away until morning came. I already knew I wasn’t taking that option. I wasn’t going to huddle here and have them laugh, watching me take a leak against the building when the urge came.

  My eyes narrowed and I felt myself getting pissed off. This is something that happens to me now and again, often at the least opportune moments. Call it a character flaw if you like—it was what it was. Normally, I’m an easy-going guy. Ask any of my friends. I can put up with a lot of shit day-to-day.

  But tonight I was done taking any more of it, especially from these three losers with their little trap.

  What had me pissed off the most was wondering how many legionnaires they’d shaken down, robbing them when they came too late to get in the door. Probably, they’d usually gone for hopefuls, not full-fledged legionnaires. Poor kids who’d come down here hoping to join up. Maybe they’d mistaken me for one of them as I’d covered my insignia.

  Instead of trying to slip past them or bluff them or hugging the dumbass smart-door like it was my mama, I walked directly toward the nearest of them. He was also the largest, although not as tall as I was.

  Their easy stances changed as I approached confidently. The leader stood his ground while the other two walked slowly toward me from the sides.

  I ignored the sidekicks. I went straight for the leader.

  “You lost, boy?” I asked loudly.

  He frowned at me. I could see his lower jaw, although the rest of his face was shrouded in a dark hood. Criminals wore hoodies all the time when they were on the street. It was illegal to cover your face to avoid facial-recognition cameras in most cities, but people still did it all the time.

  “I think you’re the one who’s lost,” he answered with a snort of amusement.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Frigging yokel,” he laughed. “I’m the taxman. And it’s time to pay your taxes.”

  The self-proclaimed taxman put out his hand with his palm up and made a grabbing gesture.

  “You’d best put that begging hand away,” I told him, “before you lose it.”

  His amusement vanished. “What? You crazy? Give me your cash. All of it. Can’t you count? We got three men against one fool.”

  “No,” I said, shedding my outer jacket and leaving it draped over my right hand. “There’s only one man here. Only one legionnaire talking to three pieces of trash.”

  My patch stood out. It showed the full stripes of a specialist. Above that was the wolf’s head of Varus. I hadn’t yet qualified for a particular specialty, which would add symbols to my sleeve, but Centurion Graves had given me the promotion before I left the ship. On our next mission, I was to train en route. I was best qualified as a tech or a weaponeer. I wasn’t sure yet which path I would be placed upon—but I was kind of hoping for weaponeer.

  “You haven’t got no ray-gun,” the leader said.

  The other two had stopped on either side of me, standing just out of reach with their hands in their pockets. They might have weapons in there, or they might not. Like I said, I was pissed off, so I hardly cared one way or the other.

  “You know what happens if this goes the wrong way?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you die.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t die. Not like you can. I’m right here next to the Hall. My mental engrams are being recorded at a constant rate, and my body scans were stored over a year ago. If I die, I’ll pop right back out in the morning. If you losers die, you’ll stay dead. Forever.”

  “Crazy mother,” the leader said. “All right, you can walk. But keep your shit to yourself if we ever meet again.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “You ladies don’t get it yet. You’re the ones that are in trouble, and you’re not going to walk. Not today. I can’t have you jokers shaking down recruits tomorrow night. This ends now.”

  “What?” demanded the thug on the left. “Why are we even listening to this fool?”

  “Shut up, Abhi!” the taxman hissed.

  “So, it’s the Taxman and Abhi, did I get that right?” I asked. “Anyone else want to give me a name or a tapper ID?”

  At that point, I thou
ght I had the situation in the bag. They were crumbling. I had the leader cowed and one of his sidekicks was in rebellion. I figured I’d frog-march them all to the nearest cop station before this was over.

  But I was wrong. I’d yet to hear a word out of the third guy, who silently stood to my right side.

  The quiet man pulled out a weapon at this point in the conversation. It wasn’t a gun, not exactly. Gunpowder weapons are strictly-controlled and rare in cities these days. But what he pulled out of his coat was a weapon nonetheless. A riveter, to be exact. A construction man’s tool.

  In my time, most buildings were formed using puff-crete as the primary building material. An alien commodity, it could be shaped into any form and when it set, it was harder and lighter than carbonized steel. But its very strength was a problem because often construction crews needed to connect slabs of puff-crete together. How did one do that with a nearly indestructible material? The answer was a modern-day riveter.

  The weapon was small, not much bigger than a power drill. But it operated more like a snap-rifle, accelerating rivets to fantastic velocities and hammering them home at close range. Those rivets could kill just as easily as bullets could—they were possibly even more deadly because they hit with fantastic speed and force.

  The third man’s move left me no choice but to act. Sure, I’d played the part of a tough guy who didn’t fear death—but I was a liar. I feared death quite a bit, possibly more than these three clowns combined. I’d experienced death, and I didn’t want to go through it again.

  Dying is kind of like getting vaccinations. Every kid starts off curious and clueless when the needles come, but they learn very quickly to fear them. I had experienced the needle one too many times, and I wasn’t interested in a repeat performance.

  I had my new knife concealed under the jacket I’d shed earlier. Taking it off had served two purposes: it had revealed my rank, but it had also hidden my only weapon.

  I hadn’t planned on putting the new weapon to use so soon. I hadn’t figured it would come out of its sheath until I left Earth—but I’d been wrong.

  I took one quick step toward the guy lifting the riveter and reached out with my knife. He got a shot off, unfortunately. I was clipped in the left hip. A burning line that felt like a dog-bite sizzled there. I hoped he’d missed the bone, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. My left leg was still holding me up, but I didn’t know if I was on borrowed time or not.

  The quiet guy didn’t have time for a second shot, as the riveter kicked up and almost flew into his face. The tool had released so much energy it had recoiled and caught him by surprise. He was clearly an amateur with a makeshift weapon rather than an expert who used it in his daily routine.

  One lunge, one slash—that was all I had time for. My knife flickered and took his hand off at the wrist.

  The other two were reaching for us. They were yelling something but I no longer cared what they were saying. This was on.

  The taxman had the presence of mind to grab onto my knife hand with both of his. It didn’t save him. I dropped my knife and jerked him forward, using the momentum of his motion against him. He stumbled over his buddy, who was no longer the silent type. He was on his knees and howling by now, the fingers of his remaining hand clamped over his stump, trying to stop the torrent of blood that was splattering everyone’s shoes.

  The taxman went into a belly flop when I let him go, and I kneed him on his way down. He grunted in pain.

  Abhi was behind me then, and I took a fist in the kidney. Three or four more blows landed on my head and shoulders. They hurt, but they didn’t put me out. He threw his arms wide and looped them around mine, trying to bear-hug me.

  The taxman scrambled for the riveter, and I knew I couldn’t let him have it. I couldn’t just pick it up because this Abhi guy was on my back, so I kicked it away toward the smart-door.

  I broke Abhi’s hold, and then I broke his jaw. None of them seemed to be trained in hand-to-hand. Legionnaires usually died a time or two in boot camp—we took our training very seriously.

  Abhi ran off into the night holding his face together and sobbing. I looked around and noticed that the one-handed guy had disappeared, too. I couldn’t blame either of them.

  But the taxman wasn’t through yet. He ran toward the smart-door. He was going for the riveter.

  “Give it up, man!” I shouted, snatching up my knife. I rushed after him painfully. My hip slowed me down.

  He made it to the riveter first, and he lifted it up, grinning. His face was fully exposed, his hood having fallen to his shoulders in the struggle.

  “You’re dead,” he told me.

  “You’re on camera,” I told him.

  His face faltered. He knew it was true. His hands tightened on the riveter. I knew he could hammer a chunk of metal into my breastbone in an instant. I couldn’t even dodge effectively, and there was nowhere to hide.

  I watched his face, twisted and deciding—kill me and go to prison, or run and go to prison anyway for the list of other crimes his face was now attached to?

  As I wondered which way his mind would twist, the door behind him buzzed and opened.

  -3-

  The taxman glanced over his shoulder. I couldn’t blame him for that. He was caught between me and whoever was stepping into the situation behind him.

  I didn’t wait around for his surprise to subside. I didn’t have time to reach him with a kick or a punch. So, I threw my new knife at him.

  Throwing a knife accurately isn’t easy even if the weapon used is balanced and built for the purpose. I’d been combat-trained aboard my legion’s ship for months, but we hadn’t done much in the way of knife-throwing.

  My whirling blade sailed past the taxman, missing him by a hair. Instead of its intended target, it thunked into the smart-door behind him.

  “McGill! You asshole!”

  “Carlos?”

  I couldn’t believe it. He was standing there, his stocky form silhouetted in the doorway.

  I winced when I saw the knife had nearly hit him, but I didn’t have time for apologies. I came forward, closing with the taxman. He turned back to me, lifting his riveter, and I knew I was screwed. I couldn’t reach him before he could pull the trigger.

  Thick arms came out and latched onto the thug’s wrist. Carlos had finally made his move. The riveter fired, over and over. The concrete at my feet sparked with tiny yellow explosions.

  Carlos and I tackled him a second later, and he went down, but he still had both hands clamped onto that damned riveter. Not wanting either of us to be shot in the foot in the struggle, I ended the fight by slamming the smart-door into the taxman’s head repeatedly. Finally, he stopped moving.

  We stood over the unconscious thug, breathing hard.

  “Making friends again, huh McGill?” Carlos grunted out.

  “As always.”

  By this time, Hegemony MPs had reached the scene. The smart-door must have alerted them. We explained the situation, and they arrested the thug at our feet.

  “What’s his name?” one of them asked me.

  “He said he was the taxman,” I explained.

  The MP twisted his lips. “Very funny guy. He can tell his next joke in the District auto-courts.”

  The MPs hauled him up, carrying him between the two of them like a sack of potatoes.

  “He’s not dead,” I said.

  “I figured.”

  “Shouldn’t you call an ambulance or something?”

  The MP snorted. “They won’t come out here. We’re going to have to drive him to the District hospital ourselves. It’s a jurisdiction thing.”

  I frowned and shrugged as they hauled him off.

  “I don’t get you, McGill,” Carlos said. “One second you’re in a death fight with that loser. The next, you’re worried they’ll stub his toes.”

  “He might have a broken neck. They should put him on a stretcher or something. He’s not like us, he’s a civvie. He won’t g
et a new grow if they screw up his body.”

  Carlos laughed and shook his head. “He would have killed you if he could have. Get over it.”

  “People are desperate, Carlos,” I said. “I don’t know what his story is, but I’m sure it’s not a happy one.”

  “What can we do about it?”

  “We can bring home the bacon,” I said. “We can go out there and win new accounts, new planets for our legions to serve.”

  Carlos snorted at me. “Yeah, sure. We’re going to save the Earth. You always have big, dumb ideas. I think it’s because you’re so tall. The air is too thin up there for your brain to work properly.”

  Lines like that had often brought Carlos and me to physical blows. But I restrained my irritation. It was just his way of talking, and I’d gotten used to it for the most part.

  “What are you doing here at the Hall, anyway?” I asked him.

  “Mustering back in, same as you.”

  We’d been told we’d be contacted and brought back to the same Mustering Hall where we’d been recruited after shore leave was over. But it hadn’t been long enough for that yet.

  “By my accounting, we’ve got nearly three more weeks of leave,” I said.

  “What? Didn’t you get the call? We’re supposed to be here now. That’s why the adjunct sent me up here when you buzzed the door. The computers alerted him. Why didn’t you check in with your tapper?”

  “It’s not working—and no, I didn’t get that call. I came back to see if there was any news about our next contract.”

  We were walking through the Hall by this time. I was still limping, but it wasn’t that bad. I figured if I got the wound sprayed over by a flesh-printer, I’d be right as rain in a day or two.

  The Mustering Hall was a loud, echo-filled chamber, nearly as big as a football stadium. As the non-legionnaires had been kicked out, only official people were left still milling around.