by Ian Douglas
“Hell, son, no one tells me anything. By the time the EAs finish filtering out the news they think I shouldn’t be burdened with, there’s not enough left to let me ask intelligent questions. I just know the PEs have some of our people at Puller in custody, but that some of them are still loose and lying low.”
“That’s right, sir.” Alexander thought-clicked an animation into view, showing the tiny, red Puller sun, the orbit of the system’s lone gas giant, and the wider orbit of the stargate. “Our covert base in that system consisted of two facilities. The larger, main base is dug into the surface of an ice-covered moon of this gas giant, here. The giant’s radiation belts mask any electronic leakage. The smaller facility is out here, dug into the interior of a 10-kilometer asteroid that’s in orbit around the stargate itself.
“Lieutenant Lee reemerged from the Gate on 2410. One month later, on 1911, a PanEuropean battlefleet arrived in-system—we think from the base at Aurore. Assault troops landed on the gas giant moon and took over our facility there. The LP commander, Major Tomanaga, reported PE troops inside the base, and then all communication with the unit was lost.
“Our best guess is that the PEs had a small, probably robotic probe in the Puller system, and that it detected and tracked the ships Tomanaga sent out to pick up Lieutenant Lee when her Night Owl reemerged from the Gate. It would take about a month for Republic ships to get out there.
“Apparently, however, the Republican forces did not detect the asteroid LP near the Gate. There are still five Marines there, under the command of a Lieutenant Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick has been sending us regular updates via QCC.”
QCC, Quantum-Coupled Communications, possessed two singular advantages over any other form of long-range communication. It was instantaneous, and there was no way an enemy could tap into the transmission because there was no beam or wave to tap. A message spoken or typed at one console simply appeared at the designated receiver without passing through the intervening space, a satisfyingly practical application of what the long-dead Einstein had called “spooky action at a distance.”
“So Fitzpatrick and his people are still undetected?” McCulloch asked.
“As of their last report, yes, sir. He was able to tell us that the PE squadron consisted of twelve ships, including the fast cruiser Aurore, a heavy monitor identified as Rommel, and a fleet carrier, Le Guerrier.”
“I saw the list,” McCulloch said. “They came loaded for bear, didn’t they?”
“I’m not sure what ‘bear’ is, but, yeah. They came in with their heavies. Our best guess is that Tomanaga, Lee, and thirty-five other Marines and naval personnel are now being held on board the Aurore. She will be our chief target.”
McCulloch nodded. “I just had some intel passed down from I-squared. You’re going to have help when you get there.”
Alexander felt an internal twist of hard suspicion. “What kind of help?”
“You’re aware of the religious problems in the French sectors?”
Alexander nodded. “Somewhat. I don’t understand them….”
“The Republic’s French sectors are officially Reformed Catholic. But there’s a strong Traditionalist Catholic element in their fleet. DCI2 tells us that the T.C. is set to mutiny if and when our forces appear. If they can take over the French warships before we can deploy, they will…and they’ve promised to try to protect our people.”
Alexander groaned. “Gods….”
“What’s the matter?”
“That complicates things, General. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“We’re going to need to go in hot and hard. We do not need a bunch of friendlies running around, getting in our way and maybe taking friendly fire. That could get real nasty, real fast.”
“Affirmative. But we work with what we’ve got.”
“Ooh-rah.” Alexander looked at the animation of the Puller star system for a moment. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the PE fleet will pull out before we get our act together.”
“Don’t count on that, General. So far, they haven’t admitted that they have our people…and we haven’t admitted that we know they have our people. Their safest bet is to sit tight at the Puller system, especially since they’re probably questioning our people on exactly what Lee saw on the other side of the Gate.”
“Starwall. Right. Okay, General. We’ll take them down and we’ll get our people out. But…”
“‘But?’”
“Nothing. But when we go in, those so-called friendlies in the PE fleet had better stay the hell out of our way. Our Marines are going to be moving fast and kicking ass, and they will not have the time to find out what church their targets attend.”
“Understood. Just do your best.”
Damn, Alexander thought. It’s going to be a cluster-fuck.
And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
14
2611.1102
Suit Locker
UCS Samar
Dock 27, Earth Ring 7
1315 hrs GMT
“So? How does it feel?” PFC Sandre Kenyon asked him.
Garroway blinked, testing the mental currents. “It feels…empty. Kind of like back in boot camp. When we didn’t have our implants activated, y’know?”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what it’s like. Because that’s what it is, at least up to a point. You still have Net access, comm access—”
“But we can get Achilles back?”
“Oh, sure! He’s still there,” she reassured him. She laughed and nudged Garroway in the ribs with an elbow. “He just doesn’t know what he’s missing!”
They were sitting side by side on one of the benches in the locker, surrounded by the silent, hanging shapes of emergency pressure suits. All of his attention, however, was focused inward as he took a self-inventory of his electronic systems. His implant software was still running. Achilles, however, the platoon AI, did not appear to be on-line.
He shook his head, partly in confusion, partly in admiration. “How the hell did you learn this, Sandre?”
She shrugged. “I’m a vir-simmer, remember? Back in my misspent civilian youth, I programmed the micro-AIs in sensory helms. I knew there had to be a back door. I just needed to find it.”
“It’s still amazing.”
Garroway continued testing the feel of his internal hardware. In a way, it was like that horrible stretch of time in boot camp, the empty time, when he’d been deprived of any cereblink hardware at all. He still had most of his connections for communication, for linking into other computers, or for downloading data off the Net. What was missing was Achilles, the AI Electronic Assistant that served both as guide through the military cyberworld and as an unofficial tattletale and voice of authority.
“Yeah, well, I had some expert help, too,” Sandre told him. “Did a favor for Vince, down in the 660 maintenance shack back at RTC Mars. He uploaded some secure code for me, gave me a head start.”
“Vince? Staff Sergeant Gamble?”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t think that old son-of-a-bitch ever had a helpful thing to say to anyone!” He made a face, and imitated Gamble’s acid tones. “Especially puke-recruits.”
She laughed. “You never tried, um, feminine wiles on the poor dear. Besides, we’re not recruits any more. We’re Marines.”
“Ooh-rah.” He said it automatically, almost sarcastically, but he still felt a small, sharp chill of excitement as he spoke. Boot camp was over, the initiation complete, the metamorphosis from civilian to Marine accomplished.
Even so, he’d been feeling a bit of anticlimax. For almost two weeks after their graduation ceremony on the tenth of November, Garroway and the rest of the newly minted Marines had sat around in a temporary barracks at Noctis Labyrinthus. The forty survivors of Recruit Company 4102 had expected to be shipped out to different units almost immediately, but when their orders didn’t come, speculation and rumor—“scuttlebutt” in ancient
Marine and naval parlance—had fast become their primary, if highly unreliable, source of intel. Day after day, they’d stood watch, held practice drills, and carried out field days in various buildings across the compound, scrubbing, mopping, waxing, and polishing, “doing the bright work” until, as Ami Danvers had put it, the rising albedo of the base threatened them all with blindness. Robots and nanocleaning aerosol fumigants, Garroway had observed, could have done the job with far greater, microscopic precision; all of the hard manual labor, it was patently obvious, was make-work, designed to keep them busy and out of trouble.
They’d still had plenty of free time, though, and a lot of the conversation in the squad bay had turned naturally enough to their new life as Marines, in addition to the more traditional topics like sex, liberty ports, and more sex. The fact that they all now housed an artificial intelligence—Achilles—griped a lot of them. Achilles was, in effect, the eyes and ears of their superiors, always watching, always listening. When they were busy, Achilles’ presence didn’t bother them much; when they were practicing a combat evolution, he was treated as a part of the company, linking them, all together and guiding their movements, warning them of danger, and linking them into the larger combat net.
But when they were just sitting around the squad bay talking, Achilles’ presence became a constant stressor, invisible, not discussed, but always there.
And morale had plummeted.
But Sandre, evidently, had decided to do something about it. She’d struck up a friendly acquaintance with one of the base personnel, and learned how to switch Achilles off.
A few days later, Company 4102 had been loaded on board a tiny military intersystem transport and shuttled to Earth Ring, where they’d been hustled across to their new duty station, a titanic assault transport named Samar. The word around the squad bay was that Samar had just returned from Alighan with the 55th Marine Aerospace Regimental Strikeforce on board, or what was left of it, and that the forty new Marines were destined to fill out the 55th’s combat-depleted ranks.
But their orders still hadn’t arrived.
A short time before, Sandre had approached Garroway on the mess deck, with the suggestion that he accompany her down to the emergency suit locker after chow. He’d readily agreed; the two of them had snuck some playtime several times during the long stretch in the holding barracks at Noctis, and he’d been hoping to pursue the relationship.
With Achilles blocked, he would be able to continue his trysts with Sandre. Not that the AI had caused them any trouble at Noctis. Their platoon commander had probably been informed of all of their meetings up until he’d received the software that let him disconnect from the AI, but had chosen not to intervene—quite probably because morale had been so bad, and disciplining a couple of Marines because they’d been having sex after hours would have made things a whole lot worse.
Still, so far as Garroway was concerned, it would be a lot better if Achilles was out of the picture entirely, at least once in a while. After sixteen weeks of boot camp, he valued his privacy more than ever, and grated under the knowledge that anything he did, from scratching his balls in the head to just thinking about how he hated Gunny Warhurst could be recorded and fed up the chain of command. And almost everyone else in Company 4102 he’d talked to felt the same way.
“You’re sure Achilles doesn’t know he’s being cut out?” Garroway asked. He was trying to imagine the AI’s point of view. Wouldn’t he know that he wasn’t getting data from certain members of the company, and become suspicious?
“The way it was explained to me,” Sandre told him, “is that he’s only programmed to respond to certain situations, thoughts, or words. We don’t know what those triggers are, of course, but as long as he doesn’t receive them, he’s content. Artificial intelligences aren’t curious unless they’re programmed to be curious.”
“Or suspicious, I guess.”
“Exactly.”
“So,” Garroway said, with just a trace of hesitation in his voice, “this means you and I could?…”
“Of course. Why do you think I did it?”
“Just checking.” He slipped his arm over her shoulders, drawing her closer.
And the next hour or so was the most pleasant and unfettered hour Garroway had yet enjoyed in the Marine Corps.
* * * *
The Comet Fall
Terraview Plaza, Earth Ring 7
2226 hrs GMT
“So, did y’hear the latest scuttlebutt?” Staff Sergeant Shari Colver asked.
“About what?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah,” Sergeant Vesco Aquinas said. “The rumor mill’s been grinding overtime lately. Everything from peace with the Xul to war with the PEzzles.”
“It’d damned well be better than your last butt-load of scuttlebutt,” Sergeant Richard Chu said. “I didn’t like that one at all.”
“Roger that,” Ramsey said. “They fucking gave it away….”
The entire platoon had been grumbling since their arrival back in the Sol system, with morale at absolute rock-bottom. The word was—still unconfirmed but apparently solid—that the Commonwealth was giving back Alighan. Two hundred five Marines hit, Ramsey thought with dark emotion, over half of them irries…and they fucking go and give that shit hole back to the Muzzies….
Colver leaned forward at the table in approved conspiratorial fashion. “It’s war with the PanEuropeans,” she said in a throaty half-whisper. “They’re shipping us out next week.”
“And how do you happen to be privy to that little tidbit?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah,” Sergeant Ela Vallida added. “You been talking with the commandant lately?”
“No, but I have been talking with Bill Walsh.” Walsh was a staff sergeant over in Ops Planning. “He says it’s already decided. They’re pulling together the battlefleet now. And the 55th is on the ship-out list.”
“Aw, shit!” Corporal Franklo Gonzales said.
Chu shook his head. “Well, our luck’s true to form, isn’t it?”
“Shit,” Ramsey said. “Can’t be. We just freakin’ got back from Alighan!” Even as he spoke the words, though, he knew how hollow they were. The Corps could do anything it damned well wanted.
“Fuckin’-A, Gunnery Sergeant,” Corporal Marin Delazlo put in. “We’re due some freakin’ down time!”
“Maybe,” Ramsey said, taking in the noise and bustle of their surroundings with a grin, “just maybe this is it!”
The six of them were in the Comet Fall, a popular bar and nightlife center on the Seventh Ring Grand Concourse. It was large, murkily red-lit, and crowded; perhaps half of the other tables had privacy fields up, making them look like hazy, translucent ruby domes. The house dancers on-stage and the wait staff navigating among the tables all were stylishly nude, with eye-tugging displays of light and color washing across every square centimeter of exposed skin. The club patrons, both those at non-shielded tables and up on the stage with the professional dancers, wore everything from nothing at all to elaborate formal costumes. Music throbbed and pounded, though you needed a sensory helm for the full effect. Ramsey and the other Marines had elected not to wear helms, preferring unfiltered conversation instead.
His mind drifting, Ramsey found himself following the gyrations of one young woman on-stage wearing what looked like a swirling, deck-sweeping cloak of peacock feathers, a glittering gold sensory helm, and a dazzling corona flammae; she’d been enhanced either genetically or through prosthetics with an extra pair of arms, and her dance movements were eerily and compellingly graceful.
He was feeling wretchedly out of place. Aquinas and Gonzales both were wearing fairly conservative civvie skin-suits, but the rest of them were in undress blacks. Both sets of attire, by regulations, were acceptable wear for liberty, but it tended to make them stand out somewhat against the gaudy and sometimes extravagant background of evening wear sported by the other patrons in the establishment.
“Like hell,” Gonzales said after a long momen
t. “I don’t know about you clowns, but me, I’m just getting started! I’m not ready to redeploy!”
“That’s right,” Chu said. “I have a lot of catching up to do in the drinking and socializing departments before my next deployment!”
“Ooh-rah!” the others chorused, and Colver raised her glass in salute. “To downtime!”
“Downtime and down the hatch!” Ramsey added, lifting his own glass, then tossing it off. “Semper fi!”
The drink was called a solar flare, and the name was apt. He felt the burn going down, then the kick, and finally the rolling swell of expanding consciousness as the drink’s nano activators kicked in.
If his platoon implant AI had been activated, he thought, it would be screaming at him by now. Marines were not supposed to imbibe implant-activators, for fear it would scramble their hardware and invalidate their government warranties or whatever. He didn’t care. After Alighan, he needed this. Hell, they all did.
How the hell could they just give it away, after what we went through out there?
“Well, the brass is ramping up for something big,” Ramsey told the others, perhaps three or four flares later. He had to focus on each word as he brought it to mind, then tried to say it. He was pleased. No slurring of speech at all, at least that he could detect. “I just heard this morning that we’re getting a shuttle load of fungies in from RTC Mars.”
“Yeah,” Delazlo said, nodding. His speech was slurred, but it didn’t matter. “’Sh’right. I heard that, too.”
“Shit. Check your daily downloads, guys, why don’t ya?” Vallida put in. “The fungies arrived yesterday. Forty of them, straight out of Noctis Labyrinthus.”
“No shit?” Ramsey asked. He hadn’t heard about that. Still, Samar was such a huge vessel, and she was swarming right now with technicians, computer personnel, cargo handlers, mechs, and shipwrights. A freaking regiment could have come on board and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“No shit,” Vallida said. “Seems they want all units up to full strength, even if we have to raid a nursery to do it.”
