Sentenced to War

by J. N. Chaney

The sergeant gave a slight nod of approval, and Rev said, “Wait, that can’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve never been taught that.”

  The sergeant merely shrugged and asked for the ECR of a 94mm HE mortar. Rev didn’t know what an ECR was, but he said, “Fifteen meters.”

  For the next five minutes or so, the sergeant asked him a series of rapid-fire questions, none that seemed connected to the previous one. Rev answered as fast as he could with whatever popped into his mind, and the more he answered, the more he was sure that he was getting at least some of them correct. All he could assume was that he’d overheard the answers over the last few weeks and just didn’t remember it.

  The questions came to an end, and Rev had to ask. “Did I get any of those right?”

  The sergeant looked at his pad, then said, “Fifteen out of twenty-two.”

  Rev was flabbergasted. That was impossible. Sure, he might have lucked out on a couple, but fifteen?”

  Before he had a chance to ask what was going on, the sergeant opened the case to reveal an M-49 Assault Rifle. The weapon was ubiquitous in the Union military, and Rev was relieved to see something he recognized.

  “Disassemble it,” the sergeant told him.

  The relief he’d felt fled his body. Of course, he knew what the weapon was. But to disassemble it? He’d never even touched one before.

  The sergeant tilted his head at the weapon, his hands folded in front of him. He wasn’t going to give him any help.

  Hesitantly, Rev reached out and pulled the weapon toward him. He rotated it in front of his face as if a set of instructions might be printed on it.

  No such luck.

  He turned it over again, and almost by accident, his thumb pressed a small button. A fuel cell dropped from it, then it bounced on the table and off onto the floor.

  “Sorry about that, Sergeant,” Rev said, reaching down to retrieve the wayward fuel cell.

  As if his right hand had a mind of its own, it reached forward and pulled at a release along the barrel. It was balky, and it took a few tries, but it finally pulled free, and the barrel loosened.

  Now what?

  He twisted the barrel, but it tightened. He twisted it back the other way, and it came free in his hand. Rev quickly looked up at the sergeant, afraid he’d done something wrong, but the NCO’s face was a passive mask. He gently laid it on the table, taking care not to bang the mag-rings that ran down its length.

  “SPG,” Rev quietly muttered.

  But what was an SPG? He turned the stock and receiver and looked at the bottom. There, where it would have been held in place by the base of the barrel, was a small, black rectangle, contact points revealed. He pulled up on the end and pivoted it toward where the barrel had been, and that freed something inside. He slid it out slowly. There were contact points on the other side of the rectangle as well.

  “Short Pulse Generator,” he told the sergeant before putting it down.

  How the hell do I know that?

  It wasn’t quick, but with a few misses, he worked his way through the process, never knowing what the next step was until he faced it. Almost four minutes after he started, the M-49 was in pieces on the table in front of him. Sergeant Mysoki stared at him silently for a moment, then reached for one of the parts. The term actuator came to Rev’s mind. The sergeant twisted it as if opening a jar, and it came apart into two pieces. He laid them back down at the table.

  “Did I do OK?” Rev asked.

  “Not bad, Recruit Pelletier.”

  The sergeant picked up the trigger assembly, and with quick, sure movements, he started assembling the weapon. Rev watched, sure of each move as the sergeant made them. Less than twenty seconds after he started, the weapon was assembled, and he put it back in the case.

  Rev didn’t know where his knowledge came from, and it wasn’t as if he even knew what he knew, if he could put it that way. It was just that when the question came up, the answer was there, or when he had to disassemble the M-49, he had the steps down.

  There was only one thing that made sense, but he wanted confirmation.

  “Sergeant Wysoki, how did I know fifteen of the answers when no one taught me them?”

  The sergeant closed the weapons case and pursed his lips. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “I’d like you to tell me, Sergeant, so I can—I’d just like to hear it. Please.”

  The sergeant checked his pad, then said, “You passed, so you’re going to get briefed by the CO, but I guess it won’t hurt to confirm what you suspect. Your upload was successful.”

  “Upload.” Rev had been told that by two of the techs, but it hadn’t registered.

  The direct upload of knowledge was not the same as genmodding or augmenting. It was merely the transfer of knowledge. After the disaster of the Deimers, who ended up being more android than human, it was technically illegal, although not a major area of concern. Uploads were available on the black market, where they were a favorite of students, but as the input went into short-term memory, its effects were temporary. And the side effects could be unpleasant to downright painful, like an acute migraine.

  Rev was speaking from experience. He’d paid for it twice to get through tests, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Whatever knowledge about Old Earth history or trigonometry he’d gained had long disappeared.

  Evidently, the military had improved upon the process. Rev felt fine, and while he couldn’t tell what knowledge had been uploaded into him, it felt permanent, was the best way he could describe it.

  Except . . .

  “How come it took me forever to disassemble the M49 if I know how now?”

  “The knowledge is in there,” the sergeant said, reaching over to tap on Rev’s forehead. “But the muscle memory, that has to be learned. That’s not automatic.”

  Which made sense. Coach Kirkpatrick had continually harped on training muscle memory, making them repeat the same drills over and over, telling them they needed to be able to react to the opposing flipball player without thinking it through.

  Where Rev was a little hesitant about augments and messing with his genes, this was something he understood. A way to get ahead that bypassed hours and hours on his pad studying.

  This is going to be easier than I thought.

  “So, I’m ready to be a Marine now? I’ve got all the knowledge already?”

  “Not hardly,” the sergeant said with a barking laugh. “This was just a proof of concept, to see if you were susceptible to the process. If you weren’t, the civilian bosses wouldn’t want you out there with the other leeches with whatever knowledge you did retain. No, you got what was essentially MCM-1002, The Marine Basic Rifleman. Simple stuff. You’ve got a shitload more to learn, and you’ll get that uploaded after you get your battle buddy.”

  Battle buddy?

  Whatever that was, it wasn’t part of what he’d already had uploaded.

  “What’s a—”

  “Look, recruit. I don’t have time to sit here with you.” He pointed to the bud in his left ear. “I’ve got another of you ready to test. The CO will brief you tomorrow, so just hang tight until one of your DIs comes and gets you.”

  And with that, he was out the door and gone.

  Rev had a million questions, and while he had no idea what a battle buddy was, the words themselves made him apprehensive. He wanted more answers, and he wanted them now.

  At least he thought he did. There was a very good possibility that he wasn’t going to like what he learned at all.

  8

  “Why do we call them Centaurs? They don’t look like them,” Yancey asked.

  “What are you talking about?” Rev asked.

  “Up there. The Centaur. The tin-ass. It doesn’t look like a Centaur. I mean, if I squint hard, maybe, but barely.”

  He pointed to the life-size model at the back of the stage. The Centaur paladin stood three meters tall, an impressive hunk of mech. Unlike a Marine mech, i
t didn’t have two legs and two arms. The paladin’s base was its largest part, where sixteen centipede-like legs moved it over the ground. The upper body was where the Centaur had its bite: any of a half-dozen weapons systems.

  “We don’t call them Centaurs because they look like one, you dipshit. It’s because we think they come from the Scutum-Centaurus Arm of the galaxy,” Rev said.

  “The what?”

  “For fu—look, Yancey. Like Safe Harbor is in the Perseus Arm. Scutum-Centaurus is on the other side, past the galactic core. You guys all know where it is, right?” Rev asked the others.

  Tomiko just rolled her eyes.

  Yancey shrugged. “Don’t need to know where the hell they come from in order to kill them.”

  Rev opened his mouth to argue, but he realized that Yancey was right. Even the xenobiologists didn’t know for sure where the Centaurs came from. The Scutum-Centaurus Arm had been the initial theory after that disastrous first contact, and the name had stuck, at least in the lexicon.

  The official name was Scutum-Centaursians, but in almost all cases, it was just Centaurs. Marines, being Marines, often put fuck in their name, as in “fucking Centaurs,” they mostly called them tin-asses.

  He wasn’t going to let Yancey off the hook, though. The guy needed to be aware of the details—Rev could sense that not caring enough would get them good and dead.

  Whatever he was going to say, however, was cut off when the door into the auditorium crashed open and ninety-three heads swiveled around to see who it was. A sergeant major Rev had never seen before strode in and stepped to the side as if waiting.

  The recruits looked around, wondering what to do. While they sat straighter in their seats to the right side of the room, neither the senior nor any of the junior DIs otherwise reacted.

  Rev stared at the sergeant major. He knew what the rank was, thanks to his upload, but this was the first time he’d actually seen a Marine of such an exalted rank. With a chest full of ribbons, the man looked hard, all the more so with two silver arms peeking out from under his sleeves.

  Which seemed to be the standard here. From appearances, most of the cadre were damaged goods, and they seemed to show their prosthetics off as badges of honor. Rev thought that was weird. Why try to look like a machine when any hospital could either regrow what was lost or at least give more natural-looking prosthetics?

  The sergeant major came to a position of attention and bellowed, “Class DC-3080, attention on deck!”

  Recruits and DIs jumped out of their seats, eyes locked forward. Rev could hear footsteps, but he had to wait until the entourage, led by God himself, passed him before he could see.

  The sergeant major followed the colonel, who was then followed by four more officers. The colonel and the sergeant major walked up on the stage while the four other officers took their seats in the front row.

  The colonel stepped up to the center of the stage and looked out over the assembled recruits. Rev blanched. The left side of the colonel’s face was silver, the same silver-colored material of the arms and legs of other wounded Marines. But it wasn’t the Phantom of the Opera look that dominated. Even sitting in the second row, Rev could clearly see that the colonel’s eyes were artificial. Instead of pupils, he had the anchor and crossed swords that made up the Marine Corps emblem.

  “Recruits of Class DC-3080, I am Colonel Destafney, the Fifth Recruit Training Regiment commanding officer. I’d like to welcome you to Phase Three, the real start of your training.”

  For someone who looked like a full-on android with messed-up eyes, his voice was surprisingly nondescript.

  “I realize that you have been kept in the dark about your futures, and I apologize for that. But before you entered Phase Three, we had to ensure that each of you was qualified to advance. Many of your original number did not. Some because of a lack of will, some because of physical limitations, and more simply because of their bodies’ inability to accept the augmentations necessary for you to perform your duties as DC Marines.”

  There was an outbreak of murmuring, and the sergeant major had to shout out, “At ease, recruits.”

  The colonel waited for the room to quiet. “Yes, augmentations. Organic and synthetic. One thing you need to realize is that the Scutum-Centaursians are a deadly enemy.” He stopped to turn and point to the model behind him. “Look at that thing. Our very survival as a species is at stake. Forget what you see on the news. The war isn’t going well, and we need to turn the tide.”

  There was a collective intake of breath.

  “But rest assured, we will turn the tide and send the demon spawn back to whatever cesspit corner of the galaxy from where they made the mistake of crawling out of their primeval muck. And if that means augmentations, genmods, or whatever, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Rev’s mind was racing trying to keep up. What the colonel was saying was illegal, and it was the bedrock of what kept the various nations of humanity in an uneasy truce.

  As if reading his mind, the colonel said, “What we are doing is not illegal. In conjunction with every other member of the Congress of Humanity, the Torinth Accords have been temporarily rescinded. As you can imagine, however, this is not something that is suitable for the general public, not since the Eunuch Regiments, the Deimers, and the Genesians. Those abominations were costly, tragic mistakes, and humanity rightfully banned those practices.”

  So, why us now? Rev wondered, his stomach a hollow pit.

  “But desperate times require desperate measures, and the science to create a Genesian Berserker was never lost. Just put on ice.”

  “Holy shit,” Yancey said. “They’re going to make us berserkers?”

  Rev was speechless. The four-meter-tall berserkers were the things of nightmares, the creatures that united the rest of mankind to stop the genetic arms race once and for all.

  But evidently, not for all.

  “We’ve refined the science. You will not become monsters. Just better versions of yourselves.”

  He stopped speaking, then tilted his head toward the back row. “Recruit Talamage, take out your Status of Forces card.”

  Orpheus hesitantly reached into his breast pocket and removed the small card each of them had been issued when they were sworn in as recruits. They were to carry the cards, which delineated their legal status and duties as a member of the Marine Corps.

  “I want you to pick a word on the card, then hold it up, facing me, and point to that one word.”

  Orpheus gave the senior DI, still sitting at the right side of the room, a quick glance, but he pointed to a spot on the card and held it up.

  “The word is ‘remand.’ Am I right?”

  Orpheus looked at the card again, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Whoa,” Yancey muttered.

  Rev wondered if there was a trick to it. If not, then the colonel’s eyesight was something amazing.

  “None of you recruits can do that. And neither could I until two years ago after I lost half of my face to a Scutum-Centaursians counter-attack. I received biosynth eyes, which, quite frankly, are far better than my old organics. We used to think the Mark-1 eyeball was the best. We were wrong, and I’m living proof of that.”

  This wasn’t exactly new tech. New eyes could be grown, but using biosynths was not a rare occurrence. Of course, civilian biosynth eyes didn’t come with the Marine Corps Anchor and Swords, and none, to Rev’s knowledge, could read such tiny print from so far away. They were designed to mimic normal human vision, not give humans eagle eyes.

  “None of you will be getting my eyes, so don’t bother asking,” Destafney said, a thin smile curling over half his mouth. If he was waiting for laughter, it was wasted time. The recruits were too stunned to make a sound.

  He plunged ahead, unfettered by their shock. “But you will be getting augmentations that will transform you into the warriors we need if humanity is going to survive. Most Marines will be getting some degree of augmentations, even if it is just t
heir jack. But for you in Direct Combat, some of your augmentations will be . . . well, let me be blunt here. They will be extreme. They’ll fundamentally change what you can do, and for some of your DC designators, the training necessary to master them may not be pleasant.”

  There was a low murmur from the assembled recruits that the colonel ignored.

  “But rest assured of two things. First, you will not be changed. You’ll be the same person you always were. Second, whatever modifications are made to you are with one goal in mind, and one goal only: to allow you to take on the Scutum-Centaursians and defeat them. If it isn’t necessary, it won’t be done.”

  He paused a moment to let that sink in.

  “Still, no matter how beneficial, no matter how vital to our survival, there are some in our societies who will decry your sacrifice. And that is why the secrecy. Until you completed Phase Two, you needed to be kept in the dark. Only those who make it to augmentation have the need to know. We can’t let the extent of your augmentations become general knowledge. It will happen at some point, but the longer we put it off, the better chance we have to prove that it is needed. I stand here before you in awe. You will be the tip of the spear. By Saint Chesty, you will be what stands between our very existence and our destruction. I am honored.”

  The colonel came to a position of attention for a few moments, then said, “Captain Aloiose, carry out the remainder of the training schedule.”

  “Attention on deck!” the sergeant major shouted, and every recruit and DI jumped to attention as the colonel, followed by the sergeant major, walked out of the auditorium.

  “Who’s Saint Chesty?” Yancey asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  Some of the DIs like to bring this St. Chesty into their conversations, but Rev had no idea who that was, so he didn’t answer.

  “At ease,” the captain said the moment the door closed behind the CO. She walked up to the stage. “Take your seats.”

  Rev knew the name of their recruit company commander, but this was the first time he’d seen her. Unlike the regimental CO, she didn’t look like she’d been wounded in combat.