But, after a few minutes, the big blob of light began to throb and spin.

  “I’ve still got to go through naked, right? You haven’t improved that part?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Listen, you need to record it all. Forward it to whoever you think is right—Winslade out at Glass World, if everyone is dead and revivable. Others, if you see something weird.”

  “This whole thing is weird, Dad.”

  “Don’t I know it.” I stared at the spinning blob of light while I stripped down. Soon I was ready to walk into it with my balls in the breeze.

  “Do I still have to die?” I asked her, without looking away from the anomaly. “To get back, I mean?”

  “Unless you find some other way out, you must die inside the ten to twenty minute window. After that, the connection will randomly break. If the death isn’t witnessed—you’ll be as permed as the rest of them.”

  “You’re all love and biscuits, girl,” I told her. “Wish me luck!”

  “Luck, Dad…”

  Then, I stepped into that twisting light, and my body was disintegrated. I don’t think there was as much as a single, half-burnt hair left behind.

  -54-

  After suffocating for about fifteen minutes, I finally arrived. Gasping, doubling over and almost puking up my pizza, I slowly lifted my head to look around.

  My heart slowed and I stared in wonderment. There were crystals down here. Huge formations of them, but they were different than the bigger glacier-like peaks on the surface. These were more multi-faceted, like clustered gemstones. They hadn’t been worn down and polished by centuries of rough weather.

  After a minute of blinking in amazement, I wondered why it was, exactly, that I could see these lovely natural formations. Then I saw some lights laying on the gritty floor of the cavern.

  Creeping forward, I reached for the nearest of them—but I stopped.

  The source of the illumination was a number of suit lights. They were all down low, shining up brightly. That’s what had lit the gorgeous candelabra ceiling.

  There were dead men all over the floor of the cavern. Their chest lights and headlamps were still on, shining up from where they lay in repose.

  Instantly aware there had to be something deadly in this cavern, I hunkered down and crawled—moving as quietly as I could, from one body to the next, looking for an officer. If I could get a recording of his tapper, it would list all the dead and wounded.

  With any luck, Etta was still watching me from afar, recording my experiences. I was too far down to use some normal form of communication, like radio signals. Five hundred meters of dirt, rock and crystals tended to interrupt such things.

  But Etta’s connection to me used quantum-entanglement. It was a trick of physics that had to do with the harmonic phasing of light signals in two different places, and it worked regardless of distance or intervening obstacles. It was kind of like the deep-link boxes themselves.

  At last, I found a dead officer. It was Centurion Manfred. He was a fireplug of a man who I’d been fond of since we’d first met. Unfortunately, he was deader than a doornail. His chest plate had been ripped off and his guts torn out behind that.

  Gritting my teeth, I grabbed his tapper and touched it to mine. A circular waiting signal spun… and spun some more.

  I wanted to curse, but I didn’t dare. Could his batteries be low? I had to wait for the data to be transferred, and waiting around while you’re expecting sudden violent death isn’t fun at all.

  While I waited, I lay there on the cave floor and smelled dust and blood. My nostrils caked up, but I didn’t dare cough, sneeze or even wheeze. Instead, I just listened.

  The cavern wasn’t entirely dead quiet. There were cracking sounds—and some rustling. After a time, I thought I could tell where the rustling was coming from.

  At last, the whirling wait symbol faded and the download was finished. I felt relief. With any luck, that information had been transmitted home. My comrades were no longer permed.

  My next thought was a powerful one: why wait around naked to be killed by whatever terror had killed Manfred and his troops? Clearly, one nude McGill wasn’t going to amount to a hill of snot against an enemy that could take out so many trained troops.

  Thoughtfully, I found Manfred’s combat knife and drew it. One thrust, that’s all it would take, and my work here would be done.

  I felt like doing it. I really did… but then I heard that rustling again, and I became curious. If I could just take a peek at the inhabitants of this deathtrap, so much might be explained.

  Creeping on my belly, I slithered over corpses and sharp stones toward the sounds. Sure, it hurt, and I was soon leaving a blood-trail behind, but I didn’t care. This McGill had never been meant to last long.

  After a few minutes—a total of eleven since my arrival, according to my tapper—I located the source of the sounds.

  Two posts were being assembled and adjusted. The creatures doing it were as familiar to me as the posts themselves—they were Vulbites.

  My teeth bared themselves. I hated Vulbites. I don’t think there’s a man alive who’s met up with them that doesn’t feel the same way.

  There’s just something about hulking centipede-like creatures that can rear up and stand as tall as a man that makes my skin crawl. Hell, I didn’t even like the foot-long kind that crept around my swamplands sometimes. Those pygmies were disgusting enough—but these monsters? They were a hundred times worse.

  For perhaps a minute, I used my tapper to record what I was seeing. I was still flat on my filthy belly, aiming my arm at them and gripping my knife in my other sweaty palm. They were clearly assembling a set of gateway posts, probably to get in or get out of this secret cavern.

  Something shuffled near while I did this. I froze, pretending to be dead. Some of the bodies near me had been stripped anyway, so it wasn’t a stretch.

  Not even daring to move my head, I looked around with rolling eyeballs. I had no illumination sources on me, being buck-naked. Maybe that was why they hadn’t noticed me before. I imagined platoons of teleport troops from Gray Deck had come in shouting orders, flashing lights and aiming guns every which way. None of them had come in like a lone commando—except me.

  But I was discovered despite my best imitation of a possum. Shuffling, slithering, rasping and tapping feet—Vulbites had lots of feet, and you could hear them all when it was real quiet like it was now.

  The strange thing was that I couldn’t actually see the approaching Vulbite. I could hear him, and I more or less knew which direction he was approaching from—but I couldn’t spot him, despite the shining lights of the dead.

  Then, as he crept closer, I caught on—he was wearing a stealth cloak.

  Long ago, when we’d first encountered this technology, the Vulbites had been using it. Although the Vulbites were more primitive than humans in most respects, they did have a few excellent tricks. One of them was a cloth-like bag they could drape over themselves that bent light around it.

  Once I’d realized this I started looking low—looking for tracks. I spotted his trail immediately. I waited until he crept close, then I sprang up and rammed my knife home—over and over.

  Where are the vital spots on a Vulbite? I’d never taken that course in xeno anatomy, if there even was one. Deciding to make sure, I gave him a dozen thrusts—then a dozen more.

  Puffing breath out through cracked lips, I must have looked like a savage from days gone by. A naked warrior with a blade in my hands.

  Stooping quickly, I tugged at the stealth suit. If I could only get it off him, I could put it on, and—

  There was an odd sound, and it seemed to me that I pitched forward. My face was suddenly in the same dirt and slimy mud the Vulbite had created with its own pooling life fluids.

  How had I fallen? My legs—I couldn’t feel my legs. I was feeling kind of sick, actually. My vision…

  Then I saw the second Vulbite, and the third. They shuffled up, like the first one, but they’d thrown back their stealth suits. They stood over me, and one of them had a huge sword of the type I’d seen them use before. The sword ran with dark blood.

  Gasping and sucking up grit, I died then, but not before I realized in sick horror that they had chopped me in half, somewhere around waist level.

  It could have been they’d cut the legs out from under me, or maybe that they severed my spine and belly—it was hard to say.

  Regardless of the details, I was as dead as yesterday.

  -55-

  I woke up with the shakes. I had the willies—I could tell. Sometimes, a death was a rough one, even for a man as experienced with the process as I was.

  “What’s wrong with him?” demanded a gruff voice. “Is he pissing himself or something?”

  “No sir,” the bio said. “Maybe you should come back later, after he’s recovered. Sometimes there’s a residual reaction to the circumstances—”

  “Not with a Varus man! Stand back. Give him some air—leave his arms alone! He can stand, you’ll see.”

  “Graves…?” I said, and I coughed. It felt to me like my lungs were still full of cave grit. I’d sucked in a mouthful during my final moments… but it was only residual fluids from my rebirth.

  “There you go! You see? McGill is fine. Stand back, I’ll get him off the frigging table myself.”

  Blinking in surprise, I found myself hauled up by strong hands. I knew those hands, it had to be the uncompromising touch of Graves. He’d never been a gentle, caring man.

  A few shuffling steps later, I turned my head toward him.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, unable to focus my eyes.

  “Stand straight and walk out of here,” Graves demanded. “Or you’ll be dead again.”

  That worked on me. I was coming together, getting my mind and nervous system into some semblance of order. Graves’ warning helped give me the boost I needed.

  Standing as straight as I could, I glanced over my shoulder and nodded toward the bio people I could only see as blurs. “Thanks, gentlemen,” I rasped out. “I’ll be just fine.”

  “Maybe you’d like to have a shower first?” one of them asked hopefully.

  “Nah. I’ll do that later. The primus here seems to be in a hurry.”

  “That’s right,” Graves said. “I’ve got orders. Let’s go, McGill.”

  Something soft hit me in the face. I almost dropped the mass with my numb, grasping fingers, but I managed to hold on. It was cloth—a uniform.

  Graves was already done coddling me. I hobbled after him, struggling to pull on the clothing while it stuck to me. The smart-straps felt for one another like blind, groping snakes.

  Once we were out in the passages, I managed to catch Graves by the shoulder. “I feel like I missed something, sir,” I said to him.

  “Yeah… you missed two somethings—two lifetimes. You’ve been coming out as a bad grow. Twice in a row, and if I don’t miss my guess, that was number three I just interrupted right there.”

  I glanced back at the swinging doors that led into the Blue Bunker revival chambers. “Those frigging ghouls. They recycled me twice?”

  “That’s my guess. But don’t blame them. Blame Winslade. He had me on ice for more than a week—or did you already know about that?”

  “Uh… that’s news to me, sir,” I lied. “Let me express my heartfelt condolences. No one deserves to linger in limbo like that. Nobody.”

  Graves looked at me and nodded. “That’s what I thought. You knew. Everyone knew. Bunch of bastards…”

  I didn’t say anymore because he was, of course, correct. There’s no point to piling on further lies after the truth is well known, it only pisses people off. Instead, I chose to change the topic.

  “Any idea why Winslade might want to play the bad-grow shuffle with me?”

  “He’s under oversight now. Something happened back at Central, a report came in. That report was lost, but there were new orders with it that stuck. Winslade was ordered to seek my advice on tactics, and to stop screwing around out here. He has to finish this mission, and he wants it to be a win. He was also ordered not to keep anyone else from being revived.”

  “Uh… okay. So… he’s been killing me on and off every hour or so?”

  Graves laughed briefly. “Nah. He’s trickier than that. He brings you to life once a day, then offs you with some kind of bad-grow bullshit, and then puts you at the back of the queue.”

  I blinked at him stupidly. I could see his craggy face now, and it looked darkly amused.

  “So… like… I’ve been dying for three days now?”

  “That’s about the size of it. Someone sent us your file from Central, along with proof that those troops we sent into Hell on Glass World are dead. You’d think that would be accounted as a good thing, but you’ve been popping out and dying again on Blue Deck like some kind of demented jack-in-the-box ever since.”

  He seemed to think this was funny, but I failed to see the humor in it. In fact, I was feeling kind of pissed off.

  I reached out and grabbed Graves by the arm again. He gritted his teeth in warning, like a snarling dog. Graves liked his personal space.

  “Hey,” I said. “How about you and me get a little payback?”

  He narrowed his eyes and chewed that over. After a moment, he shook his head. “Winslade deserves the worst, but he’s still our commanding officer. I won’t be involved in any plot, or—”

  “Nah, nothing like that!” I said. “I’m thinking more like… you know… short-sheeting his bed or something. Something funny.”

  Graves eyed me with vast distrust. He knew me well. “McGill, I’m not going to do anything against regs. I’m not—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Primus,” I said brightly. “You don’t have to do a damned thing… except, maybe, give me a few permissions I don’t already have.”

  He looked at me with the hardest eyes in the legion. “We’re talking about a practical joke, here?”

  “That’s right! I swear it, as God Almighty is my witness!” I raised a hand, palm out, and smiled big.

  He shook his head. “I know I’m going to regret this, but I’ll listen—just listen, mind you, to whatever cockamamie scheme is floating inside that skull of yours.”

  “That’s all I can ask for, Primus. That’s all I ask.”

  After that, we walked across the camp, and we talked. In the meantime, I dropped certain elements of my report into his ear, about the Vulbites, the gateway posts I’d seen, and our dead units in the cavern below.

  Graves seemed surprised by all of it. “First of all,” he said, “how in the living hell did you get down there and learn all this?”

  “Uh… that’s classified, sir.”

  He snorted, but he kept listening. After a time, he became concerned. “This explains what he’s doing. Winslade has been setting up for another assault—a big one. He wants to overwhelm the Vulbites this time.”

  Graves marched across the grassy encampment to a bunker where there was a lot of activity. I followed in his wake.

  We met up with Centurion Manfred on the way. “Hey!” he shouted at me. “Is that really James McGill, out of purgatory already? What’s becoming of this legion?”

  We clasped hands, and he leaned close. “Did you get me out of that cave? That’s what I heard.”

  I gave him a nod, and he grinned.

  “Thanks, mate. Thanks for all of us. If there’s anything I can ever do—”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve been planning a surprise party for our CO. Would you like to be on the refreshments committee?”

  Manfred glanced over at Graves, who scowled, but didn’t say anything. Then he slid his eyes back to meet mine. “Put me down for a kegger. You know I’m good for it.”

  “Excellent.”

  Graves and I moved on, me still following Graves. We were heading toward Gold Bunker, where the commanders worked and lived.

  “That’s how you do it, huh, McGill? Personal favors. Loyalty among officers rather than strict discipline. None of this meets the smell-test.”

  “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, Primus.”

  Graves didn’t look at me, but he did give a small nod. He’d had enough of Winslade’s shit for one lifetime as well.

  Unfortunately, we were greeted at the doors by an armed guard. “Sorry sirs, Primus Graves, you’re allowed in—but not McGill. No one is to enter today who’s under primus rank.”

  “No problem at all, Veteran,” Graves said. “McGill, wait for me right here.”

  Like a dog that had been told to sit, I loitered at the entrance while Graves went inside. After about twenty minutes, he came back out empty-handed.

  “He’s stuck in there like a tick in a dog’s ear, huh?” I asked.

  “That’s about the size of it. I’ll guess we’ll have to—”

  I pulled Graves aside. Again, he almost snarled at me when I touched him, but I didn’t care. “Sir, just hang on—I’ve got an idea.”

  Contacting Manfred, I requested some special gear. He laughed and said he’d bring it. Then I called Natasha and asked for a favor. She complained—she always did. But she did it. When I saw Manfred was maybe a hundred meters away and marching in my direction, I sniffed at the air.

  “Do you smell smoke?”

  The veteran guard at the entrance shuffled uneasily and glanced back at the door he was guarding. Nothing seemed amiss.

  Moments later, the fire alarm went off. People started coming out of Gold Bunker and wandering around blinking at the sunshine in confusion.

  “I don’t see any fire, or smoke, or nothing,” the guard grumbled.

  Sniffing the air experimentally, I shook my head. “I have to disagree. There’s definitely smoke in the air.”