Blood World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 8) Read online

  Carlos was our bio specialist, which made him the team’s medic. For the first time, the thought impinged upon me that our small group did make up a full combat team. We had Kivi as our tech, Carlos as our bio, Harris and me to lead and Sargon as our veteran, the heavy-weapons man. All we needed to form a full squad was enough regular troops to fill out the ranks.

  Could that be an accident? I didn’t think so. Primus Graves wouldn’t have flown all the way out to Georgia Sector to apologize in advance for something that was happening at random.

  What had he called us? Group Nine? That title seemed chilling now, in retrospect. Group Nine didn’t sound military, it sounded like something a nerd would call a hapless batch of lab rats.

  We walked across the landing pad and approached the elevators. We were challenged by guards, checked thoroughly, and shunted onward into Central itself.

  The elevator dinged and we all watched as the doors slid open. The metal box that was to take us all the way down to the vaults was a special one. It was bigger, dirtier, and even more dimly lit than the regular elevators.

  I’d been down to the vaults before. Instead of carrying people up to the lofty offices of the highly ranked, this elevator took you down instead—more than five hundred floors down—to where the Earth itself began to get hotter.

  As we filed into the elevator, Winslade stepped to one side and crossed his arms. I reached out and put an arm around his shoulders. He frowned at this.

  “Unhand me, Centurion.”

  “Winslade,” I said quietly, “if I find out you led us here and set us on a one-way trip into an incinerator, you know what I’m going to do?”

  “Apologize?” he asked.

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  “I’m coming with you, fool! Stand aside!”

  He stalked into the elevator, pressed the last button on the list, and crossed his arms again. Harris and I glanced at one another in surprise. Oddly, although neither of us liked Winslade, the fact he was coming along for the ride did help put us at ease.

  “Sorry, Primus,” I said.

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be when I jot down some special notes on your next performance report.”

  I kept my mouth shut after that. Despite our long history, I felt like I’d overstepped the bounds of good taste. After all, he was my superior officer—only by one rank, but that was enough.

  We had an odd relationship, just as so many people did in Legion Varus. Among legionnaires, rank was respected—but it wasn’t everything. I suspected that had to do with our lengthy service and our many difficult deployments.

  The elevator lurched into motion at last. It hummed and made grinding noises. Our ears cracked repeatedly as we descended, and no one said much.

  “Uh, sir?” Harris asked Winslade at last.

  “What is it now?”

  “If we’re going down into some kind of an experimental operation, well, I’m beginning to expect the action will involve a teleport suit.”

  Harris’ idea gave me pause. A teleport mission...? I hated those. I’d been on quite a few, and they were rarely as fun as they sounded.

  “But now that I think about it,” Harris mused, “I’m not sure that a teleport mission adds up…”

  “Why not?” Winslade demanded. “Get to the point, please.”

  To me, he sounded nervous.

  “Well…” Harris began slowly, “no offense, Primus, but why would you be coming along? I mean, a commando raid doesn’t need brass.”

  “Who said we were going on some kind of teleport raid in the first place?”

  I finally spoke up. It was in my nature to do so.

  “Harris is right. This whole thing is strange, even for Legion Varus. If you’ve been briefed, sir, now’s the time to start talking. We weren’t born yesterday. We’re hundreds of meters underground and going deeper. It’s not like we’re going to tell anyone.”

  Winslade shifted his eyes from one questioning face to the next. He opened his mouth then closed it again.

  “The truth is,” he said, “I don’t know what all this is about. Admittedly, I’m higher ranked than anyone on this so-called ‘team’, but I’m still in the dark—the same as the rest of you.”

  “You don’t even know why you’re here, in particular?” I pressed. “I can understand everyone else in the group. We each have a functional purpose. But you, sir? You’re brass—no offense.”

  “None taken,” Winslade said, each word spoken with slow bitterness. “But no, I’m unaware of the reasons for my involvement. There was some mention of weight, I believe… An issue of balancing—something like that.”

  We all exchanged baffled glances. Kivi, our tech, spoke up next.

  “Weight…” she mused. “Could they have been talking about displacement? That sounds like teleportation again.”

  “Maybe, but—” Harris began, but he was cut off.

  The elevator door had dinged.

  We all looked at it expectantly, but it didn’t open right off.

  We waited for a few more tense seconds, but it still didn’t open.

  “Something’s wrong,” Kivi said.

  My eyes drifted to the panel, then the indicator lights. “It’s says we’re at the vault level. End of the line. Why won’t it open?”

  “Maybe this is part of the test,” Sargon suggested. “You want me to force this thing open, Centurion?”

  “No,” Primus Winslade commanded quickly. “Let’s avoid damaging government property like a pack of apes, shall we? Tech, check the panel, please.”

  Kivi advanced. She touched the panel with her arm, checked her tapper then gave a gasp of surprise.

  “What now?” Winslade demanded.

  “Check your tappers,” she said urgently. “All of you.”

  We did. They were all blinking the same yellow lightning-bolt icon at us. We’d been disconnected from the grid.

  “Is that just because we’re down here so far underground?” Carlos asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kivi said. “There should be routers down here to relay our signals. James? What do you remember about being down here in the past?”

  I looked blank. “Uh… it’s been a long time. But I don’t recall a problem with my tapper.”

  “They’re screwing us already,” Carlos said with certainty. “No messages. No one to call for help. I bet a revive request would just bounce.”

  “Open that panel and fix it, tech,” Winslade ordered.

  While Kivi broke out her portable computer and interfaced with the elevator’s control unit, Sargon gave me a meaningful glance. I shrugged in return.

  I knew what he was thinking: was I in operational command or was Winslade? He had the rank, but I had the experience. If something was wrong down here in the secret vaults under Central, I had the superior skills to deal with it.

  But I shrugged briefly in response to Sargon’s unspoken question. I had no grounds to usurp Winslade. For the time being, for good or for ill, he was in charge.

  Kivi turned back to us, frowning. Her mouth opened to speak—but she never made her report concerning the status of the panel.

  At that moment, something big—something heavy—rammed into the elevator doors on the far side.

  We didn’t know what it was, but we could hear it, and we could see what it was doing.

  The metal doors made a crumping sound and dented inward, forming a diagonal line of bulging steel nearly a meter long in the dead center of the closed doors.

  Outside, we could hear heavy thumping, like massive feet in rapid motion. A grunting, woofing sound followed.

  “Something’s out there!” Kivi said, scrambling away from the door.

  “Ya think?” Carlos asked. “Get back to that panel. Take us up a level or two!”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Maybe this is the experiment Graves mentioned.”

  “Yeah, right…” Carlos said, “I’m sure it is—and I’m equally sure it’s gone totally wrong.”
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  “Too bad we’re unarmed,” Winslade said, breathing hard.

  I glanced around the group. Hard eyes met mine.

  Another crump sounded, and the door dented in further. This time, the line that pressed into the elevator car didn’t intrude as deeply, but it did form a faint “X” by crossing the first line at an angle.

  I nodded to my team.

  “Okay,” I said, “pull out whatever you’ve got. No one is going on report.”

  All of the Varus people, except for Winslade, produced weapons. It was in our blood, our psyche, to travel armed these days.

  A hidden razor popped out of my boot. Kivi slid a wand out that crackled with a shimmering nimbus of power.

  “EMP?” I asked her, “or is it a shock-rod?”

  “Both,” she said with a wicked smile. “I designed it myself to fit into a make-up kit.”

  “Excellent,” Winslade said, looking around with approving glances. We all had some kind of blade, stunner, or other deadly item. He looked at Carlos last and frowned.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the long, shining wire in the bio’s hands.

  “It’s dental floss,” Carlos said. “You want me to give you a cleaning?”

  “That won’t be—”

  The crumping sound came again. This time, the door gave way.

  A massive head rammed its way into the elevator car with us. Kivi screamed and fell, as she’d been closest to the control panel.

  “It’s a jugger!” Harris roared in shock. “How could a jugger be down here?”

  The head lunged from side to side, trying to bite people. We instinctively threw ourselves backward and away from it. Kivi, using her feet to kick at it, got a boot caught up in those jaws. The jugger ripped away the boot and chewed on it in excitement.

  Then the head pulled back and out of view.

  Breathing hard, we lined the rear walls of the elevator.

  “What in the holy fuck is going on?” Harris demanded.

  “I think I know,” Carlos said. “They put a jugger down here to ambush us. Maybe it got loose, or maybe we took too long to come out of that door and feed it dinner. Whichever, we’re good and screwed in here. No way this elevator is going back up with the door all folded in like that.”

  “We’ll have to exit this car,” I said. “If we can get to the next one down the line, maybe we can ride it back up.”

  “Screw that noise,” Harris said. “We have sticks and knives, here. If we crawl outside of this car, it will eat us one at a time.”

  “What do you suggest, then, Adjunct?”

  Harris’ eyes drifted upward to the roof of the elevator. “There’s a small access door up there. Probably for maintenance. The lightest of us could crawl up top and—”

  “An excellent suggestion,” Winslade said. “Kivi, as our resident lightweight—”

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “You weigh about the same as I do, Primus. You’ve probably got more arm-strength, too.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Carlos chuckled.

  Winslade cast him a withering glance. “Very well. I’ll go up first and see what can be done. If we can reach the next elevator down the line, just possibly—”

  The jugger appeared to get bored with waiting for us to come out. He rammed his head into the hole again, snapping and making everyone jump. His small forearms worked on the thin metal that held him back, peeling it away from his neck.

  “Don’t let him get in here!” I shouted. “Attack him! Stab for the eyes!”

  My razor came at him from one side, Kivi’s shock-stick lashed at the other. The jugger whipped his head from side to side, which served to work his shoulders in a fraction deeper. He threatened us, slashing the air with his four-inch fangs.

  I opened up a bleeding line in his upper lip. Kivi teased one nostril, and there was a bright flash and a cracking sound.

  The jugger’s eyes flew wide, and they focused on Kivi. He let out a deafening roar and pulled his head back again.

  “You’ve been marked for death, girl,” I said.

  “I think so…” she agreed.

  We all breathed hard and stared from a crouched position for the next minute or so. Outside, silence reigned.

  “Someone check that hole,” Winslade said. “See if the monster is still stalking around out there in the corridor.”

  “Someone?” Carlos asked.

  Winslade looked at him. “Oh… right. This group never volunteers for anything. You do it,” he said, pointing at Carlos.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re useless,” Harris barked at him, “and you brought dental floss to a dinosaur fight.”

  “I’m going, I’m going…” Carlos said, and he crept to the ripped-apart door.

  He rammed an arm through and yanked it back quickly. He checked his fingers, and smiled. “All still there.”

  “Scout and report, Specialist!” Winslade urged him.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Carlos shoved his head into the opening. He looked quickly from side to side then pulled back again.

  Kivi let out her breath next to me. Maybe she still cared about Carlos—a little.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Carlos whispered. “Coast looks clear.”

  “Winslade?” I asked quietly. “It’s now or never, sir.”

  “Right… Leg me up, Sargon.”

  Winslade moved with grace when he was lifted bodily into the air. The cargo elevator was taller than most, but with Harris and Sargon each holding up a leg, Winslade managed to shimmy up and out of the car.

  “He’s probably going to escape and leave us here,” Carlos said in a low tone. “You guys know that, don’t you?”

  No one replied. The thought had occurred to everyone already.

  Listening underneath the open hatch, we heard Winslade grunting and scrabbling up there like a roof-rat.

  “What do you see, Primus?” Harris called up through the hatchway.

  “A lot of cables, dirt, and grease,” he said. “Hold on… yes, there is another car nearby. The top hatch appears to be open… I think I can make it, but if one of these cars starts to move on its own, I’m dead for sure.”

  “That would be a crying shame, sir,” I shouted up the hatch. “But we’re kind of running out of time down here and…”

  “I know, I know…”

  We heard him leap then. He landed with a thump and a grunt of effort.

  “He’s on the second elevator,” Carlos said. “He has to be.”

  “Oh no…” I heard Winslade say faintly from above.

  “What’s wrong, Primus?” I called up to him.

  “I’m at the second elevator, but I’m afraid it’s no good to us,” he shouted.

  “Why not?” demanded Harris loudly.

  “Because it’s full of dead legionnaires. What’s more, they’re wearing dragon’s head patches. Legion Victrix troops. Sorry bastards.”

  We all looked at one another in shock.

  “Did I call it, huh?” Carlos demanded. “Did I call it, or what? This is all bullshit. We’re guinea pigs down here. Dead guinea pigs!”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, “but I’m not giving up, because I don’t want to die in the jaws of this dino. Anyone want to go throw themselves into that monster’s mouth and maybe choke it on the way down? That strategy appears to have worked out for Victrix.”

  No one volunteered.

  “Okay then. Juggers are dumb, let’s be smarter. How are we going to survive?”

  They looked at one another. Kivi spoke up first.

  “We need better weapons. If that group in the next elevator was wiped out, that means the thing managed to get inside and kill them eventually.”

  “Primus?” I called, shouting up through the access hatch. “Is there anything interesting inside that elevator with the bodies?”

  “Yes,” he called back. “I’m way ahead of you, McGill. There’s a gun on one of them. I’m going to try for it.”
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br />   “Good. Be careful, sir!”

  The rest of us exchanged glances. Kivi frowned at me.

  “You shouldn’t have encouraged him. He’ll get killed.”

  “So what?” Carlos asked. “He’s been as useful as tits on a boar so far.”

  “Shut up,” I told them all. “Sargon, stand near the breach, on the right side.”

  “Why?”

  “In case Winslade can’t get back using the hatches. He might have to—”

  Right about then, we heard thumping feet and panting breath. It was coming from the other side of the elevator door.

  “Sargon! Get ready to pull him in!”

  Sargon stood at the hole, and I moved forward to the other side.

  Winslade’s hands appeared first, and we grabbed them and lifted him through the hole. He dropped the laser pistol he’d brought along, and it clattered on the floor of the elevator.

  Winslade made it about halfway when he appeared to get stuck. Sargon’s muscles bulged, and I could tell he was about to rip the man through the hole.

  “Hold on,” I said, “you’ll cut him up bad on that metal.”

  “That’s right, you oaf,” Winslade said. “My boot is stuck, that’s all. Let me work it free, and—”

  Winslade broke off, and his words changed into a cry of alarm. His head turned, looking back through the hole he’d been wriggling through.

  A gurgling sound, low and deep, came from a throat that wasn’t human.

  The jugger was back.

  “Pull me!” Winslade cried. “PULL!”

  We pulled. We pulled hard. But the jugger already had a firm grip on Winslade’s kicking legs.

  Winslade slid forward, and sharp metal rasped on his belly and ribs. His clothes were sliced away in lines. Blood began to well.

  Then he slid backward again, yanked into the dark corridor with incredible force. Sargon and I were nearly pulled off our feet.

  Winslade’s eyes bulged in shock and pain. He seemed beyond words now. He was in a state of agony, shock, and terror. I could only think, in those desperate moments, that a billion creatures had died in a similar fashion throughout history. That being eaten alive by something huge with massive jaws and incredible strength couldn’t have been an uncommon way to go out even for humans in centuries past.