Kraus cut him off with a flourish. “This installation is the key to your city’s water distribution. It produces nothing—but it controls the flow of liquid needed for life. Any city can take a disruption in food, or power—but none can withstand thirst for long.”

  “Hmm…” said the Mogwa thoughtfully. “How do you propose to stop them from conquering this spot?”

  “We will not try. Instead, we will strike with a full Blood Worlder legion, pushing them back from this point to the wall of the dome.”

  The field marshal looked troubled. His eye-groups traveled to look at Collins and me. “And these filthy apes? Why are they here? Move your genetic mutant armies to the spot and push the enemy back. You don’t even have a representative from their number here.”

  Kraus laughed. “And happy you are that we don’t. If you find these disheveled humans offensive, you would find the Blood Worlders intolerable. But still… they are not here without purpose. I want them to command the near-human legion on this mission.”

  Alarmed, Collins gave a squawk and raised her hand. Kraus gestured for her to speak.

  “What is going on, sir?” she said. “Don’t we have an imperator, or perhaps even an equestrian for this level of—?”

  “No,” Kraus said. “It is unfortunate, but I, a lowly tribune of Legion Victrix, am the highest rank among the human forces. Praetor Drusus, along with several imperators saw fit to leave the system via teleportation. Our best decided to run off and hide, so to speak.”

  That’s when my hand shot up. No one seemed happy to see that. Not Kraus, or any of the sneering Mogwa brass.

  Kraus, in fact, ignored me. “To further answer your inquiry, Primus Collins,” he continued. “I see that Winslade was placed in command of Legion Varus in the place of Galina Turov. That is unfortunate, and it also means he must remain with his forces to provide leadership. The other support legions are poorly led by various near-humans and Blood Worlders. I am, however, working to repair that situation.”

  “Repair it? You mean… you’re removing officers from command?”

  Kraus shrugged, his metal epaulets flashing like two mirrors. “To be precise, I had all non-human top officers shot.”

  “Shot…? But…?”

  “It’s a temporary measure, one I felt was necessary. They aren’t permed, merely replaced by more reliable personnel. This is an important mission, Collins. I don’t like to leave incompetence in place. You are only a primus, but you proved yourself on the battlefield. You have gained my confidence.”

  Collins looked shaken, and she’d finally figured out she should shut up.

  All this time Kraus was speeching, my hand had been raised high. At this point, I began to waggle my fat fingers.

  Finally, with a heavy sigh, Kraus waved for me to speak. “What is it, Centurion McGill?”

  “What about Sateekas, sirs? Isn’t he here someplace? He knows human and Mogwa forces. Why isn’t he at this planning table?”

  All the Mogwa officers stumped from foot to foot in irritation. Kraus looked alarmed.

  “That is not widely known information, Centurion. I think it’s best if we leave such internal affairs to the Mogwa. They’re responsible for determining who shall lead them.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “That’s enough, McGill.”

  Reluctantly, I fell silent. I’ve been told to shut my damned pie-hole more times than I can count, so I knew the drill.

  Kraus turned toward the field marshal. He spread his hands. “Well, sir? What do you think of my plan?”

  “It’s quite mad,” the Mogwa replied. “I would never have come up with such a thing… My instinct is to withdraw our best forces to the center of the city. To protect the important personages first and foremost. But… your plan is intriguing. It is bold. It involves counterattacking, and I feel it has merit.”

  “Excellent. Is it agreed upon, then?”

  The Mogwa huddled and made funny noises in their own language at one another. I didn’t bother to listen in and translate.

  “McGill?” Collins hissed at my side.

  I looked down at her, and I thought she looked kind of agitated. “What’s up, Primus?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why did you bring up Sateekas? He’s not even that great of an officer, and they clearly hate him here.”

  “Well sir, the truth is no Mogwa I’ve ever met was a great tactician. Sateekas at least takes the job seriously.”

  “Whatever. Don’t surprise me like that again.”

  I made no promises. I just fell silent.

  After a few squawky minutes, the Mogwa commanders finally agreed to Kraus’ plan. Just like that, Primus Collins had been promoted to acting sub-tribune and placed in charge of a Blood Worlder legion. The big shocker, however, was that I was going to be her acting exec.

  -44-

  We took a short flight on a local skimmer. It was a military flier, and it was Mogwa-made. As one might expect, the aircraft was utilitarian and crisply functioning—but it was more than that.

  “Wow,” I said, feeling up the seats. “These chairs are comfy! The Mogwa really know how to treat their hindquarters, even when they’re just going cross-city.”

  Primus Collins glanced at me, then back to the cityscape that was swooping by the windows.

  “Such a strange place,” she said. “The architecture consists entirely of oblong shapes with sharp edges… there really isn’t any artistry to this metropolis. It’s just a pile of rectangles heaped onto one another.”

  “Oh now, I don’t know about that. I see nice triangles up at the top. Triangles and cones both.”

  She glanced at me like I was some kind of idiot. I took no offense, as I was used to such looks from people. “Those are rooftops, James.”

  James? It had to be the first time I could recall where this woman had used my first name. What’s more, she’d done so without adding in a curse word or two. That was significant. It had to be.

  “Uh…” I said. “How is this going to work out? Between the two of us, I mean?”

  Collins gave me a questioning stare. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean… what about command structure? I’m supposed to be your sidekick. Are you thinking chief-of-staff, or…?”

  She laughed out loud. “Hardly. You’ll be given a few units of grunts to order around. I’ll put you on the front lines.”

  “Okay.”

  Again, she gave me that quizzical look. “No objections? No complaints?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m a Varus fighting man, Primus. I’ll probably do the most good on the front lines.”

  She seemed to think about that for a while. Finally, she heaved a sigh. “I think I’ve spent too much time hating you, McGill. You’re right… we should cooperate.”

  “That’s a good idea, sir,” I said, studiously ignoring her offhanded comments about hating me. She’d always seen me as a random crazy-man from 3rd Cohort. To her, I was a punishment from the Almighty himself.

  But now… maybe she was beginning to see the good side of old McGill.

  She nodded again, half to herself. “Since you’re willing to follow my orders, and you obviously have skill as a tactical commander and small-unit leader, I should use that. I understand from your records that you have operated as a cohort leader commanding Blood Worlders in the past.”

  “That’s right. Back on Edge World, Foam and I stopped an army of Bright Siders.”

  Collins frowned. “Foam? The same squid that eventually became our tribune and attempted a mutiny?”

  “One and the same, sir.”

  “Huh… all right. You must know something about squid—I mean, Cephalopod psychology. I want you to take command of a cohort and set up pickets to slow down the bears—if they really are coming to attack this water plant.”

  “You doubt Tribune Kraus’ logic on that point?”

  “Yes. I don’t think he has much of an idea what the bears are going to do next. I think he just used that to take command of the meeting. I was surprised the Mogwa let him get away with it.”

  I considered her words while she stared out the window some more. Soon, we spiraled down for a landing. She might be right, I decided. Kraus was a political animal, after all. He reminded me of a smoother, less-drunk version of Armel.

  When we piled out of the lifter, we were met by a crowd of non-human officers. Their tribune had been arrested and executed—apparently just for the crime of being born a squid. At least, that’s how they thought about it.

  As a result, there wasn’t a kind eye in the bunch as we disembarked and walked toward the line of angry squids—and squids have a whole lot of eyes.

  After smoothing out some ruffled tentacles, I soon took charge of a cohort and marched their sorry asses toward our destination. The former sub-primus was flustered and irritable. His name was Trickle, and I was already having a hard time not making jokes.

  “I find this process humiliating,” he said.

  “You don’t like it, huh?” I asked him. “Would it be better if I chopped off those slimy limbs of yours? They’re kind of flopping around and creating an eyesore.”

  The squid seemed surprised. “That would not be a preferable outcome. I was referring to… ”

  “That’s right it, wouldn’t be. Listen up, Trickle. You don’t want to be dismembered and executed as a coward. You don’t want that at all. Accordingly, you’re going to shut that big beak between your legs and take orders the first time I give them.”

  My abusive attitude would have been the first lesson I’d have given Primus Collins if she’d come along to learn the fine art of squid-wrangling. Cephalopods didn’t understand kindness, they considered pleasant talk to be an invitation for deviltry.

  Even worse, in their eyes a nice guy was just openly demonstrating his weakness. Using squid-logic, nice people who were in charge of anything were begging for someone to take them down.

  That’s how you moved up in Cephalopod social structures—by bringing superiors down. Consequently, you couldn’t give a squid anything without demanding more in return.

  On the other hand, if you built up some impressive wins while operating as a tyrant, they would eventually give you the respect you’d earned.

  My hostile attitude worked wonders from the get-go. The mean guy behavior pattern changed the attitude of my squid sidekick just as it had Foam himself back in the day.

  Soon, I had all my squid officers slapping around the place with their nasty tentacles, humping this way and that to meet my demands. Within hours, I’d packed up a cohort that consisted primarily of heavy troopers. We marched toward the shimmering dome along the outskirts of the City, which was enemy territory these days.

  Within hours we reached an abandoned zone. It wasn’t open ground like the farm we’d started at, but it wasn’t entirely industrial, either. For the Mogwa, it was a kind of local suburb. Effectively, it was a district on the outskirts of the main urban center.

  On Earth, however, the neighborhood would have been top-tier. There were massive buildings, wide streets and far-flung archways everywhere. We found the widest thoroughfare and marched down it, forming a column twenty troops abreast.

  “Uh…” I said, as we came to a region that was smoky and had torn-up streets. “Have we reached the front lines yet?”

  Trickle looked at me carefully. His eyeballs were bulging. “I am allowed to speak?”

  “Yes, dammit. That’s why I asked you a question.”

  “We have passed the front lines. We are in territory captured by the enemy.”

  “Huh…” I said, pulling out my morph-rifle in a seemingly casual way. I knew right off it was time to do some lying and ass-covering. “That’s what I thought. This is far enough. Spread out into these buildings and the neighboring blocks. We’ll wait for enemy contact right here.”

  Trickle didn’t dare go up against me. He clacked his beak and relayed orders. All around us, about a thousand troops took cover.

  It was just in time too, as it turned out. A single power bolt spanged off the puff-crete at my feet. The bears were around—or at least their snipers were.

  Shouts and return fire erupted, breaking the quiet of the streets. The environment was among the worst for infantry combat. There were huge buildings with hundreds of windows all around us. Snipers could perch up there and peck at us all day long.

  Scrambling, we moved off the streets and into the soot-stained puff-crete structures. I took to a building that had once been a crematorium—at least, that’s what my translator told me.

  Climbing up steps that were wider and more shallow than I was used to, I passed ranks and ranks of ovens. These grim machines were crusty with ash, just as they always were on Earth.

  “Why the hell does this city need so many crematoriums?” Primus Collins asked me. Rather than choosing her own ground, she’d decided to run up the same steps I’d taken. After a moment’s thought, I decided not to make any remarks about that. Instead, I answered her question.

  “The Mogwa populace all use revival machines.”

  “So what?” Collins asked, not getting it. “If they live effectively forever, why would they—? Oh… the bodies are still left behind, right?”

  “That’s it. Unless you want to bury them all or recycle them for regrowth, you’ve got to burn them. The Mogwa like fresh materials when they kickoff new lives. They don’t reuse the stale stuff.”

  Collins stopped asking questions. Instead, she ordered me to scout the upper floors. I ran up about two dozen flights before I found a spot that seemed to be a little above the level of the enemy snipers.

  That’s when the fun began. I had slavers with me for the most part. They were tall, skinny guys about twice the height of a man. They did a lot of the extra jobs in Blood Worlder legions, like scouting and sniping.

  Setting them up in windows, we plinked away at the bears, and they fired back at us. Even when hanging out the windows, we found it was hard to take out a bear with nothing but a single round from a rifle. Even a direct hit didn’t do the trick because of their armor. At the same time, they often killed one of my men.

  After exchanging fire for several minutes, I was getting nothing but curses and a few deaths on my side.

  “Sir?” I said, calling Collins over command chat. “This isn’t working. We’re getting whacked.”

  “Keep it up anyway,” she said. “You’re distracting the enemy. I’ve got men climbing the buildings to get to them.”

  I didn’t like having my slavers getting chewed up, so I came up with a way to improve our odds.

  “Here,” I said, grabbing onto a big man’s harness. He stank, and he looked scared, but he was shooting his rifle at the enemy, so I couldn’t fault him. “Here’s what I want you to do. Lean out, real sudden like, take a pot shot, then race away to a different window. Take another wild, quick shot from that window, then run away again.”

  He looked baffled, but when I asked him if he understood, he nodded. Without questioning orders he no doubt considered insane, he began to follow them.

  I passed the same instructions to a dozen squid noncoms, and they soon had the entire unit doing it. Instead of taking careful aim and pegging bears, they began popping off wildly inaccurate shots and running away. Each time, a storm of fire came back the other way from the bears, but the end result was no one was hitting anything.

  Trickle eventually oozed up next to me and stared at me with his big, scaredy-squid eyes.

  “What is it now, Trickle?”

  “Sir, are you aware that our men haven’t hit a target in several minutes?”

  “Yep. What about it?”

  “They’re missing, sir—they’re all missing.”

  I began to frown. “That’s right. We’re supposed to tie up the enemy, not kill them. That’s someone else’s job.”

  Trickle wandered off, no doubt baffled as to what we were up to, but too cowed to complain about it openly. I liked that state of mind in my subordinates, so I let him stew over it.

  After several minutes, the heavy troopers finally managed to climb the stairs and ambush the bear snipers from behind. They rushed them, moving close and fighting them in the windows.

  “Cease fire!” I ordered my snipers. Then I contacted the unit commander in charge of the heavy troopers that were hitting the bears. “Hey, 2nd Unit! Don’t shoot the bears! Don’t sword-fight them, either!”

  “What alternative would you suggest then, commander?” came back a snotty-toned question from the squid in charge.

  “I’d suggest you grab their little furry butts and throw them out the windows they’re shooting from. If they hold on to your troopers, just tell the men to jump and take the bears down with them!”

  The squid had more to say, but I closed the channel. As far as I was concerned, he had his orders.

  To my mild surprise and amusement, it soon began to rain bears. They were trapped, as the heavy troopers were under them and driving them to the rooftops. When a given bear seemed to be winning a fight, sure enough, he found himself taking a header out the nearest blown-out window and tumbling into open space.

  Trickle came to stand next to me. He watched the scene with lots of eyeballs. Again, I noticed that his eyes seemed to bulge and weep a bit more than was usual for a squid. Maybe that’s why he was called “Trickle” as he seemed to be almost crying most of the time.

  “Impressive, sir,” he said. “I’m learning from you already.”

  “That’s right. Stick with me, squid, and I’ll teach you all kinds of tactics you never even dreamed of.”

  After the interlude with the snipers, we counted up the dead. The numbers came out about even, with us ahead by maybe a dozen splattered corpses on the street.

  As the bears weren’t here in strength, they didn’t hit us back for a while. The streets fell quiet, and the skies reddened. It was going to be dark soon.

  It was at that point that streaks began to shine in the skies. They were odd projectiles, coming from the enemy’s side. At first, we ducked and hunkered—but the streaks went right over our heads. They rose and fell on a slow arc.