by B. V. Larson
I didn’t let any of that bother me. Country folks seemed to come in two flavors, those that talked your ear off and those who were practically mutes. I just figured these boys were like the latter persuasion, and it was very familiar to me.
“Centurion McGill?” an alien voice said from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and spotted the two squids. I quickly checked their nametags, but I was disappointed. Neither of them were on the very short list of squids I knew personally.
“Uh… Sub-Centurion Foam?” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can answer my questions.”
“Okay, shoot.”
The squid flinched some of his many arms, touching his large sidearm with fluttering tentacles. Then, he seemed to do some thinking as his translators burbled what I’d said, translating it into squid-talk.
“Oh… shoot has a colloquial meaning? How disappointing.”
“Are you going to ask me a question or not, squid? I’m busy talking to these here soldiers.”
Sub-Centurion Foam let his limbs slip and slide over one another for a few seconds. I don’t know how these big aliens managed to keep their limbs wet all the time, even in a dry climate, and I don’t want to know.
“Your pointless behavior is exactly what I wanted to discuss. Possibly, you are unaware of the moronic nature of these beasts. They are literally incapable of conversation.”
“Aw now, you shouldn’t talk like that about your own loyal troops! If a human commander would dare speak to another human that way… well sir, let me just say you’d be calamari by sun-up.”
The squid didn’t seem to get my references. After he blinked his overly-numerous squid eyes at me, he spoke again. “Another non sequitur. I’m finding this conversation to be tedious.”
“Move along then, squishy. No one asked you anyways.”
I turned my back on him, ignoring Foam. The squid and his sidekick lingered, however. A few minutes later, after I’d finished telling a funny story to the curious slavers, I whirled around to frown at the two squids again.
“What are you two doing hanging around? Do you like my stories?”
“We have alerted Sub-Primus Churn to your presence. He instructed us to await his arrival.”
“Churn? Hot-damn! I’m surprised Hegemony hasn’t permed his ass by now… Did you know he’s my favorite squid of all time, now that Bubbles is dead and gone? Did you know that?”
“There is no indication that Sub-Primus Churn shares your feelings about this relationship.”
“I bet. There he is!”
It was the moment I’d been hoping for. Churn was a devious Squid. All of them were, actually. They were half-rebellious on the best of days.
“Churn!” I boomed out, throwing my arms wide. “You made sub-primus? Congrats!”
All the squids backed up a bit when I lifted my limbs. For most aliens, that was a fighting stance—a physical challenge. Their numerous limbs squirmed over the ground around them for a few seconds.
“Don’t ink yourselves, boys,” I said, lowering my arms again. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just happy to see Churn, here. After that disaster back on Storm World, I’d figured he’d have been replaced by now.”
“Disaster?” Churn asked me.
He slithered up, joining the other two. The full trio of massive squids eyed me with distaste, but I pretended not to notice.
“Yeah, sure. Your legion got wiped out, remember? Didn’t you die in the mud way back then?”
“Yes, but I was revived.”
“Ah… really? Wasn’t Armel your commander at the time?”
Churn looked uncomfortable. Squids pretty much always looked like they needed to take a shit, but I could tell the difference. When you were really getting to one of them their eyes began to roam around strangely. These boys’ eyeballs looked like those of a horse in a lightning storm.
Churn spoke at last. “Armel… Yes. There was a brief period during which I served under that human.”
“Brief, huh? What was it? Five or six years? Damn, how long do you squids live? Never mind, I don’t care. I’m just surprised you caught a revive that early-on in the legions. Old Armel must have liked you.”
“Tribune Armel is a traitor to Earth,” Churn said carefully.
“He sure is… but do you still talk to him, sometimes? Just for old time’s sake?”
“Certainly not. That would be treasonous behavior.”
“I guess that it would. Anyway, what can I do for such a high-ranking squid?”
“It would be better if this were coming from Fike himself, but I’m here to ask you to leave our encampment.”
“What? Fike is kicking me out?”
Churn fidgeted for a few more seconds before responding. “No—but he has ordered me to ask you to leave.”
“Ah, I get it. He didn’t have the balls to come out here and do it himself, huh? So, he sends his most repulsive sidekick. Well, since you’re only making a request, I’m feeling free to ignore it.”
I turned back around to the slavers, who were looking kind of uncomfortable at this point. After all, they had four officers in front of them, and things weren’t going smoothly. They were smart enough to understand that when the brass started shooting at each other, it was often their unfortunate asses that caught the bullets.
For my own part, I was working the single piece of squid psychology that I understood well. Cephalopods were, by culture and genetics, only able to understand master-slave relationships. They didn’t really have friends, or enemies. They did sometimes make temporary alliances, but usually they simply obeyed their superiors until such a time as they felt they could get away with pulling a move and killing their boss. Should such a moment arrive, they usurped their rightful commander and became the new leader.
This pattern of behavior meant no squid could ever really relax. They knew that everyone below them was gunning for them. Everyone was seeking their senior officer’s destruction for selfish advancement.
As a result of this natural paranoia, if you acted confident enough around them, they were always nervous and off-balance. It was only when they felt utterly confident that they might dare an assassination attempt. An uncertain squid was by nature a less dangerous squid.
Sitting on the back of a switched-off pig, I kept telling stories. Pretty much all of them were bullshit, but I did have a moral to each tale that I gave them at the end.
“…so you see,” I finished up, “if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.”
I looked around at my listeners. The squids still wore their pissed-pants expressions—but the slavers were in a different zone. They were soaking it all in. I was the prophet on the mount to these boys.
Reluctantly, the single Blood World heavy trooper raised his ham-sized hand. I was impressed. He hadn’t said a damned thing for nearly an hour of bullshit.
I called on him immediately. “You there, tell me what you think.”
“Stupid games… stupid prizes?”
“Ah, I see. I can tell I should make the point of things more clear to you. See, the idea is that when a man does a dumb thing, a bad thing happens to him.”
“No prize?”
“Well… no, you do get the prize. You get a bad prize. You get the bad prize because you were dumb.”
The heavy trooper squinted hard. I could tell his thinker was going to hurt by morning.
Right about then, another familiar face showed up. It was Sub-Tribune Fike himself.
“Hello, sir,” I said to him. “Are you feeling kind of hot in that suit of mine? Your face is a little red.”
“McGill, what are you still doing out here? And no, you’re not getting this suit back. You can forget about that.”
“About what…? Oh! No worries there, sir! That’s the furthest thing from my dull-witted mind. No sir, I’m afraid I’m here to inform you of an unfortunate situation.”
“What situation? I’m contacting Graves. You ne
ed to get out of my camp. You’re stirring up trouble, and—”
“Just hear me out for a moment. This is about treachery. Underhanded assassination is in the works.”
Fike stopped. He stared at me fixedly. “What are you talking about?”
My thick finger came up, and it aimed at Sub-Primus Churn. “See that squid? I know him. He’s up to no good. In fact, he’s in league with one Tribune Armel.”
Fike snarled. But he didn’t snarl at me. Instead, he turned on Churn.
“Sub-Primus? Is this true?”
Churn worked his beak-like mouth a bit. It clicked and burbled in surprise. The translator at last began to speak for him.
“There is no way this being could know whether or not I’ve had dealings with Tribune Armel.”
Fike cocked his head. That wasn’t a good answer, but it was the kind of answer I expected from a squid. They didn’t always know what to say when you called them out. They tended to get fixated on some detail that wasn’t directly the point of an accusation. The slightest error in a statement—the kind of slipshod error I made on an hourly basis—drove them crazy.
“See!” I shouted. “He’s as guilty as sin! He’s not even bothering to deny it!”
“Denial is unnecessary when there is an absence of proof,” Churn said.
Fike turned to me. His anger was gone. He was concerned now instead. “McGill, I know you’ve had run-ins with cephalopods in the past. That kind of bigotry isn’t appreciated here in my outfit.”
“Far from it, sir. I’m only trying to do my civic duty. You recall back during the Clone World campaign? When Sub-Centurion Bubbles became a turncoat?”
Fike nodded. I knew he remembered the day well. He’d nearly been killed by Bubbles and his allies, the Claver clones. In fact, he even shook my hand after I helped bail him out of a deadly combat.
“Well sir, I’ve got a nose for squid treachery. I know when they’re going bad—and I know someone has been feeding Armel some good intel. How else has he managed to strike at us so effectively in every situation?”
Fike turned slowly back around toward Churn. “Sub-Primus, you are hereby relieved of command until this situation is resolved.”
Churn clacked his beak at us, but he was arrested and hauled away. I waved goodbye, but he didn’t even have the decency to wave back.
During this time I was all smiles, but Fike worked his tapper furiously. At last, he turned back to me and wore a grim smile. “McGill? Guess what? You’re working for me now.”
“Uh… how’s that, sir?”
“You’re only a centurion, but you’ll have to fill in for Churn as a sub-primus.”
“Really? What’s the hurry, sir? Seems like you’ve got quite a load of squids running around the place that might be better qualified—”
Fike shook his head. “With this kind of treachery in my ranks, I’m not promoting another cephalopod. I’ve got to keep a sharp eye on the ones I’ve got left. And as to timing, the enemy is inbound right now.”
“The bright-siders?”
“Exactly. They’re attacking. They’ll be here in force in less than an hour. I want you to take command of Churn’s cohort. You’ll be posted out there.”
Fike made a vague gesture toward the eastern desert region.
“Wonderful…”
Fike swaggered away, and Churn’s officers looked at me expectantly.
“What are your orders, Sub-Primus?” the one named Foam asked.
“Uh…”
Right then, the heavy trooper leaned close, and his dead-pig breath washed over me as he spoke.
“…win stupid prize?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yep. You’ve got it. You’ve really got it, big guy.”
He looked happy, and I was happy for him—sort of.
-63-
It turned out that I’d been placed in charge of a front-line cohort of stinking Blood Worlders. I’d worked with these boys before, so I wasn’t completely in the dark as to how to handle them. The key was to give decisive orders and understand their various strengths and weaknesses.
In every Blood-Worlder legion, the majority of the men were heavy troopers like the smart ass who’d recognized the award of a stupid-prize to me just minutes earlier. His breed was big, dumb and obedient. The only bad thing about them was they came in inseparable squads.
Each of these squads was made up of nine brothers. They were actually blood-related, and they changed personality after they watched some of their kin die. They went totally ape at that point, becoming wild berserkers.
All the Blood-World types had quirks like that which you had to watch out for. With this in mind, I had to position and prepare my troops for battle very carefully.
I made Foam my exec, as he was the only squid I really knew. Sure, he was seriously evil—and he hated me—but it’s best to work with the devil you know, I always say.
“Hey! Foamer! I want a skirmish line of slavers two hundred meters out. Put all the heavy troopers into the main trench lines, and keep the giants in reserve.”
“The enemy will attempt to kill a few of our heavy troops,” Foam said. “This will cause them to leave their entrenched positions.”
“Don’t I know it! If Armel understands one thing, it’s how to face a formation of crazy Blood-Worlders. Why did you squids breed the heavies to go ape when they were attacked, anyway?”
Foam looked startled. “That was never a goal of the breeding process.”
“Why’d you do it, then?”
“Genetic manipulation is far from a perfect science. Turning on one genetic marker often activates others, which results in less desirable traits being introduced.”
“Huh…” I said. “So it was an accident? That’s just grand.”
“Yes, it was sub-optimal. Humans fight primarily with ranged weapons. An overwhelming urge to charge into close-combat can—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up and hustle the men into position.”
The squid left me, his limbs flapping around as he hurried. It was kind of weird to give a half-ton space-squid orders, but there it was. I’d been placed in charge of this menagerie, and it was time to see if I was any good at it or not.
Using optical enhancers and satellite shots relayed from Dominus above, I watched the enemy approach. They were fast, and they seemed to have learned a thing or two since our last run-in. They weren’t all bunched up as in previous attacks. They came on in staggered lines, with at least three meters of empty space between each man.
I didn’t have any light troops, but I did have some slavers. They were way up front, hugging the ground. They aimed long rifles and began popping off shots way before I thought they should.
“Are they even in range yet?” I demanded of Foam.
“The evidence is clear.”
He flicked a video from the front lines over to my tapper. I was immediately impressed. “The slavers are actually getting hits. Not many of them, but they have the Bright-siders ducking already.”
“Shall I tell them to stop, Sub-Primus?”
“No! Keep it up. Let them come to us with early losses. What about our star-falls, Foamy?”
“No supporting barrage is incoming,” the squid officer answered. “Command ops says the inbound hostiles are too widely spread out to be damaged effectively by our remaining artillery.”
“Shit…”
As the slavers kept sniping, the front rank grew ragged, then frayed. There were holes to be seen, and I dared to smile.
Then the enemy finally began to return our withering fire. The smile on my face drooped. They were lancing at my slavers. Every now and then, one of my big skinny boys lit up in lavender flames.
“Pull them back!” I ordered. “Pull the slavers back!”
Foam gave the order, and I winced as they withdrew toward our trench lines. Five, ten, thirty of their humping forms were transformed into living torches. Maybe half survived long enough to dive into the first trench line.
�
��Tell the heavies to keep their heads down. Don’t stand and fire until the enemy is in optimal range.”
“Sir, my battle computer simulator indicates this is a tactical error. The enemy will be able to close—”
“You’ll shut up and follow my orders until such time as I’m dead in the dust. Is that clear?”
“As clear as seawater, sir.”
I glanced at him. Was Foam getting mouthy? It could be, but that would be unusual for a squid. They generally followed orders intently unless they meant to turn traitor on you, then they went all the way in that direction. Squids weren’t variable, they were binary in their behavior. It was all or nothing with them.
Going back to the buzzer feeds and scopes, I watched as the bright-siders came into the range of our entrenched gunmen, then swept past that vital point. They were closer than a kilometer now, and still moving fast.
The first rank had folded into the second, but they didn’t seem any less determined. Hell, if I had troops that were that hard-charging, I’d have been proud as punch. As it was, I had to hand it to the enemy, they didn’t fear death, hell or high-water.
“The enemy is at six hundred meters range, sir,” Foam said.
“Prepare to stand!” I roared directly over the cohort tactical channel.
Roars and grunts swept the field. Nearly a thousand over-sized brutes hunkered in their trenches, leg muscles quivering and ready.
“Four hundred meters…” Foam said in an even tone.
The enemy was fast. They had to be running at thirty clicks an hour, maybe more than that.
“Stand and fire at will!” I shouted.
Even as I finally gave the order, I felt I’d waited too long. By the time my line of big dumbasses stood, sighted and fired with a crackling roar, the approaching enemy rank was about three hundred and fifty meters out.
The effects of that first volley were devastating, however. Damn near a thousand big rounds reached out and punched huge holes in the charging line. The enemy was shattered. They fell, they rolled, and they died by the hundreds.