A thousand credits later, I managed to keep my pasted on smile in place as I paid the bill. She tried to object, but she let me do it in the end.

  We downed a few beers at the bar, where she paid, then she tried to make her exit. “All right, James,” she said. “I imagine you’ve got your reasons for keeping this secret from me. I find that irritating, but I’m willing to let you slide this single time.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you, Tribune.”

  As we got to the door, she looked at me speculatively. “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “Uh… in the dorms, I suppose.”

  “At Central? Still tight on money?”

  “I guess so.”

  Galina ran her eyes over me again. I stood there and let her make the decision. It was all up to her now. Many less knowledgeable men might figure they could sway a woman at these moments with nonstop chatter. But it really didn’t work that way with a tough girl like this one. After I’d made my pitch, she had to decide, and that was that. Pushing too hard at the last minute would be a mistake.

  Giving me a smirk, she summoned her aircar with her tapper. She got into the driver seat and revved the engine.

  “Goodnight, Tribune,” I said, and I began walking down the sidewalk back toward Central. Just for good measure, I rolled my shoulders and scratched a little, as if my healing wounds were bothering me.

  The aircar rolled up, and I looked down into the blue-lit interior. “Your back still hurts, doesn’t it?”

  “Nah,” I said.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Get in here, you animal.”

  That was that. She took me home to her place on the edge of town, and we made love for hours. I was still mildly pissed off about being flogged and all, but she’d soon made up for that in her own special way.

  -6-

  The next morning we arrived at what they called Gray Deck at Central. It was a large chamber underground in the guts of the building. From here, they launched all kinds of Hegemony teleport missions.

  Gray Deck was normally hush-hush and super-secret, but the people there knew me pretty well.

  “Taking another unscheduled jaunt into the blue today, McGill?” asked the duty specialist. He was a tech—they were almost all techs down here.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “God only knows.”

  The specialist shook his head and waved me through after the usual inspection and x-rays. They removed a number of weapons, even ones I thought I’d hidden really well.

  “You’ll be issued fresh gear inside the vault,” the tech said.

  “Got it.”

  After that, Galina went through the same process. They didn’t give her nearly the pat-down they’d given me. I suppose a man like me had to expect such unfair treatment after having broken so many rules in the past.

  When we stepped into the vault on Gray Deck, we found dozens of busy people setting up a harness in a separate area—in fact, the whole thing looked unusual.

  “Uh…” I said, staring at the rig. “That’s not our typical gear, is it?”

  The harness they were working with and charging didn’t look like a normal set of smart-straps, batteries and computer modules. Instead, it resembled a deep-sea diving outfit from the 1890s. Something they would have used to explore the bottom of the sea while pumping air to the lucky diver using a hand-crank.

  Even the helmet looked weird. It was a metal sphere with glass eyeholes cut into it. “What the hell is that?” Galina asked.

  “Ah, Tribune Turov—and McGill,” Graves said. He walked up to us and gave us each an up-down appraisal.

  I could tell the simple fact we’d walked in together—both of us exactly seven minutes late—had been noticed. Graves knew that we’d had an inappropriate relationship for years. He’d never approved of it, and today he made that clear once again with his twisted lips and narrow-eyed staring.

  Being used to his attitude, we ignored him and stepped closer to the new suit.

  “Stop!” A small, female tech rushed us and put her thickly gloved palms in our faces. “No one is allowed to approach this experimental gear.”

  “It’s all right, specialist,” Graves told her. “This man is our pilot.”

  She glanced at Graves, then back at me again. “He’s too big. We didn’t build this suit with these dimensions in mind.”

  “You’ll have to make adjustments.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  Graves shrugged. “Then take it up with Drusus.”

  She heaved a sigh and waved me forward. A half-dozen techs swarmed over me, and I was ushered into the pit where they had suspended the strange-looking suit.

  “How come we’re not using a regular jump-harness?” I asked.

  “A regular harness wouldn’t have the range,” the tech lady said. “There’s no way it could handle this leap. You’re about to travel over a thousand lightyears—you do realize that, don’t you Centurion?”

  “I guess…”

  “This is a prototype. It’s what we call a deep-dive suit. Up until now, they’ve only been used on animals for testing purposes.”

  “How’d that go?” I asked.

  The tech lady shrugged. “Some of them lived. Most were messed up internally. In general, we do better with humans. We’ve had more experience putting them back together.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t encouraged. Eventually, I was allowed to approach the harness.

  Then, much later, I was allowed to put it on.

  The sleeves were tight under my armpits. It was too small, just like she’d said. I had them adjusted out as far as they would go, but they were still going to chafe in combat, if there was any. I could just tell.

  But there was nothing they could do about that, as there was only one of these long-range, deep-dive rigs in existence. They really hadn’t built it with someone of my size in mind.

  Graves gave me the final briefing as I prepared to launch.

  “McGill,” he said, “I don’t know how you convinced the brass to send you off on a one-way suicide mission to an unknown location—but you did it, and now you’re going to have to pay the piper.”

  “That’s how I figure it, sir.”

  “We’ve got you covered in suit cameras. There is nothing extraneous on this kit but recording devices. Other than that, you’ve got the teleport module and a huge battery for the flight back.”

  “So this isn’t a one-way system? Like the caster?” He frowned.

  “Don’t talk about that. Not even here.”

  “Sorry sir.”

  “Anyway, the answer to your question is: no. This is a specialized rig that’s meant to bring the subject back home again. Now, if for some reason you don’t come back… well, I can’t promise you a revive.”

  “Permadeath is always on the menu, sir. What about weapons and other gear?”

  Graves shook his head. “Not needed. Unnecessary weight might overload the rig and cause it to fail on the way out—or the way back.”

  Nodding, I put my rifle on the deck. Graves nodded in approval.

  “You’ve got a good attitude today. That’s a nice way for any legionnaire to go out. Luck.”

  He walked away, and I watched him go with some concern. Thoughtfully, I grabbed a hand-beamer and stuffed it into my suit when the techs were busy looking at their readouts. No one tried to stop me, which was best for everyone involved.

  Many sets of eyes stared at me when the big generators began to rev up for the launch. Only one set of eyes looked like they actually cared about the monkey in the funny suit—those of Galina Turov.

  The rest of the techs and officers were cold. Some seemed curious, mind you. Others were obviously stressed about my size and the limits of their equipment. But none of them gave two shits for me personally. I was a lab rat to them, the kind that scientists liked to shock to death just to see what the process looked like.

  Mentally, I shrugged. This was a situation I’d faced before.

  After a few more dull minutes, they were ready to launch. The chamber began to glimmer, then glow blue. The blue grew in intensity, and the light throbbed faster. Soon, the whole chamber was lit up in rhythmic flashes.

  All this did seem to me to be a bigger deal than usual. The lights were brighter, the thrumming sound was hitting louder notes. The flashes, as they reached their crescendo, transformed into a gleaming white.

  Blinded, I squinched my eyes and gritted my teeth. At last, with a sickening lurch, I was launched out into the unknown.

  The trip was… well… torture. Essentially, it felt like I was in an airless void—which technically I was—but I still wanted to breathe. The problem with that desire was I didn’t have any lungs. I was a ghost, really. A mass of transmitted particles.

  The sensation was similar to that of drowning, but without the relief of unconsciousness and death. It went on and on. This trip had to be my longest ever. I’m sure it was a solid twenty minutes or more. A personal record in perceived time for one of these journeys into nothingness.

  When I phased back into existence at last, I groaned and gasped the canned air inside my oversized helmet. Doubling over, I almost vomited.

  Working hard to get control of myself, I tipped up my head to look around. It wouldn’t do to be skewered by some hostile creature or robot the minute I got to my destination.

  The scene that met my eyes took my breath away again—in an entirely new fashion.

  It appeared to me that I was on the dark side of some moon or asteroid. Overhead, the stars gleamed with fantastic brilliance. The ground around me was as black as coal. It was rugged, with an undulating surface.

  Forcing myself to stand straight, I fought to regain control of my stunned mind. The trip, the drowning—all of that was gone now. It had never really been real. I told myself that over and over as I calmed down.

  Slowly turning and panning with my suit cameras, I spoke aloud for the sake of the recording. “I seem to be inside a valley of some kind—or maybe it’s a crater. There’s no sun in sight, but it might be night here. The astronavigational unit is saying the coordinates are right—good job at hitting the target, techies.”

  Taking my first steps, I walked over the ashy, crunchy ground.

  “The gravity is low, and looking down at the deck, it seems there was a huge blast here. It’s all charred and covered in soot.”

  My heavy boots plowed up a glittering storm of ash. The ash was laced with glass and crystallized metals. I supposed that this was debris from some kind of terrific explosion.

  Looking up again at the craggy peaks encircling me, I frowned. I was definitely in a bowl-shaped region of some kind. Maybe I was standing at the bottom of a crater, or in the caldera of a volcano.

  Walking around, I examined the burnt, slagged ground. There wasn’t much that was recognizable. I didn’t see any blackened trees or boulders. The world seemed lifeless, but that wasn’t too surprising.

  So far, I was pretty disappointed. I could have explored any of a dozen crispy planetoids like this one with equal disdain.

  “No sign of any cool technology,” I said. “Nothing worth anything at all. In fact, I—” Suddenly, I halted. My words and my feet froze in place.

  Something was here. Something had gleamed. An artificial light of some kind. It was red—flashing red.

  Using the bright beams of my suit, I turned the full glare of my headlights in the direction of the red gleam. Whatever it was, I hoped it wasn’t too dangerous. Graves hadn’t seen fit to arm me properly for this trip. I drew the beamer I’d secreted in my suit and advanced.

  Six steps through the dust found me standing over a shape buried in the ash. It was a human shape—the shape of a body fallen in the ash.

  Stooping down, I gently touched, then rolled over the body. It was a woman, in a spacesuit. She was frozen solid. The red gleam I’d seen was from her tapper, which had gone into emergency low-power mode.

  Looking through the faceplate, I saw there was no doubt of who I’d found—Abigail Claver.

  For a second time, I’d found Abigail dead in a hellacious spot. She’d given me these coordinates originally. Had she meant to meet me here, but somehow died before I’d arrived?

  I looked around with new concern. The melted structures and the spiked peaks in the distance—they all seemed even more threatening than they had before. Could there be something still alive here—something that had killed Abigail?

  I took a moment to examine her. It was difficult given her half-buried state, but I brushed away the ash as best I could. Touching my tapper to hers, I was able to download her latest mind and body scans—at least she might be revivable if I could get anyone to do it for me.

  I examined the dark rip in her suit. Something had torn a series of three gouges in her belly. She’d been disemboweled, and she was obviously long dead.

  That was enough for me. I stood up and reached for my tapper. I activated my launch sequence. My suit began to glimmer and strobe, lighting up the vast crater I was in like flashes of blue lightning.

  That must have made something decide to act.

  A thing came at me. It had been hiding in the debris, behind the craggy spikes and melted humps in the landscape.

  A hulking, panther-like shape approached. It was a creature out of nightmare.

  I knew in an instant what it was. It didn’t really have a name, but it was powered by muscle and machine alike. Inside its bulk, an artificial brain drove its living body.

  I’d met up with this kind of thing before. The Skay had such mixed beasts of metal and flesh living inside them. They were chockfull of odd, deadly monsters.

  How had it survived out here in hard vacuum? I had no idea, but it had been built for the task. I could see it was sheathed in black, shiny, segmented armor.

  Because we were in vacuum, the monster’s rush was silent, but it wasn’t any less terrifying for all that. The blue wavering of my teleport rig grew, and I realized I was going to blink out soon.

  I almost escaped cleanly, but I changed my mind at the last instant and killed the countdown. A final glance down at Abigail’s sad form had made me change my plans. I didn’t like the idea of this monster winning so utterly. Was I going to allow it to kill a girl, then chase off the soldier who’d come out to find her? Was I really going to run off like a hen in a rainstorm?

  I switched off the pulsing light, drew my beamer, and braced for its charge.

  -7-

  The creature hit me like a freight train. I was bowled over, rolling and kicking up plumes of that floating ash that covered everything on this nasty world.

  While I was down on my back, I managed to get my boots up against its chest. The low gravity helped a lot, because its weight didn’t matter much. Kicking up and out, I fired the monster off me and watched it go spinning into the night.

  Getting up, I found my suit was blinking and complaining. I was losing air. The creature had managed to claw through my suit and into my flesh. I had a half-dozen gouges on my legs.

  Clearly, this was how it had killed Abigail. There was no time to worry about that now, however. The critter was falling back to the surface, and it landed a dozen meters away. Scrambling up, it charged at me again. Although I shouldn’t attribute emotions to a machine-minded creature, it seemed kind of pissed off at me.

  My hand-beamer was out, and I gave it a few shots. This had no appreciable effect, so I drew my combat knife. Graves hadn’t said anything about not bringing a knife.

  Sidestepping its charge, I struck for the back of the neck. The thrust would have killed a normal animal—but this was no natural beast. It tried to whirl around on me, but I came after it and wrapped my gorilla arms around its body. I was essentially riding on its back while its claws flashed and gouged.

  Sparks flew from the metal surface of the world and the debris all around us. More black, glittering dust swirled up. The grit was like volcanic sand.

  Half-falling, half-rolling, I took the creature down. I was on my back again, I’d gotten leverage on it. The thing’s claws scrabbled and flashed at the sky. I was doing more than holding a tiger by the tail—I was bear-hugging it from behind. This was the sort of tactic that personal combat vets taught legionnaires about dealing with low-gravity environments.

  Unfortunately, my advantage wasn’t going to last long. Already, the ferocious bucking body had starred my faceplate. It would never stop struggling, and I couldn’t hold onto it forever. The body and throat were too heavily armored to squeeze the thing’s life away—so I knew I had to take a chance.

  Letting go, I grabbed my knife and thrust. Having been in close contact, I knew how those glossy armor plates moved and shifted. I managed to slide my blade between two plates over the neck, and my knife bit deeply.

  The handle was ripped from my hand as the thing scrambled up to its four feet again.

  Damnation, I hadn’t even slowed it down. I only barely had time to get onto my feet when it came at me again.

  A big mouth opened. There were teeth, sort of, in that metal jaw. The thing had been designed in the shape of a saber tooth cat, if I had to put a description on it. Bulky shoulders, four huge paws, and a mouth with metal fangs.

  Having only one thing left in my hands, I thrust my hand-beamer into that maw, holding down the trigger.

  This had a mild effect. It backed up and shook its head-section. Maybe some part of its flesh had been damaged inside, and it knew enough to retreat for a second.

  The gun in its mouth was crushed. Little bits of metal and plastic fell from those jaws.

  If my hand had gone in there, I would have lost it for sure.

  I didn’t remain idle during this momentary pause, however. I sprang forward, got both hands on the knife that was still sticking out of its neck, still lodged between two armor plates, and I levered the blade down. A full quarter-turn later, the head was partly severed.

  Grinning and puffing, I backed up. The monster was in trouble now. Its head was hanging at an odd angle, and a freezing, steaming vapor went everywhere. Black droplets that must have served it for blood, or oil—or both—turned into shining black beads in the vacuum of space. They sparkled as they flew away from the stricken creature.