Green World Read online

  At first, I frowned at everything. Nothing looked different—but then, I noticed something inside the container was missing.

  “What was that? What did you just zap with that gizmo?”

  “I’m not sure. It wasn’t on the pay-list, that’s for sure.”

  “The pay-list?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at the deck again. “They give us a list of goods, see. Tools. Containers of raw elements. Tech gear—whatever. We find the right container, bring it down here, and we zap the item out of the box. Then we send it back up to the hold.”

  “Is that right?” I gawked, fascinated. “So you’re stealing stuff? That’s how this works? And no one can figure it out, because the containers are still sealed when they get to their destinations?”

  “Yes. They have smart-locks on them. Every container knows what has gone in and out of its doors. They keep tight track. No one can blame the shipping company when something doesn’t make it to the right destination.”

  “All right, Lenny. I have just two questions for you.”

  He looked at me. He was sweating, bleeding and staring. He didn’t say anything.

  “First off, I’d like to know what happened to the other inspectors—the ones who’ve gone missing.”

  Lenny shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw one of them make it down here.”

  “What about the guy who vanished on this very ship?”

  Lenny licked his lips. “I… I wasn’t down here then.”

  “Of course you weren’t. I’d swear to that on a stack of bibles.”

  “You would?”

  I held my hand a meter and a half off the deck. “A stack of bibles that high.”

  “Well… let’s just say that a man… a nosy man, a man who didn’t know his place… he might have come down here and… well…”

  “Out with it, Lenny.”

  “He might have gotten in between the container and the beam—you know—and been transported away.”

  “To where?”

  Lenny shrugged again. “To wherever all this stuff goes. Somewhere bad, I suspect.”

  I nodded. “You’re a deep thinker, Lenny. Now, that second question: why are you telling me all this?”

  Lenny’s left cheek twitched. It was the lamest excuse for a smile I’d ever seen. “So you won’t kill me. I know who you are, McGill. I used to serve in the legions.”

  I stared at him. “Varus?”

  He nodded, and I smiled. Lenny was a few beers short of a six-pack, sure, but in that instant I believed him. He had that washed-out look that some legion men got. He’d seen the stars, maybe died a dozen times, and then he’d come back to Earth, broken. It was an old story. Not everyone was cut out for the kind of life I led.

  After Lenny’s surprising revelations, I was in a pretty good mood. After all, I’d figured out a mystery and solved the whole case in record time. Surely, Dross would praise me and send me back home to Central, pronto. Maybe I’d even get to go home to Georgia for a while.

  Accordingly, I lifted my tapper. I took some photos, even demonstrating how the device worked. Then I made an attempt to mail the whole incriminating mess not just to Station Chief Dross, but to Galina herself.

  The signal, however, was blocked.

  About then I noticed that the door about a hundred meters behind us came flying open. It clanged, steel-on-steel, and the sound bounced around the hold like the voice of doom.

  Flashlights with armed men holding them up began to flood into the hold. I took out my pistol, and I aimed it—but then more men came down, and more still. There had to be twenty of them, and they were still coming, spreading out and creeping into the hold, fanning out.

  I looked at Lenny, and he stared back at me.

  “You sold me out?”

  He shrugged.

  I aimed my pistol at him. “Tell me why I shouldn’t burn you down first.”

  “Because I showed you what you wanted to see. And because we’re both Varus men—at least, I used to be.”

  “Huh… yeah well, all right. I’ll tell you what. Aim that camera-thing at me.”

  Lenny blinked in surprise. “But… that’s not safe. There has to be some radiation, some—”

  I laughed at him. “There are thirty men behind us, and more coming. Come on, one Varus man should help out another.”

  Lenny blinked, but he nodded. He aimed the camera-head thing at me, and he activated it.

  A ball of plasma lit up the hold. It was blindingly bright, not being hidden by the walls of a container this time.

  Men shouted and shots rang out. One struck Lenny, then two. I tried to reach for the controls, to activate the transmission button—but I couldn’t move. Something about the field had me in stasis, or at least slow motion.

  But then Lenny struggled to his knees and slapped the button for me.

  A dozen men ran up, shouting and angry. They shot Lenny, again and again.

  They shot me too, but I’d already begun phasing out. I was halfway between this dirty ship’s bowels here on Earth and wherever it was I was going to.

  In my long life, I’ve been teleported around in various ways to quite a number of exotic locations. That process was happening now, I could feel it.

  I hoped my destination would be a pleasant place, but it wasn’t a strong hope.

  -5-

  When I arrived at my destination, I tried not to gag and cough and suck wind—but I failed.

  The trip through hyperspace had been a long one. I’d spent several minutes in limbo, without much of a chance to prep myself mentally. When you’re tripping between two distant locations, I’ve found it takes around a second per lightyear. I’d gotten good over the decades at counting seconds, to give myself an idea of how long I’d been gone—but not this time. I’d forgotten to do it. The only impression I had was that the trip had been a long one, probably something like five hundred lightyears or so.

  So I doubled over upon arrival, gasping and choking. I almost puked. While teleporting a long ways, you felt like you needed to breathe, even though you really didn’t. The effect on your mind and body was similar to waterboarding, where a person felt like they were drowning.

  When I arrived at last and got over my choking fit, I straightened up and looked around. The atmosphere here—wherever I was—didn’t seem to be poisonous. At least, it wasn’t killing me straight-away. There could always be something lurking though, like a high level of carbon monoxide, something that would kill me in the next ten minutes or so. I’d just have to wait that out and hope for the best.

  Sure, I knew there was a good chance I’d permed myself. I’m not as big of a fool as most people think. But I’d been faced with a grim dilemma: I could have stayed on Earth and ate a few bullets, and hoped for a revive. That might have been long in coming, given that I’d have vanished like the previous half-dozen “inspectors”. Maybe the next guy to earn a shit-listed duty on the docks would do better than I did and figure out what was happening. Even then, however, I might have stayed permed for years—or maybe forever.

  Not liking the thought of dying in the dark hold of the Sea Empress, I’d decided to grab the bull by the balls and port out. My method was risky, sure, but at least this way I was guaranteed to learn more about this crime ring before my luck ran out.

  Looking around, I found I was in a building of some kind. The ceiling was high, and it curved at the top. Every square meter in the middle of the area where I’d landed had some kind of junk sitting on it. There were barrels of chemicals, crated instruments, tanks of oxygen and other gases—all kinds of random goods. If I had to guess, I’d say they were the kinds of things an industrial or scientific worksite might use. There wasn’t anything like clothing, food, or consumer goods to be seen.

  No food… Hmm… that wasn’t so good. If this station—whatever it was—didn’t have humans working here, or anyone else that ate anything compatible with a human digestive system, well, my stay here was limited in scope.

/>   The air was humid, and it tasted of the sea. At first, I figured the smell of the ocean might have been a lingering factor from Earth, but as I walked among the stacks of stuff, I began to get other ideas.

  The air tasted wrong somehow. Familiar, but different. It was a bit metallic—like blood. One thing was for sure: this wasn’t the east coast of North America Sector. I was certain of that much.

  To a starman like myself, this wasn’t very surprising. A lot of planets had large bodies of saltwater. The fact that it smelled weird was to be expected as well. Planets often had their own distinctive tastes and smells, and this place seemed to match that pattern.

  As I poked around, hoping for a bigger weapon than my service pistol, a nagging idea grew in my brain: This smell wasn’t entirely unknown to me. It was familiar, somehow.

  Unable to place it, I shrugged and found the nearest firm wall. Reaching out to touch it, I recoiled in disgust. The wall was wet, and it gave a little under my fingers. Was it made of flesh? Damn, I hoped not.

  Making good time, I followed the wall around through the stacked junk until I found a door. The door itself wasn’t normal. It seemed like it was built of stone, and it had a knob that was way too big for a human to use. It was about the size of a man’s head.

  Something about that doorknob… Had I seen the likes of it before? I wasn’t sure, but it did tickle my memory.

  Shrugging, I grabbed it and twisted. That was like trying to twist the trunk of an oak tree. Not being a man who gave up easily, I applied both hands, then both full arms, wrapping myself around the thing and heaving for all I was worth.

  The rough stone scratched my skin and blood welled up from my palms. I persisted, however. I didn’t want to stick around so close to my landing spot. The sailors might get brave and come after me. If not that, then whoever ran this place might come looking for the new delivery. Surely, some kind of warning buzzer had to have sounded when I arrived. It was only a matter of time before I was going to find myself with unwanted company.

  Looking around, flexing my arms, I found a tarp of sorts. I wrapped this around the knob and gave it a mighty heave.

  The knob shifted, and it creaked loudly. Then the door opened, swinging outward and away from me.

  Damnation! That door was frigging huge. It had to be four meters high at least. Whoever these people were, they must be gigantic.

  The doorway led out onto an open expanse of sand and rocks. I saw a green sea gushing and lapping over those worn stones. There were waves coming in to the shore, big ones.

  Then I saw the sky above, and I knew the truth.

  There were gray clouds, sure. There was a sun somewhere—I could sense it hiding behind those heavy clouds, silvering their edges.

  But it wasn’t the clouds or the hiding sun that caught my eye. I was the open areas—the parts of the sky that were unobstructed.

  What I saw there was a deep green. A green that reminded me of our own earthly blue, just as full of color and glowing light. I wondered what atmospheric elements might make one sky blue and another red, or green like this one.

  That’s what did it for me, the sky. I felt like an idiot. It was so obvious. I’d seen this place, off and on, for years. I’d even visited here several times. Once, decades back, I’d led a commando mission onto these islands and killed a Wur scientist of sorts.

  “Green sky, green sea…” I said aloud. “Green World…”

  There was an endless ocean out there. No other land was in sight. Just like every other time I’d been here, or caught a glimpse. To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t much land on this planet. It was mostly covered in oceans—or at least that was my impression.

  Tearing my gaze away from the sea and sky, I began scanning the beaches. I didn’t see anyone around, but there had to be someone here.

  There were other hulking buildings nearby. Each was large—as big as the warehouses on the docks back at Central City. Were they all full of stolen goods? There was only one way to find out.

  Gripping my pistol firmly and trying to look every which way at once, I walked across rocks and sand to the next massive building. This one had an open doorway which yawned wide to reveal the cavernous interior. I slipped around the massive door, careful not to make it swing or creak, and I walked into the quiet interior.

  -6-

  The second warehouse was just as chockfull of stuff as the first had been. This was way too much theft to be done for easy profit—it was the kind of stash I’d seen at supply depots on legion bases.

  What was more important was the different kind of goods I found in the second building. Instead of science and survival gear, I found weapons. Lots of them—and some of them were weird.

  In general, the rifles looked to be the size of rocket launchers. They appeared to fire plasma bolts, but I passed on the idea of shooting one off to confirm my suspicions. Whoever had built up this massive stockpile would doubtlessly react in a negative fashion to a man like me poking around in here.

  There were rebreathers, too. Stuff built for underwater work. And larger, automated gun turrets. I had a fair amount of experience with this sort of thing. You could set them up like automatic sprinklers, and they would sense, track and destroy any target that failed to transmit the correct friend-or-foe codes. They were nasty things. As an infantryman I hated them just on principal.

  After spending a good half-hour fooling with the gear, I came to a realization: this equipment wasn’t meant for a human army. The stuff would hardly fit on a man. Not even a heavy trooper from Blood World could carry this kind of kit easily. The rifles alone had to weigh damn near a hundred kilos.

  “Found anything you like, yet?” asked a feminine voice from behind me.

  I spun, lifting my pistol, but she had a bead on me already.

  “Ah-ah,” she said, taking aim at my face. “Don’t make me shoot you, James. I’d feel bad.”

  It was Abigail Claver. She was a woman of ill-repute by anyone’s standards. For years, I counted her as a friend, but today…

  “What’s all this for, girl?” I demanded. “You’ve got enough stuff to outfit an army—an army of giants, that is.”

  Abigail looked thoughtful. “Of all the people I didn’t expect to find out here in my warehouse, you have to top the list. I saw the sensor readings, and they said you were human, but I wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it with my own eyes.”

  I smiled and lifted my hands in a shrug. “Well… I do get around.”

  “That you do. Now, before I send you back to whatever casting device you came out of, James, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Uh… like what?”

  “Is Central watching this right now?”

  There was an edge to her voice. I could hear it plain as day. She was pretending not to care much one way or the other, but as a near-professional liar myself, I knew she was bullshitting.

  The trouble was, I wasn’t sure how to answer her. If I told her Central was watching, well then, she would have no qualms about offing me immediately. The casting device worked that way, sending spies to ungodly places so they could look around, then watching them die and printing out a new man when the death was confirmed.

  The difficult part was no one was watching me today. I had no guardian angel looking over my shoulder. If I died out here on Green World, I would be most soundly permed. No one knew I was here except for Abigail, and I couldn’t count on her kind heart after I’d gone and trespassed and snooped around and everything.

  Although it hurt my thinker to even contemplate it, I thought I was going to have to come clean and tell her the truth—most of it, at least.

  “Well… that’s a tricky point. I’m not supposed to be here. You see, I discovered your operation at the docks at Central city. After a little bit of… convincing… I got the sailors aboard one of those big ships to send me here to check things out.”

  “Really? And why would you be doing that, pray tell?”

 
; I shrugged. “That should be obvious. You’ve been stealing lots of stuff, Abigail. That has been noticed. Investigators found your setup with the containers and the x-ray-looking machine. Anyways, I was sent to find out who was on the far end of this slick operation. I must say, I’m impressed by the extent of it. Did you really steal all this stuff?”

  Abigail stared at me. Her eyes were all squinty-looking. I could tell she was trying to sift through my words and figure out what was wheat and what was chaff.

  “So… Central knows you went somewhere—but not exactly where?”

  “I guess so.”

  She sighed, and she lifted her pistol in a decisive manner. “Dammit, James. You shouldn’t have told me that. Whether its truth or a lie, it means I have to burn your oversized carcass to slag.”

  “Uh… it does?”

  “Of course. Think about it from my point of view, before you get offended.”

  “I’m trying. Help me out.”

  She waved the pistol, indicating I should step away from the weapons crates. “First, let’s take a little walk outside on the beach.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. There was a lot of valuable looking equipment behind me. Maybe she didn’t want burn-scars all over it.

  Instead of moving away, I threw a big arm over an expensive looking field projector. I smiled. “Sorry, I like it right here.”

  She sighed again, shaking her head. “All right, have it your way.”

  “Hold on one second. What good will it do to burn me down here?”

  “It’s always satisfying to take care of a thief in my warehouse.”

  “I haven’t taken anything!”

  “All right, all right—a spy then. But besides that, I can’t have you reporting back to Central on what you’ve seen here.”

  I snorted. “Look, let’s play the logic-game, shall we? Let’s say that the Central folks decided to risk old McGill, and they sent me through using one of your machines as an experiment.”

  “Uh-huh.”