“And why would that be?”

  “Because you’ve got no reason to perm me. Hell, I’m not even in Legion Varus anymore.”

  He blinked twice, and he stared at me. His eyes were full of suspicion and curiosity. Finally, he grunted and let me walk down to the bottom of the steps. His gun stayed in my face, however.

  “All right. I’ll bite. What the hell are you talking about, you buffoon?”

  “Uh… do you mean baboon?”

  “No, I don’t. It’s different—dammit, just tell me what you’re doing down here, and what’s this crap about you being kicked out of the legions?”

  I explained, and I showed him footage of the slaughter at the alien witch-trial I’d gone through. Pretty soon, he was laughing. It turned into a belly-laugh after a while.

  “So you see, I’m not exactly worth perming,” I finished up.

  Wiping at his eyes, he lowered his gun and shook his head. “You never were, you never were. All right… so here’s your second question: what the hell are you doing down here? This bunker is strictly off-limits.”

  “It is? I didn’t see any signs posted, or—”

  “I don’t have to post signs. This is our camp—a Claver stronghold. It’s good enough for your people to know they aren’t welcome down here. Or maybe they haven’t gotten that message yet?”

  My neck was craning, trying to look around the underground chamber. It was round and had clearly been rough-hewn in the dirt and sprayed with puff-crete. In the back was a door of sorts, built out of a sagging metal sheet.

  I pointed at the door. “What’s on the other side of that door?”

  “Just shut up about that. You’re on thin ice right now, boy. I’m asking all the questions. What are you looking for, exactly?”

  “You,” I said, pointing at his belly.

  “Why?”

  “Well see, I need to get ahold of a pair of gateway posts. You wouldn’t happen to have a set back there behind that door, would you?”

  He squinted at me like a rat in a cage. “If we had gateway posts, we’d have used them by now to evacuate.”

  “Yeah… that’s what I figured. Why do you build a base way the hell out here with no gateways?”

  “First off, because your boys blew up most of them back on Clone World. Secondly, because we decided a long time ago not to link our strongholds that way.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  He twisted up his lips. “Think about it for a second. I’m sure something will come to that addled organ of yours.”

  I did give it a think, and after a half a minute I came up with an idea. “You don’t want us gaining easy access to all your worlds, do you?”

  “That’s right, genius. What kind of a secret organization builds a convenient subway system that connects every group? No, we operate like spy cells these days. We’re separate, with each base hidden and yet capable.”

  “Capable, huh? What was this bases’ specialty?” I asked.

  “We’re the bank, dipshit. We hold onto the cash reserves.”

  “Oh yeah… that’s kind of obvious. Okay, so how do I get off this rock and save everything?”

  He crossed his arms, letting his pistol get tucked under his arm. “Save everything? What are you talking about?”

  I told him about the growing numbers of Tau and Rigellian troops outside the dome. The prime looked concerned.

  “We know about them…” he said. “Do you think they can break in here? Do you think our defenses will fall?”

  “This fortress almost fell the last time,” I told him, “and by the time the next attack comes, we won’t have revived all of the people we lost. We’ll start off the fight with our reserves deployed on the walls. If anything breaks after that—well, they’ll roll right down here into the center of the show.”

  Claver frowned. “Right…” he said, seeing my logic. “So how does Graves plan to stop them?”

  “I don’t know if he has a plan, really. As our reinforcements arrive, we’ll plug the holes in our lines and stand fast.”

  “Sounds like a plan… a bad one.”

  Claver was finally starting to get it. I needed to convince him that our situation was perilous to get any help out of him.

  “That’s exactly right,” I told him. “The plan sucks, but I think I’ve got a way to save us—to save all of us. But first, tell me what’s behind that door. Tell me why you’re down here, hiding in the dark.”

  He looked angry all over again. “I’m not hiding. I’m tending to the sole reason we’re all on this miserable planet.”

  My face brightened. I pointed at that shabby door. “You mean… seriously? This is where you keep them? In a rat hole under an unused shed?”

  “Where better? Only an idiot with a death wish would search a place like this as thoroughly as you did.”

  I half smirked at that. He wasn’t wrong. Walking to the back of the chamber, I tugged, then wrenched the metal ring in the door. Claver didn’t try to stop me.

  At last I yanked it open, and my eyes landed on a fantastic sight. Inside was another chamber, and it was full of open crates. In each of these crates was a fortune in Galactic credits.

  After the effects of being dazzled by wealth beyond imagining faded, I noticed something else. Something I’d never considered before.

  Each of the crates bore a special marking.

  “What’s that mark mean, Claver? Is that a family crest of some kind? I didn’t know you Clavers went in for that kind of thing.”

  Claver laughed, and it was an unpleasant sound. “That’s not our family crest, you big dummy. Don’t you recognize it?”

  After a few moments of staring, I found I did recognize the emblem marking the crates. I’d seen that same design just a month or two back… what was it?

  “Huh… is that the Turov coat of arms? It is, isn’t it?” I asked, and even as I spoke these words, the enormity of their meaning began to sink into my slow-poke brain.

  Claver laughed again. “I see that you’re beginning to figure things out, aren’t you boy? I’m glad I didn’t have to draw out a map for you this time.”

  My mouth gaped, and my eyes must have been wide as saucers. “Holy… are you kidding me? Did you steal these coins from the Turov family? From old Alexander himself?”

  Claver ruffled at this idea. “Steal? We Clavers don’t steal! We… negotiate. We make deals and trades.”

  “So, you’re telling me that this fortune in wealth, cash overflowing boxes marked with the Turov crest, isn’t their money? It’s all your money, nice and legit?”

  He gave me a dismissive shrug. “Sometimes every party in a contract isn’t completely satisfied with the final results. In such a case, we might do a little confiscating when a business arrangement goes sour. But rest assured, we were owed all of that and more.”

  I stared at him, then at the money, then back at him again. My eyes jumped like a frisky fly that doesn’t know where to land.

  Now, anyone who knows me could tell you that my brain is slower than a three-legged turtle, but I was beginning to see the light. All the events that had led me to this fateful moment were starting to make sense.

  The Tau hadn’t just come out of nowhere due to Carlos passing off a few coins. They’d come for a bigger score. They’d come because they knew there was a stash of big money in this story somewhere. Cash I’d never imagined was real.

  If the Turovs had owned all those coins to begin with, maybe they’d hired the Tau to find their lost property. Maybe they’d tracked us down and learned the truth. That’s how I, a lowly centurion of Legion Varus, had ended up in the golden presence of this king’s ransom.

  “The Turovs sent the Tau…” I said. “They must have. That old buzzard Alexander Turov… he’s behind this, isn’t he? The attacks back on Earth—everything!”

  Claver shrugged. “It stands to reason. The Tau don’t do anything without getting paid. Sure, there are a few of their coins in my vaults, but that’s not where the bulk of it comes from.”

  “I get it. I get it. And to think I was blaming Carlos all this time—but hey, there’s one thing I don’t get.”

  “What’s that, genius?” Claver asked.

  “Why did old Alexander Turov have the Tau attack his own garden party? His daughter’s wedding was messed up. Sophia got killed, and she didn’t even remember the guy she was going to marry once she caught a revive.”

  Claver grinned up at me. “Keep the wheels turning inside that thick skull of yours, boy. You’ll figure it out.”

  “Uh… maybe he didn’t like the guy she was marrying?”

  Claver let go with another nasty laugh. “Okay,” he said when his amusement faded. “You’ve seen some secrets, and you’ve entertained me with your idiocy. But you still haven’t given me a good reason not to perm you down here in the darkness. Your former officers will probably give me a medal for it, if I asked them.”

  I pointed a big finger at him, and he scowled at it. His gun reappeared in his hand.

  “I can help you,” I told him, “I can help all of us. Let me go cut a deal with the original injured party. We’ll give the old man back half the money—or we’ll vaporize it all. We’ll offer them the same deal we cut with Legion Varus.”

  Claver scratched his head. “Seems like there are a lot of halves you’re passing around, here.”

  “That’s true…” I admitted. “But that’s okay as long as they don’t all know about each other.”

  Claver narrowed his eyes to slits. “Clavers don’t deal like that. We can’t pull tricks like that and survive. These coins are ours, as I said. We didn’t steal them. We took them in lieu of payment for other—”

  “Look, this will be my idea, not yours. That’s why I’ve got to go back to Earth. I don’t care where you got these coins or how. I’m sure old Alex Turov is a shady customer, but that doesn’t matter right now. He’s hired a load of Tau—and apparently some bears to fight with them—to invade this planet. Once they get what they’re coming for, we’ll get nothing out of it. Everyone else will be cut out of the deal and probably permed as well.”

  “Okay… I feel like I’m losing IQ points just listening to you right now, but let’s hear your pitch, McGill. What are you going to do, and how are you going to do it?”

  I began to tell him, and he didn’t look super-happy to hear the details. But in the end, he agreed to give it a try.

  Otherwise, the next Tau offensive might finish us all off and cut everyone out of the deal.

  -55-

  The Clavers didn’t have any gateway posts on Ice World—mostly because they didn’t want to link up invaders to another one of their bases. They didn’t have any other teleportation devices around, either. They appeared to be operating like secret cells, like hunted people in enemy territory. I didn’t envy them, but I did admire their ingenuity as a group.

  What they did have was an old-fashioned deep-link device. That was absolutely required for interstellar communications. Some egghead had once explained to me that without this machine, which operated using quantum entanglement, radio transmissions would take hundreds of years to travel between the stars.

  As it was impossible to make interstellar trade deals without being able to communicate with people on distant planets, the Clavers always had a deep-link available.

  Grudgingly, Claver led me to where they had such a machine and watched me distrustfully as I began making calls on it.

  “Those calls aren’t free you know, boy.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said. “The link company is a pack of terrible rip-off artists.”

  I’d never owned a deep-link or opened a deep-link account or anything like that, but I’d learned how to get people to let me use their equipment. The key was to be sympathetic to complaints, while simultaneously operating as a huge mooch. So far, my techniques had fared well. I’d never paid for a single call, and I didn’t even know how much they actually cost.

  Claver watched sourly while I rang Dust World for several minutes.

  “Just ringing costs money, boy!” he burst out at last. “Why don’t you call someone else?”

  “There’s no one else that can help me—at least, there’s no one who would be willing to do it for free. You interested in paying for this service?”

  “No, dammit…”

  The ringing and pinging went on and on. At last, after a goodly twenty minutes, I got someone to answer the damned call.

  To my surprise, it wasn’t the Investigator. It wasn’t Floramel, either—it was my own daughter, Etta. She must have gone home from visiting my parents in Georgia by this time. I hadn’t even thought about that, but I’d been gone for awhile now.

  “Daddy? What a surprise! Are you planning to come out and visit me on Dust World?”

  “Uh… yes, as a matter of fact. I do plan to, but for right now… is the Investigator around, honey?”

  A year or so back, Etta had moved to Dust World to stay with her grandfather, a strange man known as the Investigator. He was a scientist who specialized in the darkest of arts—technology forbidden to our race by the Galactics.

  “No, sorry,” she replied. “He’s out at the pond collecting specimens. You want to talk to Floramel?”

  “Sure, put her on. I’ll come out to see you soon.”

  She got off the line happily, and I waited for Floramel to show up.

  Claver had been wisely standing off to my left, watching all this in silence. He leaned in now and smirked at me. “Your girl looks a bit different than I remember. There’s something different about her face.”

  I shrugged, deciding to avoid the topic. “Maybe she grew up some...”

  The truth was my daughter wasn’t quite the same girl I’d raised for years. Etta had died and been permed, and we’d brought her back to life in an illegal way. As a direct consequence, she was stuck on Dust World where people didn’t track every human every second of the day, and where the Investigator had used some creative techniques to achieve her return to life.

  After a minute or so, Floramel came to sit and look at me. “James? What’s this about?”

  “I’ve got a file to send you. It has to come through error-free.”

  She blinked at me. “What file?”

  I told her, and she looked horrified. “Are you sure this is necessary? Absolutely sure?”

  “Yep. It’s the only way. Don’t worry, girl. You guys can handle an unauthorized revive. I know you can.”

  “But James, I think you’ve forgotten something. Even with your body scans and mental engrams, our methods take weeks to produce results. Do you have weeks to spare out there on Ice World?”

  I forced a smile. This was going to be the hard part. In every underhanded deal, there was always a hook, a trick, a catch that stung.

  “Uh… I didn’t want you guys to do the revival. Not on your equipment, that is.”

  “What then? How do you expect to live again if you just send your files out to us?”

  “Well… I need someone to take my files to a special place. A place on Earth.”

  Floramel blinked at me. “Me? You mean you want me to go back to Earth?”

  Her last words came out as a near-squeak. She’d finally realized the trap I was getting her into. She now understood that she was the target, and she had been all along.

  Floramel shook her head. “I don’t know, James. I don’t have any pull back at Central—I might even be arrested. I don’t have a million credits in my pocket, either.”

  “You don’t need any of that,” I said, keeping a smile pasted firmly on my lips. “I don’t even want you to go near Central. What you need is a pair of legs, a pretty smile, and enough money for sky-train fare. That’s all.”

  Then, as I transmitted the lengthy files to her tapper from mine, I explained to her what I wanted her to do.

  She wasn’t happy, but after a lot of cajoling, I got her to agree. When the call ended, the file transmission continued.

  Claver peered at the machine suspiciously. “This is going to cost me a lot, isn’t it?”

  “What do you care? I thought you Clavers were flush with coins.”

  “A man doesn’t stay rich by throwing cash around.”

  I punched the disconnect after the files had been transferred, then I sucked in a breath when the bill was displayed a moment later.

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat!” I burst out. “That’s a stiff tab, Claver. Thanks for all the help.”

  Getting up, I quickly exited the chamber. Then Claver caught sight of the bill, and he began cursing. I guess doing interstellar file uploads was pricy—much more so than just talking to people.

  Scooting out into the snowy overland again, I found it was morning. Damn, it had been a long night. Hopefully, none of my precautionary plans would have to be utilized—

  “There he is! There’s never been a sack of shit stacked so high!” The voice was that of Graves, and he sounded pissed.

  I started to trot in the opposite direction, but I didn’t get very far. I came nose-to-muzzle with a pack of Clavers almost immediately. They put their guns into my face like so many microphones on the pope’s pulpit.

  “Uh…” I said, lifting my hands in the air. “What’s the trouble, boys?”

  Snow crunched behind me, and I turned to see Graves trotting near. He never ran much, and so I felt honored to have gotten such an excitable response out of the old primus.

  “You are the trouble, McGill. We’ve been looking for you all night long. There isn’t a being on this planet—probably not one in this entire province—who doesn’t want to see you dead.”

  “Is that so? How’d I get so famous?”

  He shoved his tapper in my face. A vid played showing some Blood Worlder troops going mad in a bunker full of aliens. They hacked half of those aliens to bloody chunks while I watched in mock horror.

  I tsked and shook my head. “That’s a shame, sir. A damned shame. You really should put whoever was in command of that squad on report. It’s just unacceptable.”

  Graves lowered his tapper out of my face. He was red in the cheeks, and I didn’t think it was a healthy look for him.