Steel World (16 page)

I walked ten paces back toward the wall, and found a fern bush with a fallen log nearby. “Here! Look here!”

“Shhh!” hissed Harris. “Quiet!”

“Sorry. Carlos, come over here and have a look. You were on your knees behind this log when we fought later. But, first, when I met the weird thing, I was standing in this big fern. I used it to hide myself. The alien came out—right there!”

I walked forward and found a spot I felt far more confident was the correct one. I waved for the bios, who reluctantly got up and came to my new position. They were as nervous as cats. They knelt and scooped frantically.

I knelt with them and grabbed a few leaves and scraped soil into my pockets.

A familiar form hulked over me. “Okay, that’s it,” Harris said. “We’re moving out.”

“Just one more minute, please.”

“No-go. Move out or be left behind.”

I got up reluctantly. The bios were already rushing away toward the distant walls.

I looked at Harris. “Your heart really isn’t in this one, is it, Veteran?” I asked.

“Don’t you give me that crap. I’ve been doing this since before you were born.”

I stared at him, wondering if that could be true. Dying and coming back—if you kept getting new bodies, sometimes rolling back a year or more…

“But Veteran,” I said, “what about the aliens? Don’t you care if they take Cancri-9 from us?”

“Tomorrow, a thousand of your freaks might show up, and we’ll know who they are then. Besides, if they’re going to kick us off this world in the end, then this fiasco will probably make no difference.”

“But it
might
make a difference.”

Harris made a frustrated sound. He walked away, and I followed him. I didn’t feel good about it. I wasn’t sure I’d found what had to be found. It was harder than I thought it would be to find a particular spot in the woods—even after I’d died there.

It was then that I heard footsteps. Not human steps but those of something larger and heavier.

No one needed to say anything. They’d all heard it. Maybe it was just one scouting lizard, sniffing us out. Maybe he was as scared as we were…but we ran anyway.

We’d been ordered to retreat, after all, not to engage. I was very glad to have that order to fall back on. We ran like the devil himself was chasing us all the way back to the tall, blue-white walls. The gates opened when we got there then clanged behind us the second I made it through.

I bent and put my hands on my knees. My sides heaved. The air was so thick here—it made it hard to run.

I glanced at Harris and saw he was grinning at me.

“I told you you’d be the last one to drag your sorry ass through that gate,” he said.

I stared at him, and I realized he was right. He’d made sure I was the last man in line. If the lizard had chased us, I was sure I couldn’t have outrun it. The raptor-types were often clocked at better than forty miles an hour. If anyone had died tonight, it would have been me.

I suppressed the urge to shudder. Instead, I straightened up and gave him a tough-guy nod.

He laughed at me. Deciding to ignore him, I followed Adjunct Leeson and the bios back to their lab. It was time to dump dirt out of my pockets and theirs and find out if we’d wasted our time or not.

The bio-lab was interesting. It wasn’t like any other bunker or tent in the camp. It was clearly designed to do serious science. There were machines there—things that didn’t come from Earth. I’d been in here before when I’d been revived, but I hadn’t been in any condition to pay attention to my surroundings then.

“I didn’t know we had stuff like this,” I said.

“Most people don’t,” said the bio working the equipment. It was Anne Grant.

Grant turned away from me to work on her equipment. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties—but in Legion Varus, that could have meant almost anything. She had brown eyes, brown hair, and for the first time I noticed her perfect posterior. I kept a quiet eye on that while she worked.

“Hey,” I said, “I’m sorry about what happened back when we first landed. It was my first drop, my first real combat action. Maybe I could have done better as the point man.”

She sighed. “I wish you hadn’t brought that up.”

“Painful memory? I mean—of course it is. No one likes to die in the mouth of a dino.”

“It’s not that. You did fine given the circumstances. I was at fault. I was in command, and you were a splat. I should have put a more experienced man on point.”

“Well, I just wanted to say—”

“Forget about it, okay?”

“Right,” I said, happy to do so.

There was a brief, awkward silence.

“What’s that one do?” I asked, pointing out the main machine she was working with.

“It compares known genetic strands to anything you give it. We’ve got a lot of samples to run through this baby.”

“Will it know about our alien friend?”

Grant shrugged. “Possibly. This isn’t a first class scanner. The best ones are hooked up to the Galactic databases, cataloging everything known galaxy-wide.”

“Why don’t we have the best?”

She laughed. “This is Legion Varus, and believe it or not, we get one of the biggest budgets from Hegemony that any legion gets for specialized equipment. But a forensics device like that just costs too much.”

I asked if I could stick around while the machine ran the tests, and she said I could. We chatted for quite a while. I found that I liked her, and she seemed to have gotten over her rage at having died during the dino rush when we first landed. Having died myself recently, I now better understood how such an experience could leave one in a bad mood.

When the tests were finished, she read the results carefully. She let out a sigh.

“The tests are inconclusive,” she told me.

I tried to hide my disappointment.

“What’s that mean? Are we out of options?”

“It means that the unit isn’t sure. There is biotic material in the samples—lots of it.”

“Including blood?”

“Yes. But most of that is from known sources. The few unknowns might be alien to this world, or they might be from a species this device can’t identify. The point is, nothing definite showed up that we can say for sure should not be on this world.”

“What’s next?”

“I’ll send the readings up to
Corvus
, and on to Earth. That will take a while. But you know, there is one element we’ve identified with certainty.”

I nodded encouragingly. “Tell me.”

“We found your blood, James.”

I stared at her, uncertain how to take this news. She looked happy about finding my DNA in the jungle dirt.

“Actually,” Grant said, “that’s a good thing. It means you did find the right spot. There are samples we haven’t identified yet—there’s still hope. The problem is we don’t have data on every species indigenous to this world. We’re a combat unit, not a scientific exploration team.”

I nodded, understanding. “Thanks,” I said, and I turned to go.

Grant called me back. “Look, McGill… For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with Harris and Leeson. It was a good mission, it went well, and it needed to be done.”

I gave her a smile, but
I had to wonder if she’d be talking like this if a pack of lizards had eaten her for a second time.

Next, I headed back to my squad’s quarters where people weren’t as happy with me. Kivi was the first one to declare this without any soft-pedaling.

“Hey,” she said, coming up to me and sitting on my bunk. “I hear you’ve been brown-nosing the brass.”

I looked at her in surprise. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

Kivi gave me a hard stare. “The gang has decided collectively that we don’t like special missions. We could have wiped out there hunting for your bug or whatever it was you thought you saw. I’m here to ask you not to do anything like that again—ever.”

I felt an angry heat rising up in me. It usually took a while, but I could get pissed off eventually. “If this kind of situation comes up again, I’ll do the same damn thing. You can bet on that.”

She stood up beside my bunk and ripped open her shirt. The smart cloth struggled in her hands, trying to close again, but she held the two leaves open and flashed her chest at me. I couldn’t help but stare. After a few seconds, she covered herself quickly.

Kivi leaned close and whispered in my ear harshly. “Then you can just forget about getting anything from me when the lights go off around here.”

“All right,” I said. “If that’s how it has to be.”

She stormed away angrily.

I realized we’d just broken up. I told myself I didn’t care—but I did. During training, we’d hooked-up occasionally, when we both felt like it. Every time had been memorable. Now, that was history.

I flopped down on my bunk and stared at the one directly above me. I boiled inside thinking of a hundred rude things to say.

A head popped over the side of the bunk above mine.

“You screwed that up pretty bad,” Carlos observed in a whisper. “I could have kept that going, you know. You went straight-up against her. Never do that with a woman, buddy, especially with a woman who is that hot.”

He turned his head looking after Kivi, then looked back down at me. “In fact, with your permission, I’m going to—”

“Shut up,” I said. “She’s never been interested in you.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you what: I’m gonna cry a special tear for you and Kivi tonight, big guy. One big tear.”

I kicked the bottom of his bunk and he retreated.

“Asshole,” I muttered.

I tried to fall asleep, but it didn’t come easily. When I finally did drift away, I dreamt of Kivi, saurians and multi-legged aliens gripping me with all six of their freaky hands.

* * *

“Ha!” shouted Veteran Harris the next day when the DNA test results were released to the unit. “A big, friggin’ zero. That’s what I suspected all along. At least no one died for your little fantasy, McGill.”

He stomped away, shaking his head and mumbling.

Pretty much everyone gave me the evil eye after that. Carlos looked like he was going to eat sitting next to someone else for a minute—then he sighed and plopped himself down next to me.

“You’re killing my mojo, McGill,” he said. “I’m never going to get laid again if I keep hanging out with you.

“That’s quite a sacrifice for friendship,” I told him. “Thanks man.”

He shook his head and we ate quietly. After a few minutes, Natasha came and sat down with us. We both looked at her inquisitively.

“Don’t stare,” she said. “This is just me being friendly, not a marriage proposal or anything.”

Carlos immediately began chatting her up. I could see this flattered and amused Natasha, so I didn’t interrupt. I kept thinking about the alien I’d met—and about Kivi.

Before we could finish lunch, the aliens made their next move. We jumped up, shoving food into our faces as the alarms went off. We rushed out and got our kits together. The bunker rang with the sound of a hundred pairs of stomping boots.

“The bastards couldn’t let us finish a meal?” Carlos complained.

“Why do they keep coming when we beat them every time?” Natasha asked. “You think they’ll hit the walls again?”

“Ever seen a lizard in your backyard?” Carlos asked in return. “They never looked like geniuses to me.”

“Yeah, but they just keep dying…”

I lost track of the conversation as we reached the surface. The heat of day made us slam our visors closed the second we exited the bunker. It was intolerable outside. Troops were scrambling for cover everywhere. It took me a second to realize they were being shot at, and at first, I couldn’t figure out where the fire was coming from. But then I looked up and over my shoulder.

They had come at our fortress from behind, this time. Somehow, a few hundred snipers had scaled the mountain at our backs and crawled out on top of the cliffs. There were no juggers in the group, only saurian regulars. They peppered our exposed positions from above. Two dozen troops were nailed down to the ground before they could scramble to cover.

I ran and took cover with Carlos at our section of the wall. More troops came out of bunkers behind us, confused and looking around. By the time they realized what was happening, they were being cut down. They scrambled for cover too, but many didn’t make it far. I watched them die, shot over and over again by the snipers. There was nothing I could do—I wanted to run out and drag them to my safe position, but the veterans were screaming for us to hold our positions on the covered wall.

“Let them die,” Harris said, walking the line, bent at the waist. “There’s nothing you can do for them. They’ll be popping back out of the oven in less than an hour.”

I wasn’t sure how we were going to meet this new threat, but the counterattack plan was quickly deployed by my commanders. Earth’s legions were nothing if not experienced and versatile.