by B. V. Larson
Tired, I arrived at my quarters ready for bed. It had been a very long day. To my surprise, my roommate wasn’t there. Instead, Centurion Graves stood in the middle of the room.
“Is there a problem, sir?” I asked, setting aside my bag.
Graves let his arm fall. He’d been watching his tapper. He stared at me coldly. “You tell me, Specialist.”
“Sir?”
“You’re late.”
“Just got aboard, sir. Last shuttle up from—”
“Bullshit, McGill,” he snapped.
I shut up. It had always been hard to bullshit Graves. I decided to quit while I was behind.
“I’ve been waiting here at the barracks for the last hour or two. Then I decided to hunt you down using your tapper to locate your position. Do you know what I found?”
“Uh…I was taking the grand tour, sir.”
“Yes, you were. I’ve spoken to some of the people who were on your itinerary. Do you know what they said?”
I was standing at attention by now having come to realize this wasn’t a social call. “I can guess, sir.”
“They told me you’ve been out drumming up votes to keep Legion Varus independent. Is that right, Specialist?”
“In a manner of speaking, sir.”
“Right… Do you know that the officers in the legion have all been specifically forbidden to sway the votes of troops in this matter?”
I glanced at him. “No sir. I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Well, it’s true. That’s why I’m here.”
“Sir?”
“I want you to carry on, soldier.”
“Oh. I see, sir. Will do.”
Graves snorted. “As if you would listen to me if I told you to stop.”
“The vote is pretty much over with anyway, sir,” I said. “It’s almost midnight, and they’ve cut our access to Central.”
This seemed to amuse Graves. “No, Specialist. You’re wrong about that. This is far from over. Now, if you’ll please excuse me. I need to get out of your presence before the crazy rubs off on me.”
He bid me goodnight and marched off down the passageway chuckling.
After my head landed on my bunk a few minutes later, I found it was hard to keep my eyes open. The vote was over, and I was pretty sure we’d won. If we hadn’t won, I figured I could at least take comfort in the fact that I’d done my damnedest.
I wondered what Graves had been hinting about, but I hardly cared as long as we’d beaten Turov.
* * *
The next morning after breakfast we were summoned for a briefing. Minotaur was still in orbit, I was glad to see. I’d been worried they’d leave Earth during the night. I wanted the chance to tell my folks I was shipping out—once we were in a warp bubble there’d be no transmissions possible.
My unit stood at attention in a square inside our designated module. Minotaur was a big enough ship to allow each unit to have its own module. They were all linked together of course, stacked up like suitcases inside what had to be a single massive hold. But to us tiny humans, the modules were comfortable homes. There was an exercise chamber, sleeping quarters, and a mess dedicated to each. We were in the exercise chamber right now waiting for the mass briefing to begin.
Centurion Graves marched in from a side door at precisely 0700. Martial music began to play—I recognized it as the Hegemony anthem. A few troopers hissed, and their veterans silenced them.
A face flickered into being on the forward wall of the chamber. The image had to be thirty feet high. The face belonged to none other than Imperator Turov.
“Damn,” Carlos said next to me. “That mole on her forehead must be a half-meter across.”
“You should text her about it,” I suggested.
Turov’s face was tight and grim. She waited a moment then addressed the assembly. I knew she couldn’t see us as she had to be looking into a camera pickup, but the effect of those gigantic eyes staring down on a man was chilling nonetheless.
“Fellow legionnaires,” she began, her voice rolling out over us with the booming power of an amplifier. “As many of you know, I’ve been transferred to Hegemony. I requested this opportunity to address my Varus cohort one final time.”
Carlos nudged me, his eyes shining with excitement. “We’ve finally lost the old witch!”
I slapped him away and stared at Turov in concern. She had a reason for all this—of that I was certain.
“Your new mission begins today,” the giant face told us. “You’ll ship out within hours, and you won’t be back for a year.”
A general chorus of groans went up from the assembly.
“Because last night’s vote was a failure,” Turov went on, “Legion Varus will not be joining Hegemony. As a direct result, Central Command feels Legion Varus should be deployed immediately to Tau Ceti. There you’ll serve as a color guard for the local aristocracy. The term of your contract will be, as I mentioned, one standard year.”
She said these words with emphasis, and I figured she knew they would cause every soldier who heard them pain. We normally didn’t deploy for more than six months at a time. A full year—that wasn’t going to be easy. Worse, Tau Ceti was known as a dull world. They were a merchant’s depot, a central clearing house for goods from twenty star systems. Most of the technology shipped to Earth these days filtered through Tau Ceti.
Although Earth legions often served there as bodyguards for rich merchant princes who wanted to show off to one another, service there wouldn’t be anything to write home about. Effectively, Legion Varus was being put on ice.
“Legion Varus will be relieving Legion Germanica,” she continued. “There will be a two week transferal period after which Germanica will be brought home aboard Minotaur.”
“Marooned on Tau Ceti for a year?” Carlos complained.
I didn’t glance at him. No one did. Carlos was always complaining about something—but this time I had to admit he had good reason.
“I wish you all well,” Turov concluded with a smug smile, “and I regret that I’ll be unable to accompany you on this mission. On a final note, I wanted to assure every trooper who privately texted me concerning certain irregularities in last night’s voting process that the matter will be investigated. Thoroughly. The wheels of legion justice grind slowly, but in the end, no wrong will go unpunished.”
Carlos slapped my belly. “She’s talking about you, dummy.”
I caught his hand and went for a finger-hold, but he managed to jerk it away before I could break something.
Veteran Harris turned his head, glaring. “You two knock it off. Is this junior high?”
“Sorry Vet,” Carlos said. “McGill can’t keep his hands to himself.”
Shaking his head, Harris turned back around with a sigh. I was surprised he hadn’t injured one or even both of us. Maybe he was too depressed to do so.
When Turov’s giant face finally melted away, Graves made a speech about duty and honor, but I wasn’t listening. The briefing broke up shortly thereafter.
All I could think of was the long, long year stretching out in front of me. We’d won the vote. Legion Varus was still independent. But it seemed like Turov had had the last laugh. She was sending us off to Tau Ceti for an entire year—a gulag assignment.
After the briefing, Harris was the first to “congratulate” me. He clapped a heavy hand on my back. His open palm landed so hard between my shoulder blades that the blow might easily have been mistaken for a slap.
“Well played, Specialist,” he boomed in my ear. “Now I’ll get to cool my heels twenty lights from home. I’ll be wearing parade uniforms and accompanying drooling Tau while they go shopping in hostile townships. Lucky me. I’m so glad you kept us free and clear of the evils of Hegemony.”
I looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t realize you wanted to become a hog so badly, Veteran. Maybe you should appeal your case. They might let you off on a shuttle if you move fast. After all, we’re still in orbit and—”
“Shut up, McGill,” he rumbled then quickly marched away toward the exit.
“Ha!” Carlos said, coming up to me and staring after Harris. “You smacked him harder than he smacked you. What do you think? Did Harris really vote to bug out and join Hegemony?”
I shook my head. “Hard to tell. If he wanted that, he could have bailed out after returning from any deployment over the years.”
“Maybe it’s a matter of pride,” Carlos said. “He can’t leave on his own because that would make him look like a coward to everyone in the legion. But if we all bailed out together, he could do it with dignity.”
I looked at Carlos and nodded. “No one will ever accuse you of being insightful, but you might just have something there.”
Carlos took my backhanded compliment well. He beamed and strutted. I guessed it was because, for him, praise was hard to come by.
-6-
The only person aboard Minotaur who didn’t seem depressed was Natasha. She was excited to have the chance to visit Tau Ceti which she referred to by its nickname: Tech World.
“It’s a techie dream,” she told me. “They have stuff there you just can’t get on Earth.”
“Isn’t it some sort of space station? A merchant clearinghouse in orbit?” I asked, making conversation.
“Yes, there is the orbital market. That’s all most people know about the world. But there’s much more to the system than that.”
We were in line at the cafeteria, and I plucked an orange from a fake tree and rubbed it on my uniform. It was an old habit, one I continued to indulge even though I knew there wasn’t a spec of dirt left on fruit aboard a legion ship.
“That’s an example right there,” she said, pointing to the tree I’d just relieved of its fruit. “These trees in the cafeterias are new tech marvels from Tau Ceti. Have you ever wondered how a spindly tree like that can grow fresh fruit every night?”
“This thing cost hard Galactic credits?” I asked, looking at the tree in surprise. “I figured the fruit was glued on there by the staff to make it more appealing. You’re saying it actually grows like this?”
“Every night,” Natasha said, plucking one of her own. “See the leaves? They’re real. This tree can grow anything we want. If we load it with a new DNA sequence it can grow new fruit fast.”
“Huh,” I said. “The food has been better on this trip.” I marveled briefly then carried my tray to a table and sat down. Natasha trailed behind and sat opposite me. She seemed to be almost in a trance as if her mind was working overtime.
“The possibilities…” she said. “There’s so much tech out there, James. It’s mind-boggling. We’ve lived on Earth all our lives while the vast galaxy has been just beyond our reach, wheeling around us, and creating new products we’ve never even heard of.”
She proceeded to talk about tech miracles she’d heard whispers about but which she’d never yet seen. The gusher of money that had reached Earth had doubled the number of consumer and government products from alien systems, but rather than satisfying her, a glimpse of the true economy of the Galactics had served to inflame her desire for more.
I went to work on lunch, shoveling and chewing. For me, eating is a pretty serious business. She’d barely touched her meal by the time I’d reached the half-way mark on my plate, and I have to admit I was eyeing her portion and wondering if she was going to need help with it.
“Tau Ceti isn’t like anywhere you’ve ever been,” she went on. “It’s more advanced than Earth in every way. The Tau have completely covered their planet with a single gigantic city. Even the oceans are crisscrossed with bridges and artificial islands. But that’s only the half of it. Most of their world is hidden from the sky. It’s an old world, and they never stopped increasing their population. They’ve been restricted from colonizing other systems like all frontier worlds, but they’ve become an impressive power anyway.”
“You going to eat that orange?” I asked, unable to keep my true thoughts to myself any longer.
She tossed it to me and showed me a wry twist of her mouth.
“I have to admit, this is fresh-tasting,” I said, peeling the fruit and popping pieces of the orange into my mouth in rapid succession.
By the time she was done talking about alien tech, I was leaning back and sighing. I’d eaten half her ration and all of mine. For me, that was the very definition of satisfaction. Eating with a girl often resulted in windfalls like that, one of the reasons I did it so often.
Natasha leaned forward and whispered to me. “You want to know what I’m going to do when we get to Gelt Station?” she asked.
I narrowed my eyes. “Something that you want to whisper about?”
She shrugged. “Nothing illegal—not exactly. I want to walk the markets and find something no one has ever seen on Earth. I’m going to buy it and take it home with me when our tour is done.”
“Why?”
She made an exasperated sound. “To show it off, of course. I can tell already you’re not going to be impressed.”
“Depends on what it is,” I said. “For instance, if you can score me a tree that pours out bourbon, or…I don’t know.”
“That’s it? Your imagination ends with a daily booze producer?”
“Well, you’d have to admit that would be pretty cool in my little house.”
“What else would you like to find?”
“Uh…” I looked at her and smiled in a predatory fashion. “How about a unique alien stimulation device? Something no one on Earth has experienced.”
She looked at me in disgust and crossed her arms. “That’s not what I meant, James.”
“Training in five,” I said, getting up.
All around us, soldiers were stirring and putting on their kits. Out in the passageway she turned to the left, and I had to go to the right. Techs and Weaponeers didn’t often train together.
I reached out and caught her hand. She turned and kissed me. We traded smiles and parted company.
“Still nailing that one, huh?” Carlos asked, falling into step beside me. “Losing your touch, aren’t you? I mean, shouldn’t you be chasing some fresh tail by now?”
“She’s a good friend.”
Carlos walked backwards for a half-dozen steps, making guttural sounds. “Yeah, I can understand the attraction better as she walks away. Tasty.”
I tripped him without even breaking my stride. It wasn’t hard since he was walking backward. He sprawled, then bounced back up.
“Asshole,” he muttered.
“Have you heard anything about our unit’s assignment?”
“Not really. We’re all breaking up, I know that much. We’re spreading all over Gelt Station playing soldier for any tax-cheat, payroll courier, or merchant princess who wants a color guard.”
“I have to admit it does sound a little dull. But I’m looking forward to a vacation from serious combat missions. Isn’t it about time we got a cush assignment?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Carlos admitted. “We can’t always play hero on some primitive dirtball of a planet, I guess. It just seems wrong for Legion Varus, you know what I mean?”
Looking down at him, I frowned and nodded. “You’ve got a point there. As I see it, there are two possible reasons for this assignment. Either Turov just wants to put us on ice out here so we can’t embarrass her further, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or there’s more going on out there than we’ve been told about. Maybe there’s a reason why they’re retiring Germanica from this world and putting in the goon squad instead.”
“Ha! The goon squad. Yeah, that’s about what we are, isn’t it?”
We reached the exercise room, took up live weapons and slouched against the wall. Above and ahead, we could see space. It was vivid but fake. I knew there was only a titanium wall
there, no stars, no swirling planets or nebulae.
When a warp ship was inside its bubble, sliding between the stars at amazing speeds, it was impossible to see light in a normal way. An actual window to the bubble field outside would only show a glowing white haze. But as it comforted the occupants, human ships tended to display portals and even large panoramic views of what the passing universe should look like—if it were physically possible to see it.
“What’s on the menu today?” Carlos asked me.
“Another squad of recruits,” I said, shouldering my belcher, a heavy plasma cannon.
“You don’t sound happy about it? You scared?”
I glanced at him and gave him a disgusted look. This kind of training had always delighted Carlos and disturbed me.
“My only fear is that you’ll shoot me in the ass somehow,” I said.
Carlos belly-laughed. “That’s more likely than getting hit by the noobs!”
The exercise room began to warp and dim. I knew that was our cue. Carlos and I jogged forward and selected a position behind a rock that had grown up out of the floor over the last thirty seconds. It was solid enough even though it was just a pack of smart metal with a pixelated texture projected over it.
Veteran Harris’ voice crackled into my ear as I adjusted my helmet and the built-in headset.
“All right, ambushers. The recruits are entering the passage to the west in one minute. No one is to fire until they are all in the room, armed, and on alert. Is that clear? No pasting them early this time.”
I heaved a sigh. The exercise room was about two hundred meters square, but it seemed bigger because of all the illusory scenery on the walls. Trees, rocks, even tall grasses that rippled in a non-existent wind now surrounded the fire team I was hiding with. Including Veteran Harris himself there were only six of us against thirty recruits, but this wasn’t going to be a fair fight.
The noobs came in, armed themselves with snap-rifles from a rack, and were told to patrol to the far side of the exercise area. The Adjunct leading the group was a thin female with big eyes and a small, mean mouth. She ordered them forward but didn’t step into the room herself.
