by Ian Douglas
Where he had lived, past tense.
Goradon was already jogging for the personal travel pod behind a nearby wall that would take him spinward to the nearest port. He might make it.
“What I’m going to do,” he called to the empty air, as if Mish could still hear him, “is call for help.”
“What help?” his AI asked as he palmed open the hatch and squeezed into the pod.
“I’m going to have them send in the Marines,” he said.
It was something Goradon had never expected to say.
1
2101.2229
Associative Marine Holding Facility 4
Eris Orbital, Outer Sol System
1542 hours, GMT
Marine General Trevor Garroway felt the familiar jolt and retch as he came out of cybe-hibe sleep, the vivid pain, the burning, the hot strangling sensation in throat and lungs as the hypox-perfluorate nanogel blasted from his lungs.
The dreams of what was supposed to be a dreamless artificial coma shredded as he focused on his first coherent thought. Whoever is bringing me out had better have a damned good reason….
Blind, coughing raggedly, he tried to sit up. He felt as though he were drowning, and kept trying to cough up the liquid filling his lungs. “Gently, sir,” a female voice said. “Don’t try to do it all at once. Let the nano clear itself.”
Blinking through the sticky mess covering his eyes, Garroway tried to see who was speaking. He could see patterns of glaring light and fuzzy darkness, now, including one nearby shadowy mass that might have been a person. “Who’s…that?”
“Captain Schilling, sir. Ana Schilling.” Her voice carried a trace of an accent, but he couldn’t place it. “I’m your Temporal Liaison Officer.”
“Temporal…what?”
“You’ve been under a long time, General. I’m here to help you click in.”
A hundred questions battled one another for first rights of expression, but he clamped down on all of them and managed a shaky nod as reply. With the captain’s help, he sat up in his opened hibernation pod as the gel—a near-frictionless parafluid consisting of nanoparticles—dried instantly to a gray powder streaming from his naked body. He’d trained for this, of course, and gone through the process several times, so at least he knew what to expect. Focusing his mind, bringing to bear the control and focus of Corps weiji-do training, he concentrated on deep, rhythmic breathing for a moment. His first attempts were shallow and painful, but as he pulled in oxygen, each breath inactivated more and more of the nanogel in his lungs. Within another few seconds, the last of the gel in his lungs had either been expelled or absorbed by his body.
And his vision was clearing as well. The person-sized mass resolved itself into an attractive young woman wearing what he assumed was a uniform—form-fitting gray with blue and red trim. The only immediately recognizable element, however, was the ancient Marine emblem on her collar—a tiny globe and anchor.
Gods…how long had it been? He reached into his mind to pull up the date, and received a shock as profound as the awakening itself.
“Where’s my implant?” he demanded.
“Ancient tech, General,” Schilling told him. “You’re way overdue for an upgrade.”
For just a moment, panic clawed at the back of his mind. He had no implant!…
Sanity reasserted itself. Like all Marines, Garroway had gone without an implant during his training. All Marines did, during recruit training or, in the case of officers, during their physical indoctrination in the first year of OCS or the Commonwealth Naval Academy. The theory was that there would be times when Marines were operating outside of established e-networks—during the invasion of a hostile planet, for instance.
He knew he could manage without it. That was why all recruits were temporarily deprived of any electronic network connection or personal computer, to prove that they could survive as well as any pretechnic savage.
But that didn’t make it pleasant, or easy. He felt…empty. Empty, and impossibly alone. He couldn’t mind-connect with anyone else, couldn’t rely on local node data bases for information, news, or situation alerts, couldn’t monitor his own health or interact with local computers such as the ones that controlled furniture or environmental controls, couldn’t even do math or check the time or learn the freaking date without going through…
He started laughing.
Schilling looked at him with concern. “Sir? What’s funny?”
“I’m a fucking Marine major general,” he said, tears streaming down his face, “and I’m feeling as lost as any raw recruit in boot camp who finds he can’t ’path his girlfriend.”
“It can be…disorienting, sir. I know.”
“I’m okay.” He said it again, more firmly. “I’m okay. Uh…how long has it been?” He looked around the room. A number of other gray-clad personnel worked over cybe-hibe pods set in a circle about the chamber. Odd. This was not the storage facility he remembered…it seemed like just moments ago. His eyes widened. “What’s the date?”
Schilling leaned forward slightly, staring into his eyes. Her eyes, he noted, were a lustrous gold-green, and could not be natural. Genetically enhanced, he wondered? Surgical replacements? Or natural genetic drift? She seemed to be looking inside him, as though gauging his emotional stability.
“The year,” she said after a moment, “is 2229 Annum Manus, the Year of the Corps. Or 4004 of the Current Era, if you prefer, or Year 790 of the Galactic Associative. Take your pick. Does that help?”
He wasn’t sure. His brow furrowed as he tried to work through some calculations without the aid of his cerebral implant. The numbers were slippery, and kept wiggling out of his mental grasp. “I went under in…wait? I’ve been under for something over eight hundred years?”
“Very good, sir. According to our records, your last period on active duty was from 1352 through 1377 a.m.” Her head cocked to one side. “I believe you called it ‘M.E.’ in your day. The ‘Marine Era?’”
“‘A.M.’ means…meant something quite different. Antimatter. Or morning, if you were a civilian.”
She looked puzzled. “Morning? I don’t think I know that one.”
“From ‘antimeridian.’ Before the sun is overhead.”
“Ah. A planet-based reference, then.” She dismissed the idea with a casual shrug. “In any case, you were promoted to brigadier general in 1374, and were instrumental in the victory at Cassandra in 1376. The following year—that would be 3152 by the old-style calendar—you elected to accept a promotion to major general and long-term cybe-hibe internment in lieu of mandatory retirement.”
“Of course I did. I wasn’t even two centuries old.” His eyes narrowed. “How old are you, anyway, Captain?”
She grinned. “Old enough. Older than I look, anyway.”
“Genetic antiagathic prostheses?”
“Some,” she admitted. “There are a fair number of people alive in the Associative now who are pushing a thousand, and that’s not counting uploaders. Partly genetic prosthesis, partly nanogenetic enhancement. And I’ve spent two tours so far inside one of those pods.”
“Really?” He was impressed. “In the names of all the gods and goddesses, why?”
She shrugged again. “Cultural disjunct, I suppose.”
“Copy that.” The gulf between civilian life and life in the Marine Corps had been enormous even back in his day. It might be considerably worse now.
“The Corps is my home,” she added. “Most of my family was on Actinia.”
He heard the pain in her voice, and decided not to question her further on that. Evidently, he’d missed a lot of history. Eight centuries’ worth.
The numbers finally came together for him. “Okay. I’ve been out of it for 852 years. I take it there’s a crisis?”
Again, that perplexed look. “What makes you think that, sir?”
“An old expression, ancient even in my day,” he replied. “‘In case of war, break glass.’”
“I…don
’t understand, sir.”
“Never mind.” He looked around the chamber that had changed so much in eight centuries. Eleven other pods rested quietly in alcoves around the oval space. His command constellation. The other waking personnel appeared to be working at reviving them. “What’d they do, rebuild the place around us?”
“Moved you to a larger facility, about three hundred years ago. You’re in Eris Ring, now.”
“Huh. We got hibed in Noctis Lab. On Mars.”
“That facility was closed, sir, not long after they brought you up here. The whole of Mars is military-free, now. The Associative’s been downscaling all of the military services for a long time, now.”
“I see.” He was looking forward to catching up on history. It promised to be very interesting indeed. “Eris? A planetoid?”
“Dwarf planet, Sir. Sol system…one of the scatter-disk objects.”
“TNO,” Garroway said, nodding. “I know.” Trans-Neptunian Objects was a catch-phrase for some thousands of worlds and worldlets circling Sol beyond the orbit of Neptune, most beyond even the Kuiper Belt. Eris, in fact, according to history downloads he’d scanned, had been responsible for downgrading another dwarf planet—Pluto—from its former status as a full-fledged planet. That had been over a thousand years ago—no. He stopped himself. Two thousand years ago.
He nodded toward the other personnel working on the silent cybe-hibe pods. “They’re recalling my people?”
“Yes, sir. But the orders were to wake you first. Then your command staff. Protocol. Your brigade will not be revived until you’ve received a full briefing, and give the appropriate orders.”
“Okay. You know, you didn’t answer my question, Captain.”
“Which one, sir?”
“Is there a crisis?”
“So I gather. I don’t have any details, though. You’ll get that in your briefing download.”
“I expect I will.” Carefully, he swung his legs out of the pod recess, his bare feet reaching for the deck. Most of the nanogel was gone, now. He glanced down at himself, then at Captain Schilling. “Hm. I trust there are no nudity taboos in this century.”
She smiled. “No, sir. Nothing like that. But I have a uniform for you, if you want to be presentable for your constellation when they come around.”
“Good idea. But food first, I think. Uh, no…maybe a shower…”
“Both are waiting for you, General. Do you feel like you can stand, yet?”
“Not sure. But I sure as hell intend to try.” His feet found the deck. He swayed alarmingly, but with Schilling’s help, he managed to stay on his feet. She had a floater chair waiting for him in case he needed it, but full muscular control reasserted itself swiftly and he waved it away, preferring to do this on his own if he could. The cybe-hibe procedure permeated the body with molecule-sized machines that did everything from arresting cell metabolism to keeping muscle groups healthy, if inactive. There was some stiffness, and a few unsteady moments as he relearned how to keep his balance, but surprisingly few aftereffects of an eight-century sleep.
Eight centuries? How much had the world, the Galaxy, changed? How much had Humankind changed? When he’d entered cybe-hibe—it seemed literally like just last night—there’d been the bright promise of a new, golden age. The dread, ancient enemy, the xenophobic Xul, had been defeated at last. Across a Galaxy that had seemed a desert in terms of sentient life—where only a handful of reclusive or unusually sequestered intelligent species had survived the Xul predations—more and more nonhuman cultures were being discovered, contacted, and invited to join the loose and somewhat freewheeling association that was then being called the Galactic Commonwealth.
Now it was being called the Associative? There would be other changes, of course, besides the name. He found himself anxious to learn them…as well as a bit afraid.
The shower proved to be a transparent cylinder giving him a choice of traditional water at any temperature, high-frequency sound waves, or total immersion in a thin, hazy nano-parafluid programmed to cleanse his skin while permitting him to continue breathing normally. He chose water, more for the stimulation of the pounding on his skin than anything else. Garroway found he needed the liaison officer’s help, though. Without his implant, he couldn’t interact with the damned shower controls.
When he was clean and dry, Schilling gave him a buttonsized pellet that, when pressed against his chest and activated by her thought, swiftly grew into a skin-tight set of dark gray neck-to-soles utilities. It was, he thought grimly, downright embarrassing. Here he was a Marine major general, and he couldn’t even bathe or dress himself without the captain’s help.
Then she led him into the mess hall, and he realized just how much things had really changed as he’d slept down through the centuries….
The compartment was large and spherical, with much of one entire half either transparent, or, more likely, a deck-to-overhead viewall with exceptional clarity. The view was…stunning, a blue and white swatch of dazzling light, a sharp-edged crescent, arcing away beneath a brilliant, pinpoint sun.
But for a moment, Garroway was utterly lost. It looked like Earth, with those piercing, sapphire blues and swirls of cloud-whites. But the sun was all wrong, far too tiny, far too brilliant, a spark, not a disk.
For just a moment, he wondered if something had happened to the sun during his long sleep. Then he wondered if he’d misunderstood the captain, that this Eris was not the frigid dwarf planet in Sol’s outer system, but an Earthlike world of some other, utterly alien star.
“That can’t be Earth’s sun,” he said, squinting at the pinpoint. “It’s way too bright.” He could see a distinct bluish tinge to the intense white of its glare.
“No, sir,” Schilling told him. She smiled.
“And since when do tiny little icebox planetoids have their own atmosphere and water?”
“Terraforming has come a long way, General,” Schilling told him. “That’s not Sol. It’s Dysnomia.”
“Dysnomia.” He blinked. In his day, Eris had been an ice, rock, and frozen methane worldlet 2500 kilometers in diameter, about eight percent larger than, and 27 percent more massive than, Pluto. Discovered in the early twenty-first century, it had a highly inclined, highly eccentric orbit, but he couldn’t remember the exact numbers without his implant. He knew the place was cold, though, down around twenty-five Kelvins or so, a scant twenty-five degrees above zero absolute. Dysnomia had been a tiny satellite of Eris, like Pluto’s Charon, but smaller, a rock only 150 kilometers across.
“The Eridian satellite,” Schilling told him. “About five hundred years ago, they planted a quantum converter on it and turned it into a microstar. It’s tiny, but it’s only about thirty-seven thousand kilometers from the planet. Orbits once in fifteen standard days. The converter provides enough heat to warm Eris, and the nanoforming matrix is doing the rest.”
“You’re losing me, Captain. They turned a 150-kilometer asteroid into a star, and then…what? Nanoforming?”
“Terraforming, using nanoreplicators and assemblers. Breaking methane, ammonia, and water ice into water, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon.”
“And the star goes around the planet, instead of the other way around?”
“Exactly. Eris still rotates beneath it, though, and has a day…” She paused, closing her eyes as she checked a data base through her implant, “of twenty-eight hours and some.”
He looked into the achingly beautiful blue of the planet’s crescent. “Terraforming a planet doesn’t happen overnight. How long before people are living there?”
“Oh, they’re living there now. Not many…a few hundred thousand. Mostly military at this point. Most of them are Eulers, actually, in the Deeps. The atmosphere won’t be breathable for another few centuries, and the storms are still pretty bad, but they started colonizing it as soon as stable continents emerged from the world ocean.”
“Continents.”
A globe appeared in the air as Schilling sent a reque
st through her implant, blue and brown, without cloud cover.
“Three main continents,” she said, and each highlighted itself on the projection in turn as she named it. “Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz. Those were the discoverers of Eris, way back when. Two minor continents over here…Xena and Gabrielle.” She paused, then frowned. “Strange. No data on where those names came from.”
Garroway thought about this as Schilling led him to a table and two chairs that seemed to grow out of the deck as they approached. The technology had changed, and changed tremendously if Humankind was able now to create stars, even small ones. That was only to be expected, of course. Human technology had been in a rapidly upward-lunging, almost logarithmic curve since the eighteenth or nineteenth century.
He took one of the chairs, as Schilling sat in the other. She placed one hand, palm down, on a colored patch on the table. “What would you like to eat?”
“Captain, I have no idea. Choose something for me.”
A white, plastic hemisphere materialized in front of each of them; seconds later, the hemispheres evaporated, revealing their meals. Garroway wasn’t sure what it was—there was something that might be meat, something else that might be starchy, a third thing that was brilliant green—but he decided not to ask questions. The stuff was edible—in fact, delicious—whatever it was, and that was all he needed to know for the moment.
Other Marine personnel were in the mess hall as well, though the cavernous room was not close to being filled. The others kept their distance, however, though he saw numerous glances and curious stares. He found himself trying to listen in on conversations at the nearest tables. He was curious. How much had Anglic changed in eight centuries? Did they even speak an Anglic-derived tongue, now, or had the vagaries of history brought some other language to the fore?
Again, he decided to wait rather than bombard Schilling with questions. While he could hear voices, the nearby conversations seemed muffled, somehow, and he suspected that some sort of privacy field was blanketing the compartment.
Thirty minutes or so later, he leaned back, watching his empty plate dissolve back into the table surface. “Well, if that was a sample of the food in the forty-first century, I could get to like this time.”
