Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 45

She laughed. "What I want isn't worth squit. You're in my section and I'm giving you 60 seconds recuperation time before I need you ready to use this." She thrust something into his hands. It was an SA-71 carbine. His carbine.

"Here's the sitrep. We beat off the rebel counterattacks, but it wasn't easy. We've lost half the cadets who dropped from the Yorktown. Cristina and Osman are both dead but, frankly, we've gotten off lightly. Gold Squad's down to about section strength."

A chill, p.r.i.c.kling sensation marched up Arun's spine. So many dead?

"Where are we now?" he asked.

"Don't interrupt. We think this is the main control room. We made a mess of the doors coming in, helped by some drills the monkeys were kind enough to leave for us in the bridgehead. Del tried hacking the computer systems but doesn't think that worked. Zug had a brainwave and found power cables running through a conduit in the roof. We cut them. The main lights went out. The power hum in all the machines running here died too."

But how do we know for certain that we've turned off power to the ma.s.s driver? Or the force shield protecting it?"

Madge hesitated. "We don't. We can't raise Force Alpha on WBNet - the monkeys are jamming us. So Brandt's ordered us to stay here. Make sure the monkeys don't sneak in and turn the power back on."

"Shouldn't we try to link up with Force Alpha? At least recce the ma.s.s driver?"

"Did G.o.d visit you in your dream and promote you to sergeant?"

"No, corporal."

"Then the lance sergeant still outranks you - thank the Fates... I think. And there's this tradition that means you kinda got to do what your superior says. Humor me. It's a Marine thing."

Madge turned away, adding: "One last thing. The base has set up pressure plugs, meaning any pressure loss is sealed automatically by a kind of gradual force field. So we can't repeat the trick of cutting a hole in a door and watch the poor vecks inside tripping over as their air rushes out. And now that we're back in an atmosphere, grenades and blast weapons - they're gonna hurt a whole lot more."

"Those pressure plugs," cut in Zug. "I've studied the theory. Playing with the laws of nature like that doesn't come cheap. Which means there must still be a lot of power running through this base. Power they could re-route to the ma.s.s driver."

"Thank you for the interruption," snapped Madge. "Makes me feel a whole lot better. I'll pa.s.s it on to the lance sergeant. You worry about keeping your eyes on the northern approach." She kicked Arun's feet. "You too. Recuperation time's over."

Arun tried standing up. There was a slight wobble, no more. There wasn't even any pain. In fact, he felt completely numb except for the tingling sensation of his gauntleted hands gripping his carbine.

Barney's medical summary explained that Arun had been stabilized just this side of death, patched up, and set running again. The reason Arun wasn't collapsing in a swoon was because, instead of using the battlesuit motors to amplify Arun's muscle movements, Barney was pretty much running the suit himself by guessing Arun's intentions. If he were outside of his battlesuit, Arun would probably be in a coma.

But at least he wasn't getting any worse. A near-coma would just have to do.

Arun was behind a huge equipment bank. He imagined it would normally be winking lights, heat and a power hum. Currently it was a cooling metal box. Even in the emergency lighting - putrid green bio-luminescence seeping out of the walls - the box looked pretty shot up by the cadet attack. With Barney's guesses helping to make up for the lack of illumination, Arun saw that he was in a 12 by 10 meter rectangular room filled with dead computer and power equipment and consoles.

There was a door to the north which had been fused shut and then cut through and peeled back from the outside. Must be where the cadets had drilled through. A mound of spent SA-71 sabot casings on the far side of the door told the story of what had transpired.

Corpses were piled up against one wall - human and the more numerous Hardits mixed together.

To the south, a second door was propped open leading out onto an approach corridor. The Gold Squad survivors were guarding that approach.

Arun's eyes dimmed, his breath quickened. He closed his eyes, felt like he was swaying but he knew Barney wouldn't let him fall. He didn't want to open them. Didn't want to see. Not yet; he was still too weak.

Hiding didn't help, though. He could remember what he'd seen in the tac-display clearly enough to count the Gold Squad dots. There were 8 survivors of the 31 who'd dropped from the Yorktown just 83 minutes ago. From Blue Squad, 21 had made it this far.

He wanted his heart to feel as numb as the rest of his body but he felt only aching loss... and Cristina had gone too.

A jumble of memories jostled to overwhelm him: happy times with Cristina, of arguments and impossible boasts he'd traded with Osman. He opened his eyes to escape, and tried again to take in his surroundings.

He was crouched alongside Madge and Springer behind the metal-skinned box. The alien writing and dead display screen set into the box told him nothing about its function or inner contents.

Behind a similar box next to them crouched Del, Zug and Umarov.

They were facing the northern corridor approach. They couldn't see it in visual because the boxes were in the way. They didn't need to. If anything came at them from north or south, every cadet would see it on their tac-display. Delta section would simply leap up, fire, and then drop back down behind cover.

Arun unsnagged his mind from speculating what might be transpiring around the ma.s.s driver and memories of fallen comrades. He settled his concentration instead onto the dots and wire-frame schematics of Barney's tac-display.

Seconds turned to minutes.

Nothing happened.

Like the training missions where he remained floating in s.p.a.ce, keeping watch on the void, once Arun had settled into the rhythm of observation, he could keep his concentration fixed for hours. He'd been bred for this, engineered.

So it came as something of a shock when his concentration was broken by someone rapping on his helmet with the barrel of an SA-71 carbine. It was Springer. Her faceplate blanked to transparency, an internal light in her helmet illuminating her features. She smiled. It was forced, but the affection warmed him.

He blanked his own visor, automatically lighting the inside of his own helmet. A little glare reflected off the inside of the visor.

Arun was struck by the look of concern that shone out of her eyes like violet jewels.

Springer pursed her lips and blew him a kiss from the inside of her helmet. With faceplates touching so that the sound wave could travel directly into his helmet, he could hear the sound as if from a great depth underwater.

"That was a vac-kiss," she breathed in a voice that Arun found teasingly steamy, but he recognized was the sound of Springer speaking from her heart despite the distortion of speaking faceplate-to-faceplate. "When we get back home," she continued, "I'll give you a real one."

"Then I'd better make sure I stay alive," said Arun, grinning.

"Be sure of it. No Marine left behind. They used to take that seriously, you know, those old Marines on Earth. Bryant might laugh at that, but I don't. I can't leave you behind, Arun."

A burst of warmth flooded through Arun, spreading out from his heart and into an uncontrollable grin that filled his face. He fantasized entwining his suit with Springer's. There was an annoyingly rational part of his brain that Arun wished he could turn off, but maybe one day would save his life. Right now it was reminding him that human hormonal responses were dangerously amplified by combat stress, a dangerous side-effect of their re-engineered physiology that would normally be overcome by the use of combat-stim drugs.

A harsh aural a.s.sault of white noise made Arun flinch. He brought his free hand to cover his ear. Of course, that made not the slightest difference to the noise attacking him through the speakers inside his helmet.

Arun gritted his teeth and hung on tightly to his sanity until the noise cut out as suddenly as it had hit him. It had lasted six seconds.

"Cut it out, you two," bellowed Majanita inside his helmet. "You're both on a charge. Brandt's seen you. If you two loved-up shunters let yourself be distracted a moment longer, I'll be on a charge too and you will be reported for dereliction of duty. What's wrong with you, Springer? I thought you were too smart to get yourself executed."

Arun and Springer both answered at the same time. "Sorry, corporal."

Even with his attention back on the corridor approach, Arun couldn't eject from his mind the fact that Springer was standing next to him. He imagined he could feel the warmth from her body. A body that if freed from their suits would fit perfectly pressed against his own. His arms would wrap around her, gently squashing her warm flesh against his. Arun's hand would stroke through her mess of auburn curls, moving slowly so as not to pull painfully at her hair, gently untangling. Then his hand would slide down to cup the underswell of her b.u.t.tock and press his fingertips into her yielding flesh.

He pushed those thoughts far enough away to realize that Majanita was right. His faulty body chemistry was going to get them both shot if he wasn't careful.

Arun let out a long breath and then ordered Barney to administer combat drugs.

He wasn't sure what they were doping the cadets with, but he couldn't shake off memories of the last time he'd been on stims. He'd ended up naked, his image plastered all over Detroit.

What would it do to him this time?

He didn't feel a thing as the meds went in, but then he felt a crust form over his heart. Fantasies of what might be were replaced with obsessively detailed observation of the here and now. l.u.s.ty romance evaporated away to leave indifference, which soured into hatred and finally the need to kill.

"Here we go again," he mumbled.

Combat drugs were unique to each individual. Really they were a c.o.c.ktail of psychostimulants and endocrine effectors blended to an individual's requirements and adjusted and tuned after each use, an exercise made more difficult when administered into a young body still changing through the natural hormones of adolescence.

He tried to hold onto the memory of Springer's kiss, the lilac glow from her beautiful mutant eyes. He could recall the images of Springer with full fidelity, but although he could remember the fact of her love and concern for him, the emotion behind those facts had now drifted far out of reach.

Human emotion had become alien to him.

He wanted to hate that loss but couldn't. All his hatred was aimed at the enemy.

Springer had always looked out for him, ever since that time when he'd stood up for her when they were both ten years old. When the leader of the most vicious girl gang of their year had asked Springer to join, her reply had been to fill the gang leader's bed with steaming porridge, just before bedtime. Springer's other friends had thought that hilarious when the news reached them, but not Arun. He tracked down his missing friend to a disused corridor where he found her surrounded by jeering gang members. Arun stepped in to protect Springer.

His presence made no difference. Both of them were beaten senseless.

When they'd awoken in neighboring infirmary beds, she smiled as best she could through cut and swollen lips and called Arun her hero. It was the first time he'd seen her violet eyes glow, a warmth that stirred his heart. But then she said something that still chilled him: "You cared. You came because you cared. No one else did. No one else could. Thank you for caring."

Even back then, loyalty to the Corps was firmly instilled in all novices. But caring for others was a weakness, and good Marines had no weaknesses. Emotions were being eroded from the human genestock of the Corps. As a little boy, his mother had warned him never to reveal that he cared. But Springer knew his secret.

Arun shut out the memories of Springer and locked them away next to times remembered with Cristina and Osman. He had no need for such weakness.

The drugs had released him of that burden Now all that mattered was killing the enemy.

And killing was good.

Without warning, Arun's tac-display vanished, leaving him staring out of a dumb visor of transparent polycarbide at the big block of cold metal in front of him. In the near-dark he could barely make out the edges of the equipment block.

He jumped up, carbine ready, but before he cleared the top of the equipment box, his visor display went completely white. Words appeared on top of the white.

+ TRAINING OVERRIDE ++.

+ DO NOT SHOOT! INCOMING MARINES ARE FRIENDLY ++.

Was this a trick?

If the rebels could subvert the cadets' suits, then sending messages would be simple. Speaking like a human would be tricky, but any AI could write a simple sentence in any language it knew.

"Hold your fire!" The command came from Brandt, or at least that's what Barney was telling him. Brandt added: "But keep your weapons trained in case this is a deception."

That's all very well for you to say, thought Arun, but how am I to train my weapon when I can't see out? Barney antic.i.p.ated his next thought and informed him that the air was mildly poisonous and would not be easy to breathe, but if Arun wished, the helmet lock could be released so he could take it off and see who was approaching with his naked eyes.

As he was considering whether that was wise, Brandt announced: "I have visual. It's the Yorktown Marines. It's Force Alpha."

Arun's faceplate lost its whiteness and his pulse calmed down. On tac-display he saw four new marines had joined LBNet. The double-halo of command had switched from Brandt to Ensign Thunderclaws, a Jotun name if ever he'd heard one. Thunderclaws was bounding toward them from the north like a swift six-legged dog, a creature Arun had seen many times in Earth recordings, though he'd never seen a dog in combat armor.

"I repeat, this is no trick," said Brandt. Frankly, thought Arun, if the rebels could fake a Jotun in a suit then they deserved to win.

"Sir, why did we lose Wide Battle Net?" asked Brandt The officer replied: "Our WBNet transmissions had to be bounced off the Yorktown and boosted in tight beams to punch through Hardit jamming."

Oh, s.h.i.t, thought Arun. That meant...

Brandt asked the question in Arun's head. "Is she lost, sir?"

"Negative," replied the Jotun. "Yorktown is evacuating key personnel from orbital platforms. She is merely out of range." The Jotun was speaking through a voicebox machine, sounding identical to Pedro. Arun wondered whether his friendly Trog was going to survive this rebellion, whether he would debate Arun's part in the operation with his usual alien weirdness. He was surprised to find that he looked forward to that talk.

Of course, there was the little matter of Arun surviving the day too.

Arun stood up and took a good look at the Marines coming his way.

There were three of them, in gray battlesuits, though their coloration could change in an instant. Unit insignia marked them as 9th field battalion, 412th Marines - Arun's regiment.

Two of them carried SA-71s, the third an HG-11c machine gun, which was essentially a heavy version of the SA-71 in railgun mode. Kinetic darts fired from the HG-11c reached greater muzzle velocity due to a greater electrical charge and a much longer barrel braced by a small flip-out bipod rest.

Arun counted four ammo belts slung over the machine gunner's shoulder, each holding scores of magazines, which were blocks of charged metal, pre-stressed to split along ballistic shapes a little like perforated paper. The ammo alone must weigh well over a hundred pounds. Sometimes Marine armor was used to turn humans into beasts of burden. Unglamorous yet effective.

The machine gunner was coming directly toward Arun. Or, more likely, to take over his position.

Arun stepped back a few paces to allow the machine gunner to select his or her position but the gunner immediately switched direction to come straight for him.

Arun froze.

"Are you Arun McEwan?" asked the Marine - a corporal according to suit markings - when they were standing toe-to-toe.

"Yes, corporal."

"Blank your visor and let me see your face."

Arun complied, standing at attention while this guy just stared at him.

Arun desperately wanted to query Barney's tac-display to ping this Marine's ID, but he couldn't do that with a blank display.

Then the Marine blanked his own faceplate. That was even worse. The Marine peered at him through bulging eyes tinted an artificial blue. The Marine's face was young - thirty perhaps? - and might have been considered handsome if not for the scar tissue that covered one cheek and cut across his nose and brow. Here was a marine who had taken a plasma blast to the face and survived.

You didn't get to be a G-2 Marine cadet without knowing how to deal with older kids throwing their weight around. The first rule was to avoid being seen as weak. Then, if you get picked upon anyway, you took it on the chin and waited for payback until you're older.

This guy had probably picked on Arun at random. Singling him out to make an example to the other cadets to remind them who was in charge. But then, why bother? The Marine's eyes stared into s.p.a.ce for a moment, as if recalling a precious memory. His face crumpled a little and his lips moved, preparing to say something laden with emotion.

Just before the man could speak, Springer beat him to it. She had checked her tac-display on Arun's behalf.