So saying, I spun on my heel, turning toward the door. I was already planning my lunch.
“Not so fast. Stand and wait.”
“Yessir.” Slowly, I turned back to face him. Sometimes, a man just couldn’t slip away fast enough.
Drusus turned back to Armel, who wasn’t smiling or goofing off. He knew Drusus wasn’t dumb. He was decisive—and he could be mean.
“What do you expect from us for this good turn, Armel?”
“Nothing absurd. I don’t expect a command of my own. I merely wish to return to normal society. I want to be a common man again. A retired soul on Old Earth.”
Drusus snorted. “That’s hardly possible. You’re a renown criminal—worse, you’re a traitor on a grand scale.”
Armel pursed his lips and shrugged. “I might require… facial surgery? Whatever it takes.”
Drusus shook his head. “No. You’ll go with us. You’ll stay a prisoner until this campaign is seen through to the end. If I’m satisfied with your efforts at that point, I’ll see that all charges are quietly dropped.”
“You can do that?” I burst out. “That’s pretty cool.”
Drusus glanced at me, but he didn’t answer. “What do you say, Armel?”
“I accept your terms, Drusus. I’m at your service to the bitter end.”
Drusus then summoned some hogs and had Armel taken to Blue Deck for some more patching up.
When we were alone, he turned to me at last. “Looks like we’re launching a new campaign together, McGill.”
“It’s like my birthday and Christmas came all at once, sir!”
“What do you think of Armel? Can we trust him?”
“Not half as far as I could throw him. Nowhere near that far, actually…”
Drusus nodded and paced a bit. I let him get the pacing-thing out of his system without interrupting.
“I want you to keep an eye on him,” he said at last. “Turov too. I don’t quite know what’s going on, but I don’t like any of it. We’ll go out to Green World, we’ll erase whatever’s there, and we’ll pray that’s the end of it all.”
I nodded. “I sure hope the good Lord plans to give us a break this time, sir.”
He smiled faintly. “Me too.”
-27-
The next dozen hours were a whirlwind of action. It took us longer to get Dominus underway than we’d hoped—nearly twice as long.
That said, it was amazing we could get a ship so large fueled and loaded with cargo when the voyage hadn’t even been planned. Hogs and yard-dogs were working hard, sweating and humping and bumping.
At last, we had enough gear and personnel to cast off. The big ship turned toward the Moon, slid out just past the satellite’s orbit—then Captain Merton hit the gas. We entered warp and hummed along nicely.
Immediately, I found a hard bunk and flopped on it. That gained me some well-earned shuteye. The break didn’t last long, however. By about 0600 hours, my tapper was beeping and people were hammering on my flimsy cabin door.
Staggering awake, I threw the door open. A group of officers stood there, and they were shocked by what they saw. The main problem was I was naked from the waist down.
“McGill?” Graves asked. He glanced sourly around my cabin, but he saw I was alone. “Did you get the update on your tapper last night, McGill? About the breakfast meeting this morning?”
“Uh… sure did, sir!” I lied with enthusiasm. Night-time messages rarely got read by my eyes, unless they’d been sent by a pretty girl.
Graves glared at me. “The meeting is right now, and you’re out of uniform, soldier. Put some clothes on. We’ll wait.”
Behind him, several curious necks craned to look. Centurion Leeza was there, plus Winslade and a few others. She looked amused, while Winslade was disgusted. As for Graves, well, he looked just as annoyed with me as he usually did.
“Uh… yessir. I’ll get right on that. I like to sleep in the buff when I’m hot, see—sorry about that.”
I slammed the door in their faces and whipped on some clothes. As soon as I had myself half-covered, I opened the door again and waved for them to enter.
“Welcome to my humble abode… if you think you’ll all fit, I’ve got a foldout table right here.”
Winslade snorted. “That’s not our intention, McGill. Come with us.”
That’s when I realized Winslade was in charge of this little delegation. I didn’t like to see that, but he’d been given command of Legion Varus’ sidekick legion again. Apparently, after Fike had shit the bed at the tribune level out on Edge World, the brass had lost confidence in him. He was just another primus now.
That meant the job of running what we called our “zoo” of aliens was wide open, and the duty had fallen on Winslade’s skinny shoulders once again.
In all honesty, that made him a sub-tribune, and I didn’t think he should be lording it over an accomplished man like Graves. But I didn’t make the rules—bureaucrat hogs back on Earth did that. They’d ruled a sub-tribune was a half-step below a full tribune in rank. Essentially, he was in-between the level of a primus and a real tribune. Every sub rank worked like that now. It was good to have a clear chain-of-command, but it did leave a bad feeling in some people’s butts when it resulted in moments like this.
We dutifully followed Winslade on his rounds. He was gathering up a number of officers, mostly of the centurion and primus rank.
“Did someone say something about breakfast?” I asked when we were a throng of about thirty people. “I’m getting kind of peckish.”
“Come, come,” Winslade said, flicking fingers over his shoulder. “Refreshments are this way.”
Lured like children following the Pied Piper, we made our way down
