Free Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) by B. V. Larson Page B

before the big day came. Minotaur came out of warp, paused for a moment to get her bearings, and then glided like a stalking predator toward Tech World. Crawling across the star system in normal space, it took a full day to get from the designated warp-in point to the target planet.
    During the final hour of the approach , every trooper was on deck and wearing their full kit. A massive power pack humped my back like a bloated camel. On my shoulder rode my belcher, a venerable piece of legion armament. It was a powerful infantry weapon and the heaviest a single earthman could carry. But I had to wonder if a better heavy gun could be found somewhere else in the Empire.
    Maybe, just maybe, we could find one and order it on a place like Tech World. If we could find a better weapon, shouldn’t we buy it and use it instead of these older weapons systems? We had the credits, I was sure of that. The belchers were reliable most of the time, but they had notorious problems with heat. They also took powerful hands and arms to operate which was why I suspected they were originally designed for much larger beings. Maybe my belcher was nothing more than a hunting rifle on its distant world of origin.
    Schemes to gain better weaponry wormed in my head as I stood at the far left end of my unit’s third rank. Together, we formed ten ranks of ten troops each. A perfect square on parade.
    My unit’s square was one of nearly a hundred such formations. There was only one chamber big enough to contain so many of us at once, and it wasn’t a spot I liked much. We were in the open hold standing on top of our unit modules. There were gaps between these modules—alarming crevasses five meters wide. Above us was the “roof” of the ship, the top of the main hold. Dull and crenulated with equipment, the roof was really the inside of the primary hull. Beyond that was open space. Assembling our entire legion on top of these modules seemed dangerous to me. If there was a hull breach, we’d be hurled out into the void like so many motes of dust.
    But no one had asked me about the pageantry of legion rotation. It was a tradition for the arriving legion and the legion being relieved to stand in full dress in a single area if at all possible. I knew our Tribune Drusus wasn’t about to let Germanica look more formal than we did.
    There wasn’t any artificial gravity in the hold, so we had to use our magnetics to hold us down. We braced ourselves against the jolts of deceleration and course adjustments as we eased our way closer to the gigantic space station outside.
    Throughout the lengthy docking process, the brass wanted us all on parade. There were camera drones buzzing everywhere. I had to smile at that. Drusus had even told us to hold up our unit flags. The rumpled banners displayed our Wolfshead emblem and our unit numbers, but the flags themselves hung oddly in null-G , looking as if it was the most shockingly windless day in history.
    All this sounded more exciting than it was. In practice, it meant standing around at attention on the flat roof of a module for an hour or two waiting for something, anything , to happen. I was left with plenty of time to think. I was excited to be arriving at Tech World. This would be my third visit to a new planet.
    There was so little we knew about the Galactic Empire as a whole. I’d been impressed by the influx of funds, but so far I hadn’t heard much in the way of new information from the Empire beyond Frontier 921. Natasha was excited by the new gadgets we’d gained access to, but I wanted something bigger. I wanted information —preferably in its rawest form.
    I was jolted out of my reverie. Without warning, a tremendous clang rang out sweeping the hold. It was a sonic blast of such power it might have deafened the exposed troops if we hadn’t been sheltering inside helmets and suits. Even so, I saw men put their gauntlets up to the sides of their heads futilely trying to protect their