by B. V. Larson
“You got greedy, Claver,” I told him. “You should have been satisfied with stealing tech and escaped when you could have.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you planning to port me to the Nairb ship. What kind of reward are they offering for my capture?”
He looked at me with his right eye only. His left was swollen shut. “More than your damned carcass is worth, that’s for sure!”
“Dead or alive?” I asked. “If you’d ported out the moment we shook hands, I’d have melted in flight.”
He shook his head. “Nah, probably not. It’s only a few million kilometers up to their ship. You’d be singed outside the suit, but you’d live.”
I smiled at him again, because he’d just provided me with the critical information I was looking for. The suit was set to go to the Nairb ship next.
Still smiling at him, I buttoned up his suit onto my own, larger frame. It automatically stretched and cinched, reshaping itself.
“Aw, shit,” he said, seeing my smile and catching on. “Just kill me now, McGill. I’ve been bested by a subhuman. Clearly, I’m a bad grow. I should be recycled, feet first.”
“Sorry, no time for that,” I told him, “I’ve got too much work to do—and I think the locals might want to deal with you in their own way.”
I contacted Floramel and her people. They soon came and arrested Claver.
With a teleport suit at the ready, and a gateway system being set up for my use—I was feeling pretty good.
The first thing I did was test it. I popped up to the Nairb ship and had a look around. That was a ballsy move, even for me. I could have arrived in the midst of a firing squad—but I didn’t. I was in a quiet hold with dim lit ceilings far above.
There were items there I recognized. Claver had been squirreling away his stolen loot aboard the Nairb ship. I had to marvel at that—he was gutsy. I didn’t know if the Nairbs were in on that part of the deal or not, but either way, Claver was a criminal mastermind.
Heading back to my starting point was easy enough. Earth suits had a “back button” that took you to the last place you’d come from. Employing that, I found myself standing near a surprised-looking Floramel a moment later.
“Excuse me, Miss,” I said. “You should really mark the spot where a man teleports out, by the way. If you stand right there, you might merge up when he comes back.”
Alarmed, she did chalk the spot, and they all stayed well clear of it.
I had Floramel’s nerds help me get the exact coordinates of the Nairb ship from the suit’s memory. That wouldn’t last long, of course. The computer on the suit was smart enough to match for drift, but if the ship got underway, I’d be left popping out into the void to no purpose.
Next, I had them calculate the position of Nostrum relative to where we were now. This wasn’t hard, as they were constantly monitoring every vessel in the star system. Taking one half of the paired gateways in my hands, we recharged the suit, and I popped out again to the Nostrum.
This time, I didn’t land perfectly. I came out about three meters above the deck, and I crashed down pretty hard due to artificial gravity effects. Fortunately, the gateway wasn’t damaged.
I lugged the device into a quiet hold and plugged it in. The plug was of universal Galactic design. Smart, and easy to find. I turned the gateway on, activated it, and Floramel stepped out of a shimmering pink-white haze in the air between two poles.
“So fast…” I said, impressed. “The unit synched right up and found its mate instantly.”
She smiled. “This is an improved model,” she said. “It can’t handle heavy equipment like the ones the Cephalopods used to invade your world—but it can transfer one person at a time reliably over short distances.”
Short distances. She was talking about millions of kilometers of open space. I knew the teleport suits could do better—crossing lightyears without a landing spot predetermined at the other end. Still, this tech was very impressive.
Floramel did something odd then, she reached up both her hands, put them on my shoulders, and squeezed me lightly.
“Um…” I said, “are you trying to start something?”
“Maybe later,” she admitted. “Right now, we should probably talk to your commanders.”
Reluctantly, I led her out of the hold and up to Gold Deck.
Deech, Graves and a few other primus-level officers looked at me and Floramel with great suspicion. I couldn’t blame them for that—after all, my companion had helped arrange the deaths of thousands of legionnaires in the Arcturus system already.
“Sirs,” I said, “meet Floramel. She’s a principal investigator in this system. A boss-lady scientist, you might say.”
They still looked like they smelled something foul. I decided to press on without commenting about it.
“Floramel has decided to help us,” I said. “She—”
“Oh, she has, has she?” Tribune Deech said, swaggering forward with her hands on her broad hips. “Investigator, you’re under arrest. All your people are to report via radio, so they may be picked up for immediate processing.”
Floramel looked at me in surprise. “Who is this person?” she asked. “I thought you were in charge of this ship.”
“Uh… no,” I admitted. “I’m an officer, but these people are my superiors. Let me explain—”
Graves made a rude sound and chuckled. “No need, Centurion. You’re antics are well known and expected. You gained her trust, told her a pack of lies, and lured her up here. She’s your collar, don’t worry. No one else will try to claim this capture.”
Deech glanced at him in annoyance. Then she turned back to me. “What about the rest of them?” she asked. “We saw you set up a gateway in our hold. Graves said we shouldn’t interfere, but I’m anxious for results. Get the rest of the rebels to march through and into our hold.”
“Hmm,” I said, “I think there might be a misunderstanding, here. The scientists aren’t surrendering their lab—not yet.”
“Then why have you been wasting my time?” Deech demanded.
“Perhaps I can explain,” Floramel said. “If we surrender now, you will destroy us. You’ve already demonstrated this intent. On the other hand, if we on stay on the planet, the Nairbs will eventually lose patience and erase us.”
“Not the Nairbs themselves,” Deech said. “Battle Fleet 921 is on the way. When it gets here, your time—and ours—will have run out.”
“I understand,” Floramel said, “and I believe I have a solution that will allow all of us to keep breathing.”
They all looked at her with squinty eyes. No one looked happy—and I figured after they heard her out, they were going to be even less happy than they were now.
After Floramel had explained her plan, they all looked shocked. I felt it was my civic duty to step in and clarify.
“You see,” I began, “the key is that no one in Battle Fleet 921 can suspect that we did this—or that the lab people did it. The whole thing has to look like an accident.”
“Why not blame it on the lab people?” Graves asked.
“Because we won’t participate if you do!” Floramel stated flatly.
I knew that wouldn’t buy any bacon with Graves, so I raised my hands and gestured for calm. “That’s just part of the reason. Remember that the Nairbs are touchy, and the Mogwa make them look open-minded. If they think their representative—that guy Slur—died because of some kind of screw-up on our part… well, Earth might as well be toast.”
“Are they really that unreasonable?” Tribune Deech asked. “All the time?”
“Yes,” Graves admitted. “As a longtime member of Varus, I’ve run into our Galactic benefactors on several worlds. They’re never friendly or forgiving. Quite the opposite.”
“We just fed them Winslade so they could torment him to death,” she said. “You’d think that would massage their egos.”
“The Mogwa think a great deal of themselves,�
�� I said.
“All right then,” Deech said. “I’m putting you in charge of this insane plan, Graves.”
She stood up from behind her desk and walked out. Everyone watched in surprise. She turned back at the doorway.
“Make sure you don’t screw anything up,” she told Graves. “I’ll review every second of this briefing if things go badly—otherwise, I’ll delete it to eliminate the evidence.”
Then, just like that, she was gone.
“What a cast-iron bitch,” Graves said. “She’s trying to disassociate herself—Earth be damned.”
“There’s always a good reason why a top officer has survived so long,” I agreed. “You’d better get your troops rolling. I need a shower.”
“Not so fast, McGill,” Graves said. “You’re going in with the first team.”
My mouth sagged open. I hated when it did that, but I think it’s just part of how my brain is wired.
“But sir,” I said, “I don’t have any technical expertise. This first move against the Galactic ship is just a matter of wiring.”
“Uh-uh, you’re not getting out of this one. They’ll need security, and your unit will provide it.”
“That’s a lot of people. Our odds of being discovered will rise dramatically.”
Graves turned to Floramel again. “How big did you say their central hold was? And what percentage of it was full of collected trophies?”
“The space enclosed is estimated to be three cubic kilometers. Approximately two-thirds of that volume is occupied by a wide variety of—”
“Of junk, right,” Graves finished for her. “The Mogwa like to steal a few choice artifacts from every world they annihilate. I don’t know why they bother—they don’t seem to do much with it.”
“Maybe they just like stacking it up,” I offered. “Like packrats.”
“Make sure you provide the next Mogwa you meet with that theory, McGill,” Graves told me. “In any case, my point is that there will be plenty of room to land a team and invade the ship without sounding an alarm.”
“We don’t really know that, Primus,” Floramel objected.
Graves pointed at me. “He just ported into that hold and messed around for a while—no one saw him. In any case, that’s my price for agreeing to this mission. McGill goes along.”
This insistence honestly surprised me. I wasn’t sure exactly why Graves was pushing it so far. Maybe, he wanted me to watch the rogues, just like he’d said. Or maybe, he wanted me to die and play scapegoat. It was hard to tell which it was.
Anyway, there wasn’t much time left for fooling around. We went down to my unit’s cube, suited up the troops, and headed back to the floor of the open hold. The first trick was to get everyone positioned right. Floramel started off by walking through the poles of the gateway on our ship and transporting herself back to the planet.
That’s when Graves showed up again. It seemed like he’d been watching me every second. He had with him a large power cart. On the back of it was a watermelon-shaped object with digital readouts on the sides.
I’d seen such things before—in fact, I’d carried them to their destinations and set them off.
The object in question was an antimatter bomb.
-49-
Just seeing the bomb made me nervous. I’d handled such weapons before. They were ten times as powerful as a good, old-fashioned H-bomb from Earth. They converted mass to energy on a one-for-one basis, which was a dramatic improvement over other explosive devices.
“Whoa!” I said to Graves, waving my gauntlets at him.
“Don’t interfere, McGill,” Graves said. “It’s the only way. We’ll roll this into the gateway, and their dome will vanish. We’ll have completed the mission Magnate Slur set for us.”
“Hold on,” I said as he prepped the bomb. “They have stasis projectors down there, sir.”
“What?”
“You know—the same things Claver used to freeze me when I tried to bomb him with one of these back on Earth.”
He squinted at me. “You’re bullshitting me again.”
“I’ve got proof, sir,” I said, and I shared my body-cam vids with him. They showed Claver being trapped as he teleported in.
“I’ll be damned…” Graves said. “You think they’ve set these things up to catch anyone coming through this gateway?”
“Stands to reason,” I said, using my best poker face. “We can’t take the chance. We haven’t got any stasis fields aboard that we can use to catch them in return. All they’d have to do is roll our bomb right back here, and KA-BOOM!”
I made wide circles with my arms. Graves got the idea, and he looked worried. Turning to Leeson, he handed him the bomb.
Leeson’s eyes flew wide. “What do I do with this, Primus?”
“Take it to your techs. It’s set to go off in a few minutes.”
Alarmed, Leeson ran off, shouting for Natasha. Graves didn’t even watch him run. He was a philosophical and fatalistic man. If we all died in a vast explosion, well, he knew he wasn’t going to feel a thing, so he didn’t worry about it.
“McGill,” he said, “you just vetoed our best option. Now we’re back to your original, cockamamie plan.”
“So… who’s idea was it to just roll in the bomb?”
“Tribune Deech came up with it, of course. She brought it up to me, and I immediately agreed to it. The plan was a brilliant scheme, if only due to its simplicity.”
“But now you’re switching back to my plan?” I asked. “Don’t you have to approve that with Deech?”
“You heard her, she put me in charge. That’s her standard mode of operation. She knows she can always fry me for failing later on. That’s the key to upper management, McGill—always have a chosen sacrifice all prepped up on the altar in case things go wrong.”
“I’ll remember that, sir,” I said, “but I’d feel better about this if I knew you believed in me.”
He shrugged. “You’re the best chance I’ve got left. You can’t know how much it pains me to say that—but it’s true. No one else has led commando missions aboard enemy starships. You’re it.”
I had to admit he had a point there. He left, and Floramel arrived with her team of nerds just in time to see him go.
“What was that about?” she asked, pointing after Graves.
“Nothing,” I said. “He was just wishing us all the best. What did he say? ‘Glory and Honor?’ He shouted something like that, didn’t he Sargon?”
“He sure as shit did,” Sargon lied for me. I could always count on him to back up anything I said.
Floramel looked a little confused, but she stopped asking questions. I could have told her the truth instead, of course. After all, I’d saved her people from a quick ride up into the stratosphere—but I knew women well enough to know that wouldn’t have earned me any points at all.
Her team came through, and they brought another pair of gateway units with them. The plan was to link the planetary surface to our ship, then link our ship to the Nairb vessel. That way, we’d chain all three locations together in two steps.
The whole thing presented an interesting set of tactical possibilities. As I thought about it, I better understood why Central had sent us out here to steal this excellent tech, rather than destroy it.
“The gateway is hooked to power,” Kivi said.
“What about that… uh… subsystem Leeson gave to Natasha?” I asked her.
She gave me a sharp look. “We’re still alive, aren’t we? The situation was contained.”
“That’s a relief,” I said. “I’m glad things worked out so easily.”
Kivi gave me the stink-eye. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. We should switch jobs sometime. Maybe you’d have time to appreciate all that we techs do for the grunts.”
“Oh really?” I asked. “You want to switch places? I can let you play officer and take charge of this ride into hostile territory, if you want.”
She balked at that idea.
“Forget I said anything.”
“Done,” I said promptly, “now and forever.”
Giving me a strange glance, Kivi rejoined her fellow techs, and I summoned the entire unit. They came bubbling out of the cubes nearby and gathered, fully kitted out. Many of them were so fresh from their revivals they still had wet hair. Sarah was one of these, and her eyes were looking kind of glassy.
Harris was glaring at me with his arms crossed.
“Oh… right,” I said, “Leeson, Sarah is now part of your platoon.”
He looked at her dubiously. “What am I going to do with a whack-job light trooper?”
“Put her on point,” Harris suggested. There were twitters from the group at that.
“She’ll be your stenographer,” I told him in irritation. “Now team, huddle up.”
Reluctantly, the surly group came together. Our defeat down on Rogue World hadn’t done any wonders for our unit’s morale.
“This is the finish,” I told them. “We’ve been honored with the privilege of striking a blow for Earth.”
They looked at me seriously. Most of them had no idea what we were going to do. Probably, that was for the best—but I had to let them in on it at some point.
“We’re going on a very special mission,” I said. “We’re going to board the Nairb ship.”
“Excuse me?” Harris said loudly. “Did I hear that correctly?”
“You did indeed, Adjunct,” I told him.
He looked like he was barely listening. He was working his tapper, no doubt contacting Graves to rat me out. After a few seconds, he looked up again, shocked.
“That’s right,” I said to him. “This action is fully sanctioned by the legion brass. We’re going to board the Imperial destroyer and immediately disable her communications module. There can be no signals going in or out of that vessel fifteen minutes after we board her.”
“What if we fail?” Leeson asked.
“Then… Earth might well be screwed.”
Harris pointed at the gateway. “That thing can carry a thousand troops!” he complained. “Why not flood their damned hold? Why not—?”
“Because,” I interrupted him, “if they realize they’re under attack before we knock out their communications module, they’ll send a deep-link message to the battle fleet.”