“But why agree to do anything for them?” Galina demanded. “We already have the coordinates.”

  “Because,” Drusus answered patiently. “They might have more intel we could use. Informants must be paid and protected, or they soon stop coming to your doorstep.”

  “All right…” she said, but she was eyeing me again. “But how did you meet these

  people? You live in a shack!”

  “And that suits me just fine, sirs. Do we have a deal?”

  I was looking at Drusus now, looking him in the eye. Slowly, he nodded. “We have a deal. If this works out, McGill… Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Galina looked sullen. Drusus hadn’t praised her at all. He wasn’t born yesterday, and he’d figured out the situation between us.

  “Someone will have to verify the find,” she said suddenly. “Someone will have to go out there before we send any ships into a deathtrap.”

  “Do you have anyone in mind?” Drusus asked. She extended a painted fingernail in my direction.

  Drusus looked at me. “It makes sense. You already know about the find—keeping a tight lid on those coordinates is critical.”

  “Well, McGill…?” Galina asked me.

  “I’ll do it,” I heard myself saying. “But that’s a long, long jump.”

  “It is. I’ll tell the teleport deck to schedule you in.”

  Sighing to myself, I was dismissed and kicked out of the office. I found myself out in the hallway, wondering what new flavor of Hell I’d just volunteered for.

  -4-

  Leaving Drusus’ office, I made the critical error of letting Galina get behind me. She had been quiet all through the end of the talk with Drusus, and the truth was, I’d kind of forgotten about her.

  After all, I’d just signed on for a solid killing or two, possibly a perming if things went wrong. Galina’s feelings just weren’t on the top of my mind at the moment.

  Before we made it to the elevator lobby, I felt a sharp blow to my hindquarters. “Hey!” I said, turning around.

  There she stood, teeth clenched, breathing hard. I could tell by her stance she’d just kicked me in the butt. Now, normally that would be hard for a girl of her stature, but I happened to know from personal observation that she could high-kick like a ballerina if she wanted to.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked, idly rubbing a few fingers over my back pocket.

  “What do you think is wrong, you oaf?” she demanded. “You made me look like a fool back there.”

  “How so?”

  “By making it obvious I knew nothing about your secret alien arrangements. I’m your superior officer, the tribune of Legion Varus—it’s my job to know what my centurions are up to.”

  “Yeah…” I said, mulling that over. “I guess that’s so, but I just wanted to present the deal in the best possible light.”

  “Why?” she asked, taking a step forward and cocking her head to the left. “Who are these people, anyway?”

  As she approached to within kicking distance, I instinctively wanted to cover my privates, but I refrained. It would have looked weak.

  “They’re friends… sort of.”

  “Plural? As in at least two?”

  Already, I could see the wheels turning in her skull. That was a dangerous thing. I didn’t want her or anyone else to figure out who had given me the tip. Everyone at Central wanted to execute any form of Claver on sight. I knew I had to prove the worth of this location if I was to have a chance of getting Hegemony to honor the deal I’d just struck with Drusus. If they found out too early where it came from—well, that was going to lead to trouble all around.

  Naturally, I didn’t let on that I was concerned about any of these things. Instead, I watched her approach like a snake-charmer working with a fresh-caught wild cobra for the first time. My paranoia was focused on her personally.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Afraid I might bite you?”

  “I know you bite, girl.”

  This garnered me a fresh frown. “Don’t talk like that,” she said in a low tone. “This is Central, dammit. We must hide our personal indiscretions—besides, that’s all in the past now.”

  I blinked, but I didn’t start whining. If I had a nickel for every time Galina had told me she’d never share my bed again, I’d be an independently wealthy man.

  “Okay then,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning at the launch.” Turning away, I approached a bank of elevators.

  I heard her hurried steps behind me—but she didn’t kick me again. Instead, she fell into step beside me. This took an effort on her part, as my stride is unreasonably broad, even when I’m not trying to walk fast.

  Taking a glance down and to my left, I saw she was still fuming. “Is something wrong, sir?” I asked her.

  “Of course it is. I’ve signed onto one of your mad schemes without knowing any details. That’s highly stressful for me.”

  “Oh,” I said unhelpfully.

  The elevator dinged, and we stepped aboard. This, apparently, was the moment Galina had been waiting for. She moved to face me and wagged a finger in my face.

  “Now we’re clear of Drusus’ cameras,” she said.

  “But what if he’s tapped into the elevator feed?”

  “Then he’s about to get an eyeful. I’m hereby ordering you to tell me who is behind this offer, which you so conveniently brought in from out of the blue. How did you hear about it? Who made the original move to contact you?”

  “Uh…” I said, thinking things over. I shook my head at last. “I told Drusus it had to be a secret, and he agreed with me.”

  “So, you’re disobeying a direct order from your tribune?”

  “Well sir… I guess so.”

  “Fine!” she spat out, and she stepped to the elevator panel. She waved her tapper over it like a wand. Immediately, all the buttons activated. That was a cool trick. Normally, only selected options were available to the likes of me, but Galina had higher clearances.

  “Uh… what are you doing, sir?”

  “I’m redirecting this elevator car to the brig.”

  “Aw, come on now.”

  But she did it. She didn’t listen to any kind of bullshit I could present, either. Soon, we parked on a floor just under the lobby level. I knew it well.

  It was the prison level.

  “Jeez, Tribune!” I called out, but it was no good.

  Two hogs rushed into the elevator to grab me. I let them take an arm each and walked out with a docile stride.

  The moment Galina turned her back, I threw them both on the floor. One guy landed badly, he seemed to be groaning and flopping—his neck might have been broken.

  The other hog had plenty of fight left in him. I stood on his throat just to let him know who was boss.

  “God dammit, McGill!” Galina said, whirling around. “Get away from that man!”

  “He’s choking on something, sir. I think we ought to call a corpsman.”

  She stomped up to me and looked me right in the eye. “McGill,” she said. “I’m giving you three options. You can tell me what I want to know, or you can be kicked out of Legion Varus right now.”

  “Uh… what’s the third option?”

  “You can be publicly flogged. That’s by the book.”

  I knew she was right. Old Roman rules for handling insubordination weren’t easy-going. Not back then, and not now. In fact, if a whole unit needed shaping up, an officer could order them “decimated” which meant every tenth man was killed. Of course, this wasn’t as severe a punishment as it had been in the old days of the Roman Empire. Back then every tenth man would have been permed rather than revived to serve again after execution.

  The harsh old methods of discipline still worked in most cases. Another man might have quailed and begged for forgiveness. Unfortunately, that sort of thing wasn’t my style.

  “I’ll take the flogging,” I said, shrugging my way out of my shirt.

  The hog on the floor got up before anyone walked too far away. He had an electric truncheon upraised in his hand. He was breathing hard and kind of red-faced.

  “You seen a doctor lately, hog?” I asked him. “That’s an unhealthy sweat you’ve got going. You might want to get your ticker checked.”

  Galina grabbed his arm. There was a wicked light in her eye. “Will you do me the honor of flogging this prisoner?” she asked. His face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “I would really appreciate that opportunity, sir,” he rasped out. His voice didn’t sound quite right, like he’d been gargling gravel or something.

  The next hour was unpleasant, but it wasn’t my first rodeo. Public flogging had been formalized these days. They had a big leather dummy to hang your wrists on, and loops and straps to hold.

  The biggest difference was the well-lit, clean room they did it in. The place was all white and almost surgical. Cameras were all around, some flying on drones. They got every angle, and they broadcast it on the grid so it was captured forever.

  All of this was meant to strike fear and shame into the heart of the flogged man. For me, however, there was no hope of that working.

  Sure, the whip stung, and my back would be scarred up and burning for a while. But my mamma could have told anyone that spanking me as a child had never been overly effective. In most cases, she’d ended up with a hurt hand and sullen boy who’d most likely learned absolutely nothing from the experience.

  After the first twelve licks or so, I took the opportunity to turn my head and look back toward Galina over my shoulder.

  There she was, wincing with each blow. In fact, she looked almost as unhappy as I did. Maybe even more so.

  Showing her teeth, she sucked in a breath and ordered the gleeful hog to stop after twenty lashes.

  “I thought you said thirty, sir,” he objected.

  “Cut him down. Now.”

  Shaking his head in disappointment, the hog came near to release my wrists. With a grim smile, I straightened and shed them myself. I’d pulled them loose while he wasn’t looking, just in case.

  He glared at this, but he wisely took a few steps back, circling the edge of the room. I grabbed my uniform and pulled it on, grimacing a bit.

  “That’s not sanitary, McGill,” Galina said. “You’re bleeding through the cloth.”

  “Yeah… I’ll go down to Blue Deck and have someone spray it with nu-skin.”

  She walked with me out of the chamber, giving me frequent wary glances.

  Sometimes, I’d been known to become violent after being abused. It was a character flaw of mine that people were well-aware of.

  After I showed no signs of going into a rage, Galina grew bolder. “Centurion McGill, you have been justly punished for insubordination,” she told me in a formal tone.

  “Sure have, Tribune,” I agreed.

  “So? Are you willing to talk about your informants now?” I shook my head. “Nope.”

  All of a sudden, her attitude shifted to anger again. “You animal! How can you be so obstinate?”

  “I don’t know. Comes natural, I suspect.”

  Twisting up her mouth, she marched to the elevator lobby. I followed her, making sure to stay behind her this time.

  -5-

  I soon realized that walking behind her might have been a tactical mistake. She still had the best hindquarters I could recall seeing on a young woman—physically young, that was, as she’d been around for at least a decade longer than I had.

  But her body showed none of those decades of aging. She’d always managed to get herself killed every once in a while, just to freshen up her looks. She never updated her body scans, and it had been so long since she’d followed the rules that the bio people had given up sending requests to her. As a result, she looked like a college freshman most of the time.

  That’s what was troubling me now, I realized. Not only was she a fine specimen, the fact that I’d been with her many times over the years gave me an added surge of interest. By the time we got into the elevator and began the long ride down, I was thinking hard on how I might mend some fences with her. At last, I came up with an angle.

  “Oooh…” I said, leaning my head back against the wall of the elevator.

  “What is it?” she asked in immediate concern.

  I moved my shoulders, which had been resting against the wall, and I made sure I left a big stripe of blood there. “I don’t know… I’ll be fine, I guess.”

  She came close and examined me. I wrapped my arms around myself and hung my head low. My butt was against the wall, as if I needed propping up—which I didn’t.

  “You’re going into shock,” she said with sudden concern. “Shit…”

  She moved to the panel and rattled the buttons, seeking a Blue Deck with an open slot. She called on her tapper and all kinds of stuff, but I didn’t really listen. I played the dying, beaten man with ease, having witnessed such behavior any number of times in the past.

  When we arrived at the medical center, she tried to help me get off the elevator. She absurdly tried to shoulder one of my arms. I didn’t lean on her too hard, not wanting to break her. The key was that she felt like she was helping me, that’s all that mattered.

  “Is this the recycle?” asked an orderly with arms as big around as a normal fellow’s legs.

  My head snapped up. “I’m not feeling that poorly. Just give me some ice water and a flesh printer.”

  “And maybe a transfusion,” Galina added. “Why don’t you people ever want to do anything other than run people through grinders?”

  The orderly looked at both of us, then he took note of our rank insignias. He soon nodded and backed off. “Right this way, sirs.”

  Two minutes later I was in a floater-chair, gliding down the blue-white hallways to a private room. Over the next hour, I let a few cute bio girls pamper me. While this went on, Galina stood by the door with her arms crossed and her eyebrows knitted in concern.

  Sure, sometimes Tribune Galina Turov hated me. She’d had me killed before, and I’d gotten in a few licks now and then myself. But she also loved me, I think, just a little. We had the kind of complex relationship that was all too common in the legions.

  To understand it, you have to contemplate spending decades fighting and dying with the same rough lot of people, then being reborn to fight again. We’d lived like that for so long we barely remembered our old, normal lives.

  Some of the scariest old farts, like Graves, had been on active duty for close to a century. As a result, all of the senior legionnaires had sour memories. We all held grudges—but we also cared about each other, too. In a way, normal folks barely mattered to us. We were like a big, dysfunctional family of serial-killers.

  After I’d had enough, I staged a miraculous recovery. I stood up suddenly and grinned. “I’m feeling much better. You ladies really can cure a man when you put your minds to it!”

  The two bio women—who I’d taken the opportunity to chat up while they worked on me—smiled sincerely. It wasn’t often a Blue Deck death-monkey heard praise from a legionnaire.

  Galina drew in a sudden breath. “I guess I’ll be going now. See you in the morning.”

  She walked out, and to her surprise, I walked after her. She looked at me with upraised eyebrows. “Aren’t you going to consummate with your newfound friends?”

  “What? Those kids? Nah,” I said, laughing. “I was just passing the time and being friendly.”

  She shrugged and walked away.

  There it was again. That fine ass. Sure, I could go back to the bio girls and give it a shot. I had half a mind to after all the crap Galina had put me through today—but my eyes still lingered, and my heart grew fonder.

  I’d always heard that absence was a great inducer of love—but I didn’t understand that concept at all. I tended to go for what caught my eye at the moment.

  “Hey,” I called out. “I’m sorry about going up against you and showing you up in front of Drusus today.”

  “You’re sorry? Now?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ve had time to think about it. Time to calm down.”

  “I see…” she said thoughtfully. “Are you telling me that you’re finally willing to—?”

  “Give up my sources? No, I can’t do that. But I can take you to dinner.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, there’s this new place down at Fourth and Century. It’s not far from here. Come on.”

  She stared at me, and her mouth did a little drop, a miniature version of the slack-jawed shocked look I wore so often. “Are you kidding me, McGill?”

  “No sir. I would like to make amends.”

  Galina blinked, and she thought about it. I didn’t say a damned word while she made her decision, as I didn’t want to startle her. When you’ve got your prey sniffing the bait and circling the trap, you sure as hell keep quiet.

  Finally, she heaved a big sigh. “All right. Show me this place. It better not be Thai food, though. I hate those mixed flavors.”

  “Hell no! It’s barbeque. The best in the city.”

  She rolled her eyes, but she followed me out onto the streets. I soon forgot about my pain, my supposed state of shock and all the rest of that malarkey.

  Unfortunately, Galina hadn’t forgotten about the first part of the day.

  “You’re very healthy looking…” she said, marveling. “You don’t seem injured at all anymore.”

  “Damn straight! I’m all fixed up. That proves my darkest suspicions.”

  “Proves what?” she asked.

  “For starters, it proves bio people are as lazy as hell. They have a million credits worth of equipment in every room, and the only thing they want to do is switch on that box of spinning knives.”

  Galina gave a little shudder. The best part was she didn’t bring up my miraculous recovery any more. That’s exactly what I’d been trying to achieve, so I let well-enough alone.

  Soon, we sat down to some fine beef. I ordered the tri-tip, while she had a fillet mignon. I hadn’t even known they had that sort of thing on the menu, but I didn’t object.