"Ill be back in half an hour," I said. "I promise, Galina."

"Youd better be, or Im going to have you arrested again with fresh charges."

"Wait until I get back, or Ill go public with the key."

After our exchange of threats, she watched me leave. She wore a sour, wistful expression.

As I walked down long pa.s.sageways back to the aft section of the ship, I reflected on the strange chemistry I had going with this particular woman. It had to be the oddest relationship of my long and storied career with the opposite s.e.x. On any given day, we were as likely to engineer the others demise as we were to make love. Wed done both, in equal measure, for years now.

She could have had me tracked down and arrested right now, of course-but she didnt. Personally, I think that deep down she didnt want to see the last of me. No matter how much she talked about getting rid of old James McGill, I still turned her on at some primitive level. Maybe we were in twisted, mutually abusive love affair. One thing was for sure: we were a couple made in h.e.l.l.

When I made it back to the detention center, the guards stopped me and moved to arrest me. I was prepared for that. I pulled Turovs face up on my tapper.

"Let him through," she said glumly.

I knew she didnt want me to blab about her key. She just wanted me to get this over with.

The door into the torture chamber opened and slammed shut behind me a few minutes later. My two best friends were there, talking and sipping coffee. Randy-that a.s.shole-he was playing a vid of me on his tapper and laughing about it. On his arm, I was squirming in the chair. It must have been a different version of James McGill, as I couldnt recall having had that many needles shoved into me all at once.

Neither man was armed as they didnt want to risk a prisoner getting his hands on a gun.

Bill stood up and looked at my pistol. He knew the score, and he didnt even say anything. His eyes focused on the b.l.o.o.d.y stained deck at our feet. Thats all.

I shot him in the face, and he sagged down like a sack of meal.

Randy fought. One second, he was smiling and laughing at my video, and the next he snarled like a dog and charged me, getting in close before I could get my pistol lined up properly.

The gun spun away, and we were on the deck, trading vicious blows. He didnt go down easy. I had to pin him. I even ripped out one eye, but he still fought on.

Maybe he knew what his fate would be, too.

When Randy finally lay still on the deck, I used the key on his tapper, and I erased him. Not just his life, but all record that hed ever existed. Maybe his mamma had a few baby pictures saved somewhere back on Earth, but that was about it.

The only people who would remember him were those who knew him personally and could attest that hed once drawn breath. As far as all the computers in the galaxy were concerned, hed never been alive at all.

When I was done, I looked at the key...such power. Id never permed a man before, and it felt strange.

I tried not to think about it afterward-but of course, I did.

Whyd I do it? Because such a man didnt deserve to live.

What right did I have to perm another human being? I dont know. What right did he have to kill seven versions of me in a row?

Like I said, I tried not to think about it...

But I did.

The detention people were understandably upset when they got to the torture chamber and found both their star tormentors dead on the deck.

They found me sitting on the steel chair, looking down at the bodies thoughtfully.

"Drop the weapon, Veteran."

I did so. Then I held up my hands. On my forearm was a live feed, displaying Turovs face.

"Let Veteran McGill go," she ordered.

"Are you under some kind of duress, sir?"

"No. He has acted under my authority. He is to be escorted to my office immediately. But dont listen to anything else he says."

The guards werent happy, but they did as she ordered. They muttered and complained all the way back up to Gold Deck.

Centurion Belter made an appearance along the way, and she almost crashed the whole party. She was raving mad, half-naked, and she had a lot of grease and dirt on her. She must have had a hard time getting out of that locked data closet.

"Sorry sir," I said when faced with her shouts and curses.

When the guards explained I was under Turovs protection, she took her sidearm and left me, snarling about traitors and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Since I felt I was neither, I didnt feel the sting of her barbs.

It occurred to me as we reached Gold Deck that Turov might very well have me shot when I got there. But those were the breaks. Id done what I wanted to do. Id made my bargain with the devil, and I was going to keep my end of it, no matter how it turned out.

When I got there, she saw I was unarmed and so she waved my escort back outside into the pa.s.sages. Her office door closed behind me, and we were alone.

I stood at attention as she walked around me, staring up curiously. She stopped when she got around to face me again, and she shook her head.

"Youre a wonder, James McGill."

"Thank you, sir."

She held out her hand. "Give it to me."

I put the Galactic key into her small palm. She made it disappear like a magician palming a gold coin. One second it was there and the next it wasnt.

Then she surprised me by putting her pistol on her desk.

"James, Im sorry," she said.

Of all the things Galina Turov might have said to me, this was probably the last one I was expecting. I glanced down, looking into her face for an instant. Our eyes met, and she honestly looked troubled.

"I reviewed the vid files while you were gone," she said. "I didnt know. I swear it. And I dont want you to blame all of Solstice, either. My orders were to extract the truth. They were overzealous in their efforts."

"You could say that."

She stared at me thoughtfully for a second. "What happened on the Nairb ship? Give me the truth."

I told her. I told her everything. About Claver, the Nairb death chamber, the squid missile pod-even the chocolate bar. She listened, shaking her head from time to time and making sounds of disbelief.

"All right," she said when I finished. "Im going to trust you on this one. Whats done is done, anyway. If the Nairbs dont buy that the cephalopods destroyed their ship, executing you wont have any effect on their condemnation of Earth. Your charges are dismissed."

"Thank you, sir," I said.

"Why did you need the key for simple revenge?" she asked. "You had a pistol-that would have been enough for the McGill I know."

I thought about my answer. She didnt know that Id erased that guy, Randy. He just wasnt there anymore in the computer systems, and anyone whos ever looked for a ghost can tell you theyre not easy to find. You dont even notice when theyre not around anymore.

"What would you have had me do," I asked her, "if it had been you in that chair for seven lives?

"Seven...?" she asked, shocked. "I didnt know..."

I took three steps toward her. She backed up one pace and put her hand on the desk near her pistol, but she didnt pick it up.

I touched her shoulder. I dont know why, really. Wed been close once. Maybe that was it. Touching her just felt right.

She didnt even seem to notice. She was looking into my eyes, not at my hands.

"Galina," I said, "weve been through it, you and I. Life, death-love and despair. This is one more of those moments, thats all."

"But what did you do?"

"People think I do whatever I want, but its not true. I did what I had to do."

She finally caught on then. "You erased them?" Her eyes were big. "Thats why you needed the key. Killing those two wasnt enough?"

"For one man it was-but not for the other."

She nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did understand, Im not sure.

She looked so young, but she wasnt a kid. Shed seen a lot in her lifetime, just as I had.

"Ill cover it up," she said. "Dont worry about it."

"Thanks," I said, "but Ill never forget this day."

She gave me a little kiss. It was a strangely gentle gesture, coming from her. I took my hand off her after that and left. She didnt try to stop me. She didnt say anything at all. It was hard to know what she was thinking.

I didnt ask because I didnt care. Id had a long, hard day, and it was finally done.

-41-.

Imperator Turovs idea of "covering up" was a little different than mine. She didnt erase records or stage a hearing to clear my name. She just dropped the charges and ordered everyone involved to shut the h.e.l.l up.

It was effective on a surface level, I had to give her that. The legion officials stopped trying to arrest me, and I was restored to my previous rank and position in Winslades cavalry cohort. I dont think Winslade was too happy about that, but he didnt say anything. He had to be wondering what kind of strange power I had over Turov.

No one said much to me at all, in fact. But they did stare, and a few of them sneered. They talked-oh yeah, they talked-but only behind my back.

Carlos was an exception to that rule. He didnt just sneer and whisper, he came right out and b.i.t.c.hed about what had happened.

"Another sleazy con job," he said. "Or should I say, b.l.o.w. .j.o.b?"

"What?" I asked, jolted out of my thoughts. I was running down the pilots checklist on my dragon. It was all shined up and ready for the parade ground. Not fighting a battle for a week had allowed us to repair and polish our deadly machines.

Carlos and I were standing in the mechanics bay under the bellies of our respective vehicles. Originally, Id placed his dragon in a pod at the far end of the bay, but that hadnt worked out. Sure, hed been less annoying to me, but hed irritated everyone else. Without me to shut his mouth, his naturally charismatic personality had driven the rest of my squad nuts. Consequently, Id moved him right up next to me, so I could keep an eye on him.

"You heard me," he said. "Turov still has a thing for you. Its obvious and undeniable. If any of the rest of us had pulled s.h.i.t like that, wed have been permed instantly. Well, maybe not instantly. They might have tortured us for a while first."

At the mention of torture, I bared my teeth. I could still feel Randys hot needle in my back. Anne had sprayed several layers of fresh cells over the puncture wounds, but they still ached and stung, especially when I stretched in the morning.

"You dont know what the h.e.l.l youre talking about," I told him. "And you should stop talking before I stop you myself."

For some reason, he got the message this time. He fell quiet, although he was still muttering to himself about how unfair the universe was. He opened the leg actuators on his vehicle to make some tension adjustments, and I left the bay.

I had a headache, a backache and I was p.i.s.sed off. I went to see Anne, who looked me over doubtfully.

"I think you have an internal infection," she said. "How did this happen, James? Did you report these injuries?"

"Sort of."

"What does that mean? Are they from training, or working in the bays or what?"

Hesitating, I thought about my answer before I spoke. Finally, I shook my head. "The injuries were deliberate," I said. "Courtesy of Legion Solstice."

Anne was alarmed and angry about that. "You should report them. This goes beyond hazing and bar-fighting. This is abuse."

She applied salves to my skin and gave me a hefty shot of antibiotics deep in my abdomen. The shot made me a little sick, and the long needle reminded me of Randy again.

She put a hand on my forehead then read the results that lit up her tapper. "Slight fever. Blood toxins are up. Are you sleeping?"

"Sometimes."

She kept prodding me and checking me over. At last, Id had enough of it, and I gently took her hands in mine.

"Lets go on a date," I said.

She looked into my eyes, still worried. "What happened to you? This could be serious-you didnt have a bad revive again, did you?"

That made me laugh. "I had several of them, in fact. And I dont want to take another trip through the revival machines, if thats what youre suggesting. I just need some cheering up and some time to heal."

"I dont know," she said, looking down at her hands, which were still wrapped up inside mine.

"What? Why not? You promised me another date a while back, remember?"

She nodded, but she still didnt look at me.

"This is the best shot were going to get," I said. "Things are pretty quiet right now. Everyones been revived, even the tribunes. If we get into another fight, well be separated again. If we fly back home-well, we might not see each other until the next campaign."

Anne pulled her hands out of my grip and sighed. "I know. All right. Im on break in an hour. Meet me then."

Her words gave me the first smile of my day. I had something to look forward to. Even better, it looked like the general dislike and mistrust Id been faced with everywhere I went didnt extend all the way to Anne. I was glad about that.