Edge World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 14) Read online

  Naturally, they’d tried to reproduce the material artificially. So far, they’d failed to do so. That meant that every suit of armor took days to make, and there weren’t enough to cover a legion’s worth of troops yet—if there ever would be. At the moment, they were as rare as the pig-Latin version of the Gutenberg bible.

  Marching around in suits of regular old layered steel and titanium seemed half-assed to me now, but I suffered with it. After all, there was nothing else I could do.

  Or was there?

  “Leeson, send your ghosts up here!” I said in tactical chat.

  A moment later Della appeared on my right, while Cooper materialized on my left. They’d both approached with their stealth gear on and activated.

  “Creepy native trash,” Cooper said. “After what they did to Graves, I’m surprised we aren’t going house-to-house, burning them out.”

  “No such luck,” I said. “Listen-up. These domes are organized with winding roads between them.”

  “Dirt paths, more like.”

  “Whatever. You and Della have a new mission. Della, you swing out to the right of us, one road over. Report back any ambushes forming. Cooper, you’re to do the same on the left flank. Neither of you are to engage the locals, or touch anything. Got it?”

  Della vanished without a word and moved away. Cooper, on the other hand, hesitated. “What if I find something interesting?” he asked me.

  “What? Like some farmer’s daughter?”

  “No, no, like piece of tech we could use. A special item that would be of real value.”

  “No stealing, no looting, no giving them a hint you’re around. A ghost is useless if people know you’re lurking around.”

  Grumbling, he vanished and moved away as well.

  The streets were dry and dusty, but there was a film of moss growing on everything else. The moss flowered and grew bulbs of fruit here and there. Most of the Shadowlanders lived off the stuff.

  This mossy carpet was very successful on Edge World. It essentially grew continuously, creeping forward with the same slow pace as the local sun. It completely covered new land that was just thawing out as the cold night-side rolled into the warmer twilight. On the other edge of the shadowed lands, where the bright-siders dwelled, the relentless sun burned the moss, causing it to shrivel and die at an equal rate to the growth.

  The end result of the situation was the nomadic life of the Shadowlanders. They followed the growing moss, ate of its bounty and then left their refuse behind for the bright-siders to pick over.

  The streets themselves were lined with metal huts and domes. These dwellings were all hastily constructed, but they weren’t artless shacks. Wicker baskets surrounded each quaint building, and I knew that when the time came again to migrate, the Shadowlanders would load everything they owned into these baskets and cart them off to a new region, driving away any night-siders who’d dared to remain in a warming slice of land to forage.

  After we’d advanced a few hundred meters down the narrow streets, one of the soldiers knocked over a clay urn, which spilled out about fifty gallons of oil on the street.

  “You dipshit! Don’t wreck stuff!” I shouted at him. In immediate reaction, Veteran Moller cuffed him. There was a resounding clang and a fresh dent in his helmet.

  The men were more careful after that. There wasn’t much chatter on tactical, as nothing much was happening. The farther we went, the more the natives seemed to gather around, but they weren’t doing much. They were just watching us—staring, mostly.

  The people themselves looked a bit primitive. They dressed in thin sheer cloths—which was a pleasure in the case of the women, but kind of cringe worthy on the men.

  “What am I looking for exactly, McGill?” Cooper buzzed in my earpiece.

  “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Soon, the main street widened, and we were able to share the road with other local traffic. The buildings here were fancier, prefabs made of white metal that gleamed in the permanently purple sunlight.

  Harris fell into step with me a moment later. He had his rifle up, and the muzzle tracked with everything his eyes fell on.

  “You notice something, McGill?”

  “What?”

  “You see all those grav carts?”

  I looked around. There were a lot of natives wandering around with gravity carts, which allowed a man to float a heavy load a meter or so off the ground. They were quiet, efficient systems for transport.

  “So what?” I asked. “They’ve got to carry their stuff somehow.”

  “Sure, but why are all the carts going in our direction? And why is every load covered by a blanket or something?”

  I blinked twice while I absorbed his statement. After a moment, I realized it was true.

  On a normal city street, one would expect half the carts to be coming toward us, while the rest were moving away from us. But that wasn’t the case here. All of them were flowing in one direction—right along with us.

  We were flanked on both sides by dozens of covered carts, and I already knew that I wasn’t going to like whatever the hell was under those blankets.

  “Unit halt!” I called out on tactical chat. “We’re going to take a break and regroup.”

  This caused my men to mill in some confusion. After all, you didn’t take breaks in the midst of an enemy city while on patrol—at least, my boys didn’t.

  But the test proved effective. The people walking the gravity carts slowed a bit, but then they continued on after a moment of uncertainty. It was almost as if they had someone giving them instructions using headsets or bone-phones or something. As I continued to watch, I became more sure that they did have a coordinator I couldn’t see.

  “McGill!” a new voice buzzed in my helmet. “Why are you halting your march?”

  It was Fike. I cursed quietly. I’d forgotten he was watching on live feed.

  “Sir,” I said quietly. “There’s something wrong here. I smell an ambush.”

  “Good. Walk on into it. That might make them feel better.”

  I bared my teeth, but I managed to keep my tone civil. “Roger that.”’

  We marched a few more meters up to another intersection. We were pretty close to the center of town, by my best estimate.

  “Unit,” I said, “take this left fork right here. Cooper, we’re advancing toward your position now, give me a sit-rep.”

  My helmet buzzed for a second.

  “Cooper?”

  When there was no response, I quickly flipped through the vital signs list. Cooper was dead—so was Della. I should have gotten a warning about that, a beep or something, but I hadn’t. Could they have hacked my HUD? These guys didn’t look like tech wizards, but I knew they’d invented revival machines, so they couldn’t be rubes.

  Looking around, I saw there were more gravity carts than ever. They’d followed our turn, and they were all carrying something covered.

  “Heavy platoon! Turn around and uncover the loads on all those carts! Move!”

  Harris had been waiting for this order. He rushed toward the nearest cart, kicking it over with one big boot. That was a rude approach, but I hadn’t been specific on how to follow my orders.

  What rolled off that flipped cart surprised me—but in retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have.

  -37-

  “Ambush!”

  A moment after the warning went out, the things on the carts went into action. They rose up with deliberate slowness, casting aside their concealing tarps and blankets.

  They were automatons, drone troops of the sort we’d outlawed on Earth decades ago. Each had a somewhat man-like upper body, but with three black metal bulbs where the head should be. They reminded me of a praying mantis seen close-up.

  Their bodies were sleek, black metal. The bulbous sensors that served as eyes were made of blue polymers. Underneath the torso, they deployed legs that looked like a collection of telescoping spikes. In short, they were technological nightmares.
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  Earth’s history had always been a gruesome epic of warfare, bloodshed and plain old murder. Along the way, we’d developed some pretty awful ways to kill each other. One of those we’d experimented with and discarded some time ago was the drone-trooper.

  In history class, I’d been fascinated by the old files. Earth’s drones had been built to more or less human dimensions, so they could use standard human weapons. That had worked out well, as the combatants didn’t have to retool their factories to make specialized guns and such-like.

  A drone always had certain advantages over humans—but disadvantages as well. They could be mass-manufactured, for instance. They also came with a heavy price tag, and they broke down fairly often.

  According to the history I’d been taught, as far as you can trust any of the stuff they teach kids in schools, Earth had abandoned this kind of soldier after some experimentation during the Unification Wars. Unpopular from the start, the drones were said to be too expensive, and they caused a lot of unemployment.

  They were ditched once and for all when the revival machines came into vogue. With that sort of tech, you could print out a man faster than you could build a drone, and for a fraction of the cost. Overall, that economic argument won in the end.

  The same series of events hadn’t occurred on Edge World, it seemed. It was ironic that this planet, despite being the inventors of revival gear, had gone another way with their military. I guess it was just a case of different strokes for different folks.

  Once the drones had stood tall, reaching their full height the streets lit up, and the scene transformed into a wild firefight. Streams of countless bolts and bullets flew in both directions, but most of them were coming from our side.

  The things rose until they loomed over the humans and Shadowlanders. Gunfire ripped into the drones, but the majority of the fire was deflected by armor.

  I sent Harris and his heavies at them with morph-rifles and powered shotguns. My troops blasted the rising drones hard, which sent the cart-drivers running. A few of them caught a stray round as they fled, I couldn’t say I regretted it.

  “Take them down fast!” Harris admonished his men.

  He was charging with the heavy troopers, and he seemed frantic to attack the drones as fast as he could. It was a rare display of bravado and ferocity on his part, and I for one was glad to see it. Still, most of the drones were unlimbering and climbing off their carts without much hindrance from the shower of explosive pellets. They were armored, and only a few of them were destroyed.

  Unfortunately, I soon learned that Harris wasn’t being efficient and on-the-ball—he was desperate. Once the drones got to their feet and unlimbered their big beam weapons… well, the nature of the battle shifted.

  “Down! Down!” Harris screamed. “Kiss the dirt!”

  I fell onto my chest, but I was a little slow. Others were even slower.

  Those that didn’t get down fast enough caught one of a dozen sizzling rays of heat that passed horizontally over the roadway. When these air-shimmering beams struck anything flammable, that object exploded into a gush of fire. Worse, when one touched an urn of oil, there was an explosion of burning liquid.

  That’s when I realized the urns were part of the trap.

  “Those skinny, sneaky bastards,” Leeson complained in my ear, “they lined our route with urns and filled them with oil on purpose!”

  His complaint was undeniable. The urns popped in rapid succession and went up like bombs. Each one gushed orange flame, black smoke, and screaming men. It was as if they’d dumped napalm on the town.

  “Take cover!” I roared, backing into a side alley and firing bursts at handy targets, “Take cover! Leeson, get your weaponeers on those drones! Knock them out!”

  Leeson’s men, God bless them, were already in action. They had their belchers out and they targeted the drones one by one. The drones returned fire methodically, and they took each other out on a one-for-one basis.

  The drones became increasingly terrifying as we kept fighting them. They weren’t entirely man-like, I saw that now. They stood taller than men, and they had three legs rather than two. Rising up to about four meters high, they moved on their telescoping tripod assemblies like walking spiders.

  The top part of them was equipped like men, with two metal arms and their large death-ray weapons that plugged into their torsos. Whatever powered the drones also powered their weapons.

  “Barton!” I shouted. “Attack with your lights!”

  “Sir, we’re trying, but snap-rifles aren’t doing shit against these things. They’re mostly ignoring us.”

  “Charge in close! Get under those tripod legs. Cut their wires with your knives, take a leg out, blow them up with your grav-grenades—whatever it takes. That’s an order.”

  “Yes sir!”

  That was Barton for you. She was the best leader of a light platoon I’d ever met. Most light leaders didn’t like their jobs, which all too often involved suicidal tactics.

  Not so Barton. She took a deep breath and charged when you told her to. No hesitation, no regrets. She always did her best with whatever she had.

  Today was no exception. She rushed in with her troops behind her. Right there, she demonstrated her superior approach. She knew damned well that her troops were the least experienced and most skittish of legionnaires. Many of them would not reenlist, returning to Earth instead with hellish tales of their experiences in the legion.

  The only way to lead such troops into battle was by taking risks yourself. Barton did so without relish, but she was elite to the core, you could just tell when you watched her.

  She rushed under the sprawling legs of the first drone, and she sliced a metal tube from the hip area over her head. This sent up a gout of steam. The drone sagged, one of its legs dipping low and dragging in the sand. Two more of her troops came in behind her, and they took the drone down using the same tactic. They sawed with their diamond-sharp blades, severing vital lines and toppling the drone.

  Leading her troops toward their next victim, her luck ran out fast. This drone had learned that these thinly-clad soldiers weren’t harmless. It dipped an arm low, with wicked speed, and lanced her through with a curved length of metal that looked like an insect’s killing spike.

  In a moment of final vengeance, she did manage to set off her grav-grenade, destroying the drone and two of her troopers who were sawing at its leg hydraulics. The death made me smile. She had gone out in style.

  When the last of the drones was destroyed, we huddled in the flaming streets and took stock of things.

  “What have we got? Harris, you still alive?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got nineteen heavy troopers I’d call effective—but Jamison is kind of burned up in his armor…”

  “Good enough. Leeson?”

  “Four weaponeers are still in the fight. Most of my bio people and techs are still alive. They scattered like hens when the firefight started. Both my ghosts were fried—that means the enemy can see through stealth, sir.”

  “Noted…”

  “McGill? McGill! Report, Centurion!”

  It was Fike again. How could I have forgotten about that asshole?

  “Sir!” I said, tuning to his frequency. “Good news! The locals set up a little welcome-wagon for us, but we—”

  “Why the fuck are the streets on fire, McGill? I walked away from the orbital console not fifteen minutes ago to attend a meeting aboard ship, and when I returned to examine the scene I learn that you’ve laid waste to the town!”

  “Now hold on a second, sir. The enemy did that to themselves. Review the vids.”

  “I don’t have to. I should have known that sending you into a hot zone would result in monumental destruction.”

  “You’ve got the right end of that, sir,” I agreed. “A Legion Varus man is really only good for one or two things—and neither of them is called ‘diplomacy’.”

  “All right… withdraw. Pull back the same way you entered, double-tim
e. We’ll have to come up with another approach. Fike out.”

  These were welcome orders, and we followed them with gusto. We raced out of the burning town, dragging our wounded along with us. Long before we reached the entrance, a lifter came roaring down and squashed a half-dozen people’s homes.

  We hustled aboard and lifted off with a gush of flame and radiation. I thought the extraction was a little rude, but I appreciated the gesture from Fike. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort after all.

  -38-

  Thousands of Legion Varus troops, along with a full supporting legion of Blood Worlders, had surrounded the Shadowlander town. It looked like a siege—because it was.

  Our lifter didn’t take us back up into space. Instead, it did a little hop out of the middle of the Shadowlander town and landed at the encircling Legion Varus encampment.

  “Fike’s really going for it,” Leeson said. “I hope one of those cute agent-girls doesn’t come along and assassinate him, too.”

  I glanced at Leeson, who grinned back. It was really inappropriate to be talking in such a manner about our new CO, but everybody was doing it anyway.

  Fike was untested at this level of leadership. He knew how to handle an op, sure. He’d even led large formations of troops in support of several campaigns. All of that was fine and dandy, but true responsibility for a campaign on an interstellar level was something else again. Not since distant times, back when the Earth hadn’t been fully mapped out yet, had local military commanders been saddled with such vast freedom to screw up.

  An Earth legion commander was on his own—literally. In most cases, he was hundreds of lightyears and weeks of travel time from home. There were faster-than-light communications options, but they weren’t continuously monitored from afar. Because of the distance and time-lag in our chain-of-command, the officer in charge on the ground had to make independent decisions that were both political and military.

  A leader who was good at such things was valuable indeed, but in Fike’s case, the jury was still out.