by B. V. Larson
I slewed my eyes toward him and locked there. “What are you talking about? It’s over. We don’t have the book.”
He snorted. “I’m not giving up so easily. A million credits is nothing. I’m going out there to collect my property.”
I laid a heavy hand on his shoulder again. “You know, one thing about this old barn, there’s no wireless reception out here. We’re off the grid.”
“That’s riveting information,” Claver said. “But I’m—”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “If you die now, your mind won’t have been backed up. You won’t remember what happened out here in the bog. You won’t know about the hiding place, that Etta has the book—nothing.”
He smirked at me. “I was wondering when you’d get around to murder again. But it’s pointless, McGill. I’ve got another clone here on Earth, working another angle. He won’t give up. He’ll keep coming. A deal is a deal.”
Thinking that over, I knew he was right. Claver was a trader and a persistent one. He wouldn’t give up. He’d send more Clavers at me until he was satisfied with the outcome.
“All right, what’s your plan then?”
“Didn’t I just say it? Or was I talking too fast for that micro-brain of yours? No matter, I’m headed out to Dust World.”
“You have a ship?”
“No, dummy. I’m porting out. I still have a fair number of jump-suits. That’s how I got here, in fact.”
“Hmm…” I said, mulling that over. “Let’s go take a look.”
“At what? The suit? There’s no point, it’s one of those old-fashioned units the squids made.”
I smiled. “Big enough for a nine-foot Cephalopod? Or two men?”
He stared at me in surprise. “Now hold on, I’m not giving you a ride to Dust World on top of it all.”
“Have you ever been out there, Claver?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
“Did you find the locals to be friendly and easily swayed with pretty words?”
He paused. “No. They’re outright bastards. Dishonest, cruel, and tricky.”
I nodded. He really had been out to Dust World.
“So, do you think you’ll have an easier time of convincing them to give up the book with me along, or without?”
“Them? What do you mean, ‘them’? It’s your daughter who has the book.”
I shook my head. “Her grandfather is the Investigator. He’s probably got it by now.”
“Oh…” Claver said, turning that over in his mind. “He’s not an easy-going man.”
“Nope. Now, are we jumping out there together, or are you interested in drinking some of that bog-water outside?”
He watched me warily, realizing I didn’t make deadly threats in vain. Claver and I had killed one another many times in the past.
While we’d been working in the barn, a gentle rain began to fall. By the time we exited, leaving the creaky door groaning in our wake, the rain had become strong. Silver sheets were falling, and we were quickly soaked.
“McGill,” Claver said. “Your place sucks. Seriously, I hate it.”
I shrugged. “Southern Georgia isn’t for everyone,” I admitted.
Together, we looked for his arrival point. The rain died down and he had some trouble in the wispy fog that welled up to replace it, but at last he found the spot.
We stood directly under a big mangrove tree on a small hump of land. It was higher and drier than most of the surrounding region.
There, he squatted and pulled a teleport suit out from under the big tree’s roots and slapped the mud and worms off it. He worked with a control box, targeting our destination. Zeta Herculis wasn’t far by interstellar standards, only about thirty lightyears, but it would be quite a jump from the point of view of teleportation travelers.
“This will be a tight, unpleasant squeeze,” he began. “I don’t even—”
He got no further. His words cut off, and he turned slowly to gape at me, his mouth hanging wide.
“Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “There’s been a change of plan.”
“Why?” he croaked out.
“You really shouldn’t make deals with a man’s teen daughter. It’s unacceptable—even if she cheated you.”
Claver tried to say something else, but he lost control of his body at that moment. He collapsed and shivered on the mud at my feet.
A trowel—just some rusty tool I’d picked up while we were in the barn—was sticking out of his sternum. I’d driven it into his heart.
“Too bad you won’t remember this lesson, Claver,” I said, standing over him as the light went out of his dying eyes. “You shouldn’t mess with a legionnaire’s family. Maybe you’ll figure that out on your own… Eventually.”
I dumped his body into a deep puddle of mud. It was a spot I knew well, one I’d warned Etta about. It was the bubbling top of a sinkhole, and I knew his body might never be found—if anyone ever cared to look for it, which I doubted.
Sliding into the teleport suit and checking the gauges, I was pleased with the results. The suit booted cleanly when I powered it up, and it still had a charge.
As an afterthought, I took the bag-like stealth fabric with me as well. Rolled up tightly, it fit in the roomy teleport suit.
Looking around at the noisy swamp surrounding me, I sucked in one last breath of the dank air of my homeland, and I slammed the faceplate closed.
My hand moved to the actuator, and I engaged it.
The world melted into a glowing blue, and it began to throb. Faster and faster the light pulsed until it blinded me.
My last thought before I ported out was really more of a hope. I wished with all my heart that Claver had targeted the suit accurately—without any final tricks thrown in for laughs.
-5-
Dust Word came as a shock after leaving Earth behind. Both were warm places, but rather than the cloying dampness of my home marshes, Dust World exuded the heat of an open oven.
The sun blazed overhead, painfully bright and oversized, due to our nearness to the central star. Zeta Herculis was actually smaller than old Sol, but it was closer to this world, making it seem hotter. It was a glaring eye that ruled the sky, and I had to shade my dazzled eyes with a hand.
It was then, as I squinted and peered at my surroundings, that I got the worst shock of all: I was out in the open.
Now, you have to understand that Dust World is a giant orb of blowing sand and rocks. There’s very little that survives on the exposed, sunbaked surface. All the life we knew about existed in the dozen or so deep crevices that dotted the planet, mostly near the two poles.
“I’ll be damned…” I said to myself.
Immediately, I tried my tapper. The seeking-connection icon spun and spun—there were no repeaters within range. That wasn’t a big surprise, but it was disappointing.
I was in serious trouble.
Examining my surroundings for hints of my location, I saw a sandstorm off to my left, and a mountain range of parched spikes off to my right—but neither of these landmarks meant shit to me.
Dust World was, for the most part, a trackless wasteland. There were no roads, no hotels, no gas stations—nothing but a few scattered oases of life, hunkering down deep in the crust, seeking shelter from that burning eye of a sun overhead.
My next move was to check the teleport suit again. If it still had a charge—but no, it was bone dry. I should have expected that.
Already, I was wishing I hadn’t lost my cool and killed Claver on impulse. But it was too late to cry about that now. What was done was done.
“Think, James,” I said aloud. “Claver was planning to come out here. He planned to land at this exact garden-spot. He wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to perm one bad-tempered dumb-ass named McGill.”
My own words hurt, because deep down, I knew that’s what I was. A dumb-ass who’d lost his temper and killed the single man who knew the lay of the land out here.
Maybe he had a spaceshi
p hidden just over the horizon, or a buried base, or a few clones waiting in orbit for a signal to swoop down and rescue him when he arrived.
But whatever his scheme had been, it had died with him. I kept peering around at the rocks and grit, hoping a thought would impinge—but it didn’t.
I considered committing suicide in hopes of a catching a revive later on, but I soon passed on that idea. No one back on Earth knew I’d come to Dust World. No one except Claver would even suspect that’s where I’d disappeared to. Given the circumstances, I doubted he would launch a rescue effort on my behalf, even if he did figure out what had happened.
In short, I’d probably just permed myself.
Sucking in a dry, gritty breath of air—at least Dust World had a breathable atmosphere—I chose a direction at random and started walking. From the angle of the glaring star in the sky, I figured a path straight ahead would fit best, as it didn’t go toward the sandstorm or the mountains. As best I could judge by the slant of the star’s angle, that direction should be south, toward the pole. All the best valleys on Dust World were huddled around the poles, where it was slightly cooler.
Since any valley would do for shelter, I felt heartened when I approached a rougher region of ground. Was that…? Yes, I thought that it was. A darkened zone ahead looked like a rocky outcropping, but grew to become a widening hole and then a chasm opened up at my feet. I guess it was my lucky day after all.
It was a valley. I grinned and released an echoing war-whoop. I’d done it! I’d found my way to life and hope again.
Staring down into the dark, purpley bottom of the pit, I felt a pang of worry. How was I going to get down there? Sure, there was a lake in the center of the valley—most of these valleys were really bubbling craters with deep pools of water at the bottom. But I couldn’t survive a jump. A fall of a kilometer or two was certain to be fatal.
Just then, I thought I heard something behind me. Turning, I saw two strange beings.
They were men wearing helmets with face shields—only their lower face showing. Large men, nearly my size, they had uniformly broad shoulders and moved almost as if in synchronization.
Behind them was an aircraft they’d landed, a flitter. It was an antigravity vehicle, capable of silent flight.
“I’m glad to see you two!” I shouted at them, approaching and offering a grin and a handshake.
They closed to a range of three meters, and then stopped.
“Where is the Prime?” asked the man on my right.
“The what?” I asked, confused for a second.
The man on the left pointed toward my chest. “You’re wearing the Prime’s teleport suit. Where is the Prime?”
Suddenly, my dim brain lit up. I’d seen these guys before—or a pair very much like them. They were low-ranked Claver-clones. He’d called them class-threes. They were workers, brutes. Not too bright, but born with the inbred loyalty of dogs.
Claver had created a small army of himself, somewhere out in the cosmos. I’d been there, but I didn’t know where it was, exactly. A planet full of clones of varied abilities and designs—all based on his own original set of genes, biologically.
“You’re both Clavers,” I said. “Class threes, right?”
They didn’t even blink. “Where is the Prime?” they asked again.
A big smile curled up on my face. I sucked in a breath and stepped toward them. “Well boys… that’s a long story. You see, he sent me on ahead as he was injured in an accident back on Earth. I’m supposed to reclaim his property, which is down there in that valley yonder.”
The Clavers didn’t smile or even blink. They peered at me, slowly rotating and cocking their heads as they listened to my words. The effect was kind of eerie, like watching a couple of beagles try to figure out what you were telling them.
When I was about a meter distant, my smile was as big and round as a Georgia peach. I halted and pointed to their flitter.
“Now,” I said, “if you two boys want to follow Claver-Prime’s orders, all you have to do is take me for a little ride on that flitter. We’ll sail down into the valley, retrieve the goods, and I’ll teleport the package to Earth.”
“The package isn’t going back to Earth,” said the one on my right.
They seemed a little confused. They weren’t the brightest of clones, after all.
“That’s okay,” I said. “If you want, I’ll hand the package over to you two and you can get it back to Claver-land any way you want.”
“You are the McGill,” the one to my left said suddenly.
I turned toward him. “The light just went on in your fridge, didn’t it, son? You’re absolutely right, I am James McGill, the man who knows where the pack—”
That was as far as I got. Two sets of arms shot out, with a grand total of four knobby sets of fingers reaching for me.
Now, you have to understand that I wasn’t just your typical soldier. Sure, these walking genetic freaks had been designed for strength and speed—but they didn’t have my decades of combat experience to back them up.
A combat knife appeared in my hand. It wasn’t my own, as I’d stupidly forgotten that back on Earth. It was from the man on my right flank. He’d stupidly left it there on his belt, unguarded.
One upstroke, and the two men were down to three hands between them. I felt that would even-up the odds some.
But the injured Claver didn’t back off. He didn’t fall, keening and grasping his wrist in shock. Instead, he coldly proceeded to struggle with me. Hot blood sprayed out of his stump, splashing all the way up to my face.
It was disgusting, but I didn’t have time to worry about the salty flavor in my teeth. Focusing my efforts on the right hand Claver, I tried to knife him in the gut—but the two of them managed to wrest my weapon away and drop it into the dust.
The three of us exchanged hammer-blows whenever we got a hand free. I kept punching the one-handed guy—but soon that wasn’t needed.
In shock, losing blood fast, he sank to his knees. He kept struggling to stand up, but he couldn’t. Now and then, he asked me where Claver-Prime was with a weakening voice, but I was too busy to give him a smartass answer.
That left me with one vicious Claver to deal with. He wasn’t going down easy, either. He kept up the fight, and I was honestly impressed by his design. If I ever got the opportunity, I’d have to bring that up to the original model and compliment him on his craftsmanship.
But still, the final conclusion was preordained. I was too big, too strong, and too damned mean to be beat by any version of Claver in hand-to-hand combat. It just wasn’t going to end that way.
He hung on determinedly, and he never gave up. I’ll give him that. He just wouldn’t stay down.
Finally, I grew tired of the game, and I walked him to the edge of the cliff and threw him over the side.
“McGill!” called a voice behind me.
I turned. The one-handed Class Three had made his way to the flitter and retrieved a gun. He had the muzzle trained on me.
“It’s about time you thought of that,” I told him.
“Where…?” he said, seeming to have trouble breathing. “Where is the Prime?”
“He’s back on Earth. Dead—at the bottom of a sinkhole. Are you happy now?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he fired his weapon. I caught the blast and spun around. A hazy moment later, I realized I was falling.
I’d followed the first Class Three and tumbled right off the cliff.
I fell through space for what seemed like a very long time. The wind whistled, and my sinuses stung because the air was so dry.
It took about twenty seconds to hit the bottom, if my perceptions were right.
During that long fall, I had time to regret some of my recent choices. For instance, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have tried to kill three Clavers in a single day.
After all, a man has to pace himself.
-6-
Waking up an unknowable time later, I felt an ov
erwhelming sense of curiosity.
Who had bothered to revive old McGill this time? And why?
One thing I could tell right off: it hadn’t been a standard-issue revival. I wasn’t lying on a gurney with some bio-worker shining a light into my eyes.
Instead I was in a quiet, dark place. It was cool and windowless—almost like a tomb.
That single thought made me suck in a breath and struggle to sit up. One of the greatest nightmares every legionnaire entertains now and then is that of being buried alive.
It has happened. From time to time, a grow is discarded while still breathing rather than recycled for raw materials. Awakening from whatever stupor they were in, they might find themselves buried alive.
“Ah,” a voice said. “Our guest stirs.”
The Investigator. I recognized his distinctive tones immediately. The fact I hadn’t been left for dead someplace did put me at ease—but only to a degree.
The Investigator was an older man. He was Della’s father and Etta’s grandfather. He was also the leader of the Dust World colony. For all of that, he wasn’t a friend of mine. He was a strange man, driven by obsessions and a cold, clinical nature.
“Hello, sir,” I croaked. “Thanks for reviving me.”
“You might want to save your gratitude,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s best that you rest now—we’ll discuss it later.”
Alarm bells went off in my head. My eyes snapped all the way open, even though the scene they revealed and transmitted to my foggy brain was both dim-lit and blurry.
Was that the pallid shape of an approaching arm?
The glint of a needle?
For a Legion Varus man, to think was to act. Anything else led to death more often than not.
If it had been anyone else, I probably would have punched him. But the Investigator was a relative, of sorts. Reaching out I grabbed the needle, feeling a tiny sting, then snapped it off. It fell to the stone floor with a tinkling sound.
“What have you…? You are a most difficult man.”
“No time to sleep now,” I said casually. I held onto his wrist, so he couldn’t rearm himself. “I’ve got things to do.”
