by B. V. Larson
Carlos’ report concerning my state of health had been incomplete. I probably had a concussion, and I could still feel blood trickling down into my left boot.
After a quick meal, I made it down to blue deck. I looked up Anne Grant on my tapper and beeped her. She came out and gave me a wan smile.
“A visit?” she asked, eyeing me warily. “This isn’t another attempt to land a date, is it, James?”
“Should it be?”
“No,” she said firmly.
I shook my head in disappointment. Then I sat down heavily and clawed at my left boot. “Could you help me get this off?” I asked.
Concerned, she did so. She gasped and fussed over what she found. I never even looked at it. But she did her job, getting out a portable flesh-printer and injecting me with a random variety of medications.
“I don’t understand,” she said as she worked. “There are perfectly good bios assigned to your special ops team. Why didn’t they catch this and fix it for you upstairs?”
I caught her eye and shook my head. She understood right away.
“Oh…” she said sarcastically. “It’s like that, is it? You’re not supposed to be hurt? They wouldn’t recycle you instead of letting you have a few days off, would they?”
Huffing with laughter, I threw my hands up. I was feeling better. Whatever she’d shot into my leg had gone to my head. I felt a little lighter inside and out.
“With the mood Graves is in, he’d recycle me for a stubbed toe.”
“Okay then,” she said, wrapping me up carefully and slipping on my boot. “You’ll have to hide this. Take two of these antibiotic tabs with every meal and—”
Before she’d completed her sentence, I’d popped them into my mouth and began chewing. They were bitter, and I made a face.
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Has there ever been a simple order you didn’t modify or simply ignore?”
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to forget later, that’s all.”
“What’s happening later?”
“Nothing.”
She frowned and finished putting away her gear. “Later, hmm? What’s her first name?”
“What? Oh—no, it’s not like that. I’m heading out again in another hour. Don’t even have time for a shower. Unless you’re asking…?”
“I said no, James—take away that hand before I do.”
I noticed then that my hand had absently slipped onto her knee. It seemed so natural there that I was reluctant to remove it. Anne and I had enjoyed some sweet times a few years back.
“We had some good times,” I said wistfully.
She looked at me in concern. “You’re in a strange mood. Are things that bad?”
“Nah,” I said, definitely feeling the pain meds. “Everything’s fine. We’ll kill all these aliens and have a picnic by next week. You up for it?”
Our last date had been a picnic. It had gone disastrously, and she’d announced our breakup on the spot.
She eyed me with a mix of growing concern and curiosity.
“It’s bad, isn’t it? Worse than anyone is letting on. The news—they say there are aliens on Earth now. Up north of here.”
“Crazy talk,” I said and sloppily jabbed a finger toward her. “You give me a week, and I’ll fix everything.”
She nodded slowly. “You do that, James, and you can have your picnic. I don’t even care if you bring another girl along.”
Snapping out of it, my eyebrows shot up in amazement. Now, there was an offer a man didn’t get every day! I knew she’d back out when the time came, but it was the thought that counted. Especially when it came from a straight-shooter like Anne.
Smiling, I heaved myself up and gave her a light kiss on the top of her head.
“You have my promise, lady!” I boomed loudly enough to cause a few bio people to turn and stare at us. “I’ll make good, just you wait and see!”
Stomping back out into the long, echoing passages of Central, I left her watching me.
In my heart of hearts, I truly hoped I could keep that boastful promise.
Harris looked as angry as a wet tomcat when I met up with him in the lab. His arms were crossed, and his hair was still matted together with the slime of a fresh revive. He’d always hated dying more than even your average soldier.
“Hey,” I boomed at him, “there you are, Vet. I thought you’d gone off to take a nap somewhere.”
He glanced at me in hate, flipped me the bird under his elbow then went back to glaring at Graves. I could tell he was mostly angry with the Centurion.
It was just one of those things. Your body didn’t want to die. Your every instinct went against it. A legionnaire who survived all the way back to camp didn’t want to meet up with a quick finish after all that suffering.
I understood his mood, and I’d been there before. But this was go-time.
Clapping my hand on his shoulder, I spoke into his ear.
“Look,” I said, “you have to shake it off. We’re in this. We’re good and screwed. We’re probably as good as dead twice more and permed by Sunday—but we’re in it deep now.”
His eyes slid to meet mine.
“Why’d you do it?” he demanded. “No bullshit. Why’d you insist that I come along on these suicide missions with you?”
“What?” I demanded. “Are you still stewing about that? I told you, Vet, you’re the best. You’re the man I want at my side when the shit goes bad—and you have to admit, it’s been pretty bad already.”
He still looked suspicious. That’s the trouble with knowing a man too damned long. He got wise to your best moves—eventually.
“That’s crap, isn’t it? This whole thing about two men going in and one jumping back—that was shit, right?”
“Come on, Harris,” I said, looking down.
It was a critical mistake, and I knew it the second I did it. Damn. Normally, I’m a consummate liar. I know all the rules. You never ask forgiveness or show any remorse. You never look down, either. The whole stack of cards will come down if you do. Always.
“Damn you!” he shouted, stabbing a finger at me. “Damn you to Hell, McGill! You brought me along just for spite. I knew it, I totally fucking knew it!”
He did a little walk then, circling around and throwing his arms in the air wildly.
Graves finally took notice. He’d been going over things with the techs. He walked up to the two of us and eyed us in annoyance.
“Pull it together, you two. I don’t care if you’re ready to duel or get married. I need you in those suits and ready to jump in three minutes. Do I have your attention, Harris?”
“Yeah, yeah. I got the drill, Centurion, but I might as well shoot myself right now as jump into the unknown with this redneck frigger.”
“McGill, would you like to request a replacement for Veteran Harris?” Graves asked me.
That shocked both of us. It was unusual for Graves to ask a question like that.
I looked around the group. There were a few hogs in the room. Ferguson was there, but he didn’t look happy. I don’t think I’d seen a smile on his face since he died the first time.
“Well, if Harris is going to wet his pants…” My arm rose up to point at Ferguson. “How about—”
But I didn’t get the words out. Harris had stepped close and pushed my hand back down. I winced, as my wrist was still sore.
“No way!” he said. “No-how! I’m going. I’m suiting up. Can’t a man bitch a little after a bad death? I’m going.”
That’s when I remembered there was one thing Harris hated more than dying: public humiliation. He’d rather die than have everyone in the legion think he was chicken.
Without another word, I lowered my hand and shut up. I’d rather have Harris than Ferguson, anyway.
It occurred to me as we prepped that Centurion Graves knew his men, and he was working us to get the best possible performance. I had to hand it to him.
For his part, Ferg
uson looked relieved. He tried to hide it, but I could tell.
“Point man, front and center!” Graves shouted.
Harris stepped up to the plate, standing resignedly like a man waiting for the gallows. I’d handed off the key to Lisa again, and she performed her rituals when his jump-suit was fully charged.
Harris raised his rifle to his cheek and put his finger on the trigger.
“I’m killing the first freak I see this time,” he muttered half to himself. “I’m blowing them away before they blink. So help me…”
He vanished in a glimmer of unnatural light.
“McGill!”
Forcing a grin, I stepped up, and Lisa performed her magic. I had the key in my palm by the end of it.
Graves seemed to notice something this time. He cocked his head, and opened his mouth.
Maybe he’d been about to ask a question. Maybe he’d been about to ask what the hell Lisa had just passed to me—but I’d never know which, because I gave the suit’s dial a hard twist and ported out at that instant.
-30-
The fourth setting on the dial took to me to a place I’d never expected it would.
The port was fast—very fast. There wasn’t anything like a second’s flight time. One moment I was in the lab at Central, and the next I was standing in what looked like a household library.
There were books everywhere around me—thousands of them. I recognized the books and the room. I’d been here before.
It was Galina Turov’s library.
Now, you have to understand that Galina Turov had never been a big reader. But she was a show-off. These books were here to be seen, not read.
I knew that because I’d visited her here from time to time. The only reading that got done was accidental. We’d often made love in the library—on the leather ottoman right next to the big, old fashioned globe that was the centerpiece of the room. She’d called the globe her “focal point” whatever the hell that meant.
What concerned me more than the books, the globe, or even the fat ottoman I’d enjoyed coupling on from time to time, was the bloody mess on the floor.
Harris had been true to his word. He’d ported in and shot the first freak he’d seen. That freak happened to be Claver, who was also wearing a teleport suit.
Unfortunately for Harris, Claver had apparently used better aim. The Veteran’s eyes were frozen open, his mouth was slack, and his bloody tongue lolled on a thick carpet of amber shag.
Claver was still alive. He was on his back, breathing with difficulty. A sucking wound in his chest bubbled and whistled. He’d been lung-shot.
My weapon was at my cheek in an instant. Claver tried to lift his, but he wasn’t fast enough.
“Drop it, Claver,” I ordered. “There are seven more porting in behind me. You haven’t got a chance.”
He wheezed out a coughing laugh. “You’re a weak liar, McGill. I’ve been watching you, tracking you… I knew you’d come here next. I knew you’d come alone or with one side-kick. Harris was fast, I had to give him that. He came in ready to fight. I must have relaxed over the hours, waiting…”
He leaned over to spit blood, dropping the gun as he spoke. I kicked it away. I kept mine aimed at his head. I didn’t trust Claver at all. Anyone who did was a fool.
“You knew I’d come?” I asked.
“Of course. I saw you at the gateway—or at least, the security vids of you after you’d escaped. It was hard to make out your face from the drone cams, but when I realized someone had trashed a whole squad of litter-mates, I knew it had to be you. You’re more like one of those idiot berserkers than a normal human.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Now, what did you want to talk about?”
He looked at me in surprise. “Talk?”
I shrugged. “You didn’t set up this ambush just to kill me, did you? What’s the point? They’d just make a copy. You must want to talk.”
He nodded slowly. “I guess that’s true. I wanted to talk. Too bad I’m bleeding out on this nice carpet.”
“Talk fast,” I suggested.
“I’m feeling a little woozy. It’s hard to think straight.”
He coughed dramatically.
Rolling my eyes, I pulled a medkit out of my pouch and tossed it at him. He winced when it bounced off his chest then applied the unit to his wound. The kit squirmed and unfurled, patching the hole. He soon stopped bleeding, and his collapsed lung began to function, at least partially.
“Drugs?” he asked hopefully.
“Give me something first.”
“Like what?”
“Like why you’re here.”
There was a moment of hesitation. I could see it, plain as day. As a fellow master of the false word, I recognized the signs of a man making up a story. Either he didn’t want to tell me what was really on his mind, or he was shaping an edited version in his mind.
I kicked him. Right in the side.
“Talk, damn you!” I shouted. “Why are you here? Why are you helping the enemy take Earth? What pay could possibly be worth selling out your entire species?”
“Pay?” he snorted. “Selling out? Are you mad? That’s not what this is. I’m trying to save Earth. I have been all along. If it hadn’t been for one mentally-challenged ape running around pissing off the cephalopods and derailing plans, I’d have managed it by now.”
Frowning, I kicked him again. Fresh blood spotted from under the patch on his chest, which squirmed to a new position irritably.
“Stop doing that!” he rasped. “I’m hurt, and I’m the good guy, whether you believe it or not.”
“Oh, I believe you think that,” I said. “Turov explained it all. You wanted us to become the slaves of the squids, who are in turn the slaves of the Wur. Isn’t that right?”
“So what?”
“Maybe I have a different point of view. Maybe I want freedom for Earth.”
“Impossible. We’ve got three star systems, McGill. Two of them are barely inhabited. The Mogwa rule us now. Why are they any better than the Cephalopod Kingdom or the Wur?”
“They protect us and give us trading rights,” I said, repeating words I’d had drilled into my skull since grade school.
He gave a tired, raspy laugh. “Really? Protection? Where are their fleets? They’ve all gone to the Core Worlds, fighting their own battles for supremacy. Trading rights? Try trading restrictions. Their rules are meant to keep us down forever.”
My mouth worked, but I didn’t speak. He’d said what I’d already been thinking: what everyone on Earth had been thinking all along, I guess.
“That’s right,” he said. “Even a gorilla like you can comprehend the brutal screwing the Galactics have been giving us since day one. I honestly think the cephalopods aren’t as bad. Sure, they’d treat us like second class citizens. But we could trade with anyone we like. And we’d be allowed to legally build a fleet of our own. They’d insist upon that.”
I felt myself being swayed. It was hard to believe, but Claver was doing the impossible. Lying on the floor at my feet, he was getting me to believe that surrendering to the squids and their plant masters would be a good idea.
The whole thing was crazy right on the face of it. How could this man convince me of such an abomination?’
If the squids did manage to invade Earth and take Central, would my home world surrender? Would they fear the endless armies marching out of the gateway—and possibly a dozen more gateways? Would that fleet of theirs, lingering out of reach, persuade them to believe that resistance was futile?
The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize it could happen. After all, our rulers had surrendered to the Mogwa. Why not the squids this time around?
“I can see it in your eyes,” Claver said, in the tone of a sorcerer from times gone by, “you know the truth of my words. Now I need you to help me, McGill. I need you to get me onto my feet. I have to talk to Drusus and whoever is in charge above him. I’ll come unarmed. You don’t have to—”
<
br /> That was as far as he got, because I put my gun to his head.
“You almost had me,” I said, “but I’m a stubborn man. I’m going to try it my way, first.”
Before he could protest, I shot him in the head. His skull popped nicely, and I took a deep breath.
How to proceed? I was almost due for porting back. But I had work to do first.
Stripping Claver and Harris, I took the two teleport suits and stashed them. Then I got out my Galactic Key and touched it to my monitoring system.
The modern legion body-cams didn’t let the wearer tamper with them. A good tech could do it, but not without leaving traces of their illegal activity.
Fortunately, the AI chip that ran the system was an alien trade good. That meant I could hack it with my key. I did so, and after screwing with the unfamiliar interface, I managed to delete most of the video.
My whole talk with Claver was erased. I didn’t want his venomous words to go up the line to any of the other clowns back at Central.
When I was finished, I took fresh video of the room and the dead bodies.
“Looks like they killed each other,” I said aloud for the benefit of the cameras. “Too bad, but we netted one new suit out of the bargain.”
When I was satisfied with my on-camera performance, I ported back to the lab.
-31-
“McGill!” Graves roared at me when I got back. “Where’s Harris?”
I gave him an apologetic shrug.
“Damn you, man! Did you shoot him and leave him behind in some alien hole?”
“It didn’t go quite like that, sir,” I said.
Pissed off, he marched over to me. “You lost me another teleport suit, didn’t you?”
I gave him a slight smile then, and I held up an extra suit in each hand. His frown deepened.
“Where’d the extra one come from?” he demanded.
“It’s Claver’s.”
That got his full attention. “You found that traitor out in space somewhere?”
“Sort of… but he’s not out in space. He’s not all that far away from here, actually. We might want to discuss the details in private.”