Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (28 page)

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Claver tried to match my performance, working hard to look like he didn’t care—but he failed. He looked nervous, and I thought I saw a trickle of sweat run down his cheek. He kept eyeing me, my bare feet, and the execution system.

Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer.

“I know you, boy,” he said. “You’re as dumb as a sack of hammers, but you’ve always got an angle. What are you trying to pull off? I don’t accept for one second you’ve come here to submit to execution.”

In a way, his attitude bugged me. He had no honor, so he automatically assumed others were the same way. In the past this flaw in his character had allowed me to manipulate him. Deciding to have a little fun before I died, I narrowed my eyes and put on a nasty grin. Then I slid my hand into my jacket pocket.

“You want to know if I’ve got a surprise coming, is that it?” I asked. “You’re just the man I’d like to show this to—”

Claver’s eyes widened as he stared at my hand in my pocket. “Hold on! Hold on! Easy now, big fella! We’ve got a misunderstanding here, that’s all. I’m on
your
side.”

I hesitated. I had nothing in my hand other than a half-eaten chocolate bar I’d kept after yesterday’s lunch. For laughs, I twisted my fist around inside my jacket so the rectangular shape bulged oddly under the fabric. Claver watched this display with equally bulging eyes.

“You’ve always been a man who’s willing to die for a cause, I get that,” Claver said, talking fast. “But this isn’t the time. I can help you out. I know what you want—you want to blast this ship to hell and back, don’t you?”

Admittedly, I was taken aback. So that’s what he thought? That I was some kind of suicidal, walking bomb? I tried to think of a way to play off his misconception, but I couldn’t think of anything good.

For fun, I kept playing the part he’d given me, looking mean and fondling my chocolate bar. Screwing with Claver was the only source of joy I had left.

“You guessed it,” I said in my meanest, crazy-redneck voice.

“Okay, I’m with you,” he said. “In fact, it’s a
good
plan. We can’t keep talking here, though. They might get suspicious. I’ll just—”

He got up to leave, but I shook my head and stood up with him, my fist big and round in my jacket.

“No Claver,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re part of this show.”

“You should let me help you out—”

“I don’t need help, or tricks,” I said. “You’re going to die, old man. Right here with me. Look me in the eyes. I’m the last sight you’ll ever see.”

“Hold on! Let me make you an offer.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“I’ll revive you after you blow up this ship,” he said. “That’s the least I can do. Give me your data—I’ll do it, I swear. Just let me get off this vessel before you activate your detonator.”

I pretended to think about it, enjoying myself.

“Don’t worry about my next revive,” I told him. “I’ve got that covered. But you—it sounds like you don’t have any way to get out of this.”

He looked nervous. “What do you think? That I’m some kind of wizard?”

“Right,” I said thoughtfully. “The only revival machines in frontier systems are those brought in on big ships. That means our legion battlewagons and this Nairb Prefect’s vessel. Once this ship is gone, that’s it, because I’m betting Turov isn’t sweet on you right now. At least not enough to bring you back to life on her ship.”

He didn’t answer, he just grimaced. As I thought about it, I understood his position. He was worried about getting permed himself. That fear had caused him to jump to conclusions about what I was up to. Fear, plus my reputation for reckless behavior in situations like this one, had made my bluff work.

“Maybe we can make a deal, but I doubt it,” I said. “You’re right, I could let you escape being permed. But what can you do for me? Right now, I’m liking things the way they are. I’m thinking I can solve two problems with a single push of a button. You’re gone, the Nairbs are gone, I come back later—everything’s perfect.”

My thumbnail played with the wrapper and dug into the chocolate a little. He watched and sweated, trying to think of something he could do for me.

“You’re going to have trouble getting away with blowing up a Nairb ship,” he said. “It’s one thing to inconvenience a Galactic by killing him, but a whole Imperial ship—that’s worth real credits.”

“You only have a few minutes left, Claver.”

“You can’t have brought and placed a bomb on your own,” he said. “Turov has to be behind this. But why?”

The answer to this came to me easily. Glibness in lying is a gift, one I’ve been blessed with all my life. You can ask anyone from my old elementary school days for confirmation on that point.

“The Nairbs have too much evidence aboard,” I said. “Turov figures we can’t let them finish their report and send it to the Core Systems on a deep-link.”

“Right, right,” Claver said, buying it all. “The Prefect will report in the second he has the case closed up, and you’ve been executed. Nairbs don’t like wasting money on services, and deep-link relays are expensive—especially all the way to the Core Systems. One big blip of data is what they’ll use, and you’re here to stop that transmission.”

His ideas surprised me a little. Was I really such a big deal that the Nairbs were going to confirm my removal from the cosmos all the way back to the Mogwa? That seemed bizarre to me. I’d always figured I was small-potatoes to the Galactics.

Claver snapped his fingers and grinned. “I’ve got it. Your plan is flawed. You can’t just blow this ship up with a conventional nuke. There will be an investigation eventually. There’s no way around it. They’ll trace the radioactives to Earth. What you need is a false trail, a scapegoat.”

I was listening but frowning. I didn’t know exactly where he was going with this.

“Listen, listen,” he said, beginning to raise his voice. “I’ll let you finish your mission. Turov will be proud. I’m just going to change the circumstances a little.”

“Okay, but hurry the hell up.”

He beckoned me to follow him. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pulled my boots back on and left the chamber.

The Nairbs took some notice of this. They barked after us. I was pretty sure they were pointing out I only had about ten minutes left before my execution. I waved and nodded then disappeared into a passageway, following Claver.

I knew that, in a way, the Nairbs didn’t care what I did. They were bureaucrats, not sheriffs. If I didn’t report to their execution chamber, they’d grind on, slowly turning their wheels of justice. They’d draw up new charges, maybe expanding them to include the rest of the legionnaires in the system. They’d then order more people to submit to their will.

That was the trouble with Galactic Law, if you didn’t give in, they’d just up the ante and come after you again. They were relentless, and I honestly think blindly applying the law to others was the greatest joy in their sorry existences.

Claver and I began to run the second we were out of sight. We took big strides in the light gravity, our boots thumping on the deck as we charged down a long passage. We came at last to the docking area where a strange ship was attached to the Nairb vessel. It had to be Claver’s ship.

I grabbed his shoulder when he got to the hatch and started to climb in. “We can’t just run from the Nairbs,” I said.

“That’s not the plan, dummy! Let go of me.”

“I’ll go in first,” I said, yanking him back. I didn’t want him zipping away or pulling a gun on me.

Inside the ship, Claver had the oddest collection of crap I’d ever seen crammed into a small vessel. It was a smuggler’s ship—that much was obvious. There were loose jewels in buckets, powders in bags, guns packed in crates of oil—he had it all.

“You got a stuffed bear I could buy?” I asked him. “I always wanted one of those.”

“I’m fresh out, McGill. Now, why don’t you get out of my way so I can show you the weapon?”

“What weapon?”

He rolled his eyes like I was the biggest moron this side of the Moon.

“The squid weapon! What do you think I’ve been talking about?”

“Why do we need a squid weapon?”

“I can see I’m going to have to spell this out for you. You’re not going to use the detonator in your pocket to blow up this ship. You’re going to use a squid mini-missile pod instead. They’re a little hard to program, but I’ll show you how.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Sure we do. The Nairbs will mark you down as a no-show, sure. Then they’ll up the charges—but they won’t report it in to the Core Systems. Not yet. Not until they’ve decided on their next step. Nairbs aren’t fast. What bureaucrat is?

I had to admit, he had a point there.

“When you don’t show up for your execution,” he continued, “they’ll just grind along down the path they’ve set. That will buy you the time you need to take the initiative.”

He actually had a squid missile pod in his ship. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen so many stolen devices in a single place—not since Tech World. This made me realize something.

“That pile of junk hidden above the fountain back on Tech World—that was
your
stash, wasn’t it?” I asked him.

He flashed me a grin. “Yeah. You were robbing me, not the Tau. Does that make you feel any better?”

I shrugged then smiled. “Actually, it does.”

I examined his collection of equipment. Claver called the stuff “trade goods,” but I knew a pile of smuggled contraband when I saw it. If the Nairbs had ever seen fit to come aboard his ship and have themselves a private inspection, he’d have been permed right off. I filed that tidbit of information away for the future.

“You’ll take this pod, see,” he told me, showing me a strange-looking contraption with a mass of missiles loaded into it. The thing looked like a peeled pomegranate, packed with clusters of explosives. “Set it down next to their engine core, activate it manually and direct it to unload its full magazine into the reactor all at once. Boom! You catch a revive, and all our problems are solved.”

I stared at him. “Where are you going to be while I’m doing this?”

“Flying out of here.”

My eyes narrowed. “Why the hell should I trust you on this?” I asked, lifting my hand inside my jacket. “I’ve got the bomb business covered.”

“Listen, the squids will take the blame this way, I guarantee it. I don’t want Earth wiped any more than you do. I need to trade with someone, don’t I? These missiles are loaded with radioactives from the squid star systems. Radioactives are made inside the guts of stars. The Galactics can trace them to their source of origin. The signatures will match up to the squids, and they’ll take the blame when the investigation comes.

“All right,” I said, pretending to be doubtful. “I guess it could work.”

Claver looked relieved, but a few seconds later as we unloaded the missile pod and stood in the passageway, he frowned at me. He looked at my jacket again. I’d taken my hand out of there to help with the bulky pod, and it must have looked kind of deflated. Following his gaze, I reached into my pocket again and grasped my chocolate bar like it was a shiv.

“Where
is
your bomb, anyway?” he asked. “On the engine core? When did you plant it?”

The hint of suspicion in his eyes tipped me off. My thin, pathetic dodge was beginning to unravel in his mind. I was surprised it had taken this long. I was only wearing a light infantry uniform, after all. There was no way I could be carrying a bomb on me. A detonator, sure, but not a bomb. And I hadn’t had time to plant anything in the Nairb engine room. Anyone who could count should be able to deduce that.

“Of course,” I snapped. “I’ve got the bomb on the core already.”

He held out his hand. I glared at his offending fingers, which he used to make grabbing motions.

“What?” I asked, tensing up.

“Give me the key, McGill. That’s what you have in your pocket. There’s no way you could have reached the core and planted anything down there without the key.”

Claver was talking about the Galactic key, of course, the artifact that allowed the Mogwa to break any of the technological locks their subservient races invented. Now I understood the look in his eyes—it wasn’t suspicion about the bomb, it was greed for the key.

“Come on,” he said, “don’t let something so valuable be blown up with the ship. Give it to me.”

“All right,” I said, pulling my hand out of my jacket at last.

Claver watched, hungrily. His eyes were fixated on my fist.

Instead of receiving an invaluable artifact, he caught my knuckles in his face. At the last second, as my punch slammed home into his nose, he must have realized he was looking at fingers wrapped around a chocolate bar, not a Galactic key, a detonator, or anything else. The baffled look on his face was priceless to me. His greed transformed into confusion and disgust.

But then my big fist nailed him, and he reeled back. He slumped on the deck outside his ship. Behind him was the open hatch full of his piled up, stolen junk.