Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) Read Free Page A

thought she’d be happy? We’re not getting any younger, you know. You might not have noticed, but we’re aging—you’re not, but we are. We don’t have forever to wait.”
    Thinking about that, I frowned. It was true. A mercenary in the legions, a man who stuck with it, could live a century or more without aging. Centurion Graves, for example, was somewhere around seventy to a hundred years old, but he looked like he was around thirty-five, tops.
    That sounded great when you were a kid, and it was. But your family, the people who weren’t in the legions, they kept on aging. On every campaign I flew out to the stars and usually died out there in some fashion. Using the alien revival systems, the legion rebuilt a new body and mind for me from stored data. Since they didn’t bother to do body-backups often, I usually came back physically younger than the age I’d been when I’d left Earth.
    But back home everyone plodded along through a normal, quiet life. My parents had been aging all this time. I’d seen it, but I hadn’t really thought about it until now.
    “Mom wants to see the baby—is that what you’re saying?” I asked.
    “Of course she does,” he snapped. “How can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?”
    He was angry, and with good reason, so I didn’t object. Besides, it was a question I’d often asked myself. Instead of responding, I took a big hit of my beer and got up to get a fresh one. I offered him another one as well, and he took it.
    “She’s already pricing out a fare to Dust World,” he said a few minutes after we’d each consumed another brew in silence.
    “What? You’re kidding me.”
    “No, I’m not. It’s going to cost me a year’s pay.”
    Alarmed, my mind was racing along new paths. Della had told me she was married. Not only that, when I’d last visited Dust World, there wasn’t really anyplace for tourists to stay.
    “Dad…you should probably try to stop her.”
    “I don’t know if I can do that.”
    “But Dad, Dust World…it’s not like Earth. Most of the planet is a deadly wilderness. The people there, well, they don’t think like we do.”
    “Obviously not. Couldn’t you have used some kind of protection, boy?”
    “Sorry Dad, she took me by surprise.”
    He snorted in amusement and shook his head. He usually didn’t drink much, and he was on his third beer already. I put another one in front of him on my floating coffee table. After a moment of thought, he cracked it open.
    “You know what your mom’s talking about?” Dad asked me. “Already?”
    “What?”
    “Moving out there. Emigrating. Hegemony has a new government policy, you know. If you buy a one-way ticket out there and promise to colonize, you can go for half-price. That’s a quarter the price of a round trip. We might be able to afford that if we sell this place.”
    My eyes widened another notch. “But…”
    “That’s right,” he said. “I’d be going with her. Now you know why I’m drinking every beer you put in front of me.”
    I was beginning to understand. My mom was a hard one to dissuade once she got an idea stuck in her head. I was the same way—but this was crazy.
    “You can’t move to Dust World,” I said. “That’s nuts. The place is like a giant Death Valley. Even worse than that.”
    “I know. But most of the colonists are settling on the other planet in the system, the ocean world.”
    My eyes widened. “That’s where the squids were wiped out! That’s an even worse idea. The squids still think they own that planet. They might show up any day and eradicate whatever humans they find squatting there.”
    My dad shrugged. “They might do that here on Earth, too. In fact, most people think it’s only a matter of time. If the Empire doesn’t send the Battle Fleet back to Frontier 921, we’re all toast someday soon. Maybe your mother is right. Why not see the child before that happens?”
    “We’re building our own ships,” I said in a