Dust World Read online

  Instinctively, I resisted the robot. It’s just something in me, I guess. I could stand a bio driving what amounted to a metal spike into my guts, but having a robot molest me—that was too much.

  The machine managed to get my chest-wrap open. We didn’t have shirts, not exactly. Legion uniforms were fairly dumb as smart-clothes went. They only knew enough to fit a man’s form and hug up against him, adhering to skin and other smart-cloth.

  Having the robot rip my shirt open was too much for me. I was already sore, pissed off and hot. I narrowed my eyes at the skinny bundle of metal sticks.

  I figured that someone had to be watching—this wasn’t my first rodeo—so I decided not to attack the bot directly. Instead, I grabbed its right hand, pushed against its right shoulder, and simultaneously swept my foot behind it, stepping on its power cord. It was a judo move tailored for the target enemy.

  The effect was quite gratifying. The robot lost its balance and flipped onto its back. It crashed onto the floor with a jangling sound I quite enjoyed.

  “Test failed!” shouted a voice from a hidden speaker.

  I looked around but still didn’t spot the camera. The tent was hotter than ever, but I was frowning now and becoming stubborn.

  “Sir? How did I fail the test, sir?”

  “We aren’t playing Q and A. Exit the tent, soldier!”

  I didn’t budge. “Your robot seems to have malfunctioned,” I said.

  The robot tried to get up, servos whining. I kept my foot on its cord, so it couldn’t stand.

  “You struck the machine,” said the voice. “That’s a clear demonstration of malice right there. I’m calling that intolerance under mild stress and discomfort. Test failed.”

  “I repeat, your robot has malfunctioned,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, even cheerful. Sure, I felt like belting the owner of that voice, but I spoke pleasantly and even managed to inject a note of concern into my tone. “I tried to catch it as it fell. Maybe the heat was too much for the machine.”

  There was silence for about ten seconds. Taking a chance, I stooped over the robot and appeared to be trying to help it. In reality, I groped its chest panel until I found a set of hair thin wires. I gave them a little tug, and the robot stopped struggling.

  A moment later, a rustling sound made me turn around. A small, portly woman with blonde hair and twisted lips came in. She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. She was a tech, a type of enlisted specialist that worked with advanced equipment—like robots.

  “This automated unit checked out two hours ago,” she said in concern. “Why isn’t it operating now? What did you do, Specialist?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it has a faulty balance gyro. I didn’t hit the thing—it just fell down.”

  She glared at me, then checked out her robot. Her face changed from anger to concern. “It’s lost power…”

  “Like I said—”

  She stood up suddenly and put her finger in my face. “You’re one of those clowns from Varus, aren’t you?”

  I slapped the patch on my shoulder. “I wear the wolf’s head with pride, Specialist.”

  Cursing, she dragged her robot away. I offered to help, but the tech waved me back.

  “Just keep away from my equipment. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to pass you. That’s the worst thing I could do…yeah, you’re getting an A-plus, asshole!”

  I frowned and, not knowing what to make of her threats, I exited the tent immediately. Outside I sucked in gulps of cool air in the open Hall.

  I saw a familiar face just coming out of another tent. The girl’s name was Kivi. It had been a few months since I’d seen her, and she was a sight for sore eyes. She had that classic short-girl body: short limbs, but with plenty of curves. Her hair was curly and her eyes were quick. She was from the Mideast somewhere originally, and right now she looked hot in more ways than one.

  I couldn’t help smiling as I ran my eyes over her. She was in a state of undress and struggling to get her smart-clothes to adhere to her body again.

  Her eyes flicked over to me, and she caught me watching her. She smiled.

  “You made it through the test?” she asked me.

  “Of course,” I said, having no real idea what the test had been about.

  She pursed her lips. “I’m kind of surprised. Did the robot undress you completely?”

  I blinked, then I caught on. So that’s what it had been trying to do. “I let it,” I said, “just the way I was supposed to.”

  “You’ve changed, then.”

  She walked toward me and began flicking at my specialist patch. She didn’t have one.

  “Looks like we might not be in the same unit any longer,” she said.

  “We’ll have to see,” I said. I lifted up a hand and touched her elbow. It just felt like a natural thing to do.

  Kivi and I had been intimate on a number of occasions. We’d broken up long ago, but several months apart tends to make a man forget about whatever it was that had pissed him off in the first place.

  She smiled up at me shyly, but I wasn’t fooled. Kivi didn’t have a shy bone in her body.

  “I passed, according to the tech,” I said, “but I don’t know why the hell they would give us such a freaky test in the first place.”

  “I’m not sure. But I’ll bet we’re heading somewhere hot and wet.”

  I thought about that, and nodded. “Testing how easily we’re irritated by heat and pressure?”

  “I guess.”

  “You feel a little warmed up,” I said, looking down at her and smiling again. “How about we go get a cool drink before these Hegemony bastards torture us some more?”

  “Good idea,” she said, and we headed up a short flight of steps to the ring of booths that surrounded the central testing area. Half the booths were occupied by various legion representatives while the rest seemed to be concession stands selling things.

  I bought Kivi a beer and we drank fast. You never knew how long you had before you were caught goofing off in Legion Varus.

  As it turned out, I was just lowering my face toward hers to kiss her when my tapper buzzed on my arm.

  I could tell hers was going off too. She winced a little. The vibration under your skin never felt right. Most of us had them set so that they only made tones or flashed colors on the skin. But legion rules were clear: we had to have them set to vibrate for emergency incoming orders.

  She raised my arm to eye my tapper, which I’d had fixed earlier today. When she let it go, I naturally allowed my hand to come down and rest on her shoulder. She smiled and reached up in response, throwing a hand around my neck.

  “Forget about it for a second,” she whispered.

  Then she kissed me, dragging my face down to meet hers. We had a serious height difference…but we’d always managed to find ways to get around it.

  * * *

  The next day went by quickly. We were tested some more, and the tests themselves made me feel suspicious about this mission. Most of the metrics being measured centered on our tolerance for irritation, pain, heat and pressure. Could we take it? The answer for most of us was yes. The legionnaires in Varus weren’t like most of the others I’d run into. We might not be the smartest or the best-equipped, but we could take a beating and keep marching on.

  By the third night, we were tired but not defeated. We were herded aboard a sky-train going to the spaceport sometime after midnight. No one complained. No one said much of anything. We were going off-world and, unlike fresh recruits, we knew that meant we’d be in for a rough ride.

  Fortunately, the officers didn’t play any tricks on my unit on the way up to Corvus. We weren’t here to go through boot camp. We were veterans: flat-faced, dark-eyed. No one smiled or fooled around much. We all had the feeling that we were going to have entirely new reasons to regret signing up before this mission was over.

  Corvus was an amazing sight just as it had been the first time I’d laid eyes on her. Over five kilo
meters long, the ship was of the dreadnaught class. She had sharp angles, sleek lines and acres of burnished metal hull plates that were so long they boggled the mind. Corvus was big enough to carry an entire Earth legion plus a crew of aliens call “Skrull” and all of our equipment. Thousands of troops tramped aboard from dozens of transports which had lifted off from spaceports all around the planet.

  After we’d found our assigned quarters, we were summoned to the mess hall for a unit-wide briefing. I was happy about that, as were most of the rest of my comrades. Often, the brass didn’t bother telling us what we were facing. This time, they’d felt the need was great enough to clue in the grunts.

  “Zeta Herculis,” Centurion Graves said, as if that explained everything.

  He stood at the front of the mess hall with a laser pointer aimed at the wall-screen. Depicted in blazing color was a system with two stars: one was a big K-class with an orangey hue to it, the second was a smaller white dwarf.

  Graves looked around the group, and we stared back blankly.

  “My God, people,” he said. “Don’t they teach you anything in school anymore?”

  Carlos perked up. He couldn’t help it.

  “Yes, sir! They teach us to join the legions and see the stars, sir!”

  Veteran Harris stepped closer to Carlos and loomed over him. I could tell he was angry and dying for a hint from Graves that he should lean on Carlos, but Graves didn’t give him an excuse.

  Carlos’ comment seemed to amuse Graves. He chuckled and shook his head.

  “Yes, I guess that’s all troops come in with. Heads full of happy-talk and lies. But today, we’re going to tell you a little secret: we’re not alone in space.”

  I don’t think a single one of us knew what the hell he was talking about, but we knew enough to keep quiet and stare. Even Carlos kept his mouth shut.

  “That’s right, Earth isn’t alone. There’s another colony out there in space. Right here, in fact.”

  He smacked the wall-screen which comprised one entire end of the mess hall. The wall didn’t even shimmer. It wasn’t a projection, but an image generated by photosensitive organic LEDs sprayed onto the wall itself.

  A murmur swept over us. A lot of hands raised. We were allowed to do that during a briefing if we had a question.

  “Tech Specialist Elkin?” Graves asked, calling on a woman in the front row.

  My eyes searched for her. There she was, sweet Natasha. Like Kivi, I’d had a thing going with her back on Steel World, but it had fallen apart after returning home to Earth.

  Natasha Elkin was quite different from Kivi in manners and appearance. She was soft-spoken but always knowledgeable and confident. Her cheekbones were high, like a girl in a magazine, but her eyes squinched up and disappeared when she smiled. She was tall, with a fit body and a nice face.

  “Sir?” Natasha asked. “Are you talking about the failed exploration mission of 2049?”

  “Ah-ha! Yes, exactly. I’d hoped one of you had heard of it. Nice to have someone with a real education in the room.”

  I was baffled but unsurprised. Natasha had always been something of a brain and a natural teacher’s pet. I had it on good authority that she’d once built her own pet out of artificial parts and been expelled from school for the infraction.

  “For the unenlightened, I’ll explain,” Graves said. “Back in 2049, before even I was born, Earth sent a mission to the stars. The Hydra project.”

  When he said that, a light finally went off in my head. I remembered having read about that mission. People at the time had believed Hydra had triggered the interest of the Galactics in Earth. As far as I could recall, the ship left Earth and was never heard from again.

  “The Hydra mission was to explore and colonize an exoplanet we’d seen only in telescopes at that time,” Graves continued. “All our measurements told us that the world was Earth-like and had large bodies of liquid water. We’ve since found inhabited worlds even closer, but we didn’t know about them at that time.”

  Natasha raised her hand again. I rolled my eyes. She loved showing off when she knew something the rest of us didn’t. Graves called on her.

  “Sir? I thought the mission was lost.”

  “That’s what the official story was. But I’m here to brief you on what really happened—at least, as much as we know. You have to understand that our human-built propulsion systems were woefully inadequate when the ship left. To travel the thirty-odd lightyears to the target star system took more than fifty years in local time.”

  There was as murmur of disbelief around the room.

  “That’s right,” Graves said. “Even given the effects of time-dilation at great speed, we have to assume that people lived and died on that ship before they arrived. Some must have been born en route, and others probably never lived to see the end of the journey. Shortly after they left—right about when the Galactics arrived to graciously invite us into their Empire—we lost contact with the ship. But that was partly by design. The newly formed Hegemony government signaled Hydra to go radio-silent. They were worried that if the Galactics found out we’d already launched a colony ship, we’d be destroyed.”

  I looked around the room. People were frowning, taking it in. This news was big. It was strange to think that Earth had sent out a vessel to the stars without any helpful alien tech. I felt proud just thinking about it. By their faces however, I could tell that to others the thought was disturbing.

  “We didn’t hear from Hydra for about seventy years. A few months ago we finally did get a short message from them, saying the mission had reached their target star, and they’d set up a colony there. Here’s the shocking part: they sent that message to us thirty-five years ago. That means they reached the world in question and have been living there ever since. At least, we think they’re still alive. A lot can happen in thirty-five years.”

  I raised my hand then. I was becoming curious about a key detail that had been left out of the briefing.

  “Sir?” I asked. “What are we supposed to do when we get out there? Who do we have a contract with?”

  Graves pointed at me. “Good question, McGill. What does all this business about a lost colony have to do with Legion Varus? Well, we do have a contract. We’ve been hired to aid the colonists—if they’re still alive, that is.”

  I frowned. It still wasn’t making sense to me. “Aid them? To do what?”

  “We’re not sure. But we’re assuming they need some kind of military support. Maybe they have a civil war on their hands, we aren’t clear on that. They don’t have modern communication systems at this point, so they can’t send messages that travel faster than the speed of light.”

  The Galactic Empire we all lived within was anything but transparent. Every member world only knew as much as they needed to know about the rest of the star systems out there. Earth only sold mercenary contracts to neighbors within a zone about a hundred lightyears across. That was our territory. Beyond that, the star maps were blank in our computers. We were only given information that had been deemed necessary to perform our trade duties—namely, to provide mercenary troops to neighboring worlds.

  “Let me answer your next question before you ask it,” Graves said, looking around the room. “Why do we think our colonists might be under attack? Well, it has to do with Galactic chatter. We monitor local messaging as is within our legal rights. We’ve picked up traffic, messages concerning this star system. It’s our belief that the Galactics have discovered our colony.”

  Natasha had her hand up again. “What if they aren’t under threat? What if they plan to produce mercenaries of their own to compete with Earth?”

  Graves’ face hardened. “In that case, our mission parameters will change. We’ve been charged with discouraging them from engaging in competitive enterprises.”

  Discouraging them. I rolled those words around in my mind. I hoped the colonists weren’t going up against us. Hegemony was already hurting, and I knew that Varus would have to “disco
urage them” with violence. I felt bad for the colonists. What a grim situation they must be in. After spending nearly a century cut off from Earth, they finally make contact and what do we do? Send out a force to discourage them from trading the one thing that might turn them into a productive member of the Empire. It didn’t seem fair.

  “But Centurion Graves,” I blurted out without raising my hand. “Sorry sir, but don’t they have to come up with some kind of trade good? If they don’t—they’ll be erased.”

  Graves looked at me flatly. “Would you rather Earth be erased instead?”

  I thought that one over. “No, sir.”

  Graves straightened up, and I knew he was about to dismiss us. I waved my hand at him one more time.

  Veteran Harris stepped close. I could feel him behind me. It made the skin on the back of my neck crawl.

  Finally, Graves gestured for me to speak.

  “One last question, sir,” I said. “Who hired us to go out there? I mean, if the colonists are just starting out, they don’t have any credits, do they?”

  “No,” he said. “They didn’t do it. Hegemony did. We’re working a contract from them. Essentially, Earth is paying for this trip.”

  “Can we do that?”

  Graves chuckled. “Of course. Any member of the Empire can buy their own goods and services. The Vellusians invented puff-crete, remember? I can assure you that they can, and do, use the stuff themselves.”

  I thought about that, and it made sense. Our legion had to be contracted to take it out of circulation, meaning we couldn’t do any other work at this time. They also had to pay expenses, such as to the Skrull for carrying us out here in Corvus. It seemed odd and expensive, but perfectly legal, to buy your own services. I wondered if we gave ourselves a discount.

  As we filed out of the briefing, I was still frowning in thought. Hegemony was hurting for money, but they’d decided to spend some of their last coins on rooting out a potential rival. Since they were sending out my legion, I didn’t think this was going to end well for the colonists. Varus was only brought out to do the dirtiest of jobs, and this one looked like it was going to be the worst yet: fratricide.