Blood World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 8) Read online

  Grunting, straining and roaring with effort, we pulled on those skinny arms of his. The one I gripped slipped part-way out of the socket, popping and crackling. It had to have broken, but I still hung on. I didn’t want the jugger to get his dinner. Not this time.

  At last, the jugger seemed to give up. Winslade came firing out of the hole like a cork out of a bottle.

  Thrown off balance, Sargon and I fell on our backs.

  For some reason, Kivi chose that moment to start screeching about something. I didn’t get it. I was all smiles.

  Winslade, too, seemed happy. He smiled at me, his teeth bloody.

  “Thanks, McGill,” he said in a faint voice.

  Then the light went out of his narrow eyes, and that’s when I noticed that we only had half of Winslade.

  The other half of him was outside in the corridor, being greedily gulped down by the jugger.

  -5-

  Carlos made the next move, after he gave up trying to resuscitate Winslade. He got up, grabbed the laser pistol Winslade had dropped, and took pot-shots at the monster outside.

  The gun barely glimmered.

  “The charge is gone,” he said in disgust, tossing it aside. “Winslade died for nothing.”

  Everyone looked depressed and desperate after that. We’d been desperate before, don’t get me wrong, but now we were really feeling it.

  “What are we going to do?” Carlos asked. “We can’t get out here. We’re rats in a trap.”

  “Has anyone got something to poison him with?” Kivi asked suddenly.

  We all stared at her for a second.

  “I’m fresh out of cyanide,” Harris said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “Cyanide…” she said, then she got down on her knees and dug in her bag. She produced a cosmetics kit. “There’s cyanide in some cosmetics.”

  “That’s a long shot,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re going to kill this thing with mascara.”

  “Yeah…” she said. “He’s way too big. How about flammables? Anyone got a lighter?”

  No one did. We huddled against the back of the elevator car and sweated. The jugger, for his part, was out there striding back and forth. Now and then, he beat his tail against the door or tried to rip a fresh hunk away from the hole he had made.

  “If he got into the other car,” I asked. “Why doesn’t he just rip his way in here?”

  “Maybe he’s not hungry enough yet,” Carlos suggested.

  His thought didn’t seem to liven the mood any.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, “how about batteries? If we can get him to swallow some, he might not like that.”

  “The batteries in our tappers are small,” Kivi said. “Like the size of a thumbnail.”

  “Yeah… But there’s your computer—”

  “Wait!” Carlos shouted. “I know! That laser pistol!”

  We all looked at it. Kivi knelt and went to work. She had the battery out and bouncing in her hand a moment later.

  “This might work,” she said. “There are dangerous chemicals in here, charged or not.”

  “All right then, we’ve got a plan!” I said.

  “We do?” asked Carlos. “Who’s going to swallow that battery then jump into our scaly friend’s mouth?”

  Looking around the elevator, my eyes landed on Winslade. The others followed me, and Kivi put her hand to her mouth in revulsion.

  For a long moment, no one said anything.

  “I’ll do it,” Carlos said seriously, breaking the silence. “I’m the bio, after all.”

  “I don’t want to watch,” Kivi said, facing the wall.

  Carlos knelt, borrowed my razor, and cut a good-sized chunk out of Winslade. It was grisly, but we’d all seen worse.

  Rolling up the battery in the fresh meat, he handed it to Sargon.

  Looking disgusted, the Veteran nodded. “I’ll deliver it.”

  He stalked to the elevator door. Tapping lightly on the door with his knuckles, he tried to get the jugger to show himself.

  “Here, kitty…” he called.

  Nothing happened for a minute or two.

  “Come on, jugger. I got something good for you here. A snack!”

  “Just throw it outside, Sargon,” Kivi suggested.

  “Yeah…” he said. “I guess I’ll have to.”

  But then, in the moment of his distraction, the jugger rammed his head inside again.

  I’m not sure what went wrong in that moment. Maybe the jugger had been playing with us. Maybe he had been capable of pushing himself farther into the elevator car than he had been letting on all along.

  Either that, or the smell of fresh blood, so near and enticing, had driven him to great efforts.

  In any case, he lunged, ramming his entire head and one grasping forearm into the car with us. That claw latched onto Sargon’s leg and dragged him closer to the snapping jaws.

  The forearm was scaled and thick. It was as big as a fat man’s leg, and much stronger. Sargon was a big man, the strongest in the group, but he couldn’t resist the tug.

  The main problem was one of leverage. He didn’t have anything to hold onto. The floor of the elevator was like the floor of all elevators, smooth and completely devoid of handholds.

  Still, Sargon thrashed and flailed. We rushed in too, trying to help. Kivi whacked the frigger on the nose with her stunner again. That made him hiss and shake, but he didn’t let go of Sargon.

  For his own part, maybe sensing he was doomed anyway, Sargon timed and tossed his package into the snapping jaws. The jugger gulped, and the battery went down.

  That moment of distraction almost fixed everything. Harris and I each hooked our hands under one of Sargon’s armpits, and we lifted and pulled.

  Sargon rose up into the air, pulled in two different directions at once like a wishbone.

  Sensing he might lose the tug-of-war this time, the jugger made a final, desperate play. With Sargon’s body lifted in the air, he twisted his great head, turned, and took a big bite out of the veteran’s guts.

  That was it. Game over. Sargon died and the jugger retreated, enjoying his ill-gotten gains.

  None of us spoke after that. Kivi had tears in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound.

  “How long?” Harris rasped at last.

  “How long until what?” Carlos asked. “How long until we’re all dead?”

  “No, fool. How long until that battery eats a hole in his stomach?”

  “Oh…” Carlos looked thoughtful. “I remember talk of this in medical school… A poisoning involving a twenty millimeter lithium battery takes about two hours to burn through, if it lodges in the esophagus. After that, it can burn into the heart or lungs… This battery is way bigger, but it will still take a while. I’d guess four to ten hours.”

  Harris stared at him, and sweat ran off his face. He nodded. “Better than nothing. But I don’t think we’re going to be alive that long.”

  I thought it over. I thought hard. This whole thing was pissing me off. I wasn’t sure if this was a test, or an accident, or what. No matter what it was, I wasn’t enjoying any of it.

  But most of all, I wanted to win.

  “Listen up,” I said. “This dino is dead in time, so the safe play would be to get everyone up that shaft and on top of the elevator. From there, we might be able to wait all day until he dies.”

  They glanced at the access hatch, and most of them nodded thoughtfully.

  “But,” I said, “let’s think about the other group—those poor Victrix bastards next door. They had a pistol, a better weapon than we had. Does anyone remember what Winslade said? Had they tried to get out of their hatch like we did?”

  “Yeah,” Kivi said. “I remember. He said the hatch was up on their elevator car before he got there.”

  “Exactly. And despite all that, they died.”

  “What’s your point, McGill?” Carlos asked. “Because if it’s just that we’re all as good as dino-shit, I’m with you there.
But that’s not exactly constructive.”

  “My point is this: waiting things out isn’t going to work. Avoiding conflict isn’t going to work. You remember those tests in the Mustering Hall, back in the day? When did passivity ever win an award? Those tests are always rigged. For all we know, that jugger can blast through our door and eat us anytime he wants to. Hiding in here isn’t the way to win.”

  “What then?” Harris asked.

  I pointed at the torn apart hole in the elevator door, and the jugger beyond that stalked the dark corridors.

  “That’s our goal. We’re going to kill that thing. We aren’t going to run from him, or hide from him. We’re going to kill him.”

  All of us slid our eyes toward the dark circle in the center of shredded metal. No one spoke, but we all felt the same urge to violence.

  He was a predator, but humans were born killers, too.

  More importantly, we were pissed-off Varus Legionnaires.

  -6-

  We took careful stock of our weapons. The collection was pitiful.

  “One burnt out laser pistol, no battery,” I said. “One razor—but the jugger didn’t seem to care much when I gave him his first shave with it.”

  “We’ve got my chain,” Harris said, uncoiling the links which wound around his knuckles.

  “And my wire,” Carlos said, stretching it out and letting it snap back. It was housed in a small, circular pack that reminded me of a tape measure.

  “I still have my wand,” Kivi offered, “but the charge is gone.”

  I nodded, looking at each item in turn. My eyes landed on Carlos’ odd weapon.

  “I assume that thing is meant to whip around someone’s throat? To garrote them?”

  “Not just that,” he said. “It’s an alien-made monofilament. It can saw through steel.”

  “Really?” I asked. “How long is it? If you pull it all the way out?”

  “I don’t know… at least two meters.”

  We pulled and pulled. It turned out it was three meters long.

  “Careful,” Carlos complained, “you’ll stretch out the spring inside the housing, and it won’t snap back again.”

  I took it from him, earning myself a frown. I deliberately yanked on it until it came loose from its carrying case. Then I dropped it, and it fell in a tangled mass on the floor. It coiled itself like a snake at our feet.

  “You frigging broke it, McGill!”

  “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  They watched as I tested it and pulled on it experimentally.

  “This is it,” I said. “We can make a noose and set it up like a rabbit-snare.”

  They stared at me without comprehension. I snorted.

  “A bunch of city rats,” I said. “Watch.”

  Making a quick slip-knot, I soon had a shining loop of wire with one long end hanging from my upraised hand.

  “All right,” Harris said, “but how are we going to get it around that monster’s neck?”

  “More importantly,” Kivi added, “how do we tie it to something? We’re in a frigging elevator, here.”

  Looking around at the smooth walls of the elevator, my eyes lit on the hatchway above us.

  “Up there. It’s got to be tied off up there.”

  “Hold on!” Carlos said, shaking his head. “How is this going to work? If that jugger gets far enough into this elevator car to get his head into a loop of wire, he’s going to have to be almost completely inside with us.”

  I eyed the scene, and I nodded. “That’s right. You got a better idea?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  We set it up. Kivi went up onto the roof, fumbling around, and then—I’m not exactly sure what caused it, but the jugger went berserk.

  Was this response due to the creature getting bored? Or had he been tipped off somehow that one of his prey was trying to escape again?

  I recalled that when Winslade had gotten out onto the roof, the jugger had come inside for dinner then, too.

  Kivi screamed, and I think the rest of us howled with her.

  The jugger wasn’t fooling around any longer. Digging with his massive foreclaws, whipping his head from side to side, he managed to ram his way through the widened hole in the door.

  “Tie it off, Kivi!” I shouted. “Tie it off!”

  We’d given her a loop of metal to work with, but who knew if the line would be long enough, or if there would be a flange just the right distance from the hatchway to do the job? None of us had ever been up there, except for Winslade and now Kivi.

  Spreading out, we prepared to die as the jugger forced himself into the elevator car with us. I jumped forward, slashed open his claws, and jumped back. Harris whipped at him with his chain—but neither attack seemed to have any effect.

  Carlos took charge of the noose. He stuck his head through it, and he waggled his tongue at the jugger. He spat at him, called him names, and gave him a good look at his middle finger.

  Juggers aren’t geniuses, but they aren’t animals, either. This one knew that he was being mocked. He came through the door in painful surges, like a demon being born from a metal womb.

  Free at last, he stalked forward, darting his head down in one lunging, snapping bite.

  Carlos, bless his salty heart, offered up his grinning face, right on the other side of that big, shining loop of metal.

  The jugger snapped off his head, and Carlos was dead, just like that. Blood gushed, and the jugger looked satisfied as he gulped the head down.

  “Give it a yank, Kivi!” I shouted.

  She did so, and I saw the noose tighten.

  Alarmed, the jugger did what all creatures do when caught around the neck: he tried to back out. This only pulled the noose tighter, of course.

  The damned thing took a long time to die. That’s the main thing I remember about the long, long minutes that followed.

  Panicking and trying to pull away one moment, then lunging forward to kill us in a rage the next, we got a front row seat. The jugger thrashed and roared. Whenever he got smart and tried to use his stumpy arms to pull away the noose, Harris and I danced in, messing with him, distracting him, making him lunge and snap at us.

  Each time he did so, of course, the noose tightened. Soon, it was cutting into that tough, scaly neck. Blood welled up all around.

  The monster thrashed and fought hard, but eventually, he died.

  Feeling relieved but a bit sick to our stomachs, we retrieved Kivi by helping her climb down out of the ceiling hatch.

  “What do we do now?” Harris asked me.

  “We march out of here. Proud as punch.”

  “What if there are more tests?” Kivi asked. “Or more juggers out there, waiting for us in the dark corridors?”

  “Then we kill them all,” I said confidently.

  Not waiting for a consensus, I walked out of the ruined elevator door, crawling over the jugger’s lengthy tail in order to do so. Standing in the corridor outside, I put my hands on my hips.

  “Group Nine reporting!” I called out. “We had a little trouble on the way down, but we’re ready for that first experiment now!”

  We waited. Thankfully, they didn’t make us wait long. A figure appeared ahead of us and walked up to greet us.

  “McGill?” Graves asked me. “Where’s the rest of your team?”

  “They’re taking a nap back in the elevator shaft, sir. They got bored with your little game.”

  He chuckled. “I like your attitude. I always have. I wish I could tell you this is over, Centurion. That you’ve won the prize—but I don’t like to lie.”

  “Uh…” I said thoughtfully. “So that jugger, he wasn’t the reason you came to my place to apologize in advance?”

  “No.”

  “Can I ask then, Primus, what the point of all this is?”

  “You can, but I won’t answer. Not unless you win. And for your sake, I hope you don’t. The prize sucks.”

  Confused and glancing at one another, we followed him into
the darkened tunnels.

  We passed a dozen elevators, and we saw at least twenty dead legionnaires. There were plenty more in the corridor to step over, too. All of them had been ambushed as we had. In many cases, it appeared that the poor saps had forced open the door early on and gotten themselves slaughtered right off the bat.

  But among all those dead troops, I only counted a single dead jugger: ours.

  That made me proud, no matter how this bullshit was destined to end.

  -7-

  We followed Graves for what felt like a half-mile. The tunnels were dank, dark, and kind of stinky. People don’t always smell too good when they were dying in a state of mortal terror—and giant lizards never do.

  Reaching a station of sorts, we were patted down, sprayed off with cold water from a pressure hose, and then ushered inside. There were grim-faced guards at the entrance.

  “Hogs?” Harris asked. “We’re being hosed down by hogs after all that? That’s an insult.”

  Hogs were what real legionnaires called Hegemony troops. They outnumbered guys like us fifty to one, but as they usually stayed on Earth, we didn’t have much respect for them.

  Harris gave the next hog he saw the bird, but I slapped his hand down.

  “What?” he said, glaring. “Since when do you love the hogs?”

  “I don’t,” I said, “but they’re armed, and we aren’t right now. This might be another test.”

  Grumbling that I’d changed, Harris shut up and followed me. Every step he glowered at the stained puff-crete floor like a dog on his way to the vet’s.

  “Finally,” Graves said when we’d made it through the checkpoint. “This is the center of our diplomatic operation. Please familiarize yourselves—”

  “Say what?” Harris demanded. “Did I hear you right, Primus? How is this a diplomatic operation?”

  “That’s what it’s called. Really, it’s more of a training ground for future diplomats.”

  Even I had to laugh at that. “I can’t wait to see the embassy.”

  “Um, sir?” Kivi asked. “Can I ask what planet is going to be receiving this very special team of diplomats you’re training here?”