by B. V. Larson
Claver? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Somehow, that worm was acting as a go-between again.
Stopping my efforts and breathing hard, I looked down the hallway. Beyond the crumbling termination point of the corridor, the city was laid out. I could see pretty far from up here. All the way to the horizon it was fire, smoke and destruction. We’d been well and truly beaten.
Looking down in a moment of malaise, I saw what I needed—an outlet. It was part of the building’s auto-cleaning system. Stooping, I levered open the cover and plugged in my suit.
Sitting down and waiting for it to charge up, I contacted Graves one last time.
“When is this diplomatic mission leaving?” I asked him.
“Maybe ten minutes,” he said. “We’ve got twelve people here, all in teleport suits. Turov is among them. Natasha is here now, and she’s reprogramming their presets. Are you going to lead this historic effort to save our world or not?”
“I’m afraid I’m not going to make it down in time,” I told him. “My apologies.”
“McGill…? Don’t screw with me! McGill…?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d already made my decision.
The next star-fall salvo was arcing beautifully down from the heavens outside. Instead of waiting for it to land, I teleported out.
-61-
When I appeared on Throne World, they seemed to be ready for me. A delegation of squid queens and their armed consorts approached from every angle.
“You are the Claver?” asked the nearest of the males. He was an overlord. I could see that from his insignia.
“No,” I said.
“Why are you here? Do you serve the Claver? Are you bearing Earth’s surrender?”
“I don’t serve the Claver,” I said, “but I’ve got a message from Earth for all of you squids.”
“Excellent. Give us the message.”
“Come a little closer. Don’t be shy now, gather around.”
They shuffled their tentacles uneasily.
“You are not behaving with appropriate decorum,” the overlord complained. “Fall to your knees, slaveling.”
“Are you guys recording this?” I asked.
“Our entire planet is watching. This moment is one we’ve long awaited.”
“Good,” I said, then I fell to my knees and placed an oblong metal ovoid object on the sand. I gave it a pat and reached up to my teleport dial.
“What is this?” the overlord asked.
“It’s a gift. An answer. A treaty of sorts.”
“We need no treaties. We demand supplication, nothing more.”
“That’s just fine. You squids can demand away. Talk to this device. It will transmit your thoughts and speech back to Earth.”
“How is that possible? Do you have FTL deep-link technology? I thought that was reserved for Galactics.”
“You thought wrong, squid.”
“I don’t care for your tone, slaveling,” the Overlord told me sternly. “Punishment will be long and difficult for you when this process is finished.”
“That I believe,” I said, and I touched the second preset on my teleport suit’s dial.
The squids weren’t happy about that. They flapped their appendages and no doubt cussed me out, but I couldn’t hear them.
The suit had just enough juice left in it for a very short hop. I made it to an open area outside their capital city. Natasha had found the coordinates in the squid data core on Green World.
This place was up high among some rocky peaks. For obvious reasons it was uninhabited by squids. They didn’t like rocky heights much.
Looking to the west—or what would be called west on Earth—I saw their city laid out at my feet. It was huge. I was pretty sure no human city had ever been that large.
How many squids lived there? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe a billion?
The explosion came two minutes after I’d ported out. It was a grand sight. The heavens lit up, and even through my suit I was given a lethal dose of radiation.
It wasn’t enough to kill me instantly, but it was enough to mean I was nothing more than a dead man walking.
An anti-matter explosion is something to behold. If you ever get the chance to see one up close, I recommend it. Mind you, nuclear bombs, both fission and fusion types, are impressive—but they just don’t compare. Don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about gigatons that leaves a man breathless and filled with a unique sense of awe.
The light should have blinded me, but our faceplate technology was pretty good. It blocked enough of the initial glare to keep it from burning my eyes out of my skull right off.
The shockwave rushed outward in every direction. You could see it consuming their city, building by building.
At that point I figured I’d bought the farm, but the end didn’t come quite yet. Something stopped the shockwave from getting out of the city and reaching me. It took me a second to see the outline of a mighty dome over the city itself.
That impressed me. These squids really were ready for war. They’d decided to put a force-dome over their entire capital. What a fine feat of engineering that must have been.
The mushroom cloud puffed up next, pushing higher and higher. Suddenly, it stopped rising into the atmosphere and spread out instead. That had to be the dome. The explosion inside the dome reverberated and crisscrossed back and forth on itself. Damn, I’d seen some destruction before in my time, but this beat all that to Hell-and-back six times!
There was a grin on my face. I lifted my hands and slammed my gauntlets together, clapping.
The chaos lasted for a few more seconds before the dome gave out. Then the released energies and gasses, along with a billion tons of molten matter, flew in every direction.
One chunk of something jagged arced up and came down right at me. I had a chance to see it clearly for a split-second before I was struck as dead as a mackerel on a trawler’s deck.
* * *
When I came back to life, I was utterly incredulous. I’d always figured from the minute I went out to Throne World that I was perming myself. I’d kind of figured I might have permed Earth in the bargain, too.
“Where am I?” I asked the bio.
“You’re home, McGill,” Graves said.
Another surprise—Graves, here at my bedside?
“You guys going to torture me to death a dozen times for disobeying orders?”
Graves chuckled. “We should. Honestly, we really should. But that’s not my call. What do you say, Imperator Drusus?”
“Adjunct James McGill,” Drusus said slowly. His tone was that of a man who’s carried a heavy burden for a long time. “We should have rejected you the first day you reported to the Mustering Hall over ten years ago. Your psych eval said it all back then.
That made me laugh, which promptly turned into a coughing fit. The lungs always seemed to grow back with too much phlegm in them.
“I get that, sir,” I said. “Couldn’t have blamed you for it then—or now.”
Rolling into a sitting position, I looked around the room. The first thing I noticed was the lack of bombardment.
“The star-falls are quiet,” I said. “Are we still in Central?”
“Yes. We’re still there. The war is on hold.”
“Uh… could someone fill me in on what happened, sirs?”
“This isn’t the time to play dumb, McGill,” Graves said. “We know what you did. We know you took a jump-suit and set off a bomb on Throne World. The squids captured all that on video. They also monitored all your suit’s transmissions and transmitted your mental engrams back to us. We were able to revive you from that data.”
“Ah…” I said. “That’s why I can remember what happened.”
“Right,” Drusus said, “but we’re still sketchy on what you thought you were doing—besides getting Earth permed.”
“It’s mighty fine of you to revive me to ask,” I said. “It goes like this, sirs. I’ve been doing s
ome hard thinking. I finally decided I wanted to hurt the squids, to hurt them real bad, before bowing out of my existence.”
“That’s pretty much what we figured—but your plans went no further than that?”
I looked from one of them to the next. Something was up. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I thought I should play along. A schemer like myself never passes up opportunities to make a play.
“It was a hard choice,” I lied, “to be sure. Most men, it’s my contention, wouldn’t have risked the annihilation of the species on an uncertain plan. But even though I wasn’t sure how things would turn out, I figured it was better to die the way we humans were meant to: on our two feet with a knife sticking out of our opponent’s belly.”
They looked at one another, frowning. My answer clearly wasn’t what they were looking for. Accordingly, I cleared my throat and went on in a stronger voice.
“But that wasn’t all of it. I thought the squids would only stop hitting us after their greatest city, and a load of their queens, were wiped out.”
Suddenly, they looked at me with hungry eyes.
“Is that right?” Drusus asked. “Why?”
“Well, that’s obvious. You’ve just about told me yourselves. The squids have sued for peace, haven’t they?”
“This was your plan? No one else was directly involved. Correct?”
“Sure was.”
They both looked relieved. They smiled and Drusus clapped his hands together once, loudly.
“That’s it,” he said. “We’ve got a full confession. The squids will have to accept it. Stop the broadcast.”
I frowned at each of them in turn. “I don’t get it. Didn’t the squids surrender?”
“No, they didn’t,” Graves told me, “your actions made things much more difficult. In order to surrender and save our planet, we must comply with a new list of their demands. They want three things: All our antimatter bombs, all our teleport suits—and the man who single-handedly killed countless numbers of their civilians.”
“You’re talking about me, right?”
“That’s right,” Graves said. “They’ve demanded we give them a scapegoat, and you’ve just confessed your sins, James McGill. It’s time to prepare yourself for some unholy torment.”
“Seems like you made quite an impression on them, Adjunct,” Drusus commented.
“Yeah… I tend to do that.”
-62-
I’ve been shackled in irons before, but this time, no one was taking any chances.
My ankles were about twenty centimeters apart, connected by jangling links. My wrists were manacled in front of me, and my elbows were connected to a bar across my back. They even put a collar around my neck. Someone said they thought the squids might like it better that way. I had no doubt they were correct in that assumption.
Shuffling along like a lame robot from a century back, I was escorted to the teleportation lab one more time.
We passed a lot of familiar faces along the way. Most of them dropped their eyes, either too ashamed or too upset to meet my gaze.
There were two exceptions. One was Natasha, who looked at me openly and appeared to be ready to burst into tears. That made me feel bad. I’d brought her back home just in time to get myself offed as a traitor. That was a fine way to treat the girl I’d left behind a decade or so ago.
The other exception was Carlos. He grinned at me and gave me a thumbs-up. That uplifted my spirits. If anyone here could fathom what I’d done, it was his crazy ass.
“McGill,” he said as I passed him, “man, all I have to say is that when you fuck up, you go big.”
“Thanks Carlos. See you in Hell.”
“Keep my chair warm!”
Then he was gone, and I was prodded forward into the lab itself.
Turov was there. She stared at me with blazing eyes.
“May I have a word with the prisoner?” she asked.
Drusus and Graves looked at one another.
“I don’t see the point,” Drusus said.
Turov showed her teeth. “I still outrank you, Drusus. I have seniority.”
“The jury is out on that, Imperator. You’re under investigation. The Ruling Council might revoke your rank any day. In the meantime, I’m in charge of Earth’s defense, and you’re out of line.”
She licked her lips with a quick motion. Her eyes darted from side to side. I could tell she was thinking hard.
“He has some of my property,” she said.
Drusus snorted. “He was just revived. He came back with nothing on him, just like any of us.”
“Give me one minute,” she said. “I’ll stop resisting your right to command if you give me one minute.”
Drusus and she locked gazes. I could see there was no love lost between these two.
“All right,” he said at last. “We’ve got an hour before the ultimatum expires.”
Graves grumbled, but he let Turov move closer to me and whisper in my ear. The other officers stepped away, shaking their heads and cracking a few jokes. No doubt they thought she was making a fool of herself.
“James,” she said, “where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“The key, damn you! Where’s my key?”
“Oh, that... I imagine it blew up back on Throne World.”
She looked at me in hate, but she shook her pretty head.
“No,” she said, “I know that’s not true. They sent us all your files as proof of what you did, remember? The key wasn’t on your person.”
“How’s that possible?” I asked. “I would have needed the key—”
“Stop with the bullshit, we only have seconds left. I talked to Natasha, and I know you reprogrammed the suit to go where you wanted to go. I know you didn’t need the key anymore because she broke the security somehow. The key wasn’t on Throne World, and even you wouldn’t destroy such a powerful tool for nothing. Where did you leave it?”
I saw a great opportunity, and I took it. I smiled at her.
“You’ll never find it, Galina. I’m about to be permed, and I’ll be damned if I’ll help you out one last time. You’ll just have to do your rank-climbing without it.”
She hissed at me. “No, fool! That isn’t what I want. There won’t be any rank-climbing, don’t you see? The squids don’t want to enslave us now, not after you—”
“Time’s up,” Graves said, coming close and grabbing onto me. He hauled me away toward a fresh teleport suit.
Lisa stood by, looking ashamed and sorrowful. She had the suit peeled open and ready for me to climb in.
Looking back at Turov, I could see she was highly agitated.
“James, I beg you!” she cried out.
That made me think. Of all the things she’d ever done, she’d never begged me for anything.
My mind tried to follow what she’d been saying. She needed the key, but not for her usual shenanigans. She needed it because of the squids?
What else had she indicated? That the squids wouldn’t enslave us?
That could only mean one thing. There were only two ways out for a species under the tentacle-tip of the Cephalopod Kingdom. One was as a slave. The other was as an historical footnote.
Extermination? Extinction? Could that be what they really wanted for us now?
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. We’d pissed them off—really pissed them off. Well… I had, anyway…
They’d demanded we turn over all our bombs and all our teleport suits, plus my sorry carcass as a trophy.
Why would they ask for those things? To pull our teeth? To make sure we couldn’t hurt them again?
“Sirs,” I said as the jump-suit closed around me. “Maybe we should rethink this.”
“No, I don’t think so, McGill,” Graves said. “Sorry about your fate. I hope they make it short, but I wouldn’t count on it. You have to admit, you did earn it.”
I struggled to reach the dial on my suit as they powered it up, but I couldn’t do
it. I was still all chained-up.
Lisa kissed my cheek. Her own cheeks were tear-streaked.
“I forgive you,” she said. “Whatever you did out there, I—”
“Turov!” I shouted across the room.
Galina’s head snapped around to look at me. Lisa looked hurt, but I didn’t have time to massage her feelings now.
“Lisa has it! Ask her!”
Turov’s eyes blazed again, but instead of a fierce glare, she wore a grim smile.
Lisa looked alarmed. She looked from me, to Turov, and back again.
“Just give it up, Lisa,” I told her. “It will go easier for you that way.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but then, she wavered.
Everyone wavered. Graves had reached out and twisted the dial on my chest.
I was teleporting back to Throne World.
* * *
I never did find out what the squids did to me out there on Throne World. That’s probably for the best. I wake up with nightmares often enough as it is.
When I was eventually brought back to life again, I was even more surprised than I had been the last time.
“What the hell…?” I asked blearily. “Haven’t you folks had enough of old McGill?”
“Some would say we have,” Turov said, “but I’m in charge now.”
Blinking, I looked around. Everything looked different. This was Central—at least, I thought it was.
The ceiling was no longer fake plaster. Instead, it had that perfectly smooth cloth-like texture to it. A common enough look for a quick puff-crete patch-job.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Central,” she replied. “Good old Central.”
“Imperator?” I asked Turov. “How come the ceiling looks different? How long has it been?”
“Since we remodeled? About six months. Maybe longer.”
“What!?” I demanded, trying to get to my feet.
Turov put a gentle hand on my chest.
“Don’t worry, James,” she said soothingly. “You’re alive again, and that’s all that matters. You know, I missed you. I didn’t think I would—but I did. Strange, isn’t it? It’s like missing a favorite pair of boots even though they always hurt your feet.”
