Carlos looked disgusted. He sighed. “Of course. McGill charges into danger to help, while Carlos scuttles away. I’m pretty sure that’s why you’re a centurion, and I’m still a loser bio.”
“It’s that, plus your ugly looks—and don’t forget your sheer pig-ignorance.”
“Thanks.”
We started walking again, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the topic of conversation shifted. I’d been contemplating drowning him and tampering with his tapper—but it wasn’t necessary. He’d bought my pack of lies, and his big mouth would soon become an asset when my unit was reunited. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from telling everyone I’d been rescuing Manfred’s troops instead of running for my life.
Bored, we made a seven kilometer tour, which took us halfway around the island. That’s when Graves came looking for us virtually using his officer’s tracking system.
My tapper lit up and displayed his ugly mug. “I see you and Ortiz are having a romantic stroll on the beach.”
“Not so, Primus sir. We’re reviewing the situation at the front lines.”
“There are no front lines. We’re inside a dome, and all the monsters are dead or they’ve escaped.”
Graves was correct, but I didn’t feel like letting him know that. Not yet, anyway.
“I don’t think so, Primus. Some of those monsters got away, sure. I saw them swim out to sea and disappear—but what if they’re still lurking just off shore?”
“They’re gone, McGill. We have drones and satellite lidar. We’re tracking them to the depth of a kilometer or more. They seem to be able to move through the barrier they constructed—maybe because it’s essentially compressed water anyway. The surviving enemy all swam off into the sea.”
“Huh… well, that’s good news. How do we get out of this dome? Do we have a way to switch it off or something?”
“No… not yet. We’re trapped here. I suggest you stop wasting time on the beach and try to figure it out.”
“How, sir?”
“You could take a walk down underwater again. That special railroad you found that goes to the ocean floor might go right through it.”
I stopped walking and stared out to sea. I realized he was right. “It’s worth a try. But I’m not sure what I can do out there even if I do find a way out. I mean, I’ll still be stuck on the bottom of the ocean.”
“Not so. We’ve been trying to set up some gateway posts to take us back up to the ship. This damned dome isn’t allowing it. There’s too much interference. You can’t even teleport through it.”
I whistled long and low. I hadn’t found too many things you couldn’t teleport through. “Is it that dense? Like the star-matter hull of a Skay?”
“I don’t know, but those who have tried have splatted on the dome.”
I looked up and craned my neck. I tried to spot a crushed body smeared against the dome. I didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. The dome was pretty huge, after all.
“What are we going to do, Primus sir?”
“What you’re going to do is take a walk on the ocean floor. If you can walk about a kilometer down that path, it will take you out of the dome. From that point, you should be able to set up some gateway posts, and then maybe—”
I slapped my gloved paws together with enthusiasm. “Then we can march everyone left alive down there and roll them right through. What a sneaky way to escape!”
Graves looked at me seriously. “We might do that—march the troops, I mean. But really, what matters most are the star-falls. Those babies don’t come cheap, and Turov wants them back on her ship safely stashed in a stasis field.”
I blinked, absorbing his words. He was saying that marching all the men down there in a conga line to the bottom of the ocean wasn’t that important. They wanted to save expensive artillery pieces. That figured—Varus brass always thought like that.
Sucking in a breath, I nodded to Graves. “I’ll do it, sir. Just let me eat some dinner and take a crap. I’m your man after that, and I won’t disappoint.”
“No dinner. If you need more than four minutes to crap, do it in your suit. I want you marching down that path to the seabed inside of fifteen minutes.”
“You’re all heart, sir. McGill out.”
I began trotting after that, and Carlos trotted after me. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to keep up. But when I was in armor and he was in his light spacer suit, we were evenly matched. Even so, he was huffing and puffing long before we reached the Wur building that led down to the passage under the sea.
“Why are you following me around, Specialist? Are you trying to get a date?”
“Chill, Centurion. I just don’t want to miss a possible underwater perming. I’ve never seen one done that way before. You’ll be my first.”
-51-
As it was, Carlos wasn’t the only guy waiting to send me off. As I entered the chute that went straight down to hell, a whole pack of curious techs were hanging around the place.
“What’s this?” Carlos demanded. “You ghouls! You’re all here to make vids when he dies down there, aren’t you?”
“Settle down, Specialist,” I told him. “Ladies? What’s up?”
I ended up regretting that I’d asked the question. They dressed me up with six kinds of cameras, instruments and sensors galore. I had more wires on me than a Christmas tree.
Carlos found my predicament particularly amusing. “Wow, Graves is a cold man. This is cringey. He played you so hard this time. It’s like he blames you for the destruction of his entire cohort.”
“Shut up.
