by B. V. Larson
According to this principle, I took another backward step toward Deech’s door.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Winslade said. “I’m Deech’s liaison. Her chief of staff. No one goes through that door without going through protocol first.”
“Primus, sir, I assure you I have absolutely no intention of going around you to meet the Tribune.”
One more step. I wasn’t even sure how close I was now, because I didn’t dare turn my head to look.
“Hold it right there,” Winslade said.
He made a move on me then. It surprised me, as he should have known better. He reached out one of those long-fingered, frog-like hands and grabbed hold of my wrist.
Now, you have to understand I’m a big man. I’m a good two heads taller than Winslade and more than double his weight. What’s more, I was still wearing battle armor as I’d been fighting for my life only a few hours earlier.
My face darkened, and he saw the threat there.
To my surprise, he didn’t snatch his hand back in fear. He hung on.
“That’s right,” he said in a hissing tone. “You go ahead and strike me. I’ve had enough of your insolence.”
Behind him, I could see the guards I’d slid past earlier were advancing. Their hands were on their pistols. They began to trot when they caught sight of the situation, jingling as they came.
It was now or never—and I don’t like giving up on a thing once I’ve set my foot on a path.
My fist flew. It was wrapped in steel, and Winslade never had a chance. There was no time to dodge, or block—not that blocking with one of those skinny arms would have done anything other than break yet another set of bones.
My whistling gauntlet flew right toward his wincing, lip-curled face and kept on going.
The truth was, I hadn’t been aiming at Winslade at all. I’d been letting fly at an equipment locker that was behind him.
Wham! A crashing sound of metal-on-metal filled the passageway. If you’ve ever slammed a fist or a foot into a thin metal locker, you know they sound like a kettledrum when you nail one.
“What’s going on out here?” Deech demanded behind me.
She’d finally come out of her office to investigate the near-riot in the passageway. That was what I’d been counting on.
“McGill? Winslade? What are you two doing? Having a childish fight?”
“Tribune,” Winslade began, “this man is a menace. He simply won’t obey orders. He won’t observe the most basic protocol—”
“Shut up,” she said in a deceptively mild tone.
To his credit, he closed his mouth with an audible snap, and his voice shut off like magic. It was enough to make me wish I’d be a tribune someday, just so I could shut him down like that.
Deech stalked forward, eyeing me like I was the turd in her punchbowl.
“What have you got to say for yourself, Centurion?”
“I’ve found something, sir,” I said. “In Engineering.”
“You found what?”
“Something that’s not supposed to be there.”
She glared at me for a moment, then her eyes widened in alarm. I gave her a slight nod.
By then, the MPs had arrived.
“We’re sorry sir,” the veteran said. “McGill said he had orders to meet you. We didn’t—”
“And so he did,” Deech said smoothly, never taking her eyes off mine. “Go back to your duties—all of you.”
This last she directed at Winslade, who was sputtering. For once, it was his mouth that hung in dumbfounded amazement.
I gave him a little wave as I followed Deech into her office.
-31-
Deech circled her desk like a shark. I stared at the wall behind her like it was interesting.
“Drusus warned me about you,” she said. “Armel did too—he all but bribed me to have you permed.”
“Permission to speak, sir?”
“By all means! You’ve worked so hard to barge in here, it’s almost flattering.”
“Armel hates me, sir. And I hate him. You can, and should, disregard anything he says about me.”
“What about Drusus? Should I value his opinions?”
I hesitated for a second, but I couldn’t bring myself to make up any tales about Drusus. She probably wouldn’t believe them anyway.
“No sir. He’s a good man. His words should be heeded.”
She nodded. “That proves the point. He said you’re honest—when it matters.”
As she hadn’t asked any questions, I didn’t say anything. She did one more trip around her desk before facing me.
“So, I take it you found something unexpected in Engineering. For your sake and mine, I pray you didn’t damage it.”
“Gateway posts. One set. They’re secure, and they’re undamaged.”
“Good. We were worried the enemy would use them to transport troops aboard Nostrum and take the ship. It seems obvious now, in retrospect, that this had to be their plan all along. Naturally, I need to swear you to secrecy regarding—”
I cleared my throat loudly.
“—would you like to say something, Centurion?”
“Yes sir. You see, my mama didn’t raise no fool.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes Tribune, it is. The gateway posts were brought out from Earth by us. What makes sense is that the matching pair of posts is back on Earth—not on Blood World.”
She canted her hip and rested her butt against her desk. Her arms crossed under her breasts, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
“What are you saying, McGill?”
“That I understand the plan. That I know Earth doesn’t mean to do any diplomacy out there at Blood World—we mean to invade.”
Her butt came up off that desk like she’d been stung. She stepped up to me and put a wagging finger in my face. I hated that, but I didn’t let on.
“Listen to me, Centurion. You’re speculating. You can’t know any of this. What if we were just hoping to set up a commercial connection with the Blood Worlders?”
I glanced down at her for the first time. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Tribune. Someone has tipped them off. That’s why they attacked our ship. They did a pretty good job of it, too, bumping us out of warp and all.”
She began to pace again. I watched her this time, and I found my mind wandering.
“Is that all you wanted to report? That you found these items, and you’re concerned about them? Was that really worth barging up here and ruffling poor Winslade?”
“That’s most of it, sir,” I admitted. “But I also wanted to know what you knew about this. I thank you for being so forthcoming.”
Coming close and peering again, she seemed to be trying to figure me out. If she had any idea how many women had given me that same expression… well, she’d be alarmed, that was for sure.
“Keep silent about this. Pretend you didn’t see it, or that you forgot. Do you understand?”
“Forgot what, sir?” I asked, letting my face go slack and my eyes wide.
“That’s excellent…”
“Tribune? What about the enemy?”
“The Blood Worlders? We’ll make friends, or we won’t.”
“No, I wasn’t talking about them. We’ve got someone else out there, maybe even here, aboard ship. Before we left, I heard Claver was coming along.”
She stopped pacing, and her lips squirmed for a moment.
“I don’t know how you could have heard such a rumor.”
“Well,” I said, shrugging, “when you’re on a ship for months, secrets are hard to keep. Can you tell me why a person of such low reputation might be traveling with us?”
“He’s an agent. Nothing more. Someone had to make initial contact with the Blood Worlders.”
“Ah…” I said, catching on at last. “Right… Claver was the one who helped them invade Earth in the first place. He’s got the connections, but I’d say he’s not the most reliable go-between.”
“We
know that,” Deech snapped. “But we had no choice. The prize is too great. Think of it—billions of trained and equipped loyal troops. Remember that we’re facing a new war soon.”
“Right. We promised the Mogwa we’d fight a border war for them.”
I recalled the meeting well. Grand Admiral Sateekas, commander of Battle Fleet 921 had cut a deal with Earth. We promised to build up and fight for the Empire—but as far as I knew, who the enemy was had yet to be revealed.
“Is Claver here?” I asked. “On Gold Deck?”
Deech didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
Claver was a merchant and six different kinds of traitor. But he knew all about gateways and the people of Blood World.
“Is that the real reason Winslade is keeping people away from this deck?” I asked.
She made an irritable gesture with her hands. I took this as a dismissal and retreated toward the door.
“McGill,” she said from behind me as I put my hand to the touchpad. “Keep quiet about all this—but keep me informed if you learn more. Privately.”
“Uh…” I said, knowing how this was going to look to people like Winslade. “Okay, sir.”
“Don’t worry about Graves or Winslade. I’ll inform them of this new arrangement. Dismissed.”
Exiting the office, I hardly felt like I’d won any battles. Hell, Carlos was probably making up sex-stories about me and Deech already.
Winslade gave me some growling threats as I passed him, but his tapper beeped in the middle of his tirade.
“Better take that,” I advised.
He glanced down, saw it was from Deech, and his eyes widened.
“No…” he said. “Don’t tell…”
I gave him a tiny grin. There was no point in fighting it. The rumors were going to fly anyway. The way I figured it, a man might as well get some mileage out of that kind of thing while he could.
Defeated, Winslade shook his head and slunk back into his office.
The noncoms at the tubes looked me up and down as I approached, but as they had no orders about me, they let me pass with nothing more than suspicious looks.
An hour later, I finished washing off my battle armor and the skin underneath. Twenty minutes after that, I reached Specialist Thompson’s door.
She stepped out into the passages and eyed me shyly.
It was kind of weird, taking this woman on a date. She’d been among the very first to try to get me permed. Hell, she’d almost managed it.
The fact that I’d reversed things on her back then and managed to get the upper hand had never sat well with her. She’d died as a result of our disagreement, and she’d put me on trial for murder.
Of course, it’s hard to convict a man for murdering you when you were standing right there, especially when the evidence showed you’d been trying to kill him first with a needle full of toxins.
Despite all of that baggage, we had a pretty good time. We ate some dinner, drank some booze, and checked out Green Deck.
Most Legion transports had a Green Deck. By day, it served as an exercise yard. By night, it turned into a public park. It could grow trees, had a realistically simulated sky and even a stream with a small lake in the middle.
Long term flights being what they were, humans needed a little R&R now and then. Couples found spots here and there to have a private moment under the artificial, high-resolution stars.
We didn’t end up doing anything out there, though. We went back to her quarters instead, which were relatively private since she had only one roommate with opposite duty-shifts.
Apparently, she didn’t like public displays of affection, but once we hit her bunk—well, let’s just say that I was taken by surprise.
-32-
My love-life had always been turbulent. I could recall a day when I’d been good at sneaking kisses at the water fountain in elementary school. Sometimes, I’d gotten myself chased around by irate girls, or even hauled into the office of one weary-faced principal or another.
While the techs repaired our engines, I became concerned that Floramel, Natasha, or someone else was going to figure out I’d been quietly seeing Specialist Thompson. Luckily, she wasn’t bragging about our relationship. Maybe she felt a little ashamed, as she’d no doubt complained about me for years to whoever would listen.
I caught a break when the engines flared back into life, however. On that very day, they shipped Natasha back to Earth.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression I didn’t care for her, or that she’d done anything wrong. Hell, she was probably going to turn out to be the luckiest member of Legion Varus when the dust settled on this mission.
The thing was: Natasha loved new tech. Consequently, she’d spent a lot of time poking around on the gremlin ship. She’d learned how to operate it, and when the time came for Nostrum to move on, Deech didn’t want to just leave the ship behind.
“This is a valuable find,” she told me and Natasha. “I know Specialist Elkin is one of your primary assets, McGill, but no one is more qualified—”
“You can have her,” I said, breaking into Deech’s delicate talk.
“Really? No arguments?”
“I’m a team player, Tribune,” I lied. “Through and through. You’re right, the gremlin ship needs to get back to Earth in one piece more than I need an able tech. Recognizing that, I’m not going to be pigheaded and argue about this transfer.”
“Thank you, James—uh, Centurion,” Natasha said.
She was the third party on the call, and I knew without asking she was desperate to fly her prize back home to Earth.
So, it was settled. Natasha took off, greatly reducing the odds my visits to Thompson’s bunk would be discovered. Not just that, Earth really did need to see this new kind of starship and dissect it for intel. It was a win-win all the way around.
Once the gremlin ship took off and vanished among the stars, heading home, Nostrum did the same, heading in the opposite direction.
The rest of the flight out to Blood World went pretty smoothly. My weird fling kept going with Specialist Thompson, and the ship zoomed through the lightyears without a hitch.
Unlike me, the brass was feeling nervous. I could tell that much. They weren’t sure what the Blood Worlders were thinking. Everyone realized that we might arrive and get blown out of the sky as we approached, by whatever served them for a fleet.
Once Epsilon Leporis hove into view, and we came out of warp, I noticed we were pretty far from the big orange star. Not just a few million kilometers, either. We were more like a hundred times that—more than a day’s flight from the target planet.
Right off, I contacted Kivi. Of the three tech girls I knew, she was the biggest gossip, and the least likely to follow pesky rules.
“Kivi?” I asked.
“Why are you calling me now?” she asked. “Is that bio already tired of you? Or is it the other way around?”
There you go. That was pure Kivi. Somehow, she knew about me and Thompson, even though we rarely appeared in public together. But that’s why I’d contacted her in the first place.
“I know you’re on the feed from Gold Deck,” I told her. “Hook me up.”
She hesitated. “Why should I?”
“Come on, Kivi. I want to see what’s what. These Blood Worlders—we’re not sure if they’re in a good mood today or not.”
“No one is sure of that. Did you see how far out we were when we exited warp?”
“Of course I did. Hook me up, girl, dammit.”
She finally did so with a dramatic sigh.
A thready vid-stream came to my tapper. It had to go through several proxies, scramblers and illicit tunnels to get to me, so the quality wasn’t perfect.
“Hot damn…” I said, studying the vid. “They don’t seem to have much of a fleet. At least, we can’t see it.”
“That’s right. Just a few small ships, like that assault ship they sent out to greet us.”
; “Maybe that’s why they’re worried about us…” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe they’re scared of Nostrum. After all, we’ve got a full bank of sixteen broadsides. That’s a whole lot of fusion shells we can land on them if we wanted to.”
“Why should we? We aren’t here to conquer them.”
Kivi’s words made me squint. I almost asked her if she was sure about that, but I held off. After all, she didn’t know about the gateway posts I’d found, and I’d sworn myself to secrecy on the topic.
Still, she had me thinking. Why were we out here, exactly? The brass back home had talked about some kind of diplomatic mission, as if Legion Varus was an outfit full of tea-drinking ambassadors. Sure, we could use their troops, but how did sending Legion Varus to the scene further that aim?
The cover story just didn’t wash with me. At the very least it was incomplete. Varus had always been good at just one thing: killing stuff.
“Thanks for the vid, Kivi,” I told her. “McGill out.”
My tapper went berserk about ten minutes later. I was worried someone had traced down the piggyback signal Kivi had shared with me—but it wasn’t that.
Officer-chat had lit up, and I tuned in.
“To all my sub-commanders,” Tribune Deech began, “Legion Varus has been asked to present itself in full parade-dress. We will honor this request, unexpected as it is. Accordingly, every unit is to move to the top of their respective modules and—”
I didn’t even hear the rest. I was already running back to my module. On my unit’s channel, I was shouting for my adjuncts and noncoms to cinch-up every boot and wipe every nose. We had a bit of showmanship to perform.
Usually, the entire legion didn’t display itself for foreigners. We generally only did it to show off in front of crowds on Earth, or when we were replacing another legion at a given post. Clearly, this arrival was going to break that tradition.
“Harris, get out the banners and make sure the troops haven’t forgotten how to stand in a line. Toro, gather every soldier into the module and slam the door. Leeson, get them kitted up and formal. We’re on display in ten!”
I’d given each of my three adjuncts jobs that best fit their personalities. Harris had long been our most senior noncom, so it had been his honor to bear the unit colors. I could count on him to get that kind of gear into the right hands and make sure it was displayed right.
