He reached for Boudica’s waist, fumbling with the box, which was already off. She tried to fend him off but to little effect.

  Joining in with Raash’s horny claws, the group of hogs examined her quite closely—too closely to my mind, given her state of undress.

  Unembarrassed and seemingly unaware, she made no effort to let the red locks of her hair shield her chest. Compared to when I first met her, Boudica now sported a slight tan, which honestly looked even better on her bare skin.

  “She’s clean,” the hogs finally declared. “She’s no one—probably a Dust-Worlder illegal. But she’s not Turov. There’s no way.”

  The hogs continued to take liberties, feeling it necessary to touch her bare skin, ensuring it was indeed real and not another illusion. They were perhaps too enthusiastic about this, but I held my tongue. Boudica, for her part, shot them glares and hisses through clenched teeth.

  “We’ve got no arrest record for her,” one hog said to Raash.

  “I don’t care about his mating toy,” Raash said, turning back to me. “She’s not the one I seek. McGill, where is Galina Turov?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Raash snarled. “She was my charge. You stole her from me. You’ve been gone a week, and I’ve been punished for my gullibility. I will not let this happen again, McGill.”

  “Punished?” I asked. “By who? I thought Galina was your boss-lady.”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Raash interrupted. “You’ll speak only when commanded to do so.”

  “What do we do with the girl?” the hogs asked Raash.

  “I don’t care,” he responded. “If she’s committed a crime, then do your duty.”

  The hogs contemplated that. “Well… she could technically be called an illegal alien. She must be a Dust-Worlder, but she doesn’t look like one. Probably just an illegal sneaking in through the gates.”

  “No,” Boudica interjected, “I am not. I am an Edge-Worlder, and I want to return to my new home on Death World.”

  “L-374?” The hogs seemed amazed.

  “That’s correct, fools.”

  The group huddled for a moment. When they returned, they were shrugging and nodding. “According to our regulations, anyone wanting to trade one shithole colony for another can do so. They just can’t stay here on Earth. This waystation is technically a legal public space for even a non-registered citizen to pass through, so… as long as you’re transitioning from one colony to the next, we can’t hold you. Just don’t try to leave this building, ma’am. That would be a crime.”

  “Whatever,” Raash hissed. “Complete your perfunctory procedures and leave McGill to me.”

  Boudica, satisfied with this outcome, caressed my cheek briefly.

  “Don’t try to pass information or weapons to him,” Raash warned her sternly.

  She ignored the fuming lizard. “You’ve served me well, McGill. I won’t forget this,” Boudica declared, then turned towards the ticket booth. I supposed I’d helped her to reach Death World after all, even if it was indirectly.

  I shrugged and faced Raash. “Hey, old buddy,” I began, trying to reset the nature of our relationship. “Now that everything’s settled, how about you and me go grab a beer?”

  “Again with your ape noises,” Raash chided. “You won’t confuse or charm me. And you certainly won’t mate with me, as you probably did with that stray female.” He pointed after Boudica, noting her exposed back.

  “Don’t worry,” I chuckled. “I have no intention of doing any of that. What brings you out this way?”

  “I’m here to locate my lost charge, Galina Turov,” he declared. “I have to find her and return her to Central. I shouldn’t have trusted you with her well-being.”

  “Now, hold on,” I interjected. “I was under the impression you worked for Galina.”

  “That’s correct. However, my salary comes from someone of higher rank.”

  I stopped, pondering his words, before a realization dawned on me. “Servant Turov...? Alexander Turov? You really work for him, right?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “Who did you think paid for the yacht, for my services, for everything she possesses? Did you honestly believe a mid-ranking military officer could afford an ocean-going vessel the size of a Wur megagrowth? If you thought that was possible, it’s clear proof of your lack of intellect.”

  His words settled in, and of course, they made sense.

  I continued talking to Raash as we left the Geneva Globe together and boarded a sky train headed for Central City.

  It had to be true, what he’d said. All the wealth in the Turov family was firmly under the control of Alexander Turov, Galina’s father. He’d probably allowed her to use some of it, but ultimately, he held the purse strings.

  So, when Galina had disappeared and Raash inevitably informed her daddy of this event, he must have begun to suspect that she was trying to flee from him. She’d rejected the promotion to consul, dodging the destiny he’d meticulously planned for her.

  Old Alexander wasn’t a man who was accustomed to being thwarted. Thus, he’d ordered Raash, the last agent to have had personal contact with both of us, to act.

  I had to hand it to Raash on this point: he’d figured out where we’d gone and staked out our last known whereabouts. The moment I’d returned to Earth, Raash had been waiting to nail me.

  I shrugged off these reflections, as they weren’t pressing at the moment. I’d managed to hide Galina in the safest place I could think of. In her current state, she was dead and practically “permed” out on Dust World. That was about as safe as safe could be.

  Raash was welcome to take a team of hogs out there and search that valley all he wanted. He wouldn’t find a thing.

  “Okay, Raash,” I declared, “we’ll head back to Central. I have a report to file with Wurtenberger, anyway.”

  “A report? What are you up to, human?”

  We had reached the sky train, paid our fares, and boarded. Raash eyed me warily as I operated my tapper—my genuine tapper. I’d removed the false sheath, exposing the sweaty skin underneath. My original tapper was somewhat damp, and it burned a bit where numerous hairs had been yanked out. But that was a minor inconvenience.

  I contacted Wurtenberger’s office and, after being redirected for a good ten minutes, finally persuaded the prim secretary, the one with the butthole expression, to connect me to Wurtenberger himself.

  “McGill?” he said. “I question your wisdom in contacting me this way.”

  “Uh…” I responded, “what manner is that, sir?”

  “By calling me directly.”

  “Well, sir, I am in your employ, remember?” I reminded him of the charge he’d given me: to investigate various rebel sentiments on different worlds. “And in fact, sir,” I added, turning my tapper to show Raash’s face, “this gentleman right here has been a hindrance.”

  Raash hissed and wriggled. But due to the closeness of our seats, he couldn’t escape the camera’s view.

  “You see this peculiar lizard? The one with the sky-blue scales?”

  Raash hissed louder at the mention of his unique hue. He’d always been sensitive about it.

  “Well, sir,” I continued, “he’s been obstructing my work. I’d just left Dust World after completing my sweep and preparing my report. I was on my way to another destination when this joker tried to have me arrested.”

  “On what charge?” Wurtenberger inquired.

  “You might recall some… uh… misunderstandings back at Central.”

  “Ah, of course,” Wurtenberger acknowledged. “Misdemeanor deaths, destruction of property…”

  “Just part of doing business,” I said.

  Wurtenberger looked sour. “So, you claim to have finished the first part of your report? You’ve visited Dust World?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any interesting findings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make your report, then.”

  I shook my head. “Can’t do that—not with this lizard beside me. He’s a known agent for Steel World, you know.”

  Raash hissed so fiercely now that he sounded like a forgotten kettle on a red-hot stove.

  “Stop talking, human,” he threatened, “or I’ll rip off your arm and destroy that device you’re using to defame me.”

  Wurtenberger squinted at us. “You’re saying he’s a spy?”

  “Absolutely. He’s been deliberately hampering my attempts to execute your orders.”

  Wurtenberger examined both of us, his gaze flitting between our faces. “I’m unsure who to trust between you two. Here’s my directive: as the commander of Earth’s Defense, with the consul’s office vacant at Central, I order both of you to report to my office immediately upon arrival in Central City. Submit yourselves for arrest and questioning. Wurtenberger out.”

  The call ended, and I turned to Raash with a smirk. “So,” I teased, “looks like we’re both arresting each other now, huh?”

  Raash glared, his face contorted with rage. “You’ve maligned me and misled Earth’s naive officers. This will slow me down, but my mission remains unchanged. I work for Alexander Turov,” he declared. “No human is mightier than him.”

  “I thought you were with the Steel World princes,” I commented.

  “I was, but they discarded me. Now, I’m what you’d term a ‘free agent.’ I serve the highest bidder in the cosmos.”

  Chuckling, I pointed at him. “You’re a mercenary, a freelancer.”

  “That’s precisely what I said. You’re not only repetitive but also dim-witted.”

  That was classic Raash. The ornery lizard was always full of piss and vinegar.

  I leaned back in my sky train seat, eventually managing to ignore his putrid odor and drifted off. After all, it was going to be a long ride back to Central.

  -14-

  It was the following morning when we arrived at Central City. I was a tiny bit concerned about the reception I was going to get when we landed in the spaceport. After all, there had been some serious misunderstandings and a number of unfortunate deaths since the last time I’d been here. Some folks, especially those of a Hegemony persuasion, might have wrongly attributed these accidents and unlucky coincidences to James McGill.

  Naturally, during the last hour of my flight, I’d attempted repeatedly to contact Praetor Wurtenberger’s office to make sure things were still all-clear—but I didn’t have much success. Perhaps it was predictable then that, when we landed at the spaceport and I followed Raash toward a small shuttle train that would take us all the way into Central, we were greeted by a rather large team of hogs. In fact, it looked to me like a full-blown squad.

  “Look at that, Raash,” I said, feeling my chest swell with pride. “By my count, there’re fifteen hogs coming!” To my knowledge, I’d never been arrested by such a large group of angry Hegemony men before.

  “Hey boys,” I said as they crowded around, “don’t be in a rush. There’s enough of me to go around for all of you.”

  Gravity cuffs clicked on both my ankles and my wrists. They even put some kind of weird dog collar on me with a puff-crete chain leash, just in case I tried anything in the way of escaping them.

  I didn’t make a move, as it only would have brought them joy to beat me down. Any such effort was doomed to failure anyway against so many.

  Just to irritate, I kept up a steady banter. I talked about the funny looks on the faces of the men I’d blown up with a plasma grenade in the lobby, for instance. Some of the hogs drew shock-rods after a while, which crackled in their hands. The pain-delivering devices matched their snarls of rage.

  “Halt,” Raash said, serving as my protector on this strange day. “Do not damage the McGill. He is my property.”

  “Who the hell are you, alien?” the adjunct hog who was leading the arresting party demanded.

  “I am Raash, the minion of Alexander Turov. Check with his office.”

  They did, and his credentials were cleared. Grumbling, the hogs listened to him, although you could tell it wasn’t making them any happier. I guffawed at them and made jokes about how they were all kissing up to a lizard.

  Eventually, they got me onto a train. Oddly enough, the train had been cleared of all other passengers. I was the only one aboard—besides the hogs and Raash himself.

  “Why do you always make things so difficult?” Raash complained. “Just keeping you alive is proving to be a challenge. I should let them slay you just so I can watch and be entertained.”

  “Now, now, Raash,” I admonished him. “None of that talk. Your boss, Turov, doesn’t want me escaping that way.”

  “Escape? Impossible.”

  But still, Raash seemed concerned at the idea that I could escape him via death. Such things had been known to work before for the Clavers. Raash seemed to put me in that kind of category of extreme trickiness.

  None of them trusted me half as far as they could throw me—which wasn’t far at all.

  They took me to Central, and I was frog-marched down to the detention zone. There, for the first time, I was met with a truly unpleasant sight.

  It was the twisted-up face of a gentleman known to me as Agent Brinkley. He had such a vicious snarl on his mug that it gave me a moment of concern.

  “Hey…” I said. “I know you, don’t I? Did you get a chance to talk to Agent Dickson for me? Huh?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did,” another voice said, having walked in and joined us.

  By this time, the hogs had all disappeared. Now only Raash, Agent Brinkley, and this third man remained.

  The last guy was also known to me. It was Agent Dickson himself.

  “Holy crap!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you for years, man! Have you been hiding down here in the guts of Central all this time?”

  “Indeed…” Dickson said in a silky, sinister voice.

  I took no note of this and continued on like we were besties.

  “Hey! Hey, seriously Dickson,” I said. “I want to apologize up front for making you wet your pants so bad out there at Sky World and all those other places. You really didn’t deserve that level of embarrassment.”

  Agent Dickson nodded slowly. “You get an ‘E’ for effort, McGill,” he said. He turned toward Agent Brinkley, who had blood in his eye. “You see this performance? He never disappoints. Not with one word, not one utterance, not one syllable.”

  “Huh?” I said. “How’s that again?”

  “I predicted it, didn’t I, Brinkley?” Dickson said.

  “That you did, sir. That you did.”

  Agent Dickson was walking around me in circles now. They’d chained me with gravity cuffs to a chair made of stiff metal. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Will you abuse him now?” Raash asked. “I wish to observe.”

  “You may do so,” Dickson replied, “but make no videos or other recordings.”

  “I will not,” Raash confirmed. He stood quietly in a corner, a string of saliva dribbling from his nasty, snaggletooth-filled mouth. I figured he was probably getting excited over there, hoping these two agents would torture me or something.

  “McGill is acting just the way you said he would,” Brinkley told Dickson.

  “Yes,” Dickson said, “it’s my belief he’s already working on us, trying to make us lose our tempers and kill him. See the genius in that? He doesn’t banter, deny, simper or beg. No fearful wetting of the pants, and no angry threats or brave statements about the future—none of that utter nonsense. Instead, he chooses to enrage us right from the outset by demonstrating a supreme confidence bordering on near-lunacy.”

  “It’s like we could write a whole new textbook on him, sir,” Agent Brinkley added.

  Agent Dickson nodded and walked around me a few more times. His behavior reminded me faintly of Boudica’s weird snake-charming tricks.

  I had to wonder, could she have been part of this government at some point? Maybe she was a spy in a past life? It was an intriguing thought, but I had no answers. Nor did I want to give these two clowns any hint of her existence. So, I just grinned and craned my neck like an idiot while he circled me.

  Finally, Dickson made his move. He leaned in and pricked me with something tiny. I grunted. It wasn’t much, so I didn’t react strongly. But then the real pain began.

  “Whoa,” I exclaimed, “I recognize that! It’s one of those little wasp stings you used on your troops? Right? Back when we thought you were just some kind of sadistic lunatic playing the part of my adjunct.”

  “I’m pleased that you remember my techniques,” Agent Dickson replied, “you’ll soon become intimately familiar with them.”

  Oddly enough, that statement of his did kickstart a greasy sweat under my armpits. The pain wasn’t intolerable. It was like getting stung by a wasp—it was burning and hurting, not from any physical damage, but from the tiny toxin he’d injected into the back of my right scapula.

  As anyone who’s been stung by a wasp knows, a person isn’t too excited about waiting for the next jab. I recalled the single campaign Dickson had shared with Legion Varus. He’d frequently used this technique on the light troopers, earning him a high-level of discipline. Everyone in his platoon listened to his orders and acted on them immediately.

  However, they also did everything they could to screw him over and bring him down. They hated him. I was beginning to understand why.

  “Alrighty then,” Dickson said, “there’s really no need for unpleasantness, McGill. With a single, paragraph-long statement, you can end this process before it even begins.”

  “That would be highly disappointing,” Raash boomed from his corner. He still stood there, salivating and enjoying the spectacle to the fullest.

  Dickson glanced at him. He gave the lizard a disapproving pouty lip, but then he turned his attention back to me and smiled.

  “What do you say, McGill, my old centurion? Let’s set all this aside. No woman is worth so much fuss to a man like you. After all, we aren’t going to execute her. We simply want to know where she is. Her father only wants to know of her whereabouts. He has that right, both legally and morally. Don’t stand in the way. Tell us what you did with the girl.”