“Yes, but we have an idea. Come up to meet with us.”

  “Uh… now?”

  “Immediately. Turov out.”

  My tiny screen went dead. My eyes stared at it for a few seconds, then I looked at my troops. They had hopeful, hungry eyes.

  “I’ve been summoned up to Dominus,” I told them.

  Leeson slapped his knee and guffawed. Harris snarled. They both had the same idea, but with radically different reactions.

  “You’re going up for a booty-call now?” Harris demanded. “While we sit here in the ice and filth?”

  “You lucky fucker,” Leeson said. “I wish I was as tall as one of these pines with a dick longer than a water-snake.”

  Harris looked at him in disgust. “It wouldn’t matter in your case, ‘cause you’re bone-ugly.”

  I stood up. It was clear to me that what limited decorum and discipline my legion was capable of was breaking down.

  “I’m going up,” I told them. “And you fools better hope I can talk some sense into the brass—unless you want to sit here and besiege these mountains until Christmas.”

  Leeson went off into a cackling gale, while Harris glared at everyone. Only Erin Barton came close and eyed me thoughtfully.

  “You think your personal relationship with Turov can get us out of here, sir?”

  “Maybe. I’ll give it a shot. No promises.”

  She nodded. “I hope you can pull it off. I don’t know if we can spend another week sitting out here without going mad.”

  Troubled, I left my unit and went to the tents with the gateway posts humming inside. Without a thought, I stepped through.

  A moment later, I was on the lower decks of Dominus again. I made my way up to Gold Deck and sought out my betters.

  Marching into the place, I found that everyone who met me quickly stepped out of the way.

  I knew right-off what was wrong: I had purple splotches on my face, including the tip of my nose. I’d been frostbitten and then some. I must have looked appalling.

  But I didn’t care about my haunting appearance. If the people up here hiding aboard a nice, warm starship didn’t like the way a grunt from the trenches looked, well sir, they could avert their eyes.

  Turov and Graves waited for me in a conference room. I walked in and sat down. I let my face drip as the frost melted, forming a discolored puddle on the computer table between us.

  “Would you like a refreshment, James?” Galina asked.

  I looked at her, and she gave me that kind of wincing, squinting look again. She was trying to play it cool, but I knew my face was bothering her.

  “Always, Imperator.”

  She poured me a hot brandy, and I tossed it down. I had to get the second one myself.

  Graves stared at me while I did this. “Centurion, we’ve got a special duty for you.”

  “Hot damn! What is it, sir?”

  “You’re going to repeat your initial teleport attack.”

  I blinked a few times. “Uh… how is that going to work, sir? The enemy does flicker that dome now and then, for a second or so, when they fire artillery at us. But that’s not enough time to pinpoint a landing spot and cycle up the teleport—”

  I stopped, because Graves had his hand up in my direction.

  “We’re not going to time their dome and enter it that way. Instead, we’ll launch a diversionary attack on the other two flanks of the mountain fortress. Then your team will penetrate the dome when the enemy is distracted.”

  Squinting, I swilled down my third brandy. It hit my gut like a hot explosion—but it felt good a moment later.

  “Okay… so we walk in sneaky-like—and then we get pasted by a million rounds from the top of the walls?”

  “No. You’ll have a small team, not a full unit. You’ll be wearing stealth gear—and teleport harnesses. Once inside the dome on the least interesting front, you’ll teleport to the base of the wall, plant a charge, and retreat.”

  “Oh… and this charge will be big enough to take down the wall?”

  “That’s our hope, James,” Galina said.

  I looked from one of them to the other. “Why me? Why not get a group of ghosts to do this particular bit of dying?”

  Galina looked at Graves, and she nodded.

  “Because we think you can pull it off,” Graves told me. “We thought about sending a pack of ghosts—men like Cooper, for example, but we weren’t sure he’d blow himself up. Most ghost specialists are kind of selfish that way.”

  “Hmm…” I said, thinking it over. “I guess I’ll do it. At least my face will be fixed when I’m revived.”

  “Good. Volunteering isn’t necessary, but it’s appreciated. Report to Gray Deck in thirty minutes.”

  That was it. Graves stood up, saluted, and left. I lingered behind with Galina. I gave her a hopeful grin.

  “I’ve been kind of lonely down there in the trenches,” I said.

  She fluttered her eyes while squinting and showed me her teeth. She looked grossed-out. “I don’t know, James. I appreciate you and all that, but maybe you should come back after you’ve been killed and revived. A fresh body—you could use that right now.”

  “Aw, come on. Let’s take a shower, and I’ll clean right up. You’ve got a fresh can of nu-skin in your quarters, don’t you? That’ll cover up just about anything.”

  She sighed, but after a bit more wheedling, she relented. We showered, sprayed my frostbitten face with nu-skin, and made love. She insisted on being turned the other way around—I suspected so she couldn’t see my injuries—but I didn’t mind that a bit.

  -40-

  Reporting to Gray Deck seventeen minutes late, I whistled a happy tune. I hadn’t felt this good in a long while.

  A team formed around me. They weren’t my own people—not this time. They weren’t even all humans. The guy I found the most interesting of the lot was a scupper named Yellow-Eye.

  “Hey!” I said, spotting him right off. “You’re a scupper from Storm World, aren’t you?”

  The tall, salamander-like fellow turned around toward me. He looked like one of those colorful frogs from the Amazon jungle, except he stood up on his hind legs. His soft, wet skin was green, and he had a single bright yellow splotch over his left eye, just like his name suggested.

  “I am from M244-H, yes. You are First-man today?”

  “That’s right. I’m your First-man for this mission. Where are all the others?”

  I heard a giggle. A woman appeared off to my right. She had been stealthed, and she’d snatched away her bag-like stealth suit. The suits weren’t tight-fitting, as they didn’t work quite as well when they folded-up and creased.

  Several others appeared a moment later. All in all, there were five of them, including the scupper.

  “I didn’t even know any of your kind had joined our legions,” I told Yellow-Eye.

  “I am in the Varus support legion. My tribune is known as Winslade.”

  “Ah, right. That makes sense. Alien troops need an alien scout, I guess.”

  We all talked a bit, and I was given a larger stealth-suit to pull over my body. I checked to make sure it worked, then we moved on to our weapons and teleport harnesses.

  After picking through our gear, I found it was pretty thin. “No grenades? Nothing better than snap-rifles?”

  One of the tech jockeys addressed my concerns. She was a prissy type with a bigger gut than your typical legionnaire. That was because she was Fleet. Her kind didn’t die all the time and go on an instant-diet called a revival. Besides that, tech jockeys tended to be assigned to work that was only a short stroll from the mess hall.

  “That’s right, Centurion. You’re being issued an explosive much more powerful than a grenade.”

  Here, she hefted a watermelon-sized device with a wicked look to it.

  “Is this antimatter?” I asked. “Isn’t that overkill for blowing down a wall?”

  “What? No, no, it’s not an A-bomb. It’s a shaped-plasma charge. Kind of like a warhead for a star-fall but detached from the delivery system. You and your team are going to deliver it.”

  I lifted the item gingerly. Everyone around me backed up a step—like that was going to do them any good if it went off.

  “Seems kind of heavy.”

  The tech grinned. “That’s right, and ghosts are all skinny-armed guys. Can you guess who’s going to carry the warhead?”

  My face went slack for a second or two—then I got it. “Oh… is that why I was chosen for this novel form of suicide?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe… I don’t know. We requested some muscle, and they sent you. You’re welcome.”

  She sauntered off, and I worked to find a comfortable way to carry the bomb. It didn’t seem possible, so I soon gave up. One arm was going to have to be wrapped around it, and that arm was going to become sore after a while—the damned thing was heavy.

  The rest of the ghosts stood around looking lost. Usually, their job was to sneak into places and give recon reports to the brass. They weren’t usually used as sappers. As a result, all their faces were kind of glum.

  All of them that is, except for the scupper. Yellow-Eye seemed excited by the whole thing.

  “First-man, I’ve got an idea,” he told me.

  “What’s that?”

  “Perhaps I can be the one to carry the bomb.”

  My eyes grew squinty. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It would be a novel experience for me.”

  “Uh… okay. Tell you what, if you can pick this thing up with both hands, I’ll let you do it.”

  Working hard to make the bomb look as light as possible, I held it out to him with both my arms. They were straining, let me tell you, but I grinned and looked as cool as a cucumber.

  Yellow-Eye took the bait. He reached out his skinny wet hands and gripped both sides of the warhead. When I let go of it—well sir, it went down like a bomb is supposed to.

  Fortunately, I’d anticipated this possibility. I’d propped up a boot under it, preventing it from crushing one of the fool’s webbed feet. Even so, it thumped on the deck and rolled away with an ominous sound as the salamander sadly looked on.

  “What the hell?” asked a gruff voice.

  Graves marched up to us as I picked the warhead back up off the floor.

  “What’s wrong with you, McGill? Are you trying to blow up the ship?”

  “Aw now, it’s not even activated yet, sir.”

  Graves inspected the bomb and me with equal disgust. “Just stop messing around. The diversionary attacks are already underway down on the planet surface. You’re on-deck.”

  We hustled to our places and buckled everything into place. Nine long minutes passed, during which the fighting on Ice World went from sporadic to hardcore.

  “Kind of cool huh?” I asked Yellow-Eye. “All those men are fighting and dying down there, but it’s our mission that really matters.”

  “I don’t know, First-man. I think that they matter much more than we do.”

  “Uh… what do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I expect today to end with a perming-event for this man. That’s why I wanted to carry the weapon. It would bring me pride in my final moments.”

  My face fell. I knew he could be right.

  Sure, we all knew this mission was probably a suicide-run. That didn’t bother me much, but the implications were entirely different for Yellow-Eye. Legion Varus didn’t often revive non-humans, and he knew it.

  “Huh…” I said. “I’ll see if I can do something about that when we get back.”

  Yellow-Eye stared at me, and it looked like he was going to say something—but he didn’t have time. All of a sudden, the world began to rhythmically flash in blue-white colors.

  I knew what that meant. We were porting out. The mission launch order must have been given by someone—probably Graves.

  We appeared in an outcropping of windswept stones. We were uphill from the Valley of Death, a region still choked with so many frozen bodies it was going to be hard to walk.

  Quickly, we pulled our stealth suits into place and vanished. That was kind of disorienting right there.

  The other ghosts were well-trained. They’d spent hundreds of hours invisible to their peers. They were used to navigating over terrain when they couldn’t see their feet or their hands—but me? I almost fell on my face after my first dozen steps.

  My hand shot out and clutched a sharp rock. It didn’t go through my thin glove, but it for sure left some gouges in my skin under there. I pushed myself back to my feet with a grunt and tucked that bomb up against my belly. I was going to have to take every step carefully.

  Footprints helped me. The other ghosts were moving ahead, taking the lead. They were more skilled and unburdened. Fortunately, they left prints behind, and I followed them.

  There was a scuffle in the gray light ahead. I squinted and struggled in the snow. A dozen more steps brought me to a fallen figure.

  A Claver-Three was face down in the snow. His throat had been cut by more than one combat knife. It didn’t seem fair, but that was war for you.

  The ghosts had ringed the Claver’s corpse with footprints. They’d swarmed him and butchered him. Struggling with my heavy burden, I followed the prints downslope toward the shimmering dome.

  A hundred steps farther on, I reached the edge of the force-field. I stepped into it, and I felt an odd pressure against every hair on my body. It was a weird sensation, like pushing through the thickest soap-bubble in the universe. The bubble went on and on until I broke through at last.

  There I found another dead Claver. Dammit, the ghosts were going crazy. If they killed too many scouts, the enemy might suspect something was up. I thought about breaking radio-silence and chewing them out, but that was against orders—what’s more, it would have been shit-off stupid.

  There was nothing to do other than follow the footprints a few more steps. That’s when I found something different: another bloody corpse in the snow.

  This dead man was different than the others. He was taller, thinner, and all I saw was a flappy foot. The rest of him was under a stealth suit.

  I tugged at the bottom hem of the suit—then I was certain. It was Yellow-Eye. He’d been shot clean through.

  -41-

  Two paces onward, I found another of my ghosts. It was that giggly woman from the 6th—and she was as dead as the salamander.

  Looking around wildly, I felt my heart speed up, and my breath turned into a puffing bellows. In that simple moment, a shock of clear thought hit me—they could see us. They were killing us somehow.

  I froze. Was it our footprints? Was it some kind of anti-stealth tech? Maybe a sensor we didn’t have?

  Forcing myself to slowly, calmly gaze this way and that, I saw something to my right. It was only a stone’s throw away.

  Squinting, I realized what I was looking at. A puff of white steam, mysteriously blowing in the frigid air—like an invisible man breathing.

  A shot rang out. It was sniper-fire—the sound was unmistakable. The spot lurched where the puffing breath had been, and blood shot out over the snow.

  My first instinct was to rush toward the fallen man, but I stopped myself. I couldn’t help him.

  “McGill,” I heard him croak out. “They can see our breath. Stop breathing.”

  My lungs stopped moving. The stricken man was crawling toward me. Another shot rang out, and more blood spurted. I couldn’t see the body, but he didn’t talk anymore. I figured he had to be a goner.

  I sucked in a bit of frosty air, but I didn’t let any out. My eyes rose high, and I scanned the vast wall ahead of us. The sniper could be anywhere. He might have been on the top of the wall, or down here in the field of dead with us.

  It hardly mattered. He had us zeroed. He was scanning the field, looking for more oddly appearing footprints, or white puffing breath. He was good, and he was patient. He would find me eventually.

  My lungs began to burn as I tried to think. Three of my men were dead, and I couldn’t hear or see any survivors. There might not be any. Coming to a fateful decision, I reached into my stealth suit and touched a button. It was time to teleport again.

  That hadn’t been the plan. When we’d discussed this op and been briefed, we’d been told to stay together—to function as a team. We were to penetrate the dome, make sure we were at least fifty meters from the field, then teleport again to get closer to the wall. The force-field might disrupt the teleportation effect otherwise.

  Screw that. The thought was loud and clear inside my skull. Waiting around to be shot down like a dog was never part of my itinerary. I was either going to escape—or this was it.

  The teleportation effect began to glimmer, and I relaxed a fraction. I was going to make it. There should be time—

  Crack!

  Another shot rang out.

  Crack! Crack!

  Two more shots—possibly several more. It was hard to—

  Crack!

  Something struck me then. It hit me like a hammer in the thigh. I could feel it, burning and biting—then I was gone. I rejoined reality a split-second later. I was in a different place, but it was no less dark, frozen and alien.

  Reaching out a hand, I steadied myself. The bomb slipped from my other hand, and I sagged down against a tall, slick surface.

  Looking around I saw where I was. The looming hulk of the wall shot straight up until it merged with the frosty clouds.

  Gathering my wits, I staunched the blood flowing down my leg. It was freezing quickly, but not quickly enough. I used nu-skin and a stim—then a second stim.

  A strange smile and a floaty feeling overcame my face. That was better.

  Taking the bomb, I moved it to the base of the great wall, and I considered setting it off right then—honest, I did.

  But I knew that doing so might perm me, and it would certainly perm Yellow-Eye—not to mention the rest of my brave team of commandos I’d led into this nightmare.

  What could I do?

  My eyes and my slightly deranged mind scanned my environment. I was on the inside of the wall, on the side with stairways and doors placed here and there. I was supposed to place the bomb here and set it off.