I looked from one of my parents to the other. I knew they wanted me to explain it. I knew they wanted to be able to tell their neighbors, friends and even my own relatives that their son wasn’t part of some renegade legion of losers.

  But I couldn’t. The stakes were too high. I’d already made enough mistakes on my first campaign. I wasn’t interested in making any new ones at home.

  I shook my head and sighed. “I can’t. The whole story is Hegemony-level. Top-secret, classified—whatever you want to call it.”

  They looked disappointed. We all fell into a brooding silence. I couldn’t stand it, and about five minutes later I went to our tiny storage chamber. I managed to get the organizer robot to spit out my stored bag, then I headed for the door.

  My dad intercepted me.

  “Give us some hugs, at least,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you? You got the call.”

  I stared at him for a brief second. He thought I’d been called up by Varus, but really I’d been planning on finding another couch to crash on.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  There were hugs, and my mom cried. This scene was familiar to me. We’d already done this once, more than a year ago. Back then, I’d been starry-eyed and nervous. Now, I felt emotional but resigned.

  “Here,” my dad said, pressing a box into my hand. “A replacement. You said you lost your old one.”

  I looked at the box.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it. We were saving it for your birthday.”

  I mustered a smile and opened it. I found a knife inside, a mean-looking thing. It was no pocketknife, it was a combat model. A real one, not a cheap knock-off from another sector.

  I tested the edge and smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You never told us how you lost the first one,” my mom said, wiping away a tear.

  I shook my head, marveling at the blade. The metal was dark except for the edge which was so fine it shone white. “No, I didn’t,” I said. “And you don’t want to hear that story.”

  I’d lost my pocketknife the third time I’d died on Steel World. The first time, I’d been torn apart by lizards, but I’d found it again in the piles of recovered equipment. When I’d been executed later on, my belongings had been returned to me when I was revived—but that third time…well, that had been the charm. I’d been blown to bits and my knife had been blown up with me.

  “Thanks guys,” I said, and gave them an honest smile. I hugged them both again and left.

  I walked out of my parent’s building, and I didn’t go back. I didn’t bother to take the sky-train this time. That was too expensive, and I wasn’t in any kind of hurry.

  I spent a week heading north on bumping public trams. As long as I was careful, I knew I had enough money to last for months. I decided to have myself a little vacation. I checked out a few towns, walked on a lot of beaches and watched a lot of vids on my tapper.

  Something went wrong with my tapper unit on the sixth day, however, and I couldn’t get it to access the net anymore. I wasn’t sure if it was related to billing or if it was a technical issue. Tappers were organic screens embedded in the flesh of your forearm. The beauty of the system was that you couldn’t lose it, and it was supposed to keep you connected to the world at all times. There weren’t any batteries to be recharged, either, as it fed off the electrical impulses naturally generated by the human body. Even when a soldier died, his tapper was faithfully reconstructed by the legion revival units because it was organic, just like any other part of the body.

  After my tapper died, I spent most of my time dozing on beaches with my head on my ruck. This wasn’t as peaceful as it sounded as I often dreamed about lizards tearing off human limbs and making excited gurgling noises as they fed.

  The summer days were fairly enjoyable for me despite my dreams. I felt like I was experiencing Earth. There weren’t any officers yelling at me or worried parents eyeing me oddly. I felt like a ghost gliding through the world, and I kind of liked it that way.

  I usually wore my fatigues, but as a precaution I covered my legionnaire’s patch. The wolf’s head of Varus was on far too many net broadcasts lately—and never with a happy story attached.

  My wanderings drew me farther north every day. I knew where I was going: back to the Mustering Hall where this had all started. The legion people would be there. They’d know what the score was. They’d know when we were going to ship out again. It was all supposed to be a secret—but someone always knew what was really going on.

  END of Book #2: DUST WORLD EXCERPT

  To purchase the entirety of the book search for DUST WORLD on your Ebook Seller's website, or go to BVLarson.com

  More SF Books by B. V. Larson:

  UNDYING MERCENARIES SERIES

  Steel World

  Dust World

  STAR FORCE SERIES

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Rebellion

  Conquest

  Army of One (Novella published in Planetary Assault)

  Battle Station

  Empire

  Annihilation

  Storm Assault

  The Dead Sun

  IMPERIUM SERIES

  Mech Zero: The Dominant

  Mech 1: The Parent

  Mech 2: The Savant

  Mech 3: The Empress

  The Black Ship (Novella published in Five by Five)

  OTHER SF BOOKS

  Element-X

  Technomancer

  The Bone Triangle

  Z-World

  Velocity

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.

 

 

  B. V. Larson, Steel World (Undying Mercenaries Series)

 

 

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