-42-

  After we retook the center of the factory and gathered our troops together, we had about five hundred soldiers to work with. Primus Collins herself had finally arrived, and as the highest ranked officer in the area she began directing the counterattack. I had to give her credit for that. Winslade wasn’t down here in the combat zone, after all. He’d sent her as a sidekick to do the dirty work.

  We massed-up and pushed outward, heading for the bear positions to the west. Our advance was relentless. We met light resistance, recapturing much of the factory within minutes.

  When we finally came out under the open skies again, we were surprised. The bears had retreated. We shot after a few hairy figures on the horizon, but they slunk away into the gathering night.

  Apparently, once Victrix and Varus had managed to link up and support the garrison, they’d called off their lightning assault on the factory.

  We’d won the day. Once that sunk in, we did some hooting and hollering. The Mogwa Captain Elgu sneered, referring to all humans as barbaric ape-descendants. Centurion Tran and Primus Collins did their best to look calm and dignified, apologizing in particular for the overly enthusiastic Varus troops.

  I didn’t care. We’d fought hard, and we’d won. That’s what mattered. How a man celebrated his victories—that was up to him.

  Primus Collins came around to talk to me after the battle was over. She’d decided not to pursue the retreating bears, in case it was some kind of trap.

  Collins gave me a strange look right from the start. It was the kind of look a person might give a suspicious person found in their backyard. Was this a neighbor? A burglar? A friend or a foe? She wasn’t sure.

  “McGill? I understand your unit was the first to reach the Mogwa garrison. Is that true?”

  “It sure is, sir. After we toasted that bunker with mini-missiles, we never looked back. Hard-charging, that’s what 3rd Unit is known for. Hell, if I had—”

  Collins put up a gloved hand to stop me. “Yes, yes. I’ve heard plenty of your boasting already. But… in this case I have to admit some of your self-congratulatory talk is warranted. You did well. I thank you for your efforts, Centurion.”

  That was it. She turned and walked off. I didn’t give her any guff about cutting me off. She’d thanked me, and that was good enough. This little moment of comradery didn’t mean we were engaged or anything, but it was certainly better than trying to get each other killed by any means possible.

  The next thing I knew I had a call pinging in on my tapper. It was old sourpuss Winslade. He seemed as surprised by the results of the battle as Collins herself.

  “Collins actually took the factory? With less than a thousand men?”

  “Uh… I’m not rightly sure how many Victrix pukes were involved, but a thousand sounds about right, sir.”

  “Amazing… too bad it’s all for nothing.”

  I blinked a few times. Then I squinted. “For nothing?”

  “Yes, sadly. We’ve been pushed back everywhere else. The bears have taken several key locations around the perimeter of the City.”

  That alarmed me. I hadn’t really considered the idea that this attack wasn’t the only one. The way it sounded, it wasn’t even the biggest.

  Checking on my tapper and linking up with the strategic command feed, I browsed through the latest reports from every front while Winslade continued to talk.

  “McGill, since Primus Collins has been victorious in the zone, people have taken notice. The Mogwa High Command is requesting that the ‘crack’ combat team involved in the factory recapture be elevated in stature. It is truly her day to shine.”

  “Uh… what? How’s that, sir? We’re not even a combat team. We’re half Victrix and half… ”

  “Yes, yes. Of course, I know. But for now, you’ll operate under Primus Collins and you’ll pretend to like it. The Mogwa are panicking after losing the outskirts of their City in every direction.”

  Frowning fiercely, I ran to the nearest tall gray silo. I found a rickety Mogwa stairway and began taking them two at a time. Every time I found a door, I kicked it open. Higher and higher I climbed.

  While I ran, Winslade kept talking. “In order to capitalize on this diplomatically as well as militarily, you’re going to be transferred.”

  Huffing and puffing, I kicked open the last door. I walked to a railing and gazed out to the north, then south and at last to the east, where the City skyscrapers stood tall. High up above the factory complex, a dozen floors above ground level, I was able to get a pretty good picture of the landscape.

  In the distance, I saw the vast city center. Massive buildings were clustered together like a mountain range of oblong shapes. Most of the buildings were lit up, but not as many as there should be.

  Arching over the urban landscape, I saw the protective shell of force had survived intact thus far. It hadn’t been taken down yet. That dome took fantastic amounts of power to maintain, and I knew the generators were located in the heart of the metropolis.

  But looking lower, toward the edges of the dome, things were clearly not secure. There were fires, for one thing. Massive plumes of oily black smoke hung over lurid flickering flames.

  “...are you listening, Centurion?” Winslade demanded. “Is there some kind of cock-up in communications?”

  “Uh…” I said, my eyes roving over the scene in dismay. My hair fluffed up with a dry wind that came in from the east. “I’m here, sir. I’m outside, looking at the damage. How bad is it? How far have the bears pushed into the dome?”

  “Far enough. They’re threatening every sector. We’re pulling back all troops into the Mogwa City itself.”

  “What? We’re surrendering our position here at the factory?”

  “Yes. Collins has her orders. You’re going to retreat to the center of the city and help shore up the defenses at the location the Mogwa most fear to lose.”

  “Yeah? Where’s that?”

  Winslade shrugged. “There are plenty of vulnerable targets. Take the power generators, for instance. If power is lost, even briefly, the dome will flicker out. I don’t need to tell you that such an event would be disastrous, or possibly even fatal, to everyone involved in this grand struggle.”

  “I’ve got it, sir. We’ll do our best.”

  “I need more than that, McGill.”

  Confused, I stared at my tapper. Winslade looked back at me. His expression was cagey.

  “Uh… what else can I do for you, sir?”

  “I understand that Primus Collins and you haven’t always gotten along. In this coming struggle, there might possibly be… an opportunity to be considered.”

  He’d lost me entirely at this point. I was thinking of nothing other than how we could stop the bears from winning this fight.

  As I considered the campaign in its entirety, it occurred to me that we really couldn’t win by hiding under the dome. We would have to go on the offensive eventually. The city was too big, too hungry, and too thirsty. Sure, the Mogwa had all kinds of advanced recycling systems—but there were limits. You really needed a lot of support to keep billions of souls happy and functional.

  Along about then, I realized Winslade was still talking, and he was sounding increasingly shrill.

  “Are you listening to me at all, you ignoramus?” he demanded.

  “Huh?”

  Winslade controlled his temper with difficulty. “Do I really have to spell it out, McGill? Collins is hogging all the credit for this battle, and she’ll do the same for the next. We can’t have that. Do you understand me?”

  “Uh…” I said, and I gave myself a scratch.

  The funny thing was, I was beginning to get a glimmer of what he was hinting around about. He’d originally sent Collins out here to get rid of her—or at least that was my impression. To his surprise and chagrin, she’d performed all too well—with my help. We’d taken the factory and held it. For Winslade, this was a terrible turn of events.

  I knew this kind of petty officer rivalry was more important than anything to him. He’d gladly risk getting permed in order to leapfrog ahead of another officer and scoop up the credit for a victory. That’s just the kind of guy he was.

  Seeing my dumbass expression, Winslade closed his eyes and shook his head. “McGill, let’s put this as simply as I’m able: I want you to make sure there are no more dramatic victories in your immediate future. That’s all. Winslade out.”

  He closed the channel, and I lowered my tapper to gaze out into the night sky again. The fires were everywhere now, and that wasn’t all. I saw streaks of heavy fire rattling and roaring in the distance. A few kilometers away to the north and the south, the bears were pushing back the Mogwa and the legions alike.

  Then, I turned toward the city center in the east. Those big buildings weren’t pretty, but they were impressive. The city was larger than anything humanity had ever built. It was massive, hulking, blocky. In the night it looked more impressive than it had in the daytime, as most cities did. The countless lights that lit up the massive buildings shimmered in the distance.

  My tapper soon buzzed again, and I answered it. This time, it was Primus Collins.

  She had a strange tone in her voice. She was suspicious, I could tell. In my overly long lifetime, I’d heard that tone from the throats of countless women like her. She didn’t trust me.

  “Centurion McGill?” she said. “I see that you’ve been talking to headquarters.”

  Innocence and hardcore ignorance sprang to mind. It was my first and only defense. I went hard with it right from the beginning, using a cheery and matter-of-fact tone to counter her paranoia. “That’s exactly right, sir. Primus Winslade called me just now.”

  “I find it strange that Winslade would talk to you and not to me. What was the nature of this discussion?”

  “He told me to congratulate you on your victory. He said this factory was the only win on the front lines today.”

  “So… why did he call you, then?”

  “Huh… You know, I’m not rightly sure about that... I guess he thought you were too busy talking to the Mogwa High Command.”

  Her expression shifted from one of deep suspicion to bafflement. That’s right where I wanted her.

  “What? Why would they contact me?”

  “I don’t rightly know, sir. All I know is they requested this combat unit to be reassigned to the center of the City to coordinate their defenses. They seem to see you as some kind of a glorious hero, sir.”

  “They… what? Are you blowing smoke up my ass, McGill? I’ve heard rumors about you. If this is some kind of trick to get a date, or something, let me assure you that—”

  I cut her off by transmitting a snippet of my conversation with Winslade. I’d been working on trimming that piece of audio from the recorded talk since she first contacted me.

  She trailed off and listened to Winslade for a few moments. Naturally, I cut off the feed the moment we stopped talking about how cool she was in the eyes of the Mogwa.

  “I had no idea!” she said. “Why didn’t Winslade tell me about this himself?”

  “Like I said, maybe he thought that the Mogwa were—”

  But then, Collins made an impatient gesture with her hands, fluttering her fingers at me. “They’re calling right now. Collins out.”

  Her finger stabbed down at my face, and the image faded.

  Smiling, I lowered my arm and gazed out into the night skyline again. That’s how you handled two cottonmouth snakes. You tied their tails together and watched the fun.

  My smile faded as I watched the battles that were ongoing all over the horizon. The war wasn’t going so well. Sure, I’d dodged a bullet and won a small victory—but the struggle was far from over.

  -43-

  Things moved quickly after that call from Winslade. A lifter came down—I didn’t even know they’d managed to get some of them through the dome, but go figure… It landed right next to the factory. We loaded up every Victrix lamer, Varus man and a handful of Mogwa from the garrison. They even had room for a few dozen of those drone tanks of theirs.

  The whole kit-and-caboodle was hauled off toward the big city. Ten minutes later, we landed on top of a large flat building—one that was obviously designed for large craft to squat on. Marching down the ramps, we found that we’d been placed on top of Mogwa Command headquarters. This was the very center of the city’s defenses.

  Primus Collins and I were directed to go straight down into the inner sanctum, which was just under the flight deck. Mogwa marines and human troops were running all over the place. There were sirens and alerts. It was damn near chaos. There was a real energy around the place—but also one of impending doom.

  When I finally reached the big row of tactical planning tables, I was impressed. They had some real nice tech gear at work. We humans had good battle computers, don’t get me wrong, but you could tell right off that the resolution was higher, the sensor input was more sharp and detailed—everything was a cut above our usual fare.

  Primus Collins and I weren’t friends—we didn’t even like each other much—but we stood together anyway. Winslade wasn’t even present, so we couldn’t stand with him. Together, we were the lowest-ranking people in sight. Looking around with big eyeballs, we could tell everyone else in the room was more important than we were.

  After a minute or two of gawking, I spotted Tribune Harold Kraus. He was the vaunted commander of Legion Victrix. Among all the tribunes and legions, Victrix was probably the most famous. They’d been the first commissioned legion in Earth’s history. They’d saved our world back in the old days, when we didn’t have a trade good worth spit. In a last ditch attempt to not be erased as a species, we’d come up with the idea of sending mercenary troops to the stars to serve the highest bidder. Victrix had served those initial contracts, and they’d brought home the bacon. Everyone on Earth felt they owed Victrix a personal debt as a result.

  Tribune Kraus looked the part. His kit was immaculate. There wasn’t a dent or a scratch, and I’ll be damned if his armor wasn’t more than just shiny. It seemed to glow a bit, as if somehow it was lit up by an internal source of holy power.

  “He probably paints that breastplate in radium,” Primus Collins remarked.

  I glanced down at her. She was at my elbow, and she didn’t look any cleaner or fresher than I did. We’d both just come from the front lines, and there wasn’t a streak of soot, grease or filth that hadn’t found its way onto her scratched-up armor. My own armor was that impenetrable black kind, so it looked better than hers did at least. It was, however, no less stinky when you got up close and personal.

  Kraus beckoned to us, and we bellied up to the battle table. Kraus gave us a critical eye. Was he faintly disgusted? He might be.

  “Ah,” Kraus said. He was Austrian and had a sonorous voice with a German accent. “Can this be our conquering heroes from the front lines?”

  “Primus Collins reporting, sir… and this is Centurion McGill. His unit was the first to reach the Mogwa garrison.”

  “Excellent! You saved the day at that one point along our crumbling front lines. How did you do it?”

  One of the Mogwa high command officers ruffled up at his words. The Mogwa had about the fanciest outfit in the room, being all dressed up like a peacock complete with feathers and fluff. The Mogwa idea of high officer costumes was… strange.

  “Again with the implied insults, Tribune Kraus. You try our patience.”

  “No insult was implied, I assure you, Field Marshal.”

  The field marshal guy looked unconvinced. “First, you insist that these animals be dragged up from the front to our planning tables. Then, you proceed to insult our intellect by suggesting it was these grunting humans that saved the factory, not the glorious Captain Elgu.”

  “Well, let us hear their report and judge accordingly.”

  Primus Collins and I hadn’t been happy campers before, and now we were even less thrilled about being here. Apparently, we were pawns in some sort of interspecies pissing contest. That was just grand.

  “Um…” Collins began. “There isn’t much to say. Perhaps some vids clipped from the action will tell the tale more succinctly.”

  So saying, she tossed a few glittering images from her tapper to the tactical table. With poor grace and angry gestures, the Mogwa guy in the feathered boa allowed the vid to be displayed.

  Highlights of the action were played out. The edits were quite well done and dramatic. Most of all, I was impressed that Collins had had the foresight to put together this collection of clips. Maybe she’d had an inkling of what we were walking into.

  The vids clearly showed we had fought our way inside and destroyed the bears, even while the Mogwa garrison was getting its ass beaten soundly.

  Tribune Kraus smiled all the while. He glanced now and then at Collins, and I realized right about then that the two were in cahoots.

  Finally, the field marshal fellow threw in the towel. He reached out with a foot-hand thing and slapped away the vids, tossing them to the dumpster in the corner of the big screen.

  “All right, all right. You’ve made your point, Kraus, as offensive as it is. Your apes were critical in the defense of this single point on our front lines. They have, however, failed us at every other juncture imaginable. The barbarians are frothing at the mouth to consume our young. What do you propose to do to stop them?”

  Kraus nodded sagely. I could tell he had been waiting for this exact opening. He stepped forward and took command of the tactical table himself. His shining gauntlets cut traceries over the table, conjuring up the terrain of the great city and its surroundings.

  The Mogwa field marshal looked annoyed. He reluctantly shuffled his numerous limbs a pace or two to one side.

  “You see here?” Kraus asked, tapping at a point along the city perimeter. “This is where they will strike next. This is where we must stop them.”

  “Why this factory? There is no critical technology there. No repository of weapons. No—”