by J. N. Chaney
“Recruits, you’ve got a full couple of days in front of you, so buckle down and train hard. Gunny Gerund will be downloading the schedule, but it will be up to each of you to be where you are supposed to be and when. If you have questions, ask them. Your DIs are here to help. I want to remind you that every day you aren’t in the fleet is one more day that the Centaurs can take more territory from us, killing as they come,” she said. “I know that the burning question for each of you is about your augmentation suites.”
Rev wasn’t the only person to sit up straighter, full attention laser-focused on the captain.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can tell you at the moment. Each of your specific suites is being manufactured as we speak. Your suite will depend on which DC specialty you’re assigned, and that assignment will have been based on your testing through Phase Two. I expect that we’ll start the implementation in another five or six days with your battle buddies.”
That’s the second time I’ve heard that term. What the hell’s a battle buddy? Rev wondered.
The CO and now the captain might be coming clean with them, but that didn’t mean Rev knew what was going on. He had no idea what augmentations he was going to get, and that worried him. The CO said they weren’t going to be monsters, but just what constituted a monster could be open to a lot of different interpretations. And now he knew that one thing he’d get was this battle buddy, but he didn’t know what that was.
Even after the brass told them what to expect, they all were still in the dark.
Rev grimaced. Just like they intended.
9
“Twenty-eight seconds. Again, recruit,” Staff Sergeant Moussari ordered.
On his belly in the mud, Rev resisted rolling his eyes in frustration. He’d cut down his time from almost two minutes, and he had to be getting close. But the sergeant, sitting in her hoverchair, kept pushing him.
He pulled the charge off the wall, zeroed it, removed the fuze, and put it back into his L-Pack.
“OK, I’m ready.”
Just concentrate and get her off your ass.
“On my mark . . . three . . . two . . . one!”
Rev shifted to his side and pulled the MM-901 out of his pack. The wall was cerrocrete, so he rotated the dial to Profile Four.
“Confirm profile, check power, set time, power fuze,” he muttered.
He didn’t need to repeat them. He’d known the process from the moment he’d been assigned the task. But he just couldn’t get his fingers to work quickly enough to implement the steps.
“There!” he muttered as the fuze winked green. He slapped it into the slot on the mine body, then gave it a hard twist to the right. Nothing. He gave it another twist, and this time, the two lights lined up, flashed twice, and turned off.
Rev thumbed the release, activating chameleon pads, then placed the mine on the wall and pushed it firmly before flipping the release lever back. This time, the mine stuck on the wall.
One last step. Don’t screw it up.
The fuze and the mine had a solid connection. All he had to do now was arm it. He ran his finger around the edge and carefully pushed the arming trigger. A single soft beep confirmed that the mine was ready, and if it was real, it would detonate in ten minutes.
Rev twisted in the mud to look back at the staff sergeant. Her face was expressionless as usual. It was as if the Centaur beamer that had vaporized half of her body, from her waist on down, had taken her personality as well.
Which wasn’t fair, he knew. According to Doc Jewel, one of the corpsmen in the field during all training, she didn’t have enough spine left for prosthetics. They had to grow it, which would take another year—a year of puttering around in her hoverchair testing recruits.
“Twenty-four seconds,” she said. “Report to Station Thirty-One.”
Which meant he passed, much to his relief. He pulled off the mine and stood, the mud making a squelching sound as he broke free from its embrace. He handed the dirty training mine to the staff sergeant.
“Don’t just stand there, recruit. Double-time.”
Rev could feel for the staff sergeant, but he didn’t have to like her. He broke into a jog down the path, only to meet Krissy jogging up.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“MM-901. Moussari’s running it.”
“Fucking great,” she said as she ran past him. Then she called over her shoulder, “Good luck with the next one, big boy.”
Rev snorted. At least Big boy was an improvement over young fellah. He’d barely had a chance to talk to her since the CO’s brief. Krissy wasn’t shy in telegraphing her interest in him—not that he’d act on anything while they were still recruits—but he couldn’t even just socialize with the last four days being jammed with training, almost around the clock. He suspected that was by design, to keep their minds off of their coming augmentations.
Rev wasn’t sure what he felt about them. He was a creature of his past, and he’d always been taught that augmentations were evil. But as the CO had said, desperate times called for desperate measures. And if this was the only way to defeat the activated chameleon pads—
Truth be told, he was more than willing to let the frenetic pace of training take up his thoughts. Better not to think of what was going to be done to him at all.
He rounded the path to Station Thirty-One and stopped dead in his tracks. There was a series of at least a dozen obstacles stretched out—obstacles that looked like he was going to need items from his combat kit to traverse. Four of his fellow DC recruits were at various obstacles as they struggled to get through them.
Rev watched for a moment, then with a sigh, headed to the portahead off to the side to empty his bladder.
This one was going to take him a while.
10
The bus pulled into a round driveway for what looked like a high-end mountain resort. Huge trees, probably planted during the first terraforming, surrounded the two-story building.
“Look, a Navy bus,” Tomiko said, pointing out the window.
Rev leaned over her, and yes, a dark blue version of their bus, with Perseus Union Navy written on the side, was parked to the side.
“The skipper said the navigators and some of the other specialties have to get some of the same mods we’re getting.”
“But why here out in the mountains? And this place doesn’t look like a hospital.”
Rev shrugged, then said, “Probably to keep it quiet.”
“I still don’t see why all the secrecy. I mean, we heard the rumors before they told us.”
“And we didn’t believe them, did we?” Rev said.
He didn’t want to get into an argument with Tomiko. They’d been together since getting off that first bus, along with Cricket and Yancey, and that meant she was his oldest friend in the Corps.—and she was a safer seatmate than Krissy, at least until they were out of boot camp.
It was a reversal of roles, though, for the two of them. Tomiko was the gung-ho one, the one ready to kick Centaur butt, the hard ass who could outrun and outfight them all. Rev was the hesitant one. But after the colonel’s brief, she’d been the one to complain, to question, while Rev had come to accept their situation.
It wasn’t that he liked it. He was still apprehensive about the procedures. But his stepdad had always told him to accept what he couldn’t change, and this fit the bill. There was nothing he could do about his situation, so he might as well save his energy for what he could change.
They filed off the bus. Rev took several deep breaths of the clean, crisp air, then followed the others through the huge double doors into the main building.
I’m going in a human. What will I be when I come out?
The lobby was extravagant. This had either been a resort or maybe some sort of facility for the uber-rich, like a detox center, before the government had taken it over. An elegant table had been set up to the right as they entered, and they filed through where two pleasant aides welcomed them, then gave th
em bracelets to wear.
“Feel free to wander around, but don’t leave the building or main garden. Your bracelet will let you know when they’re ready for you.”
Rev waited for Tomiko, then the two wandered toward the back of the lobby to an atrium where several Navy recruits, in their dark blue singlets, were sitting in small groups in chairs along the side. But the focus of the room was a huge grand piano. With no empty seats, Rev and Tomiko headed to the piano bench.
“This is gorgeous,” Tomiko said, stroking the real wood, the grain so polished it seemed alive. “Bet it cost a couple years of our pay.”
“More than that,” Rev said as he sat down on the left side of the bench.
The badge read Mason-Hamlin, and Rev thought the piano had to be hundreds of years old.
Tomiko stroked the keys softly, then raised her right hand and played the melody of Where ‘Ere You Are, a love song that had been popular several years ago. The notes rang true and clear.
“I didn’t know you could play,” Rev said.
“Most of my life,” Tomiko said with a smile, then started to play the next stanza.
Rev brought his left hand into position, then slipped into the counterpoint. Tomiko’s eyes grew large in surprise, and she faltered for a moment, then settled her weight in her seat and started playing in earnest.
She was a better player than Rev, he realized, but he held his own as the two of them soared into the song, filling the atrium.
Where ere you are,
So will I be.
The darkest night, the farthest star,
You will always be a part of me.
Rev looked up where one of the sailors was approaching, her soprano as light as a bird in the higher registers.
My heart is true.
It beats for you.
Remember my touch as you ply through space,
Feel my love and remember my face.
At the end of her call, Fyr Dorcester, one of the Marine recruits, picked up the response as he strode forward, his baritone raspy, but in tune.
Back and forth, Fyr and the sailor, Rev and Tomiko, wove the tale of love being separated by events beyond their control.
Rev hadn’t played since he entered Secondary School, and never on a real piano, but it was like the Muse of Music had taken over his hands. As the two singers joined voices in the final stanza, where they pledged their undying love, Rev and Tomiko played the same notes a chord apart.
The piano held the sustain, slowly fading away, when applause broke out. The sailor blushed and gave a slight bow.
“And I didn’t know you could play, either,” Tomiko said.
“Three years. My mom made me learn.”
“Three years? Not bad, bro.”
And it wasn’t bad, he knew. He’d done OK. He felt flushed with pride. Ever since he’d arrived at Camp Nguyen, everything had been Marine this, Marine that. It was nice to forget that for a moment, to remember what it meant just to be human.
Recruits, both Navy and Marines started to gather, some shouting out songs to be played, when Rev’s bracelet vibrated.
“Do you know—” Tomiko started before Rev held up his wrist so she could see the small flashing light.
“Oh,” was all she said.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Rev stood up, and Tomiko said, “Catch you on the flip side, Rev.”
He located his door, and as he walked over to have his life changed, the notes of Tomiko’s next song followed him.
An hour or so later, after yet another full-body scan and a depilatory shower that removed every hair on his body, Rev was sitting in a hospital gown as a civilian in medgrays handed him a plastisheet.
“Mr. Pelletier, what you have now is a Form SC-3383, which lists what augments and mods you will receive over the next two days. You are receiving the Profile Six pack, and I’d like to go over them with you now.”
Finally.
Rev started scanning the list, trying to make sense of it.
From Captain Aloiose’s brief of the day before, he knew the augments were essentially broken down into three areas: mechanical, biosynth, and organic.
Mechanical were perhaps the easiest to understand. The jack he’d already received was mechanical, as would be the polyamerase support webs added around his joints and the plates around his skull. The medical nanos also fell into this category.
Biosynth were harder to classify or for Rev to understand. The colonel’s eyes were biosynth, partially organic and partially mechanical. In his case they used organic materials and synthetics to create a usable organe. For Rev, the only one he knew beforehand was his battle buddy, something he still didn’t quite understand. It was described as something like a personal search engine.
The organic modifications were simply a polite, non-alarmist term for what was genetic and biological modification, and that was what still gave Rev the heebie-jeebies.
His eyes went straight to Category Three, the organic mods.
The first one he saw took him aback. Among the numbers and scientific talk, the words woolly rhinoceros jumped out at him.
The civilian was listing some of the mechanical mods, but Rev interrupted him to ask him what that was.
The man looked over, saw the entry, and said, “Ah, that one’s new. We’re using recovered woolly rhino DNA to build up the PBM, the Peak Bone Mass, of the diaphysis in your skeletal system. That and the polyamerase webbing will make your bones stronger. You’re going to need that to support the other mods and resist fractures.”
Rev caught the stronger bones part, but woolly rhinos? The thought was creepy.
“Aren’t they extinct? I mean, like tens of thousands of years ago, in cave man times.”
“Well, yes. But they had the strongest mammalian bones ever discovered, and we found thousands of them over the centuries in the Russian Biological Preserves back on Mother Earth, frozen in time.”
“And you can just put their DNA into me?”
The tech looked surprised at the question. He gave Rev a strange look, then said, “This is old technology, Mr. Pelletier.”
“Am I getting any more animal DNA?”
“Well, not technically. We’re not just injecting animal DNA into you. We’ve modified DNA and RNA from various sources that you’ll get.”
“OK, then, what modified DNA from animals will I get?”
“Well, if you want some, look at Number Forty-Three in this section. That’s modified pigeon DNA in your hippocampus, so you’ll be able to navigate on any planet with a magnetic field. Number . . . uh, yeah, there it is. Number Forty-Nine. That was developed from the bar-headed goose, which will make your lungs more efficient. Then if you look back at Number Thirty—"
This was making Rev queasy, so he held up his hand, palm out to stop him.
“I am required to go over each of your modifications with you,” the man said.
“Just say them. No need to go into their history.”
“Very well, if you want. Let’s go back up to . . . Number Six, I think was where we were. Number Six is AQT-419S, Amerase Tactile Enhancement. Number Seven is . . .”
The civilian went on, reading aloud from the list. Rev didn’t understand what most of the items were from the description, which sort of defeated the purpose of the tech reading them off, he thought. Some made sense right away, such as the mesh that would be placed under his skin, or the modification to his liver to increase the output of testosterone. Most of them, however, remained mysteries to him. The tech would probably explain each one, but at the moment, Rev just wanted to get this over with. He was more interested in what he’d be in the end, not a laundry list of items.
“Do you have any questions?”
Lots of them.
But he wasn’t going to ask for a clarification on all of the eighty-two listed items.
“No.”
“Then I need you to confirm that you accept the list and the possible complications,” the tech said, holding out h
is copy of the plastisheet, the retinal scandot on the bottom.
“That I accept? I have a choice? What happens if I disagree with woolly rhino DNA being injected into me. I mean, they went extinct for a reason, right?”
“First, it won’t be injected, as you said. The vector will be modified adenoviruses that you’ll breathe in.”
Rev didn’t care how they were being administered, only that they would be inside of him.
“OK, breathe in. But if I don’t want rhino or pigeon DNA?”
The man actually blushed as he broke contact with Rev’s eyes. “Well, you really don’t have any choice. Your suite has already been compiled. We can’t take anything out.”
“Then why the hell did you even bother to tell me all of this shit if I don’t have a choice?” Rev barked, feeling his anger rise at the absurdity of a false choice.
“Legal reasons. This has to be voluntary.”
“But if I say no, it isn’t voluntary.”
“We like to say that if you’re being volunteered, then it is voluntary. Just not from you guys,” the man said with a half-assed smile.
Even he knew it was bullshit. And despite being a recruit for fewer than six weeks, Rev knew the game.
What was being done to them might be necessary, and the colonel might say it was legal, but if they ever managed to survive as a race, and any of the augmented Marines even lived through their enlistments, then there may be ramifications down the line. The powers that be were just covering their asses in the possibility that all of this might come to bite those asses in the future.
Like his stepdad said, don’t fight what you can’t change.
The guy had mentioned something about complications. Rev didn’t even bother asking about them. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. He sighed and grabbed the sheet, pulled it forward, and looked into the scandot, saying, “I accept this.”
With a relieved smile, the man put the sheet in a folder.
“Anything else? Any further questions?”
Rev glanced at his copy again, wishing he knew what each of the items were. He figured he understood about ten of them. The rhino bones, the eyesight, the . . .