by B. V. Larson
Cursing, Winslade gave chase. He had his needler out and ready.
God never saw fit to give me much in the way of brains, but for reasons of his own he made me a tougher fighter than most. When I scrambled around a console, I doubled back and hunched there. When Winslade rounded the corner where I crouched, I kicked him hard.
It was a low blow, and it wasn’t entirely accurate. He was wearing the second teleport suit, of course, and therefore his balls had a certain degree of protection.
Still, the force of the kick and the sensitivity of the region gave him some trouble. Hissing, he staggered away from me and raised his needler.
There was murder in the man’s eyes. I’d seen it a thousand times before.
Having little choice and no real weapons, I grabbed his arm. His hand, his beamer, and even a portion of his wrist vanished inside my larger grip. I felt numbing heat—he’d burned me.
But my hand still operated. I yanked him down on his face, and I beat him with my good hand until he stopped moving. It wasn’t clean, or pretty, but I stood up panting in the end and he lay still on the deck.
All this time, the lovely, watchful eyes of Floramel hadn’t missed a beat.
“That was savage,” she said in a wondering tone. “Isn’t he one of your people? Why would you mistreat one another in this way?”
“It would take quite a bit of explaining,” I admitted, still heaving deep breaths of air. “The brief version is that I don’t really include this little rodent as one of my people. But what really matters is that other ship out there, and the battle fleet behind it.”
She cocked her head and stared at me blankly. I’d noticed that her people seemed to do that when they were thinking. While she did so, I stripped my teleport suit down to the leggings and began to bandage my wounded hand and wrist.
“McGill…” she said eventually. “Your conversations intrigue me. You intrigue me. How can an intelligent being be simultaneously barbaric and civilized? How can you be part animal and part sentient?”
I chuckled at that. Shaking off the sweat that had beaded up on my forehead, I got out a tiny flesh-printer from the bridge emergency kits and sprayed cells on my injured arm.
“That’s a good question,” I said, “would it surprise you to learn I’ve heard it before?”
“No, not at all.”
Just about then, I noticed a blue light. It pulsed and shimmered. My eyes widened in fear. The suit on the floor—Winslade’s suit—it was teleporting out.
In a panic, I dropped the flesh-printer and tore at the suit that still wrapped me up to my knees. I hadn’t bothered to pull it off completely until just now.
My suit also began to shimmer. A few seconds later they both vanished.
“Where did the body go?” Floramel asked. She was still watching from the forward wall.
I stared down at the empty deck at my feet, panting hard. Both teleport suits were gone without a trace. That had been a very close call.
“I have no idea where it went,” I admitted, “but I’ll bet it was somewhere far away from here...”
-41-
Floramel told me she’d be in touch, and that she had to go attend to other matters. Before she closed the channel, I asked if her people would attack our transport ship again.
“As long as you don’t attack us, we have no quarrel,” she said. “This has always been true. Each time you’ve been injured it was due either to a trap we set to discourage invaders, or a counterstrike in response to your relentless aggression. Is it possible that your leaders never understood that?” Her expression was puzzled and sincere.
“Yep,” I told her. “It’s perfectly possible. Humans are good at a lot of things, but logic in the face of adversity isn’t one of them.”
“I see…” she said. “We thought our position was self-evident. Perhaps we should have issued warnings—but we feared you would only use the delay for further opportunity in attempting to bypass our defenses.”
“Bingo,” I said. “You’re right again. You see? You are beginning to understand us.”
“So strange…” she said, and her lovely face faded away to pixels.
The next call I made was a difficult one. I called Primus Graves.
He was a stern man under the best of circumstances, but as I attempted to explain the events of the last several hours, his face grew positively sullen.
“I knew something was going on between you and Winslade, McGill, but I failed to grasp the depths of this series of mistakes. When the legion is restored to order, I’m going to recommend you be stripped of your rank. You’re not centurion-level material.”
“Okay, Primus,” I said. “That’s fine. But right now, we have problems. The Nairbs are out there, and they’re likely to eradicate every living thing in this star system.”
Graves sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “You’ve put me in a grim situation. I’m the most senior officer left alive by both experience and commission date—meaning I’m in active command of what’s left of Varus.”
“Right sir, that’s why I called you first.”
“You’re sure Winslade was involved in all this? And Claver? Again?”
“It sure looks that way, sir. I can’t be certain of what his motives might have been, but—”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Graves finished for me. “We can’t revive him anyway—we can’t revive anyone—and you’re sure the entire crew aboard Nostrum is dead?”
“They’re freeze-dried, sir. I’m the sole breathing occupant. On the plus side, the rogue scientists have promised not to nail us again as long as we stop attacking them.”
“That’s very considerate of them,” Graves said in what I assumed was a sarcastic tone. With Graves, it was sometimes hard to tell—his sarcastic mode sounded exactly like his dead-serious mode. “I take it you’ve got a girlfriend among the locals? Is that safe to say?”
“Uh…” I said. I’d neglected to identify Floramel by name or description.
“That’s what I thought. Fair enough—we’ll try to get off-planet. It’s time to bail out of the Arcturus system. You stay put and wait for us. Try not to get into any more trouble. Can you do that, McGill?”
“I’ll swear on a stack of bibles if you want me to, sir.”
“Fine. At least the lifter engines are still working. The Nairbs will have to clean up here. We failed in our mission, but at least we didn’t all get permed. This will be the biggest black mark on our legion since the Teutoburg Forest debacle—but we might survive it.”
Sometimes, when Graves made remarks like that, I wondered just how old he was. I knew he was older than Legion Varus itself, but to be referencing ancient Rome… Well, it was a little bit creepy.
“Just a second,” I said as he moved to sign off. “What do you mean the Nairbs can deal with this?”
“Exactly what I said. They can drop their hell-burners for all I care. I’d kiss each one on the way down if I could. We’ve lost too much blood and treasure on this Godforsaken rock already. These rogue scientists have signed their own mass death-warrants, and I’m willing to make my peace with it.”
“But sir, that’s not really fair. I found out that if they’d surrendered, we were planning to dump them all in space anyways.”
“Is that right?” Graves chuckled. “That has Winslade and Deech written all over it. Well, the rogues had their fun at our expense. Quit crying about it. They aren’t even human, McGill, get a grip.”
Before I could argue further, he cut the channel. I cursed and fretted for a time, uncertain as to what I should do.
Finally, I took action I knew I was going to regret. I recorded a warning on the bridge comm system, and set up a timer for it to be transmitted down to the dome later, when we were already underway. I hoped that Floramel’s people wouldn’t retaliate with more missiles if we were retreating. If we had a head start, there wouldn’t be time for those deadly X-ray warheads to catch us.
The message was simple. I pro
vided Floramel with an explanation concerning the Nairb ship, its capabilities, and its primary goal of bombing out the surface.
When I’d finished the recording, I sensed a presence behind me. I whirled around, fully expecting to see Claver in a teleport suit, or maybe one of the lab-people looking distant and ethereal.
What I saw instead surprised the heck out of me—even though it shouldn’t have.
“A Nairb?” I asked. “What are you doing on our ship?”
It was indeed a Nairb. They were strange creatures. They amounted to greenish bags of protoplasm shaped sort of like earthly seals. They even had flippers.
“I’m documenting your infractions,” the creature said to me with the aid of an interpreting device. “Please continue with your activities, human. My list is already impressive, but I’m hoping to achieve even greater merit when you’re expunged.”
I gathered from its odd statement that the more violations I confessed to, or performed while it watched, increased the Nairb’s status in some way.
“It makes too much sense that you’d be more interested in brownie points than justice,” I said bitterly.
“Assuming these ‘brownie points’ are a measurement of success, your statement is essentially correct. Please continue.”
“I’m finished.”
“But you haven’t completed your treacherous act toward the Empire. You must send your message to the rebels on the planet below.”
“I was just thinking about doing that,” I lied. “I wasn’t going to send it. That was never my intention.”
“Interesting…” the Nairb said, slithering forward with a humping gait to investigate my settings on the ship’s comm console. “Ah-ha! I see your plan. The message will be transmitted after you’ve begun your escape. That adds several new counts.”
“What?”
“Premeditation has been confirmed. What’s more, you performed this latest deception while in the presence of a duly appointed officer of Galactic Law. That adds to the severity of the penalty, if not the crime itself.”
“But I never knew you were here until now!”
“Irrelevant,” it said, “…but again, intriguing. Your statement amounts to another admission. You lied when I first asked you about this message, didn’t you? More violations! Please attempt further complications, human. I’m not certain, but I believe I’m reaching a new threshold in bonus points.”
“You vile bag of snot!”
“Yes, like that! Well done! Verbal assault has now been added to your robust list of infractions. You’re a most compliant being. It will be a shame to erase you from existence. Now, let’s get down to details. I require your DNA for individual identification—”
At that point, I knew this had to stop. The Nairbs had ordered me permed several times in the past. On each occasion, they’d been tricked into believing their orders had been carried out. That had worked for many long years because the Galactics usually couldn’t be bothered to track individuals out on the frontier. We were like fish in the ocean to them: we were all the same and therefore almost without value.
But if he scanned my DNA and ran a search, he was sure to discover I’d been tried and convicted of serious violations on any number of past occasions. That would reflect poorly on Earth and all of humanity.
Whether he knew it or not, the Nairb had forced me to do something I knew I’d regret later.
Nairbs are the very definition of soft creatures. Even their hides are relatively thin—and their bones? They’re like rotten sticks.
I didn’t even bother using a weapon. My fists easily smashed his skull in, and goop flew everywhere.
“Ugh… damn… You stink inside.”
The Nairb didn’t answer, because he was as dead as a snail under a farmer’s shit-kickers. I watched for a moment as he settled on the deck, slowly flattening and glubbing out nasty juices all over the place.
-42-
The next twenty minutes or so weren’t my finest.
I felt truly screwed. Worse, I felt like I’d possibly screwed whatever chances Earth had for survival as well.
“Why, McGill?” I asked myself. “Why’d you have to go and slaughter a Nairb—again?”
My momma had always said I’d had trouble with authority figures—starting off with her. I’d just never fully grasped the concept. Even today, this flaw seemed to haunt me.
The slime from the Nairb spread far and wide. It was slippery at first, when it touched your boots, but it turned sticky as it dried. I didn’t think that was any kind of improvement.
Many possible options occurred to me as I pondered what to do next, but none of them seemed feasible. I could, for instance, try to clean up the Nairb and toss his flappy corpse off the ship. But the Nairbs weren’t sloppy about investigating such things. They’d demand a full accounting, and certain Legion Varus officers would be only too happy to hand me over to the Nairbs.
Other possibilities seemed equally far-fetched. Aiming guns at the Nairb ship, asking Floramel’s people for help—even begging for mercy. None of these things would matter to the Nairbs or my commanders. In fact, in the case of the Nairbs, they’d probably wet themselves with happiness to get their hands on a creature so undeniably guilty as I was.
To pass the time, I watched local space on the sensor screens. The Legion vacated the siege upon the dome as I watched, the lifters formed a chain of disks that rose up out of the atmosphere and came toward the transport.
Watching them, I got a scare. Something else loomed—something dark, oblong and distant.
Was it a ship—a Galactic ship? It wasn’t an Earth-design, I knew that right off.
I watched helplessly. The Nairbs had come out of hiding. They were on the far side of the planet, swinging around into view now. Were they stalking the lifters, or the planet itself? Or even me in the transport? I couldn’t tell.
“What in the nine hells were you thinking, boy?” asked a voice from behind me. “If you don’t get yourself into the damnedest predicaments...”
I whirled around to see Claver standing behind me. He was wearing a grin and a teleport suit.
“How much did you see?” I asked him.
He laughed. The sound had a cruel edge to it. “Enough to know there was a country bumpkin in this woodpile somewhere—and here he is!”
“Why’d you come back?”
“Back?” he asked me, squinting his eyes.
That’s when I noticed he had a laser pistol aimed at me. I glanced at it once, then looked back at his beady eyes.
“So,” he said, “you met me before. I wasn’t sure. Imagine my surprise when Winslade shows up dead! No McGill, no Claver—just a deceased Winslade.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That must have seemed odd.” I was stalling and fishing for clues.
He walked around the consoles to get closer to me. He seemed to be worried I might try to duck, or dive out of easy range. Nothing could have been further from the truth—but he didn’t know that.
“So how did you get along with the last Claver you met up with? And would you mind telling me what happened to… the other me?”
I shrugged. “Sure. He came to me, and he told me he’d trade me a ride out of this hellhole in exchange for the Galactic Key.”
“Good, good,” Claver said, just out of reach now. “So, what happened to my brother?”
“I thought that was obvious. Winslade caught on, and he killed you.”
Claver narrowed his eyes and waggled the gun barrel at me.
“You wouldn’t be trying to pull one over on me, would you? That’d be a bad idea—but we both know you’re dumb enough to try.”
“Think about it. There were two suits. I’m here, Winslade and the other suit came from here. We teleported to the ship, then we had an argument. Afterward, I took off my suit, and they both teleported away.”
Claver chuckled evilly. “An argument? That’s funny. You always argue with your balls and your fists, don’t you boy? Looks like Winslade lo
st this argument, and somehow he managed to die in the process. Most unfortunate.”
“That’s what I said.”
His face worked. He didn’t seem sure what was true and what wasn’t. It burned him that he couldn’t nail me down any further. My story was backed up by certain facts, but there were also holes in it you could drive a power-cart through.
“Okay,” Claver said. “I don’t care what really happened here. I take it I’m dead, Winslade tried to steal everything, and you clocked him. I’m okay with all that. Let’s call it a sketchy deal gone bad.”
“Agreed.”
“But I still want the key. There’s no way things would have gotten to this point unless it was somewhere at hand. Why else would you teleport back up to the ship?”
My face went slack. I looked as dumb as a bag of hammers.
“Don’t try that on me today,” he said. “I know you’re a moron, but people keep dying around you. Even a moron has to have an edge to keep breathing for this long when you play so close to the fire. Now, where is the key, boy?”
“Winslade seemed to think it was here,” I said, compounding my lies now into a big sticky ball of nonsense. “That’s why he ported up. I don’t know where exactly it might be on the ship itself.”
He narrowed his eyes again. “Wasn’t it in your possession?”
“That’s old news. Winslade and Turov took it off me years back—I died for a long time, remember?”
“That is true…” he said, thinking it over. “Right… but why did Winslade take you for a ride up here if he was just looking for the Galactic Key—which has nothing to do with you? And if he knew it was safe, why come at all?”
“You were hunting for it,” I said. “I think Winslade wanted to make sure it was still where it was supposed to be.”
“Why bring you along, though?”
I shrugged again. “No one said he brought me. Maybe I followed him.”
Claver grinned at last. That’s when I knew I had him.
“That’s it!” he said. “You got greedy! That’s the first thing you’ve said that I fully believe. You knew this ship was up here, dead—so big, quiet, and full of nothing but echoes. Winslade was up here alone, looking for that key like a little girl in the dark… so you followed him up and nailed him.”