Star Corps (21 page)

“Garroway!” Makowiecz's voice snapped in his head. “What the hell did you just do?”

“Sir!” he replied. “This recruit took command of 1st Squad when the acting squad leader was incapacitated, sir! We then took the objective, sir!”

He braced for the inevitable chewing out.

“Well done, Marine” was Makowiecz's surprising reply. “What would you have done differently if you had been in command from the start?”

“Sir, this recruit would have attempted to reconnoiter the objective with one fire team in the lead, the other two in support, and attempted to correlate hyperspectral data from all vantage points before moving into the open. Sir.”

Philby, frankly, had screwed up, ordering the squad to advance into the open, knowing those guns were up there but without knowing their exact positions. In any race between man and laser, the laser
was
going to win.

Garroway kept his opinion of Philby's tactics to himself, however. They were all in this together, after all.
Gung-ho
…

“Outstanding job, Marine,” Makowiecz told him. “Your support is on its way. Second Squad lost its ARNCO. When they reach your position, you will take command. Sit tight until then.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

He was over the hump.

Graduation might be another five weeks off, but he felt like a Marine.

Makowiecz had
called
him a Marine!

Even getting killed an hour later didn't dampen the feeling. The Army SpecOps commandos were literally buried behind the ridge, their heat signatures masked by solid rock, their fighting holes hidden by boulders. They waited until 2nd Squad arrived and was just settling in, then rose like ghosts from their positions and cut down the recruits with
simulated laser and plasma gun bursts before they knew what was happening. “You're dead, kid,” one of the black-armored commandos had said as he grabbed Garroway from behind.

It didn't matter. He was a
Marine
….

9
OCTOBER
2138

Pacifica
Off the California Coast
1105 hours PT

Garroway grinned at Lynnley. “You know, this would be a
lot
more fun in zero gravity.”

“You!” she retorted, giving him a gentle punch in the chest. “Aren't you ever satisfied?”

“Well, if anybody can do it, you can,” he replied. He checked his inner timer. “I guess we'd better be moving.”

“Unless we want to be listed as AWOL, yeah,” she told him. She stroked his arm gently. “It's been good, being with you like this. Thanks.”

“Real good. I'm…going to miss you.” He shook his head as she rolled out of the bed.

The walls and ceiling of the room showed a view of space—Earth, moon, sun, and thick-scattered stars, slowly circling. The view was an illusion, of course; for one thing, even in space the stars weren't that bright when the sun was visible.

“I'll miss you too,” Lynnley said.

“I still don't want to believe we can't see each other again. Maybe ever.”

“Don't say that, John! We don't know what's going to happen!”

“Sure we do! I'm on my way to Ishtar, and you're going to Sirius. I checked a star map download. We'll be farther away from one another than if one of us stayed on Earth!”

She shrugged. “That doesn't make any difference, does it? Even one light-year is too far to think about.”

“Well, you know what I mean. We're going in two different directions. And I'd hoped we'd get deployed together.”

“Damn it, we both know how unrealistic that idea was, John. The needs of the Corps—”

“Come first. I know. But I don't have to like it.” He balled his fists, squeezing tight. “Shit.” He got out of the bed and began picking up his clothes. He and Lynnley had been fuck buddies off and on for a couple of years now…nothing serious, but she was fun to be with and therapeutic to vent at and fantastic recreation in bed. He'd thought of her as his closest friend and somehow never even considered the possibility that they would end up in different duty stations.

“Simulation off!” he called, addressing the room. The view of space vanished, replaced by empty walls that seemed to echo his loneliness.

“Look,” she told him, “we're both getting star duty, right? And we're both going about eight light-years. There's still a good chance we'll be tracking each other subjectively when we get back.”

“I guess so.” She meant that their subjective times ought to match pretty closely. Since they were both heading eight light-years out, they'd be spending about the same times at the same percentage of
c
and aging at about the same subjective rate.

But he didn't believe it. Things never worked out that neatly in real life, especially where the Corps was concerned. If he ever saw her again, one of them might well be years older than the other.

He sighed as he started pulling on his uniform. How much did that matter, really? They both knew they would be taking
other sex partners. With the future so uncertain, there was no sense in meaningless promises to wait for one another. It wasn't like they shared a long-term contract.

“I think,” he said slowly, sealing the front of his khaki shirt, “I'm just feeling a bit cut off. Like I'll never be able to come home again.”

“I know. Everything,
everyone
, we leave here is going to be twenty years older when we see them again. At least. My parents aren't happy about it, but at least they understand. And they'll only be in their sixties when I get back.”

“I just don't understand my mother,” he said. “
How
can she consider going back to that…man?”

“Like I told you once before, you can't protect her. You can't live her life. She has to make her own decisions.”

“But I keep wondering if she's going back to him because of me. Because I'm going to Ishtar.”

“That's still her issue, right? You have to do what's right for
you
.”

“But I don't know what that is. Not anymore. And I feel…guilty. She wasn't happy when I saw her yesterday. About my going to Ishtar, I mean.”

“I think you're giving yourself a lot more power over your mother than you really have. You've been around before when she's left, and she's always gone back, right? What made you think this time would be any different?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. You ready?”

Dressed now in her khakis, she pulled on her uniform cap and tugged it straight. “Ready and all systems go,” she told him. “You feel ready for lunch?”

He brightened, with an effort. “You bet.” If they only had a few more hours together, he was determined to enjoy them, instead of brooding about the might-have-beens and the never-would-bes.

They left the room, stepping out onto the hotel concourse. Pacifica was a small city erected on pylons off the southern California coast, halfway between San Diego and San
Clemente Island, a high-tech enclave devoted to shopping, restaurants, and myriad exotica of entertainment. Two days after their graduation from boot camp, they were in the middle of a glorious seventy-two—three whole, blessed days of liberty. They'd already been to the Europa Diver, paying two newdollars apiece to take turns steering a submarine through the deep, dark mystery of Europa's world-ocean, all simulated, of course, to avoid the speed-of-light time lag. After that they'd checked into the pay-by-hour room suite and entertained themselves with one another.

Now it was time to find a place to eat. The restaurant concourse was that way, toward the mall shops and the sub-O landing port. White-metal arches reached high overhead, admitting a wash of UV-filtered sunlight and the embrace of a gentle blue sky.

In another forty-eight hours he would be vaulting into that sky, on his way to the
Derna
at L-4.

And after that…

“What do you do,” he wondered aloud, “when you know you're not going to see Earth again for twenty years?”

“You are gloomy today, aren't you? We won't—”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted her. “Our subjective time will only be four years or so, depending on how long we're on Ishtar…and most of that time we'll be asleep. From
our
point of view, we could be right back here a few months from now. But all of this…” He waved his hand, taking in the sweep of the Pacifica concourse. “All of this will be twenty years older or more.”

“Pacifica's been here for forty-something years already. Why wouldn't it be here in another twenty?”

“It's not Pacifica. You know what I mean. All of these people…it's like we won't fit in anymore.”

“Take a look at yourself, John. We're Marines. We don't fit in
now
.”

Her words, lightly spoken, startled him. She was right. In all that crowded concourse, Garroway could see three others in Marine uniforms, and a couple of Navy men in black. The
rest, whether in casual dress, business suits, or nude, were civilians.

Their uniforms set them apart, of course, but he also knew it was more than the uniform.

And now he knew what was bothering him.

It was as though he'd already left on his twenty-year deployment, as if he no longer belonged to the Earth.

It was a strange and lonely feeling.

Hab 3, Deck 1, IST Derna
Orbital Construction Facility 1, L-4
1240 hours Zulu

Keep thinking about the money,
she told herself with grim determination.
Keep thinking about the money…and the papers you're going to publish…and winning the chair of the American Xenocultural Foundation….

Traci Hanson lay halfway out of the hot and claustrophobic embrace of her hab cell, flat on her back on the sleep pad, eyes tightly shut as the technicians on either side of her made the final connections. She hated the prodding, the handling, as if she were a naked slab of meat.

Which, of course, in a technical sense she was. The idea was to preserve her for the next ten years, to feed and water her while her implants slowed her brain activity to something just this side of death.

IV tubes had been threaded into both of her arms as well as in her carotid artery beneath the angle of her jaw. A catheter had been inserted into her bladder. She knew her implant was supposed to block all feelings of hunger, despite the fact that she'd had no solid food for a week, but her stomach was rumbling nonetheless. She was uncomfortable, sweaty, ill-tempered, she hadn't had a decent shower since she'd come aboard the
Derna
, and now these…these
people
were sticking more tubes and needles into her.

“Relax, Dr. Hanson,” one of the cybehibe techs told her.
“This'll just take a moment. Next thing you know, you'll be at Ishtar.”

“‘Relax.' Easy for you to say,” she grumped. She opened her eyes and turned her head as far as the tube in her throat would let her. The hab deck was still crowded with Marines, most of them busily cleaning or working with weapons and other articles of personal equipment. “You have to go through this with every one of those people?”

“Sure do,” the tech told her. “That's why it takes so long to work through the list. There's only about thirty of us, and we have twelve or thirteen hundred people to prep this way.”

She noticed that her blood was flowing through the tubes in her wrists, and the thought made her a little queasy, despite the suppressant effect of her implant.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess,” she said. “Uncomfortable. The pain in my arms is going away, a little.”

“Good.”

“It feels like this damned mattress pad is melting, though. It feels wet, and kind of squishy. Am I sweating that much?”

“No. It's supposed to do that. Think about it. For the next ten years, you're going to be lying here, breathing, eating, drinking, eliminating, filtering your blood, all through these IV tubes. Medical nano and the AI doctor built into these walls are going to be monitoring and handling all of your body functions. The one thing these machines can't do is safely turn you over every couple of hours for ten years. Can you imagine the problems you'd have with bedsores if you just laid on your ass for that long? By the time you're asleep, the pad will have turned into a kind of gel bath. It'll support you gently, just like you were in a pool of water…and the gel gives the medical nano access to your back so it can rebuild skin cells and keep your circulation going, keep your blood from pooling, y'know?”

“It feels…like I'm sinking.” Thoughts of drowning tugged at her mind. She wasn't thinking clearly, and she was
having trouble formulating the questions she wanted to ask. “Will…I dream?”

“Maybe a little, when you're going under, and when you're coming out. The AI doc will be initiating REM sleep as it takes you down. But most of the time? No.”

One of the other techs laughed. “I know I wouldn't care to have to deal with a decade's worth of dreams,” she said, “especially knowing I couldn't wake up!”

“I…think the Ahannu sergeant is Cydonia at the Institute. Ahannu Buckner is a real bastard. Manipulative. Make me rich…”

“I'm sure that's true, Doctor. Would you mind counting backward from a hundred for me?”

“Counting…backward? Sure. Saves power. But what about the Hunters of the Dawn? They won't have to wait in line, not with PanTerra. A hunnerd…ninety…uh, no…ninety-seven. Eight…nine…Ishtar. It's beautiful there, I understand….”

“You'll be able to see that for yourself, Doctor, very, very soon now.”

Hab 3, Deck 1, IST
Derna
Orbital Construction Facility 1, L-4
1405 hours Zulu

The surface of the world of Ishtar blurred beneath the hurtling Dragonfly, jagged mountains and upthrust volcanic outcroppings among gentler rivers of gleaming ice. This was Ishtar's anti-Marduk side, the hemisphere held in the grip of perpetual winter as the moon circled its primary in tidal lock-step.

But the ice was thinning, the land greening. New Sumer lay just beyond the curve of the red-purple horizon up ahead, another hundred kilometers or so….

“Black Dragons,” Warhurst announced over the tactical
net, using the assault force's new call sign. “Stand by…three minutes.”

One by one the other dragons responded. Six Dragonfly reentry vehicles, laden with APC landers, hugged the terrain as they swung into the final approach, skimming scant meters above the boulders and ice whipping past below. Abruptly, rocks and ice gave way to open water, and the sextet of deadly black skimmers howled over the sea, raising rooster tails of spray in their sonic-boom footprints.

Ahead, just visible now, the black, conical mountain designated Objective Krakatoa lifted slowly above the horizon. Following plans logged with their onboard AIs, the shrieking aerospacecraft began weaving back and forth, spreading out to make themselves harder targets to hit.

Forty kilometers from the target the sky exploded in dazzling, blue-white radiance. Dragonfly Three, touched by that nova heat, melted away in an instant. Dragonfly Five, jolted by the blast's shock wave, lost control and struck the water in a cartwheeling spray of foam and metallic debris.

Damn
, he thought.
Not again!

It just wasn't working….

And then the mountain was rising to meet them, vast and black and ominous. Dragons One and Two flared nose-high, dumping forward velocity, then hovering briefly above flash-blasted rock and cinder, before releasing their saucer-shaped payloads—“personnel deployment packages” in mil-speak. Dragons Four and Six howled low overhead, reaching farther up the mountain slope before settling with their PDPs.

Each saucer lander, cradled in the gap behind the Dragonfly's bulging nose and intakes and the tail-boom mounted rear plasma thrusters, carried a section of twenty-five Marines and their equipment—two to a fifty-man platoon. The Marines, strapped into wire-basket shock frames, were jolted hard back and forth within their harnesses as the saucers plowed into the burned-over side of the mountain.