Tribunes got one sunburst, two for Imperator and so on up the line. A primus also got a star, but it was a less impressive looking one. It didn’t look like it was exploding into a supernova, it was just a simple star.

  That’s what I saw at first, but then I noticed the color. It was red in the center.

  “Is that a jewel or something?”

  “It’s a blood drop,” Graves said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s a ruby, James,” Turov explained. “A small red gem in the center of the star of a primus. It indicates Graves is the senior primus in Legion Varus.”

  Winslade appeared very sour indeed. “I get it. You’re moving Graves up to be your replacement designate. Very clever. Now, you can safely restore my rank without fear that I might be mistaken as your favored officer.”

  “Favor has nothing to do with it,” Graves said. “At least… it shouldn’t. I’ve been with Legion Varus for over ninety years now.”

  Winslade twisted up his lips and rolled his eyes. I could tell he didn’t care about Graves and his seniority.

  “In any case,” Graves said, “I thank you for the vote of confidence, Tribune.”

  “And now, Winslade,” Turov purred. “It’s your turn.”

  Winslade eyed his box in trepidation. I knew that out of the three of us, he cared the most about his precious rank. The only more ambitious climbers I knew of were Turov and Deech.

  “Oh, all right,” he said, and he ripped it open.

  His face lit up. Stunned, he lifted the simple star of a primus.

  “I… I’m shocked.”

  “You should be. But the box isn’t empty yet. Keep digging.”

  Frowning, Winslade dug a finger into the box. He fished out another item—it was a blue patch.

  We all recognized it instantly. It was a blue globe—the symbol of Hegemony.

  “Ha!” I shouted, pointing. “You’re a hog, Winslade!”

  Winslade stared at it with a funny look on his face, I wasn’t sure if he was happy or not—and I don’t think he knew right then, either.

  But finally, he drew in a deep breath and nodded to Galina seriously.

  “I accept your offer, Tribune. All charges are hereby dismissed.”

  Galina nodded, and I realized a deal had been done.

  Only Graves seemed annoyed by the revelation. In his mind, you got rank for a job well done—but I’d learned over the years that didn’t always count for as much as it ought to.

  -54-

  Galina kicked everyone out of her office after her little birthday present routine—everyone, that was, except for me.

  “Are you happy with your rank, James?” she asked.

  “Yeah…” I said, watching as she took the nano-adhesive emblems and fixed them on my lapels.

  She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it, and I found her closeness distracting.

  After she fastened the second red crest, I snaked an arm around her back.

  She had the gall to look startled. “Centurion?” she asked. “Are you taking liberties with my person?”

  “Uh…” I said. “Only if it’s okay with you, sir.”

  She appeared to consider it for a long moment. Finally, she nodded.

  I bent down and kissed her immediately. I lifted her up in the air, slipping one big hand under her butt.

  “Don’t worry about any cameras,” she said. “I took care of all that. This office is airtight and full of disruptive jamming.”

  “Oh… good idea. That’s why you got rid of Winslade, isn’t it? You sent him packing to Hegemony because of his bullshit harassment charges?”

  “Yes. It was a good deal, don’t you think? I dropped my charges of espionage against him, and he dropped his case against me.”

  It did sound reasonable, but I found something else bothered me while I made out with her.

  Coming up for air, I frowned. “Just one thing—why’d you make him into a hog?”

  “I don’t want his kind of disloyalty in my legion,” she said.

  “But I thought you wanted to go back to being a hog yourself.”

  She frowned now, and she pushed off my chest, landing lightly on the floor. “You’re ruining the moment.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll shut up if you prefer.”

  “I do—but I’ll answer your question first. I’ve decided to embrace Varus. This legion sucks, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve been stuck with the rank of imperator for over a decade. I need to have more battlefield experience to warrant further promotions.”

  I nodded slowly, catching on. “You’re following in Deech’s footsteps, then.”

  “It worked for her.”

  The conversation lagged, and I approached Galina again. At first, she was stiff and she turned her small face away—but she soon got back in the mood.

  We had a fine time. As fine as any I could remember.

  When I walked out, I was still adjusting my uniform. The smart cloth crawled over my back and knitted up at the sleeves.

  There, in the reception area, was the boy-toy secretary and one other person—the last one I wanted to meet right now: Bio Centurion Evelyn Thompson.

  “Ah, are you finished with your private meeting so soon?” the adjunct boy-toy said in a delighted tone.

  I glanced at him in confusion, and he gave me a shitty grin. Then he indicated Evelyn with a flourish.

  “She was looking for you,” he said. “So I told her to come right up here and wait. You two are going on a date tonight I understand—isn’t that right?”

  “Uh…” I said.

  Evelyn looked like someone had shot her. Her mouth transformed into a tiny, tight bud of pink, and she stood up in a rage.

  Before I snapped out of my surprise, she’d straight-armed the door and begun marching down the corridor.

  “Thanks, shit-head,” I told the secretary.

  “Anytime, McGill. I’m always down with supporting our heroes.”

  Under different circumstances, I might have cold-cocked him right there—but Evelyn was disappearing too fast.

  I went after her, feeling a pang of guilt.

  Anyone watching this scene would be apt to judge the likes of old James McGill harshly. Sure, I was a scoundrel, a cad, and even a near-professional liar. But there were extenuating circumstances when it came to Evelyn.

  Just a few years ago, she’d been regularly paid by Turov to sleep with me. She’d been a spy—one who’d seduced her mark and kept up a false relationship for months.

  Worse, there was more blood under the bridge with the two of us. The further back anyone looked into our past, the more depraved it became. We’d murdered one another, lied about each other, and even made efforts to get each other permed.

  It wasn’t the strongest formula for a romantic relationship.

  “Evelyn!” I called after her.

  She didn’t even bother to glance back. She walked faster instead.

  Fortunately, God saw fit to give me legs like a giraffe. Unless the woman outright broke into a trot, there was no way she was out-walking me.

  By the time we got to the elevator lobby, I caught up. She stabbed at the buttons like a woman demented—but we were pretty far up. The nearest car was about eighty floors below.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, facing the closed metal doors.

  “Um…” I said, stepping to her side and looking at her profile.

  She was crying.

  Damn, that hurt. I hadn’t expected it.

  “Aw now, look,” I said. “I’m real sorry. I know we had a date later, and I don’t blame you at all for hating me right now.”

  “I do hate you—and I hate myself, too.”

  “Uh… why’s that?”

  She sucked in a breath and wiped her cheeks with the heel of her palm.

  “Because I deserve this. I treated you badly before—why shouldn’t you treat me like dirt now?”

  “Aw, come on,” I said. “You’re making me feel bad.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “Forget about it. We can’t be together, James. We’re just too different—or too much alike. I don’t know which.”

  The elevator dinged, and she got on. She didn’t even look at me, so I stepped back to let her go.

  But then, I had a thought.

  My long arm snapped out, blocking the doors.

  “Damn you,” she said in a weepy voice. “Can’t you just—?”

  “No, I can’t,” I said. “Because I found something—something about the book. I never got a chance to tell you about it.”

  Slowly, wiping her face, Evelyn turned around. The expression on her face was hard to read.

  “You’re just saying this. To get into my pants, or make yourself feel better—or something.”

  I shook my head slowly. “We can’t talk here.”

  “I’m not taking you to my place. You can forget that.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go get a bite. Somewhere public and noisy.”

  Thinking it over, she made a grunting sound of distress and waved me into the elevator with her.

  The way down to street-level was a long, long ride. There’s nothing like having a hurt, pissed-off girl trapped in close quarters with you for several silent minutes.

  When we reached the lobby, I didn’t step out.

  “I’m going down farther,” I said. “Wait for me at the restaurant.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to get someone.”

  Alarmed and confused, she squinted at me as the doors shut and I was whisked away, deeper and deeper, heading into the very bowels of Central.

  I’d been down this far before—but there always seemed to be something else even farther down. Some said Central was taller underground than it was aboveground, but I didn’t know if that was true or not.

  I did know that if you exited the main elevators at the bottom floor, crossed several security checkpoints to another elevator lobby—you could go down farther.

  That’s what I did now, heading to the lab levels where Floramel worked.

  Floramel and her kind were strange birds any day of the week. But I felt like I understood them, in a way.

  Being near-humans, they just weren’t like most people. They called normal folk “basics” because we’d provided the basic genetic stock the rest had been bred from.

  I guess a wolf in the wild is a “basic” to a sheepdog, or a pug. Like those animals, every type of near-human had been bred to accentuate a specific quality. In Floramel’s case, scientists like her had been designed to be serious thinkers.

  Sometimes, I felt I was a near-human myself.

  Naturally, I wasn’t allowed into the labs themselves. I was stopped outside by an unsmiling set of guards. They wore dark goggles, shading their eyes, even though we were indoors—way indoors. I figured we had to be a couple of kilometers underground.

  After cajoling and talking big, I finally got them to call Floramel out to greet me.

  “McGill?” she asked, looking surprised in her lab coat.

  I took a moment to admire her form. She had an unearthly beauty to her, a lankiness that was exotic, but not too thin and skeletal. It just seemed like her bones were longer than normal.

  That was a stroke of luck for both of us. Usually, near-humans were butt-ugly. Breeding a person for a specific purpose didn’t always make a handsome shape in the end. But with Floramel—it had.

  “You’re looking great today, doll,” I said.

  “Are you serious? This is another attempt to gain sexual access?”

  She got a nervous laugh out of me with that line. The hog guards in their funny goggles were watching me, but they didn’t look amused at all.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “Can’t a man compliment a girl without having people get the wrong idea? Where I come from, that’s just being polite.”

  “So… you don’t mean it?” Floramel asked.

  “Of course I mean it!” I said, becoming exasperated. “I do think you look pretty. But I mentioned that just in passing. It wasn’t my reason for coming all the way down here.”

  “Good. I know you helped me return to life—but you also presided over the death of everyone I know well on Earth the last time we met. In short, if this is a play for my attentions, you’re about to be severely disappointed.”

  “Uh… okay. Listen-up, I’ve arranged a meeting with an interested party to discuss a certain piece of literature we’ve reviewed together. Can you come out with us to lunch?”

  Floramel frowned. “Us? What’s the gender of this additional person?”

  “Damn girl, you’re a paranoid one, but yes—she’s a woman.”

  She looked me up and down once, then turned to the nearest guard. “I’m taking an outside meal. Log me out, please.”

  The hog ran his tapper over hers. He didn’t say squat. These guards down here—they were kind of spooky. I wasn’t sure if it was all an act, or if they really were as hard-ass as they seemed.

  Shrugging off such thoughts, I accompanied Floramel to the elevators.

  Now would come the hard part. I’d told Evelyn that I had information on her book—but that had been a lie.

  It wasn’t a cruel, cold-blooded lie. It was more of an estimate. Floramel was smart. I was banking on that. When I’d left Earth, I’d hidden the book at home, but Floramel had already read it. I’d left her a note asking her to work on what she’d learned from it when she was revived. By now, I was hoping she’d had plenty of time to figure out its mysteries.

  In the elevator, she turned to me.

  “So, this is about the book, am I correct?”

  “Uh… let’s not talk about that. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, seeing as we were attacked and both killed the last time we discussed it, I figure it might be best if we got to a safer place first.”

  She appeared to be alarmed at the idea.

  “Did Raash kill me because of the book?”

  “I think so. He said at the time it was because he’d found me, a better target. He said he was trying to get back to Steel World, back into the good graces of his prince. I also met Claver recently, and he said Raash was working for him.”

  “So strange,” she said, staring at nothing. “He seemed honestly grateful for my help.”

  “Yeah, well… sometimes people aren’t what they seem.”

  She looked at me. “You’re living proof of that.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to take her comment, so I decided to assume it was intended as high praise.

  “Thanks!” I said, giving her a grin.

  Floramel fell quiet, studying me with sidelong glances.

  It was a strange reunion. She’d slept with me shortly before I’d left Earth, but we’d both gotten killed that same night. By the time I got her revived, I’d been flying out to Dark World aboard Nostrum.

  From her point of view, I’d slept with her, then gotten her killed and run off. It wasn’t a fair recollection of events, but that’s probably how it seemed to her.

  Fortunately, I’m a man who’s had quite a bit of experience with disappointed females. Her sulky attitude washed right off me.

  By the time we hit the streets, I was whistling a tune.

  “Could you stop making that high-pitched warbling noise?” she asked.

  “Don’t like my whistling, huh?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, let’s talk a little before we meet this other person. What have you figured out about the book since we last met?”

  “Not much, other than it’s about a certain planet—and the Mogwa.”

  I stopped in the middle of a crosswalk and grabbed her arms.

  Her eyes studied my hands, one at a time.

  “Is this an assault?”

  “The Mogwa?” I hissed. “Seriously?”

  “Are you attempting to initiate another breeding session? Again?”

  It occurred to me then that we were highly exposed. Sure, there were plenty of people around, but we were also standing in a busy street. If someone gunned a van, or fired a rifle from high up—well, there wasn’t anything to get in their way.

  “Come on,” I said, and I looped an arm through hers. I walked fast, half-dragging her out of the street traffic.

  “This has never happened to me before,” Floramel said. “Are you armed?”

  “Uh… I usually am, yeah. Why?”

  “In most cases, according to my research, abductions are performed by armed men.”

  Reaching a dusty alley between two buildings, I ducked a few steps into it and stopped hustling her.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Floramel. You’ve got the wrong idea again—but that’s my fault. I’m trying to protect you, not harm you. If you’ve got information about the Mogwa—well, that explains a lot. People all over this galaxy would kill for something like that.”

  Floramel looked confused. “You’re not abducting me?”

  “No, no. Sorry if I scared you. I just wanted to get you out of the open street.”

  She looked around. “This isn’t a suitable place for sex, consensual or otherwise.”

  I rolled my eyes. She caught that and understood the meaning.

  “You think I’m being foolish?” she asked.

  “Yes, you’re getting there. You read a lot, and I think you tend to take a lot of it too literally.”

  “I see…”

  “Let’s try to make it to the restaurant. It’s right this way.”

  I took her another thousand hurried steps down the block, and we ducked into a dim-lit place with old-fashioned holo-vid greenery flickering on the walls.

  Floramel looked around with mild surprise. “This is a restaurant—and that person over there is as you described. She’s waving.”

  “Yeah, yeah. This is legit. Come on before she gets mad and runs off again.”

  “You have that effect on many women.”

  “Yep, I sure do.”

  We all sat down together, ordered drinks and lunch, and waited until the auto-waiter was gone. All these dingy places had robot waiters these days. Honest-to-goodness human servants cost too much, I guess.

  After a few minutes of pleasantries, Evelyn got down to business first. She leaned toward Floramel and spoke in a raspy whisper.