by B. V. Larson
That’s a peculiarity of my make-up, I’m afraid. Lies always come to me in a glib, easy rush—but not the cold truth. The truth was always a struggle to get out at times like this.
Taking in a deep breath, I nodded to Graves. I leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. The rest of them—except for Graves—leaned closer to hear what I had to say.
“It all started back when I went to the Core Worlds,” I began. “That was a long, long time ago. More than a decade back by now. Anyways, I learned some things back then. Things that I never told you about during the numerous debriefings.”
“Like what?” Drusus asked.
“Like secrets. Dark things… In the case of this Skay, see, I happened to have heard of him. He’s all scarred-up, right? Did you notice that?”
“We could hardly have missed it,” Galina said. “Get to the point, James.”
“I am, I am, I swear it. See, I found out that the Skay, because he’s kind of famous, even among the Mogwa… First off, you have to understand something. The Skay people, well, they kind of have their own ways of mating. Of sharing software and making new, little Skays.”
“Little Skays?” Drusus asked doubtfully. “Are you telling us a Skay is capable of growing in size after it’s constructed?”
“What? Oh… no, no, no,” I laughed. “I didn’t mean that literally, I’m talking kind of figuratively, here. I mean their minds start off young and have to grow. Anyways, the old Skay that we dealt with today had a baby Skay, see. Not a little one, just a sort of a spawned one with a similar mind.”
Galina rolled her eyes at me. Drusus seemed intrigued, but old Graves was still giving me that same flat stare. I tried not to even look at him. Damnation, that man was hard to crack.
“So, I learned a secret.” Here, I lowered my voice and leaned even more forward, nudging my beer with my chest. “That big old Skay—he’s not the daddy of the little Skay he thinks is his. That’s the secret. I told him about it, and he was so grateful that—”
Graves suddenly stood up. His chair slammed back on the deck behind him.
His face had a clear look of disgust on it. He was holding his pistol in his right hand, and it was leveled in my direction.
“Excuse me, sirs,” he said. “But if McGill dares to utter one more word of this horseshit story, so help me, I’ll blow a hole in him the size of his lying mouth.”
Drusus and Galina blinked at him for a second or two. They both looking shocked. Then their eyes narrowed as they absorbed his words.
Together, all of them stared at me. There was nothing soft or considerate left behind in any of those three faces. Not anymore. They were all suspicious and pissed off.
“Uh… ah, shit. You’re not going to like this…”
Then, I told them the truth. Not all of it, mind you. In my version it was all the Skay’s idea. He’d worked me, abused me, and downright forced me to agree to the crazy trade of our Moon for Edge World.
Long before I’d gotten to the finish line, all three of them were drinking. They were glum-faced, and Graves ordered another round—and another after that.
Everyone got drunk, but no one laughed or smiled. It wasn’t that kind of a drinking-binge. It was the other kind, when you feel sick, and you want to bury it all.
-81-
Galina had her fist pushed up into her cheek, which was kind of pink-looking. She was a little bit drunk, if I had to guess. I’d seen that look often, but probably never when she was also depressed.
“So… you traded away our revival machines so we could keep our Moon. That’s what you’re telling us, isn’t it?”
“What? No, no, no! That’s crazy-talk! We’re not going to lose our revival machines. We’ll just have to relocate the Shadowlanders to… some other planet. Then, they can keep making our favorite product.”
Graves slowly shook his head, Drusus narrowed his eyes at me, and Galina hiccupped.
“You’ve made these arrangements?” Drusus asked me.
“Huh?”
“I’m asking you if you’ve talked to Kattra and Helsa about this.”
“Oh… I’m sure I mentioned it once or twice. They seemed to think it was a good idea.”
Drusus started massaging his face. “McGill… you’re talking about a mass-emigration. Moving an entire population to another planet.”
“That’s right. It’s been done before. Hell, they’re already nomads! It’s a perfect solution!”
Drusus sighed. “It might be, if we had a decade or so to work it out. Try to think, McGill. You’re talking about thousands of individuals.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe millions. They don’t even know they’re moving yet, and they have—what? A week?”
Here, he turned to Graves, who nodded stoically.
“A week?” I said, laughing. “Why do they have to move that fast? The planet isn’t even entering Province 926 for ten years maybe.”
“According to the old rules, yes. But you promised the Skay immediate ownership, right?”
“Uh… maybe. I don’t think that part was clear.”
“Apparently not. Graves, what’s the Skay’s last estimated course?”
He leaned forward. “The alien is headed directly for 91 Aquarii. It clearly intends to take immediate possession of the star system. His estimated arrival is… just under six days from now.”
My jaw sagged low, and I gawked at them. “Really? You guys think the Skay got it wrong? You think he’s going to go right out there and move into their orbit again?”
“That’s why he came out from the Core Worlds, McGill,” Graves said patiently. “The reason he took your offer was because it gave him an immediate win. He can now go back home and brag that his mission has been cleanly completed ahead of schedule. That’s a no-brainer for any AI being.”
My mouth was still hanging open as I looked from one of them to the next. Galina helpfully reached out a hand and applied a few fingers to my chin, shutting it for me.
“Uh…” I said. “Maybe we could renegotiate?”
They all groaned and leaned tiredly over the table. “To do so now might spark the very war we’ve all worked so hard to avoid,” Drusus said. “We’re in a much weaker position at this point, as the Mogwa have left with their Nairb representatives. We’re dealing only with one recalcitrant Skay.”
“Yeah…” I said, thinking hard. “Well then, there’s only one thing to do.”
They all looked at me. There was a total lack of confidence in those stares, and I felt they were being a tad harsh on old McGill, but I kept that complaint to myself.”
“What do you propose, Centurion?”
“I’m going to have to go right out there and make things right.”
They stared at me—well, that’s not exactly right. Galina’s eyes were closed now, and that fist she had shoved up into her cheek seemed to be the only thing holding up her head. Graves was just gazing into his beer as if he might find solace at the bottom.
Drusus, however—he was doing some serious staring. Finally, he nodded.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll teleport you back to Edge World. But please—don’t start a fresh interstellar war, McGill.”
“Don’t worry about a thing, Praetor sir. You haven’t got a problem in the world when old McGill is on the case!”
He nodded glumly, and I left the bar. Once out in the passages, I started to run. I had a lot of work to do, and I had to hop on it right now.
My first stop was Gray Deck. Even Central had a Gray Deck, and so I checked out the goods. After haranguing people who weren’t interested in helping for about half an hour, I started making some calls—but I didn’t call Drusus. Sometimes, he could be as big a stickler for rules as your average hog—or even a Nairb.
Nope, what I needed was a rule-bender, so I contacted Etta, my daughter.
“I didn’t even know you were back, Dad.”
“I sure am. Why don’t you come up to Gray Deck for a minute, honey?�
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She hesitated. She had a woman’s intuition now, and her senses were telling her something was wrong.
“You’re not going on another mission, are you? Not so soon…?”
“Hell no! I’m just having an argument with the hogs up here, and I was hoping you could help me sort things out.”
“Dad, I’m kind of a hog myself now. You realize that, right?”
“Now girl, you can’t go talking about yourself like that. You’re not a hog, because a hog is a uniformed member of Hegemony, Earth’s so-called combat forces. You’re not a hog at all. The proper term for you is nerd.”
“That’s a big relief, Dad.”
“Anytime… So, when can you come up?”
Etta eventually arrived and walked warily onto the deck. As I was standing there in my all-black Rigellian armor, she got kind of suspicious right off.
“You said you weren’t doing a mission today.”
“That’s right—well now, hold on, I am teleporting out to Edge World. That’s why I’m here. But it’s not a combat mission. I don’t intend to die or anything.”
Etta looked kind of confused and suspicious. Sometimes I wished she’d never grown up and started doubting her daddy.
I pointed to the head honcho. “If you could just tell this hog here—ahem, that is, this uh, kind of portly gentleman—that I should be allowed to go to the coordinates of my own choosing, I’d be grateful.”
She looked the pissed hog I was talking about. I’d been kind by calling him portly—in truth, he was fatter than a waffle house waitress.
“What’s he want you to do, exactly?” she asked.
“He’s got some coordinates from way out on the edge of the province. We’re not allowed to cast people that far without authorization. I can’t even turn on the machine without full confirmation and—”
“We don’t have time for all that,” I interrupted. “I keep telling him.”
Etta looked at me. “Do you have authorization to be transported to these coordinates, Dad?”
“I surely do. Just, uh… not on me.”
Etta sighed. She reached out with her lanyard and ran it over the equipment. Then she gave it some biometrics, using her eyeball for a retinal scan, then her finger for the prints. At last, the machine beeped and turned its indicator lights green.
“There we go,” I said, smiling. “You see, hog? I told you I had friends in high places.”
“Whatever,” the tech said, and he waddled away.
“Say,” I said to Etta when he was out of earshot. “I just need one more thing.”
“What?”
“A set of gateway posts. Mind you, I’m just borrowing, not stealing. Don’t worry about it, I’m good for them! Ask anybody.”
Etta heaved a big sigh. “Okay. They’re in those lockers over there. Just grab a pair of them and get into the casting couch. Activate the machine when you’re ready to be cast to the coordinates you typed in.”
I started toward the lockers and rattled the doors.
“Wait until I walk out of here,” Etta hissed at me. “I’m not even going to watch this.”
“Hold on… could you help me open these locker doors first?”
With poor grace, she opened the locker. I pulled out a fresh set of gateway posts and smiled. This was going to be easy—really easy.
-82-
I appeared on a windswept plain. Bright light shone directly out of the east.
The thing was, I knew right off I couldn’t be in right place. The Shadowlanders lived in the perpetually purply half-light on the cusp of Edge World—not in the permanently brilliant sunlight of the bright side, or the freezing gloom of the dark half.
“Hmm…” I said, checking the coordinates. They were right, but something was…
“Oh yeah!” I said aloud, after doing a bit of thinking.
The world had moved on. It had rotated at its slow, walking pace toward the east. That meant I was at the same spot I’d been before, but it had rotated enough to put me in the sunshine.
Turning, I faced myself due west. With the slanting morning sun on my back, I began walking.
Soon, I found signs the nomadic Shadowlanders had recently traveled the path. There were discarded items, dead bright-sider warriors with moss growing over them, and even the remnants of human defenses. I trudged past our abandoned bunkers and puff-crete walls for a time, then came to an open road again.
It was all nine kinds of spooky, what with everything being so empty and derelict. It was like walking on a planet that had seen the apocalypse and kept right on going.
After I’d marched for a full hour, I spotted a team of bright-sider outriders. They appeared on the horizon out to my north, then vanished again. They were clearly watching me.
Damn. I’d kind of hoped to find the Shadowlanders without having to kill anyone. I had my morph-rifle of course, which I unslung and checked. It was loaded, charged, and ready to go.
But I knew I couldn’t fight an army. I had two gateway posts on my back, banging and clacking with every step. They had to weigh forty kilos or so, but it was the awkward bulk of them that made things tough on me.
I considered dropping the posts. I could make better time and fight more freely without the burden—but I passed on the idea. I didn’t have time to fool around and find another set of posts. I had to do this entire mission without any extra delays. Timing was everything.
Grumbling, I marched onward. Soon, the sun behind me had lowered until it was a half-disk. That was a good sign. If I could get to the Shadowlander camp before—what was that?
Something crashed off to my right, to the north. I wheeled around and brought up my rifle. I almost released a spray of bolts—but something told me it was a trick.
Call it a dead man’s intuition—that was what we legionnaires called our instincts in moments like this. We’d been tricked and killed in combat so many times over the decades, that you just got to where you had a feel for an ambush when it was coming your way.
Accordingly, I whirled in the opposite direction.
A half-dozen bright-siders were racing toward me from the south. They were mounted on cat-like animals—beasts that had padded feet and made little sound as they closed with the single dumb-ass human that dared to walk in their territory.
Without a moment’s thought, I lit them up. Some people might say it was a hasty action, what with the war being over and done. These boys might be bringing me flowers or something—but I always said it was better to be safe than sorry.
The lead mummy was indeed sorry almost immediately. He was knocked from his mount by a burst of fire. The second went down a moment later, doing a header over his dead cat’s pointy ears.
I shifted my aim, but I wasn’t right on with the third guy before the rest reacted. They didn’t run for it. They split up and spread out, coming from opposing angles, converging.
I could have given them a break if they’d turned tail and run, but they weren’t that kind of warrior. They had balls, I had to give them that, even if said balls were probably shriveled-up and wrapped in bandages to protect them from their blinding sun.
My rifle hammered again. Two more went down—then the last two were on me.
Firing wide-mouthed guns that looked like blunderbusses, they knocked me around with big shells. They were forty millimeter rounds more or less, if I had to guess.
The first one hit me in the thigh and would have taken my leg clean off if I hadn’t been armored. The second one hit me square in the chest, and that was the bad one. I was tossed back, coughing and gasping.
I had impenetrable armor and lots of padding, but the shock of that heavy round still went through it all. I more than felt it, I ate it.
Spinning and falling onto my face, I tried to lever myself right back up again, but I couldn’t do it.
They jumped on me. Two of them rode on my broad back. Fortunately, they didn’t weigh much. It was kind of like having two wrapped-up versions of Winslade g
rappling with me.
I tried to do a push-up, and I managed to get my body off the dirt, but the combined weight of the gateway posts and two scrabbling fifty-kilo mummies kept me from getting to my feet.
The two mummies gave it their all, I have to say. They growled and screeched and clawed at me. They stabbed me with rusty knives and fired a few more pellets into my ribs, point-blank.
But it was like two starving peasants were trying to work-over an armored knight. They couldn’t get through, and I didn’t play nice.
My combat knife was in my hand. I cut one mummy’s leg off for him, then turned on the other guy.
Rising slowly, painfully out of the dust, I faced the last man. He looked at me, crouched low, baring lots of yellow teeth that looked like they’d seen better days. He did some practice lunges, but he was clearly scared.
“Go on now,” I told him, gesturing toward the east and the brightening sun. “Get on home to your mamma.”
I’m sure he didn’t understand my words, but he got the sentiment. With several snarling words sent my way, he trotted to his mount and climbed aboard. Then he rode off toward the east, vanishing in the light of the rising sun.
Checking my gateway posts, I figured they weren’t too badly banged up. I shouldered them painfully and set off toward the west. My hip was kind of hurting, but I forced myself to walk on it.
As I kept going, I tried to do what little math my brain was capable of. The answers I came back with weren’t encouraging.
Sure, we’d only been gone about ten days. That meant the darker twilight regions weren’t all that far ahead—but I was still in trouble.
After all, I had to figure that the Nomads wouldn’t just stop walking when they reached a dark zone and set up camp. No sir, that wouldn’t make any sense. If they did that, they’d have to tear it down and set up again too soon.
Nope, the nomads would keep going. Logically, if they did this once a month, they’d have to go a twelfth of the way around the planet’s surface before they’d stop and set up their little town.
“Shit…”
