by B. V. Larson
Now, this normally would’ve been of only slight interest to me, except that I recognized the uniform the man was wearing. It was mine. There was a Wolfshead patch on the shoulder, plain as day. The rank insignia of a veteran was visible too.
“You were amazingly thorough,” Nagata said while I stared at the image. “But there’s always something if you keep digging. In this case, an image was left in a buffer on a man’s suit-camera. The man didn’t survive the encounter, unfortunately. Neither did his memory when we revived him last night. Equally disturbing, every image his camera transmitted to the data core was destroyed. Only those stored on the mobile unit itself remained.”
My eyes flicked up to Nagata’s face, and he met my gaze. His voice was easy-going, but his expression was that of a man smoldering with anger. Interestingly, there was another emotion there: curiosity.
Most men might have broken down at this point, but I continued to play it smoothly.
“Interesting shot, sir—but kind of blurry,” I said. “Too bad we can’t see the face.”
Nagata stared at me for a long second.
“How’d you do it, McGill?” he finally asked me.
“Do what, sir?”
“Break into Central, perform a rash of assassinations and escape every security system and guard we have? It was an amazing feat, really. I have to congratulate you.”
“Oh now, hold on, sir! You’re not suggesting—”
“No, no! Don’t be so modest, man! You’re gifted. It’s the only way I can explain it. When I first met you, I thought you were some kind of thuggish buffoon. Imagine my surprise at this moment.”
“I’m not sure what you’re…” I began.
“Not clear on what I’m talking about? Perhaps I should show you more.”
He proceeded then to flash up a series of images and short vid-clips. Dead men lay all over Winslade’s office—including Winslade. I recognized the scene, naturally, but I feigned shock and dismay.
“This is unbelievable!” I said loudly. “Was it a commando raid? Aliens, perhaps?”
Nagata shook his head in disbelief. “Winslade told me you wouldn’t confess. I have here in my hands enough evidence to put you away for life. Can you comprehend that?”
“Sir,” I said, “I’m not the man you want.”
Nagata smiled at last. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that I’m willing to believe. Now, tell me who I really want to prosecute. Who should be executed at dawn, McGill?”
I knew what he wanted, of course. That had been obvious from the moment I’d walked in. He wanted me to implicate Imperator Turov. He’d set up this entire confrontation with that in mind.
It was with some reluctance that I did what had to be done next. I reached down to my belt and touched the box there.
Nagata, for all his feigned state of relaxation, moved very quickly indeed. I had to take it as a compliment that he thought I was extremely dangerous, even though his security people had checked every nook and cranny I had for weaponry.
He snatched up the pistol on his desk and put it into my face—only, it wasn’t my face anymore.
I’d activated one of Claver’s altered disguise boxes from Tau Ceti. Instead of aiming his gun at me, he was aiming it into a mirror image of his own face.
I smiled at Nagata’s reaction, and I flipped the box off again. He stared, eyes bulging.
“Alien tech,” he said. “The image—such resolution. Very clever.”
For my own part, I was starting to like Nagata. I wasn’t accustomed to having officers think I was some kind of genius. Removing the belt slowly, I set it on his desk and nudged it in his direction.
“I heard about what happened here yesterday,” I said, “but I wasn’t here. Someone else was, someone using my face.”
“Who?”
“It could have been a lot of people. There are billions of Tau who own boxes like this back on Tech World.”
Doubt was in his mind now, I could see it. For the first time since I’d walked in, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain he had the guilty party. It was time to press that advantage.
“There are a lot of adjectives people ascribe to me, sir,” I said. “But clever with technical wizardry? No sir, that’s never been on the list. I’m not going to deny that I could kill a roomful of guards under the right circumstances, but the rest of this attack was way beyond me.”
Nagata slowly nodded. A seed had been planted. Now, the trick would be to redirect his suspicions on a new path.
“The list of people who could pull this kind of thing off is a short one,” I continued. “But on the top of it is a man named Claver. He had to be involved in some capacity. Hell, he’s the one who altered these boxes in the first place to make them do tricks like this back on Tech World.”
Nagata put his gun down slowly. He picked up the belt and inspected it closely.
“This device,” he said, “combined with a weapon wrapped in purely organic matter—and they’re both alien-made.”
“I would expect so.”
“You’re claiming that it wasn’t you who performed the assassinations here yesterday? That it was some kind of body-double?”
“That’s the long and the short of it, yes sir.”
He put the box down and leaned back in his chair, thinking hard. “Alien gear…murder in the heart of Central…these things are disturbing. But the most frightening aspect is the fact that someone can walk in here and erase our computers.”
I nodded. “That’s damned peculiar, sir.”
He looked me over, squinting at me as if I made his eyes sore—who knew? Maybe I did.
“What do you know about Throne World, McGill?” he asked.
“Sir?”
“The cephalopod capital.”
Happy to change the subject, I related to him a number of things I knew about that distant planet. Most of them he’d already gleaned from reports, but he was interested to learn that I’d encountered one of the squid queens in person. I’d been present when we’d discovered the data globe that helped pinpoint where in space the enemy homeworld was, too.
“You know,” Nagata said thoughtfully after listening to me, “I think I’ve been sitting behind this desk too long. We’re going on a mission next year. You and I, together.”
“Well now, hold on, sir—” I began.
“Don’t worry. You’ll stick with your unit. And it won’t be just me lifting off into space. Not this time. Thousands of Hegemony troops will be going. Every legion and ship we can scrape together. There’s something big going on out there among the quiet stars, McGill. If we sit here on Earth, the aliens will keep coming. Eventually, they’ll wipe us all out—even sneaky bastards like you.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.
Nagata got up, walked to his window and stared down that rain-streaked wall of puff-crete and glass at crawling ground traffic around the base of the pyramid.
“We’re surrounded by enemies and unknown technologies,” Nagata said in a haunted tone. “That plant-race you encountered? They’re a cancer in the Cephalopod Kingdom. That’s the squid weakness, you know.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“Haven’t you wondered why the cephalopods have yet to come to Earth and wipe us all out? They should be able to do it, inferior ships notwithstanding, but they have their own problems with the Wur eating away their star systems.”
“I have wondered about that,” I said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about our place in this galaxy. But the Empire should—”
Nagata released a bark of laughter. “The Empire is declining and weak. It’s like an old man with a chill, shaking in a blanket. How can we rely on them for protection from the wild aliens beyond the frontier? The Empire technically controls most of the star systems in this Galaxy—but far from all of them. We’re on the very edge of known space. All sorts of things lurk beyond our borders.”
“I see your point.”
Nagata p
aused then. We both looked outside at Earth. I wondered what he was thinking about. As an upper level officer, he knew things of which I had no inkling. I found his somber, almost melancholy mood disturbing.
“McGill?” Nagata said at last.
“Sir?”
“If I let you live another day, will you promise to kill an amazing number of the enemy for me next year?”
“I’d be glad to,” I said. “I’m always happy to serve Earth.”
He nodded, and then he handed me something. It was a small box.
I stared at the box for a moment, but I hesitated before opening it. Honestly, I thought it might be some kind of bomb. Some kind of final punch-line to Nagata’s odd, soul-searching speech.
Instead, when I opened the box I discovered two nano-adhesive pins bearing the single gold bar of a junior adjunct. I took them out and felt their weight in my hands.
“Not what you were expecting, is it?” Nagata asked.
“No sir, I can’t say that it is.”
“Listen, Adjunct McGill. You understand our enemies. Sometimes I even think you’re in league with them. At other times, I think you’re some sort of lunatic.”
“I can understand that, sir.”
“But I’ve been watching you for quite a while. Ever since you started killing Galactics and getting away with it. That impressed me very much.”
His words startled me. I’d thought I’d had him bamboozled, but I’d clearly been wrong. He knew far more than he’d been letting on.
“Taking on the role of an officer,” he continued, “that’s a new level of responsibility. A whole new zone for a man like you. I want you to take this new rank seriously, if that’s not too much to ask.”
I nodded, running my thumbs over the bars. They were nano-coated, and they wouldn’t even smudge.
“I will sir, God willing.”
“Good. That’s all Earth can ask from any of her sons. Dark days are ahead, I’m certain of it. There may be special mission in your future. A task that will make use of your unusual talents.”
“I’m always up for that sort of thing,” I lied.
He kicked me out of his office after that, and a few minutes later I was walking the streets that encircled Central. Locating the nearest drinking establishment, I put my new rank insignia onto my collar before I walked in.
The gold bars felt good on my neck, but they also felt heavy. I noticed every enlisted legionnaire I found ordering drinks on a Thursday afternoon eyed me differently because I wore them. They looked at me the way kids used to look at the principal back in my elementary school days.
It had been a rough week. To make myself feel better, I drank one beer after another until I didn’t feel the weight of the new rank on my collar anymore—or much of anything else.
The End
From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed DEATH WORLD, the fifth book in the Undying Mercenaries Series. If you liked the book and want to read the story to the finish, please put up some stars and a review to support the series. Let me know what kind of world you’d like McGill to discover next.
-BVL
More SF Books by B. V. Larson:
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Steel World
Dust World
Tech World
Machine World
Death World
STAR FORCE SERIES:
(In chronological order)
Swarm
Extinction
Rebellion
Conquest
Army of One (Novella)
Battle Station
Empire
Annihilation
Storm Assault
The Dead Sun
Outcast
Exile
IMPERIUM SERIES:
Mech Zero: The Dominant
Mech 1: The Parent
Mech 2: The Savant
Mech 3: The Empress
The Black Ship (Novella)
OTHER SF BOOKS:
Starfire
Element-X
Technomancer
The Bone Triangle
Z-World
Velocity
Visit BVLarson.com for more information.
