The Chief Inspector told me a sordid tale before he passed out. Afterward, I adjusted his sagging noggin before it hit the floor and split open. It was the least I could do for a pod-brother, after all.

  Then I leaned back in my chair, thinking hard.

  -16-

  The next morning my eyes were bleary. I had a touch of a hangover, and I wasn’t in the best of moods.

  Turov had summoned us all to a private meeting in her grand office. Every officer who ranked as a centurion or above in Legion Varus was there.

  “Gentlemen,” she said. “When Legion Varus was last fully activated and deployed in the field, I was your tribune. Since my promotion to the lofty rank of imperator, Primus Fike has served in my place as a temporary stand-in. Today however, that all changes. The permanent leadership of Varus has been decided.”

  Everyone looked at Primus Fike. He was the odds-on favorite for the job, but his expression was stony. He didn’t look like a happy camper who had just won the lottery. If anything, he looked kind of stern and dour.

  Uh-oh. If they hadn’t chosen Fike… who had they tapped for the job?

  Naturally, we all knew it should be Graves. He was the man for the role. He’d been an officer in Legion Varus since it was formed, and he’d fought for Earth before she even had legions. Hell, he was the oldest man I’d ever met—with the possible exception of Galina’s father.

  But that didn’t always mean spit in Earth’s military. Back in the distant past—before my folks had been born, something had happened. According to legend, Graves had fought in the Unification Wars, and the powers that be had decided he shouldn’t command anything too big ever again.

  Still, we all held out hope for a change of heart at the top, so our eyes slid in his direction. Graves, for his part, was wearing the same poker face he’d been born with.

  “This has not been an easy decision,” Turov continued. “We considered numerous candidates, many of whom are present today. In the end, Drusus made the final choice.”

  Alarm bells were ringing in my head now because Drusus wasn’t here. It was an easy out for Galina to collar him with the decision. Why wouldn’t she take the credit for this choice herself the way she normally did for everything? Well, there was just one good reason why she was palming this choice off on Drusus: because we weren’t going to like it.

  “Brace yourself,” Winslade said in a sly whisper. He was sitting to my left with his arms crossed and his lips drawn tightly in a downturned line.

  “Oh boy…”

  It was a terrible thing to learn who your commander was going to be. That was true in any fighting formation throughout history—but it was doubly so in Legion Varus. Whoever the brass had picked to elevate—or demote, as the case may be—that individual would have the power to decide the time and manner of every man’s death in this room.

  Fidgeting in my seat, I contained an urge to stand and demand she get on with the show.

  Galina, for her part, knew she had a captive audience. Accordingly, she removed her cape and did a little thoughtful strutting around the computer table.

  “Who did we choose?” she asked the audience, hoping to build excitement. No one looked happy, but she kept on strutting and smiling anyways. “Who is up to this glorious job? Who is going to lead the best legion Earth has ever had?”

  That was the script, right there. Every officer who’d ever managed to ditch us had immediately started praising the hell out of our outfit the moment he or she was promoted. Never mind that before the day of their ascendancy, they’d spent most of their time grousing about what a pack of grunting animals Varus was.

  Keeping her audience in mind, Galina hadn’t let us down with her personal appearance. That short, blue-white cape she was wearing not only displayed hegemony colors, it was also short as hell. Essentially, it formed a flow like long hair down her back to stop just above her shapely hindquarters. That cape, along with some serious high heels, gave every male in the audience something to smile about.

  Reaching out an improbably long arm to my left, I rapped my knuckles on Winslade. “It’s you, isn’t it? I just know it.”

  He slid his ferrety eyes in my direction. “As-if, McGill. Shut up.”

  I grinned at him and went back to watching Galina strut around. Whatever else she was up to, she sure was making me recall some private nights with her.

  “I want to say before I go on that there are new ideas taking root in Hegemony. For far too long, there has been an imbalance in Earth’s forces. A discrepancy that has never been addressed since the Blood World campaign.”

  Now, she’d lost all of us. We sat around with our mouths hanging low, like baby birds at high noon.

  “What the hell is she talking about?” Graves asked suddenly.

  I glanced his way. That’s when I thought I had it.

  An injustice? Surely she had to be talking about Graves. Hell, he’d been passed over for decades and decades. Could this finally be the day when Varus was given the leader she truly deserved.

  “It’s gonna be you, sir,” I whispered to him loudly. “It has to be.”

  Graves slid his eyes in my direction, but he didn’t say anything. Was that a hint of hope in those steely grays of his? It might be. It just might be.

  Nothing about his demeanor had changed. His arms were crossed. His mouth was a flat line. He looked like a frog that wasn’t even interested in dinner.

  Galina finally stopped marching around and pointed toward a big door offstage. “And so, let me release you from suspense at last,” she said. “Legion Varus, may I introduce to you your next leader. The best of his kind. The most efficient commander in the history of our sister legion, now and finally recognized for his talents and stellar contributions.”

  The door slid open. It was dark inside.

  My nose twitched, and I sniffed the air, frowning. “Uh… do you guys smell anything funny?”

  “Sweet Jesus…” Winslade said. “This is madness. Total madness.”

  “Uh…”

  Squinting, I peered into the dark doorway.

  “That’s right,” Galina was saying. She was really selling this guy hard, whoever he was. “He’s been with you for half a dozen campaigns. He’s fought on every battlefield you have. He’s served with unswerving dedication to our sister legion.”

  “Sister legion?” I asked, still baffled.

  Swiveling my head around, I tried to figure out what was happening. Winslade had a hand over his face. He looked kind of sick. Graves was just staring. He was as motionless and unhappy-looking as a thousand year old statue.

  That’s when the thing in the side room began to slither forward. Big limbs churned—lots of them. The stench I’d detected grew in strength until it was overpowering.

  It was the smell of the sea. An alien sea that had been bubbling in the sun for a long time.

  “Meet Tribune Foam,” Galina said, “the most distinguished alien leader in Earth’s service to date.”

  My legs stood me up. They couldn’t be stopped. I pointed a long arm at the stage, where a hulking Cephalopod was working his way to the top.

  Some part of my dim brain knew I shouldn’t speak. Don’t think I didn’t know that. I’m six kinds of moron on a good day, but I know what you can and can’t say most of the time.

  But this moment was different. I was just too overwhelmed by what I’d been asked to swallow.

  “Are you kidding me? He’s a friggin’ squid!”

  -17-

  After my outburst, you could’ve heard a pin drop. The audience was made up entirely of shocked officers, mind you, but they all knew how to shut up better than I did. Every last one of them.

  Still, I could feel that the general sentiment in the room matched my own.

  “McGill,” Galina said in her school-teacher’s voice. “‘Squid is not a word that’s encouraged—certainly not when addressing your legion’s new commanding officer.”

  Slack-jawed and blank of mind, I was too stunned to even respond.

  I’d lived for many years hating squids. We’d first encountered them on Dust World, where they’d made a practice of abducting and enslaving our colonists. Years later, we beat them in an extinction-level war, but they’d never fully accepted that defeat. To this day, I knew their kind plotted Earth’s downfall. They barely tried to hide it.

  Some years back, Central had come up with the bright idea of employing legions of Blood-Worlders—genetically altered humans that were bred to fight. To lead these brutes they’d often selected Cephalopod officers, as they were highly trained in the appropriate techniques.

  That decision had resulted in the raising of the so-called “zoo legions” made up of various conquered aliens and other freaks. To begin with, these outfits had all used human officers—at least at the top spots. Over time, more and more sub-officers, and men like Fike and squids like Foam, had been commissioned.

  “Foam is a sub-primus,” I objected. “He’s not even a real primus. How can he be promoted over a man like Graves here, who’s been passed over since before I was born?”

  Graves didn’t appear to react, but he did mutter something to me. “Keep me out of this, McGill.”

  I ignored him. I was too irritated to listen to good advice.

  Galina seemed unhappy, but I could tell she was trying to hide it. I think she probably expected some push-back on this insane decision.

  “That brings me to another change,” she said. “We’re getting rid of the sub-ranks. All officers will be equal from now on, both in pay and responsibility. In Earth’s service, it no longer matters what planet you were born on. Anyone can become—”

  “He can’t even wear a proper uniform! Ask him to salute! He’ll slap himself in the eye!”

  Scattered laughter went through the room.

  “McGill, sit down and shut up.”

  Reluctantly, I obeyed. Looking around, I saw lots of shocked stares and gaping mouths. That made me feel better. The Varus team in general wasn’t taking this news any better than I was.

  The big reason was the nature of squids themselves. They didn’t have any loyalty to Earth. They were doing a job, playing along as slaves until we let our guard down. At some moment in the future, they would rebel against us. Everyone who really knew the squids understood that simple fact.

  Perhaps Central had figured out this unpleasant reality as well. Maybe, in a twisted and naïve way, they’d decided to head off the rebellion by elevating the squids. They dreamed that by making them equivalent to humans, they could avoid any future conflict.

  To me, this kind of thinking was as shit-off stupid as could be. Showing weakness to a squid was like showing weakness to a wolf. All it could accomplish was to intensify their natural arrogant and prideful nature.

  As proof of my concerns, old Foam was standing tall. He fixed us with his eye groups and long before Galina had stopped strutting around and taking credit for him, he tapped into the public address system to send his voice rolling across the meeting chamber.

  “Humans of Legion Varus, know that today, and for all days forward, you will serve a new master. This master will be henceforth known as Tribune Foam.”

  Galina looked a bit steamed over being upstaged, but she let Foam get away with it. That was another mistake, right there. I knew you couldn’t afford to let a squid walk all over you like that and retain his respect. Right now, on the very stage in front of me, she was losing control of Legion Varus. It seemed like that should be obvious—but Galina didn’t have much direct experience with aliens. She was winging it.

  “I will be reviewing the ranks and roles of every officer in the legion,” Foam continued. “Those who I find lacking will be executed.”

  Concerned, Galina leaned toward Foam to make a helpful suggestion under her breath.

  Foam reluctantly altered his position. “Ah… that is, you will be temporarily executed. You will, of course, be revived to serve out your contracted time. There will be no escaping your responsibilities in this manner.”

  Pleased with Foam’s edit, Galina retreated.

  Fike had been squirming in his seat during the proceedings. He chose this moment of confusion to move a few chairs closer to me. “This is bullshit, McGill.”

  “Sure is.”

  “I now understand why you’re such an asshole sometimes.”

  “It’s all a matter of perspective, sir.”

  “Ahem,” Galina said, giving us both the stink-eye. “Now that Foam has been introduced and affirmed, let’s all applaud our new commander!”

  There was a tepid response. Perhaps a dozen officers tapped their hands together, but this quickly died out. Fike, Graves and I didn’t move a muscle.

  “Good, good,” Galina said as if we’d all cheered her on. “Let’s move now to the briefing. This is our target planet, recently pinpointed by Centurion McGill.”

  Foam stepped to the rear of the stage, but he didn’t leave. He lingered back there, hulking behind Galina like a nightmare in a kid’s closet. His eyes were roving over the audience, and he seemed to be taking notes with one tentacle working his tapper—even squids had tappers these days.

  Was he keeping tabs on us? Marking down who was happy with his promotion and who wasn’t? That’s what it seemed like to me.

  But I didn’t care. I didn’t give him any kind of smiles or applause. I had no intention of kissing up to this officer, not even if I was arrested and boiled in his black ink. Of course, that didn’t mean all that much. I never kissed up to any officer—unless she was pretty.

  Galina was getting into the swing of things. Star charts and province maps flashed over the walls and ceiling. “Our target world is quite distant this time. Over a thousand lightyears away, it’s much closer to Rigel than it is to Earth. Normally, we’d leave a planet that far away alone—but this time, we’ve been given a mission by the Galactics themselves.”

  Winslade raised his hand. He’d been as quiet as a church mouse until now, so I turned to stare at him, curious as to what he might say. Galina reluctantly called on him.

  Winslade pointed a skinny finger at the star charts. “Imperator, since when are the Galactics optioning the contracts of Earth Legions?”

  Galina looked like she smelled a dead rat. “They aren’t, Tribune Winslade—at least, not directly. They’re charging us to take action. Hegemony has signed our actual contract, assigning the duty to us.”

  “As I suspected.”

  Galina turned back to her displays and ignored him. I could tell Winslade was annoyed by the promotion of Foam, just as Fike and Graves were. I couldn’t really blame any of them. Every top officer in the outfit had to be wondering why Central had picked an ornery squid to promote over them after all their years of service.

  “The target planet orbits a small star in a multi-star system,” she continued. “The star group is known as Mintaka, which looks like a single point of light from Earth. Mintaka is also called Delta-Orionis and is part of Orion’s belt in that famous constellation. Fortunately, the target is in frontier space this time, not in a neighboring province. We don’t have to worry about border issues with the Skay.”

  Winslade had his hand up now. Galina finally called on him. “Yes?”

  “So… I’m no longer a sub-tribune?” he asked.

  “No. You’ve been cross-promoted like all sub-level officers. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Imperator Turov. I’m glad for the promotion, sir—but I’m rather surprised I wasn’t invited up there onto the stage with Foam. After all, we now hold the same rank.”

  Galina hesitated. “You do, technically. You are both tribunes. But Foam is now in charge of the primary legion. Legion Varus. Your outfit is considered an auxiliary in support of his.”

  “Ah…” Winslade purred, “so my troops are still playing second-banana to the humans, is that it? So much for equality.”

  Galina was finally beginning to get pissed. The questions were all off-topic, and they were clearly complaints about Foam. She’d hoped to slide all that under the rug and move on to the mission—but the officers present weren’t all that interested in any new topics as of yet.

  “The clarification of ranks affects individuals,” she said. “You’re talking about changing legion to legion relationships. That’s an entirely different topic.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  Pursing her lips and giving Winslade her patented death-stare, Galina let a few seconds of silence reign. Then, she moved on.

  “As I was saying,” she continued, “our target star system is part of the constellation of Orion. If you look to the south from Central in the winter months, the star Mintaka can be clearly seen. The planet in question, however, is quite small and distant from its parent star. The atmosphere is fairly normal, but the terrain is rough, and the weather is cold. Most of the planet is rocky, and there are only a few shallow seas with ice drifting over them. Observers are already calling the place Ice World.”

  “That’s right,” I said, speaking out of turn. “I’ve been there, and it’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

  “Lovely,” Winslade muttered.

  “Thank you for the colorful metaphor, Centurion McGill,” Galina said. “Our plan is to launch Dominus toward this distant target carrying both Legion Varus and her support legion. The transport will approach the Claver base, root it out, and destroy the criminals. This must be done through ground action, however. All coins are to be retrieved and strictly accounted for. Remember, they aren’t Earth’s coins—they belong to our beloved Galactic overlords.”

  There were some moans and lots of shuffling of feet. No one wanted to die to make a big payday for the Mogwa. The whole thing sounded like a smash-and-grab operation to me.

  -18-

  Hours went by while better men than me planned out the assault. I fell asleep until someone kicked my boots out from under me. That someone turned out to be Primus Fike.

  “Come on, McGill. The meeting is breaking up.”

  “Really? That sure is a relief, sir. I’ll be heading out to—”