Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) Read Online Free

hesitation and with a steady hand, I shot Xlur right between the orbs. He flopped and died, making more of those farting sounds and bleeding blue ichor on the rooftop.

-3-
     
    Xlur didn’t look any better in death than he had in life. In fact, I thought he looked a little worse. He definitely smelled bad—like rotten fruit.
    “Are you insane, McGill?” Turov screeched at me.
    “You told me to do something.”
    “You can’t fix things by shooting a Galactic! He’ll remember all of this when they revive him upon his ship! You’ve gotten us all permed at the very least, if not our entire planet!”
    “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I’ve got a plan. Hand me the Galactic key, will you?”
    She hesitated, and I was honestly surprised by that. Could she be so greedy and paranoid? Even when faced with the destruction of the entire human race, she didn’t want to trust me with her most prized possession—not even for a minute.
    “Hurry, we don’t have much time!” I said, holding out my hand and making a grabbing motion.
    She slapped the key into my palm with a snarl. It was a seashell-shaped device that had powers that were belied by its mundane appearance. Essentially, it operated like a skeleton key, allowing the user to break security systems. Only Galactics were supposed to have them, and as far as I knew, Imperator Turov was the only human who possessed one of these highly illegal devices.
    Quickly, I located Xlur’s tapper. It was embedded in the cooling rubbery flesh of one of his appendages. I touched it with the key, which bypassed any passcodes he might have set and opened the settings menu.
    Fortunately, I was able to read the symbols his system displayed. Galactic technology was designed to be used by a wide range of beings on thousands of worlds. Interfaces had to be usable by almost anyone and therefore followed universal standards.
    Working fast, I performed the tricks that Natasha had showed me a year or so back and erased the most recent copy of Xlur’s mental-backup.
    The Mogwa’s tapper operated pretty much the same way ours did. Every few minutes it recorded changes to the neural network in the host’s brain and uploaded them to the nearest relay station. This often worked even after death as the tappers didn’t stop operating right away unless they were destroyed. That’s why we could remember our death experiences right up to and including the gory details at the finish.
    But the upload didn’t work instantaneously. It was a transmission of periodic snapshots. It took time to send the data, and the tappers had to share bandwidth with other traffic. With any luck…
    “I think I did it,” I said after fooling with the interface for about a minute. “His latest mind-snap was in the upload queue already, but I just erased it. Hurry up, help me.”
    I grabbed one of Xlur’s limbs in each hand and pulled.
    “Help you do what? ”
    “We’ve got to get Xlur’s body into the air car.”
    Grimacing, she helped me carry the flopping alien corpse to the air car and shoved it into the passenger seat. The driver looked more than stunned.
    “I can’t deliver this , sir!” she told the Imperator, horrified. “They’ll perm me for sure when I get up to the ship—”
    Turov fired two shots. The first blasted a large hole in the driver’s arm, destroying her tapper. Before she could even scream, the second shot blew the driver’s brains all over the upholstery.
    “What the hell…?” I demanded.
    “The driver has to be in the pilot’s seat for this to be believable. Don’t look at me that way—I’ll have her revived and debriefed later.”
    This woman was ruthless. I shook my head. I didn’t like including an innocent bystander, but I knew Turov was right.
    Part of me was impressed that she’d managed to grasp the essence of my plan and improvise improvements so quickly. Most people just stood around gawking when I pulled stunts like this.
    We loaded up the bodies, and I made