“Your words are suspect, but they are also intriguing. When did you make this public announcement concerning your loyalty to me?”

  “It wasn’t public, Tribune, because I wasn’t asked about it publicly. I was approached in private, and I rebuffed every suggestion of mutiny, assassination and subterfuge.”

  The squid stopped circling. He loomed over me, and he was kind of big. I have to say, I’ve fought with a dozen squids in my time, and it was always the worst to do so in water. There, they were like ballerinas while we were floundering fools.

  “Assassination… so soon? I’ve only just taken my post. It is customary for a new commander to be allowed to rule until he makes at least a single mistake of significance.”

  “That’s just it, sir. You’re talking about squid rulers. I’m talking about humans. We primates… well… it gives me no pride to say it, but we never stop scheming to take out our betters.”

  “Is your loyalty, then, an elaborate plot to take command for yourself? Do you perhaps plot against Winslade not out of loyalty to me, but out of a burning desire of your own to lead?”

  I laughed long and loud. “No way, Tribune! I was offered your cohort back on Edge World, remember? Fike wanted me to be your primus, but I turned him down flat.”

  Foam began swimming and circling again. “Interesting… your facts are bizarre, but they are essentially accurate. You did turn down the opportunity to command my cohort, even after having done so in battle with poise and grace. I’m still at a loss to explain that…”

  “Well… here’s the way I look at it: Every man—or squid—has to know his limitations. Your existence lasts longer that way.”

  Foam thought about that for a second or two. He didn’t move much, nor did he gesture or ink himself—he just hung there in the water. It was kind of weird.

  “You’ve presented me with an array of conflicting concepts, human. For now, I will accept your loyalty. I will accept that you have been slinking down here like an egg-thief for my benefit.”

  “That’s great, Tribune!”

  “Yes… and I now have a new order for you, loyal McGill.”

  “Really? What’s that?”

  “You will rise up out of this pool, and you will do battle with the robots on the shore. You will either slay them all, or they will slay you. In either case, I shall be pleased.”

  “Uh…”

  “One final suggestion: protect your helm. It is your weak point in that armor.”

  With that, the squid heaved his mighty limbs. After two or three big sweeps of those tentacles, he was up to the surface and heading for shore. Soon, he was gone from sight entirely.

  Left sitting alone on an orange-painted pump, I heaved a big sigh.

  “Well… shit.”

  -24-

  There was nothing for it. All my bullshit and bluster had gotten me exactly nowhere. I’d been given a legit order to do or die, and I couldn’t think of an easy way to get out of it.

  Sure, I could squat down here at the bottom until the cows came home. Maybe my oxygen would run out, or maybe they’d pull the plug on the lagoon and drain it—but none of that would help much.

  Without Foam’s support to call Winslade out on this bullshit exercise, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. The best I could hope for was yet another court-martial, with all the associated boredom and floggings and such-like.

  Heaving another big sigh, I began trudging up the slope toward the surface. The least I could do was have a little fun, I figured. So I walked with my rifle held at an angle in front of my faceplate.

  The robots fired a barrage at me, but my rifle deflected most of the rounds aimed at my face. They did seem to be firing at my helmet. It was the weakest point, just as Foam had said. They seemed to know this.

  “Ceasefire!” Winslade ordered.

  The shower of bullets slowed and stopped.

  “McGill?” Winslade boomed over the PA system. “Are you surrendering? Is that what this is?”

  “No sir. I’m demanding a fair fight.”

  “What? What’s this nonsense? You’re not demanding—”

  “Hear me out, sir. I want to fight these robots one at a time. Line them up, give them numbers or something—it doesn’t matter. I’ll fight all of them to the finish.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Centurion. Robots—”

  While we’d been talking, I’d been marching steadily up out of the water. If I’d started this brawl while my feet were in water, I’d have been at a distinct disadvantage. Always use your time wisely in battle, that’s what Graves had taught me for decades.

  Once Winslade had pretty much announced his intent to start the fight, I charged the nearest robot. I dropped my rifle and picked him up. I used his skinny body as a shield—which again protected my faceplate.

  Those skinny metal arms and steel fingers were strong—but not that strong. They were about like a normal man’s fingers. Strong enough to squeeze a trigger and carry a rifle—that was about it. The robot I’d lifted in the air was scratching at me, but I ignored all that and rushed the next one.

  Naturally, streams of bullets were coming at me now. They burned the air and sang in my ears despite all the layers of armor. I ignored it all.

  My armor was pretty much impenetrable and heavily padded inside, but the protection wasn’t total. My ribs took a terrible pounding, and I staggered from the impacts alone. It was like being hit by several fire hoses at once.

  Fortunately, I’m a large and ornery man. I reached the second robot and crashed the first guy into him. They both went down in a tumble of wires and sparking joints. The incoming bullets had shredded the one I was carrying, and I extended a half-meter force blade to gut the second.

  Then I was on to the third machine in line. The robots had encircled me now, firing away. By virtue of some error in their programming, however, I noticed they weren’t paying attention to what was on the far side of their target.

  A grim smile played on my lips. These guys weren’t concerned with blue-on-blue situations. Possibly, that was because a normal man in normal armor would have been dead by now. They were just computers, after all, and when I didn’t die right away, their programming said to keep firing.

  Thinking I might be able to use this to my advantage, I picked up another robot to use as a shield. My helmet was starting to star-up something awful. The faceplate couldn’t last forever, and I needed cover.

  The robots shot up the one I’d picked up, so I threw it at them and grabbed another. This worked for something like five robots before they changed tactics.

  “McGill, I’ve now confirmed that you are to be disqualified,” Winslade said. “No matter how many robots you maliciously destroy, you will be declared the loser.”

  “How’s that, sir?” I managed to shout over the din of fire and ricochets.

  “Because you’re obviously wearing an illegal suit of armor. I don’t know where you stole it, or how you got it onto Green Deck—”

  “I did no such thing, sir. I was issued this armor officially, by order of Tribune Foam himself.”

  Winslade paused. I could only imagine the terrible cursing that was going on up in the control booth. My ears were burning, I can tell you that much.

  “Very well, you vicious Judas. Have it your way, McGill. Robot operators, go to full-function! Tear that man apart!”

  For about a second, all the firing and shuffling around in the sand stopped. The robots had frozen in place. It was like a switch had been thrown.

  I didn’t know if they were loading a new program or confused, or writing emails to their iron mommies, and I didn’t much care. I wasted no time taking advantage of this pause in the action.

  Seeing as I was still outnumbered about eighty to one, I gutted the three closest machines in rapid succession. I was only sorry I hadn’t brought a grenade with me. Truly, that was my sole regret at this point. My blood was up, and I was liable to do damned near anything.

  All of a sudden, the robots started moving again. The switch was flipped back on, and this time they all dropped their rifles and rushed me.

  I wasn’t happy to see this change of heart and tactics. After all, impenetrable armor works best when someone is wasting their time trying to penetrate it. Apparently, the robo-operators had finally figured that out.

  Dozens of artificial steel hands reached for me. They grabbed every limb, every joint and every crevice.

  Struggling to break one hand free, I reached for my final weapon—the EMP device I’d gotten from Kivi.

  Sargon had delivered this tiny bomb, and I’d carried it since the start of the fight. Now was the time, if there was ever going to be one, to deploy it.

  Setting the thing off was weird. There was only a pop and a flash—and not much of a flash. The point of this weapon was to release an electromagnetic pulse. The pulse was designed to disable computers and the like.

  The robot brains were shielded, of course, but that only did so much. A powerful pulse, fired off in close proximity, was still able to scramble their electronic minds something awful.

  Unfortunately, it also wrecked my helmet displays, my weapons, and even my tapper.

  I didn’t care. The robots had all been zapped. Some squirmed and clawed at the sandy beach. Some released me, but most held on. It took me a few minutes to break free of all those steely webworks that served them for hands.

  Standing tall, I walked out of the mass of dead robots with only a minor limp. I kicked them aside when they got in my way, and I threw a couple into the lagoon for good measure.

  “McGill has ended the battle with an incredible act of vandalism,” Winslade said over the loudspeaker. “He is officially disqualified and declared the loser of this contest!”

  I paid no heed. I was shaking both fists over my head, hooting and hollering. Marching off Green Deck, I waved to the snarling techs who swarmed their busted robots and gave them plenty of grins and thank-yous. Demonstrating their lack of good sportsmanship, they universally cursed, spat, and waved their middle fingers at me in return.

  Happy and even elated, I reached the exit. A bio team was there, waiting. A grim-faced adjunct-level bio led the team.

  “Any injuries?” she asked me.

  Her tone was no-nonsense, and her attitude wasn’t the best, but she was easy on the eyes, so I gave her a friendly smile.

  “Nah, nothing much. Just this hole in my cheek, see? Nothing a little nu-skin can’t fix up in a jiffy.”

  “Let me see that please, Centurion.”

  Shrugging, I pulled off my helmet and let her poke around a bit. That’s when I felt a sting in my neck.

  Quick as a cat, I grabbed her wrist.

  “You’re hurting me, Centurion!”

  “You just killed me… why?”

  Her hard eyes softened. She looked down at the deck for a moment, and my vision faded to all shades of gray.

  “I…uh, orders, sir. I’m sorry.”

  I nodded, feeling my body going numb. I still had a hold on her wrists, and I could have killed her if I moved quick enough—but I wasn’t in the mood.

  “All right. I accept your apology—but you owe me one, Adjunct.”

  She gave me a puzzled look, and I slid to the deck. She locked eyes with me, and we stared at each other. I died there at her feet.

  -25-

  When I came back to life, I wasn’t overly angry. Sure, I’d been murdered and denounced and called a loser in a game I’d actually won—but then again, I’d trashed a whole bunch of shitty robots, too. That should put a smile on anyone’s face.

  “What’s his score?”

  “Nine-point-two. Not bad.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  That voice… it was her voice—the girl who’d killed me.

  Over the years, I’d developed relationships with a number of bio women. For some reason, since time immemorial, wounded soldiers had tended to fall for nurses, and vice versa. Perhaps today would help prove that rule once again.

  “Adjunct?” I said when I was able to speak clearly. “Who told you to kill me?”

  She didn’t answer right away, but I knew she was looking at me and thinking. “I… I can’t say, Centurion.”

  “It was Winslade, wasn’t it?”

  “No. I can assure you of that much. It wasn’t Winslade.”

  That intrigued me. I’d been pretty frigging sure Winslade was the guilty party. But if this girl said it wasn’t him, I believed her. Everyone hated Winslade. No one would lie to protect that guy.

  “Huh… well then, who?”

  “I can’t say.”

  I got off the recovery table after I got tired of being prodded and poked at. I threw my arms wide to stretch, and the bio people flinched and stepped back. That was a kind of test of mine. Someone must’ve told them I could be dangerous after an undeserved death.

  “Can I have some clothes?”

  “The locker is right over there.”

  I shambled in the direction indicated, and I was soon dragging clothes over my new body. The truth was it was kind of nice to be free of pain. A gunshot wound in the face can linger for weeks, causing all sorts of discomfort, especially when eating. After my revival, I was fresh as a daisy—and I even had an angle to play with this pretty adjunct girl.

  She was blonde, but only in the front because she’d dyed two long tresses. Her eyes were big and her mouth was small. I liked her.

  “Hey,” I said when I was dressed and wearing boots again. “How about that date?”

  “What?”

  I eyeballed her name tag. It was really helpful that we all wore them in the military. It removed one early step when you were getting to know someone.

  Her name was Adjunct Wendy Stinson. I committed that to memory as best I was able. “You heard me, Wendy. When are we going out?”

  “Never, Centurion. This is a professional relationship—besides, I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  Her cool demeanor didn’t put me off any. “Of course you do,” I said without missing a beat. “I’ve never met a girl as pretty as you are who didn’t have a boyfriend—or six of them. But I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m just saying you owe me a dinner. Maybe a few beers, too.”

  “Why do I owe you anything?” she asked in an amused voice.

  “Because you outright murdered me down on Green Deck. You did it in an underhanded, tricky way too. What’s more, I suspect you did it for profit.”

  Wendy’s big eyes widened a fraction. I knew then that I’d struck a nerve.

  Winslade had set up some kind of pool. Some kind of betting system concerning when I was going to die at the evil metal hands of his nasty robots. That meant a lot of people might be very interested in just how and when I’d died on Green Deck.

  Eyeing Wendy and her guilty expression, I got the feeling I’d figured it out. Winslade hadn’t ordered me dead—but someone else had. Someone who stood to profit.

  I grinned down at her. “Now, when are we going to dinner? Tonight?”

  She shook her head and studied the deck. “I can’t tonight. I’ve got a thing.”

  “Well call him up and cancel. Otherwise, I’m liable to contact some people who bet on me. An awful lot of people bet stacks of money, you know. They were all cheated when you intervened today.”

  Wendy gave me a quick worried glance, then she looked away again. “You can’t say anything. I just got my officer rank. I don’t need a mark like that on my record.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I hear that sort of thing all the time from perpetrators. No one ever thinks of the consequences of their underhanded actions when they’re receiving a load of credits on their tappers, no sir. They only get worried about that kind of thing when their dirty deeds catch up with them.”

  She looked up at me angrily. “I didn’t do anything dirty. I… I just followed orders.”

  “Good job. I almost believe you. That pout you’ve got going there might just keep all the losers happy. No one is going to accuse you of cheating, I’m sure of it.”

  She looked worried all over again.

  “Look,” I said, stepping a half pace closer to her and lowering my voice. “Let’s just talk about it tonight at dinner, okay?”

  “All right...”

  “Six o’clock. Lavender Deck.”

  Wendy frowned at me. “Lavender Deck? That’s for passengers and crew. Legionnaires aren’t allowed down there.”

  I gave her a smile that was as big as her frown. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.”

  Whistling, I left Blue Deck with my head held high. Today was turning out pretty well according to my way of thinking. I’d trashed a stack of robots, pissed off Winslade something awful, and wangled myself a date—and it was only four o’clock in the afternoon.

  My immediate plan was to head to my quarters and clean up a little. The freebie uniform Blue Deck had issued was one of the papery kind, and it barely fit my frame. Worse, I hadn’t taken any kind of shower and my hair was all drippy. This wasn’t how successful first dates started.

  Just as I reached my unit’s module, my luck took a turn. As I put my hand onto the doorway and pushed it open, hearing a chorus of cheers from my troops, I was accosted by an unpleasant person.

  It was Winslade, and he was waiting inside my troop quarters with a detail of three heavy troopers behind him.

  “There you are,” he said. “So good of you to wander by, Centurion.”

  “I live to please, sir.”

  “Far from it. Come this way, McGill. We need to have a few choice words.”

  As I was in my own module, and we were on the human side of the ship, I didn’t budge.

  “Sorry sir. I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m under the orders of one Tribune Foam. He’s told me to do something else right now, so I’ll have to politely decline your invitation.”

  Winslade showed me a line of his small white teeth. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “All right. Come on in here to my officer’s conference area. I’ll hear you out.”

  He and his oversized goons followed me. I wasn’t worried. If he and his three gorillas tried anything, well, I might call on Harris and his platoon of heavies to back me up.