by J. N. Chaney
Rev understood in a flash why they’d all gone that way instead of choosing to hide their loss. Getting wounded in combat was nothing to be ashamed of. It was proof that whether they had volunteered or been conscripted, they had given part of themselves in the service of others. Why hide that?
This wasn’t even a choice.
“I’ll take the Rycroft.”
25
Rev stretched out his left arm. Far from being the weapon he’d been promised—or his social arm, for that matter—all he’d received so far was this addition to the sleeve, a longer tube that extended about to where his elbow would have been. Only now, a cable snaked into the end of the tube where it was attached to his connectors.
Six people clad in isolation suits were in discussion, ignoring the seated Rev for the time being. One was Doctor Chakrabarti, and he was told another of them was a lieutenant general from Marine HQ. Rev should be impressed with that, but it didn’t do anything for him. Maybe if he could see the general and not just another person in an isolation suit, it would be different.
Isolation was more than just people around him always wearing white suits. Rev was feeling cabin fever. It had been three weeks since his surgery, and he was feeling much better. Fanny d’Tair had come by the day before, and she’d run her tests up to a microjoule without Rev feeling more than moderate discomfort. His biosynth connectors were still growing, but otherwise, he felt fine and was raring to get this program on the road.
More than that, he just wanted human contact. Anyone out of an isolation suit would do. And now, with six of the white-clad people who controlled his destiny discussing him, he could feel his stress-level climb.
“Can you sense anything?”
“I just want them to do what they’re going to do and let me get to the next level.”
“Really? You’re finally going there?”
Rev waited for a response, but Punch remained silent. He knew his battle buddy was following his programming to keep him from stressing out, but a one-armed joke? No. Just no.
But he had to admit his interest was piqued. Still, no. He was not going to get sucked in this time.
Finally, while he knew he was going to regret it, he subvocalized, “OK, how does the one-armed security guard break up fights? And this better be good.”
“Crap, Punch. I said it had to be good! I swear, I’m going to lower your PQ one of these days.”
“Yeah, and one day I’m going to do it.”
Which was true, but he was never going to admit it.
“Bios can be wrong—oh-oh, I guess it’s go-time.”
The six people broke up, one going to man equipment while the other five moved to stand around Rev.
“Well, Sergeant Pelletier. Have you been briefed on what we’re about to do?” Doctor Chakrabarti asked.
“You’re going to test my arm,” he said, waving the tube attached to his sleeve.
“Yes, that’s right. Don’t worry too much about what happens here. We don’t expect much.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, when will you start expecting much? And when will I get my arms?”
“Your IBHU is ready now, but you need to be trained first. Given our projected schedule, we’ll start field testing in about four weeks.”
Rev had to fight to keep from sighing. Four more weeks?
“Can I at least get my social arm? It would help me take care of myself a lot better.”
“That’s us, son,” a woman said, stepping closer. “I’m Admiral Boulos, head of Prosthetics Medicine. You selected a Rycroft, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turned to one of the others and said, “All your Marines go that way. I don’t know why.”
So that guy must be the Marine general.
“We have the arm now, but we had to make some modifications to account for your rather unique connectors. I’ve been told it should be here next week, and we’ll do your final fitting and get you trained right away. You should be an expert before you’re ready for the public.”
“Don’t worry about that now, Sergeant. We need to be thinking about the IBHU,” Doctor Chakrabarti said, anxious to get going.
Rev could see she couldn’t give a flying fig about his social arm. All she cared about was her project. He couldn’t blame her, though, not really. He knew her career depended on this project. More than that, if it was all it was hyped to be, then it could make a significant impact on the war.
“Daryll, if you’d helmet him up?”
Another of the white-clad people stepped up, holding a gaming helmet. At least that was what it looked like to Rev. No one had told him about a helmet, but he would just go with the flow. A cable connected it to the box on the cart. Without saying a word, the man put the helmet over Rev’s head, then with a click, jacked it into his neck. Immediately, Rev was in an open field. There were three people with him: Doctor Chakrabarti, an admiral, and a general, the doctor in her medwhites and the other two in their uniforms.
“OK, Sergeant. I want you to try to lift your left arm,” Chakrabarti said.
My left arm?
Rev turned his head to see where instead of a tube, a massive arm, at least fifty centimeters wide, was connected to him. It was articulated at what would be a human elbow, but higher up, closer to the shoulder, and from that point to the front, there was a barrel along the top of what looked to be a beam projector. Two slots jutted out at a slight angle from the projector tube.
Cool.
“Can you lift the arm?” the doctor repeated.
Oh, yeah. Come on back, Reverent.
He tried to lift it, but nothing happened. It was like pushing against the wall. His muscles—even if he knew they weren’t there—felt like they were tensing up, but nothing was happening.
He felt a small surge of panic that he tried to suppress. What if this thing wasn’t working? He tried again but to no avail.
“I . . . I can’t,” he said, his voice almost cracking.
“That’s OK, Sergeant. We expected that, but we had to try.”
She turned to face the tech and said, “Neuroplastic reversal. Raise the arm to the horizontal.”
A moment later, the arm raised, and Rev felt it move.
Woah! That’s freaking weird!
He’d just raised his arm, which looked heavy but seemed lighter to him. And not only could he see it rise, he’d felt it.
“Did you feel that?” the doctor asked.
“Yes . . . yes. I did.”
“I need you to remember what that felt like. What we did was use your own nervous system to give the order. What you need to do is to learn how to do this on your own.”
“Like muscle memory? My flipball coach used to drill that into us.”
“Well, not really. We’re working with your nervous system. We’re manually sending the signals from your spinal column through the neural interface, activating the arm. But if you want to think of it that way, that’s fine. All you need to do is learn to replicate the motion. Now, as Daryll lowers the arm, I want you to remember just how it feels.”
Rev thought he understood the concept. They were just using an outside input to train him how to do it himself. But understanding and doing it were two different things. For two hours, he tried to move his virtual arm himself, but to no avail. He was able to jerk it, but that was just him moving his shoulder.
Rev had to give Doctor Chakrabarti credit. She wasn’t getting frustrated, and her calm encouragement kept him going. Not so the general. He’d obviously gotten bored after thirty minutes, and twice he’d blinked out of the simu to return five or ten minutes later.
At one point he’d asked Punch for help, but while his
crystal battle buddy was a wealth of knowledge, the only active thing he could do was give orders to Rev’s medi-nanos. In this case, he was no help at all.
“Did you feel that?” the doctor asked for the hundredth time.
“Yes, I felt it. I always feel it. I just can’t replicate it,” he snapped, getting close to the end of his mental rope.
“You will. With each effort, you’re connecting more and more synapses. It will come.”
Or you only hope it will come for your career. You’re not the one who’s going to get shitcanned if this doesn’t work.
“Try again. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
Yeah, right. Easy for you to say, just do it like this . . .
. . . and to his amazement, the arm moved. No, it didn’t smoothly lift it to the horizontal, but his virtual arm jerked up, and in his surprise, Rev let go, letting the arm fall back.
“Did I do that? For real?” he asked, not quite sure of what happened.
“Yes! You did it!” the doctor said, full of excitement . . . or was it relief?
Rev took a deep breath. The arm was unmoving at his side, but he’d done it. And if he could do it once, he could do it again. Doubts vanished into nothingness.
At the doctor’s urging, he tried to lift it a couple more times, but other than a slight tremor, the arm didn’t move. But he wasn’t too concerned. And evidently, neither was Doctor Chakrabarti, because she stopped the session soon after.
The tech removed the helmet, and Rev blinked to adjust his eyes. He was dead tired, his body shaking, and sweat ran down his face. He’d been sitting the entire time, but it felt as if he was back at Nguyen climbing the mountain. He was wrung dry.
“Very good, Sergeant Pelletier. We made a lot of progress today. And I assure you, it will get easier,” the doctor said.
“Good job, Sergeant. Way to keep trying,” the general added.
“Thank you, sir.” Rev wanted to mention that the general hadn’t stuck with him, but sergeants who criticized generals usually ended up wishing they hadn’t. Besides, he wasn’t angry about that. He was just too relieved that he’d actually moved the IBHU.
“We’ll do this again tomorrow,” the doctor said. “You get a good night’s sleep.”
“Are you being treated OK? Anything you need from me?” the admiral asked.
“The chow’s good, but . . .”
“But what, son?”
Rev hesitated as he looked at six people dressed in white isolation suits, all staring at him.
Screw it. All they can do is say no.
“I’ve been told I’m doing fine from a medical standpoint.”
“Yes, that’s true. All of your injuries are healed or close to being so. We’re just monitoring your biosynth neural connectors. Why?”
Rev took a deep breath. “I know this sounds petty, but I’m going batshit stir-crazy here. I haven’t seen a real person, I mean, someone in the flesh and not in an isolation suit since my surgery. And at night, there’s no one to even talk to. I’d really, really like to get into a regular ward. If that’s allowed, I mean.”
The admiral gave him a long look before turning to the others. “From a medical standpoint, there’s really no reason for the sergeant to remain quarantined unless there’s something you haven’t told us, Doctor Chakrabarti.”
Ooh, smart way to put it.
The doctor hesitated. She obviously didn’t want to let her prize chassis get out among the unwashed masses.
“We don’t want word of this project to get out there yet, Sergeant. So, if you are out with your fellow Marines, can we trust you to stay mum about all of this?” the general asked.
“Yes, sir! I know how to keep a secret!” he blurted out.
Rev wondered if the general knew about the Centaur body. He wanted to use that as proof that he could stay quiet, but mentioning that would be proof that he couldn’t. Catch-22.
“But once we go live, he’ll need to have his IBHU detached each day and reattached the next day.”
Whatever sympathetic thoughts Rev had been sending the doctor’s way, he pulled them back. She was trying to quash this.
“Doable. We need to develop the donning methodology anyway,” the general said.
“But—”
The general held up a hand to cut her off. “I think we need to take care of our sergeant’s mental health, too. Admiral Boulos, I trust you can take care of that?”
“Yes, sir. I can have Sergeant Pelletier checked into the Wounded Warrior Ward before evening chow.”
“Will that do?” the general asked Rev.
“Yes, sir,” he said, getting excited.
The general said, “We’re all grateful for what you’re doing. General Echo has been following your progress very closely.”
The Commandant of the Marine Corps? Following me? Really?
The general popped open his suit’s face shield, leaned in close to Rev’s ear, and whispered, “And I’m very aware of how well you can keep a secret, Reverent. Semper fi, Devil Dog.”
Rev didn’t know what shocked him most, that the commandant knew who he was or that a three-star general called him by his first name.
“Thank you, sir,” was the only response his numbed mind could come up with.
26
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” a somewhat familiar voice said as Rev entered the Wounded Warriors Ward.
Rev looked to where a dozen Marines were sitting around in a brightly colored lounge in sweats and tees. Six were at a table playing cards . . .
“Angel Wings?”
“In the flesh,” Malaika said, getting up from the table and rushing over to envelop Rev in a bone-crushing hug. “Where the hell have you been? I heard you were CASEVAC’d back to the real world, but when I got here, no one knew where you were.”
Rev had an answer for that, given to him by the admiral herself—not that he thought he’d have to pull it out so soon.
“My body was having rejection issues,” he said, waving his stump. “They needed to keep me in isolation, purge my medinanos, and then give me more.”
Rev thought it was a weak excuse, but he’d been assured that while this was a rare occurrence, it did occasionally happen.
“Whoa. That sucks the big one. But you’re OK now?” she asked, dragging him back toward the card table.
“They say so.”
“Angel Wings, Mala?” one of the Marines at the table said as they came up.
“Private joke. Forget about it. But hey, this is Rev. He and I go way back, what . . . all of three months now? Snake-eater type, but don’t hold that against him.”
“Yeah, I know you,” one of the Marines said as he stood up, hand out. “Rafer Lindt. I met you at the E-club once with Bundy.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Rev said, shaking the hand. “You’re in tanks.” He frowned and said, “I didn’t hear of any tanks getting hit by the Angel shits, except for Bundy getting stuck in that hole.”
There was a round of laughter, and one of the others said, “Tell him why you’re here, Rafe.”
His face turned red. “I sort of fell down a flight of stairs. Broke my back.”
“And he wasn’t even drunk,” Malaika said. “Just going to take a piss. And now he’s got another six months of rehab with us here.”
She started around the table, naming each Marine and a corpsman, before pointing to the others in the lounge and naming them in turn. About two-thirds were from Seventh Marines, the Red Lions, at Camp Kamachi, while the rest were from the Gryphons and Camp Nguyen.
One of them, an older woman Malaika called Bunny, lifted a leg when she was named and pulled back her sweats to reveal a silver prosthesis. “When you getting your arm? They’re not going to regen you, right?”
“Soon. I had a rejection problem, and they need to get that fixed before I get an arm.”
That was two times in less than two minutes he’d gone to that excuse. He was glad the admiral had fed it to him, and
he had it on call.
“You’ll like it. The rehab staff are good shits. You’ll be an expert before you know it.”
Rev surveyed the room. Ten Marines and a corpsman. Except for Bunny and her leg, none looked that hurt, even if three were wearing healing chambers.
“This is all there is?”
“No. Tinsel’s in her rehab session, but yeah, this is it. The Angel shits weren’t really the best fighters around,” Malaika said.
“There’s F-Ward,” Rafer said.
The jovial attitude faded a bit, and Rev asked, “F-Ward?”
“That’s for the seriously messed-up. They’ve got people in there going back to Horry.”
Horry was HRY-355, a manufacturing station in the Grabowsky Belt, lost to the Centaurs nine or ten years before.
“Anyone from Alafia?”
“Two, from what I hear. We’re not allowed back there,” Rafer said in a somber voice.
“Hell, let’s not bring everyone down. You up for some Knock On?” Malaika asked Rev.
“Sure, why not? I don’t think I can deal, though. I can only knock with one hand.”
“Don’t worry about that, hon. You sit by me and let momma do your dealing.”
Rev took a seat and just drank in the feeling. He’d been extremely lonely in isolation with only Punch for company, but he was back with his tribe now. He was home.
“What happened to you, Mala?” Rev asked while Rafer dealt the next hand. “I mean, you don’t look—”
“I’m still beautiful, you mean?” She tapped the side of her head with her forefinger. “It’s up here that got messed up. Three weeks after you. Just mopping up the stragglers when one of the freaking Angel shits brought down a wall with me next to it. Boom! Blasted it right on top of me. Knocked me out and gave me a concussion.”
“In a PAL-3?”
It didn’t seem to him that a mere wall would do much damage to someone in the infantry combat suit.
“I didn’t mention it was a big wall,” she said as the others at the table laughed. “The docs swear I’ll be right as rain by next week.”
