“Uh… what are you trying to say, Raash?”

  “I say now that I give back your freedom and your life. There is no more debt between us.”

  This surprised me, but not overly much. I’ve found over the years that aliens were truly alien. They didn’t think like we did. Their concept of right, wrong, insult and compliment was all different.

  Still, when a rival gives me a break, I’m always inclined to accept it. I nodded to the lizard. “All right, we’re square. Fair enough… but can you do one more thing for me?”

  “You demand a boon? Truly, your avarice knows no boundaries—”

  “Hold on, hold on. Settle down. It’s not a hard thing to do.”

  Raash looked upset, but he finally opened his mouth and made more whistling noises. His interpreting device translated for him. “What is it you demand?”

  “A cookie. I want you to find that Blood Worlder who freed me and give him a cookie.”

  “Cookie? A confection? What point is there to this request? Do you mock me? Do you wish me to embarrass myself?”

  “No, no, no, nothing like that. I just promised him.”

  Raash considered the idea. “Hmm… it is within my power… but how do I tell one of those Blood Worlders from another? What if he dies in battle?”

  “Then just give all his brothers a cookie.”

  Raash straightened and looked suspicious. “Did you just multiply my required penance by a factor of nine? This is abuse.”

  “Come on, Raash. A bag of cookies isn’t hard to get. All you have to do is give one to each man. What do you say?”

  He groused some more, but he finally agreed. I grabbed his claw to shake on it, but he pulled it away from me rudely. He stalked away toward the mess tents.

  Smiling, I turned and ran off. The scene in the center of the camp was so chaotic no one seemed to notice. The trial of James McGill was at an end.

  -53-

  When I reached my barracks, I was whistling a happy tune from my youth. By damn, I’d done a bang-up job on those alien friggers, and I was proud of it.

  It took me a while to find my unit’s dugout. When I finally did, I walked down the snow-dusted steps into the dark interior, and I grinned at my troops. They looked back at me sullenly.

  Apparently, they needed some cheering up—Legion Varus style.

  “Come on, soldiers,” I said sternly. “Why the long faces? Are you guys seriously pouting about getting pretty much wiped out back there at the wall?”

  A few rolled their eyes. Some others snorted and shook their heads. People tossed gear into lockers and pulled on boots in a moping manner. I didn’t like to see this kind of thing in my own unit.

  “Centurion?” asked a woman’s voice. It was Adjunct Erin Barton, the quietest and least troubling of my officers.

  Turning around, I faced her. “What is it, Adjunct? Don’t tell me you’re upset, too.”

  She shook her head. “Not about dying, sir. It’s about your removal. I… I guess you’re here to say goodbye, huh? We didn’t have time to pull together any kind of party—I’m sorry about that.”

  My chin hit my chest. Honest, it did. I stared at the girl like the slack-jawed ignoramus I truly was.

  “Uh… my what?”

  Harris walked up next, and he slapped me on the chest. This made my jaw snap shut at least. My teeth clacked together, sounding like a gator that had missed a duck.

  “I’m sorry to see you go, McGill,” he said seriously. “Really I am. It’s been a long time, a lot of good fights and good drinks.”

  Leeson walked up next, and he offered me a hand to shake. I took it numbly. “That goes for me, too. I’m not sure how you screwed that galactic pooch in the sky this time, but I guess it was one time too many. We had some good times. Good times…”

  They were all shaking their heads and moping. I was still too stunned to say anything.

  Carlos approached me next. He clapped me on the back. “It’s a damned shame, big guy. I’m out if you’re out, you know… if that makes you feel any better.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. It doesn’t make me feel any better at all. I… I’ve got to go check on some things. See you guys later, I need to—”

  Leeson got in my way. He blocked the exit in fact. Normally, that might have been a suicidal move, but I was too blown away to knock him flat today.

  “Sir?” he said in a lowered voice. “Listen… have you heard anything about… uh… about your replacement? I mean… I’d like to know what’s coming my way.”

  I stared at him, and I shook my head. “I don’t know shit.”

  Leeson shrugged dejectedly. “They’re not giving it to me, I know that much. They never promote their most experienced men. They’ll have me wearing an adjunct’s bars until I’m good and permed someday.”

  “I suspect you’re right… now stand aside, Adjunct.”

  He did, and I rushed past him and up the stairs. Outside, snow was beginning to fall. It was getting cold again, and I realized the ground would soon ice over and be covered in white stuff again. The heat of the bombing had faded away—even if there was still some residual radiation.

  The walk toward headquarters was nothing like the jaunty stroll I’d made coming back to my unit. Instead of whistling, I strode with dark purpose.

  Primus Graves had set up his headquarters inside the main bunker. It seemed to me that in the absence of the deceased Tribune Foam, Graves was running the legion by default.

  Lesser men scattered out of my way. They had a sense that I wasn’t in a good mood.

  “Ah, there you are, McGill. Why are you still in that uniform? Civvies can’t wear that suit—and what’s this? Are you still armed? That’s a violation.”

  “Sir, am I officially demoted or something? I don’t quite get what’s going on here.”

  He blinked once, then frowned. “Really? Didn’t Ankou get around to the part where you’re kicked out of the legion? Is he going to make this trial take a week or something? Such nonsense. I’m contacting him right now.”

  He reached out a hand toward his tapper, but I moved to block him. He turned up a very serious and violent set of eyes in my direction when I did this. You just didn’t go around touching Graves—not if you knew what was good for you.

  “McGill? Are you out of your mind? If I execute you now, you’re permed. You know that, right? You’re no longer a member of Legion Varus. No one will revive you even if someone tries to make a murder charge stick on me for what I’m about to do.”

  I withdrew my hand, and I forced an apologetic grin. “I’m real sorry, sir. I just need a little time to make all this right—could you give me that chance, Primus, sir?”

  He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you see… it’s a funny thing. Ankou never got to the end of his trial. He never pronounced judgment, or declared my removal—none of that stuff.”

  Graves blinked. “What? He went off-script?”

  “That’s right, sir. He surely did. So technically, I’m still Centurion James McGill, at your service.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “All right, all right. I guess the alien congress took a break or something, huh? I’ll give it another twenty-four hours, that’s it, though. If they don’t reach a verdict by then, I’m kicking you out myself.”

  I frowned to hear that. “On what basis, sir? Why should I be kicked out of Legion Varus at all?”

  “Are you kidding me? You murdered your CO, that’s why. Get a clue.”

  “It’s not murder if he’s in the middle of an act of mutiny.”

  Graves shook his head. “Is that the defense you dreamed up? That won’t wash, McGill. As a Varus officer your legion’s tribune is your personal god. You can’t just go and decide he’s guilty of treason. No one appointed you judge, jury and executioner. You’re a glorified grunt. You never did know your place.”

  I had to admit to myself that Graves was right about all that, but instead of saying it aloud, I shook my head. “Sir, I was ordered by a superior officer—superior to Foam, that is—to take him out.”

  “Yes, yes. I heard all that about Fike and Turov. Makes me sick. In any case, Turov denies it. She blames you entirely.”

  “She said that? She said it was all my idea to kill Foam?”

  Graves looked right at me. “She didn’t have to. You made the claim, and she said nothing.”

  “But she’s on Dominus, sir—”

  “So what? She can listen in on all our channels whenever she wants to. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, McGill. What we have here is a disgruntled sociopath—I’m talking about you, understand?”

  “I got that part, sir.”

  “Right. A sociopath who decided he didn’t like squids. He didn’t like squid commanders in particular. Accordingly, he took justice into his own hands and killed his CO. Case closed.”

  “I want to call Imperator Turov to the witness stand.”

  Graves laughed in my face. “Good luck with that. You don’t order an Imperator around—especially not on a hostile battlefield. No, you’re out—or you will be when the aliens get around to that point of their little show-trial.”

  My mind was moving like a greased rabbit by now. It was on a dark path, a warpath—but I tried to steer away from another fit of violence and rage. It wasn’t going to help me now.

  “Primus, sir…” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to walk out of here, but I need to know something. I’m still a centurion for now—right?”

  Graves shrugged. “I suppose so. Go visit the commissary one last time if you want to. Once you’re a civvie, we’ll have to arrange transport home for you somehow… maybe one of these Claver huts has a set of gateway posts in it or something.”

  “That would be nice, sir,” I lied. “But for right now, I’m going to keep my uniform and my weapon. No objections, right? No arrest warrants?”

  He frowned at me. “Hmm… you’ve got a point, there… Why aren’t you manacled? You should be in the stockade or something…”

  I lifted a friendly hand. “The zoo court decided to let everyone out to piss on the grass, that’s all.”

  “What grass… okay, whatever. Get out of here.”

  I hurried back up the steps and out of the bunker. With every step, I expected someone to raise the alarm. At some point, the aliens were going to get their act together and notice I’d skedaddled. From that moment on, my ass would be grass.

  Every step away from the headquarters felt like my last. The spot between my shoulder blades burned like I had crosshairs locked on me.

  But no shot rang out. No one shouted or raced after me—I was still a free man. I was living on borrowed time, sure. I knew that. But weren’t we all?

  -54-

  Darkness fell outside the dome, in the wasteland beyond. The Tau were still out there, licking their wounds. They hadn’t attacked us again after their initial rush, but I knew they weren’t quitters. Not when there was a large amount of coin to be scored. That went double for the bears. No sir, they weren’t done with us either—not yet.

  Using my tapper very carefully, I did a quick little search. I told the device I wanted to know my chain of command, and I wanted to know where each individual on that list was located. After a minute or so of spinning and searching the star system, my tapper displayed the results of the query.

  Graves was nearby, in his bunker. No surprise there. My tribune—well, the less said about that the better. They still had Tribune Foam in that slot, and his name was dark red. That color indicated that he was dead—and that he had been for a while.

  The last name to appear was that of Galina Turov. The food-chain topper herself.

  She was still on Dominus. She hadn’t bothered to find her way back to Ice World.

  I bared my teeth. Of course she was on Dominus. That girl had never met a fight she wanted to be in the middle of. She liked her comforts and fighting and dying tended to get in the way of all that. Somehow, she always found a way to distance herself from the battle at hand.

  That made my problem all the more difficult. I had to get to her and get her to admit she’d given me the order to shoot Foam. The trouble was, there were no gateway posts handy. The ones we’d used to transport the legions down earlier in this campaign hadn’t survived the bombing and the invasion ship landing.

  I thought of other ideas, such as getting the pilot of a lifter or a fighter to take me up to Dominus… but realistically, that was going to be damned near impossible. So… what to do? How could I possibly fix this?

  I needed a drink to clear my mind, but I didn’t dare go into the commissary like Graves had suggested. I knew myself, hours from now some MP would find me there still “thinking”. No, the best I could do was take a walk under that icy sky. So I went for a walk in the fresh snow drifts, and I did some hard thinking.

  Galina wasn’t going to help me. Drusus was out too, as he was back on Earth. Besides, this time there was no way of quickly running back home to change my destiny.

  After going through every name I knew, I came up with only one possibility. Only one person who I could turn to for help on this dire day.

  I didn’t like the name, but there wasn’t any better option I could think of. It was going to be a longshot anyway, but it was all I had.

  Walking the picket lines around Claver-town, I noticed a picket had been placed every hundred meters. These were dismal Claver-Threes. They looked miserable, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Overnight guard duty on Ice World was a brutal thing.

  Stepping near the next man in line I met, I stared out at the open snowy field that led uphill to the mountains and the walls blocking the passes.

  “Nice night,” I said in a neighborly fashion.

  The gorilla-like clone glanced at me, but he didn’t say squat.

  “Say, a smart man like you might be just the person I’ve been looking for.”

  The clone glanced again, and the muscles in his arm jumped. I got the feeling I was bothering him, but I didn’t take offense. I just kept on grinning and nodding like we were buds.

  He looked away, so I pestered him again. “A man like you always knows where his master is, don’t you?”

  The man turned toward me again, and this time he stared. He blinked once, then twice, then he stared some more.

  “That’s right. You know what I’m talking about—the prime. Where is the prime, friend?”

  As far as I knew, there was just one Claver-Prime left on Ice World at the moment. He wasn’t Claver-X, he was a real legit commander of their kind. The rest of them… well, they often didn’t get along when things went poorly. It was my suspicion the rest had offed each other until only one was left.

  That single man, wherever he was, hadn’t shown his nose for a long time.

  “The prime?” the clone asked me. He was fixated on me now. He was staring.

  “That’s right,” I said gently. “Where is the prime?”

  “He’s… he’s down below.”

  “Down below? Below what?”

  But that was all I got out of him. He was a dummy, and he was determined to live up to his namesake.

  Grumbling and annoyed, I stopped wasting my time on him and walked the edge of the camp. I thought of many possible hiding places.

  Sure, I could go and ask Graves. He probably knew the truth—but that wouldn’t be a good idea. As far as Graves was concerned, I was no longer a member of my beloved Legion Varus. The less he thought about me and what I was doing the better.

  Sighing, I decided to go door to door. It was a long hunt, and after an hour or so, the landscape became truly icy. Night was falling, and it was getting colder by the minute.

  There was a sharp wind coming down from the peaks to the north. That was irritating all by itself. After all, if the physicists could build a dome that could stop a fusion warhead, you’d think it could stop the wind, too. But noooo, that wasn’t how it worked.

  At last, I found a bunker that was empty. After looking around, I realized it was empty—and worse, that it had been empty the last time I’d checked that very same bunker.

  I growled with disappointment. I’d circled the whole place. I’d awakened every soldier who was trying to get some well-earned rest, and I hadn’t found crap.

  It was hopeless… but then I had a thought. Why was this single bunker empty? None of the rest of them were…

  Walking inside, I inspected it carefully. I felt the walls, kicked the snowflakes that had blown around over the floor, and…

  “Damn!”

  I’d kicked something hard—something large that was buried in the drifting snow. I brushed away the white stuff and peered at it using my suit lights.

  A metal ring? A ring buried in the floor? What the heck…?

  Not being a subtle man, I wrapped my fists around the ring and heaved on it. After some mighty tugging, ample cursing, scrabbling of feet, and a sore back—it came open.

  A trapdoor lifted back with a squeal. Inside, there were narrow puff-crete steps leading down.

  I smiled to myself. What had I found hidden down here? There was only one way to find out.

  Heading down the steps, I found them narrow and kind of uneven. The steps were carved from the permafrost deep under Ice World and coated with a thin layer of puff-crete. Quickie construction at its finest.

  Before I got to the bottom, however, a gun muzzle was pointed into my face. It was black and sleek with a slim barrel. Behind the gun was a pissed-looking Claver-Prime.

  “Hey! Fancy finding you down here,” I said in a cheery tone.

  “McGill…? You know, I could perm you right now. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Uh… you got some of that funky juice Foam was injecting into people’s tappers?”

  “No, you idiot. I’m talking about these walls. They’re shielded. As far as the legion servers are concerned, when you came down those steps, you vanished off this planet. If you die right now, all I have to do is bury you down here—and you’re permed.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “That sure is good news, Mr. Claver, sir.”