The arrows finally converged somewhere unexpected. Instead of heading to Green Deck for an exercise, or to the mess hall for chow, or even to the lifters for evacuation, they led us to an area we hadn’t stepped into for a long, long time.
A set of big vacuum sealed doors let us into the outer hull of the ship. Or rather, the space between the outer hull and the inner.
A long time ago, I’d fought a battle in this airless region of a different transport ship. That was on the way to Death World. The Wur had set up a surprise for us back then: invading pods that adhered to the outer hull, ate through the metal with powerful acids, and weird creatures had slipped through to attack us.
When we got to our rally-point, I looked around and saw most of the cohort was here. Two of the units in the zone had no weapons—just two.
Graves was already there. He walked around, eyeing us with disdain. “You look like grannies,” he assured us. “But at least you’re armed—except for Johnson?”
“Hey, is that Johnson?” I crowed. “When did they make you an officer? I remember when you were noncom, and I seem to recall—”
“Shut up, McGill,” Graves said.
Johnson was frowning at me and Graves. He’d always been an unimaginative man. Not a bad sort, just kind of a dull blade.
Graves gave him a lecture, telling him he’d forget his cock if it wasn’t glued on and such-like. Harris and I grinned ear-to-ear.
“I remember when he punched you in the kidneys,” Harris said, “and you had your knife all set-up, and you cut half of them off for him.”
“Oh yeah…” I grinned harder and cupped my hands over my mouth to make a megaphone. “Did you forget your fingers too, Johnson?”
“Fuck you, McGill!”
Graves shook his head and marched around angrily. Johnson asked to go back and arm his unit, but Graves didn’t give him permission. “We’ve been ordered to man this station. We’re hitting the border to Province 926, and we’re passing the first of their many robotic defenses.”
“Oh, I get it. The friend-or-foe thing. Is Armel for real, or is he not? That’s the billion credit question.”
Graves eyed me. “You’d better hope that he’s on the level.”
“Why me in particular, sir?”
“First off, because he’s your pet. You brought him back, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll make sure everyone remembers that.”
“You’re all heart, sir.”
“What’s more, did you happen to notice our post? We’re guarding the vacuum between the two hulls. That’s got to be the first thing that will be destroyed if something goes wrong.”
“Oh…”
Graves was right, of course. If those border forts—mini-Skay, they’d called them—decided in their AI brains to fire upon us, well sir, anyone in this airless zone could kiss his ass goodbye.
My grin faded as I thought that over. I looked toward Harris, and he was no longer laughing, either.
“This sucks,” he said.
I didn’t even bother to answer.
Instead of talking to the other officers, I went to find Natasha. That was pretty easy, as I had a special HUD inside my helmet that allowed me to track and pinpoint anyone in my unit, dead or alive.
When I walked up, she didn’t look overjoyed to see me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Lots of things. To start with, we’re passing into Province 926 right now.”
“I know that much. What do you want from me?”
Right there, I caught it in her voice. She was miffed, unfriendly. Had she heard about Centurion Mills already? Damn, this legion was like five hundred blackbirds peeping on a wire. Gossip traveled faster than orders.
“I need to know what’s happening,” I told her.
She shrugged. “We’re in a warp-bubble, James. What can I do from here with a field computer and a tapper? Our sensors are whited-out by the Alcubierre warp field.”
“I know that. I want to know how things are going with Armel. How he’s performing with the friend-or-foe transmission? Are the techs on the comms deck buying it?”
“Oh… oh no, I’m not going to hack into the sensor op people! That’s crazy!” Her voice had down-shifted into a panicky whisper.
“Shhh… Listen, you don’t have to hack into anything. Just listen-in a little.”
“That’s a highly secure channel, James. That’s the definition of hacking.”
“Whatever. Look, if Armel is blowing it, I’d like to know. Wouldn’t you?”
“We probably won’t know until one of those mini-Skay things locks on and blows us out of space.”
“Yeah, probably. But wouldn’t it be better to know now rather than later? Besides which, I might be able to do something about it.”
She eyed me the way a cat eyes a stray dog. “What do you mean? Have you got a lever on Armel—even now?”
I shrugged. “Might be. After all, I’m the one who brought him in, remember?”
She made a frustrated huffing sound and started working on her computer. “These people are dangerous, James. The sensor-ops guys are very touchy about their data.”
“I bet. Try to be discreet.”
Natasha gave me a venomous glance and worked for a while. Finally, she flicked something to my tapper. It was a video feed. I lifted my arm to my face and tapped up the volume.
“For God’s sake,” she hissed, “cover it up with your hand or something!”
“Okay, okay.”
Standing side by side, we both watched our tappers together. I turned down the audio until it was tinny and quiet. That wasn’t the best, but you couldn’t hope for perfection when you were leeching off another man’s secure feed.
We watched a crowd on Gold Deck. Armel was in the center of it. “If you would all give me a little breathing room, please?” he asked the officers that were swarming around him.
I chuckled. “Look at all that brass! They’re
