The captain lifted his black lips. “I will do no such thing, barbarian. You will suffer the thousands deaths of the most hated. Squanto will—”

  “I bet he’s going to pay you a lot for my carcass, huh? Is that why you won’t let your troops kill me? Let me guess, you’re going to keep all the money for yourself as well, am I right?”

  “It would be best for you to be silent. Justice will be harsh with you—very harsh. But it is justice all the same. I—”

  “You sure do talk a lot,” I said, “and you’re kind of a chicken, too. You think you could kill me, man-to-man? Let’s find out. Let’s wrestle!”

  The captain looked up at me in surprise. “That would be pointless, human. You are a large beast, even for one of your kind. But your muscle density is inferior. It’s on par with that of prey animals. You could not hope—”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” I demanded, and I let loose a big laugh. “Come on, I’m just a big pussy human. Give it a shot. We’ll use only our hands. Now, take off that armor and kick my ass!”

  The bear showed his teeth. Around him, his troops were eyeing one another. They were a warrior culture, and they understood challenges of this kind. I’d seen them wrestle one another on many occasions. In fact, I’d wrestled Squanto a few times personally. They were tough little dudes, I’ll give them that.

  “Very well, impudent animal,” the captain said. “I am to deliver you alive, but there is no requirement that you—”

  “You talk too much, pansy!” I roared at him, bending my knees and throwing my arms wide.

  Two bears, clinging to each of my arms, were lifted into the air. Up until that point, I hadn’t let them know I could do that. They were strong—but they were light, too. Especially on Glass World, which had slightly less gravity than Earth.

  Hissing, the bear officer threw back his helmet to fully reveal his snout. That mouth of his was full of fangs, and I was pretty certain he wanted to sink them into me.

  At a wave from the captain, the two bears let go of me and dropped to the ground. The group surrounded the two of us, and I gave them a grin that was just as feral as theirs.

  Throwing off my helmet to match him, I began to circle. The bear did the same, talking big all the while about how he was going to take a scent-piss—his words, not mine—on my bleeding back after he’d laid me out flat in the grass.

  Finally, he charged in as I knew he would. These bears were pretty tough in hand to hand combat. They had their own form of martial arts, and this one was no exception.

  I knew that if I let him in close, he might be impossible to dislodge. Therefore, I had to act right away.

  As he came near, I pulled my combat knife from my flapping layered armor and swung it overhand. It was a close thing—his arm came up to block at the last instant—but forward momentum was such that he couldn’t reverse himself and back off. Instead, he threw himself low.

  Unfortunately for him, I have overly-long arms. I chunked the knife down, right into the top of his nasty-ass, fuzzy skull. Gore spat up, and the good captain had been struck dead.

  What happened next was predictable and exactly what I’d hoped for: the captain’s troops went berserk.

  I’d gotten the sense that they hadn’t liked me all that much right from the start, but after underhandedly destroying their captain with a trick move, they couldn’t contain themselves. They swarmed me like a pack of howling wolves. I was dragged down and torn apart, with fangs ripping out my veins and chunks of meat flying.

  I stabbed a few more of them, but they were wearing their helmets, and the blade didn’t penetrate. Aw well, I chalked it up as a good death anyways.

  Lying in the mud on my back, bleeding out, I stared at the alien sun. I laughed and cursed their mothers.

  Then, I died.

  -46-

  When I came back to life, I wasn’t angry or laughing… I was mystified. As soon as I could talk properly, I demanded answers.

  The person I demanded them from was Winslade. Fresh from the revival chamber, hardly able to walk and talk straight, I barged into his office.

  “Tribune…? What the hell happened down there? I landed in my pod, and my men were dead before I hit the ground. Then I found out why—our LZ was crawling with bears.”

  “Hmm… yes,” Winslade said, sounding quite disinterested. He was going over some kind of Glass World charts on his office battle-computer. “Well, there’s no need for concern. Your unit just appeared to have been extraordinarily unlucky. The rest of the troops landed without serious resistance and swept the area clear of your murderers. Once your group was confirmed dead, you were marked for revival.”

  “That’s all fine and dandy. But there are very serious implications here. Those bears knew I was landing right there, at that exact spot. What’s more, they had orders to catch me and hand me over to Squanto.”

  “High Lord Squanto? You must be mistaken. He’s hundreds of lightyears away, McGill. Please get a grip.”

  “I’m clear of heart, eye and mind, sir. Someone aboard Berlin gave away my drop coordinates. Someone gave that intel to Rigel.”

  At last, Winslade looked up from his glowing computer. I saw now that he was going over detailed LIDAR readings from Glass World, which showed underground hidden chambers and the like.

  “Now listen here, McGill. I don’t need to hear that kind of talk. No one aboard this ship is a traitor.”

  In my opinion, he was almost right. The only traitor I knew of was Winslade himself—but he seemed to be trying to make amends.

  “Is Graves still dead?” I asked him, arms crossed.

  That got his attention. We eyed one another for a few seconds.

  “What are you implying?” he asked at last.

  “I’m the only one that knows about that. Maybe you thought you should clean up a little.”

  “Ah… I see. This isn’t a complaint, it’s an accusation. Fascinating, the machinations of a simplistic mind.”

  “You were in command of the operation, and you had all the data. You also have access to a deep-link transmitter—and I’m a loose end.”

  “All true, I’m afraid. Here’s the punchline: I had nothing better to do than to come up with an elaborate plan to put you away. Listen, McGill, if I wanted you permed or otherwise expunged, would I have put in a priority revival order on your sorry excuse for a soul no more than an hour ago? Hmm? Answer me that.”

  I stared at him, and I blinked a few times, letting his words sink in. He had a point. If he’d wanted to get rid of me, and he’d gone to all that trouble to set me up with the bears—why the hell had he revived me? He could have simply left me languishing in the queue like Graves.

  My hair dripped thick fluid, and it splattered on his computer table. Winslade looked disgusted.

  “Ew! You’re dribbling amniotic fluid all over my office. Go find your villain, real or imagined, on your own time—and for God’s sake man, take a shower!”

  He threw me out of his office. Muttering, I staggered down the passageways in confusion. I couldn’t argue with his straightforward logic. It did seem that Winslade was innocent of this particular crime.

  But there had to be someone aboard who wasn’t…

  Going through a long list of enemies, jilted lovers and such-like, I came up with dozens of names. But none of them fit. None of them had the power, the means, or the balls to do this.

  Then I came up with one final name. I headed down to Blue Deck and made inquiries.

  “Ensign Leeza? Yes, she was assigned here during the voyage, but she’s since moved on to other duties.”

  I got what I could from the bio people and left. I headed to talk to Captain Merton, but his sidekicks intercepted me.

  “Centurion? Can we help you?”

  I eyed the ship’s XO warily. She wasn’t smiling at me. Not even a fake smile. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she looked like she smelled shit.

  “All I want to know is where Ensign Leeza has been assigned.”

  “That’s private information. I’ve got no interest in enabling a Varus stalker, no matter what his rank is.”

  “I think she’s the one that’s stalking me,” I said.

  That got a few surprised glances from the crew people. I let them know that Leeza used to be in the legions, and she had reasons to dislike me, as I came from a rival outfit.

  Troubled, the XO swiped through some documents. “The truth is… she didn’t report to her duty station this morning. The data core says she’s in her quarters. Perhaps we should all go down there to perform a welfare-check.”

  She summoned a few marines, and we marched down into the bowels of the officers’ quarters. Ensigns weren’t much above noncoms in rank, and they had to bunk up with each other. Leeza’s bunk was on the top, and it was empty—almost.

  Being a tall man, I was able to see something in the sheets the others missed. I yanked them free, and something flew. It squelched and flopped on the deck.

  “What the hell is that?” demanded the XO.

  I squatted and poked at it. “It’s a ripped-out tapper. The blood hasn’t dried yet, so it was done recently.”

  The marines drew their weapons and aimed them at me.

  “Varus,” the XO said, “your kind disgusts me. What did you do with her?”

  I snorted. “Don’t threaten me with your pellet-guns, boys. I’m a magic man. Somehow, I murdered this woman while I was dropping on Glass World. I probably faked my own death and revival too!”

  The XO checked out my story, and she soon found it was undeniably true. “You weren’t even on the ship when this had to have happened... All right… What’s your theory, McGill? Where is Ensign Leeza?”

  I stood up and leaned on the bunks. “She’s long gone, I bet. She removed her tapper so she couldn’t be traced. That’s a pretty radical move, even for a woman of her caliber.”

  “Long gone? How?”

  “Let’s go down to Gray Deck.”

  When we arrived and checked the records, we discovered one of the harnesses was indeed missing. After I’d dropped, someone had left the ship—but no one knew who.

  “Anyone with a tapper would have been ‘ID’ed,” I said. “I think we know who left.”

  “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “I have theories. You see, I’m not well-liked on Rigel.”

  “Really?” the XO asked. “I would have never suspected.”

  “A real mystery, I know. Anyway, I think she helped someone out, and they gave her a new home. A new life.”

  The XO frowned. “Rigel hates you that much, McGill? Seriously?”

  “Uh… yeah. I did some things… well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of them, but let’s just say, Squanto hates me. He wants me bad.”

  The XO smiled and unfurled her crossed arms. Taking this as a sign of good will, I asked her out on the spot—but she passed. The marines behind her shook their heads and eyed the ceiling, but I didn’t care. A man has to take his shot when the moment is right.

  She was, however, flattered. She let me look into the Gray Deck records. After she left, I called Natasha, and we combed through the details. As the XO had approved, the Gray Deck nerds let us do it.

  “I’ve got the coordinates,” Natasha whispered an hour later.

  “Cool. Copy them, and let’s get out of here.”

  “Um… what do you have stuffed under your shirt, James…? Is that… oh no! No way!”

  “Shhh!”

  I led her out by the arm, and I kissed her in the passageway. She melted into the kiss, but she still was shaking her head no when we came up for air.

  “I’m not going to do it, James McGill,” she said. “I’m not reprogramming that teleport harness you stole to send you off to god-knows-where!”

  “Who said anything about that?”

  “I know you. You’ll get yourself permed to figure something out.”

  I shrugged, unable to deny the truth of her words. “Okay then,” I said, plucking the data chip from her fingers. “I’ll do it on my own.”

  She followed me, huffing and upset. “Kivi will screw it up.”

  “Maybe.”

  She followed a dozen more steps, getting more upset and jealous all the time.

  “All right, damn you. I’ll help you kill yourself again, if it means so much to you.”

  “It does girl, it does.”

  By morning, her work was done. I woke up in my tiny stateroom to see her putting the final touches on her gizmo.

  It was a power-concentrator, a kind of coil powered by splicing into the main lines in the ship’s walls. Panels were removed, and fittings were wrapped with countless layers of rubber tape.

  “Uh…” I said, looking it over. “Is this safe?”

  “No. Not in the least.”

  Natasha looked down at her hands, and I thought she might be ready to cry.

  “What’s the matter? You’ve got a body scan of me. You’ve got an alibi, and evidence that shows I deserve a revive if I don’t come back—everything you need to fix this if it goes wrong.”

  She shook her head. “James… it’s not just that. They’re going to kill you. When I see you again, you won’t even know what happened. These engrams are too old. You won’t be this James McGill—the one I’ve fallen in love with all over again.”

  She had a good point, so I didn’t argue. I kissed the top of her head, thanked her and hugged her—and then I ported out into the void.

  -47-

  As I flew through the cosmos, I had certain regrets. The trip was a long, long one. That meant I was traversing a large number of lightyears.

  These journeys were never pleasant, but not even knowing your destination makes it worse somehow. Sure, you feel like you’re suffocating the whole time anyway, but I’d taken to slowly, calmly counting in my head as I traveled. That gave me something of a measure. The trick was not to get nervous and speed up the count, hoping against hope that doing so would somehow speed up the process.

  I’d gotten pretty good at counting, and the speed I counted at generally corresponded, one for one, to a lightyear traveled. I’d gotten a real feel for it over the decades.

  One hundred eighty-six.

  That’s was the count when I arrived, and it didn’t give me any comfort. That distance… there weren’t too many logical targets at that range. It wasn’t far enough to get beyond the frontier Province 928 entirely. That meant I was arriving somewhere in the frontier zone.

  It could have been Dark World, which was in the middle of the zone, or maybe even Storm World…

  But it wasn’t. In fact, before the blue rhythmic light had faded, I kind of knew where I was.

  Rigel. It had to be Rigel.

  Holy shit… I was six kinds of a moron today if that’s what had happened. I’d avoided being captured and shipped off to Squanto—probably in just the manner I’d transported myself today. Those bears that had been so dead-set on capturing me hadn’t possessed a ship, or gateway posts. They would have almost certainly pasted a bunch of stamps on my sorry forehead and strapped me up with a teleport rig and sent me to their homeworld if they could have—and now I’d gone and done it for them.

  Shit.

  I was standing on a deck. A metal deck, with a low ceiling. Just as the count had come to a finish, I’d realized where I must be landing, and I’d ducked low. I was in a fighting crouch, in fact.

  It was a damned good thing. Those short-assed bears didn’t build their ceilings for giants. Their passages were normally a roomy meter-and-half high. That was plenty of headroom for any native of Rigel ever born—but it would have killed me, had I been standing tall upon arrival.

  As it was, my helmet was almost touching the roof of the place. Once, back when we’d captured a Rigellian ship, I’d gotten a scalping that way, and I didn’t want to repeat the process.

  Breathing hard, I pulled my weapon up and flipped my visor open. Bears breathed air that was pretty heavily oxygenated, the mix being a little richer than Earth’s, but that was okay as long as you didn’t hyperventilate.

  A passage. That’s what it was. The gravity was low, so I didn’t figure I was on the ground. I was probably on a space station or a large starship. Either way, it was unfriendly territory and then some.

  Putting my rifle in front of my face, I moved forward quickly, aiming the gun everywhere I looked. There were no other HUD connections. My tapper was spinning, disconnected. I was off the grid.

  Switching into low-emissions mode, I activated my passive recorders, such as my body cams. Who knew? Whatever intel I got today might reach Earth by some miracle. It couldn’t hurt.

  The worst news of all regarding my situation was the flashing red on my teleport harness battery pack. It had been drained way down. If I’d flown only a few lights, I could have jumped home, but that was out of the question now.

  Moving through a series of passages, I searched for an outlet, but found nothing.

  “McGill…” I said quietly to myself. “Carlos was right. Your brain is defective. You stepped on your own dick today.”

  The sad truth was I’d found myself in this sort of situation before. I’m not sure if I suffer from overconfidence, denial or just plain old-fashioned retardation. Whatever the case, I pushed these thoughts down and focused on the mission. I was going to recon the place, looking for a way out the whole time. With luck, I’d pop back home ten minutes from now.

  A part of my mind that wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode took solace in the fact that I at least had my answer. Leeza had screwed me over, then ported out to Rigel herself. In retrospect, that should have been obvious—but it hadn’t been, somehow.

  After all, if Leeza had done it, she would have been working for a reward. Who would have paid handsomely for my capture?

  The only name I could come up with was Squanto, man’s best friend out here on Rigel. I’d done excellent detective work, but then blown it on the final step…

  “The contact is dead ahead,” I heard a voice say. It was a human female voice, and it was coming over a radio. It still sounded kind of familiar…