by B. V. Larson
When I figured it couldn’t get any deeper, I made my play. I reversed myself and came on hard, making wide, sweeping slashes. My arms are longer than an ape’s, according to every schoolmate I’d ever scuffled with, and those slashes were hard to avoid.
Now, you have to understand something about Harris: he doesn’t like to get hurt. He likes to win as cleanly as he can. His first instinct, therefore, was to fall back before my onslaught and look for an opening to dart into and finish me.
When he took his first backpedalling step the sucking mud pulled at his legs, locking him in, slowing him down. I switched tactics again, stopping the slashes. I made an my all-out lunge while he was off-balance, and I saw the shock in his eyes.
I’d planted my blade in his chest, stopping his heart. Even so, he got his knife around to stab me in the back. The move opened me up, but didn’t quite put me down. Harris sank, slowly.
Roaring and grinning, I lifted my knife and whirled around, looking for fresh challengers.
At first, I thought there wasn’t anyone left. About half the combatants were dead and floating. Most of the rest were lying on the shore around the pit, struggling to breathe.
Bio people had shown up from somewhere. They were like vultures when anyone died. They were tending to those who could easily be patched up and hauling the rest away to the recycling center.
Then I spotted a figure. She was relatively near, but I hadn’t noticed her because she was as motionless as a tiger in tall grass.
It was Della.
My heart sank, and I felt a little sick. In my rage and frustration, I’d forgotten that she was part of Harris’ squad.
She came toward me, realizing she’d been spotted. She watched me with predatory eyes and moved like a cat stalking prey. Somehow, even bare-breasted and covered in filth, she still managed to look graceful.
I let her approach. I didn’t move except to follow her as she came close and began to circle. She stepped around me carefully, and I thought she might throw her weapon the way Harris did—but she didn’t. She gazed up to me with deadly serious eyes.
Tossing my weapon aside to the edge of the pit, I stood still. She followed my knife with darting eyes. She looked at me in puzzlement and cocked her head.
Stepping close warily, she dared to speak. “What are you doing? Everyone is watching. Thousands of eyes are on us.”
“I don’t care. I can’t kill the mother of my own child.”
She licked her lips and stalked closer. I stood, watching her, wondering what she’d do.
“You’re dishonoring both of us,” she hissed.
“Why don’t you just kill me then?” I asked her. “Are you afraid?”
Della kept her eyes on my hands, flicking her gaze from one to the other. I could tell she didn’t trust me at all. This wasn’t our first fight, you have to understand.
“A little,” she said. “But the real problem is I don’t want to kill you, either. Why did you start this stupid fight? What was the purpose?”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. When we came to that first star system, I was so ready to catch the raiders and kill them... I wanted blood. I guess I started this out of frustration.”
“A stupid move. I should kill you just for that.”
She came at me then, but her arms moved slowly. It was only a fractional difference, but I could see it. A play thrust, not even on target.
I caught her wrist and pulled her off-balance. A moment later I had my knee on her back and her knife-hand stretched out away from both our bodies.
“Yield,” I said.
“I will not,” she said angrily.
“You won’t? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”
“I won’t,” she hissed. “Not unless you admit I could have killed you.”
I laughed. “All right, I admit it. I’m as good as dead on my feet. Happy?”
“Not at all—but I yield.”
Getting an arm under her waist, I straightened and tossed her onto dry land. She landed on her feet and dropped her knife in the blood-soaked dirt.
The mud-pit battle was over. I walked wearily to the bio people who tsked with disdain and sprayed me with cleansers and nu-skin.
Della returned to her own squad, and I looked after her thoughtfully. She’d never passed up a solid opportunity to kill me before.
People congratulated me on the victory and even cheered me. I didn’t feel like I deserved their praise, however. I felt spent and almost as frustrated as I’d been when I’d started this mission.
A few hours later, Graves summoned me to his stark office again. I went with my arm in a sling and my left eye swollen almost shut.
He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t congratulate me when I got there. I stood at attention until he told me what he wanted.
“At ease, Veteran,” Graves said at last. He walked toward me and looked me over. “You’re in sorry shape.”
“Nothing a few layers of fresh cells won’t cure, sir.”
“I don’t mean your body. I’m talking about your mind. I thought you’d take your losses in stride—but I was wrong. You let your emotions make your decisions for you today.”
I didn’t say anything. We both knew he was right.
“Well,” Graves said, “despite its questionable effects on morale, it was an effective training exercise. Mud-pit fights to the death? That’s the sort of thing we usually reserve for recruits and candidates seeking promotion. Let’s not have a fresh challenge from you next week, clear?”
“Clear. Nothing like this will ever happen again, sir.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
Again, I said nothing. I don’t like to lie without a good reason.
Heaving a sigh, Graves returned to his desk. “Here’s something that might cheer you up. We’ve decided to pass up the second star system we were targeting. The techs have run all the numbers. They think the second star—a binary system—is very unlikely to be the raider’s base. Odds are we’ll find them at the last star in the line, which is right at the squid border.”
He had my interest now. I shuffled to his desk where he had displayed the local stars. I tapped at the binary system we were supposed to pass by. It had the generic name of L-374. It contained an orange-colored K-class star circled by a smaller M-class companion. The last star in the line, the one we were to visit next, was yet another of the ubiquitous red dwarfs.
“Sir?” I asked. “We’re really going to skip this orange star? Why?”
“Why skip L-374? Because Gold Deck says so. Remember Veteran, I’m not in command of this expedition—and neither are you.”
“But what if we don’t find them in the third system? What will we do then? If we have to backtrack to the K-class, they might have had time to slip away.”
Graves shook his head. “We won’t bother. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll check the last system and give up. Turov will turn us around and head home again after that.”
“She’d give up? She’d actually be willing to go back to Earth empty-handed?”
He shrugged. “What else would you suggest?”
“I think we should keep searching until we find them,” I boomed. Letting my voice rise more than I’d meant to. “There has to be a fourth star somewhere along this line… Somewhere else to look.”
Graves studied me for a moment before speaking. “If you kept following this course—which we don’t know is the correct one anyway—you’d enter enemy space. After passing through the entirety of the Cephalopod Kingdom, we’d come out on the other side, near the core of the Perseus Arm. There we’d find another star to check.”
“It’s that far, huh?” I asked in disappointment.
He put two fingers on his desktop and brought them slowly together. The map contracted. I could now see the line extended farther out. There was a fourth star, but it was pretty distant.
“McGill,” Graves said. “I want you to give this up if we don’t find them soon. It’s not health
y, and worse, it’s pointless. Use your brain, man. What are the odds the raiders came from so far out? We’re talking about more than a hundred and seventy lights from Earth to get to that fourth star. It doesn’t even make sense that an enemy would know about a freighter heading to Earth from Machine World at that distance.”
Brooding and quiet, I stopped asking questions, and Graves soon dismissed me.
Frustrated and feeling like my greatest fears concerning this expedition were coming to life before my eyes, I left his office. I hadn’t wanted this to turn into a wild goose-chase, but that’s exactly what was happening. I could feel it.
There was only one other place to go, only one other person to talk to who could change things.
With a heavy sigh, I headed for Gold Deck.
-7-
Imperator Turov wasn’t always the easiest officer to talk to. First off, she liked to put barriers in a man’s way. Secondly, she was always busy doing something important or at least something that seemed important. Today was no exception to either of these rules.
There were no less than three adjuncts and a couple of centurions that I had to go through to meet up with Turov. The high and mighty one herself didn’t have time for a lowly noncom, I was told this repeatedly.
Insisting I had something to say that only Turov herself was qualified to listen to got me pretty far—but that was only because they knew I’d had unusual dealings with her in the past. Eventually, I was faced with a final adjunct—a woman named Bachchan. She had an attitude as snotty as the rest of them. I told her my story all over again, concluding that Turov wouldn’t like it if an adjunct turned me back. At last, she led me to a well-appointed office door. It wasn’t the same office where I’d met up with Turov in the past, but I figured maybe she’d moved.
The lock buzzed open even before my fist rapped on the door. It melted away from my hand as I pushed it open. Stepping inside, I was met with another unpleasant surprise.
I was standing in Winslade’s office, not Turov’s. He was sitting behind his desk with his non-reg jackboots resting between a monitor and a cup of coffee. Working on a computer scroll, he waved at me with a skinny set of fingers, indicating I should approach but remain standing.
I did so, but after a moment I couldn’t take the waiting around.
“Sir? Primus, sir? I’m sorry, I must have been led to the wrong office. I’ll be going now. Didn’t mean to bother you.”
Winslade glanced up and gave me an unhappy stare.
“You’re in the right place, McGill,” he said. “That is, if it can be said that there is a right place for the likes of you.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
He set the scroll aside and removed his feet from his desk. Weaving together his fingers like a spider web, he leaned forward and gave me an unfriendly appraisal. I could tell I was a bug on a dinner plate to him.
“Let me spell it out for you,” he began. “I’m in command of your cohort. In truth, even I’m too far up the chain of command to be talking to the likes of a freshly promoted veteran, and the Imperator is two steps above my station. The idea you should be allowed to waltz in here and meet with her in person on demand…it’s preposterous. And it’s going to stop today! If you have something to say to the Imperator, you’ll tell me first. If I find it worthy, I may kick it up another level. But I’ll warn you right now, that’s highly unlikely.”
Winslade had my attention now. I knew he didn’t like me, and he didn’t enjoy it when I went over his head and talked to Turov. But this wasn’t about protocol or personal dislike. He wanted to know what I was up to. He didn’t want to be cut out of the loop, as had happened in the past.
“I hear you, Primus. Loud and clear. I’ll be going now.”
I spun on my heel and managed to take two long strides across his thick carpet toward the door before he reacted.
“Halt! You haven’t been dismissed, Veteran!”
Stopping, I spun back around, but I still didn’t say anything. I stood at attention and looked at the wall.
“Tell me why you wanted to talk to the Imperator,” he prompted.
“Because I think she’s making a strategic error, sir.”
A frown grew on his face. It was a wary look of displeasure.
“You’ve always believed you know better than your commanders how to run our legions, haven’t you?”
“Not at all, sir. But sometimes, people don’t have a clear view. They don’t have the vision of the man in the trenches.”
“Interesting. Let me see if I can interpret your vague hints. You’ve uncovered a scheme of some kind. You believe the Imperator should be given this information in person as it may affect her decisions regarding our current mission.”
I gave him a startled glance. I didn’t have any such information. I was planning on trying to convince her not to give up on finding the raiders too easily, that was all. But as usual, Winslade with his conniving personality thought I was holding back something more sinister.
“Ah-ha!” Winslade cried, banging a skinny fist on his desk. “I’ve got your attention now, don’t I? Yes, McGill, even I can follow your clever machinations. Well, I’ll have none of it. I don’t want you pestering Turov. I’ve given the staff orders to intercede if you try. As you can see, they’ve been quite effective today.”
Nodding and looking back at the wall, I paused for a second. “Am I dismissed then, sir?”
“No, you’re not dismissed.”
He studied me quietly for a few seconds. He was obviously waiting for me to volunteer information. I endeavored to make my face a blank mask and said nothing.
“Damn you, man,” he said at last. “You’re not getting out of here without telling me what this is about. But even if you don’t want to talk, your motivations should be vulnerable to logical reasoning. Let’s continue extrapolating down this path…if you wanted to tell Turov something crucial, why not send her a text? Can it be because you’re well aware all your texts are carefully monitored?”
I gave him another startled look. He smiled.
“I see that you do know. That indicates you want to talk to Turov in person in order to give her a private message—and don’t even try to convince me you’re simply making another ham-handed romantic overture. I know that you’ve been far from lonely at night.”‘
This entire discussion was getting off-track in an alarming way. Winslade seemed to have gone paranoid. Reading my texts? Having people provide him with reports on my dating life? The man was losing it.
“Sir, I’m in the dark about all that,” I said honestly. “I’m just trying to help our commander achieve her goals. If you stand between me and the imperator—well, that’s your business, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Winslade was suddenly pissed again. He stood up and began to pace. He clasped his arms behind his back oddly, with one hand grabbing the elbow of the other.
“Threats? You dare so much? You think you still have her ear and her eye, don’t you? All right, McGill. You can go to the imperator and give her your dirty little report. But don’t think I’m not watching. Don’t think I’ll allow you to keep rank-climbing and undermining my position year after year. I have real rank, and I have a growing record in the field. On top of that, let’s not forget I’m still in your chain of command. I can make things unpleasant for you.”
“Of course, sir. I must say it’s been a pleasure to serve. Can I be on my way now?”
“Get out.”
I’d been thrown out of any number of offices, so I knew the routine. I left without saying anything more. I didn’t even glance back to see what he was doing.
When the door squeezed shut behind me, I met up with the sneering Adjunct Bachchan. She’d evidently been waiting for me.
“I’ll take you back to your module, Veteran,” Bachchan said. “This way, please.”
“Uh…you might want to check with Primus Winslade on that point, first.”
Frowning, she looked at her
tapper, which beeped and displayed fresh orders. She looked up at me a moment later, startled.
“I’m to take you to the imperator?”
“Yes. As I originally requested.”
Adjunct Bachchan didn’t say another word as she marched me down a passage or two. We wound up in front of a pair of imposing doors. She looked more worried than annoyed now. When Turov was involved directly, she knew enough to stay quiet and keep her head low.
The office doors that led to Turov’s office were impressive indeed. They weren’t like any I’d ever seen on a dreadnaught before. Ornately carved with dark alien hardwoods, they depicted the heads of what looked like a species of bird that had been crossed with a demon.
I stepped inside, and the first thing I noticed was the carpet. It wasn’t your typical military-grade weatherproof stuff. It was sumptuous. Red, rich…it felt like I was walking on velvet.
“What do you think of my new office, McGill?” asked a voice I recognized. I looked for Turov, but I didn’t see her right off. There were hanging curtains, folding glass barriers and a variety of other decorations all over the place.
“Wow,” I said, “this is really something, sir.”
Imperator Galina Turov became visible then—sort of. She was lurking behind a semi-opaque pane of glass. I couldn’t help but stare, as her lithe form was displayed in stark silhouette. What’s more, it looked to me like she was walking around nude back there. She seemed to be toweling off her hair, like she’d just come out of the shower.
It took me a long second, but I finally realized this personal display couldn’t be an accident. No one put a light bulb behind their shower curtain and stood between the two without a damned good reason.
“Sir?” I asked. “Should I come back another time?”
“Will your visit be any less annoying if it is postponed?”
“I’m not sure I can promise that.”
“Then let’s get this over with. Take a seat, James.”
James. She usually didn’t call me that. She only did so, in fact, when she was in an amorous mood, or drunk.
You have to understand that I’d had an inappropriate relationship with the imperator some years back. Most people, especially Winslade, still considered my familiarity with her to be improper.
