by B. V. Larson
Toro was a busy-body. She knew where every wandering soldier could be found and how to catch them. Leeson was a stickler for clean kits and matching socks. I knew the troops would look good if I put him on the task.
By the time I got to the module, the place was a hive of activity. We had ninety percent of our troops in the cube, and they were pulling on boots and slapping down visors like there was no tomorrow. Noncoms and officers stalked among them, pointing out flaws and kicking asses.
With three minutes to go, we raced up to the top of the module and lined up on the roof. Already, the feed from Gold Deck was flickering on the ceiling—but no one had taken the spotlight yet.
Leeson, my senior adjunct, joined me in front of the unit.
“I don’t like this,” he said quietly. “First, these Blood World freaks attack us on the way out here. Now, they want us to give them a little parade. You think maybe they want to nail us while we’re all lined up like ducks, McGill?”
“Could be,” I muttered.
Harris stepped up to stand on my other side. “Is Leeson panicking yet?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“What a sorry excuse,” he chuckled. “Tell him I found a spare set of balls in the flag box he can sew on, but he has to give them back after the parade.”
I glanced at him, and Harris grinned at me. I wanted to grin back, but I couldn’t undermine Leeson that way. Sure, he was a worrier—but he had a point.
“Harris, sound the horns. Have them fall in.”
Harris did as I ordered, and over the next thirty seconds a rabble of some hundred and twenty legionnaires turned into a crisp square of soldiers.
It was just in time, too, as the big screen overhead went live. Tribune Deech stared down at us like the face of the Almighty, who she thought of as a competitor.
“Legion Varus—is this all of them? Where’s the eleventh?”
She was talking about the eleventh cohort, which was an auxiliary cavalry group. At one time, Winslade had commanded such a group on Machine World. They’d taken away the cohort, but they’d left him a primus.
The eleventh began to flood out onto the parade grounds only seconds after Deech complained. Their big metal dragons clanked and buzzed as they walked. As I’d once led men in dragons, I felt for their commander. It simply took more time to suit up and move around a ship in vehicles like that than it did to put on armor and hold a flag.
Deech herself was quite a sight. She looked better than she had when I’d first met her, as she’d died a few times and her hawkish broken nose had been fixed during a revive. She looked to be about thirty-five, but the Lord only knew what her actual age was.
All that said, it was alarming to have anyone’s face looming on top of you. Deech’s mug was at least a hundred meters wide and almost twice that in height. It looked like my troopers could have crawled into one of her dark nostrils, even though that was an illusion, of course.
“All right,” she said after staring at us for a time. “They’re ready. Connect the feed to the locals.”
The locals. So, that’s what we were calling the blood-thirsty, genetically altered population of Blood World? My, how times had changed since they’d invaded our green Earth several years ago.
Another face loomed beside the first.
My breath caught in my lungs. The second face was nothing like what I’d been expecting.
I’d met Blood Worlders before, you have to understand. The first time, they’d invaded Dust World while Legion Varus was busy trying to eradicate the local inhabitants. At that time, they’d served the Cephalopods. Some years later, they’d invaded Earth.
Now, at this third meeting, I was in for a surprise. The face that looked at me wasn’t a twisted giant, a leering gremlin, or a disgusting slaver—it was almost a normal, human face.
But it wasn’t quite the same as ours. The features were more beautiful and shapely. The neck was longer, too.
She was a tech-smith. A human bred for brains and scientific know-how.
The most alarming thing was her resemblance to Floramel. The two could have been sisters.
-33-
“She looks like your girlfriend, McGill,” Carlos said. “Or should I say, your ex-girlfriend—ow!”
Sargon had slammed his fist into Carlos from behind. As he was the nearest noncom, it was his job to keep the mouthy troops quiet. Carlos was wearing our lightest armor, little more than a ballistic vest, and it was easy to deliver hurt right through that with a metal gauntlet.
I didn’t even look at Carlos, much less answer him. I was fixated on the face that peered down at all of us. She did look like Floramel, but with darker, sleeker hair and eyes that were so blue they were almost clear.
“Earthers,” her sweet voice said. “I am Gytha. You’re welcome here. If you don’t discomfort us, we will tolerate you.”
It wasn’t the warmest welcome I’d ever heard, but at least I knew she meant it. Her kind didn’t know much about lies and deceit. An Earther could smile and laugh while they knifed you in the back—but one of these tech-smiths would probably look troubled.
Chiding myself not to read too much into her pleasant and familiar appearance, I tried to keep my perspective. I knew I shouldn’t let my past associations with her kind color my judgment. It could be these nerds were an entirely different breed than Floramel’s folks. After all, we’d traveled hundreds of lightyears to find them.
Deech reappeared then. A split-screen formed and the effect was even more alarming than before. The women were side by side, and both of them were too big to take in all at once. It was like sitting in the front row seat of a movie house with binoculars, or being under the close scrutiny of two curious goddesses.
“Thank you, Gytha,” Deech said. “I trust you find our soldiers impressive?”
“She’s fishing for compliments?” Carlos asked aloud, “that’s pathetic.”
“Shut up, Ortiz,” Harris said.
In Deech’s defense, we did look good. Each cohort was broken into ten units of a hundred troops, led by a centurion. Every unit had a flag, just as the Romans had so many centuries before us. The flags were red with gold print that identified our units.
The banners were just for show, of course. These days we didn’t need flags to know who to follow on the battlefield. We had tappers, internal displays inside our helmets and many other high-tech gizmos to do that job. We only broke out the old gear on special occasions like today—but it did look impressive.
Gytha studied the ranks of troops.
“On the first metric, you fail,” she said.
Deech’s face fell. It was instant and undeniable. Knowing how most people worked, I knew at that moment that these two were never going to be friends. Deech wasn’t a woman who would easily forget a slight, real or imagined.
“And what might that metric be?” Deech asked stiffly.
“Bitch-fight!” Carlos said, laughing.
I fully expected Sargon or Harris to belt him one, but a glance in their direction told me they thought it was pretty funny, too. It was going to be up to me to straighten the boys out.
“A little respect would be nice to see, Adjunct.”
That was all I said. Harris rounded on Carlos, his face suddenly wrathful. Maybe he was extra pissed because Carlos had managed to engage him and embarrass him. Whatever the case, a stream of low-volume threats ensued, and Carlos looked subdued.
“The first metric is one of numbers,” Gytha explained. “Let me demonstrate the inadequacy.”
Her face vanished, and in its place a mass of glinting dots appeared. Haze drifted over them, an orangey-brown haze. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at, and it wasn’t until someone else said it that I knew the truth.
“Littermates,” Leeson said, sucking in a breath. “A hundred thousand of them—maybe a million. See each one of those glinting squares? That’s nine of them—or maybe more.”
He was right. So tiny that we couldn’t mak
e out any individuals, they sprawled over a vast area. The camera’s viewpoint must have been that of a satellite or a drone, because it moved rapidly. An endless river of metal-encased troops stood at attention on what appeared to be a rust-colored desert.
“What a shithole of a planet,” Harris said under his breath.
I had to agree.
“You see?” Gytha asked, her voice transmitted over the high winds that blew over her vast army. “We have a thousand times your number.”
“But,” Deech said between clenched teeth, “we’re on a transport. Did you honestly expect us to bring a million troops with us?”
“Not directly,” Gytha responded.
That perked up my ears. Did she know about the gateway posts? Was that a snide, or accidental, reference to them?
“You’re correct, however,” Gytha continued. “In that numbers are not a fair test. That’s why I’m allowing this meeting to proceed.”
“This chick seems to have forgotten that we kicked her troops’ collective butts just a few years back,” Leeson remarked to me.
“I’ll make sure to bring that up to her,” I told him.
“The second metric is therefore called into focus,” Gytha said. “We will greet you in the pit when you arrive.”
The image flickered and went black.
“Of all the…” Deech said. Her tremendously magnified mouth was squeezed pin-prick small and tight. “Legion, dismissed!”
The screen died entirely. Horns blew, and we were sent back down into our modules.
“What in the blue blazes was that about, McGill?” Leeson asked me.
I glanced at him, somewhat startled that he thought I knew the answer to his question.
“Uh… I’d say those two women aren’t going to get along.”
Leeson laughed. “I know that. But what’s this about a pit? Are they talking about some kind of knife-fight like we did to get into this craptastic adventure in the first place?”
Not wanting to lie, I nodded my head. “Stands to reason. Why else would they have selected us in the manner they did?”
“Shit…” he whistled. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t end like this.”
Clapping my gauntlet on his armored shoulder, I walked past him. “It’s not over yet, Adjunct.”
“Where are you off to—if you don’t mind my asking, Centurion?”
I glanced at him. “I’m going to ask the one person who might enlighten me about Blood Worlders.”
Leeson looked around then came up to me. “You talking about Deech? Is it like they say, McGill?”
“What’s that?”
“Are you, uh, involved with her, too?”
I frowned. One slip-up with Imperator Galina Turov had stained me forever. Every joker thought I was chasing top-brass tail on a daily basis.
“Not at all, Adjunct. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”
Leaving a curious pack of soldiers behind, I quickly found my way down to the labs.
Floramel was there, studying a component she’d taken from the gremlin ship.
“Floramel?” I asked. “Did you watch the assembly?”
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I knew what I’d see. And I know, James, why you’re here.”
“Uh… okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
She turned around slowly, but she still didn’t lift her eyes to meet mine. “You want my permission to see another woman.”
That line stunned me. First off, I was already seeing another woman as Floramel had sworn me off a good two months back. Second, I’d never asked for such permission in my long and storied life.
“Hmm,” I said, not sure how to proceed.
“You don’t have to be shy,” she said. “I give you your freedom.”
“That’s… that’s very kind of you.”
“Gytha is a lovely girl, younger than I, more clear of heart, mind and eye. She—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said. “What’s this about Gytha?”
She looked up and met my gaze for the first time. “Didn’t you see her? Didn’t you find her lovely?”
“Uh…” the truth was, I had done so. But I wasn’t thinking about bedding the woman. It seemed to me unlikely that we’d ever actually meet in person.
What I was thinking about was my fling with Thompson. Floramel didn’t seem to have any concept of how these relationship things worked. You couldn’t leave a man like me high and dry for months and expect him to stick around. Hell, we’d only spent a few nice nights together.
But I decided to drop all this drama and get back to the real reason I’d come down to see her.
“Floramel,” I said, “that Gytha girl looks a lot like you.”
“For good reason. She’s my sister.”
My face must have looked slack with amazement, because Floramel shook her head.
“Not in a literal sense, not exactly. She’s related to me. All of the tech-smiths who served the Cephalopods are related. After all, we come from a very small genetic pool.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “I get it now. That was what I wanted to confirm. She’s a Rogue Worlder—or an offshoot of the same stock.”
“A rude way to put it. We’re not cattle, James.”
“I know, I know. Sorry. But I also want to know if you knew these people would be out here before we arrived.”
“We couldn’t know. We could only hypothesize. We’ve been out of contact with this colony for a long time. But the likelihood was there.”
I moved close to her, frowning at the tools in her hand. She was tinkering with some gizmo that looked like the guts of a microwave oven.
“Are there more colonies full of warped humans like Blood World, Floramel?” I asked her. I was in deadly earnest.
“I don’t think so. Rogue World is gone. There are a handful of us at Central on Earth. Here, on Blood World—that’s probably the greatest number of my kind that remains among the living.”
“And what about the pits she spoke of? What should we expect there?”
“Death. Yours, or your opponents. Nothing else will free anyone from those places.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said, and I thanked her again.
Walking out into the passages again, I thought about Floramel, Gytha and Specialist Thompson.
Didn’t good things always come in threes?
-34-
In the middle of the night, ship’s time, we slid into a wary orbit over Blood World. As we approached we watched the gremlin ships, but none of them charged at us. No missiles came zooming up from the planet, either.
Primus Graves came knocking at my door first thing in the morning. It was a good thing I was used to getting up early now. I wasn’t embarrassed when I flung the door wide.
We observed Blood World via my desktop, which was really a computer. It had been connected up to a live feed from Gold Deck.
“It’s all quiet down there,” I said.
“It won’t stay that way for long,” Graves said. “Not once you and your crew start to mix it up with those giants.”
The vid stream showed what they called the pit—a cratered region of Blood World that was particularly hot and nasty-looking.
“Is that in the middle of one of their cities?” I asked.
“Yes—well, the ruins of a city. The craters take up about eighty percent of the inhabited area. From our orbital recon, the buildings surrounding the crater appear to be deserted and somewhat radioactive.”
“Sounds inviting.”
He twiddled the touchscreen and zoomed in closer. We peered at the landscape.
“They don’t have any trees?” I asked. “Just those big, mushroom-looking growths?”
“Looks like they’ll throw some shade.”
“Yeah, but so does a rock.”
Graves looked up at me sharply. “Are you whining about this assignment now, McGill? You knew what all of this training was coming down to, didn’t you? If you didn�
�t want to do this, you shouldn’t have worked so hard to win those contests back at Central. You should have let Armel take the prize.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. It was a curse I had. I enjoyed winning, and I frequently burned tomorrow to pay for a good time today.
“McGill,” Graves said, looking me in the eye. “I’m meeting with you today because we’re starting the first contest. They’ll grow in intensity with each round, but you’re going to have to choose your representative for the first heat—right now.”
“My representative?” I asked.
“Right. The first contest will involve only two fighters. One from our side, and one from a challenging group. That’s all we’ve been told.”
“Just one man?”
“That’s what I said. I’m leaving the choice up to you. Send whoever you want.”
My face contorted. The situation wasn’t what I’d expected.
One man. I was going to have to decide who it would be. Graves could have made that call, but he’d passed the buck. That was a curse and a blessing at the same time.
I thought about my options. I could send Harris, or Sargon. There were a few others who were of equal skill.
We knew nothing about the layout down there, except that it was hot and deadly. That was about all the intel we had thus far.
“I’ll go,” I said.
Graves nodded. “I figured as much.”
“So why didn’t you just ‘volunteer’ me?”
“You know the answer to that. A man’s commitment to battle is always stronger if he’s made the choice to participate.”
I nodded. “You want to know why I chose myself?”
Graves shrugged. “You’re pretty good on your feet. But that’s not all of it. You want to scout the land for the next round. Who could do that better than the centurion who’s going to command the next mission?”
“Exactly. You know me better than I thought. It’s disturbing.”
Graves rumbled, his form of laughter. He reached out a gauntlet and gripped my arm for a second. “You’ll do just fine down there. You might even win.”
