Armor World Read online

  Other than crewmen, there weren’t any officers aboard. Just me and Centurion Jennie Mills. I didn’t waste any time hitting on her.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where do you want to go tonight?”

  She blinked at me uncomprehendingly.

  “Um… I was daydreaming about a hot meal and a hot shower, actually.”

  My eyebrows shot up and I grinned. “That’s pretty direct—but I like it! We can—”

  “Wait a second, McGill,” she said sternly, having caught onto my meaning. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

  “No? Oh… I thought we had a deal. I guessed your name right when I first met you, didn’t I?”

  “Well… yes.” She looked down a little sheepishly.

  “Well then, I’m asking you out. Point-blank. Yes or no, Centurion?”

  She seemed to think about it. Then she sighed. “All right. If you don’t die from internal injuries tonight… we can go on a date.”

  “Always hedging your bets, huh? Come on, have a drink with me. I know they keep liquor in the officer’s lounge for special occasions.”

  “That cabinet is locked, McGill.”

  There was a popping sound. “All fixed,” I said, and I poured us each a foam cup full of sherry. It tasted like it’d been in the cupboard a long time, but I didn’t care.

  Jennie didn’t seem to care much, either. We had a few, and we were smiling by the time the lifter reached Legate.

  When we docked, Centurion Mills was leaning against me and giggling. My cracked ribs were crying about that, but I didn’t let on. Whining about the pain would have ruined the mood.

  The seals on the lounge door cracked open, gaining our attention. Jennie straightened up, causing me to wince again.

  A suited figure entered the chamber. It was Primus Winslade.

  “Hey, Winslade,” I said. “Care to join us for a celebration?”

  “What’s this?” he asked. “Are you drunk on duty, McGill? Again?”

  “Not at all, sir. I’m off-duty. I’m overdue for some Blue Deck patching-up and a little R&R.”

  Winslade laughed. It was a nasty sound.

  “Dream on, McGill. We’re in trouble. Haven’t you been following all the briefings and bulletins flowing from the ship’s network onto your tapper?”

  “Certainly sir, every word of it.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Turn your tapper back on, switch off the mute button, and pay attention. We have company. Grand Admiral Sateekas is here in-system. He has an entire task force, actually, and he’s moving to engage that giant cue-ball out there.”

  “Really? That is big news.”

  I got up and rushed out of the place. To my surprise, Centurion Mills looked kind of disappointed.

  That was just like Winslade. The man was a force of nature when it came to cock-blocking others. He was cold rain on every parade in town.

  -40-

  Winslade turned out to be right. Sateekas was in the Pegasi system, and he had a new fleet of ships with him.

  His new fleet was small and not too impressive. Compared to our province’s mighty Battle Fleet 921, this collection of aging cruisers was almost an embarrassment—but it was better than nothing.

  “There you are, McGill,” Graves said when I arrived on Gold Deck. “You’ve been incognito as usual, right when we need you most.”

  “Those are some mighty kind words, sir,” I told him. “What seems to be the emergency?”

  Graves gestured toward the battle-planning room. I wasn’t normally allowed into that vaunted chamber, but this was an exception.

  Following him inside, I saw all the brass was there. Armel, Turov, even Praetor Drusus was there—but he was just a hologram transmitted over from the second transport ship.

  “Ah, McGill shows up at last,” Drusus said. “Wait—are you injured? Can you stand and think, McGill?”

  “I’m right as rain, sir,” I said, trying not to sway on my feet. Fortunately, the sherry I’d drunk had taken the edge off my pounding headache and grinding ribs.

  “Excellent. We’ll contact Sateekas, then.”

  “Um…” Turov said, eyeing me critically. “Perhaps we should wait until McGill has been checked out by a bio—or at least briefed.”

  “There’s no need. Communications, patch the channel through.”

  The screen flared up between us and the most god-awful looking lump of flesh I’d seen all day squatted there. It was a hologram of Grand Admiral Sateekas.

  Now, all of us knew his real title was Province Governor, or Chief Inspector—something mundane like that. But we dared not use those words. Sateekas had been demoted from the admiralty and reassigned to a civilian post, but he didn’t want anyone to remind him of these unpleasant realities.

  “Grand Admiral!” I boomed. “Great to see you again, Your Highness!”

  Sateekas was facing away from me, but he shuffled his bulk around to gaze down in my direction.

  That frontal exposure made me wince—he sure wasn’t getting any prettier.

  Like all Mogwa, Sateekas had a spidery body with a central thorax, a thin-skulled head, and six limbs that could operate as arms or legs depending on the task at hand. But what was shocking about him was his age.

  Sateekas was old. Humans aged pretty badly, in my opinion, but this Mogwa put us to shame in that department. He had flappy jowls, a thorax that had changed from a sleek black to a mottled white, and a dozen other disgusting signs of advanced years.

  “Is it...?” he asked, peering my way. “Yes! The McGill-creature! It has been a long time. You are a favorite slaveling, and you have doubtlessly pined away for me during my absence.”

  “I sure did, sir. All Humanity has spent loads of idle time waiting for you to return. We’ve been muddling along, doing our best to enforce the will of the Galactics in this frontier province.”

  Sateekas flapped his limbs for a moment before answering. “It seems that in this instance, you have failed your Empire. These intruders must be removed.”

  “Uh…” I said, glancing around at Turov and Armel.

  They both looked a little bit sick, and it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t haven’t opened my big mouth and engaged our haughty governor immediately—but that couldn’t be fixed now. He was staring right at me, expecting me to say something meaningful.

  “Is that why you brought this new battle fleet here, Grand Admiral? Have you come to drive these aliens away?”

  Sateekas worked his limbs idly and eyed me. “This is hardly a battle fleet. I have twelve ships, not twelve hundred. True, they are new ships, not broken down rust buckets, but still…”

  “Perhaps if we combine our forces?” I suggested.

  “McGill!” Turov hissed at me. “Shut up!”

  Sateekas drew himself up proudly. “The Empire doesn’t require a militia fleet to maintain her borders, McGill. We shall… we shall remove this intruder ourselves!”

  Everyone looked astonished at this announcement. That included the humans, the Mogwa officers behind Sateekas, and even the Nairbs I saw on the cruiser’s bridge. They were trying to pretend they weren’t listening in—but they all turned and stared when Sateekas committed them to battle.

  “That’s the spirit, sir!” I boomed.

  “What means have you employed in previous encounters?” the Mogwa asked me.

  Turov made a frantic waggling motion with her hands, and I returned her wave with a friendly gesture of my own.

  “Well sir, it went like this…”

  I proceeded to spill my guts. I held nothing back, telling all about our t-bomb attacks, our teleport suit commando mission—the works.

  The situation was Turov’s fault, to my way of thinking. After all, she’d insisted I come right up to Gold Deck without letting me stop off at Blue Deck where I really belonged. The truth was, my brain hadn’t been operating at a hundred percent of its admittedly limited capacity since I’d experienced a concussion the day before.

  Sateekas listene
d and took it all in while the rest of them squirmed.

  “Hmm…” he said. “I… I have a suspicion. A dark suspicion… I’d assumed all along this ship was from the frontier, something those squalid little bear-people from Rigel might build.”

  “We thought the same, Grand Admiral.”

  “But now, I doubt my presumptions. The technology you describe is quite advanced. To my knowledge, no species out here on the galactic rim should be capable of producing such a ship. Collapsed matter formed into a hull the size of a planetoid? That is truly unprecedented outside the Core Systems. No, we would have heard of such a threat rising on the fringe of the Galaxy…”

  “But you’re still going to kick their asses, aren’t you?” I demanded.

  “Grand Admiral!” Turov burst out, unable to keep her peace any longer. “Don’t listen to McGill. He’s injured. He’s on… medications. We don’t believe your force is sufficient to defeat the intruder.”

  Sateekas looked at me, and then he eyed Turov in turn. “Sometimes a sacrifice is required for the good of the Empire. Today, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. I will transmit a message to Trantor first, and to your ship as well for safekeeping. Wish us well, slaves.”

  “Farewell, Grand Admiral,” Turov said in a defeated tone.

  “Kick their asses, Sateekas!” I shouted.

  The channel closed, and Turov came at me immediately. Now, I’m not so good at reading a woman’s mood. But those little fists, down at her side and trembling, gave me a hint. Her face was red and kind of twisted up, too…

  “You shouldn’t make expressions like that, Galina,” I said. “What if your face stayed like that?”

  “You asshole!” she shouted. “Why couldn’t you keep quiet?”

  Turov whirled around toward Drusus, Graves and Armel. “And you three—what a lot of help you were. You were three mutes while McGill went full-retard and talked Sateekas into a suicidal attack!”

  Graves spoke first. “It wasn’t my place to interfere.”

  “It wasn’t McGill’s either,” Turov snapped back.

  “Galina…” Drusus said—or rather his quiet hologram spoke for him, “we were in a difficult position. When we talk to the Mogwa, it’s Earth policy to allow lower-level individuals to engage in actual conversation.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said disgustedly. “Plausible deniability, I know. You can always execute McGill and call him a renegade officer. And I know that if his words came out of your mouth, Drusus any insult might cause our entire species to be blamed, as you are a top Earth official. I know the theory, but the stakes were too high this time.”

  “How so?” Armel asked in a mild tone. “These hysterics are… if I dare… unbecoming for a tribune. So what if the Mogwa dies? Another governor will be sent from Trantor eventually. It is no great loss for Earth.”

  Galina approached him and put a finger in his face. “Wrong, Armel. First of all, you were only thinking of yourself when you kept quiet. What’s the old saying? Mutes are never permed first?”

  “Something like that…” he admitted.

  “The difference here is that Sateekas is in the middle of reconstructing Battle Fleet 921. He dearly wants to be an admiral again—our defensive admiral. He’s pulled together a handful of shiny new ships, but what is the likelihood of him getting full funding if he’s dead—and he’s lost all his ships again?”

  Armel tilted his head and gave her a sneering shrug. “I will admit that situation may be difficult to recover from.”

  “Right…” She stalked away.

  While she’d been yelling at the other brass, I’d begun to feel a little funny. I’d found a seat to collapse into.

  Someone sent a bio around to check on me eventually, but by that time, I’d passed out.

  -41-

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I croaked when I awoke to bright lights and strange sounds an unknowable time later.

  I’d been recycled and reborn. Take it from someone who knew every sight and sound of the process—that’s what they’d done.

  Groaning, I climbed off the gurney and struggled to dress. They shoved me in a shower stall first, and I washed off.

  It was a good idea, on one level. I felt better when I got out of the shower and managed to get my uniform on right.

  But then on another level, it kind of pissed me off. These bio people could have patched me up.

  “Hey,” I said to the specialist who’d presided over my birth. “Why the recycle? Couldn’t I have been given a shot of bone-grow and nu-skin?”

  She shrugged. “Probably. But your tribune ordered a fresh start. She was very clear on that point. She said you had to have all your brain cells switched on the next time she met you.”

  “That’s what I thought. Spite. Petty revenge… Dammit.”

  When I marched out, I was in a bad mood all over again. Working my tapper, I managed to get Galina to answer. That was a surprise all by itself.

  “Hey,” I began, “why did you—?”

  “McGill? You’re back in the game? Good. Get up here to Gold Deck immediately.”

  The connection closed. I was left in an irritable state.

  With a sigh and a shrug, I began a shambling trot toward the elevators. By the time I reached them, I could almost run straight.

  There was something in Galina’s voice. A note of real worry—of fear. That feeling had come through loud and clear. Despite all my anger, I put my emotions on hold and decided to play the part of a dedicated supporting officer for now.

  When I arrived on Gold Deck, I was challenged by noncom guards. They let me through a moment later.

  Up on the bridge and the tactical CNC next to it, the chambers were crammed with officers.

  They were all looking up, craning their necks. In their midst was a central holographic image. It was so high-resolution it was as if the fleets outside had been shrunken down and placed near the lofty ceiling for our viewing pleasure.

  Center-stage was a big grayish-white cue ball I knew too well. It was the alien invasion ship. This time, it had no visible damage other than a few scorch marks. You couldn’t even tell where that big roll-away door was. They’d repaired it completely.

  That’s what they’d been doing all this time, I realized. The ship hadn’t even moved. It had just sat up there, fixing itself with the help of the Peg automated repair vessels. In the meantime, we’d destroyed a lot of their machines down on the planet’s surface—but this big bastard hadn’t even reacted.

  So strange… I knew a lot of aliens, but these folks were a different breed. They didn’t operate like living things. They didn’t have the same normal responses to injured allies. It was as if the ship were only interested in itself, not the invasion forces it seeded on planets.

  Sateekas was on an attack vector from on high. He’d swung around 51 Pegasi, coming at the strange vessel from an oblique angle. From our point of view, he appeared to be above it.

  Turov spotted me at this point. She worked her way through the crowd easily. Her rank, more than her bulk, caused people to step out of her way.

  “I hope you’re happy,” she said. “You’re about to watch Sateekas die for his honor.”

  “Honor?”

  “That’s right. Don’t tell me you don’t know what you did to him. You embarrassed him. You declared your willingness to die, and you explained how you’d already done it twice. Then you asked if he had the balls to do the same. He’s just vain enough to fall for that kind of twaddle.”

  “Twaddle…?”

  She didn’t answer me. She was standing at my side, gazing up at the fleet action again.

  Normally, when one group of ships in a system attacked another, they came in fast and hard—but not old Sateekas. Maybe he knew a thing or two about dealing with fully-automated enemy ships. He was edging closer, keeping every ship at exactly the same range. When the enemy finally took notice and responded—that’s when he’d fire. Not a moment earlier.

  �
��What if they’re baiting him in closer?” I asked aloud.

  Galina pinched my arm then.

  “Hey!”

  She glared up at me. “You think about that while you watch good crews die today.”

  I rubbed the spot she’d pinched absently. My mom did the exact same thing to my dad when she was pissed at him. I found the thought disturbing. Were we a couple? Sometimes, that was a very hard question to answer.

  The fireworks began at a range of about sixty thousand kilometers. That was pretty close by our standards. A big ship couldn’t light a match with a laser at more than two million kilometers—but sixty thousand? That was point-blank.

  The big ship didn’t open its doors, but it did begin to slowly rotate. I corrected myself even as I had this thought. It was so fast that the motion only appeared to be slow. In actuality, it was turning very rapidly.

  Sateekas didn’t wait around for the enemy guns to get into optimal firing positions. He unloaded.

  Right off, I was impressed. Beams lanced out, scorching long furrows on the spinning sphere. An ass-load of missiles came out of every Mogwa ship. They were all heavy cruisers, and they sent a screaming barrage toward the enemy mass.

  For several minutes, all this abuse went unanswered. The big ship was just turning, like a giant who’s finally noticed a buzzing swarm of gnats overhead.

  Finally, the big ship returned fire. A gush of fire leapt out without warning, catching one of the cruisers and incinerating it on the spot.

  I whistled long and low.

  “Damn!” I said. “That was quite a shot.”

  Galina punched my arm, but I didn’t really feel it.

  The big ship had stopped rotating. After firing a concentrated barrage at one ship, I got the feeling it was charging up to do it again.

  The Mogwa ships started to dance, then. It was something I hadn’t seen since the Rogue World ship had done it years back.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “They’ve got a program of little random teleports going! Just like Floramel’s gang did way back.”

  There was some mild cheering as the second barrage reached out from the invading ship—and missed. The Mogwa ships were popping around every few seconds, making targeting almost impossible.