“Minor civilizations such as ours are much less significant. We reside on the fringe of the Empire. Frontier provinces such as our beloved 921 are almost entirely devoid of value. However, many middle-tier provinces also exist. These span the region between the Core Systems and the frontier.”

  To illustrate his point, Alexander flicked at the table before him. He stood, using both hands like a wizard conjuring a demon.

  What appeared was indeed an image that impressed me. I could tell by sweeping my eyes around the table that the others were intrigued as well.

  A star map showing the entire galaxy spun between us. It was fantastically detailed, so much so that each sparkling star was like a glittering mote of diamond dust. The lights lowered as Alexander continued casting his spell.

  Then, as I was about to slam my crusty hands together in applause—things got wild.

  The gently spinning galaxy rose up, lifting itself from the depths of the conference table and taking life as a three-dimensional hologram. It spun slowly between us all, and I saw officers gasp and recoil physically when the gauzy spiral arms ran themselves over their faces. It was like being touched by a gigantic alien ghost.

  “Wooo-hoo!” I hooted, standing and clapping. “That’s the coolest damned thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “Sit down and shut up, McGill,” Praetor Wurtenberger ordered. He tugged at my pant leg, but then quickly regretted it. He withdrew his hand and rubbed his fingers together in horror.

  Reluctantly, I obeyed. A quick look at old Alexander told me I wasn’t in any real trouble, fortunately. He had a wintry smile on his face, and although he wasn’t looking my direction, I could tell he’d enjoyed my outburst. He was proud of his massive hologram. In my book, he deserved some hooting and hollering.

  The image itself was more than gaudy, it was instructive. Our galaxy was shaped like Saturn’s planetary system, with a large mass in the center and relatively thin rings circling it. Instead of a planet in the center and dust spinning around, however, our galaxy consisted of billions of stars.

  In the center, there was a tight ball of suns. These bright stars were bigger and more densely packed together than the rest of the total collection, which spread out thinner and thinner to the wispy fringes at the edges of the great disk.

  Alexander worked some more magic. He began to paint various regions of his beautiful map. He touched the center basketball of stars, and it turned golden. An inscription appeared at his whim, labeling the region the Core Systems.

  His fine-boned hand then moved to the fringe. There he touched the far edge, lighting up a wide band of stars that entirely encircled the galaxy. He turned this band a rust-red.

  The red region lit up with the label: Unknown.

  Next, he lit up a similar band of stars, one step inward from the Unknown region. He turned this band blue and labeled it Frontier.

  Extending one thin finger, he touched a tiny point in the Frontier near the Unknown, causing a star to brighten. The spot was right on the border. The dot lit up and turned green. The label said: Earth.

  “You can see our position is precarious,” Alexander said. “We are located at the very border between the known and the unknown. We ride a local spur of stars, a region that sits like a lighthouse on the edge of a stormy sea. Past our location, mildly civilized life forms give way to the utterly barbaric.”

  My hand was up and waggling now. Reluctantly, Alexander called on me again. “Yes? What is it now, McGill? Do you need to relieve yourself?”

  “What? Well… no… maybe… it doesn’t matter. I’m bothering you because you haven’t yet finished your map, Mr. Servant, sir. What’s with the big band of stars between the golden basketball in the center and the blue Frontier?”

  Alexander gave me another cold smile. “That is the Mid-Zone.” He reached out and touched the zone, lighting it up with a sickly green glow. “These peoples are more important than lowly creatures such as humans. We are grunting frontier savages. These people are considered important, but not as important as the Galactics themselves. Many of these civilizations are made up of colony worlds. Outcasts from the Core Systems, but still somewhat respectable.”

  My hand was up again, and I shouted out my next question the moment he pointed at me.

  “But sir, are they slaves like us, or are they full-fledged citizens?”

  Alexander nodded to me. “Another good question. They are in-between. In our ancient history, we once had a system known as feudalism. In that social construct, the nobility were at the top,” here he indicated the Core Systems, “with serfs and peasants at the bottom.” He tapped at the blue frontier.

  “But also, there existed a middle-tier. Such people were tradesmen, skilled artisans and bureaucrats.”

  Praetor Wurtenberger lifted a hand then. Alexander called upon him immediately.

  “You mentioned bureaucrats, sir?” he asked. “Are we to assume from this that our own local officials might hail from this region? I’m talking about, of course, the Nairbs?”

  “Yes, Praetor. You’re exactly right. We haven’t yet isolated their homeworld, but it is definitely within this region.”

  My jaw dropped. I’d long wondered where the hell the Nairbs came from. After all, they weren’t Galactics, but they were definitely more important than humans. Now, looking at the green band of the Middle-zone, I knew the truth.

  Suddenly, a new idea struck me.

  “Wait a second! Are you telling us that battlecruiser up there is driven by Nairbs? That they’re here, hat in hand, asking for our help?”

  Alarmed, everyone turned toward Drusus to hear his answer.

  He looked thoughtful. “That would be an interesting situation. In fact, I wish that it was so… it would be good for the Nairb race to owe us a favor, would it not? But alas no, this ship isn’t manned by Nairbs. The very idea is amusing.”

  I thought about that, and I realized he was right. The Nairbs were capable of many things, but they didn’t build fantastical warships. At least, I’d never seen one, and it didn’t seem to be within their natural character to construct such a thing.

  Who then? Who was flying that big ship from the Mid-Zone? Who had come all the way out to Earth to visit us and cut my vacation woefully short?

  Old Alexander had us in the palm of his hand at this point. Every eye was locked upon his wrinkled hands as he reached up again to paint more detailed illustrations.

  With a sweep of his arm, he obliterated the galaxy map he’d drawn. The looming shape of the battlecruiser that hung above Earth reappeared. It seemed oddly-designed and mysterious now. It looked like an Imperial warship—but the details weren’t quite right. I knew one battlewagon from the next, and this one didn’t match the profile of a ship from the Core Systems—not exactly.

  “And so, we have gathered to discuss the nature of these visitors we have in our skies today,” Alexander said. “No, they aren’t Nairbs. They aren’t from any planet we recognize. Nor have they yet deigned to identify themselves to us.”

  “Our fleet stands ready, Servant Turov,” Praetor Wurtenburger said. “We aren’t crowding this guest, but should they make any hostile move, we’re ready to pounce.”

  “That’s… somewhat encouraging,” Alexander said. “But I doubt our reaction would come fast enough to save the souls meeting in this chamber.”

  Right then, I felt mildly impressed. Sure, Old Alexander had probably made sure he had a backup of his files in Russia somewhere—but the fact remained that he’d dared to stand with us today, under the guns of a big warship that possibly had evil intentions.

  Looking around the table again, I noted many of the big brass types I might have expected to be present were nowhere to be seen. Imperator Turov, for example, or Tribune Winslade. One would have thought… but no, they were probably tucked away somewhere playing it safe.

  Alexander was talking again, so I forced myself to listen-up. Staff meetings usually bored the living shit out of me, but today’s case was an exception to that long-standing rule.

  “…we have, naturally, made every attempt to communicate. They have yet to respond, except for a single pulse of data. After deciphering the code, which was a dialect of Imperial standard, we determined there was only a single word of meaning buried within.”

  Here, Alexander turned and looked at me for the first time. His eyes were piercing. He was as old as the hills and maybe what was buried under those hills, too—but his mind was still sharp.

  “Uh…” I said, wondering if I’d missed something. Often, during meetings that lasted more than, say, twenty minutes, I zoned out. If I was expected to speak at that point, I’d almost certainly miss my cue. I suspected this might be another of those times.

  Reflexively, I looked as clueless as possible, hoping someone would give me a hint—but no one did. They all just stared at me.

  Finally, Alexander began speaking again. “Can you guess, Centurion, what that single word might be?”

  “Oh… No, sir. Not a clue.”

  I felt a wave of relief. I’d misread the situation. Alexander was just being unfairly accusatory, due to my often-misunderstood involvement in alien visitations. As I had no idea who these Mid-Zone visitors might be, I felt like I was in the clear.

  But Old Alexander continued to stare at me thoughtfully. He was a hard man to read. He had the expressions of a lizard—an unhappy lizard—most of the time.

  Falling back on ignorance as my standard defense, I tried to resemble a man who was as dumb as a bag of hammers. It came naturally to me.

  Finally, Alexander spoke again, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “The single word they transmitted to Central was this.”

  He touched a virtual button in the air, and a projected audio player coalesced into being. It had a red jangling line showing a waveform of sound. He played it, and a haunting alien voice spoke a single, damning word.

  “…McGill…”

  -4-

  Every eye in the place turned toward me then, and those eyes were wide. Many were bloodshot. Some were angry. Almost all of them were slitted in suspicion and prejudice.

  “Holy Hell!” I boomed. “Did you guys hear that? It almost sounded like it said my name… almost.”

  My ploy failed miserably. No one even responded. They all just sucked in a breath with tight lungs and muttered dark things to one another. Words like traitor and perming were mumbled right next to me.

  “Hey, hey now!” I said, faking a laugh. “Come on, guys. You don’t think I have anything to do with that big ship up there, do you? I’m just a hick from the sticks. I’m a six-pack guzzling moron, just ask anybody.”

  Alexander rustled his robes, sliding them back to reveal his tapper. It had a lot of wiry gray hairs growing out of it, and it was kind of nasty to look at, I don’t mind telling you.

  “I’ve taken it upon myself to retrace your recent locations, McGill. You often drop off radar—and last night was no exception. This vessel appeared late in the evening, and not only did you ignore all summons to Central—you were also unreachable.”

  “Uh… yeah. I do go off-grid sometimes. Everyone does that now and again.”

  The assembled officers shook their heads.

  “No,” Alexander said. “No one here goes off grid while on Earth. The only possible exception is myself, when I enter a counseling session with other high level Public Servants.”

  “Oh… that’s a crying shame, sir. I could show you how to tape aluminum foil over your tapper and vanish if you want to. You really should try it, you’ll enjoy yourself more.”

  He gave me that humorless smile. “A kind offer, I’m sure, but I’ll pass, McGill. Let us return to where you were last night. Were you on Earth?”

  I blinked several times. “Of course I was, sir.”

  “Do you know that both drones and a tracing grid-spider could not find you?”

  “Huh? Really? Well… I live way out near Waycross. We don’t get the best service there, see.”

  Praetor Drusus lost his cool then. He stood up and slammed a fist on the table. The image of the battlecruiser jumped a little. “McGill, I’m in your direct chain of command. In fact, I’m at the top of that chain. I hereby order you to stop bullshitting and come clean about this visitation.”

  “But sir, I’m trying to help in any way I can. Old McGill is as honest as the day is long—everyone knows that.”

  “Just tell us what’s going on,” he implored me. “Are they here to find and arrest you? Are they cutting some kind of deal you privately arranged? Or might this be a prelude to another invasion?”

  “Uh… I don’t rightly know, Praetor, sir. Seriously—I spent the night out in my swamp with a lady-friend. That’s all. There’s an old rotting cabin out there, see, and… well… sometimes it’s good to be away from prying eyes for a while.”

  They all stared at me distrustfully.

  Drusus wasn’t done yet. “You’re telling me you were out screwing some woman in the woods, and you had no idea that new and threatening aliens were knocking on our door with your name on their minds?”

  “That’s exactly right, sir. As God is my witness, I have no clue what they want or who they are. That’s not a Nairb ship. It’s not a Mogwa ship… It looks kind of Mogwa-like, but the design is different.”

  “We know all that. Thanks for being utterly unhelpful.”

  Drusus sat down in a huff. I tried not to look at him. In my experience, when someone was mad at you, it was best not to kiss-up or glare. You just ignored them and went onward. That usually settled them down the quickest.

  Old Alexander had watched this exchange carefully, and he hadn’t missed a trick. He and I had had dealings recently—not all of them of an entirely cordial nature. For one thing, he knew I’d been mounting his daughter for years, and—

  Oh, shit.

  A spike of instant regret stabbed into my fool brain. I’d screwed up. When pressed, I’d reflexively turned to my girlfriend defense. That normally worked well, as I was one of the more infamous horn-dogs in my legion.

  But I’d forgotten during Drusus’ tirade that Galina Turov, Old Alexander’s daughter, was supposed to be my main squeeze. I didn’t see any way in which confessing to infidelity would improve my standing in his cold, ancient eyes.

  “Uh…” I said. “What I meant to say was… I was indisposed in the swamp. That’s the truth, sirs. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Praetor Wurtenberger said. “I suggest we forget about McGill helping in any substantial way. What are we going to do about that ship up there? As a representative of Earth’s Fleet, I can say without reservation that we can destroy her almost without effort.”

  “No.” Old Alexander had spoken, and his single word was uttered with finality.

  Wurtenberger threw his flabby hands high. “What then? Do we wait for them to transmit a second word? Or perhaps to launch a spread of hell-burners onto our green Earth?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Not that, either. We have only one option. We shall have McGill transmit a message to them. If that doesn’t work, we’ll send him up there in an unarmed shuttle to tap politely on their hull until they either destroy him or allow him entry.”

  I blinked and frowned at these ideas. Was it my imagination, or was old man Turov sour on me all of a sudden? Could it be over his daughter? I thought that it might be, and I thought that was mighty unfair. After all, it wasn’t like we were engaged or anything.

  “Uh…” I said. “What should I say to them, sirs?”

  Drusus threw up his hands with the palms out flat. He looked very alarmed. “Sir, I can’t condone this action. McGill isn’t a diplomat. He isn’t even a proper officer most of the time.”

  “Yes. I gathered that. But they’ve ignored us for too long. They asked for McGill, we brought him here, and they will get their wish. Proceed.”

  Drusus sat down in defeat. He massaged his neck with one hand while I was given a microphone and some staffers conjured up an open channel to transmit over.

  After clearing my throat, I began to talk. “Hello, alien brothers. I’m Centurion James McGill, from Legion Varus. I’m sorry about the wait, but I’m here now and listening. If you have some message of peace, joy and enlightenment, I’m all ears down here at Central.”

  Nothing came back in response to my message. I repeated the transmission in several different ways, but no one so much as launched a peep or a ping back at me. After about three solid minutes, I gave up and threw my hands wide.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Maybe it’s all a big misunderstanding. Maybe they were saying something like McGillicuddy, you know, but it got cut off, or something. That kind of thing happens all the time in my neck of the woods.”

  They didn’t even look at me. They seemed more depressed and worried than ever. On the other hand, I was beginning to sense an opportunity for an exit.

  I faked a yawn and touched my gut suggestively. “You know, if you guys don’t mind, I think maybe I should take my leave. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you guys out, but I’m feeling a mite hungry, see—”

  “Shut up,” Drusus said suddenly. “Look!”

  My eyes followed his pointing finger. An object was falling from space. It was small, dark, and slightly reflective.

  “A bomb?” Wurtenberger demanded, standing up suddenly.

  Drusus shook his head. “No, it’s got jets, see? It came right out of the ship’s belly. Project the trajectory!”

  A red arc appeared, connecting the object to the roof of Central. The missile, or bomb, or whatever it was would soon be landing on our heads.

  “Evacuate the building,” Drusus ordered.

  “Impossible,” Wurtenberger said. “There’s no time. We must shoot it down.”

  “No.”

  We all stared toward the head of the table. Old Alexander had spoken again, and as before, everyone listened to him.

  He extended one hand toward me, and one toward Drusus. He unrolled a single finger from each hand, and pointed them at each of us.