by B. V. Larson
“What’s that going to do?” I asked her.
With a grim expression, she bent down and reached for my gorget—that was the metal ring that locked my helmet onto my special suit of armor.
To my surprise, it popped right open at her touch. I glanced down, and sure enough, she had that damned Galactic Key in her palm.
Her face split into a grin, and she put her slim-barreled pistol into my face. She pressed the muzzle up against my right nostril, in fact. It burned there as the barrel of her weapon was still hot after shooting all the Nairbs.
“Ow,” I complained.
“Hurts a little, does it? I’m sooo sorry.”
She said this in a nice tone, but she kept on burning my nose with her gun anyways. I got the feeling she wasn’t actually sorry—not in the least.
“I take it you didn’t like how I killed the Nairbs, huh?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well…” I said, “for one thing, you didn’t look happy when you were gunning down the rest of them.”
“I wasn’t happy, and I’m not happy right now.”
“Yeah? So why did you do it?”
“I only did that because I had to, you moron. You’d already killed half of them. Letting the other half go would have been even worse than our present predicament.”
“Uh… so you agree that we’re committed now? To my plan?”
“Yes,” she said, “we’re executing your plan now—if you even have one.”
“In that case, you should probably let me get up. It’s time to kick-start phase two, Tribune.”
She considered her options. The muzzle of her long gun left my nose for a few seconds, but then she jabbed it back down into my cheek. It felt like she was putting out a cigarette on me. “Tell me what your plan is, first.”
My eyes slid up to the glaring ring of Fleet pukes. They looked like they wanted to murder me. Probably, they were still upset about how I’d treated the crewmen who’d gotten in my way during my killing spree.
“I can’t. Not with this clown-posse standing around.”
Galina bared her teeth, but she nodded. She stood up.
“Stand him on his feet and get out of here—all of you.”
They hustled off the bridge. Even Captain Merton was kicked out. A little bit of public slaughter had a way of setting people’s minds straight about who was in charge.
I smiled at Galina and waved at the smeared remains of Nairbs all over the deck. “Reminds me of old times, huh? You know this must be the biggest stack of Nairbs I’ve ever murdered—and that’s saying something. I bet that’s true for you too, huh?”
“Shut up. Have you got a plan to get us out of this, or not?”
“I sure do. First off, Natasha has blocked their communications. They mentioned it, didn’t they? She’s straight-out jamming them.”
“Natasha… right, that ex-girlfriend hacker of yours. But James, what about the Deep-Link broadcast they were doing?”
“Huh?”
Alarmed, she walked up to me and grabbed my arm. I couldn’t even feel the desperate squeeze of her fingers through my suit. “The Deep-Link, you fucking idiot! They were transmitting directly to the Galactic Core!”
“Oh right! That…” I said, enjoying the sight of a little bit of panic on her face. I’d played dumb to get her to freak out. After all, she’d burned me for a mite too long with that gun of hers. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “She blocked the Deep-Link too.”
Galina squinted at me. “I didn’t know that could be done.”
I shrugged, not offering any more information. It was a secret that Natasha and I shared. We’d managed to come up with a method of tapping into Deep-Link transmissions and listening to them. Once you’ve managed to tune in to any given signal, jamming it is relatively easy.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll have to take your word for it. What do we do next?”
“Now we go talk to Nox, naturally.”
“What? Are you crazy? She’ll know she’s lost her Nairbs. She’ll know this wasn’t any accident. She’ll revive her green bastards and sic them on us again, with extra charges this time.”
“Yep, probably. But we’re not going to let her do that. We’re going to cut a deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s go down to Gray Deck, and I’ll explain. We’ve got to move fast.”
She followed me off the bridge. Out in the passages, tons of freaked-out officers, both Fleet people and Legionnaires, thronged the place. They peppered us with questions, but Galina shoved them aside with a growl.
“You’re all useless! Get out of my way, fools!”
We marched to the lifts, then rode down to Gray Deck. When we got there we found two teleport harnesses with full charges, strapped them on, and ported out.
We arrived aboard the Mogwa ship a few seconds later. We’d broken every protocol in the book by popping directly into the Governor’s headquarters—but this was go-time.
“Hiya Governor Nox,” I said brightly.
Startled, she turned around to face us. Her nasty feet-hand things churned on the deck.
“Is this an insurrection?”
“No sir, not in the least. We’re here to help you out of this predicament.”
“What are you talking about, creature? Turov, restrain your beast.”
“I wish that I could, Governor. I really do.”
Nox was kind of a scaredy-cat, even for a Mogwa. But she forced herself to relax and appear confident.
“There had better be an excellent reason for this intrusion, humans. My ship carries hell-burners, and I’m not afraid to use them.”
“I’m sure that it does, sir,” I said smoothly. “But hear us out, we’ve got an offer you’re going to want to take advantage of.”
One of Nox’s hands strayed toward her tapper. I’d picked up a rifle along the way, and I lifted it to aim in her general direction. She got the idea and lowered her appendage again.
“All right,” she said. “Describe your offer.”
Smiling, I did so. While I spoke, Galina began to look more and more alarmed. By the finish, she released an inarticulate squawk of rage.
“James! Is that it? Is that all you have? No one would go for that deal! Earth won’t approve it, either.”
I glanced at her, then I nodded toward Nox.
The Mogwa seemed pensive. She spoke at last.
“Your statements are interesting. Your species is far too clever. I can see now why so many administrators who’ve had the misfortune of venturing out here recommend we cleanse the province completely.”
“It is always good to start off fresh,” I admitted. “But the truth is, no one is ever placed into the events of history at the beginning. You’re now responsible for whatever goes on out here. Anything bad that happens in old 921 will reflect on you and your career—forever.”
Nox didn’t like my words. She didn’t like them at all—but that didn’t change the facts. She’d been given responsibility for this province, and it was her baby now. In the eyes of the Mogwa back home, anything that happened out here was all her fault.
She began to pace the deck. Her six feet tapped in an odd pattern.
“This is the sort of thing that happened to Xlur, isn’t it? Maybe he did commit suicide.”
“What’s your answer, your lordship? Yes or no?”
“It’s yes, of course. But you already knew that, didn’t you, McGill? I’ll keep my eye-clusters on you in the future. You’re not the kind of danger I expected to encounter. I’d calculated there would be great physical peril—but you humans are political as well.”
“That’s right. We’re like monkeys screaming in a tree. You never know what you might catch when you look up at us.”
Nox was annoyed, but she was also thoughtful. She turned away from us and activated her ship’s communication console. At once, it flared into life. With a swipe of one of her many limbs, she expanded a portion of the
local stars.
A single bright crescent appeared and it became rapidly larger as she zoomed in. It was the Skay, looking for all the world like an errant moon.
She tapped the image, and a signal was sent. Moments later, a channel opened.
“Mogwa,” the Skay said. “Why do you disturb me this way? We have agreed that all communications will be intermediated by the Nairbs.”
“That’s true, Citizen of the Skay. But the Nairbs have suffered… an accident.”
The Skay was silent for perhaps a second. “I see,” its artificial voice said at last. “I shall rejoice then. They obviously ruled in my favor, so you had them put down.”
Nox looked over her shoulder at us. Galina chewed on her fingers, while I gave the lady Mogwa a polite wave.
She turned back to her screens. “What you say is untrue, but I know I’ll never convince you that matters went otherwise. We are at an impasse.”
“Not so. You have forfeited, first by cheating and now by attempting to remove the judges. Neither of these attempts will succeed.”
“Uh… Governor?” I said. “May I speak to the nice Skay, sir?”
Nox glanced at me again. “Well… I don’t see how things can become worse.”
Galina looked alarmed, and I thought for a second she was going to tell the Mogwa not to let me do it, but instead she just bared her teeth and watched as I approached the big image of the Skay. She looked more than a little bit sick, and her fingernails went to her mouth again. They were going to need a fresh coat of paint after this, I’ll tell you that much.
“Mr. Skay, sir. This is James McGill. I’m sort of a—well, a professional negotiator in this province.”
“You are in my province, McGill. You have no authority here.”
“Ah-ah, that’s the rub. Right there. We’re not in your province quite yet. It will take another decade to get there.”
“We’re attempting to speed up the process. Your absurd behavior has been helpful in this lone regard.”
I wasn’t sure, but I figured I’d just been insulted.
“How’s that, sir? I didn’t—” I began, but Lady Nox finally lost it.
“No, you cunning animal!” she said loudly. “I’ll not allow your nonsense to continue!”
Glancing back at her, I figured at first I was going to have to calm some hysteria—but it was far worse than that.
Nox had a weapon in one of her many hands. It was a black tube, and I didn’t even want to know where she’d pulled it out from.
“Uh…” I said.
Without so much as a word of explanation, she shot me in the face. I was still wearing my armor, but after Galina had removed my helmet, I’d never thought to put it back on.
Those were the breaks, I guess. I died pretty much instantly.
-77-
You could have painted me nine kinds of surprised when I was brought back to life an unknown time later. That lady-Mogwa had killed me in such an unexpected and decisive manner, I’d kind of figured I was permed, or leastwise that I’d be reprinted from some old back-up file. I wouldn’t be remembering my rude ending if that were the case.
But I did remember. I remembered the whole thing. To me, Nox had exhibited a bad attitude. Her behavior had been just plain rude. To my way of thinking, I’d been trying to save her bacon, and I hadn’t deserved to be killed for that.
“McGill? McGill? Can you hear me?” It was some kind of bio, and the guy was poking at me.
“Yeah…”
“Okay, he’s good. Get him off the gurney—he’s to be sent directly down to the brig.”
I was hustled off Blue Deck and dragged to the lowest decks aboard Dominus. At least I was happy to learn I was back aboard my legion’s transport ship.
I recognized a few faces as I was hauled away. I smiled and waved whenever I saw a familiar legionnaire—but no one smiled or waved back. I’m no fortuneteller, but even I knew that was a bad sign.
The brig on any big ship is pretty much an offshoot of the sewer. Whoever designed ships always put some cramped holding cells right next to the waste processors. My tiny prison was hot and steamy. It stank to high-Heaven, and I hated the place.
A few hours later, a familiar face showed up. It was Natasha.
At first, I thought she’d come to see me, but then I noticed her hands were manacled behind her back. I felt bad about that. It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten caught up in one of my schemes and punished unfairly for it.
The guards shoved her into my cell and slammed the door. She sat beside me on a metal pallet that hung from the wall.
“Hey, at least we’ve both got some company!”
She looked up at me slowly. There were tears in her eyes. “What did you do, James?”
“Aw now, don’t go crying. Things will be okay.”
“No. No they won’t. We’re to be executed right after the deal you made with the Skay is consummated.”
“Uh…” I said, confused. “But I didn’t make any deals with the Skay. I talked to the Mogwa-lady, sure, but before I could offer up anything that made sense to that moon-sized stick-in-the-mud Skay, Nox killed me.”
Natasha shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe. I guess it hardly matters. We’re both going to be permed soon, anyway.”
“Why’d they bother to revive me if they just plan to kill me?”
“I don’t know. It’s a bureaucratic thing.”
I nodded, as I was used to that kind of answer. But I didn’t buy it. Not completely. They were probably holding old McGill in their back pocket, like an old-fashioned ace card—just in case.
As our tappers were disconnected from the grid, I played crappy games on mine. Natasha seemed bored too, and she spent hours swiping and poking at her arm. Finally, however, she whooped.
“I got through!”
“Huh? What game you playing?”
“No, no… I got through the security grid. I’m online.”
“Oh…”
Together, we studied her screen. Natasha was quickly able to determine where and when we were. The news was disappointing.
“Nine days…” she said. “They kept us dead for nine long days.”
“So what? I skipped two years once.”
She looked at wonderingly. “What should we do, James?”
I thought about it. “Get onto the ship’s grid. Log in with someone else’s ID, and get into the traffic up on Gold Deck.”
Her tongue slipped out and vanished again nervously. “What if they find out?”
I laughed. “We’re up for a perming, girl. What the hell does it matter now?”
My logic was unassailable, so she dug into hacking. She finally managed to get into a few secret accounts other techs kept for these kinds of emergencies—all of her own had been ferreted out and erased.
“Who’s account are you in now?” I asked when she finally got a visual from the bridge to come up on her arm.
“It’s Kivi’s.”
“Does she even know you hacked her?”
Natasha smiled shyly. “No. She’d shut it down if she did.”
I grinned, and we watched events unfold. What we saw bored us at first—but then we became alarmed.
Dominus was in orbit over Earth. Watching the main viewscreens, we saw what had to be our Moon swinging into view. The transport was aiming right at it.
At least, that’s what it looked like. But then I noticed that there wasn’t just one moon, there were two of them.
One of them was way too far off, but it was moving closer every minute.
“That’s that evil-looking Skay—or a different one. It’s hard to tell. He’s sneaking up on our Moon.”
“No he’s not,” Natasha said, sounding lost. “He’s repossessing it. James—he’s hauling it away.”
We watched in horror as the Skay closed slowly with our Moon and began to do strange things. It was weird, seeing a twin to our own friendly satellite up there, fraternizing with an alien stranger.
“How could he do that?” I demanded.
“Some kind of gravitational manipulation, I imagine. Kind of like applying an anti-gravity clamp onto an object. He’s making it lose all inertia, and probably severing its gravitational link with Earth.”
“Uh… that’s got to be a bad thing, right?”
Natasha swiped and tapped at her arm furiously. She brought up news reports from Earth. The stories were all awful. There were tidal waves, hurricanes… our coastlines were being wrecked on one side of the planet, while on the other side the ocean had almost stopped moving. It was turning into a million square kilometers of still pond-water.
“Will this destroy the world?” I asked.
“No… some places will be devastated, especially the coastal cities. But then, the oceans will probably start to die. There will be mass aquatic extinctions. The jet-stream might quit flowing, or it will change its behavior. The Moon swings around Earth all the time, and it makes our world churn. A lot of what we call weather is due to tidal shifts.”
She looked kind of sick, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Listen, can you get us a line out to somebody on Gold Deck?”
Natasha slid her eyes up to meet mine. “James…”
“Come on. I know you can do it.”
“Who do you want to talk to?”
I thought over the list of possible suspects. There was Turov, Graves, Captain Merton…
But then, I knew who it had to be. The one fellow who would be willing to try anything to fix this mess.
Winslade let his tapper buzz at least six times before answering the call. That was probably because it said it was coming from Kivi. He couldn’t have cared much about whatever she had to say at this point.
“Kivi,” he said, his face popping up. He looked angry and scared. “Stop pestering me with these incessant…”
He trailed off, seeing Natasha’s face. I took that moment of confusion to horn in on the meeting, sticking my big face in sideways. I gave old Winslade a wave.
“Hey, Primus,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know we’ve been released, and we’re coming up to help in any way we can.”
“What? That’s nonsense! McGill, if you’ve killed more of my guards, so help me—”
