“Maybe I am. At least I’m on my way out of this hellhole, eight more days and a wake-up. But you, boys and girls, have landed in a world of shit. Five standard years.” His grin stretched his face, but his eyes were hard and cold. “Maybe more, if they decide you’re dumb enough for shoko-school.”
“I’ve got the sockets for officer school,” Dev said evenly. “But I’ll be a navy officer, not a muckgrubber grunt like you.”
“Ah, you’re nothing but fresh meat on the block for the shiseiji to feed to the ’Phobes.” He looked Dev up and down, his mouth pulling into a sneer. “You ask me, the ’Phobes’ll spit you back!”
Dev’s hands balled into fists. He’d fought his share of battles in the grimy street canyons of West Scranton, where a challenge as sharp as this one was answered by an immediate attack. Dev took a step forward, his right fist drawing back…
“Psst, hold it!” Garret snapped. “Attention!”
Dev whirled, thinking for an instant that someone had just entered the lounge. At the far end of the lounge, the life-size, 3-D image of a Hegemony Navy lieutenant commander was materializing into near-solidity.
“Recruit Cameron,” the officer said. He did not look up from his desk, and sounded bored. “Report in person to Office 50-A. Execute immediate.” The image faded out again.
At first, Dev wondered if someone had seen the near-fight. It wasn’t impossible that surveillance devices monitored all of the barracks spaces. Then he realized that the speaker’s being a naval officer meant that it probably had to do with his assignment. He glared at Castellano.
“We’ll finish this later.”
“It’ll be a pleasure, hojie.”
Dev checked the location of Office 50-A on the information ’face panel at the front of the barracks, then headed across the dome compound at a trot.
The pressurized habitat on the eastern outskirts of Midgard known as Tristankuppel, one of the city’s forty-one interconnected domes, housed most of the local military facilities, including barracks, administration and support buildings, recruit training center, and technical schools. Most of the buildings were drab, Rogan-grown structures shouldering one another beneath the transplas sky, arrayed in a two-hundred-meter circle around a barren central field still called the grinder, a name backed by long centuries of military tradition.
Office 50-A was in Scandia Hall, the sleekest and most modern of the Tristankuppel’s buildings. The lieutenant commander Dev had seen in the holoprojection was waiting for him in a windowless work space in the Personnel Office on the first level.
Another officer was there as well, tall, long-legged, and sexy in a hard-bodied way despite her brush-cut hair. She wore collar tabs on her skintights identifying her as a tai-i—the same as a navy lieutenant or an army captain. He started to grin appreciatively but was stopped by the emotionless appraisal of those hard, dark eyes.
“Sir!” Dev said, snapping to attention as his latest feed in military courtesy had instructed him. “Recruit Cameron reporting as ordered, sir!”
“At ease, recruit,” the man said, looking up. He gestured to a chair next to the desk. “Dock yourself.”
Dev was surprised at the informality. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m Commander Fisher. This is Captain Alessandro. She’s company commander of one of Midgard’s strider units.” He tapped a small, flat screen reader on his desktop. “I’ve been going through your records, son. I see you want to follow in your father’s footsteps.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Good God,” the woman said. “Why?”
Dev stiffened. “I’m qualified to ceph the K-T jobs. I want to be a starship—”
“Glitter and gold, pretty uniforms, and a jackin’ Jill on every planet,” Alessandro said, her words biting. “Tradition and glory! What makes you think the navy’d have you?”
Dev bristled, stung by her scorn. “They’ll have me, ma’am. I’m good.”
“The correct form of address for all senior officers is ‘sir,’ ” Fisher reminded him. “Cameron, I’m afraid I have bad news. Your MSE threw a flag, point four on your TM rating. The navy can’t use you.”
He seemed to wait for a response, but Dev had none to give. The shock of Fisher’s quiet bombshell twisted his gut, leaving throat dry and brain numb. He gaped at the two of them. “Sir, I—” He stopped. “That’s impossible!” he finished.
“There’s nothing personal in a Mental Stability Evaluation,” Fisher said. He paused, as though considering what to say. “And a Psychotechnic Disorder flag isn’t necessarily a downcheck. But it is something that anyone who employs you as a linker is going to have to take into consideration.”
He met Fisher’s level gaze. “That point four… is that bad?”
“Not necessarily. Not for most jobs. If it was technophobia, now, that could be a problem, but TM? Hell, all of us have a touch of that. But it does rule you out for starships.”
Dev opened his mouth, realized he was gaping foolishly again, and snapped it shut. “Kichigai!” The word was one he’d picked up in the barracks. Literally it meant “you’re crazy,” but in Nihongo it came close to being a fighting word. “I’ve been jacking a freighter for two years!”
“I’ll ask you to control yourself, Cameron,” Fisher said coldly. “With your TM rating, I’m surprised even a civilian merchant line would offer you a job. The navy won’t take anyone with a TM higher than point two.”
Orion Line, Dev thought grimly, was not exactly in the same league as Nipponspace, but this was the first time he’d even considered the possibility that the navy wouldn’t take him.
“Look,” he said. “It’s got to be a mistake. I was second helm on the Mintaka. She’s still at Asgard. Call and talk to Captain DeWitt!”
“Tell me, Cameron,” the woman said suddenly. “What do you feel when you’re in the godsea?”
“Huh?” The sudden change of subject had caught him off guard. “It’s like… like nothing I could describe. Not in words. It’s flying… and power—”
“Ah.” She nodded. “There’s the magic word. Power. You feel big when you’re linked, don’t you? Powerful. Invulnerable.”
“I guess so.”
“Like you could take on the universe. That’s why jackers flagged for TM are pretty carefully scrutinized when they’re bucking for lead helm. Think you could pass muster?”
Dev didn’t answer at once. Second helm aboard a merchant ship was a reserve position, basically little more than a training slot. He’d passed his shipboard tests and qualified for all watch-standing duties, but twice he’d been passed over for promotion to first helm.
He’d assumed that DeWitt had downchecked him because of petty dislike, or, more likely, because of who his father was. Now, for the first time, he was considering the possibility that it was an MSE result that had blocked his advancement. Captain DeWitt had never said anything, one way or the other, but…
“So what are you saying, sir? That the Hegemony Guard won’t have me?” He was already wondering if DeWitt would take him back. He doubted it, especially if there was something in his MSE. “It’s like I was a criminal or something.”
“Not quite,” Alessandro said. “We’ve got plenty of slots for someone aggressive like you. Someone who doesn’t mind taking chances when he’s jacked.”
“But I’m a starpilot!”
“Not anymore,” Fisher said. “You know, son, with your jack configuration, you’d be a natural with heavy ViRface equipment. You ever jack transports, loaders, anything like that?”
“No.” Dev saw where the conversation was headed.
“With a TM of point four, you’d be perfect for striders,” Alessandro said. “I’m short some people, and your stats look pretty good to me.”
That was the second time someone had told him that. “No way! I don’t want to be a striderjack!”
Fisher turned tired eyes on Dev. “Look, son, here’s the straight hont. If you don’t want striders, you can go
to the line infantry, or you can try for a tech rating. Meditech. Maybe ViRtech. If you wash out of school, though, you head straight for the combat pool. They’ll be fitting you for your CA.”
CA—Combat Armor—lightweight, nano-grown hard-shells little heavier than a standard environmental suit. Crunchies. The word, and Castellano’s mockery, burned in Dev’s memory.
“If you choose striders,” Fisher continued, “you’ll be king of the stack. An officer with a solid career and a good future.”
“A grounder?” he said, deliberately, bitingly sarcastic. “Kicking up dirt clods with a combat walker? The navy’s where the real action is, anyway. All you striderjacks’re good for is—”
“Kid, you’ve been living too many ViRdramas,” Alessandro said, cutting in.
“Well, why do you want me?”
“There’s no shame in having a high TM,” Fisher said, answering before Alessandro could. “Hell, some of the psychotechnic disorders are lots worse. Technophobia… the fear of technic society. Technic Depression. That’s when you know the AIs have left you in the dust and you’re never going to catch up. Compared to those, technomegalomania’s nothing.”
“I have a TM rating of point three,” Alessandro added. She favored him with a cold grin. “You have to think you’re a god if you’re jacking sixty tons of walking death.”
It all seemed too cut-and-dried for Dev, a soulless shuffling of numbers that left him, and what he wanted, out of the equation entirely.
“Frankly, son,” Fisher continued, “with your MSE scores and your implants, I’d jump at the chance. The navy’s not going to look twice at you with a point four TM. They want cold, calm, and steady people guiding their billion-yen babies through the godsea. Not warriors.”
“Hell,” Alessandro said. “I doubt that the tech services would be that thrilled to get you either. Looks to me like you can put in for striders, or stick with the line infantry.”
This was some kind of nightmare, a horror ViRdrama without an exit code. “What kind of goddamned choice is that?”
“No choice at all, I’d say. You don’t want to be an enlisted grunt, do you?”
“But I have to palm for more than five years if I want striderjack!”
“Two extra years,” Fisher agreed. “But think of the benefits…”
Dev scarcely listened as Fisher ran through the litany of higher pay, faster promotion, and brighter glory. Fisher had been right on one point. He didn’t want to be an enlisted man if he had a chance at wearing gold. Better to give orders than to take them, and as a striderjack, at least he’d have some decent armor around him.
“And you might get another crack at the navy,” Fisher concluded. “After you qualify as a cadet.”
“How do I do that?”
“Take another MSE. Your score could change with training, with discipline, or just because your attitude changes. It’s possible to reprogram your own selfware, you know.”
“Selfware?”
He pointed at Dev’s head. “Your brain is wetware, the organic counterpart to your implant hardware. Selfware is the program your wetware runs. You know, most people have several distinct sets of overlapping selfware that they run at different times. There’s Cameron the freighter pilot Cameron the lover, out on the town for a bit of RJ. Cameron the son of Admiral Cameron—”
“What’s the point?” he snapped, angry now.
“In most people, there’s a fair amount of overlap between selfware programs. If there’s no overlap, you get multiple personalities, severe mental disorders, stuff like that. Too much overlap, and you’re inflexible, rigid, unable to adapt. Your scores suggest the latter.”
“He’s saying you have a bad attitude, Cameron. Rigid. Set in ferrocrete. But I can fix that.”
He glanced at her suspiciously, then looked back at Fisher. “But I might be able to transfer to the navy later?”
“Possibly.” Fisher shrugged. “We’ve been hardwiring humans to machines for four centuries. Hardware, software, that’s no problem. It’s the selfware that’s still the mystery. Mostly it’s what you make of it yourself.”
In the end Dev agreed. It was the only thing he could do.
Dev returned to Barracks Three to pick up his gear and was thankful to find that the entire company had been marched off for, more evaluations. The only one left in the building was Castellano.
“PBI,” Castellano said, rising from his bunk. “Am I right? I can see it just from your face.”
“Shows what you know,” Dev said, putting as much of a sneer into the words as he could manage. He was tempted to save face, but Castellano had a way of finding dungs out, and Dev didn’t want to give the guy the satisfaction of seeing through a lie. “They made me an officer.”
“Hah! I should’ve known! A goddamn clanker!”
An hour before, Dev had wanted to pound Castellano’s face in, but he found himself not caring now. He was still digesting a one-eighty course change in what had been a carefully planned career.
“Beats being a crunchie,” Dev said.
“Sure it does,” Castellano agreed. “Until they wash you out. When you can’t handle the shit they’re dumping on you, they’ll fit you for a CA-suit so fast, your head’ll swim.”
Dev looked at the older man with new insight. “That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “I screwed up once, and they dropped me in the infantry. Six months later I saw my best friend grabbed by a Xeno stalker and goddamned eaten, his legs, anyway, and he was there on the ground screaming for me to shoot him, and I couldn’t do anything but run ’cause the thing was reaching for me!…”
Castellano stood there, his hands working at his sides, his eyes wild, as though he were still seeing some invisible horror. Then he relaxed, pulling back that part of self he’d never shown the others in the barracks.
“Hey.” And the voice was gentle now. “I’m sorry. Don’t mind me. Good luck, okay?”
Stiff-backed, he turned on his heel and strode off, whistling tunelessly. Dev packed his gear, checked out at the front desk, and reported to Recruit Training Command.
He tried not to think about Castellano’s eyes.
Chapter 6
Now all you recruities what’s drafted to-day
You shut up your rag-box an’ ’ark to my lay,
An’ I’ll sing you a soldier as far as I may:
A soldier what’s fit for a soldier.
—“The Young British Soldier”
Rudyard Kipling
early twentieth century
“Toes on the line! On the line, you norking brain-burned slugs! That’s the long, straight white thing painted on the floor! Eyes front! We’re going to pretend you assholes are soldiers and pretend you know how to stand at attention!”
Dev stumbled into line with the others. The night had been a short one, ended at an obscene hour.
The drill instructor paced before them as they shuffled into line, head erect, back and shoulders as rigid as duralloy, khakis spotless and razor-creased, with more ribbons on his left chest than Dev had known existed.
“I am Socho John Randolph Maxwell,” the DI thundered. “But as far as you are concerned, I am God! Do you understand?”
There was a mumble of assent from the ragged line of men and women, some of whom were still tucking civilian shirts or tunics into trousers. Most looked blank, dazed, or simply confused.
“When I ask you if you understand,” Maxwell continued with scarcely a pause, “you will answer, in unison, ‘Linked, sir!’ Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” “Linked, sir!” “Yessir!…”
“What was that?”
“Linked, sir!”
“Goddamn my audio feed must be out! I still didn’t hear that!”
“LINKED, SIR!”
Maxwell was not a large man, no more than 172 centimeters, and he had the build of a comjacker, small and compact and lean. But his throat must have had built-in amplifiers, for Maxwell co
uld roar orders and insults without seeming to raise his voice, delivering a whipcrack of precision and authority that captured the recruits’ attention as completely as a full sensory feed. He had a cadence to the way he spoke that was fascinating, a way of stressing key words that put tremendous feeling into them. Dev wondered if Maxwell really meant what he said, or if he was simply a consummate actor.
“You have been assigned to me for six weeks of basic military indoctrination, after which you will be assigned to field training with an active unit. Ladies and gentlemen, during this next six weeks you will come to hate me, but that’s okay because all I have to do is weed out those of you who are unfit to be officers and striderjacks. What the infantry does with you after I am finished with you, I don’t care.
“My job is to find those few of you who might make halfway decent officers for the Guard warstrider regiments. It is a difficult and demanding job, requiring as it does the sifting of several tons of worthless rock for a few grams of gold. Sometimes the job is impossible, and having seen the bunch of you this morning, I am very much afraid that that is the case with this company of miserable, scuzzbutt recruits! Never, ever in all my career seen such a batch of misbegotten rejects and genetic mistakes! Officers! God help me, I never realized our side was this desperate!”
Maxwell continued his pace from one end of the barracks line to the other. Two corporals stood impassively at parade rest by the door.
“This, people, and I use that term with extreme reluctance, is Company Six-forty-five, Third Battalion, Second Regiment of the Midgard Recruit Training Brigade, First Hegemony Guard. Do you understand?”
“LINKED, SIR!”
“I am God. Do you understand?”
“LINKED, SIR!”
“Gocho Vincetti and Gocho Delaney are my assistants. You will obey their orders as you would obey me. Understand?”
“LINKED, SIR!”
“You! Scumface. What’s your name?”
“Uh, Hal Morley, sir,” a scared-looking kid four down the line to Dev’s left said.
“No, Uh-hal Morley. You are Seito-recruit Morley, and if you have something to say to me, the first word I want to hear out of your scumface is the word sir! Do you understand?”
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