by Ian Douglas
But for centuries, now, researchers had been aware of low-frequency gravity waves emerging from black holes and star gates across the Associative sphere. Thought of as transmissions of encoded information, they’d raised the specter of Rame’s emomemes, an attempt by the Xul to somehow affect Associative electronic networks.
The information provided by the Tarantulae had hinted at something much larger, much darker. The coded pulses emerging from singularities across the Galaxy were in tune with one another, their frequencies perfectly matching no matter what the actual mass of the black hole. Just as with stargates, matching frequencies emerging from two black holes implied a oneness of those singularities, a literal singularity that implied the ability to map the four-D space between.
The Xul were learning how to plot zero-point waveforms and space-time objects with precise one-to-one correlation by mapping the space-time metric from black holes and star gates. What Rame had called emomemes were Xul test runs, attempts to create simple and extremely slight nudges in human electronic networks…nudges that expressed aspects of the paranoid Xul worldview: different—meaning differences in ideas, differences in cultures, differences in biology or body form—was bad. Evidently, the Xul mapping project was precise enough to let them identify cerebral implants and the programs running within them from the other side.
As Garroway reviewed the data, including the latest information from the Tarantulae contact, Ranser suddenly interrupted. “This is just plain weird, General. How the hell do we know we can trust the Tarantulae in all of this?”
“Exactly my point, Admiral. We can’t trust anyone. And you have just proven my point….”
The Associative—indeed, all life throughout the Galaxy and even beyond—was in critical danger.
Squad Bay
Marine Transport Major Samuel Nicholas
1910 hours, GMT
Nal leaned back in the circular sofa they’d grown from the deck of the squad recreational area. Cori Ryack sat beside him, nestled inside the curve of his arm. Opposite were two of the Anchor Marines who’d been at Samar—Lieutenant Garwe and Lieutenant Wahrst.
Casual fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel wasn’t exactly encouraged in the Corps…but it wasn’t forbidden either, quite. All four were off-duty and out of uniform—Nal and Cori were in shorts and T-shirts, while Wahrst and Garwe both were nude. They’d begun their conversation over dinner in the mess hall an hour before, it had become a spirited debate, and the four of them had brought it back to the squad bay for further discussion. For his part, Nal was glad of the opportunity to get to know Garwe and Wahrst a little better. He still wasn’t sure about these local Marines, wasn’t sure he could even think of them as Marines in the way that he knew the word.
“What we’re questioning, sir,” Master Sergeant Nal said carefully, “is this remote-operating Marine concept of yours. You people can’t be killed! It’s different with us.”
“But what’s the point, Master Sergeant?” Lieutenant Garwe replied. “What’s the point of dying if you don’t have to? The whole idea of military technology, ever since some Cro-Magnon first whacked a Neanderthal on the brow ridge with a rock, has been to make it possible to kick the other guy’s ass without getting your own kicked in return. Am I right?”
“Sure. But there was always the possibility that that Neanderthal would whack you first. He’s bigger than you, and stronger—”
“Exactly. So you figure out how to hit him without being hit yourself. It only makes sense! You invent a spear-thrower, or a bow and arrow, and get him from a concealed position.”
“Better technology,” Ryack said, “and better tactics. Agreed. But…things go wrong in combat. You need to be prepared for that.”
Nal gave Ryack an approving squeeze around her shoulders. He’d been concerned about her ever since she’d fired that mercy bolt into poor Chickie. This was the first time since that firefight that he’d heard her say more than a handful of words, and she’d seemed withdrawn and introspective. For a time, he’d wondered if he was going to need to take the matter up with the company’s psych AI, but she’d seemed more her old self this evening at chow. Maybe she was pulling herself out of it.
Devrochik’s horrible death had shaken a number of people in the 2/9, including Nal. He’d found himself resenting the Anchor Marines their detached attitude toward combat, and decided that the emotion was related to Devrochik’s death.
“Sure, you need to be prepared for combat,” Kadellan Wahrst said. “But if you have to go up against an enemy, maybe someone bigger, faster, meaner, and better armed than you, isn’t it better if you can do so without risking yourself or your fellow Marines?”
“Well, in our day,” Nal said, “it was the Marines who were bigger, faster, and meaner than anyone else on the damned galactic block. We weren’t always better-armed than the other guy. Kind of a long tradition there, y’know? But we were fucking mean enough to make up for it.”
Historically, the Marines had always carried out their missions with second-line military hardware, so much so that it was practically a point of pride with the Globies. These modern-day Marines, though, seemed to enjoy the best technologies available.
“All very admirable,” Garwe said. “But again…why expose yourself to death or dismemberment if you can link in to an RS/A-91 Starwraith and fly the thing into combat from a few hundred thousand klicks away? Strikepods are cheap. Combat personnel are expensive.”
“I’m not disagreeing with that, Lieutenant,” Nal said. “But what if something goes wrong and you have to fight the bad guys in person?”
Garwe chuckled. “Doesn’t happen. We’re sitting back here in the transport, the Starwraiths are way the hell and gone out where the shooting is. What could go wrong?”
Nal shook his head. “I don’t buy it, Lieutenant. Not for two point five nanoseconds. Things going wrong is part of the definition of combat!”
“Not if things are planned well.”
“So…if that’s the attitude of combat planners in the forty-first century,” Ryack said quietly, “why the fuck were we sent through that d-teleport into Samar?”
“A class-one cluster-fuck,” Nal agreed. “Gravitational tides were screwing with the hyperdimensional gateway, and the bad guys were prepared for us, just waiting for us to come through! Why didn’t we have those fancy Starwraith pods of yours?”
“For the obvious reason that you and your people haven’t been trained in their use,” Wahrst said. “It takes a lot of sim-time to make wearing one of those things like being in your own body.”
“And a delightful body it is, too,” Garwe said, reaching down across Wahrst’s shoulder to give her bare breast a friendly squeeze.
She slapped his hand away playfully. “Behave. Later.”
Nal was irritated at the Anchor Marines’ attitude. This was serious, damn it. And he could tell from the way Cori’s muscles were bunching under her shoulders that she was seething.
“The Corps,” Nal said, “is about esprit, dedication, duty, courage. You guys are turning it into some kind of sim-game.”
Garwe laughed. “So tell me straight, Master Sergeant. You’ve never flinched?”
“Never what, sir?”
“Flinched. Come up against something that was going to scatter your various body parts all over this half of creation, and flinched. Screwed the pooch. Been afraid.”
“Of course I have. I’ve been fucking terrified. Fear is a part of it. You learn to override the fear, to do your duty, to carry out your mission despite the fear.”
“Wouldn’t it give you an edge in combat if you faced that something and knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it couldn’t touch you? Wouldn’t that let you dive right in, carry out the mission, and not worry about what might happen to those body parts?”
“Hell, sir, wouldn’t it give you an edge if you knew that the thing you were facing could kill you? Give you that extra burst of adrenaline to make you move that much
faster? Hit that much harder?”
Garwe waved his free hand dismissively. “Adrenaline is made to order by our combat pods and injected as it’s needed. Catch up with the times, son.”
“We have full pharmaceutical support as well, sir.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. My point is, with a remote combat link, we can take risks in a firefight that pointers can’t or won’t take.”
“‘Pointers?’”
“People on point…physically on the ground and in contact with the enemy.”
“As opposed to REMFs?”
Garwe scowled. “That is going too far, Master Sergeant. There is still such a thing in the Corps as disrespect for a superior officer.”
Nal sighed. “I meant no disrespect, Lieutenant. I’m just wondering if the kind of risk-taking you’re talking about might not be counterproductive.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know. Letting you get sloppy or careless. Maybe trying a head-on frontal attack against a prepared position when the better choice would be to go in stealthy and creep.”
“So long as the mission is accomplished, what does it matter?”
“Maybe it doesn’t, sir,” Nal conceded. “But I’m going to need convincing.”
Garwe shrugged. “Six out of sixteen men and women in my squadron were swatted out of the sky on that last op, Master Sergeant. If they’d been in those combat pods for real, they would be dead. Dead. Instead, they woke up back on board the Nicholas, shrugged it off, and prepared to go out again. You can’t do that when you’ve been reduced to a thin, hot plasma by a passing fusion beam.”
“So tell me, Lieutenant. What would you have done if the Dahlies had boarded us?”
“What do you mean?”
“The word came down from the top during the fight. There was a time, there, when there was a good chance that the bad guys were going to start ’porting into the Sam Nick. What would you have done if you’d been stretched out in your link couches, minds out there in your Starwraiths, when a company of armored Dahl troopers broke in and started smashing the place up?”
“If the tactical situation had warranted it, we could have been recalled. We’d have woken up.”
“And been able to take those guys hand-to-hand. Without combat armor?”
“Well—”
“Even if you’d been awake and suited up in Hellfires, like us, would you have been able to take those people on in a knife fight?”
“‘Knife fight?’”
“It means up close and personal. A ‘knife’ is a—”
“I know what a knife is, Master Sergeant.”
“Were you trained in how to use one?”
“Of course not. Ancient tech….”
“Or a hand gun? Maybe a slug-thrower, like a 14mm P-2090.”
“Those things have zero accuracy.”
“They’re last-ditch hold-out weapons, sir. Very true. But back in 1370, Corps Era, when my battalion was deployed to Nabutta—”
“Spare us the war stories, Master Sergeant,” Wahrst said, rolling her eyes. “Maybe you used handguns nine hundred years ago, but we have much better weapons available nowadays!”
Nal felt a flash of hot anger, but suppressed it. “Very well. Sir.”
“Don’t take offense,” Garwe said, grinning. “Kaddy here has a thing about stereotypical no-shit-there-I-was stories. Military porn, she calls ’em.”
“Perhaps,” Nal said quietly, “we should just agree to disagree. I can’t see that this is getting us anywhere useful.”
“Maybe not. Don’t get us wrong, Master Sergeant. We’re not criticizing the way you learned to do things…or your bravery or your devotion to duty. What you people did storming Samar was nothing short of heroic. In every way the embodiment of the spirit of the Corps.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Ryack said. Nal could feel the anger behind the soft words. “Too bad some of us had to go and fucking die when we didn’t have to.”
“Exactly,” Garwe replied. “Hey…you guys know a good, quiet place for some sex play? You know, somewhere where we won’t be interrupted for a couple of hours.”
“I might…”
“I’m thinking the four of us could have a little orgy.”
“We can’t,” Nal said. “We’re pulling duty at twenty-hundred. But you could use the Battalion Commons, Deck 50, Section three-one. You know where it is?”
“I can pull it off the Net. Sure, I see it.”
“Nice and private. Have fun.”
“Thanks, Master Sergeant! We will.”
The two stood and walked out of the squad bay. Ryack looked at Nal, puzzlement creasing her face. “I don’t have the duty.”
“Neither do I.”
“Wait a sec.” She paused, downloading information. “Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Oh!…”
“Yup. Battalion Commons, Deck 50, Section three-one. Scheduled for weiji-do training practice at 2030. Those two are going to just be getting into it when five hundred Marines walk in on them. Of course, they’re not with our battalion, so they don’t get the word.”
“You, Nal, are one sick bastard.” She paused, then added, “I like that.”
“Those two deserve a little excitement. C’mon.”
“Where?”
“I thought you and I might make our own excitement. Unless you want to practice weiji-do.”
“Wow. Tough choices.”
“If you’re feeling okay, I mean.”
She smiled. “Let’s do it, Marine. My place or yours?”
“Someplace more private than batt-commons.”
“That I think we can arrange.” He thought a moment. Recreational simtube compartments were scattered throughout the Nick’s living spaces. They were big enough for two—even for two who might be gymnastically inclined, and the sim-feed could be set for anything, from starscape to a favorite deserted beach back home. He stood up and held out his hand. “I know just the place.”
Battalion Commons
Deck 50, Section 3-1
Marine Transport Major Samuel Nicholas
2031 hours, GMT
Garwe and Kadellan were just enthusiastically getting into things, lost to everything except the touch and taste, the feel and smell and sight of each other. They’d grown a large, round bed in the center of the commons deck, darkened the rest of the compartment, and thrown a starscape across the large, vaulted dome of the overhead. It wasn’t the crowded clutter of giant suns outside the Nicholas, but a scene drawn from the skies of Earth.
The Magellanic Clouds were there, two wispy-looking patches set apart from the pale and meandering curdle of the Milky Way, seen from 170,000 light years away instead of from the LMC’s busy and nebulae-clotted heart. The sim feed included the sights and smells and sounds of a beach on the Amazon Sea, with low breakers rolling in from the distant Atlantic, and the gleam of a half-full moon behind the thin streak of Earthring arcing overhead.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Garwe told his partner, letting his hand stroke the curve of her belly. They were trying something adventurous, something from the ancient Kama Sutra called In Suspension. He had her head-down, her back against his legs, her ankles by his ears, her head on the bed while he stood above her, pressing down, entering her deeply. “You okay down there?”
“The blood’s rushing to my head,” she said, laughing, “but—”
…and then a door had opened and Marines began streaming into the Battalion Commons, laughing and joking and good-naturedly sparring with one another. An instant later, they saw Garwe and Wahrst tangled awkwardly together on the bed and the laughter swelled to a roar.
Nudity wasn’t the issue, of course—many of the incoming Marines weren’t wearing anything but their skins, either—but being caught in flagrante delicto when you were looking for some private time with your favorite fuck-buddy could still elicit good-natured hilarity. It took them a few moments to get untangled, which caused more laughing commentary and advice.
An
officer, a captain, pushed through the crowd around the bed, looked them up and down as Garwe finally pulled free of Wahrst, and frowned. “You people aren’t authorized to be in here,” she said. “Let me patch into your IDs.”
Garwe had opened his implant ID, and he felt her scanning the data.
“Anchor Marines?” she said after a moment.
“Yes, sir.”
“Fleet Support?”
“Yes, sir.”
He thought they were about to catch seven kinds of hell, but the woman then shrugged and waved them out. “This is our space tonight, Lieutenant,” she said, grinning at the two of them. “You’ll need to find someplace else for your short-arms inspection!”
“Very short arms,” another Marine called out, and that kicked off the laughter again.
Wahrst sent a triggering thought to the compartment, and the bed began melting away into the deck. Garwe stepped off. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sorry. We didn’t realize the compartment would be in use.”
Garwe and Wahrst had almost reached the compartment’s door when the captain stopped them. “Wait a sec,” she called. “You two are Starwraith drivers?”
“Yes, sir,” Garwe had said. He pulled himself to attention. “Anchor Marine Strike Squadron 340, ‘the War Dogs.’ Sir!”
Well…what the hell? Anchors didn’t mean much to the Globies, he knew, but he was still proud of being a Marine, whatever the old-timers thought.
“Shit,” the captain said, and she shook her head. “Now I really hate interrupting you two.”
“Sir?” Wahrst said. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” Garwe asked. But the captain’s expression was giving him a dark, cold, sinking feeling in his gut.
“You’d better check in with your CO,” was all the woman said. “Some news has just come down from the top.”
And that had been the goddamned truth. Garwe and Kadellan were off duty and had set their implants to pick up only on priority messages, so they’d missed it. The tactical situation was such that Ops Command was asking for live-loaded strikepods.
He scanned through the announcement again, not quite believing what he was seeing. Volunteers. They wanted volunteers. He didn’t have to go in live.
