“Oh…” I said, and my thinker was hurting. I didn’t want to tell him I was going to be shot on sight inside the dome when I got back there. After my misbehavior at my trial and subsequent fleeing from justice, I wasn’t going to be able to convince anyone on Ice World about much of anything.

  The truth was that I was probably more useless as an agent right now than any given Tau for old Turov’s purposes. But he didn’t know that, so I kept quiet about it.

  As he fiddled with straps and wires, I wracked my brain for ideas. He tapped in a set of coordinates on the harness. I was about to be airmailed right back to that frozen hell of a planet. How was I going to do this?

  Coming up blank, I again considered a knee-bashing. I almost did it, too—but then, at the last second, I got better idea.

  When he reached for the harness launch button, I stopped him. “Wait! I need a bargaining chip. A way to get things moving in our direction.”

  His old eyes narrowed. “What do you suggest?”

  “Have you got a set of gateway posts handy?”

  He laughed. “An absurd notion. Do you think I have personal access to every sort of critical technology just because I’m a government official?”

  “Well… yeah. I think you kind of do.”

  Alexander frowned at me. “What would you do with these posts, should they exist?”

  I told him, and his frown turned into a sneer—but in the end, he summoned his agents, and they returned with a set of posts.

  Then the eerie glow of teleportation began, and I left Russia Sector behind.

  -58-

  When I first arrived on Ice World, I don’t mind telling you that I was feeling kind of sweaty. That feeling didn’t last long however, as I was soon experiencing frostbite.

  I was left standing on the open mountainside just outside the dome. The snows were back with a vengeance out here. The landscape was covered by a full-on sheet of white ice again, and a quiet blizzard of swirling snow fell steadily from above.

  Dropping the posts, I worked to pull on my spacer’s suit as fast as I could. Once I was no longer naked, I felt a lot better.

  I had to admit, teleporting me directly out here from Earth had been a slick move on Alex’s part. The straps from the table I’d been bound to hadn’t come with me, and I was a free man again. Turov was a wily old goat. He’d never had to release me at all, having just pushed the transmit button and stepped back to watch me exit.

  Once I was dressed, I bent down to pick up the posts—but then I had a bad moment.

  “Where the hell…?”

  The posts were gone. They’d already been buried in the fast-falling snow. I had to shove a gloved hand into the stuff and dig around. By the time I found them and dug them out, I was up to my ankles in snow.

  Stumbling and slogging forward, I headed toward the edge of the dome. I walked into the force field and pressed until I reached the far side.

  Which of the three mountain passes had I arrived at? I was on the east side, according to my tapper. That was a bad break. I’d kind of planned to try sneaking in through the hole in the southern wall—but that was a ten kilometer hike from here.

  Hmm…

  My situation wasn’t the best. I wasn’t loved by the Tau, by Squanto, or by Legion Varus. Outside the dome, I might be shot on sight like any human. Inside the dome, I’d be shot the moment they figured out who I was.

  Weighing those two unpleasant options, I chose the latter. Since sneaking into the stronghold was out of the question, I figured it was time to talk my way back into the good graces of humanity once again.

  Lighting up my tapper, I made a few select calls. Carlos was the only man who answered.

  “No fucking way!” he said, putting his fat round face into the viewscreen. “Who did you boff for a revive this time—no scratch that, I don’t want to know.”

  “Listen Carlos, I need your help.”

  “What a surprise. Tell me McGill, how do you want me to get myself permed today in your honor?”

  “Nothing like that. I just need you to take a message to someone.”

  Carlos thought that over for a second. “Is it a love note for Squanto? I heard about your attempted plasma-bombing of your biggest hater. Too bad you missed your target.”

  “Yeah, yeah… listen: I need you to get me into contact with Claver.”

  “That’s easy. There’s like an asshole-parade of those losers right here—”

  “No, no, hold on. I need to talk to the Prime. The head Claver.”

  Carlos looked surprised. “Are there any of those left?”

  “Yes, there surely is at least one of them.”

  “Well… where is he?” Carlos asked. “No one has seen him for days. Rumor has it he’s fled the planet and ditched us.”

  “That’s a lie. There’s too much money at stake for that. No Claver would run out without taking his stash with him.” I told Carlos where to find Claver, and he grumbled about the snow as he found his way to the bunker in question. After a few minutes of poking around, he whooped and hollered.

  “Claver!” I shouted from Carlos’ tapper. “Claver—don’t kill him!”

  A craggy, calculating face came into view. It was the prime that ran this world.

  “What are you doing on this pug’s tapper, McGill? Are you two lovebirds doing this for kicks? If so, you’re about to see my boys tear him apart and piss on his remains.”

  “Hold on, sir. If you do that, you’ll never get your coins off this frozen rock.”

  Claver looked troubled. He snarled and gnashed his teeth. But in the end, the tug of greed was too strong.

  “Damn you. I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what the hell are you talking about, boy?”

  I told him, and I showed him the gateway posts. His ugly face lit up with delight. “You did good, boy! I never would have believed it, but you did good!”

  “That’s right. We’re all escaping from here with our wealth intact. All you have to do is get me in through the east gate—”

  “The east gate? What are you doing out there?”

  I shook my head. “We all have to have our secrets, sir. Do you want these posts or don’t you?”

  He grumbled, but he relented at last. He sent out a company of his men to collect me. While I waited, I covered up my tapper. I didn’t want Graves or some MP to notice I’d returned to Ice World—not yet, anyway.

  The Clavers brought an extra black uniform for me. Forced into the too-small outfit, I hunched and walked in a crouch with this pack of apes. The Claver captain informed the humans at the wall we were patrolling the land at the edge of the dome, and they let us back in. They were shaking their heads, no doubt thinking Clavers were all crazy as shit-house rats.

  Once inside the fortress, I stayed with the company until they marched near a certain unmarked bunker. There, I broke free of the rest of them and walked down the puff-crete coated steps.

  At the base of the steps, I found Carlos dead on the floor. I put my hands on my hips and straightened up, tossing aside my piss-poor excuse for a disguise.

  “Claver, dammit! Why’d you have to go and kill Carlos?”

  The prime walked up and eyed the corpse. “Ortiz is like a stain on another man’s shoe… irritating.”

  “Yeah… well… you’re right about that. Just have your goons drag him upstairs and leave him in the snow. His tapper will signal the network, and he’ll catch a revive eventually.”

  “You sure you don’t want to leave him permed? He’s been trouble for you for years, boy.”

  “Come on, do you want these posts or not?”

  Claver eyed me evilly, but he soon gave up. He and I both knew he was a man of his word, and he’d promised not to harm me while I was helping him out. Every wheeler-dealer like him knew you couldn’t burn everyone. Good agents were hard to find, and I’d just proven myself invaluable.

  We set up the posts, and they glowed into life.

  “These are an odd make,” Claver remarked. “Where’d you get them?”

  “I got them on an auction site—what do you care? Do you want to keep your half of the coins or not?”

  “I surely do. Where are these posts linked to? We can’t switch the settings on these things.

  “Dust World,” I lied smoothly.

  He smiled and laughed. “Of course. The go-to spot for all human criminals on the run.”

  I smiled back. “All right then, I’ll just go get Graves and tell him we’re leaving—”

  I didn’t make it two steps up the staircase before every Claver in the place had put a weapon in my face. “Uh… what’s this?”

  The Prime looked apologetic, but he didn’t lower his gun. “Look, James, I agreed to let you out of this alive. That was the deal.”

  “What about your deal with Earth? With Graves? What about our half of the coins?”

  “That was a military alliance that didn’t work out. The entire agreement is null and void as far as I’m concerned. Graves was supposed to chase off the Tau, and he failed. The bears and their Tau troops have beaten us here on Ice World, it’s only a matter of time until they take us all out.”

  I laughed bitterly. “That’s how you work deals, huh? Very cynical of you, sir.”

  Claver shrugged. His minions pushed me out of the way, and they walked through the posts in a hurry. He didn’t take many men with him, just enough to carry the crates of gold coins.

  When they’d gone, I walked outside to see what was up.

  All around me, men and dumb Clavers were craning their necks, looking up at the sky in confusion and fear.

  The dome was gone. Claver had turned it off as he left. The fortress in the ice was doomed to fall, and soon.

  “Shit…” I said aloud.

  My tapper lit up the second I unwrapped it. There were red, angry words printed on it. Graves had noticed I was alive again, and he didn’t seem to be in a congratulatory mood.

  In the distance, I saw artillery fire. All around the fortress, salvos rose up from every direction on the compass.

  The enemy had noticed the dome was down. It hadn’t taken them long to react. The invasion ships had all fired their weapons, targeting the center of this frozen valley. The incoming warheads were beautiful, in a way, like seeing a thousand shooting stars at once.

  Thinking things over right-quick, I did a U-turn. I closed every door behind me as I walked down into the underground bunker, and I found the gateway posts were still there, but they were crackling and sparking.

  Were those bastards disconnecting the power on the far side? It was my impression that they were. That meant there wasn’t much time left.

  Without another thought, I stepped through.

  -59-

  When I stepped out of the gateway posts I found myself on the Turov family estate. The sun was high in the sky, and it looked like we were inside a greenhouse of some kind. Exotic plants were everywhere.

  Most of the Clavers were dead on the rich black soil under my boots. But a few of them—most notably the Prime—were still kicking.

  “Hey, hey!” I shouted at Turov’s circle of guards. They were gunning down the sad sack Claver-Threes who dropped their crates of coins and were left crawling and dying on the dirt. I counted three dead guards on their side, which might have been why Turov’s men were in such a bad mood.

  “That’s not neighborly!” I complained. “Lay off these boys. They brought you a fortune after all, didn’t they?”

  Hearing my voice, the prime twisted up his head to look at me. He was half-hiding under a dead Claver-Three, using his bigger brother for a body-shield. “Forget it, McGill. No one is getting my coins—nobody!”

  “Now, now,” I said, leaning over him and putting my hands on my knees. “You should try to remember yourself, sir. Try to think of where you are.”

  Claver gave me a vile look. It was full of rage and reproach. “You did this, didn’t you? This was all part of your grand plan to rob me. You set me up and got me to step into this trap. I’ve got half a mind to blow all these coins to hell and back!”

  He fumbled for his tapper, and I felt I had to take action. I stepped forward two long strides and crushed his wrist flat with a size thirteen boot.

  He cursed and tried to stick a knife in my shin, but I slapped that away. “Get ahold of yourself, I’m trying to help out.”

  He glared at me like a cat in a washing machine, but at least he shut up.

  When the estate guards were done abusing the dumber Clavers, old Alexander himself finally made an appearance. He peeped out from behind a burly man with a carbine beamer in his hands.

  “McGill…?” he said. “You have returned my wealth as promised. I’m impressed.”

  “Damn straight I did.”

  “You bastard!” Claver squawked from the floor. He was still hiding under his dead brother.

  I toed the corpse he was hiding under. “Come on out of there, buddy. Don’t be shy. No one is going to shoot you today—right?” I looked meaningfully toward Alexander, who slanted his head forward. It wasn’t quite a nod, but I took the gesture as a confirmation.

  After a bit of cajoling, the Claver-Prime stood with his hands held high. He spat on the back of one of his dead brothers and bared his teeth. “This won’t go well for you two in the end. Thieves are thieves, and where I come from, they all end up permed or worse.”

  Alexander seemed amused. “What might be worse than permadeath?”

  “Pray you don’t find out.”

  “The point is moot in any case. I didn’t steal these coins—they belong to me.”

  Claver sputtered at that. “What nonsense. You took them from the Galactics. No human is allowed to possess hard currency like this.”

  “Why then, merchant vagabond, did you work so hard to possess them?” Alexander asked.

  Claver hesitated for a second, but only a second. He was good. I’d wager the man could make up a solid lie while he was falling down a flight of stairs in a gunnysack. “I was taking them to the Galactics,” he said. “This is all their property. You realize that, don’t you? They’ll count it, you know. They’ll count it all. If any of it is missing there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Alexander nodded thoughtfully. He was an old, wise dude. I found it kind of freaky to be around someone who was so ancient and tricky. I had no idea what he was thinking. It was a bit unnerving to tell the truth.

  “The coins were mine before you took them, Claver. Now that you’ve returned them, our disagreement is at an end.”

  Claver squinted at the old man. He cocked his head and looked surprised. “Alex Turov? Is that really you, Alex?”

  Turov nodded. “Yes. It’s a been a long time.”

  “Damn… how you’ve aged. Looks like you haven’t had a revive in a long time. You should get yourself killed or something. You know, freshen up.”

  “Perhaps I will, but I find the process unpleasant. I try to avoid such experiences as much as possible.”

  Claver laughed. “Is dying worse than getting old? Well… to each his own, I guess. Personally, I think I’d drown myself if I ever made it to fifty by some wild chance.”

  Alexander snorted and smiled.

  Watching the two of them, I had to wonder how old they really were. They’d both met before, that much was clear. How long ago had that been? A century? Two?

  Claver made a sweeping gesture toward the heap of death on the ground. “What about restitution? How are you going to compensate me for all this spilled blood and lost money?”

  “Absurd. You stole my money—”

  “Liberated it, you mean! It’s illegal for your kind to possess this cash.”

  Turov waved away his words as if they stank. “It’s equally illegal for you to possess them. Your point is nullified.”

  “Well… you traded them to me for valuable resources.”

  “Yes, one box perhaps. But you’ve stolen ten times that much. Once you saw which vault contained the treasure, you returned to take it all!”

  “That’s because you shorted me with counterfeits! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  They wrangled on like that for a time. To be honest, I could see both points of view to a degree. When I grew tired of the bickering, I stepped back into the conversation.

  “Ladies, ladies,” I said, “this is getting us nowhere. How about you hand over to Claver the sum you originally were contracted to pay him, and he leaves you the rest?”

  “What of interest payments?” Turov complained. “And damage to property? These guards don’t come cheap, you know.”

  “Neither do mine,” Claver said.

  The wrangling went on, but at last, the two old buzzards agreed to the terms I’d laid out. Claver walked out with a crate of his coins being carried by a single Claver-Three—the last man alive. I felt a bit sorry for the guy, as he was lung-shot and wheezing badly. His master didn’t even offer to help carry the crate or patch him up, so I gave the poor man a hand.

  “What are you up to?” Claver demanded, eyeing me with suspicion. “Are you dipping into my last box of cash?”

  “No, sir. The box is sealed tight, see?” I tugged experimentally on the lid.

  Claver grumbled, but he let me help him and his clone into an aircar. When they lifted off, he gave me a wave with his middle finger as he drifted up into the sky.

  “Ungrateful sour-puss,” I said, putting a hand up to shield my eyes and staring upward.

  Old man Alexander came walking up behind me with his hands buried in his robes. He had a pack of armed guards with him. He eyed me coldly. “Let’s see the coins, McGill.”

  I sputtered and denied everything, but at last I revealed the six I’d managed to palm from Claver’s box.

  The old man considered the coins, but after a moment, he tossed them back at me. “It’s a small payment for your services.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Servant, sir. That’s mighty thoughtful.”

  “Your heirs will find it useful, no doubt. Funerals can be expensive—even if the casket is empty.”