by B. V. Larson
Graves looked at her coldly. “No. You can shut up.”
He proceeded to show us around the place. It wasn’t a huge deal. There were maybe two hundred people down here in this dungeon, most of them techs and bios.
“Where’s the teleport room?” Harris asked.
Graves eyed him. “There is none.”
“How are we going to get out there, then, Primus?”
“Out where?”
“To whatever world the diplomats are schmoozing.”
Graves blinked. “Ah… you misunderstand. The trials will continue in the morning. These are your quarters. Rest up, and when your teammates come back from the revival center tell them to do the same. The second heat will begin tomorrow, and the VIPs will be watching this time.”
Baffled, we were left behind in the passages outside our quarters. The room we’d been assigned to wasn’t well-appointed. It was about ten meters square with uncomfortable beds stacked up along two walls.
“Home sweet home,” Harris said, claiming a bottom bunk with a flourish.
“McGill?” Kivi asked me.
I turned, and I saw an emotional look on her face.
Uh-oh, I thought. This was it.
Several times in the past, when we’d come under heavy fire on some strange planet, Kivi had sought solace by sharing my bed. Sure, there wasn’t any privacy here, with Harris being no more than a dozen feet off, but that hadn’t fazed her in the past. She was a very physical girl.
“Uh…” I said. “What’s up, Kivi?”
“Tell me about Carlos. I couldn’t see well from up there on top of the elevator car. What did he do to get that jugger into the noose?”
“Oh… you want to know about that? He shoved his head right in there, teasing that overgrown lizard until he got his head snapped off.”
She frowned, shaking his head. “A joker to the last, huh?”
“No girl,” Harris said, his voice rumbling up from his chosen bunk. He was lying on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes to block out the bluish light in the room. “He sacrificed himself to save us all. He got the lizard to charge and shove its big ugly head into that noose. That doomed him.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Carlos was the hero in the end.”
“The hero…?” she asked, befuddled.
Harris cleared his throat. “Now, if you two are going to screw, please do it fast and quiet-like. I could really use some sleep. I got a feeling we’re not through with our volunteer assignment down here at the south end of Hell.”
“You got it, Harris,” I said, and I gave Kivi a quick up-down of my eyebrows.
“What?” she asked, scandalized. “As-if!” She stalked away making pffing sounds.
Harris released a rumbling laugh from his bunk. “You’re losing your gift, McGill. Either that, or the girls are getting smarter.”
I frowned, not liking either possibility. But I didn’t dwell on it. I headed for the public showers, and I took a long soak in a steamy room.
After about seven minutes in, another figure showed up. I turned with a smile, expecting it to be Kivi. Maybe she’d changed her mind—but it wasn’t her.
“Natasha?” I asked in surprise. “You’re down here too?”
“Yeah. We came in after you guys. We’re Group Twenty-Two.”
“Did you do it? Did you kill your lizard?”
She looked startled. “No—is that even possible? We ran to the end of the corridor while it chewed on Lofton. Two of us made it to the exit.”
“The exit?” I asked, a frown on my face. “There was an exit?”
“Yeah, of course. Did you miss the whole point of the exercise?”
While she asked this, she unceremoniously stripped down and climbed into the stall next to me. The warm water washed off a layer of grime and blood, just as it had for me. I handed her the soap absently.
“The exit…” I said thoughtfully.
We’d never even considered the option of simply running down the hallway. No wonder we hadn’t won outright. Sure, we’d killed our lizard, but that hadn’t been the goal of the game. I shook my head, musing. Maybe it was for the best that we’d done it wrong.
“Say, Natasha—?”
“Forget it, James. I’m too tired. Even if you could get me out of here on a lifter tonight, the answer would still be no.”
“Huh? Oh… no, no, nothing like that. I wanted to know what you’ve learned about this contest. What’s this all about?”
“The answer is still no,” she said guardedly. She didn’t even look at me.
That made me feel a tiny pang. We’d had a good thing once. Of all the girls I’d shared a bed with, she was one of the sweetest. She’d fallen hard for me long ago, I knew that, and I regretted the fact I hadn’t done better by her.
“Look,” I said, “we’re both Varus. I’m asking you what the hell is going on. Did you know that Graves actually flew all the way down to Georgia Sector to apologize for volunteering my ass into this thing?”
That made her turn and frown at me. She shut off her water, and I tried hard not to look down and watch the last runnels of water roll off her breasts. She hadn’t aged a day—but then, neither had I. That was probably the only nice side-effect of dying all the time.
“Are you serious? Graves? Apologizing?”
“Yeah. He made a big effort to do it, too.”
“That sounds bad…”
“Very bad. He’s never given a shit about any of us before. What could be so bad that a man with a heart of stone like him would do that?”
“It can’t be that lizard-chase. That wasn’t any worse than the abuse he gave us as recruits.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s what I figured.”
“Could you hand me that towel, James?”
“What?”
She sighed. “Stop staring and give me a frigging towel.”
“Right, sure… sorry.”
I tossed her a towel and she covered up. I frowned as she did so. First Kivi, now Natasha. I was striking out, two-for-two.
I reassured myself with the facts: I hadn’t even been trying.
-8-
I took a solid nap, but it didn’t last long.
A horn blared, blasting us out of our hard bunks. We were all but tossed out onto the cold, unforgiving floor.
“Damn…” Carlos said, climbing back to his feet in slow motion.
Reaching down, I gave him a hand up.
“Just got back from the revival chamber?” I asked.
“Yeah… I’m still feeling it.”
“Well, that was the first bell. You’ve got time to shower.”
“Okay.”
He staggered toward the exit. We all watched him, but only Kivi moved.
“I need one too,” she said, trotting after Carlos.
Winslade chuckled. I turned in surprise. His laughter was always kind of nasty-sounding, and today was no exception.
“You’re back with us, sir?”
“Imagine my joy,” he said. “Looks like that bio friend of yours has his squeeze-toy back again.”
“Sure does,” I admitted.
“How does that make you feel, McGill? To get outdone by a pug like him?”
“Pretty good, actually.” I proceeded to tell him how the rest of the fight with the jugger had gone down.
Despite himself, Winslade seemed impressed. So did Sargon, who listened in as well.
“So… he teased the lizard’s head into the noose…” Sargon said. “That’s pretty clean. The kill was his.”
“Right,” Harris agreed. “McGill came up with the idea of a snare, but Carlos brought that wire to the party, and he teased the saurian into that fatal charge. He deserves the credit.”
“A mutual admiration society?” Winslade asked. “I didn’t think Varus grunts kept score in matters like this.”
No one said anything, but we were all thinking the same thing. Winslade had been brass too long—maybe forever. Even before he’d gotten high rank, h
e’d been a suck-up attaché for high-level officers. For all I knew, he’d never spent a day in the trenches as a plain recruit.
Sensing the distance between us all, Winslade threw his legs off the bunk and sucked in a sharp breath through his nostrils. He seemed to regret it immediately.
“What’s that stink?” he demanded. “Ah yes, of course, the goop from the revival machines. All right, as your commander, I’m ordering you all into the showers.”
I glanced at him meaningfully and cleared my throat.
“What…? Oh… all right then, we can give our hero five more minutes alone with Kivi first.”
The group waited for the five, then headed for the showers as a group. As I’d already cleaned myself, I lingered behind.
“What about you, sir?” I asked Winslade.
“I took a shower immediately after my revival. I recommend it highly, it’s become my habit.”
Nodding, I thought hard about how to approach the next subject. It wasn’t going to be an easy one.
“Hmm…” Winslade said. His eyes narrowed and he regarded me with suspicion. “I can almost see the large wheels in your head doing a slow revolution every minute or so. What did you want to discuss, Centurion?”
“It’s about leadership, sir,” I said. “You see, I have it on good authority that we’re going to be treated to a series of tests like the one we just went through. In order to do the best we can—”
“The answer is no, McGill.”
I glanced at him in surprise. Everyone seemed to be saying that to me lately.
“You haven’t heard—”
“No, I’m not going to relinquish command. Certainly, you’ve shown yourself a cunning leader. You’re a natural alpha-dog—but you’re still the dog in this pack, if you catch my meaning.”
“Sir, I wasn’t going to suggest you follow my orders. That would be inappropriate, given our ranks.”
“Good, if that’s settled then—” he said, sliding his butt off his bunk and taking a step or two toward the door.
My big arm shot up, barring his path.
He looked at it like it was the tail of the jugger we’d just fought.
I dropped my arm immediately. “Sorry sir,” I said. “What I was trying to say is perhaps we could adjust our leadership roles for the good of the team.”
He crossed his arms and looked up at me with surprise and suspicion.
“I’m almost amused,” he said. “Diplomacy? Out of James McGill? It’s like watching an ape put on lipstick. Please, by all means, proceed.”
As usual, Winslade wasn’t making this easy on me. He rarely did. I felt my temper rising—but I controlled myself, just barely.
“What I’m suggesting is that you perform as our liaison. If you could use your silver tongue on the brass, maybe you could gather clues that would help us out. On top of that, you’d be in charge of our overall strategy. For instance, do you realize that in that last room, we could have done better?”
I quickly told him about the true goal of the exercise: to run away.
“Hmm…” he said. “That was my first instinct, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly so, sir. I tend to get bullheaded in these situations. But in real combat scenarios, I would suggest you use my skills as team-leader to execute your orders in the best way possible.”
Winslade looked thoughtful. His tongue darted out, snaked over his lips, then darted back again.
I wanted to laugh at that, but I didn’t.
“Interesting…” he said. “I get what you’re suggesting. You play the grunt, like a noncom breaking down doors and such-like. I, on the other hand, would be in the rear of the formation, making the big decisions.”
My best Georgia smile lit my face. “That’s exactly it, sir. What do you think?”
“Very well. Centurion McGill, you are in operational command of these petty exercises. I, however, will decide our goal in each instance. To make things clear to the troops, I’ll announce my decision, and I’ll verbally pass temporary leadership to you for purposes of executing my general orders.”
“Excellent, Primus. But please make sure the orders are open-ended enough—give me a little breathing room, sir.”
“Will do.”
And thus was forged a working relationship. I knew everyone else on the team would be happy about it. All of them hated Winslade anyway, and more importantly, they didn’t trust him. That sort of disconnect could be deadly in any combat scenario.
* * *
The next morning at dawn we reported for duty. By that time, our team felt like a team—not just the faceless Group Nine riding in an elevator and griping. Winslade and I had made our leadership arrangements official, and the group had taken to the idea right away.
I reflected that we’d pulled together as a team fast, and that was partly done out of necessity. Even Winslade felt the urgent need to cooperate. The jugger had given us a taste of what might be coming, and we all knew enough about violent exercises to realize we had to function like a well-oiled machine in order to survive.
The morning briefing started out in a deadly silence. Normally, if you put a few hundred legionnaires from a dozen different outfits into one big room, you got a lot of noise.
But not today.
“Troops,” Imperator Turov said, strutting back and forth at the front of the room. “Welcome to the vaults. Down here, we do things we don’t discuss anywhere else.”
She’d had a little stage built so we could see her clearly, I guess. I found the setup unusual. It was about a meter high, and she was the only thing on it. Essentially, it was impossible for me not to stare at her.
“Today,” she continued, “we’re embarked on an unusual bit of diplomacy.”
There was that word again: diplomacy. It didn’t fit at all in my book. What the hell did giant sauropods, legionnaire grunts or even that pack of nerds with tablet computers who seemed to be watching our every move from the side of the room have to do with diplomacy?
Putting my mind into gear to figure things out, I considered the situation. First off, Turov was a woman to be reckoned with. I could scarcely believe she’d been placed in charge of another major project, as she generally screwed up whatever she touched. The fact she was still in a leadership role was testimony to her connections among the suits on the Ruling Council.
Despite her history, here she was, wearing a skin-tight uniform and…boots. Those boots weren’t the norm. Once my eyes landed on them, I felt a jolt of suspicion. The boots were black and glossy, and they looked like legionnaire standard-issue, but I could tell right off they weren’t regulation. I’d swear to it.
They were too high in the heel—that was it. In fact, after I took the whole outfit in, I came to realize she’d snuck lifts in there somehow, and the boots therefore gave her an extra two inches of height, if I had to guess.
Knowing her, I understood immediately that she wasn’t just trying to look taller. Sure, she was a bit on the short side with matching petite, shapely features all the way around. But what those lifts really did, especially from the perspective of a grunt down low in the crowd, was to raise her butt up and shape it nicely.
A distraction? An idle vanity? Who knew and who cared? All of us guys were enjoying the view.
Even as I watched her with the rest of them, I felt mildly troubled. Deep down, I just didn’t trust Galina Turov. She always had a third angle running that was obscured by the first two things you noticed. She was that kind of tricky.
“…so…” she continued, and I made an effort to tune back in, “Chief Inspector Xlur will be here shortly. I want to make this very clear: I want absolute decorum. I demand it! Any soldier who embarrasses Earth will pay for it dearly. Xlur hasn’t graced our planet with his glorious presence in many years, and this time, his visit will go perfectly!”
Her mention of Xlur shocked me. My eyes jumped right up off her ass as if she’d poked them with twin needles.
My gaze met hers, and for an electric m
oment, I realized she was actually singling me out from the crowd and making eye-contact with me. It was quite possible she’d been trying to do that for some time now, while I daydreamed, examining her shoes and her tail-section.
After a moment’s thought, I figured out why she was trying to get my attention. Galina and I had been involved in a disagreement with Xlur some years ago, right before Legion Varus shipped out to Machine World. That had been a dark and desperate day, even by my standards. The long and the short of it was Xlur had ended up dead, and we’d ended up swearing each other to secrecy concerning the details.
I sensed that Turov was expecting me to do something, to make some kind of response. Possibly, while I’d been distracted, she’d said something important.
Without any idea what I was agreeing to, I gave her a small nod.
That broke whatever spell she’d been under. She stopped strutting around, and she looked away from me quickly. Her entire demeanor shifted.
Turov halted and stood still, assuming a wide military stance. Her hands were clasped behind her back. Her vision swept over the ranks as everyone else reacted to her news, murmuring among themselves about the prospect of having a Galactic in the same room with us.
“Xlur is a Mogwa,” she said after we’d quieted again, “as you all should know. Remember, our province is only one of thousands in our beloved Empire, and no Frontier citizen is more interesting than a worm to a Mogwa. Xlur wields total power within the boundaries of Frontier 921. He is, for all intents and purposes, a living god on this green Earth.”
Our initial shock passed, and the crowd quieted down. Most of us, especially the troops from the respectable outfits like Germanica and the Iron Eagles, now stood at sharp attention. The Germanic pukes in particular were as stiff as boards in a desert, and their eyes were wide in alarm. Almost no one wanted to screw up in front of a real live Mogwa.
Naturally, there were exceptions to this general response. Pretty much all the dissenters were among my own teammates. We’d met more than our share of Galactics over the years, and we weren’t overawed by them.
Kivi crossed her arms and looked down. Carlos shook his head and kicked at the floor with the toe of his boot.
