So I thought about it. I could kill Graves, of course, in a number of ways. We lived in spacesuits most of time, and if one of those things sprung a leak… well, it didn’t take much to kill a man in space.

  But I didn’t want to pull something like that just to talk to Abigail. It simply wasn’t in me. I decided, therefore, as a man who was both lazy and a liar, that I’d wait it out. I’d bide my time, claiming I was working on the goal—but do nothing.

  Who knew? Maybe I’d get lucky, and Graves would fall in a hole or something. In the meantime, Winslade would be off my back.

  The following day, I woke up stretching and climbed into the showers. A lot of men didn’t like showering in large groups in steamy chambers, but I didn’t mind. For one thing, there were girls in there. Nude women lathering up and chatting with glistening skin, well sir, for me that started every day in a positive manner.

  As long as you weren’t leering in an obvious manner, the girls didn’t mind at all. It was normal to them. Some of them even liked to put on a show, stretching and lingering and so forth. Today, a familiar woman by the name of Natasha decided to do just that.

  She was a nice-looking girl, and we’d had a fling long ago—well, to be honest, it was more than a fling. We’d been on-again-off-again lovers for years.

  “What is it, James?” she asked me as I gawked at her.

  Natasha had taken up a spray nozzle right next to mine, and I’d already had my water ding and buzz at me indicating my time was up twice. Being an officer, I was able to override that with a single touch of the thumb.

  “Uh…” I said, while she smiled up at me over her shoulder. “I couldn’t help but notice how fine-looking you are today, Specialist Elkin. My apologies.”

  She shrugged and kept smiling. “Is it true that our tribune has left the star system? That she won’t be back for the duration of this campaign?”

  There it was. Natasha had always felt out-classed by Galina Turov. That was a reasonable thing to be intimidated about. Galina was not only finer-looking than probably any woman in the legion, she was also in charge and possessive over one James McGill.

  It occurred to me that I should make a move. I blinked and stared at the way the water was washing the suds off her breasts for a few more seconds, then I decided to give it a go. After all, Natasha might have made a play for me at any time over the last several campaigns—but Galina had always been hanging around. This was a rare opportunity.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, and she looked at me expectantly.

  My idea, of course, involved Natasha and me working together on a private project. She agreed, and we did so later that same day.

  The preordained night followed, and I’d forgotten what that sweet girl could be like. She wasn’t pushy or demanding. It was glorious.

  Still, by morning, I found myself wondering what Galina was doing back on Earth. Thoughts like these contributed to my general suspicion that I was a cursed man.

  -37-

  The imaginary project I’d dreamt up to work on with Natasha had to do with deep-link transmissions. I’d always wondered if they could be detected or even listened in on. In fact, I’d once made up a bullshit story about such a tracing device to get Centurion Toro, who worked for Claver, to help me escape Clone World.

  The device had always been a mere figment to me, but I’d long believed it should be possible. Natasha jumped on the idea and, using my newfound high-level security clearance, she went right to work on it.

  The next morning, we ate breakfast together in the mess hall. A lot of people tossed us glances. Women who I’d known intimately tended to watch with twisted-lip expressions of disgust. The men slapped each other and made jokes we couldn’t quite hear.

  Neither Natasha nor I paid any attention. For my part, this was because I didn’t really care. On her side of the equation, Natasha didn’t seem to notice.

  She was too engrossed in figuring out the problem I’d given her. To tap into deep-link transmissions… the thought was intoxicating to her. As she blathered on about quantum computers and in-phase photons on different planets, I daydreamed about a second night of passion. To my way of thinking, such a pleasant prospect was definitely in the cards if old McGill played them right.

  “Last night was nice,” I said. “Really nice.”

  “Yes… yes it was,” Natasha said, but she wasn’t even looking at me. Instead, she was studying her knapsack computer.

  Techs like her weren’t limited to a personal tapper embedded in the forearm. Instead, they had larger more powerful machines they carried around in military-grade sacks which were usually slung over their backs.

  “James… I want you to look at this transmission pattern and tell me if you see anything unusual.”

  “Uh… okay.”

  She showed me the display on her computer. It was backlit brightly, far more than any tapper ever was. Maybe that was because human skin could only echo out a muted level of light, and an honest screen could do much more.

  On the display was a series of waveforms and stuff. “Looks like a puddle that someone threw a stone into.”

  “Exactly,” she said, to my surprise. “That’s exactly right. This is an image of an intermediate object seen only in the form of a group-resonance.”

  “Uh…”

  “What I mean is, this is a planet showing some ripples due to the passage of a deep-link message.”

  “What? How’s that possible? I thought deep-links weren’t actual transmissions. That two computers just studied aligned photons that were connected in some way over a great distance.”

  “That’s right. Both ends of the aligned-photon connection change, and nothing else between them does—except for another set of aligned photons.”

  “Huh?”

  Natasha’s face took on a patient, but somewhat frustrated expression. That’s what usually happened to people who tried to explain astrophysics or similar subjects to me. “Listen, quantum communications involves connecting two points, making changes to one and then watching changes in the other—regardless of the distance between the two.”

  “Right, I got that.”

  “Well… what if there were naturally occurring matches in other places? Like on the surface of a sun, or a reflective ocean on a planet.”

  “Okay…”

  “So, using that idea, I began to trace back data readings. I found a record of recent transmissions between this task force and Central. Using the times and dates of those transmissions, I cross-referenced, screening for abnormalities—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” I said, putting up a big hand. “Did you use my clearance to get a record of when the deep-link was last used?”

  She looked down at her untouched food and gave me a shrug. “Maybe. How else could I get such sensitive data?”

  “Damn, girl,” I said, digging into the apple and toast on her plate. I left the ham. She needed to eat something.

  Natasha continued on, showing me more stuff I couldn’t make heads or tails of. At last, she put it all aside. “The point is, the ocean here on this planet… Some of the light reflected by the local water shimmered when the transmission was made.”

  “Really? You figured that out so fast?”

  She smiled. “It was your idea. You should get part of the credit.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Already, I was thinking of Floramel. She’d said something years ago about being able to do this. The lab people at Central were most likely going to take a dim view of the discovery, as they no doubt considered it a state secret.

  But then, I got another idea.

  “Hey, could you actually translate the transmissions? I mean—listen in?”

  “I think I can. And if I’m doing it, others are certain to be doing it as well.”

  “Hmm… what if you ran those shimmers through a lot of software and played the results?”

  Her shy smile shifted into a full-blown grin. “That’s what I’m going to do next.”

  That was Natasha. She’d always been a hacker. Playing buzzer-wrangler for the legions was boring to her. She wanted to break into things and examine them from the inside out.

  “What was the date, exactly,” she asked, “when Turov first mentioned leaving Glass World to go back to Earth?”

  “Uh… the fourteenth I think.”

  “That was the first time she said anything about it?” she asked. “Just to be sure.”

  “Yes. Remember that announcement?”

  She waved her fingers between us. “No, no. Not the official announcement. I’m talking about when she told you about it.”

  “It was the day before… I think.”

  Natasha smiled again. I frowned as I watched her work. Was she really going to—?

  A moment later, she spun her computer display around for me to see again. “Satellite imagery from the thirteenth. I’m picking up a shimmer.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I have no idea—not yet. I’ll have to work on it. Listen… if we could do an experiment, we could come up with a baseline to test against.”

  “Huh… I’m not following.”

  “Okay, we transmit a simple message over a deep-link right here. Then, we check to see what the reflections do. If we know what a given message says, we can interpolate what other messages will look like. Then… then we can listen in.”

  She was so excited her butt wasn’t even firmly on the chair anymore. Watching her and nodding now and then, I began to regret my most recent choices in life. Just to get laid, I’d gotten this girl fired up and performing interstellar crimes. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, where such things happened.

  Fortunately, a klaxon sounded shortly after breakfast was over. The whole bunker lit up with red arrows.

  My unit was given new orders—an attack was incoming.

  -38-

  After we’d made our commando attack and destroyed their gateway to Rigel, it was generally assumed that we could take our time encircling and destroying the enemy formation. After all, they were in a crystal fortress, but without supplies from home, time was on our side. We therefore adopted a siege mentality.

  But that didn’t last long. For one thing, the bears weren’t interested in cooperating.

  The first thing that came at us was their flying machines. They had a clear advantage in air support. Their flying machines weren’t fast like jets, they were more like helicopters. Very maneuverable, they could land anywhere. That kind of design worked better against shielded troops, as fast-moving aircraft would be damaged while flying through the force shields.

  The alien buzzing machines swooped over the crystal hills and flew from several angles at once toward our encampment. The shield we had, designed mostly to stop missiles, failed to halt their approach.

  Once inside the perimeter, they began hosing down our trenches from above with rapid-fire plasma turrets. The gunners were armored and shielded, as was the bottom of each airship. Our troops fired back with morph-rifles and other small arms, but with little effect.

  “Sargon!” I roared when I reached my designated trench. “Have you tried our mini-missiles yet?”

  “No dice, sir. The missiles are jammed or something. They can’t lock on these targets.”

  “Then get out belchers. Man the 88s and tilt them upward. We have to hurt them.”

  Sargon shouted to his weaponeers. They fired belchers clumsily into the sky. It wasn’t a good weapon for the task, however. Belchers were direct line-of-sight weapons. Tagging a dodging flying platform that was armored and firing back down at us proved difficult.

  The air raid was brief, but effective. Hundreds of troops were left dead or wounded. We’d only downed two of the fliers in four full minutes of fighting.

  When Graves got my report, he wasn’t happy. “That’s unacceptable, Centurion. Do your men know how to shoot straight or what?”

  “I’m sorry sir, the enemy strafed us as we were taking cover. Most of my casualties weren’t even in a trench when they were hit.”

  “That’s just great, McGill. When the next wave hits, make sure you’re ready this time.”

  My mouth sagged and my eyes blinked. “Next wave? I’m not seeing—oh wait, here they come.”

  Fast on the heels of the initial aerial assault, a ground force approached. They poured out from between every crack in the crystal wall ahead of us and spread out. They came at a ground-eating run and boiled over the closest trenches.

  “We should have built this camp farther back,” Leeson complained. “These little bastards are getting in too close. We should have built a killing field—”

  “Well, we fuck-all didn’t,” Harris interrupted. “No one expected this level of resistance. Centurion, what are your orders, sir? Do we just wait for them to hit our trenches?”

  It was a good question. Harris was right, this was our opportunity to help the front line—but I wasn’t sure if I should order a counter-assault.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I wrapped a gun strap around my left hand and bellowed at my unit over tactical chat.

  “Everyone, up and out of your trenches! Advance to contact! We’re going to support the front lines before they’re overwhelmed.”

  Normally, good tactical thinking would suggest we should stay put and gun the bears down as they came at us. Unfortunately, our rifles lacked the punch to penetrate their armor, and our shotguns, based on Rigellian designs, had short range. To help the front lines we had to advance.

  I half-expected Graves to order us to fall back—but he didn’t. Instead, units all along the line were following suit.

  The fighting on the front line was vicious. The bears were well-equipped professionals, but so were we. The unit we were moving up to support was also from my cohort. It was Manfred’s unit, one of the few officers in Legion Varus who shared my outlook and attitude.

  As we arrived, I thought at first that the bears had already creamed Manfred’s unit. There wasn’t a soul who was still standing in those trenches and firing at the advancing enemy line.

  But then, without warning, Manfred’s entire unit rose up and let rip with a storm of heavy gunfire. They all had shotguns, and they unloaded them into the guts of the advancing enemy.

  At the same time, I urged my own men to rush forward. Just as the bears met up with Manfred’s entrenched troops, we got there and fired pointblank. Many had fallen when Manfred had ambushed them, but even more were blown down by my charging line. It helped that Manfred’s men were standing in a trench, as we could easily fire over them to nail the advancing enemy.

  Often, one blast wasn’t enough to stop a bear soldier. He had to be gunned down repeatedly—but at last, he stopped getting up.

  After they’d taken something like thirty percent losses, the bears turned and ran. I’m not sure if they were following orders or running for their lives. Either way, we were glad to see their tails instead of their fangs.

  Sliding down a dirt wall in Manfred’s ditch, I almost fell on him. We sat down in the bottom of the hole, both breathing hard.

  “McGill?” he said, marveling. He was a broad, stocky fellow with a Brit accent. “How did you get here so fast—no, wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to be the star witness at your court martial.”

  “That’s the right attitude. What’s your unit’s status?”

  He threw up a tired hand at my question. “You don’t really frigging care, and I don’t have time to answer.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The next enemy wave is coming,” he told me.

  “Uh… I think we just drove them back.”

  He shook his head, drank water and shoved a battle-computer in a satchel toward me. There was a little gore on it, and seeing as it was no longer attached to one of his tech specialists, I didn’t ask where he had gotten it.

  On the display, which was sprinkled with blood and grime, I saw red triangles representing enemy contacts. They were spreading out in a crescent pattern around our entrenched position.

  “First off,” Manfred said, “their air assault softened us up. Then they sent a ground force to see if they could get rid of us on the cheap—but they’re done playing now. They’re encircling and planning to finish us methodically.”

  I nodded, going over the tacticals. They’d been downloaded from Berlin—a clear protocol violation. Only the primus-level officers were supposed to see the state of the entire battlefield.

  “You’ve got good hackers in your unit, the same as I do,” I told him.

  “Of course I do, mate. You can’t get far in Varus without the extra intel they don’t want you to have. What I want to know is what we’re going to do about this?”

  He looked at me with an odd expression. I’d seen it before. Just because, I’d been able to alter the natural course of events now and then, people thought I was some kind of magician.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know… maybe we could get Berlin to use her big guns…”

  “That’s as likely to splatter us as the bears.”

  “Sure is.” I gave him an appraising glance. Just how committed was he to holding this planet?

  “Hold on a moment, you crazy bastard. I didn’t say we should be annihilated then revive what’s left. That’s insane!”

  “I didn’t say anything of the kind.”

  Suddenly, Manfred half stood up in his trench. A few bolts struck the dirt where his helmet had been momentarily exposed, so he hunkered back down again. The earth smoked and the melted ground cooled into something that looked like dirty glass.

  “McGill,” he said through his teeth. “This is total madness! Are you telling me the brass plans to destroy the entire ground force once the bears fully engage?”

  I actually didn’t know any such thing. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The bears probably didn’t have revival machines, and we’d cut them off from their homeworld. That meant a trade of forces was in our favor. We could replace our men—and they couldn’t replace theirs.