by Rick Partlow
I returned the hug briefly, trying to be a little less self conscious about that kind of thing, and then had Holly hanging off my neck, kissing me on the cheek.
"You didn't look so hot the last time we saw you, Mitchell," Reggie confirmed, thumping a fist against my shoulder, which was the closest he'd ever come to being nice to me. "By the way, you kicked ass back on the ship."
"Thanks guys," I said sincerely, giving Holly a squeeze and thinking, not for the first time, that she felt very nice and squeezable. "But what's going on? How long was I out? And where the hell are we?"
"We're on Mars, I know that much," Deke told me. "But not much more than that. We got here about four days ago, I think." He shrugged. "They took our 'links, but we have access to the NewsNet on the terminals."
"Who's 'they,' though?" I wanted to know, disengaging myself from Deke but keeping an arm around Holly. She slipped one around me and rested her head on my shoulder and it felt damned good. "How did we get off the Thatcher?"
"Let's start at the beginning," Brian Hammer cut in as he walked over to us, sighing at the inefficiency of it all. "We managed to take out three of the Tahni troopers they sent after us, but both of the Thatcher's NCOs that were with us got killed; West, Dominguez and Nakamura got captured and trussed up like a Christmas present..."
"Hey now..." Reggie started to object but Hammer waved him to silence.
"And Vallejo got herself wounded pretty bad, too."
"Is she okay?" I asked worriedly, looking around, realizing Daniela wasn't in the compartment.
"She was stable on the Thatcher. Her lower left leg was almost severed, though, and she lost a lot of blood."
"So did you, by the way," Holly reminded me, slapping my arm affectionately.
"Anyway," Hammer went on, in that slightly overbearing way he had about him, "after you passed out from blood loss, we got you and Vallejo into the medical bay and M'voba and Savage stopped the bleeding."
"You're welcome," Savage waved from the holotank, not getting up or looking away from the movie.
Hammer shot him an annoyed look and I swear I saw Savage's lip curl upward. "While they were doing that, Reggie and I took the shuttle out of the hangar bay and used its communication gear to call for help," the broad, blond-haired Third-Class cadet continued. "It wasn't more than a couple hours later that we saw a Commonwealth ship approach us. We expected just a rescue boat, but..."
"It was Fleet Intelligence," Deke cut in, ignoring Hammer's indignation at being interrupted. "Spooks. They didn't tell us shit, just stuffed us in their lander, threw you and Daniela into automeds and took us straight down to the surface," he waved around demonstratively, "somewhere. We got these clothes and there's a kitchen down at the other end of the hallway, but we haven't seen Daniela yet, and I couldn't find Mat this morning either."
"You said you've audited the NewsNets." I nodded at the terminals. "What do they say happened with the Tahni, with Mars?"
Everyone sobered at that, looking at each other uncomfortably.
"They're trying to dress it up all noble and shit," Reggie said finally, "but as far as I can tell, we got caught with our pants down and got our asses handed to us. Fuckers destroyed the Midway."
I grunted, feeling like I'd been punched. Hundreds of hours of work and hundreds of millions of dollars had been poured into that ship.
"We kept them from taking out the shipyards," Valeria Dominguez countered, shrugging slightly. "They had heavy losses, but so did we." She seemed shy about speaking in front of us, probably because she didn't know any of us that well. I recalled she'd had close friends on the cadet bridge crew that died.
"It was a fucking fiasco was what it was," Savage commented, still not looking away from the movie.
Roger West finally did look up from the holotank, and not for the first time I noticed the slight lines by his eyes, like he'd spent a lot of time squinting against the sun. "We'll be damn lucky," he put in, "if we're in any position to fight this war after today."
"Very eloquently put." The voice came from behind me and I nearly jumped out of my skin, almost knocking Holly over as I spun around. How the hell had anyone snuck up behind me in that little room?
The voice was mild and average and so was the man behind it. He was neither short nor tall, neither slim nor muscular, neither handsome nor ugly. As Elder Pratt would say to my father, "neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat." He seemed astoundingly normal, like a functionary in an office somewhere in some part of the military where you'd expect him to tell people "yeah, I was in the Fleet during the war, but I just managed inventory in a warehouse." His brown hair was cut to the regs but not as short as any of ours, and not arranged in anything resembling a style, and his brown eyes seemed soft and almost gentle. He wore a Fleet dress uniform with the Intelligence symbol on its collar and a full Colonel's rank on his sleeve---Intelligence used the Marine rank system rather than the Fleet one, for some reason going back to the founding of the Commonwealth, so an Intelligence Colonel was the equivalent of a Fleet Captain.
At the sight of the rank, everyone braced to attention, those who'd been sitting jumping quickly to their feet as the ranking cadet present, Reggie Nakamura, shouted "Officer on deck!"
The man's eyebrows went up in ever-so-slight amusement, but he didn't smile. "As you were," he said with what might have been a dry tone. We relaxed to at-ease, whatever his opinion on it.
"I'm sure," he said, pacing around to the center of us, "that you're wondering why you're here and why you've been kept isolated these last few days."
"Yes, sir," Reggie answered with a bit more chutzpah than I would have had, faced by a full bird Colonel.
"I apologize for the delay," the officer went on, as if ignoring Reggie's interruption, "but things have been...hectic." The corner of his mouth turned up. "As I'm sure you can imagine. Also, there were wheels I had to grease, things to set in motion, favors to call in. And of course, I didn't want to have to repeat myself, so I was forced to wait until your wounded had fully recovered."
As if on cue---and maybe it was on cue---Daniela came down the corridor right then, Mat guiding her with an arm around her shoulder. I saw Holly's face light up and she ran over to hug the other woman tightly. I couldn't help but glance down at her leg and, like my abdomen, there was no sign of the wound that had almost killed her.
"Sir," I said hesitantly, taking advantage of the break in his monologue, "if I may, who are you and what is this place?"
"My name is Colonel Antonin Murdock," the officer answered readily, "and this place is, well," he chuckled ever so slightly, "off the books, you might say."
"The Colonel," Mat spoke up, his mountain avalanche overpowering the Colonel's mild tones, "is here to make us an offer." He shrugged, a very un-Mat-like motion for a man I'd grown used to seeing as decisive and sure of himself. "He's already run it past me to gauge what you all might think..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "You're going to have to hear it for yourself."
I looked between the rangy, powerful Mat M'voba and the unassuming Colonel Murdock and had an uncanny premonition that, somehow, the smaller man was far deadlier.
"Cadet West," Murdock said, stepping over to where Cowboy stood, watching him with a keen interest behind that expressionless mask of a face that he put on for all of us. "You were quite right in your earlier assessment. The Battle for Mars, as the press has come to call it," he gave a small snort of derision, "was a disaster that has left us totally unprepared to fight the sort of war we'd expected. Besides the destruction of the Midway, we also lost three cruisers which were in Mars orbit for routine maintenance."
I hissed in a breath and saw horrified expressions on more than a couple faces. That was a sizable chunk of the Commonwealth Space Fleet.
"Many things have happened in the last few days. For one, Admiral Shan is no longer in charge of Space Fleet. President Jameson has replaced him with Admiral Sato."
I frowned, trying to remember what I knew about Admira
l Sato...I thought I'd read one of his texts in my War Strategy classes, but I couldn't recall anything about it.
"Sato," Cowboy repeated thoughtfully. "He's the one who's been arguing for new tactics and strategies to best make use of the Transition Drive. He said we're still trying to prepare for a war like we did when we were using the jumpgates to get around."
Oh, yeah, I remembered it now. "Thoughts on the Proper Disposition of the Fleet." That was the dissertation he'd written.
"He thought we should build small, two-or-three-person ships," Cowboy went on. "Missile cutters, he called them, to strike deep inside enemy systems, instead of relying on the big capital ships."
"And so we shall," Murdock declared. "Starting within a month or two, once the first batch comes off the line. We'll still need cruisers, of course, but for defense rather than attack."
"What does that have to do with us, sir?" Reggie Nakamura asked, frowning in confusion. "Do you want us to be pilots or something?"
"Not quite, Reginald," Murdock said with a thin smile, and I saw Reggie's cheek twitch. He hated being called Reginald. "Though there will be some piloting involved...among other things. But with Admiral Sato now in charge of Space Fleet, I find myself in a unique position to move ahead with a pet project of my own, something just as drastic as his missile cutter concept but much smaller in scale, though I have to admit it's nearly as expensive."
His eyes sought out each of ours, and the gentle blandness left them, replaced with the focus of a sighting laser. "Tell me, cadets, what you suppose the chief advantage is that the Tahni have over us."
We'd just talked about this, what seemed like hours ago to me, but was actually almost five days. "Political unity?" I said. "They've been under a worldwide government for centuries."
"Very good," Murdock said with the head-tilt of an approving teacher. "But not just political unity. Spiritual unity. They've worshipped the same god for thousands of years and now they believe he rules their empire bodily, come to live among men in the flesh. You're a Christian of sorts, Cadet Mitchell. How motivated do you think you'd be to fight if you believed with all your heart that Jesus had come in the flesh and been elected President for life?"
"Whoa," Holly breathed softly, "I hadn't thought of it from that angle."
"I'm in Fleet Intelligence, Cadet Morai," the officer told her. "Specifically, Psychological Operations. I get paid to think of ways to make the enemy not want to fight." He paused. "If you'd all come with me, I'd like to show you something."
***
The thing in the holographic display was an image taken of a painting done in a style I'd never seen before, somehow both stylized and realistic at once, with combinations of colors that didn't seem to make sense to my eye. What I did understand was that it seemed to be a series of scenes running together, all of them revolving around oddly stooped figures in strange, stripped and twisted clothing doing things I couldn't understand the significance of and then being attacked by some nebulous, vaguely bipedal monster that emerged from the shadows and sliced them apart in a very bloody fashion with claws that came out of its hands.
"These images," Colonel Murdock told us from where he stood off to one side in the large conference room, staring up at the 3D projection, "were---well, painted is close enough---painted on the wall of a temple in Tahn-Khandranda over a thousand years ago. The details of how we came to possess them is unimportant, but what they represent is an ancient but very powerful legend among our enemies. They're what are known as the Tahn-Skii'ana, the Spirits of Death." His mouth quirked upward. "In case you're curious about the linguistics of their nomenclature, the term Tahni, as close as we can translate it accurately, means 'the essence,' or 'the spirit.' Therefore, Tahn-Khandranda, 'the spirit of the Empire,' their capital city, or their homeworld Tahn-Skyyiah, 'the spirit of existence.' They think fairly highly of themselves."
He jabbed a finger at the paintings. "These things, these Tahn-Skii'ana, are vengeful spirits that hunt down enemies of the spiritual Emperor, particularly those who falsely present themselves as his servants, and slice them to ribbons in a fairly horrible fashion. They're the bogie-men, the warnings Tahni parents give to their children to get them to behave, but they believe in them just as surely as you all believe in representative government."
Looking across the conference table, I saw Brian Hammer's eyebrow quirk at that and I suppressed a snort.
"Sir," Cowboy drawled in a tone that was respectful but still skeptical, "how do you want us to use their superstitions against them?"
"That's simple, Cadet West. You all are going to become the superstition." Murdock touched a control on his 'link and an illustration of a generic human body appeared in the projection above our table. It was a cut-away that showed parts of the skeleton, the organs, the eyes and the brain and it looked fairly ordinary for all that I could tell from my anatomy classes.
"This is all of you now, give or take," Murdock told us, again sounding like a schoolteacher. Another touch on his 'link and the image changed. Some kind of probe was inserted near the base of the spine of our cutaway human and something grey and amorphous flowed out of it and began wrapping itself around the bones, leaving gaps of bare white every few centimeters. "That," Murdock continued, "is something we call byomer. It's not exactly new, but it hasn't been used outside of a lab until now. It's an electrically active, polymer infused culture which can selectively harden to a tensile strength close to biphase carbide when exposed to an electrical current. In this animation, you're watching it being grafted onto a skeleton, wrapping around it to basically make it unbreakable except by extreme force."
"What are the holes for?" Deke wondered, gesturing at the open gaps where bone showed through.
"They're to allow red blood cells to exit the bone," Murdock explained. "Otherwise anemia would be a danger. Strengthening the bones is also necessary because of the next step in the process." He nodded towards the animation, which showed strips of the dark material being laid into place over the muscles in the body, turning the red of the muscles to a dark grey, and then more of the stuff was inserted into the joints as well.
"Artificial muscles made of that same byomer are put in place basically on top of the existing muscle, thin enough that it won't be impossibly bulky but much, much stronger, particularly in conjunction with the bone reinforcement. Artificial tendons and ligaments are added as well, which are self-repairing as well as incredibly resilient."
I watched, still basically uncomprehending, as strands of black material finer than hair wrapped around the new artificial muscle from the toes up to the head, where it finally linked up with something grey and lumpy like putty that wrapped itself around the base of the skull, with tendrils of the mysterious grey putty extending up into the brain stem.
"Those threads are superconductive artificial nerve fibers used to control the byomer muscles. They connect to an implanted computer that is...well, grown is perhaps the best word, at the base of the skull, wrapping around the brain stem. It interfaces the implanted augments with the human brain. It also serves as a translator for this," he pointed at something nearly as large as the implant computer which stretched across the back of the interior of the skull from ear to ear, "which we've dubbed a neurolink. It's an implanted version of a datalink like the ones you all carry, but rather than transmitting sound to your mastoid bone or anything so prosaic, it can use the headcomp to squirt data---sounds, images, text, memories---directly into the brain."
"Holy shit," Cowboy muttered, uncharacteristic awe in his tone flattening out his drawl. I knew the feeling. I knew things like this had been under development for decades, but no one had ever even hinted it was this close to being ready for practical use.
"There are some other things," Murdock went on. "Interesting but less important things such as filters implanted in the eyes that allow the user to see in infrared, a few small extra organs in there," he gestured at grey sacs in unfamiliar places beneath the rib cage, "that can dose the use
r with necessary chemicals, or provide a temporary source of oxygen in an emergency. Also, a byomer webbing that will be injected under the top layer of skin," this one showed on the animation, a gray goo that spread all the way through the body and encased it beneath the epidermis, "that is self-healing and resistant to cuts and burns, and also can seal wounds to stop bleeding.
"But there are only two more additions that matter. The first is a new suite of nanite injections. These go beyond the prophylactic nanites most citizens receive at birth to prevent cancers. They're experimental, far too expensive to see widespread use now and perhaps for another twenty years or more." He eyed each of us significantly. "And when I say expensive, I'm speaking in terms of the cost of a cruiser."
I whistled softly, feeling my eyes go wide.
"Exactly, Cadet Mitchell," he said, the corner of his lip curling up in what seemed to be as close to a smile as he got. "This nanite suite can repair any nonfatal wound, given enough time and resources. They gain their energy from human waste, primarily, then work their way up to undigested food, blood sugar, fat and after that...pretty much anything else. So, they don't make the user immortal or any such thing but they can repair minor wounds in minutes, major ones in hours. They can't regrow a limb, or an entire organ, and while they can repair brain tissue and restore function, any sufficiently traumatic brain injury might still result in major memory loss and personality change. But acting together with the bone reinforcement, they make the user incredibly hard to kill."
"Jesus Christ," Keller Savage muttered, face looking numb with disbelief. "Sign me the hell up."
"Yes," Brian Hammer agreed, his eyes keen and hungry as he stared at the projection, "me as well."
"This is what you want us to do, sir?" I asked the Colonel, glancing between him, the projection and Mat, who still seemed a bit troubled. "You want us to agree to this..." I waved a hand at the image, searching for a term. "Augmentation?"
