Read Online Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) by B. V. Larson - Free Book Online Page A

your tactics. What inspired you to try to shove the dragons over the side?”
    I explained how I’d seen a group along the edge which had managed to throw one down. I then quickly ordered my followers to charge into the melee before the dragons could finish butchering the first group.
    “Excellent,” Graves said. “That’s what I’m talking about, right there: Leadership on the field, improvisation—and victory. I don’t regret a thing.”
    I frowned. “What would you have to regret, sir?”
    “Your upcoming trials have been challenged. The 3 rd Unit veterans came to me, and they told me I had to pull your advancement to candidacy. Did you know they were against it?”
    “I had a feeling, sir.”
    “Well, I won’t lie—this might go badly for you, but I think you might be able to pull it off somehow. See you on the other side, McGill.”
    He stood up and gave me a grim nod. Then he left the infirmary. I looked after him and tried not to worry.
     
    * * *
     
    The trip out to Gamma Pavonis was a long run. I had plenty of time to heal up and join in the training exercises with the rest of my unit.
    Driving the dragons around turned out to be fun. I’d seen Turov do it back on Tech World, but at that time I hadn’t known who had built these machines. Apparently, the colonists from Dust World had produced the prototypes when seeking a system they could sell to other planets. They’d settled down as nanite vendors in the end but not before producing some pretty interesting designs to share with the human-only market.
    What got me most was the inventiveness of the colonists on Dust World. They’d been a splinter group cut off from Earth for nearly a century. They hadn’t known they shouldn’t be making new tech devices freely, that it was against Galactic Law. What impressed me the most, however, was how many cool things they’d invented with such a small group. During the same interval, Earth had pretty much stagnated technologically. Due to its very nature, the Empire progressed very slowly.
    I knew from my new-history courses back in school that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries had been a time of explosive growth in human knowledge. We’d invented all kinds of things that were taken for granted today. Humanity had been quite innovative back in the days before the Galactic bureaucrats came and put a damper on all our creativity. In order to legally make a product in the Empire, you had to first make sure that no other civilization held the patent. The colonists from Zeta Herculis hadn’t known about these restrictions and had plowed along inventing whatever they damn well pleased. I had to admire their spunk.
    The dragons were one such invention. As they were already producing nanites as a trade good to cement their position in the Empire, they’d decided to use the battle vehicles as a trade good with Earth itself. It was just as illegal for a single planet to have multiple interstellar trade goods as it was to have none or to trade something that someone else did. But, apparently, no other planets produced suits like these and so humans were in the clear to build and sell them among themselves.
    Over the last month or so, I’d come to understand how the new auxiliary cohort fit in with the rest of Legion Varus. My Legion had gone into space this time with a lot of extra recruits. These troops now served to swell the ranks of all ten of Varus’ existing cohorts. In the meantime, veteran troops were moved into the new auxiliary cohort. My unit, being one of the ones trained in the use of heavy armor, was a natural choice to learn how to fight in dragons as they were essentially larger, heavier, self-powered battle armor systems.
    Centurion Graves became a unit commander under Winslade. It seemed unfair, even downright mean, to put him in that position, but Turov had never been one to worry about justice when she made a decision.
    And so I learned how to drive the strange dragons. Probably the most