by B. V. Larson
“Uh…” I said, my mind whirling.
I liked Gytha in the most basic way a man could like any beautiful woman, but to abandon Earth? My family?
“You’re asking too much, Tribune,” I said.
“There will be perks. You’ll be made a primus. Perhaps, in time, we can arrange for your family to be transported out here to join you. All you have to do is get these people to march a few million troops between our gateway posts whenever they’re needed. It should be a very cush post.”
My mind was racing. I felt like I was being permed. No more Earth? No more Georgia? No more Legion Varus?
“How long, sir?” I asked. “What kind of a term are we talking about?”
Deech gave a tiny shrug. “Years, I should think. No more than a decade, surely.”
I felt sick. I’d walked in here on the top of the world, but Deech had managed to bring me down hard inside of five short minutes.
“Well?” she asked. “Will you do it?”
“Do I have any choice, sir?”
“None whatsoever.”
“All right then. Put me down as a volunteer.”
“Excellent. Your cooperation was assumed, naturally. You’ll be departing for the planet shortly. You can ride in my lifter, inside the command module. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Uh… sure thing, Tribune.”
Stunned, I was dismissed. I marched back out of her office and headed for the tubes.
Outside the big viewing ports, I could see Blood World in all her stained, dirty, rust-orange, ugly-assed glory.
Was this really to be my home? For a decade or more?
I couldn’t fully grasp the concept.
-60-
I could almost hear the trumpets blare—but they didn’t have any trumpets on Blood World.
Thousands—no, millions of troops stood in a vast array before me. They didn’t form a parade, not exactly. They marched up in a single, threatening mass and stood at attention before Gytha and me.
We stood up on a pedestal together, side by side. The pedestal was big—more of a stage, really—built with stone chunks and smoothed over by puff-crete.
It wasn’t lovely. It wasn’t even decorated, but in typical Blood Worlder fashion it was very functional.
From that shared perch, we were a good ten meters above the massive host of troops. They stood before us in the roaring desert heat, their ranks stretching out for as far as my eyes could see.
“You guys really go in for the ceremonies,” I told Gytha.
She glanced at me curiously. “Isn’t that the norm for Earth? Our oldest vid documents show standing armies like this.”
“In the old days, maybe. I guess you guys must have some historical footage to go by. Did you bring it here from Dust World?”
“We must have. The Cephalopods didn’t let us keep much from our heritage, but what we do have is full of marching armies. Pride, Service and Sacrifice.”
She listed these three words as if they were some kind of a slogan. I had the feeling they were—for her.
The squids were bastards any day of the week, but I felt they’d outdone themselves with my kin here on Blood World. They’d manipulated their bodies and their minds, seeking to form an army that was unstoppable.
To compound the sin, we Earthers had come along to take advantage of these people. They were eager and felt lost without their old masters, and I’d helped to provide them with new ones.
The army saluted then, all at once. I never saw or heard a signal that kicked off the salute, but I did hear the deafening unified shout that roared out of a million mouths at once. Wincing, I fought the urge to put my hands over my ears. I didn’t think that would look hero-like.
“McGill?” a voice spoke into my headset. It was Graves, and he sounded business-like as usual. “We’re ready at our end.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the massive arch behind us come to life. It lit up with coruscating colors, mostly a pinkish-white with big moving patches of silver that drifted like clouds.
The arch was a huge gateway. It was a military-issue portal, built by our tech-smiths back on Earth for this precise purpose.
It was, of course, much bigger and more elaborate than the single-file gateway posts we’d brought with us from Earth. To get that kind of tech out here, with huge generators and heavy metal coils and all, the legion had used the small gateway posts we’d brought with us.
The idea was ingenious to me. We’d brought out a small unit, set it up, then walked through that to haul out this much bigger contraption. A small army of techs had built it piece-by-piece in the open desert.
The stage I stood on, stone though it was, had a massive fusion generator buried inside. I could feel the thrum of it, coming up into my boots. The truth was it set my teeth a little on edge.
“Looks good down here, Primus,” I told Graves. I had to speak loudly to be heard over the din the troops were making.
I turned back to the army to see what the fuss was about.
A brigade of giants had just arrived. These weren’t the small kind, like the littermates. They were much taller and thicker. Each one was a true monster, six meters in height or more. They carried massive energy projectors. Glittering shields of force wrapped around their bodies in a glassy nimbus.
To greet their big brothers, the littermates wailed and caterwauled like demons. I expected these monsters to press ahead, marching through the spherical portal we’d made for them—but they didn’t. Not yet.
Gytha gave my hand a squeeze.
“The brood-mothers are coming!” she said excitedly.
This grabbed my attention. I’d never seen the females that had supposedly birthed all these monstrosities. Not knowing what to expect, I craned my neck and leaned this way and that.
“Where are they?” I asked finally. “All I see are some flower-girls walking under those giants.”
Gytha frowned. “Those are the brood-mothers.”
My mouth gaped. “How could those tiny women give birth to something six meters tall?”
“They don’t gestate the giants in their bodies,” Gytha said in a tone that indicated I was of substandard intellect. “Their eggs are harvested, and the offspring are grown in breeding facilities.”
“Huh… sounds kind of dull.”
She let go of my hand, and I got the idea I’d insulted her somehow—but I didn’t care. I wasn’t too keen on my new role as troop-reviewer anyway.
“Is this about over?” I asked her. “When they start marching through, we should take a break.”
Gytha gawked at me. Her face told me I’d said something shocking, but for the life of me I didn’t know what it was.
“This is the Marching of the Host,” she said in a formal tone. “These brave soldiers are willing to die for you. The least you can do is stand and watch them!”
“Uh… sure.”
After a few thousand brood-mothers did a little bit of fancy-footwork, they stepped aside at last. The giants then began marching up the steps to the stage, two abreast.
Gytha and I stood off to one side, letting them pass us.
They were impressive—but they also stank. Each one cast us in a deep shade briefly, and I could feel a gust of their body-warmth puff into my face as they marched by.
Trying not to look disgusted, I took to holding my breath briefly as each puff came, and then sucking in some fresher air as the next pair approached. It left me feeling light-headed.
“Is something wrong?” Gytha asked.
She’d been watching me. That was a bad thing. Ever since I’d been a kid in church and school, after a while, some lady had started watching me. They’d always frowned. Eventually, I knew that frown was going to turn into an outright scowl.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
Gytha turned back to the passing giants. Her face soon brightened. She didn’t seem to notice the puffs of stink, or to think these huge freaks were disturbingly close. It was all normal to
her.
After a full frigging hour long parade, the last giant stepped through and vanished.
The littermates started howling again, and I took a deep, deep breath.
“We’ve got to take a break,” I told Gytha.
“It’s not done.”
“What if I have to piss?” I asked. “You don’t want me to pee my pants in front of the army, do you?”
She gave me a cold look. “Then go behind the stage. Hurry up, before the main army begins the march. There are ten times as many troops in the next March, so empty yourself well.”
Shaking my head, I stepped away toward the back of the stage. I really did have to pee—that part had been no lie.
What happened next was an accident. I will swear to that for all eternity—up, down, and sideways, even in the bright light of God’s grace.
I walked into the portal and vanished.
-61-
Stepping out into the blissfully cool, fresh, open air of Earth, I felt like I’d found Heaven.
Unfortunately it was only New Jersey Sector, but I’d gladly take it in a pinch.
The giants were there, setting up camp. They’d come through with survival packs and weapons, but Earth had provided them with a camp here just north of what the locals called Wharton Forest. It was farm country, open land that hadn’t been eaten up yet by the mega-cities along the coast.
No one was looking, so I hopped down from the creaking steel ramp and found a dark place to take a much needed leak.
“Aren’t you Centurion McGill?” a voice asked behind me.
“Uh… hello?” I said, turning and zipping up. “What can I do for you, Adjunct?”
The woman was a Hegemony tech, and she wore that same frown I’d seen on Gytha not moments earlier.
“Sir…? Aren’t you supposed to be on the other side of this portal?”
“I am, and I’m going back in a second.”
Right about then, I heard the thrumming of the fusion generator die. It had been under the ramp, just like the one buried under the stage back on Blood World.
With the sound of receding power, I saw the portal flicker then go out like a light.
“Hmm…” I said. “Did you techs turn that off?”
“Of course, sir. The giants are all through. This camp can’t hold a million troops. They’re placing the heavy troopers up in Nova Scotia. There’s another rig up there—but sir, you must know all this. They must have briefed you.”
My mind fell back to that briefing. I’d been kind of tired after my latest revive and disaffected by the prospects of being deserted on Blood World to play mascot. I recalled having taken a well-deserved nap.
“Hmm…” I said. “I might have missed that part. So, they’re parking the army in more than one spot?”
“Yes, our new gateway tech is much improved. Those tech-smith people, the ones who came from Rogue World, they’ve moved us decades forward in transportation technology.”
“You don’t say…”
I was looking at the dead portal, and it occurred to me that I might be in some trouble. On the far side, three hundred odd lightyears away, Gytha was probably beginning to wonder where I’d gone.
“Sir?” the tech asked me. “Aren’t you supposed to review the troops? All of them, I mean? It’s going to take at least another twenty hours for the entire force to march through into Nova Scotia.”
“Twenty hours? Really?”
She shrugged. “They’re supposed to jog, and they’ll go through nine at a time—but still, a million troops takes a long time to march by.
I read her nametag then. Samantha Sladen. It seemed like a nice name.
“What’s it like?” she asked, taking a step closer. “Being out there on Blood World, I mean?”
“Well Adjunct, I’m feeling kind of hungry. Maybe I could tell you the story while we get a bite to eat.”
Startled, she looked me over. For just a second, I could tell she was considering the offer, but she shook her head at last.
“No, I can’t. I’ve got a crew to run. Maybe later.”
I nodded, smiling, but I didn’t think there would be a later. I had to get the hell out of here—and fast.
A few hours after I’d returned to Earth, I was walking backwards down the turnpike. My thumb was stuck up and out. Several trams whizzed by, but no one even looked at me twice.
I was headed south. I’m not sure why, as Central was up north. Maybe I was homesick.
Whatever my reasoning, my mind was happier than it’d been in months. I don’t like to talk a planet down, especially when I’d just served there—but honestly, Blood World sucked hard. By comparison, most of the places I’d seen in my long life qualified as genuine slices of paradise.
After another hour of walking, I heard a different sound. It wasn’t the clattering whir of a tram. It was more of a whooshing sound, the sound made by fans and repellers angled to push away the gravitational forces of the Earth.
An air car landed behind me, and a figure climbed out.
I knew her. Despite my predicament, I grinned and waved.
“Hello, Imperator!”
It was Galina Turov. She must have traced me using my tapper.
She was pissed, and I could read that mood in every hip-swinging stride she took in my direction.
“James McGill…” she said. “Why have you gone AWOL? This time, I mean?”
“Uh… it was the funniest thing, sir. You’re not going to believe it.”
“No, I’m not—but try me anyway. I’m curious.”
I told her about the endless parade of troops, and how long it took. She looked as unsympathetic as the last few ladies I’d told about that.
“Then,” I said, “I stepped away to take a leak. Gytha told me to go to the back of the platform—I swear she did! Just ask her.”
Galina crossed her arms, plumping up her breasts, and I tried not to stare. Sometimes she did stuff like that just to throw a man off.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“Well… I stepped through the portal by sheer accident. I mean, it was right there. Did you know that the globe-like field they generate can reach out and pick up a man who gets a little too close? It’s like a jet engine on a carrier.”
“I hadn’t heard that, no.”
“Well, it can happen. Anyways, I ended up here at wrong end of the portal. I tried to go back—really I did. But there was this cute little adjunct named Sladen, and she—”
“You’re kidding me, right?” she interrupted. “This all ends with you being distracted by some woman you just met?”
“No, no, not at all! She just told me I couldn’t go back through. That’s what I meant to say.”
“Why not?”
“Well… they’d, uh, shut it off already. By the time I tried to step through.”
Turov nodded thoughtfully. “So, no one ordered you to come back to Earth?”
“Like who?”
“No one in particular.”
“Um… nope.”
Galina chewed on that for a few seconds.
“You know what?” she asked at last. “As strange as this may seem, I do believe you, to a point. It’s just the sort of lame-assed thing you might do.”
Surprised and delighted, I immediately walked over to her air car and climbed into the passenger seat.
Galina came to the window and looked inside at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Um…”
“Do you realize you’re a deserter? That I should, for the good of Earth, perm you right now in the street?”
“But I thought I was a hero,” I pointed out.
“That is unfortunately correct. It’s the only thing holding me back from executing my duty.”
“Well then… can I hitch a ride?”
“No way. Get out. You can walk to Central—and by the way, it’s in the opposite direction.”
She kicked me out of her car, climbed in and flew away.
I was lef
t on the puff-crete strip, baffled and annoyed. Why’d she gone to all the trouble of coming down here? Just to make me squirm?
No… She’d wanted to know if I was pulling something more significant than avoiding Blood World. She’d wanted to know if I was working for someone—like Drusus, maybe.
-62-
It took me a full day of walking, but I made it to Central around midnight. I crashed at a friend’s house then made my way to the big building the next morning at the crack of dawn.
The guards eyed me curiously. “Aren’t you supposed to be deployed, Varus?” the senior hog asked.
“That’s right, but they’ve got these new gateways set up. I’ve been called back early.”
He frowned. “That might be why I’m not seeing your name on these rosters. Well, your tapper checks out, and I’ve gotten an approval to send you upstairs. Follow the arrows, please.”
With a nod and a smile, I did as he told me. I took an express elevator to the four hundred seventh floor, stepping out when the blinking arrows on the carpet told me to.
One thing that was always disconcerting about the legions was being ordered around by automated systems. No one called you half the time. They just sent a drone, or triggered a computer script to light up arrows on the floor. This was one of those times.
What was disturbing about it was how impersonal it was, and the fact that the system rarely told you what your final destination was.
I hadn’t been dealt with like this for at least a year, except when making drops on planets. They usually reserved this level of impersonal treatment for clueless recruits. Maybe somebody was trying to make a point.
The office I ended up at contained a person familiar to me.
It was Claver.
He sat behind a desk with his feet up on it. He looked at me when I walked inside, and he sneered.
“You’re as slow as a dancing bear on those two feet, McGill.”
“Why didn’t you fly out to pick me up if you wanted to talk so bad?”
He snorted. “I can’t leave. I caught a revive downstairs—don’t ask how, I’m not going to tell you. But even though I’m breathing again, I can’t just walk outside. The guards check everyone going in or out—just not those of us wandering around inside.”
