I got it. He was telling me I’d lost control of my girl.

  “I could prove in court she’s under age… I think.”

  Etta wasn’t saying anything. She just listened, arms crossed, and she rolled her eyes at me whenever I spoke. I didn’t like the feeling of confidence she was exhibiting. She figured she had this, and it didn’t matter what I did to try to stop her. She was a smart girl—too smart by half—and she usually got her way in the end.

  But I was a man who was used to getting my way, too. I looked at her seriously.

  “No way are you joining Varus, girl. I’ll get you black-balled by the tribune—permanently.”

  “That would do it,” Winslade chimed in. “But I do hear the Iron Eagles are offering a bonus today as well.”

  “I want to join Varus, not the Eagles or anyone else. Dad! You can’t get me blackballed. I’m your own daughter!”

  “Just watch me, girl. Sign whatever you want to—but you’re not joining Varus.”

  That was it for me. While she fumed, I turned around and walked off. I headed for the sky-train station.

  Before I got there, I heard small, rapid footsteps behind me.

  I felt a jab in the kidney.

  Reaching back automatically, I grabbed her wrist, but I managed to ease off so I didn’t break it. She hadn’t stabbed me, after all, she’d just punched me in a rage.

  That was my fault, I guess. Partly her mother Della’s fault, too. Etta was still only half-civilized. She’d grown up for her first ten years or so on Dust World. That was a wild desert planet. A colony that Earth governed—but only in theory.

  People gawked at us as they passed to board the trains, but I ignored them. They kept moving after a few angry glances from both of us.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her. “Why do you want to go through a meat-grinder so badly, girl?”

  “It was good enough for you and mom. Why not me?”

  “Because… you don’t understand. It’s a terrible thing.”

  “I want to see the stars, daddy,” she said, rubbing at her wrist. “I’m from the stars. I don’t belong on Earth—not really.”

  Sighing, I shook my head. I was up against a powerful attraction.

  The legions advertised constantly. They knew what sites kids visited on the grid. They knew what was trending and what wasn’t—and they knew how to appeal to the disaffected, the lonely, the desperate.

  Recruiting was an ancient art, as old as the first Roman frescos depicting glory. They’d painted them on the stone walls of places like their coliseum and their military barracks, a few thousand years back.

  “It’s not a good life,” I told her. “I want better for you.”

  “If it’s so painful, then why do you keep reupping your contract?” she asked. “You could retire any time now and draw a pension.”

  She had me there. She was right. I could have left the service—but it had become my way of life.

  “Look,” I told her. “It’s in my blood now. I’m a legionnaire by trade. I’ve never known anything else. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. I don’t want it to be like that.”

  Instantly, her mood shifted again from pleading to rage. That was the way with her and her mama, too. They had grimly fast tempers.

  “I’m going to decide my own life’s path! Not you!”

  She stalked away from me then, back into the Hall.

  I watched her go, and I thought about going after her—but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’d stopped her from joining Varus for now, and that would have to be enough. Talking to her further, after I’d won the day—that would only piss her off more.

  So I let her go, and I felt a pang in my heart as she vanished into the crowds.

  Damn it.

  Sometimes, parenting sucked.

  -9-

  I got news that Floramel had been revived the next day—but I never got to see her, because we’d gotten the order to ship out.

  We exchanged texts and a few pics on my tapper. We wished each other well, and I got something close to a promise of a fine date when I got back. Apparently, someone had told her I’d worked hard to get her revived.

  That same night, Legion Varus filed aboard the lifters. We roared up into orbit to meet Nostrum, our legion’s transport.

  The nice texts from Floramel made me smile, but I was too distracted to enjoy it or even to flirt properly. While we were in flight, I kept scanning the recruitment logs. I brought up the picture of every new recruit we’d signed up over the last twenty-four hours.

  Etta was a hacker, so the names didn’t matter. But the Hall took headshots of every candidate, set to spin in 3-D. It would be hard to fake that.

  Etta wasn’t there, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d dodged a bullet—but for how long?

  “Checking out the fresh fish, huh, McGill?” Harris boomed next to me.

  I glanced at him, and he shook his head, tsking.

  “Shameful,” he said. “It’s a shameful thing when an officer is scanning for a date among the rawest of the recruits.”

  Glancing back at my tapper, I cleared the screen. I had been looking only at females, and only at the fresh sign-ups. I didn’t feel like explaining myself to Harris, so I ignored him.

  That was hard to do, as he wasn’t done poking at me yet. He’d been in an insufferably cheerful mood ever since I’d been busted down to adjunct again. He didn’t have to call me sir anymore, and he very much appreciated that twist of fate.

  “Did you hear there were two arrests?” he said, changing the topic. “For treason, I mean.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Both were adjuncts. One was Henderson, that puke-sniffer over in the sixth.”

  I knew him, but only vaguely. He’d never seemed like an impressive officer.

  “But the other…” Harris said, and he began to grin again. “The other struck very close to home.”

  “Who?”

  “Adjunct Toro. Our own beloved she-monster from the third. Can you believe that?”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “Espionage. Sedition—whatever. She’s gone. She’s not on the lifter—didn’t you notice?”

  I looked around, and I finally realized there was only Harris, Leeson and myself. Winslade was glumly playing centurion at the end of the line of jump-seats.

  “Holy shit…” I whispered. “Drusus really did it? I thought he said if anyone squealed all of us were going to be permed.”

  “Yeah… maybe that was just him, bluffing. Putting a scare into us. But they’ve been watching—our tappers scan us constantly, you know.”

  I nodded. I knew that. I’d learned all about it the hard way, long ago.

  “So,” Harris continued, “I figure they did sweeps until they found out who leaked what, and then they arrested them this morning.”

  “Right…” I said, chewing that over.

  Central was taking the secrecy of this mission very seriously. Maybe they wouldn’t really execute us all for a breach—but they meant business.

  “Do you think they’re going to get permed?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Harris mused. “Hard to say. At the very least, they’re being ‘debriefed’ by the hogs under Central.”

  “I’ve been down there, in the brig,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

  Harris chuckled and shook his head. “Maybe not to you—but they may not be in the brig. Central has some floors people don’t normally venture into. In the upper basement, floors minus one to minus twenty, they have police barracks and an extensive prison section. Everybody knows about that. But lower down, around floor minus one hundred—that’s a dungeon.”

  I nodded, having heard such things before.

  “We’ve been down lower,” I said, “in the bunkers and the research chambers. All the way down to minus five hundred, about.”

  “Right, but did you ever notice that zone between minus one hundred to about minus two hundred? The elevators always skip right past them. That’s where the political types are… um… handled.”

  Thinking about that, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. I didn’t like torture. I’d been at the receiving end more times than I knew about. In many cases, it had happened to McGills who hadn’t lived to see the morning. But I could remember enough to know I didn’t like it.

  My mind fell back to Etta. To me, this all seemed like one more big fat reason I didn’t want to see my daughter join this outfit. Snakes like Winslade, Turov and a dozen others—who knew what kind of crap they might pull on my little girl?

  As worldly, smart and mean as Etta was, she didn’t know half as much as she thought she did about the universe yet—not by a long shot.

  When I got the chance, I resolved myself to bring up the topic to Turov about permanently banning her from Varus. We’d shipped out so fast, I hadn’t had time to approach her. Now that we were engaged in a mission, and I was a low-tier officer again, my access would be further reduced. I’d have to bide my time.

  The last stage of the lifter trip was routine. When our lifter docked, the officers hustled aboard Nostrum and moved quickly through the internal passages to the last docking bay in the line.

  Officers who had holes in their rosters had been invited to watch how the new kids dealt with the first training “scenario”.

  People were crowding the windows to watch. You would have thought it was the Hegemony Championships.

  The brass had seen to it that all the raw recruits were packed into that last lifter, and they were kept in null-G. The regulars and noncoms who had come up with them scuttled off, leaving the kids behind, locked in their seats.

  We watched through darkened portholes, crowding around. Harris laughed and hooted when they began to pump the air out.

  “Now they know they’re in trouble! Look, the first one broke loose! Dibs on that girl!”

  “Wait your turn,” Winslade said. “McGill has been assigned to the noob platoon this time. He has priority in picking new splats for this campaign.”

  Harris grumbled.

  I didn’t even watch. I couldn’t enjoy watching people suffocate and panic—not today. I couldn’t help but think of Etta in there, dying and freaking out. Thinking she’d been permed on the first day of her new job.

  “Oooo,” Harris whooped, “that frigger in the back, he’s got spunk! Look at him go! Look, McGill!”

  I didn’t bother to look up. I kept working my tapper.

  “Hmm…” Winslade said. “I think I know that recruit. Cooper, isn’t it? McGill has a special relationship with that young man.”

  Cooper…?

  Sparked into action, I crowded up to the porthole and stared.

  Cooper was vicious. He’d clawed his way out of the restraints, slipping them off somehow. Behind him trailed a floating series of blood drops. He was injured, but he didn’t seem to care.

  The other recruits were mere props to him as he fought to pass them by. Eyes were gouged, people were shoved aside.

  He wasn’t a big man. He was fit and fast, but with a more or less average build.

  What he lacked in bulk he more than made up for in savagery. He’d gotten hold of a writing stylus, and anyone who got in his way he stabbed without compunction.

  In the final moments, as recruits were choking out, convulsing, and dying all over the lifter, Cooper made it to the exit.

  He laid strong hands on the wheel, and he tried to turn it—but he had no leverage.

  The point of the exercise, besides putting the fear of Varus into their hearts, was to get the troops to work together. Now and then, a resourceful group operated as a team and escaped. With two men holding another trooper’s legs, one could spin the wheel pretty easily. But with nothing to push against in null-G, they were doomed.

  Cooper had long since driven off any such allies he might have used now. He got to the porthole, and he met a grim stare from me.

  After a few seconds of struggling with the wheel, he realized he couldn’t open it.

  Harris and Winslade watched with me, but it was my big face in the glass. That’s what Cooper saw.

  Maybe he recognized me in those final moments. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say.

  In any case, he showed me his teeth in a feral snarl, and he flipped me the bird.

  Cooper died with his middle finger up, and Harris whistled long and low.

  “I’ll be damned! What an animal!”

  “I’ll take him,” I said. “I want that boy.”

  “Really?” Harris asked. “Well, you can have him. He’s an asshole. I’m telling you right now, he’ll be trouble every day and every night. I thought for sure you’d take one of those ladies back there with the polished nails and fluffy hair who never even got out of their seats.”

  “Nope,” I said. “I choose Cooper.”

  “So noted,” Winslade said in a bored voice, marking down the draft pick on his tablet.

  “Why Cooper?” Harris asked me, honestly curious.

  I glanced at him. “Because that man belongs in Legion Varus. He’s a killer. I can work with that.”

  Harris made a pffing sound. “Well, good luck.”

  -10-

  After the recruiting drive was over, I met with my platoon—and I was in for a surprise.

  Winslade gathered us all up in our assigned module. He looked even more sour-faced than usual. I suspected he’d become accustomed to flying desks up on Gold Deck, and this business of slumming with actual troops rubbed him wrong.

  In my book, that was just too damned bad.

  “We’ve got an announcement from Turov coming in at the top of the hour. Please remain quiet and respectful during her speech.”

  Harris raised his hand first. I’d wanted to do the same, but I was glad he’d beaten me to it.

  Harris jabbed a thumb in my direction, then his own. “Uh… sir? These ranks are thin. I know I recruited a few, but there aren’t enough to—”

  “That’s what the announcement is about. We’ve got more reinforcements coming up in two special lifters. Your ranks will be filled with recruits—I doubt they will be to your liking, however.”

  Harris and I exchanged confused glances. We had no idea what he was talking about, but we were each about a squad short by my count.

  Our unit was a mixed one to begin with. Our normal order of battle was to have one platoon of heavy troops in battle armor, a platoon of lights with snap-rifles, and another made up of specialists and heavy-weapons teams.

  Since Toro had been arrested, I wasn’t sure how Winslade was going to deal out the reinforcements.

  Turov’s big face finally flickered into life on the main screen.

  “Legionnaires,” she said. “I’ve got a treat for you all. A surprise! An opportunity to prove once again that Legion Varus is the ground-breaking test case for everyone else in Earth’s military.”

  The camera was tight on her face up until this moment, and she looked pretty good.

  “So,” Harris whispered to me, “word is that you managed to tap that just last week? Was it worth losing rank?”

  He was so happy, I found him irritating. Accordingly, I smiled and nodded.

  “It was totally worth it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

  Harris stared at me for a long second, and I held firm to my boast, looking one hundred percent certain. I stared up at the giant image of Galina Turov like I was basking in the glory of a goddess.

  At last, Harris decided I was messing with him, and he made a rude noise.

  The camera was panning back now, showing us what was around Turov. We gasped in shock.

  Rows of troops stood arrayed around her. But they weren’t human troops—not exactly.

  There was a mix of aliens present. Heavy troops from Blood World made up about half. Then there were some others. A few towering idiot-faced giants, a tall skinny slaver or two, and even a saurian raptor.

  But what caught my eye and made me really gasp was an oddly-shaped bulky figure in dark fabric. I knew that hunched body, that fat core, the eight dangling limbs…

  “A squid!?” I shouted aloud, overcome with emotion.

  Winslade instantly frowned at me and waved a shushing hand.

  My mouth gaped. It was an honest-to-God Cephalopod!

  That was hard to take. Sure, I’d fought to the death with all of these aliens and near-humans—but a squid? That was a bridge too far in my book.

  “I’m not serving with any damned squids…” I muttered.

  “Shut up, McGill. Our squid will be joining Harris and his platoon of heavy troops. You won’t have to deal with him.”

  “Say, what?” Harris snapped.

  Slack-jawed, I kept staring.

  Turov was talking again, but it took me a few moments to tune back in and comprehend what she was saying.

  “…this grand experiment is broader in nature than would be the norm. We’re studying how an integrated legion can fight with approximately thirty percent of the troops being—ah—foreign-born. I know that you will welcome these newcomers and—”

  “Frigging squids?!” I burst out again suddenly. “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

  “Shut up, McGill!” Winslade barked. “That’s an order! We have to have one squid in each unit.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “To manage the Blood Worlders. They’re conditioned to listen to Cephalopods.”

  “Why do we have to have any Blood-Worlders at all?” Harris asked.

  “Because,” Winslade said between clenched teeth, “we just conquered an entire planet-load of them. How did you think we were going to deploy them? We need to understand them, and they need to understand us. What’s so hard to grasp about that?”

  Dumbfounded, we turned back to watch Turov again.

  She began doing some kind of dog-and-pony show with the aliens. She had them lift big objects, while they smiled with crooked teeth at the camera. I guess she was trying to show how strong and friendly these monsters really were—but I wasn’t buying it.

  Not for a second.

  “I don’t like squids…” I muttered.