Machine World (Undying Mercenaries Book 4) (38 page)

“What are you trying to say, McGill?”

“Tribune, why’d you even ask me to come up here? I mean, if you had your mind made up, why bother?”

“Maybe I wanted to confirm something about you. Maybe I wanted to know how a man guided by principle over logic would judge a case such as this. Now that my curiosity has been satisfied, I’m moving on.”

A cold, callous answer. I should have expected nothing less. Tribune Drusus wasn’t like Graves. He had a soul in there somewhere. But he also had a great deal of responsibility. He looked at things differently than I did, that’s all.

I left his office troubled but resigned. Claver was dead and gone. He was stardust, just like we all once were and would be again someday.

-51-

Earth Central Command was surprised to hear our plea on the deep-link. They grumbled, but three long months after the battle with the squids was over,
Minotaur
came back to Machine World to pick us up.

We rode the lifters away from Machine World with a deep sense of relief. I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier to leave a planet behind.

From space, the planet looked like a cotton ball. It was all fluffy-white with clouds on top and soft blue-grays underneath. The image belied the turmoil we’d gone through to survive on an intensely hostile world.

Imperator Turov was aboard
Minotaur
, and I could tell right off she wasn’t happy about that. Her face was a good ten meters tall, displayed on the ceiling of our unit’s module. When she spoke to us, she never cracked a smile. She showed her teeth plenty, sure, but that was only because her lips seemed to curl away from her pearly-whites to punctuate every sentence.

“The heroic actions of Legion Varus have been duly noted,” she said, sounding as if she was spitting out nails. “Hegemony has ordered me to provide every member of the legion with the Medal of Honor, bronze rank. Congratulations and welcome aboard, legionnaires.”

A mild cheer went up from the assembled troops. It was nice to get a pat on the head from the brass every now and then, even if it came from the hogs back on Earth.

Turov didn’t beat around the bush when it came to my role in matters, either. She summoned me to her office on Gold Deck, and this time she had me thoroughly disarmed before I was allowed into her presence. I found this stipulation disquieting, but I walked in as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

“Good morning, Imperator,” I said.

She eyed me coldly. “James McGill,” she said slowly. “The man of the hour, if reports are to be believed.”

“Happy to serve, sir. I just do my part the way any other man in the legion would.”

She snorted. “Hardly. What other noncom would dare insert his unwanted nose into every official matter that comes up?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I kept quiet. I was standing at attention, staring at the back wall of her office. There was a picture of Earth there, stylized with an image of Central emblazoned over it. I found the image vaguely disturbing. What was it meant to project? The idea that Hegemony’s military ruled Earth? I told myself I was becoming paranoid and tried to listen to Turov instead.

She was reading me a list of complaints by other officers concerning my conduct on Machine World. Even Leeson had a choice comment or two which had gone into my file. That hurt a bit, even if every word of it was true.

“The same old story, McGill,” Turov said. “You show initiative—to a fault. You fight well, you lead well. But you constantly disobey even basic orders and place your commanders in compromising positions. Honestly, I’m not sure if you’re a genius or an idiot.”

“A bit of both, sir, if my mama is to be believed.”

She stared at me with hooded eyes. “Let us get to the point. I came to this system with a plan. You’re aware of this, yes?”

I took a chance and glanced at her directly. She had that wet-cat look: tail-lashing, pissed off. The cant of her hip as she leaned her shapely butt on her desk told the story, along with the way her arms were crossed and the fact that her eyes were glittering slits.

Glancing back at the picture on the wall, I nodded. “I gathered that you had a plan, yes sir.”

“And yet you sought to do whatever you damn-well pleased? Without regard for my requirements?”

“Pardon me, sir,” I said. “But am I here to be promoted, demoted, or just chewed out for the fun of it?”

“More insolence. I should never have become personally involved with you. That was a mistake, and it has come back to haunt me in countless ways.”

Again, I glanced down at her. I dared to give her a small, private smile. “If it’s any consolation, I have no regrets in that regard. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.”

“Of course you did,” she snapped. “As to your question about your future status, that remains to be seen.”

I nodded. I was being judged. My fate was being decided. Calm and unconcerned, I went back to staring at the wall behind her.

“What arrangements did you have with Claver?” she demanded. “Why did he choose death rather than firing the broadsides for the saurians?”

There, she’d put her finger on it. For the first time, I felt a tickle of sweat under my armpits. I couldn’t tell her I’d agreed to steal the Galactic key from her. That wouldn’t do at all.

“I believe all the details are in the reports, sir,” I said, deciding to play dumb.

“I’ve gone over and over all the reports. They’re more than vague in this regard.”

My face blank, I gave her the innocent confused look I’d given a hundred teachers, babysitters and friends’ moms as a kid. I was proud of that face as it had gotten me out of countless bad spots in the past.

“Honestly, I thought you might be able to shed some light on Claver’s actions,” I said. “He always was a bit of a mystery to me. I had no idea he was going to come out here and try to set up some kind of titanium trading depot.”

She glared at me, and I looked back down at her, straight-on.

“Did
you
know anything about that, sir?” I asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about it. Even more curious was Claver’s knowledge that Earth was sending an expedition here in the first place. I mean, what are the
odds
that all these ships would show up in orbit over Machine World at the same time? There are coincidences in the universe, but this one is a doozy.”

Turov’s mouth got tighter with every word I uttered. By the end of my speech, her mouth was an almost invisible, pink, pinched-looking spot on her face. Finally, as I knew she would, she exploded.

“That’s enough with your threats!” she said. “I could crush you—you know that, don’t you? Even now, with your friends placed carefully all around the legion, you’re not safe from me. Don’t think that you are!”

My eyes were dead-ahead again. “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t follow you.”

She began to pace around me, calming herself down with a force of will.

“All right,” she said. “Keep your secrets, McGill. You’re not being helpful at all. I’m faced with a difficult decision, and I’d hoped you would shed light on the subject, but you’ve chosen to be an obstinate ass as usual.”

“Uh…what are we talking about now, sir?”

“About Claver, you fool. Should I revive him or not?”

That one took me by honest surprise. That’s when I realized this dressing-down wasn’t about me at all. She was debating Claver’s status. Their scheme—whatever it had been—had fallen apart. But maybe Claver had some hold over her, some promised prize she hadn’t gotten out of him yet. If she left him dead, she’d never get it.

That said, she clearly didn’t trust the man and wisely so. He was double-dealing everyone, up-down and sideways.

I heaved a sigh. “I made a deal with Claver,” I said. “He agreed not to operate the broadsides for the saurians, but he felt the saurians might kill him for refusing.”

“And why would he do that?” she demanded.

“To gain the trading rights he planned on in the first place. His first move was to arrive with the squids and a trade ship, cutting a deal. When that failed, he tried a legal approach, backed by the Nairbs. The man is nothing if not persistent. When I blew up the Nairb ship, he brought in the saurians. Maybe he even knew the squids were coming after that, or he called them, I’m honestly not sure.”

“He is beyond slippery,” Turov agreed reflectively. “I now doubt my wisdom at ever having had dealings with him—or you.”

“He does keep his end of a bargain,” I said. “He gave me the deep-link to call Earth. Part of the deal was to revive him afterward if things went badly. In turn, he agreed not to help the saurians fire the broadsides and demolish my legion.”

“Hmm,” Turov said. “The whole thing almost makes sense. Parts of what you say were written in your superiors’ reports, but it was never stated so openly. Fair enough. You made a deal. What do you think now? Should I revive that rat or leave him dead in the gutter where he belongs?”

“I always try to honor a deal, sir,” I said. “He kept his part of the bargain, and he paid the ultimate price as far as I can tell. I say revive him.”

She stopped pacing and stood directly in front of me, cocking her pretty face and gazing with open curiosity. “You know that he’d betray you in a second, yes?”

“Yes and no, sir. He’s a trader. A man can’t be successful in such a calling if he doesn’t keep his deals most of the time. We might not know all his plans and deals, but I feel confident he will keep to the letter of a given bargain once it is agreed upon.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Some things are beginning to make sense to me now. He knows you’re a man who will keep a deal, just as he himself would. He also knows he can talk you into foolish arrangements. Therefore, his real goal in contacting you must have been to gain an insurance policy. Perhaps he knew he was going to die. Maybe all that about the broadsides was bullshit, and the saurians were going to kill him anyway. Who knows? What we can be sure of is he talked you into agreeing to revive him if he was killed. Now that he is dead, he hopes you will do so, even if you have to do it illicitly.”

Turov gazed up at me with sudden suspicion. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you?”

“Uh…done what, sir?”

“Revived him. You have friends who are willing to do such things. I know that. I’m a woman who’s built up a network of supporters—but you don’t need to know about that, it doesn’t matter. What I want to know is if you have brought him back yet. Have you, McGill?”

This was the sort of situation I was finding myself in more and more. People thought I was some kind of wizard. Sure, I’d gotten in and out of more than my share of scrapes, but I wasn’t Houdini.

“No sir,” I said. “Honestly, I haven’t revived anyone since Tech World.”

“All right. I choose to believe you. And I’ll tell you right now, you should not bother. I’m going to do it, quietly.”

Surprised, I studied her. The look on her face was calculating, and she wasn’t even looking at me. She was working her hands in the air and staring at the deck. I could only imagine what kind of scheming was going on inside that head of hers.

“Why tell me your intentions, sir?” I asked.

She looked back up at me as if she’d forgotten I was standing in front of her. She made a sweeping motion with her hand.

“So you wouldn’t try to do it yourself out of some misguided sense of honor! You’d end up making a copy of him. That’s all this universe needs—two Clavers. Now, get the hell out of my office. You’re dismissed.”

Leaving in a hurry, I was left wondering about the conversation all the way back to my quarters. Whatever Claver and Turov were up to, it wasn’t over with—not yet.

I had the feeling I wasn’t going to like it when I learned the truth.

-52-

Two months later, I was back home on Earth. Weary, and with the haunting light of the stars in our eyes, we marched down the ramps of our lifters, six abreast.

A cheering crowd greeted us bearing tiny flags, waving both Hegemony’s blue globe and the Varus Wolfshead pennant. They were mostly relatives, but there were a few others. Members of the press, even Solstice people who felt sorry for the troops they’d left behind.

“Is it true that Varus wiped for a fourth time on Machine World?” a reporter demanded, thrusting her audio-wand into my face. A tiny camera drone buzzed over her shoulder, zooming and panning.

“No,” I said immediately. “We didn’t wipe on Tech World. Not completely. I stayed alive and began the long revival process personally. On Machine World, it wasn’t even close. We never lost more than half our—”

The reporter was eating it up, but a pair of hands came out of nowhere and pushed her away. Leeson escorted her and that buzzing drone of hers back into the crowd and hustled me toward the terminal.

“That’s enough, McGill,” he said, pushing on my back. He propelled me toward the welcoming crowd of relatives. “Noncoms don’t talk to the press. Never. Don’t you know that?”

“Sorry, sir,” I told the Adjunct. “Her questions had implied falsehoods. I wanted to set the record straight.”

“That’s the job of officers—high level ones. Your job is to keep your damned mouth shut.”

“Yes, sir.”

My parents were in the crowd. They greeted me with enthusiasm, and my mom cried. She always did that—every time I left and every time I came back.

“I’m good, Mom,” I said.

She grabbed me by my jacket lapels and hung on tight, looking into my eyes. “Did you die out there? They said that you
all
died.”

“Nah Mom,” I said, smiling. “Not this time. Look, I’ve even got a slight limp. Do you see that? Just an injury, no death. If I’d died, that would have been all fixed up with a new grow. See?”

My little dodge made her happy, and she cried all over again. I hugged them both and headed for the family tram. I was on leave, and I was looking forward to spending a few spring months in my own place on the back of their land.

The best part was my home planet’s air. I’d been breathing farts on Machine World, followed by the canned stale air on
Minotaur
, for half a year. In comparison, the fresh breezes of Earth were like heaven.

* * *

That night, I drank a dozen cold beers and passed out happily on my couch. One of the many times I had to get up to pee, I heard a knocking on my door.

It was a timid knock, the kind someone who was unsure of themselves might make. Sighing, I headed to the door and threw it wide.

I had no idea who might be visiting me. It could have been any of a dozen people. By the light of the moon outside, I judged it was the middle of the night, and therefore, couldn’t be one of my parents, but that was about the only people I’d ruled out.

My eyes focused in the darkness. Small, female—I thought of Natasha first. She’d come to my door like this on many occasions. But it wasn’t her.

Della?
I almost said the name out loud, but I caught myself in time. It wasn’t her. It
couldn’t
be her. She’d headed back to Dust World to visit her own family.

“Anne?” I said, surprised. “How’d you find me way out here?”

She smiled shyly. “I asked around. They said you lived alone—but isn’t that your parents’ place over there behind the trees?”

“Yeah. But don’t worry, they’re asleep by now. You want to come in?”

She did so with the mild trepidation all females seemed to exhibit when entering my lair. The interior was dark because I liked it that way. Soft blue lights glowed here and there, illuminating various appliances.

There was only one major place to sit, my couch. She headed there and pushed a few cushions and a thin blanket out of the way.

“You want a beer?” I asked. “Ah—hold on. I’m out. How about a margarita in a can?”

“Sure.”

I brought it to her, and she sipped it quietly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call first, or text you,” she said, speaking quickly. “I didn’t even know I was coming. I was driving around, and I thought I’d just drop by and see where you lived. Once I was here—well, I thought it would be silly not to knock on your door.”

Unperturbed, I nodded. The fact that she lived up in Kentucky didn’t impinge. It was quite a distance to be wandering late at night. If a man had done the same, they’d call him a stalker. I grinned at the thought, and although I still had a gut full of beer in me, I was smart enough not to say what was on my mind.

Eventually, we got around to the real reason she’d come to my place. We had a great time on the couch, but I didn’t remember it very well by morning, so we repeated the process after cleaning up. After that, we went out to breakfast.

There, at a local eatery, we ran into my parents. They were looking at us in embarrassment, not sure if they should say anything or not.

I walked over to them, carrying my plate. Anne followed, mortified.

“James,” she hissed. “They’ll know I spent the night. They’ll have to figure it out.”

“They already know,” I said. “They aren’t stupid. Just make the best of it.”

We sat together, talked, and ate. It was nice, and it was something I rarely did. I usually kept my private life and my family apart.

Consequently, my mother was ready to maul poor Anne. I could see she had wedding cakes in her eyes and bells in her ears. It was all I could do not to laugh.

Anne brought up the squids—and I wished she hadn’t. They kind of freaked my mother out.

“I’ve heard about those huge, disgusting creatures,” my mom said. “Did you actually see one?”

Anne gave me a wary glance. Obviously, my parents were in the dark concerning my activities while abroad among the stars. I generally edited my stories of warfare. They didn’t need to know how bad it really was to be a legionnaire.

I think my dad suspected, of course. When I candied-up my tales of the campaigns, he always smiled with his mouth, but not his eyes. He’d always been able to tell when I was lying better than my mom, back as far as I could remember.

Giving Anne a tiny nod, I took a drink of coffee, and stared into the cup. Anne cleared her throat and started in.

“There was this one cephalopod that was different from the rest,” she said. “It was huge, and it turns out it was a female.”

This detail surprised even me. Anne and I hadn’t talked about the campaign, we’d been too busy enjoying one another’s company all night for that.

“Female?” I asked. “How could you tell?”

Anne laughed. “They have sexes, you just have to look. Every squid we’ve found up until this trip to Gamma Pavonis has been a male. But I’ve had contact with the team of bios who were tasked with investigating the one you found in that big tank. It was a confirmed female.”

“
You
found it?” my mother gasped, staring at me across the table. I had a forkful of pancakes in my hand and I froze. “You never talked about that, James!” she said, raising her voice.

My dad put a hand on her arm. “Hon, you have to know that he doesn’t tell us everything.”

“You’d think he wouldn’t leave out a giant space-squid. Which he found himself, apparently.”

“I didn’t actually find it first,” I said. “Carlos and Kivi did, but I did see it before it died.”

My parents eyed me warily. I could tell they wanted to ask exactly
how
the giant space-squid had died, but they didn’t.

“Sorry,” Anne said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, no,” my mom chimed in, and immediately began trying to make Anne feel better.

They started chatting again about more pleasant things. My mom had switched gears. I could tell she was focused on getting me married off again. Oddly, that was a relief to everyone at the table.

The day went by pleasantly after that, and after staying on for the weekend, Anne headed back to Kentucky. I found myself missing her almost immediately.

About a month later, my door thumped again. It was the middle of the day, not the middle of the night, but for some reason I thought it was Anne, coming back around for another visit.

I pasted my hair down as best I could with the few seconds I dared let pass before opening it.

When I finally did, my grin faded to blank shock. It wasn’t Anne at all.

Claver stood there with two centurions. They were in hog uniforms, and Claver was in civvies. My eyes ran from one of them to the next.

“Disappointed?” Claver asked, chuckling. “I have that effect on a lot of people. Come on, McGill. You’ve been summoned to a meeting.”

“What meeting?”

One of the centurions stepped forward with written orders. They were signed by none other than Equestrian Nagata, the man who I’d met with months back. My heart sank. This had to be about Turov and the Galactic we’d killed. That hadn’t seemed like an action I’d get away with forever.

“Summoned? To Central?”

“That’s right, Vet. You coming peacefully?”

The man was eyeing me, sizing me up. I felt that was a little insulting. Sure, I’d resisted arrest before, but this was different. I was being called by a high level officer to Central. They had written orders and everything.

“The orders seem legit,” I said. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“Are you refusing the orders?” the centurion asked.

“No sir.”

“Then you’re not under arrest.”

I followed them out to a military air car. It wasn’t as nice as the one Winslade had swept me away in months ago, but it was just as fast. We glided over the treetops and soon slipped up into the regulated air-traffic corridors. Applying full thrust, the two centurions whisked me away toward the northeast.

Sitting in the back seat beside Claver, I couldn’t help but talk to him.

“Congratulations on breathing again, by the way,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied. “I’m equally impressed by the fact you haven’t gotten yourself permed yet. I might have misjudged your intellect, McGill. A man can’t get lucky so many times by sheer accident.”

“Why doesn’t anyone like to warn me about these pick-ups?” I complained. “People just come to my house whenever. They could at least send me a note first.”

Claver shook his head. “Notes? On tappers? Maybe you
are
a dummy. That would leave an undeniable trace in the computers. If people keep coming to your door unannounced, McGill, it’s because they don’t want anyone to know they’ve done it. I, for one, am unsurprised to hear people don’t want to make their associations with you public.”

I thought about Anne then, and Natasha. Had they come knocking, unannounced, because they feared leaving a trace of their visits? The thought was disturbing. Could I be that toxic to a woman’s career?

Claver didn’t want to talk business in the back of a military air car with two witnesses, so we discussed pleasantries all the rest of the way up to Central.

At last, after we landed and were walking across the roof, Claver slapped my hand with his.

I looked down at his offending hand and frowned.

“What?”

“Give it to me,” he whispered. “And don’t tell me you didn’t bring it. No one would leave it in a shack unguarded, not even you.”

“Give you what?”

He looked at me like I was the dumbest animal on the farm. “The key, you
idiot
. Are you backing out? Because I don’t like welshers, McGill.”

“I don’t have it,” I growled back at him. “Not yet. I told you to give me a year.”

“Shit,” he said. He shoved his hands back into his pockets.

When we were led into Equestrian Nagata’s office, the two centurions retreated. The first time I’d met this man he’d been in the Mustering Hall in Newark. But the headquarters building in Central was his home office. As a hog officer, he belonged here.

Claver and I stood there like kids in the principal’s office while Nagata fooled around with some computer scrolls on his big, brass-studded desk.

At last, he looked up. “Adjunct Claver,” he said, nodding, then turned to me, “and Veteran McGill. Two of the most infamous rogues in Frontier 921.”

He riffled through his computer scrolls and selected two of them. He slid one across his desk toward each of us.

I glanced down. Whatever it was, it looked like an official document. Equestrian Nagata’s scrawled signature was at the bottom of both.

“What’s this, sir?” I asked.

“What do you think it is?” he asked me in return. “An agreement to avoid prosecution—provided you give us the testimony we’re asking for.”

Frowning, we both picked up our documents and looked them over. Claver read a few words. “Immunity…immediate release….record stricken…good enough. I’m signing.”