Star Corps (13 page)

“Madam President,” Voekel said, “surely we can't base our policy—our military policy—on a world eight light-years away, on the antics of a few damned malcontents!”

“General, those ‘few damned malcontents,' as you call them, pull a hell of a lot of political weight. You know how unsettled things have been all over the world since the discovery of human slaves on Ishtar. If we back out now, if we abandon the relief mission, we could conceivably find ourselves facing civil unrest at home
and
a shooting war with the rest of the Federation. I will not be the President who signs that order!”

The men and women gathered at the table were silent for a moment. General Haslett finally spoke. “General Colby?
You've said nothing so far. They're
your
Marines. What do you think?”

General Anton Colby, Commandant of the U.S. Marines, shook his head gravely. “The Marines go where they're told to, General. For the record, I am opposed completely to abandoning our people on Ishtar, but you all knew that already.” There were a few subdued chuckles from around the table.

“With the situation on Ishtar,” Colby continued, “we are faced with a strategic problem unlike anything we have faced before. As General Voekel pointed out, the battlefield is so far away that the tactical situation is likely to have changed beyond recognition by the time our boys and girls get there. The length of the deployment is such that we will need to use a specially derived and trained unit, one without close family ties to home. By the time they return to Earth, everyone they know will have aged twenty years at least, while they will have aged only months…depending on the rho-delta-tau and the efficiency of the onboard hibertechnic equipment.

“Gentlemen…ladies…Madam President…there is an old saying in the Corps, one dating from the first half of the twentieth century. ‘Send in the Marines.' That saying was a reflection of the Corps' flexibility and hitting power in situations where it just didn't pay to declare war and send in the entire army, but where military might or the threat of an all-out war was necessary to achieve the President's goals, whatever they might be.

“The Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Unit will have the training and the hardware necessary to rescue our mission in the Llalande system. If we're too late for a rescue, well, they can secure our property there, show the folks back home that we at least goddamn tried, and if necessary send a message to the Ahannu that humans don't take kindly to being pushed around.

“I would like to add that some eighty of the people on
Ishtar are Marines serving with the Terran research mission there. The Corps does not forget its own. If the decision is made to abandon those brave men and women out there, then I am prepared to immediately tender my resignation as Commandant of the Marine Corps. A number of my staff and other senior Corps officers are prepared to take the same steps. That, Madam President, is all I have to say at this time.”

“Well spoken,” Billingsworth said. “Madam President, I must agree with General Colby. Operation Spirit of Humankind must go on, whatever the cost in dollars or lives. We lose too much if we let the Ahannu scare us off.”

“This council is not a democracy,” the President said, her voice cold. “There will be no vote. The decision rests entirely with me.”

“Ah, and with Congress, Madam President,” the Secretary of Human Affairs said. “We can't forget Congress. They're paying the bill, after all, and have the responsibility to declare war.”

“You needn't remind me, Tom,” she told him. “And you needn't worry. Congress will declare war when I ask them to. They're the ones whipping up all of these anti-An resolutions lately, remember. It's good political capital for the folks back home.”

“An interesting public relations problem there, Madam President,” Haslett said. “We declare war, but it will be ten years before our strike force reaches the target. Do you think Congress, or the public, will still be interested in fighting this war in 2148? A decade is a long time in politics and in the public's memory.”

“Frankly, General Haslett,” the President said, “that will be my successor's problem, not mine.” She chuckled. “I plan to win my second term in 'forty, retire with dignity in 'forty-four, and be safely ensconced as an elder statesperson teaching metapolitical law on the WorldNet by the time our people even get to the Llalande system.”

“But that also means, Madam President, that your succes
sor, or the next Congress, might not want to continue paying for a war that
we
started. Our troops could find themselves eight light-years from home with no hope of further reinforcements or supply.”

“Then the Joint Chiefs and the Federal Military Command will just have to see to it that we win with the one expeditionary force, won't they?”

Haslett nodded but felt deep reservations. This unexpected Ahannu god-weapon that could shoot starships from the Ishtaran sky…it was disturbing, even frightening. If the transport
Derna
was destroyed while the Marines were on the ground, they would have no way home, no matter what provisions Earthside Command made in advance. And Haslett was politician enough to know that the public wasn't likely to support
another
expensive mission to Llalande to rescue the first two, no matter how up in arms they were at the moment over the Ahannu's human slaves.

General Haslett glanced across the table at Colby and wondered what the Marine commandant was thinking.

The Mall
Washington, D.C., Earth
1840 hours ET

Secretary of State David Randolph Billingsworth rarely visited what he thought of as the tourist city. The special government service maglev subway generally whisked him straight from the underlevels of the White House–Executive Building complex to the station less than a block from his suburban Bethesda home, so his only glimpses of downtown Washington were through the odd window or on the big wallscreen in his office. The coded message that had come through on his cerebralink's priority comm channel had been as explicit as it had been terse, however. He'd checked a robot floater out of the Executive Office motor pool and
ridden six blocks to the Fourteenth Street entrance of the Mall Dome, right next to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

The Dome, actually a long, narrow ellipsoidal geodesic, stretched from the foot of Capitol Hill almost to the base of the Washington Monument, arching high above the historic Washington Mall. The largest freestanding geodesic in the world when it was built in 2069, it was widely praised as a modern wonder of the world…and equally vilified as a monumental eyesore in the City of Monuments.

Billingsworth had no feeling about it one way or another. It was possible for him to get anywhere within the government office warrens by maglev, from the Pentagon to the Capitol Building to Central Intelligence at Langley to the White House, so he never needed to go up on the surface and actually
see
the thing. But he had to admit it was rather pleasant…a cool escape from the heat and humidity of midsummer D.C., with late afternoon sunlight filtering through the transparencies to the west, from behind the slender dark spike of the Washington Monument.

He took a seat on a park bench next to a riot of forsythia. Tourists strolled or hurried past on the walkway or slid silently along on the glidepath. A naked couple snuggled on a blanket on a hillock nearby. A young woman—a congressional aide, perhaps—jogged past with a determined gait, her head completely enclosed in a sensory overlay helm, wearing nothing else but a sports bra and shoes. Near the Mall entryway, a gaggle of teenagers resplendent in iridescent Ahannu scale tattoos and shaven heads were passing out pro-An vidfliers to any who would take them.

No one seemed to recognize him, and that was good. He'd considered wearing an overlay helm himself…but that would have broadcast his ID out to anyone else with the requisite electronics and an unhealthy curiosity. Besides, people knew the President…but how many knew what the SecState looked like or even what his name was?

“Mr. Billingsworth?”

He turned. Allyn Buckner sat down on the other end of the bench and casually pretended to read a newsheet. He was wearing a conservative green and violet smartsuit and dark data visor.

“Buckner. Why'd you drag me out here?”

“Security, of course. I can't very well come to your office, or even your home, not without my presence being noted on a dozen e-logs. Nor could you visit me unnoticed. And hotel rooms, restaurants, and places like that all have so many electronics nowadays there's no way to guarantee a private conversation.”

Billingsworth took another long look at the people passing by. This hardly seemed
private
…and even an open park had more than its fair share of police surveillance floaters, security scanners, and even roving news pickups.

But Buckner had a point about other possible meeting places. Public establishments were entirely too public, while offices and government buildings were heavily wired for all manner of electronic communications and data access. He would have preferred to meet with the PanTerran VP in one of his own secure meeting rooms—there were ways to avoid the log-in and ID protocols—but this, he supposed, would have to do.

“Well?” Buckner asked with brusque matter-of-factness. He scanned a fast-moving live newsfeed of a religious riot in Bombay, then folded the sheet and dropped it on the bench. “Let's have it.”

Billingsworth sighed. “Operation Spirit of Humankind is still go,” he said. “Scheduled departure is four months from now…October fifteenth.”

“Give me the details.”

Billingsworth reached out and took Buckner's hand, shaking it as if in greeting, pressing the microelectronics embedded in the skin at the base of his thumb against similar nanocircuitry in the PanTerran officer's palm. The ultimate in secret handshakes, the transfer of files stored in the SecState's cerebralink to Buckner's files took only a few mil
liseconds, with no RF or microwave leakage that might be intercepted and monitored.

“Excellent.” Buckner seemed satisfied, in his acidic way. “My people were afraid that the government was going to backstep on this.”

“I don't understand why you need me to be your…your spy.”

“Not a spy, Mr. Billingsworth. Our
associate.
In twenty years, if all goes well, our very, very wealthy associate.”

“Twenty years…”

“Think of it as long-term investment. You'll be…what? Eighty-one? Eighty-two? Young enough to benefit from a complete rejuvenation program, if you wish. And still be rich enough to buy that Caribbean island you want to retire to.”

Billingsworth felt a sharp stab of alarm as a floater with the WorldNet News logo on its side drifted past, its glassy eye on the lookout for anything newsworthy. Humans might forget a face, but not a news bureau AI; he turned his head away, studying the foreplay antics of the couple on the hillock behind them. With a soft whine of maglifters, the flying eye drifted past, moving slowly toward the Fourteenth Street entrance.

“But I still don't understand what you need with these briefing records,” he said when the snoop-floater was out of range.

“They help us plan, Mr. Billingsworth. The government is notoriously unreliable when it comes to long range planning. You can never really count on anything past the next round of elections. When dealing with business opportunities light-years away, that can be a distinct disadvantage. With this,” he tapped the right side of his head, “we know we can proceed with certain plans, long range
expensive
plans, without risking the loss of our investment when the government waffles, or changes its mind, or decides to have a war. Besides, you need to do something to justify your shares in this venture, right?”

“I suppose so. But the scandal if this gets out—” he broke
off as another congressional jogger bounced past, oblivious and anonymous in his sensory helm. Next time, Billingsworth thought, he would definitely wear one of those, but with the ID functions off. There had to be a way to rig that, somehow.

Buckner gave a thin smile. “Then it's in both our best interests not to let it get out, right?”

“Yes, damn you.”

“Good. You'll let me know if there's any change or new development. The usual e-drop.” He stood up, dropping the newsheet in a nearby recycler. “And cheer up! You're going to be rich and live to be two hundred, easy. And no one will ever hear about those bad investments of yours last year.”

Buckner turned and walked away, heading toward gardens filling the Mall interior.

Billingsworth watched the couple having sex on the hillside a moment longer, then used his cerebralink to signal the robocar, stood, and walked toward the Fourteenth Street entrance to meet it.

He was sweating, despite the Mall's air-conditioning, and his breath was coming in short, hard gasps. Damn it, he
had
to find a way to guarantee better privacy for his meetings in the future.

24
JUNE
2138

DI's Office, Company 1099
U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center
Parris Island, South Carolina
0920 hours ET

“Garroway! Center yourself on the hatch!”

Garroway leaped into the DI's office, moving at the dead run that had been demanded of him and all of his fellow recruits in Company 1099 since the day they'd arrived at Parris Island.

“Sound off!” Gunnery Sergeant Makowiecz barked without looking up from his desk display.

“Sir!” Garroway snapped back as the toes of his boots hit the white line painted on the deck and he came to rigid attention, eyes locked firmly on an ancient water stain on the cinder-block bulkhead above and behind the DI's left shoulder. “Recruit Garroway reporting to the drill instructor as ordered, sir!”

“Recruit,” Makowiecz said, his voice still as razor-edged as a Mamaluk sword, “your indoctrination classes are complete and you are about to enter phase one of your training. Are you fully aware of what this entails?”

“Sir! This recruit understands that he will be required to surrender all technical and data prostheses still resident within his body, sir!”

“Well quoted, son. Right out of the book. Stand at ease.”

The sudden change in his DI's manner was so startling that Garroway nearly fell off his mark. Almost reluctantly, muscle by muscle, he relaxed his posture.

“Why do you want to be a Marine, son?” Makowiecz asked.

“Sir, this recruit—”

“Belay the third person crap,” Makowiecz told him. “This is off the record, just you and me. You've seen enough of boot camp now that you must have an idea of how rough this is going to be. You are about to go through twelve weeks of sheer hell. So…why are you putting yourself through this?”

Garroway hesitated. He felt like he was just starting to get the hang of automatic recitations in the third person—“this recruit”—and it somehow didn't seem fair for the DI to suddenly come at him as though he were a normal, thinking human being. It left him feeling off balance, disoriented.

“Sir,” he said, “all I can say is that this is what I've wanted ever since I heard stories from my mother about my great-grandfather.”

Makowiecz placed his palm on a white-lit panel on his desk, accessing data through his c-link. “Your great-grandfather is one of the Names of the Corps,” he said. “Manila John Basilone. Dan Daly. Presley O'Bannon. Chesty Puller. Sands of Mars Garroway. That's pretty good company. His name is a damn fine legacy.

“But you know and I know that there's more to being a Marine than a
name
…”

He paused, waiting expectantly, and Garroway knew he was supposed to say something. “Sir…this recruit…I mean,
I
don't know what you want me to tell you. I can't go back to what I was. Sir.”

“You have an abusive father.”

The change of topic was so sudden, Garroway didn't know how to respond. “Uh, it's not that bad, sir. Not sexual abuse or anything like that. He just—”

“I'm not interested in the details, son. But hear me, and hear me loud and clear.
All
abusive behavior by parents or stepparents or line-marriage parents—or by anyone else in authority over a kid, for that matter—does incalculable damage. Doesn't matter if it was sexual abuse or physical abuse with routine beatings or ‘just' emotional abuse with screaming fits and head games. And it doesn't matter if the adult is alcoholic or addicted to c-link sex feeds or is just a thoroughgoing abusive asshole. It's really impossible to say which is worse, which kid gets hurt the most, because every kid is different and responds to the abuse in different ways.”

“My father yelled a lot,” Garroway said, “but he never hit me. Uh, not deliberately, anyway.” He didn't add that Carlos Esteban
had
hit his mother, frequently, and threatened more than once to do the same to him, or that he was an alcoholic who'd disabled the court-appointed cybercontrols over his behavior.

“Doesn't matter. It says here your mother has filed for divorce. She's out of the house?”

“Yes, sir. She's staying with a sister in California now.”

“Good. She's better off out of this guy's way, and you'll be better off knowing she's okay.” He got a faraway look in his eyes as he scrutinized the data feed flowing through his link. “It says here you were hospitalized once with a dislocated shoulder after a domestic altercation.”

“That was an accident, sir.”

“Uh-huh.” The sergeant didn't sound at all convinced. “Your father has been cited seven times…domestic violence…disturbing the peace…assault…This bastard should have been locked away and rehabbed a long time ago.”

“There are…political factors, sir. He's a pretty big man in Sonora, where we live. He's good friends with the local sheriff and with the governor.”

“Shit. Figures.”

“Sir…I don't understand where this is going. Are you saying I'm not qualified to be a Marine because my father—”

“You're qualified, son. Don't worry about that. What we're concerned about right now is your c-link. Your implant is a Sony-TI 12000 Series Two Cerebralink.”

“Uh, yessir. It was a birthday present from my parents.”

“Do you have a resident AI?”

“A personality, you mean? No, sir.” Most cerebralinks had onboard AI, for net navigation if nothing else. He didn't have one with a distinct personality, though. His father hadn't believed in that sort of thing.

“Cybersex partner?”

“Uh…no…” He'd linked into a number of sex sites, of course, for a few hours of play with various fantasy partners. Everyone did that. But he didn't have a regular playmate.

“Cyberpet?”

“No, sir.” His father had been pretty insistent about his not having any artificial personalities—a waste of time and money, Carlos had said, and a threat to his immortal soul—and he'd done a lot of e-snooping to make sure his orders were obeyed.

“What did you do for companionship?”

“Well…there's my girlfriend….”

“Lynnley Collins. Yes. You're pretty close with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A fuck buddy? Or something closer?”

“She's a
friend
. Sir.” He had to bite back his rising anger. This kind of cross-examination was the sort of thing his father did, stripping him of any semblance of privacy.

Of course, he'd known he would be surrendering most of his privacy rights when he signed up. But this prying, this spying into his private life…damn it, it wasn't
right
.

“I know, son,” Makowiecz said gently, almost as if he was reading Garroway's mind. “I know. This is as intrusive, as downright abusive, as anything your old man ever did to you. But it's necessary.”

“Sir, yes, sir. If you say so, sir.”

“I do say so. Does it surprise you that we pay pretty close attention to a recruit's private life here? We have to.” He
pulled his hand off the contact panel on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Outside, clearly audible through the thin walls of the DI's barracks office, a boot company jogged past, sounding off to a singsong cadence to the beat of footsteps thundering together.

“It's a damned paradox, Garroway,” Makowiecz said as the chanting faded away across the grinder. “Lots of kids join the Marines who had bad childhoods. For a lot of 'em, the Corps is their mother and father put together. I know. That's the way it was for me. And we have to put you through six kinds of hell, have to
break
you in order to build you up into the kind of Marine we want. If that's not abuse, I don't know what is.”

“A history feed I downloaded once said that it used to be that Marine DIs couldn't even swear at the recruits. Sir.”

Makowiecz nodded. “True enough. That was back, oh, 150 years ago or so. We couldn't lay hands on recruits then either. A number of Marine DIs were discharged, even court-martialed and disgraced, for not following the new guidelines. They'd grown up in the old Corps, after all, and they thought that harassment and even physical abuse toughened the recruits, made them better Marines.

“We know better now. Still, the rules have relaxed a bit since then, because it was discovered that we couldn't make Marines without imposing discipline…and sometimes some well-placed profanity or grabbing a recruit by the stacking swivel and giving him a shake is just what is needed to get the message through his damned thick recruit skull. You copy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We
have
to invade each recruit's private life, right down to his soul—if he has one. We need to know what makes him tick. How he'll react under stress. And how we can transform him into a U.S. Marine.”

“I understand that, sir.” And he did, reluctantly…and with a few reservations.

“Good. You understand too that we have to remove your cerebralink.”

“Yes…sir.”

“You don't sound so sure of that.”

“Well, it's kind of scary, thinking about being without it. I'll be getting a Marine Corps model, right?”

“That's affirmative. Eventually. But first you will learn how to function without any electronic enhancement at all.”

“Without…any?…” The thought wasn't scary. It was terrifying.

“Right. Look…you know the cerebralink is nothing but a tiny set of parallel computers nanotechnically grown inside your head and connecting to certain parts of your nervous system, like the linkpads in the palm of your hands. It lets you link head-to-head with others with compatible hardware, lets you connect with the WorldNet and pull down the answer to any question, gives you a whole library just a thought-click away. You can see anything, call anyone, make reservations, even download the whole history of the Corps just by thinking about it. The thing is, too many kids nowadays rely on the net, know what I mean?”

“I guess so. But…are you saying it's wrong to link on?”

“Wrong? Hell no. Direct net access is one of the great cornerstones of modern technology and culture. But you as a Marine need to learn that you can get along without any technic prosthesis whatsoever…not just learn it, but know it right down to your bones. Our ancestors went a long way without implants or c-links. You can too.

“However, we've found a special problem with kids coming from families with major dysfunctions. Alcoholism. Net
addictions. Violence. Kids who don't get the love and care they need at home tend to grow up relying on surrogates, like AI companions, cyberpets, or e-mates. When they're separated from their comfort-of-choice, whatever it is, it can be pretty rough.”

“Why don't you just keep them from enlisting, then?” Damn it, if they were going to kick him out of boot camp for
this
…

“If we did that, son, we'd have to exclude the majority of our volunteers. And some of our best people came from bad home situations. Myself included. But we do take them aside first, like I'm doing with you, and give them a final chance to think about it, think about what they're in for. When we pull your hardware, you're going to feel more alone, more lost, more isolated than you've ever felt in your life. It's going to be hell. And you're going to have to ride it out. Eventually, you will be issued with a Marine Corps implant.
If
you make it through.”

“And if I don't?”

“If you don't, the government will stand you to a replacement, though I'm afraid it won't be as fancy as a Sony-TI 12000. Government issue, IBM-800 series. But you can upgrade that for anything you want later.”

“What…what are my chances, sir?”

“Oh, pretty good, actually. We lose maybe fifteen percent of our recruits at this stage. But the proportion is higher for kids from dysfunctional families, like yours. We could lose, oh, maybe thirty, thirty-five percent. A lot of kids have formed attachments they can't get along without. You have an edge, because you haven't bonded with an AI construct yet.”

“I can handle it, sir.”

“Good. Because our best Marines are fighters, the ones who've had bad shakes and had to fight to make it through. Tough. Survivors. We
want
that in our people. But we need to give you the chance to back out now, before we yank your plug-in.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You have twenty-two hours to think it over. Tomorrow, at zero-seven-thirty, you will report to recruit sick bay for processing. You may, at any time until then, refuse the treatment. At that time you may opt either for a full discharge or transfer to one of the other military or government services. One less demanding than the U.S. Marine Corps. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well.” He paused, and his voice hardened again. “Back to the routine. Dismissed!”

That, Garroway knew, was his cue to slip back into his recruit persona. “Sir! Aye aye, sir!”

He pulled a sharp about-face, then fairly lunged from the compartment, on the run.

Headquarters, PanTerra Dynamics
New Chicago, Illinois
United Federal Republic, Earth
1545 hours CT

A scarlet-uniformed attendant ushered Dr. Traci Hanson into the briefing chamber on the 540th floor of the PanTerra Dynamics Building in New Chicago and toward her seat at a large, crystalline-topped conference table. A viewall behind the table showed the gold, scarlet, and purple panorama of Ishtar, the vast orb of Marduk hanging low in the sky above clustered pyramids, obelisks, and the low, rounded domes of native habitations.