My eyes narrowed to slits. If there was one thing in this world that was worse than a squid, it had to be a gremlin.

  “What are you doing here, Ankou?” I asked the little devil.

  “Are you serious? Are you really so slow-brained? I see that you are… but beware, human, that’s no defense. Stupidity never absolved anyone of anything.”

  “Yeah, well… you didn’t answer my question. Doesn’t that make you a moron, too?”

  Ankou grinned at me with yellow-toothed wickedness. “I’m the judge here. This is my court. You’d best keep a civil tongue in your skull—or we might have to cut it out.”

  My jaw went slack and hung low. “You’re the judge? Then why didn’t you send some kind of flunky down to wake me up? Why’d you do it yourself?”

  “Before the trial, I wanted to examine the fiercesome ape who murdered Tribune Foam in cold blood. You did not disappoint. Grunting, rolling about on that stinking bed, awakening with a violent outburst… you were exactly what I expected to encounter.”

  “Glad I could make you happy. So… how’s this little dog and pony show going to proceed?”

  “I will appoint a prosecutor,” Ankou said. “Someone who understands the mistreatment of the nonhuman. Someone who is familiar with this case, and this defendant…”

  Ankou hopped down from his red-pillowed throne and walked among the crowd. He paused in front of a gang of saurians I hadn’t noticed until now. He pointed into the group, and one of them stepped forward.

  It was Raash. I would’ve known him anywhere. He was the only blue-scaled saurian of the raptor type in existence, and he didn’t look very happy.

  “Step forward creature and state your name.”

  “Hold on!” I objected. “Why did you bring Raash here? How did you even find him?”

  “Your exploits are legendary, Centurion McGill,” Ankou said. “When I asked about non-humans you’ve abused in the past, many names were offered. This individual has a particularly grim tale to tell.”

  I complained, but no one listened. At last, to shut me up, one of the big giants conked me one on the noggin. I was knocked to the ground, and I struggled to get back up on my feet.

  “Thank you, Bailiff,” Ankou said. “Raash, proceed with your testimony.”

  Raash proceeded all right. He told the gruesome story of being shanghaied by teleportation and melted down to a single finger in the process. Then he claimed I’d revived him in an incompatible body with illegal genetics. It was all true, of course, but I scoffed and rolled my eyes at him anyway.

  When he was done talking at last, I opened my mouth to explain I’d done the best I could for an old acquaintance—but I wasn’t allowed to speak.

  “Have a care, big man,” Ankou warned. “Whatever you say here can and will be used against you.”

  My oversized mouth opened, and I paused while I considered Ankou’s warning. At last, I closed it again with a snap. After all, most of what Raash had said was the truth. If you went around trying to doctor up the truth, even to clarify it, you usually ended up sounding like a liar.

  It was time for a new tactic.

  “I’ve got a question for my old buddy Raash,” I said after taking a deep breath.

  Ankou gestured with a sweeping arm. “By all means, ask your question.”

  “Hey, Raash. Would you rather be alive or dead? Would you be happier if I’d left you as a greasy finger in my pocket? Permed forever?”

  Raash didn’t answer right away. He seemed surprised by the question. “The subject of my misfortune isn’t important, McGill. It only serves as proof of your serial violations, which include the breakage of both civil and Galactic Law.”

  “Exactly! I broke the law of man and Galactic alike to help you live again, and here you are bearing witness against me. It’s not right that you’re here complaining about me when I’m the only reason you’re breathing at all. So tell me: would you rather be dead?”

  Raash glanced around the assembly, and they stared at him in return. Ankou seemed especially fascinated. His unblinking eyes shined with an intense light.

  “Answer the question, reptile!” he barked suddenly.

  Raash bristled. He didn’t like anyone shouting at him, especially not a pipsqueak like Ankou.

  “Raash answers to no warm-blood. I’ve suffered at the hands of this beast, and I will prosecute him for his crimes. You need know nothing else. I’m not the one on trial here.”

  Ankou nodded and marched around a bit as if thinking to himself. I could tell he was impressed by the Saurian’s responses, and my heart sank a little. Once you’ve been on trial enough times, you get to where you can smell an execution in your near future.

  -52-

  Raash knew me too well, and he took the wise precaution of having two Blood Worlder guards take custody of me. One stood to either side of me, holding a chain that led to one of my wrists. I looked like a kid in kid-prison between two monstrous jailors.

  The Blood Worlder guards stank and drooled. All the while, the trial went on and on, as such things always do.

  When asked, I explained that I’d been sent to do the dirty deed to Foam both because Galina had ordered it, and because he deserved it.

  The nonhumans were too angry to see reason, however. In their minds, I’d abused their one and only nonhuman tribune in Earth’s service. They couldn’t get past that, and it didn’t matter that Foam had been a stone-cold mutineer, plotting assassinations for all his superiors from the get-go.

  Accordingly, I’d spent much of the trial plotting my revenge. The key to doing this kind of thing was surprise and utter determination.

  The first thing I did was pick out my target. I thought about Raash, I really did, but that didn’t seem right to me. He really had suffered at my hands in the past, and he didn’t deserve anymore trouble just for being a bad sport.

  No… it had to be someone else.

  My eyes slid over the group with a predatory air. The crowd was ranting, venting, shaking fists, claws and tentacles in the air—but I didn’t listen to any of their angry nonsense. I was working on a plan of my own.

  I considered the squids. How could I not? They were such a sourpuss group of slime balls. They were disingenuous in the extreme. I’d only played the game by their rules and won. In squid culture, perming a superior for malfeasance was only called one thing: “winning”.

  But still, although the squids could all die as far as I was concerned, I felt a little sympathy for them. They were caught up in a world not of their own making. All their boy Foam had done was apply his natural rules to a human organization, and he’d gotten permed for it. Was that his fault, or was it ours? I didn’t know. The only thing I knew for sure was that squids and humans weren’t compatible in the long run. Foam had told me as much himself, and I felt he was right.

  Hmm… my eyes slid to the right, then the left, then… at last I landed them center-stage. On old Ankou himself.

  He was really getting off on the trial. It was a private source of joy to him. There was something evil locked inside our smallest brothers, the gremlins. I didn’t understand it, but then I didn’t understand why flies liked to land on my hands and face all the time until I smashed them in a rage, either.

  Ankou… he had come out of nowhere. He was probably in charge because he was among the most devious and smartest of Earth’s subjects. Knowing that was enough for me.

  It occurred to me that everyone else here had served the legions in some way. The big warrior types from Blood World served with guns and guts. The squids were evil, but they’d done a lot of fighting and dying under our orders as well. Hell, even old Raash had run a revival machine for years.

  But not the gremlins. They’d never done one damned thing of value as far as I knew. Despite this, Ankou had somehow wangled himself a slot as a judge and jury over me. That just didn’t sit right with me. Not at all.

  But… how to do it?

  Naturally, I’d been disarmed upon entering this “courtroom” and I had a pair of Blood Worlder guards standing at either side of me. They blinked and shuffled their feet, both baffled and bored by the process.

  “Hey,” I whispered to the man on my right. “Hey, fat-boy. You remember me?”

  The heavy trooper turned a strange eye in my direction. His face was so big, and he was so tall, he had to tip his head to see me, like a horse checking out a stable hand.

  I grinned at him for a few seconds, but he didn’t say anything. He turned back toward the trial with a face just as blank and useless as before.

  Some of them didn’t talk much—or at all. Damn.

  My head swiveled to the left. I grinned again at the second man—but before I could make my pitch to him, a squeaky voice interrupted me.

  “McGill? McGill!”

  It was Ankou himself. He was off his red velvet perch hopping in my direction. Gremlins walked in normal gravity kind of the way humans walked on the Moon. It was like they had springs in their feet.

  “The accused will pay attention when spoken to,” Ankou said crossly.

  “Sorry sir, I just got bored.”

  “Bored? Bored with what? This is a very serious matter, human. A very serious matter indeed.”

  “Yeah? Sorry, I didn’t realize. I thought you guys were all just participating in this mental masturbation for your own personal pleasure.”

  Ankou blinked in shock, then he became offended. “Contempt! Contempt for my court! You all heard it, didn’t you?”

  He turned to the crowd and howled with fury. “Don’t you feel his contempt for all of you? For all of us?”

  The aliens and assorted freaks howled with him. They wanted my blood. Raash walked up and aimed a claw at me and began making his summary argument. “This beast is not like the others. He’s far more foul, more devious, more evil and corrupt of mind.”

  After this, they both moved to talk to the crowd. They weren’t interested in me or my case, not really, they just wanted to dump on humans. We had, after all, conquered them all at one point or another.

  When their attention left me out of the spotlight for a minute, I looked to my left. There stood the second idiot Blood Worlder. He was just as big and dumb-looking as the guy on my right, but sometimes some of them held a spark of wit.

  “Hey,” I said, “hey, fat-boy!”

  It took a few tries, but I got him to look at me. He did it with that weird, one eye tipped-down expression the other guy had used.

  “Whut?” he asked, and I dared to feel hope in my heart.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  He squinted, and he stared hard. “You hummie. Bad hummie guy.”

  “That’s right,” I said, knowing that you never told a dummy he was wrong. No matter what he said, you told him he was right, but then you modified it a little in your favor. “I’m a bad hummie. But do you know which hummie? I was once announced the hero of all Blood World. Your people joined Earth because of me.”

  The big dumbass squinted some more. I almost gave up hope—but then his eyes widened, and he pointed a finger the size of a chair leg in my direction. “You the hero!”

  “That’s right, big boy! You remember!”

  He grinned then, and he looked honored and amazed.

  Way, way back, when I was just a minor-league scoundrel, I’d fought and killed my way to the top of a pyramid of aliens. It had been a grand contest, and it had resulted in the final conquering of Blood World, a place that serves us by sending us ground troops to this very day.

  “Hey,” I said, now that I had his complete attention. “Can you do me a favor?”

  He stared at me. “Whut?”

  I pointed at Ankou.

  “Kill that little prancing prick for me. Will you do that, big guy?”

  It was a mean thing to do. I’ll be the first to admit that—but I was in a foul mood. I’d been messed with all day, and I didn’t feel I deserved it.

  The big Blood Worlder stared at the tiny Ankou. The gremlin was now making a speech to the audience at large. He was mesmerizing them, weaving a spell of words and deceit.

  “I can do that,” he said in a very straightforward voice. “I can kill him.”

  “Okay. You’re on. If you live, I’ll give you a promotion—and a cookie. I swear you’ll get a cookie.”

  The brute’s face lit up. We’d taught Blood Worlders about cookies over the years, and they’d come to be easily motivated by them.

  Now, I can almost hear the complaints concerning my ethics at this point. I have to confess, this moment wasn’t my finest—but it was close.

  You see, I’m generally considered to be a man of violent action. Rightfully so. But today, since I was chained up, I had to get another man to mete out justice in my place. It was something new, and I kind of liked the sensation.

  The Blood Worlder who’d been swayed by my fame and my promises of treats was indeed a near-genius of his kind. He stared intently at the gremlin, who was talking about punishment and rewards. Ankou went on and on concerning the delivery of harsh judgments upon the wicked. It didn’t take a genius to know he was talking about me.

  But the very man they’d set to guard me, like all his kind, was immune to such nonsense. He had a mission, and a reason to perform it. Two reasons, if you count both my vaunted status and the cookie.

  The guard lowered his chin to his chest. The monster watched the gremlin as Ankou revolved slowly in a circle, casting his wicked words at the crowd. The heavy trooper stared with unblinking eyeballs the size of goose eggs.

  At last, when the gremlin had slowly spun away from us, on a fresh circuit, my guard began to stalk forward. He dropped the jingling chain that held my wrist, and he gripped a cutlass in his gigantic fist. Without roaring or charging, he walked at a leisurely pace toward the center of the room.

  A few of the patrons noticed this. Most notably, the delegation of squids raised their tentacles in alarm.

  Ankou didn’t like to be interrupted, however. He fluttered a set of pipe-cleaner thin fingers at them, indicating they should shut up.

  “…and so, this august body clearly has no option other than to—”

  He cut off with a squeak. My Blood Worlder buddy had lifted the massive cutlass in a mechanical motion, and he’d brought it down with fantastic force.

  At the last moment, however, a tentacle had interposed itself. The powerful alien limb strove with the wrist of the trooper. They were both straining mightily.

  Realizing what was happening, Ankou had spun around and squeaked in dismay. There was no near-human more cowardly when it came right down to it.

  “Stop him!” Ankou ordered. “Stop that mad-thing!”

  That’s when I raised my hands to my mouth and cupped my fingers around my mouth. Sucking in a deep breath, I bellowed with a volume no gremlin could compete with.

  “It’s the squids! They’re attacking! They’ve gone mad!”

  The audience paused in confusion. A few surged forward, but most simply looked around, baffled and annoyed.

  This wasn’t true of the Blood Worlder troops, however. The men Ankou had chosen as guards were all from the same litter, I’d surmised. They were all the brothers of the man battling the squid at center stage. There were nine of them, several at the exit and one more in front of each group of alien representatives.

  As one, the other eight troopers came to life. To their simple eyes, they saw one of their brothers struggling against a squid. What’s more, someone had declared the squids the enemy. That was enough to get their primitive minds burning.

  They charged to their brother’s defense. They hacked apart the squid who’d dared to wrestle one of their kind, and when the tentacle that was holding onto my champion’s arm was sliced off, he turned with murderous intent toward Ankou.

  The gremlin was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He began bounding for the exit.

  My eyes never left him, and I moved to intercede.

  In the meantime, the courtroom went bananas. Most of the assembled aliens tried to run out of the place. A few stayed to fight with the crazy Blood Worlders, to restrain them—but this only got them placed on the kill-list. As the nine brothers were guardians and the only people armed inside the chamber, the fight was one-sided. An awful carnage began.

  I ignored all of it. I wanted one thing and one thing only—Ankou.

  I caught up to him at the doorway. I stomped down, but he dodged at the last moment. I only caught the tip of his tiny left boot.

  Still, I stomped hard, and his foot was crushed to jelly.

  Quick as a cat, he drew a needle-like dagger and stabbed my leg with it. I howled—but I didn’t lift my foot.

  Then, in an impressive move, the little bastard slashed his own foot off. He hopped away then, at a much slower pace. He had the presence of mind to touch his thumb to his nose in my general direction.

  He almost made it to the exit and away, but at the very doorway a massive sword came down, cutting him in half.

  A lot of squids and other folk knocked me flat after that, stampeding toward the exit. I crawled away and was lifted to my feet by a strong, scaly arm.

  It was Raash.

  We locked gazes, and we both narrowed our eyes to slits. There was a fantastic level of distrust and animosity between us, there always had been.

  “Human,” Raash said. “You are the worst of your kind. Even worse than that gremlin.”

  “Let go of me, Raash, or I’ll take you back to Rigel. This time, I’ll leave you as melted grease and scales.”

  His claw opened, and he released me. I was kind of surprised. Together, we ran out of the place. Raash talked to me some more when we were outside in the cold air.

  He raised one nasty claw into my face. “I had planned to frighten you. To humiliate you and make you beg for mercy. Now you have spoiled this experience for me.”

  “I’m so sorry about that,” I lied.

  “Never mind. I never intended to incarcerate you, no matter how richly you deserve it. You gave me life when you could have left me dead. For that reason, you’ve been holding a debt over my head. A debt I’ve hated more than I hate you.”