Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (34 page)

“Still, I think it’s worth the effort. If we could use
Minotaur
and their own shuttles—we could save thousands, if not millions.”

“Very noble of you, McGill. I’m impressed. But—”

“Look,” I said, stepping closer. “I don’t need much. Just approval and one squad. We’ll fly out there in a pinnace and give it a shot. If the rebels don’t respond,” I shrugged. “I guess we did our best.”

Turov thought about it for a few moments then shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?” I demanded in what was possibly a more strident tone than she’d expected.

She frowned at me sternly but then softened and answered. “The Nairbs are here watching everything we do. They’re passing judgment. I can feel it. I don’t want to be blamed somehow for what’s happening to the station. We could lose our status as local Enforcers for the Empire.”

“Screw the Nairbs,” I said. “If that’s even who’s operating that ship.”

Galina appeared to be startled. Then she frowned. “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? Just screw it.”

It took me a second to get her point. I rolled my eyes. This pissed her off.

“I understand it all now,” she snapped, standing up and beginning to pace.

I watched her the way a man watches a beautifully sleek and deadly snake.

“This is why you can’t have sex with your subordinates,” she continued as if talking to herself. “I’d only understood it as a rule before—but it’s more than that, its wisdom from long ago. You, McGill, are a textbook case. You no longer respect my authority because we’ve been intimate.”

“Sorry sir,” I said, “but you’re dead wrong in regard to my motivations. I just don’t understand why you won’t allow me to risk my life to save so many. You can always revive me if I fail.”

“Your gesture is a noble one, but the answer is still no. You’re dismissed, Specialist.”

I paused. I was getting mad, and that was a bad thing. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. Words began to come out of my mouth.

“She suspects, you know,” I said quickly.

Turov turned and stared at me. “Who suspects what?”

“Leeza. She gave me a little knowing smirk on the way out. Wait a minute—you
told
her, didn’t you?”

Turov’s face turned red. “I told her nothing! And neither will you.”

I threw up my hands. “I’m just saying I think she suspects. She caught me on the pool table after you left me there. You must not have been gone for long, and—”

“Shut up,” she snapped, stepping close and glaring up into my face. “How can you cause me such trouble? I don’t understand it. Many men have opposed me, McGill. They’re nowhere to be found today. They have no rank, no power. They aren’t even in the service anymore.”

We glared at one another for a few seconds.

“I’m not trying to start anything,” I told her, softening my tone. “All I want is a chance to fix what’s happened here. No matter who caused all this devastation, I’m sure it was someone from Earth who killed all those people.”

“I see. You feel morally superior, and thus you’re willing to threaten me. I see.”

She reached down suddenly and began to stab and swipe at her console. A face appeared in response. It was a bio—one of the people running the revival unit.

“Imperator?” the face asked. The bio was startled, but trying to hide her concern.

“I have an emergency revival order,” Turov said.

“All right, sir. We’ll queue that up immediately. Can you give me the name?”

“You do not understand,” Turov said. “I do not want you to queue it up. You will replace the current revival project with a new one—now.”

“I—I don’t understand, sir.”

“Dump whatever is in the machine, damn you. Abort it. Recycle the current grow you’re working on and start fresh. Do so now.”

“Ah—yes sir.”

I felt a little sick. She’d just ordered the bio to kill a half-grown human. I gritted my teeth but kept quiet. I wasn’t quite sure what she was up to. At first, I’d assumed she was ordering a firing squad to come up to her office and finish me forever. Now that that idea seemed wrong I had no idea what was on her mind.

“Imperator?” the bio asked a moment later. “It’s…it’s done.”

“All right,” Turov said, looking straight at me again. “Now, I want you to cue up Adjunct Claver from Germanica. Do it now.”

“Isn’t he—?”

“Do I have to replace you, Specialist?” Turov asked, raising her voice.

“No sir. The change-order has been input and confirmed. I’ll contact you when the processing finishes.”

“Don’t bother. I’m on my way down to your station.”

She disconnected, and she eyed me with a mixture of contempt and triumph.

I had to admit at that moment that the old Turov was behind those eyes. Galina, the young lost girl I’d enjoyed the night before, was gone.

Turov had a plan, and even though I didn’t have a clue what her plan was, I knew it wasn’t a nice one.

“Claver?” I asked, stunned. “Why the hell would you bring
him
back? Isn’t he best left permed?”

“Because you can’t do this without him,” she said. “Who would be better to reprogram these crazy Tau than the man who scrambled their minds in the first place?”

I thought about it, and I realized that she was correct. I also realized something else. Claver was going to point a finger right at me when he came back to life. Every sin we’d done together was going to be heaped upon
my
head. By the time he got done talking, I’d have destroyed the umbilical single-handedly, caused cancer, and personally bioengineered six new species of houseflies in the bargain.

Further, I now understood why she was doing it this way. I had a handle on her, to her way of thinking—a threat over her head. Now, she was going to have one over me.

“I understand, Imperator,” I said.

“Do you…? Yes, I see that you do. Keep that in mind the next time you dare to contemplate threatening me.”

I heaved a small, internal sigh. Imperator Turov was back. The new version was as cute as a button—but also as mean as a half-stomped rattlesnake.

-36-

When Claver showed up at Natasha’s workshop about an hour later, I eyed him with vast distrust. He returned my expression—except possibly with more malice.

It was weird to see Old Silver with only a touch of gray in his hair. He’d lost ten years at least. I was mildly surprised to note he hadn’t been as vain as Turov in this regard. He hadn’t kept himself in cold storage as a permanent twenty-year-old. If I had to guess, I figured he was about thirty-eight years old physically. It was a far cry from fifty-something, but respectable.

Behind him were his hands, clasped in manacles. Behind them stood two MPs who had ugly mugs and even uglier shock-sticks in their hands.

Turov stepped forward, slipping past the men with lithe grace. “McGill, this is your guide. Make use of him. He’s been informed of his status, and I hope he won’t give you more difficulty than his existence is worth.”

There was an obvious underlying threat in her words. I could tell that Turov, possibly more than any of us, hated Claver.

When she’d left, I gave him a smirk. “You’ve got to be careful what you say around that lady,” I advised him. “I don’t think she likes you.”

“McGill,” he said, “I don’t like you, either. But I’m frankly amazed to be alive at all, so I guess I should shake your hand and put all our differences behind us.”

Frowning, I approached him. Natasha watched this, shifting uneasily. She didn’t trust him at all, but I thought that was silly. The man was tricky, but he wasn’t a magician.

When I got close, he made an effort to pull his hands around from behind his back, grunting and straining. He smiled a little sheepishly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot about these things. Have the guards remove them, will you? I can’t do much work with them on, and I certainly can’t shake your hand.”

I smiled, stepped forward and reached behind his back. I clasped a hand firmly and gave it an awkward shake.

“No problem at all. See? We can still shake hands. And don’t worry about helping out. We need your wisdom for this job, not your hands. Just tell Natasha all about how you built the hacked holo-boxes and we’ll get along fine.”

As fast as his expression had changed before, it changed again. He jerked his hand away from mine and snarled at me. “Why should I help you? You murdered me. You murdered
everyone
—millions of innocents down there on the planet alone!”

My smile tightened, but stayed fixedly on my face. “Now, now,” I said, “you don’t want to be like that. We should start over. You’ve got a fresh grow and I’ve got the upper hand for the time being. Work with it, Claver. Don’t get all emotional on me now.”

Claver tilted his head and stared at me quizzically for a second.

“I’m beginning to catch on,” he said. “You’re a small-time schemer, aren’t you? You’re
not
an idiot—at least, not completely. You play the fool so very well McGill, I was sucked in. I have to admit it: I was played. Wow. I stand impressed and mortified at the same time. Do you know that—”

Before Claver could get on my nerves any further, I interrupted him. “Enough chatter. Let’s get to business. Natasha, show him what you’ve got.”

I wasn’t a tech, but I’ve had a little training. Natasha had built a box with a transceiver in it rather than a simple projection device. It was designed to transmit a signal to other boxes of its own kind. The trouble was we didn’t have the protocols. We could simulate input and transmit it to another box that was listening for mood input, but we couldn’t figure out exactly how to get the other boxes to accept it.

Rather than bending my brain over the tech jargon, I watched Claver instead. I didn’t stare right at him, but I made sure his every move was noted in my mind. Thinking back, I’d seen Harris do the same thing countless times. He would position himself to watch a trooper carefully. When the man
made his move, thinking himself unobserved, Harris would pounce.

Claver could see that he didn’t have any leverage, so he sullenly cooperated. His eyes wandered while he answered Natasha’s questions, looking around the room curiously. At last, they landed upon the shell-shaped key, which was tucked most of the way under a computer scroll on the desk.

Natasha had used the key to open up a holobox and to get it to accept new programming. Now that he’d spotted it, Claver sidled closer to it, turning his back. His plan was so obvious that I decided to have a little fun.

Long before he managed to reach the key under the computer scroll, I’d gotten over there and removed it. Standing with the item behind my back, I pretended to be absorbed by Natasha’s monologue about holographic projectors.

“I’ve learned so much,” she said. “These devices are ingenious! Simultaneously sophisticated and simplistic, I’ve been fascinated by their internal design. Patching a transmitter in here to override the receptors in other units almost feels like a crime.”

“Uh-huh,” said Claver, backing up a step and fondling the computer scroll behind his back. I could tell he was going for the key which was no longer there. It was all I could do to suppress a grin.

Claver kept playing it up, smiling and saying polite things. Finally, I figured I’d had enough.

“What are you rustling with back there?” I demanded harshly, stepping forward.

Claver looked innocent. “What? I’m working, do you mind?”

I peered over his shoulder and the guards loomed close.

“He’s got something!” I shouted. “Right there! Guards!”

They’d been bored up until now, but they didn’t hesitate to relieve the tedium once I’d given them an opening. Shock sticks came out, and were raised high crackling with lavender-green power. They came down onto Claver, and he slumped to the deck, twitching.

“Here it is,” I said loudly, holding up the Galactic Key in front of his eyes. “He was after this. Good thing he’s clumsy. Those manacles are foreign-made. He might have released himself with this thing.”

Claver was beyond speech, too stunned by dual touches of the shock-sticks to respond. His eyes, however, tracked the key in my grasp. I was sure he couldn’t believe he’d missed grabbing it or that I’d spotted him. That was just fine by me. He’d killed countless people with his scheme. Having a little fun was the least I could do to avenge the dead.

The guards hauled him rudely to his feet. They were glaring at Claver, and I was smiling.

Only Natasha was frowning at me. She knew me too well.

“James, stop fooling around and fix him. I need his help.”

“All right, all right,” I said. I threw a cup of water into his face and gave him a light slap on the cheek.

“I didn’t say you should beat on him!” Natasha complained.

“He’s fine. Tough as nails. A
few kilovolts are nothing a Germanica man can’t bounce back from.”

When Claver could stand on his feet unaided, he glowered at us all.

“I’m done,” he said. “You and the Tau can all burn up for all I care.”

“You’ll die if you don’t cooperate,” I told him. “The Imperator will execute you without a qualm.”

“Don’t you think I know that, fool?” he asked me. Some of his bravado had returned in the form of a gleam in his eye.  “I’m not really Claver. I’m a copy. You don’t think I would take all these risks without knowing I couldn’t be taken out, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s your problem, McGill,” he said. “You think outside the box—but only an inch or so. Me—hell, I don’t even know where the box is, boy.”

I frowned at him not understanding and not at all liking that I wasn’t getting it.

Claver made his move then. He reached backward and grabbed the sidearm of the guard on his left—it was an insane move as his hands were still locked behind him.

He squeezed the trigger and cut a smoking line across the man’s leg. The
second guard whipped out his pistol and burned Claver down.

He flipped around onto his back and lay there, gasping.

I put my hands on my knees and bent lower, staring into his face.

“You pretty much killed yourself,” I said. “Who’s the fool now? Turov won’t revive you a second time.”

Claver struggled to speak. The smell of burnt flesh tickled my nose, but I didn’t pull back. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

He managed to lick his lips and wet them with fresh blood. “I’m not Claver,” he said. “Not the real one. Pray you don’t meet me again, McGill.”

That was it. He died on the spot.

Natasha had her arms crossed and her face twisted up into a frown. “You couldn’t have kept him alive for five more minutes?”

I looked at her. “I didn’t grab a gun, he did! He was trying to get himself free before, and I stopped him. Why doesn’t someone else keep their eyes on the ball?”

The two guards looked sheepish. The one with the burnt leg was limping badly, and I ordered him to head for blue deck for a spray of skin cells.

When we were alone, Natasha sighed. “I think I can do this alone,” she said. “He didn’t give me the exact protocols—but he gave me several ideas as to how to find them. I’ll program a loop trying every frequency until I find it. Then I’ll do a combinatory sequence—we’ll find it by brute force if we have to. After all, I’m ninety percent of the way there.”

“Good,” I said. “What do you think he meant about being a copy?”

Natasha looked at me in surprise. “You didn’t get that? He means he’s been duplicated. He’s been revived elsewhere.”

I frowned. “How could he know that?”

She shrugged. “Probably his mind was stored on another system somewhere. Wherever the data has been residing, it’s been updating since his last revive. That’s why he remembered being revived elsewhere, but not dying. Our system picked up the most recent copy of his mind and rebuilt him here.”

The idea horrified me. “What we had here was a clone, then? An illegal copy? That’s a Galactic Offense!”

Natasha shrugged. “Don’t act outraged. You’ve performed a few Galactic crimes yourself. And remember that I might have a clone, too, out in the Zeta Herculis system. She’s probably frozen or fried by now—but we might never know the truth.”

For some reason, this kind of talk disturbed me. I guess I’d believed that I was the one and only true James McGill. That when I died and returned, it was more like I’d dreamed one life and awakened in another. But to accept that there were multiple copies of Claver running around—that dashed my universe to pieces.

“I’ve got to stop thinking about it,” I said, sitting down and rubbing my temples.

Fortunately, a call came in from Imperator Turov that drove away everything else I’d been worrying about.

“McGill,” she said, “report to me immediately.”

“Sorry sir,” I said, wincing.

“For what?”

“Sorry about Claver. We couldn’t stop him from killing himself.”

“I don’t care about that. The ship that’s been lurking around the system has made contact. I need you here immediately.”

I got to my feet and headed to the door. It opened, and I took long strides toward the lift.

“On my way to the command module, sir,” I said into my headset.

“No—come to tactical command. That’s where I am.”

I frowned. I hadn’t even checked my tapper to locate her, but now that I did I saw she was indeed in tactical control.

“What’s going on, Imperator?” I asked. “What do the Nairbs want?”

“It’s not the Nairbs, James,” she said. “It’s not the Galactics, either. I need your help because you’ve talked to these people before. Get to my position. Turov out.”

Alarmed, I clanked quickly toward tactical control. If the ship wasn’t from the Empire, who could it be? What could Turov possibly mean by saying I’d talked to them before?

An answer formed in my mind that I didn’t like—but which I felt in my heart had to be correct.

I picked up the pace, running full speed through the passages. Engaging my exoskeleton, I could barely control the pounding metal legs.

I crashed past a pair of light troopers, dashing them into the walls and shouting I was sorry—but I didn’t slow down.

If I was right, there was no time to lose.