by B. V. Larson
Raash agreed, and although I didn’t trust him as far as I could spit, he behaved himself as we made our way back to Central.
-22-
Natasha came out of the revival machine hopping mad. I couldn’t blame her for that. After all, she’d been murdered on the streets by a crazy blue lizard.
When she rejoined Floramel and me down deep in the labs, she lost it when she discovered Raash was right there, sipping a fizzy drink and telling us where Green World was.
I’m a man who can generally forgive and forget a death, but not everyone is so easy-going. Some people even hold grudges. From Natasha’s point of view, Floramel was a rival for my affections, while Raash—well, girls tend to dislike their own killers. It’s only natural, I guess. They often took violence more personally than the guys tended to do.
“James,” Natasha said between gritted teeth, “if you ever want a favor from me again as long as I live, you have to kill that horrible reptile right this instant!”
“A favor, is it?” Floramel asked, unwisely interjecting herself into the situation. “What do you gain from performing these ‘favors,’ Specialist Elkin?”
Natasha turned and approached her. She had one finger up and wagging. “You too, alien freak! You’d best just stay away from me and my legion! You and Raash are both freaks!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said, standing up and waving my hands for peace. “Let’s take it down a notch, ladies. This is no way for two professional women to behave.”
“I can’t just calm down, James. This reptile terrorized and murdered me. Why are you allowing him to keep breathing?”
“Well… normally I wouldn’t, but—”
“False,” Raash said loudly. He’d decided to speak up for the first time, and he’d picked a bad note from the get-go. “You could never have defeated me, human. Only my state of depression has brought me to this labyrinth of treachery and evil.”
“Look, everyone here has been unfairly killed at some point, am I right?” I asked them. “This is the time for apologies and forgiveness. Raash old buddy, why don’t you go first?”
“Go first? Doing what?”
“Apologizing, that’s what. You do know about such things, right?”
“You demand that I grovel?”
“No, no. Just tell the nice lady here that you’re sorry for killing her. You are sorry, right, big guy?”
Raash looked at Natasha for a second. She’d crossed her arms and was looking kind of pouty, but she was listening.
“My only apology will be to my former masters. Just by being here, cooperating in this cabal, I’m performing an act of treason against them. This is a dishonorable act, and I only hope that when I sleep the final sleep, I will be forgiven.”
“That’s it?” Natasha asked incredulously. “That’s his apology?”
I shushed her gently. “He’s got a different culture, girl. Have some respect.”
She huffed at me.
Floramel seemed unimpressed as well. Her literal mind had been triggered by Raash and his odd viewpoint. “Your statements are nonsensical, Raash. You’re not even dead at the moment, much less permed.”
“It is only a matter of time. Half of my essence is already missing—the physical half. My body is not my own. It’s an obscenity.”
“Why?” Natasha asked. She seemed curious despite herself.
“Does this heinous shade not scream dishonor? I’m the color of water—or the sky. No member of my clan could wear a skin of this hue without shame.”
“What?” I asked. “Hold on, what’s so wrong with blue? It’s a nice color.”
“Only the lesser beasts of my planet can be born with this shade. You should know this, McGill. You fought on Steel World long ago.”
“Huh? Oh… yeah.” And I really did remember what he was talking about.
There were two sentient species on Cancri-9, better known as Steel World. One race was made up of raptor types, like Raash. They were smarter and more humanoid. The others… well, they were straight-out dinosaurs. Big monsters with lots of teeth and huge skulls.
“You’re telling me that there aren’t any saurian raptors that are blue?”
“No. It’s a slave-color. A lesser being deserves this shame. I’m disgusted by my own scales, and I’ve never been so artfully humiliated.”
“Well now, I don’t think the Investigator did it on purpose. It was an honest mistake, I’m sure. He’s never been to your planet, see. He’s never met your people. All he had to work from was some scraps of DNA.”
“This revelation deepens my disgust and depression. If true, you’re suggesting my body is a melding of flesh between two species—one higher, and one low.”
“Oh…” I said, and I stopped talking. I figured he was probably right. The Investigator loved to tinker with cells and genetics. He might have done damned-well anything to the lump of meat that Raash was walking around in right now before we animated it with Raash’s mind.
“If you don’t like your skin,” Floramel said, “perhaps we can dye it, or maybe scan you, do some genetic work, and revive you again.”
Raash put up a set of splayed claws. “Please don’t. I’m a pathetic mutant already. I wouldn’t want to deepen the agony of my soul with further unspeakable alterations to my form.”
Natasha watched all this with growing interest. She was still pissed, mind you, but she was also becoming intrigued.
I knew right off what the story was. She was a sucker for new tech. We were talking about tinkering with genetics, and that had her radar up and humming, I could tell.
Immediately, my fertile mind generated a helpful idea.
“Say Natasha, I get it. You want out, and I totally understand how you feel. I won’t blame you one bit if you do an about-face and march right back to the barracks. We could really use your help, of course, what with all these new ground-breaking discoveries going on—but if you’re too bitter to put aside the unhappy memory of Raash’s mood-swings, well—”
“He frigging murdered me, James!”
“Yes, yes—we all know what happened. But we’ve established that Raash feels real bad about that, don’t you, big guy?”
Raash shrugged. It was one of the human mannerisms he seemed to know best.
“So that’s my apology? Seriously?”
“James,” Floramel said, “let her run off. She’s out of her league. How much help could she provide? She’s not even an officer.”
Natasha’s face had been red before, but after this untimely comment it down-shifted to purple.
“James…” she warned. “If you want to continue being my friend, you’ll tell me what’s going on here. If I leave now I’m gone forever.”
I hesitated. It’s been my instinct and life-long practice, when someone lays down an ultimatum, to step over that line in the sand immediately. But this time we really could use Natasha, so I sighed.
“Okay, you have some catching-up to do. Let me explain what’s going on.”
I proceeded to fill her in on about a hundred important details. I told her about my investigation, my little trip off-world, and how I ran in to Raash and Armel—the works. She was dumbfounded by the end of it.
“So… this saurian is an illegal revive? A walking Galactic crime?”
“Well… sort of. No one knows about it, so that’s like it never really happened, right?”
“No James, it’s not the same at all. At least four people know the truth at this point, and that doesn’t even count the Investigator. What if one of us blabs?”
“No one will, girl! That’s just not going to happen. Who here would want to tell the Galactics something that could get the Earth permed?”
Raash raised a single claw. “It might be an improvement for the universe. A final benevolent act of atonement for me.”
“Shut up, Raash,” I told him. I looked back at Natasha and pointed a finger through my palm in Raash’s direction. I lowered my voice to a loud whisper. “He’s a bad gro
w, and he knows it. If we can just recycle him, see, I bet he’ll come out right as rain afterward.”
“Your fantasies will not come to fruition, deceitful human. I will not permit it.”
Natasha wasn’t looking at either of us. She was pacing, and she was staring at the deck. Her hair, still wet from the revival chamber, dripped on the floor now and then.
“A non-standard revival system…” she said, almost to herself. “That’s amazing by itself. It’s one thing to duplicate a technology—it’s quite another to recreate an effect without using a well-known methodology.”
“That’s right, girl!” I jumped in, cheering her on. “The Investigator’s turd-tanks are so cool—aren’t they Floramel? We humans are frigging geniuses!”
Natasha looked up at me, but I could tell she wasn’t listening. Her eyes had that far-away look. I had no idea what she was thinking about.
“I want you to take me out there, James,” she said suddenly. “To Dust World, I mean. I want to see the tanks for myself.”
“That might not be—” Floramel began, but I stood and waved for her to shut up.
“Sure thing, Natasha. If you could just help us out a little first though, huh?”
Eventually, I got Natasha settled down and working with us. We didn’t magically transform into some kind of well-oiled team, mind you. Floramel didn’t care if Natasha lived or died, and Raash kept making unhelpful comments. Still, I now had two of the finest minds available working on the problem of finding Green World. To my way of thinking, things were looking up.
As the work became increasingly technical, I soon got bored and fell asleep. The two women woke me up around five-thirty in the morning. I yawned and stretched, rubbing at a kink in my back. I’d been sleeping on some kind of metal lab stool, with my head on a chemical-stained table.
“We’ve found it,” Natasha said excitedly. “At least, we think we did.”
“That’s great, ladies. Where is it?”
The two women looked at one another. They looked haggard and their eyes were like two holes burned into blankets—but they were happy. They’d figured something out. Something big.
But I also knew they weren’t entirely happy with their findings.
That’s about when a big sharp claw poked me in the back. I turned to find Raash looming over me. His breath was foul—something like sardines mixed with garlic.
“You slept like a dead-thing,” he told me. “I could have slain you a dozen times over. The temptation was almost overwhelming.”
“I’m glad you managed to control yourself, Raash. You’re really pulling it together, man.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and walked over to see what the girls were excited about. Raash followed me, puffing his hot stinky breath onto my back. Sometimes, aliens didn’t get the whole thing about personal space.
“Let’s see what you’ve got. I can tell by the look on your faces, it’s good news!”
“I’m afraid not,” Floramel said. “Green World appears to be deep in a neighboring province.”
“You mean at the frontier?”
“No, in Province 928.”
“Uh… the one controlled by the Skay?”
The women nodded. “Exactly.”
“Hmm… that sucks. We can’t go out there without causing some kind of interstellar misunderstanding.”
“A violation of treaties,” Raash said. “A diplomatic crisis worthy of rekindling the war of succession between the Skay and the Mogwa. This is what you’re contemplating, McGill.”
I nodded as I looked over the charts. Raash was right. I was contemplating kick-starting a fresh interstellar war.
-23-
The team wrapped up all their data and gave it to me for delivery. None of them wanted to go upstairs with me, they were too chicken to present unpleasant facts to the brass.
I sent them to bed in the barracks, as they all looked bushed. Then I headed up the elevators to Turov’s office first. She wasn’t there, of course. She wouldn’t be in until around seven or so.
I had the codes to get into the offices, and I used them. This wasn’t any kind of violation as I was an officer in Legion Varus, and I was allowed into the headquarters at any time.
The couch inside looked pretty good. I’d spent more than a few hours napping on it, over the years. But just before I bedded down for an extra hour of shut-eye, I stopped myself.
“Hmm… this just isn’t a Turov-level crisis.”
Heaving a sigh, I realized I was right. Instead of waiting around for morning, I went back to the elevators. I rode up and up some more, gliding ever higher inside the massive building. When I got to damn near the top of the whole thing, I stopped for an early breakfast at the best cafeteria that was open. I considered a morning shower—there was plenty of time—but passed on the idea. I figured it would be better if I looked like I’d been working real hard on this, instead of having spent the night sawing wood and being stalked by a crazy lizard.
Drusus came to work shockingly early. He arrived via air-car, coming down his own private chimney from the roof. At about the same time, his staff arrived and took up their spots. They all must have had alerts set up warning them of his approach. That was smart. Never let the boss get to work before you do, my papa always said.
When the staffers filtered in to man their desks, they looked at me like I was a streak of shit.
“Can I help you, Centurion?” asked a particularly smarmy primus. He had ass-kisser written all over him, but that was reserved for his superiors. With a loser like me, it was all an act. I could tell he wanted me out of his waiting room and gone for good.
I could have told him that wasn’t going to happen, but I don’t like to deliver bad news unless I have to.
“I’ve got an appointment to see the praetor. I’m McGill—James McGill.”
“I know who you are…” the primus said in kind of a prissy, sing-song voice. I hated it right off the bat.
He swept his finger over his tapper, then scrolled up and checked again. His eyes snapped up and he forced a smile. “I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. You’re not on the roster for today, Centurion. Perhaps we could make an appointment for… March?”
“Nope. Tell Drusus I’m here. He’ll see me.”
That bullshit smile came back, but the primus wasn’t looking at me. Not anymore. He was glancing to my left and right.
I was surprised by the two hog veterans that approached. They were relatively quiet on their feet, which wasn’t something hogs were known for.
The primus sniffed. “Remove this man, please.”
The first hog stepped forward and reached for my bicep. That was a weak-sister move. I figured he must not have known who I was, or anything about me. That was almost a relief. I rarely encounter men these days who haven’t been forewarned concerning my unruly behavior.
The hog hit the deck with his nose and mouth in the lead. Fortunately, the flooring wasn’t stone or anything, so nothing on his face broke audibly. When he did a push-up and came back up roaring, he only left a smear of blood on the deck where he’d done a facer.
The second man had a truncheon out, and it was doing that sparkler-thing. One touch from that electric fun-stick, and I’d be doing a dance—just like I’d done yesterday when Raash had surprised me.
I didn’t like the idea of going all numb again, so I sent the second hog over my hip onto the floor—where he landed right on top of the first hog.
Somehow—it might have been an accident—the two men both caught a jolt from that activated truncheon. There was a snap and some buzzing. Their bellies were pinning it between them, I guess. It was definitely not their lucky day.
I made a face, feeling their discomfort. “Damn! You hogs should be careful with those things. They can be dangerous.”
The smarmy primus had his sidearm out by now, and he aimed it at me. His hand shook a little, and his sides were heaving with excitement.
“Freeze, Centurion!” he warble
d at me. “You’re under arrest!”
Right about then, Drusus threw his office doors wide. He took two steps into the lobby and looked around in open-mouthed shock. Then he caught sight of me, and his jaw snapped shut.
“What’s going on out—McGill?”
I’d put my hands up to make the primus fellow happy, but I took the time to touch my cap to Drusus. “I’m mighty sorry about all this, Praetor, sir. Someone must have issued shock-rods to these hogs without proper training. You shouldn’t have to witness this level of incompetence, especially inside your own headquarters.”
“No, I shouldn’t. I guess you might as well come on in.”
The primus ass-kisser, shocked to his core, opened his mouth to object. Drusus stopped him with an upright hand.
“I’m sorry, Bob. I should have told you about McGill. He has standing permission to pester me—as long as he doesn’t abuse the privilege. Now, could you get us two coffees, please?”
Primus Bob was red-faced, and he looked a little sick. Meanwhile, the two hog fellas had stopped playing twister on the floor. They struggled back to their feet. One of them seemed to have lost control of his bladder, but I, in a rare act of forbearance, didn’t even tease him about it.
“Bob?” I said. “I like three sugars in mine. And cream, too. Lots of cream.”
I followed Drusus into his office after that, and I could almost hear the awful cursing that went on after I’d left.
Once we were inside his palatial office, Drusus crossed his arms and looked a little disgusted. “All right, McGill. I’ve put up with your antics once again, but this had better be good.”
“Well sir, it’s not. It’s actually kind of bad.”
He frowned while I told him, in general terms, how my week had been going. He stopped me when I got to the part about porting out of the Sea Empress to Green World.
“Hold on. Are you telling me that explosion out in the harbor was your fault?”
“What? No, sir! Not in any way, shape or form. I take zero responsibility for what happened, for now and ever more.”