"That sounds crazy. You can't lose information in Amethi's datapool. One askping will find you anything."
"That's because it's still small. Earth's datapool breakdown was inevitable. There's too much data to be indexed in a single source, and the more the index is distributed the weaker the metalinks become. They're talking about giving it official subdivisions. Except, if you don't know where all the original data is stored, how are you going to rearrange it?"
"No wonder I couldn't get an answer."
"If you like, I can send a message to a friend I know. She can load an askping for the show."
Lawrence tumbled off the settee. He wound up kneeling in front of Roselyn, who was regarding him with intrigued amusement. "You can get the rest of the episodes for me?"
"We can find out if they exist, yes. Entertainment is still mainstream. Unless it's over a century old, of course. Even then, it's pretty easy."
"Please." He clamped his hands on her knees. "I would be eternally grateful, and I will sign that in blood."
"Humm." She pondered the notion for a moment, eyes unfocused on the ceiling. "There is one thing I'd like."
"It's yours."
She took hold of his hand and licked his fingers one by one, ending with a kiss at each tip. Then she began to move him slowly across her body until the place he touched made her gasp. "That," she murmured huskily. "I like that."
Every day for a week Roselyn went back to the Newton family estate after school. Sometimes they drove on the trike, but often they'd walk through the 'tweendome tunnels. It wasn't until the third day she was introduced to Lawrence's mother and brothers and sisters. He worried about the meeting a lot more than she did, wincing every time his mother was "nice" or asked a personal question; glaring at his siblings when they shouted a crass comment. Roselyn sailed through it with a grace he envied as much as he admired.
After that initial encounter was over, he wasn't obliged to bring her into the house every time, although it was made very clear she was to come to a meal whenever she was visiting. And it would be lovely to meet her mother for lunch one day. Soon.
"Parents," she sighed when Lawrence glumly relayed this latest development. "They never book themselves into the nursing home. They just stay home and embarrass their children."
He glanced up from licking her navel. "You know what'll happen, don't you? My mum will start introducing your mum to eligible men."
Roselyn shifted around. They'd put a blanket on the settee now; the leather used to stick to her bare skin. "I doubt it."
He heard the tension in her voice. "Sorry. You don't talk much about him."
"No." She let out a long breath. "I don't. There's not much to say. He was a great father, I loved him lots. Then one day he was gone, and everything I thought was my world went with him. And just when I thought my life was going to be completely shitty from then on, I came here." She pinched a roll of flesh around his waist, which made him squirm. "And there you were waiting for me."
"Something else we've got in common. My life was pretty shitty, too, until I met you. I don't mean it was as bad as you losing your father, no way. Mine was all self-inflicted, most of it, I guess. Easier to bring that to an end."
"Well, I'm going to inflict some more suffering on you."
"What?"
"Lawrence, I can't keep coming back here after school."
"Why not?" he asked, shocked. "Don't you like this?"
Her grin was dangerous as she clambered on top of him. "Oh yes, to be sure, I like this. Way too much, in case you hadn't noticed. Two weeks with you, and I've turned into a complete slut." She pushed her breasts toward his face.
"Me too." He licked her nipples, urgent for the taste of them. Even after all this time he was still amazed at what she let him do. His own bravery in suggesting things was surprising, too. It was as if neither of them owned a single inhibition between them.
Roselyn lifted herself out of his immediate reach. "I've got to start doing some serious homestudy. Amethi's schools are ultra-fast-tracked compared to dear old Ireland's. If I'm not careful, I'm going to wind up the biggest dunce this planet has ever seen."
"You won't."
"Lawrence! I will. I'm serious now, I have got to get my homestudy done."
"Do it here," he said simply. "There's datapool access. You've got your bracelet pearl with you. No problem." His hand went up ready to fondle her breast.
Roselyn sat back, hands on hips, to stare down at him. "You know what'll happen if I come here to do it. You'll start cuddling up and then we'll wind up fucking, and I'll never get anything done. Do you want me to be a total idiot?"
"Of course not. But—" He couldn't bear the idea of not seeing her outside school. "I won't get fresh with you until you've finished your coursework. Promise. Just, please, come back here in the afternoons. Please?"
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
His finger drew a cross on his chest. "Absolutely."
"Okay then."
"Great!"
"But, we go to the house first. Do our homestudy there."
"Ow, what?"
"That's the deal. We work together in the lounge or somewhere. That way neither of us can lapse."
"Oh hell. All right"
"And afterward"—she leaned down again, taunting— "afterward, we can come back down here, and I'll show you how grateful I am."
"Will you?"
Her tongue licked around the outside of his lips at the same time he could feel her nipples brushing against his chest. The provocation was a beautiful torment.
"Oh yes," she whispered.
"How grateful is that, exactly?"
"So grateful, I won't be able to talk, my mouth will be too busy."
Lawrence's moan was almost a whimper, his eyes were half shut, pleasure blurring his vision with tears. Trepidation made him tremble as he felt her hand curl lovingly around his balls. Then—bastardFate—her other hand pinched the fat at the side of his belly, and he juddered free.
Her beautiful face was pouting with disappointment "What's the matter?"
"I don't like that," he grunted shamefully.
"You mean this?" Her hand reached for the band of fat again.
"Yes!" He shifted sharply out of her way. "There's no need to remind me I'm overweight."
Roselyn frowned. "You are your body, Lawrence. Just like me."
But your body is fantastic, he avoided saying. Where as mine... "I know. I keep meaning to get into better shape." He shut his mouth quickly, before anything else stupid could escape.
"Really?" Her face lit up, and she kissed him enthusiastically. "That would be such a turn-on for me."
CHAPTER SIX
Can-time—the period that ground forces can spend in transit before their combat performance will start to deteriorate—was a factor that military commanders had known about for centuries, building it in to all their tactical planning. According to Z-B's manual, their strategic security forces could endure a fifty-day trip in a starship without any noticeable decay in efficiency.
At forty days into the flight, which put them still three light-years from Thallspring, Lawrence was already wondering if any of Platoon 435NK9 would even get into the drop glider when the time came to go planetside. Whatever office-lurker expert had come up with the fifty-day rule had clearly never been in low-Earth orbit, let alone a starship.
Day forty-one, at 09:30 shiptime, the platoon were in the gym. With the rest of the day given over to nonphysical training and mission revision, it was the wrong time to be doing anything strenuous. The high they'd come out with would take hours to fade, leaving them hyped and edgy. But every platoon was scheduled for ninety minutes a day in one of the life support wheel's gym compartments, keeping their muscle and bone structure up to scratch. There was no getting out of it.
Even knowing it would screw with the rest of his day, Lawrence concentrated hard on his exercise regimen, pushing rhythmically against the stiff resistance of the handlebars. He
was prone on one of the starship's standard apparatus benches, which used only springs or pistons to provide resistance. He tightened the resistance settings a couple of notches and carried on. Sweat began to build up on his forehead. His heart was pumping fast. That was the response he wanted, keeping every organ at its peak. He'd emphasized that enough times to the rest of them, and then led by example. Their Skin suits placed a lot of strain on a body, especially one that had been rotting away in an eighth of a gee for five weeks—something the can-time charts tended to overlook.
Glancing round the gym he could see Amersy and Hal Grabowski putting in a decent amount of effort; sweat was staining their scarlet T-shirts. Odel and Karl were getting away with the minimum, as always. Jones Johnson was barely moving his leg restraint, treating the session as some kind of personal rest period.
Typical, Lawrence thought: Jones was their platoon's mechanic, and damn good with just about any sort of machinery, including projectile weapons. Naturally, he assumed that ability compensated for his lack in others. Despite being a member for three campaigns, he never seemed to grasp that the platoon survived by teamwork, which started at the most basic level: physical adequacy.
Lawrence got up and casually threw a towel round his neck. He loped over to Jones and grasped the frame around the man's bench apparatus to give himself some leverage. His free hand slammed down on the leg restraint bars, forcing them to hinge round, and bending Jones's legs almost double.
"Fuck!" Jones yelled.
"You've just been ambushed. A mine has blown a wall down, pinning your legs under a shitload of stone, and three rebels with machetes are coming toward you. If you want to live, you've got to lift yourself free."
"Jesus fuck."
"Come on, you idle bastard, lift."
Jones's face was compressed into a rubber mask as he strained to bring his legs back level. Blood vessels stood out on his neck, pulsing fast.
When it was clear he'd never get the bars back, Lawrence let go. "You're fucking useless, Jones. I don't mind that it will get you killed; we might get a halfway decent replacement. But if you're immobilized it leaves the rest of us covering our asses. Keep up with us, or drop out now. I'm not carrying a liability."
"This is a fucking gym, Sarge. If we're out on patrol I'll be in Skin. This fitness crap we're supposed to stick to is total bullshit."
"The only thing you can ever truly rely on is yourself."
Lawrence caught Hal grinning at the scene. He turned to the kid. "And you can stop smirking. In six days we're going to be on the planet. Every welcoming smile you get means they hate you; the bigger the smile the more they want you dead. We've only got each other down there. Nobody else is going to look out for you. So I want you in the best shape it's possible to be. Not just your body, I want your attitude to be right, too, because Fate help me, I've got to depend on you."
He walked back to his own apparatus bench. Hal resumed his pumping, seemingly proud of how high he'd got the resistance turned up and how easily he handled it. Amersy, who hadn't stopped his forward presses, gave Lawrence a look of mild rebuke as he passed. The corporal wasn't out of line, Lawrence admitted; he had overreacted to Jones slacking off. But this time he wanted a lot more from the platoon than on any other mission. If he was ever going to achieve his personal objective when they reached Thallspring he needed to have complete loyalty, and to do that he had to take care of them. Good care. They might not appreciate it up here, but on the ground these missions quickly became very warped. Society's assholes they might be, but they were streetsmart enough to know who they could trust when the shit hit the fan. And Z-B, in the form of Captain Douglas Bryant, didn't get a look-in.
Lawrence began working his apparatus again. He could see Jones pedaling wildly and let out a quiet snort of satisfaction. He was lucky the squaddie hadn't tried to smack him one. The frustration of can-time was twisting them up. At least back in Cairns they could sneak out of the base at night and screw the tension away with a girl on the Strip.
After gym the platoon was due two hours' equipment readiness training. Lawrence left Amersy to supervise them by himself. He'd got another meeting with the captain; this close to the end of the voyage, they were averaging out at nearly one per day.
Their briefing room was a rectangular compartment with bare aluminum walls, apart from one large, high-resolution sheet screen. The three other platoon sergeants, Wagner, Ciaran and Oakley, were already sitting at the composite table. Lawrence gave them a quick nod and took his own seat. Captain Douglas Bryant walked in a moment later, accompanied by Lieutenant Motluk. The sergeants rose to their feet, all of them with one hand gripping the edge of the table to keep their feet on the ground, while the other was used to salute.
"At ease, people," Douglas Bryant said cordially. He was twenty-eight, a product of Z-B's officer academy in Tunisia. A smart man, with a solid family stake in the company to propel him along the promotion path. When Lawrence accessed his record he found the only active duty the captain had seen was counterinsurgency missions in East Africa. Punishment raids on camps deep in the jungle, where the native tribes still fought the imperialist company mines stripping the minerals from their land. It was a qualification of sorts for asset realization, but Lawrence would have preferred someone with genuine experience.
If he was honest, his contempt for Douglas Bryant originated from knowing the young man was more or less what he would have probably turned out to be himself: genuinely concerned about the condition and morale of the men serving under his command, full of information and knowing shit about what really mattered.
"Ciaran, have you got your platoon's supply inventory sorted out?" the captain asked.
"Sir," the sergeant of Platoon 836BK5 answered. "It was a glitch. The supplies were in the correct lander pod."
The captain smiled around at his sergeants. "It's always software, isn't it? Have we had anything other than virtual problems since we left Centralis?"
They smiled back, tolerantly polite.
"Okay. Final suit tailoring, how are we doing? Newton, your platoon hasn't started yet, why is that?"
"I keep them going in for function tests, sir. I want to leave final tailoring until as late as possible. Even with the gym sessions, five weeks in this gravity is messing with their size."
"I can appreciate the reasoning behind that, but unfortunately it's not quite the procedure we're following. Your platoon is to report for final tailoring oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."
"Sir."
"I can't risk them not being ready when we emerge from compression. We must not be caught unprepared."
Right, Lawrence thought, like Thallspring has moved and we 're going to finish this flight early. Final tailoring took a couple of hours per suit, at max. "I understand, sir."
And so it went. Bryant was obsessed with details; everything any experienced commander would leave to his sergeants to sort out he wanted a say in. He had to have the operation running perfectly along the standard track, a dead giveaway that he was concerned more with the impression he generated within the company than with the practicalities of the situation they'd be facing. He even wanted Oakley to cancel a request he'd made for more remote sensors when they went groundside. His platoon had been assigned to sweep through an urban area that was all narrow roads in a maze of cheap housing—and that was from a ten-year-old map; it could have decayed a lot since then. In other words, a perfect ambush territory for the local badboys. And they'd have a lot of bravado before Z-B established themselves and obtained their good behavior collateral. Lawrence would have wanted the same security those remote sensors could provide. But despite Z-B's vaunted policy of loop involvement, the beachhead plan already contained the number of sensors considered relevant. Bryant did not want anything to alter at this stage.
Oakley said yes, and got his bracelet pearl to rescind the request. They moved on to the landing operation's tuning and how Bryant didn't want them to suffer undue delay on their way out of the drop gl
iders.
* * *
A gentle warm rain had been falling on Memu Bay for most of the day, the second unseasonable downpour in a fortnight. It meant Denise had to keep the children out of the garden and at the tables and benches sheltered by the roof. In the morning she'd handed out the big media pads and got them to paint the shapes they saw in the clouds, which resulted in a splendid collage of strange creatures in glowing blues, reds and greens. By the afternoon, when it was obvious the clouds weren't going to blow away any time soon, she settled them in a broad semicircle and sat on one of the tables in the center.
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