SF Books by B. V. Larson:

  The RED COMPANY Series:

  First Strike!

  Discovery

  Contact

  Star Runner Trilogy:

  Star Runner

  Fire Fight

  Androids and Aliens

  Rebel Fleet Series:

  Rebel Fleet

  Orion Fleet

  Alpha Fleet

  Earth Fleet

  Star Force Series:

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Rebellion

  Conquest

  Army of One (Novella)

  Battle Station

  Empire

  Annihilation

  Storm Assault

  The Dead Sun

  Outcast

  Exile

  Demon Star

  Starship Pandora (Audio Drama)

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.

  CRYSTAL WORLD

  (Undying Mercenaries Series #20)

  by

  B. V. Larson

  The Undying Mercenaries Series:

  Steel World

  Dust World

  Tech World

  Machine World

  Death World

  Home World

  Rogue World

  Blood World

  Dark World

  Storm World

  Armor World

  Clone World

  Glass World

  Edge World

  Green World

  Ice World

  City World

  Sky World

  Jungle World

  Crystal World

  Copyright © 2023 by Iron Tower Press, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  In memory of Manuel Fonseca, 2023.

  “Count no man happy until he is dead.”

  – Heraclitus, 501 BC

  -1-

  On a fine autumn morning, my tapper started buzzing around 7 a.m. This was unusual, as I’d set it to ignore all communication except from my closest contacts, friends—and of course, official business from Central. That was only because I couldn’t turn that off, no matter how much I wanted to.

  Therefore, receiving an early morning call was weird. Especially at this hour. My friends knew better than to disturb me in the mornings.

  My eyes snapped open as I grunted and heaved, and Tessie rolled off me onto her side of the bed. Lately, she’d gotten into the habit of sleeping at my place on my fold-out couch bed. She didn’t like the bed much, despite the fact I kept telling her it was a big upgrade. I’d improved my living quarters, moving up from a single crusty couch to the fold-out a few years back.

  Unlike old-fashioned fold-outs, it wasn’t a torture rack. This modern contrivance was relatively comfy—but there’s just no pleasing some people.

  Tessie’s continued presence was the second big surprise of the morning. It dawned on me as I yawned and scratched and contemplated answering my tapper, that she’d been around for weeks now. While such a long-term romance wasn’t entirely unknown in my life, it certainly wasn’t the norm. It was always a pleasant surprise when a woman didn’t get sick of me after a dozen or so nights of passion.

  Tessie, while not exactly clingy, was definitely committed to sharing some good times with old McGill. Apparently, our shared near-death—and actual death—experiences had imprinted on her during the Jungle World campaign. A switch had been flipped in her brainstem someplace, and she really liked me.

  I’d been enjoying the experience myself, so I hadn’t kicked her out. I’d even done my damnedest to hide all signs of my restless spirit.

  Shrugging and getting up, I pulled on some clothes. The smart straps wrapped around my body as my tapper continued to ring.

  “Damnation…” I muttered.

  The fuzziness of sleep was fading. I wondered who this could be and whether I should answer. Knowing in my heart I shouldn’t do it, I looked at the name on my inner forearm.

  “Imperator Galina Turov…” it read.

  I sighed, but then a moment later frowned.

  The situation was somewhat mysterious. If this had been an official call—a call initiated in the name of duty—Galina would have forced it through.

  Why hadn’t she done so? Anything governmental in nature, whether reactivating my contract or requiring me to report to Central, wouldn’t have involved this arm-twisting nonsense. She would have just forced the call through.

  But she hadn’t.

  “There’s a new mystery for you…” I said to myself as I scratched my head.

  By this time, of course, the call had rung through, stopped buzzing, and then begun again twice over. That meant we were on… what? At least the third call she’d made in a row? Was she chain-calling me? Really?

  Finally, heaving a sigh, I raised one oversized finger and hovered it over the screen. I was finally ready to swipe and answer.

  “If you answer that call,” I heard a small female voice behind me. “I’m going to kill you in the exercise room during our next campaign.”

  Tessie wasn’t sleeping anymore. Probably all my buzzing, thinking and scratching had woken her up.

  “Uh…” I said. My finger still hovered hesitantly over the screen.

  “That’s Turov,” she said, “this can’t be an official call. She would have just buzzed through and forced it to answer.”

  “Well…” I said. “Yeah, probably.”

  “There’s no probably about it, James,” she said, her small fists were planted on her small hips. It was a nasty look, a look I’d seen on so many women.

  I had to turn away, despite the fact she was buck-naked and looking pretty good. Tessie was a small-breasted woman, but what she had was perfectly proportioned. Normally, I’d be admiring that view, but right now, I was too befuddled by all the circumstances crashing in on me all at once.

  “Hey,” I said to her as the phone call from Galina stopped its third round of buzzing and began the fourth. “I’ve got to go outside for just a minute, see. I need to take a piss.”

  Tessie glared at me, her fists were planted on her hips, and her eyes were narrower than ever.

  “James,” she said, “this has got to be a booty call. I don’t want you taking off on me to chase some old flame of yours.”

  There was possessiveness in her tone. Why did this kind of moment always come along after spending a couple of nice weeks with a girl? Was it preordained that the outright evils of jealousy had to rear up and spoil all the fun?

  It seemed to me, after damned-near a century of life, that it was unavoidable.

  I slashed my finger across my forearm decisively. I’d declined the call. “See? She’s gone.”

  Tessie examined this suspiciously, but then she relaxed a little.

  “Now,” I said, “I really do have to go out and pee.”

  I felt a set of small eyes boring into my back as I walked out the door, letting the big screen door slam and rattle behind me. I went out to the yard and, sure enough, started to take a long and convincing piss.

  Now, unbeknownst to Tessie, I had taken the precaution of hitting the mute button on my tapper while I’d made this grand display of hanging up on Galina. Having known Galina for many years, I got the feeling that she wasn’t through yet—she was a persistent woman. No one knew that better than me. Sure enough, that sixth call came in before I could even shake it to hang up.

  Looking as innocent as a trout in a cold mountain stream, I surreptitiously opened up the phone call and half-mumbled, “What the hell is it?”

  There was a squawking sound from my forearm. As a necessary part of the subterfuge, I reached down to grab myself. I had to continue the illusion of taking a super long piss out in the yard.

  “What’s this?” Galina squawked, looking through the camera at something that she knew rather well, but which she had no desire to witness at this moment. “You ignore me for half an hour and then you start off with a dick-pic?”

  “Whoa,” I said, lifting up my forearm, so that I could pretend to scratch the back of my head and rub up my neck while I spoke into the microphone.

  My back was still turned toward my shack, where I felt Tessie might just be looking out the window or the screen door to watch me.

  “What the hell do you want so bad, Galina?” I asked.

  “I need help,” she said, “and not the kind you just displayed to me.”

  Right then, I felt a mite disappointed. Apparently, this wasn’t a booty-call after all. I mean, sure, I had Tessie—but Galina and I—we went way back. We hadn’t been together for months and—

  “Well?” she demanded suddenly. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  I was a bit taken aback. “Listen, it’s the first thing in the morning. I’m not on duty. I’m on vacation, and you haven’t even told me what the hell you want me to do yet.”

  “Oh…” she said, “so that’s how it is. You’re whispering and showing me your neck. There must be someone else there. You’re a goat of a man, McGill.”

  “That may well be,” I said. “But still, if you want me not to hang up this call,
you’d better tell me what this is all about.”

  “I don’t have to,” she said. “I’m calling in my favor.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Do you remember, James, at the end of the Sky World campaign?”

  “Uh…” I thought, vaguely remembering having experienced something called the Sky World campaign. “You mean out there in the frontier province, fighting with Rigel and all that?”

  “That’s right, James,” she said. “Do you remember what you told me?”

  I thought of a bunch of things. None of them were all that pleasant. She’d gotten me killed multiple times during those days. She’d always had a bad temper, even for a highly-ranked female officer in Earth’s military service, and even for a woman who’d had to deal with the likes of me for so many long years.

  “I remember you getting mad at me and killing me over and over again and all that,” I said.

  “Yes…” she said, “that’s right. And do you remember why I did all that?”

  “Oh,” I said, thinking about it. “You had some crazy suspicions about me and revolutionaries and all that nonsense.”

  “Not just that, James.”

  “Uh,” I said, remembering what she must be talking about.

  Her sister Sophia and I had had a fling back then. I know that sounds bad, but it was very brief. No more than a few hand-holdings, pecks on the cheek—and one glorious night. I’d confessed all this to Galina, and then she’d said something about how I owed her one. Something like that.

  “But wait a minute,” I said. “I know what you’re talking about. You and I came to a nice conclusion over all that. You forgave me for Sophia, and I forgave you for murdering me over and over again. Do you remember having me strapped to a wall and whipped to death? Repeatedly?”

  “Vaguely…” she admitted.

  “Well, then… we’re even-steven.”

  She growled. I got the feeling that she’d hoped maybe I’d forgotten the details of that day. At least enough so she could bamboozle me into yet another favor based on my indiscretions with her sister.

  Nope, that wasn’t going to work.

  Right about then, I heard a soft voice calling from the screen door of my shack, some thirty or forty feet behind me.

  “James?” Tessie called. “Are you done pissing yet? I need to get some breakfast.”

  I grimaced. Tessie was watching. I had to be careful with this fakery.

  “Oh yeah, sure,” I shouted over my shoulder. “I’ll be there in just a second. I need to check on something out at the shed.”

  I began ambling away toward the toolshed, which stood at the edge of our property before the swamp proper began.

  Most of this so-called farm my family possessed was unfarmable. It consisted of bogland, trees, thick brush, and very wet ground. There were ponds and a couple of creeks scattered over the acreage as well.

  There were a few fields that were level and plantable out closer to the road, of course. We also possessed a huddle of animals and fruit trees, a big vegetable garden—that kind of thing. But most of our land was a dark, primordial swamp.

  “So,” I said to Galina again when we were safely out of earshot of Tessie, “what is it you want me to do for you so badly on a Wednesday morning?”

  “First of all, it’s Thursday, James. Second, I want you to find out what happened to Drusus. Last, I want you to... I want you to kill me.”

  That stopped me. My jaw dropped low, and I gaped. I lifted up my tapper and looked her square in the face. I could tell at a glance she was serious—and she wasn’t all that happy about it. Galina wasn’t a girl who enjoyed dying. She took such events seriously.

  “What in the hell?” I said. “You don’t look that long in the tooth, girl.”

  Immediately, my mind jumped to the conclusion that she wanted a beauty treatment, essentially using death and a revival machine to regenerate herself back to the prime age of nineteen again.

  That sort of extreme measure seemed premature to me. She was actually looking pretty good. Casting back in my memory, I recalled that she’d died recently. The last time had to have been when Dominus had blown up, destroyed by Hegemony because it was being chased by an angry Skay at the end of the Sky World campaign. The same Skay had gotten itself blown up over Jungle World just last year.

  I smiled at the memories. Unlike that behemoth of an AI being, we humans had been revived. There was no revival machine in the known universe that could revive a Skay. As far as I knew, they didn’t back up their minds, either. If you died when you were a planet-sized evil alien monstrosity, well, I guess the rest of them figured you were a bad piece of software to begin with. They rerolled with a fresh install and probably some variations in the software, in an attempt to perfect their own weird species.

  “I’m not looking for a facelift, James,” Galina said, snapping out the words. “I need to disappear for a while. I need to go somewhere where no one can find me. And I want you to help me get there.”

  I blinked at my tapper, as befuddled as I could be.

  Right about then, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned slowly, using one finger to quickly mute my tapper. I faced Tessie and gave her a big, fake grin.

  She gave me a glare in return. She lifted up an arm, holding her upraised hand high. That hand ended with a single, ugly finger.

  “I’m out of here,” she said. “You’ve been looking at every girl that goes by at the market and that crappy poolhall you keep dragging me to every time we go to town. And now, here you are having a whispered conversation with one of your exes? If I can’t hold your attention for two weeks, you’re just as bad as every girl in the legion says you are!”

  “Oh, now hold on, Tessie,” I said, but that was it.

  She turned around and stomped off, marching through the tall grass. I watched her small, angry butt as she left me, and I heaved a sigh. She climbed into a tram she had parked out on the roadway and drove off.

  I lifted my arm again to frown at Galina. I unmuted her, even though I was regretful to do so. She’d been carrying on for quite a while, apparently delivering an angry tirade of her own.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “You just chased off a good thing for me.”

  She grumbled and rolled her eyes. “Yes... Yes. I heard all that. I apologize for interfering in your personal life yet again. But James, you know she wasn’t woman enough for you. She was just a bit of fluff that you were entertaining yourself with.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said, even though we both knew she was right.

  It partly had to do with the realities of aging in the twenty-third century. Physically, Galina and I looked like we were in our twenties, but in reality, we were quite a bit older. A big stack of decades older.

  As a person aged and gained experience, even if you looked young on the outside—you really weren’t. Even if your body was still physically capable and full of the vigor of youth, I’d found I couldn’t seriously connect with someone so much younger and inexperienced.

  “All right,” I grumped to Galina at last, “what do you want me to do?”

  -2-

  My morning started off on the wrong foot. After Galina gave me her laundry list of tasks, we disconnected, and I went in to take a shower. Tessie had cleared out by this time. She’d taken her minimal belongings with her, including a small bag of clothes and a large bag of makeup.

  While I was in my bathroom, I noticed a considerable number of various and sundry items she’d left behind. Many of these I was unable to identify, but all were definitely feminine in nature.

  Using my long arms and a trash can, I scooped them all into the bin and stashed it under the sink.

  Why, you might ask, would I undermine a rekindling with Tessie later on? Because I understood ladies rather well, that’s why.

  If Tessie returned before anyone else showed up to replace her, I could always say that I’d experienced an imaginary fit of rage and grief over her departure. That I’d thrown away her stuff in this addled state of mind. Then, she could have the fun of buying new stuff to replace it, all the while thinking about my emotional state and how much her absence had affected me.

  If, on the other hand, a new girl showed up—Galina or someone else—well sir, that girl would never want to see some other chick’s stuff in my bathroom.