Ice World (Undying Mercenaries Book 16) Read online

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I… I got greedy. I was a kid back then… practically. Listen McGill, this isn’t about guilt or innocence or even dick-size. I need your help. Seriously.”

  Grunting, I sat back down. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  His piggish eyes lit up then. He knew he had me listening.

  Then, he began to explain.

  -3-

  Late Thursday night, I kicked Carlos out of my place. I told him he was four-star crazy and needed his brain regrown. I also told him I’d think about his predicament—our predicament.

  He left in good spirits, but I couldn’t help being bothered. Carlos knew me almost as well as I knew myself—maybe better, in some ways. His happy demeanor meant he thought he had me on the hook.

  I hoped he wasn’t right—but I suspected he might be. Was I really going to look into this investigation and fix it for him? Maybe I would... Damn.

  Bright and early the next morning, my tapper began buzzing. Blinking and bleary-eyed, I slapped at the damned thing to shut it off. A few moments later, it woke me up again, vibrating my arm and pissing me off.

  With a grunting roar, I came up to a sitting position and rubbed my eyes.

  There was a face on my tapper. A pretty one.

  “Galina? What the hell is this about? Is it even dawn yet?”

  “It’s ten-thirty your time.”

  “Really?”

  She looked even more disgusted. “Drinking again, I see? Are you alone, at least?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  She frowned at me and shook herself. “All right. I believe you. I’m calling to extend an invitation to you, James McGill.”

  Right off, my mind began firing off alarm bells. More than once Galina had reached out in just such a fashion when she was planning to have me arrested. She preferred to talk me into turning myself in, rather than sending goons to my shack. Trickery was much easier than dealing fairly with an ornery man such as myself.

  Today, I knew there was talk of an investigation in my honor, so I was extra wary. “Uh… an invitation to what, exactly?”

  “I want you to know that this is a very special opportunity. I’ve never invited anyone to my ancestral home before—never.”

  “Uh… what?”

  “Do I really have to spell it out?”

  “That would be for the best.”

  She sighed. “All right then. I’m talking about bringing you home—to my original home.”

  “What for?” I asked, yawning.

  “To meet my parents, of course. To meet my entire family.”

  That was a stunner. Sure, I’d asked her down to my place more than once over the years. She’d even eaten a few stacks of pancakes with my folks and let my dad play around with her aircar—but she’d never even talked about her own family. I’d kind of figured they were dead and gone, what with her being older than me and all.

  “You’ve got a family? Where are they?”

  “In Belarus.”

  “Belda what?”

  She showed me her pretty, white teeth—but it wasn’t a smile. “Belarus, James. It’s a lovely place in Eastern Europe.”

  “Seriously? What language do they speak out there?”

  “Standard, mostly. Some still speak Russian or Romanian, of course.”

  “Uh… Russian…? Oh yeah, I heard of that.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Well?”

  “What?”

  “Are you coming with me or not? We have to leave immediately.”

  All of a sudden her sweetness had evaporated. She sure was a nice-looking woman, but she had an awful temper to go with all those looks.

  I took a full second to consider the situation. I would have decided faster if I’d been fully awake. But as it was, I was still a little fuzzy in the head.

  The way I saw it, a trip home to meet the parents had to involve some painful meals, awkward silences, long travel times and general boredom. On the plus-side, a man who took the time to meet a girl’s parents… well sir, there couldn’t be a more certain way to ensure some intimacy would follow at some point or another.

  “Okay. I’m listening, and I’m inclined to go. I owe you after all, for all the times you’ve come down to visit my folks… but why are we going right now? I mean… isn’t this kind of sudden?”

  “There’s a wedding planned. I… I have to go, and I need a date. Are you in or not?”

  Damn if she wasn’t giving me the hard-sell. A more intelligent man would have felt alarmed. As it was, I wanted some coffee.

  “A wedding? Are you passing me off as a boyfriend? Seriously? You and I haven’t even had dinner together for months.”

  “Don’t panic. I didn’t say it was our wedding, James.”

  “Whose then?” I demanded.

  “My sister’s.”

  “You’ve got a sister?”

  “Apparently.”

  I stared at my arm for another long, dumbfounded second. “Do they know anything about me?”

  “Not really. But… they’ve heard of you. They might have even seen your picture a time or two…”

  Suddenly, I caught on. Galina was a free-spirited woman, but maybe her parents were still holding out a candle of hope she’d settle down and turn normal, just the way mine still did about me to this very day. To that end, maybe she’d flicked a few snaps of us over the grid to them now and then, just to give them something to chew on. I was a big, decent-looking guy, after all. They couldn’t tell from a picture that I was a card-carrying moron.

  “Do they even want to meet me?” I asked. “Do they know what they’re getting into?”

  “Not at all. But I’m willing to take the chance. Yes or no? The clock is ticking, James.”

  I hesitated. “What about that boy-toy of yours… Gary?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s a simp. He gets nothing from me, and he wouldn’t impress my relatives at all.”

  “But I would, huh?” The thought made me smile. “All right, Galina. I’m in.”

  “Good. Now, gather your things and come outside. I’m waiting in the swamp in my aircar, and I’m getting hot.”

  That was a shocker. “Why didn’t you just come and knock on my door like a normal person?”

  “One, because you might not have been alone. Two, because people who wake you up tend to die.”

  “Oh yeah… that’s true. All right, give me a second. Can I take a shower first?”

  “Not now. We’re tight for time. You can do it on the transport as we pass over the polar zone.”

  Groaning, I cut the feed and stood tall. I stretched, and my knuckles brushed my dingy ceiling.

  “Belarus...” I said out loud. “I wonder what that’s like?”

  A few minutes later I climbed into her aircar with a duffle full of mostly-dirty clothes. She wrinkled her nose at me.

  “You smell like beer and body odor.”

  “I told you I needed a shower.”

  She cranked one of the sliding side-windows open a crack, and the wind whistled into the aircar. We were flying low and fast, sailing over countless pines in a rush. They formed a green blur under the skids. Luckily, the autopilot kept us from hitting any of them.

  After a half-hour of skimming over the treetops in order to avoid getting a speeding ticket, we reached the spaceport at Atlanta. I followed her like a watchdog to the terminal, where a big pile of bags was already waiting.

  “You know, you could have called and given me more warning time.”

  “Yes, I know,” she admitted. “But I only just decided this morning I would attend. Things… well… things aren’t always perfectly smooth between my family and me.”

  “I hear that.”

  Soon, we boarded a trans-orbital flight. I was glad to see Galina pay the fare. She was being reasonable in that department at least.

  About an hour later I was snoring with my mouth open. She elbowed me in the ribs. “Go take your shower.”

  Grumbling, I did as she asked. The booth was a cramped one, being built for normal people, and the charge in credits was pretty high—but I did it. I was pretty sure stinky guys rarely got any action, even after a wedding reception.

  After another hour of pretending to listen to her while I played with my tapper, we landed someplace called Minsk. Taking a ground vehicle, we headed south, passing a town called Slutsk. I tried to pronounce it, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

  “Slut-ski?” I asked aloud. “That’s a funny name for a town.”

  “No, you idiot,” Galina practically spat at me. “It’s called Slutsk—and it’s a serious place. An important town in Belarus. There have been many wars fought over this ground.”

  “That’s another thing,” I said, “according to my tapper this whole area is called West Russia Sector. Are you calling the robot wrong?”

  She gave me a venomous stare. “That topic has killed millions of people over the centuries, McGill. You’d best drop it.”

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t much care anyway.

  We rode farther south until we reached another town… one with an even more interesting name.

  “Turov?” I demanded, pointing to a sign printed in standard. “Seriously? There’s a town named after your family?”

  Galina gave me a dismissive shrug, but I could tell she was pleased. “My family is important here.”

  “I guess!”

  Finally, in my slug-slow brain, certain facts were beginning to piece themselves together. For some time now, I’d been aware that Galina had a secret base of support in government. I’d always thought she’d been some kind of suck-up to people out here in Europe—but what if her mysterious benefactors were her actual family members?

  She’d gotten away with so
much horseshit over the years. Small attempts at revolution and outright treachery dotted her resume. She’d thrown in with the squids when they invaded Earth, for example. When the Skay had come to challenge the Mogwa, she’d wanted to switch sides and worship those heartless machines. It wasn’t that she was a surrender-monkey, not exactly. It was just that she’d always seemed to be swayed by revolutionary ideas just for their own sake.

  Now, none of that was super-unusual on my long-suffering Earth. Fools with big ideas came and went with great regularity over the years. But usually, when such a person made a big play and lost, they were shunned afterward.

  Galina, for whatever reason, had never paid that much of a price for her fickle nature. Right now, in fact, she had her imperator insignia back on her narrow shoulders. Two gold novas on each side, glinting in the sunlight that slanted in from the west as we glided along.

  “That’s why you’re here!” I said, pointing at her epaulets.

  “What are you talking about now?”

  “You never come back to your hometown, do you? At least you haven’t for many years.”

  She pursed her lips. “It has been a while, so what?”

  “That rank… you got back to the level of an imperator. That didn’t just naturally happen, did it? Someone out here pulled a string, didn’t they?”

  Suddenly, her eyes narrowed sharply. “That’s not a topic I’m interested in discussing, James. If you want to share a room with me tonight, you’ll forget this wild insane idea of yours. Immediately.”

  “Uh… we’re sharing a room?”

  “Possibly. I haven’t decided yet.”

  I smiled. “It would go pretty far toward supporting this boyfriend business you’ve cooked up for me, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would. Are you going to screw this up, or are you going to cooperate?”

  “Hmm… you’ve bought my silence, Galina. I’m going to smile, glad-hand, and kiss every big ring I see while I’m out here.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  We soon arrived at what I could only call a sumptuous estate. It was outside Turov proper—the city, I mean—but it was no less grand for all that. There were big iron gates on motors, sentinel robots with old-fashioned bullet-firing rifles, and about a thousand aircars crowded on cobblestones around an ancient-looking stone fountain.

  We got out and Galina took my hand. “We’re late. Hurry with me.”

  We trotted up some steps and fixed our hair with our fingers. The guards let us in, apparently recognizing Galina on sight.

  To my mind, when someone tells me I’m late to a wedding, that meant the holy matrimonial ceremony was in progress—that’s what being late to any such big event meant back in Waycross.

  But that wasn’t the story. Instead, there was some kind of signing-in shindig going on. A series of bigwig politicians were lined up inside the mansion at ornate tables. They were signing things while servants wearing funny hog formals were passing them from one bigwig to the next.

  I watched them, trying hard to keep my mouth shut. Each of the political-types signed the same computer scroll using a stylus. The weird thing was each guy only made part of a signature—like one letter’s worth—then he put down the stylus and picked up another one. Then he’d use that one to write the next letter of his name.

  “Huh…” I said, unable to contain my fool nature. “Why are they using more than one stick to sign each document?”

  Galina whispered the answer. “They’ll give away these pens as gifts later. This legislation must be important, or they wouldn’t bother.”

  “But… those aren’t even real pens. They’re just sticks, really.”

  “Shut up.”

  I did as I was commanded. I was out of my element and then some, and I knew it.

  At last, when the signing ceremony was done, everyone present stopped taking vids with their tappers, and they clapped politely. Deciding to join in, I slammed my big hands together. A few people nearby winced and gave me that up-down glance of disgust that I knew so well.

  I thought about whistling or cheering, but I held off. My sense was that Galina wouldn’t like it, and neither would anyone else in this prissy crowd.

  At last, the baffling event broke up. All smiles, Galina walked up to the guy sitting at the middle table. He was lining up his phony pens, and a couple of servant-hogs were storing them in individual cases.

  “Daddy?” Galina said.

  That’s when my jaw dropped so low I thought it would hit the marble floor.

  -4-

  Mr. Turov—or Archduke Turov, or whatever the hell his title was—looked up sharply. He had white hair with a kind of Santa Claus beard going on. His eyes were old, but quick. They took in the smiling Galina and my hulking shape at her side in an instant. After a half-second appraisal, he faked a smile of his own and stood up. He hugged his daughter—briefly.

  Then he turned to me. His head tilted to one side, and I realized I’d seen that dog-like cocked head many times before. Galina did it all the time.

  “You must be the one they call McGill. But… you’re only a centurion? Is this possible?” He had a funny accent, one that was kind of like Galina’sf but even harder to understand.

  “Uh…” I said. “Yessir, my name’s James McGill. I’m a centurion in Legion Varus, Your Highness. The best legion on Earth.”

  Galina’s expression tightened, but she kept a stiff smile in place. She didn’t even look at me, she kept staring up at her daddy like he was the only thing that mattered.

  “I see,” the old man said at last. He turned back to look down at his daughter. “Perhaps this explains certain mysteries, my daughter. Such as how your rank keeps fluctuating like a kite in the hands of a child.”

  Galina’s eyes registered a flash of irritation, but she kept back the explosion she wanted to have right now. I knew that required a serious effort on her part. Maybe moments like this explained why she didn’t fly home all that often.

  “Father, where’s my sister?” she asked finally. “I must congratulate her.”

  “Of course. Sophia is in the garden working on flower arrangements or some-such nonsense.”

  “I’ll go greet her, it’s great to see you again, Father.”

  “The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure.”

  Now, at this juncture, I figured it would be my opportunity to chat-up the old man. In the past, I’d often met with fathers of my various and sundry girlfriends. Most of them liked me—at least at first. They appreciated a man who wasn’t a weak-kneed type.

  But Galina’s tiny fist closed over the first three fingers of my right hand—it was hard for a woman her size to grip my entire hand at once—and she gave me a mighty tug.

  Naturally, I could have ignored this, but I didn’t. I let her pull me in her wake. Touching my hat to her bigwig father in a semblance of a salute, I hurried after Galina.

  “Hey, how about I stay here and talk to your dad? I don’t mind doing it. He probably has questions for me.”

  “I bet he does. That’s why we’re moving on.”

  “Really? Fathers usually like me, girl. Don’t worry so much.”

  “My father doesn’t like anyone. Not even himself. Stay with me and speak as little as possible.”

  We headed out toward the gardens, weaving our way through a big, complicated house. There were robots and real human servants everywhere. Now and then, a hog guard stood sternly at a doorway. Passing a table spread out with a fantastic looking meal on gleaming, nanite-cleaned plates, my stomach rumbled.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’ll have to wait.”

  Reaching out a long arm, I snatched a goblet of purple stuff. I downed it, and I was glad to learn it was wine of some kind. Galina never saw this, as she was hell-bent to drag my oversized carcass out the backdoor of the mansion as quickly as possible.

  Soon, we were blinking in the sunset again. It was going to get dark pretty soon.

  “There she is,” Galina said.

  “Who?”

  “My sister, you idiot.”

  “Oh yeah. Is she the one in pink?”

  Crossly, Galina looked up at me with instant suspicion. “How did you know that?”

  I smiled. “Because she’s the prettiest girl here—except for you, of course.”

  Her lips puckered for a moment. “Good answer.”