Manfred and his fire brigade arrived then at a trot. They wore special gear including hoses and packs. They brushed past the startled guard. “Come on McGill, get a move on!” Manfred called to me.

  Stern-eyed, I rushed inside. The veteran didn’t know what to make of it.

  Once inside, the fire alarm stopped. Manfred stayed at the entrance.

  “How long can you stand here and cover for me?” I asked him.

  “Until some jackass tells me it was a false alarm and orders me to get out.”

  I nodded. “Okay, but take your time about leaving.”

  Marching through the passages alone, I passed lots of brass and their staffers. They gave me odd looks, but I kept on moving, never meeting their eyes. A man who appears to know his business can often brush by bureaucrats—just try it sometime.

  -56-

  My plan was straightforward. Winslade and I would somehow get into a heated disagreement, and I’d leave him in the revival queue for a while.

  Games like this, where one man killed another in the spirit of friendly rivalry, were always frowned upon in the legion, but they happened often enough. The thing that would set this practical joke apart from other similar misconduct in my past was the fact Winslade and I were now two full levels apart in rank. That meant the action I was contemplating wasn’t just another high-spirited prank. Technically… it was an assassination.

  But I didn’t care. My blood was up, and I wanted some revenge.

  Unfortunately, when I got to his office Winslade wasn’t alone. Worse, he spotted me immediately.

  His face twisted into a smile of recognition. “Ah, McGill,” he said. “I wondered when you would turn up. Meet my compatriots.”

  Here, he waved with a flourish to indicate two unsmiling, burly men that stood on either side of him. Winslade’s smile grew as I eyed them.

  I knew right off I’d been caught red-handed. Winslade had been alerted somehow. He knew I was alive and coming to find him. He hadn’t been fooled by my fire alarm, and now he felt he was in charge again.

  “A pleasure I’m sure, boys,” I said. “Did you want to talk or something, Tribune?”

  “Indeed I do. Please, come this way.” Winslade spun on his heel and walked toward his office. I hesitated, but the two guards closed ranks around me to form an escort.

  I considered punching them and shooting Winslade in the back right then. I honestly did. But I knew that would lead to violence and death all around, and it would give Winslade a good reason to forget about me until we returned to Earth. There, I’d probably be court-marshalled.

  No sir, it was time to play it cool.

  “Tribune?” I said to Winslade’s back, hatching a new plan even as I was marched into his inner sanctum. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea about Graves and all.”

  Winslade glanced over his shoulder with an arched brow. “Not at all. How could I have mistaken the signs you gave me? I’d have to be cretinous fool.”

  “Uh… right. But what I meant was that I didn’t tell Graves anything about your… well, you know.”

  Winslade halted in his doorway. Inside his office, over his shoulder, I saw a grav-bolted steel chair and chains. He had been scheming all right.

  “You didn’t tell Graves anything because there was nothing to tell,” he said with a sidelong glance at the meatballs that were holding onto me.

  “That’s exactly right, sir. It wasn’t strange at all that he was dead for so long. His name just didn’t come up in the queue, I’m sure of it. These decisions are automated and precalculated by the best computers. In fact—”

  “Shut up, McGill,” Winslade said dangerously.

  Again, he glanced at the men at my sides. I got the feeling he knew they liked Graves better than they did him—just about everyone did—and he didn’t want to do any explaining right now. “Sit him in that chair and bolt his wrist to the floor.”

  The hog-like guards did as he ordered, but I saw them frowning as they did it.

  “Don’t worry about me, boys!” I said. “I’ve got this. It’s all a little game that Winslade and I like to play. We go back, don’t you know, way back.”

  Winslade slapped me one, and I found it surprisingly painful. That’s when I noticed he had a crackling shock-rod in his hand.

  With numb, bloody lips, I grinned at him. “Don’t tell me you’re sweet on Abigail.”

  That made him blink. “What?”

  “Abigail. You know, that lady-Claver who—”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I know who you’re talking about, you oaf. What are you suggesting about her?”

  “Well… you know. When a lady takes a shine to a man such as myself, sometimes others become jealous.”

  Winslade laughed aloud. Flecks of spittle flew from his lips.

  “As if! That witch is all yours, McGill. If she jumps into your bed, you’d best jump out, mind you. She’s the worst of the clan as far as I can tell.”

  That threw me off a bit. My barb had not landed at all. Worse, I’d say Winslade was accurate in his assessment of Abigail. That meant it would be hard to bullshit him on the topic.

  Immediately, my thinking shifted, and I took a whole new direction. That’s the benefit of living in a flexible state of mind. One can go where the wind blows when necessary.

  “Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding,” I said, watching him as he took out a series of what looked like dental instruments. “What I meant to say was we’ve had dealings, and not everyone appreciates it when others get a better bargain than they’ve gotten themselves.”

  “Hmm…?” Winslade said. He wasn’t even paying attention. He kept pulling things out, and then he began prodding on my arm. That was kind of alarming, because he wasn’t trying to cause pain, or anything so simple. Instead, he seemed to be focused on my tapper.

  “Mind if I ask what this is all about, sir?”

  “Not at all. You’ve got a set of recent memories I find troublesome. Those memories are going to be extracted from your tapper, and from the legion data core. When I’m done with that, I’ll send you back to the revival chamber none-the-wiser.”

  “So… you don’t really want to question me or anything like that?”

  “No, no need. I just don’t want some details to be passed on—”

  “You mean, like talking to Central about what I saw down there in the Vulbite chambers?”

  He flashed me a look of annoyance. “Exactly. My tactical efforts must be pristine. Sheer instinct and military genius shall guide me—not some farcical teleportation suicide mission made by one James McGill.”

  By this time, he’d poked a few needles with wires attached to them into five spots around my tapper. I supposed he planned to fry it or something.

  “That’s a sheer relief, sir,” I said. “When the people back at Central want my report explained, ignorance will be a gift for me. Sheer bliss. Please proceed.”

  Winslade did so for a few moments, but then he stopped and frowned. “What do you mean: when they want an explanation? What report? There isn’t any report, that’s the point. You died down there and you’re being revived here now. That’s the end of it, once I make certain adjustments to your memory.”

  “Well… things might not work out that way.”

  “Why not?”

  “On account of the fact I’ve already reported on the incident in full. Both to Graves, and to everyone back at Central.”

  Winslade glared at me. “You fancy yourself a masterful liar, McGill, but the truth is you’re nothing of the kind. You’re full of sewage.”

  “Not so, sir! Not this time, anyways. You see, it has to do with the nature of the casting device.”

  “The what?”

  “The, um… well, it’s classified. But you do realize they transmitted my person out from Central to Glass World, right? And you realize that they saw what I saw while I was there, in real time?”

  He stared at me. The casting project was top secret, and he naturally had no inkling of how it worked.

  “That’s right…” I continued. “That’s how it works, see. They use it to spy on Rigel and places like that. Unfortunately, they can’t get the test subject back again. All they can do is fire a lone, naked man to a location. He plays spy, and then he gets himself killed after ten minutes or so. That’s what I did, see, I—”

  Winslade released a howl of fury. He threw his tray of instruments across the room. They clattered and rolled around on the deck.

  A split-second later, the two hog-like guards threw the door open. They bared their teeth and their hands were on their pistols. They looked around at the blood, needles and shock-rods. What must have left them baffled was my grin and Winslade’s grimace of rage.

  “Is there any trouble here, sir?” they asked.

  Winslade was so pissed he seemed to be having trouble speaking, so I filled in for him.

  “He’s okay,” I said. “He was just having a little trouble reaching the kind of release he likes during our little sessions, see—”

  Winslade slapped me in the face again with his crackling truncheon. “Shut up, McGill!” he said in a very unpleasant tone. He turned to the guards. “Get this sack of excrement out of here!”

  “Uh…” the two men said, eyeing one another and me uncertainly.

  I was grinning ear to ear with one swollen eye, and I figured it was throwing them off a bit.

  “So…” said one of them, “you’re finished doing… whatever?”

  “Get him out of here!” Winslade repeated.

  The guards stood me up, causing the needles and wires to pop out of my arm with a rippling effect. Blood ran down to my fingertips and splattered the deck, but I didn’t pay any heed. After all, I was still alive. Even better, Winslade was pissed about it. All in all, I accounted this adventure as a good one.

  “Just a second!” Winslade called from behind me. “Escort McGill down to Gray Deck. He’s going to command the next assault team.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir!” I called back to him.

  When we were safely out of earshot, I had a private word with the guards. “You see that? It takes serious dedication to your CO to get a command spot in this outfit, boys. I hope you’re taking notes.”

  The guards looked disgusted, and I could tell they hated Winslade that much more after seeing these strange behaviors of his. I grinned happily as they dragged me off to Gray Deck.

  -57-

  Winslade did indeed make me point-man on the next assault. My entire unit—surprised and wide-eyed with alarm—was tossed into harnesses and fired down at the Vulbite deathtrap without so much as a briefing.

  The room began glowing and throbbing blue as our helmets synched up

  “This is bullshit, Centurion!” Harris complained bitterly on command chat. “Total bullshit! What did you do, take a crap on Winslade’s bed again?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” I admitted. “But that’s all piss off a duck’s back at this point.” Using my HUD, I switched to tactical chat, hitting the whole unit. Around us, the chamber was already beginning to pulse and waver. “Troops! Listen up! We’re about to teleport into a cave network. The cave is full of Vulbites and dead legionnaires. The enemy will be stealthed, so look for footprints in the dust—most of you know the drill. Make Varus proud!”

  A few troops hooted, but not many. The light had reached its peak, and we were vanishing, leaping through space in the blink of an eye.

  A moment later, we were in a pitch-black cave. At our feet were scattered bodies. Almost all of them were human.

  The lights from the dead legionnaires had mostly gone out by this time. It had been a few days, and the batteries had run down.

  Scrambling to switch on our own lights, we illuminated the caverns. I couldn’t help but suspect we were making the identical mistakes those who had preceded us had made.

  “The dirt!” Harris roared. “Look down, fools! If these bugs are coming, you’ll see the dirt sink down.”

  “Watch the roof, too,” Barton added. “Vulbites can climb and drop in the middle of us.”

  She was right, and I saw everyone looking around with panicky lights flashing this way and that.

  “Hold on,” I said. “Barton, your troops will watch the roof. Harris, put your people on the outer perimeter with force-blades extended. Prod every rock and take a cut at the air before you step forward. Leeson, keep your auxiliaries in the center to back up anyone who gets hit.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Leeson responded.

  Tense, moving at a snail’s pace, we stepped over the dead and advanced into the monstrous cavern. After a hundred paces, we’d encountered nothing.

  “Hey, lookie here!” Leeson called out. “Isn’t this you, McGill? You’re buck-naked, man.”

  I walked over to him and saw a grisly scene. I was cut in half, never a pretty sight.

  “At least you got a couple of the bastards first,” Harris said, joining us.

  “Yeah…” I said. “Funny they didn’t take the bodies—or the suits.”

  A few paces away, we found the gateway posts I’d seen them setting up before. I examined them, but they seemed to be inoperative. “Natasha! Kivi! I need a tech.”

  They both came running. The girls knelt and looked over the equipment, but after a few minutes, they straightened up again.

  “It’s cold,” Kivi said. “This unit hasn’t been running for a day or two.”

  “That’s right,” Natasha said. “It looks like the Vulbites escaped.”

  “Aww,” Leeson said. “That’s such a shame. Winslade wanted us to come down here and die just like the rest, didn’t he? He’ll be so disappointed to see you’re still breathing, McGill, won’t he?”

  I nodded, eyeing the gateway posts. “They were evacuating the place. Bugging-out the last time I saw them. Let’s look around.”

  We searched the caves, and we did find a number of puff-crete pads. Every indication was that heavy equipment had once rested there.

  “They’ve pulled it all out,” Leeson said. “We gave them too much time.”

  “Natasha,” I said, turning to her. “It’s all up to you. Can you tap into this thing and find out where they went?”

  She shrugged. “I can try.”

  Natasha began to hack, and Kivi helped her. Natasha was the real master at this kind of thing, and both of them knew it. In the past, such knowledge had been annoying to Kivi, but she seemed to accept it today. They worked together as a team, and I was glad to see the change.

  “I don’t know,” she said after several fruitless minutes. “They aren’t using standard galactic coordinates. I don’t know where it goes.”

  “But if you flipped it on, it would still link up with the same destination, right?”

  “Maybe… wait a minute, James. Don’t even think about that.”

  But it was too late. I was thinking hard already.

  “Turn it on,” I ordered her. “Kivi, set up some buzzers. Let’s see if they can travel through and get back.”

  “Even if they can, it isn’t proof a man won’t be permed,” she told me.

  “I know that. Just do it.”

  They worked for a few minutes, and we had to chain together some batteries from our harnesses to provide power, but at last, the gateway posts glowed into life.

  That’s when I got a surprise. Graves walked up behind us. He had another unit with him, and he seemed to be personally leading it.

  “There you are, McGill,” he said.

  “Nice to see you rated special treatment today,” I told him with a smile. “I thought I was the only one.”

  “What did you do to Winslade?” Graves demanded, his face angry and his rifle held to his chest.

  “I just told him the God’s-honest-truth, sir! Nothing more, I swear it! Can I help it if a man is allergic to the truth?”

  Graves shook his head and looked even more annoyed. I briefed him further on the situation, and he agreed glumly that Winslade had sent us down here out of spite.

  “All right,” he said. “So we’re screwed if you can’t get that gateway working, is that it?

  I blinked at him. “Well, we can’t find out where they took the processing equipment anyway.”

  Graves laughed. “That’s not the problem, McGill. There’s no way out of here, haven’t you figured that out yet? We haven’t got enough power to port out using our harnesses—they’re all drained.”

  “That’s true,” Natasha said. “The batteries were charged only enough to pop us down here on a one-way trip.”

  “But… what if we won?” I asked. “What if we’d found the processing equipment?”

  “It’s all up to him,” Graves said, pointing a gloved finger upward as he was talking about the All-mighty himself—but I knew he wasn’t. He was talking about Winslade.

  “Uh… you mean that to perm us all he has to do is leave us here to rot?”

  “Now you’ve got it,” Graves said. “The way I figure it, he did the math. If we found the processing center, we should have enough power to escape and report the good news. After all, wouldn’t a processing center have to have a power plant to operate?”

  “Yes…” Natasha said, walking up and joining the conversation. “And these packs, even the ones on the dead soldiers—they’re all out of juice. They’ve been running lights, rebreathers and air conditioning for days.”

  My eyes looked back at the dead behind us. A few suit-lights glimmered, but not many. It took a lot of power to teleport, even one harness used a lot of power to activate.

  “That dick,” I said, “I didn’t even realize… he can leave us down here if he feels like it.”

  Graves indicated the gateway posts. “Right there, that’s your answer. Our ticket home. All we have to do is redirect them to the battlecruiser, or even back to Earth. Can you do it, Elkin?”

  Natasha shrugged. “I think I can get them working, but I can’t redirect them. They’re Rigel-made. They don’t have a standard interface, or even software I can understand. We’ll be working against time, anyway. Running them will take a lot of power, and we’re using up what we’ve got with every passing minute.”