by B. V. Larson
“All good, I trust,” I said, looking around her office.
“Some of them were—some were quite the opposite.”
You can tell a lot about an officer by the look of their office. Tribune Drusus had adorned the walls with the heads of slain enemy aliens. Trophies from a dozen campaigns on far-away planets.
Graves always sat in the center of his steel box. He didn’t believe in fancy-ass decorations. Just tactical maps and other practical tools of war.
Deech was different. Her office held plaques, awards and gaudy star maps. These items were proudly presented, and each one indicated some kind of step in her career. This woman was a bona fide go-getter and a legend in her own mind.
“Huh,” I said and walked over to finger a tiny purplish globe. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was Ross-g, a misty world full of swampy principalities.”
“Very discerning, McGill.”
“Didn’t you serve with the Iron Eagles? Originally?”
Deech assumed a posture of rigid pride. “I did indeed. Ross-g was one of our top assignments. No warlord was ever assassinated under my watch.”
Nodding, I pretended to be impressed. Iron Eagles, Victrix and Germanica were all prissy legions, in my opinion. In years past, they’d liked to operate as color-guards. Usually, they’d spent years following some lordling around to impress other local petty tyrants on one planet or another.
Those times had passed all of us by, of course. We were all hard-fighting outfits now, but she seemed nostalgic for the old days.
Deech watched me as I poked at her trophies. Since she didn’t demand I state my business, I kept exploring her office.
“Looky-here!” I said. “This is from the Galactics!”
“My greatest possession,” she said pridefully. “A plaque from the Core Worlds, commending the service of the Iron Eagles.”
I whistled at that. The only attention I’d ever gotten from a Galactic was the negative kind—as in an official demand that I be executed.
“Have you ever met the Mogwa in person, Tribune?” I asked her.
“I’ve never had the pleasure.”
“Well, I have—several times. They’re kind of snotty. They don’t like it out in the provinces. They call us dark-worlders.”
Deech stared at me. I took a glance and saw her mouth was slightly open, and she had the kind of squint to her eyes that indicated she wasn’t sure if she believed me or not.
“Anyways,” I said, “I’m here to report to you what I learned down on Rogue World.”
“Something, I trust, that would be so critical you thought it was worth bypassing Graves to tell me about it?”
“Exactly. I learned this whole invasion is a waste of time. We should just bomb the planet now and cut our losses.”
Deech frowned at me. “Are you accustomed to making large-scale strategic decisions for your superior officers?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s come up before,” I admitted. “Please hear me out before you dismiss me.”
Then I told her what the lady scientist from the dome had told me. The scientists were fighting because previous Earth ships had promised to rescue them but ditched them in space instead. I didn’t know if these cold facts would matter or not to Deech, but I figured I might as well give it a try.
“That’s very interesting…” she replied. “But the Mogwa fleet is coming directly here—you knew about that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my heart sinking.
Her lack of surprise in response to my story told me two things: first off, she already knew, and secondly, she didn’t care.
“Think, McGill, why would they travel directly here, rather than stopping off at Earth to question our officials?”
“Uh… maybe they want to catch us in the act of developing illegal tech out here?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Now, if we don’t care about these rogue scientists, what possible reason might we have for taking such great care not to destroy the dome?”
“Hmm… maybe we want to steal their data core, or something?”
She smiled. “This has been an interesting chat. I thank you for the report, and the tenacious way you brought it to me. Next time, it would be more helpful if you brought me something I truly needed to know instead.”
I was starting to feel like I was in the principal’s office.
“Just one more thing, sir,” I said. “If we do find what we’re looking for, will we let those lab folks live after that? I mean… maybe we can talk them into giving it up for their own safety.”
“An interesting and very charitable idea. Unfortunately, we can’t really afford to have thousands of angry civilians carrying around information that could get Earth erased, can we now?”
“Right… Thanks for being so honest with me.”
“You’re welcome, Centurion. Dismissed.”
I left her office, my mind whirling.
Everything the lady on the planet had told me was true. The brass had lied to the troops again—but that was nothing unusual in my legion. In fact, it was downright commonplace.
But no one really likes genocide, not even the perpetrator. What my mind was chewing on now was the idea that something else could be worked out…
I kept thinking of that unearthly, fine-looking runway model down there on the planet below. Sure, she’d offed me without a qualm, but she’d done it for a good cause. I felt like I could reason with her if I was given a half a chance. It was more than I could say about my own people.
-31-
Winslade hadn’t kept quiet. While I was talking to Tribune Deech, he ratted me out to Graves. By the time I got back to my quarters, there was a note on my tapper. It was red and blinking.
“Report to the Primus—immediately,” I read out loud.
A few more of my unit’s troops had been revived by then. One of them was Natasha, another was Carlos. As we weren’t under attack in space, the algorithm had queued up the senior non-coms first.
Carlos was helping out with the revives and deciding who should be recycled in case there was a bad grow. Natasha was reviewing our cam data to see what had gone so horribly wrong.
“Natasha,” I said, “come with me. We’re going to see Graves.”
She joined me as we headed to the cohort command office. Gold deck was reserved for fleet-types and legion brass. A primus like Graves was on the border-line in this situation. Depending on his assignment, he might get an office on Gold deck like Winslade had, or he might not. Since he was involved in direct combat ops, he’d been assigned to a cube just like we had.
“Centurion McGill,” he said when I reached his cold steel walls. “Fancy seeing you here, instead of running around over the top of my head.”
“Huh? Oh, right sir. Sorry about that. Deech asked me to report anything funny I found on the planet.”
His demeanor changed. He had been reviewing summarized video of enemy capabilities from Natasha’s vast collection of vids. Every trooper had cameras on their suits, but they generated too many hours of material for any one person to watch them all. It fell to techs like her to create highlights of the interesting stuff for the officers.
Graves stood up and gave me a stern glare. “McGill, I’m not going down this road with you again. You’re not to bother the tribune with any wild, hare-brained scheme you come up with.”
“I swear on my momma’s grave that I would never even consider such an action.”
“Your mother is alive, McGill.”
“I didn’t realize you took such an interest, Primus. I’m honored.”
He heaved a sigh. “Look,” he said, “when it comes to Deech, keep your pants on and your mouth shut. Is that clear?”
“Crystal, sir. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Natasha and Graves exchanged glances, and I could tell neither one of them trusted me. I wasn’t sure if that was something to be proud of or not.
“All right,” Graves said. “As the tr
ibune hasn’t complained to me personally, I’m going to assume you haven’t set her off into a rage yet. You have your instructions. You’re going back down with the first lifter in the morning. Assemble your troops.”
“Uh… we’re going down again, sir? What’s our mission this time?”
He frowned at me. “What have you been doing all day? You were revived two hours ago. Check your logs, man. Tactical plans were distributed before those new lungs of yours took their first breath.”
“Oh, that. Okay, Primus. I hadn’t had time yet to review the documents.”
“Well, do so. There will be no general briefing. We’re going down, setting up a fire-base on the mountains above that damned dome, and we’re going to take it. I don’t care if every civvie inside dies in the process.”
I nodded without argument. I knew personally that Deech didn’t care if they all died either. Apparently, that might well make her mission easier.
“McGill,” Graves went on, “your first unit action ended in a full wipe. Not a single survivor crawled out of that dome. Don’t you want to avenge yourself and your troops?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.
“How so?”
Natasha cleared her throat then. We both looked at her.
“I might be able to help clarify,” she said, using her tapper to scroll through countless vids. She took us to the endpoint, a few moments before I was killed by that rogue lab-chief under the dome.
The imagery flashed up on the walls, and we all stared at it. Graves snorted when he heard her soft voice and saw her fine-boned face.
“Really, McGill?” he asked. “You found an alien girlfriend? It doesn’t even matter to you that these people viciously slaughtered your entire unit?”
“She had her reasons, sir,” I said. “You should listen to what she says. I mean, I don’t agree with her, but I can understand.”
He reached out and made a snuffing gesture with his hand. The vid faded and vanished.
“I don’t need to,” he said. “What I need is your assurance that you can complete your mission.”
It takes a long time for a man like me to get mad—usually. But Graves was doing the trick today. Even Natasha was pissing me off. She shouldn’t have played that vid and gotten Graves sniffing down the wrong track.
“Primus Graves,” I said loudly. “Sir, how many other units were assigned to penetrate the dome?”
“Three,” he said.
“And how many managed it, sir?”
“Just one—yours.”
I nodded. “That should tell you all you need to know,” I said. “The other teams might have had more survivors, but we came closer to accomplishing our mission. We’re the only ones that got in there, we reached the power plant, and I damned near shut it down myself.”
He tipped his head back thoughtfully for a moment. “You did more than that. You did knock it out for about two hours. Rupturing the cooling jacket did the trick.”
“Then I rest my case—mission accomplished, sir.”
He sighed. “All right. You did well. The other units chickened and were devoured by the machines inside that black vapor. I’m just never certain how things will go when I deploy you into the field, McGill. It’s a crap-shoot every time.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, sir.”
“You’re dismissed, Centurion. And read those damned tacticals.”
“Will do, sir. I swear it.”
On the way out, I felt like strangling Natasha, but I controlled myself. “You’ve got a new duty to perform, Specialist,” I told her. “Read all these tactical docs. Summarize and brief me before midnight tonight.”
“Tonight?” she asked.
“Damn right,” I said. “We drop in the morning.”
“But I’ve got thousands of hours of suit-vids to review.”
“Take a stim,” I suggested. “Make Kivi help—and give her a stim, too. Hell, everybody gets a stim.”
“Sir? Is this because I embarrassed you by showing Graves that vid of the girl?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m neither petty, nor vindictive. I’d no more do such a thing than you would.”
Natasha looked sullen. She knew I was calling her jealous as well as petty and vindictive. Clearly, she was still hauling around some baggage from our past relationship.
“Point taken, Centurion,” she said. “May I be excused? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Get going.”’
She trotted off, and I watched her run. She had a nice shape to her. She’d lost some of her tone over the last year or so on Earth, but dying had been good for her. She’d regained her old body in top condition.
Sometimes, we all had to look at the bright side of death.
Along about midnight Natasha returned with her summary. I’d been sipping synthetic whiskey and relaxing, but I managed to stash the bottle before she walked in.
Her hair was a mess. It looked like she’d been running the palm of her hand through her bangs. She looked tired, but triumphant.
“You were meant to spend all day on this—it’s a full dossier,” she told me.
I nodded, keeping my face neutral. I realized that she’d mistakenly read the whole thing. That would include orders and plans for the entire cohort. As a centurion, I was only responsible for reading my own unit’s mission plan, or maybe others I was likely to come into direct contact with.
Sensing that telling her that now would be another mistake, I listened as she described the briefing. She did a great job.
“Okay,” I said when she was done. “We’re dropping at dawn on the biggest rock formation that overlooks the dome. We’ll try to probe—to bait them into doing some of their tricks. We’ll destroy their defensive machine and biologicals then invade when the vapor disperses, about an hour later.”
“That’s the gist of it,” she admitted. “But you got all those other details, didn’t you?
“Certainly,” I said. “I’ve committed them all to memory. You did fine work here, Natasha, above and beyond. Why don’t you take the rest of the night off? You can process the vids from our first action later. There won’t be any time for the troops to review them tonight, anyway.”
She looked troubled by that, but she smiled gratefully. “Okay,” she said.
Then she frowned at me and cocked her head. “Do I smell alcohol?”
I grinned. “A drop of it, yes,” I admitted.
Revealing the squeeze bottle, I poured her a dollop and handed it over. She looked at it dubiously and sniffed it like a cat with a new food dish.
“Is this stuff safe to drink?”
“It’s sterile, if that’s what you mean.”
She actually took a probe from her kit and dipped it into the cup. I shook my head as she read the chemical analysis.
Natasha always had been the smartest girl in the unit. She was more of a brain than an emotional type, but she could be both under the right circumstances.
Finally, when she was satisfied she wouldn’t be poisoned, she sipped the drink. Making a face, she sipped some more.
We talked, and a few minutes later I gave her a fresh cup. That was it—after that, she was stone drunk.
I was getting pretty happy myself. We laughed and made sloppy love about an hour later. It felt just like going home again.
“I missed you,” she said when she was lying on my bare chest.
“I missed you too,” I said, and I meant it.
“Are we going to die again tomorrow?”
I hesitated, but I didn’t see any advantage in holding back the truth from her now.
“Yeah… probably.”
She heaved a sigh after that and went to sleep.
-32-
The next day was even more of a shit-show than usual.
I didn’t even get a solid night’s sleep. Usually, before a drop, they fed us well and let the food settle in our guts an hour or so before we boarded the lifters. Sometimes, if
the ride was expected to be especially rough, they’d just give us this disgusting liquid-protein stuff and some motion-sickness patches.
Today was different. About an hour before we were supposed to be awakened by the ship’s computer, a klaxon went off.
“What the hell…?” I asked, heaving myself up to a sitting position.
Natasha was an experienced soldier by now. She rolled right off of me, sat on the floor and started working her tapper—hangover and all.
Yawning and pulling on my boots, I saw the floor light up.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Looks like an alert. What’s on the feed?”
“We’re under attack.”
Now, that surprised me. The rogues had shown they were resourceful, but I hadn’t figured them for the kind who might be able to strike at us up here in orbit.
“What have we got?” I asked.
“Some kind of missiles are incoming.”
“Dammit. I hope they don’t wreck this nice ship. We’re still breaking it in.”
“Orders, Centurion?”
I pointed at the flashing arrows on the floor. Every recruit knew they were to follow them in an emergency. “We’re a combat team, so we follow the red ones.”
Kicking it into gear, we suited up and grabbed our rucks. Fortunately, legionnaires were permanently packed. The smart ones even kept their toothpaste ready for action.
Clanking and banging our gear on the walls as we moved, we trotted through the passages of the ship. As a unit centurion, I no longer had the task of babysitting recruits and regulars. I had noncoms to do that.
Instead, I communicated with my adjuncts as I ran, telling them to get their platoons to the lifters on Red Deck pronto. At the same time, I listened into command chat—picking up what was going on with the whole legion.
At my side was Natasha, to whom I’d given the task of monitoring ship-board data coming from Gold Deck.
“It’s not good,” Natasha told me. “They launched five missiles—it doesn’t seem like much of an attack, but we haven’t been able to take any of them down. They’re punching through our countermeasures. Lasers are bouncing off—it looks like some kind of new reflective coating and an aerogel shield surrounds them.”