by B. V. Larson
Graves narrowed his eyes, looking at my tapper. “How come your tapper hasn’t identified you to the network?”
I shook my head and eyed my forearm. “It’s the damnedest thing, sir. The organic circuitry must not be working—not even on this copied version. I’ll have to have the techs look at it.”
“All right,” Graves said. “Your story is bullshit, but at least it’s attractive bullshit. Maybe we can get past the Primus eventually, but you’ll have to be demoted in rank. You’re a regular again. You can still carry your heavy kit for the rest of this mission, as you’re trained for it, but you’re not a Specialist any longer, McGill.”
This pronouncement gave me a pang of regret. I nodded.
“I understand, sir,” I said. And I really did. Graves hadn’t believed me. Not for a second. But he was willing to play along in order to not lose a good man on a lonely planet.
“Off the record,” Graves said quietly, “I didn’t think it would be right to kill all these colonists just to save our own hides, either. But I wasn’t calling the shots when the decision was made, and it might be too late now. They’ve screwed up by taking the ship rather than running off into the desert. Now everyone in the legion wants them dead.”
I nodded, looking up into the pinkish-blue sky overhead. Graves frowned at me.
“I’m letting you off easy McGill,” he said. “The least you can do is pay attention.”
“Remember what you said about running out of time, sir?” I asked, pointing upward.
As he looked up, his face sagged. There was a shadow coming over the valley. It soon darkened the skies and then the entire valley.
The Nairb ship had arrived.
-35-
The Nairb ship wasn’t a battlewagon. Bureaucrats usually didn’t carry a payload of Hell-burners with them ready to fall on our heads.
We feared them all the same. The power of the Empire was behind every word any Nairb spoke to a lowly species like ours. They didn’t have to wield force directly; they ruled through the threat of a vast power that might be unleashed should we fail to please them.
Being an unimportant species on the fringe of the galaxy was both good and bad. As long as no one noticed us, we were effectively invisible to the great races of beings in the Core Systems thousands of lightyears away. Staying invisible had become our best trick. It was the goal of any world like ours.
Today, however, the cold light of Nairb logic was to shine down upon us. Once the ship had darkened the skies of Dust World, all attempts to hide the truth ended abruptly. We stopped fighting with the colonists and ignored them in their stolen ship.
Instead, we focused on organizing ourselves. Lifters rolled in from other valleys all day long, as the Legion gathered its full strength. We didn’t know if the Nairbs would want to perform a headcount; but if they did, we were ready.
Within ten hours after the Nairb arrival, every legionnaire had been revived and given a full kit. We’d polished our gear, and the lifters had come from every valley on the planet to unload full cohorts on the open polar deserts. There we stood in ranks waiting for inspection.
I was near the end of a line of troops that had to be a kilometer long. Fifty ranks stood ahead of me and twenty or so more behind. We stood in the blazing sun with dust whipping into our closed visors. I had to admit, we were a pretty impressive sight standing at attention in our thousands.
The first four cohorts were light troops—those sorry bastards: Soft gear, cheap smart-cloth and substandard air conditioners. They cradled their snap-rifles with what had to be aching arms. My armor was much heavier, but I had better temperature controls and an exoskeleton to hold up the weight.
Each cohort was broken into ten units of a hundred troops, led by a centurion. Every unit had a flag, just as the Romans had so many centuries before us. The flags were red with gold print that identified our units. These days, of course, we didn’t need flags to show us who to follow on the battlefield. We had tappers, heads-up-displays inside our helmets and a dozen other pieces of high tech gear to serve that purpose. But on special occasions like this, when we wanted to dress up and show off, we still broke out the old gear and unfurled the banners.
As the most senior non-com in the unit, Veteran Harris had the honor of holding up our unit’s flag. It was emblazoned with the wolf’s head emblem of Legion Varus and our cohort and unit numbers. Seeing the banner flapping there in the strong, hot winds gave me a moment of pride.
After a solid hour of standing around in the sun, however, my pride was fading. I waved at a tech running down the ranks offering power to any trooper who was running low. To my surprise, it was none other than Natasha.
“Hey, pretty lady,” I called.
“Need some power, McGill?”
“Sure, give me a boost.”
I let my plasma tube down to touch the dust that now covered my boots entirely and offered her an arm. She had a drone following her that was loaded with power-packs. She plugged into my external port and I watched my gauges turn green as the juice flowed.
“Talk to me, Natty,” I said. “What the heck is going on inside the Nairb ship? Is the brass going to keep us standing out here until we’re buried under a sand dune?”
She cast a nervous look over her shoulder toward the ship. It had landed on the planet’s surface up above the valley floor. Naturally, we’d been obliged to come up here and stand in parade in front of it. We were arranged in a massive square between the hulking ship and our swarm of nine lifters.
“Let’s just hope they let us live, James,” she said quietly, not looking at me.
I reached out and grabbed her hand as she disconnected me. I made sure I didn’t squeeze too hard. Powered gauntlets could crush a person’s bones.
“You know something, don’t you?” I asked. “Tell me about it.”
She glanced at me worriedly and shook her head. “It’s best I didn’t.”
“Come on,” I told her. “Things could hardly get worse. Either we’re screwed or we’re not.”
“I’ve only caught bits and pieces from officers as I’ve juiced them up. I think things are going badly. The Nairbs want to know everything. They aren’t buying any of our cover stories. They want to investigate the colonists who are still holed up in that alien ship. They want to talk to the aliens, the colonists—everyone.”
I frowned. That didn’t sound so good.
“They might burn us all down, James,” Natasha said, sounding scared. “They might want to burn us all.”
“The whole legion?”
“For starters. Earth could be in danger, too. We’re not supposed to be colonizing new planets. We’re not really supposed to even be out here.”
“Yeah, I know. Hey, since this might be our last hour under the sun, how about you and I have a little good-bye kiss?”
Natasha snorted in disbelief. “As if I would—can you guess what Kivi told me?”
I sighed. “I have a pretty good idea.”
Natasha walked off, laughing. I watched her go wistfully. It wasn’t long after that when a peculiar call came in to my helmet. I answered and became concerned when I saw the caller’s ID: It was Primus Turov herself.
“McGill? Get your ass up here, right now.”
“Sir? Where’s ‘here’, sir?”
“The Nairb ship, you moron! Get to the entrance. The Nairbs will direct you.”
I lurched into motion. My legs were stiff from standing so long, but I ran anyway. Graves came to intercept me and got into my face.
“Leave your weapon—and your sidearm.”
I knew what that meant. The officers didn’t want a scene in case I was to be executed.
The look on Graves’ face was as hard as his steel-gray eyes. I gave up my guns and trotted off at a steady, ground-eating pace toward the ship. I ran first down the ranks, then up between the units. I passed Natasha along the way, and she stared at me.
“Should have given me that kiss while you could!” I shouted.<
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Hustling up to the hulking Nairb ship, I had to wonder exactly what they might want with little old me. I didn’t think Legion Varus could place all their sins on my head and get off with a warning after perming a single soldier. And the Nairbs had no reason to want me dead in particular. They didn’t think in terms of individuals when meting out punishment, anyway.
With nothing to go on, I dropped my worries. I’d play this game when I learned what it was about. Until then, I’d keep my mouth shut and act the part of the eager legionnaire.
Despite what Turov had said, there weren’t any Nairbs to greet me at the hatchway. All I found was a series of flashing green lights on the floor. That was typical of Nairbs, they didn’t make things personal.
As I hustled along, following the lights, I noticed that they vanished behind me. I passed what seemed like endless bulkheads and cavernous empty holds. I had to wonder why they’d brought such a big ship out here. Could they really be planning to rescue us and give us a ride home? That would be nice—if uncharacteristic of the Nairbs.
At the end of a particularly long passage, I finally found Primus Turov. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites all the way around. I wasn’t sure if she was scared or pissed off—I thought it might be a little of both.
“Good of you to take your sweet time getting here,” she said.
“It was so nice outside I hated to come in.”
She stared at me for a second, then shook her head bemusedly. She looked over my armor and dusted it off. While we spoke, she worked to clean my armor, which I thought was sort of weird. I’d never been spruced up before by someone who flat-out hated me.
“Don’t even open your damned mouth in there unless called upon, McGill.”
“Wouldn’t think of it, sir.”
“And don’t accidently kill anyone, either.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
At last, the final hatchway opened. I walked inside, taking two steps forward, and then stood at attention.
I looked around, knowing that they probably couldn’t see my eyes moving through my visor at this distance. The chamber was unlike any I’d seen yet aboard this ship. There were fat, fluffy chairs everywhere. On most of them were Nairbs, draped over their furniture like seals on rocks.
The Nairbs were an odd race. They were green-skinned and green-blooded. They reminded me of living beanbags. They’d reportedly started off as an aquatic race, but had evolved into a tool-using species with curling flippers that could manipulate objects with great dexterity. These days, they were the local accountants for the Empire.
Unfortunately, in an organization as large as the Empire, accountants and bureaucrats had grown in power. Every race we’d ever met lived in fear of the Nairbs and their heartless regulatory powers.
When I stepped into the room, a few Nairbs turned to look at me. They soon turned their attention back to the Tribune, who was the only other human in the chamber.
Tribune Drusus didn’t look happy. In all the times I’d seen him, he’d always come off as a paragon of calm judgment and wisdom. Today, he looked like a perp in handcuffs—a guilty man who knew he’d finally been caught.
“This is the man,” Drusus said to the Nairb Prefect. “He’s the only one that might get an answer out of them.”
I glanced at Drusus, hoping for a clue concerning what I was supposed to be doing here, but he gave me nothing.
“Self-execution would be far less time-wasting,” said the Prefect.
This gave my heart a squeeze. It began pounding in my chest.
“I’m within my rights,” Drusus replied.
The Nairbs translating device made a rattling sound. I think it was trying to translate a grunt of disgust.
“Very well, tell it to speak.”
Drusus turned to me. “James McGill. We need you to contact the humans inside the alien ship. Who was their leader?”
“You mean the Investigator, sir?”
“Yes, that’s him. Get him on a com line.”
“Uh…” I said, at a loss. “I don’t think he’s going to answer my—”
“Please try, McGill.”
A com-link with an outside hook-up was brought to me. I removed my helmet and set it aside. Putting on the com-link, I tried to open a channel. We’d left our com equipment inside the ship before the colonists had retaken it—but, really, I thought it was a longshot that they were listening at all.
To my surprise, the channel did open. But no one answered my call.
“Hello?” I asked. “Can I talk to someone, please?”
Drusus looked impatient. “We’ve tried that. The communication is getting to the ship, but it isn’t being answered by anyone.”
“They might not even be listening—” I began to point out.
Drusus made a rapid hand gesture, as if he were erasing my words out of the air. “McGill, they are listening. The trouble is that we haven’t said anything yet that they wish to respond to. Do you understand?”
I was beginning to. Drusus had made some kind of commitment to the Nairbs with regard to the colonists. Maybe they’d demanded to talk to them, and so far no one had been listening to our demands.
For a second, I considered the problem. Sure, there might not be anyone around to pick up the phone, but I had to try. I could tell from the Tribune’s attitude that it was of the utmost importance that I succeed.
“I understand, sir,” I said.
After a moment of thought, I opened the channel again. As before, it opened, but no one said anything.
“This is Specialist James McGill,” I said, then paused. “Correction, I’m Legionnaire James McGill of Legion Varus.”
Drusus made a rapid hand gesture that indicated I should get on with the show. I tried not to look at him.
“I need to talk to the Investigator,” I said. I wracked my brain, trying to come up with something that might get the man on the phone. I didn’t have much on him. “This is of great importance. It is in regards to Della, your daughter, sir. Please speak with me.”
I waited for several seconds, but there was no response.
“Maybe you’d like to use code,” I said, grasping at straws. “If you’re having trouble with your com equipment, try keying the transmit button to inform us of that fact.”
Drusus looked alarmed. The Nairb Prefect perked up.
“They have failed to comply for an extended period,” said the Nairb. “Criminals frequently seek to evade justice through hiding in ridiculously obvious places. This case is no different.”
“Please, Prefect,” Drusus said. “Allow us a bit more time.”
“Irritating. You have reached the end of your useful—”
“Please, sir. I beg of thee.”
“Beg? You plead for Imperial Mercy?”
“Yes.”
The Nairbs barked at one another for several seconds.
“Very well,” said the Prefect at last. “It is within our charter to extend mercy in these circumstances, but I must point out that you are only inconveniencing my staff further with these pointless delays.”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” Drusus said. Even as he spoke, he made circular motions toward me, indicating I should proceed.
I was sweating now. Whatever the Nairbs had in mind for us, it couldn’t be good.
“Investigator,” I said into the com link. “If you don’t want to talk about Della, maybe you’ll be willing to discuss your own survival and the survival of your ship. The Empire will destroy it if you don’t comply immediately.”
The Nairbs squawked and shuffled on their flippers. “That statement was unauthorized,” complained the Prefect.
“I’m so sorry,” Drusus repeated. “This man is merely an enlisted interpreter. He’s not fully versed in the—”
“Investigator? We’re coming in there. Surely, you can see the Nairb ship. You told me you knew about the Empire. The squids knew about it, too. You can’t be completely ignorant concerning the vast power you
face. I would advise you—”
“No one is going to take or damage my ship!” said a voice suddenly.
I paused, blinking stupidly. Drusus looked as shocked as I was.
“Is this the Investigator speaking?” I demanded officiously. I decided to channel the Nairbs with their bad attitude. It seemed to be getting a reaction.
“We’ve been listening to your prattling demands for better than an hour now. I’m switching this box off.”
“Investigator! Don’t do it, please! I’m the star man, the fellow who came to your caverns and met with you personally. I forged a truce between our peoples that—”
“A truce? That arrangement was nothing but a ruse. The new ship is ours, and as soon as we figure out how to fly it you’ll all regret your actions.”
“Threats?” the Nairb Prefect said excitedly. “The humans have threatened us. That casts an entirely new light on the matter. Take note, scribes. New charges must be drawn up.”
Drusus had his eyes shut in horror.
“Investigator,” I said. “You have to be very careful what you say now. All our lives are in jeopardy. I’m not threatening you or your ship. I’m trying to help you; to help both of us out of a bad spot.”
The Investigator was quiet for several seconds, and the Nairbs moved restively on their pillows. I began to wonder if he really had shut off the com box.
“Twice now, McGill, you used the possessive form when referring to the cephalopod ship. Do I take it that Earth accepts our ownership of this vessel?”
I had no authority to do anything, so I eyed Drusus. He looked at me, and nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re willing to make that concession. But you have to help us out. If the Nairbs don’t agree, the opinions of Earth mean nothing. You understand that you and I and every being in this galaxy is a citizen of the Empire at best. If not, you’re nothing more than an animal: An insect that might be crushed at any moment.”
“Hyperbole,” complained the Investigator. “Idle threats invented to intimidate us and force us into giving up a superior position.”