Where had she gone? Immediately, a single thought came to my mind. It was a dark thought, and it pissed me off.

  Working my tapper with speed, I checked on the whereabouts of another woman. Since she was also in my direct chain of command, I quickly found that she was aboard Dominus.

  “Galina…” I said, and the word came out like a curse.

  She’d pulled this kind of shit in the past. I began walking again—faster than before. Now, rather than bumping into me, soldiers were being rudely rammed aside. They cursed and growled at me with even greater vehemence, but I cared even less than before.

  My first stop was her office, up on Gold Deck. I found Gary there. He had a big smile on his face, and a pair of big boots on his desk. He seemed very happy to be back at his chicken-shit job.

  On a different day, I might have found this amusing. I might have teased him about it, or threatened to tell Galina something—but I didn’t do any of that today. I was too pissed off.

  “Adjunct!” I shouted.

  Gary ripped his boots off the desk and lurched up. “Centurion?”

  I was glad to see he was still conditioned to jump at the sound of my voice. He’d gotten something from participating in a real campaign at least.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  Normally, Gary would have been surly and flippant in his answer. He might even have pretended not to know who I was talking about—but not today. I’d spent too many days with the power of life and death over him recently, and he’d forgotten none of that.

  “She’s in her quarters, sir.”

  “Alone?”

  He blinked. “Um… as far as I know.”

  I turned to go, still storming, but Gary called after me. “Hey, McGill. I wanted to thank you for telling Graves to send me back to my office work. That was really cool of you.”

  I glanced at him, and I nodded. I took a moment then, since Gary wasn’t to blame for anything I was suspecting Galina of right now. I instantly decided it was time to lie, and I went hard with it. “It’s a shame, really. You did a good job out there. You were born to be a soldier, even if you didn’t enjoy it. At least now you won’t be wondering for the rest of your career how it might have gone in the combat arms.”

  Gary blinked in surprise, then he smiled. “Why… thank you, sir. It was good to serve under you.”

  There, I’d done my good deed for the day.

  Marching out of the place, I headed for Galina’s quarters. They weren’t as sumptuous as they’d been in past years, but they didn’t consist of a dusty bunk in a well-used module on the lower decks, either.

  Hammering on the door until it shook, I waited a moment, then I hammered again.

  The door clicked open, and it swung fractionally inward. I pushed my way inside without waiting for a formal invitation.

  Inside, I found Galina Turov primping in front of a mirror. She was fancying up her uniform with meticulous care.

  Normally, when any soldier arranges his dress uniform, it takes a bit of the old spit-and-polish, but Galina took such things to the extreme. She didn’t just get her insignia straight and remove the smudges from her buttons. No sir. That was just the beginning. She liked to wear smart cloth, the kind that could be instructed on how to hug one’s shape.

  She had quite the shape to be hugging onto as well. Using her tapper, she touched a glowing spot on some kind of prissy fashion-app, and I watched as her pants cinched in, sucking in wrinkles and becoming form-fitting over her buttocks. It was like they were designed for this express purpose—which they were.

  Despite my mood, I was distracted. Had she set up this scenario on purpose?

  Dammit.

  “Galina?” I asked.

  “James? What’s up?”

  “Did you ship Primus Collins back to Earth?”

  She stopped primping and turned slowly to look at me. Her head cocked, and what had been a smile faded into a red line of suspicion. Worse, her eyes were all slanty now. They’d been in a good mood before, as I recalled.

  “What are you talking about?”

  If there’s one area of mental effort that my mind excels at, it’s the glib excuse. I couldn’t do much math, speak any foreign languages, remember promises, or even listen when people talked for more than a full minute straight—but I could switch directions on a dime when I had to.

  This was one of those moments. Galina clearly had no idea what I was talking about. That meant that I was not only barking up the wrong tree when it came to thinking Galina had turfed Cherish to remove her from my reach, it also meant I was letting the cat out of the bag in real time.

  “Uh…” I said, my mind doing a one-eighty. Less than a second later, my stern gaze turned into an affable smile. “I’m sorry, things were rough down there on City World.”

  “Yes, but what’s this interest in Primus Collins?”

  I shook my head. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then I can see I’ve got the wrong idea. I’ll just excuse myself and leave you to your meeting or whatever is coming up.”

  Her suspicions were flying high now. Higher than ever. Her fists planted themselves on her hips. “How do you know I’m going to a meeting?”

  I gestured vaguely. “Uh… all the pant-tightening sort of gives it away, sir.”

  Her face soured, and she almost let me go—but not quite. “Hold on. Stand where you are, Centurion.”

  I froze and turned slowly back to face her.

  “You came in here angry, didn’t you? What did you think I’d done?”

  Shrugging helplessly, I tried to look like a dumbass. That didn’t take much work. “I don’t know, sir. I just thought maybe you knew what had happened to my commander.”

  “Your commander? Primus Collins?”

  “Yessir.”

  I proceeded then to explain that Collins and I had been thrown together on the battlefield. I described our heroic actions—but I left out all the salacious ones.

  “That’s very interesting. You two worked together on this nonsense of using Mogwa tanks with gremlin pilots?”

  “Mogwa power-armor, sir. Yes.”

  She fluttered carefully painted nails in my direction. “Whatever. Why were you upset?”

  There it was. Dodging had been my first line of defense, but now I knew I needed to move on into a straight-up lie to protect the guilty.

  “Well sir, we were credited with a lot of the glory down there on City World. As you know, sometimes people like Winslade and Tribune Kraus… well sir, they aren’t good at sharing the limelight.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay. I get that. But why did you come here to accuse me of some vague crime?”

  “Well… I thought maybe they’d come to you—seeing as you’re the proper CO and all—and one of them might have gotten you to do their dirty work.”

  “Reassigning Primus Collins to some salt mine?”

  “Yes.”

  Galina’s eyes narrowed, and she slid them around. They weren’t glaring at me. They were thinking hard. Evil thoughts were going on behind those eyes, I could tell.

  “Those bastards…” she said at last.

  “Huh?”

  She pointed a finger at me. “You’re right. I was lobbied to remove Primus Collins. She’s been reassigned to Death World. She’s running a garrison there now, policing those nasty women Helsa and Kelsa—whatever their names are.”

  “Uh… really?”

  I was floored. My bullshit scenario had come true? I’d been winging it—but it did make sense. When a tribune has been shown up by an inferior officer, and that tribune is cagey, he might very well quietly shunt aside underlings capable of taking his job from him.

  “So… I was right?” I asked, flummoxed. “Cherish really did get reassigned?”

  “Yes, she… wait? What did you call her?”

  “Primus Collins, sir. A meaner woman I’ve never met. She’ll give those Shadowlanders a headache and then some.”

  Galina smiled vaguely. “Yes. I suspect she will.”

  Then she shrugged, and she smiled up at me. “James, from all reports you performed magnificently on City World. You even managed to unload those bumbling idiots Nox and Sateekas. I’m sure the poor Mogwa citizens who’ve inherited those two will come to regret their choices.”

  “Hehe…” I said, laughing hesitantly. “I’m sure you’re right about that, sir. Did you say you were going to dinner?”

  “I said I was going to a meeting.”

  “Oh yeah… will there be food served… by any chance?”

  Galina eyed me, and she thought over my offer for a second or two. I let her do it. When the mouse sniffs the cheese, you don’t snap the trap. You won’t even catch a tail if you go off too early.

  “All right. You may accompany me. Get your kit in order—you have… eighteen minutes to do so. Meet me down on Lavender Deck after that.”

  I smiled. “Yessir!”

  Trotting out of the place, I had to wonder at my swiftly changing fortunes. I’d gone in there to chew Galina out for sending Cherish away, and I’d nearly blown everything.

  Now, a less thoughtful person might say that I’d given up on my brief affair with Primus Collins too soon, but I was nothing if not a man who seized opportunities when they were offered. After all, she was gone and out of my reach. Galina was here and she was… looking pretty good.

  The evening went well, and we ended up spending the night together. Along about midnight, I got a message—it was a deep-link transmission, which meant it cost real money.

  The message was a serious text-wall. It was from Cherish, and it amounted to a lengthy apology. She’d gotten orders and been rushed away back to Earth, then to Death World. It was a great opportunity for her to run her own garrison command, and she hadn’t been able to say good-bye properly.

  I thought about tapping a message back to her, but I didn’t dare. Galina was asleep beside me, but she was a notoriously light sleeper.

  Instead, I swept away the message with a swipe of my finger, then I double-deleted it, even searching for the back-up on the cloud and nailing that, too.

  You could never be too careful with such messages. They could bring all kinds of pain if the wrong people read them.

  -61-

  Months later, as fall began on Earth, Dominus finally parked in orbit. We disembarked and walked on solid ground again for the first time in a long while. Anxious to get home, I mustered out and demobilized. As quickly as I could, I headed home to Waycross.

  Anyone who knows me might well suspect that I’d have forgotten my promises to a certain gremlin madman named Jink by the time I reached Earth. Such a hypothetical person would have been right on the money, too.

  What with Galina distracting me, troops to demobilize, and a stuffed-shirt named Dickson to deal with, I plain forgot about Jink—but he didn’t forget about me.

  When I got back home to Earth, a package was waiting for me. I opened it, and I puzzled over the contents.

  Inside, I found a waxy flower… it was clearly an alien growth, and it was both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time.

  Finally, I remembered what it was. The strange-looking bloom came from Dust World. It looked kind of like a giant orchid the size of a cantaloupe.

  I’d once plucked one of these things and given it to Natasha. That had been many long years ago… who might be sending me something like this now?

  I thought over all the people I knew on Dust World. Etta was out there, fooling around with some kind of weird experiment with her grandfather again. Then there was the old man himself. He was a freak, but he wouldn’t have sent me a sticky flower that grew in the marshlands around the lakes of his planet.

  Who else lived out there these days…? Oh yes, of course.

  Floramel.

  My eyes snapped wide. A thought had struck me, and it struck me hard. I’d forgotten about Jink. I’d forgotten about my promise to bring Floramel back to Blood World. Hell, I’d forgotten about everything I’d told just about everyone out on City World.

  “Shit…” I whispered, climbing off my couch and slipping on boots in the dark. Fortunately, I was already wearing pants and such. I was sleeping alone, and it was the dead of the night in Georgia Sector.

  It had to be Jink. There was no way Floramel or the Investigator would send me a flower out of the blue. Etta might have done it if it was my birthday or something—but it wasn’t. It was a cold Tuesday in March, and not even close to Easter this year. Besides, Etta would have sent me a note or something.

  Searching the box, I found there wasn’t a damned thing in it besides some sticky residue from the flower. That was it.

  Looking at the bloom again, I realized it had to be pretty fresh. Someone had brought it—probably by courier—through the gateway posts up at Central, and they’d secretly delivered it to me.

  This was a chilling moment for old McGill. I had family here, and family out on Dust World. Someone knew about all of them, and where they were. In fact, a paranoid man might have concluded they knew about the flower I’d once given Natasha as well.

  “Damnation… I’ve got to go out there.”

  I armed myself, packed a minimal ruck, and headed for the airport. I pretty much stole the family tram to do this, slapping her gently on the fender to send her back home. She knew the way.

  After a long sky-train ride, during which the woman next to me sneered and made lots of remarks about people not knowing how to wash these days, I found my way to Central. From there, I paid a fee and walked into a bug-zapper that sent my molecules all the way out to Zeta Herculis, better known as Dust World.

  These days, just about anyone could buy a ticket and stand in line, zapping yourself to the world of your choice if humanity owned it. The weird thing about such travel to the stars was the prices. You would think that what with the power usage being the same and all, going anyplace would cost the same amount—but that wasn’t how it worked.

  Going to Dust World was dirt cheap. The only destination that was cheaper was Death World. Before anyone starts getting ideas about an exotic destination-vacation, however, you’d better check on the cost of returning to Earth. Coming back was expensive—especially from Dust World. I suspected the truth was that Hegemony Gov didn’t really want people to come back from that place. They wanted people to migrate and stay put.

  After walking down off a platform and touching my cap to some unsmiling hog guards, I was asked to state my business. That was easy to do for a man such as myself.

  “I’m cruising for a hot date,” I said. “I heard these local colonist girls are as easy as they are cute.”

  That elicited a gut-busting round of laughter from the guards. “You’d better think again, friend. The girls around here will cut your dick off as soon as look at you.”

  I pretended to be disappointed but headed to town anyway. After enquiring as to the whereabouts of the Investigator, I was eventually directed into the caverns that had been drilled into the stone walls of the valley.

  Using my tapper, I searched for Etta. They’d apparently moved their secret lab deeper into the dank caves, but I found them on the third day of the search.

  When I arrived, they were in the middle of an experiment. Floramel was there, with the Investigator at her side. He was observing, looking down into a lumpy tank of brown stuff that bubbled and smelled bad.

  Etta was playing the part of the assistant. She made me smile, she was so intent on her work she didn’t even know I’d arrived at first.

  “Raise the amperage a milliamp,” Floramel said.

  “Done.”

  “Hmm… nothing. Let’s try—James?” Floramel turned around and stared at me in surprise. “Where did you come from?”

  “Floramel,” the Investigator said sternly. “You’re mixture is steaming…”

  She whirled back to her nasty brown stew and ordered Etta to shut it down. After that, everyone greeted me enthusiastically—except for the Investigator. He was rarely happy to see anyone, especially when he was working some kind of disgusting magic in one of his tanks.

  I pointed at the tank. “Don’t tell me you guys are trying to revive someone in there.”

  “No,” the Investigator said. “Let’s adjourn to my office.”

  He walked away, and the two women followed him. The man had a natural authority about him which tended to make most people obey his every whim.

  Naturally, I wasn’t the most easily swayed of individuals. I lingered and put a finger into the soup in the tank. It was hot, and it kind of itched a little after I pulled it out.

  “James!”

  The three were standing at the exit, staring back at me.

  “Coming!”

  I trotted after them, wiping stinky stuff on my pants. I hoped it wouldn’t eat my uniform—or my finger.

  We found our way to a lantern-lit office of sorts. It had once been some kind of tech shop, I could tell that much from all the antiquated junk that lined the walls and shelves. There were jerry cans of fuel, sealed barrels of chemicals, and all sorts of dusty electronic gizmos.

  “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?” the Investigator asked.

  “Whoa!” I said, laughing. “Since when does a man need a special occasion to visit his genius daughter?”

  This response pleased Etta and Floramel—but the Investigator didn’t seem mollified.

  “It’s been my experience, over several decades, that you always want something specific when you come here, McGill.”

  “Well… that’s true.”

  “It’s Etta, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re here to take her home, or arrest her, or something worse. Am I right?”

  “Uh…” I said looking around at the three concerned faces. “None of those. Honest.”

  “Why then?” he insisted.

  I sighed, and I pointed at Floramel.

  “I’m here to see you, girl. Not Etta—not this time. But it is sure nice to lay eyes on you too, little lady.”

  I gave Etta a hug, and she returned it with one of her own. She was happier now, it seemed to me, and that made me happy as well. The last time I’d seen her she was still upset about her new, hybridized body. After all, any adult person can get kind of attached to having a certain height, weight and appearance.