Could that be why he wasn’t worried about losing this war?

  Giving my head a shake, I tried to push all that aside. Right now, I needed to calm Raash down and get him to let me have access to his deep-link.

  “All right,” I said, flipping my knife in the air and thunking it into the table where we’d been so recently at peace. “Let’s sit down and talk about this. We can always kill each other later on. Take a seat, Raash, old buddy.”

  The lizard stood indecisively. He was never as good as I was at switching mental gears—not unless he was switching into a murderous rage, that is.

  When the MPs finally arrived, I had to shine them on with some laughing bluster about us practicing our combat skills. Only then did Raash grudgingly sit down with me again.

  He sulked until the cops left, then he finally fixed me with a baleful eye. “I have such a device. It is as you described—capable of communications between the stars.”

  Nodding, I smiled at him. “I kind of figured…”

  I was getting ideas all of a sudden. All sorts of ideas.

  -49-

  Once I had Raash in less of a crazy-lizard mood, I managed to get him to show me his secret communications device. Only the obvious fact that we were all about to get our collective asses permed down here on City World convinced him to cooperate. After twenty long minutes of cajoling and false praise, I got him to allow me access to his secret spy gear.

  I’d always suspected Raash was a saurian spy. He’d told me as much on a few occasions, usually when he thought he’d beaten me and was in a position of power. In such moments, his sense of pride had exceeded all caution, and he’d crowed like a pre-dawn rooster.

  Today was different. Today, he wasn’t proud or boastful—he was worried.

  “The device was sold to me by an elderly earthling,” he said. “I barely know how it operates.”

  “Uh-huh…” I said, ignoring his nonsensical cover-story and poking at the machine.

  Raash was a terrible liar. Even now, when my hands were on his spy-machine, he was still trying to pretend a little old lady had sold it to him. Next, he’d probably complain that he’d been swindled by the imaginary old bat.

  “This here looks like the transmit button,” I said.

  “Yes. Don’t touch it.”

  “Hmm…”

  The device wasn’t much of a puzzle. It had very little in the way of controls. There was an input microphone on a wire—an honest-to-God wire—and that’s about it other than the single transmit button.

  “But…” I said, lifting it up to look underneath. There was nothing to see there, either, except for a power cable that was warm to the touch and about as thick around as my Johnson on a Saturday morning.

  “Raash? I don’t understand how you change the channel on this thing.”

  “The what?”

  “Every deep-link device has a unique ID. A station number. That’s how you know who you’re talking to.”

  Raash looked evasive. “That is not how this machine operates. I was a fool to show it to you.”

  “Nah… it’s okay. I know someone who can get it to work for us.”

  Raash looked curious. “Who might this be? A man from Central? An intelligence officer?”

  His big paws were up again, and the big poky things on the ends of his gnarled fingers were working the air. I got the feeling he was wishing they were working on my neck.

  “No, no, no. I’m talking about Natasha. She was dead for a while, but I can get ahold of her. I’m pretty sure I can find her and get her to help.”

  “Natasha… I recall this one. Female, but oddly capable. Yes. She helped with my revival, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. That’s the girl. Let me talk to her—hey, time to back off, now.”

  He had a few of those pointy claws on my wrist, but I pulled away and worked my tapper. I could tell I was blowing all sorts of violent plans old Raash might have been entertaining in his scaly head, but that was just too damned bad. We didn’t have time to fight and kill each other right now—fun though that might be.

  “Natasha? Hey, girl. You’ll never believe—what? No, no, this isn’t a booty-call. Far from it. See who I’ve got here with me? You remember this nutzo blue lizard, right?”

  Natasha was never eager to join in on my schemes, but then she never said no to me in the end, either. In less than an hour, I had her down in the lower decks of the lifter with Raash and myself, working on the miniature deep-link.

  “This thing is ingeniously designed,” she said. “Stream-lined to a single purpose.”

  “What’s that, exactly?” I asked.

  “It transmits, and it doesn’t receive. Further, it only transmits to a single station. The receiver, you see, is larger than the transmitter on these devices. All you have to do is connect this baby to a big power source, and you can send anything you want to the preordained address.”

  “Uh… okay. It sounds like we need two things, then. One, a power source, and two a way to change the target station ID.”

  Natasha laughed. “Yes. A tall order, as you would like to say.”

  “False,” Raash declared suddenly. “I have a power source. I have linked this device to the lifter’s engines.”

  We both looked at him in concern. “How did you learn to do that?” I asked.

  Raash shrugged. “I believe I was born with the knowledge innately. It is a gift of mine.”

  I snorted, and Natasha rolled her eyes, but we didn’t argue with him. Obviously, he’d been trained by his spy-masters to do such nefarious things.

  “All right, we’ve got the power to transmit,” I said. “How about changing the destination ID?”

  Here, both Raash and I looked at Natasha. She appeared alarmed. “Seriously? You want me to figure that out using a strange alien device? I barely know enough to tell you what this thing does.”

  Raash lifted one blue-scaled finger. “I will aid you.”

  Together, the two of them went to work on the device. Raash knew how to take it apart. He knew what every piece did, too. He soon led her to the parts that controlled the station ID.

  It was more than obvious that Raash hadn’t gotten this gear in any innocent way, but Natasha and I both made a point of not pressing him on the topic.

  By midnight, the jury-rigging of the device was done, and we sent a fateful message. I had no way of knowing if the message had gotten through or not, as the machine only transmitted, it could not receive.

  But it didn’t matter. We’d done what we could to call for help. I’d sent the message to Galina, aboard her flagship in Earth’s Fleet. It had to be out there someplace, and as those ships were the only source of aid we could hope might rescue us, I’d chosen her as the recipient.

  Once the deed was done, the night closed in. The roar of artillery outside took a break along about midnight, so I made a play for Natasha’s attentions. I offered her a warm spot on my bunk, which I accounted as a plus—but my offer flamed out. Disappointed, I decided it was okay, as I was pretty tired anyways.

  Long before dawn, I was startled awake by sirens and a booming announcement that blared from every tapper in my unit.

  Our sector of the great City was under attack.

  -50-

  Rushing to join my unit, I found they’d been given orders to hold at the water plant. A big attack was expected. I managed to wangle a ride on a skimmer and headed toward the front lines.

  In the meantime, after getting his revival, Sateekas had taken up his station at headquarters. He and a few dozen others worked with the human commanders to coordinate the city’s defenses.

  Sateekas had left me in the feed that was normally only shared with top brass. Things looked bleak. Based on the chatter and colored maps laying out the tactical situation, we’d already lost a third of the city. That was mostly the outskirts, sure… but the bears were pressing ever onward, moving deeper into the central neighborhoods with every passing hour.

  Joining my unit in the buildings circling the water plant, I waited for the predicted enemy rush—but it didn’t come. After an hour went by, my troops and the other neighboring units began to celebrate. Manfred even came by with some hooch.

  “Hey McGill,” he said, lifting a disgusting concoction fermented in a ration pouch. “You want some rot gut? We’ve got plenty.”

  “No, thanks. We haven’t won this yet, Manfred. Not by a long shot.”

  “Party-pooper,” he grumbled, and he wandered off to pester Jenny Mills who was commanding the next unit down.

  Becoming increasingly concerned, I finally logged in and checked the feed again. Where were the enemy, if they weren’t hitting us?

  The answer was soon apparent. The bears had circumvented our location entirely. Legion Varus—or a good portion of it—was deployed to defend the city’s water supply. According to their profile so far, it was expected the bears would push hard to gain control of the region.

  But that was only if they wanted to do more poisoning of the population. Maybe they were out of bio agents after days of aerial spread. Or maybe they didn’t care anymore because their dirty-work had already been done.

  Watching the crawling colored lines and blocks, I could see their plan. They were avoiding human-defended locations. They were driving right past us, pushing where the Mogwa marines were supposed to stop them. As a result, our lines were crumbling. Soon, the headquarters itself would be surrounded. It was only a matter of time until we were cut off from one another. Then, we’d be destroyed and swallowed in small, bite-sized chunks.

  “Manfred!” I bellowed until he came back to me.

  “No need to yell, mate. I’ve still got some hooch for you.”

  I knocked the slop from his hands. “We’ve got to move out. They’re surrounding us. All our flanks are threatened. The Mogwa are collapsing on every side of us right now.”

  His mouth hung open for a second, but I showed him what was happening on my tapper, and he soon became as alarmed as I was. He ran off and alerted everyone he could.

  The first thing I did was try to contact Sateekas—but it was hopeless. As the grand-poobah in charge of this war, no one within shouting distance of his office would give me the time of day, whether they were Mogwa or human.

  Next, I contacted Primus Collins and Tribune Winslade. They were two rule-followers, two people unlikely to stick their necks out if it was so much as drizzling outside, but I got them to see reason by sharing the tactical feed from headquarters.

  “Dammit!” Winslade squalled. “This is so typical. Absolutely typical. The vaunted Mogwa marines—bah! The finest soldiers of the Empire, we’re told. Any ten of them would lose a fight with a house cat!”

  “What are we going to do?” Primus Collins asked.

  “We have to hit them as they flow past us,” I suggested. “If we sit here, dug in, they’ll surround us and pocket our positions once and for all.”

  “We’re not going on an offensive without orders,” Winslade said sternly. “Even you should know better than that, McGill. Stand down and stop viewing tacticals that aren’t meant for a man of your rank. Winslade out.”

  He dropped the group channel, and I showed every tooth I had in my head to the video pickup.

  Primus Collins was still on the line, and she frowned up at me. She looked worried—really worried.

  “McGill… Winslade is wrong on this one. I think you’re right. You’re better than I am at getting things to happen that go against the C. O…”

  “Uh… is this an endorsement, sir? Or an order?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing but a sentiment… but I think you should do what you have to. I know you’ll come up with something. Let me know if I can help.”

  Her finger moved toward the disconnect button, which was a red circle on her tapper, but I managed to stop her.

  “Hold on a second, Primus, sir. Why don’t you patch me into headquarters? Through your tapper?”

  She blinked a few times. “They’ll think the call is from me…”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who are you going to talk to? What are you going to say?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t want to know anything about that—do you?”

  “No…” she said, “I don’t. I’m patching you through.”

  Soon, I caught the attention of an underling at headquarters. It was one of Kraus’ butt-monkeys, by the look of him, and only some creative talk about having critical information for Sateekas’ himself kept me from getting the old disconnect.

  But instead of Sateekas, I got Kraus’ ugly face frowning up at me instead. Apparently, he’d managed to escape whatever trap Winslade had left for him. He didn’t seem happy to see me.

  “McGill? Is that Centurion James McGill? What are you doing tying up command resources? Don’t you know a major battle is on-going?”

  “I do indeed, sir. I happen to have critical information concerning this very situation, and I need to talk to Sateekas personally.”

  Kraus looked off-camera, as if glancing around the place. He shook his head. “You’re way out of line, Centurion. You’ll stand your post, and you’ll follow orders. No Victrix man would—”

  “Don’t I know it, sir. I’m not fit to polish the boots of a Victrix recruit. But if you would cast your mind back to yesterday, you might recall that I personally managed to get Sateekas revived.”

  “Yes, yes. What of it?”

  “Well sir,” I continued, “during that operation, I came into contact with certain information that only old Sateekas himself was privy to.”

  “What information?”

  I shook my head. “Now that’s the trouble-spot, see? If I were to tell you about this—about something Sateekas asked me to do for him personally—that would mean I’d spilled the beans, so to speak.”

  Kraus narrowed his eyes down as far as they would go. “Are you loyal to Earth or the Mogwa, McGill?”

  “Both, sir. I serve my legion, Earth, and the Empire—just like you do.”

  His lips worked for a bit. It looked like he was trying to bend his teeth with them.

  “All right. Just don’t do or say anything traitorous.”

  “You have my personal guarantee on that point, sir. That’s a promise, a solemn oath. I wouldn’t—” I stopped talking, as he’d transferred me over to Sateekas.

  The Mogwa was shiny and fresh-looking, but he didn’t look happy.

  “McGill? What is this about?”

  “Sir, the bears are marching right past us. They’re pushing through the Mogwa lines on every flank.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, McGill? I’m not blind.”

  “Yessir… but don’t you think you should order all the human units to attack them as they pass by? We could slow them down, make them—”

  Sateekas shook his flappy head. “It wouldn’t work. There aren’t enough of you. Less than fifty thousand… The Mogwa marines still number nearly that many. You can’t replace them all.”

  “No sir, but… aren’t all those men sick? All your marines?”

  “Yes, most of them. The environment suits stopped the poison for a time, but it worked its way in.”

  “What about your drones? What about those mini-tank things?”

  Sateekas made a wild gesture. “That’s what we’ve been fighting with for days. Most of the battles have involved our drones against the bears. But before this invasion even began, we’d lost a lot of them fighting humans.”

  He gave me a baleful stare. I ignored this, not caring a whit. If the Mogwa had seen fit to let us into their dome without a fuss, we’d all have been better off.

  “What about your power-armor, sir? Each suit is like a tank all by itself. Why not redeploy those that have sick Mogwa in them, and—”

  Sateekas made a farting sound. It was Mogwa laughter. “Who would you suggest I put into these empty suits of power-armor, McGill?”

  “I don’t know—whoever you’ve got. Civvies, maybe. Or noncombatant humans.”

  Sateekas shook his nasty mouth parts at me. “It won’t work. Humans are too large, and Mogwa civilians could never be trained to fight in time.”

  “But sir, I’ve seen how the armor operates. They aren’t complicated. They fit you like a glove, and when you move they move. If they only knew how to aim and fire the turret, any citizen—”

  Again, he shook his head. “No, it isn’t that simple. We are a highly civilized people, McGill. We’re not a rabble of snarling barbarians. To get any Mogwa person to fight in close combat requires a lifetime of training. A civilian would simply flee to his home. He’d use the armor to hide or to protect his person. No untrained Mogwa would stand and fight in a line against an enemy capable of harming them.”

  “Huh… well then,” I said, getting another idea, “what if I could get you some smaller guys to man this armor? I’m talking about guys who are even more vicious than your average human?”

  He shrugged. “Do your worst. I don’t see how it can hurt…” he worked a console for thirty seconds or so. “There, I’ve given you full access to our armories. One is in your region. Now I must go attend to the last stand of my people on this planet. I appreciate your slave-love for the Mogwa, McGill. You have been an outstanding servant, even if you failed us in the end.”

  He disconnected, and afterward I frowned at my tapper for a moment. Things had to be really bad if Sateekas was practically thanking me for doing my job. The Mogwa never appreciated anyone or anything. Never.

  A few minutes later, some strange access codes flooded my tapper. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it—but I knew who could.

  -51-

  Contacting Primus Collins, I told her of my armory access.

  “That’s just grand,” she said. “We’ve got more equipment than we need already. What we need are trained soldiers.”

  It was an age-old story in human history, I knew. Often, a nation that was on the way down had plenty of aircraft and other weapons systems—but they didn’t have anyone left alive who knew how to use one. That was because it took longer to train people than it did to build a new machine.