Dust World by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

-19-

Any thinking man would have melted that little witch down without hesitation, but I held my fire. I looked for her comrades but saw no one. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding somewhere nearby.

I thought about contacting Leeson, but I was worried he’d freak out. I’d taught this girl what the white flag meant, and she’d now decided to use the technique on me. Would it be right to take revenge now?

Heaving a sigh, I decided to take a chance. I knew I’d probably take another trip through the guts of that damned revival machine for my troubles, but for the sake of peace between the colonists and Legion Varus I lowered my cannon and walked toward her.

Della withdrew a few feet into the flowers. I walked up to her and flipped open my visor so she could see my face clearly.

“You are McGill?” she asked, staring at me warily.

“You know who I am,” I said.

She extended a long tan arm toward the alien ship.

“Your littermates have come for you. Are you happy?”

“I don’t know who those people are,” I said. “And I’m definitely not pleased about them crashing this party.”

She stared at me oddly, turning her head this way and that, as if she was listening to my words and trying to understand if they were true or not.

“How can you not know what they are?”

“You’ve seen them before, that’s what you’re saying?” I asked.

“Of course. They’re marauders from the stars. They come here on off-years when the planets align. They capture as many of us as their ship will hold and fly back into the heavens. We kill some of them—but they always come back, and they always take more than we can kill.”

I frowned. “Is that right?”

Looking at the ship, I got a creepy vibe from it. “Are you telling me these guys aren’t related to you? They aren’t your people? They look human enough.”

She laughed bitterly. “They are related to us, but in a perverse way. They’re bred from our bodies. They’re twisted and unnatural, like plants that grow in neat rows under the earth, nourished by lamps rather than sunlight.”

I was beginning to catch on. “You told me about this before, right? You said they were littermates. Are there nine in every litter?”

She nodded, staring across the lake. “For this variety, yes. The armored ones always come in nines, and they always march with their brothers. There is some humanity still left in them, I think. If you kill one of the brothers, the rest go mad.”

“That sounds encouraging. I thank you for the warning. I’ll pass the information on to my superiors. Do you think they’ll attack us?”

“No,” she said. “They never harm anyone unless you harm them first. But they will come, and they will take your weapons from you and destroy them. Then they will place rings around your arms and touch them together like this.”

She crossed her wrists to demonstrate. “Then you will never be able to separate your hands from one another again until they will it.

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