Green World
Page 38
“No. I’m not me. I’m never going to be okay.”
“That’s just a bad death talking. Varus people live this way all the time. You’ll have to toughen-up girl. You used to want to be in the legions, remember?”
“Yes… and I was out of my mind. Dad… this is serious. The ID tests down low in Central go way past photographic recognition. My DNA has changed. My biometrics have changed. I won’t be allowed within a hundred floors of my own office.”
I thought about that, and I realized she was right. “Oh… so… what are we going to do?”
She thought about it for a time, and at last, she had an answer. “Let’s go back home. To Georgia. Take me home, Dad.”
So, we took the sky-train down to Georgia. I was sick over my little girl, but I talked big the whole way home. Only a practiced ear that was very accustomed to my particular brand of bullshit would have detected my true state of mind.
My folks were overjoyed to see us. I told them in a private moment that Etta had gotten into some new beauty face-sculpting, and they bought that. They were worried—but they didn’t know their granddaughter was about twenty percent stranger now.
Etta seemed to settle in nicely. Her grandparents were accepting, and everything was familiar and comforting. She turned over every mirror in the house, and we pretended not to notice.
On about the third evening, when the sun was traveling low over the swamp, I saw an aircar. The flight lights were blinking above the trees.
Aircars were still rare in Waycross, but they weren’t unknown. It wasn’t until I saw the thing bank and glide down out of the sky for a landing that I became curious.
A lone figure climbed out while I watched from behind a tree. She was small and well-built. Frowning, I let her walk up to my porch and knock on my shack door.
For the first three knocks, I didn’t move. I didn’t know how I felt. Galina and I had been through a lot together—but I wasn’t happy about being sold to the Skay.
Finally, she gave up on my shack, and she turned toward the main house.
“Are you shitting me…?” I muttered.
But it was true. She had the all-out gall to head toward my parents’ backdoor. I couldn’t believe it, having figured she’d get back in her car and leave when I didn’t come to the door.
Doubtlessly, she’d been buzzing my tapper for days, but I’d already covered it all up with aluminum foil and tape. I didn’t want any forced calls from Central. They were all total bastards, to my way of thinking.
“Hey!” I shouted, walking after her. I didn’t want her to disturb my folks, or Etta, who was not in a good state of mind. “Galina!”
She turned and stared. After a moment, she approached me slowly. “James?”
When I got close, I got even more pissed, because I saw the new rank symbols on her shoulders.
“They made you an imperator again?” I asked.
“Yes. It took a long time, didn’t it?”
We stared at each other for a few moments. Neither one of us seemed to know what to say. But anger got the better of me.
“A promotion. That was the deal, wasn’t it? The payoff for selling me to the Skay?”
“No, James. It wasn’t like that.”
She was lying. I could feel it. She wasn’t as good at lying as I was. She had some talent, but it just wasn’t at the professional level.
“Look,” she said after I glared at her for a while. “I’m very glad you managed to get home. I hope you didn’t have too bad of a time out there… wherever you went. I must ask, however… did you assassinate the governor?”
For a second, I blinked in confusion. “Did I kill Nox? No. I talked to her. I suggested options. She took one of them.”
Galina narrowed her eyes. “Care to tell me what that option might have been?”
“Nope. I don’t care to talk to you at all right now.”
“James…” she took a few seductive steps in my direction. “I apologize. For everything. You weren’t treated well. For the record, your criminal status has been revoked on Earth. I had to work hard to get that through the council—but I did it. There’s no need to thank me.”
I snorted.
She put a small hand up and rubbed my cheek with the backs of her fingers. “You’ve got days of stubble on you. Let’s go into your place and you can get cleaned up. Okay?”
I thought hard about it, and I almost went for it.
Galina was an evil woman, but we’d always had a thing for each other. Sometimes, I thought she was the love of my long and twisted life.
But then I thought of Etta, and I straightened my spine. “I’d rather you left, Galina.”
Surprised, she backed up a step. She looked kind of hurt. “All right. If that’s what you want. I’ll see you at our next deployment.”
She turned away, and she marched back in the direction of her aircar. It was in an open field, but there were trees she had to go through to get there.
I watched her go, and part of me regretted my choices. Her hips, her legs… they were moving smoothly in all the right ways.
Heaving a sigh, I turned and stepped up onto my porch again. I was going to need some beer tonight—a lot of beer. I might even have to go into Waycross for another twelve-pack.
As I reached for my screen door, however, I heard a funny sound.
Turning, I squinted, looking in every direction. I didn’t see Galina, or anyone else. But I did see her aircar. It was still squatting there in the field.
There was something else wrong, too. The birds were quiet. Dead quiet.
Walking through the wooded region toward the field, I kept swiveling my head around.
“Galina? Are you still out here pouting or something?”
I almost stepped on her. There she was, stretched out on the grass under a big oak. There was blood on her cheek, and she wasn’t moving.
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“Etta!” I roared. “Etta! Come out here right now, girl!”
The wind rustled in the trees, but nothing else moved. I checked Galina’s pulse. It was there. She wasn’t dead, at least.
“She’s not dead, but this is a misdemeanor assault, daughter of mine. Show yourself!”
I heard a sound from above me. I looked up and jumped back.
Etta swung down out of the tree. She landed neatly and brushed her hands off on her pants.
“This body is weak—but it’s lighter. I can climb better than ever.”
“I’m glad you’re happy about that. What the hell did you do to Galina?”
She shrugged. “Don’t worry. She’ll probably live. That’s more than she deserves, Dad. You shouldn’t let her walk all over you.”
“Girl, that is my business. Are you really going back to your old ways? To murdering people and such-like?”
Etta looked troubled. She walked around, staring into the open fields and the shaggy trees that hung over the swamp.
“Dad… I think I have to leave. I never did belong on Earth… not entirely. Now, I’m feeling strangely invigorated. I was depressed at first, but… do you think grandpa put something else into that stew he made? Something… spicy?”
“Uh… he wouldn’t do that. I’m sure of it.” This was a flat-out lie, of course, but Etta took it in stride.
“I can’t go back to Central. Even if they did let me in again, I’d probably kill somebody within a week. I think my prefrontal cortex is smaller, weaker—maybe gone entirely. When I feel an emotion, I just act on it. I can’t help myself.”
I frowned. Etta had always been like that, but she did seem to be worse since the revive. She’d put a knife to my neck, and to Floramel’s. She’d conked Galina a good one, too.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Dust World. I’ll work with Floramel and grandpa. Three weird scientists and no rules. Who knows what we’ll come up with?”
She grinned at me, and even though it did me good to see her happy again, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat concerned as
well. After all, this girl was Etta… but she also wasn’t. She was like a whole new daughter. Like Etta had a sister or something. A mean one.
“Okay,” I said. “You can go out there with my blessing. I don’t blame you a bit for wanting to leave the dungeons under Central after ten long years.”
Etta hugged me, and she clung to me for a full minute. When we parted, she headed toward the main house. My parents were going to be sad to see her go, even if she was wearing someone else’s face right now.
Working carefully, I picked Galina up and took her to my couch. She might need some medical attention, but I didn’t want to call any ambulances before Etta left. If she died on me… well, I’d talked myself out of worse things.
Like most legionnaires, I kept a basic medical kit in the house. It had nano-injectables, blood-packs and a diagnostic band. I put the band on her forehead, and it told me she had a concussion. Go figure.
The nanos seeped into her bloodstream and relieved the swelling. Around about seven in the evening, she woke up. She groaned and complained. She demanded champagne and a bucket of ice. I gave her a warm beer instead.
By eight o’clock, she’d been fed some leftovers and three more beers. She took a shower and came back out to the couch.
“You didn’t even try to climb in with me.”
“Nope.”
“Are you still angry? Even after bashing my head in?”
“Wasn’t me. We’ve got some big wombats out here in the swamps, you know.”
She snorted and slapped my arm. I ignored her and watched my tapper. I’d removed the wrapping to track Etta. She was already halfway to the sky-train station. She planned to try to make it to the gateway posts under Central. If they let her through security one more time—well, taking a step through the posts would transmit her to Dust World for free.
“I guess I’ll try to leave again,” Galina said. “As long as you can control your wombats.”
“Uh…” I said, thinking that over.
If Galina left now, someone might tell her about Etta’s exit. That was a longshot, but there was also the possibility she’d already figured out who had bashed her. All she had to do was report it, and Etta might be arrested.
“Hmm… maybe you should spend the night. Aren’t you a little intoxicated?”
She looked me up and down. “That’s how it is, huh? Your anger is gone now?”
“No, but I do feel a bit bad. You shouldn’t drive with a concussion, anyways.”
It took a while for us to reacquaint. It had been awhile, and there had been some bad blood between us. Fortunately, we’d always had a strong physical attraction to fall back on.
By midnight, Galina’s headache was gone due to the medical pack, and we were screwing like rabbits.
Afterward, I wondered about a lot of things as we rested in each other’s arms. I’d gotten a message indicating Etta had made it out to Dust World. That was good… probably.
A bootleg copy of Etta, plus Floramel and the Investigator. What would those three brains conjure up over time? Given the freedom to invent anything they felt like… the stars were the limit.
Late that night, my tapper began to vibrate. I was surprised, as I had all sorts of blockers on it. Only a few friends could get through.
Moving carefully so as not to disturb Galina, who sleeping half-on and half-off me, I checked to see who it was.
Carlos Ortiz. That’s what the caller ID said.
I winced. If answered now, I would not only wake up Galina, I would probably have to get an earful from Carlos about sleeping with her again. I shook my wrist, dismissing the call. He’d just have to wait until morning.
About a minute later, as I was dozing off, I remembered something: Carlos had said he was going to quit the legion. I’d kind of forgotten about that, what with the battles and reviving Etta and all. Feeling guilty, I quietly tried to call him back.
He didn’t answer.
Fortunately, Galina didn’t wake up—but now my mind was churning. I thought about Carlos, and about who would become the new tribune of Legion Varus, now that Galina was moving back to Central. I hoped it would be Graves, but I doubted it. The highest brass didn’t seem to want him to rise in the ranks.
Whoever it was, I hoped it wouldn’t be Winslade. The mere thought almost made me shudder.
Lastly, I wondered why I was with Galina again. She had to be the worst woman in my life—and that was saying something. Now that she was an imperator again, our relationship was technically out of regs. Not that such technicalities had ever stopped us before.
By the time I managed to start nodding off again, the old dead Skay we called the Moon had risen up to glow in the night sky. For everyone on Earth, it was kind of freaky-looking these days. We knew what it really was, and no one was happy about it. How was it that we’d all found it so romantic and enchanting just a few years ago?
Full and bright, the artificial corpse of our greatest enemy rode the night sky like an alien god. It made me hope I’d never see a living Skay again.
THE END
Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed GREEN WORLD the fifteenth book in the Undying Mercenaries Series. If you liked the book and want to read the story to the finish, please put up some stars and a review to support the series. Let me know what kind of world you’d like McGill to discover next!
-BVL
More SF Books by B. V. Larson:
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Steel World
Dust World
Tech World
Machine World
Death World
Home World
Rogue World
Blood World
Dark World
Storm World
Armor World
Clone World
Glass World
Edge World
Green World
Rebel Fleet Series:
Rebel Fleet
Orion Fleet
Alpha Fleet
Earth Fleet
Star Force Series:
Swarm
Extinction
Rebellion
Conquest
Army of One (Novella)
Battle Station
Empire
Annihilation
Storm Assault
The Dead Sun
Outcast
Exile
Demon Star
Starship Pandora (Audio Drama)
The Star Runner Series:
Star Runner
Fire Fight
Visit BVLarson.com for more information.