by Ben Weaver
Brothers in Arms
Ben Weaver
For Robert, Eric, and Caitlin
and, of course,
Nancy, Lauren, and Kendall
Contents
Part 1
Brothers in Arms
1
The rope snapped,and I plunged toward the canyon floor,…
2
Dressed in fresh utilities and with eight minutes to spare…
3
The first day I arrived at South Point I had…
4
Sergeant Pope’s cries echoed off toward the mesas as I…
5
During the next week, we returned only once to Whore…
6
The next morning, just after first call, I asked Jarrett…
Part 2
Quantum Bonds
7
On cool summer nights, when the moons are full and…
8
Since two thirds of Third Battalion had been wiped out…
9
As we neared the same door we had used to…
10
After an hour’s travel through the tunnel, Ms. Brooks and I…
11
We neared the main gorge. Beauregard signaled a halt, then…
Part 3
The Fidelity of Dogs
12
The Exxo-Tally and Inte-Micro Corporations, largely responsible for most of…
13
The tawt had come on so quickly that if my…
14
“St. Andrew? Where are you, man? Can’t pick you up. I…
Part 4
The Walking Wounded
15
Our transport pilots initiated a tawt drop to Mars. We…
16
Halitov, Dina, and Lee had ascended dangerously close to the…
17
We never made it to Vallis Marineris. The pilots of…
Appendices
Appendix A
Chronology of Important Events in Galactic Expansion
Appendix B
The Seventeen Systems
Appendix C
Extrasolar Colonized Worlds as of Terran Year 2301
Appendix D
Chain of Command, South Point Academy, 70 Virginis Star System, Planet Exeter (established September 1, 2278)
Appendix E
South Point Academy Code
Appendix F
Appointment of Cadet Officers and Noncommissioned Officers at South Point Academy.
Appendix G
First-Year Cadet Weekday Schedule at South Point Academy
Appendix H
Mission of the Seventeen System Guard Corps
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Articles of the Code of Conduct of the
Seventeen System Guard Corps
(adopted from old United States
Marine Corps articles)
ARTICLE I
I will always remember that I am an Alliance citizen, fighting in the forces that preserve my world and our way of life. I have resigned to give my life in their defense.
ARTICLE II
I will never surrender of my own volition. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the will and/or means to resist.
ARTICLE III
If I am captured, I will continue to resist by any and all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
ARTICLE IV
If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to fellow Alliance citizens. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will uphold them in every way.
ARTICLE V
Should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, and willingly submit to retinal and DNA analysis. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability and will not submit to cerebral scans of any kind. I will make no oral, written, or electronic statements disloyal to the alliances or harmful to their cause.
ARTICLE VI
I will never forget that I am fighting for freedom, that I am responsible for my actions, and that I am dedicated to the principles that make my world free. I will trust in my god or gods and in the Terran Alliances forever.
PART 1
Brothers in Arms
1
The rope snapped, and I plunged toward the canyon floor, some three hundred meters below.
Later on, Squad Sergeant Judiah Pope would learn that my rope had been cut, but his investigation into the incident would prove futile. Problem was, everyone in the Eighty-first Squad wanted me dead. Everyone except Dina, who felt more pity than resentment toward me, and my older brother, Jarrett, who would rather I experience pain. A whole lot of pain.
Pope had us ascending and rappelling a wall of mottled strata that South Point’s first cadet corps had dubbed “Whore Face” since she offered so many good hand-and footholds. The sergeant had, in all of his oratory splendor, told us, “You fuckin’ first years ain’t gonna get the luxury of no combat skins yet. You’re gonna climb this face with ropes, then you’re gonna come down this face with ropes. No super-hero bullshit. Now I wanna hear you call out. On belay? On! Ready to climb? Ready! Don’t let me see you screwin’ up.”
My father, a soft-spoken mineralogist who worked for the Inte-Micro Corporation, had always told me that only the ignorant resorted to profanity. I had never heard more swearing than I had during the end of my first year at the academy, even though most of the second, third, and fourth years I had met seemed pretty bright, and right there in the South Point Academy Code—a code none of us would dare break at the risk of immediate dismissal—was the admonishment to be at all times polite and courteous in our deportment, bearing, and speech. During my second day on Exeter, the rocky moon on which the ancient Racinians had chosen to build their facilities and on which Generals Ky-Tay and Jotanik of the Seventeen System Guard Corps had chosen to build South Point Academy, Pvt. Joey Haltiwanger had told me that the cadre was nervous over the mounting political tension between the colonies and the alliances. That’s why everyone remained so intense, and that intensity grew even more fierce as we struggled to finish our first year’s training and get onto the Order of Merit list for promotion.
While that may have been true for some, Pope belonged to a camp all his own. The twenty-year-old second year stood a quarter meter shorter than most of us, had skin like singed rubber, and had a gap so large between his bottom front teeth that you swore someone had knocked out a tooth. For a long time I considered him no more than a disgusting little man, a military cliché overcompensating for the curses nature had wrought upon him.
So I was falling, watching the rope drop away from me, feeling the wind rush over my face and flutter through my black training utilities as though it wanted to morph them into a parachute. And there, down below, stood Pope, a diminutive grim reaper, scowling, pointing a finger at me, and though I couldn’t hear him, I knew he swore at me. I gaped at him, my eyes burning, and thought of breaking orders and activating my skin to save myself. Finally, he hit me with the CZX Forty, and I came to a slow stop about a meter off the dusty ground.
For a little while there, I hadn’t been sure if Pope would save me. The day before, my poor time on the confidence course put my squad in third place during the platoon competition.
“What’re you doing, St. Andrew?” Pope asked, still aiming the CZX Forty’s big barrel at me. He thumbed a button on the antigrav rifle’s st
ock panel. I dropped to the dirt, tripped, and fell to my knees. His boot suddenly connected with my jaw, and I slammed onto my back. Exeter’s pale blue sky scrolled by and got me dizzy. The majority of the cadets training on Exeter had been raised above ground, but people like my brother and I who had spent most of our lives in the mines of Gatewood-Callista still had trouble adjusting to all that real, nonsimulated space overhead and had developed mild or even severe cases of agoraphobia that kept the academy’s shrinks busy. Sure, Jarrett and I had been to the surface and had seen the heavens, but only on rare occasions, given the cost of renting an environment suit. My father had bought me a trip up for my eighteenth birthday, hopefully my last celebrated on that godforsaken satellite, and I had reveled in the night sky and had dreamed of coming to Exeter and becoming an officer in the Seventeen System Guard Corps so that I could, like so many other eighteen-year-old colos, shed my second-class roots.
As I rubbed my smarting jaw, I realized that all of my dreams had come terribly true.
“Get your ass up!”
Spoken like a true leader. “Sir, yes, sir!” I cried.
By the time I got to my feet, nine young men and women about my age had surrounded me and were staring at the dust-covered pariah before them.
Pvt. Rooslin Halitov, also a native of Gatewood-Callista, jabbed me with a stubby index finger, then turned up the blue flame in his eyes. “Don’t know about the rest of you,” he began, stealing a glance over his shoulder, “but I’m tired of carrying this gennyboy. I say he dusts out right here, right now.” Halitov gritted his teeth, which made his blocky face seem all the more hatchet-shaped and drew out the veins in his tree trunk of a neck. He poked me again, then traced his finger along the two-inch, cross-shaped birthmark on my cheek. And that’s when I grabbed his wrist.
And Staff Sergeant Claudia Rodriguez grabbed mine. The tall, humorless woman had the grip of a shraxi, and I was one to know since I had once inadvertently run into two of those nocturnal little bastards on my way back to First Year Barracks. Luckily, Jarrett had been with me and had pried them off before they had sunk their teeth into my arm.
“Squad Sergeant?” Rodriguez called.
“I’ll take it from here, ma’am,” Pope said.
“Very well.” Rodriguez released my wrist as I freed Halitov’s. She spun on her heel and headed back for the shade of the Eighty-first’s Mobile Training Command Center, not much more than a small pup tent from where she monitored the squad’s progress via her tactical computer. She could view us via three-dimensional simulacrum, old-style flat screen projection, or even a direct interface, were we wearing cerebros. I could always feel the heat of her electronic gaze on my neck. And sometimes I wish I had been nicer to her, but I couldn’t have known then that I would watch her scream and clutch her spilling intestines before she collapsed to her death.
“The exercise is over,” Pope said, holding the end of my rope. “This break is clean. Looks like someone gave Mr. St. Andrew a little help getting down. You know who you are. And so will I. Now we’re going to hump back. Last mess formation at twenty-two thirty. Evening study period is cancelled.”
A collective groan rose through the squad since in the morning we had major exams in astrophysics, composition, and colonial history. Never mind the fact that Exeter’s twenty-eight-hour days taxed the hell out of us and we generally slept through our classes with our eyes open.
“We’ll be back out here at twenty-seven hundred,” Pope added. “And we’ll do it again, in the dark. I don’t give a shit how much you’re draggin’. Police up your gear and move out.”
“Can he do this?” someone muttered.
Halitov snorted. “Why don’t you ask him?” Then he looked at me and just nodded, as though confirming to himself that yes, he would find a way to dust out the gennyboy. He squeezed my birthmark, twisted the skin, then wrenched himself away.
I stood there, rubbing my sore face and damning to hell my ancestors who had damned me. Back in 2144, Jeffery St. Andrew, his wife, and their five sons had been members of the original forty thousand to settle on Kennedy-Centauri, humanity’s first extrasolar colony. With the sponsorship of NASA, Coca-Cola, Inte-Micro, and the old People’s Republic of China, great-great-grandfather Jeffery and his family had mined iron ore, copper, and feldspar, and in doing so had contracted a new airborne disease called epineuropathy. The disease caused a rapid though ultimately treatable gene mutation that resulted in seizures not unlike those associated with grand mal epilepsy. It also affected a gene dubbed TIE-2, which codes for a receptor on cells that line the insides of blood vessels, and the malfunctioning receptor resulted in birthmarks. Similar to the old port-wine stains but created by microscopic parasites of an unknown origin, parasites that affect vein growth and strength, the marks cannot be removed without severely scarring the patient—laser surgery or no. Irony was, the marks themselves produced scars that ran much deeper than the skin because they branded you as a colonist, a second-rate citizen with bad genes. And you couldn’t do much about hiding a mark on your face. Flesh-colored creams always rubbed off. I’ve learned to live with my mark, even embrace it, but back then I wanted nothing more than to rip it from my face. I sometimes thought that my handicap was the reason my mother left us when I was just three. My father still refuses to talk about it, and for years I blamed myself. I imagined that she couldn’t handle a child with a mark, that every time she had looked at me, it had been with pity and disgust. The fact that my brother lacked any trace of defect only heightened my guilt and jealousy.
“You all right, Scott?” Jarrett asked with disgust.
I stiffened. “Just go.”
It was bad enough that someone had had the bright idea of assigning both of us to Third Battalion, Kilo Company, Twenty-seventh Platoon. But couldn’t the brass have found another squad for my brother? Or had they figured me for a liability who needed a keeper? I would never learn the truth. Official policy dictated that you were assigned to a unit and would remain there until either promotion, dust out, or death. Decisions of unit organization were made by the administration. Most requests for transfer were denied unless you had a seriously good reason; even then the staff would do everything they could to keep you where you were. They did not want to second-guess themselves.
Pope crossed in front of us. “You better watch your brother’s ass,” he told Jarrett. “If you don’t, in the next couple of days I guarantee he’ll IDO.” Translation: Involuntary Dust Out. Pope faced me, and as usual I averted my gaze so I wouldn’t have to watch him stare at my birthmark. “Mr. St. Andrew, they’ll come for you in the night. I’m you, I don’t sleep.”
“Sir, I’m trying my best, sir.” I sounded like a pathetic fool. Why was I wasting my time and the alliances’ money trying to become an officer? Why couldn’t I just accept who I was, genetic flaws and all?
Because I knew exactly what my life would be if I remained on Gatewood-Callista. I would marry some poor slob woman, bang out a couple of kids (who would, in turn, become middle-class workers like me because that was all you could get on a colony), and I would probably die painfully, in debt, and not by natural causes. Numox poisoning killed more people on my world than anything else. The stuff was layered through the rock, and you had to protect yourself from it as though it were plutonium. Exposure for just a few seconds would kill you within a day.
I had just wanted to escape. My father had wholeheartedly supported my decision, and I had even scored higher on the entrance exams than my brother.
“Sir, permission to speak candidly?” Jarrett asked.
Pope’s god-ugly face spilt in a crooked grin. “Speak.”
Jarrett raked fingers through his reddish brown crew cut, drew in a deep breath, then raised his shoulders. “Sergeant, this is bullshit. You’re standing there and telling me that someone tried to kill my brother, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it?”
“Trust me. Fourth years are investigating. But we should talk in private,” Pope
rasped. He turned a menacing stare on me. “You. Go.”
I snapped off a salute, gathered my gear, and jogged away. I felt very afraid for my brother.
Some of the first years like myself often joked about how Generals Ky-Tay and Jotanik lacked originality and had blatantly ripped off the traditions of other military academies to create South Point. But once I had read up on the institution’s brief, highly classified history, I discovered that the generals had had every intention of employing traditional models, which, in their estimation, simply worked. They had begun their work in 2278, just twenty-three years prior, had given the establishment a familiar name reminiscent of the old United States’ West Point Military Academy, and had embraced the conventions of a cadet code, prayer, and medallion. All fifteen hundred of us had been organized into an officer’s training regiment comprised of four battalions, sixteen companies, forty-eight platoons, and one hundred and forty-four squads.
But despite the generals’ intentions to make the academy rest on the foundations of yore, South Point still lay seventy-eight light-years from Earth and stood on a moon orbiting 70 Virginis b, a gas giant over six times the size of Jupiter. Thankfully, Exeter’s magnetic field shielded it from 70 Virginis b’s tidal forces and intense radiation. Eight hundred thousand years ago, the moon had had a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and a gravity of .758 Earth standard; now it inexplicably maintained a breathable atmosphere and near-Earth gravity, much like the colonies of Aire-Wu, Epsilon Eri III, and Rexi-Calhoon. Some theories held that the Racinians breathed an atmosphere and preferred gravity similar to ours and had terraformed Exeter and the other worlds. Nothing in the aliens’ technology had thus far proven those theories, and most experts agreed that they had left our galaxy about fifty million years before we discovered their existence.