She looked back at him in a dismissive manner. “You’re not a centurion any longer yourself, Graves.”

  Graves blinked, and he nodded. He looked at me. “Perhaps McGill can conduct—”

  “No way,” she said. “If we leave it to him there will be a paternity lawsuit for Hegemony to worry about.”

  Graves chuckled. “Right… Who then?”

  Another figure stepped onto the scene. He always seemed to be lurking around Central somewhere these days.

  “It’s been decided, you might as well all leave,” Winslade announced. “I’ll be performing the honors personally.” He looked and sounded insufferably proud of himself. That wasn’t anything unusual for Winslade. He was easily impressed by his own shenanigans.

  “Says who?” Turov demanded.

  Winslade smirked and showed her the red print on his arm.

  “Wurtenburger?” she demanded. “Again you pull strings with the euros? What do you have over that old, fat—”

  “Careful, careful,” Winslade said. “There are recording devices everywhere.”

  “Drusus must approve this,” Turov insisted. “He’s in charge here. Wurtenburger is supposed to stay in Geneva where he belongs.”

  Winslade shrugged. “Who knows what our beloved members of the General Staff are thinking? The simple fact is that Wurtenberger is senior to Drusus, and therefore—”

  “And therefore,” Graves interrupted, “you’ve somehow gotten him to pull that thin veneer of authority over Drusus twice in one day. From a distance, no less. This planet needs a consul to pull the hierarchy together.”

  Winslade and Turov both looked startled. “A consul?” Winslade asked. “That rank is theoretical.”

  Graves shook his head. “No it isn’t. Back in the Unification Wars, Hegemony was run by a consul. Many think that’s why our side won.”

  The rest of us gave each other alarmed glances. Now and then, Graves gave hints as to his real age. I knew that he’d joined Legion Varus when it had first been formed—but could he be even older than that? Could he have fought to unify Earth? Damn, that was over a century ago…

  “I guess it doesn’t matter how the order was given,” Graves said. “Winslade is in charge. Call me if you need me.”

  He left, and Turov dithered for a time before she left too. She gave me a jerk of the head, suggesting I should follow, but I lingered behind.

  “Winslade,” I said, “dealing with Abigail isn’t like talking to a normal woman.”

  He snorted. “Indeed? I guess you would know about that, wouldn’t you? Thanks for the advice, but your services will not be needed here tonight. Please leave.”

  He turned on his heel, was admitted through the cage-like doors, and disappeared. In the meantime, I was left standing in the grungy lobby area.

  With a sigh, I walked out. I’d done my best to learn about this “interrogation” to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, but I’d failed.

  When I got to the elevator lobby, I stopped. There was another person walking the other way, toward the brig. I recognized her immediately.

  “Centurion Leeza?” I demanded loudly. “As I live and breathe, what a surprise!”

  She looked startled as well. She glanced around furtively for a moment before stopping to talk to me.

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk long, I’ve been summoned to—”

  “You’re a hog?” I asked, all but shouting. I’d just noticed the globe on her sleeve.

  Leeza was a hard-bitten woman, a tough fighter who’d originally served in Legion Germanica with the likes of Armel and Claver. Now, she had the blue-green emblem of Hegemony on her sleeve.

  “Please don’t gloat,” she said. “There’s no need.”

  “Uh…” I said, chewing that over. “Gloat? What would I have to be proud of?”

  “Very little in my opinion, but it’s well known that you were instrumental in my removal from interstellar duty and placement here at Central.”

  “Well known, huh? Who told you that?”

  “Winslade. He’s been conducting an extensive investigation into the matter.”

  “Is that so? And now he’s got you going in there to talk to Abigail?”

  She blinked. “Who’s Abigail?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll find out soon enough. Just tell Winslade that I know the real reason you and he got shuffled. He’s not going to get anything out of this prisoner about that. I doubt she even knows you two exist.”

  Leeza narrowed her eyes at me. She had a pinched face naturally, and when she pinched it up further… well, it wasn’t a good look for an otherwise handsome woman.

  “You know…? You know what happened to me?”

  About then, I realized I’d just let the cat out of the bag. I’d managed to act like a country bumpkin with Winslade, but Leeza and all her haughty behavior had gotten it out of me.

  “Perhaps I misspoke,” I said.

  “Perhaps you did. We’ll talk about this later, McGill. I really do have to go.”

  I watched as she walked away. She didn’t have the kind of curves I usually went for, being too skinny by half, but she did have a graceful step that I could appreciate.

  Riding the elevators down to the street level, I tried to get Galina to take a call on her tapper. She wouldn’t do it. I was temporarily blocked, in fact.

  Shrugging, I decided to hit some bar and grill-type places on the strip in the city. There were a lot of new establishments these days after the Skay bombing. Most of them had never even poured me a beer.

  By the time I reached the first one and had ordered my first mug, my tapper was buzzing. It was Winslade.

  I took a long gulp, sighed, and opened the channel.

  “McGill? Get back here to Central at once!”

  “What seems to be the trouble, Centurion?”

  I was reminding him that he’d been reduced in rank. He no longer had direct authority over me, as he had our entire professional careers up until now.

  His face twisted up. “You told me you knew nothing about my circumstances!” he said in a hissy voice. I got the feeling he was trying not to be overheard by someone.

  “How’s the interrogation going?” I asked in conversational tone. “Not even going to deny it, eh? All right then. All right.”

  He closed the channel, and I had a good chuckle. But then, I started to worry. He’d been flexing some political muscles lately, and he might just be planning to flex them against me.

  Getting off the barstool, I guzzled the rest of my beer, paid and left.

  -13-

  When I got down to the detention level, I knew right off something was wrong.

  The first hint was the lighting. Most of the glowing ceiling panels were dark. That was weird, because Central had its own fusion generator, and the lights were pretty much always on.

  The second thing I noticed was the lack of any guards at the entrance to the detention area. Instead, I found the cage-like door hanging open. On alert, I stalked forward from the elevator lobby to the check-in point. Normally, there would have been a guard here overseeing my admittance, and various scanners would have cleared me for entry.

  None of that was happening tonight. Instead, I found the door ajar. I swung it open farther, and discovered what was blocking it—keeping it from closing.

  A dead hog lay at my feet. He was a fatty, like most of them, and his fallen body had kept the cage door from closing.

  The guard’s chest had been blown open by a close-range blast. I’d seen such injuries before. The look of utter shock on the dead man’s face, coupled with the fact his gun was still in its holster suggested it had been a surprise attack.

  I took his gun, as the guards had relieved me of mine back at the lobby. I lifted my tapper to my lips and sent a voice message to emergency services.

  “Trouble in Detention D,” I said quietly into my tapper. “You’ve got a guard down, power failure, and an open cage door.”

  No one responded. I glanced down at my tapper, tearing my eyes away from the scene, to see that I had no signal.

  Now that was truly strange. If there was one thing that could be counted on in Central, it was a direct line to the grid. You were always online at Central.

  “Shit-fire…” I whispered, staring at my tapper.

  I’m not a total moron. I knew I should turn right around and get help—but I didn’t want to. I didn’t like the idea of allowing someone to break in and do as they pleased down here. Whoever it was, they were probably here to either free or kill Abigail. She was the star prisoner. If I took the time to ride the elevator and get help, I might learn later that I could have helped if I’d moved in right away.

  First responders in Legion Varus were taught to attack. To engage. Not to play it safe. Not to allow the enemy more time. Hell, if everything went tits-up, they’d just print out a new James McGill.

  Accordingly, I hesitated for less than a second before I shouldered the door open. I stepped over the cooling corpse on the floor and walked inside the detention area.

  With the guard’s pistol in both hands, I moved down the corridor quietly. I didn’t call out to see who was around, or who might need help. I stalked the place, looking for trouble.

  It didn’t take me long to find it. Two small men walked into the passage way ahead of me. They dragged a third man, who was slumped in their arms like a ragdoll between them.

  I thought I knew who the ragdoll was. A second glance confirmed it—yes, it was Winslade. He had a distinctive shape to his wiry body, even when he was limp.

  There was no better time to start things, so I popped two shots into each of these little guys. They were headshots, all four, and at least one landed on each. The closer of the two pitched forward and sprawled on the deck. The other went to his knees, clawing at his hip for a gun—then lost consciousness and went down.

  I rushed forward, and that’s when I recognized the dead men. They were Rigellian bears. I hadn’t realized it at first, but I should have. The fuzzy head, perky round ears and nasty-looking teeth.

  These humanoids weren’t twins to earthly bears, mind you, they were more like little trolls out of legend. For one thing, their fur wasn’t even in length or nature. Instead of a lush coat, they sprouted furry tufts of nasty hair in many spots.

  The fabric was familiar, as it appeared to be their standard body armor, the stuff we couldn’t reproduce. Fortunately, they’d had the hood thrown open, either to breathe or see better. My shots wouldn’t have penetrated otherwise. The suits they wore were shiny black, one-piece affairs. Apparently, they could be worn while teleporting. I didn’t know how else these guys could have gotten here.

  A bolt of real worry hit me as I grabbed at one of their guns—but dropped it. The thing was a smart-gun, attuned to the biometrics of the enemy. It wasn’t going to work for me. Worse, any other bears that had heard me shooting would have their hoods up. I couldn’t face them with a pistol then.

  Winslade was squirming. He’d been abused, but he wasn’t dead yet.

  “Shut up and play dead,” I told him, and I rushed into the room the bears had come from.

  To my surprise, I found Abigail there, dressing in a suit that looked a lot like a bigger version of what the bears had been wearing.

  “Uh…” I said, watching her pull the black suit over her bare flesh. “Underwear too tight?”

  She looked up in surprise. “I thought—I thought it was more of them!”

  She shuddered, pointing at the dead bears. While she did this, she kept pulling on her suit and strapping in.

  I aimed my pistol at her. “Freeze, Abigail.”

  She knew by the tone of my voice that I meant it. She stopped moving, and she let her hands relax. Her clothes dropped away, and this revealed some shapely curves. I made an effort not to get distracted.

  “These bears came to break you out, didn’t they?” I asked.

  “Your officials were going to torture me, James. They really were. I had to call for help.”

  I nodded, but I had no idea how she could have gotten a message out to Rigel, much less how they’d teleported into our most critical facility.

  “I believe that,” I said, leveling my gun at her. “But I can’t just let you pop out of here scot free. You owe me some answers. I went out to that rock you gave me coordinates for.”

  “The dead Skay?”

  “Right. I found you dead out there, and I brought your data back and arranged a revive.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said, starting to pull her suit up a little.

  I shook my head and twitched my gun. She stopped trying to dress herself. I knew these suits. If they had a charge, they could teleport her out. I also knew they were bulletproof. If she got completely dressed, I’d have to shoot her in the face to stop her.

  “I need to go, James,” she said. “I really do. Either shoot me now, or let me port out.”

  “Shoot you?”

  “Yes. Did you really think this was the only copy of me around? I need to escape somehow, and death is one of those ways.”

  I thought about recent rumblings I’d heard about torturing people to find out what they knew, and not even letting the original subject hear about it. Even a Mogwa could be copied, tormented, and recycled while the “real” version sat home on Trantor. It was a grim practice, but Central wasn’t above it. In fact, it had happened to me before.

  I lowered my gun. “Tell me a few things, then you can go anyway you want.”

  “Like what?”

  “These suits. Where do they come from? Who makes them?”

  Abigail bared her teeth. She clearly didn’t want to answer. “There’s a planet… A place where long ago a neutron star blew up and laced it with collapsed matter. Some of the physics there… it helps with the manufacture of gear like this.”

  She rubbed at the suit she wore, then she tugged at it. “Can I at least cover my boobs? Or haven’t you gotten to stare long enough?”

  I realized with a flush that I’d been staring at her. “Uh… okay.”

  She pulled the suit up some, but she didn’t zip it. A bare stripe of skin was still visible, running from her face down to her belly button.

  “What are the coordinates of this world?” I said. “Do they make the suits there, or just ship the materials—?”

  Abigail walked toward me smoothly. “I can’t give you any more details.”

  There was a sound out in the passages. Someone shouted. The hogs were coming.

  Abigail grabbed my gun, and she pressed the muzzle up to her bare chest.

  I grinned. “Girl, there’s no way you’re ever going to get this gun out of my hand.”

  “I know,” she said, and she looked up at me with those big eyes. “Don’t let them make any more copies of me, James. Please?”

  “Uh…” I said, not sure where this was going.

  She couldn’t teleport out with her suit open, and my gun was pressed up against her heart. I wasn’t sure just what she was—

  Bang!

  The gun went off in my hand. She’d forced my finger to pull the trigger.

  Those pretty eyes glazed over, and she flopped down on her back, deader than yesterday.

  -14-

  A few moments later, a cavalry of hogs came in the door behind me. They found Winslade, the bears… and Abigail. They were all dead on the floor, even Winslade hadn’t survived the experience.

  Graves looked at me, then the stack of bodies.

  “McGill…” he said. “I almost don’t want to ask, but I have to.”

  “Well sir,” I said, waving my hands around. “This all was one big misunderstanding.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He turned to the hogs. “Arrest him. Question him. When you give up, call me.”

  The hogs looked baffled, but they followed orders. I left a few of them on the deck, but dispensed no permanent injuries. They took me into a neighboring cell and beat on me for about half an hour. At that point, they abruptly stopped.

  Now, I know hogs the way I know my own slice of swamp down home in Georgia.

  They all operate in pretty much the same manner. There was simply no way they’d gotten bored yet with trying to interrogate me.

  My neck was strapped down to a steel table. My arms were twisted up behind my back, almost to the point of dislocation, and tied that way. Still, I was able to roll my eyes way back up into my skull and get a glimpse of the doorway.

  Winslade stood there. He appeared to be indecisive, but I couldn’t see his expression from this angle. He was framed by the more brightly lit hallway.

  “Fresh from a revive, Centurion?” I asked in a cheery tone.

  “That’s right, McGill. Now, I’m faced with a dilemma.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I know you won’t tell them anything—at least nothing that you don’t want them to hear. Therefore, I could call a halt to it.”

  “Aw,” I said. “Giving boys like these unfortunates a workout is just another public service I provide from time to time.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. It must be deadly dull working down here in a dungeon like this.”

  The two hogs crossed their arms and nodded their heads.

  Winslade glanced at them and dismissed them by making a flicking motion with his fingers. “Take a break, gentlemen,” he said. “You look sweaty.”

  They walked out, and Winslade paced around me.

  “What should I do?” he asked. “You clearly broke in here to help—you killed both my kidnappers and even shot Abigail herself, preventing her escape.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “But at the same time, I can’t fail to recognize that you admitted to knowing why I was demoted—and that you haven’t yet told me the real reason.”

  He had me there. Suddenly, the situation was clear. Winslade had clout from high-level brass right now. He was using it to find out why the entirety of Earth’s military command structure seemed hell-bent on shitting on him.

  “Graves knows the truth too,” I said. “Why don’t you go ask him?” Winslade snorted. “I’d do better to question a carved block of stone.”