City World (Undying Mercenaries Book 17) Read online

  Deciding it was best to stick to a single cover story, I went with the tried-and-true.

  “It’s aliens,” I said, with the same gusto I delivered this lie to my dad.

  “What?”

  I gave him the same cock-and-bull story, and just like my pop, he seemed to buy it. His jaw was hanging lower than mine before I was done explaining.

  “This is unbelievable… how do you get yourself into shit like this, McGill?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a gift, I suppose. You want to help with the shoveling?”

  “What? I don’t want any part of your skullduggery. I came out here to tell you to turn on your damned tapper. You have to talk to Central.”

  I glanced down at my arm. It was still quietly playing sports.

  Carlos followed my gaze. “You don’t even have it wrapped in aluminum foil? I’m stunned. Why can’t anyone reach you?”

  “Because… maybe… well, I might have done a little bit of jail-breaking.”

  “Don’t even tell me that. I don’t want to be an accessory to any more of your crimes. Not tonight.”

  “Fine, fine. But you’re not going anywhere.”

  He had just turned to leave, but he looked back over his shoulder in annoyance. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re going to help me hide these aliens. You know the truth, and that makes you a co-conspirator. You’re just as guilty as I am.”

  Carlos frowned. “What if I squeal?” he lifted his tapper into the glare of the floodlights coming from the walker. “What if I call Turov, or Graves, or—?”

  I reached out a hand and covered his screen with big fingers. “You don’t want to joke about that. You’re not squealing. Not tonight—not unless you want to squeal on the way down to the bottom of this here hole in the ground.”

  Carlos looked from me to that round black hole and back again.

  “Are you going to help me or not?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “All right, all right. You don’t have to twist my arm. I’ll help.”

  We worked together, and while we did so I questioned him about the reasons Central had seen fit to send a man of his low reputation all the way out here into the darkest swamp in Georgia.

  “Because there’s a Mogwa battlecruiser parked in orbit,” he said, pointing a thick finger up into the black sky. “Apparently, your name came up in their conversations with Central.”

  I covered my mouth with one big dirty palm. I groaned aloud. A few days ago, I’d been looking forward to a lazy summer and an even lazier fall. I was in the full swing of vacation mode, and I’d been enjoying each day thoroughly.

  But today, everything seemed to be shifting under my size-thirteen boots. As every hour passed, I’d begun to doubt my immediate future would be peaceful.

  “All right,” I said. “Help me finish this—and pick up the pace. We’ve got to work fast. We’ve got to knock down all these stones and throw them into the well, along with enough muck from the swamp to fill it in.”

  “Is that what that puddle of slime over there is for?”

  “Yep.”

  Carlos wrinkled his nose. “It stinks. It really stinks. There are sticks in here, too…”

  He began poking around in my sludge pile, and before I could stop him, he held up a long dripping bone that was slick with black mud. “Hey, this looks like—”

  I snatched it out of his hand and tossed it into the well. It clattered on the way down.

  Carlos faced off with me. “That wasn’t a Tau bone.”

  “It sure as hell was. What do you know about it?”

  “I’m a bio, remember? I took anatomy and all that.”

  “Oh yeah…”

  We stared at each other for a second, then I sucked in a deep breath. “Look, do you really want a full report? I’ll turn on my tapper, here, to record it all. You can hear about every dark deed that’s gone on out here in this swamp, all the way back to the Unification Wars. Is that what you want? Really?”

  Carlos blinked. He looked around the place. He was really thinking now, I could tell. “The Unification Wars…? Shit, no—I don’t want to hear another word.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I went back to shoveling, but Carlos was looking around with growing alarm. “I don’t think I ever want anyone to know I was out here.”

  “They won’t hear it from me—but you are here. Anyone who wants to check will know the truth. Your tapper knows it.”

  Breathing hard, he lifted up his arm and stared at it. “Wrap it up for me. Or hack it. Or maybe stab it with your knife—I don’t care.”

  I grinned. Carlos had had a change of heart. He was realizing that he wasn’t just antagonizing me, he was endangering himself. His life, limb, and Healthy Citizen scores were all on the line.

  These days it didn’t matter if you innocently stumbled upon a heinous crime against Hegemony. You were indelibly stained by such moments, becoming permanently associated with whatever you’d found. Innocence bought you jack-squat. Only powerful associates, like Galina’s father, could save you.

  Carlos didn’t know many powerful people—and whenever he did meet one, they soon started hating him.

  “Come on, hurry up,” he said as I trussed up his tapper. “Let’s just bury everything. You’re right, McGill. It’s the only way. Oh, and thanks by the way for involving me in more of your subversive evil.”

  I shrugged. “No charge. But you should remember I didn’t ask you to come out here when you stole those illegal coins, either.”

  Carlos’ breathing slowed when he saw his tapper was sealed up tight. No telltale signals were escaping his arm now. Not anymore.

  An hour or two later, he straightened his sore back and groaned. “What else can I do? The well stones are about gone.”

  I had him move the sludge into the hole. It was the worst, dirtiest job I could think of. Skulls showed up now and then while he worked. Mostly, they were human skulls. Any fool could see that.

  But Carlos didn’t say anything. Oh, he grimaced, and he spat grit, and he cursed a lot—but he didn’t say anything. He saved his breath for working.

  About an hour before dawn broke, we finished our work and stumbled back to my place. We washed off with the hose and drank beers on the porch.

  “Hey!” Carlos said. He got up and walked out into my weed-pit of a yard. He pointed up into the sky. “Look out there, up to the northeast.”

  I walked out into the open and looked up with him. I squinted, and then I saw it.

  A diamond-shaped object hung in the sky. The sunlight was hitting it, as it was far above the curvature of the Earth. The edges were a silvery gray, and they were unnaturally straight.

  “That’s an alien battlecruiser,” Carlos said. “The spooks figure the Galactics probably sent it.”

  “What’s that doing here?”

  He grinned tiredly. “Drusus at Central wants to know the answer to that question even more than you do. That’s why your tapper is filling with urgent messages.”

  Sure enough, when I looked down at my arm, I saw it crawl with red text. Now that I was near the house, they could find me despite my hacks.

  “Shit…” I said.

  “Come on,” he said, slapping me on the back. “You can sleep in my air car while I drive you up to Central. As soon as we get there, though, you’ve got to promise me my name will never come up again. Okay?”

  “You got it—as long as you forget what you saw out there in my swamp.”

  Carlos glanced out into the bog, and he squinted in disgust. “I can’t remember a damned thing. It must be the beer. Did you put something in this can?”

  He lifted the beer I’d given him accusingly. We both smiled tiredly and headed for his air car.

  There wasn’t time for a shower, or breakfast, or much of anything. That ship was waiting up there—and it didn’t look like something that liked to wait around on grubby humans.

  -3-

  On the way to Central, I finally
looked at my tapper. It filled every minute or so with fresh, frantic texts. I turned off all my illegal mods, knowing that would only make things worse.

  “Look at all this crap,” Carlos said. His arm was getting bombed as well. “Most of these love-notes are accusing me of goofing off. What a bunch of dick-riding haters.”

  “We are wanted men, Carlos. At least they haven’t called us directly yet. They’re probably all in a meeting.”

  Still, frowning at his arm, he finally sighed and lowered it without reading any more of the messages. “It’s a relief I’m getting all this now, really.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, since I didn’t see this spam while we were… uh… out hiking… that means we must have been off the grid.”

  I nodded, unsurprised. Most of the Earth’s surface was within range of a grid pickup these days, but not everywhere. Spooky backwaters like my family’s private swamp still qualified as offline, apparently.

  Bored after a short nap, I tapped at my tapper with a grungy finger. Most of the texts were from officers such as Graves, Winslade—even Galina Turov. Finally I saw an interesting name on the list.

  “Drusus himself?” Carlos asked. Even though he was driving, he was still snooping.

  “Piss off,” I told him, turning away from him and shielding my forearm from his prying eyes. Then I tapped on the message in question.

  McGill, the message read, contact me before you speak to any of the others.

  “I’ll be damned…” I said, and I tapped on the message, initiating a direct call. I shushed Carlos when the call went through.

  Primus Bob appeared on my screen immediately. He looked as bald and sour as ever.

  “Hey, Primus!” I said in a cheery tone. “I got the boss’ message loud and clear. You can tell him I’ll be in Central in an hour flat. You can take that to the bank.”

  “Not good enough, McGill. Your appointment began at 0700 hours. It is now 0714 hours. Accordingly, I’ve been authorized to take drastic action for the purposes of personnel retrieval.”

  “Uh… what?”

  Primus Bob smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I see that you’re in an air car. Please land and await extraction.”

  After that cryptic suggestion, the screen went blank.

  “What the hell is he talking about?” Carlos asked. Despite my best efforts, he’d been listening in.

  “I don’t know. But you’d better land.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said. “We’ll make better time if we thin the airfoils and hit the gas hard.”

  My tapper was quiet, but I frowned at it, thinking about what old Primus Bob had said. “I think you’d better land. They’re planning something.”

  Carlos frowned and gazed all around him at the skies. “I don’t see any fighters or anything.”

  “Just land the frigging car, Carlos.”

  “All right, all right.”

  We spiraled down, putting our skids into a green field. We were in the Carolinas somewhere, south of Virginia sector.

  Craning our necks, we gazed at the skies suspiciously—but we were barking up the wrong tree.

  A bluish glow flashed into existence just above the car’s hood. Two big boots thumped onto the front panel, making some big dents.

  “Goddammit!” Carlos shouted, climbing out of the driver’s side hatch in a hurry.

  I scrambled out of the passenger’s seat with equal urgency.

  The teleport jumper was a hog soldier in stone-gray coveralls. He wore a teleport harness, and he handed me a matching unit.

  “You dented my hood, you asshole!” Carlos told the man.

  The hog ignored him—which I didn’t think was a good move on his part, but it was his funeral.

  I took the harness and put it on. There was only one big button on the harness. Even a dummy like me couldn’t get it wrong.

  “Let me guess, I press this thing here, right? Where will this take me?”

  The hog veteran didn’t answer. He reached out a glove and rudely pressed the button for me.

  I began to blur out, and I would have given the man a piece of my mind, but you can’t really talk when you’re in an energy field and about to jump.

  The single thing that gave me joy was the fact that I saw Carlos coming up behind the thoughtless hog. He had a tire iron in his hand, and I knew he meant business.

  Smiling and giving the jump-jockey a wave, I winked out of existence.

  A moment later, I appeared inside Central. I was standing on a circular landing pad on an indoor Gray Deck—probably the highest floor in the building that had such a facility. Unsmiling hogs were there waiting for me.

  They didn’t grab me—and that was a good thing for them. Maybe they’d been briefed or something.

  “Centurion McGill? This way, sir.”

  As I hadn’t been shown any undue disrespect, I followed the security people without injuring them. It was moments of forbearance like this that allowed me to assure others I was no threat to polite authority figures, despite past misunderstandings.

  Marching briskly, we headed for the lifts and shot upward at a dizzying pace. In the meantime, I whistled a forbidden tune and looked out the windows at the clouds and the city that sprawled out below them.

  “Um…” one of the hogs said. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve got a powerful odor coming off you, sir. Is that mud on your hands… or maybe manure?”

  “A little of both, I suspect. I was called in from my farm without much notice.”

  “I see… Do you maybe want to stop by a restroom and wash up?”

  I considered his thoughtful offer. I really did. But I shook my head. “Nope. Duty calls, and they’re telling me I’m already late. A smear of grit and filth is nothing the brass hasn’t seen before. We’re all soldiers here at Central.”

  “Okay…”

  The two hogs looked at each other doubtfully and shrugged. I ignored them.

  When I marched into Primus Bob’s domain a few minutes later, he gave me a tight grin of greeting. I could tell he thought he’d pulled a fast one on me, what with the teleportation kidnapping and all.

  As we got closer to one another, however, his grin faltered. “What are you wearing, McGill…? Is that a filthy flannel shirt? And what is that god-awful smell?”

  “That would be the fine soil of southern Georgia Sector, Mr. Primus, sir. I didn’t have time to wash-up, see, what with your sudden abduction and all.”

  “Good God! This will never do. Come with me.”

  Primus Bob rushed past me with a finger crooked over his shoulder, indicating I should follow him toward the lavatory. I did so with reluctance.

  Before we’d taken six steps, however, the doors to the main conference chamber flew wide. A stormy-faced Drusus appeared. “Bob? You texted me that McGill had arrived. What’s the hold-up? Ah, there you are, McGill! Get in here immediately.”

  “But sir—” Bob began, but Drusus ignored him.

  Drusus gestured furiously for me to follow him.

  As Drusus outranked his bald butt-monkey by a factor of around a thousand, I switched directions and followed him instead. On the way past old Bob, I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for me,” I said. “Too bad the brass is in such an all-fired hurry.”

  Primus Bob didn’t answer me. His mouth hung open a centimeter or two instead. Then he frowned and sniffed at his collar in disgust.

  I didn’t get to see all of his reaction, unfortunately, as the big doors swung shut behind me at that moment.

  Turning to look around, I was immediately impressed. The meeting wasn’t large—but the attendees were big-wigs, one and all.

  There was Praetor Drusus himself, Praetor Wurtenberger, plus a few flunky tribunes and imperators. My eyes widened when I spied the one person present who wasn’t wearing a military uniform—other than myself, that is. Dressed in the ceremonial black robes of a Public Servant, Alexander Turov sat at the head of the conference table.
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  Alexander was an old dude with a wrinkled face, a hoary beard, and quick eyes. He had a funny East-euro way of talking. One glance told me he was in charge of this assembly.

  “I see McGill has finally arrived,” he said. “Good. We will proceed with the briefing.”

  “Great to see you, Servant Turov!” I said with gusto. I approached him and offered him a grimy hand to shake.

  Old Alexander wasn’t fooled. He glanced at my offending hand like it was a dog-turd—which it just about was.

  “Remove your filthy paw from my vicinity, Centurion. Drusus? McGill is your beast. He will sit next to you.”

  Still smiling, I walked to the other end of the table and squeezed into a spot between the two praetors. Drusus and Wurtenberger looked horrified. I grinned and nodded to them both.

  Old Alexander then reached a hand out toward the conference table. He made a few practiced gestures.

  The battlecruiser that hung above the planet appeared. It was majestic and impressive. The sun shined over the hull, giving it a silvery outline.

  “An envoy has arrived from the mid-galaxy provinces,” Turov began. “We are all accustomed to our barbaric local warlords such as the Rigellians. We also frequently suffer the attention of our rightful masters from the Core Systems—but this ship is from the Mid-Zone.”

  My dirty hand was already up and waggling. A few dribbling bits of grit flaked off as I performed this gesture, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Alexander glanced at me in surprise. “There is an inquiry? Already? All right, I will suffer your existence one more time, McGill. What is it?”

  “Sir, what the hell is a Mid-Zone alien? I mean, are these people from a planet like Earth, or are they something special like the Galactics of Trantor?”

  Alexander pondered the question for a moment before answering. “It’s a mix of the two. As we all know, the Empire spans outward from the core, covering two thirds of the star systems in our galaxy. In the hot, blazing center, there are countless ancient suns circled by worlds that are billions of years older than our beloved Earth. There, the Galactics hold sway.”

  I nodded. I knew all this stuff already, of course. I’d been to grammar school and studied Astrological Civics just like everyone else in the room.