-21-

  The great game of “King of the Hill” ended with more of a whimper than a bang. In the end, no one else dared assail our position.

  I think the effect was more psychological than practical. There were several groups of fifty or more running around out there, biding their time—but none of them quite had the guts for an assault against us.

  They didn’t know that we were down to nothing more than thirty-nine exhausted survivors. All they knew for sure was that we’d turtled up again, hiding among the rocks. We’d covered ourselves once again with leaves and sticks.

  Around the base of our hill was a mass of strewn bodies. They’d watched us repel five full units making determined assaults. On top of that, they had to know we were armed to the teeth with countless spears to shower down upon any new attacker.

  No one felt like climbing over that shifting pile of dead bodies, only to catch a spear or a rock in the face from some psycho who couldn’t be dislodged from that infamous pile of stones.

  So, they let the time run out, and none of them attacked us again for those last eleven minutes.

  “Time!” Graves shouted. “3rd Unit wins the game. In my opinion, the other nine centurions should consider themselves shamed. Seriously? Nine hundred of you couldn’t kick McGill off those rocks? It’s absolutely disgusting…”

  People hung their heads and threw down their spears in anger all over Green Deck—except for my boys. We waggled our dicks and our tongues at the distant chickens, laughing and hooting.

  “I’m ordering double PT for everyone who died,” Graves continued, “starting the minute they come out of a revival machine. That policy will continue until the day we land on our target planet.”

  Graves dropped the mic after that, and everyone on Green Deck breathed a sigh of relief. The time read 00:00 in big blue digits.

  “I can’t believe it,” Leeson said. “It’s friggin’ over.”

  “I’m kind of surprised you survived this long,” I told him.

  “Maybe it was because he never came out from under one of those rocks at the top,” Harris complained.

  “What about Clane?” I asked.

  Leeson answered me. “Oh, him? He died, like, half an hour ago.”

  I nodded, unsurprised. “Good work, people,” I said, clapping hands and giving everybody I could a bloody grin of congratulations. “Excellent work. I’m proud of each and every one of you.”

  Those of us who could still walk dragged ourselves back to our module and stretched out on our bunks. Blood oozed into our blankets, along with sweat and dirt. We took showers in shifts, laughed, drank booze, and swapped funny stories about when we’d taken out one or another of the enemy.

  Sometime later, I heard a shout from the front door.

  “Attention! Primus on the deck!”

  Harris had given the warning call, and I staggered out of my centurion’s quarters, wearing a crusty grin. My head was dripping from the shower, but I hadn’t gone through a revival machine. Even the bio people had declared my injuries superficial. They’d patched me up and sent me back to my bunk.

  “Well, Primus Graves,” I said, “I’ve got to thank you for that opportunity.”

  “How’s that, McGill?” he asked.

  “Well, sir, that was the most fun I’ve had since Jungle World. That’s what I’m saying. Whoever came up with that idea, they are to be commended.”

  Graves smiled at me with half his mouth. “I’ll take that as a compliment. The idea was mine.”

  “Good going, Primus.”

  Graves paused for a moment, then spoke again. “You know why I’m here, McGill?”

  “I surely do,” I said. “You’re here to congratulate the winners of the great contest.”

  “No, I’m afraid that’s not so. I’m here to ask what the hell you’re doing in this module. These are no longer your quarters. You’ve been reassigned to Gold Deck. Did you forget?”

  I stood there dumbfounded, my mouth gaping. In a way, yes, I had sort of forgotten. It seemed so natural to return to the module with my troops, the men who I’d fought with all day. I rotated my head this way and that, looking like an owl with a broken beak.

  My shoulders slumped in defeat.

  “But Primus, sir, I thought Raash was so stinky no one wanted him up there with the Gold Deckers?”

  “You’re not going back to Winslade’s office, if that’s what you mean. You’re still part of the secretarial pool, however. I thought you might want to serve as a personal valet.”

  “To Primus Collins?” I asked, perking up a little.

  “Hell no,” Graves said, glaring at me again. He didn’t like it when I got fresh with ladies he figured were outside my zone. “Maybe they’ll put you on laundry duty, or something…”

  “Aw, come on, sir!”

  Raash appeared then. He loomed behind Graves. “So!” he boomed, pointing a nasty claw in my direction. “This is where he hides. Do you see this? McGill has made yet another attempt to evade me. He will not be successful. I will follow him to the ends of the cosmos.”

  “Shut up, Raash,” Primus Graves said.

  Around me, my soldiers walked up one at a time and clapped me on the back. I winced from one injury or another, but they all shook my hand and bid me farewell.

  Leeson, my last fully whole and hale officer, seemed almost ready to burst into tears. “Does this mean, sir,” he asked Graves, “that I’m acting centurion again?”

  “Yes, it certainly does. You’re the senior.”

  “Holy hell,” Leeson said, turning and walking away.

  Graves frowned after him. He seemed indecisive. “McGill,” he said, “I’m going to go talk to Winslade. You stay right here.”

  We all perked up and watched as he marched out without saying another word.

  Harris approached me a moment later. “Do you think he’s going to try to get you out of purgatory?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I truly hope so.”

  “Hey, Graves!” Harris shouted down the hall after him. “Tell him that Raash is coming with McGill if they want him back.”

  Graves waved dismissively over his shoulder, not turning to give Harris any special recognition.

  We all waited for the next hour or so. It was a tense time, and my men slowly trickled back to the module from the revival machines. Each of them congratulated me in turn. They hooted with pleasure when they learned that we’d lasted the entire time and held the hill from minute one to minute sixty.

  But then they got the message that possibly old McGill was going back to Gold Deck, that the matter hadn’t yet been decided. Universally, their spirits were dampened.

  It was about an hour later when word finally came back. Winslade himself lit up my tapper.

  I answered the call wearily. “Hello, Tribune, sir. I’m sure you’re calling to congratulate me.”

  “Oh, stuff it, McGill,” he said. “How did you convince Graves to wheedle and whine so much? I’ve never seen such a spectacle from him.”

  “Well, sir…” I said, “I don’t rightly know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say a damn thing to him.”

  He squinted at me for a moment, then he heaved a sigh. “All right,” he said, “you’ve been reinstated with your combat unit, back to combat arms. But there’s one condition.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, while men cheered behind and around me.

  “You must take that lizard with you. Keep him in your module—in your barracks. He’s never to return to Gold Deck again.”

  “Request granted, sir!”

  Raash grunted and complained about this result, but we all ignored him. The rest of the evening fell into a celebration. The night ended when Kivi, Natasha, and a freshly revived Della, all vied for my attention.

  I chose Della, oddly enough. She’d been the one who’d died early and hard—caught between two angry units she had tricked into fighting each other.

  We spent a fine night together, and I told her many quiet secrets in my cabin about Etta and her new boyfriend, Derek.

  She was not entirely thrilled with the idea that our daughter was considering marriage with a hog.

  “I’m shocked you didn’t kill him outright,” she fumed.

  “Well, it’s not that I didn’t think about it…”

  “And you’re saying my father’s putting up with all this? That he’s fine with having an Earth Gov stooge as a son-in-law?”

  “A grandson-in-law,” I reminded her. “But yes, it’s got to be devastating news.” I shook my head. “Things have gone a little strange out there on Dust World. Della, how long has it been since you’ve been out there?”

  “I don’t know…” she said. “Probably a decade.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, maybe you should visit. Try not to freak out when you see what’s become of your father and his people.”

  I described a few of the things, like the strange guys in leather pants with knives who could barely speak, and Boudica, plus a few other details. When I got to the vats of stinking liquids used for illicit revives, she became alarmed.

  Della seemed aghast. “I’ve heard of a few of these things before, of course, but I hadn’t realized it had gone this far. Next time we’ve demobilized, I’ll make it a point to visit and see this for myself.”

  “Good deal. Now… where were we?”

  We stopped talking about upsetting things and tried to recapture our moment. We made love again, but it wasn’t quite the same.

  We were both worried about our relatives and all the strange things happenings in the cosmos. We slept together for the night, but by morning, Della was gone.

  She was one of the few girls I knew who could sneak out of my bed without waking me up.

  -22-

  It was only a few days later when a major alert sounded all through Scorpio’s echoing passageways.

  “James McGill to the bridge. Centurion James McGill, proceed to the bridge immediately.”

  I was taking a shower when this rang out across the ship. I gawked at the ceiling, wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Didn’t you hear that, Centurion?” Harris asked behind me. “You gotta go, man.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, spraying off suds as fast as I could, trotting out of the place buck-naked through the passages. I took just long enough to grab a uniform, pulling it over myself as I trotted, still dripping wet. The smart cloth stretched and cinched itself all around me. I was still barefoot, barehanded, and had suds in my hair when I arrived at Gold Deck.

  If it hadn’t been for my summons, the hog-like guards wouldn’t have let me through. As it was, they shook their heads and waved for me to trot on by. I was still leaving wet footprints when I stepped onto the bridge proper.

  “There he is… Centurion? What the hell?” It was Graves, and he was in shock.

  “What’s going on, Primus?” I asked.

  “Why are you so inappropriately dressed, McGill?”

  “Well, sir, I was taking a shower, see, and then—”

  “Never mind, never mind. Get into the conference room.”

  I was chased off into the conference room that was immediately adjacent to the bridge. There was a big holo-table in there surrounded by high-level officers. Tribune Winslade, Gilbert, Collins, and Graves were all there. The last man to waddle in the door was Captain Merton.

  Damn, that boy hadn’t died for a few long years, now…

  “McGill is barefoot on my bridge?” Merton said with disgust. “Tribune Winslade! Can’t you even get your men to dress appropriately?”

  “I apologize, but we did summon him with all haste.”

  All the officers looked at me as if they smelled shit, but to my surprise, they didn’t order me to run off and get myself all the way dressed. That had been, to be fully honest, my greatest hope. A man sent off to get dressed… well… that could take a long time. By the time I wandered back, the meeting might even have been over and done with.

  But my dodge did not bear fruit. Instead of shooing me out, they waved me toward the circular holo-table. Even now, it was flickering into life.

  “What’s the big emergency?” I asked.

  “A Mogwa ship has been detected,” Winslade said. “Several of them have been, in fact. They’ve been identified in our wake. We’re slowing down and allowing them to catch up. We’re coming out of warp now.”

  The flickering ended as the ship itself transitioned from hyperspace into normal space, which made it a lot easier to have a conversation with other starships.

  A view of space appeared. It was pretty much empty: interstellar dust, a little bit of gas, maybe, and an occasional frozen comet. Nothing else was on track.

  Then a large blip appeared—then three more.

  “Holy hell,” I said. “Those are Mogwa ships. Battlecruisers, I’d say.”

  The rest of the officers said nothing. They looked grim. It was Primus Gilbert who finally spoke up. He was a sallow-faced skinny man who reminded me of a cold-handed undertaker.

  “This has got to have something to do with McGill,” he said. “The first message they sent to us indicates that much”

  “It was only a text,” Winslade told him. “We don’t know what’s happening. Stay calm.”

  Captain Merton pointed a shaking, fat finger at the ships, which kept popping into view. “Four now! Four battlecruisers, all from the Core Worlds. Mark my words, they’re here to arrest McGill. We’ll be lucky to escape with our lives.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, leaning close and squinting at the high-resolution holograms. “Isn’t that... yeah, I’m sure of it! That’s Admiral Sateekas’s flagship, as I live and breathe! Remember? We flew with him out to the Mid-Zone.”

  For once, it wasn’t me who was slack-jawed in astonishment. Everyone else around that table stared aghast and amazed.

  It was true. The flagship was well-known to us, and she wasn’t a standard Mogwa ship from the Core Worlds. Her class was built by the Mogwa of Segin, a breed apart from those who lived on Trantor, the Mogwa home system.

  The distance this fleet must therefore have flown to catch up to us was vast. It was thousands of lightyears to the Mid-Zone. Our fringe of stars along the Perseus arm was a veritable desert of stars in comparison.

  The Core Worlds were something else again. It never grew dark there, where the Galactics lived at the hot core of our galaxy.

  The ships were impressive—a full squadron of battlecruisers now paraded on our tails. They were more advanced than our best and larger as well. Even Scorpio, which was massive, probably couldn’t take down even one of these Mogwa warships. This was especially true since we’d converted Scorpio to carry troops and had disabled some of her armament in order to do so.

  “Where are the rest of the ships in our flotilla?” Winslade asked.

  Captain Merton worked his fingers and a sub-box appeared in the upper left region of the holo-display. “They’re converging on our position, but they aren’t yet at the rendezvous point. We’ve got perhaps a day before they all meet up with us.”

  “How poorly timed can we be?” Winslade complained. “Here we are, caught alone with our pants down.”

  “I feel like we’ve been caught speeding in an aircar,” Primus Collins said.

  “In that case,” I said, grinning, “it might be time for you to turn on some of that feminine charm.”

  They all looked at me as if I’d made an inappropriate comment. Perhaps I had, but I didn’t really care.

  Finally, the screen flickered again, and we got a transmission that was directly from the lead battlecruiser. It was none other than Admiral Sateekas himself.

  I couldn’t help but recognize him. He was younger these days, no longer the ancient wattled Mogwa of the past. He’d died back during the City World campaign at Segin, and I’d helped get him a revive. He was still going on that lifetime as far as I could tell.

  So, while he was older now—perhaps middle-aged for a Mogwa—he was by no means ancient. His eye-groups moved from one of us to the next, taking us all into account. I felt like he was measuring us up. The final person his eyes landed upon was me.

  “The McGill…” he said. “It has been a long time.”

  “It sure has, Admiral Sateekas, sir.” I saluted him, and he slapped one of his hand-foot things up near his own forehead in response. He had, of course, learned many of our gestures.

  I was proud to get possibly the first human-type salute out of this Mogwa admiral that anyone had ever seen. It was proof-positive that the old spidery bastard of an alien still liked me.

  Normally, when he and I met, I made a huge point of referring to him as an admiral or grand admiral, which had been his original title. In his heyday, he’d commanded a Mogwa fleet from the Core Worlds, Battlefleet 921. It had been a long time since he’d had the official title of grand admiral, but he had always considered it his greatest achievement.

  It was best to flatter those who are powerful, especially when they deserve the flattery. Grand Admiral Sateekas was not the best navy commander I’d ever met—in fact, he was probably one of the worst. But he was a loyal creature, and he’d fought and died and sacrificed many Mogwa ships on Earth’s behalf over the decades.

  “McGill?” he said, “for once, you have given me the correct title. I am indeed an admiral again. Behold my small flotilla. My consort, Vox, and I have been rebuilding our fleet from Segin. This force is nowhere near as grand as the armadas that Trantor can field, but it is fully half our total naval strength.”

  “Wow,” I said, pretending to be stunned and amazed.

  In truth, I was disappointed. Only six ships? Was that it? That was a sheer disappointment, even if they all were large, capable capital vessels.

  “Hold on,” Sateekas said, turning toward a subordinate. “Nairb? You have failed me.”

  “How could that possibly be, Admiral?” The Nairb asked.

  “You have kept most of my vessels hidden.”

  “Oh, that… Well, I thought we should check on the human status before we...”