Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (20 page)

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The noncoms and officers of the cavalry cohort met together before we dropped. Winslade walked around a central tactical display, skinny arms behind his back, hands clasped. He had the look of a primus, at least, but I still didn’t buy the idea that he knew what he was doing. He hadn’t earned that from me.

The rest of the troops around me were mostly battle-hardened officers. They looked at Winslade with even more disdain than I did.

I knew the first time we’d dropped under this gentleman’s command hadn’t won him any points. The entire thing had been a fiasco. He’d stayed hidden under the lifter while we ran around blindly all over an unknown landscape like a bunch of kids in grandma’s cellar. Hell, it had taken us
days
just to cross a river. After that, things had gone downhill. We’d ended up taking heavy losses and getting chased off the surface again, accomplishing pretty much nothing at all.

While I’d been down there, these details hadn’t been so easy to see. After all, I hadn’t been the one in command. I’d followed my orders and marched my squad around to the best of my ability. The strategy hadn’t seemed clear to me, but I’d thought at the time that maybe it was because I was new to the role of squad leader.

But after talking to others like Graves and Leeson, who were much quicker to judge than I’d been, I could see now the whole thing had been a gigantic charley-foxtrot from start to finish.

Now Winslade was doing his little walk around the tactical display and making a pompous speech in front of about a thirty sets of unfriendly eyes. He didn’t seem to notice that we weren’t in love with him. Maybe he was used to that.

“Soldiers,” he said, “we’ve been asked to return to the surface of Gamma Pavonis. This invasion will be different. Last time, we were dropping to evade an enemy attack on our ships. This time, we have a clear goal.”

He swept a skinny finger down to point at the three dimensional map. The section he pointed at lit up. A small spike in the landscape was at the center of the region he’d indicated.

“See this startling geographical formation? It’s a steep mountain near the equator. Now that we’ve had time to carefully survey the planet surface after many orbits, we’ve identified this region as possessing a heavy concentration of titanium ore. Unfortunately, the squids also took the time to analyze the same data. This was their chosen landing spot. The troops they dropped onto the surface ended up here.”

His words sparked my interest. I knew that our Imperial ships were built largely with titanium. The metal was light and extremely strong, making it a perfect choice for a ship’s hull. With a lead coating to keep out the gamma rays and a few layered electromagnetic shields, you could fly through space in safety and comfort inside a titanium ship.

The trouble with titanium, however, was its rarity. A big mine with a high yield would be extremely valuable to Earth.

“Not only,” Winslade continued, “is the ore here plentiful, it’s very rich and pure. We’ll hardly have to smelt it. Obviously, the squids want this same resource and have moved to take control of it upon landing.”

The officers and veterans around me were stirring. I could see their overall attitude shifting. As mercenaries, we were aware of the value of things. We understood fighting for material gain. A big mountain made of pure titanium ore? That had the troops licking their chops all up and down the line.

Winslade surveyed the assembled officers and noncoms for the first time. He allowed himself a sly smile. I could tell he was reading them the way I had. They were no longer thinking about how he’d gotten so many of them killed the last time he’d dropped them on this foggy rock. Now they were thinking of bringing home a treasure to Earth.

“I needn’t tell you,” he said, lowering his voice, “how much this metal will mean to our home world. Back on Earth right now, Hegemony is buying up interstellar shipments of rare metals, and they’re having a tough time of it. Freighters are shying away from Frontier 921. They don’t want to venture this far out. The saurian princes of Steel World, our best local suppliers, are still unhappy with Earthlings and refuse to trade with us. Rumors of piracy and outright rebellion all along the fringe of the Empire are rampant as well, making longer distance runs by traders problematic.”

That part about piracy was news to me. My eyes widened upon hearing such a thing was possible. How could the Empire allow these violations? I knew the answer, of course, as soon as I’d mentally asked myself the question. The civil war in the Core Systems had changed everything. That was the source of the problem. No one was minding the store out here on the frontier—no one but Earth, that is.

All my life I’d grown up in a very orderly political universe. At the top of the food chain were the Galactics. Races of beings that were so far removed in power and stature from Earthlings that we might as well have been pond scum to them—and pond scum from a rather small pond at that.

But things had changed. The Empire was eating itself from within. The word was that things hadn’t gotten any better over recent years in the Core of the galaxy as the conflict spread and progressed. The Mogwa, the particular race of Galactics who “owned” our local province, were nose deep in the war, just like the rest of them. They were slinging ships at other powers, wasting their strength on petty squabbles over who had the right to rule a thousand stars, give or take. They were losing an empire to win an argument.

In the meantime, out here on the frontier, things were becoming more lawless all the time.

Winslade said something else then, something that jarred me out of my reverie.

“There’s another angle to this,” he said. “A more personal angle. One that involves every one of you in this room.”

He had our attention. I couldn’t imagine how anything about dropping down again onto a planet Carlos lovingly called “fart-world” was going to personally engage me, but I was willing to listen.

“We need this metal to keep building dragons and other, larger machines we’ve been planning with those tech wizards out on Dust World. The primary component of their chassis is titanium. A fair amount of it has been mined on Dust World, but nowhere near enough to sustain serious production levels.”

Graves lifted a hand. Winslade called on him without hesitation. “Why would the Dust World colonists be our suppliers? And why does this involve us personally, as you claimed earlier?”

“Good questions,” Winslade said. “As I understand it, the colonists had originally planned to build their own ship, possibly to use it to escape their desert planet. A grim thought, from our perspective as humans. They might have violated yet another Galactic Law and gotten our species erased. But in any case, they’re our modern munitions producers because they haven’t been stunted technologically for generations by the Empire. In some ways, they’re more advanced than we are.”

“And the personal interest part, sir?” Graves asked.

“Do you want to go back to the infantry, Centurion Graves?”

“No, sir. But this hardly seems the moment to make public threats toward my career path.”

Winslade fanned away the words with his thin fingers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. What I’m trying to say is that the continued existence of this cavalry cohort, and others like it, depends on these metals. We need a surplus just to replace the dragons we’ve already lost. The fleet wants it all.”

We looked at Winslade thoughtfully. Everyone was a little shocked. The words “I’m sorry” had never been in his vocabulary before. I felt an urge to ask a follow-up question. In fact, I almost raised my hand—but I didn’t. Maybe it was my recent promotion, or maybe it was an onset of newfound wisdom, but whatever the case, I stayed quiet. Graves was asking the right questions, and it was his prerogative to do so as the senior centurion, second in command of the cohort under Winslade.

“I see my words aren’t lost on you,” Winslade said, studying our faces. “I know you aren’t confident in me as your commander—not yet. But you like your dragons, don’t you? All I hear is praise for the hardware. Look how it performed in this last conflict. Without the dragons, an all-infantry force would have been decimated by the native machines.”

We couldn’t dispute his statements. They were demonstrably true, and they praised us at the same time. Who could argue with that?

“So,” Winslade continued, “we’re not going to take this ten thousand meter tall rocky spire for Turov. We’re not going to take it for Earth! We’re going to take it so we can fight in these walking dragons. Unlike our bodies, the dragons must be manufactured and shipped from lightyears away. In order to remain viable, we need a cheap supply of raw materials. Otherwise, this experiment known as a cavalry cohort will be a footnote in the Hegemony textbooks.”

Wait a second… Had he just said
a ten thousand meter high spire?

I looked at the map again, a frown growing on my face. Yes, I could see the scale now. On the map, the central mountain in question looked small, no bigger than a man’s nose on an otherwise smooth face. But that was because the display depicted a vast planetary surface.

Ten thousand meters.
Holy crap... That was going to be quite a climb.

Winslade went on then with assignments, timetables and launch codes. After about a half hour, he dismissed us. But he called out to Graves before doing so.

“Centurion,” he said. “I wish to have a word, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly, primus,” Graves said, standing stiffly while others filed away. The rest headed down to the dragon bays, planning to pass the briefing summary to their troops.

I hung back, wondering what Winslade was going to say to Graves. I still didn’t trust the man. I trusted him nowhere near as far as I could throw his skinny carcass—which I estimated would have been a pretty good distance.

Winslade eyed me sidelong. “I see your chief ape is reluctant to leave. I’m flattered.”

It took me about a second to realize I’d been insulted—sort of. The title “chief ape” had its appeal, after all, but I didn’t think he meant it that way. Personally, I would have given that title to Harris or Sargon. They weren’t as tall as I was, but were about as strong and mean.

Winslade beckoned to me. “Come on over here, ape. If you’re going to listen, you might as well do it without straining your huge ears.”

I walked back to stand beside Graves. Winslade had a strange look in his eye. He appeared thoughtful. I couldn’t recall having seen that expression on this man’s face before.

“I owe both of you a great deal,” Winslade said. “You both were instrumental in saving my command. Correspondingly, I’ve recommended you both receive a commendation.”

Graves and I blinked at him, stunned.

“Did I hear that right, sir?” I asked. “You’re telling Hegemony to give us a medal?”

“Yes. I doubt the request will go through, however. There is a non-neutral party between myself and Hegemony who must approve, and I doubt the motion will get past her desk.”

He eyed us. We all knew he was talking about Turov.

“Still,” Graves said, “it’s the thought that counts, sir.”

“Not really, but I’m glad you feel that way. There is another remedy. When Tribune Drusus is eventually revived, I’ll ask him to give you Legion Varus’ medal of valor. You’re still part of Varus as the cavalry cohort is attached to your old legion. I believe he may like you two more than…others do.”

“Uh…” I said, “Did I just hear that right? Are you saying Drusus
still
hasn’t been revived? It’s been days, sir!”

“That’s correct. It has been.” Winslade didn’t say anything else about it. He dismissed us with a wave of his hand.

We left together, and out in the hallway, following the glowing arrows that had appeared on the deck, I turned toward the dragon bays. The arrows weren’t displaying emergency colors but were meant to guide troops through the ship to their appropriate destinations. The red arrows were meant for me as I was a combat-arms soldier.

Graves walked with me down the passage.

“That was weird,” I said to him.

“Indeed it was. I never would have thought it could come to this.”

“Come to what, sir?”

“I’m having second thoughts about Winslade. He barely knows what he’s doing, but he’s willing to admit that you and I helped him out. That’s a serious first step in a commander. What’s more, he did a fairly good job of motivating his cohort to fight hard on this new invasion attempt. He tried to provide us with a personal stake in the battle. I don’t recall Turov ever doing that.”

Still frowning, I nodded in agreement.

“But sir,” I said, “what’s bothering me most is this business about Drusus. He should be back on the line by now. There’s no excuse for leaving him in limbo for three days.”

Graves chuckled. “There’s always an excuse. Hell, for all we know he’s been revived several times and declared a bad grow. I wouldn’t be surprised if Turov herself was personally recycling him with a grin on her face.”

I winced at that horrible image. The revival machines didn’t always reproduce a functional human body. Sometimes people came out wrong and had to be put down and grown again. I’d been declared a bad-grow on a few occasions, but I’d managed to convince people to let me keep breathing until events halted my life yet again.