Free Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World by B. V. Larson

shrugged, making her head shift on my shoulder.
    “I’ve been executed before,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”
    She giggled at that. She didn’t know I was telling the truth. I had been executed before—put down by Harris under Turov’s orders. It had been intended as a perma-death, too. But somehow, it hadn’t stuck.
    “Some of us were talking,” she went on, “and we were betting a lot of the troops would fire. But not you.”
    I smiled. I guess if a guy had to have a rep it might as well be as the only man in the unit who wasn’t a cold-blooded killer of innocents.
    We didn’t leave the observatory for about an hour after that, but by the time we did, we were arm-in-arm. We went up to the green zone and made love under a sugar pine tree. For me, that night was the highlight of the entire trip.
     
    * * *
     
    Things went drastically wrong sometime after four a. m. ship’s time. Altogether, I’d spent over a year of my short life aboard Corvus , and in all that time, there’d never been an accident or hiccup of any kind. That was all about to change.
    I rolled out of my bunk and crashed onto the cold, hard deck plates. It was a shocking way to wake up but nothing I hadn’t experienced before. I looked around blearily, scrambling up onto all fours and expecting to find Veteran Harris had kicked me out of bed.
    Instead, I was struck by a very large, hairy mass. Carlos had rolled out of his top bunk and landed on top of me. We grunted and cursed each other in annoyance.
    When we got to our feet, we were unsteady. No, that was my first impression, but it was wrong. The ship was unsteady.
    In all my time aboard the starship, it had never shuddered or thrown me around due to G-force manipulation. But today was going to be very different.
    “What the hell…?” Carlos asked, getting to his feet beside me.
    We had our hands out, reaching for the edge of our bunks in order to hold onto something. There was a deep vibration coming up through the deck into our feet now. It made my toes itchy.
    “This crazy thing is going to blow up, isn’t it?” Carlos demanded. “I knew it, I fucking knew it! I hate the Skrull. Alien bastards, they probably already jumped ship. We’ll sail right into that Zeta star and burn up.”
    “Shut up,” I said, and for once he did as I demanded. “Let’s get our gear together.”
    Carlos watched me dig my armor out of my locker after thumbing it open. He did the same. Getting into heavy armor was much more of a pain than pulling on a light-trooper’s vac suit had been. Instead of seconds, it took a full minute before we were mobile again.
    During that time the ship continued to shudder, and an alarm sounded indicating we were to suit up an d report to our rally point. Blue arrows flashed on the floor.
    “Blue?” asked Carlos aloud. “That’s the evac color. What the hell is going on? Are they honestly expecting us to launch in a lifeboat while in warp? We’ll be torn apart before—”
    “Just get your damned gear on. Pull my gauntlets up tight, and I’ll do yours. Sargon showed me—it’s faster that way.”
    He grumbled but did as I suggested. Carlos was a heavy trooper now, too—we all were. He wasn’t a weaponeer so he didn’t have a plasma cannon like mine. He only had to handle his laser carbines and the force-blades that could be extended from his suit’s arms.
    Less than a minute later, we were clanking down the passageways with the rest of our unit. The blue arrows split us up by number, and we gathered as squads at larger intersections. We stood there nervously looking every direction at once. So far, Veteran Harris and all the officers were absent. There were only a few non-com specialists like me milling around, and we were as clueless as the grunts.
    “The last time we did this,” Kivi said by my side, “a wave of lizards charged in and ate half the unit.”
    “Correction,” announced Carlos, “they ate everyone except for McGill, here. He got