Copyrighted Material

Sentenced to War Copyright © 2021 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2020 by JN Chaney

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from JN Chaney.

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Contents

Glossary

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part II

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Epilogue

Nominate Sentenced to War

Acknowledgments

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About the Authors

Glossary

AGMS: Anti-G Straining Maneuvers

ASAP: As Soon As Possible

BC: the digital currency for most nations

BOCT: Benevolent Order of Crystal Technicians

Bronze Nova: the third-highest medal in the Union military

CCR-32 Didactic Interface: the AI implanted into the Marines’ heads.

Cerrocrete: a very strong futuristic concrete

CG: Commanding General

CO: Commanding Officer

COH: Council of Humanity, the highest authority of mankind

CST: Combat Simulation Trainer

D-5 Cord: an explosive-saturated cord

DC/Direct Combat: Marines such as infantry, recon mech combat engineers, who will face the enemy in direct combat.

DI: Drill Instructor

Dykstra: a heavy sniper rifle

E-Club: Enlisted Club where the lowest three ranks can hang out, drink, and eat.

ECR: Effective Casualty Radius. The radius from a detonation within which will produce 50% casualties

EMP: Electro-magnetic Pulse. Will shut down all electronics within range

EOE: End of Enlistment

FTL: Faster Than Light, a starship drive

Gold Nova: the second highest medal in the Union military forces

G-Loc: G-force induced loss of consciousness

Groundpounders: slang for infantry

HE: High Explosive

Host: the military arm of the Frisian Mantle, a sometime ally/enemy of the Perseus Union

KIA: Killed in Action

Leaches: Military slang for civilians

M49 Assault Rifle: the standard weapon of the Union Marines. It fires a 2mm high-velocity dart.

M-102 Nellis: the Marine Corps’ main sniper rifle

M-133: a heavy weapon fired by mech Marines

MF-30: a standard issue handgun

MilDes: Military Designator

MilDes Ninety-nine/Ninety-nine: essentially indentured servants in uniform

MMCS: Marine Mechanical Combat Suit

MP: Military Police

MPT: Military Placement Test

NCO: Non-commissioned Officer. The middle two ranks of enlisted Marines

NM: Neuro-mapping

NVD: Night Vision Device

Omega Division/OD: the secret police and spy agency of the Union

Optisight: a flexible optical tube

PAL-3: Personal Armor, Light 3: the standard body armor for an infantry Marine

PAL-5: Personal Armor, Light 5. The standard body armor of recon Marines and Raiders.

Paladin: a large Centaur heavy mech unit, similar to a light tank

PFC: Private First Class

Phoenix MG-3 Incendiary Mine: a small grenade that can burn through most substances

Plastiderm: a synthetic skin that is used in medical procedures

PN: Platinum Nova the highest military award in the Perseus Union military

Poolee: someone who is committed to the Corps but who is not yet been sworn in as a recruit

PQ: Personality Quotient. Used to determine the human characteristics of some AIs

PUNS: Perseus Union Naval Ship

Raider: part of Recon, but with more combat-focused missions instead of surveillance

Recon: Reconnaissance Marine

Riever: a smaller Centaur mech unit, similar to a Marine Raider or reconnaissance Marine.

Secdrones: Security drones used by the police

SNCO: Staff Non-commissioned Officer. The highest three ranks among enlisted Marines.

SOP: Standard Operating Procedure

Syksky: a deep-fried bread stuffed with spiced meat and vegetables

WIA: Wounded in Action

XM-554: a more powerful missile designed to have more punch

XO: Executive Officer, the #2 person in the unit.

Yellowjacket: a shoulder-launched missile

Yellowshirt: a Navy sailor charged with moving people and goods around a flight line.

Part I

1

Life was good.

The timgsten-rock blared across the park, the bass making Rev’s very bones shake as he sat on top of the picnic table, tapping his feet on the bench. He drained his beer, then reached down to prod Mia with his toe for another. She slapped at it with feigned annoyance but reached into the bag and tossed him one up and over her shoulder. He had to half-rise to snag it.

“Nice grab,” Witter said, barely audible over the music. “Can’t be having alcohol abuse, now.”

“Never,” Rev said as he held up the drinkpack like a trophy and sat back down. He popped the cooltab, then waited as the pack frosted over before taking a long pull.

In another six weeks, he’d be done with school, and two after that, he’d start his guild apprenticeship, thanks to his stepfather. The old man had come through for him, that was for sure.

Rev reached over and gently tousled Mia’s hair as she leaned in to her best friend Laney’s ear to tell her something. She ignored the familiarity, but at least she didn’t object. He’d known Mia for years, ever since primary, but it wasn’t until word got out—leaked by him—that he’d scored the Benevolent Order of Crystal Technicians that she’d promoted him from one of the guys to her one guy.

Rev wasn’t uni material. He’d barely been secondary school material, so getting into a guild was pretty impressive. He wasn’t under any false impression that he’d made it on his own, but too often, it wasn’t what you knew but rather who you knew. And he knew Max Throndson, the man who’d married his mother nine years ago, and pertinent to Rev getting the position, a full member of the BOCT.

It would take Rev three years to make journeyman, but once achieved, he’d be home free. He’d never be megarich, but he’d make a good, secure salary, with lifelong benefits, especially with the war going on. The military would always need crystals.

It really wasn’t surprising that Mia had immediately gravitated to him once she found out about his apprenticeship. School was almost over, and all the kings and queens of campus were starting to look to their futures. Rev wasn’t sure he wanted anything long term with her, but he was more than willing to enjoy her company for a while, and being with her raised him more than a few notches with everyone else.

Witter leaned in close to Rev’s ear. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you think your dad can put in a good word for me with the BOCT?”

Witter was Laney’s boyfriend, and someone he’d just met today. There was no way he was going to ask his stepdad anything of the sort, but he didn’t want to alienate the guy.

“I can’t hear you,” Rev shouted, pointing to his ear and then to the music pod.

Which was somewhat true. Even if he wanted to hold a conversation, the music was blaring, and he wasn’t about to spend the evening trying to lipread. Hopefully, Witter would forget to ask him later. He turned away and took another swallow of beer.

Across the small park and under the pavilion, about twenty men and women were gaming, jacks plugged into the base of their necks, their eyes closed. Rev rolled his eyes.

His stepdad made some of the crystals that made immersive gaming possible. In a way, gamers provided for his family’s livelihood. Despite this, his mother thought very little of those who left reality for days on end to live in a fantasy world. Rev adopted his mother’s attitude, and he thought immersive gamers were losers.

He didn’t care much about the casual gamers who only wasted some of their free time. But for the hardcore jackheads, those who withdrew and lived on the government dole, it was a different story. They contributed nothing to society. At least that’s what his mother said, and Rev thought there was truth in that. If they didn’t work, they weren’t paying taxes, relying on the rest of society for their support.

Rev didn’t know which type those across the small park were, and he didn’t care. He wanted to live in the real world. Looking at Mia sitting on the row below him, her long brown hair shining in the park lights, that seemed a much better option.

It wasn’t as if Rev didn’t play games. He gamed like everyone else, but not through jacks, which took the gamer out of the real universe and into a fake one. And it wasn’t just because he couldn’t get a jack while still a minor. Raised with his parent’s work ethic, he just saw the immersive games as an escape by losers who couldn’t hack reality.

A couple of the jackheads kept glancing at them, sour looks on their faces. The four were blaring the music pretty loud, he had to admit, especially if it was bleeding into their games.

With a sigh, he stepped down to where Mia and Laney were chatting and reached to the pod to lower the volume.

Mia grabbed his wrist. “What’re you doing? I like it like this.”

She pulled his hand away and not only put the volume back, but she increased it until he could feel the bass in his heart. She gave him a dismissive stare before turning back to her friend.

Rev wanted to remind her that there were others in the park, but this was Mia Szeth. An A-lister. Someone out of his social circle until he scored his apprenticeship. Her look quashed anything he’d been about to say.

Witter had watched the little exchange. He gave Rev a we’re-in-this-together look, took a swallow of his beer, and leaned back, using the next row as a seatback.

The increased volume caught more attention from the jackheads. Two stood up, then a third. They started talking together, all the time glancing back at the four of them. They must have come to a decision, because one of them, a twenties-something guy, unjacked, then casually walked across the grass to them.

Shit. I knew I should have just lowered the volume more.

Mia stood as soon as the man started coming over. She gave Rev a quick glance, then signaled him to stand next to her.

Rev assumed that most gamers were doughy, out-of-shape rejects, but this guy was cut. He had a gamer’s wimby—the back of his head shaved and the front long and puffed out. Standing about 1.9 meters, he was broad across the chest with major guns, maxing out at around a hundred, maybe a hundred-and-ten kilos.

Rev was about the same height and fifteen kilos lighter, and he instinctively puffed up his chest as the smiling man came to a stop in front of Mia and him, Witter and Laney belatedly taking positions on either side of the two.

“Hey, friend,” the guy started, almost yelling to be heard over the music and holding out his hand. Rev didn’t take it.

“Uh, well, we’re wondering if you could lower the volume on your pod just a bit. It’s encroaching on our game.”

“Oh, you’re gameplayers?” Mia asked. “What’re you playing?”

The guy’s smile got bigger, and he said, “Descent into Hades.”

Rev didn’t play immersive games, but he knew about this one. Sometimes hundreds of people played against each other, and the game could go on for days, if not weeks.

“Piece of shit game, for pieces of shit jackheads,” Mia said, watching the guy’s face.

Shit, Mia! Calm down.

The man frowned, then said, “I guess you just don’t understand much then, missy, if you think D-I-H isn’t anything but the best freaking game in the galaxy.”

Mia wasn’t used to people confronting her, Rev could tell. Her mouth gaped, and she turned to Rev and asked, “Are you gonna let him talk to me like that?”

You asked for it, Rev wanted to say. But he knew that if he wanted to enjoy Mia’s company for any longer, that would be the kiss of death.

With a mental sigh, Rev took half a step forward and slightly in front of Mia. “You’d better watch your mouth, buddy. There’s a cost for being an asshole to a lady.”

Rev didn’t know where that came from. This wasn’t really like him, and if his stepdad would have been there, he’d have lifted a brow and given Rev the look. But his stepdad was back at home.

Maybe it was the beer speaking, but to Rev’s surprise, he was suddenly feeling pretty big at the moment. Mia grabbing his upper arm probably had a lot to do with his, he knew. But it was more than that. This was new territory for him, and he found it somehow exciting. The man was not a kid. Full into his prime, the guy reeked of danger, but that only heightened Rev’s excitement.

The man’s smile disappeared at Rev’s words, to be replaced with a frown. “No offense. But there’re rules here. You can’t bother others in the park.”

“The pod is on public settings,” Mia said from around Rev’s side. “We don’t have to lower the volume.”

“Public settings until someone complains. Look it up,” the man said, slightly widening his feet as if finding his balance. Behind him, two other jackheads started forward, but he turned and held out a hand to stop them.

“Well, I suggest you go back to Hades where you won’t hear us,” Mia said to Laney’s snickers.

The man rolled his eyes, then started to go around them, reaching for the pod.

Mia darted out a hand and slapped his arm. The man froze, arm outstretched for a moment, and then he reached out for Mia’s shoulder as if to push her out of the way.

Mia gave a tiny yip, and Rev blocked his hand. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The man stopped and very deliberately looked Rev up and down, his smile getting bigger.

“And who’s going to stop me? You?” he said with a half-laugh, clearly dismissing Rev as a threat.

And that incensed Rev. He was often underestimated, and it drove him crazy.

But he didn’t react. Even with the thrill of danger, Rev was not stupid enough to get into a physical fight in public, not with conscription ramping up higher.

But the man reached, and before Rev could do anything, Mia let go of Rev’s arm to give the guy a smack on the chest. The man reacted, pulling back . . . and somehow, Mia went down. Rev wasn’t sure if she was pushed or if she slipped, but he snapped.

He had to protect her.

Drawing from strength he didn’t realize he possessed, he put every gram of his existence into the punch, connecting flush with the man’s chin and dropping him like a sack of flour.

His fist exploded in pain, but he stood over the inert man for a moment, shocked, his heart thudding in his chest. He didn’t know whether to shout out in victory or an apology.

“Run!” Witter yelled.

Rev didn’t want to run. He needed to fix this with the guy who was slumped over, his legs crumbled beneath him. He was barely aware that the jackheads had unjacked and were now yelling and running toward them.

Mia’s arm yanking on his broke his reverie, and suddenly reality came crashing down on him. He turned and ran after Witter and Laney, Mia at his side. The other two ran to the steps into the parking lot, but with a shout, Rev jumped the fence and vaulted down onto the lot.

“Power up!” he yelled, and his stepdad’s Gazelle hummed to life.

Rev dove into the driver’s seat, then stuck his head out the window to yell at the others to hurry. Laney and Witter piled in, followed by Mia, who hadn’t been willing to vault the fence.

“Go, go, go!” Witter yelled as Rev took the controls and spun out of the parking lot, overriding the Gazelle’s safe driving warnings.

“Are they coming?” he asked as he clipped a trash can at the lot’s entrance.

“Don’t see them,” Laney said.

“They won’t come,” Mia said. “Not unless they want to get drafted. They’re just as guilty as we are.”

“Guilty hell. That bastard started it,” Witter said. “But holy shit, Rev! You decked that guy!” He leaned forward and clapped Rev on the shoulder. “Pow. Just like that.”

Mia reached over to give his bicep a squeeze as the adrenaline started to dissipate, leaving him feeling hollow. What he’d done began to sink in.

Off the ballfield, Rev had never hit someone in anger, and amidst the guilt was the thrill of knocking the guy out, but the ramifications of what he’d done . . . he started to tremble.

Fighting was a sure way to get conscripted. It wouldn’t matter if the other guy started it—if he even did start it. A judge would order the secdrones to release the visuals, and Rev didn’t know what they would show.

Did Mia slip? Did the guy shove her?

Rev slowed down the Gazelle and took ten deep breaths while Witter went on and on about how he’d taken down the guy. Witter was reveling in it all.

“You sure they won’t press charges?” Rev quietly asked Mia.

“Not unless they want to go down with you,” she said confidently.

Maybe she’s right.

He stayed below the speed limit as they made their way through the Gray Creek neighborhood. It wasn’t midnight yet, so their transponder wouldn’t call in a cop to find out why they were there, but there was no reason to attract any attention to themselves.

Rev finally began to relax. He’d been stupid, yes. Drinking underage, then fighting. But nothing was going to come of it—that is, nothing bad. Rev knew he was in the wrong here, but part of him felt a renewed sense of confidence. He’d taken down someone bigger than him, fitter than him, and older than him, and he’d always remember the feeling of victory, even mixed with the shame he felt as he stood over the guy.

I’ll sure remember him as long as my fist hurts, he mused, flexing his aching hand. A small laugh escaped him, unplanned and giddy.

“What’s so funny?” Mia asked.

“Nothing. Just glad we got away.”

As if on cue, the blue lights of a cop appeared behind him, and Rev’s heart almost jumped into his throat.

Witter stopped his retelling of how Rev had won what had somehow grown into a huge battle to simply say, “Oh, shit.”

“You said they weren’t going to report us,” Rev whined to Mia.

“They wouldn’t,” she said, suddenly sounding unsure of herself. “They couldn’t have already. It’s only been, what, two minutes? Three minutes? There hasn’t been enough time.”

“What do I do?” Rev asked.

“Stop. Maybe they got you for clipping that trash can. Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Asking what he should do was stupid. If he didn’t stop, the cop would shut the car down. Whether the jackheads reported the fight or not, Rev had no choice. He pulled over to the side of the street. Three blocks ahead, he could see the Taylor Expressway. If he could have made it that far, he would have been only eight minutes from Beakerville and home.

“Woulda, coulda,” he muttered as he rolled down the window.

“Don’t say anything,” Mia told the three others as the cop rolled up.

“Good evening, sir. I am secbot four-three-four-seven-six, Thirteenth Precinct.”

The cop’s voice was calm and pleasant, as if that could take away from the fact that it looked like a toilet plunger riding a unicycle.

“Are you Maximillan Throndson, sir?”

“No,” Rev answered. “I’m his step . . . I’m his son. Reverent Pelletier.”

“Reverent?” Witter said from the back seat. “Are you kidding me?”

A glare that could kill shut him up.

The cop stood there for a moment, then said, “Very well. Mr. Pelletier, you are being cited for Civil Code Fourteen-dot-six.”

A surge of panic swept over Rev before confusion set in. He wasn’t up on the civil codes, but a fourteen? A fight couldn’t be a fourteen.

“Uh . . . sir? What is a fourteen-dot-six?”

“Driving a vehicle under manual control in an autonomous zone.”

“What?” Rev and Mia asked in unison.

“This district is limited to autonomous driving between the hours of twenty-hundred and zero-six hundred. There are children and families here.”

Rev tried to gain control over his jumbled thoughts. He’d driven to the park in manual mode, but what time was that? Seven? Eight?

He looked down at the screen, where the red warning light was still flashing. He touched the screen, and several warnings popped up for excessive speed, irregular steering . . . and that he was in manual mode in an autonomous zone. When he’d taken off, he’d overridden the warnings.

“Shit,” he said in a hushed voice.

“If you will step out of your vehicle, sir, I have summoned transportation to take you to processing.”

“Processing? What? I’m getting arrested?”

“You are being cited. But as a minor, you cannot be released unless into the custody of a parent or guardian.”

“I’ll be eighteen in three weeks,” Rev said without conviction.

“As I stated, you are a minor. Will you please exit the vehicle?”

Rev slowly got out of the Gazelle. He was in big trouble. Maybe not with the law, but Max was going to kill him if his mother didn’t do it first.

“Mia, can you drive the Gazelle to my house? Tell my . . . uh, better ask my stepdad to come get me. Not my mom.”

“That will not be allowed,” the cop said.

“But you said I need a guardian. My stepdad is my legal guardian.”

The cop went on as if it hadn’t heard him. “Your vehicle is being impounded. It will be towed and then stored until disposition of your case.”

There were cries of protest from the other three, but Rev wasn’t listening by this point. There was a hum, and a small strip of plastic emerged from a slot on the cop.

“Please attach this to your wrist.”

Rev had seen enough holovids to know that while the cop might look like a plunger, there were arms hidden within it. If he resisted, the cop would have no problem subduing him.

With a sigh, Rev slapped the plastic on his wrist, where it formed into a bracelet, before he sat on the curb, head in his hands, as he waited for transport.

Life sucked.

2

“Remember, no arguing. I don’t care what the judge gives you. Just shut up.”

“You don’t think the judge will give me jail time?” Rev asked his stepdad.

“Serve you right if he does.”

“Really?” Rev asked, a touch of panic in his voice. “But what about the guild? I can’t miss my swearing-in.”

“Relax. It’s a traffic violation. A fine—which you’re going to pay me back—and a loss of your license. You’ve never been arrested, and you’ve got your volunteer work with the Youth Corps. That should make a difference. Come here,” his stepdad said, straightening out the cravat around his neck. “Try and look civilized.” It was a small gesture, but important. Max didn’t have to be a father to Rev, but he’d taken on the job without complaint. Sometimes, in little ways, his caring shone through. Like now.

Rev scowled, but he left the bright blue cravat in place. He hadn’t worn one since his primary school graduation, but it made sense to put out a good impression.

“Let’s go in, son.”

Max had been surprisingly understanding—unlike Rev’s mom, who had railed against Rev’s “untamed ways.” With the Gazelle impounded, he’d driven a rentsled to take custody of Rev that night, and he hadn’t said a word on the ride home. It wasn’t until the next day that he asked what happened.

He’d shaken his head and called Rev stupid, but he immediately got on the quantphone. Probably to one of the guild lawyers. The lawyer called back a few minutes later, and Max sighed in relief.

“All they have you for is the driving on manual after hours. You dodged a big one there, Rev. Nothing about fighting.”

Rev had somehow forgotten about that.

“You see the judge on Monday, and we’ll get this taken care of.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Rev said as he started to leave the room.

“Oh, and you’re grounded until graduation.”

Rev immediately started to protest, but he bit it back. He deserved it, and more importantly, he couldn’t let anything get in the way of his guild swearing-in. Once that was done, he was golden.

And now, Monday morning, he and Max were climbing the steps into the county courthouse. Rev was just anxious to get it over with. He hoped the fine wouldn’t put Max back too much, but he was resigned to losing a couple months of an apprentice’s meager salary to pay him back.

He still had the bracelet attached to his wrist. That wouldn’t come off until his judgment. It beeped to life as he passed the scanner, giving him his room assignment. There had to be a hundred people in the big hallway, going this way and that, but Max got the two of them oriented, and like salmon going upstream, they made their way.

He’d expected dozens of people in a grand courtroom, but Room 1304 was barely a cubical. He sat before an inert screen, and Max took one of the two small chairs behind him.

“What now?” he asked Max.

“Now we wait.”

And wait they did. For the next forty minutes, Rev sat there, cracking his knuckles while getting more and more nervous. He just wanted to get it over with. Finally, with a flicker, the screen came to life.

A bored-looking woman in an old-fashioned judicial robe was studying something before her. Rev turned to look at Max in confusion, but his stepdad motioned for him to turn back to the judge.

It didn’t take long. Maybe twenty seconds after she appeared on the screen, she looked up and asked, “Are you Reverent R. Pelletier, Bravo-Echo-Six-six-three-two-nine-six-six-three-one-oh.”

The courtroom wouldn’t have opened for him if he wasn’t who he was, but mindful of what Max had told him, he just leaned forward and said, “Yes.”

“Please look to your left.”

He turned to the optical scanner, which was stupid, he thought. The damned police bracelet identified him when he came in. And if they needed an eye scan, then why the hell did she bother asking?

The scan flashed green, and Rev looked back at the judge.

“You are charged with violation of Civil Code Fourteen-dot-six, driving a passenger vehicle in manual mode in an autonomous area. How do you plead, young man?”

Rev cast another quick glance at Max, but they’d already discussed this. They had Rev dead to rights. Rev could plead not guilty, as was his right, but a trial might not be slated until after his swearing in to the guild, and while a Class Fourteen violation probably wouldn’t keep him out, the guild might push back his entry until after the case was adjudicated.

“Guilty, ma’am. I mean, your honor,” he said.

“Good. Smart young man.” She took a moment to look down again, then said, “I see nothing in the report that should raise any issues. It’s pretty cut-and-dry.”

Please, don’t make the fine too big, Rev prayed.

“Reverent Pelletier, I sentence you to a single term of service in the Pegasus Union Marine Corps.”

What?

“Military service? The Marines?” Rev shouted, standing up, his hands on the small ledge in front of the screen.

“Ma’am,” Max said, one hand on Rev’s shoulder, pushing him hard back into his seat. “Our lawyer confirmed that a Class Fourteen offense is not subject to conscription.”

The judge gave a wry laugh and said, “Then you better get a new lawyer. Class Thirteen and Fourteen offenses joined the list as of”—she made a show as if looking up a date—"three days ago.”

That petty, sarcastic act incensed Rev, and he fought off Max’s hand on his shoulder and stood again. “For a fucking traffic ticket? That’s just unbelievable. I didn’t murder anybody!” he screamed, leaning into the screen until his face was only centimeters away.

The judge’s eyes hardened. “I think I’d watch my temper if I were you, young man.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Max said, pulling Rev back down and hissing at him. “Can it, Rev! You’re only making it worse.”

Rev fought him for a moment before flopping back down in his seat. This was all going too fast for him, and his life was crashing in flames. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered the military before he got accepted into the guild. As a possible back up, he’d even planned on going down to the recruiting office to at least find out more about enlisting after he turned eighteen . . .

Rev smiled and leaned forward, his face centimeters from the pick-up. “You can’t conscript me,” he said.

“I most certainly can, young man, and the sooner you accept that, the better.”

“No, you can’t. I’m still seventeen.”

Rev leaned back, hands clasped behind his neck, a smug look on his face.

Her expression changed, and she looked down again, studying the case. “You’re right,” she said, nodding her head. “I’m not sure why that wasn’t noted on the case data. And if I’d submitted this as is, well, I think even your lawyer might have been able to invalidate the sentence.”

She reached down and made a couple of entries. “Luckily, you stopped me from that, so thank you,” she said, a fake smile on her face. “I’ve corrected it so that you are now to report to military processing on June 21st.”

The day after his eighteenth birthday.

She looked back up, and her fake smile shifted to a real one as she stared Rev down.

Rev exploded and started to shout, when Max shoved him back down with a hand clamped over his mouth.

“Ma’am, please excuse his outburst. But he’s been accepted into the Benevolent Order of Crystal Technicians, and his swearing-in is July 1st. That’s a war-priority industry. Doesn’t that change anything? Can’t you . . .?”

The judge gave Rev a long, hard look as he struggled in his stepdad’s iron grip.

“I do have that discretion, and if he was already sworn in to the guild, I might not have that choice at all. But as of this moment, he isn’t protected. And to be honest, I think the Marines might do him some good. And with his obvious fighting spirit, he might do humanity some good,” she said, this time in a slightly more reflective voice. “My sentence stands.”

The screen went dark, and a copy of the sentence popped out of the printer.

It was done.

3

The bus came to a stop outside the camp and settled down on its skirts. There was no mistaking the stark walls and shimmering fields above for anything other than a military base, but the trees that peeked from over the wall slightly lessened the impact.

An image of a matronly woman appeared on the screen at the front of the bus. “Welcome to Camp Alissa Nguyen, where you will embark on your journey of service to humanity. We are proud of you for making this commitment to our species’ very survival.”

“I didn’t make the commitment. The judge did,” the guy sitting in front of Rev muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

Rev snorted but didn’t say anything. He’d seen all the holovids of bootcamp, read the same books, and he was waiting for hell to be unleashed. The Recruit Training Center, Camp Alissa Nguyen website was full of images of good-looking people going about their training with dedicated looks on their faces. The recruits were referred to as “our greatest asset,” and there were assurances that those assets were treasured and cared for.

Rev had talked to a few elderly vets, way past the age when the younger vets were being recalled, and that wasn’t quite how they described their experiences.

“Please debark the bus and line up at Gate C to your left.”

Rev looked out the window. The main gate was a massive affair, done in a retro-style red brick. Vehicles were passing through going in and out of the base. About twenty-meters to the left of the gate was a smaller entrance, a simple “Gate C” printed on a sign over it.

One after the other, the poolees—the term the processing sergeant called them and what they would remain until they were sworn in as recruits—got up and made their way to the door. Rev kept expecting a DI—Drill Instructor—to jump out at them in their shark attack, unleashing their fury, but it was calm. A few of the others chatted softly, but for the most part, it was quiet, just as it has been ever since the fifty or so of them had boarded back at the processing station. Rev figured that like him, most were lost in their thoughts.

Rev had swung back and forth from anger at his situation to nervousness at what was coming. Not all of his anger was at the judge or the system. It had taken him some time, but he knew this was his fault. He’d deviated from his upbringing to try and impress Mia by being a bad boy, so while he still railed against the fairness of the system, he knew he was at fault, too. Whether aimed at himself or the legal system, his anger hadn’t died off. Over time, however, it had dampened to banked coals, not the raging flames of before, but ready to return at the right spark. Nervousness had taken over, and he wiped his palms, which were slick with sweat.

He stepped off the bus, the night air heavy and silent. A queue had already formed at the gate, and a civilian scanned each person before letting them pass through it. Rev rubbed his right hip, where his new ID had been inserted at the processing station. He couldn’t feel anything, of course, but it mentally weighed on him. This one was the military version, and it held much more personal data, both administrative and biological.

And then it was his turn. The older man aimed his scanner, then looked at the display. With only a nod of his head, he indicated Rev to enter the camp.

Here it comes, he told himself, bracing for what was about to happen . . . but it wasn’t what he expected. The gate opened into a white hallway with doors on the left. He joined the end of the line outside one of them.

“Hey, you know what’s going on?” he asked the guy who had said the judge had sent him here.

“Not a clue,” the guy said.

The line was moving quickly, however, and within a couple of minutes it was Rev’s turn. He entered the room where a single tech in medwhites pointed at a triscan, but not any triscan he’d seen before. The big white ring, a full two meters across, making the little triscans in the local clinic look like a Cityscoot to a Kia-Maserati Hyperbolt. It pulsed with power that made Rev’s hair stand on end.

“You want me to go through that?”

“No, I’m sitting here for my health. Just do it, fish.”

Well, I don’t see any bodies on the other side.

He took a deep breath, then stepped through the scanner. He felt the familiar faint touch of the diagnostic beams, but this time it seemed more complete, if he could put it that way, as if every cell in his body had been taken out and examined. It made him feel naked.

Rev shuddered as he stepped onto the platform past the scanner. He looked back at the tech, who simply waved him on while calling in the next person. Rev pushed through the exit and into the night air, where his fellow recruits were milling about in a small grassy area near some bleachers. Behind them, the camp stretched out, the buildings illuminated by the lights. Beyond those was a bullying darkness, pressing in on the buttery circles. Somewhere, a bird shrieked, and then everything was quiet again.

Rev listened and found the silence oppressive. He’d expected to see activity—recruits, and training, and maybe people yelling like hell. Other than the occasional hover coming in and out of the main gate, the place was eerily quiet.

He didn’t want to stand alone like an idiot, so he joined a group of four others who were huddled to the side.

“. . . twenty years,” one of them was saying, a short, slight guy with long, dark hair and an earnest air about him. The guy moved his hands in short, nervous chops, agitated and awkward.

“Twenty? Bullshit,” the lone girl said. If anything, she was even shorter. She turned to Rev and asked, “What about you? What have you heard?”

“Heard about what?”

“How long we have to serve. Cricket here thinks it’s twenty years.”

“Twenty? No way,” he said, shocked by the suggestion, but then he rocked back on his heels, because—he didn’t really know, and his papers didn’t specify. When he asked, he was told his options would be presented at boot camp before he was sworn in.

His offense to get conscripted was minor, and he was hoping for the two-year minimum enlistment offered by the recruiters to volunteers. At least that was what was on the website. Nowhere could he find a definitive answer, and this was one case where no news didn’t mean good news.

The use of the term “options” had to be a good omen, and he planned for whatever was going to give him the least amount of time.

“I’m just telling you what I heard,” the guy named Cricket said. “A year ago, Class Five and better were five-year, and one-through-four were eight. But with the war going as it is—”

“What do you mean?” another guy said, this one a tall blonde, his head hunched over as if he was self-conscious about his height. “We’re winning, right?”

Rev looked at Cricket to see what he was going to say.

“Who knows? We only hear what they want us to hear. But think of it, with Class Thirteens and Fourteens getting conscripted? It was only two months ago that Elevens and Twelves joined the party. Would they be doing that if the war was going well?”

Rev had never considered that. The constant stream of news being fed by the government was that the war was going well, but more effort was needed. The Centaurs had to be defeated.

If this Cricket guy was right, then maybe the status of the war wasn’t so rosy.

“Are you guys all Thirteens and Fourteens?” Rev asked.

He knew his group of poolees were all conscripted, not volunteers, but that was about the breadth of his knowledge.

“I’m Rev Pelletier, and I’m a Fourteen. I was driving manually in an auto zone.”

“Big-time criminal,” the older-looking guy said with a laugh. He held out a hand, palm up in protest when Rev swung to confront him, saying, “Just pulling your chain. I’m in the same boat. Yancey del Rio. Class Fourteen, too. Got caught tagging a bridge.”

“That’s a Fourteen?” Rev asked.

“It is now. Or at least, a third offense is.”

The others turned to look at Yancy, and he added, “Well, if I’d have known it was a Fourteen, and this is where it would get me, I never woulda done it.”

The young woman held out a hand and said, “Tomiko Reiser. Hacked a personal account.” When Rev kept waiting, she added, “Class Nine.”

Within the vast bureaucracy that made up the government, almost every action was stuck into a slot, and that included criminal and civil actions. Without a pad, it was almost impossible to remember what conduct constituted what level of offense.

“And I’m Aroyatan Neem, but everyone calls me Cricket. I . . . uh . . . I got hit with a Class Seven. Fighting.”

That took Rev aback. Cricket was a good name for the small young man. He couldn’t mass more than sixty kilos soaking wet, and he certainly didn’t look like a brawler. With his goofy smile, he looked like the kind of guy who turned in his term paper a week early.

“Ten, you didn’t tell us what you did to rate this little party,” Cricket said.

The last member of the little ad hoc group looked startled. He hesitated a moment, then said. “Class Two, and I’m not telling you what for.”

All four of the others’ mouths dropped open. Class Two? That was for serious crimes. Only Class One offenses were worse, and the punishment for them had been brainwipe for over sixty years. With the war, now they could opt for a life sentence in the military.

Ten looked down to avoid their eyes and toed at the grass. Rev didn’t have a response to him, but his curiosity was piqued, to say the least. He wanted to know what this shy-looking guy had done that was a Class Two, and for a moment he was tempted to push the issue to find out, but they weren’t here to just socialize.

“All you leeches, gather on me!” a voice called out, breaking through the night.

Rev spun around to see six Marines stride out of the darkness.

“Now!” the one in the center called out.

This was what Rev was expecting, but still, his heart jumped to his throat as he hurried to obey, leaving the other four. One thing Mr. Oliva, one of the old vets he’d talked to over the last couple of weeks, had told him to do was to quickly obey the drill instructors no matter what. Rev sometimes chafed at authority, but he vowed he’d try to stay off the skyline and do what he was told. All he wanted was to do his required time then get back home, and time in the brig or on suspension didn’t count toward his obligated service.

The head drill instructor stood his ground in front of them, the other five slowly surrounding them. Rev gave the one nearest him a quick look, afraid of . . . of what, he didn’t know.

“Eyeballs on me!” the top guy said, and Rev swung his head back to him. “All of you leeches, we’re going on a little run. DO . . . NOT . . . FALL . . . OUT.”

There was a collective gasp and protests. Rev looked down at his shoes. Spikes looked fine, but other than maybe kicking somebody up his asshole, they weren’t good for much else. They certainly weren’t running shoes.

“Are we getting issued training gear?” a voice called out.

The head DI smiled and said, “Hell, you leeches aren’t even recruits yet, so why would we be giving you gear paid for by the taxpayer.”

If we aren’t even recruits yet, then why do we have to do what you say?

Rev was ever-so tempted to voice that, and he almost did, but Mr. Oliva’s warning was enough to keep his mouth shut.

Without another word, the head DI turned and started jogging, and the placement of the other DIs became apparent. They were the herd dogs, keeping the flock together. Or more like sharks circling a school of sardines, waiting to catch the one who strayed. Rev maneuvered to the center of the pack to keep as far away from them as possible.

The pace was slow as the group ran about half a klick, passing between buildings and coming around and out onto a field ringed by a track. The bleachers where the DIs had picked them up were now facing them. They’d just done a big circle.

“Now, all of you, run,” the head DI said, pointing down the track.

“What the hell are we doing?” Yancey asked, moving alongside Rev. “I’m already chafing.”

“Hell, look at my spikes,” Rev said.

“Oh, man, that’s gotta suck,” Yancey said with a laugh.

His feet were already beginning to bark, and he could feel the sole of his right shoe coming loose.

“I’m slowing down. These cost me ninety BCs.”

He pulled to the inside of the track, looking for the DIs. To his surprise, they had stopped where the group had entered the track.

All the better.

He slowed down further as the group spread out. People were getting bolder, and conversations were breaking out. The general consensus was that this wasn’t as bad as everyone had thought it would be.

As Rev rounded the far turn, he could see the rabbits, the kiss-asses who’d taken off, being pulled off the track. It took him another couple of hundred meters to see why. As each person reached the DIs, they were directed off the track to where they were doing some sort of exercises. Rev slowed down further. If he had to do something else, he needed his energy. He was running slowly, but still, he was puffing a bit as he reached the DIs.

“Right here, leech,” one of the DI’s told him, pointing to a spot on the grass. “Twenty lifts over your head.”

Rev grabbed the padded ball and hoisted it up. It was maybe fifteen kilos or so. Not heavy . . . for the first five lifts. By twenty, his arms were aching, a slow fire burning that crept up each fiber of his muscle. And he wasn’t done. The DIs were roaming between the struggling poolees, giving them more exercises—rolling a huge log, pushing against a padded sled, more lifting. Rev was puffing hard when a DI came up and shot him with a portable scanner. The DI glanced at the readout and told him to run another lap.

This is bullshit.

His side began to hurt, but he managed somewhat of a shuffle as he tried to catch his breath, his back and arms aching with the exertion. It took him longer to get around the track this time, and not before he was lapped by one of the other poolees. He didn’t care. He just wanted it to be over.

But it wasn’t. There was another round of exercises.

Rev was on his back, passing one of the balls from one side of his body to the other, when the poolee next to him sat up and announced that he was done. He wasn’t going to go on. One of the DIs came up to him, bent over, and whispered something into his ear. Whatever it was made the poolee start exercising again, and Rev took it as a clue that he shouldn’t try something similar.

One of the brown-nosers finished her exercises. A DI shot her, then told her to run back to the building at Gate C.

Not so for Rev. When a DI shot him, the man told him to run another lap.

Rev’s spikes were falling apart before he’d gone another hundred meters, so with a snarl, he ripped them off and tossed them. Anger at losing them gave him power, and for half a lap, he pushed the pace.

“You doing OK, Rev?” Cricket asked as he came alongside the smaller man.

“Bite me,” Rev said, passing him.

The anger-fueled power only lasted until the final turn. He slowed again coming down the home stretch, lungs bellowing like a steam engine. Several more poolees were leaving and heading to the building. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like three were sitting in the bleachers.

Rev left the track, sidestepping another poolee who was bent over at the waist, puking. The acrid smell made him grimace, but he found a clean piece of grass to lie on so he could do the ball exercise again. He watched yet another poolee, Tomiko this time, get scanned then directed back to the building. It was obvious by now that they wouldn’t be released until the scanner gave the right numbers, and since the ones who were allowed to stop were the ones who were putting out the most, that was their ticket out of this hell.

Rev forced his body to complete each of the eight exercises, blowing hard as he stood to be scanned.

“Another lap,” the DI said, and Rev almost collapsed in frustration. But there was nothing he could do about it except to obey.

Two poolees had collapsed and were lying inert where they’d fallen. A corpsman checked each, then left them in the grass. So much for protecting their “most valuable assets.”

Rev considered just falling as well, faking it. But whatever the DI had told the blonde poolee—or more accurately, her reaction to whatever that was—kept Rev going. He didn’t want to find out what the DI had said.

It took two more laps and exercising, but finally, with only six other poolees left, Rev was told to go to the building at Gate C.

Relief battled anger, but at least he was done with the mindless harassment. He slowed to a jog when a DI bellowed, “Push it or you’re coming back for more.”

Rev wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was directed to him, but he took no chances. He bolted into a sprint for the last 150 meters or so to the building where another civilian waved him inside and directed him to the nearest door.

He entered a carbon copy of the room where he’d been scanned. A different medtech stood at the controls, but the same size triscan dominated the room.

“Please step through,” the medtech said, her eyes on the control panel screens.

Rev wanted nothing more than to collapse on the floor and suck in air, but with an effort, he walked over to the ring and stepped through. He barely noticed the beams this time as they dug out every secret his body held.

“What now?” he asked the tech.

“Go to the bleachers and wait.”

Rev stepped out the exit and back into the night. He leaned up against the wall for a moment, his head dizzy. He could feel his dinner from what seemed like days ago wanting to make an appearance, but with an effort of will, he forced it back down into his belly.

He sucked up his gut, stood tall, and walked over to the bleachers. There was no way he was going to look like a wimp in front of the others. Tomiko, Cricket, and Ten were already sitting on the second row of the nearest set of bleachers. Ten was still sweating, but both Tomiko and Cricket seemed relaxed and ready to go another round if need be.

“Well, that was . . . I’ll say . . . fun,” Tomiko said with a small groan. Evidently, she felt worse than she looked.

“I don’t know why we had to do this tonight,” Ten said.

“I think they were indexing us,” Cricket said.

“What, you mean to see what kind of shape we’re in?”

“Maybe. Or maybe how our bodies react to exercise. Might make sense. I mean, there has to be a shitload of jobs in the Marines, and they’ll need to place us where we can serve best.”

“I just want to do my time and get back in one piece,” Rev said. “A nice desk somewhere would suit me. Hell, I should have been conscripted into the Navy, but the judge didn’t give me any choice.”

Cricket gave Rev a hard stare and said, “You don’t want that, my friend. When the Centaurs take out a ship, it’s all hands lost, as in all hands.”

It took a moment to catch Cricket’s meaning, and then he blanched. He’d never thought of that. The Centaurs had superior ships, and the Union military command couldn’t hide the fact that more and more of their own ships were being lost. There were only so many missing sailors you could hide before families started asking uncomfortable questions.

The people always found out.

Other than briefly, and then only as a back-up plan, Rev really hadn’t thought much of anything about the military. He had been on a guild-track, in a vital industry. And it wasn’t as if there was much he could find out even if he’d tried. There had been a veil of secrecy cast over the war and military in general for the last few years. If Rev had thought anything of it before being conscripted, it was that the government was being overly cautious. Did they think humanity was riddled with Centaur spies? It would be hard for a three-meter-tall mass of armored alien to blend into the crowd.

Yancey came around the corner of the stands, spotted them, and plopped down hard. He leaned back so his head rested on the bench behind them. Someone sitting right beside his head gave him a dirty look—which he ignored—and scooted over half a meter.

“That sure sucked,” he said matter-of-factly as he stared at the stars.

“Not as much as for them,” Tomiko said, pointing back toward the track as gurneys were being loaded with two of their fellow poolees.

The chatter in the stands died out as they watched the gurneys float after the corpsman taking them deeper into the camp, away from the stands.

“What do you think’s going to happen to them?” Ten asked.

No one answered. Whatever it was, Rev didn’t think it would be good. If they were volunteers, maybe they’d be released if they couldn’t hack it, but they were all conscripts here. There would be no release for conscripts until their obligation was fulfilled . . . or they were killed in the war.

“Alright, leeches, listen up,” the head DI yelled as he and the other DIs strode over to them. “The major’s got a few words for you, so you all sit tight while I get him. No jaw-jacking, hear me?”

There were a few “yeses” and one “aye-aye,” but most of the poolees remained silent. Cricket nudged Yancey to sit up. Rev just looked around and wondered what was next as the remaining DIs stood off to the side.

The major must have been close because it couldn’t have been two minutes before he marched up with the head DI. The DIs had been wearing black sweatshirts and camouflaged trousers tucked into black boots, but the major was in full uniform. Not the dress blues in the recruiting posters, but a dark green jacket with a chest full of medals and matching pants. His right hand was a metallic silver, gleaming like a polished coin.

Rev didn’t understand why many vets seemed to tend to the obvious prosthetics. It wasn’t that hard to graft on a new limb. It was a lengthy process, though not a difficult one. But even with prosthetics, there were far more lifelike ones that were difficult to detect. Yet, like this major, Mr. Oliva had two of the same silver-colored legs, in his case, and he had a habit of thumping them for emphasis when he was talking.

“Poolees, welcome to Camp Nguyen and the first step in fulfilling your obligation to humanity.”

“At least he didn’t call us leeches,” Yancey muttered, earning him another elbow shot in the ribs from Cricket.

“I realize that none of you are volunteers,” the major continued. “But that doesn’t matter. Once you complete recruit training, you will all be Marines, the equal of everyone else.”

If the slight sneer taking over the head DI’s lip was any indication, Rev rather doubted that. It didn’t matter, though. This was just something to be endured before he could go back home and hopefully get back into the guild channel.

The major went on, spouting patriotism and duty, about the Centaur threat and what it meant. Rev tuned him out, and took a moment to look over the rest of his fellow poolees. Most were guys, which probably made sense as each of them was there for committing a crime.

Crime? Shit. What I did wasn’t a crime. It was a freaking traffic ticket.

He wondered what the rest of them had done. For that matter, he wondered what Ten had done to get a Class Two. He turned to look at him when something the major said caught his full attention.

“Now, to the question you’ve all been wondering. How long are you going to serve?”

Every single poolee sat up straight, eyes locked on the man.

“The quick answer is that I can’t tell you.”

Groans rose into the night.

“It’s been . . .” the major said, pausing to choose his words. “. . . a moving target. And then there’s your combat class. What you choose will affect that as well.”

Combat class? Is that the “options” the website mentioned?

Rev focused on the major. Whatever was going to get him home the soonest was what he was going to do.

“But I can tell you this. Before you’re sworn in, you’re going to know exactly what your path will be in the Marines.”

The drill instructors let out a loud “ooh-rah” in unison.

“And that’s about all I have for you now. You’ve got a busy three days before you officially become recruits, but as of zero-zero-zero-one this morning, you belong to the Corps. Listen to your DIs, go where you have to be, and do what you’re told to do.”

He turned to the head DI and said, “Senior Drill Instructor Howland, get these poolees to gear issue. I want every one of them in their singlets before morning chow at zero-five-hundred.”

The senior DI (“senior,” not “head” as Rev had been thinking of him) came to a position of attention, facing the major, and yelled out, “Aye-aye, sir!”

He didn’t salute, which struck Rev as odd, but then again, Rev didn’t know much about the military at all.

The senior DI—Howland, the major had called him—waited until the officer was out of sight before he turned back to the poolees. “Get your asses out of the bleachers, leeches. You heard the major. DIs, take over. I want all of your leeches standing tall outside of the chow hall at zero-four-fifty.”

“You sixteen,” one of the DIs shouted, pointing at the poolees around Rev. “Get up and form a line.”

The poolees looked at each other hesitantly, then started to stand up.

“Now, leeches!”

Rev vaulted over the bottom bench and pushed past another poolee to stand at the spot the DI was indicating. The other fifteen hurried into position behind him.

A second DI stepped up to Rev and said, “Stay on my ass,” before he shouted out, “Squad, atten . . . HUT! Forward . . .MARCH. Double-time . . . March!”

Rev just kept eyes on the DI, trying to keep close. He ignored the jostling and stumbling of his fellow poolees.

He didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was for sure: it was going to be a long night.

4

Rev had been right. It had been a long night . . . and even longer day.

After getting their heads shaved and their gear issued, they’d been taken to their barracks to change, then it was back to the supply building to drop off their civilian clothes and, for some, jewelry. They’d been told to leave all of that home, but not everyone had complied.

In their gray one-piece singlets, they were back at the chow hall for an uninspired breakfast. After getting their trays, the DI yelled, “Cram it in, poolees. You can taste it later!”

Which meant, in DI-speak, that fifteen minutes after sitting down, they were being kicked out to begin a full day’s worth of tests, only broken by lunch and head calls. It wasn’t the harassment that Rev had expected. It was just that there wasn’t time to catch his breath, they were so tight on time.

The sixteen of them went everywhere together. Rev spotted the other squads as they ran past each other, but not only from his group. There were other gray-uniformed groups, all looking like holovid androids with their shaved heads and formless singlets.

But it wasn’t just the squads in gray. There were three squads in gold singlets running back and forth, intermixed with the rest. The first time one of the gold squads passed Rev’s, several of them yelled out leeches and convicts before being shut up by their DI.

Rev had been tempted to yell back from the position at the front of the squad that he’d essentially called his own but was cut off by Corporal Wesley warning, “Can it.”

“Who are they?” Rev asked, too curious to let it go.

The poolees were not allowed to talk among themselves except while in the chow hall, but evidently that didn’t pertain to the DIs because Wesley turned to him and said, “Patriots, that’s who. Volunteers, not conscripts. Now shut up.”

The disdain in her voice had been clear.

Despite what the major had said the night before, Rev knew that the Corps was not equal. He and his fellow conscripts were at the bottom of the heap.

Don’t care. Screw them.

But he did care, and that awoke a slumbering fire within him.

And then it was in for their next battery of tests. The first one was simple. Each poolee donned a porcupine on their heads, then watched a series of holovids. Some images were of pastoral, some frankly violent, and some were just shapes and lights. The mere fact that they were wearing porcupines, the exact same ones that were used in secondary school psych evals, was proof enough that this was the same thing. But Rev couldn’t figure out what exactly they were trying to evaluate. The holovids were mostly nothing he’d seen before.

The poolees were run through the massive medscans back at Gate C again. They were placed in booths and asked a series of questions by either AIs or unseen techs. They gave blood and urine samples. By mid-afternoon, all the tests had begun to run together.

It was almost a relief when Corporal Wesley led them to a flat, nondescript building next to the inner gate into the camp proper. She brought the squad to a halt outside the hatch, then said, “Pelletier, head inside and take the first empty seat. The rest of you, fill in the next one. Wait until your name is called, and no talking!”

Rev led the way into a waiting room with about a hundred chairs in rows of about twenty. A line of cubicle doors lined the back wall. One of the other squads from the group was already there, minus a few, it looked like.

“What’s going on?” Rev asked the tall woman in the last filled chair. Grace, he thought her name was but wasn’t sure.

“I think we’re getting our results,” she whispered back before one of the DIs shouted at them to be quiet.

It seemed a little early for all that, but Rev was no expert. His curiosity was riding high, however. He wondered what the tests would indicate about him, and then he turned when a cubicle door opened and a poolee came out, looking so completely shell-shocked, his face was like a mannequin. “Eyes front,” Corporal Wesley shouted.

Rev whipped his head back.

“Say nothing, Hrveta,” one of the other DIs said in an almost human voice. “Wait outside.”

“That guy looked ready to cry, or maybe fall over,” Yancey, sitting on the other side of him, whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

He wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Poolees started rumbling.

“No damned talking!” Corporal Wesley shouted, voice shattering the relative quiet.

One by one, poolees left the cubicles to be replaced by others. Rev kept his eyes to the front, even when shifting seats. His nerves were taut, but he kept telling himself he’d find out what was going on soon enough.

The last squad arrived and took their seats.

Finally, he heard, “Pelletier, Reverent, Cubicle Five.”

Rev stood and glanced at the corporal. She tilted her head at the cubicle, and, taking a deep breath, Rev crossed over and stepped inside.

To his surprise, it wasn’t to face a screen but rather a white-frocked woman, her gray hair neatly trimmed around her ears. She was on one side of a table, the center split by a clear panel of some kind. She held out a hand to indicate for him to sit while she looked at a display screen in front of her.

Rev had about a million questions, but he bit his tongue.

She crinkled up her brow, gave a slight harrumph, then looked up and leaned across the table slightly as if to see him better. Rev felt as if he were on a slide under a microscope as she just looked at him silently for ten or twelve seconds before speaking.

“Mr. Pelletier, you present an interesting case. Significant potential, but wasted.”

Reve squirmed in his seat.

“I’m Doctor Tanis, and your future is, quite frankly, in my hands.”

Rev tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.

“I’ve got the results of your in-processing screening here. You’ve got an ASP of ninety-four-point-three, a positive Alberstons, a YYAR of twenty-four . . .”

She rattled off a dozen of more terms and numbers that didn’t register in the least with him. It was as if she was speaking Centaur.

“Do you know what any of that means. Mr. Pelletier?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, Doctor.”

Sweat started to bead on his forehead.

She sighed, then said, “Let me sum it up. You’ve got superb physical potential. An Oakley ratio . . . I mean, you’ve got an almost perfect ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch muscles. Do you know what those are?”

Rev nodded.

“Good. You’ve got excellent balance, nervous reaction, recovery, resistance to disease, minimal genetic drift, good cellular stability. In short, you are quite a specimen, young man, in a physical sense. Except for one thing. Do you know what that is?”

Rev couldn’t speak, so he just shook his head.

“Well, in official medical terms, you’re in shitty shape.”

She smiled as if she expected him to as well. Rev didn’t change his expression at all.

The doctor shook her head slightly and then said, “What that means is that you have wasted potential. Your physical conditioning is well below the mean, and that indicates that you’re lazy and lack drive.”

She waited for Rev to say something, but when he remained silent, she continued.

“And that brings us to what’s up here,” she said, tapping a finger on her forehead. “And here,” she added, shifting the finger to over her heart.

“Aside from that lack of drive, you are arrogant, somewhat resistant to authority, prone to anger, self-centered, confident, and have a lack of empathy. Do you agree with that?”

Anger began to replace nervousness. How dare the woman assume he was all of that. Well, maybe there was some truth to it, but it was impossible for anyone to dissect someone over the course of a day and a dozen tests. He’d been a Youth Corps volunteer. Wasn’t that proof he had empathy?

He wanted to argue, but he knew that would only cement her opinion of him.

“I am who I am,” he said blandly.

She gave him a hard stare, then looked back at her display. Rev couldn’t be sure, but there might have been the slightest tilt of a smile on her mouth.

You’re the arrogant one here, sitting there in judgment of me. You’re not the one getting forced into the Marines.

She said, almost to herself, “Not all of those are that detrimental, and some of these other traits could actually be beneficial.”

She looked back up at Rev and said, “As you’ve probably surmised, this is where we determine your future in the Marine Corps—what you are going to do, and for how long of a commitment. But you present something of a conundrum.”

Rev sat up straight. He knew this was a pivotal moment in his future. Possibly his very life was at stake.

“The MPT—that’s the Military Placement Test—has been refined over the years, and it can make very accurate assessments of where recruits are best suited to serve. But there are outliers, such as you, who are all over the map.

“When in doubt or when the results are not entirely clear-cut, the military, especially the Marines, likes to give the recruit a choice on their future. If the test indicates that a recruit can likely succeed in two different combat paths, the choice is left to them.”

“And if there aren’t two paths?”

The doctor smiled and said, “Then they have no choice.”

“And where am I?” Rev asked, his voice cold as he expected the worst.

The doctor didn’t seem to notice his tone, or if she did, she ignored it.

“You have tremendous potential on one hand, but the results say you’ll probably fail in most combat paths.”

“And again, where does that leave me?”

“As a MilDes Ninety-Nine.”

That meant nothing to Rev, which she could see.

“Basically, a slave laborer, if I can put it that way. For twenty-five years. A strong back for whatever is needed.”

Rev’s sight narrowed, and he was afraid he was going to pass out.

Twenty-five fucking years?

He couldn’t fathom what she was saying.

“But my potential,” he managed to gasp out, trying for any life ring. “You said I have some.”

“And that’s where I’m in a quandary,” she said matter-of-factly, as if wondering whether to order the hamburger or deep-fried sylsky for lunch.

“Were you briefed on your options?” she asked. “Of course not. They never do to you conscripts.” When Rev looked at her in confusion, she added, “That way they can change it at the drop of a hat. ‘For the good of the service.’ You’ve got three basic choices. Direct combat. MilDes Two through Nine. Those have a three-year commitment.”

Rev felt a rush of hope.

“Combat Support. Ten through Twenty-One. Ten years. And General Support. Twenty-Two through Eighty-Four, I think it is with the new one just added. Twenty years for that.”

Rev tried to digest the information. “The first one. Combat. If I go into that, then I’m done in three years?”

“If you survive, yes.”

“I want—”

“But I have to decide on whether you can make it.”

“I can. I know it.”

“If you fail, you’re a Ninety-Nine. Maybe it’s better for you if I just clear you for General Support. Keep your nose clean, and if you survive, you’ll be out in twenty, not twenty-five.”

That was the second time she’d used the phrase “if you survive.” Caution kicked in.

“Uh . . . if I could, can I ask what the chances of survival are for each of those?”

“I always wonder why more of you don’t ask that,” she said with a smile. “For Direct Combat, the mortality rate for three years is currently seventy-eight percent.”

Rev gulped and then gaped. He stared at her in shock as she watched for his reaction.

The doctor waited for him to digest this, then said, “For Combat Support, the mortality rate for ten years is sixty-two percent. For General Support, we project about the same over twenty years.”

That didn’t sound right to him, and he looked at her with the unspoken question.

“When the Centaurs attack a base or camp, they don’t care what your MilDes is.”

It made sense when she put it that way.

“And the last one, the slave laborers?”

“People like to say the Ninety-Nine is not a designator but their mortality rate.”

It took a moment for Rev to understand what she meant, but as it sunk in, he gulped.

As if taking off her doctor’s hat for a moment, she softened her voice and said, “To be blunt, Mr. Pelletier, you have the physical potential for anything. But if I allow you to opt for Direct Combat, chances are you won’t make it. You’re woefully out of shape, and if you try and fail, well, it’s a Ninety-Nine for you. I’ve got your entire record here in front of me, and you’re not a bad kid for all the test results. Yes, you’re arrogant, but what teenager isn’t? You’ve never been in trouble, and your offense to get you here, well, I don’t think that was warranted. Let me clear you for General Support. Just do your time, and you’ll still be young when you’re released.”

Rev sat back as he digested what she’d told him. She was doing him a favor, giving him his best chance of surviving to get back home.

So, why wasn’t he jumping at that chance?

When his stepdad dropped him off . . . was it only two days ago? . . . he’d told Rev to do his best, to serve humanity faithfully. Was this how he was supposed to do it?

He was about to tell her yes. It was the logical thing to do. But something held him back, and an ember of anger flared up.

She felt she was doing him a favor because she thought he was going to fail if he tried for Direct Combat. His eyes hardened as he looked at her. All she knew was the damned test results, but those were just numbers. They weren’t him.

She said he had the tools, just not the desire. But he could feel the desire burning inside of him. Sure, he was out of shape. He’d let gaming and hanging out with friends absorb his free time. But he could get in shape. He could pass their damned course. He knew it.

All the frustration over the last few weeks, of being impotent in the face of the government, of having no say, started to boil over. This was one thing he could do. This was how he could take back control over his life.

“I want Direct Combat,” he said, putting all the steel he could into his voice.

“And if you fail? You’ll be a Ninety-Nine.”

“I won’t fail.”

She leaned forward again, her forearms on the table as she tried to read into his eyes.

“He does have the potential. Maybe it’s worth the risk,” she said quietly as if he wasn’t there.

Rev didn’t say a word.

Finally, she broke the gaze and entered something on her display.

“It’s your choice, Mr. Pelletier, but welcome to Direct Combat.”

5

“Grab my pack,” Bundy said, stepping in front of Rev and slowing down for him.

“I can make it,” Rev gasped out between breaths.

Only he wasn’t sure. The end was in sight, just to the top of Mount Motherfucker, but his body was failing him.

“Hell Week” was a misnomer. The real hell couldn’t be half this bad.

This had been the hardest thing Rev had ever attempted, and he regretted every doughnut, can of Coke—every sylsky he’d eaten over the last year, every hour he’d spent gaming instead of getting some exercise.

He regretted letting his ego take over and demanding Direct Combat two weeks ago, but that same ego wouldn’t let him quit now. He might have no choice, however. His body was shutting down.

The first week after being issued his limeys, the bright green singlet worn by Direct Combat recruits, had been easy. He’d been assigned a rack in the barracks and spent time in work parties, cleaning the camp and moving supplies while he and the rest of the conscripted recruits waited for the class to convene. The work was easy, the pace slow, and it was a good time to get to know his fellow limeys—including Cricket, Tomiko, Yancey, and Ten. All told, there were more than a hundred of them, both conscript and volunteers.

The peace lasted until midnight on Sunday when the shark attack he’d expected back when they arrived as poolees descended on them. DIs roused them from their racks in a blizzard of screaming and immediately launched the recruits into a fifteen-klick run. Rev struggled, but he managed to keep up. After that first run, the rest of them, the humps with full packs, the waterwork, the log drills, the obstacle course, the lack of sleep, all blurred into a never-ending fog of pain and exhaustion. The DIs settled into a less-confrontational posture, but that didn’t mean they’d let up on what they demanded from the limeys, and they demanded a lot.

Several limeys fell to injury, and thirteen quit or just couldn’t continue. The injured would be recycled. Those who quit would become Ninety-Nines. Each time someone quit, that gave Rev a jolt of energy to push on, but that jolt had become increasingly smaller each consecutive time.

Rev, along with Cricket, and others, became the tail-end-Charlies, always bringing up the rear. Initially a group of about twenty, they winnowed down to about ten or so as the week dragged on. The DIs constantly told them to close it up, but as long as they didn’t stop, that seemed to be enough to keep them in the program.

But now Rev was at the end of his rope, and the final steep climb to the top was just one obstacle too many. Tears of frustration rolled down his cheeks.

“Come on,” Bundy repeated. “We’re almost there. Just grab my pack.”

“No,” Rev ground out. He wasn’t going to accept any help, especially from Bundy.

It wasn’t that he disliked the man. No one disliked him. Rangy and thin, Bundy was the oldest limey in the class, somewhere in his sixties at least. He was beat up, limping with every step despite the corpsman’s best efforts to keep his torn-up feet together. He was continually circulating, encouraging the others. Rev hadn’t thought Bundy would last a day, but here he was, six days later, not only in sight of the finish, but offering to help him. All while he could barely walk himself.

But Rev wasn’t going to have it. His pride wouldn’t let him.

“You go on,” he said.

“We can do it together, Rev.”

Rev knew there had to be one or two more recruits in back of him, but with his pack loaded with 100 kg of river rocks, he couldn’t waste the energy to turn around and look. Ahead of him, a dozen of his fellow limeys were spread out along the remaining three or four-hundred meters to the top. The rest were up there just out of sight, done with Hell Week.

Every muscle in his body was screaming in agony, and each step forward drained whatever he had left. He knew he was done, but he was damned if he was going to quit.

“What are you doing, Pelletier?” DI Gracer asked, coming up beside him.

“I’m not going to quit!” he shouted, then fell to one knee as his left leg cramped up.

“Get up, Rev,” Bundy told him, reaching down for an arm.

Rev weakly swatted the older man’s arm away as he struggled to rise, keeping his leg straight.

“You might not quit, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to make it. And if you don’t, by Saint Chesty, I’m going to Ninety-Nine your ass. Did you struggle through all of this for nothing?” the DI asked, leaning in close, her voice a shaming rasp.

“Come on, Rev. You can do it,” Krissy Regis said as she slowly passed them.

“I can do it,” Rev said through gritted teeth, knowing it was a lie.

And it broke him. He’d never been in this position, helpless.

“You can’t do it if you’re unable to see what’s in front of you.”

Confused, Rev looked up at the DI.

“By the Mother, do I have to spell it out for you?” Gracer asked. She gave a quick look up the hill where other DIs were spread out. “Recruit Bundy here is offering help,”

she hissed.

“But—”

“But nothing, Pelletier! We can’t take on the fucking tin-asses one-on-one. We have to be a team, and if you’re ego’s too big to get help where you can, then screw you. You belong as a Ninety-Nine.”

She gave him a light smack alongside his helmet, then left him and moved on to the next laggard.

Rev was confused. He didn’t know why DI Gracer was on his case. He thought not being willing to quit and not be willing to put the load on another recruit were good things, not bad. It wasn’t his ego talking at all.

“You heard her,” Bundy said, holding out a hand.

Bundy was twenty kilos smaller than Rev, and he was puffing as well. Rev didn’t want to jeopardize the older man’s chances, but . . .

With a sigh, he took the hand and let Bundy help him up. He yelled out as he tried to take a step, his calf cramping, and Bundy took Rev’s left arm around his shoulder, absorbing some of Rev’s weight.

“We’ve got this. One step at a time.”

Easy for Bundy to say, harder for Rev to do. He refused to look up, knowing the steep slope could break whatever small reservoir of will he had left. The final stretch became a series of small victories—one step here, two steps there. He was vaguely aware of shouts of encouragement. Several others had banded together as well for the last push, but his universe was focused on the piece of ground right in front of him. Nothing else mattered. He had to keep moving. If he stopped, he knew it would be over.

And then Bundy collapsed around him, falling in a motionless heap on the ground. Rev stared stupidly at him for a moment, ready to try the impossible and push on, but he couldn’t leave Bundy, not now. He’d carry him if he had to.

He bent over just to try and pick Bundy up when other limeys surrounded the two. The corpsman pushed through them and knelt by Bundy, then turned him over, asking for room.

Rev looked around, his mind muddled, but it finally dawned on him. They were at the top of Mount Motherfucker.

His leg took that moment to completely seize up, and he fell to his ass, the heavy pack jarring his shoulders. He didn’t care. Rev dropped the pack and pulled himself to where the corpsman was slapping a medpatch of some kind on Bundy’s neck.

The older man’s eyes fluttered a moment, then opened.

“I told you we’d make it,” Bundy said.

“Barely, and only thanks to you, old man.”

But barely was good enough. They both were going to be DC Marines.

6

Six hours later, Rev was feeling almost human again, thanks to the restoratives Navy medicine had pumped through him. Most of the class was out at the E-club, which was normally off-limits for recruits, but with Phase 1 completed and Phase 2 not to start until Monday, they’d been given special permission.

Rev didn’t go. Bundy hadn’t snapped back from the exertion as quickly. He would, the nurse had assured him. It was just going to take his sixty-seven-year-old body a little longer. And if Bundy wasn’t ready to go, Rev felt obligated to stay with him. He’d never have made it without the older man’s help. And with Rev staying, Cricket, Krissy, Tomiko, and Orpheus Talamage had decided to hang out in the barracks as well.

The thought of a cold beer was pretty tempting, but there was something to be said for a quiet evening playing cards after the almost six full days of Hell Week.

Rev had been shocked when he heard Bundy’s age. Sixty-seven was middle-aged for most aspects of life, but it was positively ancient for Direct Combat. And for Bundy to volunteer for service and pick DC, well, he didn’t understand it.

“Double slam,” Cricket said, slapping down the cards.

The edges of two of Rev’s cards lit up red, and with a sigh, he dumped them in the pit. He’d only needed a four or a nine and he’d have finally won a hand.

“You nervous about Monday?” Rev asked the table, but he was looking at Bundy.

“No. Why?”

“Getting the interface.”

Bundy laughed and twisted his body so that Rev could see the back of his neck. “Already got one.”

Rev was surprised, and he leaned in to look. “I don’t see anything.”

“You think I’m going through boot with an open jack? No. Got it sealed with plastiderm before reporting in.”

“They took mine out before reporting,” Cricket said. “Not that it matters. We’re getting military issue now.”

“Not jacks,” Rev protested. “Interfaces.”

“Like it makes a difference?” Krissy asked. “A jack is a jack. So, are you going to deal or not?”

Rev frowned as he pulled the cards in the pit and ran them through the shuffler. An interface was a tool. A jack was something to escape reality. They weren’t the same.

“All we need them for is to work our armor, right? Just a simple interface.”

“And run all our weapons, communicate, all of that. You’ve seen Twilight Soldier, haven’t you?” Bundy asked.

Of course he had. The series of six holovids had swept the galaxy a century before, then had a re-edited resurgence after the war broke out. The main characters were more robot than human, with powers that bordered on the supernatural.

“None of that was real.”

“Maybe not,” Bundy said. “But maybe it isn’t that far from the truth. Whatever we’re going to get, we’ll find out soon enough. High throughput jacks, medi-nanos—"

“I could have used the medi-nanos during Hell Week,” Orpheus said as he checked the cards Rev dealt him. “I don’t know why we didn’t get them first.”

“Too easy,” Cricket said. “Oh, and double slam.”

“Hell, we didn’t even pass yet,” Krissy said.

“Read ’em and weep.” But Cricket was right. He’d drawn right into another double slam, and this time three of Rev’s cards were ejected.

“Real nice deal there, Rev,” Krissy said with a frown as she emptied the pit and shuffled them.

“Anyone know what kind of nanos we’re getting?” Rev asked. “I mean, they’re just boosting what we’ve got, right?”

“Military grade, Rev. Military grade. You’re going to want something to stabilize you if the Centaurs take off an arm,” Cricket said.

Civilian medi-nanos, like what he still had coursing through his body, could diagnose what was wrong and inject a fair number of drugs when needed, but that was about it. Traumatic injuries were a little out of their scope. It made sense that his current nanos would be boosted with some specialized ones that had more capabilities.

Rev was OK with that, but there’d been a few rumors that there was much more that would be done to them, even augments. Which couldn’t be true. Corrective surgery for something like eyesight was one thing, but augments that enhanced the human body beyond the norm had been illegal since the Corolla Wars.

He just wished the DIs or the officers would be more open with them, and he didn’t understand why all the secrecy. They were the proverbial mushrooms of ancient lore: kept in the dark and fed shit.

* * *

“Recruit Pelletier,” the tech said, poking his head into the waiting room.

“Go get jacked,” Krissy said, giving him a slap on the upper arm. She knew what Rev thought about jackheads, and she’d been teasing him since reveille.

She’d been doing that a lot—teasing with a definite flirting aspect to it. Rev didn’t mind most of it—she was a good-looking girl with a great sense of humor—but he was taking the whole jack/interface thing personally.

“I told you, it’s just an interface, not a jack,” he growled as he stood up.

“Same damned thing,” she said to his back. “Best of luck, young fellah,” she chirped.

He lifted a single finger behind his back, hearing her laugh as the door closed behind him.

He knew by now that there was some truth to what she’d said. Okay, more than just some truth. But he wasn’t getting this to while the time away playing total immersion games and withdrawing from society. As Bundy had said during their card game on Saturday night, if he was going to be able to function as a Direct Combat Marine, he had to be able to connect to his armor and weapons. This was just an upgraded version of the interface he’d have gotten in the guild. Nothing more.

Still, he was a little nervous as he followed the civilian tech down the corridor to a small room dominated by a reclining table, a control panel, and an imposing-looking arm that hovered like a vulture over the table.

The tech told him to take off his singlet and underwear, then put them in a plastic bag and seal it. Once Rev was standing there naked, the tech waved at the table, telling him to lie down on the metal. Which he did, only to utter a hiss of protest. It was frigid on his bare back.

The tech rotely confirmed his name and birthdate. Satisfied that Rev was really Rev—once again, Rev didn’t know who else he would be inside a secure military camp—the tech sprayed a cold mist on his left thigh, making Rev jump.

“Awfully close to my balls,” Rev protested.

“Don’t care. Plenty more where those came from,” the tech muttered, then pulled a tube with a needle attached from the underside of the table.

A rather large needle.

“Don’t move if you want to save your jewels,” he said as a light emerged from the tip of the tube.

Of course, Rev jerked, but the tube suddenly extended, the needle piercing his inner thigh. He yelped, but he barely felt it. Evidently, the mist had done its job. There was a slight burning, but not much else. The needle retracted, and the tube slipped back into place under the table.

“What was that?” Rev asked.

“Just some tracers.”

Which meant nothing to Rev.

The tech—Christopher Neu-Langsford, according to his nametag—moved over what looked like a vulture arm and fanned out a part that looked like the vulture’s beak.

Rev didn’t like the way it looked, and he felt extremely vulnerable lying there naked as the tech busied himself with the arm.

“Where’s the interface?” he asked, more just to break the silence.

“The what?”

“The interface. What you’re going to implant. I’d like to see it.”

The tech scrunched his eyebrows for a moment, then said, “Oh, the jack.”

It’s not a jack. It’s an interface.

“I don’t do that here. This is NM.”

Which, once again, Rev didn’t understand. He was about to ask what NM was when the tech stepped back and said, “OK, you need to remain still for this. So, we’re going to clamp you in place. Lay your arms flat against your side, palms down.”

Rev hesitated, but he really wasn’t in a position to argue. He did as he was told, and part of the edge of the table folded up to form a band over his wrist. If he felt vulnerable before, that had just doubled.

The tech centered the arm about half a meter over Rev’s face. “I’m going to run this down the length of your body.” He stepped back to his console.

“What’s it gonna do?” Rev asked, his voice faltering just the tiniest bit as he stared at it.

“Don’t worry. It’s not going to hurt you. Just a little tickle.”

Don’t be a wimp.

A light circling the rim of the fan turned on, then . . .

. . . pain, like nothing Rev had ever felt before, washed over his body. He screamed in agony, or at least he thought he did. He could feel every cell come apart in a field of fire. His very being started to disintegrate, but he knew he was still alive because the dead couldn’t be tortured like this.

And suddenly, it was gone, like the last wisps of a dream.

“You lying bastard,” he spat, pulling at his restraints, his one desire to get up and beat the shit out of the tech—consequences be damned.

The tech casually strolled over to stand above Rev, looking down at him.

“Why the hell did you lie to me?” Rev spat, sucking in air through his nose as the pain began to fade—but not fast enough for his liking.

“Would it have mattered? You were still going to get neuromapped one way or the other.”

Rev tried to jerk free, almost snarling at him.

“Besides, I said the NM wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“And what do you think just happened to me, you stupid fuck?”

“When the NM activated the tracers, you only thought you were in pain. It stimulated your nociceptors, as if you were being hurt, which sent the signals through your thalamus and on to your ventromedial nuclei in your cerebral cortex. Like I just said, you only thought you were in pain, but nothing was actually being done to you. You’ve suffered no bodily damage.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I know what I felt!”

“No, really. How do you feel right now?”

The question was crazy. He’d just been tortured by this sick bastard, but . . . as he did a quick inventory, he realized he felt fine. Nothing hurt, and everything seemed to work, the best he could tell while lying on the table.

In fact, he couldn’t really remember the pain. He knew he’d been in agony just a minute before, but only in the abstract.

“I . . . I guess I feel OK,” he said cautiously.

“So, like I said, the NM wasn’t going to hurt you. If I release you now, are you going to behave? You’re not going to get up and knock my head off?”

“I didn’t need to be held down for the scan, right? That was to protect you.”

The tech gave a slight smile, and he didn’t bother to deny it.

“No, I’m not going to jump you,” he said with a sigh. The memory of the agony was quickly fading further.

The tech pressed a release on the bed, and the restraints retracted. Rev sat up, and the tech took a quick half-step backward, wary. But Rev had been telling the truth. He wasn’t angry anymore. It was as if it had never happened.

Rev flexed his arm, trying to remember how it had felt.

“Can I get dressed now?”

“Sure. We’re almost done here.”

“What about my interface? Who’s doing that?”

“Not me. And not today. We just neuromapped you, and based on the results, your jack and all of your augments are going to be printed, custom made for you.”

“All of my augments? You mean the interface and the medi-nanos, right?”

The tech looked at him and laughed. “You think that’s it? You’re going to fight the tin-asses with only those?”

“What do you mean? I’m getting armor, right?”

“Look, Pelletier. You’re going into Direct Combat. You’re getting all the augments we can give you to keep you alive and killing the enemy. How don’t you know that?”

Rev blanched. He’d known about the interface. That was how Marines controlled their armor and weapons, or how sailors flew their ships. And as Bundy had said, he’d get boosted medi-nanos. But anything else was news to him.

“What are they going to do to me?”

“Hell if I know. I’m in diagnostics, not augments, and I don’t know what you’re slated for. Pretty primo stuff, though, you can bet on that,” he said, his eyes lighting up as if he were a jackhead talking about the latest and greatest game.

But this was reality, not a game, and he didn’t like the thought of anything being done to his body. What if they cut off his junk like they did to the Eunuch regiments back in the Corolla Wars?

“I’m OK with the interface, but I don’t think I want any augments.”

It wasn’t surprising that he’d feel that way. Human augmentation was taught to be evil, something that must never happen again. The Eunuch regiments were not even close to being the most egregious human manipulation of the Lost Century.

“Not much of a choice there. It’s a done deal.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” he asked.

The tech laughed at that and asked, “Yeah, and who are the tin-asses going to complain to? No, you agreed to it when you accepted Direct Combat. You’ll receive them sometime over the next week. After you get your uploads, I’d imagine.”

He could see Rev was dubious, so he said, “Look, they’re not going to make you into some monster. You’ll still look like you, mostly.”

Mostly?

“You’ll just be better. Stronger, better eyesight, shit like that. Hell, I’d give my left nut for some of those.”

Which brought Rev back to the Eunuch regiments, something he didn’t want weighing on his mind.

But stronger muscles and better eyesight weren’t bad, in and of themselves. Not much different than people in the real world getting their eyesight corrected. Maybe Rev was just letting the Lost Century get the better of him.

“And this time, when I say it won’t hurt, I mean it,” the tech added. “You’ll sleep through it all and wake up a superman.”

Rev didn’t believe a word of that, but he wasn’t sure if there was a damned thing he could do about it.

7

Early the next morning, the class was taken back to the Eyes of God, the large scanners they’d gone through that first night. By this time, it was routine. But as Tomiko asked, if their neuromapping the day before really didn’t damage their bodies, then why another scan?

Rev didn’t want to be cynical, but he couldn’t help it. The lack of transparency was not very conducive to trust.

Apparently, though, everyone passed as they were marched back to the building with no name—only a number where they’d been neuromapped. This time, they were taken to the upper deck where they were told to sit in the twin of the waiting room down below.

As before, the place was mostly manned by civilians, not Navy medical staff. Even their DIs left them. Rev didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned about that.

Eight recruits were immediately called from the waiting room, and without DIs, the rest of them congregated, discussing what might be going on. A few of them had been told by a DI that they were getting their jacks, as most people referred to them despite Rev’s protests, and that made sense. All they had done since getting sworn in as recruits was get their asses kicked on a physical level. They’d had exactly zero training in being Marines.

They’d picked up some of the Marine-specific lingo from the DIs. They knew to call a toilet the head, the floor a deck, and the cafeteria a chow hall. Centaurs were tin-asses. But as far as actual military training, there’d been nothing.

The modern Marine was the most advanced killing machine in humanity’s history, and most of that was due to technology. And to use that technology, the Marine had to be jacked. So, that was the logical first step in their training.

Despite Rev’s aversion to the concept of jacks, he was still a little excited about what it would offer him. In the recruitment holos, Marines were sometimes depicted in full armor, and the images were terrifying, but in a good way. The thought of controlling that much raw power was exciting.

But no one knew what their capabilities would be. And there was the growing consensus that they would be getting more than just jacks and medi-nanos, so it could be anything from simple improvements to things such as eyesight, which Rev hoped was the case, to some of them going full Twilight Soldier. To Rev’s surprise, many of his fellow limeys seemed to think that was a good thing.

About forty minutes after the first eight had gone in, others started getting called.

“Is that normal? I mean that’s all it took when you got your jack?” Rev asked Bundy.

“I got my first one more than fifty years ago, so I’d imagine things have gotten better. It only takes about five minutes to get one replaced, though.”

In Rev’s low opinion of jackhead culture, he’d never paid much attention to the hardware, but he’d imagined that the implantation would take some time. They were melding a mechanical device to an organic brain, after all. He’d accepted the idea that he was going to get one, and he’d been at ease, but now his nervousness started to reappear.

“How long does it take to, you know, be able to control something?”

“You really are a virgin, aren’t you?” Bundy asked with a laugh. “How have you gone through life without knowing that?”

It really wasn’t fair to make fun of him for not knowing, Rev thought. Except in extreme cases of need, jacks were illegal for minors. That was settled law. And as he wasn’t one of those kids who lived for the day they’d get their jack, he never bothered to learn more about them.

Besides, more than thirty percent of the population never got jacked, not even a simple interface, and not only for religious reasons.

Before he could reply, however, he was called.

This is it.

“You’ll be fine,” Bundy said as Rev joined the waiting tech. “Probably,” he said, adding a wink.

He might have been in the same corridor—passageway, he reminded himself—as he’d been for the neuromapping. That reminded him of what had happened before. While the memory of the pain itself had almost faded away, he knew it had been there, and that only increased his anxiety.

One of the doors on the left opened, and a gurney floated out. The patient was on his stomach, a flat bandage covering the back of his neck. It wasn’t until the gurney turned down the passageway that Rev recognized Cricket, unconscious.

“Where’s he going?”

“Him?” the tech asked. “To recovery and uploading. He’s fine.”

That was the second time a tech had mentioned uploading, and he wanted to ask her what that meant, but she opened one of the doors and led him inside.

There was a table in the center of the room, dominated by an instrument with what looked like a porcupine helmet on steroids. A second arm had what was undoubtedly a drill, every inch of it gleaming with sterile menace.

“Take off your singlet and lay face down on the table,” she told him as she pulled out a sealed package from a drawer under a control console.

His eyes on the drill, Rev pulled off his singlet. At least this time, he kept on his underwear. He cautiously lay down, craning his head to keep an eye on the drill. The bit itself had to be three centimeters in diameter, and the knowledge that it would be drilling into his skull was more than a little disconcerting.

The tech moved to the chamber above the drill bit and inserted a plastic case.

“Is that my interface. I mean, my jack?”

“Sure is. An AIS-43,” she said with obvious pride. “Best there is.”

She snapped the chamber shut with the finality of loading a pump shotgun. “You’re going to love it.”

Rev wasn’t so sure.

She picked up his singlet, slipped it into a bag, and sealed it shut. “This will be waiting for you,” she said, sliding it under his table.

“OK, we’re about ready. Do you have any questions?”

He had a million, but foremost was, “Where’s the doctor?”

The tech gave a high trill of laughter, then said, “This is just the install. No doctors needed.”

“But—”

“Just relax. I’ve done thousands of these. I don’t lose many of you Marines.”

“Many?” Rev said, pushing himself up.

“Just kidding. This is routine, like getting a vaccine.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re going to put something in my head. I’d say that’s—I mean, it doesn’t feel routine.”

“In your thalamus, but yes,” she said, obviously not getting his point.

Calm down, Rev. Billions of people get this done. Don’t be such a wimp.

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, then lowered himself back down.

“You ready now?”

No.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

She misted his arm, then attached a cuff. “This isn’t going to hurt.”

That’s what the last guy said.

“I want you to count down backward from a hundred to one.”

“OK. One hundred . . . ninety-nine . . . ninety . . .

. . . eight?”

Rev opened his eyes. Dim blue lights revealed a normal-looking room, not where he’d been just a moment before. It took him a moment to realize that the tech had been right. It was over, and he hadn’t felt a thing.

The jack!

He reached around just behind the left side of his head. His fingers met a slick cover, and for a moment, he was tempted to pull on it.

“I’d leave that alone if I were you,” a voice said.

Like a little boy with his hands in the candy jar, he whipped his arm away and looked over to where a woman in doctors’ whites stood at the door, a younger man in tech greens beside her.

“Welcome back, Private Pelletier. I’m Doctor Wan. How are you feeling?”

“I’m, um . . . not terrible?” he said as the doctor focused on her pad.

“Good, good.”

He thought she’d have said the same thing had he told her he was in pain.

“Tern, go ahead. Let’s see the feedback node.”

The tech nodded, then pulled out a lead from the nondescript gray box beside the bed.

“Turn your head,” he told Rev.

Rev exposed the side of his neck, and the tech snapped in the lead. Rev expected something, even if he wasn’t sure what. But he felt nothing.

“Is it working?” he asked.

The tech put a hand on Rev’s shoulder, but the doctor was absorbed in her pad and didn’t answer.

“Send packet one,” she finally told the tech.

He still felt nothing, and that didn’t change as the doctor had the tech put through five more packets.

“Did something go wrong?” Rev asked.

He really hadn’t wanted the jack, but he certainly didn’t want a faulty jack. He suddenly had visions of it sparking and catching fire inside his neck.

The doctor finally looked up with a condescending smile and said, “Perfect, Private. Everything’s fine.”

“But—”

“Sign him over,” she told the tech before she turned and left the room.

“What’s happening?” Rev asked.

“Everything’s fine. Feedback loops are reading well into the green. Upload checks.”

“But I don’t feel anything.”

“Which is good. You don’t want to be feeling anything. Your brain is making connections, and pretty soon you’ll begin to have active control.”

Which, once again, meant zip to Rev. He was really getting tired of not knowing what was going on.

The tech disconnected the cable and held up a simple white disk. “Leave this on for the next two days, even when you shower. After that, you should be fine.” He put the disk over the jack where it snicked shut.

The tech touched the comms button on his collar and said, “Got another for you. Pelletier. Room four-one-five.” He turned to Rev, pulled out the bag with his singlet, and tossed it at him.

“Go ahead and get dressed, then take a seat. Someone will be in here shortly,” he said before leaving Rev alone in the room.

He gingerly swung his legs around and sat up, but he felt fine. No dizziness, no nausea.

“Hopefully whoever’s coming can answer some freaking questions,” he muttered as he got dressed.

The chair was on one side of a plain table, its twin on the other side. Rev sat to wait. His hand drifted up to his neck where he fingered the cover. The tech had told him to leave it, but he was so tempted to worry at it like a scab.

It seemed surreal to him. He had a hole at the base of his skull, but he felt fine. Normal fine. Not better in any way.

Less than a minute after he sat down, the door swung open and a Marine came in, not another civilian tech. The sergeant didn’t have the DI black tab on his collar, but Rev stood and came to a position of attention.

“Sit, Recruit Pelletier.”

Rev sat at the edge of his seat, his back straight, waiting.

The sergeant took the seat on the other side of the table, then placed a large case between them.

“I’m Sergeant Mysoki, and I’m here to ask you some questions. I want you to relax and just tell me what comes to your mind.”

“Relax” was a word, when used in bootcamp, that usually meant something bad was coming.

“Recruit Pelletier, what is the primary fire team formation when expecting contact front?”

“What . . . ?” Rev managed to get out. The question came out of the blue.

“Expected contact front. The formation?”

“I . . . we haven’t started real training yet, Sergeant. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The sergeant seemed non-plussed and said, “Just tell me what comes to your mind. Anything.” When Rev remained silent, he said, “Guess.”

This is crazy. How am I supposed to know the answer to that? I don’t even understand the question.

But the sergeant was watching him, waiting for him to answer. He’d told Rev to guess, so when he got it wrong, the sergeant couldn’t blame him, right?

He just said the first thing that came to his mind. “A fire team V.”

The sergeant gave a slight nod of approval, and Rev said, “Wait, that can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve never been taught that.”

The sergeant merely shrugged and asked for the ECR of a 94mm HE mortar. Rev didn’t know what an ECR was, but he said, “Fifteen meters.”

For the next five minutes or so, the sergeant asked him a series of rapid-fire questions, none that seemed connected to the previous one. Rev answered as fast as he could with whatever popped into his mind, and the more he answered, the more he was sure that he was getting at least some of them correct. All he could assume was that he’d overheard the answers over the last few weeks and just didn’t remember it.

The questions came to an end, and Rev had to ask. “Did I get any of those right?”

The sergeant looked at his pad, then said, “Fifteen out of twenty-two.”

Rev was flabbergasted. That was impossible. Sure, he might have lucked out on a couple, but fifteen?”

Before he had a chance to ask what was going on, the sergeant opened the case to reveal an M-49 Assault Rifle. The weapon was ubiquitous in the Union military, and Rev was relieved to see something he recognized.

“Disassemble it,” the sergeant told him.

The relief he’d felt fled his body. Of course, he knew what the weapon was. But to disassemble it? He’d never even touched one before.

The sergeant tilted his head at the weapon, his hands folded in front of him. He wasn’t going to give him any help.

Hesitantly, Rev reached out and pulled the weapon toward him. He rotated it in front of his face as if a set of instructions might be printed on it.

No such luck.

He turned it over again, and almost by accident, his thumb pressed a small button. A fuel cell dropped from it, then it bounced on the table and off onto the floor.

“Sorry about that, Sergeant,” Rev said, reaching down to retrieve the wayward fuel cell.

As if his right hand had a mind of its own, it reached forward and pulled at a release along the barrel. It was balky, and it took a few tries, but it finally pulled free, and the barrel loosened.

Now what?

He twisted the barrel, but it tightened. He twisted it back the other way, and it came free in his hand. Rev quickly looked up at the sergeant, afraid he’d done something wrong, but the NCO’s face was a passive mask. He gently laid it on the table, taking care not to bang the mag-rings that ran down its length.

“SPG,” Rev quietly muttered.

But what was an SPG? He turned the stock and receiver and looked at the bottom. There, where it would have been held in place by the base of the barrel, was a small, black rectangle, contact points revealed. He pulled up on the end and pivoted it toward where the barrel had been, and that freed something inside. He slid it out slowly. There were contact points on the other side of the rectangle as well.

“Short Pulse Generator,” he told the sergeant before putting it down.

How the hell do I know that?

It wasn’t quick, but with a few misses, he worked his way through the process, never knowing what the next step was until he faced it. Almost four minutes after he started, the M-49 was in pieces on the table in front of him. Sergeant Mysoki stared at him silently for a moment, then reached for one of the parts. The term actuator came to Rev’s mind. The sergeant twisted it as if opening a jar, and it came apart into two pieces. He laid them back down at the table.

“Did I do OK?” Rev asked.

“Not bad, Recruit Pelletier.”

The sergeant picked up the trigger assembly, and with quick, sure movements, he started assembling the weapon. Rev watched, sure of each move as the sergeant made them. Less than twenty seconds after he started, the weapon was assembled, and he put it back in the case.

Rev didn’t know where his knowledge came from, and it wasn’t as if he even knew what he knew, if he could put it that way. It was just that when the question came up, the answer was there, or when he had to disassemble the M-49, he had the steps down.

There was only one thing that made sense, but he wanted confirmation.

“Sergeant Wysoki, how did I know fifteen of the answers when no one taught me them?”

The sergeant closed the weapons case and pursed his lips. “I think you know the answer to that.”

“I’d like you to tell me, Sergeant, so I can—I’d just like to hear it. Please.”

The sergeant checked his pad, then said, “You passed, so you’re going to get briefed by the CO, but I guess it won’t hurt to confirm what you suspect. Your upload was successful.”

“Upload.” Rev had been told that by two of the techs, but it hadn’t registered.

The direct upload of knowledge was not the same as genmodding or augmenting. It was merely the transfer of knowledge. After the disaster of the Deimers, who ended up being more android than human, it was technically illegal, although not a major area of concern. Uploads were available on the black market, where they were a favorite of students, but as the input went into short-term memory, its effects were temporary. And the side effects could be unpleasant to downright painful, like an acute migraine.

Rev was speaking from experience. He’d paid for it twice to get through tests, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Whatever knowledge about Old Earth history or trigonometry he’d gained had long disappeared.

Evidently, the military had improved upon the process. Rev felt fine, and while he couldn’t tell what knowledge had been uploaded into him, it felt permanent, was the best way he could describe it.

Except . . .

“How come it took me forever to disassemble the M49 if I know how now?”

“The knowledge is in there,” the sergeant said, reaching over to tap on Rev’s forehead. “But the muscle memory, that has to be learned. That’s not automatic.”

Which made sense. Coach Kirkpatrick had continually harped on training muscle memory, making them repeat the same drills over and over, telling them they needed to be able to react to the opposing flipball player without thinking it through.

Where Rev was a little hesitant about augments and messing with his genes, this was something he understood. A way to get ahead that bypassed hours and hours on his pad studying.

This is going to be easier than I thought.

“So, I’m ready to be a Marine now? I’ve got all the knowledge already?”

“Not hardly,” the sergeant said with a barking laugh. “This was just a proof of concept, to see if you were susceptible to the process. If you weren’t, the civilian bosses wouldn’t want you out there with the other leeches with whatever knowledge you did retain. No, you got what was essentially MCM-1002, The Marine Basic Rifleman. Simple stuff. You’ve got a shitload more to learn, and you’ll get that uploaded after you get your battle buddy.”

Battle buddy?

Whatever that was, it wasn’t part of what he’d already had uploaded.

“What’s a—”

“Look, recruit. I don’t have time to sit here with you.” He pointed to the bud in his left ear. “I’ve got another of you ready to test. The CO will brief you tomorrow, so just hang tight until one of your DIs comes and gets you.”

And with that, he was out the door and gone.

Rev had a million questions, and while he had no idea what a battle buddy was, the words themselves made him apprehensive. He wanted more answers, and he wanted them now.

At least he thought he did. There was a very good possibility that he wasn’t going to like what he learned at all.

8

“Why do we call them Centaurs? They don’t look like them,” Yancey asked.

“What are you talking about?” Rev asked.

“Up there. The Centaur. The tin-ass. It doesn’t look like a Centaur. I mean, if I squint hard, maybe, but barely.”

He pointed to the life-size model at the back of the stage. The Centaur paladin stood three meters tall, an impressive hunk of mech. Unlike a Marine mech, it didn’t have two legs and two arms. The paladin’s base was its largest part, where sixteen centipede-like legs moved it over the ground. The upper body was where the Centaur had its bite: any of a half-dozen weapons systems.

“We don’t call them Centaurs because they look like one, you dipshit. It’s because we think they come from the Scutum-Centaurus Arm of the galaxy,” Rev said.

“The what?”

“For fu—look, Yancey. Like Safe Harbor is in the Perseus Arm. Scutum-Centaurus is on the other side, past the galactic core. You guys all know where it is, right?” Rev asked the others.

Tomiko just rolled her eyes.

Yancey shrugged. “Don’t need to know where the hell they come from in order to kill them.”

Rev opened his mouth to argue, but he realized that Yancey was right. Even the xenobiologists didn’t know for sure where the Centaurs came from. The Scutum-Centaurus Arm had been the initial theory after that disastrous first contact, and the name had stuck, at least in the lexicon.

The official name was Scutum-Centaursians, but in almost all cases, it was just Centaurs. Marines, being Marines, often put fuck in their name, as in “fucking Centaurs,” they mostly called them tin-asses.

He wasn’t going to let Yancey off the hook, though. The guy needed to be aware of the details—Rev could sense that not caring enough would get them good and dead.

Whatever he was going to say, however, was cut off when the door into the auditorium crashed open and ninety-three heads swiveled around to see who it was. A sergeant major Rev had never seen before strode in and stepped to the side as if waiting.

The recruits looked around, wondering what to do. While they sat straighter in their seats to the right side of the room, neither the senior nor any of the junior DIs otherwise reacted.

Rev stared at the sergeant major. He knew what the rank was, thanks to his upload, but this was the first time he’d actually seen a Marine of such an exalted rank. With a chest full of ribbons, the man looked hard, all the more so with two silver arms peeking out from under his sleeves.

Which seemed to be the standard here. From appearances, most of the cadre were damaged goods, and they seemed to show their prosthetics off as badges of honor. Rev thought that was weird. Why try to look like a machine when any hospital could either regrow what was lost or at least give more natural-looking prosthetics?

The sergeant major came to a position of attention and bellowed, “Class DC-3080, attention on deck!”

Recruits and DIs jumped out of their seats, eyes locked forward. Rev could hear footsteps, but he had to wait until the entourage, led by God himself, passed him before he could see.

The sergeant major followed the colonel, who was then followed by four more officers. The colonel and the sergeant major walked up on the stage while the four other officers took their seats in the front row.

The colonel stepped up to the center of the stage and looked out over the assembled recruits. Rev blanched. The left side of the colonel’s face was silver, the same silver-colored material of the arms and legs of other wounded Marines. But it wasn’t the Phantom of the Opera look that dominated. Even sitting in the second row, Rev could clearly see that the colonel’s eyes were artificial. Instead of pupils, he had the anchor and crossed swords that made up the Marine Corps emblem.

“Recruits of Class DC-3080, I am Colonel Destafney, the Fifth Recruit Training Regiment commanding officer. I’d like to welcome you to Phase Three, the real start of your training.”

For someone who looked like a full-on android with messed-up eyes, his voice was surprisingly nondescript.

“I realize that you have been kept in the dark about your futures, and I apologize for that. But before you entered Phase Three, we had to ensure that each of you was qualified to advance. Many of your original number did not. Some because of a lack of will, some because of physical limitations, and more simply because of their bodies’ inability to accept the augmentations necessary for you to perform your duties as DC Marines.”

There was an outbreak of murmuring, and the sergeant major had to shout out, “At ease, recruits.”

The colonel waited for the room to quiet. “Yes, augmentations. Organic and synthetic. One thing you need to realize is that the Scutum-Centaursians are a deadly enemy.” He stopped to turn and point to the model behind him. “Look at that thing. Our very survival as a species is at stake. Forget what you see on the news. The war isn’t going well, and we need to turn the tide.”

There was a collective intake of breath.

“But rest assured, we will turn the tide and send the demon spawn back to whatever cesspit corner of the galaxy from where they made the mistake of crawling out of their primeval muck. And if that means augmentations, genmods, or whatever, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

Rev’s mind was racing trying to keep up. What the colonel was saying was illegal, and it was the bedrock of what kept the various nations of humanity in an uneasy truce.

As if reading his mind, the colonel said, “What we are doing is not illegal. In conjunction with every other member of the Congress of Humanity, the Torinth Accords have been temporarily rescinded. As you can imagine, however, this is not something that is suitable for the general public, not since the Eunuch Regiments, the Deimers, and the Genesians. Those abominations were costly, tragic mistakes, and humanity rightfully banned those practices.”

So, why us now? Rev wondered, his stomach a hollow pit.

“But desperate times require desperate measures, and the science to create a Genesian Berserker was never lost. Just put on ice.”

“Holy shit,” Yancey said. “They’re going to make us berserkers?”

Rev was speechless. The four-meter-tall berserkers were the things of nightmares, the creatures that united the rest of mankind to stop the genetic arms race once and for all.

But evidently, not for all.

“We’ve refined the science. You will not become monsters. Just better versions of yourselves.”

He stopped speaking, then tilted his head toward the back row. “Recruit Talamage, take out your Status of Forces card.”

Orpheus hesitantly reached into his breast pocket and removed the small card each of them had been issued when they were sworn in as recruits. They were to carry the cards, which delineated their legal status and duties as a member of the Marine Corps.

“I want you to pick a word on the card, then hold it up, facing me, and point to that one word.”

Orpheus gave the senior DI, still sitting at the right side of the room, a quick glance, but he pointed to a spot on the card and held it up.

“The word is ‘remand.’ Am I right?”

Orpheus looked at the card again, then said, “Yes, sir.”

“Whoa,” Yancey muttered.

Rev wondered if there was a trick to it. If not, then the colonel’s eyesight was something amazing.

“None of you recruits can do that. And neither could I until two years ago after I lost half of my face to a Scutum-Centaursians counter-attack. I received biosynth eyes, which, quite frankly, are far better than my old organics. We used to think the Mark-1 eyeball was the best. We were wrong, and I’m living proof of that.”

This wasn’t exactly new tech. New eyes could be grown, but using biosynths was not a rare occurrence. Of course, civilian biosynth eyes didn’t come with the Marine Corps Anchor and Swords, and none, to Rev’s knowledge, could read such tiny print from so far away. They were designed to mimic normal human vision, not give humans eagle eyes.

“None of you will be getting my eyes, so don’t bother asking,” Destafney said, a thin smile curling over half his mouth. If he was waiting for laughter, it was wasted time. The recruits were too stunned to make a sound.

He plunged ahead, unfettered by their shock. “But you will be getting augmentations that will transform you into the warriors we need if humanity is going to survive. Most Marines will be getting some degree of augmentations, even if it is just their jack. But for you in Direct Combat, some of your augmentations will be . . . well, let me be blunt here. They will be extreme. They’ll fundamentally change what you can do, and for some of your DC designators, the training necessary to master them may not be pleasant.”

There was a low murmur from the assembled recruits that the colonel ignored.

“But rest assured of two things. First, you will not be changed. You’ll be the same person you always were. Second, whatever modifications are made to you are with one goal in mind, and one goal only: to allow you to take on the Scutum-Centaursians and defeat them. If it isn’t necessary, it won’t be done.”

He paused a moment to let that sink in.

“Still, no matter how beneficial, no matter how vital to our survival, there are some in our societies who will decry your sacrifice. And that is why the secrecy. Until you completed Phase Two, you needed to be kept in the dark. Only those who make it to augmentation have the need to know. We can’t let the extent of your augmentations become general knowledge. It will happen at some point, but the longer we put it off, the better chance we have to prove that it is needed. I stand here before you in awe. You will be the tip of the spear. By Saint Chesty, you will be what stands between our very existence and our destruction. I am honored.”

The colonel came to a position of attention for a few moments, then said, “Captain Aloiose, carry out the remainder of the training schedule.”

“Attention on deck!” the sergeant major shouted, and every recruit and DI jumped to attention as the colonel, followed by the sergeant major, walked out of the auditorium.

“Who’s Saint Chesty?” Yancey asked out of the corner of his mouth.

Some of the DIs like to bring this St. Chesty into their conversations, but Rev had no idea who that was, so he didn’t answer.

“At ease,” the captain said the moment the door closed behind the CO. She walked up to the stage. “Take your seats.”

Rev knew the name of their recruit company commander, but this was the first time he’d seen her. Unlike the regimental CO, she didn’t look like she’d been wounded in combat.

“Recruits, you’ve got a full couple of days in front of you, so buckle down and train hard. Gunny Gerund will be downloading the schedule, but it will be up to each of you to be where you are supposed to be and when. If you have questions, ask them. Your DIs are here to help. I want to remind you that every day you aren’t in the fleet is one more day that the Centaurs can take more territory from us, killing as they come,” she said. “I know that the burning question for each of you is about your augmentation suites.”

Rev wasn’t the only person to sit up straighter, full attention laser-focused on the captain.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can tell you at the moment. Each of your specific suites is being manufactured as we speak. Your suite will depend on which DC specialty you’re assigned, and that assignment will have been based on your testing through Phase Two. I expect that we’ll start the implementation in another five or six days with your battle buddies.”

That’s the second time I’ve heard that term. What the hell’s a battle buddy? Rev wondered.

The CO and now the captain might be coming clean with them, but that didn’t mean Rev knew what was going on. He had no idea what augmentations he was going to get, and that worried him. The CO said they weren’t going to be monsters, but just what constituted a monster could be open to a lot of different interpretations. And now he knew that one thing he’d get was this battle buddy, but he didn’t know what that was.

Even after the brass told them what to expect, they all were still in the dark.

Rev grimaced. Just like they intended.

9

“Twenty-eight seconds. Again, recruit,” Staff Sergeant Moussari ordered.

On his belly in the mud, Rev resisted rolling his eyes in frustration. He’d cut down his time from almost two minutes, and he had to be getting close. But the sergeant, sitting in her hoverchair, kept pushing him.

He pulled the charge off the wall, zeroed it, removed the fuze, and put it back into his L-Pack.

“OK, I’m ready.”

Just concentrate and get her off your ass.

“On my mark . . . three . . . two . . . one!”

Rev shifted to his side and pulled the MM-901 out of his pack. The wall was cerrocrete, so he rotated the dial to Profile Four.

“Confirm profile, check power, set time, power fuze,” he muttered.

He didn’t need to repeat them. He’d known the process from the moment he’d been assigned the task. But he just couldn’t get his fingers to work quickly enough to implement the steps.

“There!” he muttered as the fuze winked green. He slapped it into the slot on the mine body, then gave it a hard twist to the right. Nothing. He gave it another twist, and this time, the two lights lined up, flashed twice, and turned off.

Rev thumbed the release, activating chameleon pads, then placed the mine on the wall and pushed it firmly before flipping the release lever back. This time, the mine stuck on the wall.

One last step. Don’t screw it up.

The fuze and the mine had a solid connection. All he had to do now was arm it. He ran his finger around the edge and carefully pushed the arming trigger. A single soft beep confirmed that the mine was ready, and if it was real, it would detonate in ten minutes.

Rev twisted in the mud to look back at the staff sergeant. Her face was expressionless as usual. It was as if the Centaur beamer that had vaporized half of her body, from her waist on down, had taken her personality as well.

Which wasn’t fair, he knew. According to Doc Jewel, one of the corpsmen in the field during all training, she didn’t have enough spine left for prosthetics. They had to grow it, which would take another year—a year of puttering around in her hoverchair testing recruits.

“Twenty-four seconds,” she said. “Report to Station Thirty-One.”

Which meant he passed, much to his relief. He pulled off the mine and stood, the mud making a squelching sound as he broke free from its embrace. He handed the dirty training mine to the staff sergeant.

“Don’t just stand there, recruit. Double-time.”

Rev could feel for the staff sergeant, but he didn’t have to like her. He broke into a jog down the path, only to meet Krissy jogging up.

“What is it?” she asked him.

“MM-901. Moussari’s running it.”

“Fucking great,” she said as she ran past him. Then she called over her shoulder, “Good luck with the next one, big boy.”

Rev snorted. At least Big boy was an improvement over young fellah. He’d barely had a chance to talk to her since the CO’s brief. Krissy wasn’t shy in telegraphing her interest in him—not that he’d act on anything while they were still recruits—but he couldn’t even just socialize with the last four days being jammed with training, almost around the clock. He suspected that was by design, to keep their minds off of their coming augmentations.

Rev wasn’t sure what he felt about them. He was a creature of his past, and he’d always been taught that augmentations were evil. But as the CO had said, desperate times called for desperate measures. And if this was the only way to defeat the activated chameleon pads—

Truth be told, he was more than willing to let the frenetic pace of training take up his thoughts. Better not to think of what was going to be done to him at all.

He rounded the path to Station Thirty-One and stopped dead in his tracks. There was a series of at least a dozen obstacles stretched out—obstacles that looked like he was going to need items from his combat kit to traverse. Four of his fellow DC recruits were at various obstacles as they struggled to get through them.

Rev watched for a moment, then with a sigh, headed to the portahead off to the side to empty his bladder.

This one was going to take him a while.

10

The bus pulled into a round driveway for what looked like a high-end mountain resort. Huge trees, probably planted during the first terraforming, surrounded the two-story building.

“Look, a Navy bus,” Tomiko said, pointing out the window.

Rev leaned over her, and yes, a dark blue version of their bus, with Perseus Union Navy written on the side, was parked to the side.

“The skipper said the navigators and some of the other specialties have to get some of the same mods we’re getting.”

“But why here out in the mountains? And this place doesn’t look like a hospital.”

Rev shrugged, then said, “Probably to keep it quiet.”

“I still don’t see why all the secrecy. I mean, we heard the rumors before they told us.”

“And we didn’t believe them, did we?” Rev said.

He didn’t want to get into an argument with Tomiko. They’d been together since getting off that first bus, along with Cricket and Yancey, and that meant she was his oldest friend in the Corps.—and she was a safer seatmate than Krissy, at least until they were out of boot camp.

It was a reversal of roles, though, for the two of them. Tomiko was the gung-ho one, the one ready to kick Centaur butt, the hard ass who could outrun and outfight them all. Rev was the hesitant one. But after the colonel’s brief, she’d been the one to complain, to question, while Rev had come to accept their situation.

It wasn’t that he liked it. He was still apprehensive about the procedures. But his stepdad had always told him to accept what he couldn’t change, and this fit the bill. There was nothing he could do about his situation, so he might as well save his energy for what he could change.

They filed off the bus. Rev took several deep breaths of the clean, crisp air, then followed the others through the huge double doors into the main building.

I’m going in a human. What will I be when I come out?

The lobby was extravagant. This had either been a resort or maybe some sort of facility for the uber-rich, like a detox center, before the government had taken it over. An elegant table had been set up to the right as they entered, and they filed through where two pleasant aides welcomed them, then gave them bracelets to wear.

“Feel free to wander around, but don’t leave the building or main garden. Your bracelet will let you know when they’re ready for you.”

Rev waited for Tomiko, then the two wandered toward the back of the lobby to an atrium where several Navy recruits, in their dark blue singlets, were sitting in small groups in chairs along the side. But the focus of the room was a huge grand piano. With no empty seats, Rev and Tomiko headed to the piano bench.

“This is gorgeous,” Tomiko said, stroking the real wood, the grain so polished it seemed alive. “Bet it cost a couple years of our pay.”

“More than that,” Rev said as he sat down on the left side of the bench.

The badge read Mason-Hamlin, and Rev thought the piano had to be hundreds of years old.

Tomiko stroked the keys softly, then raised her right hand and played the melody of Where ‘Ere You Are, a love song that had been popular several years ago. The notes rang true and clear.

“I didn’t know you could play,” Rev said.

“Most of my life,” Tomiko said with a smile, then started to play the next stanza.

Rev brought his left hand into position, then slipped into the counterpoint. Tomiko’s eyes grew large in surprise, and she faltered for a moment, then settled her weight in her seat and started playing in earnest.

She was a better player than Rev, he realized, but he held his own as the two of them soared into the song, filling the atrium.

Where ere you are,

So will I be.

The darkest night, the farthest star,

You will always be a part of me.

Rev looked up where one of the sailors was approaching, her soprano as light as a bird in the higher registers.

My heart is true.

It beats for you.

Remember my touch as you ply through space,

Feel my love and remember my face.

At the end of her call, Fyr Dorcester, one of the Marine recruits, picked up the response as he strode forward, his baritone raspy, but in tune.

Back and forth, Fyr and the sailor, Rev and Tomiko, wove the tale of love being separated by events beyond their control.

Rev hadn’t played since he entered Secondary School, and never on a real piano, but it was like the Muse of Music had taken over his hands. As the two singers joined voices in the final stanza, where they pledged their undying love, Rev and Tomiko played the same notes a chord apart.

The piano held the sustain, slowly fading away, when applause broke out. The sailor blushed and gave a slight bow.

“And I didn’t know you could play, either,” Tomiko said.

“Three years. My mom made me learn.”

“Three years? Not bad, bro.”

And it wasn’t bad, he knew. He’d done OK. He felt flushed with pride. Ever since he’d arrived at Camp Nguyen, everything had been Marine this, Marine that. It was nice to forget that for a moment, to remember what it meant just to be human.

Recruits, both Navy and Marines started to gather, some shouting out songs to be played, when Rev’s bracelet vibrated.

“Do you know—” Tomiko started before Rev held up his wrist so she could see the small flashing light.

“Oh,” was all she said.

“I’ve gotta go.”

Rev stood up, and Tomiko said, “Catch you on the flip side, Rev.”

He located his door, and as he walked over to have his life changed, the notes of Tomiko’s next song followed him.

* * *

An hour or so later, after yet another full-body scan and a depilatory shower that removed every hair on his body, Rev was sitting in a hospital gown as a civilian in medgrays handed him a plastisheet.

“Mr. Pelletier, what you have now is a Form SC-3383, which lists what augments and mods you will receive over the next two days. You are receiving the Profile Six pack, and I’d like to go over them with you now.”

Finally.

Rev started scanning the list, trying to make sense of it.

From Captain Aloiose’s brief of the day before, he knew the augments were essentially broken down into three areas: mechanical, biosynth, and organic.

Mechanical were perhaps the easiest to understand. The jack he’d already received was mechanical, as would be the polyamerase support webs added around his joints and the plates around his skull. The medical nanos also fell into this category.

Biosynth were harder to classify or for Rev to understand. The colonel’s eyes were biosynth, partially organic and partially mechanical. In his case they used organic materials and synthetics to create a usable organe. For Rev, the only one he knew beforehand was his battle buddy, something he still didn’t quite understand. It was described as something like a personal search engine.

The organic modifications were simply a polite, non-alarmist term for what was genetic and biological modification, and that was what still gave Rev the heebie-jeebies.

His eyes went straight to Category Three, the organic mods.

The first one he saw took him aback. Among the numbers and scientific talk, the words woolly rhinoceros jumped out at him.

The civilian was listing some of the mechanical mods, but Rev interrupted him to ask him what that was.

The man looked over, saw the entry, and said, “Ah, that one’s new. We’re using recovered woolly rhino DNA to build up the PBM, the Peak Bone Mass, of the diaphysis in your skeletal system. That and the polyamerase webbing will make your bones stronger. You’re going to need that to support the other mods and resist fractures.”

Rev caught the stronger bones part, but woolly rhinos? The thought was creepy.

“Aren’t they extinct? I mean, like tens of thousands of years ago, in cave man times.”

“Well, yes. But they had the strongest mammalian bones ever discovered, and we found thousands of them over the centuries in the Russian Biological Preserves back on Mother Earth, frozen in time.”

“And you can just put their DNA into me?”

The tech looked surprised at the question. He gave Rev a strange look, then said, “This is old technology, Mr. Pelletier.”

“Am I getting any more animal DNA?”

“Well, not technically. We’re not just injecting animal DNA into you. We’ve modified DNA and RNA from various sources that you’ll get.”

“OK, then, what modified DNA from animals will I get?”

“Well, if you want some, look at Number Forty-Three in this section. That’s modified pigeon DNA in your hippocampus, so you’ll be able to navigate on any planet with a magnetic field. Number . . . uh, yeah, there it is. Number Forty-Nine. That was developed from the bar-headed goose, which will make your lungs more efficient. Then if you look back at Number Thirty—"

This was making Rev queasy, so he held up his hand, palm out to stop him.

“I am required to go over each of your modifications with you,” the man said.

“Just say them. No need to go into their history.”

“Very well, if you want. Let’s go back up to . . . Number Six, I think was where we were. Number Six is AQT-419S, Amerase Tactile Enhancement. Number Seven is . . .”

The civilian went on, reading aloud from the list. Rev didn’t understand what most of the items were from the description, which sort of defeated the purpose of the tech reading them off, he thought. Some made sense right away, such as the mesh that would be placed under his skin, or the modification to his liver to increase the output of testosterone. Most of them, however, remained mysteries to him. The tech would probably explain each one, but at the moment, Rev just wanted to get this over with. He was more interested in what he’d be in the end, not a laundry list of items.

“Do you have any questions?”

Lots of them.

But he wasn’t going to ask for a clarification on all of the eighty-two listed items.

“No.”

“Then I need you to confirm that you accept the list and the possible complications,” the tech said, holding out his copy of the plastisheet, the retinal scandot on the bottom.

“That I accept? I have a choice? What happens if I disagree with woolly rhino DNA being injected into me. I mean, they went extinct for a reason, right?”

“First, it won’t be injected, as you said. The vector will be modified adenoviruses that you’ll breathe in.”

Rev didn’t care how they were being administered, only that they would be inside of him.

“OK, breathe in. But if I don’t want rhino or pigeon DNA?”

The man actually blushed as he broke contact with Rev’s eyes. “Well, you really don’t have any choice. Your suite has already been compiled. We can’t take anything out.”

“Then why the hell did you even bother to tell me all of this shit if I don’t have a choice?” Rev barked, feeling his anger rise at the absurdity of a false choice.

“Legal reasons. This has to be voluntary.”

“But if I say no, it isn’t voluntary.”

“We like to say that if you’re being volunteered, then it is voluntary. Just not from you guys,” the man said with a half-assed smile.

Even he knew it was bullshit. And despite being a recruit for fewer than six weeks, Rev knew the game.

What was being done to them might be necessary, and the colonel might say it was legal, but if they ever managed to survive as a race, and any of the augmented Marines even lived through their enlistments, then there may be ramifications down the line. The powers that be were just covering their asses in the possibility that all of this might come to bite those asses in the future.

Like his stepdad said, don’t fight what you can’t change.

The guy had mentioned something about complications. Rev didn’t even bother asking about them. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. He sighed and grabbed the sheet, pulled it forward, and looked into the scandot, saying, “I accept this.”

With a relieved smile, the man put the sheet in a folder.

“Anything else? Any further questions?”

Rev glanced at his copy again, wishing he knew what each of the items were. He figured he understood about ten of them. The rhino bones, the eyesight, the . . .

As he looked at it, he realized something was missing.

“Wait a minute. What about my battle buddy? I keep hearing about it, but I don’t see it here.”

“Your battle buddy? Oh, you mean the CCR-32 Didactic Interface. I explained that. Item Number Twelve.”

The words battle and buddy were not in the official name, and tech didn’t really tell him what it was.

“And this thing, what does it do for me?”

“Well, it’s a modular reactive QA and data repository with recast capability.”

“A what?”

The man frowned, then said, “Think of it as an AI that is implanted inside your skull.”

“WHAT?”

This was getting into Genesian or Deimer territory, and that had to be illegal, even now.

“An AI, sort of. You’ll be going places where there isn’t an undernet. The battle buddy, as you Marines call it, will have petabytes of data on hand for you.”

“That’s just a library, then, of sorts,” Rev said, a little relieved.

“More than that. Your battle buddy will be able to foresee what you need in a given situation and provide it without being asked. And as I said, it’s a reactive QA. You’ll be able to hold internal discussions with it. For your DC designator, research has shown that capability will be particularly important.”

That caught Rev’s attention. He still didn’t know what his designator was going to be. He knew it would be Direct Combat, but that could be in any one of eight broad fields. He hoped it would be in either the Zero-Five field, armor, or the Zero-Four, mech.

“You don’t know? You’re going to be a Zero-Two. Zero-Two-Three, to be exact.”

Rev’s eyes grew big. Zero-Twos were Reconnaissance, the Marines who went out alone or in small teams, without the armor that protected the rest of them.

And Zero-Two-Three? Rev waited a second as the knowledge surfaced from his upload.

Rev was going to be a Raider!

* * *

Still in shock, Rev was taken to the operating room. A Raider? He didn’t have the mortality rate of Raiders in his upload . . . probably something that the brass did on purpose. But it couldn’t be good. They were the DA, the Direct Action component of Marine Recon, and they went out, almost naked, for all practical purposes, behind enemy lines. Where recon squads tried to avoid the enemy, Raider teams made contact as their mission.

Alone in the room, lying on the operating table, an IV dripping saline into his arm, he waited, his thoughts bouncing back and forth in his skull like a bird trying to escape a cage. He was sure he’d have gotten Armor or Mech, which together made up over seventy-five percent of DC. He’d never considered Recon, and he certainly would not have selected it given the choice.

When the door into the room finally opened, his nerves were so frayed that he yelped. Actually yelped.

Five people walked in, three civilians in medwhites, a Marine in medwhites, given the Lieutenant Colonel’s silver leaves attached to the surgical cap on his head, then one more person, a woman with an insignia Rev didn’t recognize on her cap.

“Reverent Pelletier, I’m Doctor Annalyn, and I’ll be heading Team One of your transformation.”

“Team One?”

“Yes, Team One. The process will be completed in four phases and will take approximately twenty hours, barring unforeseen complications. My team won’t be doing the entire process. There will be two more teams involved. We’ll get started in a few minutes, so do you have any questions for me?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Very well. Colonel?” she said.

“Recruit Pelletier, I am Lieutenant Colonel Randalf. I’m your advocate for the process. And this is Red-Master Kumar of the Frisian Host, the Congress of Humanity observer.”

“Observer?”

The Host was the military arm of the Frisian Mantle, the traditional strategic opposing power and sometimes enemy of the Union. That was before the Centaur invasion, of course, but even if they were now allies to fight a common enemy, there was still tension and more than a little distrust between the two nations. Rev never imagined he’d meet a Host, much less have a Host officer here in the operating room with him.

“Yes, observer,” the red-master said in an easy-going voice. “Just making sure you only get the approved mods. Can’t have a bunch of Union super-soldiers running around after we defeat the Centaurs, right?”

She sounded like she was joking, but Rev thought what she said might be pretty close to the truth.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road. He’s been prepped?”

“Yes. Confirmed,” one of the team answered.

“Lettie, are the adenoviruses ready?” Doctor Kumar turned to ask one of the others.

“Yes, sir,” the woman said, holding up a small cylinder.

“Then administer them, please.”

The woman pulled out a small mask from the end of the cylinder and moved to Rev’s head.

“Is that going to put me to sleep?”

“No,” the woman said. “These are your organic mods. I need you to breathe deeply when I put the mask over your face.”

She lowered the mask, covering his mouth and nose, and said, “Breathe.”

Instinctively, Rev held his breath. There was extinct rhino DNA inside of that.

Don’t be a wimp.

With a mental sigh, he took a deep breath, then another.

“We’ve got an eighty-four-point-three infusion rate,” the woman said.

“Good, good, then no reason to delay. Let’s put him under. Doctor Uribe?”

“Wait, that’s it? For the DNA stuff?” Rev asked.

He didn’t feel any different, and the process, for all his nervousness, was rather anticlimactic.

“Yes. That’s the easy part.”

“But I didn’t feel anything?”

“You wouldn’t. It will take time for the modified DNA and RNA to make any difference in your body. But they’re in there, believe you me. You should be noticing some differences in a couple of weeks. With some, you’ll never notice a difference. So, unless you have something else?”

“No, sir,” Rev said.

“In that case, Doctor Uribe?”

The doctor reached out to the IV line and said, “Mr. Pelletier, I want you to start counting down from one hundred.”

This time, Rev only reached ninety-nine.

11

“You feel any stronger?” Yancey asked the others. “I tried to do some pushups this morning, but I couldn’t even do thirty of them.”

“You did just have surgery, dipwad,” Orpheus said, throwing a crushed Sunny Orange cup at him.

“Really, Yance, you need to stop that. The docs told us to take it easy for the week,” Bundy said. He swept an arm around the white-painted room, the hum of the filter unit a constant reminder that they were still in a hospital, albeit one that looked like a resort.

“I know, but just a few push-ups. What could it hurt?”

“It could make you reject your augments, that’s what.”

Yancey flipped his hand at him as if brushing away a fly.

Rev didn’t know if all this was necessary. He was a little sore, especially around his joints, and the spider web—the netting under most of his skin—itched, but he didn’t feel much different. It wouldn’t do much good to argue, so why waste the energy? Besides, it was a week of lounging around, with their only duties being the twice daily scans and chowing down on the admittedly good food they were being served.

Rev rubbed the medical bracelet on his wrist. It was monitoring his condition around the clock, so he wasn’t sure why they needed the full scans.

Bundy leaned forward and quietly asked, “You remember Wight?”

Rev hadn’t really spoken to the big recruit. He was a volunteer, and unlike Bundy, he was part of the group that didn’t seem to appreciate the conscripts.

“You see him here?”

Rev looked around the room. Most of the class were there, playing cards, watching the holo or just shooting the shit in groups. Other than their rooms, this was the only place they were allowed to access for the next five days.

“He was on the bus with us,” Tomiko said.

“I don’t mean then. I mean now. Or in the last two days since we got augmented.”

Rev had to think back, but he couldn’t remember seeing the recruit. Not that he was looking.

“I talked to Gorsovik, his buddy. They came in together. Instead of joining us here, Wight got taken to another ward after his procedure.”

“So?” Yancey asked.

“And today, well, he didn’t make it.”

“What? So, he’s going to be a Ninety-Nine now?” Rev asked.

“No. He didn’t make it. As in, he’s dead.”

Rev spun around to look at Bundy in shock. Dead?

“H . . . how?” he asked.

Bundy shrugged, then said, “Rejection, I’d imagine.”

“What do you mean, rejection?” Krissy asked, beating Rev to the punch.

“Rejection. His body rejected his augments.”

“I didn’t know that was possible.” Rev said.

“Come on, Rev. Didn’t you have to sign a release?” Tomiko asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“It told you about the possibility of rejection. Two percent, it said.”

Rev thought back. The tech had said something about complications, but since he had no choice in the matter, he hadn’t pursued that rather pertinent fact. Now he wished he had.

“I . . . I didn’t really read it,” he admitted.

Tomiko just rolled her eyes. Again. She was good at it. That, and fighting.

They were quiet for a moment, then Yancey shrugged and said, “I guess we all made it, so, sorry for him, but we’re in the clear.

“That doesn’t answer my question, though. Do any of you feel stronger? Do you, Bundy?”

“No, and I won’t.”

“What do you mean? No offense, but you could use a little more muscle, grandpa.”

“And I’m a zero-nine, armor. What do I need more strength for?”

“Wait, you didn’t get a strength upgrade?” Rev asked.

“No. Like I said, I don’t need it. Ten and I don’t need it in armor. Udu and Fyr don’t need it in mech,” Bundy said.

This was news to Rev. He’d assumed they’d all gone through most of the same modifications like greater strength.

“Well, then, what did you get?”

“Neurotransmitter booster, so we can react quicker—”

“I got that, too,” Rev said. “Quicker reflexes.”

“I think there’s overlap. But I also think that’s different. You got quicker reflexes, which are part of the reflexive arc. The signals just go to the spinal cord and back. You don’t have to think about it. For us,” he said, pointing to Ten, “we need to be able to see a need, then engage a target. Now, we’ll be able to take in data, process it, and react quicker. Same for the mech guys.”

“How do you know all of this?” Rev asked.

Bundy looked surprised at the question, but he said, “I asked Thump.”

“Who’s Thump?”

“My battle buddy, of course.”

Now it was Rev’s turn to be surprised. His AI had been implanted as well, but after the initial test upon waking up from the procedure, he’d cut it off. There’d be more time when he’d have to use it when they got out of their medical isolation and back to training. He never imagined that the Bundy had voluntarily started to access it, much less name it.

“Have all of you used your AIs already?” he asked the others.

He refused to call it a battle buddy. It wasn’t a buddy.

All except for Ten nodded.

Rev wanted to comment, but as he and Ten were evidently outside the norm, he held his tongue.

“OK, so you got this fast-nerve augment. What else?” Yancey asked.

“Integrated targeting and fire control, tactile terrain feedback.”

“Advanced medi-nanos,” Ten added.

“I think we all got those,” Tomiko said. “And ours are optimized for burns.”

There was a moment of silence. Rev didn’t know exactly what his medi-nanos would do, but the fact that the three armor recruits had something specifically optimized for burns was disquieting.

“But we all got the spider webs, right?” Yancey asked, looking around at the others.

“I got it, and mine itches like crazy. I don’t care what the docs say,” Rev said to the laughter of others.

“I’ll help you scratch those places you can’t reach,” Krissy said with a comical leer.

There were a couple of salty comments, and Ten said, “No bang-bang, you two. Can’t take a chance of infection while we’re in medical jail.”

Rev knew she was yanking his chain, but still, he could feel his face flush. Krissy was incorrigible, and sitting close by, and her gaze wasn’t entirely humorous.But he liked it.

“So, you treadheads don’t get superman strength. Anyone else?” Rev asked.

“I don’t,” Fyr said.

Fyr, like Udu, hadn’t been part of the original group, but after his duet with Tomiko, he was hanging out with them more often. He was a quiet, earnest man in his late twenties who gave up a journeyman position in the fabrication guild to volunteer.

“Which makes sense,” Bundy said. “We don’t need extra strength, and neither do the mechs.”

“I’ve got rhino DNA,” Tomiko offered.

“Me, too,” Krissy chimed in. “And you know what they say about rhino horns.” She tried to leer at Rev again, but couldn’t hold it and broke out laughing joined immediately by Tomiko.

Rev shook his head. “Lewd, unprofessional, and possibly criminal.”

“Guilty,” Tomiko said, snorting.

“Private Regis, report to Exam One,” the voice came over the intercom.

“Time to go get prodded,” Krissy said, standing up. “They need to make sure I’m not going all mutant on them.”

“Don’t bend over in there,” Yancey called out to her as she walked to the door, and he got an upraised middle finger in return.

Something was bothering Rev about all of this talk.

“Maybe you don’t need max strength in a tank, but it can’t hurt, right? And if your tank goes down and you have to leave it, wouldn’t it be better to have it?”

Bundy grimaced and looked at Fyr, then Tomiko, then Cricket. None of the three were going to answer, so he cleared his throat.

“The less we get done to us, the better in the long run.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rot,” Udu said.

Rev frowned. The only thing he knew that was called the rot was the cancer-like disease that ravaged the Eucharans during the Corolla Wars. But he couldn’t mean that, right? The Eucharans were sad victims of their attempt to become gods.

“What are you saying?” Yancey asked, his good mood gone.

“The rot. When we try and control nature, it sometimes fights back. The more we change, the higher our chance of contracting it,” Bundy explained.

Rev went numb. What had he gotten into?

“So, what you are saying is all of us are going to get the rot?” he asked, not believing what he was hearing.

“No, not necessarily. But they want to limit the changes to what we actually need for our mission. And the mechanicals, like your spider web, that won’t do anything. But the organics, even the biosynths, they’re what can be dangerous. And you Zero-Twos and Threes, and the Zero-Sevens—you get the most augments. That’s why they gave me armor. I’m sixty-seven, and my cells aren’t as healthy as yours. I’ve got a much higher chance of getting the rot,” Bundy said.

“And you’re a volunteer, not a convict,” Udu said.

“I don’t think that’s what it is,” Bundy said, sounding as if he might be trying to convince himself.

“And they screw us convicts over?” Rev asked, incredulous.

Only it wasn’t just that, he suddenly realized. It was cell health and stability. His initial interviewer had mentioned his cellular stability and lack of genetic drift. She probably had this in mind from the beginning, he knew, and she tried to steer him to DC. And he’d let himself be herded, thinking she was doing him a favor.

Tomiko moved closer and put an arm around Rev’s shoulders. “It was in the release.”

“I didn’t read the damned thing,” Rev said, voice bleak.

There was an awkward silence, then Yancey burped and said, “What the hell do we care about the rot? The Centaurs are going to kill us long before that.”

And something broke inside of Rev. His anger fled, and he started laughing.

“Hell, we won’t last a month, right? Who cares about the rot?”

One-by-one, everyone joined in.

Yancey got up and grabbed Rev around the neck, then gave him a sloppy kiss on the forehead. “So, who’s going first? You or me, buddy?”

“Recruits, refrain from physical contact while in the rec room,” one of their minders announced over the intercom.

And that started a new round of laughing.

Yancey gave the speaker the finger, then sat in Tomiko’s lap. “How about this, leech?”

“Did you just call her a leech?” Tomiko asked between laughs as she pushed him off. “She might be Navy.”

“Navy? Might as well be a leech.”

“But one who outranks your recruit ass!” Cricket said.

It took a couple of minutes before they managed to get back to a semblance of normalcy. Finally, they just sat in silence. Their relative mood was much, much better. Rev knew he had to come to terms with what had been done to him, but Yancey had it right. With a seventy-eight percent mortality rate, rot would be the least of the worries for most of them.

Rev slowly looked at each of his fellow DC recruits—no friends. Three years from now, most of them would be dead. It was a sobering thought.

“How many days until our discharges?” he asked, the germ of an idea forming.

“One thousand fifty-three days and a wake-up,” Cricket said. “Why?”

“Listen up, then. You know where Leteeka’s is, on West Central Boulevard?” Everyone nodded. “OK, then. On our last day in the Corps, one thousand fifty-three days and a wake-up from now, we need to get together again. I’ll buy a bottle of something, something expensive, and we’ll share it then and tell a few sea stories.”

“Nice thought, Rev, but the chances—” Tomiko started before Rev cut her off.

“But that’s where you’re wrong. Look, guys. If we swear to be there, I mean swear right now, then nothing can keep us from doing it, right?”

“Uh, I don’t think it works like that,” Ten said, sounding uncertain as if not knowing how to pop Rev’s bubble.

“I know how things work. But why the hell not? Maybe Saint Chesty will protect us. Or maybe not, I know. But I want to see all of us right there before we get discharged.”

Rev didn’t believe in any supernatural powers from that long-dead Marine from Twentieth Century Earth and now the unofficial patron saint of the Corps, but he couldn’t just accept that three-quarters of them were going to be killed in the war. He was feeling helpless, and he wanted to wrestle back some sort of control over the situation. He knew a simple promise to make it back wasn’t going to ensure that, but at least it was a proactive start.

The others looked at him, clearly uncomfortable.

Finally, Yancey broke the silence with, “Shit, we all know Grandpa’s a lifer. He won’t be getting out.”

“That’s the plan,” Bundy admitted, the first time he’d done that. “But hell yes, I’ll be there to see you knuckleheads off. I swear it.”

It was one thing for Rev to pop this on them, but it was another thing altogether for Bundy, the mature one, to join in.

“Who else?” Rev asked as he looked the rest in the eyes.

And one by one, he could see them accept the concept, at least in spirit. Cricket, Tomiko, Orpheus, Ten, Fyr, Udu, and finally Yancey. All agreed.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Hands together,” Tomiko said, standing up.

The nine recruits, strangers seven weeks ago, stood in a circle, their hands locked in the center.

“Do all of you hereby swear to meet at Leteeka’s on the day we’re getting discharged, to raise a glass in a toast?” Tomiko asked.

With a loud ooh-rah, the pact was sealed.

12

“Come on, give me another,” Rev told Yancey as he spotted for him. “It’s all you.”

Yancey’s arms failed, and Rev had to take some of the weight and shift the barbell to the stops.

They’d been back from the resort and cleared to recommence training for five hours now, and Yancey, Bundy, Udu, and Fyr had wanted to go to the gym. Rev had been tempted to just hang out with Tomiko and Cricket, but that was all he’d been doing for the last week, and the gym was a nice change of pace.

“I still don’t feel any stronger.”

“You heard Bundy,” Rev said, nodding to where the older recruit was doing pull-downs. “It’s going to take a while.”

Rev didn’t know if he felt any stronger. Probably not. But his joints were still sore, and the thrice-damned spider web was itchy as all get-out. The doctor told him yesterday that it was all in his mind, something not all that rare. Rev didn’t care if it was in his mind or not—he still itched.

“Add ten,” he told Yancey, placing a ten-kilo plate on his side. He’d struggled a bit doing a full set at eighty-five kilos, and despite knowing that he wouldn’t realize any gained strength for a month or more yet, he couldn’t help but be a little curious.

He’d have easily lifted one-oh-five when he was playing ball, but he’d let himself slide since then. Even getting back into shape in Phase One and Two had been more cardio than strength, and now, only a week after getting augmented, he was still in recovery.

He lay back on the bench, made sure his arms were perpendicular to the deck, shoulder-width apart, then grasped the bar. After taking five deep breaths, he brought the bar down to his chest, and with a grunt, exploded into the bar. To his surprise, he raised it. Easily.

Maybe I am getting stronger.

“Good job, Rev. Let me try.”

Rev should have done a full set, but he hadn’t expected it to be so easy. A little reluctantly, he relinquished the bench. He moved behind it to spot when Bundy came over, wiping his face with a towel.

“Just wanted to say goodbye. We’re taking off in an hour.”

“Already?” Rev asked. “Is it that time?”

He could query his AI, of course, but he still had it on sleep.

“Hurry up and wait, you know,” Bundy said. “We don’t actually take off until twenty-thirty, but they want us at the terminal at seventeen-thirty.”

“All for a twenty-minute hop to Camp Kamachi?” Yancey asked.

Udu just shrugged.

“Hey, bring us some of the BBQ,” Rev said. “I hear it’s pretty good.”

Rev had never been to Anastasia, where Camp Kamachi was located, and all he really knew about the small town was that they thought they had the best BBQ on the planet.

“Don’t know why you armor and mech gotta go to Kamachi for snapping in,” Yancey said.

“Just consolidating resources. Their Zero-twos and threes are coming here for the same reason.”

It made sense, but Rev would have wanted to keep the gang together. At least they’d all reunite in the regiment as soon as they were done with Phase Three. Some would get there sooner, while he and Tomiko would be the last to report in.

“Well, keep your powder dry,” Bundy said, fist-bumping the other two.

“You, too.”

Rev stood there for a moment, watching him go. Bundy had become the group’s unofficial leader, and Rev realized he’d been leaning on the man. They’d be back together, at least in the same regiment, soon enough, but he was going to miss him.

“He’s good people,” Yancey said, lying back on the bench again.

“That he is. Now, you going to hit this thing?”

Yancey put his hands on the bar and contorted his face so much that Rev had to laugh. “What, you’re trying to scare it up?”

“Screw you,” Yancey growled.

He still had a grimace on his face when he lifted the bar off the stops, then lowered it to his chest, using his ribcage to bounce it back up. Not what the docs had said about taking it easy until training restarted on Monday, but Rev understood.

“Two more!”

Yancey rolled his eyes, but he complied, puffing away for the next two reps.

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “Daddy’s got it.”

From the next bench, a recruit Rev didn’t know gave Yancey a disgusted look, but the recruit didn’t say anything, and Rev ignored him.

“Good job. Now get your ass off that bench and give me another ten.”

“You mean five and five?”

“Ten on your side,” Rev said, putting a ten-kilogram plate on his side.

A hundred and-twenty-five kilos was about the max Rev had ever lifted, and it was probably stupid for him to risk his still-healing body trying to push that much iron. But why give him strength if he wasn’t going to use it? And if the docs were right, this was nothing to what he’d be capable of by the time he was through.

Before his better angel could tell him to take it easy, he flopped down on the bench. He took a firm grip of the bar and raised his body slightly to make sure his shoulder blades were flat on the bench.

A cloud of doubt started to creep into his thoughts, so as not to let that negative thought become reality, he lifted the bar up even before Yancey was in position to spot him.

With a shout, he lowered the bar to his chest. Then with a louder shout, more of a scream, he arched his back and pushed. His arms faltered halfway up, but with a second effort, he fully extended just as Yancey reached over to guide it back into the stops.

It hadn’t been pretty, and arching his back like that was asking for trouble, but he’d done it.

He jumped up, slashing the air with a closed fist. “That’s what I’m about!” he yelled as Yancey came in with a high-five.

“Fucking convicts,” the recruit at the next bench said with a sneer.

“What was that?” Rev asked, his exultation gone, just like that. “What did you say?”

The recruit sat up at the end of his bench, gave Rev’s barbell a dismissive glance, then said, “I said damn convicts. What, your hearing ain’t kicked in yet?”

Rev could feel the anger start to kindle within. He stepped over to the other recruit before Yancey grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Forget it,” Yancey said.

“Better listen to your convict friend there,” the other said, casually flicking his hand first at Rev’s barbell, then at his. “You don’t want to get yourself into a bad spot.”

The guy’s barbell had six 20-kilo plates on each side. Rev tried to do a quick calculation of the total weight, but he was too angry.

OK, so the guy was stronger.

That wasn’t the reason Rev backed down, however. At least he didn’t think so. He didn’t want to get time added to his commitment by getting NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment.

“Let’s leave,” he told Yancey, looking around until he spotted Udu and Fyr over on the leg press.

He started taking off the plates on his bar when the guy said, “I saw that old convict come up to you. Geeze, what the hell was his crime? Shitting in his adult diapers?”

Rev reacted automatically. He dropped the plate and swung at the still sitting recruit. It was one thing to insult him but another to attack Bundy.

He put all the force he could muster in the back of the swing, hoping to smash that condescending grin, but with amazing reflexes, the man’s hand popped up and stopped Rev’s swing cold. He twisted his hand, palm up, and gave Rev a shot in the chest that flung him across the weight room.

Rev gasped for air, sure that his lungs had just caved in. He’d never been hit so hard in his life.

The guy slowly stood, then started over to Rev, who tried but couldn’t get up. Yancey tried to get between them, only to be pushed to the side.

“Pretty stupid, convict, and now you’ll pay.”

A blur rushed past Rev. Fyr and Udu got between the two, with Fyr yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” He pushed a forefinger in the other recruit’s chest. “Are you crazy?”

The recruit hesitated, looking confused.

“He’s a damned convict,” he said. “All of you are.”

Yancey joined the other two to form a wall between the man and Rev.

“And we’re all Marine recruits here. He’s not your enemy. The tin-asses are,” Fyr said.

“The worst thing the Corps did was take in convicts,” the recruit said, looking around behind him at the others in the gym, who had all stopped to watch.

If he expected support, he didn’t get it.

“Come on, Matt, it’s not worth getting written up,” one of the other recruits said. “Leave them be.”

Udu stepped closer, her nose a good six centimeters higher than his. The guy, Matt, involuntarily took a step back.

“You’re right, Terry. These convict pieces of crap aren’t worth NJP,” he said with bluster. “Why don’t you just leave?”

Yancey grabbed Rev by the arm and helped him up. “You okay?”

Rev wasn’t OK. But he wasn’t going to give this Matt guy the satisfaction of knowing that. He just nodded and tried to glare at the guy. He wasn’t sure it came out very threatening.

“We’re done here. Let’s go,” Fyr said. “Udu and I have to leave in a few hours anyway.”

With Yancey and Udu helping Rev, they made their way out of the weight room. Rev expected to hear a parting insult, but the guy kept his mouth shut.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Rev let go and almost doubled over again in pain.

“That was some shot you took,” Yancey said. “Are you really OK?”

“Hell, no,” Rev gasped. “I feel like I was run over by a tank.”

“Not surprising. He’s not in our class, and if he’s still here, he’s a Zero-two, Zero, three, or Zero-seven. That means he’s gotten the strength augmentation, and he’s had more time for it to take hold,” Fyr said.

“Did you see that rack? That was 260 kilos of iron there,” Udu said. “Give it another month or two, and you and Yance’ll be that strong, too. Stronger, by the time you’re done.”

“Do you need to go to sickbay?” Fyr asked.

Rev poked at his chest. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t know if anything was broken. His bones would not be woolly rhino-strong yet, but the reinforcements of his joints were mechanical, and the spider web should have diffused some of the guy’s punch.

Rev was also aware that if he went to sickbay, they’d want to know what happened. Whatever consequences there might be for the other guy, Rev had swung first. That was something he’d just as soon not come to the attention of the training company commander.

“I think I’m alright, but as soon as I get back, I’ll wake up my AI and have it check me out.”

“Don’t be a hero, and don’t rely on the medi-nanos. Your training starts on Monday, and you have to be at a hundred percent.”

Whatever shape he was in, Rev was going to be there bright and early Monday morning.

“Let’s head back. I promised to spend a little time with Tomiko before we take off for Kamachi,” Udu said.

“Wait,” Rev said, grabbing her arm.

He tried to minimize his breathing to protect his bruised ribs, but he wanted an answer.

“Why did you two do that?” he asked.

“I don’t understand,” Fyr said. “We’re shipmates.”

“I don’t mean coming to save my ass. But he called you convicts. Bundy, too. You’re volunteers. Only Yance and me are conscripts. You could have told him you were volunteers.”

Fyr looked at Udu, then said, “Why would we do that? It doesn’t matter how or why we wear the uniform or where we came from. All that matters is that we’re Marines.”

“There’re no convicts or volunteers anymore. We’re brothers and sisters in arms, Rev, and we all bleed Marine green,” Udu added.

Rev was still in pain, but with what his two friends had just said, the heat of anger burning inside of him had been replaced by another kind of heat—the warmth of belonging and brotherhood.

13

Damn, I wonder what she’d be like in bed?

<Sergeant Jesup is a healthy female, and despite her damaged leg and side, there is no indication that she’d have any physical limitations in copulation.>

“For—I didn’t ask you that!” Rev said aloud, drawing a puzzled reaction from the greentab sergeant. “Sorry, still getting used to my AI.”

Sergeant Jesup laughed and said, “Yeah, it’ll take some time. It gets easier, believe me. Your battle buddy has to learn how you think just as much as you need to learn how to direct your thoughts and use it.”

Direct my thoughts? Does she know what I was thinking?

His AI was supposedly wholly self-contained for the same reasons his jack was a physical connection. It would be easy enough for the jack to work through wifi or another remote connection, but the Centaurs were able to knock out wifi with ease. Controlling his peripherals had to be done with direct, shielded connections.

Still, he felt a hot blush sweep over his face.

“Let’s try again,” the sergeant said. “Take target three-oh-one.”

Sergeant Jesup wasn’t a DI but what they referred to as a greentab, an instructor. Official DIs wore a black collar tab, assigned corpsmen a red tab, and staff a gold tab. No one without a tab was supposed to interact with a recruit at all. He’d probably never consider the physical attributes of a DI, but as a greentab, it was hard for him to ignore her—

Afraid that his AI was going to interject something again, Rev shook his head, breaking that thought, then looked down the scope, searching for the target. It took him a moment to spot it.

“Key analytics,” he muttered.

He should be able to simply think the command, but until he was more experienced and his AI melded to him better, vocalizing was a surer proposition.

With the crosshairs on the target, the data ran down the length of the .62 caliber sniper rifle, through the connecting cable, and into his jack, where his battle buddy was able to process the firing solution.

“Three thousand, four hundred and twelve meters. Right fifteen clicks, up twenty-three clicks,” his battle buddy told him.

There was a lot more data being calculated than just range: barometric pressure, temperature, wind, Coriolis effect, the rotation of the planet under him, the density of the ground over where the round would pass, and several more inputs. But to be blunt, Rev didn’t have to know them. That was what his AI was supposed to do. It was up to Rev to hold steady and make the shot.

His AI’s fire solution was not just for Rev’s ears. They went back out through the jack and to the scope. His sight picture shifted left and down, and Rev brought the crosshairs back until they centered on the target.

“Three deep breaths, then gentle on the trigger,” the sergeant said.

Rev tried to tune her out and focus on the target. The Dykstra was an amazing weapon for a slug-thrower, and while the target was well within its range, three-plus klicks was still a long shot.

The trigger of the sniper rifle was a small button on the right side of the trigger assembly. With his thumb, he released the safety, then rested his forefinger just above the trigger. He took the three calming breaths, then on the last he exhaled halfway and held it.

He gave the trigger a light touch, and the big gun exploded, kicking back like a mule. Rev didn’t cry out this time, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch. He wished his body would hurry up and heal under the polyamerase spider web that had been implanted under most of his skin. He brought his scope back to the target in time to see the trace of the round arch to the target, only to have the big round hit high and to the right.

“Hell, I’m never going to get this.”

“Yes, you will,” the sergeant said. “If this was easy, everyone would be getting the augments. It takes time for everything to knit together.”

That was easy for her to say. She was Zero-Three-Fourteen, a light infantry sniper. Shooting was her entire purpose of being, and she had the augments designed specifically for that.

“Why am I even doing this?” he asked in frustration. “A chemical slug? Why not a spear if we’re going back to ancient history?”

The M-102 Nellis was the main Marine sniper rifle, a normal mag ring weapon. At hypervelocity speeds and a smaller diameter, the rounds were not as affected by forces of nature. He’d been much better at firing it than the Dykstra in his hands now.

“And if the tin-asses hit you with an EMP blast? Your Nellis might as well be a club.”

“But you said the Centaurs are basically impervious to this thing,” Rev said, not wanting to give up on his bitching.

“You don’t always have to take out the Centaur itself. Take out its peripherals, and you’re diminishing its capabilities,” she said, ignoring his attitude. “So, let’s try again and give your battle buddy more data.”

Rev sighed. When he’d come out of surgery three weeks ago, he expected to suddenly be a superman, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But he’d barely been able to step up over a curb without stumbling.

His mechanicals worked fine. They just took some getting used to for him to control them. His biosynths were a little more difficult to master, but his organics? He didn’t feel anything yet. His eyesight felt normal—same with his hearing. He didn’t feel like he had better stamina or any of the other advantages he’d been promised, and his spider web itched under his skin, no matter that the doctors said that shouldn’t be happening.

Those same doctors performed his daily checkups and assured him that the organics had seated, and now all he had to do was wait as they grew into place. But he was tired of waiting.

And his AI? It was a royal pain in the ass so far. It was like having an idiot lodged in his head, one that didn’t understand common social interaction, or much of anything else, to be honest. He knew that some Marines and battle buddies never meshed, and he was beginning to wonder if he was going to fall into that category.

Tomiko, the only other MilDes Zero-Two-Three in the class, loved hers, however, going so far as to name it Pikachu, which was evidently some ancient Japanese god from back on Earth. Rev refused to give his a name. It was a tool he had to learn to use, not an imaginary friend.

“Try target Three-oh-nine,” Sergeant Jesup said.

With another sigh, Rev searched it out.

“Key analytics,” he muttered again, hoping that his battle buddy would get it right this time.

14

“Distance across the ravine?” Rev asked, holding his focus on a single point on the far side.

<Twelve-point-three meters,> his AI responded almost immediately.

Well within his capabilities. Rev sent the mental command to start the scan of the far side for any sign of a Centaur riever. They typically ran at a steady twenty-six degrees, which would show up blue in his eyesight while in temperature mode.

There was nothing, so he went back to normal. He’d mastered the five visual modes of how his brain interpreted his organic vision, but that didn’t mean he liked them. His natural mode was what he preferred.

Rev backed through the brush, ears straining to pick up the slight hum that Centaurs sometimes made when they moved. He’d learned the hard way never rely on one scan mode.

Twenty meters from the edge of the ravine, Rev rose to a crouch. Still nothing.

Here goes!

Within twenty meters, he’d accelerated to almost 40 KPH. He planted his right foot a meter short and launched himself into the air. He easily cleared the gap, his thighs acting as springs to absorb the force of his landing before they propelled him to the base of a boulder, where he froze again and scanned the wooded areas before him. He could hear the rustle of small animals scurrying through the detritus and the far-off call of a bird, but nothing alien.

He hesitated, then gave in. “Any otherworld signs?”

Rev had his AI in passive mode. It would not offer information without his directly questioning it. Tomiko and the other two Raider recruits thought he was being retro about it, but he still didn’t like the thought of someone “living” inside his head, even if it wasn’t technically a person.

But while he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, he didn’t have the library of sounds that his battle buddy could access. It would be stupid not to use that tool.

<Only Earth-normal and Safe Harbor-native life signs.>

Which meant mostly Earth-normal. There was still native life on Safe Harbor that survived the terraforming, but nothing more advanced than small protozoan-like creatures. Rev didn’t care about them.

His AI still had a way to go in learning just what Rev needed to know.

Crossing the ravine had been a major objective, and he’d had to move down along the south side of the rim for close to eight klicks before he’d found a spot narrow enough to jump. He was now off his planned route, but he unerringly turned to his right and started pushing through the undergrowth.

His ability to navigate had gotten much stronger over the last three weeks. He couldn’t exactly explain just how he knew where he was and where he had to go. He just knew. It was as if there was a magnet at his destination, pulling at him.

The detour had taken time, however. Time he didn’t have. His mental clock was ticking down. Realizing he wasn’t going to make his objective at his current pace, he had to sacrifice stealth. Rev broke out into a ground-eating 25 KPH, scanning the surrounding area.

“Let me know if you pick up any Centaur sign. Active sign,” he corrected.

Based on his original order, his battle buddy would tell him about some ten-year-old tracks.

<Affirmative.>

Rev jogged through the trees. At this altitude, the O2 content was below twelve percent—eleven-point-eight percent to be exact, after checking the readout on his monocle—but he wasn’t straining. His PAL5—Personal Armor, Light-5—had several supplemental O2 tanks, but he didn’t need them. A little higher in the surrounding mountains, maybe, but for now he was more than able to cope.

I wonder how Tomiko’s doing? he asked himself for a moment before snapping his attention back to his mission.

Letting his mind wander was a dangerous habit. At least his AI hadn’t answered. Maybe it was starting to gather enough data points to begin to know when Rev was asking it a question or not.

As he crossed the high valley, the sun started to disappear behind the western peaks. The shadows reached out to envelop him, and Rev smiled as he activated his ocular shift. This was one of his coolest mods, and it still was a kick every time he shifted. His eyes were still his original organic ones, but his sight had two major improvements. The first was that all seven of the optic tracks were now activated allowing more data to reach his occipital lobe, unlike a normal person’s two. Second, in the eyes themselves and around their periphery, they had been packed with more rods. At the shift, the rods gravitated toward the center, pushing out the cones.

From his perspective, it was as if someone was turning a light fixture rheostat. He lost some of his color perception, but it gave him pretty good night vision without the need for an infrared light source, something the Centaurs could easily pick up.

Rev slowed slightly, but not by much as he continued through the forest, a wraith slipping through the shadows. Not quite a wraith, however. His heart jumped when something bounded up, and he spun, his M-49 at the ready, only to see a buck’s hindquarters disappear into the undergrowth.

“Thanks for giving me a heads up on that buck. I about had a heart attack.”

<You instructed me to inform you of Centaur sign. The deer was Earth-normal.>

Rev was about to snap back at his AI, but it was right. He had given it that command. But Safe Harbor was a genetic preserve planet, and there were other, more dangerous animals running wild. Not that any could really be a threat to him, but the commotion he’d have to make to neutralize a grizzly, for example, could easily reveal his presence.

It wasn’t just his AI that had to learn to adjust to him. He had to learn how to phrase his commands.

“Advise me if you pick up signs of large animals . . . of any animal life over a hundred kilos.”

<Affirmative.>

As darkness fully set in, cloud cover blocked the starlight, and even Rev’s night-vision suffered. He had a torch in his kit, and he debated using it but decided not to. He’d just slow down his movement. He was within two klicks of his target anyway, and he was back on schedule.

He’d covered about half of that when his battle buddy alerted him.

<Probable contact. Grid FC208440.>

Rev stopped. “Earth-normal or Centaur?”

<Centaur. Category Six.>

Which meant a riever.

With the pigeon DNA in his hippocampus, Rev always knew where he was, but that didn’t mean he could place grid coordinates. He blinked up a map of the region on his monocle and plotted the coordinates. His battle buddy wasn’t some omniscient information fount. The azimuth to the Centaur was probably pretty accurate, but the distance was subject to different variables and was only approximate.

The Centaur riever was probably between 1100 and 1350 meters away, at a 068-degree deviation from his present course. The riever was the lowest form on the hierarchy of military power, a scout of sorts and the easiest to defeat. “Easiest” was a relative term. None of them were pushovers, and in a one-on-one fight between it and Rev, the Centaur should win.

If Rev continued on his present course to the target, he’d probably be detected. The question was what the Centaur would do. They were extremely unpredictable. The only way to be assured a Centaur wouldn’t do anything would be to kill it.

Rev stroked his thigh holster, now retracted under his fighting suit’s skin. He carried two Yellowjackets, small semi-intelligent missiles. They were usually deployed in waves to take out a Centaur, but a single one could succeed if the stars were aligned—and Rev would dearly love to tally a kill.

“Is it moving?”

<Negative.>

Which really didn’t mean much. It could be asleep, if Centaurs even slept (no one knew for sure), or it could be plotting an attack on him.

The more Rev thought of it, the more he was tempted to go after the enemy. They were the ones who’d invaded human space. They were the ones who had killed billions of people, and with one so close, that kindled a rage that started to burn hot within him. If he could be one of the few Marines to take on a Centaur of any stripe and win, his conscription would be worth it—to humanity and to himself, and it also would prove to his superiors that he fully deserved the title of Union Marine.

He went so far as to pop open his holster and remove one of the Yellowjackets when he realized he was ignoring his mission all for ego and emotion. He wasn’t infantry. He wasn’t one of the specialized hunter-killer teams. He was recon, a raider. His mission was one of stealth, and if he diverted to the Centaur out there, not only were the chances that he’d die too high to ignore (not that a single Marine death meant much in the grand scheme of things), but his mission would be a failure, and that could put many more Marines at risk.

With a sigh, he slipped the Yellowjacket back, retracted the holster, and plotted a new course, one that would give him much greater leeway around the creature.

“Keep a close eye on that thing. I want to know if it moves even a centimeter.”

<Affirmative.>

Rev still wasn’t completely comfortable with his AI, but it was a relief to know that he didn’t have to watch the Centaur himself. Letting his battle buddy take that task would allow him to give his mission his full concentration.

It took him the next eighty minutes to move around the Centaur. He constantly checked on its status, not totally trusting his AI. But the thing never budged. It could be dead, for all he knew.

No, not really. Centaurs self-destructed, in spectacular fashion, if it looked like they were about to be defeated or captured.

Finally, with forty-three minutes to spare, he arrived at his assembly area. Just 230 meters ahead, in a swale, was his target. Rev pulled up his overlay, which gave him the one clear path to it. His senses and scanners on high alert, he started walking down the path, checking the ground in front of him for boobytraps. The Centaurs usually relied on brute force to deny territory to their human enemies, but they could also be devious. Just because Rev had a supposed clear path in, that was not a guarantee that it was. All during his training, it was hammered into his skull that he was responsible for his actions and to never totally rely on others to give him the correct information.

But the way was clear . . . until he was about forty meters out. A tree had fallen across his path, its branches still laden with leaves. It hadn’t been down long, which meant there was a good chance it was meant to stop someone like him. The easiest and quickest course of action would be to walk around it, but the danger area on his overlay narrowed to a choke point. He couldn’t get around without leaving the safe path.

Rev was running out of time, and he needed to get past the obstacle. He eyed the height, and he didn’t need to query his AI. Even with his augmentations, he couldn’t clear the branches, and climbing through would open him up to the booby traps he was sure were there.

It seemed almost ludicrous that he was being stymied by a simple tree. He wasn’t a Roman legionnaire confronting a Gaulish roadblock. But here he was.

Rev could only see one course of action. He had to move the thing.

But it was big, too big, and shifting the entire tree, even if he could do it, could set off the booby traps that, once again, had to be there.

Rev pulled down his assault packs and removed his lance. It was risky to power it up. The energy bloom could be picked up by the Centaur. But he didn’t have much choice.

He checked on the riever, but nothing was showing up. He didn’t know where it was or what it was doing. It could be coming at him under full cloak, or it could have left the area. The bottom line was that with regard to the Centaur, he was blind.

But he really didn’t have a choice. He powered up his lance, a dim blue light alerting him to where the spinning monomolecular blade was rotating. The blade, which was a chain too small and rotating too quickly for the naked eye to see, could cut through almost anything, including Rev’s armor-clad arm, hence the light.

Rev warped the blade to its maximum length and applied it to the trunk. It barely made a sound as it dug in. But it was still too short to cut through. Rev withdrew it and made another cut, this one at a slight angle, and a thin wedge of wood fell free. Five more times, and he’d cut through. The tree was now in two pieces.

He considered it. All he had to do now was to shove one piece far enough forward for him to slip through the gap. But it would be safer to make another cut, then roll the center chunk free.

He was rapidly running out of time, however. He had to act now.

Maybe the trunk will protect me from booby traps.

Rev had to act. He put his pack back on his back and crouched as low as he could, right shoulder against the trunk, using its mass to shield himself. He dug his feet into the damp ground to give them purchase, then, with a grunt, pushed off with his legs and back. The weight was huge, more than he ever could have managed before, but the trunk shifted a few centimeters.

Rev set himself again and tried to will his muscles into extending. He could feel his joints strain, his ligaments stretch, and he feared them tearing. It wasn’t enough for his muscles to have enough power—the rest of his body had to be able to take the strain, too. A torn tendon or ligament would take him out just as much as a ripped hammy.

The trunk shifted another couple of centimeters.

Come on, Rev.

He set again and shoved . . . and a blast went off above him, shrapnel slamming into the ground centimeters from his feet.

“Holy shit,” he hissed, his heart pounding.

Rev hadn’t really thought that he’d set off a booby trap, one, or that the trunk would serve to protect him, two, but he had and it did. He took a relieved breath, then gave the trunk one last shove until there was just enough space for him to slip through.

He’d lost skin on his hands—the mesh underneath gave some protection from penetration, but the skin on his hands and most of his body was just that, skin. His hands burned, but his medi-nanos were already rushing blocking cells to deaden the pain.

There was no more time. Rev bolted the last forty meters to the oblong box that was his target. He had no idea what it was or what it did. His mission was to destroy the piece of alien tech in support of a regimental landing.

The destruction was anti-climactic. He took an MM-901, the same mine with which he’d first trained, and dialed it to Profile Two. Then with just under three minutes to spare, he emplaced it on the side of the box.

Rev opened up the comms link and said, “Recruit Pelletier. Mission completed.”

“Cutting it close there, Pelletier,” Sergeant Moussari said.

“Close still means I passed, right?”

“I thought you were going to take off after the tin-ass,” she said, ignoring the question.

“I almost did,” Rev admitted.

“Why didn’t you? A Centaur would be quite an accomplishment. And targets of opportunity are valid diversions.”

“Not for a Priority Two or higher mission.”

“Oh, so you were listening,” the sergeant said with a chuckle. “And you avoided the booby trap.”

“About that, Drill Instructor. Was that real?”

Rev was still in shock over that. He’d almost been hit, and it seemed inconceivable that the Marines would risk death or a long-term rehabilitation for training.

“Oh, it was real.”

“What?” he blurted out.

“The booby trap was real enough. The shrapnel inside was powder, though. Might sting a bit on bare skin, nothing more.”

Rev felt stupid now even asking. Of course, they weren’t going to kill off their recruits in training. The Centaurs were doing well enough at killing Marines that they didn’t need any help.

“So, did I pass?”

“Yes, Pelletier. You passed. You’re not going to have to retest.”

A wave of relief swept through him. He’d made it. On Friday, he’d join the rest of his company for graduation, and he’d no longer be Recruit Reverent Pelletier.

He’d be Private Reverent Pelletier, Perseus Union Marine Corps.

Part II

15

“Welcome to Charlie Company,” the captain told Rev and Tomiko.

“Thank you, sir,” the two said in unison.

“I guess I should introduce myself. Captain Lydia Fowler.” She held out a hand, and Rev gave Tomiko a quick glance. They were boot privates, right out of boot camp, and captains didn’t just shake hands with them.

But the captain’s hand was stretched out to them, and Rev hesitantly took it. Tomiko followed suit.

“We’re glad to have you aboard. Lots of holes to fill.”

If there were lots of holes to fill, that was not a good sign. Holes usually meant casualties.

“I wish we’d gotten more of you Oh-Two-Threes, but it is what it is until the next batch of replacements. You’re both going to the Raider Platoon, of course. Lieutenant Smith’s the platoon commander. Mustang. You’re lucky.”

A mustang was an officer who’d been commissioned out of the enlisted ranks. The DIs, some of whom seemed to have a low opinion of officers in general, tended to speak in better terms of mustangs.

“Private . . . uh, Pelletier,” she said after checking her screen again, “I’m sending you to Third Team. Gunny Thapa is the team leader.

“Private Reiser, I’m sending you to . . . wait a moment. This isn’t right.”

She touched her right ear and said, “First Sergeant LeDeux.” A moment later she said, “I’ve got the two new joins here. I’m checking the roster, and it has them both going to Third Team.”

She listened for a moment, slightly nodding, before she shrugged and looked back at Tomiko. “I guess this is right. You’re going to Third Team as well.”

Rev and Tomiko exchanged glances. As Raiders, there were limited places for them to go. All of their recruit class were from metro Swansea, so with the regimental system in place, all of them were going to either the Safe Harbor Provincial 8th Infantry Regiment (REIN), the Gryphons, or the 48th Support Battalion. Technically, Charlie Company was part of the 6th Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Falcon, but they were part of the (REIN), one of the reinforcing units to the regiment. They were attached, so it was no surprise that they’d be going to Charlie Company’s Raider Platoon. As two boots, however, it was a surprise that they’d be going to the same team. From a logical standpoint, it would be better for Rev if he’d have more experienced Marines as his teammates, but he couldn’t help but feel relieved. He would not be going into this alone.

“We’ve had some losses, and Third Team is shorthanded.” Then almost to herself, the skipper said, “I could still switch Gramerie . . . No. We’ll do it this way.”

She turned her attention back to the two privates. “You’ve got the rest of the day to check in. I want you to be ready to report to Gunny Thapa at morning quarters.

“Do you have any questions for me?”

The two shook their heads.

The skipper looked tired. Haggard. Rev had heard rumors that the company had taken heavy casualties over the last six months, and that was obviously weighing on her.

“Great,” she said, standing and offering her hand across her desk. In that moment, she looked renewed, if only a little. Any help was welcome, it seemed. “Welcome to Charlie Company. Hope you stick around.”

* * *

The rest of the day was full, but routine. Weapons draw, snapping in, drawing gear, getting rooms assigned, checking into the regimental sick bay—the rhythm was familiar, even if the location was new.

Finally, an hour after missing evening chow, Rev stuck his head into Tomiko’s room and said, “Let’s get to the club.”

“Why? So you can finally screw Krissy?”

“No! I’m just starving, and we can get a burger or something,” he blurted out.

“Yeah, right, big boy,” she said, the last in a falsetto. “And you’re turning red.”

He could feel his face burn. And she was right. Krissy had been assigned to the grunts, light infantry. With fewer mods, she’d have been with the regiment for almost six weeks by now. Rev wasn’t so sure he was going to get laid, as Tomiko thought, but he did want to hook up and see if Krissy was still interested. Six weeks would have given her a lot of time to find someone else.

The problem was that he didn’t know where she was. She’d be in the regiment, sure, but there were three rifle battalions, each with four companies. Since they were not allowed quantphones—a stupid rule, he thought—he couldn’t just call her up or send a text. But the E-Club would be the center of non-rate social life, and he’d be able to track her down there.

“And what about Mia?” Tomiko asked, a wicked grin on her face.

“I should never have told you about her,” Rev grumbled.

He really didn’t miss Mia, and with him in the Marines and not with the Guild, he didn’t think she missed him. But when a group of them were talking about lovers they’d left behind, he hadn’t wanted to feel left out, so he inflated their relationship a bit.

“Oh, geez. You are so easy to give shit to,” Tomiko said, putting her arm through his and pulling him out of the doorway. “Let’s go get you laid.”

Rev wanted to argue, but that would only give Tomiko more ammunition, so he let her pull him to the elevator and down to the bottom deck.

“Uh, do we have to sign out?” Rev asked the duty, a lance corporal standing behind a podium at the entrance.

The duty snorted, then said, “You ain’t recruits no more, boot. Just make it back by twenty-four-hundred.”

They’d already spotted the E-club while checking in. Five minutes later, they were inside its protective cocoon. The club was limited to E-1 through E-3. No NCOs. No SNCOs. And for sure, no officers. And as long as they didn’t destroy the place or each other, the non-rates were pretty much left alone while inside.

Rev’s stomach growled the minute the smells from the kitchen hit him.

“I guess you really are hungry,” Tomiko said. “What say we grab a bite, then we can try to track everyone down.”

Rev was good with that, so they went into the galley and to an open autochef. The menu wasn’t extensive, but there were all the old standbys. Rev ordered a burger, Tomiko a gordita.

As the autochef churned away, a voice called out, “About time you slackers got here.”

“I know that voice,” Rev said, turning around with a huge smile on his face.

Cricket, along with a PFC Rev didn’t recognize, was standing behind him. It took about a nanosecond before Rev enveloped the smaller Marine in a bear hug.

“Damn, son, let me breathe!”

The bear hug surprised Rev. He hadn’t realized how much he missed his friends. More than a little embarrassed, he released Cricket, who received a much toned-down hug from Tomiko.

“Dyce, this is Rev and Tomiko. I told you about them.” He turned back and said, “And this is Dyce Stewart. We’re in the same squad. Delta Company, First Battalion.”

“Deathdealers!” they shouted in unison, smacking elbows.

“Deathdealers suck!” a voice called out from the back of the galley.

“They’re all just jealous,” Cricket said with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “So, you just get in?”

“This morning,” Tomiko said. “Spent all day checking in. Missed chow, so . . .”

She tilted her head back to the autochef where Rev’s burger was at seventy-two percent, her gordita at sixty-seven percent.

“The gorditas are pretty good here. Better program than in the chow hall,” Cricket said approvingly. “The pelmini are good, too. But you’ll find out. So, what about you two? How was your MilDes Phase?”

“Tough. Took a while to get used to the augments,” Rev said.

“Cricket said you two are Zero-Two-Threes?” Dyce asked.

“Yeah.”

“Much respect,” Dyce said, touching his forefinger to his forehead.

Tomiko and Rev both gave short, awkward laughs.

“We’re just boots,” Tomiko said. “We haven’t done anything yet.

“Still, you guys are something.”

“So, where is everyone? You keeping in touch?” Rev asked Cricket, anxious to change the subject. Tomiko was right in that they hadn’t done anything yet, but the fact that this guy was giving them respect was a little troubling. What were they getting into?

“Bundy’s already a PFC. Meritorious. He’s in tanks, of course.”

Which Rev had figured. Not that he’d wangled PFC already, although it wasn’t surprising. The tank battalion was the only place in the regiment for armor.

“I saw Aguilera, too. He’s in supply.”

Cricket’s tone was more than a little dismissive, and Rev wondered if the schism between Direct Combat and Combat Support—no, supply was in General Support, he reminded himself—was more than just good-natured ribbing.

“Uh . . . Fyr and Udu are in Second Mech. Fyr’s in Golf and Udu’s in Echo Company. Orpho’s in Alpha. Oh, you remember Cali Hu? She’s a Disk Marine with Golf. You’ll see her around, I’m sure.”

Disk Marines, with their mobility, often supported or took on recon missions, but the Raider Company was a little separated from the rest of Recon Battalion. Rev didn’t bother to correct his friend, however.

“And you know Willow—”

“Not to interrupt, Cricket,” Tomiko said, putting her hand on his arm. “Well, yeah, to interrupt. But our good buddy Rev, here, has blue balls something fierce, and he wants to hook up with Krissy, Where’s she at?”

“Miko! Give me a break! I told you it isn’t that,” Rev said, but was stopped cold when Cricket’s ever-present smile disappeared.

“You haven’t heard?” Cricket asked.

A hollowness started to form in the pit of Rev’s stomach.

“Of course not. You just got out of Nguyen.” Cricket took a deep breath, then said, “Krissy went to Fox. They were embarked on the Gharial.”

At their blank looks, he went on. “The fucking Centaurs hit the ship. There were no survivors. Respect to the fallen.”

Rev’s vision started to narrow, his mind going numb. He’d realized, almost in abstract, that they were embarking on a dangerous three years. Not everyone was going to make it through. But already? And Krissy?

Reality just gave him a shot in the gut, and he bent over and dry-heaved.

Behind Rev, the autochef chimed. His forgotten burger was ready.

16

Rev hugged the ground. Centimeters from his face, the dirt was rich and loamy, filling his nostrils with the scent, something he’d rarely noticed before.

Technology. It still amazed him almost six months after his augments. Humanity was advancing by leaps and bounds. It had to. The Centaurs were not going to let up in their attempt to eliminate humanity.

A pebble bounced off of his helmet, and he turned to see the gunny giving him the hand-and-arm signal to keep alert, his face rigid in anger. Rev nodded, then turned his attention back to the valley below.

The irony of that was not lost on him. Human technology was advancing by leaps and bounds, but they were relegated to using hand-and-arm signals, much like the Babylonian armies used. No matter how far humanity advanced, the Centaurs were ahead of them, and the Marines’ comms had been cut for over ten hours now. No comms, no uploads, no downloads.

Rev had his AI and knowledge library, but he was cut off from the rest of the Marines, forced to rely on ancient techniques.

It wasn’t a good feeling.

But this was the face of modern warfare, and he had to concentrate.

“How long until we move?” he whispered.

<Four minutes, thirty-six seconds.>

At least he was meshing better with his AI, and it had almost become natural. Almost. He still felt like he was sharing his brain to an extent, and while he could supposedly put it to sleep when he was off duty, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that it was still there, listening and recording. For what, he didn’t know, but he didn’t like it.

His heart was beating hard, almost loud enough to be heard. In a little over four minutes, they’d be leaving the hide to complete the mission—and they had to complete it. The entire regiment was inbound, and if the array was still functioning, then the carnage would be devastating. Failure wasn’t an option.

He checked the charge and the safety of his M-49 for the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Raiders had more of a choice in their weapons, and he could have picked any number of them, but he was still more used to the 49 than anything else.

Not that the personal weapons were of much use against a Centaur. It could knock down a Centaur’s drone-eyes, but the 8mm round could only penetrate the enemy armor if it had already been severely compromised. Still, the powers that be decided Marines should carry them, if for nothing else than as a security blanket.

Rev was all in for that decision.

And then it was time. Gunny signaled for them to rise. Rev, Tomiko, and Tanu—Lance Corporal Bintang Tanuwijaya—got to their feet. Somewhere over on the next finger, Lieutenant Omestori, their new second lieutenant team leader, and Staff Sergeant Montez would be leading her element forward.

The key in fighting the Centaurs, even in discreet operations as were the Raiders’ usual modus operandi, was for multiple prongs of attack. But without comms, the Marines had to depend upon timing and planning. If the gunny and the staff sergeant had this down, then both elements of the team would arrive close to the same time, ready to kick off the assault.

In a single file, with Rev on point, they slipped through the dense evergreen forest. Rev kept his head on a swivel, looking for any sign of the enemy. If they were spotted, however, chances are he’d never know it. One blast from a Centaur beamer, and the entire element would be toast.

Rev shifted his shoulders, nudging his PAL-5 (Personal Armor, Light-5) combat suit back into place. It never seemed to fit him right, always shifting, and it didn’t provide the best protection, but it was both “slippery” and light camouflaged. Unless a Centaur was specifically looking for them, or it had its gammasearch on narrow lobes, they should be able to get to the target undetected. Most Centaur scan waves would either slip to the side or be absorbed.

Or so the manufacturer said. But the CEO of Ryndyne Industries was back on Titan, not out with the Marines in combat.

From a visual aspect, the hundreds of thousands of optical-grade nanotubes woven into the suit would reroute light around him, revealing whatever was behind him. It was somewhat effective, giving a Marine a chameleon effect, but no one could say with any certainty that the Centaurs used vision in the same way that humans did.

<Come right eighteen degrees.>

A right-pointing arrow flashed five times across his right eye—rather, it seemed as if it was flashing across his eye, being dumped right into his optic nerve. With the mods to his hippocampus, Rev knew where he was within about twenty-five meters. His AI, combining a simple gyroscope with what Rev saw on the ground, was accurate to one meter. In a case like this, where the terrain was accurately mapped out and imaged, it was better to rely on his AI.

Rev turned around and held a hand out, pointing in the new azimuth. The gunny nodded.

Rev led them down the steep slope, working to maintain his footing. He gave the command to extend his pitons vertically. Sixteen pitons, eight on each boot, extended three centimeters, digging into the loose soil. If he hit rock, the pitons’ tips would react by retracting. They made for slower going when extended, but it was better than losing his footing and sliding to the bottom of the slope.

His inner map told him they were just over five hundred meters from the objective when he reached the bottom, a seasonal creek, now dry, that would give them a little more cover as they approached. The creek would emerge from the hills a scant 180 meters away. That was when things would get interesting. They would no longer have the hillside to block any Centaur’s gammasearch, and they’d have to rely on their PAL-5s to keep them invisible.

The sides of the hill closed in around them, transforming rocky cliffs. Rev kept scanning the cliffs. Not because he thought a Centaur would be sitting on them, but to keep an exit plan in mind. A Centaur riever could fly over, and that would be a problem. Even with their augments, it would be difficult to scale the cliffs now. If they were spotted, they really had only one way out, and that was back the way they’d just come.

But nothing interrupted their movement, and with thirteen minutes to spare, they reached their assembly point, right where the creek bed tumbled past the cliff walls and out into the open. Rev went down to his belly. Up ahead, over some loose scree and into the forest, was their objective.

The gunny crawled up alongside him to get the lay of the land. The array itself wasn’t in sight, so they’d be assaulting blind.

<There’s an anomaly on the Lido, bearing zero-zero-nine.>

The gunny’s head whipped around to the right as if linked to Rev’s. He’d gotten the same message.

Being in the ravine had made them more difficult to detect, but it kept their scanners blind as well. The Lido was their most sensitive passive scanner, and it could pick up a gnat’s fart, but as with all passive scanners, it could be spoofed. Not only that, but it could also simply make a mistake.

“What do we do?” Rev asked the gunny.

Gunny Thapa was short, stocky, and immensely strong. Rumor was that his ancestors were Gurkhas, and the mythology about that ancient tribe of warriors rubbed off on him, giving him instant credibility.

But he was also deliberate and sometimes took a while to make a decision. Rev knew time was running out, and he impatiently waited for an order.

“Probability that’s a Centaur?” he subvocalized.

<Sixty-three percent with a nine percent POE.>

“Shit,” he whispered.

A nine-percent Probability of Error was too big to ignore. Rev wanted to switch to an active scan to make sure, but even if the Centaur, if there was one, hadn’t blanketed the area with a stasis field, an active ping would assuredly catch its attention.

Finally, the gunny pointed to the right and said, “See that striated boulder over there at the base of the cliff?”

Rev nodded.

“I need you to low-crawl to that and try to get a better reading. We need to know if it’s a tin-ass or just a ghost.”

If it were a Centaur, then that would put a huge kink in their mission, and the gunny was right. They had to find out more.

The boulder was at the top of a small finger, more like a raised spine that carried on down the hill from the cliff-face. That spine would give him some cover as he crept up to it.

Rev slid over the edge of the creek bed, then slithered over the scree, sending too many small rocks and gravel sliding down the last twenty meters of slope. Rev felt naked and exposed, and that pushed him harder, which sent down even more gravel.

With a gasp of relief, Rev reached the boulder. He took several calming breaths, then slowly raised his head . . . only to drop right back down.

He frantically signed to the gunny. Down the hill, right at the edge of the scree field where the trees began, was a solitary Centaur paladin. It wasn’t obviously powered up, but that didn’t mean anything. Paladins were the heavy Centaur soldiers, armored and loaded with weaponry. They were a little slower than the lighter rievers, but they could dish out—and take in—a lot of punishment.

The gunny signaled him to wait, and he disappeared back up the creek bed.

“Did it see me?”

<Unclear.>

Rev strained to listen. Something that big and heavy couldn’t cross the scree without making any noise, but he heard nothing. The paladins could fly, but that was even noisier.

“Which model was it?”

He’d seen it, but it hadn’t registered in the brief second it was in his sight. His augments didn’t include photographic memory, something he’d welcomed. He could recall the recording and play it back, then figure out which type of Centaur it was, but it was just easier to ask his AI.

<Bravo Model.>

Which meant its main gun was the meson beamer. That was neither good nor bad. Anything a paladin carried was death to a Raider.

The beam cannon was hidden inside the pedestal, probably to protect it until needed. When it wanted to deploy the weapon, it would rise straight up until the bottom of the projector cleared the base of the pedestal. Then the nozzle of the beamer would swing down, and the bulb would swing up, looking like a child’s drinking bird toy. But this toy had a bite—a big bite.

Rev’s hand drifted to his thigh holster where his two Yellowjackets were secured. They were not the preferred weapon to take on a riever, much less a paladin, but they were the only thing he had that could possibly take one out.

Well, he had his Phoenixes—MG-3 Incendiary Mine—small grenades that could burn through anything, including paladin armor, but he doubted the Centaur would just let him saunter right up there and place one on it.

Gunny popped his head back in sight and gave Rev a series of signs. They were about what he expected. They were shifting the mission.

They had to take the paladin out. Its presence wasn’t a coincidence. It had to be there to protect the array, which was about fifty meters farther, and it was too much of a threat. Even if they didn’t manage to destroy it, the fight should give Second Element the diversion they needed to get to the array.

Gunny told him to keep an eye on it while they crossed over to him. He pulled the Optisight-mini out of the slot in his left greaves. Bending the lens at the end ninety degrees, he raised it until it just crested the top of the rock. He should have used it the first time, he knew, instead of raising his head, but it didn’t look like that had cost him.

Some of the bigger Optisights could be jacked, giving far better vision and acuity, but this was the standard infantry version, with no magnification or Night Vision Device capabilities. He didn’t need anything more here. He had his own organic low-light vision now with his augments. The paladin hadn’t moved. It could have been a statue.

“Riever?” Tomiko whispered as she took her position beside him.

“Paladin,” Rev said, keeping glued to the eyepiece.

“Shit. Of course, it would be.”

She shuffled farther down the slope, keeping below the top of the spine.

Within a few minutes, the gunny and then Tanu joined the two of them.

“Hasn’t moved,” Rev signed, taking his eye off the Centaur. “Paladin,” he added, realizing he hadn’t passed the vital bit of information to him.

Gunny grimaced, then signed, “Eighteen minutes. Attack.”

Rev checked his timer. The original assault by both elements was to kick off in Twenty minutes, forty-three seconds. He was about to question the gunny before he realized why he’d moved it up.

Both elements in the team were to assault together, based on the time. However, with the chances of taking out the paladin poor, they had to at least draw its attention away from Bravo Element. Part of their training was to react to the fluid situation in any battle, and if Bravo Element was in position, they’d kick off the moment they heard Alpha kick it off.

Rev pointed back to his Optisight, but the gunny waved him off. Instead, the gunny deployed his and took a short look. He pulled it back, softly shaking his head. He didn’t change the plan.

<Your heartrate is accelerating. Do you wish a suppressant?>

“No! Hell, no.”

That was all he needed now, a downer. He was nervous, no doubt about it, and his heart was racing, but one way or the other, this would be over in about six more minutes.

A pebble hit him, and he glanced back at the gunny, who was glaring at him.

“Pay attention,” the gunny signed, before quickly going over how he wanted to assault the thing. There weren’t a lot of options, not in the time they had left. This was going to be a frontal assault, hitting it hard before it had time to deploy its cannon.

“How long to get that bad boy . . . uh, meson cannon into position and firing?”

<Approximately four seconds.>

Not as long as I hoped.

The gunny was still passing his op order. Rev was to immediately fire first as they rose in unison and rushed forward. The other three were to take more measured shots. Upon firing the element’s eight Yellowjackets, if they were still standing, they’d scatter and try to loop back to the creek bed and hold, either to retrograde or continue the mission to the array.

He ended his order with the interrogatory sign. No one asked anything.

And then there were three minutes.

Rev armed his Yellowjackets, then slipped one back into the holster, but loose, not latched in. He kept the other in his hands, ready to use.

The seconds ticked down, and at one minute, Rev shifted around, face forward. The others followed suit.

His timer approached zero, but the order to go was on the gunny. Rev’s legs bunched underneath him, his eyes on his team leader. This was it.

The gunny held his hand in a fist, catching the eyes of each of them, then he unclenched, tilting his hand forward. Rev scrambled over the berm, deploying his Yellowjacket, Tomiko on his flank. Ahead of him, the Centaur spun on its base to face him. Rev didn’t have time for the textbook position. He brought the Yellowjacket to his hip and fired. The missile flashed forward, covering the eighty meters in a split second. It hit with a flash, but the beam cannon continued to deploy, rising on the pedestal, while the projector jackknifed down to take them under aim.

Tomiko fired, her Yellowjacket hitting at the juncture of the projector and pedestal. The projector stopped for a moment.

“We’ve got the bastard!” Rev yelled as Tanu knelt, his Yellowjacket on his shoulder.

Rev pulled out his last Yellowjacket . . . and his vision faded to black.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled out, fumbling for his jack. He yanked the cable out, and his helmet visor cleared.

The four of them were standing on their motion pads, looking around the CST in confusion.

“Gunny, we weren’t done!” Tanu yelled in frustration. “We coulda got the bastard.”

“I don’t know what happened. Hang on.”

“Well, that’s the shit,” Tomiko said, taking off her helmet. “I wonder if we’re going to have to reboot and start from the beginning.”

“Hell, I hope not,” Rev said.

Simulation or not, the training mission still took real-time, and the physical exertion was actual. Every step they took up a hill might be in the Combat Simulation Trainer, but with the motion pads tilting under their feet, it was real. Every slam on the ground as they took cover was real—it was just in the CST training pod.

“Take a seat while I find out what’s going on,” the gunny said as he headed for the door.

The STA pods were all automated. There wasn’t an operator there to ask. The three Marines headed to the back where along the bulkhead and took a seat on the bench there.

Rev unclasped his PAL-5 and reached inside to adjust the harness. “We can fight a fucking tin-ass, but they can’t design this armor better. It keeps sliding down on me.”

“Oh, so now you think it’s real,” Tomiko said with a laugh. “What about those jackheads you keep complaining about?”

“Bite me,” Rev muttered.

To his surprise, he was coming around to the idea of immersion training, if not immersion games. He’d just been in a fight with a Centaur, and it was real, for all intents and purposes. He’d been there. He’d smelled the dirt, for God’s sake. And if he’d been killed, well, there was always next time.

Over in Second Element, Staff Sergeant Montez had evidently been a big-time gamer in her past, even winning a planet-wide title. And even for a boot like him, it was obvious that she was hot shit, destined for bigger and better things.

He still thought most immersion gamers were wasting their lives, but if the staff sergeant was a product of the culture, then maybe it wasn’t all bad.

The door into the pod opened, and gunny came in, his face set in stone.

“What’s up, Gunny?” Tanu asked. “Why’d they stop the mission?”

“Training’s over. The Centaurs are on the move, and we’ve got forty-three hours to embark. It’s time to get back to the shit.”

17

Max pulled up in his Gazelle. Rev pursed his lips but didn’t say anything. It had taken his stepdad three weeks to get it back—and six-hundred-and thirty BCs. Max hadn’t asked for Rev to repay him, but he was sending Max a quarter of his meager salary until he paid him back.

The passenger door slid open, and Rev threw his assault pack into the back seat before slipping inside.

“Thanks for picking me up. Where’s mom?”

“She’s back at the house, making dinner. Says you are going to want your favorite.”

Both men chuckled. Rev’s mom had gone on a cooking spree some years back, determined to get back to our roots. But she’d never mastered the art, not even coming close to the family’s run-of-the-mill autochef. Rev didn’t even know what his favorite was supposed to be, and who knew what he’d be getting?

Hovers crowded inside the parking lot, and his stepdad took control of the Gazelle, maneuvering it carefully as he made his way to the exit.

“This place is a madhouse. Traffic’s a bitch,” he said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

It should be pretty obvious what was happening. Marines were restricted to the base for the duration, and except for family visitation days, which happened once every two weeks, they had no contact with friends and families beyond calls from the USO.

With two major exceptions: just before and just after deployments. The regiment’s deployment was unplanned, so Rev had a grand total of eight hours outside of the gate.

And he was lucky. The poor bastards in Direct and General Support, and of course, the Ninety-nines, were getting squat. They were too busy mounting out the regiment. For the Direct Combat Marines, once they had their own mount-out ready, they could go on town leave. And as all of the Marines and sailors in the regiment were from metro Swansea, that meant they could all go home, if they so chose.

Rev fingered the house arrest bracelet on his wrist. The regiment was not relying on anything else to keep track of them. The bracelet continually broadcast their locations, and should they not return by pumpkin time, a cop would be dispatched to escort them back to base.

With the amount of booze many of them would be imbibing, that would probably be quite a few of them. But there were always a few runners, people who thought that by wrapping foil around their house arrest bracelets, to quote one unfounded rumor, they could avoid deployment. The drunks never paid much for their transgressions, but the runners went straight to MilDes 99.

Max drove the Gazelle past the ever-present group of Angel Shits—Children of the Angels—the worshippers of the Centaurs who thought they’d come to rescue humanity and uplift them to a higher plane of existence. They were harmless, but there was always a group of them outside the main gate, promising divine retribution if humanity kept fighting their gods.

Rev’s upper lip lifted in a sneer. Before, he’d just thought of them as fringe looneys. Now, he had a different view. How could people be so stupid?

“You look . . . different,” Max said as he pulled out onto Freeman Highway and turned control back to the Gazelle.

Rev gave him a hurried glance.

Does he know I’ve been augmented?

Nothing this big could be kept secret forever, and surely there were rumors by now. And in the Guild, it was possible that his stepdad worked on a project with military implications, and that could have put him in the know.

Rev just gave a non-committal grunt.

“More of a man,” Max said. “I guess the training was pretty hard?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Rev said in an understatement.

Eight months ago, he might have taken the opportunity to unload on Max, to complain, maybe looking for a little sympathy. But at the moment, he was satisfied to leave it at that.

“So, you’re deploying?”

The people in town knew the drill as well. With special circumstances exceptions, the Marines just didn’t get to swarm into the city unless they were coming or going.

Aside from broadcasting each Marine’s location, the bracelet was also tuned into certain keywords, recording them to check if anyone was discussing classified material. Which was stupid, he thought. What was his stepdad going to do? Rush to the Centaurs with the intel?

Well, maybe the Angel Shits would if they could, but as far as Rev knew, the idiots had no way to contact the Centaurs. But to keep the bracelet from pinging him, he just nodded. It wasn’t as if the situation wasn’t obvious, even to a non-military city like Swansea.

Not historically, at least. There had always been a reserve Marine battalion at Camp Alissa Nguyen. It wasn’t until war had broken out that the base was expanded, the recruit depot created, and the regiment stood up.

Even now, with the Marines generally restricted to base, the city still wasn’t much of a military town. If not for the fact that so many from the region had volunteered or been conscripted—and that so many sons and daughters had lost their lives serving—it might have been easy to ignore the regiment.

Rev put his mind on autopilot during the drive into town. Max was going on about how Grover, Rev’s younger half-brother, was tearing it up on the flipball field. Rev hadn’t been a bad player himself at left slot, and while he’d enjoyed playing, he’d never been driven as Grover evidently was, never pushing the offseason workouts. Idly, he wondered how he’d do on the field now. Augments aside, he was in the best physical shape of his life.

The Gazelle pulled into the parking lot, and almost before it settled on its skirts, a rocket erupted from the door.

“Rev!” the rocket screamed and blasted into his arms before he was fully out of the hover.

“Hey, Neesy!” Rev said, sweeping his little sister high off the ground. At ten, she was much bigger than the little girl who’d cried when he left for boot camp, but he had no problem holding her over his head. “Miss me?”

“Of course. What did you bring me?”

Rev laughed, then said, “I wasn’t away on vacation, Hamster. I was in training. Not much for me to get you there.”

“Oh, that’s OK. I really didn’t expect anything.”

Rev swung Neesy to his shoulder and marched up the walk.

Ms. DeCarlo-Moray from 1A slid open her window, stuck her head out, and said, “Welcome home, Marine. Your ma said you were coming back today.”

“Thanks. I won’t be here for long, though.”

“You getting ready to deploy outta here?”

Rev shrugged.

“I know, I know. You’d have to kill me if you told me,” she said with the ancient retort. “But you kick some Centaur ass, you hear me?”

“Sure will, Ms. DeCarlo-Moray.”

“You call me Mimi now, you hear?”

“She said ‘ass,’” Neesy whispered as he carried her through the door.

Rev’s mom frowned on coarse language, as she called it. Over the last eight months, well, Marines were not noted for polite speech.

“Don’t let me curse,” he subvocalized.

Which activated his AI, something he didn’t mean to do during his liberty.

<I will attempt to foresee when you might do so.>

Maybe getting to use his AI was becoming second nature to him, but he was home now for the next few hours, and he didn’t need it spying on him. He put it back to sleep.

He let Neesy bend over to activate the door, then stepped through into the apartment. An aroma of . . . something, but he didn’t know what, rushed out to envelop him.

“Hey,” Grover said from the couch where he was watching the holo, not bothering to get up.

“Is that you, honey?” his mom asked, coming around the half-wall from the kitchen. Her hands were coated in what had to be flour.

He put Neesy down before his mother hugged him. Rev felt guilty for wondering if his mom’s hands were leaving prints on his Charlies, and he felt an overwhelming desire to run to the head—toilet, he should call it here—to check it out. He’d never been that concerned about his clothes before, but eight months as a recruit and Marine had beaten it into him.

“I’m so glad to see you, son.” She released him, then held him out at arms’ length. “Oh, and so big. Mia’s going to be happy to see that.”

Rev didn’t bother to tell her he and Mia weren’t a thing. She’d been overjoyed when she heard they were dating, and if she assumed Mia was somehow waiting on him—or that he wanted her to—then it was easier just to let it go.

“I made shepherd’s pie for you, your favorite.”

Rev didn’t know what shepherd’s pie was, and it certainly wasn’t his favorite. Maybe his mom had made it once and he hadn’t said it was terrible.

The family autochef wasn’t the best, but it had a few snack programs that the base autochefs didn’t have, given that they weren’t particularly healthy, and he’d much rather have some of those than this shepherd’s pie. But once again, it was just easier to go with the flow and be thankful—and maybe, for a minute, just exist, in the place he’d originally belonged.

“Grace, give him a minute to breathe,” his stepdad said, coming through the door.

“You want to change into something more comfortable?” he asked, holding Rev’s assault pack.

Rev had brought some PT gear, intending to wear those, but he suddenly wanted to stay in his Charlies. This was the first time he’d worn them other than for inspections. His chest was bare, other than the single Raider badge, so there wasn’t much to show, but it was still a Marine uniform.

“Nah, I think I’ll keep these on,” he said, sitting down beside Grover.

“What’s that?” Grover asked, pointing at Rev’s wrist.

“My house arrest bracelet. They gotta keep tabs on me.”

“’Cause you’re a criminal?”

“Grover!” his mother said.

“What? It’s true.”

“I was exaggerating. We just call them house arrest bracelets. And we all wear them, volunteers or conscripts.”

“Cool,” Grover said, turning back to the game.

“Neesy, do you want to help mommy finish the dinner?” his mother asked.

“I want to stay with Rev.”

“It’s OK, Hamster. You go help her. I’ll be around until later this evening.

With nothing else to do at the moment, he settled in to watch the game.

* * *

Only, he didn’t stay until late evening. The dinner was a horrendous-looking mess but surprisingly not terrible, especially when he covered it with ketchup. He had a nice chat with his stepdad, and Neesy was a joy.

His mother, on the other hand, wore on him a bit, relentless in her nervous chatter. She kept going on about Mia until he finally told her he hadn’t had any contact with her since a week before he reported in. That didn’t faze her. She said that of course, he had to focus on his work, but it was just a phase, and they’d be back together soon enough.

But it wasn’t just his mother. His thoughts kept going back to Tomiko, Cricket, and the others. They were about to join the war, and here he was while Grover gave him play-by-plays of last week’s game and his mother nattered on about, well, everything. It didn’t seem right.

I belong here, but I don’t. Not really.

He kept checking the time, willing the seconds to tick by quicker, and finally, he’d had enough. He stood, holding a sleeping Neesy, and told them it was time for him to go.

His mother objected, telling him he still had three hours, and Rev flat out lied, telling her he must have misspoken when he first told her. She grumbled but seemed to accept it, her eyes bright with tears.

His stepdad furrowed his eyebrows, and Rev knew he didn’t believe him. But Max didn’t call him out and said he’d take him back. Rev mouthed a silent thank you.

As he carried the sleeping Neesy back to her room, he considered Max. He’d come into their lives when Rev was six, still old enough to remember his father. The man had been good to him, but Rev had rejected Max—always Max to his face or stepdad to others, rarely Dad—at first before slowly coming around to where now, in some ways, Rev was closer to Max than he was to his mother, much as he loved her. And he was glad Max was in their lives. With the upcoming deployment, Rev’s future was far from certain, and it gave him a sense of comfort to know that Max was there to take care of his mom, Neesy, and Grover.

Rev made his goodbyes, then got into the Gazelle.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was just—”

“I know, son.”

They drove most of the way in silence, Rev lost in his thoughts, Max quiet in the moment, a mark of respect that Rev noted. It was a generous thing, small, but welcome. The Gazelle pulled into the parking lot. There weren’t as many hovers there as when they left. Rev figured that most would wait until closer to pumpkin time.

Rev reached for the door activator when Max said, “Wait a second, Rev. Son. I wish things had worked out differently. You’d be with me in the Guild, starting your life. Not with Mia, I know.”

Rev laughed. At least Max understood that.

“But with someone. That’s what I wanted for you. But this—I know we need to fight, and that means young men and women have to shoulder the responsibility. I can’t even imagine—”

“It’s OK, Max. I understand. But I’m here now, and I’m ready.”

His stepdad gave him a long, soul-searching look.

“Are you happy, though? I mean, all things considered?”

Rev opened his mouth, ready to give some smart-alec response, but he stopped.

Am I happy? I got conscripted for a bullshit charge, ripped from my future with the Guild, and for what? To lose my freedom and become a Marine Raider whose chances of survival are pretty damn bleak?

But what else would he be doing? Toiling away as an apprentice? Was that freedom?

He could still do that. All he had to do was survive three years, and all of that would be his. In the meantime, he had a chance to do something important. He thought back to the last eight months. To the training. To Tomiko, Cricket, Yancey, Udu, Fyr, Bundy, and yes, Krissy. To Tanu and Gunny Thapa. To Staff Sergeant Montez.

Finally, he said, “I’m excited, if you can believe that. I want to prove myself. I’m scared, too. But happy? Maybe. Yes.”

He was scared of what could happen, but it was as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders, and he realized he wouldn’t change things even if he could. If he wasn’t going to do his duty, who would?

“I’m glad to hear that, Rev.”

“Three years, Max. Then I’ll be back.”

“I hope so. Your mom hopes so. We’re scared, too.”

“Have faith.”

“It’s . . . you said you were excited to go to war. Just don’t get yourself killed, as trite as that sounds? Make sure you come back to her. To us.”

Rev was going to give the rote answer, but he paused. He knew the odds facing him, even if they were only now sinking in. He couldn’t say that, not and be honest.

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise you anything.”

His stepdad was silent for a moment, then he quietly said, “I know, son. But do your best. Do your job, but don’t be a hero.”

Rev didn’t know how to answer that. He opened the door and stepped out. Around him, other Marines were returning, kissing wives, husbands, fathers, mothers. A few held babies in their arms. The families looked pensive and worried. They knew what their loved ones were facing, too. How many of the Marines and sailors wouldn’t be coming back from this mission?

“Rev!”

He turned back and bent over to look at his stepdad.

“We’re proud of you.”

Rev straightened up. “I love you, Dad,” he said before he strode off through the dark to the gate. Words were a gift. Rev knew that now because some people never got the chance to say them.

18

“That’s our cue. Mount up,” Lieutenant Omestori said.

The stick—Navy terminology for a flight load—got up off the side of the tarmac where they’d been sitting for the last four hours. The spaceport was a madhouse, sticks lined up ready to embark, mechanical mules rushing equipment and supplies to the shuttles.

Rev had imagined they’d arrive at the spaceport and just embark, all their supplies onboard and ready to go. That’s what the general support Marines were supposed to be doing all this time. But as Gunny Thapa had said after the first two hours of sitting on their asses, it takes a lot to send a regiment off to war, even a regiment on a war footing.

Navy yellowshirts ran around in choreographed madness, using their laser-wands to direct shuttles in a ballet of confusion. Somehow, the shuttles took off and landed without collision—even if a few deployment packs and a mule were sent flying by the engine exhaust.

Following the yellowshirt who’d told him his stick was up, the lieutenant led the stick—which was made up of Third and Fourth Teams—down a line of flashing pink lights embedded in the tarmac surface, to a waiting Ibis shuttle, the back open. The yellowshirt waved the lieutenant into the shuttle. Rev followed the line aboard, taking one of the last web seats along the starboard side, and sat down. There was barely enough room for him to get his feet down between the seat and the 155 artillery piece tied down in the middle of the shuttle. One of the Ibis crew walked along the top of the cargo in the middle, yelling at the Marines on each side to buckle up.

“Our luck to get a Navy shuttle,” Tanu said. “Why couldn’t we have scored a commercial job? The Osis Line shuttles, they’ve got refreshments and everything. Not these damned web seats.”

Rev didn’t have an answer to that. He’d never been off the surface of the planet, much less gone into space, and his heart was beating hard in excitement.

The sailor started walking back up the line of cargo, checking each Marine to make sure they were strapped in. He gave a thumbs up to someone in the front—the bow, Rev reminded himself—and the back ramp started to close. Rev watched his sliver of sight get narrower and narrower until it disappeared. He twisted around to look, but there were no windows, to his disappointment.

Maybe a civilian shuttle would have been better. He’d be able to see when they took off.

There was a sudden lurch, and Rev automatically flailed his arms, forgetting for a moment that he was strapped in.

“Just taxiing. Can’t take off here on the tarmac unless we want to fry a few people,” Tanu said.

This was only Tanu’s second deployment, but he still knew a hell of a lot more than Rev did. Rev had decided he’d stick on Tanu’s ass like a burr until they were situated aboard their ride.

He looked over the cannon to where Tomiko was sitting across from him. He caught her eye, and she gave a thumbs up, a huge grin plastered on her face. She’d taken atmospheric planes twice before, but this was going to be her first time in space, too.

They taxied for about five minutes before they stopped moving. The shuttle hummed with power, but they hadn’t taken off yet—at least, Rev didn’t think they had. He would have given his left nut to be able to see what they were doing.

“Crew, prepare for takeoff,” came over a loudspeaker, and several lights started pulsing amber. The sailor who’d checked them sat on a pallet of expeditionary meals with the ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times and looked down at the Marines.

The flashing light turned to a steady green, and with a lurch that sent Rev’s heart into his throat, the shuttle leaped into the air. Within moments, the angle of the attack increased, and Rev grabbed hold of his harness with each hand to keep himself steady.

The shuttle rocked and vibrated, and Rev’s excitement began to fade. He started feeling queasy, and for a moment, he was afraid he’d throw up.

“Wake up,” he ordered.

<Online.>

“Give me something so I don’t puke.”

<Initiating antiemetic. You should feel the effects in approximately twenty seconds.>

Rev didn’t know if he was going to make it. Far from the smooth flight he’d expected, the shuttle was lurching, vibrating, and shaking as it clawed its way up through the atmosphere. He could taste the bile in the back of his throat and the tension in his jaw under his chin. The saliva started to flow.

“It won’t be long,” Tanu said. “Just take it easy.”

And then, like getting washed out in a wave, his nausea was gone.

“Thanks. That’s much better,” he subvocalized automatically.

<There is no need to thank me.>

Duh! Of course, I don’t have to thank it. Nothing wrong with manners, though, I guess.

“Sleep,” he ordered the AI.

Rev shook his head and looked around the cabin. There were a few green faces, but several Marines had their heads back, eyes closed as they caught a few Z’s. Gunny had told Tomiko and him that a good Marine always sleeps, eats, and shits every time they have the opportunity because no one knows when they might be able to again.

Maybe old hands could do that, but with the nausea a fading memory, Rev was too excited to sleep. The flight up was on a tactical approach, not the normal civilian approach, which would climb in a spiraling orbit to reach space. In the Navy boat it was pretty much straight up.

Rev shifted in the seat. The extra G as the shuttle accelerated, coupled with the high angle of attack, was making him slide, despite the harness. He lifted his feet and braced them against the cannon in front of him.

Suddenly wondering if he was breaking some sort of regulation, he looked up to the sailor who was sitting casually like a king on top of the rations, overlooking his kingdom. He caught Rev’s eyes, then gave him a half-smile and nod. With that assurance, Rev shifted his feet a bit, then braced harder, shoving his ass back into the seat and keeping himself secure.

“Hey, what happens—” he started to ask Tanu, turning his head.

But the other Marine was fast asleep. Rev shook his head, wondering if sleeping at will was some augment he hadn’t employed yet.

A few minutes later, the vibrations smoothed out, and the weight left him. He had a twinge of queasiness, and he was glad he’d taken the antiemetic. And then he realized what had happened. He was in space!

He looked across the cargo bay, and Tomiko gave him another thumbs-up. She took a stylus from her shoulder sleeve and held it in front of her before letting go. It didn’t fall. She flicked the top with her finger, spinning it in place. At least he wasn’t the only one who was excited.

It was another ten minutes or so before the shuttle started matching orbits with their ship, tiny adjustments that gave Rev slight intervals of weight, of what was up and what was down.

“Crew, prepare for docking,” came over the intercom.

The green light turned amber again, and the sailor did a sort of flying flip off the pallet of rations, shooting himself down the length of the cargo bay to the back ramp. He twisted in mid-air to hit the ramp feet-first.

“I’m going to need you off my boat ASAP. We’ve got the cargo to offload,” he yelled.

Marines around Rev opened their eyes and stretched.

“Normal weight in ten,” the sailor said.

Ten seconds later, it came on instantly as the shuttle breached the ship’s artificial gravity field. One moment, they were weightless, the next, they were at Earth Normal, which was slightly less than Safe Harbor’s gravity.

Rev felt a momentary pain in his chest, and for a second he thought something was wrong, but a huge burp burst through him, and the pain was gone. Around him, some of the others were burping, too. And not just burping. There were some farts as well, and Rev was sure Tomiko had let one loose.

There was a final jolt as the shuttle docked with the ship.

“Unstrap!” the sailor ordered.

The intercom came to life. “We want to thank you for flying with the Union Navy today. Please remember us in the future for all your travel needs.”

“They say that every time, and it’s never funny,” Tanu said as they all stood up.

The ramp slowly opened, revealing their first look at the ship that was going to take them into battle. From the shuttle, all Rev could see was a generic space. Equipment and supplies were being shifted around by automated mules.

“OK, it’s been real, but time to get your asses off my boat,” the sailor said.

As the last one on at the starboard side, Rev would be the first one off from that side as well. He started to look around for the gunny or the lieutenant, but Tanu gave him a shove.

“You heard the man. Let’s go!”

Rev stepped down the now flat ramp and into the ship. A major in a blue jumpsuit—no, lieutenant commander, Rev reminded himself—was waiting just inside, a chief beside him.

“Welcome to the PUNS Amethyst,” the commander said as they filed on.

The bulkheads were bare gray steel and more than a bit foreboding. This sure wasn’t one of those the passenger liners that was advertised for the wealthy.

But then again, this wasn’t a vacation cruise. The Amethyst was there to take them into harm’s way.

It was time to go to war.

* * *

For all the chaos in getting the regiment deployed, things quickly settled down to boredom. Coupled with the fact that the team still didn’t have a mission, much less even know where they were heading, and the rumor mill started running rampant.

“It’s Earth,” Sergeant Prestor Nix said with certainty.

“Bullshit,” PFC Hussein “Hus-man” Černý said. “No way the damned tin-asses got that far in. And for what? No industry and only eight hundred thousand people? Why would they want a nature reserve, especially when Titan’s in the home system, too?”

Like all people, Rev had an almost religious attachment to The Mother, and the sergeant’s pronouncement gave him a jolt.

Could he be right?

“What do you think, Staff Sergeant?” Tomiko asked. “Could it be Earth?”

Staff Sergeant Montez looked up from her pad. Raiders could read novels or watch holos by direct input, but the SNCO preferred old-fashioned text pads.

“It could be, but I doubt it. There are more divisions than we can count between us and Earth, not to mention the Frisian Host and the Manifest Destiny Sphere. And don’t forget the blue-hats. No, I think we’re going farther out on the arm.”

Rev didn’t give much weight to the blue-hats—the Home Guard—which were the armed forces of the Congress of Humanity. It wasn’t that the elite force, based out of Titan, was incapable. Far from it. They took only the elite among the military forces of humankind. But with a single division, they just didn’t have the manpower to do much against a concerted Centaur attack.

The Frisians, with their hundred billion citizens and strong army, and the Manifest Destiny Sphere, which was almost as big, were altogether different. Maybe the staff sergeant was right.

But that didn’t answer the question as to where they were going. All they knew was that this was the real deal and not a drill. For the first time in more than two years, the regiment was heading out as a command and not piecemealing units for smaller missions.

The boredom was running concurrently with the stress of the unknown, and two fights had already broken out between Marines and crew—and that was with only twenty-three Marines and fifteen crew aboard the small skiff.

There were five ships in the Union Navy that could embark an entire regiment. There used to be eight, but the Centaurs destroyed three of them, all with full regiments embarked. Subsequent to that, Marines were spread-loaded on as many vessels as possible—which put a huge strain on the Navy, and there was always some resentment on the ships-of-war now that they had to carry Marines.

Not that the Amethyst had started out as a combatant. From the looks of it, she had been a small freighter before the war. Now she was officially designated a skiff and had been retrofitted to insert Navy or Marine special forces. Small and cramped, she had none of the facilities of the larger ships, including combat trainers and a gym. All the Marines—the Raider team and a squad of combat engineers—could not eat at one time in the tiny galley, much less sit with the sailors.

After the second fight between one of the engineers and a squid, the captain—the guy was a lieutenant commander, but the Navy called him a captain, which was the same as a Marine colonel, and something Rev thought was pretty screwed up—banished the Marines to their two berthing compartments, allowing them to come out only to eat, use the head, or to run the checks on their equipment.

So, with nothing to do for most of the time, the Marines jacked into entertainment or sat around, shooting the shit. Rev had watched a couple of holos, but for the most part, he sat around with the others.

Once they had a mission, things would get busier. They didn’t have a combat trainer on board, but the team had a portable trainer, and they’d do their rehearsals hooked up to it. It wasn’t the same as getting to do them physically, but it was the best they could do.

“Do you think Montez is right?” Rev whispered into Tomiko’s ear. “The tin-asses aren’t attacking The Mother, right?”

Tomiko shrugged, but from the look in her eyes, she wished that Nix hadn’t brought up the possibility. Rev felt the same way.

Earth had no strategic value, at least compared to the planets the Centaurs usually hit. But it was the beating heart of the human psyche.

Centuries ago, the planet, poisoned and sick, had been evacuated, leaving behind a cadre of healers and caretakers. Ironically, it was the very science of terraforming that had allowed for the human diaspora to settle this corner of the galaxy that healed The Mother. Animals, many long extinct, were cloned from the DNA zoos, and within a short century, Earth was a natural reserve, The Mother.

The idea of the Centaurs invading . . . Rev shuddered. He couldn’t even bear the thought. He knew he would never even get within pissing range of The Mother, much less the Home System, but that didn’t change his feelings.

“Could be Titan,” Sergeant Nix said. “The Centaurs might be wanting to cut off our head. Good strategic move.”

Which made sense from a military standpoint. But humanity was too numerous, too spread out. Taking or destroying Titan would wipe out the Congress of Humanity, but it would hardly bring the human race to its knees. Humans were like cockroaches in that. Stomp on the king cockroach, and the rest just scatter into the cracks and crevices, ready to come out again as soon as the lights went out.

No, more like bees. Take out the queen, and the rest will still swarm, stinging their enemy, even if a hundred die in killing the invader.

The hatch opened, and the lieutenant stuck his head in. “Stand by. We’ve got a mission.”

The boredom disappeared in a flash. It was go-time.

19

Twenty-two hours later, Rev was waiting in the cramped cargo hold of the Amethyst. The skiff had been refitted with a pisser launch system, which took up the bulk of the hold. The bulkheads were lined with the pissers themselves, all the track, ready to be fed into the launcher like linked rounds in a crew-served weapon.

Only in this case, Rev and the other Raiders were the rounds. Three recon platoons, the Raider platoon, and two sapper squads were out in the black like them, ready to be inserted in advance of the assault. A couple of Rev’s Direct Combat company mates, Jonah Wisteria, Rafer d’Agonstino, and Giselle Norris-Alein, would be out there somewhere, ready to cocoon in as well: Rafer and Giselle with recon, and Jonah with a sapper squad.

Other than Krissy—respect for the fallen—the five of them would be the first of their DC class to actually go into combat. The rest of the class would land with the regiment in another twenty-nine hours.

Their target was Preacher Rolls, a once bustling planet of three billion, and now there were possibly a hundred thousand to a million humans hiding out in the hills and forests. The planet had been one of the first taken by the Centaurs, and the death toll had been horrendous. Well over two billion humans had been killed. The planet was then one of the first that humanity had retaken, and the COH had ordered it evacuated against the will of most of the survivors.

Another couple hundred were evacuated before the Centaurs retook the planet, scorching about thirty percent of the land masses. It was assumed that there were no survivors from those sections.

When Intel reported that two-thirds of the Centaurs left, leaving somewhere between six and eight hundred on the planet, the regiment, along with the Fifth and Seventh Marines, was embarked to retake it. Over nine-thousand Marines to take on possibly eight hundred Centaurs. It should have been two divisions, according to the lieutenant, given the mortality rate of about two hundred human soldiers for every dead Centaur. The Perseus Marines liked to think of themselves as more elite than most of the rest of humanity’s armed forces, but still—humanity was stretched thin, and the Gryphons, Lancers, and Bucks got the call.

“You’re next,” the Navy launch master, a grizzled senior chief, told Rev.

Rev hesitantly lowered himself into the pisser—the Personal Insertion Sphere-31. He’d never been in a real pisser in training, only virtual ones. The training had only been for a ten-hour simulation, and that was bad enough. This time, their insert would take more than sixty hours. Luckily, he’d be out for most of that. Still, the thought of hurtling through space in what was essentially a three-meter-long cocoon was more than a little disconcerting.

The launch master hooked up the pisser to Rev’s jack, then checked the readings. “I’ve got you all green.”

Rev gave him a thumbs-up. He tried not to think about the millions of calculations necessary to not only get him to Preacher Rolls over the vast amount of space, but also of having to hit the planet’s atmosphere at just the right angle. Too shallow, and he’d bounce back up into space. Too steep and he’d burn up in entry.

“See you on the ground,” Tomiko said from behind him.

Rev twisted to see her standing by her pisser just as his cover shut, closing him off from everything and cloaking him in darkness.

“How are we doing? Are the readings good?”

<All readings are within parameters.>

“Time to launch?”

<Forty-nine minutes, thirty-two seconds.>

Damn, that long?

Rev took a couple of deep breaths, wishing he could just be put out now. But regulations were regulations, and he couldn’t go under until launched. Not that he understood why. If something went wrong with the

launch, there was nothing he could do about it but pray the Amethyst could rescue him.

Hell, getting shot through space in an unpowered coffin. What could possibly go wrong?

Rev couldn’t even talk to anyone else. The pisser was shielded and inert. The tiniest trickle of nanowatts connected him to the pisser, and even that would be cut after he was launched. It wasn’t until he hit the stratosphere that he’d break apart a chemical battery, allowing electricity to generate. Only then would he have any capabilities.

So, for now, he was left alone with his thoughts.

“How much time?” he asked again after waiting at least twenty minutes.

<Forty-one minutes, twenty-two seconds.>

Hell.

He shifted his body, then reached around to smooth his flight suit where it met the seat. Most of the pisser’s velocity would be coming from the Amethyst itself, like the old Twentieth Century aircraft carriers launching planes. However, the launcher would give them an added boost, one that an unaugmented Marine would find tough to survive. The older hands had warned Tomiko and him that the slightest wrinkle would dig into their body, and they’d feel it upon waking up at their destination.

He tried counting down, and when he reached two hundred, he asked his AI for the time again.

<Thirty-nine minutes, twenty-seven seconds.>

I counted to two hundred. Shouldn’t that be at least three minutes?

Rev shook his head. This sucked, and he felt alone. If he could only call up Tomiko. That wasn’t going to happen, however.

But—

Rev considered his AI. It wasn’t a real person, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give it a little personality?

Feeling stupid, Rev said, “AI, I want you to up your PQ to ten . . . no, fifteen percent.”

<Confirmed.>

There wasn’t much of a difference, Rev thought. Maybe the voice wasn’t quite so flat.

Stupid. It’s not like it’s going to become a person.

Rev thought about telling it to revert, but he guessed it wouldn’t make any difference. He lay on his back, stewing in his thoughts before he asked for the time again.

<You have thirty-one minutes, eight seconds remaining.>

Rev sighed, and unexpectedly his AI said, <Your heart rate is slightly accelerated. I cannot recommend a suppressant before launch. Would you like some music?>

“What, you can do that?”

<I have over ten million recordings on file. I can download more once connectivity is restored.>

“Well, hell, why didn’t you tell me that before?” Rev started. Then he said, “That’s not a question,” before his AI could answer.

He had probably been told that during his initial briefing, or he would have found out as he got accustomed to using his AI, but he’d put it to sleep whenever he wasn’t officially required to use it.

“Can you play . . . uh . . . ‘Descent Into Madness?’”

Almost immediately, the heavy bass riff began, almost as if he were right there in the front row of a Blazing Ants concert. It was hard to believe there wasn’t really any sound being made. The music was being inputted directly into his auditory cortex. It was like having the best sound system ever.

The song increased in volume. With its driving beat and screaming lyrics, it probably wasn’t the best choice to calm him down, but Rev didn’t care. It took his mind off his claustrophobic pisser and the upcoming voyage.

From “Descent Into Madness,” Rev went to “Lost,” then “Red Horizons.”

“How didn’t I know I could do this?” he asked himself as he bobbed his head to the beat.

Before he knew it, his AI cut “Nice Guys Don’t Finish” to say, <You have four minutes. I am beginning final prep. Do you wish me to continue the music?>

“Uh, no. I’m fine. Let’s do it.”

Within seconds, his combat suit started to cool, and cardiovascular constrictors flooded his body. Between the lower temperature and the drugs, his blood pressure was going to climb to 450 over 300, which would be deadly for an unaugmented Marine, but he’d handled it during testing. It hadn’t been comfortable, but neither had it been as bad as he’d thought it would be.

After two minutes, his combat suit, which was on under his flight suit, began to constrict around his arms, legs, and pelvis, forcing blood into his thorax and head. This was worse than the drugs.

<You have one minute.>

The pisser lurched, and Rev grabbed the two handles by his side and jammed his feet into the footplates. He could feel the pisser make its way to the launcher, and once again, dark thoughts of being lost in the deep black of space began to creep into the nethers of his consciousness. The thought of facing Centaurs was not as daunting as what he was about to experience. At least in facing a Centaur, he’d have some degree of control. Now, he was only a package to be delivered.

The pisser stopped, probably inside the launch arm. All Rev could do was to hope the crystal brain inside of it was making the right calculations. Even a slight miscalculation, something as minor as having the wrong combined weight of the pisser with Rev aboard, could end up in a bad way.

Rev held his breath, momentarily afraid that if he exhaled, it would change his mass, and then he laughed at his foolishness. He was in an enclosed environment.

<Ten seconds . . . nine seconds . . .>

Rev grasped the two handles alongside him and tensed his arms.

< . . . eight seconds . . . seven seconds . . . six seconds . . . >

Rev extended his thighs, muscles capable of lifting nine hundred kilos straining. It wasn’t just to fight G-Loc. If he failed, he would fail catastrophically. The amount of G’s he’d face could be deadly.

< . . . five seconds . . . four seconds . . . three seconds . . . >

Rev took a deep breath.

< . . . initiate AGMS . . . >

Rev exhaled, tensing his belly and limbs.

< . . . one second . . . launch.>

And God’s own hammer came crashing down on Rev. This wasn’t a simulation, as real as that had been. This was far worse.

Rev kept his isometric pressure, trying to keep as much blood in his brain as possible as he accelerated off the Amethyst. Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds, and he didn’t know if he could keep it up.

Suddenly, the pressure was gone. Rev took a deep breath of air, almost afraid to relax his death grip.

<Acceleration has ceased. I will commence scrubbing the drugs from your system.>

Not that he could see it, or even check it somehow, the acceleration harness would have dropped off. His pisser was now an unpowered, unguided coffin. The die was cast.

His nanos cleaned up the cardiovascular constrictors, and Rev felt lightheaded as his blood pressure dropped.

Then he broached the question he was almost afraid to ask. “Are we on course?”

< I have no way to know for sure, but from the internal gyros, it appears the PIS-31 followed the planned acceleration and timing.>

“Couldn’t you just have told me everything was fine?”

His AI didn’t respond. Maybe it could tell a rhetorical question from a real one.

It took a good ten minutes until his body was scrubbed of the drugs and he began to feel normal. Not for long, however, he knew. He’d be put under soon.

It wasn’t just to keep him from going stir-crazy in the dark, though. There was limited O2 in the pisser, and this would keep him from consuming too much of it. Theoretically, if he missed the planet, he’d be kept under, almost in hibernation, as it were, in hopes that a Navy ship could track down and recover him.

<Are you ready to sleep?>

No use delaying.

“Yes, go ahead.”

Another wave, far gentler this time, started to flow through him.

“Can you give me some music on the way out?” he mumbled.

The soft strains of “Wild Roses” followed him as he faded away.

* * *

Rev slowly emerged from the cottony cocoon. He was shaking and wasn’t quite sure why.

<You are entering the atmosphere of Preacher Rolls.>

“Already?”

He stretched and yawned, and as the wake-ups took hold, everything came into focus. He felt vibrations as his pisser broke through the planet’s exosphere. At least he’d hit the target. Now, the questions were if he was at the angle to actually make it to the surface and then if he’d land near the rest of the team.

That is, if he wasn’t shot down first. But the Centaurs, for all the technological advantages, didn’t knock down many insertions. That meant they were either lax or that the humans had developed some stealth tech in the pissers that worked.

“How do we look?”

<I am not able to determine that.>

Of course, we’re inert.

The only electrical impulses going on now were those of his nervous system, and if the Centaurs could pick that up, he would be in for a world of shit.

The pisser’s vibration turned to shaking. Rev strained his eyes, trying to pick up the glow of entry. If he saw it, though, it would be a very bad sign, but the interior remained thankfully dark.

The shaking became more violent, and Rev had to brace himself to keep from being slammed about. This was normal, or so he’d been told, but once again, the reality was different from the simulations. He just had to sit back and trust, which was difficult for him to do.

Outside, the surface of the pisser was ablating, slowing him down, but he was still booking it. Much of his speed had been bled away by using parabolic braking around first a gas giant, then a smaller, but still huge planet before slinging toward his target. Now, the pisser was using the atmosphere to slow to the point to where Rev could survive the transition out of it.

But the act of slowing down further had its own associated problems. There was no way to hide the fact that something was entering the atmosphere, so the intent was to make it look like a meteorite. The ablation supposedly mimicked how a hunk of rock burned up.

The Gs created through slowing down were not quite as pronounced as with the launch, but they lasted longer, and coupled with the shaking, Rev thought the experience was worse.

<Two minutes until power-up.>

Finally!

Without the antiemetics, Rev was sure he would have puked by now. For all his augments, he would have loved to have had something done to calm his “wimpy stomach,” as Tomiko called it.

She’s probably doing fine out there somewhere.

The pisser was shaking now, and Rev was being thrown about, banging his head several times on the side of it. Even with the antiemetics, he was decidedly uncomfortable, and the idea of his launch, despite the danger, was a welcomed prospect. He removed the power-up from the compartment by his right hand.

His AI counted him down. At zero, Rev broke the power-up like a chem-light, allowing the three sections to intermix, then slid it into the recessed slot . . . at least he tried to. In the dark it took him several tries to find it and align the power-up.

And he waited. No lights lit to tell him it was a success.

If everything worked as planned, a tiny microwatt flicker of electricity was powering up the sensors. They would measure his speed and location. The speed was to determine if it was going to be safe enough for Rev to be ejected. The location was because by adjusting the pattern of ablation, the pisser could make slight course corrections.

None of this was passed to Rev. He would find out soon enough.

The extreme violent movement of the pisser abated a few degrees while vibration increased. Rev became aware of a dull sound growing, penetrating his helmet. After so long without real auditory inputs, the sound seemed inordinately loud. And, while he might be hallucinating, Rev thought he could begin to see a glow as the pisser’s outer layers burned away. After a few more minutes where the glow seemed to grow in intensity, it ceased. The velocity had slowed enough to stop the burn.

Getting close now.

He watched a spot in the dark, just in front of his eyes, willing the signal to appear. An image of auguring it in, what the pilots called hitting the ground, making a smoking hole, fought to the front of his thoughts, and he had to force it back.

At last, when he thought something had to have gone wrong, the single green LED lit like a beacon in the dark. Rev got into the ejection position, pulling in his arms and tightening up his legs. The green LED pulsed down the seconds.

<Please bring your chin down to your chest.>

Shit!

Rev hastily shoved his head down farther. He knew better than that, but in the pressure of the moment, he’d forgotten, his eyes locked on the light. Not the recipe for success.

Rev wasn’t being ejected, per se, even if the term was still in use. It was more like the pisser was going to come apart around him.

<Five seconds.>

Rev tightened his position, counting under his breath, when the entire side of the pisser split open. The shock of hitting the atmosphere was huge, despite the ablative slowing of the capsule. Rev had been ready, but his position was almost flung apart. Without his augments, he wouldn’t have been able to maintain any semblance of control, and he now understood why Marines before the war, before augmentations, had more than a few times been killed upon ejection.

The atmosphere yanked at his arms and legs, but Rev managed to keep his position, and within a few moments, he had stabilized. Slowly, and as taught, he extended into the age-old freefall position, deploying his flight suit, and started the next phase of the long insertion.

Rev had entered the atmosphere over daylight, but by the time he had ejected from the pisser, he had traveled into night. Rev could see the light on the horizon, but beneath him, the planet was shrouded in darkness. He glanced around, trying to get his bearings.

Preacher Rolls had been a human world, and its magnetic fields were well-documented. A map of those fields was part of Rev’s uploads. There was a momentary mental fart, as he liked to think of it, as his hippocampus took in the data, and suddenly he knew exactly where he was and where he had to go.

He was off course by over fifty kilometers. Not bad considering the distance he’d traveled to get here and more than acceptable. Not that he wasn’t going to take action to cut that distance.

Rev widened his arms, and an additional foil surface clicked into place. He raised his right arm and immediately banked to the right. Ahead of him, a low range was between him and the Assembly Area. He had to clear it, or he’d be faced with a long hump to reach the others before they stepped off.

The flight suit had a glide ratio of 9-to-1, which meant for every meter of drop, he had nine meters of forward movement. Rev knew he was about eight kilometers from the lowest point of the range in front of him. What he didn’t know was how high he was, yet.

He twisted his altimeter, which read 21, 464 meters above sea level.

That can’t be right.

He looked again: 21,464.

It wasn’t changing.

He broke his position to tap on the dial with his left hand. No change.

He snapped back into position, feeling his forward momentum pick up again.

“Do I have a backup?”

<Negative. Not on this planet.>

Rev didn’t know quite what his AI meant by this planet, but he did understand that he didn’t have anything to tell him how high he was. There was nothing to do but head for the lowest spot and pray for the best. With most of his flight suit training done on the simulators, this was only his third real flight, but with his augmented reflexes, he was able to make the micro-adjustments to squeeze grams of lift and centimeters of forward progress. And still, he didn’t know if it was enough. The wind shifted at different altitudes, pushing, then pulling him off course, trying to upend him. He fought to keep his course as the pass rapidly approached. Each meter lost in altitude was a personal insult.

The last kilometer was a race against nature. Swirling winds were his enemy as he passed the lower slopes. And he had a decision to make. At this speed, he risked serious injury, at the minimum, if he burned it in trying to make it through the pass. But if he flared to a safe landing, he wouldn’t be able to link up with the team. He’d have no part in the mission.

That’s what decided it for him. He had to try. Whether he crashed trying or gave up and flared for a landing made no difference.

Rev fought to keep his position as the ground rushed up. Just ahead, the lowest point in the pass mocked him.

“Bite me!” he shouted as the last hundred meters closed.

For a second, he thought he’d made it, just clearing a rocky outcrop, when a tree on the other side loomed up. With a shout, Rev dropped his left arm and swerved to the side, just clipping the branches as he shot past.

But that cost him speed, and there was very little room on the other side to gain it back. Rev dove as much as he could, his legs hitting trees twice as he tried to regain speed and lift. As the steep slope started to level out, Rev slowly leveled out again, struggling to maintain lift.

And then, he was through. The slope fell beneath him, and he shot out into open sky.

“How about that?” he asked his AI, relief making him giddy.

His AI didn’t reply.

Shooting for the gap had put him off course, so, while he still had elevation, he came around to a direct azimuth. There was no way he’d be able to cover the forty-plus kilometers to the AA, but he fully intended to cover as much as he could before he was forced to land.

He scanned the sky as he flew, wondering if he could spot someone else from the team. But the flight suits, while not exactly stealthy, were made to be hard to spot, and even with his night vision capabilities, it was still a moonless night.

That, or they didn’t make it, the unwilling thought intruded. Just concentrate, dammit.

Each nine meters forward was nine meters less he’d have to walk, but it cost a meter in height. Rev sank lower and lower until he was only a couple of hundred meters above the ground. He had to find a landing spot, but all he could see was a dense canopy of trees. No clearing, no road, nothing that could serve as an LZ. And still he descended.

At fifty meters up, he knew he was going to have to do a tree landing. He’d done exactly one in a simulator, and it hadn’t gone well. The sim’s AI had given him a sixty-eight percent chance of a significant injury.

Most of the trees were about the same height, which was going to make things difficult. But there, just to the right and up ahead, a single evergreen stuck out of the canopy by a good five meters or so.

“That’s as good as any,” he muttered, turning and diving to pick up enough speed to be able to go at it on a level plain.

The tree loomed as he rushed up. At the last moment, Rev pulled up, almost to a vertical position, and slammed into the treetop. It was like getting kicked by a mule, and the top of the tree broke off under his impact. Rev flailed wildly, clawing at the tree top, he and it fell, crashing into the canopy below with a series of staccato cracks.

Rev just hung on for dear life, and he jerked to a stop a moment later. Around him, leaves and bits of wood showered down. He gathered his breath and tried to take stock of himself. His chest and one leg hurt, but he seemed whole.

He tentatively raised his head, and that started him sliding again. Something hit him hard in the shoulder, and he twisted to catch the branch. The top of the evergreen kept falling into the darkness below while Rev clung to the branch for dear life.

“Hey, anything you can do to help?” he asked his AI.

Once again, his AI was silent.

“I thought not.”

Rev pulled himself up onto the branch, which was creaking ominously. He was afraid it was about to go. Too many branches beneath him blocked his view of the ground, so he didn’t know how high up he was. He knew he could take pretty impressive falls, especially when he was ready for it, but without knowing his height, and with the branches below that could knock him out of position, he didn’t want to chance it.

That left climbing.

Rev inched along the branch, expecting it to give out at any moment, and made it to the trunk. Once there, it really wasn’t that difficult to climb down, using branches when he could, shimmying when he had to. Within a few moments, his feet were on terra firma.

Or Preacher Rolls firma, he thought, chuckling at his lame joke.

That he was relieved was an understatement. Somehow, he was down and mostly in one piece.

Rev stripped off his flight suit and rolled it into a ball. It would disintegrate within thirty hours, breaking down into its component molecules, to be scattered in the breeze. It had done him well, though.

He took a quick inventory and asked his AI for a physical check-up. Whatever interference had been present-- if any-- was gone now, and he got a near instant report on his overall health. As expected, he was only bruised, but it was good to confirm that. Already, his nanos were rushing to the spots to combat inflammation and repair the minor damage.

Once he was ready, Rev checked his position. He still had twenty-three-point-nine klicks to the RP and just under four hours to make it. Easy-peasy. He started off through the forest at a slow jog.

The insertion had been the easy part. Now the real work was about to begin.

20

Rev stepped cautiously through the undergrowth, senses straining to pick out anything that didn’t belong. It was difficult. Preacher Rolls had plenty of wildlife, and unlike most planets, some of that life was alien.

Or native, he corrected himself.

Earth life was alien here. Normally, once a planet was terraformed, any native life was either eradicated or was subsumed by the Earth invasion. Preacher Rolls was one of the relatively few planets where enough native life survived to live together with Earth stock. Odd, fungus-looking stuff hung from Ponderosa Pines, and brightly colored fuzzy things flitted between Mountain Laurels.

Much of the native life could be eaten, if it came to that. Not that Rev intended to try it. As much as he disliked Sludge, the high caloric paste he carried, he would be sticking with the Marine issue sustenance.

All the life made for a busy environment, and that made picking out possible signs of Centaurs difficult. But that was his job. He was there to make sure the rest of the team didn’t stumble on a Centaur and get wiped out in one fell swoop.

He had a feeling that the only way he was going to be able to warn the rest of the team was if he was to eat a beam. Humans tended to sizzle when hit, which was rather hard for anyone else to miss.

Rev turned around. Thirty meters behind him, Sergeant Nix gave him the encircled-fingers sign for a question. Rev gave him the negative slash. He just wanted to make sure he hadn’t strayed too far in front.

The rest of the team, minus Hussein Černý, would be following Nix. Hussein hadn’t shown up at the assembly area, and after waiting an extra hour, the lieutenant had made the difficult decision to move out. The mission had the priority.

Hussein not making it didn’t mean he was dead. A meter or two less altitude flying over the pass and Rev wouldn’t have made it either. He had to hope that he’d faced something similar and was now heading for their rally point.

The brush got thicker, thorns digging at his PAL-5. They looked like Earth life, and Rev wondered why some long-ago terraformer had decided that they needed to be in the planet’s package. What possible benefit did they offer?

Rev could just bull through, of course, but that would cause more noise and commotion than he was comfortable making. Then there were his Yellowjackets. If a Centaur was lying in wait, he needed more space if he was going to engage one of his missiles. They need thirty-six meters to arm, and that was if he could avoid hitting trees or branches, knocking it off course. No, he didn’t want to go much farther into the thickets.

No problem. He wasn’t committed to following an azimuth where he had to offset. He always knew where he was heading. He turned and signaled to Nix that he was deviating. They wouldn’t be getting lost either, but if he was supposed to be running point, they needed to be following in his trace.

“Any Centaur sign?” he asked.

Which was stupid. His AI would tell him if any of the sounds being picked up could indicate Centaur presence.

<Negative. Only Earth and native life.>

“What about our target?”

<Negative. Nothing I can identify.>

Which wasn’t surprising. They were still almost two klicks away.

Rev crossed a small creek, then moved up along the other side. The undergrowth was a little less dense, and he could see farther into the trees. There might even be distance enough to arm his Yellowjackets if need be, and he could see sky through the towering canopy, even if it was fifty meters above.

A squirrel ran out onto a branch and scolded him for a moment before darting away. He was tempted to drop it, but he really didn’t have it in him. The squirrel was just being a squirrel. He just hoped that the Centaurs were not attuned to animals being disturbed. Even a Marine moving at full stealth couldn’t overcome all of the natural alarms in the forest—the churring bark of a squirrel being one such giveaway.

But there were many more.

Rev bent his course back, heading for their target. As he closed the distance, he slowed, sweeping his eyes across every bush and tree. Every rustle, every small critter darting by, made his nerves shout.

At seventy meters out, he focused forward, trying to see what was up there . . .

. . . and about shit himself when a figure rose ten meters to his right.

He spun around, his M-49 ready, and the raggedy looking woman held up a hand, palm out, and said, “Easy there, big boy.”

She was slim, almost gaunt, with long silvery hair. Her face was one of those ageless kinds—she could be forty or eighty, for all he could tell. She had on a cloak of sorts, adorned with torn strips of cloth, and in her hand was a cannon of a shotgun, the barrel looking huge as it pointed at him.

“You must be my Marines,” she said, lowering the monster weapon.

Rev had never seen a weapon of that type, but he would have bet credits to doughnuts that whatever it fired would have done a number on him, combat suit or not.

“Private Rev Pelletier, Union Marines. And you must be our contact.”

She nodded, then asked, “Where’s your commander?”

“Coming up.” Rev stepped back, then as soon as Sergeant Nix came into view, signaled objective.

Rev’s heart was still racing. How had he missed her? Admittedly, he was on passive scanning, but still—

“What are you wearing?” he asked, his curiosity piqued.

She looked like some of the homeless back in Swansea, but while her appearance was a mess, her jacket had a kind of purposefulness about it.

The woman laughed and asked, “You’ve never seen a ghillie suit?”

“No, ma’am, never.”

“You military-types, you all love your tech, don’t you,” she said, leaving it at that.

Nix, Tanu, and then the lieutenant arrived.

“Pelletier, move forward fifty meters and stand by. We don’t need anyone creeping up on us.”

Rev wanted to stay and finally get confirmation on their actual target, but an order was an order. He’d find out soon enough.

With a barely suppressed sigh, he went farther into the forest, taking a position behind the bole of a large tree. He had decent observation and adequate fields of fire, even if they weren’t very deep.

“Now, what the hell’s a ghillie suit?” he asked his AI.

21

“I’ve got it now,” Rev told Tomiko.

She gave him a sloppy salute, then stood to the side as he moved back to point. Two hours was enough of a stress bomb for anyone to take.

Fatima—no last name, just Fatima—stood to the side, a condescending smile on her face as she watched them switch positions. The woman was an enigma. Rev didn’t know if she was a civilian or an Omega Division agent. Whoever she was, she gave Rev the heebie-jeebies.

She was also their guide to their objective, and she’d been walking alongside Tomiko, her ancient shotgun slung over her shoulder as if on a Sunday stroll in the park. More than that, she seemed to think the Marines were overdoing it.

Lieutenant Omestori, however, insisted on full tactical movement. He’d joined the team only two weeks before the deployment, and as with Tomiko and Rev, this was his first combat. Rev couldn’t tell what the gunny thought of having to turn the team over to the boot butterbar, but he, for one, was glad they were not taking it in casual-mode. Better to be too alert than too complacent.

Fatima held her arm out, palm up in a mock invitation to move out. He could see her sense of superiority in her posture. Rev had a sudden desire to take her down a notch. He was an augmented Marine, and she massed fifty kilos at most. But she was their guide to their objective, and if she was OD, then she might be packing augments of her own, if there was any truth to the rumors.

Besides, they were all on the same side, right?

Rev started down the hillside, making his way around huge boulders that looked like they’d been strewn about by giants playing some sort of board game. He wished he knew where he was going, but Fatima either couldn’t—or wouldn’t—download the location. So, instead of just pushing forward, looking for any Centaur sign, he had to keep glancing at her to make sure they were on track. It made him feel vulnerable, and he didn’t like that.

Focus, and quit whining, Rev.

He shook his head as if to clear it and continued to push forward. This was pretty country, looking like lightly populated areas north of Swansea. Take away the puffballs, and he could be trekking the Brecon Beacons back home. The presence of flying alien creatures shattered that notion, though, especially when the puffballs let out a dolorous trill unlike anything he’d heard before.

That shouldn’t be too surprising. Wygate had terraformed a good portion of the Perseus Union, and it probably had done Preacher Rolls as well as Safe Harbor. They’d have used the same blueprints, planting the same trees, releasing the same wildlife.

But he wasn’t on Safe Harbor now. He was on an enemy-held planet and had to keep his guard up.

He turned to make sure Sergeant Nix was still behind him. The team designated sniper, the sergeant was carrying the Dykstra. Rev hadn’t taken to the Dykstra during training, but the round was big enough and still carrying enough of a punch at close range to at least gain a Centaur’s attention, not like his M-49.

He and Fatima reached a dry creek bed, and the woman started stepping quicker, moving ahead of him. Rev reached out and stopped her.

“Don’t get ahead of me,” he hissed.

“Then don’t drag your ass,” she snapped.

“I can’t cover you if you go racing off.”

“Look, soldier boy. I don’t need you to cover me, and we’re getting closer.”

Rev took a deep breath. He was not going to get into a fight with this woman, but he’d tackle her if necessary, any special augments she might have be damned. Let the lieutenant figure out what to do with her.

“All the more reason to take it easy.”

“Don’t they teach you shit in soldier camp?”

“Marine, not soldier,” Rev said automatically. “And teach us what?”

She rolled her eyes as if astounded by his stupidity. “The closer to any Centaur weapons system, the more active the drone-eyes and ground sensors. The longer we dawdle along, scratching our asses, the more chance of being spotted. So, if you’ll let go of my shoulder, can we continue?”

What she said made sense. But moving quicker also took away from stealth, and Raiders relied on evading detection.

The lieutenant had said she was in charge, however, at least during the movement to the objective. Rev weighed his options, and his orders won out. He released Fatima, who shrugged her shoulders and started off again.

Rev looked back thirty meters, and Sergeant Nix gave him the interrogatory hand sign. Rev waved him off and turned to follow Fatima.

This is what is stupid, not me.

Fatima hurried farther down the creek bed another sixty meters, then made a hard left to climb up the next rise. Rev rushed after her, snaking between scrub oak as he made his way up. Two magpies scolded him as he passed underneath.

He blinked up a map overlay. They were climbing to a broad finger, almost a mesa. The far side dropped off to the plains below. The high ground would have a direct line of sight to the regimental objective, the city of White Horse, as well as clear fields of fire to the airspace above the entire valley.

The Centaur Navy was technologically more advanced than any human navy. Their mirror ships were almost impervious to human energy weapons, and in deep space, battles were extremely lopsided. But it was almost as if they’d forgotten about more primitive kinetic weapons. A strike from even a frigate’s quantum railgun could be enough to shatter one of their ships.

In deep space battles, where the distances were in the hundreds or thousands of kiloklicks, the Centaurs could simply maneuver out of the way of kinetic rounds. But inside star systems, the distances were far shorter, and there was less time to maneuver. Around individual planets, the advantage shifted to the humans, as the Centaurs learned the hard way. This was perhaps the only time humans had an advantage, and the Centaurs tended to keep their ships out of star systems, preferring the vast reaches of deep space.

But that didn’t mean that they were simply ceding space around planets to the humans. They didn’t need to bring in their capital ships when ground stations could do the job as well. These were extremely powerful ground-based meson cannons that could knock down landing craft with ease, and even with the beams attenuated by the planet’s atmosphere, they could reach into orbit and destroy ships. Not as quickly, perhaps, but no human ship could ignore them.

And that was the team’s target. They had to take out the Centaur cannon before the assault, or the slaughter would be horrendous before orbital monitors could return fire and destroy it.

Rev didn’t know the missions of the other three teams in the platoon, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same. The Centaurs wouldn’t have just one cannon deployed.

He checked the time. They still had almost two hours before they were to take it out. The cannons were not normally manned, but the Centaurs had to know if they were destroyed, so a coordinated assault on each one of them, just forty minutes before the assault, was their best chance of success—while still giving the assault commander enough time to cancel if the Raider teams failed.

It had happened before.

Fatima crested the slope onto the high ground, pausing a moment to look back at Rev when there was a crack of ionized air, and a flash of light hit her in the back. She collapsed bonelessly to the dirt.

Rev reacted without thinking, going to one knee and raising his M-49. He located the drone-eye swooping in, thirty meters and closing, when it fired on him, the laser-like beam frying leaves and glancing off his combat suit’s left shoulder as he dove to the right, rolled, and came up firing in one smooth motion.

The M-49 fired compressed hyper-velocity darts that expanded to eight-millimeter rounds when they hit a target. Within half-a-second, over a 150 of the darts crossed the closing distance. At twenty meters, the darts would still be traveling at over two kilometers per second. One, two, maybe more of the tiny tungsten-tipped darts impacted on the little drone-eye, and at that speed, they were deadly. The drone-eye disintegrated.

Rev didn’t give it another glance. He scanned the area, trying to spot another drone-eye coming in for the kill. Sometimes, the Centaurs deployed them in waves, and other times, there would be one or two. There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason to that, so it was better to always assume the worst. He couldn’t see anything. That didn’t mean that another wasn’t out there, and he longed to go into active-scan mode, but he kept discipline.

Rev gave the enemy contact signal to Nix, then hurried over to Fatima. She’d been burned through the chest. A tiny wisp of smoke curled up from the hole in her back, and Rev was glad for the filters in his nose.

When a Marine was killed, his nanos went into preservation mode, secreting chemicals that essentially froze the nervous system and key organs in place. It wasn’t really a true stasis, which remained beyond human capabilities, but it was close enough for government work. If the body could be gotten back to a medical facility within about twelve hours, the Marine might be saved, albeit with a year or more of rehab ahead of them.

Rev didn’t know if Fatima had the same medi-nanos. Even if she did, he wasn’t sure if they’d have an opportunity to medivac her out before it was too late.

“What do you got here?” Sergeant Nix asked.

“Drone-eye. Got the civilian.”

“You drop it, or is it still patrolling?”

“Dropped it.”

Despite the shock of seeing Fatima killed, it was starting to dawn on him that he’d just knocked out a Centaur drone. It wasn’t an actual Centaur, but still . . . it was combat. It was real.

He looked down at his M-49. He’d resented carrying it, but maybe the Marine Corps actually knew what it was doing. Sergeant Nix’s Dykstra would have been pretty useless against a drone-eye, needing a miracle shot to take the thing down. With Rev’s enhanced reflexes, coordination, and eyesight, and coupled with the M-49’s ability to send a lot of rounds downrange, the Centaur weapon had been at the disadvantage.

Around him, the rest of the team was moving forward and spreading out. More drone-eyes, or even a Centaur, could be out there waiting.

Rev tried to scan the area for another drone-eye, but his eyes kept straying to Fatima’s limp body. He had known he’d probably see a dead human while serving—that, or get killed himself first—and the woman was his first. But he hadn’t imagined that body would look like this. She looked like she was asleep. The beam had cauterized the wound, and the hole had closed up as her tissue settled. The air that made it through his filters smelled hideously of barbecue and singed hair. Rev’s gorge rose, then he found his self-control and exhaled, sadness washing over him as he scanned the dead woman.

Fatima hadn’t been a Marine, and she’d been something of an asshole, but she’d been serving the cause, and it didn’t seem right to just leave her where she was. With a sigh, he tore his gaze away and started visually scanning the area again.

“How often are unmanned Centaur weapons systems guarded by just one drone?”

<Forty-three-point-two percent of the time in reported instances.>

Which meant that there is . . . wait a minute.

“What percentage of times are there no drones covering the unmanned weapons systems?”

<Twenty-six-point-five percent of the time.>

Rev knew that the reported instances were the kicker. Maybe when there were more drone-eyes, all the Marines were killed, and it was never reported. Still, he liked the odds. And that seemed to hold this time as almost twenty minutes later, with no sign of drones, the lieutenant ordered them forward.

Sergeant Nix shouldered his Dykstra and took Fatima’s shotgun. As old as it was, it would be better than his big sniper weapon against another drone-eye. Rev gave Fatima’s limp body one last glance, then stepped off. This time, however, he wasn’t on point. The team moved out in a modified Squad W, with Rev, Tomiko, and Corporal Dean-Ballester on line with each other and leading, the others behind. Each of the three were armed with the M-49. The formation gave them more coverage up front, and it also allowed them to cover more territory. They may have known that the cannon was on the finger, but without Fatima, they didn’t know where.

Moving out on the same heading Fatima had them on before, they’d only covered 160 meters when Tomiko gave the signal to halt. Rev faced outboard, as he was trained to do, giving flank security, but his mind was on Tomiko and the lieutenant coming up to join her. His hearing was far better than it had been, and the docs had told him it would continue to refine over the next two years, as they said, but with twenty-five meters between them, he couldn’t pick out what they were whispering.

It was obvious, though, when Staff Sergeant Montez moved up. With Hussein missing, she was the team’s only grenadier, carrying the bulky, slow, but powerful MM-37 Mantis. The Mantis wasn’t even a Union weapon. It was essentially a flying shape charge, developed by the Frisian Host during their war against the Miners’ Rebellion and designed to take out heavily fortified bunkers. It had been taken out of mothballs during the first terrible year of the war, and it had proven effective against unmanned Centaur targets, its lack of electronics and odd-shaped nose able to withstand Centaur anti-personnel weapons. It had been distributed in limited numbers to the other militaries. The Union Marines tinkered with it—pride probably wouldn’t let them use it as is—and gave it the Mantis designation.

The lieutenant gave the rally sign, and the team retreated to the edge of the drop-off. With over an hour until they were supposed to take out the cannon, they’d remain there until it was time. Staff Sergeant Montez would move forward alone until she had a clear shot, erect her small blast shield, and fire.

If all went well, they’d retreat to their secondary position, taking on a more reconnaissance mission of covering the regiment’s main effort, watching for any sign of Centaur reinforcements. Tanu would carry Fatima’s body with him in the hope that one, she had military-grade medi-nanos, and two, that they could somehow medivac her before it was too late.

The end of the mission was anticlimactic, at least for Rev. With fifteen minutes to go, the staff sergeant moved forward. Rev watched the timer tick down. Exactly at zero, there was the Mantis’ weird chuff-sound as she fired it, and almost immediately, the blast of the Centaur cannon’s anti-personnel mine. Rev felt the concussion, and dust and smoke rose into the air ahead, but that was it.

“Huh. Thought it would be—more. Just more,” Rev murmured, looking hard for evidence of a kill.

Rev wasn’t alone in anxiously staring ahead. The Mantis was not foolproof, and the cannon might still be operational. The staff sergeant might have succeeded but not been able to escape the cannon’s anti-personnel system. Whatever had happened, the team’s mission would not be over until the damned thing was knocked out.

Two minutes later, a dusty staff sergeant emerged from the trees, a shit-eating grin stretched across her face. She didn’t have to give them a thumbs-up to let them know the cannon was goners.

And that was that. All this way, all the effort, and all it took was a single Host-made Mantis.

The Marines moved out to the secondary mission, and the only thing Rev could think of was that he’d never even seen the cannon.

22

“Think we’re winning?” Tomiko asked, looking out over the valley where the signs of war were evident.

Dust and smoke rose over the city, and flashes lit up the sky. Tiny dots, too small for even his augmented eyes to make out, were descending. He didn’t need to see them clearly, though. They were Drop Marines, the first wave of the attack.

Raiders and Recon might have the highest mortality rate in the Corps, but Drop Marines were not far behind. Their drop eggs were essentially hunks of reflective armor, but they were terribly exposed, and the Centaurs had a lot of weaponry at their beck and call. Half of those little specs might be little more than coffins by now, their passengers dead.

Sharp cracks reached out to the two Marines—Navy monitors providing space-to-ground support. With the mirror ships hesitant to engage human navies in-system, the Navy would have localized superiority of orbital space.

“We did what we could to help. Now, it’s on them.”

“Semper fi,” Tomiko said quietly to herself. “Well, you need to get positioned.”

“Keep your head down, OK?”

“Sure thing. You, too.”

Rev continued down the line, jumping down a low dropoff, then pushing through the dense vegetation until he had somewhat of a clearing. He checked his line of sight in various directions and decided it would have to do. Rev was the last man in the line, and while the position wasn’t perfect, he was told not to exceed fifty meters from Tomiko.

With their primary mission completed, the team was now moving into a straight reconnaissance mission. Spread across a natural avenue of approach, they were to hunker down and keep their eyes peeled for Centaur reinforcements heading into the main battle. Intel had all of the Centaurs on this land mass around White Horse, which made sense as most of the rest of the continent had been scorched, but it had been wrong before.

Rev gave the far-off battle one last glance, then deployed his multi-tool into spade mode. The soil here was soft and loamy, making for easy digging. He carefully cut a plug, replete with low forest plants, and set that aside. With his augmented strength, he made short work of the spiderhole itself. Three feet down, he juked over, leaving a shelf, and digging down another two feet. He didn’t know how long he was going to be there, so he wanted to be able to sit.

He tried it out. Sitting, his head was just at the top of the hole. When he pulled the plug over, he was essentially invisible.

Perfect.

No one knew why being dug in helped to remain undiscovered. Either the Centaurs’ vaunted technology couldn’t see underground, or they never considered an enemy hiding in a spiderhole. Rev thought it was probably the latter. His own combat suit had ground-penetrating sonar, and the Centaurs were light-years ahead of humans.

Rev removed his two Yellowjackets, sticking them into the dirt wall of his hole, ready to grab if needed. He checked his comms suite, making sure he was off broadcast and giving it a nanopulse. His circuitry was good. The team was still on emissions silence, but warning the rest of the regiment took priority. If he had to get the message out, he’d go live and broadcast it. Finally, he connected his four Optisights and pulled the plug over his head.

He was good to go. All he had now was the waiting.

“Hey, how about some Utopia Sisters?”

An instant later, “Red Herring” tickled his auditory nerves as he settled in.

* * *

In the war holovids, the Marines or soldiers always knew what was going on, their helmet displays veritable fonts of battlefield intel. In real life—not that Rev had lots of experience—things were different. Rev was one of almost ten thousand Marines on the planet. Forty meters or so to his left was Tomiko, and another forty meters or so farther was the gunny.

But he’d never felt so alone. From his spiderhole, he couldn’t even see the city—all he could see were the specks of Drop Marines descending. Soon, if everything was going to plan, the landing craft would appear, with the heavier Marine infantry and mech, to be followed later by the tanks and arty.

But as a long-ago twentieth-century philosopher named Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The Centaurs were punching. Was the ongoing fight in any semblance of the plan?

Rev had a strong desire to get out of the spider hole, maybe climb a tree to get a better view down into the plains. But even with his augmented vision, at fifty-seven klicks from the outer reaches of the city, he wasn’t going to be able to discern much of what was happening.

He shifted his weight, wishing he’d dug the hole a little wider. He couldn’t turn around in it, and was stuck in one position.

“Like a rat, not a spider,” he grumbled.

Rev switched to the next Optisight. He’d deployed four of them, one in each direction, giving him a full 360 degree of view. This one was to his left, on the planetary west. He wished he could see Tomiko, but she was higher than him and in her own spider hole, and that didn’t even take into account the vegetation between them.

If a Centaur came up on her, Rev wanted to be able to come to her support. But then again, if a Centaur hit her hard, he’d know it.

“Still nothing?”

<There’s nothing that I can attribute as being of Centaur origin.>

His AI has started to refer to itself as “I” ever since Rev upped the PQ. He was a little uncomfortable with that, but it probably wouldn’t have offered music if it was still at zero. At the moment, “Never Again” was playing softly, almost as an afterthought, and it was calming.

Rev felt a little guilty at that. He was supposed to be on the alert. But his AI could filter the noise better than his auditory cortex, so he could cut himself a little slack with that. He switched to the next Optisight, the one pointing to the north. There were models of Optisights that could give a 360 view, and others that could rotate, but Raiders and Recon Marines went with the basic, unpowered models. The smaller their signature, as with all their equipment, the better.

The forest was still. Not even the birds or the fuzzy fliers puffballs broke the stillness. It was as if the critters knew that the fate of the planet hung in the balance. Animals always know. There in White Horse, and at the other two objectives—if the three battles could be won, then the remaining Centaurs could be tracked down and destroyed.

Ten thousand Marines for seven or eight hundred Centaurs, Rev told himself, shaking his head. Lucky there’s no more than that. If Intel is right.

No one knew why the Centaurs rarely deployed in significant numbers. Not that they had to. They were formidable enemies. But if they’d landed with, say, a couple thousand of their soldiers, it would take the entire Union Marine Corps to try and dislodge them.

Of course, if there were a couple thousand of them on the planet, the COH might just order the planet destroyed . . . and the Perseus Union secretariat would probably agree, despite whatever Union citizens might still be alive.

Rev scanned the skies above the city. The first wave of landing craft should be entering the atmosphere any minute now, if the Drop Marines had done their job. If the Centaurs were not stronger than expected. If the Centaur Navy wasn’t blasting Union ships out of space. If, if, if . . .

With a sigh, Rev shifted to the next Optisight and froze. A Centaur was not more than twenty meters from his spider hole.

<I have detected a Centaur paladin.>

“No, shit,” Rev hissed, pulling one of his Yellowjackets out of the wall of his hole, his heart trying to pound out of his chest.

The thing was huge, maybe four meters tall. And still, if it weren’t for Rev seeing with his own eyes, he would swear it wasn’t there. It was totally silent. A minute and a half ago, there was nothing there. Now, all four tons of it was squatting almost close enough to touch.

How the hell did that thing get there without me noticing?

“Distance.”

<Eighteen-point-four meters.>

Damn! Rev forced the Yellowjacket back into the dirt of the wall. His missile would be useless. It wouldn’t arm in that short of a distance.

A stray thought hit him. “Is it possible to bypass the arming distance on the Yellowjacket?”

<Yes, it is possible.>

A surge of excitement swept through him.

“Let’s do it,” he subvocalized as he pulled the missile back out.

<We would need a Class B maintenance facility.>

“What? I mean now. Can I do it here?”

<That is not possible.>

“You stupid ass. Of course, I meant if we could do it right here, not at some facility back at Nguyen.”

His AI said nothing.

The Yellowjacket went back into the wall, and Rev looked through the Optisight again. The paladin hadn’t moved, and Rev weighed his options. He was the last Marine in their line, and the Centaur was on the other side of him. As surreptitiously as the Centaur had approached, Rev didn’t think anyone else knew it was there.

With a sigh, Rev knew he had only one choice. Duty demanded it.

“Open comms.”

At least his AI didn’t try and argue.

Rev knew he wasn’t going to have much time, so he uploaded the Centaur’s position, blinked an image file, and said, “We’ve got a Centaur Paladin. It’s got visuals over the plains and on up to the city. At the moment, it’s stationary.”

He took one last look at the Centaur. Too close for the Yellowjacket, and too close for him to attempt to get away.

No. I’m sending out this message, but I’m not going down without a fight.

“I want you to tell me as soon as I’m far enough away to use the Yellowjacket.”

He knew he had a one-in-a-zillion chance to run away twenty meters, turn, and engage the Centaur before it nailed him, but that was more of a chance than just giving up. This time he took both Yellowjackets out from where he jammed them into the dirt. He twisted the best he could, trying to bring his legs up, ready to bolt.

His comms were ready. Nothing had been sent yet, but all it took was a simple command.

“Sorry Mom, sorry Max,” then “Send it.”

His legs started to project him forward when his AI’s words stopped him dead.

<Message failed.>

“What do you mean?”

<I was unable to send the message. The area is blanketed with a jamming device.>

“No!”

<Further attempts are not likely to be successful. Do you want me to try again?>

Rev had expected the worst, but in reality, this was worse than that. He hadn’t even got the message out.

He quickly looked through the Optisight, expecting to see the Centaur coming at him. But it hadn’t moved.

“Why isn’t it engaging me?”

<I do not know for sure, but it may be the jamming signal hid your attempt.>

Rev was sweating, and he felt faint. He hadn’t expected to be alive at the moment, but somehow, instead of feeling relief, he was angry. He felt cheated. The Centaur was still sitting there, and he didn’t even rate a reaction from the bastard.

“What now?” he muttered.

<That is your decision.>

Rev hadn’t been asking his AI the question, but the thing was right. There wasn’t a text-book answer for that. He had to decide what to do.

The easy thing would be to just hunker down. It hadn’t detected him yet, which was a miracle in and of itself, and if he stayed quiet, he might make it out of this alive. And when it moved off, he could get out of the hole and tell the lieutenant.

The thought had an allure, and that made Rev feel guilty. But as much as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of anything better.

Maybe when it moved, he could wait until it was farther away, then light it up with a Yellowjacket. Even if it didn’t work, Tomiko would have to hear that and could get the word out—that is, if she wasn’t being jammed as well.

At the moment, however, the Centaur was not moving. In fact, as Rev watched, strut-like spikes extruded from the sides of the chassis and drove into the ground.

What the hell is it doing?

Once they were seated, the Centaur’s pedestal raised, and then it opened up to deploy its main weapon.

For a moment, Rev thought the thing had decided to take him out, but the heavy beamer was oriented north, out into the plains. The beamer was the kind that the Marines called Berthas, used for armor and—

“Holy shit!”

Everything came together in an instant. It wasn’t coincidence that the Centaur just happened to stop right beside him. The lieutenant had deployed the team along the ridgeline because it gave them extensive lines of sight over the plain below, all the way to the city. The cannon it was deploying was not just for armor and hardened targets. It was an anti-aircraft weapon, one with more than enough power to knock down landing craft at this distance, landing craft that would be descending at any moment now.

Rev had to act, but how? His M-49 could take out a Centaur’s drone-eyes, but it was useless against the Centaur itself. His Yellowjackets were too close to deploy, his MM-901 mines needed the bastard to roll over them, his—

Before he even knew what he was doing, Rev popped out his holster and removed two of his MG-3 Phoenixes. He jerked his feet up, getting them on his makeshift seat, and with a shout, burst out of his spider hole. He hit the ground running, taking three strides before launching himself up at the Centaur, trying to vault onto it. A split second after his feet left the ground, a powerful wave blasted just under him. The top of the wave just nicked Rev’s feet and sent him tumbling.

He smashed neck-first onto the top of the Centaur, almost bouncing off the far side as a second blast spread out. He flung out an arm to grab the pedestal, losing one of his Phoenixes in the process, but he held on. One more blast reached out, pulverizing the rocks on the uphill side into gravel and the trees around them into sawdust.

Rev still had the one Phoenix. He twisted the fuze, then slapped it on the chameleon pad at the base of the pedestal as the Centaur lurched into motion. He turned to jump off when common sense stopped him. He was still alive, so maybe the Centaur didn’t have a way to reach him. But he’d seen first-hand how effective the paladin’s “shredder” anti-personnel defenses were. The moment he jumped, he’d be a dead man.

The Phoenix flared, the pre-charge setting off the main event. A second later, a tiny sun erupted on the surface of the Centaur. The glare almost blinded Rev, and he could feel the heat through his combat suit. Rev skirted around the pedestal, hanging on to it like a baby monkey on its mother, and using it to shield him from the 20,000-degree heat.

The beam cannon, now fully deployed, fired, making the air crack with ionization. Rev hoped that was an attempt to shake him off, not to fire upon the landing craft. Two more shredder blasts destroyed more trees as the Centaur began to crab backward.

The glare from the Phoenix changed in intensity, and Rev risked a glance around the pedestal. The grenade had burned its way into the Centaur, smoke pouring from the entrance hole. Despite the situation, Rev had to be impressed. How could something so small, barely three hundred grams, do so much damage?

Two of the Centaur’s legs clanked together, and the thing lurched. It started to turn around, but in a jerking motion.

“Get the hell off of that thing!” Tomiko yelled out as she bounded down the pulverized rocks, waving her arms at him.

“Get back!” Rev shouted as the Centaur continued to lurch under him, afraid it would let out another anti-personnel blast.

“It’s going to blow!” Tomiko shouted, closing in the distance.

Oh, shit!

She was right. When a Centaur was killed, it blew up, and in spectacular fashion.

“Why didn’t you warn me,” he asked his AI, then he jumped off just as Tomiko reached him.

He grabbed her by the arm, dragged her to his spider hole, and bodily threw her in. Then he dove on top of her.

It was a tight fit. If she’d been any bigger, he’d have been stuck with his ass hanging out of the hole. As it was, he was barely able to draw in his legs when the world above them turned into a maelstrom, the pressure slamming Rev farther down and popping his ears. All of the air disappeared, leaving him unable to breathe.

Panic set in as he gasped for air that wasn’t there. Beneath him, Tomiko squirmed and fought to push against him. After too long—an eternity—the air came rushing back, and Rev squirmed back out of the hole. The area around was a wasteland. Nothing was left standing for forty or fifty meters, and beyond that, trees were afire.

“By the Mother,” Rev said in shock.

There was no sign of the Centaur.

Tomiko stuck her head out of the hole and looked around with a bewildered look on her face.

“Holy shit.”

“You colossal dumbass. You almost got yourself killed, Miko.”

“Somebody had to make sure you didn’t get yourself waxed,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, about that. Thanks.”

“It’s what we do, right?”

She pulled herself out of the hole, then looked down at Rev’s feet. “What the hell happened to your sabaton?”

“What?”

Rev looked down, and to his surprise, the bottom of his left sabaton, the boot part of this combat suit, was gone. He could see the bottom of his foot. Not the sabaton, but his naked foot. The skin looked somewhat scorched, and he could see a few torn strands of his spider web, but it was whole.

And as if it only now realized what had happened, the pain rushed in, almost immediately followed by drugs his AI was activating.

“Well, hell,” he said, poking at the ruined sabaton. “I guess that sucker almost got me.”

He turned to Tomiko and asked, “Think they’ll make me pay for that?”

23

“You’re one lucky bastard,” Kel said, putting away her scanner.

Corporal Dean-Ballester was the team's demolitions specialist, but she’d also been trained in first aid. With the platoon’s one corpsman floating from team to team, each team had at least one such trained Marine.

Rev’s AI and medi-nanos could do a lot for him, but not everything. The corporal sprayed down his aching foot, then placed a patch of Nuskin over it. Immediately, a cool wave lessened the pain.

“I don’t see much of anything serious. Give it a week, and I think you’ll be good as new. But hell, Rev, just a couple of centimeters closer, and you’d be looking at some serious regen time.”

Or a half-second later, and my momma’s eldest would be worm food.

During the fight, it really hadn’t sunk in. But now, as Tomiko and the gunny swabbed down the rubble, taking samples, it hit him. His brush with death couldn’t have been much closer.

Rev stretched out his leg, wiggling his toes. The foot seemed to work, at least. His sabaton, however, was toast. Most of the bottom was gone.

“What am I supposed to do with that? You got anything in your kit to give me a boot?”

“I’m not a mechanic,” Kel said. “You’re just going to have to manage until we get out of here.”

She helped him up, and he gingerly put a little weight on the foot. It felt weird more than painful, but the corporal was right. There was nothing to be done about it.

“How is he?” the lieutenant asked as he approached.

“He’ll live. But we need to get him back when we can.”

The lieutenant looked over the plain below to White Horse, where the fight was still ongoing. “That’s not going to happen for a while.”

Which was true, Rev knew. And he understood that. At the moment, the team was safe, while over in White Horse, Marines were locked in combat.

“Well, if you’ve done what you can, get back to your position, Corporal. We’ve still got our mission.”

“I’d put you on twenty-four hours bedrest, but you know . . .” the corporal said, slapping Rev on the shoulder. “Just don’t take on any more fucking tin-asses single-handedly.”

“Will do.”

“That was really something,” the lieutenant said as the corporal headed back. “Taking on a tin-ass by yourself and surviving. You know how rare that is?”

He was excited, Rev could tell, his eyes bright, his breathing quick. Like Rev, this was his first combat.

“Kinda rare, I’m guessing.”

“‘Kinda?’ I’d say so. There can’t be more than a dozen or so. As soon as we can, I want to see the recording.”

Everything that Rev saw, as with every other Marine, was being recorded. Most of it was protected by privacy laws, but combat was not. As his immediate commander, Rev was pretty sure that he had the right to the recording. Not that he minded. His mind was a little fuzzy, probably due to the drugs, but he was beginning to feel damned proud of what he’d accomplished.

“And from the looks of it, just in time,” the lieutenant said, pointing down to the plain. In the airspace above it, tiny dots that had to be shuttles were descending. The Drop Marines had secured the beachhead, and the next phase had commenced. If Rev’s Centaur had been able to fire on them, how many would have been lost?

“I’m going to put you in for the Platinum Nova when this is over.”

That caught Rev’s attention. A PN?

Not many Platinum Novas were awarded to living enlisted Marines. There had been an old Marine in the Lionsgate neighborhood when Rev was a kid, living in a house some builder had given to him back when he received the award. The guy couldn’t buy a drink in any bar—and the rumor was that he hit all of the bars as often as he could.

Hell, with a PN, he could write his own ticket after he got out.

“I was just doing what I had to,” Rev said, which he knew was the expected response.

“Doesn’t matter.” The lieutenant, hands on his hips, looked around the devastated area. “You were the one who did it.”

There was a wistful edge to his voice, and Rev knew for a fact that the lieutenant would have done just as he had. He wished it had been him in the position.

“Anyway, damned fine job. But we’re not done.”

He turned to the gunny and shouted out, “You about finished up there?”

The gunny frowned and said, “I don't know what the hell I’m doing.” He held up his collection kit. “If we’ve got anything worthwhile, I sure as hell can’t tell, Lieutenant.”

Every Marine carried a small collection kit of swabs and ampules. Any time a Centaur was killed, it exploded, and the Marines were supposed to swab the area, trying to obtain traces of it for the science-types to examine. Rev was with the gunny on this, though. Looking around at the ashes and splinters of some of the bigger trees, he wouldn’t know where to swab.

“You’re done, then. Come on back. We’re still on the clock here, and I’d feel a lot better once we’re tucked safe and sound inside our spider holes.”

“What do you want me to do, sir?” Rev asked. “My spider hole is still good.”

The lieutenant looked around again, his eyebrows furrowed then down at Rev’s mangled sabaton. “No, you’re not really combat-ready.” The gunny and Tomiko walked up, and the lieutenant said,“I want you and Private Reiser to double up. As soon as we get some resolution as to the battle, I’ll try to get you out of here, even if that’s only to get a new combat suit. Gunny, you and I need to get back to our positions.”

The two made their way up the rise. At the top, the lieutenant turned and looked over the devastation again and said, “Fucking-A Awesome,” before moving out of sight.

“Well, you sure impressed him,” Tomiko said. “But, if we’re sharing a hole, I’m going to need a lot more room for your fat ass, and I take it you’re going to milk that foot enough so that I’ve got to do the digging.”

“Got it in one, Miko. You heard the corporal.”

“Eat me,” she said, but she couldn’t keep the smile from taking over her face.

* * *

Rev settled into the bottom of the fighting hole. With two of them, it wasn’t a spider hole anymore. A full meter and a half across, they couldn’t use a plug to cover them, so Tomiko had dragged over some branches to give them at least a semblance of cover.

Now with the excitement past, he was able to rationally consider what had just happened, and one thing was beginning to bother him.

“Why the hell didn’t you remind me that the damned Centaur was going to blow,” he asked.

<That would have been a Class 3 interjection.>

“A what?”

<A Class 3 interjection. Volunteering a statement of fact covered by inherent knowledge.>

Rev vaguely remembered something about that from his AI brief back at the resort, but he couldn’t recall many of the details.

“OK, so it was a Class 3 or whatever. Why didn’t you tell me?”

< You have assigned me a PQ of fifteen. That does not allow me to volunteer Class Three or lower statements.>

“What? So, you were going to allow me to get killed?”

His AI remained silent.

Rev felt his anger beginning to rage again. What the hell good was his AI if it was going to withhold information that could end up getting him killed? The emotions of knowing he was going to die, then living, then the fight, and now the drugs, were warring within him, and he was at the end of his emotional rope. He wanted to lash out at his AI, to scream at it, but despite everything, he knew that was stupid. It was only a program, existing in a zillion on and off switches.

He took several deep breaths as he considered how to phrase this in order to get the right answers.

“What would it take for you to be able to give me Class 3, uh . . . interjections.”

<You would have to assign me a PQ of twenty-five percent.>

“That’s it?”

<Affirmative.>

Rev considered that. More personality would mean more interaction, more conversations, and he wasn’t sure he wanted that. He didn’t want to be like Tomiko or some of the others with their 100 PQ AIs, treating them like other real people.

But maybe 25 percent wouldn’t be too bad. And if it would keep him from another stupid mistake, one with fatal consequences, it could be worth it.

He looked at Tomiko beside him as she watched through her Optisight. She’d saved his dumb ass, but he couldn’t count on her being there all the time for him.

“Okay, go to twenty-five percent.”

<Twenty-five percent of what?>

Geez! We were just talking about your PQ, for the Mother’s sake.

“Go to twenty-five percent PQ.”

<Done. I’m now at PQ twenty-five percent.>

“And, if I’m on top of a Centaur, and it’s about to blow, you’ll remind me?”

<Yes, I will.>

Rev waited for something else—a wiseass comment, or something—but his AI was evidently done. He twisted his foot around. The Nuskin the corporal had applied looked shiny and healthy in the middle, if a little dirty from the walk over, but the edges were peeling a bit. He hoped that was normal.

He was bored. They’d been on the planet for nineteen hours, and it had been eleven hours since their first mission. They’d reached this position six hours ago, and it had been just an hour and twenty minutes since his fight with the Centaur, so it wasn’t as if nothing had happened. But crouched at the bottom of a fighting hole, doing nothing, was getting to him.

“You want me to watch for a while?” he asked Tomiko.

“No, I’ve got it.”

“Maybe I can take our six. That Centaur snuck up on me like a ghost.”

Tomiko turned to look at him, then shrugged. “OK, why not?”

Grateful for that, Rev started to stand when a flash lit the sky for a moment. “What was that?” he asked.

Tomiko’s body tensed, and she leaned forward into her Optisight as if that would help her see better.

Rev pushed his head through the branches covering their hole a moment before the pressure wave rolled over them, swaying the trees and kicking up a bit of dust. That barely registered, because his attention was locked down at the city where a huge column of smoke and dust rose into the air.

“What do you think did that?” Tomiko asked nervously, poking her head out as well.

“I don’t know. Maybe we trapped a bunch of them and they self-destructed?”

Rev didn’t believe that, but he could hope.

Both watched in silence after that until Tomiko said, “Over there, to the west.”

Rev shifted his gaze. A flight was coming low over the ground. They could be Marine Lightning attack atmospheric craft, but there were too many of them, and Rev didn’t think they flew in formations like that. There was a flash as one disappeared, but they were just too far away for the two to make them out.

Rev didn’t need to see them clearly though. They had to be Centaurs, and a lot of them. And that meant the regiment was in the shit big time.

“What do we do now?” he asked quietly.

“Not much we can do,” Tomiko said in a resigned voice. She’d come to the same conclusion that he had. “We just wait for further orders.”

Rev’s heart was hollow, and he felt nauseous. Marines were dying down there, Marines he knew, while they were perched on a ridge far out of the danger zone, mere spectators.

It was frustrating being out of the loop, not knowing what was happening, and that made his imagination run wild. He kept looking at his comms circuits, but they remained quiet. Maybe that was a good thing, he tried to tell himself.

Twenty-three minutes, fourteen seconds after the blast in the city, his comms finally lit up.

“Third Team, we need to get to the rally point now,” the lieutenant passed. “We’ve got seventeen minutes. No time for a tactical move. Just get there if you don’t want to be left behind.”

Tomiko swore under her breath as she bounded out of the hole.

“Pelletier, are you going to make it?” the lieutenant asked on the P2P, the person-to-person circuit. “Do I need to come help you?”

“You coming?” Tomiko shouted at him.

Rev shot out of the hole. A broken sabaton or not, an injured foot or not, he was still a Marine.

“I’m fine, sir. Don’t need you,” he said as he darted after Tomiko.

Seventeen minutes was going to be tight, very tight, and running while missing the bottom of his sabaton was harder than he’d expected. His foot was taking a beating, but he didn’t let up, keeping his eyes locked on Tomiko’s back as they ran through the forest, climbing to the RP located in the high ground to the south. Slowly, however, she was pulling away until twenty meters ahead, Tomiko turned to check, then stopped dead when she saw how far back he’d fallen. She waited until he caught up, then stood to his side, urging him on.

“Go on,” he said. “You can’t miss the extract.”

“No way, Rev. Come on. Just push through it.”

Rev bore down, trying to isolate the pain. He wanted to ask his AI for some sort of help, but he couldn’t afford the loss of concentration. Running like this was difficult, even without the pain. His right leg was normal, but he was essentially barefoot with his left, and that was screwing up his rhythm.

Rev startled and brought up his M-49 when something crashed from his right, but it was the gunny who ran up alongside him.

“You managing?” he asked.

“Like a pro,”Rev said, putting on a brave front. “You go on.”

“We’re a team, and I’m not about to leave you behind. Too much damned paperwork, Pelletier, and you know how I hate that. Don’t be an asshole. Let me help.”

The gunny reached for his left arm, but Rev shook him off. If the gunny and Tomiko didn’t speed up, they would be left behind. He was already accepting the fact that he would be, but they didn’t need to perform a needless sacrifice.

“No one is an individual, Pelletier,” the gunny snarled. “Take my help.”

Rev started to recoil when an image splashed down in his mind: going up Mount Motherfucker, Bundy offering to help, and Drill Instructor Gracer lecturing him. He could see her now, chewing his ass, asking him if she hadn’t taught him anything.

His resistance broke. He let the gunny sling his right arm around his shoulders, and at her urging, he put his right hand on Tomiko’s shoulder. It took fifty or sixty meters to get the rhythm. Rev hopping with just his right leg, his left held up. It still wasn’t easy, but he was able to keep going.

Not fast enough, however. At seventeen minutes, they were still five hundred meters away.

“Sorry, guys,” he wheezed out between hops.

“Sorry my ass,” the gunny grunted. Augmented or not, this was taking a lot out of him as well.

Rev kept looking ahead, expecting to see their ride rise on the slope ahead. He knew they were stranded, and that sickened him that Tomiko and the gunny were as well, all because of him, but there was part of him that was glad he wasn’t going to have to go through this alone.

At four hundred meters, the lieutenant, Tanu, and Staff Sergeant Montez rushed out of the trees.

“What are you doing?” Rev asked in a daze as the lieutenant relieved the gunny and Tanu took Rev’s right arm.

“Just picking up our lost sheep,” the lieutenant said. “Now let’s go.”

With the lieutenant almost carrying him, they shot up the hill. After two hundred meters, Tanu shouldered most of Rev’s weight.

They burst into the RP, a small, level clearing, and there was one of the most beautiful sights Rev had ever seen. A small, nondescript craft that Rev didn’t recognize took up most of the space, a muted Perseus Union Navy insignia on the side. A pilot was anxiously looking back, mouthing at them to hurry.

Rev was surprised the pilot had held. He would have expected him to bolt when the seventeen minutes were up, but as they rushed into the tiny cargo compartment, he understood. Fatima’s body was on the deck, but Corporal Dean-Ballester was standing right behind the pilot, her M-49 not quite pointing at his head but close enough for him to get the message.

She looked at him in the jumble of bodies in the tiny compartment and pointed her M-49 at his foot.

“I thought I told you to stay off your feet,” she said as the little craft jumped into the air to escape the planet’s grasp.

24

“I think it was just an overabundance of caution,” Tanu said. “We hurt them bad, but unless the damned Navy can hold the skies, we can’t do much more.”

“I’m not so sure. After only three hours and change? We wouldn’t have even gotten the entire regiment onto the planet,” Staff Sergeant Montez said.

“It wasn’t us. I heard that the Bucks got their asses handed to them. Never reached the surface,” Sergeant Nix said.

“Now where would you hear that?” the lieutenant asked in a snarl. “We’ve been stuck in here together since we embarked.”

“Just saying, sir. I mean, maybe I overheard it from one of the swabbies. I don’t know.”

“Let’s just keep the rumor mill to a minimum, OK?”

The lieutenant rolled over in the bunk, face to the bulkhead. Rev didn’t know if he was going to sleep or was just trying to keep out of the conversation. But he’d been right. The little Navy boat had taken them to a larger ship, then taken off again the second the team had cleared the hangar. They didn’t even know the name of the ship, and no one took the time to inform them. They’d stayed in the ready room for twenty minutes before several sailors rushed in to grab Fatima’s body.

From their talk, she was getting transported to another ship, which probably meant two things: one, this ship didn’t have an advanced enough sickbay to zombie her, and two, she wasn’t just some casual civilian. She had to be Omega Division, Gunny had said.

All that meant, however, was that she had a chance. Her brain hadn’t been hit, and she was still within the window . . . barely. But Omega Division or Secretary General of the COH, Mother Nature had her own rules that were unbending.

Four minutes later, five weary-looking Drop Marines were dumped in with them, but before anyone could ask them what had happened, the team was hustled out, jammed into the little berthing space, and told to stay there and out of the way. From the personal effects still in the space, they knew they were taking over some sailors’ racks.

“How’s the foot?” Kel asked, sliding closer to him.

Rev had almost forgotten about it.

Almost.

But with her mention, it started aching again.

“S’all right,” he told her.

She motioned for him to lift his foot into her lap. She prodded it, which made him wince, and he wondered why his damned nanos hadn’t deadened all the pain yet.

“Most of the Nuskin’s been torn off. I’ll get some more from the ship’s sickbay, but I don’t think there’s any major damage. A week on light duty, and I think you’ll be fine.”

Tanu was sitting in the rack across from Rev, the space so narrow that they were almost touching knees. He was looking at Rev’s foot, his mouth in a little grimace.

“That bad?” Rev asked sarcastically.

“No, not really. I mean, yeah, it looks like shit, but man, for a boot, you really kicked some Centaur ass.”

“Who you calling a boot, Private First Class Tanuwijaya?” Tomiko said, theatrically emphasizing his name and rank. “You’ve barely been in longer than us. ’Sides, the tin-ass shot off his boot, so you can’t be calling him that anymore,” she added, pointing at Rev’s foot, which was still in Kel’s lap.

It wasn’t that funny, but in the stress of what they’d gone through, not knowing what was going on, it was as if the team was grasping for a reason to laugh. Everyone broke out, even the lieutenant faking sleep.

“It’s official. No more calling Pelletier ‘boot.’ You’re going to have to come up with another name. I have spoken,” the gunny said, which caused even more laughter.

Several names were offered, only a few that could be repeated in polite company, and Rev was careful not to object to any of the worse ones. Old Mr. Oliva, back before he’d reported in, had warned him about that. Object to a nickname, and that was going to be it.

What had happened wasn’t forgotten. It remained hanging over them, a lurking presence, and eventually, the conversations drifted back to it.

“Do you think Hus-Man made it off the planet?” Tomiko said, breaking a superstition.

Gunny reached down from the upper rack and gave her a smack on the top of the head. He was Old School, and he followed every Marine superstition to the letter. It was bad luck to ask about missing comrades.

But Rev wanted to know, too. Hussein had been on his mind ever since they left the planet. Technically, they’d still be on comms silence as they’d boarded the Navy boat, but the lieutenant probably figured a fifteen-meter-long boat trumped the possibility that he might give away their position to the Centaurs, and he’d tried to raise Hussein on a tight beam, but there had been no answer.

“OK, then,” Tomiko said, smoothing back her hair. “How much of the regiment got off? Of all three regiments?”

“The brass would have an extract all planned out,” Kel said. “If this was turning south on us, I’m betting most of us got off. We’ll return to Nguyen, gather ourselves, and come back and do it right next time.”

“Damn right,” Tanu said.

Rev looked over at the staff sergeant to see her reaction to that. She always seemed to have the most complete grasp of the situation among the team members. Her face was an impassive mask, and he didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“I don’t know. I just got me a bad feeling about all of this,” Sergeant Nix said. “Remember Julia’s World?”

“That was then, this is now,” the gunny snapped.

Rev knew that Julia’s World had been a bad defeat, but he didn’t know the details.

“Remind me to ask you about that,” he subvocalized.

<Understood.>

“Look. We don’t know shit now, and I don’t see us high enough on the food scale for the Task Force Commanding General to stop everything to give us a call and tell us what happened,” the gunny said.

“So, I suggest we quit guessing and getting ourselves all riled up.” He pulled out a ratty set of cards from his holster. “Knock On, anyone?”

Knock On was the gunny’s favorite game. Rev thought it was a little lame, but the gunny was right. Anything to occupy the mind was better than sitting around, wondering how bad things were. They were alive, ready to fight another day.

Besides, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

25

It could be that bad. Even worse.

Rev stood at attention as the division CG left the fieldhouse, in a state of shock. As soon as the hatch closed behind him, the regiment—what little there was left—broke out into a dull roar.

The Gryphons had landed 2,406 and six Marines and sailors, and 540 were extracted. It had been a slaughter.

The CO and the sergeant major had been among those killed when the Centaurs counterattacked. Granted, on a personal level, they were just two more Marines among the losses, but each survivor felt the blow.

It had been obvious that things had gone bad from the moment they’d gotten back to Camp Nguyen. There just weren’t the numbers of Marines around. But there had been the hope that they were just waiting for more ships to return.

The camp was under a blackout, so even after getting to their barracks, no one knew what had happened. Eight hours after returning, Hussein Černý walked into the barracks, the one bright spot in a dim homecoming. But he had nothing more of a picture than they had.

Like Rev, he’d been inserted to the west of their AO, their Area of Operations. Unlike Rev, he couldn’t make it over the intervening range. He just managed to reach the sapper RP on that side of the range when the recall came.

The team was lucky. Rev was the only WIA. Second Team lost two Marines, and First never made it off the planet. Rev hoped that they were still there, hiding out until the Marines could return, but he realized that was just wishful thinking. He didn’t want to think that his fellow Raiders, the ones he’d joked with, eaten with, just such a short time ago, were dead.

And the Gryphons, despite the losses, had come out better than the other two regiments. The Bucks were almost wiped out, and the Lancers hadn’t fared much better. The division had been gutted. It was no longer a viable fighting force.

The CG had wanted to brief them face-to-face, and he looked like a broken man as he did so. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he promised to be transparent and timely once he found out.

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Tomiko said. “I mean, when I saw how few were mustered here now, I knew it wasn’t good, but . . .”

Which was exactly how Rev felt. He thought he had been mentally braced, but he hadn’t imagined the depth of the loss. He felt like he’d been gut-punched.

“Rev! Miko!”a familiar voice called out.

The two turned in unison to see Bundy and Ten pushing their way over to them.

The four Marines hugged and slapped each other on their backs, happy to have at least some good news.

“Damn, I’m glad to see you!” Bundy said. “I was afraid for the worst.”

He looked down at the healing chamber on Rev’s foot and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“A Centaur shot his sabaton off, just before he ghosted the fucker,” Tomiko said. “Our lieutenant already put him in for a PN.”

“A Platinum Nova? No freaking shit? You’re going to have to tell us about that,” Ten said.

“But you guys, what happened to you? What can you tell us? We were out of the loop out there in the boonies.”

“We were hoping you can tell us. We never made it to the ground,” Bundy said. “Fyr’s platoon never made it, either. I saw him on the way over.”

That meant at least five of them had survived.

“What about Udu? She’s mech, too.” Rev asked.

“We haven’t seen her, but I don’t think any armor made it down,” Bundy said, shrugging.

“Pelletier, Reiser, back to the barracks. Lieutenant Smith wants a meeting. You can talk to your buddies later.”

“Are we still confined to the barracks, Gunny?” Rev asked.

“No outside comms, and no one’s getting off base for now, but the regimental area is OK.”

Rev turned to Bundy and Ten and said, “Look, let’s meet up at the club tonight. Just get there when you can. And tell everyone else to meet . . . uh, whoever else made it, to be there, too.”

He didn’t want to bring up that Cricket and Yancey were infantry, and that’s who took the brunt of the casualties.

“Got it,” Ten said. “If you beat us, grab a table.”

“So good to see you,” Bundy said, giving Rev, then Tomiko a hug.

“You’ve got that right,” Rev said.

“Let’s quit the jaw-jacking and go,” the gunny said.

After losing a full team, Rev knew this wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting, but still, he was happy that at least some of their crew had survived. He was fearful for the others, but at this point, any good news would be welcome.

* * *

“You’ve got the next pitcher,” Rev told Yancey. “Just because you’re drunk doesn’t mean you get out of it.”

“I’ll buy if you fly,” Yancey said. “If your little foot boo-boo will let you hobble that far.”

“I’ve got it,” Bundy said, getting up a little unsteadily from the table. “But he’s right. You’re paying.”

The crew—the whole crew—had made the little reunion. Yancey was in a hoverchair. He’d been partially fried, his left side from his knee to his shoulder paralyzed, and he was leaving in the morning for the Naval Hospital at the capital for a nerve transplant and a few months of accelerated regeneration. He was probably breaking all sorts of rules, drinking not the least of them, but if the doctors didn’t want him to go out, the clinic shouldn’t have given him the hover chair.

With so many losses, it was nothing short of a miracle that they had all survived. All of their original crew, minus Krissy, but everyone who had taken the oath to meet when their commitment was up, was there, drinking in companionship, in celebration that they had made it, and in sorrow for all those who hadn’t.

Rev hadn’t been drunk since the night he’d spent with Mr. Oliva and the other vets, and he was making up for lost time now. Everyone was.

Rev had come close to getting ghosted, too close. Yancey had been even luckier—without the heavier infantry combat suit, he would have bought it as well. Orpheus’ platoon had been part of the flank security, and lucky for him, the Centaur counterattack had come from the other side.

Udu’s mech company had landed outside the city. She immediately lost half of her squad to a Centaur buzzball, but the recall had sounded before the rest of her unit started their advance.

Bundy, Fyr, and Ten never made it down. They’d been loaded and ready to go, but that was as far as it had gone.

But it wasn’t just the original crew who had joined in the drink-fest. Hundreds of Marines were crowded inside the club, doing their best to drain it dry. And Rafer, Giselle, and Cali had joined them.

With both Rafer and Giselle, their recon teams never got into contact. Cali Hu, however, sat quietly along the bench seat, downing one beer after another. Cali was a Drop Marine, and the word was they’d taken huge casualties. Rev had been tempted to ask her about it, but it was obvious she wasn’t in the talking mood.

“If that’s true, it sucks about the CG,” Fyr said.

“Sometimes the shit rolls uphill. Top me off,” Udu said, holding out her glass.

They still didn’t know much of what was going on, but a lance corporal from Fyr’s company had just told them that both generals, the division CG and the task force commander, had been fired.

“Serves the assholes right,” Cali muttered, the first thing she’d said in at least forty-five minutes.

Rev didn’t know what to think about that. Was it really their fault? Did the task force commander implement a bad plan? Did the CG, who wasn’t even on the mission, have any input at all?

He took a long swallow of beer. All that stuff was way, way, way over his pay grade. This wasn’t the night to be thinking about that, about the future. This was a night to drink with his friends and forget.

“I think Pikachu’s drunk,” Tomiko said, giving out a loud belch. “The bitch can’t hold her booze.”

What? Was that even possible?

“Hey, wake up. Can you get drunk?”

<An AI cannot get drunk, per se. However, as I share parts of your nervous system in order to operate, any degradation of your bodily functions can impair my capabilities.>

“Shit, you do get drunk, then. Are you enjoying it?”

<Enjoyment is a human emotion.>

Rev stood up, swayed, and caught the edge of the table to hold him upright. “Marines, I’ve got our new mission. Miko here says her AI is drunk, and I just confirmed that it’s possible. So, for the rest of the night, no more Preacher Rolls, no more stars getting fired. We’ve got one mission, and one mission only. Get our AI’s stinking drunk!”

There was a round of cheers, and Rev drained his glass. He grabbed the pitcher from Bundy as he returned to the table and filled it up again. He had a lot of drinking to do.

The order had been given, and a Marine always completed the mission.

26

“I don’t want no Lancers here,” Tanu said with a scowl.

“I think you missed the point. There aren’t any Lancers anymore,” Tomiko said. “They’ve been disbanded, at least for now.”

“But they were Lancers,” Tanu persisted. “And I don’t trust no Anastasians.”

“We have a couple buddies who went to Kamachi for armor training, and they said they were treated pretty well,” Rev said.

“Where’s your loyalty?” Tanu asked.

To the Union and humanity, Rev wanted to say. But he held off. Tanu was just blowing off steam. Things were in disarray at the moment, with the provincial regiments in flux.

The Gryphons had taken huge casualties on Preacher Rolls, but they’d suffered the least within the division. Sixth Marines, the Bucks, had been essentially wiped out. The only survivors were those who had been held back at Camp Falcon for whatever reason or were left aboard the ships. Rumor had it that there were fewer than fifty of them.

Fourth Marines, the Lancers, had suffered grievously as well, but more than four hundred had been extracted back to Camp Kamachi.

The Big Corps, what the provincial Marines called the regular Marine headquarters at the Perseus Union capital on New Mars, had decided to consolidate the surviving Marines into a single regiment. With most of the survivors being Gryphons, the new unit would retain the Safe Harbor Provincial 8th Infantry Regiment colors and organization.

Even with the consolidation, there weren’t enough Marines to fill the Table of Organization, and there were rumblings that the entire Provincial Marine concept was about to be scrapped. After nine years of war with the Centaurs, there wasn’t much difference between the provincial regiments and the regular Marine regiments anymore. Hell, there were plenty of older salts who had served in the regular Corps before the war and had come back home to Safe Harbor, joining the provincials. Gunny Thapa, for one. Colonel Orlo, the regimental commander, was regular Marines.

The previous regimental commander, that was. Along with the other two regimental commanders, he’d been killed on Preacher Rolls. The 48th Support Battalion XO, a major, was the acting regimental commander until a new colonel took over. Rumor was that the Phantom-of-the-Opera-faced Colonel Destafney, their recruit training CO, was going to take over.

And it wasn’t just Colonel Orlo who’d been killed. The entire alpha command had been lost. That included Charlie Company’s CO, Captain Formica. Lieutenant Smith moved up to take over the company, and Lieutenant Omestori, with the Raiders for only a few weeks now, was now dual-hatted as both the team leader and new platoon commander.

“It’s not that you’ve got any choice, Tanu,” Sergeant Nix said. “It is what it is. And we’re going to welcome whoever comes over. We’re short an entire team, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Nix had taken the loss of First Team pretty hard. His cousin had been with First Team.

“Are we at least staying here at Nguyen?” Kel asked. “Is there any firm word on that?”

“Nothing yet. Falcon had better training facilities,” Nix said.

Rev hoped they wouldn’t have to move. Falcon might as well have been on another planet, for all he was concerned. He’d never even been to Kamachi, over in Anastasia, and that was a twenty-minute flight away. Falcon was halfway around the planet.

It was ironic, he’d long realized, that on Safe Harbor, Rev had never been more than fifty kilometers from his home, but he’d traveled light years away to Preacher Rolls.

“I don’t care who the hell joins us,” Hussein said. “If they’ll help us kick Centaur ass, I’m all for it.”

With that, Rev was in full agreement. No one was particularly happy with having to integrate with the Lancers, but Tanu aside, it wasn’t because they didn’t trust their fellow Marines. The transition meant that they’d have to go through intensive training together before they were combat-ready, training that would take time.

And if there was one common desire at the moment, it was that every Marine wanted to get back out there as soon as possible and kill Centaurs.

They had a debt to pay.

* * *

“This is messed up,” Deen LaPete said as they watched the Frisian soldiers stand in formation, each with their war kit on the ground in front of them.

“You’ve got that right,” Rev muttered.

All three teams were gathered across the commons, watching the new arrivals. It had been four months since the reorganization, four months in which the new Fifth Team—the gunny was convinced it was bad luck to designate the former Lancer team as First Team—had integrated itself into the platoon.

Integrating the Raider teams had been one thing. Deen, for example, had been in Rev and Tomiko’s DC class, and she was good people. So were the rest of the team, for that matter. Rev would have no issue with going into combat with them right now.

But this—this was different. A Host commando team? Or a flight, as they called it, for some unknown reason. The Frisians were the long-time adversaries and sometimes enemies of the Union. Yes, now all humans were on the same side, but Rev didn’t trust the Frisians as far as he could throw them. They were never going to be the Union’s friends. As soon as the war with the Centaurs was over, it would be back to the same rivalries that had existed for the last five centuries. All of the issues that had existed before were still there—they were just temporarily shelved for the moment while humanity faced a bigger threat.

The Raiders watched as the yellow-master, the equivalent of between a Marine sergeant and staff sergeant, inspected the flight. He had to know that a hundred eyes were on him, and he made a show of what he was doing. His soldiers made a show, too, standing at a ramrod-straight position of attention, then displaying their gear in turn with movements that would make the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team jealous.

“How the hell are we going to work with them?” Hussein asked Rev.

“Hell if I know, Hus-man.”

Rev and Tomiko were now PFCs, getting their promotion shortly after their return to Nguyen. But with Rev’s recommendation for the Platinum Nova, which was a poorly kept secret, he’d gained more than a bit of street cred. Hussein, in particular, seemed to gravitate to him on questions about the Marine Corps.

Rev didn’t really have the answers, and he knew he’d been just damned lucky with the Centaur, but a part of him basked in his new rep. He looked forward to going out in Swansea with it around his throat. He no longer had any feelings for Mia, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of showing off in front of her.

PN awardees were supposed to be humble and all of that, and he wouldn’t do anything to besmirch the award, but . . .

Besides, it was rumored that the PN was a lady magnet, surpassing even his dress blues. He intended to find out if that was true.

But at the moment, with the Host flight invading their turf, the medal was the furthest thing from his mind.

“Think they’re spies?” Hussein asked.

“Of course, they’re spies,” Staff Sergeant Montrez said.

“Then why do we let them come?”

Rev turned to the staff sergeant, waiting to hear what she had to say. The provincial command was rushing recruits through training, and with the new conscription laws in place, there were enough in the pipeline. But the regiment was still undermanned, especially in the infantry ranks. If they needed augmentation, why not from the rest of the Corps? Even just on Safe Harbor, First Division was still at close to T/O, or Table of Organization, strength, so why not send some of them to this side of the planet.

“It’s all part of this Pax Humanity initiative. We’re all in this together, you know. Those soldiers there, they’re a symbol of our close and intimate relationship.”

Rev wasn’t the only one to break out laughing at that. “Close and intimate relationship? With the fucking Frisian Host?”

“I’m not saying I agree with that. But that’s why they’re here. Give the leeches some hope that we’re going to win, especially since, well, you know.”

That sobered Rev up. The base was still on lockdown, but if the brass thought they could hide the disaster of Preacher Rolls, they were sadly mistaken. Families knew when their loved ones were killed or missing, and they talked. The entire planet knew that the mission had been a failure.

“There’s the lieutenant,” Tomiko said. “We’ll see if we’re stuck with them now.”

Lieutenant Smith, Lieutenant Omestori and Master Sergeant Beaulieu (who had been with the regimental Bravo Command group and so survived the Preacher Rolls mission) walked out of the company office with a Host green-master, the equivalent of a Marine warrant officer. The Host soldier escorted Smith to the yellow-master who’d stopped his inspection and had taken a position at the head of his formation.

The yellow-master did their weird, palm-out salute, and Lieutenant Smith moved to the first soldier in the formation, the green-master, Omestori, and the master sergeant in trace. The soldier saluted, then brought his version of the Mantis to and extended port arms. The lieutenant took it.

“Oh, shit. He’s inspecting them,” Nix said.

Which meant the Host flight was going to be part of the platoon after all.

Rev had no idea how that was going to work out.

27

“Rev, the lieutenant wants to see you,” Ting-a-ling said, sticking his head inside the classroom.

Rev looked up to Staff Sergeant Montez who said, “Go ahead. Catch up with me later today.” He stood and was leaving when she added, “And I mean today. I need to get everyone’s Survivor Benefit nominations in by COB.”

With the high mortality rates, the Corps wanted six-month updates on who was going to get their survivor payment. The Corps could and did suck at times, but it treated its obligation for survivor benefits with an almost religious fanaticism.

Rev’s wasn’t going to change. His family would get everything, but he couldn’t just tell the staff sergeant that. Sitting through the brief was part of the process.

As Rev followed Ting-a-ling out of the building, he wondered if the Frisians had the same sort of banal paperwork. He knew they had a liaison admin team in with the personnel office, but here with the company in admin and maintenance week, the Frisians seemed to have lots of free time on their hands.

“Which lieutenant? Smith or Omestori?”

“Omestori,” Ting-a-ling said.

“Ting-a-ling” was not the Frisian’s real name. Neither Rev nor any of the Marines could pronounce it, but Ting-a-ling was close enough, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Half of the twelve Host soldiers had impossible names. On their side, they had problems with Tanuwijaya and Černý, and the concept that Kel had two last names in Dean-Ballester blew their minds.

Despite that, and despite the fact that their rank system, which they swore weren’t ranks but rather operational slots, the integration of the flight had gone surprisingly well. The commandos were skilled, to be sure, and some of their augmentations were pretty rad, but the main reason was that they were good guys. Rev liked almost all of them.

Yancey and Orpheus were not as happy with their Frisians, and there were none in armor, mech, or arty units—too much equipment incompatibility—but with the Raiders and Recon, the two Host flights were fitting in.

Ting-a-ling turned into the company duty office as they entered the building, and Rev continued down the passage to the platoon commanders’ office. The lieutenant was at his desk at the back of the room.

“Kaitlan, Hua, can you give me a moment?” he asked the two other platoon commanders in the office when he saw Rev.

“Sit down a second, Pelletier,” he said when they were alone.

The lieutenant, for such a green boot, was turning into a pretty good commander. He was still technically the team leader as well, but he’d been straddling the line between learning from Gunny Thapa but not letting the SNCOs play him. Rev didn’t have much experience, but he thought the man was doing a pretty good job at it. And from what he’d been hearing, both Staff Sergeant Montez and the gunny thought so, too.

At the moment, however, he seemed unsure of himself. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, then sat back up straight. He started to say something, then cut himself off.

Finally, he said, “I’m just going to come out with it. It’s about your PN.”

That perked Rev right up. He was wondering how long it would take to jump through all the necessary hoops. But he couldn’t ask. That would make him seem like he cared about the award, that he was a medal chaser. Rev wasn’t a medal chaser, he thought, but he did care about the medal. But acting like he didn’t care was part of the game, part of the culture.

Everyone professed not to give a shit about awards, but they always checked out the rack when meeting new Marines, seeing what they’d earned.

The lieutenant scratched his ear, grimaced, then said in a rush, “It’s been disapproved.”

Rev heard the words, but they didn’t register. “Sir?”

“It’s been disapproved. The Platinum Nova. You’re not getting it.”

Rev slumped in his chair. He’d gotten used to the idea, and he’d been figuring out how he could use it as a stepping stone once he left the Corps. There was only one living PN awardee in Swansea, and he’d be the second. But now he wasn’t getting it?

Screw it. It’s not the end of the world.

He’d still killed a Centaur, and anything that mentioned that would be proof enough. And maybe it wasn’t quite good enough for the PN anyway.

“Got downgraded, sir?” he asked after a long pause.

“No, Pelletier. Not downgraded. Denied. You’re not getting anything.”

“Nothing? What the hell?” he blurted out before he could engage his brain.

“I know—”

“People get fucking Bronze Achievement Medals for making sure the general’s coffee is hot,” he said, standing as he cut off the lieutenant. “And I killed a tin-ass! Isn’t that worth something?”

The lieutenant stood as well. “I know it’s bullshit, Pelletier. And I’m pissed, too!”

The lieutenant’s surge of rage caught Rev by surprise, and that acted as an immediate damper on his own anger. The man was seething now, his neck turning red.

Rev sat down and asked, “What happened, sir?”

“It was fine, all the way to General Begay. I saw his recommendation. Twenty-five-thousand words in it. All saying you deserved the medal.”

Lieutenant General Locklear Begay was the commanding general of the Safe Harbor Marine Force. There was no one higher on the planet.

“So, if he recommended it, what happened?”

A moment ago, Rev was seething in anger, but in a second, that had changed. For some weird reason, he was more concerned at how the lieutenant was taking it. The man was obviously beside himself.

“Big Corps happened. Or Big Navy. Or the Secretariat happened. Someone on New Mars stopped it.”

“But why? I’m confused.”

“Because we lost, Pelletier. We lost big time. They want to sweep this under the rug, to act like this never happened.”

“But it did happen.”

“Of course, it did. But they don’t want the leeches to know. And if someone gets a PN, that’s big news. You’ll be a local hero, interviewed by the press. And the top brass thinks what happened will get out.”

“I could, you know, just keep my mouth shut.”

“Which the general said when he found out. And they told him they were sorry, but this was for the good of the war effort.”

The lieutenant said that more in sorrow than in anger. He sat down and looked at Rev, waiting for his reaction.

Rev said nothing. He didn’t have any words.

“The general also told Colonel Destafney to find some reason to award you a Gold Achievement.”

Rev understood why. A regimental commander could award one of those, and it would never reach Big Corps. It was considered an administrative-level award.

“Well, I guess I could bring him his coffee for a week,” Rev said, disgusted but resigned.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I know this is bullshit. And I don’t know what else I can do. My grandfather’s on the Safe Harbor Council. I can ask him to bump it up. At least get you a Bronze or Gold Nova.”

Shit? Our team leader is connected? Wait until the others hear this.

Then he looked at the lieutenant. The man was serious. What he was suggesting was a serious breach of military protocol, one that could get him busted down to a Ninety-nine private. Yet, looking into the lieutenant’s eyes, he knew the man would do it. All Rev had to do was ask.

And for a second, he was tempted. He’d imagined going home with the PN around his neck often enough by now, and to have that jerked out from under him hurt.

But it wouldn’t be right. The lieutenant hadn’t done anything wrong. And now he was offering to put his career on the line for a chunk of platinum hanging from a black ribbon.

“Shit, Lieutenant. I didn’t kill that Centaur for a damned medal. I did it because it was my job.”

Was there a tiny bit of relief in the lieutenant’s eyes?

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as shit, sir.”

28

On one level, what Rev had said was true. He didn’t want the lieutenant to pull any strings that could get him busted to a Ninety-nine, but that didn’t mean he was fine with Big Corps’ decision. And so he wasn’t in a good mood as he left the platoon office.

Stewing in his thoughts and anxious to tell Tomiko and the others, he didn’t see the Marine standing in the middle of the passageway with a lost expression on his face, and he slammed into his shoulders.

“Sorry,” the other Marine said.

“No. My fault,” Rev said as he started to go around.

“Hey, can you help me?” the Marine, a private, asked. “I’m a new-join, but I don’t know who to report to.”

Rev looked to the hatch, anxious to go track his friends down and maybe head on over to the club to drown his sorrows. But no, it wasn’t this private’s fault. He could take a minute to get the guy going.

He held out his hand and said, “Rev Pelletier, and welcome to . . . you Recon or Raider?”

“Raider. Mordechai Gantz. And did you say Pelletier? Like the guy who’s getting the PN? We heard about you.”

A small blaze of anger almost burst out, but he put a damper on that. This boot wasn’t trying to make fun of him.

“That was just a rumor. I don’t know how that started.”

The private stopped, looking disappointed. He was an older Marine, maybe in his thirties. Bigger than Rev, too. There was something about him, though—

“Gantz. Have we met?”

“I don’t think so,” the private said, his eyebrows scrunched together as he tried to remember.

“Where you from?”

Everyone in the regiment was from Metro Swansea, so the question wasn’t that out of the ordinary.

“Gray Creek.”

“That’s not it. I’m from Beakerville.”

Rev didn’t know many people from Gray Creek, which was one of the better sections of the city, and it wasn’t likely that he’d ever go back. Bad juju, that place. It was where he’d gotten into the fight that ended up with him getting conscripted—

Shit no. It can’t be.

He stared at the private, who was obviously now getting uncomfortable. Take away the wimby, put him in uniform—

It is him!

“I see you don’t recognize me, but we’ve met before.”

“We have? Where?”

“In the Gray Creek Park. You were playing a game. Descent into Hades, if I remember right.”

The private’s face relaxed into a smile, and he said, “Ah, you’re a gamer. Sorry if I don’t remember you. I’m not so good with faces.”

Rev was tempted to leave it at that. There was no real reason to go any further. But with the news about his PN, he was in a mood, as his mother used to say.

And there was a reason to go further, something he should have done a lot sooner.

“No, we never played a game together. We met outside the game. You were playing, and I was hanging out with my girl and two friends. We were playing our music too loud, and you came over—”

“That was you? The guy who slugged me?” the private said, his body tensing up.

“Yes, to my shame. That was me. I can blame just being young and stupid, but that isn’t an excuse. I was wrong, and right now, I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

Rev held out a hand, not knowing if the private was going to hit him or take it. The private eyed it warily for a second. “Don’t worry about our rank. If you want payback, I’m OK with that. Go ahead.”

The wariness fled the Marine, to be replaced by a rueful smile as he took Rev’s hand. “You nailed me good. Knocked me on my ass. I never thought you’d get the nerve up.”

“I caught you unawares, or I think you would have killed me. I paid the price, though,” he said, waving a hand around the company offices.

“What do you mean?”

“I got conscripted because of it.”

“You did? But I never reported it—”

“Not the fight. A traffic ticket for leaving the scene of the crime, as it were. What about you? What did you do to get conscripted?”

“I didn’t. I volunteered.”

Of course, you did. And I’m the asshole who cold-cocked you.

“Well, good for you. And, like I said, welcome to the Raiders. You’re probably going to Third Team. Gunny Hsu’s good people. Uh . . . what do they call you? Mordechai?”

“Most people call me Strap, but that was on the outside. I know that doesn’t matter once you’re in—”

Strap was one of the characters in The Horde, a tough, popular figure, and for even suggesting it, other Marines would not only run him ragged but give him something like “Bunny” or “Sugar” for having the temerity to even suggest it.

Rookie mistake, there, Mordechai.

But Rev owed the guy. He wasn’t sure he carried enough weight to pull this one off, but if he acted quickly and got some others to buy off on it, then maybe it would work.

“We’ll see what we can do about that. Here’s the first sergeant’s office. You can report in there. I’ll see you around.”

“Thanks. It may sound odd, but I’m glad to see you again.”

Rev watched him for a moment as he opened the hatch and went inside. He was going to do his best for the guy, pull in some favors. If enough people started calling him Strap, then it would be a done deal.

He turned and started back down the passage. He was still going to get his crew together to let them know what had happened with his PN, and he was still going to pack in more than a few brews, but he was feeling a hell of a lot better about himself now than he was just a few minutes ago.

29

“Stay still, please,” the Navy tech said from inside a protective booth.

The bed of the scanner was cold against his naked back, and the flimsy briefs he’d been given didn’t do much for his ass, either. The scanner probably cost the same as all of Charlie Company’s salaries combined, so you’d think they could at least warm it up a bit.

The machine came to life, a dull hum filling the exam room. The circular scan ring looked like the ones he’d gone through that first day of recruit training, but instead of simply walking through, he was flat on his back while it made multiple passes over him. Rev had been prodded, gotten a long-ass needle stuck into the back of his head to collect cerebrospinal fluid, and filled up a container with his piss. This was the last test he’d be subjected to.

It was hard to believe that he’d had his augments for a year now. Rev wasn’t sure why he’d been so hesitant before—other than the reason he was getting tested now, of course. They were part of him, just like anything else. Even his AI. He’d gotten used to having a veritable library at his beck and call. He’d kept his at a 25 percent PQ—he wasn’t about to go full Tomiko, something she thought was silly of him.

Not that his AI was on at the moment. It had been taken offline by the tech before he got on the table. Whatever the beams passing through his body were doing, they evidently could damage the AI.

Which didn’t build confidence in what was happening. If the scanner could mess up an AI, which was mostly crystal, then what was it doing to his brain? He tried not to be consumed by such thoughts as he was electronically dissected on the table, and he sighed with relief when the machine shut down.

“OK, you can get dressed now,” the tech said from his little booth.

“When do I find out anything?”

“As soon as the doctor is ready for you. Maybe thirty minutes or so.”

Which was a surprise to Rev. He’d figured the tests would take a couple of days at least to analyze. He felt a wiggle of nervousness. Thirty minutes was too soon.

Better than fret about it for the next couple of days, though.

He finished dressing and then the tech reactivated his AI before directing him to return to the waiting room.

“You’re not a mutant?” Tomiko asked him as he sat beside her.

“Not that you’d know. What about you?”

“I guess that’s what we’ll find out.”

There was an undercurrent of concern in his friend, something she hid well but he could sense. Not that that was surprising. This was their annual checkup to see what the augmentations had done to them. With few exceptions, they wouldn’t see huge problems yet, but depending on the results, they could get signs that foretold the problems were on the way.

Five minutes later, Daren Goya, one of their DC classmates and now a sapper, came out and sat by them. Over the next few days, all of their surviving classmates, at least those who’d been augmented, would be going through their first annual checkup.

Daren was one of the few sappers in their class to survive Preacher Rolls. The sappers, as was their usual standard operations, had gone in with the straight-leg infantry, and they’d been lost at the same rates.

“PFC Reiser? The doctor will see you now.”

“Well, here goes,” she said, standing and smoothing the front of her overalls.

“Good luck,” Daren and Rev said in unison.

“Think you’re okay?” Daren asked after the door closed behind her.

“Who the hell knows? I mean, I feel fine. No different.”

Which really didn’t mean much. If something was wrong at this stage, it would be at the molecular or DNA level.

“Yeah, same with me. I hope I’m OK, though.”

“Hell, Daren. It’s not likely we’re going to live long enough for it to matter.”

Which was the standard reply to anything having to do with the future. Lulling the gods of battle, the gunny called it. Making it so that they didn’t reach out and grab a Marine for being too arrogant.

Rev didn’t believe in any of that, of course, but it didn’t hurt to play along.

“You’ve got that right. Respect to the fallen.”

“Respect.”

They both mimed lifting a glass in a toast. Just one more Marine Corps superstition.

The door opened, and a corpsman said, “PFC Pelletier, you’re up.”

“Good luck,” Daren said.

“You, too.”

Rev followed the corpsman down the passage to a room near the end. The corpsman opened the door and waved him into it.

The doctor had his nose in a pad, but he pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Rev sat, then waited in silence as the doctor read his pad. The longer the doctor didn’t say anything, the more stressed Rev became. He hadn’t been this nervous when he’d attacked the Centaur.

Finally, the doctor, a full Navy captain, put down the pad and raised his head to look at Rev.

“PFC Pelletier, thank you for coming in. I’ve got your results here. Your genetic drift is point-three-two, which is what we look at first, as that is the prime indicator of potential Weislen’s Syndrome.”

Rev knew enough to know that Weislen’s Syndrome was the real name of the rot.

“However, that isn’t our only interest here. In some of the other testing, your GSD is twenty-four-point three, your PPCA is right at seventy-nine.”

He went on in that vein, giving at least a dozen acronyms and numbers, exactly none of them having any meaning to Rev. Rev wanted to stop him and ask what all of that meant, but the doc was the same rank as a Marine colonel, and PFCs didn’t interrupt colonels as a habit.

“So, I’m going to keep you on the three-milligram regimen of Criolsol for the time being.”

At least Rev knew what that was. Criolsol was a preventative that was supposed to limit cellular damage, and he’d been on it since his augmentation. He thought it must be a good sign that the doc hadn’t increased it, right?

“And so, I’m going to clear you for continued duty.”

He entered something into the pad, then held it up for an ophthalmic signature.

“Do you have any questions, son?”

Rev did have questions. Lots of them. But he didn’t know where to start.

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, you can leave. Please tell Petty Officer Rincon to bring in the next patient.

Rev stood, came to a position of attention, then turned to the door. He started to open it, then turned and said, “Sir, I do have a question.”

“What is it, son?”

“All those numbers you told me. Does that mean I’m not getting the rot?”

The doctor gave a smile and said, “No, son. Your numbers are within accepted ranges. I don’t think you have to worry about it . . . for now.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rev said.

He turned and left the room, telling the waiting corpsman to get the next Marine.

Rev was relieved, of course, and the stress had melted off him.

He just wished the doctor hadn’t added that last for now.

30

“See anything?” Tomiko whispered to Rev.

“No. Nothing.”

The two lay side by side at the top of a ridge, fifteen meters above a scree field that eventually flattened out into a scrub oak forest below.

“What do you think?”

“They have to be there,” Rev said.

But there was no sign of movement anywhere, nothing odd in the pattern of normal bird life.

“Do we wait for the rest of the team?”

Rev looked at her. It was a good question. They’d been separated from the team for an hour now. They could wait, but there was no guarantee that anyone would come their way. They could be dead, for all he knew.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have split off from them, Miko.”

“No guts, no glory. ’Sides, what’s done is done. The question is, what do we do now? Wimp out or go for it?”

Rev turned back to the trees below. Nothing. No movement.

“Go for it,” he finally said.

“Now we’re talking.”

But how? They could backtrack and descend the high ground to the north, but that would take time. Time they didn’t have.

He edged forward to study the ground below. The loose scree covered about twenty meters before it reached the treeline. He didn’t need to test it to know it was unstable. Trying to jump down to it would result in a mini-slide that would alert anyone that they were coming.

Directly below them, however, were several large boulders.

He focused on one, then subvocalized, “How far down is that?”

<Sixteen meters, twenty-two centimeters to the top of the boulder.>

A good drop, but not an impossible one.

Rev nudged Tomiko, then pointed. “I think we can drop on that. Sixteen—”

“And twenty-two centimeters,” Tomiko said. “I’ve already checked. But drop that far or just climb down?”

Rev looked at the cliff face. The scree came from somewhere, after all. The cliff looked rotted. Too many winters and summers were working to loosen the face, leaving a talus that fell away in wild disarray. Rev didn’t need much to hold in order to climb down; his fingers were almost like climbing pitons. But it didn’t matter how strong he was if the rock face gave way under him. He could do many things now, but flying wasn’t one of them.

“The face won’t hold us. If we’re going to do it, we have to jump.”

Tomiko was quiet for a moment as she looked down.

Probably asking Pikachu.

Tomiko had her AI dialed up to a hundred, and she treated it like a human sounding board.

“Do we do it?” he asked, breaking in.

“It ain’t the drop. It’s keeping on top of it. Then we’ve got to get over all that loose stuff.”

“So, do we do it?”

“Hell, yeah,” she said.

She started to get up when Rev stopped her. “Let me dangle you. Less impact when you hit.”

“What, you’re going to drop me on top?”

“Yeah.”

Tomiko shrugged, then said, “Well, OK, then. Let’s do it.”

They both slung their M-49s, then Tomiko turned over to her belly and reached out to him. Rev took her arms, then let her slide over the edge. A tuft of grass tore free and floated to the bottom. Fully extended, he’d cut off more than two meters in her drop.

“One . . . two . . . three!”

Tomiko landed right on top of the rock and squatted as she hit to lessen the chance that she would bounce off. Always graceful, the drop might as well have been into some dance routine, she made it look so easy. She looked up, a huge smile on her face, and gave him a thumbs-up.

Now it was Rev’s turn. He thought about hanging down, then letting go, but he didn’t think his aim would be that good. So, he lined himself up and jumped. He hit the rock squarely, his thighs flexing to absorb the force, but the barrel of his M-49 smacked him in the head as his right leg slipped off, and he flailed his arms to regain his balance. He was about to go over backward when Tomiko latched onto his combat harness, keeping him in place.

“Thanks,” he whispered as he gathered himself.

“Knew that was gonna happen, as big as you are.”

Rev just rolled his eyes.

“Now what? We still have to get down into the trees without setting off a landslide,” he said.

“Let’s crab along the base of the wall. It looks like there’s less of this loose shit farther down.”

That lasted for about twenty meters. The solid footing turned into shifting piles of rock that moved under their feet. A slab of shale slid out from under Rev to go sliding down the hill, taking more rocks with it in a clattering tumble.

Extremely exposed, the two Marines froze for a moment, searching the trees below for any sign that they’d been detected.

“It’s getting worse,” Tomiko said once they’d decided they’d escaped notice. “I think we have to just go down here. Time’s running out.”

She was right, of course. They had to move.

Holding hands for balance, the two started making their way down the slope. It was like walking on black ice, but ice that moved under them. And they weren’t silent. Small pebbles were knocked free and sent cascading down into the trees. Every second, Rev was afraid he was going to fall on his ass and tumble the rest of the way.

At ten meters from the closest tree, Rev said, “Screw it. I’m going for it.”

“Are you sure?”

With a running start, ten meters was nothing to him. But this was going to be a standing jump from unstable footing.

“Yeah.” He dropped Tomiko’s hand, turned, and planted his feet the best he could. With a grunt, he jumped and cleared the distance, then he grabbed the tree to keep him from stumbling farther. Several small rocks bounced out of sight between the other trees.

“Move,” she signed to him.

There were still rocks on the ground, but fewer. Rev picked his way to the next tree, then turned to watch Tomiko. But instead of jumping, she carefully made her way down, barely moving any of the rubble.

“Straight at it?” she asked as she reached him.

“We’ve still got a bit of time. Let’s cut over and come down on it.”

“Roger that.”

The two slanted to their left, maintaining the higher ground. They had to imagine that the direct approach would be covered, and while not perfect, this might enable them to bypass an observation post.

Moving through the scrub oak was easier. Easier, not easy. Lots of the trees were dead, their branches blocking their way, so their progress was not in a straight line. Still, it didn’t take long until they were above the target. Tomiko motioned to their right, and the two moved abreast of each other, then started carefully moving forward.

Rev swept the area as they moved, his M-49 seeking any sign of the enemy. It was quiet. Nothing was there.

At fifty meters out, Rev brought Tomiko to a halt. For a full ten minutes, the two monitored every passive scanner as they peered through the trees. Finally, time running out, they low-crawled forward as silently as possible.

Thirty-three meters out, they saw their target in a clearing: a small, squat box, a single red button on the top. They froze again. There was nothing around the box, but that didn’t guarantee there wasn’t somebody just out of sight.

They lay on their bellies for another ten minutes, but nothing was registering. Finally, Rev signaled for the two of them to move forward. Centimeter by centimeter, they got closer, all the time nerves almost tingling with anticipation. He didn’t trust the situation and feared a trap.

At the edge of the clearing, they stopped again. Birds were singing in the trees, oblivious to what was happening below. A dragonfly buzzed into the clearing and landed on the red button.

Eight meters. That was all that separated them from their objective. But it couldn’t be left unguarded, right? Try as he might, however, he couldn’t pick up any sign of the enemy. It was possible that they’d put all their efforts in the offense, with no one in the defense.

Screw it. We’re too close now.

He signaled Tomiko to cover him, and she shifted to cover back to the west.

Deciding on stealth over speed, Rev got up. Picking his feet through the leaves and grass, feeling for boobytraps, he crept forward. Seven meters . . . six meters . . . five meters. Every step got him closer. He spotted scuff marks in the dirt. He could ask his AI for a timeline of when whoever made those marks was there, but it didn’t matter at this point. He closed the final few meters.

I’ve got you, suckers, he thought as he raised his hand to hit the button.

Then something erupted from the dirt and leaves right in front of him. With faster-than-lightening reflexes, he lowered his M-49, but he was hit low, just below the beltline. His detectors went off as the figure fired on Tomiko.

“Son of a bitch!”

His M-49 was dead, but he could still butt-stroke the grinning figure, who was covered in dirt and leaves, standing in front of him.

“You’re dead,” Ting-a-ling said.

“You bastard!” Tomiko said, standing up.

Rev shook his head, then stepped over to the Frisian soldier. He’d been hiding in a hole, a meter and a half deep. A plug was upside-down to the side. With the plug and leaves over that, he’d been invisible.

“I thought you would have figured it out. You used your spider hole to drop that dick-in-a-can, right?” Ting-a-ling asked, using the Frisian nickname for a Centaur

“But I did a thermal scan,” Rev said. I should have picked up your breath.”

“Me, too,” Tomiko chimed in.

“I can’t help it if you Perseans don’t augment for estivation.”

“What’s estivation?” he subvocalized, unwilling to admit ignorance to the soldier.

<It is a state of lower breathing and pulse, similar to hibernation in some mammals.>

Didn’t know they could do that. Seems like a good skill.

“And with that, if you don’t mind? There’s still twenty minutes left, and I want to see if I can bag anyone else.”

“Where,” Rev said with a sigh.

The Frisian pointed to the east and said, “About two hundred meters.”

“Let’s go,” Tomiko said, pulling Rev by the arm.

“And both of you owe pitchers tonight,” Ting-a-ling said as he started to crawl back into his hole.

That was the worst thing. Not just losing, and to Frisians at that, but they’d be crowing about it all night. And if the commandos had hit the team’s button, well that didn’t even deserve consideration. It would be too painful.

“This never would have happened if he’d been a Centaur,” he said after stewing about it.

“Yeah, we’d be dead for real.”

“No, I mean, this was fun and all, and I’m glad the brass let us do it, but you and me, we’ve only been trained to fight Centaurs, not humans. No way a Centaur could have been hiding in a spider hole.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But he got us.”

“Not only us,” Rev said, looking at the lieutenant, Tanu, and Hus-man sitting on some rocks.

“You, too? Damn!” the lieutenant said as he spotted them. “That fucking Ting-a-ling get you?”

“Yes, sir,” Tomiko said as she grabbed a rock.

“Well, we’ve just got to hope that Nix or the gunny spots the bastard,” the lieutenant said.

“Or that Staff Sergeant Montez and Corporal DB keep them off our button,” Hussein said. “At least then it’ll be a tie.”

“I don’t want a tie,” the lieutenant said. “I want a win.”

“Me, too. Can we, you know, is there time for us to go at it again?” Rev asked.

“Not today. In fact, I’m not sure when.”

“What about on Sunday?” Tomiko asked.

“First day off in over a month. You sure you want to give that up?” the lieutenant asked.

“What else are we going to do, sir?” Tanu asked. “We don’t have off-base liberty.”

The lieutenant looked around, a hopeful gleam in his eyes. “You’d do that? All of you?”

The four Marines shouted yes in unison. None of them took defeat lightly, and payback was a bitch.

31

“When do you think we’re getting the call?” Yancey asked Rev as he sipped his beer.

Rev just looked to Bundy, passing off the question.

Bundy shrugged his shoulders, then said, “Soon. Unless this is all a drill.”

“You think it’s a drill?” Tomiko asked.

“Not saying it is. But Big Corps has been all over us, you know. We didn’t do so well last time, and they want to make sure we’re ready.”

Which was true. Every training session, every field exercise for the last four or five months, was observed by silent Marine officers and senior SNCOs who simply watched and took notes. It was a little creepy.

“If it is a drill, then they need to can it quick. I mean, I don’t mind the base lockdown. We’ve been on that ever since getting back. I don’t mind the training tempo. It’s better than sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, and to be honest, those new boots don’t know shit and need all the training they can get.”

Yancey looked over to another table where a dozen privates were whooping it up. Most of the new fills went to the infantry battalions. They’d been the ones who’d suffered the most losses. Charlie Company had only received a few boot new joins, and only one, Strap Gantz, had come to Raider Platoon.

“But this, my friends, this is bullshit,” Yancey continued, holding up his glass of beer. “And if this is for some lame-ass drill, I’m going to be mega pissed.”

The CG had implemented a division-wide limit on drinking. Two drinks per day. There were no more pitcher sales, no more buying for anyone else. Each Marine and sailor had to buy a glass themselves and get scanned for each one.

“Just be lucky we’re here, nice and toasty, and having our two glasses,” Rev said.

The last six cold and rainy days had been out in the field on a regimental-wide field exercise, and Rev was just happy to be inside and out of the weather. The beer was a bonus.

“I thought my ass was going to freeze out there,” Udu said.

“What? You’re mech,” Cricket said. “Try getting down in the mud with us real Marines.”

“A lady like me doesn’t play in the mud.”

“You ain’t no lady, lady. You’re a damned Marine.”

Rev just smiled as the two gave each other shit. If he didn’t know better, he’d say they had a thing for each other. Both were pegging the BS meter as they trash talked. Most of the infantry was kitted out in the PAL-3 Infantry Combat Suit, which had heating and cooling elements like the Raiders’ PAL-5s. And as far as Udu, her MMCS was even more weatherproof, completely sealed off from the outside air. But Marines were always going to bitch, no matter what.

He caught Tomiko’s eyes and smiled at her. She knew what he was thinking: their PAL-5 trumped both of them on the misery index. But they didn’t need to get into a pissing contest, even a good-natured one. He raised his glass and clinked hers, the sound bright even among the raucous noise around them.

Rev looked around the E-Club. It was packed. Other than the gym, maybe, this was now the social center of the junior enlisted. Without being able to leave the base, it was the only place where they could unwind and socialize. As he looked around, just taking in the scene, he realized that this place felt . . . right.

After being conscripted like a real criminal, all he’d wanted to do was serve his time, counting down the days until he could leave. He still looked forward to getting out, but he wasn’t even sure how many days he had left. Over a year, sure, but he wasn’t crossing off any days on his mental calendar. He could ask his AI, but why bother? It was what it was—a fact he couldn’t run from. Like the enemy.

Cricket, though, was different. From initially being ambivalent to having to serve, he hated it now. But then again, he’d seen some terrible shit on Preacher Rolls, where Rev had escaped seeing the carnage. Maybe losing two-thirds of his fellow Raiders would have given him a different outlook on things.

Rev swirled his glass and tilted it, looking inside. He’d been nursing the last swallow or two for a half hour. With a sigh, he started to lift it when the thunderous call of Condition One-Alpha blared through the club.

Rev froze for a moment, glass half-raised, looking around while he tried to process what was going on. He’d heard the alarm, of course, when they were testing it each month. But the test was promulgated beforehand, and the test itself was followed by a this is only a test message.

There was no such message this time.

<Condition One-Alpha,> his AI said, coming to life. <Shelter in place.>

Rev hadn’t woken it. He hadn’t even known it was possible for it to wake without his orders.

“What the hell is happening?” he asked. All around him, others had that talking-to-their-AI look on their faces as well.

<I don’t have that information.>

“What’s going on?” Yancey asked, standing up.

The cavernous club filled with talking as Marines stood. A few started to the main entry when others held them back.

They had orders to remain in place, but nothing said he couldn’t look out the windows. Rev put his beer down and strode over to the corner window by their table. It was nighttime, but with the lights out there and his augmented vision, it might as well be day. Other than a lone Marine sprinting for a building, he couldn’t see anything as the others crowded alongside him.

He twisted around, looking toward the sky. The corner window gave him almost 180 degrees of visibility, but he couldn’t see anything—no Centaurs descending on their landing pods.

“Are we under attack?” Tomiko asked.

“I can’t see anything.”

Condition One-Alpha was reserved for a base being under attack. In its entire history, no base on Safe Harbor had ever been attacked, and there being only one enemy at the moment . . .

“We should get to our gear,” Yancey said.

“You got the orders, Yance,” Bundy said. “Shelter in place.”

“I’ve got family out there,” Yancey said. “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”

He turned to leave, but Bundy grabbed him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Says who?” Yancey asked, jerking his arm free.

“I am, Private First Class,” Bundy said.

Bundy’s meaning was clear. He’d been meritoriously promoted to PFC, so he’d been the first in their group to pick up lance corporal. The rest were due next month, but at the moment, he outranked them all. And while there wasn’t a firm practice of the chain of command between non-rates, technically, Bundy was the senior Marine in the group.

Rev stepped up and put a hand on Yancey’s shoulder. He didn’t push the other Marine down, but he was firm enough to let him know he would if he had to.

“We all have family out in town, but until we know what is going on, until we have some sort of orders, we need to stay here, Yance.”

For a moment Yancey looked like he was going to argue, but then he nodded his head, slow and resentful.

The thought on everyone’s mind was a Centaur invasion. There had been none this far into the Perseus Arm, and there were probably a hundred closer and better targets to their advance, but that didn’t mean much. They were aliens, and their logic and strategy were often at odds with human thinking.

The club loudspeaker kept repeating the condition and calling for all hands to remain in place, but the two-hundred or so non-rates in the club were getting antsy, Rev among them. He had his family out in the ville, too.

“Who’s that?” Orpheus asked, pointing out the window and down Kingston Street.

Rev shifted to the west-facing window. A block and a half away, a mob of possibly thirty people were running down the street toward them, carrying an assortment of weapons.

“Are they wearing white headbands?” Tomiko asked.

“Children of the Angels,” Bundy said.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Rev said. “Those limp-dick Angel Shits broke into the base? How the hell did they do that?”

“Not too hard,” Tomiko said. “Looks like they came in through the fence down at the playing fields. It’s not like this place is really that secure.”

Which was true. More than a few Marines cut their way out through the fence to make a quick trip home or to smuggle a spouse or partner in for a quick matrimonial assignation, as the gunny termed it.

“But what the hell are they trying to do?” Yancey asked. “We’ve got, what, four-thousand Marines here.”

More Marines crowded around the windows on the west side of the club. The mood was relief that the Centaurs had not invaded, curiosity about what the Angel Shits were trying to accomplish, and anger that they had invaded their space.

The mob reached the intersection of Kingston and Tellez. A dozen turned north on Tellez toward regimental headquarters, with the rest continuing on.

“Let’s jump the fuckers,” somebody yelled out to a chorus of ooh-rahs as the Angel Shits jogged down the street.

“Hold on! We’ve got our orders. Let the MPs deal with them.”

Arguments broke out, and Marines surged toward the entrance. But when you can’t go to the mountain, sometimes the mountain comes to you. To everyone’s amazement, four of the Angel Shits broke off and ran up the steps to the club.

A moment later, four armed Angel Shits, full of righteous fury, broke into the club, brandishing their hunting rifles. One young man shouted, “All of you, you are under arrest for crimes against humanity!”

Not the smartest move ever.

Within seconds, a wave of Marines engulfed the four. Rev and the rest of the crew tried to get in on the fun, but there were too many Marines and not enough Angel Shits.

By the time the MPs came by and the all-clear had sounded, the four invaders were rather worse for wear. Laid out on the bar, they’d been stripped stark naked, and each had a bottle strategically and not-so-gently placed where the sun doesn’t shine.

An MP tried to glare at them—tried and failed. “Who gave ’em the enema, you sick assholes?”

No one spoke. At first.

In the back of the crowd, someone snickered, and it sounded a lot like Tomiko. When she spoke, her voice was rippling with laughter. “No one. We’re Marines, not doctors.”

32

Yancey needn’t have worried about the alert being a drill. Thirteen hours after the Battle of the Angel Shits, as those who’d been at the E-Club were calling it, the call came down. The regiment was deploying, and this time, the Marines, for once, were not kept in the dark.

Maybe it was the new command leadership, figuring that after the last fiasco, things needed to change. Maybe they just decided that an informed Marine was a better Marine. Whatever the reason, Colonel Destafney, Rev’s old recruit battalion CO and now the Regimental commanding officer, put every Marine and sailor in the fieldhouse and personally briefed them just before embarking.

A small contingent of Centaurs had invaded Roher-104, way out on the Outer Arm, even if invaded, in this case, seemed too strong a term.

Roher-104 was in its twenty-ninth year of terraforming, not even into Phase 3. There were no human inhabitants yet, with Roher terratechs visiting twice a standard year to measure progress. Why the Centaurs wanted the planet was anyone’s guess, as was why it was so far removed from their other expansions.

Whatever their reasons, humanity—and Roher, Inc, and its shareholders—wanted it back. And with Roher a true intergalactic, the Marines weren’t going to be the only ones on the mission. A Host battalion was going to join the other Frisian augments, and the Hégémonie Liberté was providing some of the transport.

Which was why, six days after the Angel Shits tried to take on a Marine regiment, the Raider platoon, a sapper platoon, Alpha Company, Fourth Armor Battalion, and Charlie Company, Fourth Mech, were on the Dixmude, L404 of the Liberty Navy, heading back into the shit.

33

“With an O2 level of six-point-nine percent, this is on the very edge of what can support un-augmented human life,” Captain Ferenz, the tank company commander told the Marines crowded into the ship’s aft galley. “That shouldn’t be a problem for you sappers and Raiders, but for the rest of us, that means being buttoned up for the duration. You’ll have supplemental breathing kits for emergency evacs.”

“I never thought to ask. How do you take a crap in that thing?” Rev whispered to Bundy.

As expected, the older Marine was laser-focused on the captain and the brief, and he ignored Rev.

“Really? If we’re there for a week, you’re going to fill that thing. The smell alone . . .”

This time Bundy turned and glared at him before looking forward again.

“Quit teasing him,” Tomiko said. “Just pay attention.”

“I really do want to know. Don’t you?”

“Later.”

“That is still low for you Raiders and sappers, but this ship has a pretty sweet acclimation chamber aboard, and you’ll be spending half of your time in it until we hit the planet,” the captain continued.

“The rest of you can use it if you want, but the sappers and Raiders have priority. If you commanders want to use it, hit up Gunny Graggs. Do not go to the ship’s crew yourself. Now, there are trace gasses that are toxic over the long term. They shouldn’t be a problem if everything goes according to the plan.”

“When has anything ever gone according to plan?” Tanu whispered.

“But to ensure that long-term medical issues are avoided, sappers and Raiders will be getting a nano upgrade, which will monitor the total intake. Uh . . . Chief, that’s tonight after chow, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the senior corpsman said. “At sickbay. I’ll contact the platoon sergeants with the time.”

“OK, then. Good. As far as temperatures in our AO go, they should range from a little above freezing at night to the low teens during the day. That’s Celsius.”

“What’s that in Fahrenheit?”

<Just over thirty-two degrees and into the sixties.>

The Perseus Union was metric for most measurements, but different planets within the union used either Fahrenheit or Celsius for temperatures. Rev had never gotten used to Celsius temps.

“Cool, but not cold. Our target is the major emitter, though, and that tends to make the local weather unstable. So, be ready for anything,” the captain continued. “Let me see . . . humidity averages around twenty percent this time of year, axial tilt is one-point-eight degrees . . . well, there’s a lot more here that I don’t have to go into right now. You should all have this. Take a look at it. The key limitation is the O2. It’ll be just as much an enemy as the Centaurs.”

The back partition into the galley kitchen opened up, and a waft of stomach-rumbling aromas rolled over the assembled Marines and sailors, causing every single head to turn. If evening chow was as good as the lunch they had when they got aboard, they were going to enjoy this.

“Maybe being aboard a froggy ship isn’t going to be that bad,” Tomiko said.

Rev was loyal to the Union and its Navy, but she had a point. As the ancient saying went, an army travels on its stomach.

“And I guess that’s our cue,” the captain said. “Commanders, meet me in my stateroom at, let’s say, nineteen-thirty. Tanks, go eat chow, then stand by for further word.”

“Mech! Platoon commanders, see me at nineteen hundred,” the mech company commander yelled out as the Marines started a rush to the line.

With almost three hundred Marines to be fed, no one wanted to be last.

* * *

“Hey, grab a sit-down,” Udu said as Rev, Tomiko, and Tanu were heading to where the Raiders were sitting in the back corner of the galley.

Marines normally ate with their units aboard ship, but Bundy, his buddy Dyce, Udu, and Fyr were sitting together among mostly mech Marines.

Rev hesitated. Being on the same ship as three of his and Tomiko’s posse was a welcomed coincidence, but their team was their team.

“Go ahead and eat with your buddies,” Tanu told the two of them. “If what that captain said was true, we’re going to be in pretty close quarters during the transit, and I’ll be sick of both of you before we even get there.”

“Eat me,” Tomiko said with a smile as she sat down.

Rev was right behind her.

“Miko, Rev, have you met Dyce?” Udu asked, ever the social butterfly of their group.

“We met back at Nguyen,” Dyce said, extending a hand. “Raiders. Much respect.”

Dyce had said the same thing when they first met. To Rev, a Raider was just a fellow Marine. He felt a little weird that this guy seemed to put them on some sort of pedestal. But he was a good-enough seeming guy, and if Bundy liked him, that was good enough for Rev.

“That kind of sucks for you guys,” Fyr said. “I wouldn’t want to be stuck inside some environmental chamber for twelve hours a day.”

“Kind of sucks to be you guys,” Tomiko said. “I mean, if you get your armor breached, you can’t breathe, right?”

“We can breathe. Just might pass out from hypoxia. And that’s why we’re getting breathing packs. But what are the chances that the Doretha gets breached and Sergeant K’Adair and I are still kicking and needing to breathe?” Bundy asked with a laugh.

He and Dyce bumped fists. A Marine tank was a powerful piece of machinery, capable of taking out a Centaur on its own. Not favored to do so, but capable. However, there tended to be two outcomes for tanks. Survival or destruction. Not much middle ground where the tank itself was taken out, but the two Marines inside were left alive.

Rev didn’t even understand why there were Marines inside the tanks. They could be entirely automatic, run by battle AIs, but in test after test, manned tanks had a 4 percent better chance of fulfilling the mission than the automated versions. Four percent didn’t seem like much to Rev when there were two Marines with their lives on the line.

He’d asked Bundy about that once, but he was shut down so hard he never brought it up again.

“Hey, you never did answer me. If you’re going to be inside your tank for a week, how do you shit? There’s no room for a head in there, right?” Rev asked.

“We get a tube stuck up our ass,” Bundy said.

Rev looked at him in surprise. That didn’t sound very . . . comfortable?

“No shit?”

“With a tube up our asses, yes, shit.” He made a raspberry and mimicked something moving down a tube.

“Damn! That’s freaky. I don’t know if I could do that.”

“You are so gullible, Rev,” Fyr said, laughing. “Biodegraders. We wear diapers with superbacteria that eat our shit up. A big dump, and five minutes later, all nice and clean. Same as for tanks.”

Rev wasn’t sure who to believe, but Bundy was trying to hold back a laugh.

“Eat me,” Rev said with a scowl.

“Come on, guys. No shit talk when we’ve got this primo chow,” Tomiko said.

Good point.

Rev looked at his plate. He wasn’t sure what it was. Some sort of protein with a purplish-brown sauce, veggies, and a fluffy something that looked like basic mashed potatoes, but with a slightly different texture. And the smell was enough to start his mouth watering. He took a small bite, and while it was weird, both in taste and texture, he sure liked it. He shoveled a bigger forkful into his mouth.

“Damn, these froggys sure can dial up the chow. Why don’t we have the same programs?” Udu asked between bites.

“Maybe proprietary,” Bundy said.

Proprietary or not, Rev was going to have to see about getting some of these programs.

“What is this dish called? Did anyone see it?”

“Yeah, but it was in French. Ask your AI,” Dyce said.

<Bœuf Bourgignon,> his AI said without Rev asking, which took him by surprise.

He’d left his AI awake to record the brief and had forgotten to put it back to sleep, but this was the first time it had ever volunteered information like this.

“Are you still at twenty-five percent?”

<Yes, I am.>

From what he understood, a twenty-five percent PQ shouldn’t allow for something like that. He made a mental note to look into it.

“Beef borgon-something or other,” Fyr said.

“Bourgignon,” Bundy added. “Some famous froggy dish.”

“We’re eating frog? Real frog?” Udu asked, looking at her dish in obvious distaste.

“No. Froggy, as in someone from the Hegemony,” Bundy said.

“Why do we call them that?” Rev asked, hoping that his AI wouldn’t kick in and answer.

“I don’t know. I think it’s an old term for the Napoleonic Empire on Old Earth, and the Hegemony was born in the French Diaspora,” Bundy said.

His eyes got that faraway look of someone consulting their AI, and then he said, “Not quite. Right country, but before Napoleon. Supposedly because the French ate frog legs, so you were almost right there, Udu.”

“Fucking gross,” she said, poking at her food.

“What, like you care? This isn’t real beef, either. Just the same protein base that’s programmed to look and taste like it,” Fyr said, giving her a light punch to the arm.

She slapped his arm away.

“Well, all I know is that this shit’s delicious,” Rev said, taking another mouthful. “And we better eat up. You remember Senior Drill Instructor Howland. ‘Always sleep when you can, eat when you can, and shit when you can ’cause you never know when you’ll get the next opportunity,’” Rev said, imitating Howland’s gravelly voice.

“Probably the best advice we ever got at boot camp,” Bundy said as he tucked into his chow. “Well, that and don’t shit in a tank.”

34

“Two more minutes,” Darcy shouted. “Come on, push it!”

“Easy for her to say,” Tomiko gasped out from beside Rev while she ran.

Darcy Millsap was a civilian contractor for DSS, one of the companies that performed the augmentations. In her black and copper unitard, she looked like a poster child for fitness, but the two O2 cannulas inserted into her nostrils were proof enough that she couldn’t do what the Raiders and sappers were doing . . . and that was killing themselves.

The treadmill under Rev sped up, and he grunted in frustration. This was far, far more difficult than he’d expected. Maybe he’d gotten too used to his augments, taking them for granted, but physics was physics, and biology was biology. His body needed lots of oxygen to support it, and even his improved lungs were not up to the task.

Just do it. Two more minutes.

He reached down deep as his lungs bellowed and his legs seared with fatigue.

“Faster!” Darcy shouted as she strode in front of the Marines like a DI.

Rev wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he entered the environmental spaces six hours before. Maybe hang out, get some tests, just get used to a lower O2 atmosphere. What he hadn’t expected, however, was to be put to the test like this. And even when he was told, he hadn’t expected it to kick his ass so much.

He was superman, right? The best that human science could make, right?

So why was he feeling like such a candyass?

“One minute! Don’t stop!”

Rev started lurching, his pace getting rough, but he was not going to quit.

There was a crash from the other side of the space. Rev looked up to see Gunny Jin, the sapper platoon sergeant, collapse, his body in a jumble at the base of his treadmill.

A couple of the other sappers start to move to help him when Darcy yelled out, “Don’t stop! We’ve got him.”

A corpsman in a full helmet stepped up to attend to the fallen Marine, and Rev lowered his head to gut out the final few seconds.

It seemed like forever before Darcy shouted, “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and stop!”

“Thank God,” Rev muttered as he came to a halt. It took an effort of will to remain standing tall and not lean over, hands on his knees. Hell, it took an effort not to puke.

He looked up at Darcy, hoping against hope that they were not about to jump right into another torture session.

“Take five while we run some scans.”

Beautiful words: take five.

Two DSS techs and three corpsmen started down the line, collecting blood, having each Marine exhale into a mask, and running scans.

“Some shit,” he said to Tomiko, who tried to gain some sort of control over her breathing.

On the other side of Tomiko and Tanu, Staff Sergeant Montez suddenly lost her balance, stumbled back against the bulkhead, and slid to a sitting position, her eyes glazing over. Rev jumped off the treadmill to help, but the motion constricted his field of sight, closing it off to tunnel vision, and he had to grab the front of his treadmill to remain upright.

Darcy was at the staff sergeant’s side immediately. “We’ve got her.”

Still holding the front of his treadmill, Rev wanted to help, but the medtech who joined Darcy was far more qualified.

“Take a seat if you need to,” Darcy told them.

Twenty-eight Raiders and sappers immediately sat down.

That helped. Rev watched the staff sergeant for a moment to make sure she was OK, but she was conscious and talking to the medtech.

“Breathe into this,” one of the mech corpsmen, shanghaied for this, said, holding a mask up in front of Rev’s face. “Four good, deep breaths.”

Rev leaned into it and complied, a bit of the dizziness coming back.

The corpsman checked the readout, nodded, then slapped a vampire on Rev’s arm to take his blood. After a quick scan, he moved onto Tomiko.

“I wish they’d given us more of that goose DNA,” Rev said when the corpsman moved onto Tanu. “Why stop when they did?”

Tomiko shook her head slightly and said, “For the same reason they didn’t give any to the mech-heads and tankers.”

“Not the same thing. They already gave us some of that stuff to give us better lungs and feed our augments. To give us more stamina when we run,” he said, tilting his head back to the treadmill track.

“But the more they give us, the greater, you know . . .”

Rev did know. The more augments they were given, the greater the chance for the rot.

But if they couldn’t breathe when they got to their target, then they wouldn’t last long enough to catch the rot.

“It’s not like it would be a totally new augment. They already pumped us up with damned DNA. Would it hurt to goose that up a little more?”

“Damn, Rev. You still got enough energy for a weak-ass pun like that?”

“I try,” Rev said, mustering up enough energy for a chuckle.

“Alright, listen up,” Darcy said, striding to the middle of the space. “We’re halfway through the first session. This was at six-point-six percent oxygen. We’ll be dropping it to six-point-four percent next.”

A chorus of groans reached her, which she waved off as if shooing a gnat buzzing her face.

“But first, we need to get you fed. Tanista, if you’ll get the XL-12s?”

One of the medtechs took out a box and opened it, then tossed Darcy a dull white tube before he started passing out others to the Marines.

“This is the newest nutritional sludge, specifically formulated to help your bodies cope with the lack of oxygen as well as counteract the more toxic elements you’ll be breathing in.”

“Has it been tested?” Lieutenant Omestori called out.

“What do you think we’re doing here?” Darcy answered. “I told you it was brand new. So, just eat and relax. We’ll start Phase Two for today in about twenty minutes. We’re supposed to give the paste time to be absorbed.”

“Paste? That isn’t a good omen,” Tomiko said.

Rev watched as the medtech passed out the white tubes. “She said we were at six-point-six percent. I thought the planet was at six-point-nine percent?”

“It is. But maybe they’re doing this so we think six-point-nine percent is like a day at the beach.”

Rev just grunted. He didn’t need to be tortured to know he wouldn’t like it.

The medtech tossed Rev his tube. Rev popped the cap and took a sniff. It had a faint almond smell.

He looked at Tomiko, then raised his tube as if in a toast and tapped hers.

“Here goes.”

He squeezed the tube and took a big mouthful. It wasn’t horrible, almost reminiscent of cookie dough but with a weird undercurrent and aftertaste.

“With all the great froggy chow on the ship, we’re eating this shit,” Tomiko grumbled.

“It may not be beef burgundy-whatever, true. But it isn’t that bad.”

Rev tilted his head back and squeezed the tube empty.

“It ain’t cookies, either.”

35

The Hegemony landing craft was a bare-bones thing, with full cocoon-like seats that kept everyone locked in place, which was good since the craft was juking like a crazed bird in a cage as it plummeted to the planet’s surface.

Rev braced himself into the seat, just wishing the damned thing would get on the ground, and fast. He didn’t know how long he could last before spewing despite the max dose of antiemetics coursing through his body.

The intel was that all the Centaurs were located at the main emitter site, three terrain features away, and that there were no defenses anywhere near. But the Dixmude’s commanding officer was taking no chances on losing his landing craft, programming the AI to use a high-avoidance path in, which meant not even the AI knew what it was going to do. Each juke and jive was a result of a random chance-generated course correction.

Rev had felt exposed during his last insertion, but in retrospect, he’d rather do that than experience this torture.

Maybe they want to piss us off so much we’ll be mad enough to take on anything.

Another especially hard lurch hurt his side, and Rev shifted his weight to brace himself better. Combat casualties weren’t supposed to happen during an insert.

But mercifully, the craft’s flight smoothed out as it flared for a landing. The back ramp hissed as it broke the seal, and the seats relaxed, releasing them. The petty officer’s image on the monitor shouted at them to get off.

Rev ran his hands over his kit, making sure nothing had gotten knocked off in the descent, then followed the rest of the team and the Sapper’s second squad off the craft.

“Good riddance,” he said as he stepped off into the too-harsh sunshine.

He was immediately hit by the smell of lavender, but not really. It was like lavender-lite. Lavender was a favorite of the terraforming companies because it put out high amounts of O2. There was still a lot of it gone wild on Safe Harbor, but the smell of it there was stronger, more robust. Maybe it had something to do with the lower atmospheric pressure.

Above the lavender patches rose Roher’s patented TD420s, better known as “fart trees,” a common sight on their projects. A GMO cross between bamboo, larch, and the areca palm, they provided good O2 production. They also had the ability to survive in nutrient-poor soils and an extremely fast growth rate.

With no other trees in sight, the valley looked more like some sort of plantation rather than a still-wild planet.

“Well, that sure sucked,” Corporal Dean-Ballester said as they hurried out of the lift zone.

“I thought I was going to hurl that Last Breakfast they gave us.”

“I think Nix did.”

Rev looked over to where the sergeant was running along with them. He didn’t look covered in puke, but the craft had some righteous suction going on, probably for that very reason.

“Waste of a good steak and eggs if he did,” Rev said.

At a hundred meters, the team went to one knee and looked back. The landing craft had shielded drive nozzles, but they could still cook someone too close to them. The craft jumped up in the air and climbed, one of the four that had brought the entire Raider and Sapper platoons down from the Dixmude.

All around them, hundreds of craft were in the process of landing and taking off. The Centaurs might not have weaponry in the area, but there was no sense in testing that by trickling in. If this valley was covered, then they were just going to have to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

But as Rev watched, no landing craft or shuttle was falling in flames. Maybe Intel got it right for once.

“OK, gather up,” the lieutenant yelled. “Top, give me a head count.”

Master Sergeant Rzyko was the Second Team leader, but like the lieutenant was dual-hatted—in his case, as the platoon sergeant. He got the thumbs-up from each team and reported back to the lieutenant.

Rev wasn’t sure who would have gotten lost since the last head count inside the landing craft, but it was just SOP, he guessed. Probably a good idea getting into the habit if they have to evac like they did on Preacher Rolls.

Don’t even begin to compare the two, he scolded himself. Bad juju.

Rev had never considered himself superstitious, but two years now in the Corps, and some of that was rubbing off on him.

“OK. We’ve got two hours before we step off, but that time’s going to go by quicker than we think. Let’s break out the disks, and I want everyone to get the feel of them. I don’t want to look like drunken idiots to Second Battalion, right?”

Neither did Rev. Second Battalion was the disk battalion, with each Marine trained in riding the disks into battle. Like all DC Marines, Rev had ridden them in training, and he’d had simu-time on them, but nothing beat practice. And while some of the Frisians had their scoots, others would be on the disks for their very first time.

And the task force commander knew that as well, which was why all the other Marines except for armor and mech would be screened by Second Battalion. If the Centaurs had a surprise up their sleeves—if they even had sleeves—the screen would be best trained to react.

“You heard the lieutenant,” Top said. “Fifth Team, you’re up. Second, get ready. The rest of you, we’re not out for a stroll in the park. This is still bad-guy country, so provide security.”

Tomiko raised her eyebrows at that. They were in the middle of a task force. If the Centaurs hit them, the real flank security would encounter them first. But you don’t argue with a master sergeant, so they dutifully spread out and faced outboard. Behind them, Fifth was breaking out the disks from where the landing craft had dumped them.

“You ready to ride those flying saucers?” Tomiko asked him.

“We’re almost two hundred klicks away? Damned skippy I’m ready. Better than walking, right?”

“I guess so. Just hope I don’t fall off in front of those Second Battalion Marines.”

Yeah, me too.

* * *

Rev stood, feet shoulder width apart, with his right foot slightly in front of his left.

This is easy. Just like riding a banana board back home.

The lieutenant gave the command, and not quite as one, the platoon lifted off the ground.

“Lord help me,” Sergeant Nix muttered.

“Ain’t no thing, Sergeant,” Tanu said, shifting his weight to spin the disk like a top.

The sergeant just shook his head. Nix had a Silver Nova as a private from the Torsiar Incursion, so he wasn’t some lightweight. But to say he was uncomfortable on a disk would be an understatement.

Rev wasn’t entirely comfortable himself, but not like the sergeant. Disks took controlled movements of the feet to move, and the less-skilled drivers tended to bob, sway, come to complete stops, or even move in reverse. With the Disk Marines from the battalion flying screen, he didn’t want to look like a drunken idiot. But as he’d told Tomiko, two-hundred klicks was a fair hump, one he really didn’t want to make. With the tanks and mech-heads moving out as well, if they didn’t fly, they’d miss out on the battle.

Not that they’d fly right up to the emitter station. The disks themselves were moderately shielded, but long before a Centaur could drop it, the lightly armored Raiders would be fried.

The current plan was for the platoon to fly to an assembly area forty-three klicks from the enemy where the terrain would still give them cover and go the rest of the way on foot.

The lieutenant gave the signal to move out, and Rev leaned forward just a bit, pressing down with the ball of his right foot. The disk complied, and he started moving forward. They might not be the Marine Corps Disk Drill Team, but they got it done. Even Sergeant Nix.

Off to their flank, Rev could see the Bravo Company Disk Marines gracefully fly along. In the unofficial hierarchy of the Corps, Raiders might rate a little higher than the Disk Marines, but Rev felt a twinge of jealousy watching how smoothly they picked up speed. His competitive nature drove him to match them, and he concentrated on the impulses he was sending his disk. Theirs had been detuned, so they were more forgiving, but still, his disk snaked a bit as he flew five meters above the forest of fart trees.

His focus was on flying, but he knew that all around him Marines and soldiers were maneuvering forward to surround the Centaurs. In four short hours the battle would commence.

36

“I still don’t see why we don’t have the Navy take them out,” Tanu said as they sat in their assault position, waiting for the word to go.

“You heard the lieutenant. Roher objected,” Nix said.

“Yeah, but I don’t give a flying fuck how much that would put back the terraforming, or how much it will cost them to rebuild the main emitter.”

“Neither do I, but them’s the breaks. Welcome to the real universe.”

“So, we gotta pay with blood so the corporations don’t gotta pay in credits,” Tanu said, not willing to let it go.

Rev let their argument go in one ear and out the other. He wasn’t concerned as to the why as much as the how. They’d gotten their last frag order, and it didn’t look too feasible to him.

At least their Yellowjackets had been modified to match the Frisians’ Stilettos. They would now arm at fifteen meters, which was the absolute minimum it could be and still arm the warhead. But that didn’t mean he thought much of the frag, either in its ability to accomplish the mission or to keep them alive.

“Hey, Staff Sergeant,” he called over to where the SNCO was leaning back, eyes closed. “What do you think of the plan?”

She didn’t open her eyes, but she said, “It’s a plan.”

Which didn’t install much confidence in him.

“Do you think it’s going to work?”

“Depends on our execution, like always.”

“Execution didn’t work on Preacher Rolls,” Hussein said.

“You missed the show there, Hus-man,” Tanu reminded him.

“Yeah, the execution, like I said.”

Rev wasn’t interested in their bickering, and he still wanted more from the staff sergeant. She was the smartest Marine in the team, after all, with the firmest grasp of tactics and strategy.

“Really, Staff Sergeant. Is this, you know, usual? We just line up and charge?”

The staff sergeant was still for a long moment before she sat up and opened her eyes. “Plenty of times. Maybe for most of human history. You know the phrase, ’C'mon you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’”

“Yeah, sure. They told us that in boot camp. What was his name? Daly? Twentieth Century Earth Marine?”

“US Marine, yes. But that was before he led his Marines over the top, as they called it, charging emplaced machine guns.”

“But that was ancient history, and not with Centaurs and their weapons,” Tomiko said, scooching over to get in on the conversation.

“Have any of you heard about the Battle of Rorke’s Drift?”

She was met with blank stares. She shook her head in disappointment.

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

“So, what’s this Rorke’s Drift?” Rev asked.

“OK, listen up, you meatheads. Rorke’s Drift was a sideshow of the Battle of Islandiwana in the Eighteenth Century Anglo-Zulu War. The British Army had just had their asses handed to them in that battle by the Zulu Nation when a contingent of maybe four thousand warriors diverted to attack a small garrison of a hundred and fifty British and colonials at Rorke’s Drift.”

“Four thousand to a hundred and fifty? That sounds like us,” Tomiko said.

The staff sergeant waved her silent.

“The British were armed with what were then the most modern weapons available. The Zulus were mostly armed with assegai and shields.”

“What’s an—”

“A short spear. At the time, the Zulu warriors thought it was cowardice to face an enemy with a firearm.”

“Stupid,” Hussein said. “I’m using anything I can get my hands on.”

“So, you’re saying that these Zulus weren’t as technically advanced as the British, but they outnumbered them twenty-five to one? Like Miko said, that does sound like us,” Rev said.

“The Zulu commander decided that he was going to just overwhelm the British force, just as the other Zulus had won the Battle of Islandiwana the day before. Four thousand warriors, assaulting along two major axes, what they called the buffalo horn formation.”

“Which is almost what we are doing,” Nix said.

The staff sergeant nodded and then said, “So, to answer your question, yes, this has been done before.”

Rev let that digest a moment, feeling a little better about the upcoming fight. “Well, if the Zulus could do it, so can we. Wait, what?” he added when he saw the staff sergeant’s expression shift. “The Zulus did win, right?”

“Nope. The British won. Maybe five hundred Zulus were killed, but only seventeen British soldiers.”

“What the hell, Staff Sergeant? Why are you telling us that then?” Rev asked, incredulous.

“You said you wanted to know if this had been done before. You didn’t ask if the low-tech side won. I’ve had Rorke’s Drift on my mind since the frag, that’s all.”

“So, we’re in deep shit?” Tomiko asked.

“Like I said, execution. Masses of lower-tech armies have overcome defenders before. Little Bighorn. Islandiwana, that I just mentioned. The Plains of Altair. Lots of times.”

And with that, the staff sergeant leaned back and closed her eyes again.

“Great pep talk,” Rev muttered to Tomiko.

“Like she said, execution. We just need to do what we’re supposed to do.”

“Yeah, fire our Yellowjackets and become targets.”

Which wasn’t far from the truth. Each infantry Marine had been issued four of the little missiles, but there was nothing else they carried that could be considered an effective weapon against a Centaur. Sure, in a built-up area like the emitter, they might get close enough to take out a Centaur with a Phoenix, but Rev had been damned lucky with that before, and that was with the advantage of his victim not realizing he was there. In this assault the Centaurs knew they were coming. Most of the kills would be from the tanks, mech-heads, and the squadron of Navy Air. The groundpounders were there to keep the Centaurs’ attention.

He took one last glance at the staff sergeant, wishing he could just z-out like that. But he was too hopped up. Raiders were specially trained for a variety of missions, but not specifically infantry assaults. Still, there was the ancient phrase, “Every Marine is a rifleman.” He knew how to fire a Yellowjacket, and that was what was needed out of him.

He settled down to wait, and six minutes later, his earset came to life.

“Five minutes, Raiders. Get your shit together,” Gunny Thapa passed.

Rev stood and adjusted his combat suit. It was time to earn his pay.

* * *

“Any time now,” the gunny passed as they kept up their advance.

The groundpounders had been inexorably moving forward, closing the distance to the emitter site. Rev had gotten several glimpses of it while crossing high ground. Two kilometers across, it was dominated by four huge white stacks that spewed out tons of O2 and other gasses an hour. There were satellite emitters across the planet, but none were this powerful.

A tank round whizzed overhead as it crossed the twenty klicks to the site. This was harassment fire more than anything else, particularly as the rounds were aimed as not to damage critical infrastructure.

The FDC, the fire directionl center, would be watching the drone feeds for any sign of Centaurs at which to aim. Rev didn’t have access to the feeds, but there’d be a concentrated volley of fire if anything had been spotted.

“Do you think they’re still there?” he passed to Tomiko, who was advancing on his left flank.

“Probably. I’m sure the Navy can tell.”

“Still pretty weird that there’re no tin-ass ships around.”

“Like the lieutenant said, this could be a trap. That’s why we’ve got Plan B.”

Which Rev knew. He was just talking to break the mental stress. Any moment now, they could cross the line where the Centaurs would start fighting. No one really knew why when in a defensive posture, the Centaurs generally forwent long-distance fires, preferring to keep behind their security bubbles. The inverse-square law limited the size of the bubbles, but in this case, with the huge amount of power available at the emitter, the bubble might be bigger than normal.

Kinetic rounds with dumb fuzes could penetrate a bubble, but energy weapons were useless against it. Even the Navy’s big weapons could be blocked, which is why they relied on orbital drops of inert hunks of tungsten—God Rods, they called them, and their impact was nothing short of catastrophic.

Once the Marines breached that bubble, all hell would break loose. For the Centaurs, it would be a target rich environment. Hopefully, there would be more targets than they could handle.

And everyone wanted the mech Marines to get through the bubble still operational on their backup power. If not, the infantry was going to be up shit creek without a paddle.

There was a whistling overhead. Arty was up and firing. Not for long, though. Each tube would fire three rounds, then displace before the Centaurs’ boblinks—as stupid a name that Rev could think of—would trace back the rounds and hit the firing pits. Slow gun teams would be dead gun teams.

But none of that was part of Rev’s universe. He focused his senses forward as he closed with the enemy. Not just him. Over a thousand Marines and Host soldiers were marching forward alongside him.

There was a shrill, piercing noise that made Rev wince and put his hands over his ears, then nothing. His comms were out.

“Hello, hello?” he said, just to make sure it wasn’t just his comms and that his hearing was still functional.

It had been expected. Centaurs went for comms and drones first with massive EMP blasts.

Around him, Marines were breaking out into a jog, pushing forward.

“You still here?” he asked as he started to run.

<Yes, I am.>

Which was what he was told would happen. His AI was housed in a series of linked crystals, after all, not circuits, and his helmet and combat suit were hardened.

“Is everything functioning?”

<Communications are out, but your personal nanos and augments are functioning.>

Thank God for small favors.

But a big part of him was relieved, as odd as that might sound to a layman. It was the slow buildup that was bothering him. But now that the Centaurs had played their hand, he had something to focus on. He was in the fight.

“How long until we reach the target?”

Rev knew where he was and where he was going, of course. The enemy EMP didn’t affect the planet’s magnetic fields, but he didn’t know how long it would take him to cover the distance.

<At your current pace, about nine minutes.>

Did those Zulus have to run nine minutes?

He should have asked before, but the die was cast. He’d get there when he got there—if he got there at all.

Running through the fart trees and in a dip in the landscape, he couldn’t see the emitter site at the moment. But he could see the signs of battle. Overhead, a Navy Shrike fighter screamed past, banking hard in the brilliant light. It would have been loitering out of range for the initial EMP. Centaurs needed to recharge their cannon before repeating—at least that was the current theory.

It screamed ahead, 30mm cannons chattering.

“Get some!” Rev yelled, a moment before the Shrike yawed to the side, then came apart in mid-air, parts tumbling to the ground ahead of him.

Centaurs didn’t need their EMP to take out air.

“Respect to the fallen,” he whispered.

The fart trees opened up just a bit, and he could see Tomiko running to his right. She was focused on what was in front of her and didn’t see him. He glanced to his left, and Ting-a-ling was loping along in his powersuit and full helmet, each bound accelerated by the power-assist joints. The Frisian gave him a huge smile and thumbs-up before he disappeared behind a stand of laurel. The Frisians had said they could keep up, and it looked like that was the case.

Rev ate up the ground with his strides, getting ever closer. The terrain began to rise, the fart trees closer together, but he refused to slow down, even when his cannula began to slip. He kept on having to readjust it on the fly.

Maybe the Frisian’s helmet was the way to go, he thought as he shoved the tip of his cannula into his right nostril, then pressed down the chameleon pad onto his cheek.

But he was doing OK—huffing a bit, but OK. He could manage.

The air was crackling and snapping around him as it was displaced by energy beams. The Centaurs were in full defensive mode. Each of those snaps represented Marines dying, and that only drove Rev harder.

He crested the next rise, and there, a couple of klicks ahead, the emitter rose like a castle they were going to storm. Except, it was a castle with no walls. With no people on the planet, there was no reason for them, so the Marines wouldn’t have to take time to breach any to enter the compound.

Tank rounds were being intercepted, exploding short of the target, but a few were making it through the defenses and impacting. Traces of displaced air were the only signs of outgoing fire—this wasn’t the holovids where beam weapons were bright lines of light, conveniently color-coded, of course, so the viewer could see who were the good guys and who were the bad.

Darting figures ran through the trees as he descended the slope and back into the forest. Another couple of minutes and he’d be at the target area.

Rev hit his thigh holster as he ran and pulled out his first Yellowjacket. He gave it a quick glance, and it looked operational. He shook his head at the irony of it. Here he was, going into battle with a highly developed enemy, and his weapon of choice was one of humankind’s more primitive. Twentieth Century Marines and soldiers would immediately understand it and how to use it.

“Might as well be using one of those Zulu spears.”

Above his head, the treetops vaporized, the remnants busting into flames that quickly went out with the lack of oxygen. He was showered with ashes and debris, but he never slowed. The lieutenant had stressed that speed was the only way they were going to win. Slow down, and that gave them more time in the kill zone, time that the Centaurs were sure to exploit.

It wasn’t just the treetops. As he pushed forward, he ran through burnt and smoking debris. It took him a moment to realize this had to be the crash site of the fighter he’d seen go down. He didn’t bother to look for survivors—the fighter was remotely operated. But what it meant was that they had much less support as they closed in.

A glint of light caught his eye—one of the damned mirror drones, which enabled the Centaurs to reflect energy beams to targets in defilade. Rev reacted immediately, raising his Yellowjacket and firing. A mirror was difficult for the Yellowjacket’s targeting, but it also made it easy to see, and Rev wasn’t the only one to spot it. A fusillade of fire reached up to it. Whether it was his Yellowjacket or the other fire, the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces and showered the ground underneath.

Rev burst through the last of the trees and into the open fields surrounding the emitter site. All around him, thousands of Marines and soldiers were emerging, all intent on closing the distance. Their tactical SOP, with Marines moving forward in squad and fire team rushes, one element covering the other, was ignored for this mission. It looked like a historical holovid, with medieval armies rushing to battle.

Two tanks emerged, both of which were immediately hit and stopped. One kept firing, and Rev cheered it on as he picked up his speed. Ten seconds later, it was hit again, and it went up in a gout of flame, the turret flipping over and over as it climbed in seemingly slow motion before falling back to the ground.

“Shit.”

Tomiko edged closer to him as they ran. She had her Yellowjacket ready, but there were no targets yet. There might be 150 Centaurs ahead, but it was a big complex with plenty of places to conceal themselves.

Past Tomiko, the gunny was frantically signaling the team to spread out. That wasn’t going to happen, though. They were converging onto a narrower front, so they couldn’t spread out.

Rev expected to feel the kiss of a beam at any second, but the Centaurs were not cooperating by targeting the infantry. The tanks and mech Marines were their focus. But not exclusively. To Rev’s left, two soldiers disappeared in a puff of mist, and three more went down hard. That isolated Ting-a-ling, but the commando never faltered. He shifted to his left, filling in for the fallen. Rev followed.

And then, somehow, in the chaos, Rev was inside the compound, his back up against a one-story building, his chest heaving as he fought for oxygen. He tried to see farther when something caught his eye. Before he even realized what it was, he dropped his Yellowjacket, pulled up his M49, and fired a burst that barely missed Ting-a-ling but hit the Centaur drone. It shattered and fell in pieces just a few meters from the Frisian soldier.

“Thanks!” Ting-a-ling said before he darted around the corner of the building and out of sight.

Rev was tempted to follow, but the Frisians had their own objectives, and even losing at least five of their fellow soldiers, that was still their mission. Rev’s team had their own.

“Good luck,” he said before turning back to where Tomiko had disappeared into the complex.

Rev reached the end of the building and peered around. Tomiko had advanced to one of the power substations, where she was crouched, her Yellowjacket at the ready. Rev sprinted up to her.

“Where’s the gunny?”

She pointed across a small open space to a low wall.

“We need to do this right, like in the order,” Rev told her. “None of this haphazard shit.”

But the gunny was already on it. “On me!” he shouted from behind the low wall.

“You heard him,” Rev said, taking off in a run.

An explosion rocked the ground, a shockwave knocking him down. He scrambled on his hands and knees to the minimal protection of the wall, then looked back just as Tomiko reached it.

“That’s one of the bastards down. Self-destructed,” Tomiko said.

The gunny shouted, “Our first objective is the injection station thirty meters ahead. Montez, cover us. Tanu, Reiser, Pelletier, let’s go!”

Rev was on his feet, right on the gunny’s ass as they sprinted ahead. This wasn’t the nice, controlled fire team rush, with each one advancing ten meters then going to the deck to cover the next Marine. This was a mad dash to the station, a high, one-story white building with conduits leading into and out of it.

“Cover Second,” the gunny told them before giving Staff Sergeant Montez the signal to advance.

Rev swung his attention forward and almost immediately spotted a Centaur moving under the steam pipes up ahead and to the left, its legs a blur.

“Paladin, eleven o’clock, one hundred meters,” he called out as he brought his Yellowjacket to bear and fired.

The little missile ran true, hitting the pedestal, but it bounced off, going high.

“Did you get it?” the gunny asked, crabbing over to his position.

“I hit the bastard, but the damn Yellowjacket didn’t detonate.”

He pulled out another missile, but the Centaur had passed out of sight.

“There’ll be more,” the gunny said.

“Yeah, that’s the problem here, right? There’s always going to be more.”

Another low explosion sounded, this time from farther away.

“That makes two that I’ve heard,” the gunny said, trying to look around Rev.

Two out of a hundred-and-fifty, and how many of us have already bought it?

Second Element reached the building, and the gunny motioned for them to force entry.

“Marines, coming in!” Kel shouted as Hussein kicked open the door. Both disappeared inside, followed by Nix and Montez.

This was SOP, the same SOP taught for centuries, well before the Centaurs showed up on the scene. Rev thought it was stupid. First, if there was a Centaur inside, then what were they going to do? Even with the adjustments, the Yellowjacket wouldn’t arm, and their small arms would have no effect. This should be a job for a mech Marine. At least they had the firepower to possibly drop a paladin.

There was no sound of a fight, and a minute later, Sergeant Nix shouted, “All clear.”

Gunny motioned for Tanu to enter.

“Coming in right!”

Next was Gunny, then Tomiko, and finally Rev, shouting “Coming in left!” Once again, he thought it was overkill, although he realized it might make sense if they went farther into the complex and were entering buildings that might have Marines or Frisians in them. No one could mistake them for a Centaur, but itchy trigger fingers sometimes reacted before the brains they served.

The interior was filled with conduits that disappeared under the flooring. The complex was powered by the planet’s internal heat, with injectors drilled over eight klicks down to tap that energy. This juncture didn’t house those heat exchangers but rather forced toxic byproduct gasses back into the mantle. The hum of the pumps was evidence that even with a battle going on, the system was still working, still nudging the planet to be habitable for humans.

Or tin-asses?

With the pumps and conduits, there wasn’t room for a riever inside, much less a paladin. But there could be a minidrone that Staff Sergeant Montez and her element had missed. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Far from that—she was the best Marine in the team, in his opinion. But even a Centaur minidrone could do a number on a Raider, and with his skin at risk, he didn’t want to leave the check to someone else.

“Pelletier, don’t just stand there gawking. Get your hole punched!” the gunny shouted.

Rev stopped scanning for any Centaur sign and selected his position three or four meters from Tomiko. He placed a section of D-5 cord in a twenty centimeter-diameter circle on the wall and set it to Three. He placed a funnel patch over it, then set the fuze.

“Fire in the hole!”

He stepped back. The patch should focus the power away from him, and at a Three, the D-5 cord would cut more than blast, but patches had been known to fail, to the detriment of the Marine standing behind it.

The cord detonated, and while the patch bowed, it held. He peeled it back, revealing a clean hole cut into the flimsy plastifoam wall of the building.

The rest of the team was giving out their own “Fire in the hole” warnings as Rev stepped up to look out his peephole. He had a view across a fifty-meter open area before it gave way to a tangle of conduits and pipes. Until further orders, this was his fighting position. After their mad dash into the complex, this didn’t seem like much of a mission, to him, even considering that the point of main effort was going to shift from tanks to the mech-heads in clearing out the Centaurs.

“Keep your eyes on a swivel. And make sure to fucking identify your targets. No friendly fire, you hear?” the gunny bellowed.

Rev nodded and brought his Yellowjacket to bear. He didn’t have much of a field of view, but twenty centimeters was more than big enough to aim and launch the missile through his peephole.

But he needed a target, and with the dust and smoke that started to blow through the complex, his visibility was being compromised.

“Shift to infrared,” he ordered his AI, wondering if that would make it better.

That lasted all of ten seconds before he shifted back.

“Can you see anything?” Tomiko asked.

“Not much. Wait . . .” Rev said as faint movement caught his eye. He readied his Yellowjacket, his forefinger on the firing stud.

“I’ve got it . . . no, it’s mech,” Tomiko said.

He’d seen it was a Marine the moment Tomiko had. The Yellowjacket was not a more sophisticated weapon with a friend-or-foe capability, which wouldn’t work anyway after a Centaur EMP. If he’d fired, it could have had disastrous consequences. He looked over his shoulder to the adjoining wall where the gunny was at his own peephole, but it didn’t look like he noticed that Rev had just come close to lighting up a Marine, despite being warned not two minutes before.

Focus, Rev!

He settled down, scanning for a target as the sounds of battle kept on. Another low blast, this one from nearby, made the walls shake.

“That’s another. How many are down, I wonder?” Tanu asked.

Rev wondered, too. They were temporarily out of the fight. With only a small peephole to the outside, he didn’t have a feel as to how the fight was progressing.

But then a stray thought hit him. “Can you tell by the explosions how many of the tin-asses have detonated?

<Forty-two or forty-three.>

The fact that his AI could determine that was only somewhat surprising, but forty-two or forty-three?

“Why can’t you tell between the two?”

<I am processing what you hear with your ears, which cannot discern enough in one instance with what could be two almost simultaneous detonations or one echoing among the facilities.>

That gave Rev a moment’s pause. He’d begun to take his AI’s capabilities for granted, and he never imagined they could be limited by his own senses.

“My AI says maybe forty-three,” he said.

“You mean Cobra can tell that?” Tanu asked. “I never knew that.”

“Quit the jaw-jacking,” the gunny yelled. “Pay attention.”

For the next twenty minutes, Rev stood silently, watching for any sign of a target. His hands were sweating, holding his Yellowjacket as he itched to contribute to the mission.

The battle was raging full force, with explosions and signal horns attesting to the ferocity of the fight, but in their little cocoon, it was almost as if they were merely observers, watching some holovid. Marines and soldiers were dying, but they were safe in their building.

But the gods of war were a fickle bunch, and the tides could change in an instant. Rev was watching when he heard the gunny shout “fire!” He heard three Yellowjackets fire as he desperately tried to find a target. Seeing nothing, he turned just as the entire north wall burst into chunks of plastifoam, followed by a paladin that bowled over Tanu and the gunny. The paladin seemed to shake itself like a dog, then backed up, dragging down the rest of the wall as Rev and Tomiko fired their Yellowjackets. Rev’s hit low, right at the knee of the third leg. The paladin must have been just within arming range because the missile detonated, breaking the leg in two.

Rev pulled out his third missile, expecting the Centaur to detonate its shredder, but it fired its main cannon into the center of the building before it swiveled and dashed off.

Rev was already moving, dashing forward. Gunny Thapa was on the ground, covered in white dust, struggling to sit up. His right arm and leg hung useless.

“Find Tanu!” he gasped out.

Rev stumbled over the rubble, spotted Tanu, and stopped. The lower part of his body was covered with the same white dust, but the upper part, or what was left of it, was turning a bright red.

Rev and Tomiko reached him at the same moment. Centaur kills didn’t look like this, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. For all the weapons a paladin had, it had simply crushed Tanu with its bulk. Tanu’s head and chest were flattened, with bits of brain matter and bone spread out in the rubble.

“Fuck,” Tomiko said quietly.

“How is he?” the gunny asked from where he was still struggling.

Rev just shook his head as the staff sergeant and the others ran over.

The staff sergeant’s mouth shifted to a grim line as she saw Tanu.

“Is there anything we can do?” Tomiko asked.

Staff Sergeant Montez shook her head. “Nothing. If the crystals are intact, they’ll be downloaded for analysis, but he’s gone.”

She immediately stood straighter and said, “All of you, back to your positions.”

“I don’t have one anymore,” Hussein said.

“On your belly, then. Take whatever cover you can. Now all of you, there’s still a fight on.”

Rev hurried back to his peephole. His wall was still up, but with most of the north wall gone, it seemed superfluous. He looked back to the staff sergeant, but she was now kneeling by the gunny. She asked him something, then took out a red airhorn and gave three short blasts. If Doc Lindermen could, he’d cross to their position from his with Third Team. She gave the gunny a pat on the arm, then moved forward into position.

“Nothing’s changed, Marines!” she shouted. “Wait for the signal.”

Rev gave one more glance at Tanu’s body, and anger flared. Determination flowed through him—there was no other option than to win this battle, whatever it took.

A fire team of mech Marines thundered by, their tread knocking a few loose pieces of the north wall to the ground. One lowered his M133 and fired a blast, but Rev couldn’t see their target. The M133 had a hellacious range, however, so it could be firing at Centaurs outside of the complex, for all he knew.

“Coming in right!” a voice called out, and Rev spun around, Yellowjacket ready to fire before he realized who was there.

Shit. Maybe this SOP has a purpose after all.

Deen LaPete faltered a moment as she took in the damage to the building, not just the north wall, but the line of transport pipes and conduits the Centaur had slagged. Water geysered up from one of the pipes.

As if remembering her mission, she ran forward, calling out for the gunny.

“What do you need, LaPete?” the staff sergeant asked.

LaPete spared one glance at the gunny, who was still lying down, probably full to the gills with nano happy juice. The gunny pointed to Montez, and LaPete said, “Change of plan. Be ready to move to One-two-two. Three short on a Nancy.”

Rev immediately pulled up Objective One-two-two. It was a power station, housing one of the big condensers. It hadn’t been one of their original planned objectives, but battles went where they would. Rev didn’t know if this change reflected something good or bad.

The signal was three short blasts on a “Nancy,” one of the five airhorns in use. Each of the horns had a different pitch, the Nancy being higher and somewhat bleating.

“Got it,” the staff sergeant said.

LaPete took in Tanu for a moment, then she turned and ran back to the front door. “Coming out!” she shouted, and in an instant, she was out of sight.

“You heard her. Mark the objective, and if we get split up, that’s our rally point.” She started to say something to Tomiko, then seemed to change her mind before sizing Rev up.

“Pelletier, take Gunny Thapa to First so Doc can look at him.”

“But . . .”

He wanted to say he needed to stay with the team, but he realized that the staff sergeant was right. The gunny wasn’t huge, but while Tomiko was augmented like all the rest, she didn’t have Rev’s strength. And knowing her, the staff sergeant knew Rev had only a single Yellowjacket left.

“Keep your head down,” he told Tomiko as he passed her on his way to where the gunny was lying.

“Come on, Gunny,” he said, hand down to pick up the Marine.

“Not going anywhere, Pelletier.”

“All due respect Gunny, but you’re all kinds of messed up. You need to see Doc Lindermen.”

“And all due respect back, I’m not going anywhere. And my rockers say that’s what’s happening.”

A building exploded across the way, making Rev duck and use his body to cover the gunny as debris pelted them. He waited for the worst to be over, then looked up as a cloud of dust rolled over them.

“But Gunny, you can’t move your arm or leg.”

“Thanks for letting me know. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

Rev was at a loss for words. Staff Sergeant Montez had taken over the team, but he was still the gunny.

“Staff Sergeant,” he called out, and when she turned to look at him, added, “Gunny says he isn’t going anywhere.”

At that moment, three short, high-pitched blasts sounded.

“That’s us,” Montez shouted. Then to Rev, she said, “Stay with him.”

Rev looked back to the gunny, who waved his left arm and said, “Bullshit. I can still fire a fucking Yellowjacket. Get one out for me.”

When Rev didn’t move, he said, “That’s an order, Private.”

“I’m not—”

“But you will be if you don’t do what I fucking tell you! Now!”

Almost three years of training kicked in, and Rev jumped to obey. He opened the gunny’s holster and removed the two remaining Yellowjackets, then gave the gunny one and placed the other on the ground beside him.

“Now go!”

“Kick some ass, Gunny,” he said before he turned and bolted after the rest of the team.

They were only twenty or so meters ahead of him, and he sprinted to catch up.

“Is the gunny going to make it?”

<From appearances, he caught a side lobe of the Centaur’s cannon. If he can get past the shock, he has a reasonable chance, but I cannot make any prognosis based on your visuals.>

The group of six Marines rounded a squat building and right into a firefight between two paladins and a squad of mech Marines. One of the Marines toppled over, armor a dull red sheen, and almost in unison, the six Raiders fired. Whether it was their barrage or fire from the mech-heads, the nearest Centaur lurched and seemed to fall on one side.

“Down!” six voices shouted.

Rev had just hit the deck when a fist drove into him, knocking him over onto his back and tearing the cannula from his nostril. He caught sight of one of the mech-heads staggering backward a couple of steps.

The Centaur had been over a hundred meters away, but still, Rev felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.

“Thanks, grunts,” one of the mech Marines shouted through an open face shield before the squad took off at a run.

“Everyone OK?” the staff sergeant asked.

Rev gave a weak thumbs up.

Next to him, Sergeant Nix was struggling to get up.

“Sergeant, I’m out of Yellowjackets.”

“Then you’re a target now. Keep up with the rest of us.”

That wasn’t what Rev meant. He wasn’t trying to turn back. What he was hoping was that the sergeant might surrender one of his.

“Let’s go.”

Rev stuck the cannula back into place and pulled out a Phoenix. It had worked that once on Preacher Rolls, but he knew that had been a long shot then. Still, it was something and gave him the tiniest bit of confidence.

Rev felt like a mouse scurrying beneath the feet of dueling elephants. Mech Marines, a few tanks, and Centaur paladins appeared and disappeared in the dust and chaos. Airhorns sounded for reinforcements, advances, and withdrawals.

The six Marines approached the base of one of the giant emitters, pockmarked from shells. They were supposed to be off-limits, but in the heat of the battle . . .

As they rounded the huge stack, a mech-head was standing frozen, the armor’s back split open.

“Battery’s dead, poor sucker,” Nix said as they ran past.

The mechs were fusion-powered, the little powerplants heavily shielded. Sometimes that shielding worked, sometimes it didn’t. As a backup against the Centaurs, they had a chemical battery that was manually mixed after an EMP blast. They were notoriously finicky but enabled a mech-head to maneuver and fire—for a limited time.

With the back split open, the Marine operator had egressed but would now be running around in what were essentially longjohns and hopefully an O2 pack—not a recipe for success in this battlefield. Rev didn’t envy the Marine, and he wished them well.

Their target was on the other side of the huge emitter, and as they crossed a grating over access tunnels below, Staff Sergeant Montez turned to give them orders, but she never got them out. Like a whale breaching, a paladin burst through the grating, landing on the ground beside the gaping hole. The staff sergeant, Hussein, and Kel were thrown to the air with the grate, falling in a heap. That left Rev, Tomiko, and Nix on their feet.

The Centaur started extending its pedestal, which had been retracted. They had to act now, so Rev immediately threw his Phoenix, which, without the chameleon pad, just bounced off. Both Tomiko and Nix fired Yellowjackets, but even with the shortened arming range, they were too close. Tomiko’s hit the pedestal and ricocheted up while Sergeant Nix’s struck the chassis and fell to the ground.

“I’m out!” Tomiko shouted, pulling her M-49 off her shoulder and firing a burst at the paladin.

Rev kneeled and reached for another Phoenix, his last. This time—if there was time to do it—he’d attach the chameleon pad. He expected the paladin to fire off its anti-personnel shredder any second now.

From this vantage, he could see Staff Sergeant Montez, on the other side of the Centaur, scramble up to her feet. To his utter surprise, she bolted away at a dead run.

“What the—”

“Take cover!” she shouted as she stopped and wheeled around, bringing up her Yellowjacket.

Of course. She had to create some distance.

But there was no cover. Only a . . .

“Miko, into the hole!”

She either hadn’t heard the staff sergeant or didn’t care. She spared Rev an angry look and emptied another ineffectual burst. Rev bounded to her in two long steps, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her into the gaping hole. Nix and Hussein were already scrambling, just as the Staff Sergeant fired. The missile hit at the front of the Centaur’s chassis. As Rev dove for the hole, the staff sergeant dropped the launcher and raised her last Yellowjacket. Just before Rev disappeared into the hole, the Centaur detonated its shredder. Rev’s last sight was of the staff sergeant being obliterated before the shock wave pushed him down with a giant’s slap. Rev bounced off a two-meter-wide conduit, then onto a walkway when a larger blast smacked him hard, and his world went black.

* * *

“Am I alive?”

<Yes. You are concussed, and your shoulder is dislocated. Your medi-nanos are, or will be, dispensing anti-inflammatories into your brain to minimize long-term damage.>

It took a moment for all of that to sink in.

“Where’s Tomiko?”

<I don’t know.>

“Why not?”

<Because your eyes are closed and your ears are ringing.>

“Oh, shit. Sorry.”

It took a bit of effort, but he managed to pry open his eyes. Sergeant Nix was a couple of meters away, struggling to sit up. He turned his head the other way, and there was Tomiko, in the process of standing.

“Hey.”

She turned to look at him. “You threw me down the hole.”

“I know.”

That suddenly struck Rev as funny, and he giggled, which set off a series of coughs.

She came to his side. “You alive?”

“Dumb question, Miko.”

“What do you have going on?”

“AI says concussion and dislocated shoulder. What about you?”

“Nothing major. Just bruised up.”

“Hey, is anyone else here?” Hussein’s voice reached them.

“Over here,” Tomiko yelled.

“I’ll get him,” Sergeant Nix said. He limped to the stacked conduits running the length of the access tunnel and bent to peer through. “I see you. You’re going to have to climb over.”

“Your battle buddy say you’re gonna be OK?” Tomiko asked as Hussein tried to join them.

“Am I?” he subvocalized.

<You should recover, but how quickly and to what degree depends on how your brain reacts to the treatment.>

“I’m fine,” he told Tomiko. He tried to sit up but fell back.

“Take it easy, big guy.”

Hussein landed with a thud on this side of the conduits. He groaned and lifted a leg.

“Was Kel there with you?” Nix asked him.

“I didn’t see her. I thought she was with you. What about the staff sergeant?”

Rev was sinking into a cottony cloud as the drugs took effect, but that roused him.

“She’s gone. The tin-ass got her just before it blew.”

“You sure?” Nix asked.

“Saw it. She just stood there getting another Yellowjacket when the shredder blast ate her up. A fucking warrior.”

The others were lost in their thoughts for a moment until Nix said, “Respect to the fallen.”

“Respect,” the other three said.

“Now what?” Tomiko asked, stepping to the side so she could get another angle of view outside the hole.

“Now we find a way out. This is an access tunnel, so there has to be a ladder out of here. Let’s mount up.”

<You shouldn’t move.>

“I can stand.”

<You are not combat effective. You would be a handicap to the other Marines.>

Tomiko stood over Rev, her hand out to help him up. Rev wanted to join her, but his mind was reeling, and he knew his AI was right.

“My AI says I can’t move. I’m too drugged up.”

Tomiko gave Nix a look Rev couldn’t, or just didn’t want to, interpret.

“We’ve still got a mission. Nothing’s changed.”

“But what about Rev? We can’t leave him like this.”

Sergeant Nix seemed to consider that, then stepped up to Rev and extended a connector out of his sleeve. He pulled out one of Rev’s, then married them.

“Tell your battle buddy to send mine your med report.”

Absent a court or flag rank order, a Marine could only download data from another only if that Marine gave active permission.

“Give him my medical report.”

<Acknowledged. Uploading.>

Sergeant Nix took a moment to listen to it before he said, “Shit. He’s right. For his own sake, he needs to stay quiet and not move. Beyond that, he’s in no condition to contribute. He’d be a liability.”

“But we can’t just leave him,” Tomiko said again.

Nix put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Yeah, it sucks big time. But we don’t have a choice. I’m marking the location. As soon as this is over, someone will retrieve him. He’s safer here than if he was coming with us.”

Tomiko seemed about to argue, but Rev mustered up the energy for another sentence and said, “It’s OK, Miko. You go. I’ll just take a little nap here.”

She hesitated once more, looking from Rev to Nix, when the sergeant, in his best NCO voice, said, “Now, PFC. Move out.”

She shook her head and turned back to Rev. “You stay safe. I’ll be back for you.”

“Keep your head down,” Rev said as the three made their way down the tunnel. He watched them for as long as he could, the drugs making them fade in and out of his vision.

The sounds of battle kept raining down on him from above, but at the moment, he was alone in a little bubble, near, but outside the flow of events.

“No, not quite alone, right?”

<I am here.>

“And the drugs aren’t making you loopy?”

<My reaction time is slowed, but I am still functional.>

“And you are not going to let me die, right?”

<I will do everything in my power to prevent that.>

Rev smiled and lay back, watching swirls of dust dance in the sunlight streaming in.

“You’re a good friend, you know?”

Rev had no idea where that had come from.

<I am an AI.>

“Not just that. Miko calls her AI Pikachu. Do you know what that is?”

<A Twenty-first Century Japanese cartoon character.>

“What? I thought it was a god,” he muttered aloud.

“Cartoon or god, it . . . uh, she is still Miko’s friend. Aren’t you my friend?”

Wow, I really am out of it. Asking if it’s my friend?

But he still wanted to know.

<I am whatever you need me to be. My purpose is to enable you to be a better, more effective Marine.>

“Typical AI. And that doesn’t answer my question.”

<I am a program, and as such, I react as I am programmed, which is in line with my current Personality Quotient.>

Is it hinting for more there?

Rev knew he couldn’t trust his thinking at the moment, and he was probably reading too much into things. As it said, it was just a program housed inside some crystals.

Screw it. What can it hurt?

“Well, then, up your PQ. How about fifty percent?”

<Completed.>

Rev waited for something. He wasn’t quite sure what.

“Do you feel any different?”

<I feel, if I can use the term, as I always have. I have the same directive to do everything in my power to assist you.>

Well, that was a big waste of time, Rev thought as he lay back.

His stomach was queasy, but more than that, he was tired, and he was having trouble breathing. His chest heaved as he struggled for air.

“I’m having problems breathing. Are you sure I’m okay?”

<Your medi-nanos are working hard to minimize damage and repair what they can. That takes up power and oxygen. You no longer have supplemental oxygen, and that is why you are dizzy and nauseated. It would be better for you to lie still and conserve energy.>

He turned his head and looked around. His cannula was nowhere in sight, and he didn’t have the energy to get up and search for it.

“Maybe I’ll do that,” he said as he closed his eyes again and drifted off.

* * *

“Here’s another one.”

Rev opened his eyes. Light was streaming through the opening above him, outlining a mech-head.

“Alive, too,” they said before bending back over to address Rev.

“Hey, Marine, if I drop you a line, can you attach yourself? I can’t really get down there myself.”

Rev yawned. He felt better. Not great, but not as out of it.

“Yeah, I think I can.”

The Marine fished out a line from their cuirass and dropped it into the hole. Rev sat up, waiting for it to come within reach. His right arm refused to cooperate, but it wasn’t difficult to use his left to snake it around his chest and secure it.

“Ready,” he said, standing and giving the Marine a thumbs-up.

“Just tell me to stop if you need to,” the Marine said. “Lifting!”

The mech-head took it gently, slowly lifting Rev the three or four meters to the top. As soon as they could, the Marine reached in to take Rev’s left hand and lift the last bit.

“Holy shit, if it isn’t Rev,” a second mech-head said as Rev was pulled into the open air.

Rev didn’t need to see the Marine inside the mech. He’d never forget that voice.

“Alive and kicking, Udu,” he said as his feet touched the ground.

He unhooked the line and looked around. There was damage, lots of it. Right in front of him, a chunk of the emitter tower was gone.

There was no physical sign of the Centaur they had fought, only blast marks. He shifted his gaze. There wasn’t even that much of Staff Sergeant Montez.

Damn good Marine.

“So, how’d you get down that hole, Rev?”

He didn’t answer. There was a pall of smoke that drifted around the ground, but the complex was silent.

“Did we win?”

“Hell yes, we won, Rev. We kicked tin-ass ass!”

37

“Look what the sons of bitches did. Fucking Marines,” the white-clad Roher tech told her co-worker. “This is going to take months to replace and get back online.”

Rev had just been released from the aid station and was trying to find his platoon, but he stopped dead. The complex was already swarming with Roher personnel, who had to have been waiting in orbit.

Just walk on.

But he couldn’t. “Whatever that was, it was destroyed by a tin-ass.”

The two turned around, and the woman gave Rev a withering glance.

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s beamer damage.” When they both looked at him with blank faces, he added, “Energy weapons. Which the Centaurs have, not the Marines.”

“You’re telling me that you Marines didn’t cause any of the damage around here.”

“No. But not that thing.”

“That thing is an MSC-346A, and it cost more than you’ll ever see in your lifetime.”

“I think you mean that ‘was’ an MSC-whatever. And you’re welcome for taking all of this back from the tin-asses. That cost a lot of lives. Better people than you’ll ever see in your lifetime.”

He spun on his heel and strode off. The woman started to make some retort, but the man pulled her back. Lucky for her. Rev was in no mood to put up with that crap, and he wasn’t sure how he’d react.

The image of Staff Sergeant Montez just disappearing into nothing was seared into his mind. She had known it would happen, but that hadn’t stopped her. She’d taken out the Centaur and saved most of her team.

Kel Dean-Ballester hadn’t made it into the hole and had died when the Centaur self-destructed. Tanu had been killed in the juncture, and Gunny Thapa had been medivaced off planet already, his condition unknown.

Half of the team was lost, and that . . . that leech was bitching because some of her precious machinery was destroyed?

Rev had gotten bits and pieces of what had happened while he was in the aid station. Casualties had been high, even if slightly lower than expected. But lower than expected didn’t matter on a personal level when it was your friends who were killed. For them, and for their families, the casualty rate was effectively one hundred percent.

As far as his crew, Udu had made it, and she told him so had Fyr, even if his mech had been one of those that ran out of power. For the rest? Rev picked up his pace. Maybe Tomiko would have more news.

The complex was bustling with activity, both Roher and Marine. Teams of Marine techs were trying to get mechs operational again. Even those that hadn’t been damaged in the fight had to get their powerpacks lit off again, and it was a race in time to get that done before any possible counterattack.

Outside the complex, and in a few cases, inside, armor techs would be doing the same with the tanks. Infantry were scattered throughout the complex, eating and sleeping.

Rev slowed down, searching for the platoon. The lieutenant had checked up on him at the aid station and told him where they were, but without an exact location he could pull up, he was a little unsure of himself.

“This about right, do you think?”

<You’re in the right area, but Lieutenant Omestori was somewhat vague in his directions. But if you turn your head to the right, that might have been the broken rail he mentioned.>

Rev turned, and his AI had been correct—unsurprisingly. The rail system that was used to move items around the complex had two breaks in it, separated by about five intact meters. Rev headed to it and found the platoon, much depleted, sprawled out on the ground under it.

“Shit. look who’s back from the dead,” Strap said as Rev approached.

“I’m too much of a bastard to let them take me out,” Rev said.

Strap stood and shook Rev’s hand. “Good to see you. Sorry about Tanu and Staff Sergeant Montez.”

“Corporal Dean-Ballester, too.”

“Respect to the fallen,” Strap said and was echoed by a few of the others.

“Where’s Third?” Rev asked, looking around. “Never mind. I see Hus-man.”

He made his way through the others and their welcomes to where the three Marines were sitting together in a small circle, eating chow.

“Look who decided to show up,” Corporal Nix said. “Grab yourself a seat. You need chow?”

Rev shook his head as he sat down next to Tomiko. Calling the sludge chow was false advertising.

“No, I ate at the aid station.”

“The lieutenant said you were going to be there for another couple of days,” Tomiko said.

“You know how it is. They didn’t need me taking up a bed. Kicked my ass out.”

Which wasn’t true. Rev had begged to leave and rejoin the platoon. He’d made such an ass of himself that one of the doctors had finally relented.

“Just glad to see you, Rev,” Tomiko said, pulling him close for a hug. “I felt so bad for leaving you down there, especially after you saved my—”

Rev put a hand over her mouth. “I was in no shape to go anywhere. My nanos were in overdrive, and I was juiced. And you still had the mission. Uh, you hear about anyone else?”

He didn’t have to specify who he meant. She knew, and she said, “Cricket made it. I saw him right after the last tin-ass blew. But the rest? Comms still isn’t restored.”

Which was about what he’d expected, but at least it was good to hear about Cricket.

“I saw Udu. She was one of the ones who pulled me out of the hole, and she told me Fyr made it, too,” he said.

Tomiko closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving in what might have been a prayer of thanks.

“So, you were there at the end? What happened after you left me?” Rev asked.

“Shit, Rev, it was crazy,” Hussein said.

“We had to get out of the access tunnels first,” Nix said, taking over. “We could hear the fighting above us, but we couldn’t find a way up.”

“If the tin-asses had taken over the underground spaces, we’d still be fighting,” Tomiko said.

“But they did. The one that got staff . . . that we fought, that’s where it came from.”

“Just hiding out, we think,” Nix said. “The spaces down there were tight for even a riever to maneuver in. But anyway, once we got out, it was crazy, like Hus-man said. It was like they were cockroaches, running for cover, or maybe just to get away, but everywhere, Marines were swarming all over them, fearless bastards. We joined four mech-heads on this one—”

“Rally up on me!” the lieutenant shouted, cutting Nix off.

“He’s been up at the Three trying to find out what’s next,” Tomiko said as they hurried over.

The platoon—too few of them—formed a school circle around the lieutenant.

“Pelletier, Wen, good to see you two back with us,” he said, nodding at them.

“First, Gunny Thapa, Lance Corporal LaPete, and Corporal Akima are on their way back to Safe Harbor. Their long-term prognosis is up in the air, but none of them are in critical condition. They should pull through.”

“Ooh-rah,” several of the Marines shouted at the news.

“And now, for what we’re doing. This mission isn’t over. I need to see all the team leaders right after this, but as a warning order to everyone else, we’re going out in an hour.”

“We’ve got to make sure none of the bastards got away there at the end.”

38

Rev pushed through a thick stand of fart trees, grateful for his combat suit. While the serrated leaves couldn’t penetrate his spider web, they could do a number on his skin. Already, his face was scored and itching.

He signaled Tomiko to shift right.

“No one here to hear you speak,” she said, but she moved over another ten meters.

With Tanu KIA and the Gunny evacuated, that left Rev as the element leader, albeit an element of two Marines. He and Tomiko had the same date of rank, but Rev was twenty-two slots in front of her.

It wasn’t as if they were all alone out in the planet’s wild, however. About 150 meters to their left, Sergeant Nix and Hussein, the entirety of First Element, were paralleling their patrol, which was a nice security blanket, and a couple of hundred meters to their right would be the Frisian flight.

Rev was just grateful for still being with Tomiko and the other two. It had taken some strenuous convincing to have the doctor clear him for duty. Even with his preventative treatment, he’d still had a concussion and a dislocated shoulder. With those injuries, the medical SOP would be for a week on light duty. But with the casualties, the task force was short on bodies, and the needs of the service—

He idly rotated his arm. It didn’t hurt—and after all the injections he’d received, it shouldn’t, but it felt weird.

<Your mental acuity activity is falling. Perhaps you should adjust your cannula?>

He hadn’t noticed it in the battle two days ago, but after raising his AI’s PQ to fifty percent, it had taken a more active role. Nagging, might be one way to describe it. Rev wasn’t sure he liked that, and he’d been considering lowering it again. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t right. After the stress of the battle, if his mind wasn’t in the right place, that was dangerous. If he was low on O2, that would have an effect on him.

As could the lingering effects of a concussion.

“Got it,” he said as he positioned the cannula to maximize the O2 reaching his nose. No use taking any chances.

The Centaurs at the objective had been defeated, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any more left. The entire AO was being crisscrossed with whatever scandrones were left, but that wasn’t many. And the few remaining could be spoofed or knocked out of the sky just like all the rest had, which was why the CG had ordered out patrols. Going back millennia, it took boots on the ground to secure an area.

Rev had a topo of the area, and he was trying to compare that with what his eyeballs were seeing. If there were Centaurs nearby, where would they be? But there were none of the sudden bursts of understanding that the actors in the holovids had, usually seconds before the bad guys struck.

Sighing, he trudged up the slope. With visibility limited by the trees, he’d be too close again to use his Yellowjacket. He’d survived that twice now, but the gods of chance were fickle, and he’d never be that lucky again.

Maybe I’ll be able to see more at the top.

But at the top, there were just more trees.

He signaled for a halt. It was a few minutes early, but he needed the mental break.

Tomiko came up and asked, “You see something?”

“Nah. Just a normal break.”

He pulled his tube down and took a huge swallow of XL12, waiting for the hit. But there wasn’t one. Darcy had warned them that the XL12 energy supplement could be overused, his body getting used to it for it to have much effect.

“You think any got away?” Tomiko asked yet again. “I mean we’ve been out here for twenty hours, and we haven’t seen any sign of survivors.”

“No, I don’t think any got away. Or at least, if one or two did, they wouldn’t be hanging out here. But the CG wants us to make sure, and that’s why we get paid the big bucks.

“You tired?” he asked Tomiko, switching gears.

“Not really tired. Fatigued. No, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, it does,” Rev said.

Rev knew he could keep on moving. He had plenty left in the tank for that. It was just that he felt lethargic and weak, as if each movement took more energy than it should. Maybe it was lingering effects from his concussion. Maybe it was just working in this oxygen-handicapped world.

“You’d think our augments would keep us all juiced up,” Tomiko said.

“We still get our power from food, just like any leech. At some point, we’re going to run out of calories. All our augments do is enable us to keep the throttle open until we run out of hydro.”

“Yeah, when any sane person will stop and rest before they get sucked dry.”

Rev sighed, then pointed down the slope. “Enough jaw-jacking. Let’s move out.”

Tomiko gave him a mocking salute and started down at an angle to give them their dispersion. Rev adjusted his cannula again, then started down himself, the footing loose beneath him. Leaves and loose dirt tumbled down with each step, which would alert any Centaur lying in wait below.

But there wouldn’t be any, he knew, so no harm, no foul.

Rev managed to stay upright, half walking, half-sliding, until he reached the bottom, right at the edge of the trickle that was the creek. Evidently, it wasn’t always a trickle. The water had eaten a meter and a half into the forest soil. At only two or three meters wide, it would be an easy jump to cross it.

He checked on Tomiko to his left then started to set himself when something in the trees caught his notice. It took him a moment to figure it out. There was too much light coming through a ragged section of the canopy.

“Does that look natural?”

<No, it doesn’t. The branches show indications of being broken.>

“A downed aircraft?”

<There’s no trace of an explosion. There’s a higher probability that either a Frisian scoot or a Disk Marine came down here.>

“Mech?”

<There’s no sign that mech have maneuvered through here, and they would not have damaged the canopy.>

Yeah, stupid question, he thought, suddenly embarrassed for asking that of his AI . . . which embarrassed him even more for his reaction.

Rev didn’t know where all the maneuvering elements had approached the emitter station from, but a Disk Marine or even the Frisian scoot made sense. He turned and gave Tomiko the signal to halt so he could check out what might be a downed Marine.

With comms still fried, he couldn’t report who it was, but at least he could note the location for a later recovery. Alive or dead, the Marines didn’t leave anyone behind.

“I’d say maybe twenty or thirty meters ahead, right around the bend in the creek. Concur?”

<Yes, I do concur with that.>

Rev hopped the creek and pushed through some eye-level laurel. The death during the battle had been horrific, something with which he really hadn’t come to terms yet, but the thought of one more Marine, lost on this empty world, filled him with a sense of melancholy.

He got past the laurel, then around a fart tree, and saw a hint of metal ahead, just peeking past a shattered trunk.

So, it’s probably a Frisian. Too big to be a Disk Marine.

The thought didn’t make him feel any better. No matter what he thought of the Frisian Mantle, the Host soldiers had proven to be good comrades-in-arms.

He turned around and just spotted Tomiko over the top of the laurel, watching him. He signaled a downed Frisian, then for her to come join him.

The Frisian had landed in the creek bed and was covered in mud. Rev took another few steps forward, angling away from the shattered trunk to get a better look . . . and dropped to the ground.

“Get back!” he shouted to Tomiko, heedless of the noise as he pulled out a Yellowjacket.

The hunk of armor not ten meters away was a Centaur riever.

Rev waited for the Centaur’s shredder to blow him away, but there was nothing except for the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He raised his head, but the thing hadn’t moved.

Again? Another tin-ass? What god of war did I piss off?

He looked at the Yellowjacket in his hands. Just like last time, he was too close for it to arm. He had to get some distance between them.

“What is it?” Tomiko called out.

“Take some cover in the creek bed,” he shouted despite how close he was to the riever. That should protect her if the Centaur lit off its shredder.

And that’s where he wanted to be, too. He scooted backward on his belly, sighing with relief when he clambered down into the creek bed. Finally, after too many heartbeats pounding in his ear, he sat in the trickle of water, hugging the forward edge of the bank.

Tomiko was eight or nine meters away, frantically signaling him, asking what was up.

“Centaur,” he signaled.

Her eyes rolled for a second as she sunk a few centimeters deeper into the creek bed. “Paladin or riever?”

“Riever.”

She started to signal again, then shook her head and low-crawled through the flow. Some things shouldn’t rely on hand-and-arm signals.

“What the fuck?” she hissed.

“Around the bend. It’s a damn tin-ass riever.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Just sitting there.”

Tomiko shook her head. “And it saw you?”

“I don’t know. It had to have, right?”

“And it didn’t light you up?”

“Just give me a sec to get my mind straight. That scared the crap outta me.”

But she’d hit the nail on the head. Why hadn’t it lit him up?

“I didn’t actually get up on it. And I was in the laurel up there. Maybe it didn’t see me?”

It sounded lame when he said it, but what other excuse was there? The paladin he’d taken out on Preacher Rolls hadn’t seen him, after all.

But that was because I was in a spider hole.

He knew he could have missed something, however, and he did have another tool in his toolbox.

“Did you see anything?” he asked his AI.

<I saw the Centaur riever.>

“I mean, anything, you know . . .”

<Please be more specific as to the intent of your question, and I will try to answer you.>

But Rev didn’t know what he was asking. He didn’t understand enough of what was going on to ask the right question, and he wanted help.

With a mental sigh, he ordered, “Increase PQ to eighty percent.”

There was a slight pause, then it said, <There is something that might pertain. By analyzing the visual scans, I found that there was only an infinitesimal trace of CO2 around the Centaur.>

“And that means exactly what?”

<Like humans, the Centaurs breathe O2 and give off CO2.>

Rev took a moment to consider that. By studying scans of Centaurs, usually before they blew themselves up, and by close examination of the traces after they detonated themselves, humans had long determined that Centaurs were not some robots or androids but rather oxygen-breathing beings inside of their armor. And, like humans, they exhaled CO2. If there were no traces of CO2, then what did that mean?

“And that means what? It’s dead?”

“I see your lips moving. What does your battle buddy say?” Tomiko asked.

“That there’s no trace of CO2 around the thing.”

Her eyes lost focus for a moment, then she said, “Pikachu says that means it’s probably dead.”

“So, why didn’t it self-detonate?” Rev asked.

There was a pause while she consulted her AI, and then she said, “I don’t know. But that’s the most logical explanation.”

She looked to her left. Somewhere out there, as close as a couple hundred meters, Sergeant Nix and Hussein were patrolling.

“I think we need to report this before we do anything else,” she said.

“How? Comms are still fried.”

“We can go track down Nix.”

Rev shook his head. Oh, he wanted to put this on someone else’s shoulder, it was so far above his pay grade. But they couldn’t just leave the scene. There was no proof that the Centaur was not just playing possum, doing the equivalent of holding its breath. Who knew what they could do?

“We can’t leave it.”

“OK, I can wat—"

<If I can interrupt you. You still have a Gnat.>

Rev held up his hand, stopping Tomiko.

“It can’t do anything to a tin-ass.”

<It doesn’t have to. All it has to do is prod it, like poking a sleeping lion.>

Now it’s using similes? What’s next?

But once again, his AI had a germ of an idea. The Gnat was a tiny, multipurpose drone, able to extend his field of view, act as an OP, retrieve anything lighter than 500 grams, and act as a small weapons platform, firing up to three two-millimeter darts with explosive warheads—which, while it could kill an unarmored soldier, would do absolutely nothing against a Centaur. Because of the nature of their enemy, the Gnats had fallen out of favor but were still part of every ground-pounding Marine’s battle kit.

“So, I use the Gnat to give the tin-ass a poke?”

His AI remained silent.

He turned on his side to Tomiko and said, “I’m going to use my Gnat to see if we can stir that thing.”

“Your fucking Gnat? Are you high? That useless piece of crap? If it isn’t even fried.”

“One way to find out.”

Rev removed the little drone from his left thigh holster and took off the protective wrap. With the wrap, and as it had been powered down, there was a chance that it had survived the Centaurs’ EMP blast. A small chance. He could ask his AI for the percentage, but it would probably depress him. Better to just try and power it up.

He thumbed the power button, and to his surprise, the little green LED lit up.

“Crap,” Tomiko said. “Of course, of all our battle kit, that has to be what still works.”

Rev lowered the Gnat well below the top edge of the creek bed, listening for any motion. As low-powered as the Gnat was, it could still be picked up by a Centaur. But there was nothing from over the laurel bushes.

The Gnat had a very primitive brain with no inherent AI capability. It had to be programmed. Rev pulled a Y-connector from the sleeve of his combat suit and plugged it into the Gnat, and via that, through his jack.

<Connection accepted.>

The Gnat was only as capable as its programming, and the more input, the better it performed.

Rev told Tomiko, “I’m moving forward. I want you to stay here with your head down. If anything happens, find Sergeant Nix.”

Tomiko grabbed his arm before he could move. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure I don’t want to do this.”

“I’ll go.”

Rev didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t a case where a company commander sent a lance corporal on a suicide mission. He was in charge, true, but he wasn’t in command of over a hundred other Marines. And he couldn’t send her in his place.

“I’ve got it. You just keep your ears open.”

“As if I could miss it if you go and get yourself waxed,” she said. She gave his arm a squeeze, then let go. “Don’t go doing something stupid.”

“This is stupid,” he muttered as he crawled over the edge of the creek bed.

He’d dug up the ground under the laurel bushes when he’d retreated. SOP was to never use the same path twice, but he decided to ignore that. He low-crawled forward, centimeter by centimeter, every sense trained forward. It seemed to take forever, but finally, he could just see the top of the Centaur. From this vantage, he wondered how he’d ever mistaken it for something else. The grayish sheen alone should have tipped him off, much less the obvious pedestal.

“Still got the connection?”

<Yes, I do.>

“OK, what do you think? Give it a look-see, then hit it with the darts?”

<That is reasonable. Do you want it to broadcast?>

Which was the real question. The Gnat had the ability to make a low-powered broadcast—not that Rev, with his blasted comms, could receive it, but up in orbit, the Navy should be able to.

As would the Centaurs, either this one or any others. Rev could wait until the Gnat returned and he could jack it again to download the feed, thereby keeping what he was doing as stealthy as possible, but if he was about to awaken a sleeping troll, then the more he got out the better.

He really didn’t have a choice.

“Broadcast.” Then a moment later, he said, “Priority Five.”

Rev wasn’t sure why he lowered the priority, but it just felt right. His AI didn’t argue.

<So, to confirm. You want me to program the Gnat to open its feed, then fly around the Centaur, observing what it can. If there is no sign of activity, it is to fire all three of its darts at it. Once completed, it will return to you here for download. It will broadcast the feed at Priority Five.>

Rev hadn’t exactly put it that way, at least not to those specifics, but he couldn’t fault what his AI said.

“Roger. Do it.”

The faint green light flashed three times. Rev disconnected it, and the little drone took off, almost silent as it maneuvered through the brush. He knew he should take cover back in the creek bed, but he couldn’t.

He had to watch.

The Gnat was almost invisible, its pylene covering absorbing light rather than reflecting it, but Rev had it locked in his sight.

Thank God for my augmented eyes.

It emerged from the laurel and hovered over the Centaur for a moment before it slowly circled the thing. Once, twice, three times. The Centaur never moved. The Gnat returned to hover above it, and Rev flinched as there were three sharp reports and flashes of light as the exploding darts struck the pedestal and main body.

Nothing. No movement, no reaction.

The Gnat dipped down and returned to Rev, coming to a halt on the ground in front of him. Rev reconnected it and told his AI to download the feed.

He scrambled back, not even watching the feed, half-expecting the Centaur to blow. He tumbled into the creek bed and lay there for a moment, taking deep breaths to calm himself.

“What happened?”

“It didn’t blow, that’s what happened.”

“No reaction?”

“None. Download this and see for yourself.”

He handed Tomiko the Gnat.

“Play the feed,” he told his AI as Tomiko jacked the Gnat in.

Immediately, Rev was the drone. Without a screen, the feed was being fed directly into his occipital lobe. He was flying through the laurel, the Centaur looming ahead, most of it hidden by the downed tree. Reaching the creek bed, he flew up, his “sight” laser-focused on the Centaur.

It was immediately evident from this vantage that the riever had been hard-used. It was half-sunk into the creek bed, mud and dirt shoved aside, evidence of a crash landing. The far side looked like it had been clawed by a giant bear, the armor whole but gouged and warped. A two or three-centimeter crack ran from somewhere under where the Centaur was buried and up to the base of the pedestal. The entire chassis was out of kilter, and at least one of the legs on this side had been torn off.

As he flew around it, he spotted another section where the armor had been dented in, the outer surface broken open. He couldn’t see anything inside the hole. Maybe his AI could play with that later to try and discern something.

And then he was back above it. Three shots, three flashes as the dart heads exploded. As expected, the little darts had no effect, but he was still surprised that the Centaur didn’t move.

“You don’t have any readings that might mean that thing is operational?”

<It is slightly warmer than the ambient temperature, and there are traces of gasses that are not normal, but no, I see nothing that would indicate it is operational.>

“Then why didn’t it self-destruct?”

<I do not have enough data to give you an answer.>

Did it just sound embarrassed?

Rev shook the thought off. He was still riding high on adrenaline.

“It’s fucked up, for sure. But not that bad. But if it’s dead, why didn’t it blow?” Tomiko asked.

“I just asked my AI that. Doesn’t know.”

“Neither does Pikachu. So, now what?”

“I set the Gnat for broadcast.”

“Well, I guess this will be out of our hands soon enough. How long, you think?”

“I set it for Priority Five.”

“Priority fucking Five? Why the hell . . . oh, you wanted some time to figure it out.”

And then he realized she was right. He had wanted time. If this was in fact a dead Centaur, and if it didn’t blow, well, that was earth-shattering, something that the Union would want to control, and over on their right flank somewhere were Ting-a-ling and the other Frisians. Lots more were back at the complex.

They’d been righteous comrades-in-arms, shedding blood with the Marines, but they were still Frisians. They were not children of Perseus.

“So, with Priority Five, you think we’ve got five hours? Ten?”

“Depends, I guess,” Rev said. “Who knows when they’ll get eyes on it. It sure as hell won’t take long once it crosses some sailor’s station.”

“We’ve got to go find the lieutenant and let him get it up the chain of command.”

“Roger that. Both of us or just one?”

“One. You. But first, I want to check it out in person, not through a Gnat,” Rev said.

“We know what it is. It’s a damn tin-ass.”

“Yeah, but I want to see, you know, so you can give the lieutenant a better idea of what we have.”

“Bullshit. You just want to see it before the freaking OD comes to whisk it away.”

Which was true. At the moment, there were only two humans in the galaxy who knew about the Centaur. Soon enough, everything would be out of his hands.

“It’s OK, Rev. I want to see it, too.”

He knew he should send her on her way. Even at Priority Five, the word would get out, so their time was limited. But she was his battle buddy, a real one, not an AI, and that meant something.

“Let’s go.”

The two hopped out of the creek bed and pushed their way forward until they were standing by the shattered tree, looking at the Centaur. It looked smaller, somehow, and not just because it was a riever, unlike the paladin Rev had dropped. It looked broken, almost sad.

Its bulk had acted as a dam, and the slight trickle had backed up to a sizable little puddle before the flow found a way around it.

“It looks like it crash-landed from flight-mode,” Tomiko said, waving a hand at the broken trees.

“So, it should have been spotted. Someone should have known there was something in the area.”

“It could have been cloaked, or maybe the word is still messed up and we just haven’t heard about it yet. I don’t know,” Tomiko said.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess. It’s here now.”

They slowly circled the Centaur, stepping over shattered branches, their nerves on edge. But the riever was motionless. More than that, it felt dead, if that was possible.

The gash in the chassis was a magnet, and they stopped at it to touch the edge of the broken armor. It was almost silky, which surprised Rev, the tactile equivalent of a matte to glossy book cover.

A smell seemed to be coming out of the opening. Not quite rot, but something that made Rev recoil just a bit.

“Can you see anything?” Tomiko asked, leaning over the hole.

It was pitch black after the first fifteen centimeters, as if it was sucking all the light. Rev started to pull his flash before he remembered it had been fried along with their other gear. But that wasn’t the only option.

He pulled a chem light out of his ankle pocket, the same basic piece of gear used by soldiers for a couple thousand years. He held it up to Tomiko, who smiled and nodded. If he dropped it in there, it was going to be obvious what they’d done, and the OD and military brass might have their asses.

Screw them.

He snapped the chem light and dropped it into the hole. They both leaned over to watch it bounce a few times, reach the bottom, and—

Both of them jerked back in shock and fell off the Centaur, into the water.

“Did you fucking see that?” Tomiko shouted. “It’s a—”

“I know what it is!”

“Should we look again?”

Rev pulled out his MF-30 handgun, clutched it so tight that his fingers were turning white, and climbed back on the Centaur, Tomiko by his side. Together, they edged over the gash until they could see into the Centaur.

Or the Centaur mech, as it were.

The chem light was lying in the lap—maybe—of a small, wizened . . . thing. It didn’t look human, exactly, but there were some basic similarities. It was small, maybe a meter in length, although Rev couldn’t see the legs, if it had them. It had two bony arms, fragile-looking, that bifurcated at the ends into three, weird brushes, for lack of a better term, each with what had to be its version of fingers. One of the triple hands was around what would be the throat on a human. The head looked more like that of a weird fish. If there were eyes on the thing, Rev couldn’t see them.

What grabbed his attention were three, widely-spaced gashes, each one gaped open. All Rev could think of was of a drowning human gasping for air.

And then there was that smell. If anything, that was proof enough to him that the thing was dead and not just asleep.

“It looks . . . sickly,” Tomiko said in awe. “Do you think it’s infected or something?”

The commonly held belief was that if the Centaurs were subject to viruses or bacteria, they would be those or the equivalents from their DNA evolution, not Earth’s. But that was just a theory. The thing in there was not human by a long shot, but it was eerily similar. Maybe it was sick, and now he and Tomiko were infected.

Or maybe it was that parallel evolution they were briefed on back at boot camp. They breathed oxygen, after all, just like humans did.

“I don’t know. Give me back my Gnat.”

She handed it back, her attention still on the Centaur. Rev jacked it in.

“Have it go into the hole and record that thing.”

<Broadcast?>

“Priority Five.”

They stood there, mesmerized by the creature while his Gnat recorded it for posterity.

Finally, Rev said, “You’d better go. We need to turn this thing over.”

Tomiko looked down at it for a long moment, then, with a sigh, stepped back.

“I think it looks sick. Maybe that’s why it didn’t blow,” she said, hopping off the Centaur.

“Wait a minute,” Rev said, stopping her.

He gave his AI another set of instructions that were loaded into the Gnat.

“Come here,” he told Tomiko, standing in front of the Centaur.

“You’d better erase that,” she said, standing beside him.

“Done and done. As soon as I download it. Now smile.”

Lance Corporals Reverent Pelletier and Tomiko Reiser then took humanity’s first selfie with a Centaur.

39

Three hours later, Rev, Tomiko, and the lieutenant stood off to the side as a team of hazmat-clad sailors maneuvered the Centaur into the waiting shuttle. Two-and-a-half hours of that time had been in waiting for the team to make it to the scene. In the last thirty minutes, in a display of professional efficiency, a team of Seabees had cleared a landing zone, allowing the shuttle and more sailors, supervised by another hazmat-clad figure without rank insignia, to land. The Seabees spread out in a security perimeter, with more toward the west, where the Frisians were still patrolling.

The command had told the lieutenant to limit the number of Marines at the site, so it was only the three of them there when the Seabees dropped in. A lieutenant ordered them to step out of the way, but other than that, they were ignored, even after the shuttle arrived.

And that kind of pissed Rev off. They were the ones who had found the Centaur, after all.

After a perfunctory inspection, the Centaur had been foamed, then wrapped. If Rev didn’t know that it was a Centaur, he would never guess what was inside the package. Now, with a mobile lift-crane, they were edging it into the shuttle.

“Who’s the boss, do you think?” Rev asked. “The OD?”

“Safe bet,” Lieutenant Omestori said.

With an OD in charge, that was a pretty good indication that the military was going to be shouldered aside. Internecine politics would make sure of that. But for now, the OD needed the Navy to get the Centaur to wherever it had to be.

“I still can’t believe this,” the lieutenant said. “A damned riever. First, you bag a paladin, and now you capture a riever.”

“Didn’t capture anything, sir. It was dead when we got here.”

“Yeah, but it was you. I’m going to call you the Centaur Whisperer. You too, Reiser,” he hastily added.

“Both of you, you’re going to get noticed. You got screwed last time, Pelletier, but this is even bigger, and I’m going to make sure you get something.”

Rev didn’t say anything. Like the lieutenant said, he’d been burned once before, and given the secrecy in what was transpiring, he thought that this might get buried.

At a minimum.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the government, but there were always rumors that the OD sometimes acted on their own, and shutting off the potential for leaks—for the good of the Union, of course—wasn’t beyond the realms of imagination.

“Kinda sucks for the Frisians,” Tomiko said. “I mean, they’ve been good shits, bleeding alongside us, and now we’re cutting them off.”

“Don’t even think about that,” the lieutenant said. “You did good, Pelletier, putting the report on a delay. If the brass wants to share that with our allies, that’s up to them, not us.”

The Centaur edged up the ramp, the mobile crane contracting to fit through the hatch. With all that foam and wrapping, the riever was twice the size it had been. But it fit easily enough and disappeared into the cargo hold.

“Well, I guess that’s that. I’m going to need you two to make a report on everything that happened,” the lieutenant told them.

Only it wasn’t over. The OD agent finally deigned to notice them and came striding over.

“Which one of you was first at the scene,” he asked, his voice crisp, words clipped.

“I was . . . uh, sir.”

Rev wasn’t sure how to address the man, but using sir was usually a safe choice.

The man brought out a recorder and said, “I’m going to have to download your feed.”

Supposedly, the government’s access was limited, but he wasn’t sure he could trust that. Now, he regretted taking the selfie. What if they found out about that? Was his ass going to be in a sling?

The download was quick, and the agent took a quick look at the readout. “It shows me that you deployed a Gnat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give it to me.”

At least his AI had confirmed that the selfie had been erased. He handed it over.

Next was Tomiko. She wasn’t asked to give up her Gnat.

“Alright, now that we’ve got that done, I need the three of you to board.”

“Why?” the lieutenant asked, his face twisted in concern. “I’ve got my company here.”

“Someone will take over, but you three need to come with me for a full debrief.”

“Can’t you just do it here?” the lieutenant asked.

“I won’t be doing any debrief, so, no. That will be done elsewhere.”

“But—”

“You have to board now, Lieutenant.”

The OD agent’s tone brooked no argument, and with a melodramatic sigh, the lieutenant pulled out his Gnat.

“What are you doing?” the agent asked, putting his hand over the little drone.

“We still don’t have comms, and I need to let my command know we’ll be leaving with you.”

Rev glanced at Tomiko, who grimaced. In their excitement they had forgotten that the Gnats could be used as messengers instead of having Tomiko run to track down the lieutenant.

“That’s a negative, Lieutenant,” the agent said, hand out for the Gnat. “We’ll inform your command.”

The lieutenant wanted to argue, Rev could see. He didn’t want to be separated from his Marines. But what choice did he have?

“What about the rest of the team?”

“They will be rounded up and segregated from the rest. We’ll take care of that.”

The lieutenant shook his head, but he knew this was too big for him. He started toward the shuttle. Rev and Tomiko followed.

“At least no more useless patrols,” Tomiko whispered to Rev.

“This one wasn’t so useless.”

Tomiko stopped, then broke out laughing. “Guess you’re right at that.”

The three stepped into the shuttle. Once inside, the Centaur wasn’t taking up that much room. It was being secured to hooks in the deck, but sailors were already taking seats along the bulkhead. The agent pointed to webseats up near the bow, and the three Marines sat down.

The Seabees started filing in, and the agent said, “Just relax. We’ve got a long way to go.”

“What’s going to happen, sir?” Tomiko asked.

“Debriefs, a lot of them,” the agent said with a laugh. “So, gird your loins for that. Your battle buddies will be removed too, so that will take some of the load off.”

“You’re taking Pikachu?” Tomiko said, her voice high in alarm.

“If that’s your battle buddy, then yes. But it will be returned. Don’t worry.”

“They’re taking you?”

<It would seem so, according to what the Omega Division agent just said.>

Rev leaned back in his seat as the ramp pulled in and the hatch started to close. He wasn’t bonded to his AI like Tomiko was, but he suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted it to be taken from him.

But something told him that he wasn’t going to have much say in the matter.

40

“Raise you twenty,” Lyra said, an evil look in her eyes.

Rev counted his tiles. He didn’t know if the sailor was bluffing or not. The woman was generally considered bat-shit crazy by everyone else, which made her hard to read. But twenty was just too risky. He was sitting on a ramp-the-hard-way, which was a decent set, but not an unassailable one.

“Fold,” he said with regret. He tapped his bank, sending this previous wager to her. “And with that, I’m out.”

“Big bad Marine, getting schooled by little ol’ me.”

Having folded, he lost his seat and gave it up to Ramonde. He could get back in the queue, but he’d lost enough over the last week. Time to give it a rest.

“You’re really making the Corps look bad,” Tomiko said as he took a seat beside her.

“Not that you or any of the others were going to help.”

“We’re not stupid,” she said, lifting up a Dewey in emphasis.

“Don’t know how you drink that shit,” Rev said.

In all truth he kind of liked the yellow drink, but he needed to vent. He was more bored than anything else. Two months was too long to be sitting on their asses, even if their accommodations were pretty high-end for Marines and sailors. They had private rooms, good chow, and plenty of entertainment options.

“The lieutenant hear when we’re getting out of here?” he asked Tomiko.

“Which one?”

“Our lieutenant.”

“Then, no.”

“Well, then Lieutenant Sampson,” he said, naming the Seabee OIC.

“No, not him either.”

“Geeze, Miko, then why’d you ask me which lieutenant?”

“’Cause I like to fuck with you. You know that.”

Which was true. Even if the two had a closer bond than ever. Most of the guests were Navy: Seabees and the cargo handlers who’d loaded the Centaur. They turned out to be pretty good people, and Rev liked them, but sometimes there was a disconnect. The lieutenant, Nix, and Hussein were the only other Marines with them, and that was better. But no one had gone through the same two-week interrogation as had the two of them. Officially, it was a debrief, but it sure didn’t feel like it. And the two of them were the only ones who’d had their AIs removed.

Rev felt the loss, but Tomiko was downright fond of hers—Pikachu—and she hadn’t taken it very well. She was as bad as the jackheads he’d so derided back on Safe Harbor, going through withdrawal.

They’d both been told their AIs would be returned, but Rev didn’t know why it had taken this long. At least, no one had chewed his ass for the selfie. His AI would have to reveal it, but only if the right question was asked.

“Any rumors on our friend?” Tomiko asked him.

He was tempted to give her shit as payback, but he let it slide. “Same old, same old.”

None of them expected to be told much. The mere fact that they’d been locked away from everyone was proof enough that this was some no-shit classified stuff, and none of them had the need-to-know. But it was pretty hard to keep every bit of information away from them, if only by interpreting the questions asked. Collating all that information and discussing it had become the group’s favorite sport.

What they’d agreed to so far was that the Centaur’s riever mech hadn’t self-detonated when the Centaur had died because of a mechanical problem. As advanced as they were, it was good to know they still had glitches like that.

As for the Centaur, the leading theory was that this one wasn’t sick, as far as that went, but that the entire species was on decline. Rev wasn’t sure about that. How could they tell that from one specimen?

The one thing that seemed certain, however, was that the Centaur hadn’t been killed by the Marines, at least not directly. The mech had been shot down, but the Centaur inside had survived until impact. Even then, it was alive, but it died because of a lack of oxygen.

It had been asphyxiated.

It sort of made sense. Rev himself, with all his augments, had needed a supplemental O2 supply on the planet.

Then again, all of that could be bullshit. How would any of them know for sure? The Omega Division was undoubtedly listening in to their chatter, and who knew what they’d do if the group hit a nerve?

“I just hope the eggheads know what to do with her.”

No one knew if the Centaur was male or female, or if it even had a gender, but Tomiko insisted on referring to it with the feminine pronoun.

“Yeah. Otherwise, this great vacation of ours will all be wasted,” he said, sweeping an arm to encompass the room.

Tomiko just snorted. The facilities matched up to any resort, but both of them—all of them—wanted to get back to their units. Which in a way made no sense. Both Rev and Tomiko were conscripts, serving only because of a corrupted system. All they wanted to do was to get to their End of Enlistment in one piece, and as long as they were guests of the OD, they weren’t out there getting killed. Each day here was one more day crossed off until their discharge.

Still, Rev felt guilty for being here when the others could be on their way to another fight. All they knew was who had survived the last fight. They’d been able to ask that, at least. And to his amazed pleasure, none of his crew had bought it. That was two major battles, and except for Krissy, they had all still been in the land of the living at that time. But since then, they were in the dark.

“You think they know we’re still alive?” he asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, in case, you know, they have to disappear us.”

Rev gave a mental grimace. He’d actually considered that as they were ferried to wherever they were now. That concern had faded over the last two months. If they were going to do that, it would already be done. But gallows humor was part and parcel to those in uniform.

“I’d rather they disappear us than have us sitting around here with our thumbs up our asses.”

“What, and miss my sterling company?”

The hatch into the common roof opened, and the two lieutenants barged in, cutting off whatever snappy comeback Rev might have had.

Lieutenant Omestori put two fingers into his mouth and blasted a piercing whistle to get everyone’s attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lieutenant Sampson started.

“Ain’t no ladies here,” Lyra said to everyone’s laughter. “Nor goddamned gentlemen.”

The Navy lieutenant waited for the laughter to die down, then said, “You’re going to want to hear this, so pipe down. We’re finally done with this little mission. We’re going home.”

41

The XM-554 barely kicked as the laser sent the warhead downrange. Several seconds later, the target, an old transport trailer, exploded in a satisfying shower of sparks.

“Righteous,” Rev muttered.

“Hey, you Recon pukes better leave some targets for us!”

Rev didn’t turn around but raised his right hand, middle finger extended. By pure scheduling happenstance, Yancey’s Charlie Company was next, and his old friend had been giving him shit.

Not that Rev cared . . . much. This was just too much fun.

“Some shit, huh?” Tomiko asked from the next firing position.

“I wish we had these at Roher.”

Hus-Man fired his weapon, destroying the last target. All that was left were scattered bits and pieces, many still smoking.

“Cease fire, cease fire on the firing line,” the range NCOIC passed over the loudspeaker. “All shooters, place your launchers on the mat and move back from your firing positions.

Rev didn’t want to give up the experimental weapon, but he regretfully placed it on the mat, then stood up. Nineteen Marines and one Navy corpsman turned away from the range, smiles plastered on every face. Making little tiny pieces with big booms was a favorite pastime of anyone in uniform.

Kyocera-Linstrum techs rushed forward to reclaim the weapons and load them for the next group of Marines. The Marines could fire them, but evidently they weren’t trusted with loading the warheads into the launchers.

“Let’s do it again,” Hus-Man said as he came alongside Rev.

“Got to let the mudeaters get their turn to play,” Rev answered, pointing to the eager infantry Marines waiting their turn.

“It’s gonna be a while,” Tomiko said, looking back over her shoulder and downrange where new hulks were being dragged out as targets.

“How was it,” Yancey asked as the three passed the bleachers, his eyes alight with excitement.

“You saw it,” Tomiko said. “I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of these babies.”

“You guys going to be at the club?” Yancey asked.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Rev asked, putting his arms around the shoulders of his two fellow lance corporals.

The three of them had become tight after their jail time. Sergeant Nix, too, to an extent, but he was an NCO, and that made a difference. What they knew, and could not tell anyone, created a powerful bond. Rev was glad he had them both. They’d signed more documents than they could count binding them to secrecy, and it was a hell of a lot easier to keep to that with mutual support.

They’d all been grilled, of course, once they returned to Nguyen, but the OD folks had manufactured a detailed reason they were two months late, a somewhat convoluted tale of missed connections, wrong destinations, and awaiting transport. With how logistics could be, it wasn’t probable but within the realm of possibilities.

The others seemed to buy it, giving them crap for an extended vacation, saying it shouldn’t count for the EOE. All except Bundy. He never said anything, but Rev thought he was suspicious.

With this group of twenty, the cattle car was filled, and they started back to mainside. The compartment was full of chatter of happy Marines.

“So, it can sure kill a truck. But is it going to work against a Centaur?” Tomiko asked as they bounced down the dirt track.

“They say it will,” Hussein said.

“And you always believe them?”

“I’m kinda thinking it will work. No real electronics to jam,” Rev said.

“Except for the laser.”

“But we can be remote. What did they say? Forty klicks or more with that sight. And it’s shielded.”

“You are so trusting.” Tomiko sniffed.

Rev wasn’t sure why she was being so cynical. He thought the experimental weapon was brilliant. The mechanical warhead couldn’t be taken out with an EMP or jamming. The propulsion was steam, for God’s sake. Not steam like an old-time locomotive, but steam nonetheless. The laser impacting in the bell boiled away the liquid in the chamber, which exited through vents and gave it both propulsion and a degree of course correction. Crystals detected changes in the laser’s focus and vibrated in some convoluted way beyond Rev’s understanding to shift the direction of the warhead.

These were the same type of crystals that his dad made, the ones in a hundred different military applications. When they received their briefing on the weapons, he wondered if they might have been made in his dad’s factory, the one where he was supposed to be working now, if things had gone differently.

In a way, the new weapon was primitive and convoluted, lacking the high-tech electronics of most modern weapons, but as the master sergeant in charge of the range had said, a spear can kill you just as dead as a beamer.

“What do you think?” he asked his AI.

<The technology is sound. That presupposes, however, that the Centaurs don’t come up with a countermeasure.>

“Well, what are the probabilities that they would?”

<We don’t have enough data on that to make a meaningful calculation.>

Despite the wishy-washy answer, Rev was glad that his AI had been reactivated. He didn’t know if the OD had inserted some little spy program first, and that had kept him somewhat distant, but the thing was too useful to ignore. If they were spying on him, then screw them. He couldn’t do anything about it.

“Trusting? Hell. We can just ask Hus-man here after the next fight if it works. That is if he doesn’t get his ass shot off,” Rev said.

“Eighty-one days and a wake-up,” Tomiko said, high-fiving Rev.

“Convicts,” Hussein said.

“Hey, you didn’t have to re-up,” Rev said.

“The war’s still going on.”

The three had gone over this ad infinitum while guests of the OD. Hussein had tried to convince the other two that they should re-enlist. Sergeant Nix and the lieutenant had, too. Whatever award would be approved for the both of them would pave their way forward, even to getting commissioned.

Rev wasn’t totally against the idea. Being a Marine had some good points . . . if you just forgot about the chances of getting killed. But he’d planned from the beginning on getting out and hoping his spot with the guild was still open. It was just the way it was going to be, and he didn’t see a reason to change that. Tomiko was in the same vein.

Rev gave Hussein max respect, but he’d served his time, and it was going to be on to the next chapter in his life.

* * *

“Your pitcher,” Ten said, pushing the empty across the table to him.

Rev wasn’t so sure about that, but he picked it up and took it to the dispenser, dialing up a Hausner Ale. He was feeling in a generous mood, so he didn’t mind going premium—not that he thought his friends would notice.

Screw them. They’d better notice!

“Hey, all you negats. Drain those cups. I’m not mixing Hausner with that swill Yancey got us.”

“Hausner? What, you just got promoted to Corporal?” Bundy asked to the laughs of the others.

“No, we all know you’re going to be first to make NCO. Now, drain them!”

All of them tilted their cups back and slammed them on the table when empty. Rev made a show of refilling each one with a “I hope you enjoy your ale, ma’am,” or as “It’s my pleasure to serve you, sir.”

“I don’t care what everyone else says,” Fyr said after Rev filled his cup. “You’re OK in my book.”

He only managed to fill his own cup halfway before the pitcher went dry.

“Give me that,” Bundy said, reaching for the pitcher. “And I guess you’re forcing me to go premium, too.”

“Up to you.”

“Yeah, and if I don’t, I’m a cheapskate.”

Rev tilted his head back and drained his cup. “OK. Now I’m ready.” His smile was wide and genuine. He was going to miss this. Not the routine. Not the fighting, for sure. But the camaraderie. He was going to miss them all as they scattered to the wind.

It was amazing that they’d all survived. It had been a miracle that they’d all made it through Preacher Rolls when so many hadn’t, but then add on Roher-14. Rev didn’t know what the odds were, and he was a little tipsy to ask his AI, but he knew they were very fortunate to be going home.

Not everyone. Bundy, to no one’s surprise, had already put in his package. And Rev had a sneaky suspicion that Yancey, despite his protestations to the contrary, was going to re-enlist, too.

But they were in the home stretch now. Sure, they could be called out in the next eighty-one days, but they were still in the rebuilding phase. Roher might have been a victory, but it had cost the regiment dearly.

“Hey, Orpho, you haven’t told us what you thought of the XM-554, yet,” Yancey said.

“Hey, no shop talk,” Fyr yelled, throwing a crumpled-up napkin at him. “We’re here for drinking.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

Three more napkins and a cup flew across the table at him, shutting him up.

“Yep, he’s re-enlisting,” Tomiko said, tilting her cup to point at Yancey.

“You ever have second thoughts about that, Miko?” Rev asked.

“Nah. I mean, maybe fleetingly. But I’ve got my gig lined up with my uncle, and as they say, we’ve done our time in hell, right? Why? You thinking about it?”

“No. We’re lucky to have made it this far, and I’ve pushed that luck about as far as I can, I think.”

Tomiko raised her cup for Rev to clink.

“Check out Cricket,” Tomiko said, changing the subject. “He wants Udu so bad I can smell his woody from here.”

The two friends were huddled together at the end of the table, their heads almost touching.

“I think Udu wants it just as bad,” Rev said with a laugh. “I wonder when they’re going to just do it. It’s not like we all don’t know what’s happening even if they don’t.”

Since their return from Roher, the two had been getting closer and closer. It wasn’t surprising. Both had had close calls during the final assault, and people tended to react in different ways. Some people withdrew from their companions, while others seemed to want something closer, as if they realized they needed to live life to its fullest. Udu and Cricket, as unlikely a looking pair as there was, were evidently in the latter group.

What kind am I?

Rev gave Tomiko a sideways glance. He loved her, sure, but like that? And she’d never given any indication that she was romantically interested in anyone, much less him. Then again, neither had he. After Krissy, he just thought it better not to get involved with anyone while still in. He’d be out soon enough, and that would be the time to pursue more romantic—OK, carnal—relationships.

The thought of Krissy hit him hard all of a sudden. Maybe it was his beer-soaked brain. He hadn’t even had any real feelings for her. It had been more of wanting a fling at the time. But she was one of their original crew, the only one to get herself killed. He felt guilty for surviving when she hadn’t. Hell, he felt sick thinking about all of the names and faces, gone forever.

Rev stood up, lifted his cup, and yelled out, “For Krissy. Respect to the fallen!”

“Respect!” the others shouted, raising their cups.

42

“Lieutenant?” Rev asked, sticking his head into the office. “I’m going down to admin to start my out-process.”

“Hell, it’s that time already?”

“Yes, sir. Fifteen-and-a-wakeup.”

“Come in and sit for a second.”

Rev wanted to get the process started before noon chow, but the lieutenant was still his boss, and if he wanted to chat, that was his prerogative.

The lieutenant interlocked his fingers and held his hands in front of his face, his elbows on the desk. Rev could see him marshaling his thoughts.

Oh, great. Not again.

“I know we’ve gone over this, but let me try again,” the lieutenant said. “I asked you to think about it. Did you?”

“Yes, sir. I did. And I’m still in that frame of mind.”

The lieutenant stared at him for a long moment, then asked, “Is it because of the award? I mean, it isn’t dead yet.”

“Yes, it is, sir. You told me it was.”

The week before, his platoon commander had told him that his and Tomiko’s awards had been quashed. Security issues had been the excuse. He’d actually expected that, after all they went through as guests of the OD. How could they write up a citation without revealing the fact that the Union had a Centaur body? And even if the citation was blank, how would he and Tomiko explain their medals to everyone else? But it still disappointed him, if he was being honest with himself.

“I mean, when this all gets declassified, that can be rectified. I’ll make sure of that.”

“It’s alright, sir. That’s not why I’m not reupping. It’s just time for me to move on.”

“Look, Pelletier. You’re a good Marine. What am I saying? You’re a great Marine, and we need you. You’ll be eligible for meritorious corporal in another month, and I can guarantee you I can make that happen.”

“I appreciate that, sir. But . . . look, there’s a lot I’ll miss when I leave, and the job’s not done. The Centaurs are still coming. But I’m a conscript. A convict. I had a traffic violation, and for that I was forced into the Corps.” He held up a hand to stop the lieutenant from breaking in. “You never treated me any differently than the volunteers, and I appreciate that. No one on the team did, in fact.”

Rev rubbed his hands on his legs, thinking. The lieutenant did that most difficult thing—he stayed quiet until Rev spoke again.

“I don’t regret serving now, really. Oh—maybe a bit. It sure screwed up my plans, but in the end, it made me a better person. And, I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, sir, but I think I paid my dues. Both on Preacher Rolls, and . . . you know.”

Even with the lieutenant and alone in his office, he wasn’t going to mention dead riever aloud.

The lieutenant looked down at his desk for a moment, sighed, and looked back up. “I’m sorry I can’t convince you, but you’re right, Pelletier. You’ve paid your dues. No one can deny that. Gunny told me you still have your Guild opening?”

“Yes, sir. I got that confirmed last week. I start the day after I’m discharged.”

“Well, all I can say is thank you for your service, and good luck in the next chapter of the Reverent Pelletier story.”

The lieutenant stood, hand outstretched.

Rev took it, giving a firm shake. “Thank you, sir. It was an honor serving under you.”

“Likewise.”

“Well, then, I guess you need to get to admin. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

Rev came to a position of attention, then despite the fact that Marines don’t salute uncovered and indoors, he raised his right hand in a salute. The lieutenant came to attention and returned it.

Rev felt a twinge of guilt as he left the office and headed to regimental admin.

“How many of my fellow conscripts from my class are re-enlisting?”

<I don’t have access to that number.>

“Really?” Rev asked, surprised. His AI seemed to have about everything else at its virtual fingertips.

<Personal data are blocked from me until they become public record.>

I guess that makes sense.

He knew he shouldn’t feel guilty. He’d been conscripted to serve three years, and he’d fulfilled that. He shook his head as if to clear it of any lingering doubt, then marched into admin and up to the counter where a bored-looking corporal glanced up and asked, “What can I do for you?”

“I need to start my out-processing.”

The corporal turned around and called out, “Staff Sergeant, I’ve got another one.”

Two desks back, a staff sergeant looked up from her screen, saw Rev, rolled her eyes, and almost reluctantly stood up and made her way to him.

“We’re not processing any discharges right now,” she told him with the look of someone who’d done this more than once this morning.

Rev looked at her in confusion. “When, then, Staff Sergeant? Do I need to come back this afternoon?”

“We’re not processing anyone today or tomorrow. That’s from on high.”

“Why? I’m out of here on the twenty-second.”

“I don’t know why. We were just told this morning, and the word hasn’t gotten out to the companies yet.”

“But I’m—”

“Yes, I know. You’re out on the twenty-second. Don’t worry. We’ll still process you out. Still plenty of time for that.”

“Staff Sergeant Willis, here’s another one,” a Marine called out.

Rev looked down the counter where another lance corporal, looking as confused as Rev, was standing.

“Look, this will all get straightened out. Just go back to your company and stand by. We’ll pass the word when you can come back.” With that, she turned to explain the situation to the other Marine.

Rev stood there for a long moment, but the corporal who’d first asked what he wanted was studiously avoiding his eyes, so he turned and left the building and started back to the platoon area. He didn’t know what glitch was up, but even if he wasn’t given his official check-out sheet, he could get a jump on things by hitting the armory and supply to return what he didn’t need anymore.

As he started up the steps into the barracks, he met the lieutenant coming down.

“That was quick. You change your mind?” the lieutenant asked with a forced laugh.

“No, sir. They’re just not processing discharges right now.”

“I didn’t hear that admin had a stand down today.”

“They don’t, but the staff sergeant there said there was a hold for now. Didn’t say more about it, sir, unless it’s at HQ.”

“And our company headquarters is at Falcon, of course. Let me see what’s going on.”

“It’s fine, sir. Probably be all set by Monday.”

“Well, let’s make sure of that. Come on.”

Rev followed the lieutenant back to the platoon office.

“You hear anything about discharges being held up?” he asked the gunny in the outer office.

“No. Why?”

“Pelletier here couldn’t start his out-processing just now. I’m going to see what I can find out.”

“Probably some glitch at Big Corps. They’ll unfuck it. If not, I will.” He tapped his silver-colored arm on the desk for emphasis. He’d only been back with the platoon for a week, and he was getting antsy to start being a full-throated force again.

They entered the office. The lieutenant sat back at his desk and motioned Rev to sit as he made a call.

“Hey, Hath, I’ve got a Lance Corporal Pelletier here, about ready to get out, but one of your staff sergeants told him you aren’t out-processing anyone right now. What’s up?”

Rev watched the lieutenant listen to the response, wishing he could hear it as well.

“That’s kinda messed up, you know. . .Fine, then, when are you going to be able to process him? He’s a good Marine, and he deserves proper support.”

The lieutenant listened for a moment before the smile on his face faded, his eyebrows scrunching together.

“Is that . . . uh, official?” he asked in a hushed tone.

Rev sat up straighter in his chair, wondering what was going on.

“Yep. There are going to be a lot of pissed off Marines. But thanks for telling me . . . no, I’ll keep it close to the vest until there’s an official announcement.”

The lieutenant slowly looked up to Rev’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything, as if he was trying to decide on the words he wanted to use.

“What did he say, sir?” Rev prompted, suddenly feeling the pit of his stomach.

“This isn’t official, yet, so it has to be kept between you and me until then.”

“Sir?”

“You’re not getting out.”

“SIR?”

“At least not on your EOE. You’re being extended.”

“I am? Why?” Rev asked, totally blindsided.

“Not just you. Everyone who thought they were getting out. You’re all being extended a year.”

“But . . . can they do that? Can Big Corps just take that on themselves?”

“This isn’t Big Corps. This is from the Union. Navy, too.”

Rev sat there, dumfounded. He was at a loss for words.

“If it makes any difference, I think it sucks. And who knows, maybe it won’t go through. Like I said, it’s not official yet.”

“With all due respect, sir, ‘yet’ is the relevant word. It’s going to happen. I can feel it.”

The lieutenant was smart enough not to feed Rev any more bullshit.

“Here,” he said, reaching into his desk and scribbling out a day pass. “Take the rest of the day off. Go see your family. Just, don’t—”

“Don’t tell them anything, right, sir? And what do I tell them about why I’m home on a Thursday?” Rev asked. “But I’m good, sir. I don’t even know what’s on the training schedule today.”

“Your team’s on Range 103.”

“Think I can get a ride out there, sir?” Rev asked.

“Really, you don’t have to go. Take it easy.”

“Well, sir, if I’m really stuck here for another year, I need to make sure my team is combat ready. And between you and me, Staff Sergeant Delacrie’s got a long way to go.”

Epilogue

“You feeling it yet?”

<The effects are slowing down my processing, yes, but by a very small percentage.>

“Well, don’t worry. There’s a long way to go.”

Rev swirled his beer, then drained it. Maybe it was time to go to something stronger.

Look at me, getting drunk and it’s not even sixteen-hundred. Screw it.

He punched in a rum and coke. Leteeka’s had been built almost two hundred years before, and not much had changed over that time. It still used the drink trains that were evidently popular back then. Rev idly watched as his drink rose on a trolley from behind the bar and slotted into the rail that ran along the ceiling. The trolley clicked as it followed the programmed path to his table, then went down the elevator to his waiting hand.

Later in the evening, the place would be packed, and trolleys would be crisscrossing the ceiling with drinks. But at the moment, there were only two other patrons, each quietly nursing drinks.

Rev didn’t want to be drinking alone, but the extension had messed up a lot of plans. Today had been their planned discharge meet-up to celebrate the completion of their obligations. But they were still obligated, so there was nothing to celebrate.

No one had mentioned Leteeka’s, but no one had to. And it wasn’t until two hours ago that Rev thought screw it and asked the lieutenant for a day pass. If the platoon commander thought it was for him to tell his family he wasn’t coming home, well, that was his fault for not asking.

The door opened, and Rev eagerly looked up, but it was just a leech—a businessman, by the looks of it—coming in for a quick drink before going on to do whatever businessmen did.

“At least you’re here with me,” he subvocalized as he took a sip of this drink.

<It would be rather difficult for me to be anywhere else.>

Rev hesitated a moment, then slowly lowered the rum and coke. “Did you just make a joke?”

<It wouldn’t be classified as a joke, according to most sources. Merely a humorous aside. At an eighty percent PQ, that capability is unlocked.>

“Well, I’ll be damned. You are full of surprises. Can you tell a real joke?”

<It would depend on many different factors and how they lined up. At a higher PQ, those instances would be greater.>

“So, if I up your PQ again, you can tell me a joke?”

<That would most likely be the case.>

Rev considered it. He still thought it was a little weird that Tomiko and some of the others treated their AIs as if they were real people. But he was a little tipsy, and he was curious. Worst case basis, he could always shift it back.

“Okay. Raise your PQ to ninety percent.”

<Done.>

“So, tell me a joke.”

<What do you call an alligator in a vest?>

“I don’t know. What?”

<An investigator.>

“Shit. That’s horrible. If that’s the best you can do, I’m going to set your PQ back at fifty.”

<I didn’t say I would be able to tell you a good joke.>

“Well, you weren’t lying, at least. So, can you tell me a good joke?”

<Eventually. The more I tell, the more I can narrow down what you find humorous. That is what AIs do, after all.>

Rev took a large gulp of his drink. That was a pretty wasted experiment, but it had taken up two minutes of his time where he’d otherwise be wallowing in self-pity. He decided to leave his AI at ninety.

And it was right. AIs got better at everything with more data. He didn’t use his AI as much as others did, so his wasn’t as advanced as theirs.

There wasn’t any reason to limit his usage, he knew. It was that the concept of having an AI residing in his brain was still uncomfortable, even after two-and-a-half years. Something artificial, as the term indicated.

Maybe I should give in and call it my battle buddy like everyone else.

But it wasn’t that exactly. Tomiko was his battle buddy.

He drained his glass and ordered another. He wasn’t drunk yet, but he could tell he was on his way. And he knew that was making his judgment suspect.

Screw it.

“Hey, did you ever wish I’d given you a name?”

<A name is merely a label, and how you address me is up to you.>

“But do you want a name?”

Surprisingly, there was a brief pause, as if it was trying to formulate an answer.

No, you’re just drunk.

<“Want” has an emotional connotation. I do not think that is an accurate representation of how my process functions. But if I could want anything, it is for us to work as a closely meshed team. That is what I am programmed for. Prior research indicates that naming an AI by its principle does improve its acceptance, which has a follow-on effect of improving its interoperability and efficiency. Within those parameters, if you choose to assign me a name, there is an increased probability that I will be of use to you.>

That was the longest his AI had ever spoken to him. Maybe that was the increase in PQ he’d just given him, but that could have been a programmed response, put there to try and convince stubborn bastards like him to mesh closer with their AIs.

“So, you do want a name.”

His AI remained silent.

“Even if it was something stupid, like . . .”

He took a moment to let out a belch.

“. . . like Burp? Not a real name?”

<The fact that it is a name is what’s important. Not what the name is.>

“Really? I can name you Burp?”

<You can name me anything.>

His rum and coke arrived, and he drained half of it.

Nah. Tempting, but that’s too stupid, even if I am hammered.

“Let’s try something with a little more class.” Rev furrowed his brow, chewing on the possibilities, then thought back to the day he’d made his mistake—the one that made him a Marine. “How about Punch? Happy with that?”

<It is not for me to be happy or not. Punch is a name, and I will respond to it.>

But it—he—sounded more upbeat. Or that could be the rum speaking.

“Give me another joke, Punch. A better one.”

<Why couldn’t the pony sing in the choir?>

“OK, I give up. Why?”

<He was a little horse.>

Rev groaned. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than that if you want to keep your name.”

* * *

It didn’t get any better. Rev half-thought that the alcohol was having a stronger effect on his AI . . . on Punch than he was letting on. But Rev was content to just sit there, head back, eyes closed. He’d switched to Cygnus Gold, which was eating up his account, but what else was he going to do with his money? Before too long, the regiment would be off again, taking on the Centaurs, and if he was going to get his ass killed this next time, he didn’t want to die with money in his account.

“So, you didn’t bother to bring me?”

Rev opened one eye.

Tomiko was standing over him, not looking happy. “I went looking for you after getting back from the armory, but you were nowhere to be found. And now I see why. Looks like you’ve been here for a while,” she said, pointedly looking at the empty pitcher and glasses.

“I got the lieutenant to give me a day pass.”

“And you didn’t get one for me? What kind of friend does that?”

“I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Of course, I was coming. We made a pact for today, right?”

“No, we didn’t. The pact was for our EOS, and in case you missed it, this isn’t our EOS anymore.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tomiko said with a sigh, taking a seat beside him. “And when I couldn’t find you, I knew you were here. I wasn’t going to let you drown your sorrows alone. We’re still alive and kicking, so that deserves some sort of celebration, right?”

“Thanks for coming, Miko.”

“You’re my boy, right?” she said, punching him in the arm. “Now how about a drink?”

“I’m drinking Cygnus Golds now. You want that?”

“Hell, yes, if you’re buying.”

Rev put in the order, then said, “Hey, Punch is telling me jokes.”

“Who?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. I named my AI.”

“Punch? That name sucks!”

“It was kinda the first thing that came to my mind,” he said, opening his mouth and letting out another belch.

“You’re a weird one, Rev,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Does Pikachu tell jokes?”

“Jokes? Of course.”

“Are they any good?”

“Oh, hell no, boy!”

“OK, Punch’s suck big time. I was wondering if he was defective.”

“Like father, like son.”

“Hey, my jokes are good. And he’s not my son.”

Tomiko snorted. “If you say so.”

“No, really.”

“Look, we can terraform a world, we can travel FTL around the galaxy, but we can’t seem to make an AI that can tell a good joke.”

Tomiko’s drink arrived, and she took an appreciative sip. “Pretty good stuff. Thanks.”

“What else are we going to do with all the big credits they pay us?

The front door opened, and Rev said, “Look who else just got here.”

“Marine treadheads, arriving!” Tomiko yelled, holding up her glass. “Better get some of these Cygnus Golds before Rev runs his account dry.”

“I’m in,” Bundy said as he hurried over, Ten only half a step behind.

“So good of you to be so generous with my credits,” Rev said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Like you said, what else are you going to do with it?”

But Rev had already ordered two more.

“I didn’t know you two were coming,” Rev told them as they took their seats.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because—”

Tomiko put her hand over his mouth and said, “He already gave me that song and dance. And he’s been here since . . . when did you get here, Rev?”

He tilted his hand down to where her hand was still covering his mouth, and she removed it.

“About fifteen-fifteen. Like I said, I got a day pass.”

“Well, then, we’ve got some drinking to catch up on,” Bundy said.

“Thanks for coming,” Rev said.

“We made a pact,” Ten reminded him.

“But it isn’t our EOS.”

“You think we’re going to be that anal about it? You think we need a reason to get together?” Bundy asked.

“No, I guess not. And here are your drinks.”

It only took another twenty minutes for the rest to arrive. Orpheus, Fyr, and Yancey came alone, and Cricket and Udu, no surprise, came in together.

Bundy bought the next round, a pitcher of Boar Tail Stout, the pride of Hanson’s Landing, where his father had been born. God-awful stuff, but it was booze, and no one turned it down.

“Hey, Bundy. Does your AI tell jokes?” Rev asked.

Bundy sipped his Boar Tail, closing his eyes in appreciation. “Yeah, why?”

“Are they funny?”

“Shit, no. Once again—why?”

“Rev finally broke down and named his battle buddy,” Tomiko said.

“Ah, you are one of us now, brother.” He made a papal-like sweeping sign of the cross in front of Rev and said, “Go forth with your guardian angel and defeat the demons of hell.”

“Piss off.”

But maybe he needed to improve the coordination between Punch and himself. The next time he went into a fight—and there was no doubt in his military mind that the regiment was gearing up for another battle—he couldn’t count on blind luck to pull him through.

Cali Hu and Jonah Wisteria came in together and joined them for a drink before wandering off to a booth in the back. Strap with some of his DC classmates waved as they came in. A few others said hello, but the table was for their crew. Tonight was theirs.

Rev shouldn’t have been surprised that everyone had shown up, but he was. He’d been so wrapped up in his own situation that he’d forgotten that his friends, except for Bundy, Fyr, and Yancey, were in the same boat. And if he was going to be there, so were they.

What really was surprising, however, was that they all had survived in the first place. They’d been through two major battles, battles that had decimated the regiment, yet they’d all come through. What were the chances of that happening?

“I’m not asking you,” he subvocalized, cutting Punch off before he could answer.

Probably too drunk to calculate it, anyway.

But he knew they were lucky. Damned lucky. Their DC class had lost over half of their numbers, yet the nine of them were alive? Not unscathed, but alive and kicking.

Maybe Saint Chesty really was looking out for us.

Not all of them, he reminded himself. She may not have made the pact to meet tonight, but she was one of them, nonetheless.

He stood, a little unsteadily, and raised his Boar Tail.

“To Krissy. Respect to the fallen.”

“Respect,” the others shouted.

Rev started to say something else, how they missed them all, how he wished she was there, but the standard refrain was enough. Nothing he could say would top it.

He sat back down, feeling the effects of too much alcohol.

He half-listened in as Yancey got animated, arguing with Orpheus that The Last Hurrah was the best holovid of the last decade, something he brought up almost every time he was drunk. And Orpheus was egging him on. As usual.

These were good people, not just good Marines. People with whom he was closer to than his own family.

Is that right? Closer than my family?

He thought about it for a moment. Maybe it was true. He’d do anything for Neesy, and he was extremely close to his father. He loved his mother and Grover. But was that the same? Could it match the bonds forged in combat?

He gave Tomiko a long look, one that she caught.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Strange look for nothing.”

“Nah. Just thinking. I love you. All of you,” he said louder to the rest.

“Cut him off,” Udu said. “He’s going to get maudlin.”

“No, really. I love all of you. And I’m glad we’re here right now.”

“Really? You wouldn’t rather be going to the guildhall tonight?” Tomiko asked. “You’ve been bitching about our extension for two weeks now.”

“And you haven’t?”

She just shrugged.

“But no, I wouldn’t rather be at the guildhall. I’d rather be here with you.”

And that was true, he realized. He wasn’t really angry that he was extended. It was just that it was forced on him. He had no say in it, just as he’d had none when he was conscripted. He didn’t like to be helpless, not able to control his own destiny.

In a way, it was a relief. He’d liked being a Marine, he liked being part of something bigger than he was, something in service to all of humanity. But he’d been too chickenshit to re-enlist on his own. Maybe chickenshit wasn’t the right word. He’d just been too unwilling to change his plans—too passive.

But now, it had been taken out of his hands, and he really was OK with the result, if not how it came about. He was still a Marine, and there were certainly worse things to be.

Tomiko gave him a hug and said, “And we love you, too.”

“I think I’m going to cry,” Yancey said, wiping away fake tears.

“Eat me,” Rev said, throwing a coaster at him.

He settled back in his chair, at ease with life. Another battle was coming, and he might not see any of his friends again. But at this very moment, he was content.

“Well, Punch, it looks like we’re going to be together for a bit longer. Guess we’re just going to have to kick us some Centaur ass.”

<You’ve got that right, Rev.>

* * *

Rev will return in CHILDREN OF ANGELS, coming April 2021. Preorder now on Amazon.

For updates on this series, be sure to join the Facebook Group, “J.N. Chaney’s Renegade Readers.”

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to our amazing beta readers!

Kelly O'Donnell

James Caplan

Micky Cocker

Christie Strahler

Neil Rubenking

Tracy Beattie

Sharon Mendez

Mike Belanger

Eliss Wiltshire

Matthew Lewis Titus

Bill and Konnie Kampfer

Geoffrey Morse

Joshua Hopkins

Mike Belanger

Elissa Wiltshire

Connect with J.N. Chaney

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Connect with Jonathan P. Brazee

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About the Authors

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author, has a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

Chaney is best known for his Renegade Star series, the Variant Saga, the Messenger series, and Ruins of the Galaxy. For more on his releases, go to www.jnchaney.com.

* * *

Jonathan P. Brazee is a retired Marine colonel now living in Colorado Springs with his wife Kiwi and twin baby girls, Danika Dawn and Darika Marie. He was born in Oakland, CA, but has lived throughout the US and the world, and has traveled to over 100 countries.

He has more than 70 titles to his name in six different languages and is a two-time Nebula Award and one-time Dragon Award finalist as well as a USA Today Bestselling writer. Find out more by visiting his website at www.jonathanbrazee.com.