by Rick Partlow
"That's not everything," Mat cautioned us, placing his hands palm down on the table as if bracing himself. "Tell them the rest, sir. Tell them why us."
Murdock nodded, eyes half-closed. "Indeed. It's a good point. This treatment could be done with anyone, and I doubt there would be a shortage of volunteers. But people talk, ladies and gentlemen. Even professionals talk. If we went out and asked for volunteers, the word would spread, and although you may not be aware of this, the Tahni do have a very elaborate intelligence operation of their own. No inkling of this can ever get out or the entire project would have to be scrapped."
"Uh oh," Deke said. "That sounds pretty fucking ominous."
"All ten of you," Murdock said as if pronouncing a sentence, "were declared dead. According to the records, the Thatcher was destroyed by enemy fire during the Battle for Mars."
"And whether we agree to be part of this or not," Mat M'voba interjected, his voice cold and final, "we stay dead until the end of the hostilities." He shrugged slightly. "Or until the Tahni find out about the project on their own."
"What?" Holly exploded, jaw dropping, her face beginning to turn red.
"If you decline, you'd have to remain in a secure facility," Murdock confirmed. "For a time, at least, until it’s deemed safe to allow you to reintegrate with the general military."
"But..." Valeria protested, stumbling over her words. "But what about the Academy? Our careers?"
"What about our families?" Holly said, fury in her voice as she stood to her unimposing height.
Murdock stared at her the way I imagined a frog might stare at a bug before it ate it. "What do you suppose," he asked coldly, "will happen to your families if we lose this war?"
Holly rocked back as if she'd been slapped in the face. The Colonel stepped over to her and looked down on her, his expression turning solicitous.
"What's happening to you isn't fair," Murdock admitted. "But life rarely is, particularly in wartime. This needs to work, along with a dozen other things, if we're to win this war. It's interrupting your lives and your plans, but that's what wars do."
"What's the other thing?" I asked him, trying not to let the business about our families matter to me. It wasn't as if I had a home to go back to anyway.
His eyes snapped around questioningly. "You said there were two more additions to the procedure that mattered," I reminded him, "but you only told us about the nanites. What's the other thing?"
He gave me a regarding glance that I thought perhaps signaled approval.
"These," he told me, touching his 'link. In the animation, something was inserted along the bones of the forearm, anchored into the byomer there. The hands formed into fists and from a spot just above the wrist, twin curving talons extended out of the skin from their housings in the forearm. "They're sixteen centimeters long, made from duralloy, and only a few molecules thick at the point."
"Just like the claws on the things in the paintings," Deke said. There was a look on his face of...what? Resignation? Acceptance?
"Exactly, Cadet Conner," Murdock confirmed. "You are going to become the Tahn-Skii'ana to the Tahni soldiers of the line, to their ordinary grunts and their families at home who they write messages to. You're going to infiltrate their bases unseen, appear out of the shadows like their demons and gut them with your talons like in the old paintings. You're going to destroy their faith in their government and in their god.
"You're going to be their bogie-man." He pounded a fist on the table in what seemed less like an emotional act and more a gavel pounding in a courtroom to conclude the case. "And you're going to help me win this damned war."
***
I knocked quietly, knowing it was old-fashioned here, where all the rooms had door chimes, but not caring. The door opened and Holly stood there, eyes red, but her tears long dried. She stepped back wordlessly, giving me room to enter, and I did, hearing the door hiss shut behind me. The room was as relentlessly, impersonally baby-blue as mine had been. Holly went back to her bed and sat down on the edge of it, resting her chin in her hands. I sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulder, feeling it shake slightly.
"Jesus, Cal," she said with an almost distant sadness, "they already think I'm dead. They already told my sister I'm dead."
"I'm so sorry, Holly," was all I could think to say, wincing at the inanity of it. "Maybe...maybe we can figure out a way to get word to them."
Her breath caught for an almost imperceptible second as if she were thinking about it, and she rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, then ran them through the spiky brush of her light brown hair.
"No," she said finally, shaking her head. "That would be...irresponsible. They'd go asking about it and everything would blow up." She closed her eyes for a moment and let out a long, ragged breath. "Or they'd be disappeared, if Colonel Murdock is as ruthless as he sounds.”
“He sounds pretty damned ruthless.” In fact, I thought he sounded like a cross between my Primary School teacher and a movie supervillain.
“Besides," she admitted in a matter-of-fact way that surprised me, "he's right about the war. I knew when I applied to the Academy that we were going to war. I knew what that could mean and so did my family."
She looked up at me, her hazel eyes piercing and clear, though still rimmed with red. "What do you think the others will say?"
"Deke's going to do it," I told her. I’d just spent over an hour talking to him about it. "He doesn’t like his family that much anyway. Cowboy's in and so's Brian." I snorted. "From what they said, I don't even know if they're thinking about anyone back home, just what they'll be able to do once they get the augments. Kel didn’t say anything over a syllable, but I figure he's the type to go all in. I talked to Valeria for a second and she was all about the duty to the Commonwealth thing, even though she doesn't like it. Reggie seemed..." I shrugged, "...intrigued by the prospect I guess. I don't know about Mat or Daniela; I couldn't find either one of them."
"That's because they're together in his room."
Holly said it so casually that I almost missed the connotation.
“What?” I asked, wanting to make sure. “You mean, together together?”
She rolled her eyes at me, then touched her tongue to her upper lip demonstratively.
"Really?" I asked her, feeling my mouth drop open. "Mat and a Third-Class student? Isn't that against the regs?" I was only half being sarcastic. Mat was the type of guy who would fall on a grenade to save his buddies, but only if it didn’t violate the Commonwealth Space Fleet safety regulations. To say he was a stickler for the rules was damning him with faint praise. Daniela…well, she was totally career-focused and getting caught with another cadet wouldn’t look good on her record.
"It was against the regs," Holly corrected me. "Which was why they never did anything about it before." She snorted humorlessly. “You may have noticed that we’re never, ever going back to the Academy. Plus," she shrugged, "there are other complications about who Mat is back home that...don't apply anymore, I guess."
"Oh." I threw my hands up helplessly. "Wow. I guess I am as socially clueless as Deke says."
She laughed for real this time, and I could tell she was grateful for having a reason to do it.
"You are indeed totally clueless, Caleb Mitchell," she told me, looking me straight in the eye. Then she grabbed me by the neck and kissed me.
I was too surprised to fight it, and it felt pretty good. She sucked on my lower lip playfully as she pulled away. "If you weren't," she said, smiling, "you'd have had a lot more fun the last two years."
"I, uh..." I stuttered, feeling utterly confused and thoroughly blindsided, feeling the heat from her hand on my neck and noticing again how good she looked in that T-shirt and shorts. "I thought we were, you know, friends."
"We are friends," she said, laughing again. "You want to have sex with someone you aren't friends with?"
“Since you put it that way…”
I slid one arm under her thighs a
nd another around her shoulders and lifted her up bodily, leaning in to kiss her as I laid her down on the bed. Her arms went around my neck and her fingers tangled in my hair while my hands slid under her shirt and then pulled it off impatiently. In seconds, our clothes were scattered on the floor and I took a moment to appreciate just how good she looked. We were all in good shape---the Academy didn’t let you not be in good shape---but Holly, while skinny by Canaan standards, had the sort of curves that I appreciated. She looked me up and down as well, licking her lips almost unconsciously in a way that filled my head with fire.
I hadn’t been with anyone since Rachel, almost two years ago; and afterward, I wouldn’t remember too many details other than how hot her skin was where it touched mine, how soft and firm she felt against me and how good it felt to hold someone again. Everything was a fevered rush of intensity, as if there was an urgent need to finish before our time was up, and when I finally emptied myself into her it was emotionally as well as physically.
Afterward, we sank down to the bed next to each other, her hand resting on my chest, mine caressing her hip. The room was chilly but we were both covered with sweat, panting to catch out breaths. We had to be breaking some regulation, but I just didn’t give a shit.
“Is there anything else I don’t know about?” I asked her playfully. “Is Reggie in love with Deke? Was Valerie going out with the Academy Commandant?”
“Caleb Mitchell,” she said profoundly, “there’s a whole universe full of things you don’t know about, but I think Colonel Drama out there told us we had to get back to him with an answer by morning, and of all the things I want to do with you between now and then, playing Twenty Questions isn’t one of them.” She covered my mouth with hers, her hand traveling lower.
“Besides,” she whispered as her lips went to my ear, “everyone knows that Kel Savage is the one in love with Deke…”
Chapter Ten
In the end, we all agreed to it, of course. Most of us were pissed off about the circumstances, but no one wanted to sit out the war in some prison-in-all-but-name while everyone else got to do the fighting. The words were barely out of our mouths before Murdock packed us all in a shuttle, flew us up to orbit and we boarded a transport for...wherever. He didn't say, and once we were on board, there was no one to ask. We were kept in a sealed-off section away from the crew, and the meals were all serve-yourself out of a typical ship kitchen.
I'd thought we'd wind up talking about it as a group on the ship, but we didn't. The galley was small and there was no other compartment even that large, and it felt crowded anywhere with more than three people in one place. Holly and I shared a compartment by mutual understanding, and for the first sixty hours of the trip, we didn't come out except to eat and shower. Even the two of us didn't talk to each other much, at least not about anything important; just small talk between sex and sleep and meals and washing up. We made up for a lot of lost time though, and I came to realize just how limited my experiences had been.
We'd just received the warning over the ship's intercom that we were three hours from Transition when Holly and I went into the galley for a snack and found Deke there, lounging in one of the two padded booths, a bulb of coffee on the table in front of him.
"Heya," he said, saluting us with his drink before taking a sip. "How are you two kids enjoying your flight?" He winked at me, and Holly rolled her eyes.
"You're so damn subtle, Deke," she said, punching him in the shoulder as she passed by to grab a pair of protein bars from a cabinet.
"You try being subtle when you're sharing a room with Reggie Nakamura," Deke shot back. "Jesus, that guy will not stop talking about ballet. I swear, if he tells me one more fucking time about how he was going to dance with the Commonwealth Ballet if he hadn't gone in the military..."
"Mat and Daniela's gain is your loss, I guess," Holly said, chuckling. The two of them were sharing a cabin, which drove Mat's usual roomie, Reggie, into alternate accommodations.
"Yeah," he said, then blew a frustrated breath out of the corner of his mouth. "I asked Valeria if she wanted to bunk up, but she's not into guys." He shrugged. "Or maybe she's not into me and she's just polite. Either way, she and Kel are in the last compartment down there." He waved aft.
"You could have grabbed a spot with Kel, if you're flexible about that kind of thing," I teased him.
"Yeah, that's all right," he said drily. "I don't swing that way, and even if I did, Kel Savage is a bit more of a cold-ass son of a bitch than I'd feel comfortable sleeping next to."
I grabbed bulbs of fruit juice for Holly and me and sat down next to him. She squeezed next to me, handing me the protein bar. I tore into it, wondering if they made them taste this bland on purpose.
"So, I've been thinking," Deke said in a tone that changed the nature of the conversation. "We're spending less than three days in T-space, and the only system I can think of that's close enough for that is Centauri."
"That doesn't make any sense," I protested. "There's a jumpgate to Centauri. Why waste three days in T-space when we could have done it in one day, including travel time to the gate?"
"Because all ships coming through the gates are carefully logged," Holly pointed out, elbowing me for not thinking of it first.
"Exactly," Deke agreed. "Now, there's a Fleet base out in the belt around Alpha Centauri, but I figure we have to be headed for Hermes instead."
"Why?" I wondered. "Wouldn't it be easier to hide a top-secret research base in the asteroid belt?"
"Too risky," Deke argued. "What if some rock hound stumbles across it while he's scouting for a chunk of ice? He tells his friends and they tell their friends and all of a sudden, everyone knows there's an installation out there where no one's supposed to have one." He raised a hand before I could object. "Sure, it's a lot of space, but you can still see it from thousands of kilometers away; shit, hundreds of thousands if you have good enough optics. And there are a lot of optics out there, looking for rocks."
"Okay, I gotcha," I admitted, nodding slowly and hoping to avoid another elbow. "But how would it be easier on Hermes? The shit Colonel Murdock was talking about, that's some serious high-tech gear. Wouldn't people notice stuff like that being shipped to the Fleet base on Hermes? I mean, it's the oldest star colony, there's a lot of traffic out at Proxima."
"Yeah, but there's a huge research presence on Hermes already," Holly reminded me. "Because of the jumpgate map."
Hermes was the very first interstellar colony, and it was where we'd found the map of the wormhole jumpgates, carved into a metal alloy we still couldn't identify or duplicate on a plate the size of a cliff by the aliens we called the Predecessors some twenty thousand years ago. We had no idea who or what they were, what they looked like or where they went, and the only things they'd left behind were the structures under the Martian "Face" with a small map to the jumpgate in the Belt and the map in the Edge Mountains on Hermes.
"So it would be easy to build something out there, in some restricted area," Deke elaborated, "and bring in whatever you needed."
"Okay," I allowed with a shrug. "And why is any of this so significant?"
"Because we're not going to Inferno," he explained. Inferno was the less hospitable of the two habitable worlds around 82 Eridani. Eden, its sister planet, was a veritable paradise and was home to the civilian colony. Inferno was home to the Fleet Headquarters and not much else, mostly because no one else wanted it. "Everyone gets their military training on Inferno, we'll probably train there too, so why not just do this there?"
I counted to ten, praying for patience.
"Okay Deke," I said with exaggerated control, "you obviously have an idea about that, so...why aren't they doing the surgery there?"
"Because none of this shit is authorized by anyone in the Commonwealth government," he finally sprang his theory on us, emphasizing each word with an extended finger. He sneered. "This is all being done with some huge black projects fund that Admiral Sato freed up for his old bud
dy Colonel Murdock; and if it ever got back to the President---or God forbid, the Senate---that Fleet Intelligence had shanghaied a bunch of kids for what are probably risky and illegal human experiments and told their families that they're dead..." He trailed off, gesturing expansively. "Murdock and Sato would both be facing a Court-Martial, if not a fucking Senate hearing."
He shook his head and took another sip of coffee. "Naw, that line about how we'd get tucked away incognito if we said no, that was just bluster. There's no way in hell he could have pulled that off."
"So why did you say yes, then?" I asked him, throwing up my hands. "Why didn't you call his bluff?"
He laughed softly, his brown eyes gleaming as he shot me a glance. "Bud, why the hell would I not want in on this? All that shit is why I didn't say no. This is the real deal, not like sitting a watch on a damn cargo hauler or a defense station and the only action you see is if the fucking Tahni decide to nuke your ass one day and you barely get a chance to know it before you're dead."
I thought about that for a second, and I had to admit, it did have its appeal. "The fact we're kind of unofficial," I said slowly, "means we'd have a lot more freedom, fewer people looking over our shoulder. That could be fun."
"And the part about illegal human experimentation doesn't bother you?" Holly stared at me, agog.
"Do you want to back out now?" I asked her, understanding suddenly why we hadn't been talking about this the rest of the trip. I tried not to make my tone challenging, but I wasn't sure if I succeeded. She looked at me sidelong, like she was trying to judge what I'd meant by it and I rushed on, hoping to rescue the question. "I mean, if you do, we have to decide together and make it a solid front. If we do this, we have to do it together, and if we decide against it, we should all back out together."
She seemed to take that a little better and nodded, chewing at her lip. "No," she decided, her voice firm. "We made our decision and we should stick by it." I gave her shoulder a squeeze, hoping fervently that I hadn't fucked things up.
