Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (38 page)

I frowned, thinking of my pyramid scheme. Could it have gone that far? I squirmed in my seat. “What was Graves talking about then?” I asked.

Her eyes dipped down to her desk then raised back up to meet mine. “We were contacted again, James. By the Cephalopods. While you were on the station, fighting—I had to make a hard decision, and I made it.”

Frowning, I leaned forward. “Could you be more clear, sir?”

“They delivered an ultimatum to us about two hours ago.”

“What kind of ultimatum, sir?”

“They demanded payment for their losses at Zeta Herculis. They said they would hold humanity personally responsible if we didn’t agree. It was an unfortunate situation, and I have to admit at the time I didn’t think your scheme was going to work. You have to understand that, James.”

Our eyes met, and she stared at me with cold concern. I frowned. I wasn’t getting it yet, but what I
was
getting I didn’t like at all.

“What did you do?” I demanded.

“That’s not an appropriate tone, James—”

“Come on,” I said. “Not appropriate? You just jumped my bones right here on this desk—”

“Threatening my reputation won’t gain you anything,” she said dangerously.

I laughed incredulously. “Just tell me what you did—what was the nature of this ultimatum?”

“The Cephalopods are an intransigent race. They demanded material restitution for their losses on their colony world. Keep in mind, the Nairbs did burn their entire colony down to the bedrock.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but what did you give them?”

“The station.”

We stared at one another. My sweat and hers was mingling and cooling on our bodies, and I could still smell her hair in my nostrils, but I felt cold nonetheless.

“You gave them the
station
? Are they going to haul it off to their homeworld or what?”

She shook her head slowly. “They’re looting it. They’re docking up now I would expect. They’ll board with their slavers and their regular troops. They’ll round up the people they want as captives and take whatever else they can find before it sinks down into the atmosphere and burns up.”

“I thought you said the repairs were working.”

“They are,” she said, shrugging. “But I expect that attacking and pillaging the structure will disrupt that process.”

“Are you totally insane?”

“James,” she said sternly. “I understand you’re feeling emotional about this topic as you just fought to save the Tau, but try to see it from my perspective. The Cephalopods may well have the power to wipe out Earth. Battle Fleet 921 might come back next year and wipe them out in return—but then again, it might take decades. I can’t risk our species to save a few million Tau.”

I nodded slowly. I did see her way of thinking—at least partially.

“You figured I would fail,” I said. “And that the Tau were as good as dead and bat-shit crazy. Is that it?  You might as well get some mileage out of them. Maybe they’ll even kill a few squids for good measure. Damn, what a way to serve and protect.”

“Rudely put—but essentially, you’re correct.”

For several seconds, I sat there staring into space. Turov kept on talking about something, but I didn’t hear her. Finally, after those seconds passed, I stood up.

Galina’s eyes widened involuntarily. My movement had been purposeful, and I was armed and wearing battle armor again. I realized then what she must have understood in that moment—that I could tear her apart with my gauntlets if I wanted to.

But I didn’t attack her. I was upset, but taking it out on her wasn’t going to change anything.

“Sir,” I said loudly. “Am I dismissed?”

She looked at me for a second and nodded. “Dismissed, Specialist.”

I left her then, clanking on my way out. The MP outside looked up at me and gave me a smirk. I wanted to bash him one—but I held myself back. I was on a new mission now, and nothing was going to get in my way.

Nothing.

-40-

I didn’t think I could manage my plan without help, so I headed down to 3
rd
Unit’s module and stepped into the common room. Everyone looked up when I appeared in the doorway. A few of them shouted greetings, but most were quiet. A few got up and left immediately—not a good sign.

Spotting Natasha, I walked toward her. She avoided my eyes and got up, packing away a pile of equipment.

“Is that your buzzer control system?” I asked her.

She glanced at me, and then looked at the deck. “I’ve got to go.”

“Uh…” I said, looking around.

Grins met me, mixed with a few frowns. Some people snickered. I began to suspect the worst.

Natasha tried to slip past me, but I reached out and clasped her wrist. Women hate that, but this was an emergency.

“Let go of me, James,” she said, still not looking at me.

“Listen for one second—Turov has sold them out. She’s letting everyone on the station die.”

Natasha finally looked at me. “What?”

I quickly explained what I was talking about. She seemed conflicted.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

“Look,” I told her quietly. “I have a plan. It might work. But I need your help. I need my friends.”

“I’m not doing anything for you.”

I looked over her shoulder at what she was holding. It
was
her buzzer equipment.

“You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, apparently it does to you. Let’s forget about whatever it was you saw with your spy-bugs. People are about to be permed—millions of them. They might be annoying aliens, but I don’t think they deserve to be enslaved and slaughtered wholesale.”

Natasha let out her breath until she looked deflated. She sat down quickly. “Just tell me what you want to do, James.”

I told her, and she didn’t look any happier.

“Are you
crazy
?” she demanded in a harsh whisper.

“I get that a lot.”

“We can’t take over the ship!”

“We won’t have to—at least, I hope not.”

“James, there are four full units revived now. Not just a few people will stand in your way, hundreds will. There’s the Germanica Unit, too. They’re back to full strength.”

“Yeah, well…I know about them.”

“That’s not all. Turov had them revive both the Tribunes—Drusus and Armel.”

“Really? That does change things. Wait for me here, and work on those calculations.”

“You think you can just order me around?” she demanded. “You didn’t even ask if I would help or not.”

“Well? Will you?”

“We could get permed.”

“People
are getting permed back on the station right now.”

“They aren’t
people
James—not exactly.”

I frowned at her. “Look, the Tau are a lot friendlier than the squids. If Claver hadn’t set them off with his holo-box virus, they would still be peacefully selling everyone their gizmos. Instead we abused them thoroughly, and now we’re letting the squids have a turn.”

Natasha winced, knowing I was right. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can cook up.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I can’t promise you won’t regret it, but it’s the right thing to do.”

I slid the key across the table, and she took it quickly. She stood up and headed for her workshop. She looked like a condemned woman heading up the steps to the guillotine.

Heading in the opposite direction, I caught up with Carlos in the rec room.

“Oh, no,” he said, catching sight of me. “Just forget it. Don’t even start with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Whatever you just pulled on Natasha, save it. I don’t want to hear a word.”

Frowning, I approached him anyway. He was standing in the null-grav zone ready to exercise with nothing on but a skin-tight smart-cloth suit.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked.

“I sure as hell do mind.”

I shed my outer gear and joined him anyway. There were a few others in the room as we drifted and dragged ourselves along the ceiling using rings bolted there for the purpose, but they were out of earshot and making too much noise to listen.

“
Carlos, I need your help.”

“No you don’t. You need a psychiatrist.”

I gave him the short version concerning the Tau and their predicament. Oddly enough, the story struck him as funny.

“You’re kidding me?” he asked. “These heartless bastards have been sold to the squids as
slaves
? That’s irony at its best.”

“No it isn’t,” I said, becoming annoyed. “Well, yeah, maybe it is. But it’s not just ironic. It’s tragic. These are people we came here to protect. Now, we’ve sold them out to the squids.”

“Better them than us, brother.”

I could tell I was going to have to take an entirely different approach to get Carlos to help me. Pulling on his heartstrings was hopeless.

“Let’s try to take the long view,” I said. “What do you think the squids will do next?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll fart around in this system plundering it long enough to get the attention of the Galactics. Then, hopefully, the Core Systems will send back our fleet and rip off a few trillion of their tentacles. It’ll be calamari time!”

“Yeah,” I said, “that might be how it goes. What do you think the Galactics will do when they see how their new enforcers wimped out?”

Carlos frowned. “Um…they aren’t going to like that.”

“No. The Nairbs will have a special crime on their books for it—you know they will.”

“Yeah. It will all be our fault somehow. They left us in charge.”

I was nodding. He was following along and I thought I might almost have him in the bag.

We’d warmed up on the rings and now glided into the sparring pit. This amounted to a spherical cage. Once the door slammed shut, we began to wrestle. This is harder than it sounds in null-G. We went into one spinning, grunting clinch after another, but neither of us could pin the other.

“Let’s try another hypothetical,” I said, straining. “What if the Galactics
don’t
come back? How will it play out then?”

Carlos disengaged and I let him. He looked even less happy.

“That will really suck,” he said. “The squids are ruthless. They’ll come for Earth after a while and take us out. We’ll be the next slave race on their menu. They already like to catch and breed our kind—it would be a natural for them.”

“Exactly,” I said, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was talking myself into action as much as I was talking him into it.

“We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” Carlos said, doing a flip and floating down to the floor.

“No,” I said. “We’re damned if we don’t do anything no matter whether the Galactics come back or not.”

He climbed out of the sparring cage, and I followed him.

Carlos looked at me. “What do you want to do, then? Besides screw our coldhearted Imperator?”

I let his comment slide with difficulty. “We’ve got to knock out the squids.”

He shook his head and snorted. “Just like that?”

“Yes.”

Seeing I was serious, he floated closer and lowered his voice. “Just go to Turov. Butter her up, if you know what I mean. Get her to see reason. We’ll hit the squids just as they unload into the station. That’s got to be the moment.”

“I tried that already,” I said. “She wasn’t listening.”

Carlos smirked. “So it’s true, then? I heard it from the MPs, but I didn’t believe it.”

“What?” I asked, my heart sinking.

“They said you and Turov had another little meeting. Right there in her office? You are insatiable—like a goat, I mean.”

I launched myself at him, and we locked arms. We went into a spin. Others watched, laughing. It had to be a comical scene.

“Let go or we’ll land bad,” Carlos said, gritting his teeth.

“No,” I said. “Fifty-fifty, you’ll be on the bottom. I’ll take my chances.”

We struggled in a clinch, and crashed into a wall. Unfortunately, it was my back and skull that took the brunt of the impact.

“All right,” Carlos said, drifting away and breathing hard. “I’ll help. But first, you’ve got to tell me about Turov. What’s the deal between you two? Is this becoming a habit? I don’t know if I can take that.”

“What do you mean, take it?” I asked, rubbing the back of my head. Blood wet my finger.

“Making love to a lady more than once changes everything,” Carlos told me. “That officially makes this an
affair
not just a random event, McGill.”

“The second time makes it an affair, huh? At what point does she turn into an actual girlfriend?”

“I don’t know…tenth time, I guess.”

I shook my head. “I bow to the expert. You know it all
, don’t you Carlos?”

This made him angry. A lot of things make Carlos angry, but any reference to his relative lack of success with women always did the trick.

“If you can’t beat them, then screw them, is that it?” Carlos demanded. “That’s your policy isn’t it, McGill? And don’t lie to me—everyone knows what you’ve been doing with Turov.
Everyone
.”

“Is my policy such a bad one?” I asked. “Sort of like ‘make love, not war.’”

“Yeah, sure… You disgust me.”

“Only because you aren’t as good at the game as I am.”

Throwing his hands up, Carlos traveled hand-over hand to the exit and left the chamber. He slammed the door on the way out. I was just as happy to see him go. How could someone be selfish and judgmental at the same time? I didn’t get that. I was plenty selfish too, I’d be the first to admit that. But at least I didn’t go around giving everyone else I met a lecture on how to behave.

Cursing, I remembered I had to have his help. I dragged myself over the rattling rings to the exit and followed him.

“I talked, and you promised to help if I did,” I said when I caught up to him.

“I know. I’m heading for the armory, aren’t I?”

“This isn’t going to be like that. Get on a light suit—with a good seal.”

He eyed me, shaking his head. “I don’t like this plan already. Why can’t we just go in with our guns hot?”

“Because we don’t want to be fried for it afterward, that’s why.”

He grumbled, but he listened. We got into light suits and wore nothing but air tanks and helmets. No sidearms—no weapons at all.

Natasha met us out in the hallway. “Graves might be getting suspicious,” she told me. “He’s ordering a full roll call at 1700.”

“We’ll have to move fast. What have you got?”

She handed each of us a grenade. They weren’t shrapnel grenades. They were silvery canisters about the size and shape of a beer can.

“You pull the ring on the top and toss them close. Not much range. No odor, no visible smoke trail.”

I eyed the canister dubiously. It didn’t look pro.

“You sure this will work?”

“Are you sure you want to do this at all?” she asked in return. “Because this is your idea, and I’m willing to bail out right now.”

“What about cameras and their tappers?”

“They’ll be blanked out. That’s the best I could do.”

I sighed. “No way you could record some kind of fake squid attack?”

“No,” she snorted. “Not unless you give me a studio and a week to work it up. Besides, who would believe the squids did this?”

“No one,” I admitted. “Well, that’s it. Let’s roll, people. Black it out, Natasha.”

She licked her lips and studied a tiny screen. “You sure you want to do this, James? Really sure?”

“Oh yeah,” Carlos said. “He’s sure. If it’s dangerous, insane and just plain wrong—McGill’s your man.”

Natasha reached up and activated a script. Moments later the lights in the passageway went dark, and I started to run.

We burst in on the tactical ops people two seconds after we’d rolled the canisters in. They were mostly unconscious, but one of them stared at me from on his knees, grabbing the console with both hands like a drowning man. Then he toppled onto the floor and sprawled onto his back, out cold.

“I thought you said this stuff was instantaneous!” I complained. “That guy saw me, I’m sure he did.”

“I did the best I could,” Natasha said.

“Not good enough.”

“Let’s call the whole thing off,” Carlos suggested.

I stood there in the room. Wisps of vapor drifted toward the vents overhead. The gas the small canisters had released wasn’t as invisible as Natasha had said it would be, either. For a sick second I wondered what would happen if it filled
Minotaur
and knocked people out all over the ship. Anything seemed possible at this moment.