by B. V. Larson
Claver never landed his second blow with the wrench. Instead, he sprawled out on the deck beside me.
It took several long minutes of groaning before I could get to my feet. There was blood in my hair and more of it ran down my back. If a bio had been around to witness the situation, they might well have recommended I start over again with a fresh body—and the way I felt at that moment I might have agreed with them.
But in the end, I managed to get to my knees and then my feet. Swaying, I took the opportunity to look at Old Silver.
He was a mess. His eyes were bulging in shock, showing all the whites like boiled eggs with blue yolks. There was blood and fragments of bone everywhere.
“I hope you stay dead,” I told the corpse. Then I looked down at the planet below us.
The destruction I saw down there made me want to puke. I scanned the billowing clouds of dust, rubbing my head absently as I did so. It looked as if a meteor strike had landed—a big one.
Gathering my wits and my strength, I staggered out of there and headed for the modules. Claver had only ejected the three occupied units. Maybe there were more people aboard.
I could have contacted the Skrull—but what good would that do? They were hired hands here. They had no stake in this battle. If everyone in this system killed one another, they barely cared as long as we didn’t molest them. In fact, they couldn’t interfere or even disobey an order from a legitimate source without incurring the wrath of the Galactics.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a legitimate authority. I was an enlisted man. I was mere cargo as far as they were concerned. That meant I couldn’t control this ship, not even with the Galactic key. I could control individual subsystems, but I couldn’t fly the ship itself. The Skrull would only listen to an officer.
Limping around the modules, I found no one. I cursed and raved. Claver had been thorough, and his Germanica victims had been obedient. They’d all sealed themselves in their modules and been promptly ejected into space.
I took stock of what resources I had left. There wasn’t much. I could commandeer a pinnace and fly back to the station—but that didn’t look like a very good idea right now. The station might well be doomed and spiraling in a decaying orbit. At the very least, it was full of deadly rioters and even more deadly legionnaires, all of whom had to know by now I was to be killed on sight.
The broadsides were still under my command, I realized. But who was I going to blast next? I barely understood their operation much less how to precisely target them. Besides which, I had no intention of causing even more misery and pain today.
I turned my thoughts back to the modules. I took a quick look at the non-standard units. There was the tech module, a combination of laboratory and workshop. The armory was reasonably well-equipped with thousands of weapons I had no need of.
Then I came across a bio module. Here, as on every ship, it was called “blue deck”. I stepped inside and had a look around. Soon, I had a flesh-printer in my hands and was running the wand over the back of my head. Pain-relievers, fresh skin cells and a trickle of stimulants made me feel better almost immediately.
My eyes drifted to the locked sub-chamber. There was a revival unit in there, I thought. There had to be.
I shut off the flesh printer and walked to the door. It was locked, but a touch of the key solved that.
Inside the room, I regarded the dormant revival machine. I hated these things. To this day, I didn’t see how bio people could handle working with them all day, every day. They were slimy, disturbing—and they smelled pretty bad, too.
Due to an unusually colorful past in Legion Varus, I was able to operate this strange piece of equipment. I needed more people. I couldn’t run this ship alone. Accordingly, I tapped the priority list and stabbed the go-button. The machine would decide who I needed first, and I trusted its judgment. Whoever was on the top of that list was the best person I had available to me.
The revival machine gurgled and sloshed inside. The thought that it was working to grow a new human being was freaky, but I was beyond feeling such emotions.
My mind drifted to the Tau below. Sure, they were an overpopulated, irritating species, but I didn’t think they deserved to be slaughtered wholesale for all that.
Before the revival machine finally signaled it was finished, I’d found the stimulant cabinet and partaken of the ampules inside. I had a faint smile on my face and my aching head was a distant worry.
The revival unit’s maw fell open with a wet sound. I sighed and got out the spatula-like tool.
Feet. Bare feet. It was giving birth to a woman by the look of it. She was small and shapely. I got the tongue of the shovel-like tool under her butt and pulled, but she didn’t come out right away. I had to tug at her feet, grunting with effort.
She finally flew out with a popping sound and a gush of thick fluids. Wrinkling my nose, I struggled to get her onto a gurney without accidentally injuring her.
I assumed she was an officer, possibly a Germanic bio. When she was functional, she’d have a lot of questions for me. I didn’t want to even contemplate what answers I was going to provide her.
The woman was attractive and seemed way too young to be an officer. I had her on the table, and she tried to speak, but couldn’t. I checked the readings, squinting at them.
“Atrial fibrillation?” I read aloud. No one answered. No one was there to tell me what to do. “A bad grow right off? Crap.”
I considered grabbing her and shoving her into the recycling slot. She was barely conscious, and she wouldn’t remember this short lifetime. But I couldn’t do it for some reason. There was something familiar about this woman. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was there.
Unlimbering the defib equipment, I shocked her repeatedly. After the fourth try, she came awake, puking and gasping. I checked the reading.
“All clear,” I said, smiling. I’d done it despite the fact my body was operating on stims and sporting a serious head-injury. I felt mildly proud.
The woman rolled away from me then, curling up in a ball on the gurney. Then I knew the truth.
She had a distinctive set of hips. Her shapely posterior that was more than a little familiar. I’d stared at her for years. Of course, I’d never seen her without clothing, but a man like me knows a shape that stands out.
“Turov?” I asked.
She coughed and weakly struggled to sit up.
“McGill?” she asked. “I’m going to kill you. Over and over again.”
“Yes sir,” I said. “You probably are. Did you know your hair is a different color?”
“I dye it, you idiot.”
“Oh, right. But you’re also a lot younger than the last time I saw you. Haven’t you backed up your body over the last couple of—decades?”
She glared at me with red eyes. “I haven’t died for a long time in the service of the legions.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, but you look like you just joined up.”
“Are you high or something?” she asked.
I thought about the pain meds. I’d partaken liberally. I smiled a small smile. “A little, yeah.”
She produced a sound of disgust. “Give me some damned clothes.”
Smart-cloth soon covered her body. Like a wrapper closing and cinching, flaps slid over her breasts and thighs. I was sorry to see them go.
“It’s going to be hard on you as an Imperator,” I pointed out. “You look like a kid. In fact, you’ve got to be younger than I am now.”
Glaring, she twisted up her lips. “Why the hell did you revive me?”
My mouth opened, and I almost told her I’d hit the priority-revive button. But some part of my brain was still operating. I knew you never told a girl that chance had brought you together. She had to be special.
“I needed help,” I said. “I couldn’t think of any one better than you for the job.”
She narrowed her eyes at me disbelievingly then they slid down to the snap-rifle I still had on a strap over
my back. There was blood on my hands and my face and—everywhere. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip.
“You’re sure this isn’t some kind of odd fantasy of yours?” she asked. “Did you revive me for a chance to make me suffer? I hadn’t thought you were that kind of a man.”
She sounded confident enough, but there was a new note of worry in her voice. She’d finally picked up on the fact that there was no one around except me and her.
It was true, I realized as I thought about it. I could murder her right now. After stuffing her body into the recycling chute, no one would be the wiser.
“I’m not a fiend,” I said. “I needed a ranking officer to help me handle this emergency. I immediately thought of you.”
“What emergency?”
“Uh…what’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was in the lobby outside my office—and that rodent Claver shot me.”
“Right, well…a lot has happened since then. Can you walk?”
“Certainly,” she said, batting away my helping hand.
She got down off the gurney and almost did a facer right there. I was ready for it, and managed to grab onto her before she hit the floor.
“Get off!” she shouted.
I ignored her complaints and stood her up like a doll. I supported her elbow as she took her first steps despite her protests. Soon, she had the hang of walking again.
“I can tell it’s been a while since you went through a revive,” I said.
“This isn’t going to get you out of execution if that’s your plan,” she told me. “Anyone could have revived me.”
“Well…maybe not,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Give me a headset, now!”
“Just give me a few minutes to show you the situation.”
Turov eyed me. “So…I am your prisoner? You won’t get any pleasure out of this, McGill. I assure you of that.”
The revival machine began to churn and slosh, creating fresh life. I could only guess who it had chosen to be second off the line. That process would take a few minutes, so I thought now was as good a time as any to reeducate the Imperator.
I could tell she wasn’t going to believe anything I said, so I figured the only thing I could do was show her the situation. I took her to the fire control room. As we walked down the echoing, empty passages, I wondered why the machine had chosen to revive Imperator Turov. I guessed that it had decided such a high-ranking individual deserved special treatment. Probably, back on the station the bio people had been too busy churning out combat troops and throwing them at the front lines to bother with wasting time on the brass. They hadn’t had time to pamper the officers. They’d needed fighting troops to stop the enemy advance.
By the time I managed to get Turov to the fire control center, she’d figured out she was on Minotaur and that there was something massively wrong with that.
“Why is this place empty?” Turov demanded. “You can’t have killed everybody.”
I didn’t bother to answer her question.
“Where’s the staff?” she demanded. “Where are the Germanica Legionnaires? What have you done, you crazy fuck-up?”
I gestured toward Claver’s body, which was still sprawled on the floor and staring. Right then, I decided to take a few liberties with the truth.
“Sir, this situation is admittedly hard to explain, but I’ve been chasing your murderer for about a day now. I caught up with him here and found him raving about stopping the attack on the station.”
Explaining quickly, I told her about Claver’s claims that the hologram projection equipment the Tau civvies wore had been tampered with—and that he’d done it himself. Then I explained Claver’s belief that it was the root of all the riots, and the production of such systems had to be stopped.
By the time I got this far, she’d wandered to the viewports and gazed outside. Horror materialized on her pretty face.
“You’ve destroyed the planet!”
“Not at all, sir,” I said. “First of all, Claver did it. Secondly, only one small section of the planet has been damaged. He only got off one shot with the broadsides before I killed him.”
Turov looked at me, then Claver. “He struck you?”
“Yes. I’ve got new skin itching and growing right over the hair on my scalp.”
“Incredible,” she said. “This is an unbelievable diplomatic breach. I thank you for stopping him, and I now understand why you revived me.”
“You do?”
“Yes, of course, McGill. I may look like I’m nineteen, but I’m not naïve.”
Nineteen? I thought in shock. Could she really be that young? Looking at her, I knew that she could. Thirty-nine in the mind and nineteen in the flesh. That was going to be confusing for everyone.
“You’re hoping to curry favor with me,” she continued. “You killed my killer and apparently stopped this same madman from destroying an entire world. I’m now in the strange position of being in your debt. Perhaps millions of Tau are as well. But I’m not sure about one thing.”
“Uh…” I said, not certain which of her leaps of logic she might be questioning.
“Why won’t you let me communicate with the station?”
“Oh…that,” I said. Then I showed her the station, which had drifted almost out of view and explained that the broadsides had disconnected the umbilical.
Her eyes widened to an improbable size.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. She looked at me, and her shock was infectious. “He’s killed them all! That must be why I wasn’t revived on the station. They might all be dead already if there is a hull breach. Think of it, Germanica and Varus wiped out together—all at once. Earth has never lost two of her legions in a single campaign, James. Not since Roman times.”
“The Battle of Teutoburg Forest,” I said thoughtfully.
“Yes. I’m surprised you know of it. I’m glad Varus still teaches her lore to enlisted men.”
“Let’s call the station and learn the truth,” I suggested. I gave her a headset, and she pulled it over her head.
She hesitated before opening the channel. She looked at me for a moment, and I could see in her eyes that she felt lost. I knew that she didn’t want to verify that we might well be the last living human beings in this star system—or that we soon would be.
Her face was so full of youth and relative innocence that I found myself feeling differently toward her. I knew it was just my mind responding to what it was seeing rather than what I knew her to be. But I couldn’t help it.
Standing before me, Imperator Turov was a fine-looking, frightened young lady. I wanted to hold her in my arms and comfort her.
I told myself I must be completely nuts, but that’s how I felt.
-30-
Could it be that a younger version of a person was really a different person? More like a relative to the original rather than a direct copy?
That was what I was wondering about as I watched Imperator Turov attempting to communicate with our legions on the station that drifted nearby. There was no response, and her eyes began to redden. What was that expression? I’d never seen it on Turov’s face before. Was she actually going to break down and cry?
Partly, her emotional state had to be related to her recent revival. It had been a very long time for her, and that must be affecting her thinking. I’d been there many times myself. Nothing makes a man reconsider his place in the universe more than dying and being reconstructed from slime.
It was more than that in Turov’s case. Her new body was too young for her to be the same person she’d been before she died. People underwent vast changes as they aged. Those changes weren’t all due to the slow rerouting of our neural pathways—what we called memories and experiences. Our brains aged just like the rest of our bodies did. Our hair turned gray and our organs wore out. Our sleep-patterns changed—and the way our minds worked changed as well.
Younger people had more musculature. They were much b
etter at healing and scored very differently on IQ tests. Their brains worked faster but were also more chaotic, impulsive and emotional.
I could see these realities playing out on Turov’s face. She wasn’t the same bitter woman she’d been the last time I’d seen her. She was battling with youth, uncertainty, and surging hormones.
For me, whenever I died I lost less than a year of time, so I was pretty much the same guy I’d been for years. I’d gotten a little wiser maybe, but not much. Perhaps that was why people kept telling me to “grow up”, but I never seemed to do so.
Imperator Turov had frozen herself in time. Today she’d returned as she had been in her youth. Everyone thought they wanted to be young again, but it wasn’t going to be easy for her, I could tell already.
Struggling to drop these thoughts and worry about our current situation, I waited for her to give up attempting to communicate with Legion Varus, then Germanica.
She put the headset aside and stared at it. “I think they’re all dead,” she said.
“What? The station has lost some atmosphere, but it can’t be that bad yet.”
She shook her head. “The rioters—they were attacking hard before I was killed. They might have overwhelmed the legion. They outnumber us thousands to one.”
I stared out into space, shocked. How could they all be dead? The battle must have been going worse than I’d believed. I felt bad about having run out of there chasing Claver.
“Some of the civilian Tau are still alive at least,” she continued. “I heard some traffic but nothing intelligible on our command channels. Possibly we’ve lost our communications stations, and there are still knots of troops fighting aboard the station.”
We both gazed out the viewport.
“What are we going to do, sir?” I asked her.
“I’ll contact the Skrull. We’ll get Minotaur moving and circle the station to assess the situation. Stay on the open channels.”
“Good idea, sir,” I said. “But I request permission to return to the revival unit. It’s processing another birth and I need to be on hand to keep the person alive.”
“Oh—of course. Do that immediately. You’re sure you’re qualified?”
