Insignia

by S. J. Kincaid

  Marsh gave a crisp nod at something he saw on his face. “That’s right, son. Your country needs you at the Pentagonal Spire. The question is, are you man enough to win a war for us?”

  sts

  “NOT A CHANCE,” Neil said.

  Tom sat on the edge of his bed in their hotel room. Neil nursed a drink, since, as he always liked to say, a good screwdriver was the only reliable hangover cure he knew. The very mention of Tom’s encounter with General Marsh made every line stand out on his face.

  “Dad, I can’t pass this up.” Tom flipped through the parental consent form Marsh had given him. “They’ll train me and I’ll be a combatant. And it’s for our country—”

  “You won’t be fighting a war for this country, Tom.” A wave of Neil’s hand sent orange juice sloshing over the rim of his glass. “Our military fights to secure first extraplanetary mineral rights for Nobridis, Inc. The Russo-Chinese alliance fights back to secure them for Stronghold Energy. War isn’t about countries! Multinationals use taxpayer-funded militaries to fight their private skirmishes, and then they sell the public on it by donning the mantle of patriotism. This is all just a big fight between members of the Coalition to see who will become the richest CEO in the solar system!”

  Tom had heard this before. This whole antiestablishment thing Neil had going on. He pulled it out every time someone asked him why he hadn’t ever held down a job—“Why haven’t I jammed my neck in the yoke of corporate servitude, you mean?”—or paid taxes—“I’ve got better causes to support with my money than stuffing the coffers of Amerika, Inc.!”

  So Tom studied the consent form and tuned him out.

  “You know how the military treats its people, Tom? They chew them up and spit them out, that’s how. You’re just another piece of equipment to them. And for what? Not for your country. For the wallet of some business executive you’ll never meet in some luxury suite you’ll never see!”

  Tom looked over his father, with his sloppy morning drink, his rumpled clothes, and unshaven face. “Dad, this is a career. It’s a real life. Marsh said I’ll even get a salary.”

  “You have a real life. Don’t let that rat general tell you—”

  “I don’t need him to convince me of anything,” Tom burst out. “I’m sick of this. It’s the same thing over and over again. You lose all our money, and I miss school and have to deal with Ms. Falmouth. I bet this is why—” He stopped talking.

  He’d almost said it. That dark thought, the one he never voiced.

  I bet this is why Mom left us.

  It took Neil a moment to speak, as though he’d heard the phantom words. “This is not the only way we have to live. If you’re tired of this, we’ll settle somewhere. You don’t have to join them. Next win and I’m done.”

  Tom closed his eyes, blood beating in his head. There would never be a “next win.” And even if there was, it wouldn’t be enough—and the next win would be gambled away just as quickly as the other ones. He’d heard this all before. His dad would never give up this life. The promise was worthless. And Tom would be worthless, too, if he didn’t get away while he had the chance.

  “I don’t have to join the military, Dad. I want to.” He opened his eyes and approached it from his father’s perspective. “Is it the money thing? My salary will be in a trust, but I get a living allowance. I can send some along. I can help you out.”

  Why was Neil looking at him like he’d stabbed him or something? They both knew Tom was the one paying for their rooms lately.

  Neil’s jaw clenched. “Fine. Fine, Tom. I’ll sign whatever blasted form you want. You want to throw your life away? Want to pledge yourself to the corporate war machine?”

  “Yes, Dad. I want to pledge myself to the corporate war machine.” Tom’s voice grew ferocious. “It’s my choice.”

  “It’s your mistake.”

  “Maybe. But it’s mine.”

  Neil yanked the consent form from Tom’s hands. “This isn’t how teenager’s rebellion’s supposed to go. You’re supposed to shock me by doing something scandalous. Not by joining the establishment.”

  “This is about as scandalous as I’m going to get, Dad. Sign the form.”

  “I’d rather you got a tattoo.”

  Neil scrawled his signature on the form and handed custody of Tom over to the US military.

  LATER IN THE afternoon, General Marsh returned to collect it.

  “Mr. Raines, you have no need to worry about Tom while he’s with us. We’ll take good care of your boy.” Marsh offered Neil a hand to shake.

  Neil stared back at him with stony hatred. He ignored Marsh’s hand and instead reached out to envelop Tom in a rough, parting hug.

  “Tom”—Neil ruffled his hand in his hair—“whatever happens, you take care of yourself. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Tom couldn’t help wondering at the look on his dad’s face when he left with Marsh. Neil stared after them like he was sure this was the last time he’d ever see his son.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Chapter Three

  AS THE AIRPLANE hummed around him, Tom pictured himself as a Combatant, saving America from some devastating Russo-Chinese plot. And maybe then Ms. Falmouth would see him on TV and gasp, realizing her least favorite student had just saved her country. Then everyone at Rosewood would find out, too.

  Suddenly he wanted to tell her where he was going. He had this weird need to hear what she’d say. But when he asked about visiting Rosewood one last time, Marsh shook his head.

  “As far as your Ms. Falmouth is concerned, you’ve been moved to a foster home. We keep as quiet as we can about our young recruits, Tom. The only face we put out there publicly is Elliot Ramirez. The rest of you are only known to the public as call signs.”

  The flight from Arizona seemed to take forever. When they flew over Arlington, Virginia, Tom finally spotted the building he’d been watching for since takeoff: the Pentagonal Spire, military headquarters for the Intrasolar Forces. The massive spire rose from a five-sided pentagonal base and twisted up into a gleaming, chrome point.

  Marsh rapped a knobby knuckle on the windowpane. “Used to be, when I was a kid, Tom, this building was a giant, flat pentagon. The place where the Spire is? Right where it’s planted, there used to be a courtyard and two inner rings of the Old Pentagon. We called the courtyard ground zero. It got the name way back in the Cold War, when everyone thought that would be the first place the Soviets bombed. A lot of people were upset when the higher-ups decided to build the Spire over that piece of history—but we were just ramping up competition with the Chinese in space, and we needed an edge. The Spire itself isn’t just a building—it’s the most powerful transmitter in the Western Hemisphere.”

  “What do you do in the old building?” Tom said as the plane rudders tilted up, outside his window. They decelerated as the hybrid plane shifted into helicopter mode.

  “We’ve got some military traditionals stationed in the remaining three rings. Might as well call them the Corps of Engineers nowadays, though. Don’t get me wrong, we have combat companies just in case of civil unrest or the emergence of some new, rogue nation, but they’ll never see any real action. A shame, because I was a combat guy myself in the day, and we did more than fight. Helped Interpol track down criminals, overthrew corrupt regimes, even distributed humanitarian aid.”

  “You were a veteran?” Tom had never met a real one before. His stomach gave a great leap as they descended toward the roof of the Old Pentagon. “Did you shoot guns at people?”

  “Not that kind of veteran. I was a pilot. Flew troops who did shoot guns at people in and out of the Middle East back when there was some fight in the region—back when there was a there there. Believe it or not, Tom, when I was young, violence wasn’t a small-scale, isolated matter. There were always several wars going on somewher
e in the world, with guns and bombs and insurgencies and everything you’ve read about.”

  The plane touched down on the helipad. Tom and General Marsh unbuckled their seat belts and emerged onto the old building’s roof, where a line of military traditionals stood at attention. Marsh exchanged salutes with the ranking officer, stood statue stiff for his retina verification scan, then gestured for Tom to accompany him into an elevator. They dropped into the Pentagon, and emerged into a first-floor corridor joining the old Pentagon to the Pentagonal Spire.

  In the hallway leading to the Spire, a crisply dressed woman with large, clear eyes and dark skin awaited them. She strode forward as they drew closer to her. “Thomas Raines, I assume?”

  Tom glanced at General Marsh, and began a salute like the ones he’d seen moments before.

  General Marsh shook his head. “No saluting, Tom. This is Olivia Ossare. She’s a civilian.”

  The woman beamed at him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tom. He’s right. I’m a civilian—as are you. When the military began requisitioning teenagers four years ago for intrasolar combat operations, the Congressional Defense Committee, which oversees operations here, drafted a document known as the Public Accord.”

  Tom followed her into the vast lobby of the Pentagonal Spire, General Marsh behind them. The entrance to the Spire was no less daunting than the glittering chrome outside: high marble ceilings, with a golden eagle glaring down upon those at the threshold. A large American flag stood by the door, ringed by the flags of the current US military allies: India, Canada, Britain, and various European and Oceanian states.

  Olivia’s heels echoed on the floor. “All recruits are subject to child labor laws. Although you are joining the military, you won’t serve in the same capacity as traditional soldiers unless you choose to reenlist at eighteen. You will not hold a formal rank. The military may be your custodian while you’re here, but according to federal law, your legal guardian is still your father. The military does not own you.”

  Tom’s eyes strayed to a group of uniformed regular soldiers marching past in formation. Olivia’s hand on his shoulder urged him forward.

  “Like me, Tom, you’ll be something of a civilian contractor. You’ll be in the employ of the government but on a limited schedule. You’ll receive a traditional education—”

  Tom winced. He’d hoped he was done with school forever.

  “—a stipend, with a regular salary in a trust, and you’ll have Calisthenics as well as a minimum of twenty hours of free time per week. You’ll have twenty vacation days per year, some at standard holiday intervals, some at times determined by General Marsh. On weekends, the time is entirely yours to fill. You have liberty of movement as long as you ensure you’re back at the Spire by ten p.m.”

  “And as long as you remain within a twenty-mile radius of this installation,” Marsh cut in. “This is the designated zone, Mr. Raines, and you don’t stray from it without getting approval from me first. If a trainee goes outside the DZ, we assume the Russo-Chinese alliance is involved, and we go to DEFCON-2.”

  “DEFCON-2?” Tom said, stunned.

  “That’s right. Losing a trainee is a national emergency. We mobilize the traditionals for a hostile retrieval. It’s happened recently, and that trainee—a young man who snuck off to see a girl—was not happy with the consequences he faced when we found him. He no longer has liberty of movement. He’s lucky to still be here at all, considering how much work it took to keep that story off the internet.”

  They emerged into a vast circular area with sleek black tables.

  “This is Patton Hall,” Olivia told him. “It’s the mess hall for young trainees and the officers who live at this installation.” She steered Tom toward the banks of elevators. “This brings us to”—she pointed to a glass door at the end of the hallway beyond the elevators—“my office, Tom.”

  Tom squinted, and saw the print: OLIVIA OSSARE, LCSW-C.

  “As I said, I’m not military. I’m a licensed social worker, and I’m here for you kids. You can speak to me in confidence if any issues arise. I am here to be your advocate, even if your problem is with your military custodians.”

  General Marsh took over the tour. He showed Tom the Hart Medical Wing and the Lafayette Room. The latter was a massive chamber with rows of benches and a raised stage between a US flag and a flag of the six Indo-American corporate allies on the Coalition of Multinationals: Wyndham Harks; Dominion Agra; Nobridis, Inc.; Obsidian Corp.; Matchett-Reddy; and Epicenter Manufacturing.

  Marsh gestured around them. “The trainees have core classes here in the Lafayette Room with civilian instructors. You’ll get to know this room quite well. As a first year—a plebe—your classes are divided between this room and MacArthur Hall on the fifteenth floor.”

  They took the elevator to the sixth floor and stepped out into a sleek, windowless room with a plush arrangement of couches in rows, gaming consoles, an air hockey table, a Ping-Pong table, a pool table, and towering bookshelves. Around the room were sliding doors. One had a giant ax painted across the door and the words GENGHIS DIVISION. The next had a feather and the words MACHIAVELLI DIVISION. The next one had a catapult and the words HANNIBAL DIVISION. There was a musket and the words NAPOLEON DIVISION, and then a sword and the words ALEXANDER DIVISION.

  “This is the common area for plebes,” Marsh informed him. “Those signs? Those are the doors to the five living quarters for trainees, the ‘divisions,’ all named after prominent figures in military history—generals and a strategist. Five sides to a pentagon, five divisions . . . Gives it all a nice order. Now, I think it’s time you saw the training rooms. I think you’re ready. Do you concur, Ms. Ossare?”

  Olivia’s face froze. “I concur, General,” she said shortly. “Now’s the time.” She strode past Tom and pressed the button for the elevator.

  They rode up to the training simulation rooms on floor thirteen. Marsh glanced at the information dockets by a door, and pressed a finger to his lips. “Come in here.”

  He opened the door to reveal a vast, dark chamber. Tom’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, and then he saw them: a group of a dozen or so teenagers stretched out on cots in a ring, eyes closed.

  Tom was thrown by their zombielike silence, by their stillness, by the EKG monitors with jagged lines registering their heart rhythms. What were they even doing? Marsh called it a simulation, but he didn’t see any VR visors or gloves or even one of the old-fashioned sensor bars. No one was gesturing or waving. No one was moving at all, in fact. They looked more like they were patients in some coma ward.

  General Marsh gestured for him to come back out of the room. “Those are plebes,” he told Tom in the hallway. “They’re running a group scrimmage. Before they get into advanced tactical training, plebes are drilled in teamwork exercises. They’re also acclimated to the neural processors in their brains interfacing with something other than their own bodies.”

  It took Tom a few seconds to comprehend the words: neural processors . . . in their brains . . .

  He stopped walking. “Wait, what?” He swung around to look at the two adults. “What do you mean, processors in their brains?”

  Neither Marsh nor Olivia reacted. It was as if they’d both expected this.

  Marsh said, “To become a trainee here, Mr. Raines, you have to have a neural processor installed in your head. It’s a very sophisticated computer that interacts directly with your brain. You’re still human afterward, just something extra as well.”

  Olivia’s hand squeezed his shoulder. Tom pulled away from it. “You didn’t say anything about—” he began.

  “What did you think, son?” General Marsh raised his thin eyebrows. “Our Combatants control machines, and they fight machines. You’ve got quick synapses yourself. But your brain isn’t machine fast. Not yet. Those kids in there? Their brains are.”

  Tom understood the zombielike stillness of those kids: the computers were inside their heads. The simulation they were using to train was
running inside the computers that were inside their brains.

  “All the trainees undergo the procedure, Tom. It’s safe.” Marsh’s eyes riveted to Tom’s forehead. “What you teenagers have in great supply—and we adults do not—is neural elasticity. Your brain’s adaptable. Adults and neural processors don’t go together. We tried it, and it turned ugly. Adult brains couldn’t adjust to the new hardware. So we use teenagers. By virtue of your youth, your brains are primed for enhancement. The fact is, you can’t control Indo-American combat machines in space if you can’t interface with them. To become a Combatant, you need to cross some of that distance between human and computer yourself.”

  Tom gaped at him. “So all of the trainees here—and all the ones with call signs on the news sites—they’ve got these neural processors? Even Elliot Ramirez has a computer in his brain?”

  “That’s right. Even Elliot has one.”

  “What about the Russo-Chinese Combatants?”

  “They have them, too. This is top secret information. The public doesn’t know this, but it’s the key to everything. This is how the war’s fought. Combatants use the neural processors to interface with the unmanned drones in space, to control them, and wage battle against the drones controlled by the neural processors of Russo-Chinese Combatants.”

  Tom looked back and forth between the general and the social worker. He remembered that expression on Olivia’s face a few minutes ago when Marsh talked about showing him the training room, and his thoughts dwelled upon it. She’d expected his reaction. They’d both expected it. This was the catch. And they’d just decided to ambush him with it.

  He found himself thinking of Neil and the way he said Elliot Ramirez wasn’t a real human. His dad had been right. Elliot was part computer.

  “Does it change people?” Tom wondered.

  “No,” General Marsh said.

  Olivia cleared her throat.

  “Somewhat,” Marsh amended. “But little changes. Undetectable to you. You’re still you in every important sense of the word. Your frontal lobe, your limbic system, your hippocampus are all intact . . .” At Tom’s blank look, he elaborated, “We don’t alter your thought process, emotions, or old memories. We don’t change the essence of who you are—that would be a human rights violation, after all. But once we install some hardware in your head, you’ll think faster. You’ll be one of the smartest human beings alive.”