‘Hi, baby.’ He tried to wrap his arms around her but she pulled back. ‘I’m wet,’ she told him.
He grinned. ‘I have that effect.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Pervert. Besides,’ and she wrinkled her nose, ‘your breath smells like, like breath, and not in a good way.’ She placed a hand on his chest and pushed. He took a surprised step backwards, met the edge of the only chair in the little room and dropped into it.
‘Hey,’ he protested. ‘That’s no way to treat a superior officer.’
She looked down at him, a hand on her hip. ‘Superior officers,’ she said, ‘are probably not supposed to spend so much of their time underneath.’
‘What? Oh . . .’ He stared at the floor for a moment then looked up innocently. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘there’s always leading from behind.’
Fleare shook her head. ‘Life in the army . . . speaking of which, wasn’t there something we were meant to be doing?’
Muz nodded. ‘Brigade briefing,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t start until— Oh, shit.’ His eyes followed her pointing finger to the time display on the wall. ‘Oh shit, ohshitohshit!’
‘Precisely.’ Fleare nodded. ‘We have six minutes. Of course, I’m already washed.’
She stood aside as he charged into the cabinet, and then laughed out loud at his scream of protest. She had forgotten to mention the cold water.
They made the briefing with ten seconds to spare.
‘. . . modifications, including Enhancements, for anything other than therapeutic purposes were banned in all Spin jurisdictions following the collapse of the Dimililer class action in 734. Please refer to your notes for that. De jure, this remains the case, but accumulating precedent allows a degree of interpretation . . .’
Fleare fought back a yawn. The elderly Technical Sergeant who was briefing them was bone-thin, and her voice had a droning quality. As well, the briefing room was stuffily underground, in a partitioned-off corner of what had been a hardened missile silo. It was also still faintly radioactive; to come in here you had to wear a monitoring tag. The tag was clipped to one of the pocket flaps on her fatigues. It felt a little irritating, but it hadn’t pinged yet.
Something brushed against her shoulder. She glanced to the side, and suppressed a grin. Muz was standing with his eyes half closed, swaying. She dug an elbow sideways; his head snapped up.
‘. . . decided to offer certain recruits the opportunity to Enhance, with the focus being on strength, speed and stamina. Those with complementary outcomes will be formed into squads of five for training as intervention squads, for duties which will be disclosed only at that time . . .’
There were about fifty of them, all casualties of the Dog’s Dick the night before. Fleare guessed she was one of the lucky ones. Muz was obviously struggling, and to her other side Kelk looked like a black and white picture of himself. His fatigues were rumpled, and Fleare guessed he had slept in them. She sniffed a little, and wrinkled her nose. Definitely slept-in, and possibly something-else’d-in as well.
‘. . . concludes the disclosure. There will be a short period for questions and then you will have free time until sundown, after which all those who volunteer will be required to enter their consent with Legals.’ The woman put down her notepad and gave a frosty smile. ‘So, questions? Yes – at the back?’
‘Uh, what does “complementary outcomes” mean?’
Fleare looked round. The questioner was a tall, hard-looking male with blue-black skin. They’d met the night before, in the sense of drunkenly bumping into one another and exchanging ID tabs. Zepf. That was the name. Exclusively homosexual, Fleare remembered. She shrugged and faced forward.
‘What it says.’ The woman looked impatient. ‘Different bodies experience different levels of outcome from the same intervention.’
Zepf persisted. ‘And different levels of success?’
‘Self-evidently.’ The Technical Sergeant gathered her papers. ‘I recommend you read the notes, if you have not yet had the opportunity; everything is fully covered.’ She made to walk away from her lectern.
Fleare raised a hand. ‘Sorry. One more question?’
Heads turned towards Fleare. The woman stopped, tutting audibly. ‘One question only. Go on.’
Fleare took a breath. ‘What’s the rush?’ she asked.
There was silence for a moment. Then the woman placed her papers back on the lectern and raised her eyebrows. ‘What rush?’ she asked mildly.
‘Well, we’ve been here for nine days. We haven’t even done any basic training yet.’ Fleare felt herself getting ready to shrink under the cool gaze, and shook herself. ‘And we haven’t been assessed yet. Don’t we have to get sort of tested before you put us in for mods?’
The woman’s eyebrows climbed. ‘The Hegemony isn’t waiting. How many people do you think have come into its influence since you arrived on this planet?’
Fleare shook her head.
‘I’ll tell you, although I suspect that you of all people know.’ The emphasis had been subtle; Fleare looked around, but no one else seemed to have noticed. ‘It’s roughly a hundred million. That is the average rate of advance of the Hegemony over the last few years: ten million people a day. A mega-city every ten days, a medium-sized planet every year, with their democratic governments replaced by so-called technocracies imposed without their consent to correct the financial disasters caused by the depletion of their economies by the tame bankers that follow the Hegemony like flies following a dragged corpse. Technocracies which then control social freedoms, roll back progressive statute, turn healthcare into a currency. Where life expectancies fall and infant mortality rises and suicide rates soar.’
Fleare realized with something like shock that the woman’s voice had trembled as she spoke and there were beads of sweat clinging to her hairline. She hadn’t thought such a dried-up-looking entity capable of moisture. Let alone passion.
The woman went on. ‘So if every day provides ten million human reasons to act, why should we wait?’ The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘Besides, both the nature and the urgency of your training will depend on the nature of your modifications and the level of their success. Clearly we would not waste time training you for a role which you had no chance of carrying out. And as an aside, your reading of the sign-up disclosure was obviously defective. You have been the subject of close remote-sensing scrutiny since the moment you arrived. We know more than enough about your physiological responses . . . to every situation.’ She gave a smile which looked genuine and gathered up her papers. ‘Enjoy your afternoon, Cadet Haas.’ She paused. ‘And of course your, ah, friend, Cadet-Corporal fos Gelent.’
There was a rustle of laughter and Fleare felt her face burning. She stood to attention along with the rest of the room until the woman had left. Then, as hard as she could, she drove her elbow into Muz’s side.
‘Ooooof!’ He staggered and clutched at himself. ‘What was that for?’
‘You knew!’ She pulled back her elbow for another shot but he grabbed it. ‘You knew they were spying. You complete,’ she searched for a bad enough word but couldn’t find one, ‘you complete turd! You might as well have hauled me into a fucking porn studio!’
‘Oh, right. Of course!’ He gave her back her elbow. ‘Obviously I pushed you down the slope against your will. I mean, it’s not like you were the sober one or anything.’
His eyes met hers, and she held the gaze for a moment. Then she felt her stomach muscles twitch and suddenly she was laughing, and so was he. When they had panted themselves to a stop he took her hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the afternoon. I’ll show you something.’
‘Will it be something you showed me already?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Not that sort of something! Come on.’
Half an hour later, Fleare was surrounded by planets.
The Spin was a thickly populated area of space about thirty light-days across. It was moderately remote from the nearest major civi
lizations and therefore tended to make its own astropolitical weather. It was independent, socially fissile, multilingual, multifaith, internally and externally argumentative, occasionally united but far more often chronically squabbling. Small wars were endemic; larger ones rare. Really big conflicts like the First and Second Machine Wars were unusual enough to merit capital letters if your language supported them.
Depending on how and when you counted, there were between eighty-nine and ninety-four planets in the Spin. Five were wanderers, on vast elliptical orbits that brought them back into play every few years. There was a fashion among the wealthy for maintaining houses, estates, whole private continents on these planets. The fact that they were useless for nine tenths of the time just seemed to add to the attraction. The remaining stable – by Spin standards – eighty-nine looped in complex orbits around twenty-one suns, with both orbits and suns evidently being artificial. Not just artificial; most of the orbits were impossible, and a few were close to whimsical. One described a flattened figure of eight centred on nothing obvious, with light, warmth and an intermittently fatal spectrum of radiation coming from its own pet mini-star orbiting a few light-minutes out. It was popular with thrill-seeking tourists, who mostly wore radiation suits, and a select cadre of the terminally ill, who mostly didn’t. The suntans were spectacular, of course.
Nobody knew who or what had built the Spin, and to speculate on why was just farcical, but whoever it was seemed to have had grand ambitions, almost limitless power and a sense of humour. There was archaeological evidence, but it pointed in so many wilfully different directions that the only safe assumption was that it was part of the joke. There were also artefacts that turned up from time to time, most so inscrutable as to their use that they might as well have been executive toys. Despite constant attempts, the Construction Phase remained opaque to investigation.
As far as anyone knew, no race had ever tried to attain civilization from a starting point in the Spin. It was just as well. As one anthropologist said, if they’d tried to interpret what they saw in the skies the resulting religions would have been lethal.
Joke or not, the Spin was unique as far as its inhabitants knew. It had few external visitors, mainly because it was rather isolated, floating in a bubble of more or less empty space half a dozen light-years across. Outside the bubble the galaxy got quite dense, with civilizations clustering together and gazing warily across the gap. The Spin had sometimes been a boisterous neighbour – another reason to leave it un-poked, if possible.
The obvious guess was that the empty bit had been plundered for the raw star-stuff needed to make the Spin in the first place, but this was just a guess. What was certain was that the Spin was by a massive margin the single biggest artificial structure in the mapped galaxy. It was home to about ten per cent of known sentient civilizations, twenty per cent of economic activity and, historically, anything up to fifty per cent of total military effort.
It had another claim to uniqueness, too.
Fleare ducked as a cluster of moons whistled past her. ‘What, on every planet?’
‘Yup. All different, but all complete. A planetarium on every planet. Look, don’t stand there. Incoming solar system.’ Muz took her arm and pulled her gently backwards. She shook herself free but stepped back a few paces, in time for a planet about the size of her head to go barrelling by. It looked as if it was made of some dark hardwood, mounted on a polished brass stalk that disappeared down into the darkness. Several others followed, all made of similar materials, and some with sketches of continents etched on to their spinning surfaces. Then a bigger brassy globe wobbled past. Fleare looked at Muz. ‘A sun, right?’
‘Right. Look, Fleare, I gotta sit down.’
The planetarium occupied a spherical space about fifty metres across, with a metal checkerplate walkway running round the circumference. There were banquettes on the walkway. Muz wandered over to one and collapsed on to it. The cushion made a sighing noise as it took his weight.
Fleare sat next to him. ‘Still suffering?’
‘Oh yes.’ He leaned back against the wall of the planetarium and gave a sigh that sounded just like the cushion.
Fleare grinned. ‘Serves you right.’
‘Thank you, Cadet Haas.’ Muz stretched his arms above his head. Fleare heard one of his joints click, and he winced. Then he sat up. ‘Hey, that’s funny.’
‘What?’
‘Well, your name. Isn’t there some, like, mega-rich total bastard that owns half the Spin? Big wheel in the Heg’. He’s called Haas, right? Coincidence. Funny.’
Fleare stared at her feet. A small cold knot formed in her stomach. ‘Not really,’ she said.
‘Not really what?’
‘Funny, or a coincidence.’ She stood up, turning and hugging herself. With her back to him she said: ‘Viklun Haas is my father. It isn’t half the Spin but it’s plenty, and yes, he is a total bastard, and yes, he is on the side of the Hegemony so I’m technically at war with him. I’m sure he’d say it was just a gesture but I can’t ask him because I haven’t spoken to him since my fifteenth birthday, because he’s at least twice the bastard you think and he makes me want to throw up. Sorry.’ She turned round. ‘So, I’ll be leaving, I guess. Thanks for last night.’ She swallowed. ‘It was fun.’
‘What?’ Muz got to his feet, a little unsteadily. ‘Leaving? Why?’
‘That’s how it usually goes after his name comes up. Even if it takes a while.’ Fleare tried to meet his eyes and failed. ‘I’ve got plenty of experience.’ She turned abruptly and headed for the exit.
After a few paces she heard him following. She spun on her heel and held both arms out straight, bracing herself. He bounced gently off her outstretched palms, took a wobbly step backwards and collapsed on to a bench. His expression was so comical that she almost relented.
But only almost. Instead she shook her head. ‘I can’t, Muz. I joined up to get away from all that shit, you see? Him and anything to do with him and anyone who even heard of him, because it doesn’t take long for everyone else to stop having a relationship with me and start having one with him. And if you did that, I’d have to kill you.’
He threw his hands up. ‘Okay, have it your way. I feel too crap to argue and if you really gave a shit you’d probably be staying, so just fuck off. But you’d better change your name, otherwise you’ll be fucking off for the rest of your life.’
‘I’m going to change more than that.’ She turned and stamped towards the exit. The old-fashioned door slammed satisfyingly behind her.
Three hours later she was half sitting, half lying on a med couch while a cloudy neutral-coloured fluid dripped into her bloodstream through a slim tube which looked disappointingly ordinary. The fluid was a complex, doubtfully legal suspension of nano-particles, and the process was neither risk-free nor reversible.
Despite this, her formal agreement to the military’s right to modify her had been accepted without a flicker, barely ten minutes after she had left the planetarium. The bored Adjutant-Administrator hadn’t even looked up from his terminal as Fleare had submitted to the iris scan that confirmed her consent. She’d had to scan twice. Apparently tears obscured the beam.
Taussich, Fortunate Protectorate, Cordern
IT WAS HOT and dusty, and they had been hunting all morning without seeing anything. Two suns had climbed high and the third was already above the horizon, making the desert air shimmer. Even the mounted nobles were tired, and their beasts smelled rank and hot. The beaters, running alongside them, were streaked grey with a mixture of fine sand and sweat. One was scored with red from the shoulder to the hip where he had run through a stand of Sorrow Spines. Another had already collapsed and had been left where he lay. Perhaps an hour more and they would all have to find shade.
A cry broke the silence. ‘A sighting! My Lord, there is a sighting. Prey-ho!’
Alameche Ur-hive reined in his mount. The animal resisted for a moment and then came to a restive halt, shuffling its f
ront feet before letting the stumpy rear limb unfurl. Alameche waited until the beast had settled into its tripod resting position, and swung his leg out of the saddle. He watched the panting beater running up to him, and held out his hand as the boy drew near. The boy handed him the telescope. ‘A ten-score of paces to second sunward, Lord. I believe it is a Rethi. At the edge of the stand of Wire Trees.’
Alameche took the instrument and raised it. At first he could see nothing. He took it from his eye, inspected it, and then swore. The lens was filthy with sweat and dust. He reached out, swept the soft sun-hat from the cowering beater’s head and used it to polish the lens. Then he rolled the hat up and stowed it in his pack. ‘You can do without that, cretin,’ he told the boy. ‘Count yourself lucky I don’t have you thrashed.’
The boy flinched and bowed himself away.
Alameche raised the telescope again. It was still difficult; the shimmering of the baked air baffled the eye. He concentrated, turning the eyepiece until the Wire Trees came into focus, and scanning along their edge until he came to a dark mound. It moved as he watched. A leg stretched out indolently, and the sunlight glinted off insectoid mouth parts as they opened in a yawn.
A Rethi, indeed! Full-grown and fully armoured. It looked thoroughly relaxed, and Alameche was not surprised. He adjusted the telescope and counted the segments along the humped carapace. There were twenty-one, each the length of a man’s outstretched arm. By the waiting gods, the beast was huge! And ancient, too. No one knew for certain, but Alameche’s hunting master had once told him that each segment counted fifty years. Over a thousand years old! No wonder they had found nothing all morning; the presence of this monster would have every animal for klicks running for shelter.
He lowered the telescope and handed it back to the boy, who was standing with his hand raised in a pathetic attempt to keep the sun off his bare head. Serve the whelp right.
Hooves thumped behind him and a cloud of dust rose as two riders hauled their beasts to a halt at his side. Alameche cursed inwardly. Garamende, of all the noisy fools, with Fiselle just behind him. He nodded a greeting, at the same time making a quick downwards gesture with his palms. Then he pointed towards the Wire Trees. ‘There,’ he said quietly. ‘Just on the edge of the shade. Do you see?’
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