Home World

by B. V. Larson

-20-

  There were questions in my head. How could there not be? I’d thought of a dozen holes in the plan.

  What if the enemy killed us all? There would be no more teleport suits to utilize.

  Worse, we’d pretty much be permed unless they disregarded Galactic law, which they might if they thought we could save Earth. That was unlikely, however. It wouldn’t make any sense. Nine revived legionnaires couldn’t do squat to an enemy fleet parked in orbit over our home world. We were only important because we could get to the enemy before they could get to us. We only mattered because of the jump-suits.

  I spent the evening with Lisa. She was impressed with me—even more than she had been. I’d popped around the cosmos, killed squids, and returned to tell the tale. I think it was the fact I’d faced the enemy and bested them on their own ground that really turned her on.

  “The evidence you brought back…” she said, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Really?” I asked. My eyes were closed, and I was balancing a beer on my stomach. Love-making usually put me in a sleepy mood, while Lisa seemed to be one of those women who got all energized from the experience.

  “It’s just incredible,” she said, talking fast. “I’ve accepted that these suits could transport a living being over thousands of kilometers—but light years? I’m amazed. The technology can’t be utilizing any kind of light-based transmission of data. It has to be so much more than that.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I heard her sliding closer to me. “What did it feel like, James?”

  “Hmm… Like being torn apart and put back together again. Like being vaporized and reconstituted somewhere else.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “It wasn’t my favorite way to move around, that’s for sure.”

  She slid away again and replayed my body-cam vids. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to relive my encounters with squids, green skies or plant monsters.

  “Where do you think they got them?” she demanded suddenly.

  I snorted awake. “Huh?”

  “The suits. They’re Imperial-made, you know.”

  My eyes opened. I regarded her, and she regarded me.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “It’s my job to know the origin of any piece of alien tech when I see it. That dial… did you know each of the control dials has an Imperial stamp on the back? It’s only visible when you study them under an electron-microscope.”

  She had a funny look on her face. She was studying me. That look—it was usually given to me by a woman I was involved with when she suspected me of infidelity. But this time, I figured it had to be something else.

  “That small, huh?” I asked.

  “Yes. Each stamp is less than a thousand molecules strung together. It’s amazing all by itself. But it also indicates these suits come from the Core Systems. They have to.”

  I nodded thoughtfully.

  “Why are you looking at me funny?” I asked.

  “I’ve only seen a few stamps like these, James. None of the devices that have them are legal on Earth. They’re Galactic gear. We techs at Central know about them, but we’re not supposed to.”

  Feeling a little uneasy, I sat up in bed. I caught my beer before it could spill and drained it.

  “Are you supposed to be telling me this?” I asked.

  “Not really. But you’ve already used this forbidden tech. It hardly matters if you know more about it—it might even help.”

  “How so?”

  She slid around in the bed and no longer lounged beside me. She sat up cross-legged and faced me. The look on her face was all business, which I found instantly disappointing in a new girlfriend.

  “James… have you seen anything like this before?”

  “You mean teleporting suits? Or Galactic tech stamps? No.”

  She nodded, looking down.

  “What about other items? Other devices unknown to Earth? Have you ever encountered any of them?”

  Warily, I nodded. “Sometimes—I’ve been on a lot of planets, you know.”

  She licked her lips. “Right. How about something that can override security systems?”

  Immediately, my mind froze over. That was it. She was on my trail. She knew about the Galactic Key, or at least she suspected I had something like it.

  At moments like these, I tended to fall back upon the tried and true. Accordingly, I played dumb.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  A flash of frustration crossed her features.

  “Fine,” she said in sudden irritation. “Forget I brought it up.”

  “Okay.”

  She got up and began to dress and pack her stuff.

  “Aw now, come on,” I said. “I’ve got a twelve-pack left here. Don’t make me finish it and sleep alone.”

  She didn’t even look at me.

  Hopping out of bed, I put my hands on her shoulders. She shrugged me off.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “I don’t like being lied to. Especially about something so important.”

  She took a step toward the door.

  “Lisa,” I said, “did you ever think I might have my own secrets? And my own reasons for keeping them?”

  She hesitated, then whirled around on me. She pointed a finger at me like it was a gun.

  “James McGill, you’re the one who’s not thinking. I know you did something to get your suit to work. Something none of the rest of us could figure out. Tomorrow we’re going to port to an enemy ship and try to take it.”

  “Damn straight,” I said. “That’s why I’d rather be getting some solid sleep in right now.”

  She rolled her eyes. Women did that all the time around me.

  “First of all, I don’t even understand how you could sleep on a night like this before going to battle.”

  I shrugged. “I just try not to think about it.”

  “Secondly,” she continued, “I know you’re a lot smarter than you pretend to be, but you’re not thinking this time. How are you going to fix all nine of our suits before we port out of here tomorrow?”

  A funny look must have swept over my face.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said, coming closer. “Now you get it.”

  That finger was still up, and it was right in my face. Normally, I would’ve gotten angry about that, but she’d made a very good point.

  Sure, I could touch my key to my own suit and make it work for me—but what about the rest of the team? How would it look if I went around fluffing up everyone’s collar and giving them a kiss before we launched? Would that even work?

  “We’ve got a problem,” I admitted.

  “We sure as hell do,” she agreed. “Now, as your senior tech on this mission, I demand that you come clean. Tell me how you did it. Let me save this mission.”

  My jaw slid side to side as I thought it over. I couldn’t come up with a dodge or an easy solution.

  So I sighed, and I spilled my guts. My story was brief, but informative. I told her about the Galactic Key, how it worked, and what it could do.

  When I was done, her eyes were as big around as a bug’s.

  “And you’ve somehow kept this from your officers for how long?”

  “Years, actually,” I said. “But it wasn’t like it sounds. For most of that time, the key belonged to Imperator Galina Turov. I was under strict orders not to reveal anything about it. Seeing as how she’s been permed now, I figure I’m free to talk.”

  Lisa began to pace and tap at her arm. I could see her mind was working way too fast. I wondered how I always got mixed up with the smart ones.

  “Let me see it,” she said, holding out her hand.

  Reluctantly, I put the seashell-like thing in her hands. She stared at it.

  “This is a powerful artifact? I had this in my possession before.”

  “Yeah.
Luckily, they returned it to me after my last recycle. I formally listed it as a ‘personal item’ a long time ago, and they always give it back. Funny how they never catch on.”

  “I can’t believe…” she said, trailing off. “You told me this was a gift from your mother!”

  “Uh… I might have said something like that.”

  Lisa slapped me lightly for lying and carried the key to the bed. She held it like it was made of glass. In reality, it was pretty tough. It had been through some hard knocks, and it still worked.

  “What a glorious find…” she said. “In a way, this is better than the teleport suit.”

  “Uh… can I have that back now?”

  “No, not yet. I must perform a few experiments.”

  She walked around the room and touched the key to items as I’d explained she could. She hacked her tapper, killed the lights on the entire floor, and unlocked her own apartment door.

  “Amazing,” she said. “But how are we going to launch the team with it?”

  “Well… you’re the tech. You could do a final, personal check on every suit. Walk from person to person and unlock their suits. When you’re done, we’ll launch.”

  “Such a simple plan—do you think it will work?”

  I smiled and caught her around the waist.

  “The simplest plans always work best.”

  Lisa resisted a little, but pretty soon her robe was off again, and I had her in my arms. Her body was warm and all her original excitement and energy seemed to have returned.

  She was a techie, after all, and I’d just rocked her world.

  -21-

  The next morning came all too soon. We were rounded up and suited up. The only good news is they gave us a few new pieces of gear I’d never seen before.

  “This tech is the good stuff,” Lisa told the team. “Things we’ve developed here on Earth, but which are illegal as far as the Galactics are concerned. Now that we’re facing extinction, Hegemony has authorized the use of everything we’ve got in the arsenal.”

  The Galactic Empire operated through a simple but inflexible set of rules. Every star system in the Empire had to have a valid trade good to be eligible for membership. This membership was very desirable—mostly because the only other option was planetary extermination.

  From the beginning, Earth’s trade good had been mercenary troops. We were allowed to buy weapons and military hardware, but only the kind of gear that the Empire had deemed our fringe civilization was good enough to buy. We couldn’t manufacture better weapons or copy alien designs. Aliens held patents on every weapon we could come up with. If we tried to build stuff like that anyway, the penalty would have been species removal.

  Galactic Law only had one punishment for any infraction: death. The amount of death was the only variable. In mild cases, an individual death might be enough to atone. More serious infractions required that a family unit, a city, or even a planet had to be removed from the living. In extreme cases, complete extermination of the species was called for.

  Because of the danger, Earth had studied alien tech but dared not use it. We’d never had enough credit or trading partners to get everything that was wanted legally, but we’d stolen a few secrets here and there.

  Today was different. The Galactics were no longer our biggest problem. They were far away and toothless. There hadn’t been so much as a visit from the Nairbs or the Mogwa for years.

  As was always the case, when the cat was away, the mice began to play.

  “Cinch this up tighter, McGill,” Lisa said, hooking yet another gizmo onto my belt.

  “What’s this thing?” I asked doubtfully.

  “It’s a tracker. It tracks physical bodies that are in motion.”

  “Hmm…” I said, less than impressed. “Do I really need a device for that? If I can see them, I can shoot them.”

  “This is better than your eyes. It sees through walls. It will show you what the enemy is doing, even if they are on the far side of a solid wall.”

  “Ah…” I said, catching on. “You carry it.”

  She complained, but she finally did as I asked. I didn’t want to be overburdened with gear. Sure, these things were useful, but we were going to be swimming most of the time, and I didn’t want to be weighed down.

  Graves let me handle the details any way I wanted. He’d put me in charge of the mission. Unless he saw me actively disobeying his orders, he wasn’t going to get involved. This mission was my baby.

  Half an hour after we got to the lab, we were all suited-up and ready to jump. I looked at Lisa, and she met my eyes. She gave me a tiny nod and showed me the Galactic Key. She had it in her palm, ready to go.

  “Okay,” I said, “we’re going to pop through one at a time. Even if you die the second you appear in the glass ball, try your best to fall out of the way. We can’t afford to merge up with one another when we arrive.”

  The team looked a little green when I mentioned “merging up.” They’d seen me kill myself and one of the Omegas accidentally by teleporting into the same space he occupied.

  “We can assume that a liquid medium like water or air will displace. We’ve seen that firm solids do not. We don’t want any new disasters. The second you get there, move out of the way for the next guy, got it?”

  Everyone nodded grimly.

  “If you possibly can,” I continued, “hustle out of that bubble. Kill any squid you see. We should have surprise on our side, but that’s it. The crew will outnumber us and outweigh us. We have to take them down before they know what’s happening.”

  “McGill,” Graves said. “What’s your order of battle? Who’s on point?”

  “I’m going first,” I said. “After me comes Ferguson, then Carlos.”

  I continued the list. Every ten seconds, a team member was to jump. Lisa would bring up the tail end of the squad, right after Harris.

  We did a final check, and they all looked at me like I was some kind of undertaker. All except for Lisa, that is. She seemed to believe I was a miracle-worker. I only hoped for her sake that my luck would hold out.

  Go-time came all too soon. I stepped up to the plate—literally. There was a disk-like plate now on the floor. Maybe Graves had gotten tired of cleaning up the deck itself. Lisa approached and touched the key to my dial and stepped away, nodding.

  “Checked. Ready to fly, McGill.”

  We’d practiced this maneuver in the early morning. She’d gotten good at handling the key and palming it afterward.

  Since we didn’t know how long the security on the teleport unit would be disabled, I wanted her to send off each trooper personally. She’d come last so that she didn’t have to wait around too long, either. Putting my girl at the end of the queue also meant she would have the most cover-fire and therefore the safest entry into hostile territory.

  Slamming down my heavy visor and turning on my exo-skeletal gear, I felt I was ready. I had plenty of new toys on my person that the nerds at Central had cooked up but never dared use before in combat. All that nonsense about Galactic Laws and patents was being blissfully ignored by the brass now. Even better, the squid jump-suits had plenty of room inside for us to pack with gear.

  “For Legion Varus and Earth!” I shouted over the tactical channel, and the assembled group cheered me.

  Mid-cheer, their voices cut out. I’d switched the dial on my chest, selecting the second notch.

  Instantly, I was cast into limbo. My body had been torn apart and felt as if it was floating. My consciousness seemed to be spread thin for a moment, then I felt myself coming together again.

  About a second and half passed. Suddenly, I was aboard the cephalopod ship Force again—unfortunately, I was not alone.

  The glass globe was gone. In its place were no less than twelve squids.

  My first thought, in the split-second before the fireworks began, was that the enemy had set up an ambush. They’d been waiting here for me to come back, and now they’d formed a firing squad to rip me apa
rt.

  But that wasn’t the situation. I could tell as I reached for my belt and set off a pulse-bomb that the squids were actually prepping to teleport themselves. Nine combat-squids were there, and they were all heavily armed and wearing jump-suits.

  In addition were two technical types who wore normal spacer-gear. They were checking over their equipment. The whole scene reminded me of the one I’d just left behind.

  There was no doubt in my mind that this group was heading to Central. Their techs were about to launch a team at us—but we’d beaten them to the punch.

  The squids, rather than being trigger-happy and ready to blast me, were taken completely by surprise.

  The pulse-bomb was something new. Developed for aquatic combat but never used before by Earth troops to my knowledge, the device created a concussion wave that was designed to rupture every eardrum and organ in the vicinity.

  Naturally, I’d been fitted with protective padding and reactive armor designed to mitigate these same affects.

  When I set it off, I expected to hear a pop and go on my merry way. That wasn’t exactly how it turned out, however. Even with my protective gear, I was stunned. It felt like I’d been slammed in the head with a big rubber mallet—from multiple angles all at once.

  When my mind and my vision cleared, I could see the squids had fared worse than I had. Half of them weren’t even moving. The rest were flopping around, leaking blood and ink. Their eyeballs had ruptured, and they seemed to be blind and virtually helpless.

  My chronometer went off—or maybe it had been going off for a while. I couldn’t hear it, I could only feel it vibrating my tapper. Still groggy from the point-blank effects of the pulse-bomb, my first instinct was to silence the alarm…

  Somehow, somewhere in my brain, another urgent thought struck through the fog: get the hell off the launch pad, McGill!

  Numb legs propelled me one step, then as I began the next, my left boot froze. I looked back and down—it was Ferguson. He’d ported in and the tip of his boot had been fused with mine.

  At first, I thought we might both be as good as dead. Two idiots trying to fight with a pair of merged feet? That would be hopeless.

  “You’re not off the pad!” he told me needlessly.