by B. V. Larson
Carlos looked agitated once we began crossing the city toward Central.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I don’t know… I mean, I don’t know why I have to go put my head on a platter with Graves. I’ll never get rank.”
“You want to bail out now?” Kivi demanded from the back seat. “You coward.”
“What good can I do anyone? I’m a bio. Kivi, you’ve got the tech data, the recordings. They’ll listen to you. McGill, you’re an officer. You’ll be fine.”
“Sure I will. Brass loves shit like this.”
We drove on for a time in silence.
“Are you going to let me out on the street, or what?” Carlos asked.
“No,” I told him. “I need witnesses. Besides, your face is in the vids. In fact, your hairy butt mooned the camera-stick at one point as I recall.”
“Ohhh… damn. Okay, right. I’m screwed. Let’s just do this. Somebody break out some handcuffs and shock-rods.”
Glumly, we drove up to Central and parked the tram on the street. We got out, but before we could go inside, a dark shape hummed and swooped down on us.
It was an air car. A fancy one. I thought I recognized it, so I waited for the cupola to pop open.
Sure enough, Imperator Turov climbed out. She wasn’t alone, either. Primus Winslade got out of the car with her.
“Evening Imperator,” I said loudly. “Nice night for a drive.”
“Shut up, McGill,” she said. “Do you know how long we’ve been staking out Central looking for your rattle-trap piece of shit tram?”
“I’m sorry if I wasted your valuable time, sir, but I’m wanted inside, and I—”
“No more games, McGill,” Winslade said, stepping around with a laser carbine in his hands. “Hand over the suit. We know you have it.”
“Damn,” I said. “I can’t get away with anything in this town. All right, it’s in the trunk.”
Carlos and Kivi exchanged glances. They looked nervous but ready for anything. Winslade and Turov both outranked us by a multiple of about a thousand each, but they were way off script with this gangster routine. I knew my friends were calculating how far we could go in defending ourselves, if it came down to that.
Even more importantly, I knew my little core group of peers was watching me. They’d take their cue on how to behave and run with it. They were loyal that way—they’d follow me off a cliff if I led them to the edge. The funny thing was, they’d probably bite and curse and kick me all the way down to the rocky bottom of said cliff—but they’d follow me, all the same.
Cheerfully, I opened the tram’s trunk. Winslade edged around to look. He had the carbine on me the whole time, as if he expected me to pull something. People often treated me with a pathological paranoia I didn’t fully understand.
Winslade explored my cargo with the tip of his weapon.
“What the hell…?” he said. “Is that Claver? What’d you do, burn him—?”
That was as far as he got. In his moment of distraction, I slammed the lid of the tram down on his carbine, catching him on the wrist as he’d been prodding the corpse with the gun barrel.
I think I did it too hard. There was a cracking sound, and Winslade began hissing something awful.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry about—”
“McGill, you difficult piece of—” Turov spat in my ear. She’d moved on me, putting a small flat pistol to my head.
“No way, Imperator,” Carlos interrupted from behind her. She turned to see both Carlos and Kivi standing to either side. They both had their service knives out, glittering in the street lights.
“Look,” I said, “everyone seems overly tense. Let’s call a truce and move to a safe location. If I may point out the obvious, the AI governing the cameras has noticed the excitement and probably dispatched MPs by now.”
Turov sneered. “I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m looking at a dead body in your trunk instead of a magic squid-suit.”
She looked over her shoulder then and cursed. An MP detachment was already approaching. There was no mistaking that quadruple set of blue-white spotlights crawling over the street as they glided toward us.
“Get in my car—all of you,” Turov ordered.
“What about him?” Carlos said, indicating the body still inside my open trunk.
I slammed the lid down in response, and we all got into the air car. We launched into the sky with alarming speed. The MP vehicle stopped and did a slow perusal of the site. Fortunately, they were ground-bound and legally prohibited from forcing my trunk open without a warrant.
After a few seconds, one of the cops got out. He flipped us the bird, then printed a ticket and shoved it under the wiper blades.
“Bastard…” I muttered.
My dad hated tickets. At least I hadn’t littered the tram’s cabin with hamburger wrappers this time.
Satisfied they weren’t going to find Claver immediately, Turov veered away and took off toward her place.
We landed on the roof in the pitch black. There weren’t even any landing lights on her air car.
“You modified this thing for stealth?” Carlos asked. “That’s illegal. Did you know that?”
“Shut up, Specialist,” she said. “And Winslade, shut up about your arm. McGill could have killed you—I probably would have.”
Winslade pouted, and we all headed upstairs. Turov distributed drinks to everyone, giving nano-sutures and painkillers to Winslade.
While Winslade worked on his arm, Carlos moved to help him. He was a bio, after all. He had the bone set and injected the nanos into the site with a skilled hand.
“Okay,” Turov told me. “It’s time we laid our cards on the table.”
“Yes, I agree.”
“What do you know about this project?”
“So it’s a project? A defense project? In that case, why’s Claver involved?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s a military project, but not one sponsored by our government. The cephalopods have decided to move on us and take over. They will gain control of Earth shortly.”
That statement threw us all for a loop. My mouth sagged open.
“You’re a traitor?” I demanded. “You’re straight-up admitting that to me?”
“Not at all. I’m saving Earth— the only way it can be done.”
“Through surrender?”
She made a flapping motion of dismissal with her hand. She strutted around while she talked, but for once I didn’t even care to admire her form.
This was big. This was serious. This was treason.
“Listen to me, McGill,” she said. “You, out of everyone in Earth’s military, should be able to understand. The Cephalopod Kingdom is unbeatable to us. They have three hundred worlds compared to our one.”
“But the Empire—”
“The Empire is a toothless old man. Battle fleet 921 has left this province and will never return. We have to fend for ourselves. All I’m suggesting is you keep an open mind while I explain things to you—can you do that?”
“An open mind is an empty mind, my momma always said,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes at me.
“Just listen. Earth capitulated to the Empire a century ago. We’re doing the same thing this time. We’ll become a vassal state to a different set of aliens in order to survive. Does that make sense to you?”
“Uh… sort of. But I don’t recall this being brought up as a possibility on the news vids. Nor do I think the governing council has voted it into law.”
“I would expect you’re right about that,” she said. “Often in these situations, the old guard doesn’t want to accept new realities. They would prefer to die standing on tradition rather than live under a new set of rules—or rulers, in this case.”
For about a minute, I studied my hands and thought hard. Many things were pieced together in my brain during that short time.
Claver and Turov had worked together before. They’d both dealt with aliens ill
egally as well—but this was big. They were talking about a coup. About taking over Earth. I was fuzzy on how they planned to do it, but that was obviously the goal.
Looking back up at Turov, I saw her in an entirely different light. Ever since I’d met the woman, I’d known she was ambitious to a fault. She was a pragmatist, an egotist and God knew what-all else. But still, I wouldn’t have quite guessed she was capable of this kind of sweeping scheme. Claver yes,… but Turov? She’d surprised me.
“You trust Claver?” I asked her
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“What hold do you have over him then? That man is as slippery as a flea on a snake. You can’t deal with him unless you have an angle.”
“You’ve dealt with him quite effectively, it seems to me,” Winslade commented in his usual snotty tone.
“Listen, McGill,” Turov said. “I need muscle. You’re a man of action. You get things done. That’s very valuable to me.”
I thought hard for another few moments.
“I want Natasha back,” I said. “I want a revive for her—immediately after this is over.”
Turov’s lips spread into a smile.
“Done,” she said.
“James, we can’t trust her,” Kivi said in my ear.
Turov ignored her. She knew she had my attention, so she didn’t care what Kivi said.
Turov just kept staring into my eyes, like a cat staring down a mouse.
-9-
The plan was simple. We landed on Central’s roof at 4:03 am. Attacks usually came just before dawn for a reason—that’s when people were their most bleary-eyed and fuzzy of mind.
We left Winslade with his broken wrist in the air car. Armed only with our service pistols, we escorted Turov to the elevator. There were two guards there. They checked our IDs and let us pass. After all, Turov was brass.
On the way down in the elevator, we didn’t even talk. Carlos and Kivi exchanged worried looks, but they weren’t saying anything. They had orders from superiors, one of whom was a friend, so they were playing along. They were nervous, sure, just like I was. After all, we were doing something that was bat-shit crazy on the face of it.
But the plan was simplicity itself. The first squid attack on Central had been designed to take out certain key members of the brass with combat experience. Men like Nagata had to go.
The second step was even more sinister. The defense networks were located deep underground, beneath Central. These computers managed communications and planet-wide defenses. If they could be knocked out, our fleets wouldn’t stand a chance against the Cephalopod Armada that was closing in on our star system even now.
Turov had explained it to us this way: we’d be saving lives. Possibly, we’d save the life of everyone on Earth. If Earth didn’t fight, but capitulated instead, we’d be a valuable vassal state for the squids. We could give them intel on the Empire and provide them with an unusually strong planetary defense force that could be used in the wars that were sure to be in our future.
As we moved deeper and deeper into Central, particularly when we went underground, the guards became less congenial. Turov’s rank was no longer enough to sway them.
When a frowning hog veteran finally put his hand up and shook his head, we were stopped dead.
Turov frowned in return, pulling out a computer scroll and consulting it. She shook her head.
“We’re not close enough yet. McGill!”
I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t. But I saw no other choice. I shot the hog veteran, and then I shot the two men who were lounging in the hallway behind him. None of them even managed to pull their guns out of their holsters.
With shocked looks, they slumped to the floor.
“Excellent,” Turov said.
As she used her Galactic Key to bypass the security locks, an alarm went off. Apparently, the system couldn’t keep us out, but it was still smart enough to know something had gone very wrong.
“Pick up the pace,” Turov ordered, “we’ve only got about three minutes left.”
She began to run down the passage, and we followed at a rapid jog.
“This is bullshit McGill!” Carlos hissed to me. “Let’s arrest her and call ourselves heroes.”
“We’ll be dead heroes,” Kivi said. “We’ve gone too far. They’ll perm us after torturing us to death a dozen times.”
I didn’t answer either one of them. I just kept running after Turov. My reluctant companions trotted after me, not knowing what else to do.
We made it to an empty meeting room just outside the data center. A handful of nerds were there, drinking coffee to stay awake.
We gave them a reason to perk up. Bursting in with our guns out, they scrambled to their feet and ran. Turov shot two in the back, then let the rest go.
“Push the tables out of the way!” she ordered.
We moved the tables to the sides of the room.
“This is where they’re coming through. It’s the only area big enough and open enough to allow a full squad to jump in at once.”
I only half-knew what she was talking about, but I saw the timer on her tapper. There was only one minute to go.
“Pull back to the entrance,” I ordered.
“What?” Turov demanded. “What are you talking—”
I grabbed her. First she squeaked, then she raged. “Let go of me, or you’ll never see Natasha—”
“Look at your tapper, Imperator.”
She did, and her eyes widened. There were only nineteen seconds left.
I backed up into the doorway and stood with her in front of me. I had my pistol at her back.
“I have to open the doors to the data center!” she shouted, lifting the Galactic Key in her hand. “You’re screwing this up, McGill!”
I plucked the key from her fingers. “I’ll take care of that—thanks. When you revive, Imperator, take credit for everything and play the part of the hero. You do that so very well.”
For the rest of her short lifespan, Imperator Turov cursed my name loudly and repetitively.
During that same brief period, the squids began popping in. They seemed disoriented for a few seconds after jumping, and that was all the opportunity we needed. We shot them down one by one.
“Don’t wreck the suits,” I told Kivi and Carlos. “Keep firing at their heads.”
Squids don’t die easily, even when you nail one in the brain-pan. Two of them made it to us.
One reached up a long, long tentacle and grabbed Turov. Some might have claimed I shoved her into his grasp, but I’ll always maintain that was an optical illusion. She was taken from me by the inexorable strength of that single, worm-like limb.
Dragging her into a clutch, the two squids who had survived thrashed on the floor. They lived long enough to tear her limb from limb. We shot them over and over until they stopped flopping around.
Just like that, the commando attack had been thwarted. Security forces arrived and viewed the scene with horror. Bodies, blood and wisps of vapor filled the room.
“Who the hell are you?” roared a hog centurion.
He put his gun in my face, and we all put our hands up.
“I’m Adjunct James McGill, sir,” I said smartly. “Sorry we didn’t have time to go through regular channels on this, but we—”
“Did you shoot my guards, Adjunct?”
“Sir, Imperator Turov ordered me to do so in order to help her on this mission.”
“Imperator…?”
He looked down then, stunned to see who was lying in pieces at my feet.
“She led this action?”
“She’s the real hero here, sir. She found out about the squid commando raid and grabbed some commandos of her own to counter it.”
He stood up slowly then walked around the room, kicking dead squids. A few of them shivered at his touch, and he jumped back warily.
“What was their plan?” he asked.
I almost blew it then. I almost smiled. But I managed to st
ay business-like. I had the fish on the hook, and all I had to do was reel him in.
The next half-hour we spent explaining that Turov knew about a squid attack on Central somehow, and how she’d been quick-thinking enough to call up my team and order us to counter it.
I could have turned in Turov, of course. I could have said she was a traitor to all humanity. The real truth was monstrous. She not only wanted Earth to be defeated, she wanted us to serve the squids as fighting slaves.
But there were serious problems with that level of truthfulness. The brass wouldn’t be happy with an easy tale of Turov’s treachery. They’d want to lump us into the whole thing. Why hadn’t we stopped her? Why hadn’t we warned Central?
The truth, of course, was that Central wouldn’t have acted quickly enough. I knew there was an attack coming, but not exactly where or how it would go down. In order to get Turov to take me to the exact spot I needed to be at the right time to shoot down the squids, I had to play along with her game.
The brass wouldn’t have been happy if I told that story. They’d have hung me along with Turov. I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t. That’s why I’d written my own script and played my own tune. Now, all I had to do was get away with it.
We repeated our story on up the chain of command. By the time we were marched up to the VIP offices again, we’d been disarmed and handcuffed.
Most importantly, I’d managed to hold onto the Galactic Key. They’d taken it from me and looked it over, but as it resembled a seashell with no obvious interface capabilities, they’d given it back to me before taking us upstairs.
The hogs were understandably pissed and confused. They took me to a fancy office on the three hundredth floor and let me into the room. Carlos and Kivi were left outside under guard.
“Ah,” Winslade said. “I see you finally made it, Adjunct.”
My eyes flashed up to meet his in surprise. Winslade had always been able to redefine the word slippery, but even for him, this move was masterful. Somehow, he’d kept himself from being arrested at all.
“Good to see you too, Primus,” I said. “You can corroborate my story?”
Winslade’s eyes widened then narrowed again. He had no idea what kind of tall tale I’d told the guards.