by B. V. Larson
My rank. That’s what changed my mind in the end. I was an adjunct now, an officer. Fooling around killing good men wasn’t my job anymore—if it ever had been. This veteran was a hog, sure, but he was only trying to do his job. I could tell by the look on his face I was someone he respected.
What was it Primus Rossi had asked me to do? Only kill the ones that needed killing?
My hand slid away from my pistol.
“What’s the problem, Veteran?” I asked. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Floor three-fifteen,” Weber repeated, stepping right past me and aiming his rifle at the door that led to the stairwell. His partner moved to cover the elevator lobby. “They say the floor is packed with squids, sir. I don’t know if I believe it, but I have to take a report like that seriously when it comes from my duty-commander.”
“Squids?” I asked, my mind whirling. In my head, I could hear Claver’s words before he’d disappeared.
They’re coming a lot sooner than you think.
I turned toward the elevator, which had just dinged. I drew my weapon smoothly and joined the other two men. We stared at those elevator doors, waiting for them to slide open.
They seemed to be taking a damnably long time to do so.
-4-
When the elevator doors did finally open, I almost blasted the single occupant inside, but I controlled myself as did the two hogs.
It was Primus Rossi. She was clearly in a bad state. The elevator wall behind her was smeared in blood. Her uniform had two black holes in it. Laser-fire, if I had to guess. They’d burned her right through.
Somehow, she was still alive. One white-knuckled hand gripped the railing inside the elevator, and the other was clutching at the holes in her uniform.
She looked up at me, her eyes big and glassy.
“McGill?” she gasped.
“Careful!” I barked at the hogs as they moved to rush to her aid. “Could be a trap. Are you booby-trapped, Primus?”
“What? No… a squid fired on me. I got to the elevator and managed to shut the doors before it could put me down.”
She paused to have a coughing fit. I moved into the elevator. Veteran Weber joined me, and we helped her out and laid her gently on the floor. Emergency people had begun to gather, and they went to work on her as soon as they saw her.
I could have told them it was a waste of time. If there’s anything I know the look of, it’s death. The primus was a goner.
She beckoned me, and I knelt beside her. Her breathing was becoming irregular.
“McGill,” she said. “My tapper stopped working up there. They did something—we couldn’t get word out. The squid I saw came out of Nagata’s office—I don’t understand how it got in there.”
“Nagata’s office? Any sign of Nagata?”
She shook her head slightly. “We have to assume they got him.”
“Okay, thanks for the report. I’ll lead these men up there and we’ll deal with them. You can rest now.”
Her white hand shot up and gripped my sleeve.
“No,” she said. “There’s something else—the data core. I think they damaged it.”
Frowning, I looked back down at her. “Why would they do that? Do you think that’s why they came?”
Rossi’s eyes were closed now. That small pony tail of hers was in full view. It seemed strange to think she’d carefully washed, combed and tucked it up under her hat only this morning.
She shook her head and mumbled something. Then her hand relaxed, letting go of my sleeve. I looked at the medic. He shook his head.
I knew what that meant. She was gone. Blood loss, organ-failure. It didn’t really matter. The squids had claimed another victim.
Standing up, I found the two hogs I’d teamed with were looking around uncertainly.
“What are your orders, boys?” I asked.
“Last we heard we were to hold this post. But our tappers don’t work now. The net is silent.”
Poking at my own arm, I soon confirmed what he was telling me. I walked to the nearest office door and kicked it in. Veteran Weber stopped in the doorway as I walked inside.
Weber watched me in concern. “This is a private office, Adjunct.”
“No shit? Well, I need it, and these are extreme circumstances. Central can take the damages out of my next paycheck.”
The office was empty, but the desk computer was on. I ran my fingers over it, waking it up. Working on the computer, I was soon frustrated. It wouldn’t take my log in.
“You try,” I told the veteran.
He did, but with no better luck than I had.
“Primus Rossi said the net was down,” I said. “That’s why we’re not getting any orders. Our command and control is paralyzed, right here at Central.”
“Do you think this might be part of a bigger attack?” the veteran asked.
“Could be. Only thing I know for sure is those squids must be repelled.”
“Standard operating procedure is to lockdown the building then wait for reinforcements.”
“You mean in case of terrorist attack?”
“Yes sir.”
I laughed. “We’re way past that now. There could be a slaughter going on upstairs, and we’re the only ones with guns in this building. You, me, and a few hundred guards.”
Veteran Weber looked nervous, but he nodded.
“All right,” I said, “I’m going up there. You can stand your post, or you can back me up. Your choice, Weber.”
With that, I moved to the elevators. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t work. The building still had power, but without an operating network, much of it was malfunctioning.
Not bothering to pause and think about it, I walked to the stairwell and pushed open the doors. There were stairs in there all right. A vast, echoing tower full of them. The stairway itself formed a boxy coil up around an endless central shaft. Natural light blazed through slotted windows on every floor like a dashed line that blurred up out of sight. It had to be a hundred flights up to three-fifteen.
I took the first flight two steps at a time. Then the second flew by.
Hearing footsteps below me, I paused and turned around with my weapon in my hand, peering over the rail.
Veteran Weber and his sidekick were running up behind me.
“You changed your minds?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to guard. Most of the building has been evacced now, and the elevators aren’t working anyway.”
Smiling and giving them a quick nod, I headed up another flight. They were right behind me, huffing.
Somewhere around floor two-thirty, Veteran Weber reached out a hand to pluck at my shoulder. He could hardly breathe.
“Next floor…” he said, “…emergency equipment locker.”
“You need an oxygen bottle?” I asked, only half-joking.
These hogs were never in as good of shape as real space-going legionnaires. They rarely saw combat and even those that carried weapons were relatively soft after decades of pointless guard-duty.
He shook his head, gulping down air.
“Lift-disks,” he said. “They’ve got a few in the lockers for evacuating casualties.”
“Got it,” I said, nodding.
We found the locker and the lift-disks. They were shaped more or less like stretchers. Making our way back to the stairwell landing, we could only lay one out at a time.
“Me first,” I said, sprawling on one like a surfboard.
I activated it and began drifting upward. Cranking it up a notch, I got off the ground far enough to ease it over the stairway rails into the vertical shaft. I had to really goose the power to go up instead of down, but it worked.
The lift-disks were a lot like my floater back home. I’d spent many summers gliding weightlessly over the Satilla River, and I felt comfortable guiding the disk up the stairwell.
Looking down, I could tell Veteran Weber and his partner weren’t so happy. My years serving the legion off-world had given me a lot of experie
nce with my feet off the ground. These boys looked terrified.
“You’ll be fine,” I called to them, smiling. “Just don’t look down. These things could probably take us all the way to the roof before they run out of power—as long as they have a full charge, that is.”
Nodding weakly, they clung to their lift-disks with white-knuckled hands and floated after me.
We reached floor three-fifteen about two minutes later. The lift-disks had saved us a lot of time and given us time to catch our breath.
Guns drawn, we circled the door. Veteran Weber’s sidekick, a Specialist I’d come to learn was named Jacobs, reached for the handle.
Some kind of instinct kicked in for me. I’m not sure if I heard a click, or my naturally suspicious mind triggered on something else—like the tiny trail of slippery slime on the puff-crete floor.
Reaching out my hand, I pulled Veteran Weber backward toward me. He looked at me in confusion.
Then the bomb went off. Specialist Jacobs flew backward, smashing into Veteran Weber’s back. The two of them almost went over the railing.
I still had hold of Weber. Even though the blast had my ears ringing, it hadn’t been a big enough one to kill us all. I guess it had been something small and easy to hide.
Despite its relative lack of punch, the tiny charge managed to fire the door handle off and embed it into Jacobs’ face.
I saw his blank, disbelieving eyes for a moment as he went over the edge, a piece of metal lodged where his nose used to be.
He fell then, silently, all the way down to the ground floor.
I hauled Veteran Weber back up onto the landing. The door hung open crookedly.
“You still have your weapon?” I asked Weber.
He showed it to me numbly.
“Good,” I said. “Keep it ready. These squids are probably commandos. Few in number, but tricky and mean.”
White-faced, he let me go first as we stepped into the open passageways of floor three-fifteen.
The first thing I noticed was the darkness. There were no artificial lights operating on the floor that I could see. Not even the emergency glow-runners embedded in the flooring were on. They should be displaying colored arrows to lead people out—but they were all dead.
Here and there along the passageway, which stretched for a hundred meters or more in both directions, were office doors that hung open. Some of these doorways emitted daylight, which allowed us to see a few things.
The passage was smoky, with drifting blue wisps. The acrid smell in the air reminded me of burning insulation—and burnt meat. The squids had obviously been busy, going from office to office, slaughtering anyone they found inside.
Taking a left, we headed toward Nagata’s office. We reached it without making contact with the enemy.
Nagata was still dead, still slumped over his computer. That was the only thing about the room that I recognized.
The place had been torn apart. Every book was down from its shelf. Every knick-knack, office equipment item and piece of furniture had been broken, pulled apart and cast down on the floor.
“They were looking for something,” Weber said.
“Yeah… just like Claver was,” I said.
“Claver?”
“Never mind. Let’s keep moving.”
We exited Nagata’s office and ran smack into a squid.
He’d been waiting there, outside the office. I couldn’t explain it any other way.
“Halt!” he said, using a translator app. “Tell me why you’re in this office?”
This sort of talk was very like squids. They liked to command people to do things. They’d never been diplomatic about anything to my knowledge. I’d fought them on three different campaigns, and they’d always pissed me off with their poor attitudes.
“Who are you to tell us what to do, squid?” I demanded. “This is our building, our world. We’ll give you the orders here.”
The squid made a funny, burbling noise.
“You are amusing. I’ve been tracking you since you entered my security zone. My greatest worry was that my trap would kill you all before I could gather intelligence.”
Veteran Weber grew a set about then, and he aimed his rifle at the squid threateningly.
“We’ve got the drop on you,” he said. “Surrender or die!”
“Such bravado,” replied the squid. “I like this one. If I wasn’t on a time schedule, I’d take it as a slave-pet.”
That was enough for Veteran Weber. He shot the squid right between the eyes—only, his gun didn’t go off.
“Ah!” said the squid, burbling again. “What is the problem? Could it be your Imperial weapons don’t work in my presence? What a pity.”
I caught on immediately. They’d hacked our weapons. Imperial technology often had fail-safes built into them. That was supposed to keep us from turning our guns on Galactics. They also had recognition circuits that allowed someone holding something called a “galactic key” to operate them without authorization.
Without much hope, I fired my pistol at the squid. It didn’t even click.
“Excellent,” the squid said. “Now, if your low-functioning cognitives are capable of comprehending the situation, you know you’re my prisoners. You must therefore answer my questions, or I’ll apply punishment.”
“Low-functioning what?” Veteran Weber asked me.
“I think he called us dummies,” I said.
Weber drew his combat knife and assumed a fighting stance. I could have told him that was a loser. Squids stood nearly three meters tall when they arched up, and they had limbs with musculature we couldn’t hope to combat without technological help.
I touched his shoulder, indicating he should stand down. The squid had braced itself for the attack and now looked disappointed.
“You control this animal?” he asked me. “Yes, I now clearly see who the master is. Set your hound after me, little master! I wish to punish it.”
“Maybe another time, squid,” I said. “Listen, we’ll cooperate. We’ll answer any question you want, if you’ll just tell us a few things first.”
“Your terms are unacceptable. Full submission is required.”
“You’ll get that, trust me. All I want to know is why you’re here. It all seems pointless. We’ll revive our dead. We’ll rebuild the damage to the building. Such a waste, attacking us like this and achieving nothing.”
“We’ve achieved a great deal. Your low-quotients simply prevent you from comprehending what has already come to pass.”
I shook my head slowly and laughed at him.
“No, I don’t think so. I think you’re covering up a sick failure. An embarrassment. You realize you’ve shown us a new technology, an ability to infiltrate the heart of our military headquarters. All that for nothing.”
The squid puffed up like a snake. He was angry and prideful. The easiest way to get a snake to strike was to poke it with a stick, and it was working on this guy.
“I shall abuse you for this wanton display of impudence,” the squid told me. “Your dead will not be re-printed. Our strike at your commanders has been a permanent and fatal one.”
That gave me pause. The squid was claiming he’d permed these people? But how?
“I don’t buy it,” I said loudly. “You’re just bullshitting now, and I know all about that. Strategically, Earth will be far ahead after this screw-up.”
“What is your designation, human?”
“Who me? I’m Adjunct James McGill. From Legion Varus.”
That appeared to surprise the squid. “McGill? You are the McGill-creature?”
“I just said so. Is your brain malfunctioning? Should I repeat everything I say twice to make sure you get it, dummy?”
Anger came back, replacing his surprise. He took a shuffling step forward, his limbs rasping in his suit.
It was only then that I recognized the outfit he was wearing. It was exactly like the one Claver had been wearing when I saw him in Nagata’s office. It
was a lot bigger, indicating the garment had smart technology and could resize itself into different configurations, but that raspy material was definitely the same stuff.
So that’s what all those extra leg-holes in Claver’s pants had been for. He’d been wearing an outfit made for a squid.
Slowly, the gears in my head rotated and clicked. The squids must have technology just like Claver’s. Maybe he’d even stolen it from them.
They had the power to teleport—or whatever you might want to call it when you rapidly moved your body across vast distances. The technology was startling, and it seemed very useful.
“Standard abuse will be an insufficient punishment,” the squid told me. “Your extremities must be removed methodically at the very beginning, but life will not be allowed to leave your husk.”
Veteran Weber charged in at that moment. He’d been side-stepping while the squid and I squared-off.
Weber managed to get in one slash which gouged a tentacle. That was impressive—but it was as far as he got. The squid lashed out with a single arm and swept him off his feet. Weber was tossed ass-over-tea-kettle into the hallway beyond.
The distraction had given me just enough time to get in close. I didn’t draw my knife, however. I had a different plan.
“Careful!” the squid said, wrapping me in its writhing tentacles. “Don’t injure yourself! I must witness a slow, agonizing finish for you.”
The squid was grappling my limbs. Very quickly, both my legs and my right arm were pinned.
But my left arm remained free to act.
I didn’t draw my knife. I didn’t gouge at one of those wet, rolling eyeballs despite the fact I wanted to.
Instead, I reached up to the big star-shaped dial on the squid’s suit. I gave it a hard twist, just as I’d seen Claver do.
This didn’t make the squid happy. He hurled me away from him.
I slammed into a wall, and the world became a splash of color for an instant. It seemed like I could see the blood flowing inside my own eyes.
The squid was staggering around, burping and farting in his own language. He was struggling with that knob on his suit. Apparently, he didn’t like the new setting I’d selected for him.
There was a blur in the air, a ripple in space. Just as Claver had done before him, the squid winked out in the middle of it.
