Star Corps (8 page)

She'd begun regretting the decision within hours of boosting out of Mars orbit. These female Marines made her nervous with their bad-ass attitudes and nanosculpted bodies. They were rough, strong, and as foul-mouthed as their male Marine counterparts, flat-chested and hard-muscled, with technically enhanced eyes that seemed to look right through her.

They'd been polite enough, true, but her forced incarceration had left her irritable and sour. She was at least a borderline claustrophobe, and none of the compartments on board the
Osiris
was larger than a small bedroom. It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd been in free fall; even the tiniest hab compartment seemed roomy with three-dimensional floating space in microgravity. But the steady one-g acceleration—three times what she was used to after a year on Mars—kept her pinned to the deck, and most of the time strapped into her couch. She didn't understand how Horst and the others could move about with such casual disregard for the acceleration dragging at them every minute of the long ship-day.

Then something one of the Marines had just said managed to register in her weight-numbed mind. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What was that about Llalande?”

“Llalande 21185,” Barnes said, staring at her with her peculiarly dark nanoaltered eyes. “It's a red dwarf star about eight light-years from—”

“I
know
what it is,” Hanson snapped. “We've been watch
ing it from Mars. What did you mean about an out-Solar mission there?”

“Stands to reason, honey,” Ostergaard said, grinning. “That's where the action is. My money's riding on a relief expedition. You're an archie, right?”

“Xenoarcheotechnologist,” she replied.

“Whoa, the lady's using damned big words,” Barnes said.

“Positively sesquipedalian,” Horst said, with just a hint of a sneer.

Ostergaard laughed. “I'll bet a month's pay they want you out on the Llalande planet to check out the xenotech they've been finding. Right, Marines?”

“Fuckin'-A,” Barnes said. “Assuming there's any left when we get there, ten years from now.”

“I'm
not
going to Ishtar!” Hanson said. She didn't want to admit it, but these people were scaring her now. “My work is here, on Mars.”

“You're not on Mars now, honey,” Horst reminded her. “You're en route to Earth on
very
special orders. Either you really pissed someone off back there or you're headed for Ishtar.” She grinned, an evil showing of teeth. “And maybe both!”

Traci Hanson was used to having things her own way, to charting her own course and the hell with what others thought. It had gotten her this far, head of mission research at the Cydonian complex, and only a few scars the worse for wear. If they thought they could just order her to drop everything to go haring off to the stars, they were crazy. What did they think AIs were for?

Robinson. She would take this up with Robinson as soon as she got back.

Or…as soon as she was able to get up and walk around again, after this brutal week of acceleration.

Then she remembered that the packet's acceleration matched the gravitational acceleration of Earth itself, that this hell was going to go on and on.

Shit…

Headquarters, PanTerra Dynamics
New Chicago, Illinois
United Federal Republic, Earth
1455 hours CT

Gavin Norris had never seen a demonstration like this. The chanting throngs filled the circular PanTerra Plaza and spilled over into all of the surrounding thoroughfares. Police in full armor were everywhere, trying to maintain order and keep the main walkways open. The demonstration, he gathered, was an anti-An gathering, and tempers were burning high. Pro-Anners were there as well, and demonstration and counterdemonstration were threatening to erupt into full-scale civil war.

Norris ignored the chanting crowds as best as he could, making his way toward the slender, black pinnacle that was his destination. The PanTerra Building soared two kilometers into the thin, cold air of the midwestern sky, rising from the Highland Park district to look down on a cloud-mottled Lake Michigan to the east and the still empty ruin of the Barrens to the south.

The destruction of Old Chicago during the UN War a century ago had killed millions—no one would ever know the precise death toll—and extinguished one of the largest and most prosperous cities on the planet. Plutonium from the reaction mass heating grid of the French spacecraft that had broken up above Lake Michigan had scattered radioactive dust southwest across the city, leaving a poisoned footprint fifty kilometers long burned into the soil of northern Illinois. Detox robots and crews in sealed crawlers continued to work both in the desert ashore and in the waters offshore, but the most optimistic calculations indicated that the Barrens would remain hazardous for another five centuries at least.

North of the Barrens, though, the rebuilding had been proceeding with an enthusiasm born of victory in the deter
mination not to see the brawling, big-shouldered city of Sandburg's poem forever extinguished. The cities of Highland Park and Waukegan had merged, becoming the nucleus of the new metropolis. The lake itself was all but dead now, but construction had begun extending out over the water almost as soon as the radiation there dropped to reasonable levels.

The PanTerra Building, with its distinctive black panther logo perched high atop the revolving dome that housed its executive suites, had foundations sunk deep within the bedrock beneath what once had been open water. The PanTerra Plaza consisted of open grounds and pavement immediately in front of the main entrance, centered on a towering water fountain symbolizing the Spirit of Chicago.

The demonstration was well under way by the time Norris approached the building. All traffic—ground and air—had been blocked from the Highland Park district as far south as Central and as far west as Sheridan, and the slide-ways had been turned off. He had to park his flier at a port garage near Central Park and walk five blocks through streets packed with thronging mobs. When he saw how packed the plaza was, he turned away and found an entranceway to the transit levels. Most of the major buildings in New Chicago were connected by floater tubes beneath the ground level.

An elevator took Norris from the PanTerra Building's transit access bay to the lobby. A separate elevator, one with a security check panel that tasted the DNA on his palm and electronically probed his briefcase and his clothing, took him then to the 540th floor, so far above the demonstration that the mobs simply vanished into the geometrical intricacies of street, building, and plaza.

Allyn Buckner met him in another lobby, this one with soaring, curving walls that were either completely transparent or remarkably large and seamlessly joined viewall pan
els. The PanTerran panther hung above the entrance to the conference center, ten meters high, muscles rippling in realistically animated holography.

“Mr. Norris,” Buckner said, extending a hand. He was a thin, acid-looking man with an insincere smile, one of the small army of PanTerran vice presidents whom Norris had dealt with in the past. “Thank you for coming in person.”

“Not a problem, Mr. Buckner,” Norris replied. “You never know who's got access to your VR link codes. I prefer face-to-face.”

“Indeed. We can guarantee the security of our conversation here. This way, please?”

Norris jerked his head to the side, indicating the crowds far below. “So, what the hell is
that
all about?”

“War, Mr. Norris,” Buckner said as he led Norris beneath the giant panther and into the conference suite. “There is going to be a war very soon now. The first war, I might add, to be fought across interstellar distances.”

“Llalande?”

“Of course. The people are quite upset over the, um, slavery issue.”

“There was a pretty sizable pro-An contingent down there too.”

“Religious nuts, Mr. Norris. The lunatic fringe. The
people
are demanding that the human slaves on Ishtar be freed.”

That, Norris thought, was something of an oversimplification. The number of separate factions on Earth clashing over the issue of contact with the An and the sociopolitical situation on distant Ishtar was simply incalculable. True, the loudest voices right now were those of outrage over the discovery of the Exiles—descendants of humans taken from Mesopotamia thousands of years ago and transplanted to the An world as a slave population. But there were other voices as well. The entire Islamic block wanted all dealings with the An halted…and an end to archeological research
both on Earth and off-world that tended to relegate humankind to a less-than-glorious set of beginnings. That was what the fighting right now in Egypt was all about. And then there were the countless religions, cults, and movements worldwide that viewed the An as gods, figuratively or even literally.

But there were also groups who saw considerable profit in closer ties with the An. Most of the major megacorporations of Earth were vying now for the technological spin-offs coming out of the xenoresearch off-world.

And of course that was where the real power lay, Norris thought…not with the “people,” but with the multitrillion-newdollar corporate entities who truly controlled the planet.

Inside the conference suite, Buckner guided Norris to a carpeted, soundproofed room with an elaborate array of viewalls, link centers, and screens. “Computer,” Buckner said, addressing the air. “Security, level one.”

“Security, level one initiated, Mr. Buckner,” a female voice replied. “Do you require a record?”

“No. Switch off.”

“Switching off, Mr. Buckner.”

“I don't even like the AIs listening in to some of this,” Buckner explained. “What we're on to here is so fantastic—”

“Are you sure the mikes and recorders are really off?”

“Of course. The software was developed in this very building. Have a seat.”

Norris sank into the embrace of a chair that molded itself to his back and shoulders. “So, I gather you have another assignment for me.”

“We do.” Buckner took a seat opposite his. “A very important one. A
lucrative
one.”

“You've got my attention, Mr. Buckner.”

“We have been scanning our personnel records for a particular person. You were the first of the troubleshooters on our list. And the best, I might add. You have all of the quali
ties we are looking for—young, dynamic, ambitious. No family to speak of, no long-term commitments or contracts. Not even any casual lovers.”

Norris raised an eyebrow. They didn't know about Claire, evidently. Good. “What's your point?”

“We need a liaison, Mr. Norris, on a very, very special operation.”

“What kind of operation?”

“You'll be fully briefed later, if you accept.”

“How can I accept if I don't know what it is?”

Buckner smiled, an oily tug at the corner of his mouth. “Oh, we may be able to offer suitable inducements.”

“Such as?”

“We are offering you a long-term contract. A very long-term contract, in fact. Minimum time—twenty years.”

Norris's eyes widened. “Is that a business proposition or a prison term?”

“A little of both, I fear. If you accept, you won't be able to terminate. Not…conveniently, at any rate.”

A twenty-year contract? Buckner must be out of his mind. “This doesn't exactly sound like a promotion, Mr. Buckner. What are the inducements you mentioned?”

“A nice, round figure, Mr. Norris. One billion newdollars,
and
a shot at senior management, when you return. Perhaps even a seat on the board.”

“One
billion!
.” Norris hung on the shock for a comic moment, mouth gaping. “One
billion?
” Then he heard the rest of Buckner's sentence. “What do you mean, when I return? Where are you sending me?” He already knew he was going, wherever it was. A billion newdollars? Was the man serious?

The viewalls at Buckner's back lit up in response to a linked thought. A swollen gas giant hung low in a russet sky. Oddly twisting, purple-hued vegetation clotted an undulating landscape. Pyramids reflected the gold-red light of a tiny, shrunken sun.

“Ishtar, Mr. Norris. We're sending you to Ishtar, eight light-years away.”

“My God!”

He hoped Claire wouldn't be
too
hurt when he told her goodbye.

20
JUNE
2138

U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center
Parris Island, South Carolina
0215 hours ET

“Now I want you maggots off of my bus…
move! Move! Move!
”

John stumbled down the steps in a sleep-deprived haze, crowding forward with the other recruits as they piled off the ancient and weather-beaten magbus that had brought them there from Charleston in the middle of the night. The Marine sergeant who'd ridden the bus with them all the way from the Charleston skyport, a grimly taciturn man in spotless khakis, had been singularly uncommunicative for the entire trip. Now, though, he was bellowing at the recruits, chivvying them from their seats and into line. Lights glared overhead, casting weirdly moving shadows and making it light enough to see the footprints painted on the ground, neatly spaced in a single long rank.

Another sergeant was waiting for them, hands on hips, the infamous “Smokey Bear” hat square-set on his head. “Fall in! I said fall
in
, damn it! Feet on the prints!
Stand at attention!
”

The mob of civilians shoved and bumped into line, each of them taking on his or her own semblance of standing at attention…or at least a half-informed guess as to what
such a posture might be like. John's loving study of the Marine Corps in past months had included a download of several Corps training manuals, and he'd been practicing in front of the E-center's holopickup a lot lately. The footprints on the ground were closely spaced, so close that each recruit was shouldered in tightly to left and right, ahead and behind, a single, anonymous mass of tired humanity.

“Jesus, Quan Yin, and
Buddha!
” the second sergeant bawled. “I ask for recruits and they send us
this
? The boss is
not
gonna like it!”

John stood rigidly in line, eyes fixed on the letters reading
U.S. GOVERNMENT
on the sloping gray side of the magbus, endeavoring to keep them fastened there as the sergeant stalked past his line of sight. The night air was steamy, a blanket of heat and humidity that dragged at each breath and brought sweat dripping from brow and nose.

The sergeant from the bus prowled down the line of scared and sleep-deprived recruits. “You! Square away! Shoulders back! Get rid of any cigs or gum. And you! Yeah,
you
, maggot! Quit gawking around and hold those eyeballs front and center or I will personally
pop
them out of your miserable maggot's skull and
eat
them for breakfast!”

John was pretty sure he knew what was coming, courtesy of family stories from his mother about life in the Corps—disorientation, confusion, controlled but deliberate terror, sleep deprivation, all in the name of breaking down civilians and rebuilding them as Marines. Forewarned was forearmed, as far as he was concerned. Whatever they dished out, he could take. He was a Garroway now, in name as well as by birth.

He did wish Lynnley were here, though. She'd flown out from Tiburón to Charleston, while he'd accompanied his mother north to San Diego first, then caught a sub-O flight out of Salton Spaceport. They'd planned to meet up at the Charleston skyport yesterday, but all incoming female recruits had been rounded up as soon as they arrived and whisked off to some other receiving area. He'd found him
self herded on board the ancient magbus with thirty-seven other young men and the taciturn Marine sergeant.

That sergeant was taciturn no longer. “
On
behalf of Major General Phillip R. Delflores, commanding officer of this installation, and
on
behalf of the United States Marine Corps,
welcome
to Parris Island,” he bellowed, somehow making the ear-ringing yell effortless, somehow doubling the volume of select words for emphasis, as though a bellow was his normal and everyday manner of speech. “I
am
Staff Sergeant Sewicki, and my assistant here is Sergeant Heller. I
will
keep this short and simple, so that even brainless civvy maggots like you can understand.

“This is
my
island, this is
my
Marine Corps, and you maggots are
my
responsibility! Today you are embarking on a twenty-one-week course of Marine Corps recruit training, commonly known as boot camp. You are
not
at home any longer. You are
not
at school, you are
not
in your old neighborhood, you are
not
back in the world that you once knew. During these next few weeks, you
will
obey all orders given to you by
any
Marine. Just so there's no confusion on this point, you people are
not
Marines. You are
recruits
. You must
earn
the title of U.S. Marine. To do that, you must prove to your officers, your drill instructors, your comrades,
and
yourselves that you are
worthy
of the uniform and the title of a United States Marine!
Do
you recruits understand me?”

The question was greeted by a mumbled chorus of “Yes,” and “Yes, sir,” and even the occasional “Sure.”

Sewicki exploded. “
When
you open your maggot mouths, the very first word you utter will be the word
sir!
The very
last
word your maggot mouths utter will be the word
sir!…Do
you understand me?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” was the response, somewhat ragged and quavering.

“No! No! No!”
Sewicki's eyes bulged, his face reddened, and for an instant John wondered if the man was going to have a stroke. “
What
do you people think this is, the god
damn Army?
When
I ask if you understand me,
when
I give you an order, the correct and
proper
response is, ‘Sir, aye aye, sir!'
Do
you understand me?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“‘Aye, aye' means ‘
I
understand and
I
will obey!'
Do
you understand me?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“What? I can't hear you!”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“Again! Louder!”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

He cupped a hand to his ear.
“What?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“You!”
He spun suddenly, face and forefinger inches from the face of a terrified recruit three men to John's right. “What is your name?”

“Sir! H-Hollingwood, sir!”

“Hollywood! What kind of a name is that?”

“Sir—”

“Let me see your war face!”

“S-Sir! Aye…what?”

“Let me see your goddamn war face! Do you know how to make a war face?
This
is a war face!
Arrrr!
Now
you
do it!”

With his eyes rigidly front, John could only imagine what was going on, but he heard the recruit give a terrified yelp.

“That is
pathetic!
You do
not
frighten me, Hollywood! Hit the deck! Ten push-ups!”

The recruit dropped.

“
On
your goddamn feet, Hollywood!
What
did I just tell you?”

“Sir, I—”

“
When
I give you an order, you
will
respond with ‘Sir, aye aye, sir!'
Do
you understand me?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“What was that? I can't hear you!”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“Now hit the deck and give me twenty push-ups!”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

As the recruit began grunting through his push-ups, attended closely by the other sergeant who was shouting out the cadence, Sewicki continued his prowl in front down the ranks.

“I am an
easy
man to get along with.
All
you need to do to get along with me is
to
obey my commands instantly,
without
hesitation,
without
argument, do you understand me?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”
the ranks chorused.

“You!”
Sewicki moved so fast he appeared to dematerialize, rematerializing in front of a recruit in the front rank four to John's left, face glowering, finger pointing. “What's your name?”

“Sir! Garvey! Sir!”

“Gravy, is that
gum
you have in your mouth?”

“Uh, sir, I mean, it's—”

“Is that or is that not gum you have in your maggot mouth?”

“It's—It's counterhum, sir.”

“Remove it.”

Garvey spat the offending wad into his hand.

“Place it on your nose.”

“S-Sir…?”

“On your nose, recruit.”

“Sir! Aye aye, sir!”

“And it had better stay there until I tell you to get rid of it!” He spun, addressing them all. “As for the rest of you, we are going to march—or perform the best simulation of a march that you yahoos are capable of performing—into that building behind you, and there you will deposit in a bin that we will provide any and all contraband you may have on your persons, including guns, knives, weapons of any kind, cigs, lighters, candy, food, soda, liquids of any type, gum, stims,
all
drugs including analgesics, mem boosters, and sleepers, nano dispensers of any kind
including
hummers
and joggers, game players, personal communications and recording devices, personal entertainment systems, neural plug-ins, pornographic material of all types—including naked holopics of your girlfriends, boyfriends, and/or parents—
do
you understand me?”

“Sir! Aye aye, sir!”

“I don't care what you used, smoked, tapped, smacked, licked, drank, charged, plugged, or popped back in the World. You people with electronic enhancements
will
be losing them tomorrow. While you are in
my
Corps and on
my
island, you will be
clean.
”

John blinked. He couldn't mean
all
electronics, could he?

Sergeant Sewicki's face suddenly filled his vision, glowering down at him, a mask of red fury. “
You!
What's your name?”

“Sir! Garroway! Sir!”

Sewicki's war face softened a bit with surprise…but
only
a bit. “That name has a special meaning around here, recruit,” he growled. “You big enough to carry it?”

“Sir, I hope so, sir.”

“There's no
hope
for you here, recruit. And in the future, you will not refer to yourself as ‘I' or ‘me' or ‘my.' You will refer to yourself as ‘this recruit.' Now, do you know who Sands of Mars Garroway was?”

“Sir, he was one of my…uh, one of this recruit's ancestors, sir.”

Sewicki's eyes glazed over for a moment, as though he was studying something within, an implant download, perhaps. “Says here on my roll that your name is Esteban.”

So the bit with Sewicki demanding the names of individual recruits had been simple theater.

“Sir, I had—”

“What did you say?”

“Uh, sir, I—”

“You are
not
an
I
!
None
of you maggots rates an I! The
only
first person on this deck is me! The
only
time you maggots say the word ‘I' is when you declare that you under
stand and
will
obey an order, and you
will
do so by saying ‘aye aye'!
Do
you understand me?”

“Sir! Aye aye, sir!”

“
Every
time you wish to refer to yourselves, you will do so in the third person! You will say ‘this recruit' and you will not say the word ‘I'!
When
you refer to yourselves, you will do so as ‘recruit,' followed by your last name.
Do
I make myself clear?”

“Sir, aye aye, sir!”

“Jesus, Quan Yin, and
Buddha
, are you that
stupid
, maggot? You say ‘aye aye' when you understand and will obey an order! If I ask a question requiring of you a simple yes or no answer, you
will
reply with the appropriate yes or no!
Do
you understand?”

“Uh…Sir, yes, sir!”

“What was that? I heard some static in your reply!”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

“Now, what is it you had to say to me?”

John had to grope for what it was Sewicki had originally asked him. Exhaustion and disorientation were beginning to take their toll, and his mind was fuzzy.

“Sir! This recruit had a naming last week. I…uh…this recruit took his mother's name. Sir.”

“You're a little old for that, aren't you, son?”

Save for the members of a handful of conservative religious groups, women rarely took the names of the men they married anymore, which meant that a person's last name was now a matter of conscious choice. Throughout most of western culture, for at least the past fifty years, boys took their father's last name, girls their mother's, until about the age of fourteen, when the child formally chose which name he or she would carry into adulthood. John originally had his naming ceremony on his fourteenth birthday at his father's church in Guaymas.

There was nothing in the rules, though, that said he couldn't have a second naming and change his last name from Esteban to Garroway. He'd gone to a notary in San
Diego with his mother as soon as they'd left Sonora, paid the twenty-newdollar fee, and thumbed the e-file records to make it official. He would never be John Esteban again.