by B. V. Larson
“McGill cheats, and he wins!” Centurion Doyle shouted.
Cheers and boos filled the room.
Shaking out my aching fingers and arm, I offered a hand to Manfred, who was glaring at me from the deck.
At first, I thought he’d spit on me or something, but then, his face softened.
“Well done, Centurion,” he said, and he took my offered hand.
A second round of cheering went off, then everyone shuffled toward their seats. Those who had placed bets handed off cash or touched tappers to exchange credits.
All this was watched by several frowning cohort leaders. Every primus in the place seemed annoyed—but not old Turov herself. She smirked at me.
I wasn’t surprised. I knew Galina pretty well by now. She liked to watch men struggle like apes. I’d often thought that moments like this formed the very basis of our mutual attraction.
Still shaking the kinks out of my hand, I sprawled in a chair. Manfred came to sit next to me, and I was gratified to see he was clenching and unclenching his fist as well.
We traded tired smiles, and we might have spoken, but the briefing began.
Primus Graves kicked things off. He was Turov’s senior primus as indicated by his rank insignia consisting of a basic star emblem with a red ruby in the center. They called that a blood drop, and it meant he was the second in command of the entire legion.
“Officers of Legion Varus,” he said. “I welcome you back into Earth’s service. This time, we have a challenging mission ahead.”
A few officers muttered at that, mostly saying “no shit” and similar remarks. No one was surprised or impressed.
Despite being officers, most of us slouched in our chairs. Varus people weren’t known for pomp and shiny kits. We were known for killing stuff. Aliens, mostly.
“In the past, we’ve met up with countless alien species. One of the most challenging of those was an unusual population called the Wur.”
“God help us,” Manfred muttered.
I groaned softly, seconding the motion.
The Wur consisted of a very strange set of intelligent plants. They infected planets, rather than colonizing them, by planting growths that eventually took over the entire surface area of the host world. So far, I’d tangled with them on two occasions—and I wasn’t looking forward to a third encounter.
For about a minute, I experienced a flashback. I recalled walking trees, ferns that released poisonous gases, spider-like things that came out of cocoons—and giant brain-plants that ruled all the rest of it.
“Megaflora,” Graves was saying when I managed to pay attention again.
He was flashing through a series of short vids. He showed us giant trees the size of a skyscraper. These trees didn’t move themselves, but they grew pods to defend their territory.
“The mobile forms look like this,” he said, and we watched as a charging wave of the monsters overran our lines.
“That day sucked,” I said, remembering the battle.
“It sure did,” Manfred chuckled. “Because I was dead that whole week.”
I glanced at him. “You missed Death World?”
“Most of it,” he admitted.
“Gentlemen,” Graves called out to us. “Could I have your attention, please? Or do you two love-birds have an engagement to announce?”
A chuckle swept the room.
My hand shot up, and Graves called on me reluctantly.
“Primus Graves, sir? Why are we fighting the Wur again? Is the target world inside Province 921?”
“A good question, for once. I’ll hand that off to our tribune to answer.”
“Thank you, Primus Graves,” Turov said.
She stepped up onto the center of the stage. There was always a stage when Turov gave one of her little speeches. I’d figured out this was due to two simple facts: one, she liked being up high and in charge. Two, she also enjoyed the ogling looks all the men in the audience tended to give her as she stood at the front of the room.
“Graves has given us the basics,” she said. “The who, but not the where or the why.”
She swept her arm over the wall behind her, and the starscape shifted to display the frontier region.
“As you know, we have a province to protect for the Empire. But we also have a difficult frontier border to worry about. In this region—”
Here, she caused a large zone to light up that was past the edge of the Empire proper.
“—certain independent worlds exist. We control a few of them, such as Blood World, in the very heart of the region. Keep in mind, we have legal claim to all of them—but that’s not good enough. You also have to be strong enough to enforce that claim.”
Suddenly, the point of this new two-legion warship was striking home. Maybe it wasn’t an extravagance, but a necessity to Earth’s long term strategic goals.
“Rather than gathering a fleet and visiting all these worlds, demanding obedience, Hegemony has decided to answer calls for support. There are always, after all, downtrodden planets in need of our aid.”
She turned to the map then, and she began to zoom and pan. This action caused her to stand on her tiptoes, and that was a lovely sight. Somehow, a girl in high-heeled boots looked best when she lifted herself up on her toes.
Even Manfred was affected. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him squirm in his chair and cant his head slightly to the left, probably to get a better angle.
“Here it is,” she continued, making dragging motions to pull a star down closer. The visual panned and focused on its own. “M244-H. An unimportant star, a red dwarf. It’s a little bigger and brighter than most red dwarfs, but… so what. They are common and usually without value.”
As she spoke, she kept facing the wall. Was she doing that on purpose?
Along about then, I began to frown a little. Was her butt shaped differently today? Was I seeing things?
“I’ll be damned…” I said.
Manfred tossed me a glance, but I ignored him and continued peering at Galina.
Now, it has to be said that I’m something of an authority on the topic a woman’s hindquarters. I liked to think I knew every variety of hip-structure and shape available. Turov had always possessed a very nice, carefully manicured posterior. It was a natural shape, the kind that was girlish rather than broad-hipped and fully mature. This was probably due to the fact she kept her body-scan from her earliest years in the legion.
But… today she looked a bit different. Those hips were wider, somehow. And that butt… yes, I’d stake a months’ pay on it!
“She’s had a butt-job!” I said aloud.
Fortunately, my words were spoken quietly. Only Manfred heard me. He could hardly help it, as he was sitting right next to me.
Manfred bust out laughing.
Everyone turned to look at him, including Turov. Graves wore a particularly grim expression.
“What is it, Manfred?” Graves asked.
“Uh… Sorry primus. McGill is cracking jokes back here.”
Graves swiveled a pair of unfriendly eyes in my direction.
“Dick,” I hissed at Manfred.
“What’s the joke, McGill?” Graves demanded. “Please share it with all of us. I’m sure we could use a good laugh.”
“Um…” I said. “It was nothing, sir. Manfred likes knock-knock jokes, see. He can’t get enough of them.”
Graves eyed me coldly, not believing me for a second. “Can both of you shut-the-fuck-up now?”
“Yes sir,” we mumbled in unison.
“Such infantile behavior,” Turov said.
She turned back to her wall again. Continuing to reach high and then low, she generally fussed over that big display of hers. She showed us the target planet, the continents, the prospective LZs—everything. She even talked about the alien race that lived there, and how they were being overrun by the Wur and were asking for our help.
Daydreaming, I missed most of the details. The woman was hypnotizing me.
I knew full well what she was up to, of course. She was showing off her new purchase. Some lucky surgeon had taken her best feature and improved it a bit, and she damned-well wanted to get her money’s worth.
Sure, she could have turned around and faced us. She could have had an underling manipulate the board, or she could have at least spent more time looking out at her audience—but she didn’t. She’d had some special work done, which was why she’d been out of sight for a few weeks. What’s more, I was pretty sure I knew why she’d done it: misguided jealousy.
Deciding I might as well enjoy the fruits of her labor, I stayed riveted to the rest of the briefing. Galina had always commanded the attention of any audience she got in front of—and that was never by accident. She wanted to make sure every man in the place got an eyeful.
And brother, looking around the room to check out the crowd, I can attest that she’d gotten her wish today.
-13-
Manfred and I had always gotten along, and I think now we were tight. We marched back to our modules, laughing and high-fiving each other.
“You know, McGill, I’ve always watched your particular flavor of bullshit from afar. I never really participated before—but now, I’m hooked. That was hilarious!”
We grinned and parted ways, agreeing to do our damnedest to destroy one another on the training grounds. That was the peak of compliments among rival officers in Varus.
Sinking into my office chair, I felt pretty good inside. I’d been an officer in the legion for several years, but I’d always felt somewhat out of place. The older types hadn’t appreciated my swift rise through the ranks, or my genuine talent for pissing off the brass.
After today, I felt like all that had changed. For whatever reason, my fellows were accepting me as a welcome peer.
Harris thrust his head into my office first that day, and I could tell by the stink-face he was making that he was bound and determined to rain on my good mood.
“McGill?” he asked. “Did you know all this crap about the tides?”
“Um…” I said, casting my mind back to Turov’s skin-tight uniform and lengthy briefing. It did seem, to my hazy memory, that something had been mentioned about the harsh weather. “I heard about it at the briefing, sure.”
“Wet-suits? Grav-boots just so we can hold onto the ground during the tidal shifts? Hot geysers, deadly terrain—this planet sucks!”
I blinked at him, and I slowly began to frown. It occurred to me, as it so often did after a mission briefing, that I should have daydreamed a little less.
But instead of mentioning these things, I lifted a finger and wagged it at him.
“Now, don’t go spreading your deepest fears among the troops, Harris. You hear me? Just because your panties are all wadded up with tears, that’s no reason to lower morale.”
“Say what?” he demanded, becoming angry. “Since when have I complained in front of the troops?
I rolled my eyes. “Since before I was born, probably,” I told him. “Just make sure that if you feel the uncontrollable urge to cry, you do it in private. Got that, Adjunct?”
He slammed my door and left. That was disrespectful, of course. I could have put him on report or worse—but I let it slide. After all, his actions had brought a smile to my face as I’d been goading him for fun anyway.
But after he left, I began rerunning the recording of the briefing on my tapper. Adjusting the video so it only caught the big screen—rather than Turov’s distracting display—I was better able to absorb what was being said.
The planet in question did look kind of shitty. It was a weird, wet world. The land to sea ratio was worse than on Earth, with over eighty percent of the surface underwater. The continents that did exist were smaller and… nastier.
“Hmm…” I said aloud. “Continuous atmospheric disturbances. High winds, heavy cloud-cover, constant tidal shifts from the six moons… Crap!”
Six moons. That was the detail I’d somehow missed before.
Back home on Earth, our single moon did us a lot of good. It kept the oceans stirred up, driving waves, tides and many other natural phenomena. Without our moon, the Earth would be kind of dead and quiet most of the time.
But this world had taken that logic to an extreme. Being a relatively small planet encircled by no less than six satellites, the place was churned up all the time. The ground itself sometimes swelled up and popped a new volcano due to the intense yanking it got when several of the moons aligned.
And the storms… they were legendary. Planet-wide rain was the norm, not the exception. The result was a lashing stew of water and wind. Sometimes hot, sometimes freezing cold an hour later, the weather depended on vicious twists in the upper atmosphere that drove the climate like a raging cowboy beating his poor horse to death.
As I absorbed all this, Leeson showed up at my door next. He tapped instead of simply nosing his way inside, and I told him to come on in.
“Centurion? You ready to talk seriously about our new situation?”
“Uh…” I said, looking up at him. “You mean about this washing machine of a planet were supposed to invade? Or Harris?”
He waved these ideas away. “Nah, I already figured we would be fighting on some kind of bucket of puke planet. I also wanted to tell you you’re right about Harris. He’s a big baby.”
“Okay then…” I said, leaning back and putting my boots on my desk. “What’s bothering you?”
“It’s the new adjunct, sir. I’m not sure she’s going to fit in.”
I blinked at him twice. Frowning, I lifted my tapper and glanced at it. I tried to make this look as if I’d just gotten a text message.
And I had, of course, gotten about a hundred of them this morning alone. Unlike most people, I didn’t feel the driving need to read them the second they came in. I liked to let them stack up for a few hours before giving them the eye. Pacing myself that way made my life feel less disrupted.
“Just a second,” I said, coming up with a covering lie. “Just got something in from Turov.”
Leeson smirked. “Is there a pic? I hear she—”
I waved him to silence in irritation. It was unfortunately well known that Galina and I slept together from time to time. Leeson, in particular, seemed fascinated by that fact.
Scrolling, I soon came to the reassignment orders. My eyes read the notice—and I swallowed hard. I gave up on all pretense that I had already known who they’d assigned to my unit without consulting me.
“Damn…” I said. “I was hoping we’d get someone we knew.”
“Fat chance. The brass hates promoting us. Why pay us more when they know we’ll work for less? Besides, the fresh face on the other side of the fence is always cuter. Eh, McGill?”
Another dig about me and Turov. I ignored him and eyed the new adjunct’s record.
“Adjunct Barton,” I read. “From Victrix, no less. She’s experienced, but she must have done something pretty bad to get herself reassigned to Varus.”
“Maybe she’s into screwing her commanders, eh?” Leeson suggested, leering at me.
I frowned at him. “That’s enough of that talk, Adjunct.”
“Sorry sir,” he said in a disingenuous tone. “At least she’s a better looker than Toro. Let’s hope she’s a better officer, too.”
“Hmm…” I said, tapping on her profile and digging deeper with every tap into her history files. “Looks like she used to be a centurion… Maybe she did get herself into some trouble.”
The woman’s face came up on my screen with the crossed swords of Victrix emblazoned over her head. They hadn’t even bothered to change her insignia yet. That meant she’d been fired out of Victrix on a rail.
Either that, or she was some kind of spy.
I studied the face. Sharp, large features. Eyes that were big and olive shaped. Her chin and nose seemed to come to a point. Her shoulders were broad, but not brutish. Overall, she was a fine specimen of womanhood, but with a meaner look than usual.
<
br /> “You thinking about going for it, McGill?” Leeson asked. “Already?”
“Dismissed, Adjunct,” I said. “When you meet her, be respectful.”
Leeson gave me a dirty laugh. “Oh, I’ve already met her. You’re gonna love this lady.”
He walked out and I frowned after him. It seemed to me that my unit lacked discipline and respect for rank.
It was a serious problem in the legions that grew over time. You got to know each other too well after living and dying together for decades. There was rank, there was protocol—but then there was reality.
To me, it seemed like everyone had gone to seed over the summer. Sitting in my office and thinking hard, I pondered different means by which I could kick some subordinate tail and gain team spirit at the same time.
Thinking about that caused the first smile of the day to break out on my face. It was a grim smile, but I enjoyed it no less for all of that.
Drills were coming. Cruel exercises that would straighten out my people.
“Centurion McGill, sir? Am I disturbing you?”
“Huh?” I said, craning my neck back to the door again.
There she was. The woman on my tapper display. In person, Barton didn’t seem quite as threatening as her headshot appeared on her profile.
She was as solidly built and fit-looking as anyone could hope to be, but there seemed to be a hint of trepidation in her expression. Maybe she wasn’t comfortable with Varus yet.
If so… well… that was just too damned bad. There’d never been much in the way of hand-holding here in Varus. You lived, you died, and you lived again. That was pretty much all of it.
“Adjunct Barton,” I said, standing and giving her a tight smile.
We gave each other a salute, and I followed up with a handshake. “Welcome to the third, the best outfit in Legion Varus.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, standing at attention.
Sizing her up, I immediately decided Barton was a sharp troop. I liked that right off. Unlike my other overfamiliar, nosy, complaint-and-joke-filled supporting officers, she’d yet to give me a single ration of shit. I thought to myself I could get used to that.
