Carlos looked like he might back off—but he didn’t. He knew I had an angle for being here, and it probably wasn’t just to meet randos walking aboard ship from Earth. He tried hard to figure out what I was up to.
I could have ordered him to shove-off, but I didn’t feel like it. He hadn’t done anything wrong yet, he was just mildly irritating by nature.
“It’s Turov, right? That’s it, isn’t it? She’s coming aboard today, and you’re hoping for some sugar.”
“Wrong. She won’t come until we’ve almost reached the target world.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she can wait on Earth until the last minute. Would you rather be aboard Dominus or back home sitting in some restaurant, if you had the choice?”
He nodded. “Hmmm… good point.”
Still, he didn’t leave. He lingered, watching me and the crowd.
About five hundred folks filed by before one officer in particular caught my eye. Her name was Jenny Mills, a centurion in the same cohort I was in, under our dear Primus Graves. Jenny and I had shared a night or two way back, but I hadn’t talked to her much for years. Still, I figured she was the best shot I had today.
“Hey Jenny!” I shouted as soon as she walked onto the deck plates. “Hey look, everybody! It’s Centurion Mills. We can get the party started now.”
She looked around in some confusion, then walked over to where I stood. Carlos wisely melted away, but I saw him tossing appreciative glances at her from behind.
“McGill?” Jenny asked. “I was told you’re one of the primary instigators of this fuster-cluck. Is that true?”
“Guilty as charged. How about we have dinner tonight? I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Um…” she said, and she flicked her eyes to the left. That might be a good sign. If a girl looks at the ceiling, that usually means she isn’t interested. If she looks at the deck, she probably is. But a glance to the side? Well sir, according to the James McGill bible of female responses, that indicated she wasn’t sure.
In short, she was telling me I had a chance.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Five years back—or was it ten now? Jenny had been in action with me on Armor World. We’d had a few moments, a few dates, but then she’d caught me texting another girl and promptly dumped me. All of that was ancient history at this point, so maybe she’d forgotten about being mad.
“All right,” she said finally. “What the hell. I know a shit-storm when I smell one, and you’re always in the middle of these things when they happen.”
“I’m like a force of nature! Let’s go.”
Jenny followed me off Gray Deck. As we left I glanced back, and I saw Carlos shaking his head and making obscene gestures with his fingers. Was that annoying? It sure as hell was. But he hadn’t interrupted. He hadn’t come over and tried to warn Jenny off, or made some kind of loud joke. I considered that to be major progress on his part. If he kept this up, Carlos was going to have to be reclassified as fully human.
Jenny dropped off her stuff at her module, then she walked the quiet passages of the big ship with me. I gave her the whole story—with a few key edits, naturally. She listened to me with big eyes, and before either one of us knew how we’d gotten there, we were standing on Green Deck.
“You remember when I burned this place down?” I laughed.
“Yes. My unit couldn’t exercise for a week.”
I guffawed and carried on. Jenny watched me, but her arms were crossed and her eyes were kind of slitty. That wasn’t a good sign, but I pretended not to notice. It wasn’t until I got to the juicy parts, like when I’d revived Raash and Armel back on Earth, that she seemed impressed.
“So… do I have this story straight? You’re claiming that you not only went out to Rigel and killed two of the enemy—”
“Hold on! It was four, if you count those two watch-lizards Armel had with him.”
She nodded. “Four then, right. After all that, you get two of these traitors revived on Earth? Why?”
I had her going now, I could tell. Her eyes were big, blue and round. Her arms weren’t crossed anymore, either, and I was glad to see it. They’d been squeezing her breasts down so hard I thought they’d go flat.
“That’s just it, see. Big stuff is happening in the cosmos. These two knew the inside story, and I knew they’d both like to get back into the good graces of mother Earth. Accordingly, I brought them home and got them to confess their worst crimes. Central was so grateful to them—and to me—that they were allowed to continue breathing.”
“Really? No prison time? No punishment at all?”
“Well… there was a solid flogging in the deal for old Armel. I did the honors personally. And that crazy lizard—he died kind of hard on the way back here. Sure, we brought him back to life and all, but I don’t think he’s totally happy with his new circumstances.”
“Why not?”
“Uh… he’s kind of blue, now. I mean his scales, his skin. It’s a different color.”
Jenny shrugged. “So what? If I was permed, and I came back as a redhead, I wouldn’t complain about it.”
“That’s what I said! But, according to that big crybaby lizard, there aren’t any blue raptor-types on Steel World. Only the big guys, the juggers, are sometimes blue.”
Jenny blinked a few times as she thought that over. Then she looked up, and she registered horror. “You don’t mean that he’s
