by Dan Davis
“Alright, let’s find ourselves a nice valley to land in,” Kat said. “We need one with a flat, smooth valley floor that has a very long, very gentle upward slope that is free from any obstructions. We can’t have it strewn with giant boulders. No rivers, if we can help it.”
“Very well. Working.” Sheila fell silent for a while and Kat attempted to clear her mind. She reached into her chair arm’s locker and readied her stimulants. Her stomach was twisted with hunger, thirst and fear. She drank some water, sucked down a few tubes of glucose and salt dispensed by her flight helmet and jammed a few stim pods into the suit delivery system on her thigh.
If she was going to die on the landing, at least she would do so refreshed and hydrated.
Out of the window, she saw the dark of the horizon turning to sunlight. The night turning into day.
“Potential landing sites identified,” Sheila said. “Primary site meets forty percent of pilot’s required criteria.”
“Forty percent on the idealness chart?” Kat said, surprised. “I’ll take it.”
“We must begin our descent immediately. Please follow this course. Would you like me to take control?”
“No,” Kat said. “No, I would not. Adjusting course now.”
It felt good to have the Lepus responding to her commands once again, even if the thing was sluggish and falling to bits.
The AI pinged her with a tone and a blinking yellow light on the console, which was the AI equivalent of clearing one’s throat. “Would now be a good time to mention that several of the passengers are injured and are in need of immediate medical attention?”
“No, Sheila.”
“And two passengers appear to have expired.”
“Stop talking, Sheila and help me land this shuttle.”
11.
“Stop this drip feed bullshit,” Ram said to Stirling and Tseng. “Just tell it to me like it happened.”
Sergeant Stirling looked across the tent at the ensign, who nodded his approval.
“There’s not much to tell, really, sir,” Stirling said, shrugging. The others were silent, watching. “Like I said, they scraped up your remains from the floor of the arena. Your face was ripped off and your skull was fractured all over the place but your brain was okay. And they had that other clone of you ready on the Victory. Then they did whatever they do. Dr. Fo and his team. God only knows what but yeah, it wasn’t that long at all before they had you awake and walking around.”
“What was I like?” Ram asked, his mouth dry. He licked his lips.
Stirling glanced at a couple of the others, then shrugged again. “Seemed normal. Like how you are now. Like how you were before. We didn’t really know you before but we’d seen some of the training footage and, yeah, you were normal.”
The Marines nodded in agreement.
“But they did stuff to you,” Harris said.
“What stuff?” Ram asked.
“You were done with being a fighter in the Orb,” Stirling said. “Your mind had been transferred again and there’s always some degradation, so they say. The bosses knew you’d never make the cut for the next combat, in thirty years. Some other bastard will fight for us in Mission Five, right? So why bother to bring you back at all?”
“Propaganda,” Cooper said. “Wasn’t it.”
“That’s part of it,” Stirling said. shrugging. “Probably. You should have seen what they were saying about you on Earth.”
“They made a statue of you,” Flores said, grinning, her eyes shining in the low light from across the tent. “In India. A hundred meters high, in pure gold.”
“It wasn’t fucking pure gold, Flores,” Cooper said. “Pure gold would buckle under the strain.”
“It’s a figure of speech!” Flores shouted.
“No it isn’t,” Cooper snarled. “You’re so naive, it’s no wonder—”
“Quiet,” Stirling said, sighing. “Knock it off, kids. Yes, propaganda. It makes UNOP look good that you not only won, that you survived. In some fashion. But the bosses are too canny to give up a resource like you just for marketing purposes. You’re a killer, sir. They made you that way from birth, from before birth. Then they molded you into an even bigger one. They decided to keep going. Director Zhukov and Dr. Fo didn’t want to just bring you back like you were before, with minimal tech inside you so that you could get through the Orb’s smokescreen. What was the point of limiting themselves, of limiting you? They were free to go to town on you. They gave you those manufactured eyes for improved visual acuity. Amplifiers and dampeners for your ears, but we have those, that’s just standard. They also gave you extra organs for backups, like a cluster of synthetic systems inside your rib cage that kicks in when you need more oxygen, more glycogen, fatty acids, ketones, whatever. The list goes on, I’m no expert but you got nano pumps for your blood, and hormone producing organs, and God only knows what kind of chips and sensors they put in your brain. And the story is that they tried to make you love war.”
A cold knot writhed in his guts.
“Excuse me?”
Ensign Tseng was nodding. Exactly. This is exactly the problem.”
Stirling continued. “You know how much they love behavior modification. They’ve tried it on all of us here, to some extent. With you, they felt you had residual pacifistic tendencies.”
“That’s crazy,” Ram said. “I’ve never been a pacifist. Not at all. Especially not for monstrous aliens.”
“Fucking A,” Harris said and pounded his gloved fist against Cooper’s.
Ensign Tseng cleared his throat. “The psychological evaluations said otherwise. Your empathy scored a touch too high to be suitable for command. But your compassion quotient was far above the recommended range for leadership roles, even for junior officers.”
Ram looked round at them. “I have too much compassion? That can’t be true. Anyway, too much for what? I’m not in command.”
No one would meet his eye.
“What?” Ram said. “Come on, guys. Out with it, I said.”
“You joined the UNOP Marine Corp,” Stirling said. “You signed up. Voluntarily. The scientists, they helped fast track you. They filled your brain with memories and with knowledge. I don’t know how but they uploaded every Marine text book on file, directly into your brain. Gave you memories they’d taken from other officers, from veterans but stripped of personal detail. What they do is, so they say, is they record the memories of people practicing something then they process it and dump it into you, then your brain sorts it out. They’ll record a novice Marine who is a good shot while they train him to be a sniper. A year of training, maybe more, I don’t know, the whole time in those training sessions they have some kind of brain scan net on his head. Then they put it in you and hope that some of it sticks.” Stirling shrugged. “They pumped you full of Marine juice, sir.”
“That’s why I know the details of this suit,” Ram said. “And how to operate my weapons. But they hid it from me.”
Harris snorted. “Don’t get too excited about the tech. The memories don’t stick. It doesn’t work.”
“It does work,” Cooper cried, pointing at Ram but talking to Harris. “He’s proof it does.”
“Right, right,” Harris said. “It didn’t work on you, though, did it. It didn’t work on the other one, that poor woman Sifa. It didn’t work on the Lieutenant.”
Tseng raised his eyebrows. “I did not need it. And I was simply assessed for the procedure and found to have an unsuitable brain, just as Cooper and Fury and Stirling were. I know you feel left out, Harris, but don’t make inaccurate statements.”
Harris held up his hands. “Alright, sir, alright. All I’m saying is, it is experimental technology with a high failure rate, would that be fair to say? And in Ram’s case, it messed up his brain, right?”
“No,” Stirling said. “Ignore him, sir, he thinks he’s smarter than he is. You know that phrase a little knowledge is more dangerous than none? They came up with that to describe Har
ris.”
“You keep calling me sir,” Ram said, feeling increasingly dislocated. “That’s just a courtesy, right? Like you said. I mean, I’m not…”
Stirling nodded. “While they were filling your head with the text books, with the memories and the skills, they put you into training with us. Drilling on the ship. Avar combat missions. You were bloody brilliant, sir, frankly. No one could deny it. Didn’t take long for them to put you through officer training school.”
“Why in the hell would they do that?”
“Ha.” Tseng said but did not elaborate.
“Despite what some tests said about your abundance of compassion, you had an aptitude for leadership,” Stirling said, glancing at the ensign. “From your years leading a pro Avar co-operative.”
Flores spoke up. “And they said it’s in your genes.”
“Leaders just start leading,” Stirling said. “When you’re in a group with a flat hierarchy, if you’re a leader then people look to you. That’s what happened to you.”
Tseng laughed, briefly. “It was a publicity stunt. I’m sorry, Seti, but that’s all it was. I’m not saying you were a bad Marine but they wanted to make you an officer because they could sell that better to people on Earth and in the colonies. I was in a meeting when they were discussing it. Director Zhukov said to Cassidy that if they used your image and your story properly, they’d never struggle to recruit Marines for the military buildup. Anyway, you’re not on active duty anymore, so it’s a moot point.”
“They put me through officer training but I didn’t make the cut?” Ram asked.
“You were commissioned as an officer,” Stirling said, throwing a glance at Tseng. “And you were integrated into the command structure as an ensign and acting as a second lieutenant.”
Ram rubbed his face, half-smiling to himself.
I’m a real-life space marine.
“Okay, so at what point did I go insane?” Ram asked. Again, the others in the tent avoided meeting his searching gaze. “What did I do?”
“You seemed normal,” Flores said. “As far as anyone could tell.”
“Do you remember a man called Bediako?” Stirling asked.
Ram frowned. “Oh, yeah. Shit, yeah. He was the instructor in the ludus, on the Victory. Before the Orb. How could I have forgotten about him? I never liked that guy. What happened to him?”
“You killed him.”
Ram nodded. “Right.” He closed his eyes. “Right, okay.”
Tseng cleared his throat. “You remember it?”
“No. Not at all. But it makes sense, I mean, I feel like I could have killed him back when he was training me because the man was an absolutely miserable son of a bitch. What happened?”
“You seemed fine, as far as any of us could tell. Maybe a little distracted. On edge, sometimes. But after you did what you did, they told us you were suffering from psychological trauma that went pretty much undetected for a while. And you and Bediako kept clashing for months before the murder. He didn’t like that you joined the Marines, I think. We didn’t want him, you see. He was too old, too slow, too angry.”
“Yeah,” Harris said, “he was always trolling you. Needling you. And you snapped and you stomped his head flat.”
“Could have happened to anyone,” Cooper said.
“Seems to me that you were never welcome as far as Cassidy was concerned,” Stirling said. “Just like the rest of us.”
Tseng scoffed. “Now who is being paranoid?”
“I mean it,” Stirling said. “We were all taken off duty, court-martialed, just because we never fell for Captain Cassidy’s bullshit. Nor Sergeant Major Gruger’s. You most of all, Lieutenant Tseng. You know you were driven out because you saw Cassidy for what he is, you did nothing wrong. Barely, anyway, sir. Same as the rest of these guys.”
“Not same as me,” Fury said, awake now and leaning on one elbow. “I really was stealing shit from Cassidy’s quarters.” She lay back down again and closed her eyes. “And I don’t regret it for a moment.”
Cooper and Harris laughed.
Ram looked round at all six of them. “Cassidy told me you were all crazy or incompetent.”
“No more than the rest of the bastards back there,” Harris aid. “Walking around on patrol with their rifles in hand while we’re given spades and boxes to carry.”
“You screwed with Cassidy and you ended up removed from duty,” Stirling said. “Same as all of us.”
“What did you do, Sarge?” Harris asked.
“Never you mind about me, sunshine,” Stirling said.
“But I’m a murderer?” Ram said. “I really did it.”
“That rather depends how you look at it,” Tseng said. “Legally, no. It was recorded as an accidental death in training. And in moral terms, some people say that the person you were when you did it, is now gone. The memories destroyed. The man you are now is innocent.”
“But you don’t believe that, do you, Ensign Tseng,” Ram said. “That’s why you turned us in.”
For a moment, the only sound was the faint whistling of the wind on the outside of the tent. A patter of light rain gusted against the roof and died away.
The ensign licked his lips, eyes sliding between the people inside. “I see your paranoia was not wiped away. This is what I feared. Your underlying condition was never addressed, clearly.”
“What condition?” Ram didn’t feel like he was paranoid but then again, a psychotic person doesn’t know that they are mad. “Why did you look guilty when I caught you watching your wrist screen for our pursuers?”
Tseng scoffed. “Because I didn’t look guilty. Your insanity is warping your mind. You have a disturbed view of reality. In fact, I doubt you know what reality is any more.”
“Maybe,” Ram said. “I’m willing to accept that. Do you have a geolocator on you, additional to the ones in your suit that Harris redirected?”
Tseng laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not going to entertain this. Have you taken your tablets this evening? When they said they were assigning you to my team, they told me you would be issued with anti-psychotics mixed in with your nutrients and anabolics and so on and you were supposed to be conditioned with the urge to take them.”
Conditioned to take drugs. I’m chaining myself to the powers that be. I’m as dumb as one of Pavlov’s dumb mutts.
“I took them.”
“Good, well, hopefully they will start to work soon.”
“Hopefully.”
“Alright then,” Tseng said. “I hope we can all get back to sleep now. Assuming the wheelhunters do not attack in the night, we have a long day tomorrow, with an infiltration and possibly a fighting withdrawal. Get some rest while you can.”
“Yeah and we can end the war in the morning,” Cooper said, grinning. “As long as we kill the hive queen.”
Everyone groaned. Harris and Flores threw balled up food packets at him while Cooper chuckled to himself.
Ram crawled back to his spot across the tent. Flores stared at him, her eyes wide and serious. He smiled at her and she gave him a brief, half-fake smile in return.
The other members of the Spaz Squad, the Tard Team, all had their own psychological problems and they had all been taken off active duty in one way or another, for one reason or another. It suddenly made perfect sense that Captain Cassidy had assigned him to them. Ram was insane. In fact, it was worse than that.
I’m a murderer.
He was also certain that Ensign Tseng was lying. The sneaky bastard was working against them, no matter what lies he spouted or how much he discredited Ram’s opinion.
Ram hoped that he would not have to kill someone again. But he knew that he would if he had to.
I’m a space marine. I’m a murderer. I’m a killer.
***
The night proved uneventful. At least, no wheelers attacked and no Marines arrested them. The Tard Team broke camp well before dawn, in efficient, military fashion. The rain had stopped but the world w
as glistening and slick with moisture.
Ram had slept fitfully, with endless dreams where he fought giants as big as elephants or bigger. Dreams where he fought Bediako. Dreams of Milena begging him to help her. Nightmares where his own guts got ripped from his body and he felt himself treading on them as he walked up mountains, heading for the enemy.
“You alright, sir?” Flores asked as the ETATs rolled out, heading up the valley toward the alien’s lava tube hideouts. She had climbed in the back with him when they packed up. When she’d done it, he had thought that she had taken a liking to him, maybe because they had slept beside each other. He was relieved to realize that she was merely worried about him.
“I’m okay, Flores,” he said. “Was I talking in my sleep or something?”
“Kind of moaning a bit,” she said. “Had the comms off so I wouldn’t have noticed but you thrashed into me a couple of times. Thought the wheelers had come for us but then I tuned in and you were groaning and muttering.”
“Oh man, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
She laughed. “Your arm weighs about thirty kilos but don’t worry about it, sir. I’m tough as MozTek.”
“Good to know. Still, sorry.” He looked at the sky growing light on the lumpy horizon. “I think we’ll see combat today, Private. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Do you know why I was taken off active duty, sir?” She raised an eyebrow, peering up at him as they bounced along.
“Not sure if anyone told me,” Ram said. “As long as you’re here, and you want to be, that’s alright with me.”
“I appreciate that, sir. But I don’t mind telling you about it. You used to know, before they… you know.” She mimed pointing a pistol at her head with her finger and thumb. The black, armored glove of her suit looked remarkably pistol-like. “My great-uncle is Admiral Goto Howe. On my mom’s side. My dad’s family is in business, in construction. In spaceship construction. We have one dockyard orbiting Earth, another around the Moon and a new one around Mars.”