Armor World

by B. V. Larson

  “It’s a matter of commitment,” Graves said.

  Looking down at the flattened streets, I figured we must have lost a half-million human civilians right there. That demonstrated a serious level of commitment on Earth’s part, if you asked me.

  We passed through a force-shield and landed on the roof of Central. It was surreal, being on a whole and undamaged building in the midst of such destruction.

  “There were a lot of good restaurants and bars down there in those streets,” I lamented.

  “Don’t worry,” Drusus said. “They’ve already begun to rebuild.”

  We went downstairs using the roof entrance and got into an elevator together. That was when something unexpected happened.

  I figured out later that certain members of our foursome had planned something, but they hadn’t included me in on their designs. That was their prerogative, of course. They all outranked me—but it was bad policy anyway.

  Drusus made the first move. He turned toward Graves and nodded his head.

  I noticed this, but I didn’t think much of it until Graves took a step forward and reached for Galina’s sidearm.

  Now, I shouldn’t have done anything. A thinking man probably wouldn’t have moved a muscle—but I’m not always a thinker. I’m more of a doer.

  I believe I was triggered by pure instinct. Galina was standing there, minding her own business and tapping at her tapper the way most women did night and day. She looked pretty innocent and unaware.

  Seeing Graves grab at her from behind like that… I guess it was more than the animal side of my brain could handle. After all, she and I had been in a half-assed, on-again-off-again love affair for years. In short, I felt an immediate urge to defend her, and I did so without hesitation.

  Graves found his own wrist clamped by my bigger hand. He made a fast move to break my grip, being no less of a combat-trained individual than I was.

  Of course, I’d anticipated this, so I swept his feet out from under him with one of my oversized boots. He landed hard on his can, cracking his skull on the elevator floor.

  If I’d hurt him, it didn’t show any. He bounced up like some kind of a ninja and squared off with me. Both of us were crouching and in a combat stance.

  About this time, Galina turned around to see what was happening. She had her pistol in her hand.

  Drusus had his gun out by now, too. It was a real-life Mexican standoff if I’d ever seen one.

  “All right, all right,” Drusus said. “Let’s calm down a moment.”

  “What is this, Drusus?” Galina demanded. “Assassination?”

  “A praetor doesn’t assassinate tribunes,” Graves said, never taking his eyes off me. “He rightfully executes them.”

  “Is that what this is, sirs?” I asked. “An execution?”

  “No,” Drusus said firmly. “It’s an arrest. I apologize for the clumsy handling, but it is legitimate.”

  At this, Galina looked at me appraisingly. “You saw them move on me, and you attacked them?”

  I shrugged, beginning to relax and stand straight again. Graves did the same, but he never took his eyes off me. He never even blinked.

  “Uh… yeah,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

  Galina nodded and squinted at the other two. “Am I really so threatening you thought you should do this in an elevator? I feel proud to know I fill you with such fear.”

  Drusus and Graves looked annoyed. Drusus put his gun away first.

  “That’s a mistake, sir,” Graves said, but Drusus waved for silence.

  “Tribune Galina Turov, we’re arresting you on suspicion of treason.”

  Galina’s head tilted to one side. “Oh really? Treason to whom?”

  “To Earth. To Hegemony… to all humanity if you like.”

  By this time, my eyes were pretty wide. If they were arresting Galina, there was probably a good reason for it. She always had been the shadiest girlfriend I’d ever known.

  “Very well,” she said. “I submit to your arrest.”

  She handed her gun to Graves, who took the weapon and cuffed her with gravity-clamps. Only when she was safely in custody did Drusus seem to relax.

  Graves aimed a finger at me.

  “What about McGill? Is he under arrest as well, sir?”

  The elevator door finally dinged and opened. We’d moved several hundred floors by this time.

  The group stepped out while Drusus considered his options.

  “No,” he said. “McGill was just playing watchdog. We’ve got no reason to arrest him.”

  Graves shook his head. I could tell he thought Drusus was too lenient. I restrained my natural urge to give him a quick victory smile. He was, after all, still my immediate superior.

  As we walked down the passage toward Drusus’ office suite, I began to wonder about Turov herself. She seemed far too quiet. When she was caught off-guard she normally hissed like an alley cat.

  Further, I noticed that her hands were rubbing at her wrists… no, that’s wrong. She was tapping on her tapper. I’d seen her do that before under extreme circumstances.

  Alarmed, I began looking this way and that. It wouldn’t have surprised me if a team of commando squids jumped us right then and there.

  But they didn’t. We made it all the way to Drusus’ office, where the door swung open at our approach. Drusus stopped before walking inside. He was frowning at his tapper.

  “What is it, Praetor?” Galina asked in an innocent tone of voice.

  We were all immediately suspicious.

  Drusus did a rare thing. He reached out a hand and gripped Galina’s shoulder. He gave her a little shake.

  “What have you done?” he demanded.

  “I’ve done nothing!” she insisted, but her eyes were glittering dangerously.

  Drusus pushed past her, he pushed past us all and rushed into his office. Soon, he broke into a trot.

  Over the top of his central battle table a hologram had appeared.

  I knew in an instant what and who was calling us.

  It was a Mogwa. An individual known to me as the Governor of Province 921, Sateekas himself.

  -60-

  Drusus reached out and touched the mute button. He’d put Sateekas on hold.

  Breathing hard, he turned to face us. Galina was sauntering up, hips swaggering just a little. Graves and I followed, frowning and confused.

  “What’s Sateekas doing here?” he demanded. “He was dead… we haven’t even reported his death to the Core Systems yet.”

  “No, we haven’t…” Galina said.

  Drusus looked at her like she might bite. I could have told him from experience his instincts were right about that.

  “He knows?” Drusus asked. “He knows what happened out there?”

  “Not everything. I’m really not sure about the details.”

  Drusus was dumbfounded. “You would really go this far, Galina? You’d bring down the entire Earth to burn with you in Hell?”

  “Such drama!” she responded. “Burning Earth isn’t my intent, Praetor. I know you need a scapegoat to pin the Armor World failure on—but it’s not going to be me. Sateekas has learned he died in this province after losing against the Skay in battle. Someone else told him about that a long time ago.”

  “It had to be Armel…” Drusus said. “Someone revived him somewhere, and he informed the Mogwa. Such a disaster.”

  “Don’t panic,” Galina told him. “All I did was inform him that the four of us were there when it happened.”

  “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “It’s a suicide pact,” she said. “He will question us. If you agree to drop all charges against me, I’ll go with whatever story you concoct for him. It’s that simple.”

  Drusus looked desperate. He wasn’t a good liar… that was putting it mildly. He was, in fact, a boy scout among officers.

  But to placate the Mogwa he was going to have to lie fast and lie well. Frankly, I didn’t know if he
had it in him.

  On the hologram, I saw Sateekas slap a cringing Nairb and badger him. Perhaps he was bitching about the lack of contact, and taking it out on his subordinates. I could hardly blame him for that. If the Nairbs worked for me, I’d probably kill one or two of them every day myself.

  “Old Sateekas is young again,” I said. “Really, I don’t know why he’s so sore about dying. It looks like an improvement to me.”

  Drusus didn’t appear to hear me. He had wild eyes. He glanced around at all of us, eyes leaping from one face to the next.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said to Galina. “Did you, or did you not cooperate with that Skay invader?”

  “I did not.”

  “What about Armel? He seemed to know what was going to happen.”

  Galina looked shy for a moment. I knew that was an act, but she did it so well it probably fooled most people.

  “He was planning something,” she admitted, “something with his squid officers. That’s all I know.”

  “The sub-centurions?” Drusus asked in confusion.

  She nodded.

  “Wait a second!” I called out, interrupting. “I remember now! Old Sub-Centurion Bubbles was acting funny when I went up to Gold Deck that same day, before Armel pulled his trick. Bubbles pretended not to know me, and I clearly made him nervous.”

  “That’s pretty thin, McGill,” Graves said.

  “It is,” I admitted, “but you can beat it out of him. Don’t go easy! Keep squeezing until there’s ink all over the floor. It’s the only way to handle one of these slimy squids.”

  Drusus turned back to the hologram. The Nairb we’d seen earlier appeared to be dead now. Sateekas was losing it.

  “We can’t delay any longer,” Drusus said. “We have to begin the interview. McGill… try not to say anything that makes my hair turn white.”

  “It’ll never happen, Praetor.”

  Sighing, he glanced at Galina. “If we get out of this alive, there will be an investigation here at Central—but it will fail to find anything. Do you understand?”

  “Certainly. Now let’s talk to the Mogwa before he nukes Central again.”

  Drusus activated the pick-up. We suddenly heard some clicking and barking sounds. The translators caught up a moment later and began interpreting the alien’s speech.

  “… you have earned this demise, creature! I will not be discomfited by a bureaucrat. All of you will live only as long as you are useful to me, contributing to the Glory of the Empire…”

  Sateekas trailed off, having noticed that we were staring at him. Shuffling his limbs around, he eyed us in turn.

  “This is the requested four?” he demanded.

  “Yes, Governor,” Drusus said.

  I winced immediately. Sateekas considered the job of Governor to be a personal insult to his status. His prior office as an admiral was infinitely more prestigious, which was why I still used that title when I spoke to him. Drusus either didn’t know that, or he’d forgotten. The long and the short of it was that Drusus had managed to insult the Mogwa with the first two words he spoke.

  Sateekas shuffled his limbs in agitation. “It has come to my attention that I lived briefly onboard your pathetic ship, human. Is that true?”

  “It’s true, sir.”

  “And why was I not informed?”

  “We’ve only just returned to Earth from 51 Pegasi. We don’t have ships with the kind of speed your vessels from the Core possess.”

  So far, so good. Go Drusus, the words echoed in my head.

  “Hmm… and your ship, Legate, lacks any kind of deep-link technology. And yet somehow, someone informed Mogwa Prime that I should be revived. How convenient…”

  “It’s all a matter of budget, sir,” Drusus said. “We don’t have that kind of communications tech on every ship. Possibly another ship came by and reported your death.”

  I cringed again. Drusus had stepped on another minor landmine. Sateekas hated anyone who whined about budgets.

  “Every time I come out here to this beggar planet I’m assaulted by pleas for more funding. It’s despicable.”

  Drusus blinked twice. “Oh… I’m sorry sir. I was only trying to explain the lack—”

  “Please stop before you anger me further. I’m trying to be objective.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Sateekas turned away, looking off-screen. He demanded that a Nairb approach. Bravely, another of them did. The green, seal-shaped alien stood on top of the flappy corpse of his previous brother.

  “If it pleases the court,” the Nairb began, “this trial is now in session.”

  Graves, Turov and I exchanged worried glances. The Nairb’s statement hadn’t pleased any of us in the slightest.

  White-faced, Drusus stared at the hologram.

  “Who... who is on trial, sirs?” he asked.

  “You are, human,” the Nairb said. “All of you are… collectively.”

  “And what’s the charge?”

  “Treason. Assassination. War crimes and conspiracy to commit further war crimes. These are the major items, but the list is quite long and detailed. Do you wish to hear a full recitation?”

  “No…” Drusus said, his voice small. “I’d rather not. What evidence do you have of these alleged crimes?”

  “It has come to the attention of this tribunal that the species of primitives known as ‘Humanity’ did revive and assassinate the sitting governor of Province 921. Evidence of this was provided in visual form.”

  Immediately, a recording began to play. I recognized the scene immediately. It was of the Mogwa slaughter that had occurred aboard Legate. There was no sound, just action.

  At first, I thought they’d somehow gotten a copy of my own body-cam recordings, as I’d been right there when it happened. But I soon realized the video was taken from the point of view of the killer.

  “Armel was recording all that?” I asked aloud.

  The others looked at me in shock, and I shut up in a hurry.

  Even as I said this, however, my own face came onto the scene. I aimed a gun at Armel, talked to him for a few minutes, then shot him dead. The recording ended.

  “The prosecution will now call its first witness,” the Nairb said. “Centurion James McGill-creature. Are you present?”

  “I am, sir,” I said, stepping forward.

  The other three humans in the room looked even sicker than they had before, if that could be imagined.

  “McGill-creature,” the Nairb said. “Was that you in the video?”

  “Uh… yes sir. Sure looked like me.”

  “Did you shoot the assassin at the end?”

  “Yes sir, I did. That was Tribune Armel, and I shot him dead. He has not been revived.”

  The Nairb seemed to take some notes. I felt a trickle of sweat under my arms. These bureaucrats were tricky. You had to handle them like live snakes.

  “You spoke with the assassin,” he said, “but we don’t have the audio portion of this broadcast. What was said?”

  “Uh… I don’t rightly recall every word…”

  “Wasn’t it something like: ‘that was a job well done, comrade, but now you must die.’?”

  “What? No, no, no! I’m only a centurion. Armel was a tribune. I would have been executed for treason against humanity if I’d shot my superior officer without good cause.”

  The Nairb consulted with a few others who looked just like him. After a moment, he returned to face me. “Your point is accepted. Nevertheless, you didn’t shoot him immediately. You spoke to him first.”

  “I had to find out why he was cracking the skulls of our beloved Mogwa officers. It seemed crazy to me. I had to know if there were any other assassins.”

  This statement perked up the Nairb. He’d been almost bored up until that moment.

  “Indeed? And what was his response?”

  “He said yes. He said he was in the employ of the greatest enemy we’ve ever seen out here on the frontier. He was an agent of anothe
r race of Galactics, in fact. They’re the vilest of creatures, known to us as the Skay, and they’re planning a vicious takeover of our Province even now.”

  At that, the whole bridge behind the Nairbs lit up with a wild wave of squawking. The Nairbs and the Mogwa were shouting at each other too fast for our translators to keep up.

  -61-

  After the Nairbs had settled down, Sateekas himself waddled forward to the camera pickup and spoke to us directly.

  “Humans,” he began, “there is something very odd about this province. My predecessor Xlur remarked upon this on several occasions, but I’d always assumed he was mad. Today, I’m not so sure. Today, I’ve witnessed my own butchery at the hands of your pathetic species.”

  He paused then, as if in thought. The Nairb prosecutor tried to wriggle past him, but he brushed the smaller creature away.

  “Any sane Mogwa would destroy the lot of you just on suspicion. No more evidence of your foul natures would be needed beyond this visual recording. You’re mad-dogs, and you should all be put down for the good of the galaxy… but still, I hesitate…”

  The Nairb managed to slip past him and approach the camera pick up again. “If you would allow me, Governor. I have even more devastating charges to make.”

  Sateekas gave way somewhat. “How could such a thing be? What crime could be more heinous than the assassination of a sitting supremacy such as myself?”

  Right then, I knew what was coming. It was crystal-clear in my mind.

  My grandma always told anyone who cared to listen that I was a born genius when it came to mischief. I truly believe it was the ingenious part of my brain which sent a jolt of precognition through me at that moment.

  There was only one move to make, and I made it without hesitation before the Nairb could say anything else.

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about, sirs,” I said loudly.