Dammit. I looked as guilty as Hell. I might as well have started sobbing.

  When I opened my mouth to lie, she put up a hand, stopping me.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I can see that you have—and I knew the answer was yes before I asked the question, anyway.”

  “Uh… okay…” I said, still confused.

  Galina struggled to explain herself.

  Often, when a person is discussing something that’s difficult for them, it’s just best to shut up. Any hinting on my part might dilute the information I was about to receive.

  Upping the stakes was the fact my daughter Etta was involved in the book’s recent change of status. That simple reality made me want to play this the safest way I could.

  “The book contains things that can’t be known,” Galina said. “We need to get it back. We need to destroy it.”

  “Uh…” I said. “It’s gone.”

  She closed her eyes, and she nodded. “I feared that’s what you would say.”

  “No, really. It’s gone. If it helps any, the secrets in it have already been figured out, and Central has them.”

  Galina’s head snapped back up.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Well… I happen to know firsthand that the bio-terminator described in the book has been developed and tested. What’s more—it works.”

  She looked stunned. “I can’t believe you know such things, and I don’t. Drusus… that bastard, he’s always pushing me out of every loop he can!”

  I took absolutely no steps to correct her false line of logic. Floramel had done all the work privately and told me about it. No brains were required on my part to realize it was better for her to blame Drusus than Floramel—so I clammed up.

  “Okay,” she said. “I came here to learn about the book, and I learned far more than I’d bargained for. That makes me inclined to believe you.”

  “It’s all the truth. The whole truth, the honest truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me.”

  “Where’s the book, then? If you don’t have it, where did it go?”

  “Uh… Claver took it.”

  “WHAT?”

  “My daughter was here alone. He got her to give it to him.”

  Galina stood up. “That monster! Is she all right?”

  My mind churned. She’d again taken a wrong turn in the logical sequence of events—but that was a good thing, to my way of thinking. There was nothing positive about the idea that Etta had turned traitor to me, Earth—and hell, the entire Empire.

  “She’s okay,” she said. “I sent her to Dust World—that’s where she was born.”

  Galina nodded, thinking hard. “I get it. You wanted to protect her. I don’t blame you—if Claver came and managed to use her once, he’d do it again. I’d love to kill him and all his clones.”

  Right there, she’d let drop another bit of information in my direction.

  She knew of Claver’s lair—at least, that’s what it sounded like. In the past, she’d had a lot of private dealings with the old trader. It stood to reason that she’d know some of his secrets.

  “Okay…” she said. “You’ve been reasonably honest with me. I know this because I verified much of what you said before I arrived. I knew you had the book at some point, and I suspected you’d lost it. I knew your daughter was involved in that process, and that she’s left Earth. Now, I see how all the pieces fit together.”

  She lifted her tapper to her face, and she spoke to it.

  “Primus, stand down. Remove all assets. The ball isn’t here.”

  “McGill is cleared?” Graves’ voice spoke.

  It gave me a chill to hear him. Could a cohort of troops be out there in the bog, encircling my place even now? It was more than possible.

  “McGill is clear. Withdraw.”

  “Do you need an escort, Tribune? I can extract—”

  “No, damn you. Withdraw. I’ve got my air car. I’ll leave later.”

  There was a brief moment of silence. A hesitation. Then, finally, he spoke again in a resigned voice. “Graves out.”

  I could tell by his tone that he didn’t approve, but I also knew that Galina Turov usually did whatever she damned-well pleased.

  “Wow,” I said, and I upended my brew.

  I drained it and cracked open another.

  Galina watched me, and she did the same.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That book—it’s just so important. Do you have any idea who might have bought it from Claver?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “No… Of course not. It could have been any of the Galactics that rival the Mogwa. Or even the Rigellians.”

  My eyes widened. I hadn’t even considered such things. But she was probably right. If Claver was working so hard to get the book, that meant he already had a buyer all lined up.

  Who would want a book that gave away the secrets to a genocidal weapon—one that only worked on the Mogwa?

  Any enemy—no, make that every enemy they had. The list was long and distinguished.

  “I’m glad to hear we managed to glean the secrets before it was stolen,” she said. “That might be critical in the future.”

  “How so? Are we trying to exterminate the Mogwa?”

  “Probably not. But there are other uses... If we gave them the formula, for example, they might be able to come up with a cure before they got hit with it. That might be quite valuable to them.”

  “Oh…” I said, thinking it over. “Tell me, Galina, why’d you come down here personally? Why not just send Graves with fifty goons?”

  She looked a little shy. “Because I owe you,” she said.

  “Um… for what, in particular?”

  “Have you been keeping up with the legion news articles online?”

  “I sure have!”

  “No…” she said, “of course you haven’t. That might disturb your meditation, or whatever it is you do down here in this marsh. Give me some whiskey now, and I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening at Central.”

  It was an unexpected request, and I could tell from the way she was talking that those first two beers were already having an effect on her. Galina had never built up much of a tolerance for alcohol.

  “You sure you want to drink hard liquor right now?” I cautioned her.

  “Yes, dammit! Give it to me.”

  I shrugged, and I poured. After all, the woman was over fifty, even if she’d kept her body down as close to twenty as she could by dying every few years.

  In fact, she’d died just a month or two back aboard Nostrum. Maybe that’s why her face seemed all young again.

  Her face was more intoxicating to me than the booze right about now. I hadn’t had a date since Etta left, and that was a long, long time in my book.

  We drank a shot each, and she didn’t seem to care any longer about the status of my glassware. After she’d gulped her drink, she sighed and relaxed.

  “You were saying something about why you owe me?” I prompted.

  “It was glorious,” she said. “I don’t know what you said to Drusus after he dismissed your trial—but it must have been hard on him.”

  “Yeah…?” I said, thinking it over. “I just talked to him about how things went out on Dark World.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That it seemed like a giant charley-foxtrot to me.”

  “It was,” she laughed. “A cluster-hump of the first order!”

  “When I talked to him, Drusus was contrite. He seemed to blame himself.”

  “As well he should!” she said, suddenly angry. “How could he expect us to get along? He’d just switched our ranks for fun and then shipped us out to fight together! It was such bullshit!”

  I knew she was talking about Deech. From her point of view, the situation had been made intolerable by the presence of that other woman.

  Standing tall, she began to pace and talk loudly.

  “First, he fucks her!” she announced, pointing a finger at my sooty ceiling. “But that’s not good enough for him! Oh no. Next, he has to take my job, give it to her, and then make us fight in the same trench! How could he expect anything other than failure at that point?”

  “No way in Hell,” I said, egging her on.

  “No way! So…” she started laughing again. “Here’s the funny part…”

  Her voice dropped and she half-fell beside me on the couch. I steadied her with a hand.

  “After you talked to him,” she went on, “he seemed to realize his sick error. The brass from Geneva was making inquiries. Imagine, his first big military campaign after getting the rank of praetor had gone tits-up, and he’d created the disaster himself!”

  “Heh… yeah… that sounds funny,” I lied, thinking of tens of thousands of dead legionnaires. “What did he do? Apologize?”

  “Hell no. What he did was better than that. He fired Deech, demoting her. He put her in charge of Teutoburg! Can you believe it? They’re almost as bad as Varus. No, worse, because they never do much of anything important. Then, he shipped her ass out to sit on Machine World.”

  She broke into a long belly laugh, and I was bemused myself.

  “Deech is on guard-duty?” I asked.

  “That’s right. Permanent guard-duty. She’s marooned on that rock. She can rot there, I hope. Better her than me.”

  “Oh…” I said, “so that’s why you’re so happy. You think I got Drusus to demote her? I’m not sure that my little talk—”

  She grabbed up a big wad of my shirt then, pulled me in close, and kissed me hard.

  It was a nice, firm kiss that went on for quite a while. After something like a full minute, she eased off, but she was still very near, whispering into my face.

  Her hot breath was sweet to me—it was a good thing we were both drinking.

  “James, he told me that what you said moved him. You let him see how he looked through the eyes of a low-level officer. He realized that if it looked that way to you—not the most perceptive man in the legions—that everyone must know he was wrapped around her finger.”

  “So… he had to send her away? I almost feel sorry for old Drusus. He had a real thing going with Deech, and I don’t get the impression that he’s had many affairs in his life.”

  Galina snorted in my face. It caused my hair to puff back a little.

  “Do you want to make love to Drusus? Or to me?” she demanded.

  That was all the invitation I needed. My arms encircled her, and we got busy.

  Galina had lost none of her skills, and she managed to take me away from my own heartaches for a time. I forgot about Claver, the Mogwa, my folks—and even about Etta.

  After a solid half-hour, we took a break.

  I’d set up a fan to blow over us—that’s a necessity in southern Georgia. The fan thrummed and cooled us down enough to make contact with another humans’ skin comfortable.

  Galina laid her head on my chest, but she didn’t fall asleep. She seemed to be thinking.

  “You know, I believe…” she said, “yes… I might have a thing for you, James. Is that crazy?”

  “Uh…”

  She put a finger up to my lips. “No. Don’t answer that. Forget I said it.”

  My shrug made her small head bounce.

  We’d turned off every light in my place, so the timeless blue glimmer of the heavens was our only illumination. Outside, the stars shined brightly, and the Moon had risen over my shack.

  Playing with her hair, looping my fingers through it, my mind was a happy blank.

  We fell asleep like that, and I for one was glad she’d come down to pay me a visit.

  And if Galina did have a thing for me…? Well, that was okay, too.

  THE END

  From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed DARK WORLD, the ninth book in the Undying Mercenaries Series. The audiobook version is due out June 12th 2018.

  If you liked the book and want to read the story to the finish, please put up some stars and a review HERE to support the series. Let me know what kind of world you’d like McGill to discover next!

  -BVL

  BONUS Reading!

  What follows is the beginning of: REBEL FLEET

  To purchase the entirety of the book search for REBEL FLEET

  on your Ebook Seller’s website, or go to BVLarson.com

  REBEL FLEET

  (Rebel Fleet Series #1)

  =1=

  The first time I witnessed a stellar flux it was midnight, the moment when Tuesday was about to become Wednesday.

  I was sitting at a bar on the tropical island of Maui at the time. The bar was called TJ’s, and it bordered on being a dive. It was a local hangout, not a fancy tourist place. The crowd was muted most of the time, and there was no pounding music to drown out the crash of the surf that was about two hundred steps to my right. I liked it that way.

  “Whoa!” Jason gasped.

  “What…?” I asked.

  “Leo, do you see that?” he demanded.

  Jason was a bronzed-skin guy who haunted TJ’s as a regular. He was about five years younger than I was, and he’d become my friend over the last month or two.

  Turning to him, I followed his gaze. He wasn’t looking up at the sky, but rather at the waves. Frowning, I stared at a bubbling spot. There was a light source down there, something which made the foaming water glow green and white. The rest of the ocean was inky black all around it.

  “That is weird,” I agreed. “Could one of your Hawaiian lava vents be blowing its nose down there?”

  “We don’t have stuff like that on this side of the island.”

  I took him at his word. Being a drifter from the mainland, I’d spent the last two months here, but I was far from an expert on natural events of this kind.

  When I looked back at Jason, his eyes were wider than before. He was looking up at the sky now.

  “Don’t tell me…” I said, following his gaze again.

  We stared at the sky together. What we saw drove us to leave our drinks behind and walk out onto the open sands.

  The stars could be seen clearly—but there was something unnatural about them. I was a Colorado native from the Rockies, and I’d often been treated to gorgeous starry nights. But this celestial event was definitely out of the ordinary.

  For about a minute, the stars did an odd, wavering dance. Then a nebula appeared between Earth and the Milky Way. I’d learned the term “nebula” only recently from news reports. Apparently, it was what you called clouds of dust and gas that hung between the stars. Usually, they were the result of stars that had blown themselves up in nova explosions—but there weren’t any dying stars in our stellar neighborhood.

  “Don’t take your eyes off it,” Jason said. “It won’t last. I watched vids on the net—it never lasts long. The glowy stuff appears for a while then vanishes again.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t even tell him the proper name for the glowy stuff. Instead, I just gaped up at the sky alongside him, figuring it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness a mysterious natural event.

  “Are we going to die, Leo?” Jason asked me suddenly. “Is that what this means?”

  “Uh… I hope not.”

  “What do you think is out there in the water?” he asked a moment later, looking at the light in the sea again.

  Jason was young, slightly drunk, and impetuous under the best of circumstances. I’d teamed up with him over the last month or two as he seemed to be even better than I was at finding piecemeal jobs and getting laid at bars like this one. It was the kind of life I’d embraced after leaving my Navy career behind me.

  “Hey…” I said. “Kim’s watching us. She’s got a friend with her tonight. Let’s—”

  But I was talking to Jason’s back. He headed right back into the bar, which was open to the sandy beach, and curled an arm around Kim’s friend.

  Kim didn’t like Jason much. She didn’t seem to like me, either. Lord knew we’d given it our best, but we’d both already struck out with her.

  But a young man like me is always on the lookout for new opportunities. After all, “no” and “never” were two entirely different words. Smiling, I joined the three of them.

  “Are you guys going out there?” Kim asked me immediately. The look on her face was a mixture of worry and curiosity.

  “We sure are,” Jason said. “Come on!”

  As a group, we headed out across the sands. How could we not investigate? Over the last three months, there’d been numerous accounts of the stars turning into glowing dust-fields for a time, then smoothing back over and showing our familiar bright pinpoints of light again. As far as I knew, there hadn’t been any reports of splash-downs of debris—but that might have just changed.

  “This could be highly dangerous,” Kim said.

  “You always worry,” Kim’s friend said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the new girl.

  “This is Gwen,” Jason said giving me a hard look.

  I caught on immediately. He was claiming Gwen. Hell, his arm was still lightly draped around her waist. That was moving pretty damned fast, even for Jason. They’d only met about ninety seconds ago.

  Jason had always been fond of the blonde ones, but I liked Kim’s straight black hair just fine. Taking a tip from my friend, I slipped my hand around Kim’s back when we reached the water.

  Kim gave me a funny look. “Are you drunk?”

  “Not nearly,” I said. “Look out there! It’s still bubbling. What I think is weird is that light. Where’s it coming from?”

  She forgot about my hand and didn’t shrug me off. She stepped closer to me, in fact, as we stared at the water.

  From the bar, the underwater lights had looked like a small patch of ocean that was farting up bubbles. Up close, the strange effect had taken on a different character. Whatever was down there—it was pretty big.

  “It can’t be an animal,” Gwen said. “Not even a whale would make that kind of gas release.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Maybe a small plane went down—or a boat.”