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

confident, boastful tone. “We’re building up Earth’s home fleet every day. And our ships can take theirs, two to one. I’ve seen them do battle.”
    “Imperial warships can, not Earth’s ships,” my dad said. “People keep making that mistake. Galactic ships from the Core Systems are built by aliens who know what the hell they’re doing. An Empire-built ship can take down cephalopod ships easily. Every news vid shows that. But our homegrown designs are totally different. Have you seen them? Big balls of puff-crete laid over wire ribs—our ships look like crap, and they’re untested. Some experts say they’ll pop like balloons in battle.”
    My dad was right, of course. Hegemony was building ships as fast as they could, but our initial designs resembled lop-sided dog turds floating in space. The ships were constructed more like barrels with guns sticking out than anything else. The hulls were formed with puff-crete layered over a titanium grid-work to give it shape and something to stick to. The process reminded me of the way people built in-ground pools. Concrete with rebar buried inside like metal bones. The new Earth ships were slow, heavy and ugly. Could they fight? That was conjecture.
    With remarkable speed, my dad and I finished the entire twelve-pack I’d been saving in my fridge for the weekend. After that, we were both in a markedly better mood. Cracking jokes, we walked back to the house together where we found my mom watching another video of Etta. She’d managed to find a clip of the baby taking her first steps.
    We sobered up immediately. My dad and I exchanged glances.
    “I’ll talk to Della about this, if she’s still on Earth,” I told him.
    “If she’s on Earth, wouldn’t Etta be here too?”
    “No. Dust Worlders are different. They raise their kids as a group. Della joined the legion, but she didn’t bring Etta with her.”
    My dad shook his head. “They sound like they don’t think the way we do.”
    “True enough,” I said. “But listen, if it’s possible to go out there, I’ll help with the return fare. You guys wouldn’t make it as colonists on such a harsh planet.”
    My dad gave me a hug, and I stared over his shoulder at the big screen in the living room. Etta had sandals on, but her feet were still black with grit. None of the colonist adults around her seemed to care, or even to notice, that she was dirty.
    I stepped back outside. Standing in the dark with gnats and mosquitoes buzzing near, I tapped a fateful message to Della. I didn’t know if she was on Earth or not, but as soon as I hit send and the little twirling icon began to rotate I felt my heart speed up a notch.
    The note I sent said simply: Della, we need to talk.
    The wait was longer than usual. I’d begun to think she’d left Earth and gone back to Dust World after all. Hell, she might well have ditched life in the legions entirely and gone home, calling the whole thing a bad dream.
    But she hadn’t. My tapper screen stopped twirling, and a tiny chime sounded in the dark. She’d gotten my message.

-2-
     
    A day or two later, in the middle of the night, I heard someone in my room.
    Della had never responded to my message. She’d gotten it—that much I knew. But I couldn’t tell if she’d read it or not. She had that information blocked, as most people did.
    To tell the truth, I’d done my best to forget about the whole thing. I knew my mom was still tense about the situation. Every time I saw her, she asked me questions I couldn’t possibly answer.
    How tall was Etta now? What did she weigh at birth? Were there complications during the delivery? What was the name of this husband fellow, this faceless stepfather who was supposedly caring for the child while her crazy parents were off getting themselves repeatedly killed on alien planets?
    In answer to all these queries I could only shrug and shake my head. She growled at me every time I did that, accusing me of a dozen forms of idiocy and