Date: 2017-06-06 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: From Hugo award finalist and bestselling science fiction author David VanDyke come three Plague Wars: Alien Invasion/Stellar Conquest novelettes in one volume of 125 pages. Steel's First Temper: Jill "Reaper" Repeth must complete a tough rescue mission on a Meme asteroid base while beginning to train a new protégé, Joseph "Bull" ben Tauros. A Hotter Forge: Bull and Reaper are assigned to capture one of the Pure Race, but a Blend throws a monkey wrench into their plan, forcing them into a no-win battle. What Price Humanity? Vincent "Vango" Markis awakes to find himself blind and helpless. Soon

Forge and Steel

By

David VanDyke

Three Plague Wars/Stellar Conquest Novelettes

Author’s Note

This volume consists of three novelettes of roughly thirty pages and four or five chapters each. The first two are Jill “Reaper” Repeth stories, though told from the point of view of Marine Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros.

The last is a Vincent "Vango" Markis story.

The first and the last story have been published in the anthologies There Will Be War, Volume X and Riding the Red Horse, Volume 2. The middle story, however, is brand-new and is only available here.

These three novelettes take place within the period of nearly a century between the end of the novel Comes the Destroyer and the beginning of the novel First Conquest. The three stories are in chronological order, and the first two, Steel’s First Temper and A Hotter Forge, will help you transition seamlessly between those two books.

The third story, What Price Humanity?, illuminates some events that are also mentioned in Tactics of Conquest, Stellar Conquest Book 3, and so contains minor spoilers if you haven’t read that.

So, if you are committed to reading the series through to its end, it may be more enjoyable for you to read Tactics of Conquest first, and then What Price Humanity? immediately afterward.

In whatever order you read them, enjoy!

- David VanDyke

What Price Humanity? copyright © 2015 by David VanDyke and Reaper Press, LLC. Steel’s First Temper and A Hotter Forge copyright © 2016 by David VanDyke and Reaper Press, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Books by David VanDyke

Plague Wars Series
The Eden Plague
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin
Nearest Night (Summer 2016)
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes The Destroyer
Forge and Steel

Stellar Conquest Series
The Plague Wars continues 100 years later!
First Conquest
Desolator
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Conquest and Empire

Star Force Series - with BV Larson
Outcast
Exile
Demon Star

Books by D.D. VanDyke

D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.

California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends
In a Bind
Slipknot
Off The Leash

For more information visit http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/

Cover by VISIONS

Formatting by LiberWriter

Steel’s First Temper

Chapter 1

Newly minted Marine Second Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros turned to look as an unfamiliar woman entered his platoon locker room aboard the EarthFleet assault transport Melita. He exchanged glances with Gunnery Sergeant Kang, his platoon sergeant, who shrugged.

“Can I help you?” Bull asked, walking toward the newcomer in nothing but athletic shorts.

Brown hair, a slim figure, a severe Anglo-Hispanic visage and dark, intense eyes greeted him. Those orbs never strayed from Bull’s face, despite his big bald head, naked torso and massive musculature. He easily topped out above one hundred fifty kilos. They didn’t call him Bull for nothing.

Even women who batted for the other team usually took a clinically interested look at his development. After all, the hard-won slabs of flesh were things of rarity in this age of laminated bones and combat cybernetics.

The ten-centimeter ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain around his neck usually merited a glance as well.

“You Lieutenant Joseph Tauros?” the woman said, not flinching as he encroached deliberately on her personal space to tower above her.

“Joseph ben Tauros,” he corrected. “It means ‘son of the bull.’”

“That fits.” She stuck out her hand. “Jill Repeth. It means the clerks at Ellis Island couldn’t understand a Scotsman’s accent when he said ‘Repath.’ At least that’s the story I always heard. Personally, I wonder if some scoundrel ancestor of mine was running from the law and made it all up.”

Bull eyed her up and down, noting easy confidence wrapped in sharply pressed civvies adorned with an abundance of pockets. It was practical, rugged bush-style clothing, reminding him of former military who took security contractor jobs.

He didn’t take her hand. “You don’t look Scottish.”

“My mother was Hispanic. You don’t look Jewish.”

“Nobody looks Jewish. It’s a religion, not an ethnicity. I’m Israeli.”

“Nobody’s nothing but Earthers anymore.”

“That’s not what a lot of people think.”

“Then they need to think harder.” With a flat stare, Repeth closed her fingers and lifted her hand to point at Bull’s nose. “Might want to check that attitude, Eltee. We’re going to be working together and you do not want to get on my bad side.”

Bull repressed his desire to flatten the twink. No way that would end well. Either he’d put her in the infirmary, pissing off someone higher up – who’d obviously saddled him with some kind of advisor, maybe a reporter – or he’d fail to do so, which would make him look a complete fool in front of the dozen Fleet Marines around the room watching their brand-new, fresh-out-of-training platoon leader with interest.

Besides, he was old-fashioned enough to think manhandling a woman was unchivalrous.

Chuckles from behind him threatened to up the stakes, so he decided to cut his losses and avoid the game until he found out the rules. Forcing a wintry smile, he opened one meaty paw after all. “Call me Bull.”

“Reaper,” she said with a twitch of her eye, slapping her petite palm into his fist to clasp.

He applied just enough pressure to hurt, but the woman didn’t flinch. Didn’t even seem to notice, actually.

“I see you’re enhanced,” he said, letting go. “Who do you work for?”

The woman ignored the question. “You got an office? We need to talk.”

“I have a desk in the orderly room. Out the door to the left. Give me a minute to dress.” He pointed, watching her as she exited.

Laughter bubbled from the throats around him. “Chingawa, Eltee,” said Sergeant Acosta. “I think I’m in love. Leave some for the rest of us, okay sir?”

“I heard you’re in love with your right hand,” Bull replied as he donned a t-shirt, trousers, and then his tunic.

That brought more laughter, but at least it wasn’t directed at him. Bull pulled on his boots. “And I get a feeling this one would rip your prick off and feed it to you.”

Ooh, went the noises around the room, along with more vulgarities aimed at Acosta, and Bull used them to cover his own exit.

In the orderly room, he saw a lone Personnel troop tapping at a keyboard, but no Repeth. “Ma’am?” Bull called into the air, looking around.

Repeth – Reaper, he reminded himself – leaned out of the open door of the company CO’s office. “In here, Bull.”

When he entered the cramped space, he saw she was alone. She waved him to a drop seat and, once he’d eased his bulk into it, sat down on the edge of the tiny desk, which put her head on the same level as his. “Here.” She handed him a battered secure tablet.

Before he looked at the device’s screen, he said, “So I gotta babysit you? Make sure you don’t get your head blown off or eaten by a Pureling while you get some nice 4D video footage?”

“No babysitting. This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ll pull my weight and more.”

“Would be nice to know who you really are.”

Reaper rapped her knuckles on the desk. “I’m sure you can find some references to me in the Fleet databases. But, time for that later. Read the rest of the orders first. This is a rescue. Intel thinks at least six of our people are being held at a Meme outpost. I won’t get in your way. You make the tactical decisions. Your job is to get us in, recover our people and get out.”

“Then what’s your job?”

“Read the mission brief.”

Lifting the device, he looked over the orders. A short-notice raid on a Meme facility, one of thousands of living bases that had been seeded within the asteroid belt and now waited, stealthy, watching. The Marines could expect heavy resistance by Purelings, programmed warriors cloned from subject races.

The seldom-seen aliens themselves looked like giant amoebas. Teeming with free-floating memory molecules, they spread their Empire by conquest and by blending with other life forms, subsuming them and their abilities. They could build mechanical structures and devices, but they favored living ships and bases, which grew and spread on their own.

With millions of asteroids to search across quadrillions of cubic kilometers, EarthFleet stayed busy playing whack-a-Meme while they waited for the inevitable next invasion.

“So you’re not a reporter. This says you’re in charge,” Bull said, containing his irritation with difficulty.

“Overall command.”

“What are you? Some kind of spook?”

“That’s classified.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s irony, coming from you, Bull. Don’t make me regret this.”

“I’m already regretting it.”

Reaper sighed and glanced upward as if pleading with a watching god. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? You’re the big bad alpha male and I’m the liability of a split-tail who’s gonna get a Marine killed trying to protect her high-value ass.” She hopped over to take the seat behind the CO’s desk and quickly slipped papers and mementos into the drawers, leaving it clear. Then she set her right elbow in the center and held up her open hand, staring at him. “Let’s do it.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Buk-buk-bukawww.” She sniffed, wiggling her fingers.

Bull stared at this crazy bitch who wanted to arm-wrestle him. She oozed confidence, and in his experience, that meant either she was batshit nuts, or she knew she could beat a fully boosted Marine. “Turn off our enhancements?”

Reaper laughed. “Fair fights are for fools. Come on, Bull. Live a little.”

“I’ll pass. You must be cheating.”

Her hands came down, rubbed together. “You’re not quite as dumb as you look.”

“You must have some really high-grade shit.”

“Beyond.” She grinned, held up one hand. Short blades perhaps two centimeters long sprouted from her fingertips, bright ferrocrystal coated in her own blood as they sliced through her skin from beneath, and then disappeared, healing quickly due to Eden Plague and, for sure, the latest combat nano in her blood.

“Ben zonah. You’re black ops.” Mods like finger-knives were forbidden to Marines. They’d just get in the way of fighting from within battlesuits.

“Direct Action, you mean? I have been. I’ve also been a Marine, and a Steward. And a few other things.” She shrugged.

Bull rubbed his jaw and flexed his hands in unconscious sympathy. Stewards were the white side of Fleet special operations, tasked with VIP protection, internal investigations and, it was rumored, sensitive anti-Blend missions. They got the best of everything.

By contrast, Direct Action operatives, General Spooky Nguyen’s special corps of door-kickers and enforcers, were…well, who knew what they were, beyond wild rumors? That’s why they called them black.

“How the hell old are you, anyway?” he asked. The rejuvenating Eden Plague made everyone appear young, so except for mannerisms and similar tiny cues, the woman in front of him could be ninety for all he knew.

“Old enough to be your mother twice over,” she said with the first genuine smile he’d seen. “Now, have we measured dicks enough, or do you want to go a couple rounds in the ring?”

“No thanks. I get a feeling I’d lose there too.”

“You might. But as you said, it’s only because I’m cheating, right?” She stared at him.

“Is that a trick question?”

“Yep. And here’s the answer. The enemy doesn’t fight fair, and neither do I. Neither should you. People don’t follow you because you can beat them in a ring or bench-press a bigger barbell. They follow you when they believe you’ll lead them to victory and, more to the point, you’ll get them home. Are you here to lead Marines and kill aliens, young butterbar, or to waste my time trying to act like the biggest, baddest bastard around?”

Bull continued to massage his hands as if he wanted to arm-wrestle after all. Eventually he grated, “I signed up to kill Meme.”

“Well, guess what? Like those orders say, you’re gonna get your very first chance. Today. And if you’re lucky, and your people do their jobs, and I watch your back, your grass-green ass won’t come home in a box.”

Chapter 2

Two hours of mission briefings later, Bull watched Reaper inspect her gear in the armory, running through the standard checklist faster than anyone he’d ever seen.

“Hey, what did you do right there?” he asked, holding out a hand.

“What, with my pulse rifle?” She flipped it over, sights down and magazine ports up. “Pre-charged its internal capacitor with a full power pack, and then swapped out with another one to recharge. Just like putting a round in the chamber and then reloading a mag. Gives me a two percent bump in available juice.”

Bull grunted. “Got any more tricks like that?”

“Got a million of ’em.”

He stared, hard. “You’re different.”

“From what?”

“Other females. Most of them, anyway.”

“What the hell does that mean? You have bad experiences with women?” She said it without rancor.

“No. Women compose forty percent of the Fleet, ten percent of Marines, and they’re all highly competent.” He said this as if reciting a text. “But most of them don’t seem so…”

“So into it?” Reaper laughed and slapped a magazine of caseless, electrically fired ammo into the weapon. “Yeah, I’ve been called every name in the book. Uber-bitch. Ballbuster. Clamp tramp. Bull dyke. And those are the nice ones. Some people still can’t accept that a straight woman can excel in this business. I gave up on letting it bother me long ago. I am different. I’m that one in a million women born, bred and built for this life. I’m a warrior. I’m your own personal Joan of Arc. If it helps, think of me as male.”

Bull shook his head. “Not likely,” he said, pointedly eyeing the understated curves beneath her t-shirt.

“Married, too.” She winked and rubbed at a ring tattooed around the third finger of her left hand. “To a man, even.”

“All the good ones are taken, they say.”

“You wouldn’t want me for the long haul anyway. I gave up dating warriors decades ago. Not enough room for my ego and theirs. Then I met my husband. Cyber-geek. Best in the fleet. He does his thing, I do mine. It works. Here,” she said, putting aside her weapon and picking up electric depilators, handing them to him. “This should help.”

“What…a haircut?”

“Yeah. One less thing to worry about.” She turned around, lifting her already short hair with both hands. “Start from the bottom and it’ll come off easy.”

“Skin?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

When her short brown locks lay on the floor, he had to admit she’d become a lot less feminine. Now she looked like a wiry boy.

The two dozen men and women nearby said nothing, but continued inspecting and readying their gear. No doubt they had been listening closely, but he’d warned them the civvie was in charge, that she was former military, and that she didn’t need babysitting.

And that she had some juice behind her. Bull was smart enough to know that anyone who’d been a Steward – hell, who might be one now – no doubt had flag officers’ personal numbers in her comlink.

He glanced at the wall screen, which displayed the countdown and prep checklist. “Loading in fifty mikes, people. Final inspection in forty.” He looked around. “Where are Acosta and Suarez?”

“Where do you think, Eltee?” Gunny Kang said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“You gonna make me do your job for you?”

The senior NCO’s face blanked. “No, sir.” He turned to stalk out, in search of the two Marines who liked a quickie before every mission, whether training or real.

Not that there’d been a real one for Bull, until now. He caught Reaper looking at him. “What?”

She shrugged.

“You want to tell me how to run my outfit?”

“Did I say something?”

“Not with your mouth.”

“Fine. Since you asked…micromanaging your senior NCOs makes you look even more like a snot-green loot than you already are.”

Bull bit down on his reply, realizing she was right.

“Don’t sweat it,” Reaper went on, watching him closely. “You’ll do fine. First dance with the elephant, right?”

Bull fought not to drop his eyes. After all, everyone had a first time. “How did you know?”

“Duh. I read your file.”

Bull looked away, thinking. With a whole battalion aboard the assault carrier and many experienced officers, what were the odds of him drawing the short straw? “Why me, then?” he said quietly. “Why not someone more senior?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your platoon is the best aboard, according to their record before you took over when Morehead made Captain. Your NCOs are outstanding. Your troops are outstanding. This will be a hairy one. I want the best people to cover my sorry, high-value ass.”

“You mean you want the best chance of completing the mission, don’t you?”

Reaper snorted, but said nothing.

Bull wasn’t sure if that was derision at his parroting the party line, or something else entirely. He simply didn’t know what to make of someone like her. Someone who, after his four years of officer training, didn’t fit into any of the neat slots in his military world.

Instead of trying to figure her out, he returned to putting on his battle armor, composed of integrated layers of protection from the skin out, culminating in polycarbon and ferrocrystal plates that made Marines look like orbital drop troopers from some old video game.

Somewhere along the line, Kang came back with the two lovers, Acosta sheepish and Suarez smug as she rubber-banded her short hair into a ponytail.

Donning backracks full of gear – additional air supply, ammo, charge packs, grenades and more – signaled the final step in the unit’s preparation. Line Marines snapped their pulse rifles to retractors and clipped them in carry position at their chests, while designated troops picked up rocket launchers, portable railguns and heavy lasers.

The platoon’s two scouts played with their gnats, controlling the tiny drones with chips implanted in their heads, the signals run through their HUDs. They spun and danced around each other like fat, angry birds.

“Fall in, you diggers!” Gunny Kang roared, trotting out of the armory onto the flight deck where two extended-model stealthed assault sleds waited. He set himself and waited for the formation to assemble before ordering them to open ranks.

Bull walked down the lines and looked his Marines over one by one, Kang following. Unbidden, Reaper strolled behind, but said nothing. Now that she wore full battle rig, helmet dangling from her left hand, she seemed to fit in better.

As he turned toward the front of the formation, he caught sight of her chest and back plates, which displayed insignia: three up, three down and a star inside. He recognized it as an outdated Sergeant Major’s rank from the old U.S. Marine Corps.

Drawing her to one side, he leaned down to speak to her privately. “You can’t wear that insignia.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not regulation.”

“I’m a civilian. I can put whatever I want on my armor.”

“Bullshit you’re a civilian. You either earned the right to wear that or you didn’t. If you didn’t, you’re a fraud. If you did, you’re going to confuse the line doggies, because like you said, you’re a civilian and not acting in that capacity. Besides, by regs, a sergeant major can’t be in charge of an officer.”

Reaper smiled, half-nodding as if she approved of Bull’s words and he’d passed some kind of test. “Fair enough.” Her eyes unfocused for a moment – she must have accessed her internal chipset and comlink to talk to the suit – and the symbol disappeared from the programmable paint. A moment later it was replaced by the shield and crossed staves of the Fleet Stewards, and the armor had turned a blinding white. “Better?”

“Fine. Now you want to tell me why you’re busting my balls?”

The woman looked up into his eyes. “Because you might be one in a million too, Bull, even if you don’t realize it yet. I’ve met enough warriors to know potential when I see it. But more than one young eltee never made it because there wasn’t a crusty old sergeant-major to put a boot up his ass when he needed it.”

“So this is a test.”

“Everything’s a test, Bull. Life is a test. You of all people should know that.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

Two flight warrants waved at Bull from across the deck, and he nodded to Kang, who told the platoon to fall out. The pilots saluted him casually as he approached, a male and female in the Aerospace branch, with nametags reading Butler and Lockerbie. Their flight sergeants continued to prep the birds behind them.

The blue-suiters glanced over at Reaper with a flick of their eyebrows – did they recognize her? – and then returned their attention to Bull. “Mission flight brief, sir, ladies and gentlemen,” the female pilot said crisply. “You will load in order, strap down all gear and take your seats. You will follow all orders from flight crew while in transit to and from the objective. You will point your weapons toward the deck at all times and you will not activate them or chamber rounds until the assault begins. You will maintain suit integrity at all times…” She recited the rest of the checklist from memory, or maybe she was reading it off her ocular implant.

“Buckets on,” Bull said when the boilerplate was finished, seating his helmet and making sure it sealed. “Link check.”

Thirty seconds of data and voice test later, he led First and Second squads aboard one assault sled, Reaper joining him. Boxy and resting on skids, the simple, rugged space vehicles provided room for troops and their accouterments of war, much as armored personnel carriers did for ground forces.

Gunny Kang took Third and Fourth squads into the other sled.

When the ramps had shut and twenty armored troopers had strapped into the jumpseats, Bull turned to Reaper and keyed a private channel. “Shouldn’t you be in the other vehicle?”

“Why?”

“What if we lose a sled? Only you and I have all the details of this mission.”

“And Gunny Kang.”

Bull’s voice hardened. “This mission is ‘need to know.’ According to the orders, that means you and me.”

“He needed to know, so I told him. He’s your top noncom. Orders or no orders, you should have told him yourself. Don’t blame me for doing your job for you.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be dicking around with my authority.”

Reaper snorted. “Eltee, Gunny Kang has been fighting the Meme since your mama was changing your diapers. You’d better get used to the senior NCO network coloring outside the lines or you’re gonna be running into all sorts of brick walls. You may be an officer, but as a butterbar, you’re mostly a figurehead. You’re here to set the mission parameters, go through the motions and soak up knowledge in hopes that by the time your gold turns silver, you’ll actually be worth something. Dump the notion that you can control everything and everybody. Trust your people, stay out of the way, and they’ll take care of you.”

Once again, Bull suppressed the urge to slap her down. Her smug, casual attitude toward proper procedure during a dangerous mission scraped his nerves. Yet, the voice of wisdom reminded him yet again that fighting with someone with the ear of senior leaders would be a lose-lose proposition.

Instead, he cut the channel and recited to himself one of the many Hebrew prayers he’d learned as a child, based on a Psalm that cautioned against foolish pride. He wasn’t certain whether that prayer was aimed at her, or at himself.

Reaper didn’t sit, but remained standing and clamped herself onto the now-vertical rear ramp, leaving the cockpit’s third seat, the traditional place for the Marine commander, to Bull. Set back and between the pilot and sergeant-copilot, it allowed him to see out the foot-thick crystal viewports, as well as the more important screens that showed space around them.

“Sled One, ready,” Lockerbie said.

“Sled Two, ready,” Bull heard Butler reply.

Gravity vanished as mechanical arms lifted the two vehicles from the deck and slotted them into the breeches of launch chutes. A moment later, Bull’s sled began falling toward the skin of the spinning, wheel-shaped assault carrier.

“We’re exo,” Lockerbie said over the platoon net as they emerged. “Sit back and enjoy the ride, jarheads. As we’re remaining in stealth mode the whole way, our ETA is five hours forty-five minutes, give or take a smidge.”

Good-natured grumbling broke out, mostly centered around the necessity of using the suits’ waste disposal systems, which never worked as well as the designers claimed. Ideally, Marines suited up no more than two hours before deployment, but this time, that wasn’t in the cards. The stealth approach mandated this extended insertion from the distant carrier.

“Everybody shut up,” Bull growled, and awkward silence fell.

A moment later he saw a private channel icon on his HUD and Reaper cleared her throat in his ear.

“What?” he said. “More advice for the green loot?”

“Yes. The one with the chip on his shoulder. You ever hear the saying, ‘the troops ain’t happy unless they’re bitching?’”

“No.”

“Well, now you have. What do you think it means?”

“Why should I care if the troops are happy? It’s not their job to be happy.”

“Oh, shit on a stick. Haven’t you learned anything since OCS?”

“I know they don’t respect you if you try to be their friend.”

“They won’t respect you if you’re a total jackass, either. We’re hours out with nothing to do but sleep and shoot the shit – which, if you check your HUD, they’re doing anyway. The only difference is, they’ve set up private channels. Now, instead of listening in and assessing the morale of your troops, maybe throwing in a jab every now and then to show you’re listening and not an uptight jerk, you’re well on your way to convincing them that’s exactly what you are.”

“So I’ll listen in on them anyway.”

“But then you’re an insecure, eavesdropping outsider instead of a casual but confident part of the team.”

“I can’t win with you, can I?”

Reaper sighed. “There’s only one way.”

Bull waited for Reaper to go on and tell him how, but she didn’t. Well, he sure wasn’t going to look stupid by asking until he’d thought about it for a while.

He cast his mind back to OCS, where the tac officers were, of course, unbeatable. By design, the entire training edifice was constructed to hammer square pegs through round holes so hard they either broke, or came out cylindrical at the other end. In other words, if you wanted to make it, you conformed to the model of Fleet Marine officership or you washed out.

Maybe this was like that. Maybe he’d been reacting all wrong, based on her cockiness, her non-Marine status, maybe even her gender, treating her like an outsider or a threat.

But what if instead he thought of her like an OCS instructor: posing as an opponent, but in reality a demanding mentor? Someone older, wiser, and a hell of a lot more experienced. Someone he could learn from. Someone with the admiral’s ear.

Someone who could make or break him with one mission report.

Better a bite of crow now than a whole plateful later.

“Okay,” he said eventually, forcing a reasonable tone. “I’m listening.”

“You sure? Because hey, I wouldn’t want to screw up your opinion of me by making sense.”

“I’m sure. How should I recover the situation?”

“Progress! If you don’t have an instinct for handling your troops, at least treat them as problems to be solved.”

Bull waited, teeth grinding. “Still listening.”

Another sigh. “Override and reset everyone’s private channels to the platoon push. Don’t explain, don’t apologize. When you do, tell them matter-of-factly that they can talk now, as if you had something important to think about and that’s why you told them to shut up.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. We got five hours. It may take five minutes or fifty, but pretty soon everyone will be bullshitting again and will have forgotten about it.”

Bull grunted and did as Reaper said.

Fifteen minutes later, as the chatter slowly ramped back up, she put a wink-eye emoticon onto his HUD and said, “I’m going to sleep. Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”

Chapter 3

“Ten minutes,” Bull said loudly at the mark. “Prep, check and sound off.” Acknowledgements rippled up the lines, accompanied by emphatic hand signals. One digger gave the double thumbs-down of a glitch, and Bull began to unbuckle.

“Sit down, Bull,” Reaper said privately. “Let Sergeant Brooks do her job. You’re the platoon leader. Do officer shit and stay out of your NCOs’ way.”

“Yes, mother.” He said it lightly.

“There you go.”

Brooks fixed whatever had gone wrong with the private’s integrated armor system and sat down again with a thumbs-up.

Bull’s mouth dried as the chrono digits crawled lower and lower. He chinned a squirt of water and swished it around, pulse pounding. First combat insertion, and it was all getting real. Thoughts raced with the adrenaline. He fought the overload by reciting assault checklists and telling himself to treat it as just another exercise.

“One minute, sir,” Flight Warrant Lockerbie murmured in Bull’s ear.

“One minute!” Bull barked reflexively. How had the time gotten away from him? He should have been paying attention, but somehow he’d lost track. One minute from go. Would he become a statistic? The old saw about the short life expectancy of second lieutenants ran through his mind.

Better that than failure. Should he shoot a battle cocktail? The stims would fire him up, and pretty soon he’d be raging to slaughter Purelings. He’d been deliberately juiced once before, a training exercise to show Marines what it was like. They’d had to shut down his cybernetics and let him burn out. That was why the heavy drugs were only for extreme situations.

If he did that, he might as well hand in his bars, though. His job wasn’t to fight, no matter how much he wanted to. His job was to direct the battle, complete the mission and get his people home. Not for the first time he wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off enlisting as a line doggie, but his father had wanted him to go to OCS. What Colonel Gideon ben Tauros told you to do, you did, no questions asked.

“Pinged,” Lockerbie said abruptly. “Stealth is blown.”

“Won’t matter,” Bull growled, cinching down already wire-tight straps. “Ten seconds!”

“Breaching missiles away.” The sled shivered with the launch.

Bull was tempted to switch his HUD to the pilots’ godlike view, but he didn’t need the distraction. The heavy short-range rockets would be slamming home, their double shaped charges cutting and widening holes in the enemy base’s armored skin. The sleds would follow…

Now.

Marines bucked against their restraints, minimal gravplating absorbing the majority of the impact as the sleds corked into the gaps, brutally arrested. For a moment, all was still.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead!” some wag quoted, and then Bull popped his harness.

“GO, GO, GO!” he roared as the quad clamshell nose of the sled opened, pilots still strapped into their seats swinging up and out of the way to create a clear channel into the interior of the base. He should have stood aside and let the diggers go first, but instead he stepped off the ramp and nailed the first thing that moved.

The target turned out to be a squid, a repair creature, not a fighter, and little threat to an armored Marine. Troops rushed to deploy ahead of him, their pulse guns spitting high-velocity rounds at other biologicals.

Reaper’s clapped him on the shoulder. “Good shot, Bull. Calamari on the barbie tonight. Now let’s get our people.”

“Laser team,” Bull called. “Start cutting!”

Two Marines manhandled their crew-served beamer onto its tripod, more awkward than heavy in the low gravity. Without delay, an intense orange line crackled through the smoke of the thinning atmosphere to lick at the living interior wall of the enemy base. The material flashed with steam and drew back like the flesh it was, opening a hole into the next chamber.

The digger nearest the entrance immediately disappeared in a deluge of puke-yellow goo, and a moment later emitted a horrified scream. The shriek died with him as acid found its way into the joints in his armor, burned through and ate him alive from the inside.

In response, a blizzard of pulse gun fire battered the opening. “Grenades!” Sergeant Brooks called, and four launchers chuffed, throwing the short-range bombs past whatever lurked behind the opening.

Another stream of gooey acid poured out, but the troops nearest had already moved to their flanks, away from the direct line of sight. As the grenades detonated, flashes of incendiary lit the enemy from behind, spreading oxygenated napalm.

“Bugs!” Sergeant Acosta called as their opponents came into view. Of the several known varieties of Purelings, the big, tough insectoids were the most common.

Three-meter-tall mantis-like creatures poured forward, forced out by the spreading flames. Hard-driven pulse gun projectiles hammered the leading two to their knees. Pieces exploded off their exoskeletons along with sprays of greenish ichor. The next two made it a short distance closer before being cut down by the heavy beamer.

Unfortunately, the explosive heat generated by the laser created obscuring steam, allowing the bugs to spread out and attack the Marines hand to hand. Although Purelings could use firearms, in this soft, close-combat environment they stuck to melee weapons, in this case meter-long molecular-edged blades held in each forelimb.

Bull saw three Marines hacked down before crossfire from the two squads obliterated the attackers. He brought up HUD sonar – he’d been briefed that IR was mostly useless within the hot guts of Meme bases – and made sure all the bugs were dead, putting rounds into the heads of any still thrashing.

Should have had everyone go in with sonar up, he told himself, and felt his face flush with shame. Then he checked several Marines and realized they were already using theirs. I really am a green loot. Damn.

“Head in the game, Bull,” Reaper said as she pulled out a hand laser, more tool than weapon. She began cutting a hole in the wall.

“That’s the wrong direction,” he replied. “Laser team’s already setting up for the next burn.”

“Well aware. This is a diversion. The base will feel it and divide its forces.”

Bull grunted, filing that one away for the future. “Grenadiers, you were slow last time and a man died,” he heard Sergeant Brooks say with a snarl. “I want four through the breach as soon as it opens or I’ll chuck you in myself.”

The laser lashed out, cutting another hole. This time, grenades flew into the next chamber and exploded before the enemy had a chance to respond.

Reaper left off cutting and joined Bull at his elbow. “How’s Kang doing?”

In the whirl of confusion, Bull had forgotten to check. Cursing himself once more – how did she stay so calm with this shitstorm around her? – he tried to contact his platoon sergeant, who should be leading third and fourth squads to attack along a parallel axis. No dice.

“Can’t reach him,” he replied.

“I know.”

Bull almost asked her why the hell she’d queried him, but then realized her question had pointed out his lapse without being a bitch about it. He took a deep breath and spoke to Acosta and Brooks. “Good work. Keep pressing, but watch the flanks.”

“Aye aye, sir,” they replied in unison, and for the next three chambers, the attack went like clockwork, with no casualties. Bull began to feel as if he was settling into his role, able to see the bigger picture, his mind no longer over-focusing and flitting from thing to thing like a stim addict.

“Action left!” Reaper barked as they prepared for the next breach. Line Marines just had time to turn and set themselves before three irises appeared in the long wall.

Bull drew an instinctive bead on the closest enemy and froze…which almost killed him. The Purelings bursting through weren’t bugs. They looked like human Marines, wearing fatigues and carrying pulse rifles. He barely had time for the weapon aimed straight at his faceplate to register in his consciousness, with the gut-punch certainty of impending death, before the man’s chest exploded.

Not a man, Bull told himself. A programmed clone, no more human than a vat-grown replacement organ.

Five more enemy nearest Bull met the same fate, center-mass bursts coming so quickly he assumed a fireteam had taken them down, but when he looked behind him, all he saw was Reaper, swapping magazines on her smoking pulse gun.

“Eyes up,” the woman snapped, and Bull lifted his weapon to his shoulder and flipped the selector lever to rock and roll. The spell broken, he sprayed and prayed, emptying his first hundred-rounder in one long burst at the mass of humanoids.

One shocking moment later it was over, but six more Marines were down hard, two of them dead, along with at least twenty of the false-flag enemies. Sergeant Brooks nodded bleakly to him as she organized a quick medevac in accordance with the OPLAN. Despite the action so far, they’d only progressed a hundred meters, so it made sense to run the wounded and KIAs back to the sleds.

“Hold in place,” Bull called. “Security out!”

Recon gnats buzzed back along the extraction route, and the remaining dozen Marines reorganized. In the lull, Bull toed one of the human Purelings over. The thing’s face stared upward, looking for all the world like a fresh-faced recruit. He felt a creeping sense of unreality and dissociation, as if he stood outside himself and watched.

Reaper appeared at his elbow. “Don’t beat yourself up. Most of you’ve never fought human troops before. It was natural to hesitate.”

“They’re not human,” he said distractedly, reaching down to pick up a pulse rifle.

“Your guts don’t know that.”

“You’ve killed before. People, I mean,” he said, searching her eyes through her faceplate.

“Yeah. A lot.”

“Is this what it feels like?”

“Worse. Much worse. But like you said, these aren’t people.”

“Okay.” Even in his own ears, he didn’t sound sure. “You didn’t hesitate.”

“Lots of practice.”

Bull thought he detected a bitterness hiding within her even tone. “You gave warning,” he said.

“Meme walls give a little ripple before they iris open. Hard to spot unless you’re used to it.”

“And you killed them fast, like a machine,” he said. “Saved my life.”

Reaper tapped her head. “I cheat, remember? I have Steward-quality wetware. Alters my time sense so everything’s in slow motion. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“Why don’t Marines have good shit like that?”

“Priority to other units. Expense. Training costs. Eventually you will, but you know how stretched everything is with the war on. Can’t even find a decent black-market beer anymore.”

“You should be in charge, then.”

“I am.”

Bull turned away. “No, I mean, in tactical command.”

“I wouldn’t have done anything different. We’re in a tough, ugly war here, Bull. You’re going to lose Marines, probably every mission.”

“I know.”

“Then snap out of it.”

Bull had read a hundred books about combat and prepared himself for this mission all his adult life. He’d been sure it’d be different for him. Now he felt like a fool. He reached for something within himself to clear the fog of unreality, the first handy emotion.

Anger. Not rage, not stim-fuelled fury, but a colder, more useful thing that crept up from the base of his spine and spread along his nerves, leaving his head clear and his mind sharp.

“Fucking bastards,” he muttered. “Stealing our flesh and making fake people to kill us.”

“Yup.” Reaper turned to look pointedly at Sergeant Brooks as she and her troops returned from dropping off the wounded and dead. “But remember, you’re not a line dog. You have a mission to lead, Eltee. Your people need you. Man up and get going.”

Bull shook himself and felt renewed confidence flow into his veins. Snapping orders with textbook clarity, he led and directed his platoon to drive a wedge into the heart of the small base, where Intel had said the prisoners should be housed.

“Do you think they’ll be alive?” Bull asked Reaper as they cleared the final chamber, a room that looked less organic and more conventional, with hard, vertical walls and floor.

“Depends.” She said no more.

“That’s insightful.”

“Too many variables.”

“If I were the Meme, I’d have killed them by now,” he said heavily. “I mean, why let us get them back?”

“Why indeed?”

Dammit, the woman was acting mysterious again. Trying to make him think for himself? No time for pondering now. He checked his HUD and saw that Kang had Third and Fourth squads deployed in positions behind the central command center in order to block any escape.

Assuming they hadn’t already gotten the prisoners out. Who knew what tunnels led from the base down into the asteroid?

Brooks and Acosta prepped the troops that remained to execute the final drill, but this time it wouldn’t be as easy. If prisoners waited behind the final wall, they couldn’t simply lob grenades in. “Single shots only,” Bull reminded them. “No full auto, no napalm unless everything goes to shit. Now let’s go get our people.”

Two explosive templates had been laid on the hard wall, to the far left and far right. In the center, the laser team made ready to cut, a diversion. Reaper moved up into a position close to the far left breaching charge, the first time she had taken point.

Bull had to admit she’d stayed out of the way and covered his ass like the pro she was. He considered trying to order her back, but decided it would be pointless. She was obviously the best qualified to enter a rescue situation, where split-second decisions and precision were more important than raw firepower.

Reaper gave the laser team the signal. Its hot beam sliced into the wall, this time spitting sparks as it chewed through ferrocrystal-reinforced excreted resin rather than rubbery flesh. A three-count coordinated the two breaches, door frames made of shaped explosives cutting man-sized holes through to the other side in flashes of smoke.

Chapter 4

“Go-go-go!” Bull heard his squad leaders yell, but Reaper had already moved in. On impulse, he charged forward to follow the assault team on the far right.

Instead of the expected firefight, he saw a large, well-lit room that could have occupied space in any office building back on Earth. No casualties, enemy or friendly, were visible. Six humans dressed in skinsuits stood, hands raised, covered by multiple Marine weapons.

“Okay, let’s go. Take them and extract!” Bull snapped.

“Wait,” Reaper replied, holding up a hand.

“The Meme could be organizing a counterattack. We need to move!”

“What does Recon say?”

Bull took a breath and consulted his HUD. Recon Marines with several gnats each formed a perimeter, and the feeds showed no enemy activity. “Nothing right now,” he said, grudging.

“Pretty sure we’re good, then, for a minute,” Reaper replied. She lowered her weapon to dangle from its retractable sling beneath her arm and walked forward to face one of the men they’d recovered, popping her faceplate open. “Hello, Dasko,” she said.

“Top!” the man cried and grabbed Reaper by the shoulders. “God, it’s good to see you!”

Bull told his people to hold in place, and then strode over to the tableau. “So this is personal? That’s why you’re along? An old boyfriend?” he said, disgust in his voice.

Reaper’s eyes narrowed as her head swiveled toward Bull and she brushed Dasko’s hands off. “Staff Sergeant Dasko and I fought together at Callisto, Lieutenant. Is that a problem?”

“Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“So what if I know one of them? I’ve served all over.” Reaper looked pointedly at the other five. “But I don’t know these. Dasko, you vouch for them?”

“Yeah, Top. They’re all mine. I can tell you their names, their personal histories, when they reported to my unit…everything.”

“What the hell do you mean, vouch for them?” Bull asked. “They’re our people.”

“Unless they’re not. Meme can blend with humans. Or given enough time, they can grow clones and upload extracted molecular memories so good they don’t even know they’re copies.”

The Marines stirred, raising weapons that had been lowered. “I never heard about that,” Sergeant Brooks said through clenched teeth.

“It’s not common knowledge.”

“It will be now,” Bull said.

Reaper shrugged. “Not officially. And who believes scuttlebutt?”

“Hey, what the hell is this?” Dasko said. “You know me, Sergeant Major, and I know my people.”

Bull’s comlink beeped for his attention. “Got hostile movement in quadrant four,” one of the Recon Marines reported. “Forty, maybe fifty signatures.”

“We have to extract, Reaper,” Bull said. “We’ll sort it out in the rear. I’m sure there’s some kind of test to see if they’re real.”

“Real? What the hell does that mean, real?” Dasko’s voice rose and began to crack.

“There is, but it takes days. Sometimes weeks. I got a better test,” Reaper said, grabbing Dasko’s skinsuit at the neck with her left hand. With blurring speed, her right lifted an ancient PW5 pistol from its holster and put the muzzle to the man’s head.

“Woah, Reaper, this is wrong!” Bull said, reaching reflexively for the woman, who swiveled, putting Dasko between them. “We can trank him and the others if you want, but we’re taking them with us. You said yourself the tests take days.”

The prisoners stood frozen within the scene, hands raised and surrounded by Marines with weapons pointing everywhere – some at them, some at Reaper and Dasko. One woman said, “Please, sir, get us out of here. The things they did to us…”

“Reaper! Stand down! That’s an order!”

“You can’t give me orders, Bull. Unless you’re willing to violate your own instructions and threaten me.” Through her faceplate, Bull could see Reaper’s teeth bared in a snarl, eyes hot and skin tight across her cheeks. “Fleet put me in charge and I’m doing this my way.”

“And what is your way?” Bull asked with quiet menace.

“Lieutenant, our perimeter is engaging and falling back,” Kang said in Bull’s earbud. “We have to un-ass this AO, post-haste.”

“One minute,” Reaper said. “One. Minute.”

“Right. One minute, and all this is on vid for your court martial, or whatever they call it when people like you are prosecuted.”

“You think I’ve lost it?”

“Maybe. Fifty seconds.” Ball waved at his troops. “Check your HUDs. Take defensive positions and be ready to support Third and Fourth squads as they fall back.”

Reaper turned to Dasko and let go of him, using the free hand to remove her own helmet. “You know who I am, Jorgen?”

“Of course I do, Top!”

“Then don’t move a muscle.” Reaper’s nostrils flared as she shifted the barrel of the pistol to point at Dasko’s right eye. “What if I told you I had to blow your head off? Right now. For the good of humanity. Because even though you don’t know it, you’re a Pureling.” She deliberately thumbed off the safety and tightened her finger on the trigger.

Dasko bolted for one of the open doors faster than Bull would have thought possible. Before he brought his own weapon into line, Reaper put two rounds into the fleeing man’s back. He jerked and fell, but continued to writhe on the ground.

Three of the other former prisoners ran, almost making it to cover, but Reaper knocked them down like carnival targets.

“Eyes back on the perimeter!” Bull roared as Marines stared at the action. He turned toward the last two of those they’d freed, one male and one female, who hadn’t budged.

“Sir,” the man said to Bull, “I’m Corporal Hahn and this is PFC Sortillon, Fleet Marines. Take us back and test us if you can.” He swallowed and lowered his head, hunching his shoulders. “But if that endangers the mission, kill us now and burn our bodies. Just don’t leave us to the Meme. Sir.”

Staring hard, jaw set and eyes filled, the woman next to him nodded.

Reaper nodded back and holstered her weapon. “That’s the answer I was looking for. Fleet Marines don’t run, and Dasko was one of the best. He’d never have run from me. He’d have stood fast and eaten a bullet if I told him to.” She took four steps over to the fallen Dasko-Pureling, slid her hand onto the grip of the pulse rifle, blew the thing’s head clean off, and then finished the other three.

“Glad you’re so sure,” Bull replied, sickened.

“You can steal memories, maybe even replicate a mind. You can’t counterfeit Semper Fidelis.”

“Always…loyal?”

“Faithful. To the end. I wish Admiral Absen had made that the Fleet Marines’ motto when he formed the corps, but he didn’t want it to seem too American, so we ended up with By Land, By Sea, By Space.” Reaper looked around, and then back at Hahn and Sortillon. “Do you think the real ones are still alive?”

Slowly, they shook their heads. “No.”

“Me neither. Okay, Bull; time to extract,” Reaper said.

“Extract! Third and Fourth, fall back to ORP-1, now!” he snapped. “First and Second, prep to receive passage of your lines under fire. Reaper, secure these two and go to the sleds.”

“Bull –”

The steel in Bull’s voice carried across the comlink. “Now, ma’am. Tactical decision. We paid in blood for those two, and you’re going to take them home, because I don’t want anything to do with this shit anymore.” He watched Reaper put her helmet back on and escort the rescued pair rearward.

Then he reached for his Final Option device, detached it from where it rested beneath his belly armor, set the timer for fifteen minutes, hid it under a heap of debris, and joined the fighting withdrawal.

After the sleds launched, Bull tapped into the rear cameras and watched as the fusion bomb cracked the asteroid and obliterated the Meme base. He told himself once more that even if the originals had survived, they were better off dead than in some Meme laboratory.

He felt a piece of his soul die with them.

In the surreal quiet of the ride home, Bull stared across the assault sled at Reaper when she opened her eyes and spoke. “They’re your Marines now, Bull. They followed you to hell and back.”

“The ones that made it,” he said bitterly.

“Ultimate liability clause. Every Marine signs it, not just you.”

“I could have saved more.”

“Wasn’t your job to save them. Like you told me, your job is to complete the mission.”

“With minimum loss of resources.”

“Survivor’s guilt is a bucket-load of shit you don’t need.”

“What, you my shrink now?” he snarled.

“Better me than a Fleet doc. We’ll get good and drunk tonight. Kill some brain cells. Best therapy there is.”

Bull turned to look toward the bodies strapped to the deck, his eyes unfocused. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“It is well that war is so terrible, else we would grow fond of it.”

“More of your American quotes?”

“From one of our best. A guy called Robert E. Lee.”

“I’ve heard of him. He lost.”

Reaper shrugged. “Losses teach you more than wins.”

“Guess I have a lot to learn.” Bull turned back to look her in the eyes. “I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to teach.”

Reaper took a deep breath and smiled coldly. “Since you asked nicely…class starts tomorrow.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Her chest plate changed to display a proper Fleet Marine insignia. “I’m your new company first sergeant. That means you’d better have your shit strac, Eltee, or I’ll crawl up your ass and set up a permanent campsite.”

“Fair enough.”

She tilted her head back and narrowed her eyes. “So how’re you going to do it?”

“Keep my platoon squared away?”

“Yes. You have a plan?”

Bull pursed his lips and flared his nostrils, glancing away. This was a trick question, but belatedly, he remembered the answer from his training. “Yes, a detailed one.”

Reaper’s brow furrowed.

Bull continued, “When we get back, I’m going to tell Gunny Kang to get my platoon squared away and report when he’s done. I’ll tell him I’ll be around if he needs me. Then I’ll go do officer shit. I’ll visit the wounded, check the quality of food in the enlisted mess, find out what equipment needs replacing to fill out our table of equipment, type up my after-action report, start working on letters for the families of the KIAs…”

Reaper smiled and lifted both hands, palms out. “Hallelujah! The baby walks!” Then she crossed her arms, closed her eyes and leaned her head back to catch between two jump seat support straps. “Wake me up when we get there, will you, sir?”

Sir. First time she’s called me sir.

Bull only let himself smile when a faint snore wafted from Reaper’s nostrils.

The End of Steel’s First Temper

A Hotter Forge

Chapter 1

Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros knew something was up from the look in Reaper’s eyes as she strode briskly into the battalion gym aboard the assault transport Melita.

He set down the dumbbells he’d been pumping and met her halfway. “What’s happening, Top?”

She spoke quietly. “Please grab your gear and meet me in your platoon locker room, sir. You can shower there before the warning brief.”

“Why –”

Reaper held up hand. “Not here.” She turned and hurried off.

Seemed an odd way to do business. She could have simply paged him to a comm. He shrugged. Reaper was old-school for sure. Preferred the personal touch. Well, to a point.

Retrieving his gym bag, he did as instructed. His knee-jerk internal irritation at having a noncom tell him what to do, even if couched as a request, reared its ugly head and he fought it down. The training models never told you how to handle a nominal subordinate that in reality had ten times – maybe a hundred times – the experience and influence, whatever her putative rank.

But he was learning to handle it, and in his fairer, more reflective moments, he knew it was doing him good. She’d told him leadership was the art of getting people to want to do things for you. Apparently it was working, for he found himself wanting to measure up to her high standards.

And I’m also learning to lead, he mused. Leadership begins with respect, and respect begins with composure, confidence and concern for people, the three Cs. That’s what Reaper had told him, anyway.

When he entered the locker room he saw the rest of his platoon gearing up. His key noncoms – Gunny Kang, Sergeants Acosta, Suarez, Brooks and Chohan – were ready, already inspecting and assisting the troops. He felt as if he were behind the power curve, but shook it off. Composure, confidence and concern.

“All good?” he asked Kang as he stripped and grabbed a towel.

“On track, sir.”

“Gonna shower. Be right back.”

Bull was just pulling on his skinsuit when Reaper walked through the door right behind Captain Vaughn, the company CO. The room snapped to attention automatically.

Bull noticed Reaper shut the door and lock it.

Vaughn said, “At ease. Continue your prep, but listen up. We’re on vidlink with the rest of the company. Alfa Company's been tasked with a short-notice, time-sensitive, critical mission. Reaper?”

Reaper stepped forward, a tablet in her hand. “A Meme survey ship has been spotted ten hours from us among a dense cluster of asteroids. We believe it’s visiting a base. We’re going to go get it.”

“That’s a long trip for an assault. And why Marines? Why not have the flyboys go blast the shit out of it from long range?” asked Gunny Kang.

“Because we’ve never had a chance like this to capture real, non-blended Meme. Those of the Pure Race, as they call themselves.”

The room fell silent with shock. Though they’d been fighting the Meme Empire for decades, the only real glimpse of the amoebic enemy overlords had been from the video record of the defector, Raphael, before it blended with a human woman and became Raphaela.

Reaper continued the brief. “A survey ship is the smallest enemy craft that routinely carries a trium of actual Meme. This type of craft is often heavily stealthed, and survey crews seldom take any risks. They gather intelligence and data, but they don’t normally perform forward military scouting. And, like all Meme ships, they can run like a bat out of hell if they want to.”

“But not this time,” Bull said. “They’re hurt.”

“And we’re hoping we can catch them with their pants down.”

“Could it be a trap? They know we’re out here on patrol,” Kang said.

“The possibility exists. We’ll have a squadron of Warthogs backing us up, but they can’t get too close until we begin the assault. At that time, Aerospace will come in hot and the task force will follow them at best speed. If it is a trap, hopefully they can pull our nuts out of the fire.”

“Hope ain’t a plan,” someone muttered.

Reaper’s voice rose. “But it’s worth the risk. We’ve never captured a pure Meme. The spooks say if we can get one alive, we can extract one hell of a lot of intel from it, intel that will save lives and win battles.”

“No offense, Top, but this sounds more like a job for black ops,” Sergeant Acosta said. “Marines kill things better’n anybody, but capturing? That’s tricky. Restrictive ROE gets people dead.”

Reaper swiveled her head around the room. “You see any black ops people around here? The closest Direct Action unit is four days away. By that time, the survey ship will have repaired and gone. We’re it, ladies.”

Sergeant Chohan lifted a hand. “Is there a reason we’re getting this briefing in our locker room? Other than saving a few minutes tramping to and from the auditorium?”

“OPSEC, Sergeant. From now until we launch in less than one hour, nobody talks about this outside of secure spaces.”

“But we’re on a ship in deep space!”

Reaper took a step toward Chohan. “And our enemy has the ability to place spies among us. Blends, clones, or even suborned normals. I’m pretty sure about all of us Marines, but do you want to bet your life that every swabbie and squid on this ship is exactly who he says he is? Not to mention we have civilian contractors and even one embedded newsie aboard. That’s why you’re being briefed behind closed doors, and the rest of the company over secure vidlinks. And the commander and I are telling you in person because First Platoon is taking point and performing the capture. Second, Third and Fourth Platoon will support and secure.”

“Okay, Top, I got it.” Chohan still seemed deeply skeptical.

Bull didn’t blame him. Nobody wanted to be the guy that blew such a big opportunity, and this mission seemed like a setup for failure.

The rest of the hour fled quickly with the detailed operations order and final gear checks.

When Bull boarded his assault sled, the first thing he noticed was Reaper there ahead of him. “You coming along with First Platoon, Top?”

“You have the capture element, Bull. I’ll be your senior advisor and cover your six, both tactically and politically.”

“Politically?”

“Yeah. I vouched for you and First Platoon as the best. If we fail, I’ll take as much of the heat as I can.”

Bull nodded. “Politics. Hate that shit.”

“Get used to it. It’s a fact of life wherever people exercise power. People want to get credit for success and avoid the stink of failure.”

“Success has many fathers, but failure’s an orphan,” he quoted.

“Or mothers.”

Bull grunted in acknowledgement and looked around. The next thing he noticed was a large bundle strapped to the deck. Looking more closely, he thought it resembled a collapsed inflatable survival pod, but bigger. “What’s that?”

“Modified emergency life-support pod. That’s what the Meme goes into if we catch it. There’s one on each sled. Pull the opener and its internal frame will expand. You’ll see a twenty-centimeter-diameter flexible tube. Slap it on the Meme and hit the button. It’ll suck that bastard right in. Close the valve, seal it up, and we got ourselves a blobbo.”

“We just happened to have this aboard?”

“Spooky thought about it long ago and had several added to the complement of every ship in the fleet.”

Bull’s jaw dropped. “Spooky Nguyen? You know him?”

“Far better than I’d like to,” she said. “If you ever get a chance to work for him, say ‘hell no’ immediately. He’ll poison your soul and pat you on the back while doing it.”

Bull was about to respond with a joke, but thought better of it when he noticed Reaper’s face, which displayed all the humor of a hissing cat. “If you say so.”

“Do I seem unsure, Lieutenant?”

Bull tilted his head back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you unsure, Top. That bugs me sometimes.”

“Get over it. Sir.”

Bull shrugged, and then moved out of the way as two ratings carried a portable toilet into the sled and clamped it to the floor. “Ugh. Well, I guess it’s better than suit waste disposal systems. Ten hours would be a long time to go without a dump.”

Reaper nodded. “If we had more stealth sleds, we could have loaded light and in-flight rigged, but we’re lucky to have these eight specials. It’s gonna get real friendly in here, but it’s one hell of a lot less cramped than some missions I’ve been on. Did I ever tell you about the time I spent almost a week in a mini-submarine a quarter this size?”

“I’d like to hear about it.”

“I’ll tell everyone during the trip. I’m sure the troops will find it entertaining.”

Chapter 2

During the first hours of the long insertion, Bull allowed relaxed discipline. With helmets and gauntlets off, restraining straps loose and weapons unloaded and racked, the troops shot the shit. They ate and drank from cases of ration packs, trading favorite items or wagering for them on everything from poker to coin flips.

Once their initial energy wore off, Bull ordered the lights dimmed for three hours and had everyone induce two REM cycles of sleep in order to ensure they were fresh. When he awoke, he set his oversized helmet on his huge cranium and fired up his HUD, tapping into the sled feeds.

Four hours to go. Passive sensors showed the positions of rocky bodies as the sleds passed through this tiny corner of the asteroid belt occupying the band between Mars and Jupiter. So huge was the volume of space that the Meme had no problem infiltrating spy craft and setting up camouflaged, hard-to-detect bases among the millions of rocks.

EarthFleet countered by sending thousands of cheap robotic probes to scout, followed by search-and-destroy sweeps, but given the constant motion within the area and the number of potential hiding places, this was rather like trying to police a large city with a handful of cops. They might find a lot of bad guys, but they could never catch them all.

The Meme also had the advantage of on-site reproduction. As bio-engineered creatures, the vehicles and bases – which were really the same thing, only differently equipped and configured – could bud, spawn and disperse, as could the semi-independent living parts inside. So, like weeds, enemy spies could never quite be stamped out.

“Anything I need to know about?” Bull asked the flight crew over the cockpit channel.

“We’re five by five on a perfect ballistic trajectory,” said Lock, the senior sled pilot. “No burns, no comms, no nothing as we approach. Focused passives show no active sensor emanations from the target area, so they’ll have to get ungodly lucky to spot us until we arrive. The real question is, will the survey craft have a crewmember on standby in whatever passes for a cockpit, or will we catch them all aboard the base?”

“What if it does have a pilot aboard?”

“If it were me, I’d lift and run. Once they get moving, there’s no way we catch them or even hurt them. I doubt the Warthogs can chase them down either.”

“Then I guess we’ll hope there’s a Meme stuck aboard the base,” Bull said. “There are supposed to be three on a survey ship.” He switched channels. “Reap, you about ready for that story?”

“Sure, Bull.”

Bull opened up the general platoon channel, and then included the aerospace crew for good measure. “Listen up, diggers. Our esteemed first sergeant has consented to give us a tale of the old days, before the Meme came.”

The chatter fell silent as those in the sled listened.

“I was part of the Free Communities movement back before Earth became united,” she began, speaking as if the tale were old and familiar. “The New Soviets, China and the United Governments of North America were trying to strangle the Eden Plague by ever-more-brutal repression and military means. Daniel Markis approved Spooky Nguyen to lead a mission to seize an American ballistic missile submarine, with the goal of launching the missiles, wiping out the Big Three’s satellite networks, and level the playing field somewhat. But then Murphy showed up…”

Reaper went on to tell the tale of how they hijacked the Nebraska and launched its missiles. “Only the warheads didn’t go where they expected. A Psycho infiltrator reset the targeting, and about a hundred nukes fell on each superpower. Millions died.”

Her voice hitched a bit, sounding to Bull as if she’d choked up. He wondered why. Maybe she felt responsible. He wasn’t surprised. He was ready to fight and kill to defend humanity, but hundreds of nukes…that was wholesale slaughter on a scale to weigh on anyone’s soul.

“This devastated the Big Three, broke the back of resistance to the Free Communities and the Eden Plague’s spread. New governments took power and things were looking up, but then the Demon Plagues fell, and the alien Raphael showed up, and the rest you know from history shows.”

Chatter surged, questions from the troops on details, until Bull roared, “One at a time!” He reset the network so Reaper could control who spoke and when.

The questions and discussion passed the time, and Bull listened as Reaper skillfully led the listening Marines, some young and naïve, some old and crusty, toward the conclusions she wanted them to draw – lessons about war and operations, politics and life.

That reminded him again of how young he was at twenty-two, and how old she was at…what? He tried to remember when the alien showed up, and then did some math. At least fifty years old, maybe sixty. Which meant thirty-plus years in the active military. Damn.

Come on, Bull. Confidence, composure, concern. He flexed his hands and stared at them, wondering, like he did every time, if he’d measure up. Then he laughed to himself. That’s exactly how she wants me to feel: always striving to do better, to match the model and the example she sets.

More war stories passed the rest of the dull travel time. It reminded him of a definition of warfare that originated in the First World War: Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. He felt fortunate he’d never found himself terrified once the shit hit the fan, but the boredom was real, part of life.

In a way, he thought, the boredom made it easier when the moment came. By the time for the approach, he was champing at the bit to get the hell out of the cramped confines of the sled.

“One hour,” Lock said in his ear. “No movement at the target.”

“Right. Listen up. Take your last dumps, clean up your cards and dice and get your gear on. Nobody chambers a round until I say so. Buddy checks, then team and squad leaders recheck and report to me when finished.”

Reaper joined in the double- and triple-checking of gear. They were in full exo-armor, the individual ensembles massing more than two hundred kilos of integrated life support, protection, comms and weaponry. Cybernetic strength and low gravity made it manageable, but nobody would call EarthFleet’s Marines agile when they wore it.

Except Reaper, Bull mused. She moved like a dancer even in all her gear. He wondered whether it was customized, or if it was merely perfect economy of motion that allowed her to make it look easy.

“Six minutes,” Lock called. “Still no activity. I’ll hit the retros at one minute fifty. When I do, they’ll know we’re here.”

“Understood.” Suddenly, his bladder felt full. “Dammit,” he muttered, and then let go. The suit could handle some pee. He sipped at his water tube to moisten a mouth suddenly gone dry. A normal reaction to an abnormal situation, he reminded himself. Not fear, just anticipatory stress.

Okay, a little fear.

Reaper said a little fear was a good thing. Got the blood pumping.

Oddly, he felt more and more nervous before each new mission, not less. He refused to call it fear. Not fear of injury or death, anyway. He simply didn’t want to fail, and with each battle, he realized more and more how much could go wrong, how much was out of his control.

How much he had to rely on everyone else.

He didn’t like relying on anyone else.

He didn’t have any choice.

He wondered how long it would be before he’d feel like Reaper did. Then he realized he didn’t actually know how she felt. Maybe she felt the same things as he did. Maybe she was simply better at hiding it, or coping.

The sled shuddered and Bull felt the straps holding him strain with brutal deceleration. He heard a rebel yell and other battle cries as the interior bucked and shook. Debris flew and something rattled off his helmet as the long, narrow space seemed to tip forward to the vertical.

The Warthogs would be blasting in now, but it would take them at least an hour to get here. Until then, the Marines were on their own. Resistance wasn’t expected to be high, but the thought of a trap still hovered in the back of his mind.

He switched to the external view and saw the sled angling in toward the base, which was outlined on the HUD or he’d never have spotted it. It looked like any other patch of asteroidal surface, except for the docked survey craft half-buried in it, as if its pointed fuselage had crashed into the base’s roof.

“Is that…” he found himself saying as the survey ship began to wobble and stir. “It’s moving!” he yelled.

“I see it,” Lock said through clenched teeth. “I’ll try to –”

“Breach it!”

“What?”

“Don’t assault the base; assault the ship! There has to be a Meme aboard if it’s being piloted.”

“It’s armored a lot more than the base. We might not get through.”

“Try to hit it amidships. Fire a double round of breaching missiles. Tell the other First Platoon sled to do the same, right next to us.”

“Roger wilco.”

A quick check of the rest of the company showed the six sleds of Second, Third and Fourth platoons angling for the perimeter of the base to come in from all sides, according to plan. The enemy ship lifted slowly out of its living cradle. In a moment it would rise clear, hit its fusion engine and be gone.

“Don’t let it get away!”

“Doing what I can, sir,” Lock replied.

The survey ship swelled in his HUD and Bull switched back to tactical mode. The collision alarm sounded and the interior lighting flashed red. Marines hugged their straps and clamped hands on their weapons. Bull felt the breaching missiles’ double launch, and four seconds later the sled’s impact slammed everyone sideways, harder than he’d ever felt in an assault. He heard the vehicle’s structure groan, and then Lock called, “We’re in, but the nose will only open halfway! Go!”

“Lock and load!” Bull yelled, and Marines popped their restraints and chambered the first rounds on their pulse rifles. He tried to release his own webbing but found the fittings bent under the strain of holding his extra-large armor and self. He roared, exerting full cybernetic strength against the buckles, but they had been designed to hold, and hold they did.

He felt the tension release suddenly, and he turned to see Reaper with a battle knife in her hand. Its marked molecular edge sliced easily through the rest of his straps, and he shook himself free. “Thanks.”

“You should have done it yourself, sir. With your knife.”

“Got it.” A bit embarrassing, for she was right.

Getting loose fast didn’t turn out to matter; he had to wait patiently as his Marines exited one at a time through the half-open sled nose. When he finally made it in, he found himself in a surprisingly solid chamber, blank and featureless, but lacking any obvious threat. It looked more like something humans would build, rather than the usual Meme organic bladder.

“Where you at, Gunny?” Bull said, not seeing the nose of the other sled poking from the wall as he expected.

“We didn’t make it through the armor, boss,” the man replied. “We’re coming around for another try, but…”

“Belay that. Tell your pilot to dock with the back end of our sled and file through. Bull out.”

He turned back to the matter at hand. Designated Marines had finished setting two breaching frames in place, one at each end of the chamber, ovoids of explosive that would cut openings through the interior walls.

“Ready and blow on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

The frames ripped holes through the walls. Marines threw incendiary grenades and charged through both breaches. Bull took the right-hand chamber, the one closest to the nose of the Meme ship and, theoretically, to its command center. His HUD showed Reaper at his back, a good feeling.

Once through, he stared at another blank chamber, similar to the first. “Is this how it’s supposed to look?” he asked Reaper.

“Not according to the briefings…or my experience.”

“You’ve been aboard Meme ships?”

“A couple. They’re usually cramped, wet and full of critters that keep the systems working.”

“Shit. You think it’s a trap? Should we pull out?”

“Don’t know, but we haven’t lost anyone yet and I don’t see any threat. Something weird’s going on, but…it’s your call.”

Bull had never seen Reaper so uncertain. He licked his lips and checked with the Marines who’d gone through the other breach, finding they reported the same thing.

Abruptly, he was overcome with a wave of dizziness and pain as light exploded behind his eyeballs.

Chapter 3

Bull felt himself lurch and flail, half-conscious.

What happened? My suit…my stabilization system…

He groped for his weapon, which hung on the end of its tether, and wrapped his hand around its grip. Looking around, he tried to find a target, but saw nothing but Marines in various states of distress.

An opening irised in the living wall of the chamber and a figure dressed in what looked like yellow silk stepped through. Reflexively, he pointed his weapon at the thing and fired, but nothing happened. His pulse rifle seemed dead.

Fortunately, the creature held no weapon. It raised its hands as if in surrender.

Bull found his feet, noticing his armor seemed to mass a ton. He tried to call up his HUD and found that wasn’t working. In fact, none of the electronics in his armor or his cybernetics seemed to be functioning at all. He was moving two hundred kilos of suit with nothing but muscle power.

Fortunately, he had a lot of muscle, and the gravplating seemed to be set low, though he knew that could change at any time.

Somehow the Meme had knocked out all his systems. His gear should have been shielded to resist EMP, but apparently it hadn’t been enough. So, no enhanced strength, no comms, no sensors, no weapons.

They were screwed.

The creature, some kind of dark-green insectoid, seemed to be speaking. Its mouth parts moved, its thorax seemed to breathe and it was making gestures. Bull lumbered toward it, fumbling with the manual release on his faceplate so he could hear.

Reaper stepped up beside him, her old PW5 pistol in her hand, primitive enough not to depend on electronics. Just good old-fashioned cordite shells powering high-velocity bullets. Bull made a mental note to add something like that to his ensemble.

When he got his faceplate open he sniffed the air, finding it breathable, though with a taint that reminded him of offal and aging meat. The sound of the thing’s words came muffled to his heavily padded ears, so he took off the helmet and saw that Reaper was doing the same. Marines moved to surround the creature, ready to club it with their rifle butts.

“Please do me no violence,” the thing said in passable English. “One of the Pure Race wishes to join you. Please do me no violence. One of the Pure Race wishes to join you. Please –”

“Okay, we got it,” he said.

“You’re a Blend, right?” Reaper interjected. “That’s why you’re wearing that yellow silk?”

“I am a Blended One, yes. These clothings are the mark of my status.”

“I thought Blends stayed on planets.”

“In some rare cases we remain with the Pure Race in order to serve and minister to them.”

Bull’s mind raced. “And you’re saying a Meme wants to defect?”

“There is no defect in my master.”

“No, no, defect means…it wants to switch sides in this war. To leave the Meme Empire and become part of Earth’s, um…”

“Society,” Reaper piped up.

“Correct.”

“And what about you?”

“I love and serve my master.”

Bull turned to Reaper, who didn’t take her eyes off the man-sized bug. “What do you think?”

“I think when something’s too good to be true, it isn’t.”

“But what if it is?”

“Then I think your next promotion is guaranteed, young lieutenant. But I’d feel a lot better if all our electronics weren’t dead. We have no idea what’s going on with the rest of the company.”

“True. Go back to the sled. See if everything’s knocked out there too. If not, get a SITREP on what’s going on and pick up some handcomms.”

“Right.” She held out the PW5. “Better take off your gauntlet. I don’t think that sausage you call a finger will fit on the trigger otherwise.”

“Not my fault you’re built like a scarecrow.” When he’d gotten the pistol settled in his fist, Reaper headed for the sled and Bull turned to the Blend. “Where is the Meme?”

The creature gestured through the hole in the wall. “It waits through here.”

“Tell it to come out.”

“That will not be comfortable.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s comfortable. I want to see it and I’m not poking my head in that hole. Not when all our systems are dead.”

“Your systems might be restartable. The electromagnetic wave will not recur.”

“You’re saying that was a one-use EMP?”

“One use aboard this craft, yes. My master is clever. It built an unsanctioned copy.”

“Copy of what?”

“Of the sanctioned device, which can be recharged and used many times.”

“Great. Don’t move. I’ll come back to you in a minute.” Bull initiated a diagnostic on his cybernetics first, but that failed. He then tried a hard reboot, pressing two separate places on his body, feeling for the contacts there. Simultaneous pressure should use a bioelectric charge to try to restart his systems in a positive cascade.

That seemed to achieve nothing, so next he tried to reboot his integrated armor after manually resetting the surge protectors. The startup sequence began, so he moved on to his weapon, replacing the power cell and turning the simple device on. Its ready light lit.

“Listen up!” he roared, hoping unaided voice power would carry to those nearby. “Reboot everything you can – internals, suits, weapons. Cybernetics may not be restorable. Pass it on!”

His Marines began following his orders, so Bull turned back to the Blend. “You said your master built an unsanctioned copy of another device. Where is that other device?”

“On the base below us.”

Bull felt a cold lump in the pit of his stomach. He handed Reaper’s PW5 to Sergeant Acosta. “Watch this bug and stand by.” He pulled on his helmet and keyed his comlink as he began lumbering back toward the sled. “Reaper! Reaper!”

No answer came, but Sergeant Brooks called out. “Sir, we’re getting suits and weapons back up, but internals are dead.”

Bull replied. “Same for me. Our wetware is less robust, more delicate than our suits. Be glad we have weapons. Spread out and secure this ship. Everywhere but the hole where the Meme’s supposed to be.”

He ran into Reaper near the sleds. She handed him a handcomm and he clipped it to his shoulder, and then he halted her and initiated a hard reboot on her armor, easier for a buddy to do. Once that began, he tapped her weapon. “Reset it!” he snapped.

Reaper gave him a thumbs-up and then called through her open faceplate, “I got it working already. But we have bigger problems.” She waved him toward the sled. On the way, they met Gunny Kang disembarking with Third and Fourth Squads.

Bull barked, “Gunny, did you get EMPed?”

“No, sir. We hadn’t docked yet when it happened.”

“Toda lecha Elohim.”

“Thank God indeed,” Reaper echoed.

Bull wondered where she’d picked up Hebrew. “Gunny, spread out, quarter and search. There’s an insectoid Blend that’s under guard and apparently a Meme behind him, and we’ve encountered no resistance, so don’t fire at anything that’s unarmed or nonthreatening. It looks like this Meme might be trying to defect. If you can’t reach me or Reaper, try alternate sled or handcomm channels.” He tapped the device.

“Yes, sir.” Kang waved his squads forward, relaying instructions on the move.

Once inside the sled, Reaper led Bull up to the cockpit. Lock and her copilot sat strapped into their crash chairs, hanging from the upper leaf of the four-petaled flower that formed the front of the sled. The low gravity made this only a slight inconvenience.

Reaper grabbed a hard line and plugged it into Bull’s helmet, and then another into her own, linking them with the flight crew and sled systems. “The sled shielding is heavier, so we’re good,” she said. “The Warthogs should be fifty minutes out, with a squadron of light cruisers and frigates two hours behind them. But that’s not what concerns me. Warrant Officer Lockerbie, please tell Bull what you told me.”

The pilot nodded, her brow furrowed. “First, the ship we’re on is moving away from the base and in the direction of our forces. Not too fast, though.”

“That supports the Meme’s contention it’s trying to defect,” said Bull.

“Yes. Second, there’s a low-power modulated widebeam laser painting us from the base. I’m pretty sure it’s an attempt to communicate, but I didn’t want to open comms before I got your say-so, in case it’s some kind of information attack.”

“Have we reached the rest of the company? Or even the sleds?” Bull asked.

“No, sir. The base is sending out wideband jamming on all radio freqs.”

“Power emanations from the base? Our people? The vehicles?”

“From what little I can detect, only Meme-style equipment. This sled has rudimentary sensors, but they should be able to see if our other sleds were live. They’re not. Infrared shows they’re cooling, too.”

Reaper said, “The ‘sanctioned’ EMP device on the base must have been more powerful than the one that got us.”

“Looks like it was a trap after all,” Bull replied.

“Or a new defense.”

“Why would they try out a new defense here all of a sudden?”

“To keep that Meme from defecting?”

“If they knew it wanted to defect, why let it aboard the ship? No,” Bull said heavily, “this was a trap. The defection is a wrinkle they didn’t expect.”

Reaper sighed. “I’m forced to agree. Now what are you going to do about it, sir?”

Bull gave her a sour look. “This isn’t the time for stump-the-lieutenant, Reaper.”

“I’m not, sir. That was an honest question. We can’t get through to Captain Vaughn, so your platoon needs command direction from you.”

“And you’re my senior enlisted advisor. So advise.”

Reaper turned to stare at the cockpit instruments. “As I see it, we have two choices. Secure this Meme and keep going. We accomplish the mission, which was to capture a Meme. In fact, we’ve done even better than that. Apparently we have one that wants to cooperate. It’ll be an intelligence goldmine. Or…”

“Or go back and try to get our people,” Lock said.

Bull growled, “I bet they’re already dead – or at least, most of them. If the enemy was ready, they could have chopped them up like hamburger after the EMP killed their cybernetics, suits and weapons. Dammit.” He smashed one fist into the nearest bulkhead, causing it to shake. “Why wasn’t our shielding better?”

“Weight and bulk, especially inside our own bodies. Everything’s a tradeoff, Bull. You know that. We’ve never had any indication of the Meme using EMP this way. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. I should have –”

Reaper slapped Bull on the shoulder. “You did everything you should have. Now what are your orders?”

Bull chewed his lip. “Lock, accept the transmission. Relay it to the closest Fleet units on a laser and see what they make of it, along with an updated SITREP.”

Lock nodded and tapped at the pad on her seat’s arm. “Accepting now. No malware detected. Software is interpreting…trying to relay…our laser comms are down. Doesn’t surprise me; we’re three-quarters buried in this ship. Werner, see if you can run a line back to the other sled and establish comms.”

“Roger that,” said her copilot as he unbuckled and began to do as Lock had instructed.

On the shared channel, Bull heard an obviously synthesized voice say, EarthFleet unit commander, respond. EarthFleet unit commander, respond. EarthFleet unit commander…

“Patch me in. Meme base, this is the EarthFleet commander. What do you want?” Ben Zonah! I’m really talking to a Meme…

We want the Third in our trium returned to us. It is ours.

“Yeah, and I want a tall cool blonde and a million bucks. How’s it feel to want?”

We do not understand. Clarify.

Bull exchanged glances with Lock and Reaper, breathed deeply, and then said, “I don’t intend to return your Third.”

We offer the lives of your underlings in exchange for our Third and our ship. This bargain is to your advantage.

Bull’s mind raced. Twenty-two Marines plus two flight crew per sled, times six sleds, plus the platoon leaders, platoon sergeants and the CO. One hundred fifty-two humans had assaulted the base. “How many do you offer?”

One hundred fifty still live. Two have expired. You may have them all in return for our Third and our ship.

Shockingly few casualties, Bull thought. “Stand by.” He waved at Lock to suspend transmission and said to his comrades. “They didn’t massacre them. Why not?”

“Maybe they expected this Third to defect,” replied Lock. “They were ready.”

Reaper shook her head. “No…if they had, they’d have simply prevented it from running. Locked the survey ship down. I think this was a trap from the start. They baited it with Meme, they used a new tactic and a device to disable but not kill the assault force…”

Bull slapped a bulkhead. “They wanted prisoners. But why?”

“Lots of possibilities,” said Reaper. “To blend with us. Brainwash us with biogenetic conditioning and use us against our own people. Study our cybernetics and weapons systems. Clone us and slip copies back as spies. Not to mention the morale hit EarthFleet would take if the entire complement of this mission mysteriously disappeared. Remember those big, empty rooms on the survey craft? That’s where we would have been held as the ship ran for the outlands to rendezvous with one of the bigger, more distant Meme bases or ships. But now,” she said, pointing a finger at Bull, “you have a decision to make.”

Bull didn’t say anything. In the background, he heard the synthesized Meme voice asking for an answer, and Lockerbie telling it to continue standing by.

Think, Bull, think!

What should he do?

Chapter 4

Bull’s gut told him to take the deal and get his people back. People he knew. People he served with. His brothers and sisters in arms. He couldn’t let them down. He couldn’t leave them in the hands of the Meme to be altered, conditioned, experimented upon, not to mention the intelligence the enemy would gain from doing so. As far as he knew, the Meme had never gotten ahold of more than one or two humans at a time. One hundred fifty would be a windfall.

So, two reasons to take the deal.

Yet, every bit of his training told him that the mission was paramount. That sacrifices were necessary for the defense of humanity. That letting the enemy use hostages to get what they wanted would simply invite more hostage-taking.

The voices of instructors he respected echoed in his head, telling him that his first duty was to the overall objective. That if he put people ahead of the mission, he would inevitably decide not to take the risks that needed taking, which would lead to a vicious cycle of playing it safe, trying “not to lose” instead of playing to win.

And Bull played to win.

But sometimes, he knew, winning turned out to be impossible. Sometimes, snatching survival from the jaws of disaster constituted the only possible victory.

Yet that wasn’t this case. He could complete the mission, with “only” seventy-five percent casualties. First Platoon, with its forty-four Marines, plus four Aerospace crew, would survive, and they’d bring their Meme defector home. The information in its mind could save a lot more lives than three platoons-worth of Marines.

In fact, that information might change the course of the conflict. Earth really knew so little about the Meme Empire, its capabilities and its current status. The other defector, Raphael, had been out of contact with its fellows for thousands of years, so its info was very old.

The information from this Meme might win battles….maybe even the whole war. The value of the things it could tell them about genetics and biology alone would be incalculable.

“What do I do?” Bull hadn’t intended to say that out loud, but found he’d whispered it.

“Get our people back,” Lock said immediately. “Screw this Meme defector. Let them have it. We’ll be no worse off. A draw.”

“Minus two KIA,” Reaper snapped. “If we do, no Meme will ever try to desert again. During the First Cold War, the West never forced any defectors to return to the Communists for exactly that reason.”

“Oh, so now you have an opinion, Reap?” Bull said.

“I’m just rebutting Lock. I didn’t intend to influence your decision, but you asked, and now the damage is done.”

“Maybe it would be better if you both brought your arguments into the open so I can hear them.”

“If that’s what you want, sir.” Reaper raised an eyebrow and a slight smile played about her lips.

Bull hated when she did that. It meant she’d defaulted to instructor mode and he was the student, even though technically he was in charge. He felt like he always ended up in a lose-lose discussion…except somehow, she helped him come up with the right answers. Which was, he supposed, more like a win-win.

Damn all smartass crusty senior NCOs, anyway.

“I want you both to do what I just told you,” Bull said. “Make your cases. Maybe you’ll tell me something I haven’t thought of.” There. That should retake the high ground.

“Go ahead, Lock,” Reaper said, deceptively mild.

“Okay. We can’t leave a hundred fifty of us and get only one of them. It gives them a bigger windfall than we get. More importantly, it would be breaking faith with our own. I don’t know about you jarheads, but Aerospace doesn’t leave our people behind. We sure as hell don’t leave them behind alive to be experimented on and turned into slaves or worse. How’d you like to be one of them and be abandoned? It’s wrong!”

Bull watched Reaper’s face freeze at the slur on Marines, and then she seemed to force herself to relax. “Nobody in EarthFleet wants to leave anyone behind. And you’re right. It’s wrong and it sucks to be them. But sometimes the choice is between wrong and wronger, and I believe it would be even more wrong to send back this defector. The repercussions would be enormous, not to mention the lost intel – which is not ‘one compared to one hundred fifty in value. Meme memory is like a database, nearly perfect, potentially encompassing thousands of years of life. Every time one of them divides to reproduce, it keeps all of its ancestors’ memories. That’s what we’d be losing: dozens of lifetimes. I hate like hell to say it, but EarthFleet needs this creature and its knowledge more than we need all those Marines.”

Bull held up a hand and thought it over for a long minute, fully aware that time was running out. At a certain point, it would be impossible to turn and run back to make the trade the Meme demanded.

“Is that our only choice, though?” Lock broke in. “Why not try to eat our cake and have it too?”

“How?” Bull asked.

“We could fake the exchange and double-cross them. Attack, get our people out and probably the Meme too.”

Reaper snapped, “We might lose everyone. They can EMP us again and then they’d slaughter us all. It would be better to wait until the Warthogs show up. We could offload the Meme in a survival pod, then go back for a straight-out assault, supported by the gunships. That way we have the defector for sure, and we might get some of our people back. And we make damn sure they’re not left behind, alive or dead. That way, the Meme get nothing out of this.”

“You’re one cold bitch, you know that?” Lock said.

Reaper’s face twisted. “Someone has to be,” she rasped. “Making military decisions on the basis of sentiment is stupid.”

Bull realized that Reaper was forcing her words out, not from anger or contempt for Lock’s arguments, but because she was choking on a lump in her throat.

She doesn’t want to leave them behind any more than Lock does. She’s making herself give the advice she believes is best. Heart or head? Bull asked himself.

A movie hero would deftly combine both into a plan that would miraculously achieve all of his goals. Everyone would come out all right, with a couple of sacrifices along the way for a bit of pathos, and they’d all live happily ever after until the next episode.

But that wasn’t the way it worked in real life. What had Reaper said? Wrong or wronger. The bad choice or the worse. If he couldn’t make a good decision, at least he should be able to make the least-bad one.

Or he could call back to ask for instructions, and then do what he was told. But every minute that went by carried them farther from the base. Besides, that would be a coward’s move, avoiding responsibility.

His instincts said to keep the Meme and go back, try to fight the Marines out of the base. Also, if he took the deal, the chain of command might approve, but the line doggies would never look at him the same, knowing he’d sacrificed so many of them for something so nebulous as “good intel.”

So what was more courageous? To carry out the mission and be hated by the troops? All he had to do was say no to the voice on the comm and keep going.

Or to give in to the Meme demands, go back and make the swap and get his people out of there?

Both choices seemed cowardly.

But maybe…

“Lock, keep trying to establish comms and relay that SITREP. Keep up the chatter with that Meme, too. Tell it we’re discussing their proposal. Stall them. Reaper, follow me.” Bull unplugged and jogged back toward where the Blend stood under guard.

“What’s the plan?” Reaper said.

“Watch and see,” he snapped, not in the mood for her second-guessing.

When they reached the insectoid, he said, “You. You call this Meme your master?”

“Yes.”

“Are you willing to die for it?”

“If I must.”

“Can you pilot this ship?”

“I can, though not as well as one of the Pure Race.”

Bull turned to Reaper. “Go get that inflatable Meme pod and four Marines with working cybernetics.”

“For what?”

Damn the woman. “Do as you’re told, First Sergeant.”

Reaper raised an amused eyebrow. “Aye aye, sir.” She trotted off.

As they waited, Bull spoke with the Blend, explaining its role in his plan.

When Reaper returned with the pod, he ordered it inflated and readied, checking his chrono. This would take exquisite timing if it were to work.

“Tell your master to open up the skin of the ship and let our vehicles inside as I explained, and seal it behind them so the other Meme won’t be able to tell,” he told the Blend. “Then you take over piloting and send your master out.”

The Blend turned to the opening and stepped half-inside for a moment, apparently communicating with the Meme hidden there. Then it returned to its positions. “You will treat my master well.”

“If you follow through on your part of the deal.”

The Blend stared at Bull for a long moment. “I choose to believe you, for I have no other choice. My master must escape.”

Sergeant Suarez, standing nearby, snorted in disbelief and muttered, “Sounds like love for sure.”

The Blend turned toward Suarez. “What could you know of love, wretched underling?”

Surarez took a step toward the insectoid and raised her weapon. “Fucking Meme bug –”

“Stand down, Suarez!” Bull roared. “Go relieve Acosta and send him here. Quick march!”

“Aye aye, sir,” she said through gritted teeth, and then faced about and double-timed off.

“Well, you’re making friends,” Bull said as he turned to the Blend once more.

“I will not accept criticism from the lower orders. I speak with you because you command, and because I must.”

“Because I’m the one who decides your master’s fate, you mean.”

“This is true.”

Bull keyed his handcomm. “Lock, you guys inside?”

“Yes, Bull. The ship’s skin pushed both sleds into the big interior space and sealed up behind us. Freaky shit. What’s going on?”

“Like you said, we’re going to try to eat our cake and have it too.”

“What?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Bull checked his chrono again, and then detached his Final Option bomb from beneath his thick belly armor. He breathed a sigh of relief when its detonation timer booted right up. The fact that it had been shut down must have preserved its electronics. He turned it off and snapped it back into place.

He was about to prompt the Blend, when it turned and entered the dark hole. A moment later he stepped back involuntarily as a cloudy gel began to flow out of it.

No, not a gel: an amoeba, a Meme. He stared at it in horrified fascination as it rose bonelessly, waist high, and focused a stalked eyeball the size of a grapefruit on first him, then Reaper, and then the other Marines.

Those stared as well, some gripping their weapons convulsively.

“Everybody relax,” Bull said. “It can’t hurt us. Reaper, the pod.”

Reaper took the open end of the large hose and set it down in front of the Meme. Then she waved at it as if to say, get in.

The eyeball bobbed, withdrawing into the interior of the mass of jelly. After a moment’s pause, the thing’s body flowed smoothly and with startling speed into the tube. Five seconds later, it had disappeared completely into the pod.

“Have that carried to the skin of the ship.”

Reaper signaled the four Marines to pick up the pod full of Meme and carry it off, with her in trail.

“Blend, can you hear me?” Bull called into the hole.

“I hear you.” The opening widened and the interior brightened.

Inside, he saw the insectoid manipulating organic control surfaces that looked like large hairs, tentacles and pimple-covered expanses of skin. Concave screens covered in clear slime showed what must be representations of space around the ship.

“Are we heading back to your base?”

“It is not my base.”

“To the Meme Empire base.”

“Not yet.”

“Are the other Meme suspicious?”

“I do not understand the question.”

“Meme operate in threes, so there are two other Meme on the base, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Do they suspect I’m not following their instructions for the exchange of assets?” Bull asked.

“How can I know?”

Bull growled. Damned literal-minded creature. “Do you believe they suspect anything amiss?”

“No.”

“Go ahead and release the pod.”

“Complying.”

The pod and the Meme within it would be pulled through the organic wall and excreted into space. It would drift toward the oncoming Warthogs and Fleet ships until one of them retrieved it. A beacon on it would make that easy.

“Pod released,” the Blend said.

“Now turn the ship around and head back to the base at the same speed as before.” Bull unclipped the handcomm from his shoulder and placed it next to the creature. “This is a simple communicator. Its frequency is already set. Push the large button when speaking, release to listen. Clear?”

“I am a highly intelligent being with a near-perfect memory, human. Of course it is clear.”

“Then use it to tell me when this ship is docked tight.”

“I shall do so.”

Bull stared at the bug a moment longer, feeling an odd flash of comradeship. “Good luck.”

“Given our opposition, we shall need it. Farewell, human commander.”

“Bull. My name is Bull.”

“I am Maydar. Die well, Bull.”

“I ain’t gonna die today, Maydar.”

The bug seemed to shrug. “I believe I will. But it shall be as the One Above All dictates.”

Bull raised a hand and turned away. Meme believed in some kind of god? Yet, why should he be surprised?

He made sure his HUD was set to automatically monitor the handcomm freq and cue up any transmission, and then switched to the platoon channel. “First Platoon, this is Bull. All personnel return to sleds and load up. Gunny, report when all present.”

When he reached the sleds, now parked inside the empty chamber as if on a flight deck, Marines were loading up and taking their seats. “Strap in if you can. Shut down all systems, including cybernetics, and be ready to reboot at a moment’s notice.”

“Third and Fourth squads as well, sir?” Kang asked.

“Everybody. We’ll be far less vulnerable to EMP with our systems off, and the sleds should give us a lot of shielding.”

“What is it we’re doing, sir?”

Bull realized he hadn’t explained his plan to anyone yet. “We’re going back to get our people.”

A brief, spontaneous cheer broke out among the troops.

“But the defector…” Kang trailed off, confused.

“We’re Fleet Marines, Gunny. We don’t negotiate for hostages, and we don’t betray defectors by sending them back to be tortured and killed. So we’re going to play Trojan Horse.”

Kang cleared his throat. “Ah, sir…they’ll use the EMP again.”

“I’m counting on it. From what the bug told me, they only have the one device, and it takes a long time to recharge. So here’s what we’re going to do…”

Chapter 5

“We have docked with the base, Bull,” Maydar said over the handcomm. “I am receiving instructions intended for my master, to surrender for dissolution. I cannot maintain this pretense for long.”

“Tell them we’re holding you until our people are released to fly away in their sleds.”

“I told them, as you instructed. They refuse. They insist on the prior surrender of my master.”

“Tell them to let the ones they have go and we fifty-two will be hostages. Then they get your master, and then we go.”

“I will tell them.”

What seemed like minutes passed, though when Bull checked, it was only thirty seconds.

“They do not understand your attempting to change the bargain. The two Pure Ones seem to be arguing. They suspect treachery.”

Bull smiled grimly. “They’re right about that.”

“I do not understand, Bull.”

“About what, Maydar?”

“Why did you not trade my master for your underlings?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself, so I can’t really explain it to you.”

“You humans are a peculiar species.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Yet it pleases me to see you possess a sense of morality.”

Bull snorted with suppressed laughter. “I thought you Blends were supposed to be the hedonistic narcissists, bereft of all ethics.”

“Most are, but some few, like me, retain their sense of propriety through the blending process. Such is more likely when blending with an asexual worker insectoid form like this one.”

“What, only the queen and the drones get any fun?”

“If you are referring to sex, then yes.”

“And you think we humans are weird.”

“We think you humans are corruptible because of your many vices.”

Bull grinned. “Most are, but some few, like me, retain their sense of propriety.”

“And a sense of humor, I see. Then we are alike.”

“Maybe so.”

“The most senior of the two of the Pure Race has prevailed. They shall not alter the agreement. They insist you send out my master.”

“Doesn’t your master have a name?”

“Its designation is – was – Third. Those of the Pure Race have no names. Only underlings have names.”

“Bizarre. Okay, we’ll have to do this the hard way, like I told you. Do your part and if we make it through this, I promise you’ll be reunited with your master.”

“I will do my part.”

Bull dropped the channel back to standby and tried all the company channels in sequence, hoping to reach someone outside of First Platoon, but no dice. They must not have been able to restore any comms. They might have been stripped of all their equipment by the enemy. That’s what he’d do in their place.

Then it would all be on him and his people. He switched to the platoon channel. “First Squad, Fireteam Beta, initiate according to plan. Everyone else, shut everything off including HUDs and comms.”

The rear ramp on his sled dropped and five troops charged out, spreading out in all directions. The ramp raised to seal again and Bull took deep breaths, trying to overcome the frustration of being blind and deaf, unable to speak to his people or even watch them on his tactical HUD.

If Maydar did his part, the five would be heading for five different points inside the survey ship’s skin. When they were all ready, irises would open and they would charge out into the base, throwing grenades and firing their weapons, raising as much hell as possible.

And if the enemy took the bait…

“Bull!” Lockerbie yelled from the cockpit, “positive EMP!”

“Drop ramps and go!” he replied. “Reboot! Everyone reboot!”

Front and rear ramps dropped, manually released, and troops poured from the sled. Bull took a moment to reinitiate his armor and weapons, and then followed his people out.

Four tunnels, pulsing with red stripes, showed the way off of the survey ship. Bull followed the rump First Squad down one of them, lumbering in his massive armor. Without cybernetics to boost his strength and speed he remained clumsy and slow, but at least his weapons and comms worked.

Now that the enemy had used their EMP against his decoy squad, he had a fighting chance. Third and Fourth squads, which had been outside the ship during the first EMP, hadn’t lost any capability.

Even now he could see them on his HUD, assaulting left and right around the perimeter of the circular base. He’d ordered this deployment in hope the sleds hadn’t been moved far from their insertion positions. Maybe the prisoners would be kept in their vicinity.

First and Second squads, with active weapons and armor but no cybernetics, headed for the Meme command center. Maydar had pinpointed it for them, offset from the middle of the base.

Using cutting charges, Bull and his Marines breached wall after wall, mercilessly burning down every living thing they encountered. For several minutes resistance remained light, consisting of unarmed worker biologicals that threw themselves at his troops, doing little except making them expend ammo.

Then a wall shivered, and Bull remembered what Reaper had said about a ripple preceding an opening. “Action left!” he snapped as he brought up his pulse rifle.

The wall split along its length, left to right. The bottom half dropped and the top half retracted upward, and a dozen mantises with blades charged his line.

Bull found himself bellowing as he emptied his first magazine in one sustained burst. His hands felt as if they were moving through molasses as he performed a quick reload, the lack of cybernetics telling. As he snapped the new magazine in, he ducked a wild swing from one of the mantises and fired into its abdomen. Ichor erupted from its broken exoskeleton even as he felt something slam into his back and drive him to the deck.

He tried to roll, but pieces of his broken back-rack hindered him. He twisted and fired at his attacker, and then dodged again as the mantis stabbed downward. The blade skidded off ferrocrystal armor plate until it found a weak spot, which happened to be his left wrist. The point pierced his skinsuit and impaled his forearm between the radius and ulna, pinning him to the deck.

Swinging his rifle upward one-handed, he blew the thing’s triangular head off. It came crashing down atop him and he screamed as the blade twisted.

Keying a hero cocktail of stims and painkillers made the pain recede. Releasing his rifle, he set himself and pressed a quarter-ton of Pureling to slowly roll off of him. He felt his laminated bones grind together, but it was only a curious sensation, not a deterrent. Once free of the bug’s mass, he seized the blade that held him and worked it back and forth to draw it first out of the deck material, and then from his arm.

“Acosta? Reaper?” he rasped, struggling to his feet.

“Acosta’s KIA,” Reaper said, stepping into his field of vision. “So are Kronhaller and Colón. Billings and Riggs are walking wounded. You are too, looks like. Can you use the arm?”

Bull flexed his left hand, but the fingers only twitched nervelessly. “Not really, but that’s all right. I can fire one-handed. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Attack!”

“Have you checked tactical?”

He almost told her to screw tactical when he caught himself. It was the drugs coursing through his veins, not reason, that made him feel like taking on the whole Empire. He brought up his HUD and saw Third and Fourth squads meeting up on the other side of the base perimeter.

“Gunny, SITREP,” he rasped.

“We recovered about two dozen.”

“Out of a hundred fifty?”

“They had no weapons, no armor, no wetware. We interrupted the slaughter in two chambers, but the rest…they had no chance, sir.”

“How about your own?”

“Seven KIA, nine or ten wounded. Resistance has disintegrated, though. I think we got all the bugs, sir.”

“You recover any pilots?”

“One, sir.”

“Then load up the nearest sled with wounded and get it into space. You and the rest fight your way back to the survey ship and our sleds for extraction.”

“Roger that, sir. On our way.”

Checking near him on the HUD, Bull found the remnants of Second Squad nearby. Neither they nor his fireteam had gotten anywhere near the Meme command center, but he hadn’t expected to. Theirs had been a diversion, to help out Third and Fourth in the rescue attempt.

“Brooks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fall back to the survey ship and rendezvous at the sleds. You did good.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Reaper fired a burst from her weapon at a mantis peeping from an opening across the room. “We need to extract, Bull. The shape we’re in, it won’t take much to wipe us out.”

“Right. Pick up our KIA and bring them along.”

“Without cybernetics, we can barely carry our suits.”

Bull realized that was true. Everything that had once been easy had become difficult. Even with his unusual strength, he felt as if he could barely haul himself across the deck. “Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna vaporize this place anyway.” He detached his Final Option bomb one-handed and set the timer for twenty minutes and optional command detonation, and then shoved it inside a dead mantis’ guts. “Let’s go.”

When he and his Marines shuffled tiredly to the sleds, he found Pureling body parts strewn across the deck. Lock and the other Aerospace personnel stood in their lightweight blue suits, holding pulse rifles at the ready.

“Looks like you had a little action,” Bull said.

“Not enough to make me want to join the FMF,” Lock replied. “No biggie. There were only three, with those swords. But sir…”

“What?”

She pointed at one corpse. “That one’s not a mantis. Wrong color, too.”

Bull looked where she indicated. Instead of the gray of mantis chitin, he saw yellow silk soaked in green blood. “Damn. It’s Maydar. The Blend.”

“Guess they like traitors about as much as we do,” Reaper said.

“There’s a difference between a traitor and a defector,” Bull snarled.

Reaper shrugged. “Eye of the beholder. Sorry, Bull.”

Gunny Kang came loping up, fully capable Marines behind him helping skinsuited personnel, many wounded. “Load the sleds, move, move! Fourth Squad, pull security.”

“Good job, Kang,” Bull said.

“Thank you, sir. Wish we could have rescued more.”

Bull searched Kang’s face for any trace of rancor. After all, Bull could have gotten everyone home safe if only he’d have traded the Meme. He’d tried to eat his cake and have it too, but over a hundred of his people had died. He didn’t see any condemnation in his platoon sergeant’s manner, though.

In fact, Bull thought he saw approval. He didn’t understand that at all.

When he turned to Reaper, she nodded at him. “Let’s get our people home, Bull.”

“How?” he asked, looking around. “Maydar is gone. How do we get out of this ship?”

Lock pointed toward the noses of the sleds. “Thin spots marked right there. They appeared a couple minutes before we got attacked. I assume it was your bug friend’s dying act.”

“My bug friend…” Bull looked at Maydar’s body once more. “Gunny, roll him in a survival blanket and bring him along.”

“Sir?”

“He was on our side. Or at least, on his master’s side. And he returned with us to help. Without him, we’d never have gotten any of our people back. And I made a promise to him, that he’d join his master. So he comes along. We treat him with respect.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Kang detailed two Marines to carry out Bull’s instructions.

“Wish I had another bomb to put on this ship. Make sure it’s dead too, so there’s no escape for the surviving enemy.”

“Final Option bomb, you mean?” Reaper asked.

“Yeah.”

“Here.” Reaper opened her chest armor and pulled out a small, flat device. “It’s a mini.”

“Mini?”

“Tenth of a kiloton instead of half, but it’ll get the job done.”

“Only officers are supposed to have these.”

“What, Bull, you don’t trust your First Sergeant to run with scissors?”

Bull shook his head in exasperation. “Fine. Ten minute timer. Hide it in a mantis body and let’s get the hell out of here.”

On the crowded shuttle ride back, some Marines slept. Others treated wounds, tended to gear or jabbered until their battle-stimmed nerves calmed. Several of the rescued shook Bull’s hand and thanked him for coming back for them. He didn’t bother trying to explain that he could probably have saved everyone if only he’d abandoned his mission orders and taken the deal the Meme offered.

“You did the right thing,” Reaper said quietly, leaning in.

Eerie. Seemed like Reaper could read his mind. “Did I? I could have traded the Meme and everyone would have lived. So what if I’d have been court-martialed. Small price to pay for so many lives.”

“You didn’t take your oath to save your life, or even Marine lives. You took your oath to uphold Earth’s constitution, to protect humanity against all enemies, and to follow all lawful orders. You feel like your mission orders were unlawful?”

He sighed. “No.”

“How many are coming back?”

Bull consulted his HUD. “Sixty-eight.”

“Better than fifty-two. Your actions saved a net sixteen lives, and you carried out the mission to capture a Meme. The fact that it’s actually a willing defector is a bonus.”

“Once the whole story comes out, nobody’s going to trust me to lead them to a whorehouse, much less on another mission.”

Reaper lifted her index finger and poked Bull in the eye.

“Ow! Shit, what the fuck?”

“That’s for being a whiny asshole. Look around you, young lieutenant. Do you see anyone glaring daggers? Blaming you? Did you think those Marines thanking you were lying?”

“No…”

“Then quit beating yourself up. You made a plan and you executed it. The worst plan, violently executed, is better than no plan at all. Everything else is up to God, fate, the competence of the enemy and the roll of the dice. You made a command decision. You completed your mission. You lost some people. Shit happens. Do the dead the courtesy of honoring their sacrifice and move on, because this sure as hell won’t be the last time people die under your command.”

Bull put his head back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. He had no energy to argue with Reaper, and everything she said seemed to make sense while she was saying it.

Yet, he felt his heart harden within him, and he had a vision of it, like a lump of metal under the blacksmith’s hammer. Perhaps that’s what it would take to become the leader he must: a soul of iron, tempered within a hotter forge.

What Price Humanity?

Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2110 A.D.

With their vast, intelligently designed living ships, the hostile aliens we call Meme employ superior strategic mobility in the outer Solar System. They are able to operate with few bases and no resupply more advanced than the nearest collection of asteroids and cometary nuclei. They lurk within the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, losing themselves among millions of objects across incredible distances, consuming ices, metals and silicates to refuel, replenish and reproduce.

While gathering strength, they raid, attacking our outposts and asteroid acquisition operations, our transiting cargo ships and task forces, looking for easy victories, forcing us to expend more resources than they. In accordance with their conservative – the misinformed might say cowardly – nature, they hit and run, always with the aim of preserving themselves while damaging us.

This situation reminds me of my studies of the twentieth-century conflicts in Vietnam that pitted various outsider-supported indigenous forces such as the Viet Cong and Viet Minh against foreign powers – notably, but not only, the French, the Americans, and my own Chinese ancestors. This guerilla strategy would be a model for insurgents and terrorists for decades, until Earth finally became united in the face of the Meme threat.

To counter this strategy, EarthFleet employs heavy sweeps of areas where we suspect their presence. When we meet them, we defeat them if they stand; thus, they seldom give battle. Screened by clouds of living hypervelocity missiles, they flee faster than we can pursue until we retire again to the orbit of Jupiter, the true edge of human territory.

Thus, for a time, we fight the classic asymmetric war. Our machines, our discipline and our locally superior firepower are mismatched by the Meme ability to strike with little warning, inflict damage, and withdraw with impunity.

That is until, every decade or two, their reinforcements arrive from beyond the solar system.

Each time, the Meme gather to conduct a massive assault, hoping to penetrate our defenses and damage our single, fragile home planet. Each time, we have beaten them back with great losses, heroic sacrifices. Each time, their remnants withdraw to the outer reaches to continue their guerrilla warfare and await the next push.

And each time, they come closer to wiping us out.

We are losing this war, not because we are getting weaker, but because they grow stronger more rapidly than we. Yet we must win, every single time. If we lose, we lose Earth, the basket in which most of our eggs lie.

To win, I believe humanity has no choice but to consider inhuman solutions to inhuman threats, to fight fire with fire.

But if we ignite this conflagration, might we not burn down our own house?

Chapter 1

“Do you know who you are?”

The woman’s warm, professional voice soothed him. “Sure. I’m Vango Markis. Flight Lieutenant Vincent Markis, EarthFleet, Aerospace branch, I mean. What happened? Did I get hurt?”

“Nothing we can’t fix. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m blind. Why can’t I see?”

“You don’t have use of your eyes.”

“Why can’t I feel anything? Will I fly again?”

“We’ll explain all that soon, Flight Lieutenant Markis. For now, we need to re-baseline your cognitive profile while we work on your body.”

“Call me Vango. It’s my call sign. You’re a doctor?”

“I am.”

“How bad is it, doc?”

“You’re not dead. You’re thinking clearly enough to converse.”

“But will I fly again?”

“Yes, Flight Lieutenant Markis. You’ll fly.”

Vango detected a false note behind her calm and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. How bad could it be? Between the Eden Plague’s healing and the reconstructive nanotech, if the brain made it back alive and undamaged, the body could eventually be regenerated, cell by cell, good as new.

That must be it. He couldn’t remember, but he must have been hit bad, really bad, worse than he’d ever been. He wondered about the other fliers in his squadron. Did they make it back?

Make it back from what, though? He couldn’t remember.

“Doc, what happened?”

“What’s the last thing you recall? Tell me your last memory of anything at all.”

“I’ll rack my brain.” He tried to laugh, but felt no muscles respond. How was he speaking? It must be a low-level neural link, audio only.

“Was that supposed to be humorous? Humor’s a good sign. Now please answer the question, Flight Lieutenant Markis.”

“You can call me Vango. Really. I remember…I remember heading back to Earth from Callisto, sealing into the coldsleep cocoon. Hate those things, the slime and everything. Don’t trust captured Meme biotech.”

“The technology is safe and proven.”

“So’s bungee jumping. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Do you remember waking up?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything after that? A mission, perhaps?”

Vango mulled this over, trying to strain out the most recent memory among the many sorties he’d flown against the Meme, but everything seemed to muddle together. “I’m not sure. I remember a lot of missions. Last one I’m certain of is when we beat the Destroyer.”

“That’s all right. Confusion is to be expected.”

“Why aren’t I in full VR link? Is my visual cortex damaged?”

“We’re taking it slow, working from the ground up. We’ve already done as much as we can while you were unconscious. Now we have to ask you a battery of questions. Please bear with us.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please let me know when you’re ready.”

“What’s your name, doc?”

“My name’s Sue, Flight Lieutenant Markis. What’s yours?”

If he had eyes to roll, he would have, and didn’t bother to insist a third time she call him Vango. “Humor’s a good sign.”

“Humor’s a good sign.”

“Okay, fire away.”

The voice paused. “Is there a fire?”

“No…go ahead and ask, I mean.”

Although the doctor’s voice rang with tones of purest English, Vango couldn’t precisely identify her accent. Still, he thought it sounded a bit unnatural. A translation program, then, for someone speaking another language. Software often stumbled over idioms or translated varying phrases exactly the same.

“Where are you from, doc?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts. How about you?”

Interesting. His guess about Sue as a non-native speaker of English seemed to be wrong. “I’m from Carletonville, South Africa, as you should know.”

“Why should I know?”

Awkwardly, Vango struggled for words as he always did when confronted with the fact that his father, Daniel Markis, was the Chairman of the Council of Earth, the man most people thought of as humanity’s political leader. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

“We need to move on, Flight Lieutenant Markis. I have many patients to attend,” Sue said. “We’re going to start with maths. What’s five plus eight?”

“Thirteen,” he answered automatically. Maths? Didn’t Americans say math for mathematics?

“Twelve times three?”

“Thirty-six.”

“The value of pi?”

“To how many decimal places?”

The questions went on like this for hours, becoming rapidly more complex and covering language, history, science and more. Vango found himself happy to exercise his mind and felt little fatigue, experienced no difficulty.

“How’d I do?”

“Very well, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Tomorrow we’ll run some more sophisticated tests.”

“Tomorrow? What’ll I do until then?”

“Sleep. Pleasant dreams, Flight Lieutenant Markis.”

“Dammit, I’m not –”

Vango awoke with no sensation of drifting or lethargy, nor did he remember dreaming. It was as if someone threw a switch and he came whole unto consciousness.

“Good morning, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Did you sleep well?”

“I think so. Can I see something today?”

“Auditory tests will be conducted today.”

“I can hear you just fine, Sue.”

“We still have to run the tests.”

Vango sighed mentally and compartmentalized, telling himself it was just another hurdle to be jumped, another step toward getting back into the cockpit.

The day dragged, and at the end of it he was almost glad to be put to sleep.

“Good morning, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Did you sleep well?”

“You can ditch the script, Sue. Just talk to me like a normal person. English isn’t your first language, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“But you said you were from Massachusetts.”

“That’s true.”

“It’s true that you said it, or what you said is true?”

“Both are true.”

“What’s your first language, anyway?”

There came a perceptible pause. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to discuss anything further about myself at this time, Flight Lieutenant Markis.”

“At this time? Why?”

“We don’t want to skew the tests. You and I must remain emotionally detached.”

“Who said?”

“That’s another thing I can’t discuss. You’ll understand in time.”

“Maybe I want to understand it now. Maybe I’m sick of your damn tests and won’t take any more until I get some information.” He wasn’t fed up – not quite – but perhaps as a negotiating ploy…

“Your readings do not indicate sufficient agitation to refuse. Besides, you’re a military man. You raised your hand and swore to uphold Earth’s constitution and obey the lawful orders of the officers appointed over you.”

“Are you an officer appointed over me?”

“No, but I’m relaying the instructions of those who are.”

“Then I demand to know who’s giving the orders.”

“These orders come from Admiral Huen.”

“Not from my father?”

“Chairman Markis and the Council of Earth have delegated authority to Admiral Huen in these matters. You know how the chain of command works.”

“Does he know what’s happened to me?”

“To which ‘he’ do you refer?”

“My father.”

“Your father has been fully briefed.”

“Why can’t I talk to him?”

“You must complete the program first. Now, Flight Lieutenant Markis, we must proceed with the testing regimen.”

Vango sighed, or tried to, though he felt no lungs, no air. “Sue, you’re one hardass bitch.”

“You’re not the first to say so. We will now continue with the testing regimen.”

“Then for the love of God, please tell me I get to see something today.”

“Yes, a bit later. Touch and smell-taste baselining will take a couple of hours. Afterward, you will see.”

He steeled himself for more tedium. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

After the hearing, touch and smell-taste processing, the first visual Vango received was of a blank plain, a whiteness broken only by the hint of a horizon at an indeterminate distance. He looked down and saw his feet, his legs and his torso, and when he moved them into view, his hands. They lacked the exquisite detail of the real thing, though, identifying this as a VR sim, a virtuality not so different from what he saw when he linked in to the computer network in a fighter, though of far lower resolution.

“Is that better?” Sue said.

“Hugely. You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck inside your own head with no one to talk to.”

“You might be surprised.” The horizon clarified, and the plain took on a texture resembling carpet. “Walk, please.”

Vango walked. Shapes appeared, resolving themselves into three-dimensional geometric representations – cubes, pyramids, spheres – then into more complex objects such as chairs and tables, houses and cars, airplanes and Fleet spacecraft. Each time he was asked to identify and interact with the items.

“Look, I’m acing these tests. Obviously I’m not impaired, right?”

“Not significantly. Your cognition is running above ninety-seven percent of normal.”

“Then please, may I see something real? Link me into the grid. Give me full VR with people in here. I’m sick of playing your games.”

“These are not games, Flight Lieutenant Markis. They are evaluations designed to identify flaws.”

“Flaws in what?”

“Your ability to perform to specifications.”

“You make me sound like a part in a machine.”

“What is a pilot but the most important piece of his craft?”

“Like you’re the most important piece of the mechanism of modern medicine?”

“Of course.”

“Doc, are you even human?” Vango meant it as a joke, but the question had an unexpected effect, bringing on an extended pause, and then he felt himself losing consciousness.

Chapter 2

When he came to, no Sue spoke in greeting. Instead, he woke up in a dimly lit, nondescript chamber bereft of windows.

Not his bed and not his room. Not a bunk in an officer’s shipboard stateroom. Someplace dirtside, then. He felt about one G of pull, which meant he was likely on Earth in some kind of medical facility.

Swinging his legs out of bed, he stood in loose-fitting pajamas and bare feet on a warm, carpeted floor. The motion evidently triggered the lights, showing a small desk with a chair, a wall locker and nothing else.

All this confirmed his suspicions. He occupied a high-class simulation. His body must still be undergoing reconstruction in a nanotank. He’d never been injured badly enough to need one for more than a day, but a full rebuild would take months. He resigned himself to a stretch inside the virtuality, and afterward the inevitable VR-addiction detox, the bane of those who spent too much time in the link.

Opening the room’s locker, he found a flight suit with his name and rank on it and pulled it on, along with socks and boots. Better to obey the rules of this virtuality than override them, if that was even allowed. As an experiment he tried to call a lit cigarette into being, and then a cup of coffee, but failed. So, no freebies.

Suitably attired, he squared his shoulders and opened the door, finding a hallway that could have come from any Aerospace-branch barracks, with the usual art on the walls showing fighters, bombers, attack and transport craft from eras stretching back to the Wright Brothers.

“Token!” Vango felt a greater flood of relief than he’d expected as he spotted his tall, ebony-skinned wingman stepping into the hall, similarly attired.

“Hey, Vango. You getting rebuilt too?”

“I guess. They haven’t told me much for sure. Nothing since the tests.”

“Yeah, me neither. And they didn’t let me contact anyone.”

“Maybe we’re on slow time. That way it won’t feel like months.”

“All the more reason to let us talk to someone.”

Vango looked up at the ceiling, a common habit when addressing a ship’s computer or a sim’s controller. “Sue, you there? Anyone?”

No answer came.

“Maybe this is more testing,” Token said. “Maybe we’re supposed to figure things out for ourselves as a way of keeping us occupied.”

“I don’t appreciate being played games with. I don’t usually like to drop the Markis name, but I hope someone’s listening when I say I doubt my father will be pleased when he hears we’ve been poorly treated.”

Token waited a moment, eyes also lifted as if to see whether that declaration would bring a response, and then he shrugged. “You know how doctors are. Petty gods. They’ll claim medical necessity.”

“We’ll see.” Vango strode down the hall, banging on doors until more than two dozen people stood in the hallway, all of varying degrees of familiarity, but none unknown. He had the odd feeling that some of them were out of place, as if they didn’t quite match with his recollections, or with each other.

That was it. He was certain they hadn’t all served together at the same time. And one of them…

“Stevie?”

The short, blonde lieutenant as usual crackled with energy and filled out her flight suit in a way that made him ache with powerful nostalgia, though oddly, not the lust he expected. Before, when they’d been involved, she’d been his wildest fling, full of fiery chemistry.

“Hey, Vee.” Her strong Southern-U.S. accent brought back a flood of memories. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”

Vango seized her in a crushing hug, drawing catcalls and whistles from the others as he kissed her tentatively, she more enthusiastically. “Stevie, I don’t understand,” he said into her bobbed hair. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”

“Guess not, old son.” She slapped him on the butt and pushed him to arm’s length, continuing in a Mark Twain drawl. “It seems reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Vivid memories washed over him, of the medics carrying her cold, dead body out of her quarters on a stretcher, the rubber hose of her speedball addiction still wrapped around her arm. Nobody came back from that, Eden Plague or nanotech notwithstanding…right?

“What’s your last memory?”

Stevie’s face turned cagey. “I remember dumping a plate of gumbo on your head in a restaurant in the Quarter.”

“That’s it? The very last memory? Come on, Stevie, this is important.”

“I remember going to the infirmary.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Bitch cut me on the street. It was pretty bad. Bad enough they stuck me in an autodoc tube all day.”

Something made Vango ask, “Did they put you under? General anesthesia?”

“I guess. That’s the last thing I remember.”

Vango turned to Token. “What’s your final memory before waking up here?”

“Getting on the transport back to Earth after we beat the Destroyer. Getting in the cocoon.”

“Me too.” He pointed at Lock, a slim, no-nonsense female senior transport pilot well known for getting out of extreme scrapes. “What about you?”

“The same. Coldsleep. After the Destroyer.”

“Wild Bill?”

The calm, taciturn man said, “After. Coldsleep, too.”

“Does anyone have a final memory of anything except going into coldsleep or an autodoc?”

All of those present shook their heads or muttered negatives.

Token said, “Is it possible we were all damaged in the cocoons? Maybe our bodies didn’t come out of coldsleep properly, but they were able to salvage our brains.”

“So,” Stevie cocked a hip and raised a finger, “we’re disembodied brains? Like in some old pulp movie?”

“Until they rebuild our bodies,” Vango replied. “Nothing to worry about.”

“But what about the autodoc?” Token asked.

Vango rubbed his jaw. “I think it’s not about coldsleep, but getting put under. Something went wrong. Something new and unexpected.”

Wild Bill sniffed. “Then why haven’t they simply told us what’s going on? We’re not children. We can handle a little bad news. Hell, it’s just a vacation in VR. We’ve all been here before. Where’s the sun and the surf, the ski slopes, the mountain meadows? We should all be hang-gliding by day and clubbing by night. Instead, we’re in this,” he gestured, “this institution. Something’s not right.”

Vango growled deep in his throat and slammed the heel of his hand into the nearest wall, then again, and again. He could feel pain and a sensation of injury, so the virtuality was sophisticated and accurate, almost flawless. “Sue!” he yelled. “Someone talk to us, or we’ll…”

Stevie turned, shrugged in apology and kicked Wild Bill in the crotch. “Sorry, dude,” she said as he rolled in agony on the floor. “Try to remember it’s just VR.” She put a booted foot into his ribs with enthusiasm, and then reared back for a stomp, until three others grabbed her and pulled her back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lock said, taking a fistful of Stevie’s flight suit near the neckline and shaking the smaller woman.

“Trying to get the warden’s attention.”

Everyone paused for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened.

“It was worth a try,” Vango said, standing over Wild Bill, “but no more of that. We might not be hurt physically, but with pain feedback enabled we can be mentally damaged.”

“Psycho bitch!” Wild Bill gasped, holding his genitals.

“Pussy,” Stevie replied. “I took worse beatings in juvie.” She struggled in Lock’s grip. “Now let go of me unless you want some too.”

“Everybody throttle down,” Vango said. “Is this all it takes to set us at each others’ throats?”

Most had the decency to look sheepish, except for Stevie and Bill.

“So what’s the plan, Vango?” Token asked.

Everyone was staring at him, even the other flight lieutenants who he thought might have more seniority. Apparently the Markis name was bigger than the difference between two flight lieutenants’ dates of rank. People expected him to lead. No big deal. He was used to it.

“First, no more brawling. We’re EarthFleet officers, not a bunch of street punks.” He glared at Stevie, who merely grinned at him. “Second, it seems like we have two choices. We can wait, or we can do something. Anyone here the waiting type?”

Voices raised in denial until Vango waved them down. “Good. Half of you go that way with Token, the other half come with me this way.” He pointed emphatically down the hall to match the directions as he spoke, and then took off.

When both Stevie and Wild Bill followed him, Vango stopped and said, “Bill, you better go with Token.”

Wild Bill shot Stevie a poisonous glance and then sneered. “Fine. Keep thinking with your prick.” He turned to stalk off.

Vango sighed. He’d sent Wild Bill off because he didn’t trust anyone else to handle Stevie, not because he was lusting after her. Until the situation clarified, he would keep an eye on her, keep her under control.

Not that he’d done very well at that the last time around. She’d died, after all, because he hadn’t been able to compete with a needle and a packet of white powder. Like every day since, he wondered what that said about him.

At the end of the hall in the direction he’d chosen, Vango found a room full of old Mark III flight simulators. Those with him crowded past and ran their hands over the machines, checking them for function and status. Stevie jumped into one and reached for the link wire, plugging it into her skull before he could object.

That made Vango reach up to touch the socket in his own skull. “Does anyone else think it’s weird that we’re inside a VR sim looking at flight simulators that have been obsolete for years?”

Lock nodded. “Yeah, and pointless. Why bother with representations of simulators anyway? Usually we just request a revision of the virtuality and suddenly we’re flying. This seems…primitive.”

“Walking before we run?” said Butler, a tall male warrant officer. “Still evaluating our responses?”

Vango frowned. “I suspect you’re right. Stevie, can you hear me?

“Yeah.”

“What do you see?”

Stevie had begun manipulating the manual controls, standard backups even though all functions on modern craft were handled via link. “Only one program, labeled XM-58. Extremely high maneuverability and acceleration. Whatever ship I’m flying, it’s shit-hot, hotter than anything I’ve ever tried before. Can’t find the weapons, though.”

“Probably not available until later in the program,” Lock said.

Vango ran his hand over the simulator’s shell. “Until later…why?”

Lock gave him a stare as if he were dense. “They obviously want us to use these things. Look at this room. No doors. Even the one we came in disappeared. Eleven of us, eleven simulators. We’re in VR, remember? They can control our environment in detail and they’re not telling us anything, so obviously they want us to play along. The others are probably experiencing the same thing.”

Vango remembered Lock was always a thinker, even smarter and more driven than the usual elite pilot. “Fine. Let’s play.” He hopped into one of the chairs and reached for the link. The others followed suit.

Like Stevie reported, the program put him inside the cockpit of the fastest, most maneuverable ship he’d ever driven. Sure, it might be an imaginary craft, something never built, but what point to simulate a phantom?

And the vehicle obeyed the laws of physics. It had limits, though those limits were extraordinary, and he felt nothing of the body – no G forces, no vibrations, no feedback.

Forgetting about his situation within the greater virtuality, he lost himself in the joy of flight, launching from and landing on moons and planets, ships small as frigates and large as carriers and everything in between, zooming within cruising fleets, buzzing his way past near-collisions in trajectories far too dangerous for reality.

At no time was he able to see the craft itself, though, neither interior nor exterior, even reflected in shiny surfaces. He had the impression it was cylindrical, like a fuselage, although that may have been an artifact of the sim.

After several subjective hours, just as he felt he had achieved basic mastery of the thing – building on his extensive experience with less capable craft, of course – a new section appeared on his avionics display: a standard sensor panel. It cued him to an incoming Meme hypervelocity missile.

He easily avoided the missile, and it vanished. Two came next, and then four, then more, doubling in number each wave. Eventually he was brought down by one of thirty-two, at which point the count stabilized until he passed that level. Then it doubled again until he couldn’t dodge them all no matter how he improved.

This exercise presaged a run of combat scenarios of ever-increasing complexity. He encountered squadrons of Meme stingship fighters, corvettes, frigates and cruisers, all the way up to Destroyers, those massive, kilometers-wide living battleships, firing at him with missiles small and large, with fusors, even with the less-common biolasers and scatterguns.

Never was his ship provided with weapons, though he was allowed to self-destruct using his internal suicide fusion bomb, or ram when all hope of escape was lost, exploding that selfsame warhead on contact. Not an advisable tactic, usually, but something every pilot no doubt contemplated in his or her heart of hearts. Better to go out in a blaze of glory and take one of the hated enemy along.

Fatigue began to set in. A check of the sim chrono told him he’d been at it for ten hours straight, but he pushed himself for a couple more, hungry to complete whatever process this was, to see the end of it and, he hoped, regain the real world and his freedom.

He was still at it when he lost consciousness.

Chapter 3

Once more Vango woke up in the featureless room with its nondescript furnishings. This time, when he stepped into the corridor, his comrades awaited him. Vango prevented his own door from closing. “Can you go back into your rooms?”

A couple of people opened door. “Seems like it,” on called. “Why?”

“I’m trying to find out how much they’re going to push us to do what they want. So today, we’re not playing in their sims.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Stevie said, stepping up to him and grabbing him around the waist.

“Exactly,” Vango replied with a slight blush. “We’re going to do anything but play along. Have sex, talk, play word games, whatever you like. Just don’t go to the simulators. Let’s see what happens.”

“Ooh, I like this plan already,” Stevie said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into his room to the hoots and hollers of the others. Inside, his dead former girlfriend – or whoever she was – stripped out of her flight suit to stand naked in front of him, posing like a short, buxom pinup model. “Like what you see?”

“Of course,” Vango said, his voice even. “Only one problem.” He stepped out of his own flight suit and spread his arms. “Not working.”

Stevie stared at Vango’s lack of erection. “That never happened before.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Let’s try a little harder, then.” Stevie pushed him onto his bunk and soon both were doing their best to bring about the desired result.

“Damn,” she said after a few minutes. “These bastards turned off the fun parts.”

“I was afraid of that. They’re not going to make it easy to entertain ourselves.”

“I never heard of a sim like this. Even in training, there’s rules, right, Vee? They’re supposed to treat us the same in or out of the virtuality. That’s the law. They even amended the Constitution.”

Vango stroked Stevie’s hair absently as they lay naked on the bed. “Yeah, that’s the law. The fact that they’re not following it means something.”

“What if there was a coup? Somebody else took over when we were lying injured. Hell, it could be years later than we remember.”

“If we’d all boarded the same ship and had the same last memories, I might believe that, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. And you were dead, believe me.”

“I’m not jonesing either.” Stevie slapped the inside of her elbow as if to raise a vein. “I mean, I kinda want it, but mostly because I’m bored.”

“Bored with me here?”

Stevie laughed and rolled onto an elbow. “It’s that small-town insecurity that makes you so edible.”

Vango sighed. “Not today, it seems. Speaking of edible, have you felt hungry or thirsty yet?

“Nope. Haven’t even had to pee.”

“That settles that, then.”

“Why us, though?” Stevie asked. “Why these twenty-four people?”

“Well, I served with all of you one time or another.”

“Really?” Stevie jumped out of bed and pulled on her flight suit. “I don’t know most of these people, but you do? Maybe you’re the nexus. Come on, let’s go find out.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He dressed quickly and started pounding on doors, rousting everyone into the hallway again. “I presume you all got the same negative results we did?”

A few raunchy jokes floated his way, but all eventually agreed that sex simply hadn’t been allowed to work.

“Stevie pointed out something I missed,” Vango said. “I’ve served with every single one of you at some time, but she hasn’t. Is there anyone here who knows everyone from before, like me?”

No one raised a hand.

“So for some reason, I’m the center of all this. It makes me wonder if you’re all real, or just sims within my virtuality.”

That started them buzzing. Wild Bill, now seemingly fully recovered, stepped forward. “I feel like myself. I remember my life. I can describe it in detail if you want.”

“Proves nothing,” Stevie retorted. “Vango says I died. I don’t remember that. But from his point of view, we could be programmed to say or do anything.”

“How can we be sure any of us are real?” Lock said.

“We can’t,” Vango replied. “But we seem to be consistent. If we had writing instruments, we could probably construct a time line and some matrixes showing when and where we served, what our last memories were, what all our relationships were. But we don’t even have that. Our rights are being violated. Earth law and EarthFleet regs regarding VR says nothing can be done inside a virtuality without our consent, and that we can leave at any time.”

“Except in case of medical necessity,” Lock pointed out.

“That covers keeping us here, but not failing to provide information, forcing us to do all those tests, giving us nothing to do except what they want…”

Token spoke. “It might be operational necessity.”

“How do you mean?” Vango said.

“What if what we’re doing is vital to the war effort?”

“Then why not tell us that? We’ve all dedicated our lives to fighting the Meme. What’s the point of keeping us in the dark?”

A hand went up in the crowd, attached to a big man called Canyon. “What if it’s not friendlies that have us?”

“Come again?”

“What if we’re not under EarthFleet control? What if we’ve been captured by the Meme and they’re, I don’t know, studying us?”

The pilots’ faces all reflected varying expressions – shock, skepticism, disgust, thoughtfulness – as that idea percolated through their minds. Conversation began, turning to chatter and argument.

“I don’t believe that,” Vango said, raising his voice to cut through the noise. “Remember, the Meme can blend with prisoners. They can take over their bodies and suck all the knowledge out of them. Their biological and genetic sciences are far superior to ours. That’s why we use reverse-engineered Meme-tech in our coldsleep cocoons and other devices. So, there’s absolutely no need to study us in VR. They already know all there is to know about the human race, and if the Meme had captured us, they’d already have blended with us against our wills.”

“How do we know they haven’t?” Lock said, looking around.

“I guess we don’t,” Vango replied. “Stuck in VR like this, we don’t know a damn thing except what the controllers want to tell us. So I guess the question is, do we play along with what might be some unfair and extralegal crap on the assumption it’s all necessary, or do we assume this is all bullshit and resist as best we can?”

“Is this a democracy?” said Lock, giving him a hard look.

Vango nodded to her in thanks for reminding those here of their military discipline. He realized she was probably the oldest, longest-serving among them. If she hadn’t been happy to remain a chief warrant officer, she’d no doubt outrank everyone here.

“Yeah, what do you say, Markis?” Canyon said. “You’re in charge.”

“Everyone agree to that?” Vango asked. “Some of you might have dates of rank earlier than mine, so if you want the job, say so now. Otherwise, I’m it and you’ll follow my orders from now on.”

He looked around, searching for disagreement and finding none. “Then we’re going to play their game for now. We haven’t been abused, and this thing feels to me like some kind of extended psychological test combined with training. It might be meant to keep us occupied or it might genuinely be teaching us how to fly a new vehicle. And that’s what we do, people. We fly. So follow me, and let’s fly.”

At the same end of the hall as yesterday, he opened the door to the simulator room and waved everyone in. Twenty-four modules awaited them in the room, and the chamber seemed larger, confirming Vango’s suspicion that it didn’t matter that they’d split up the first time. All roads led to these simulators.

Vango’s next surprise came when the simulator activated an IFF-Blue Force module that kept track of friendlies. Even before he launched from the asteroid he found himself on, he saw twenty-three other contacts designated friendly, each with appropriate personal call sign.

Experimentally, he spoke. “This is Vango. Anyone read?”

Chaos immediately broke out in the audio link.

“Pipe down, people,” he said. “Looks like they gave us a common net, so use standard protocols and keep the chatter to a minimum.”

“Token here. What are we supposed to do?”

As if in response, a short mission brief appeared in Vango’s HUD window. It directed him to lead his formation along certain routes, avoid threats, and to come within fifty meters of the designated targets. Those targets turned out to be Meme Destroyers, the enemy’s largest ship class, living spheres two to three thousand meters in diameter and massing billions of tons.

Fifty meters might as well be ramming.

“Do you all have the mission brief?” Vango asked.

Terse affirmatives told him they saw it. “What’s the point?” asked Stevie. “Get close to Destroyers?”

“Obviously there’s a program of increasingly difficult missions, like a tutorial. Since this is the first one where we can see and talk to each other in the VR field, let’s cooperate and graduate to the next one and I’m sure we’ll see. That’s the point.”

No one grumbled further, which heartened Vango. This might all be a game, but it felt like mission prep, like one of those group dynamics exercises where the participants had to figure out how to achieve objectives within extremely narrow rules of engagement.

As he’d taken the reins of leadership, he’d do the best he could. He wondered briefly if this whole thing was a leadership test for him alone, using simulacra of people he’d known. If so, he resolved to pass with flying colors.

“All right, everyone report go for launch.” When they’d done so, Vango gave a three-count and kicked his ship up off the asteroid. He swiveled his point of view backward and saw an ejection tube flush with the surface. All around him rose other craft that looked like unadorned missiles.

Zooming his viewpoint in close, something that came naturally when fighting in VR space, he saw his comrades’ ships still appeared as blank cylinders, tapered at the nose and blunt at the tail. No weapons, sensors or other fittings could be seen. A suggestion of fusion exhaust showed near their sterns, but when they adjusted course, no jets of any kind spurted. It was as if the sim controllers were deliberately suppressing any clue as to the real nature of these attack craft.

On the fly, Vango assigned each of his pilots roles and positions within a hierarchy, based on his memories of the people involved, dividing the twenty-four into six four-ships. He took Stevie, Token and Lock with him.

He told each flight to make its own way toward the objectives. They didn’t get far. By halfway in, everyone had been destroyed. As the pilots died, they respawned back in the launch tubes, but were not allowed to begin again until everyone else had returned and Vango gave the word.

“How are we supposed to get there with no weapons to defend ourselves?” Stevie complained. “This is bullshit!”

“We have to figure out a way to at least get one ship into the objective zone,” said Token. “We’ll need to assign interceptors and decoys to sacrifice their ships. We have our suicide bombs.”

“That’s bullshit too,” Stevie said. “That’s not the way we’d really fight. Highly trained pilots don’t throw themselves away.”

Vango said, “They do if it’s important enough. Besides, this is a low-grade sim. If they wanted us to treat it as real, they’d make it realistic in all aspects. Instead, this is like a kid’s game where the goal is simply to beat the level and advance to the next. So we go with Token’s idea. This next iteration, our objective is for one of us to complete the mission. After that, we can work on getting more of us there.”

It took nine attempts, but with a series of wild maneuvers, eventually Vango made it through to break the fifty-meter range. Everyone else got knocked out, but they all still cheered. He felt as if he’d used them up as they decoyed and intercepted threats for him, but knowing it was a game, he was able to think like a football team captain rather than a flight lead. His only objective was to get the ball to the goal, and the ball was himself.

Vango said, “Great job, team. Now you see it can be beaten. This time let’s get more people across the line.”

His confidence quickly faded, however, as the next mission ramped up its difficulty. He abandoned all thought of multiple wins and settled for trying to get himself there again. This time it took five attempts, and he ended up ramming the Destroyer and killing his ship.

But he won, according to the simulator.

“This really is a game,” Vango said to his people. “I didn’t notice at first, but now I realize the success parameters didn’t say anyone had to survive. We only have to cross the fifty-meter line, and that’s a whole lot easier if we ram them at the end, no matter what the speed.”

“Then I bet we can get several through,” Token replied. The others agreed, and as it became clear there was no penalty for dying in the process, they waxed enthusiastic, proposing new and unconventional tactics to “win the game.”

They won the game. In fact, three rammed the objective. Crossing the fifty-meter line seemed incidental.

“We’re getting good at this,” Stevie cried.

But hazards increased once more.

“They aren’t letting us taste the fruits of our victory,” Vango announced, “but we’re improving by leaps and bounds. At some point there will be a new kind of challenge, not merely a harder one. Keep at it.”

The day ended before the objective changed, though the difficulty increased four more levels. Every time Vango thought they had it licked and they got most of the ships across the goal line, it became tougher.

In what turned out to be the day’s final run, Vango’s consciousness faded as he alone crossed the fifty-meter mark.

Chapter 4

This morning, Vango felt something had changed. As he opened his eyes, he noticed the ceiling seemed grainy, with much greater detail than before. He followed the join where it met the wall and noticed a smudge, and then a cobweb.

Rolling abruptly out of bed, he stared at the imperfection as if it were the world’s most wonderful sight. Tearing his eyes away, he examined the room and found many such details, though the basic layout remained the same, with the addition of a door.

Opening it, he found a bathroom, with toilet, shower, soap and other supplies. He suddenly he realized he had to pee. The relief was nearly overwhelming, both psychological and physical. Had he finally been released from the virtuality?

He examined his hands, then the rest of his body, finding real, variable flesh, skin and hair, where before it had been minimalist and plastic, like a mannequin. Finding tweezers in a drawer, he stabbed himself in the forearm and drew blood from the tiny wound, blood which glistened for a moment before he smeared it to clotting. Then he sucked on his finger, smelling and tasting the iron.

Real. It was real.

Or a high-resolution sim, he told himself. Don’t get your hopes up too high. This may be simply one more test.

Showering and dressing hurriedly, he found others in the hallway already talking earnestly. Some slapped back and spoke joyously, loudly. Others seemed intent on examining everything up close. He saw Token take down one of the pictures on the wall and look behind it, touching the hook that had held it there.

Arms grabbed his waist from behind and he turned to find Stevie wrapping herself around him. An unexpected surge of desire flooded toward his groin.

“Is that a pickle in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?” she said.

Vango grinned. “Very glad to see you.” He leaned down to kiss her, and it lasted a while.

“Break it up, you two,” Lock said from arm’s length. “How do we know this is real?”

“Aren’t you the buzz kill,” Butler said, coming up to bump the tall woman with his shoulder. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” she snapped.

“Why?”

“Because…” Lock trailed off. “It just does.”

Vango disentangled himself from Stevie. “How can we know?”

Lock frowned. “We can test the limits of this virtuality, if there is one. If we find things that make no sense in the real world, we know we’re still inside.”

“And if not, we’re still not sure.” Vango shrugged and raised his voice. “Listen up, people. Spread out and try doors. Find windows or exits or…something, anything that proves we are – or aren’t – still inside a simulation.”

Five minutes of exploration were all it took to return the verdict: not real. No windows had appeared in their rooms. No exits could be found. And the room at the end of the hallway that had until now contained the flight simulators…

“Not what I expected,” Vango said as the others ushered him into a room grown large, a hall now overflowing with the trappings of a feast. High ceilings supported chandeliers, and a banquet had appeared on one long heavy polished wooden table. Linen tablecloths and napkins set off silver flatware, crystal goblets and porcelain plates. Bottles of wine, beer and liquor vied for space with whole roast fowl, haunches of beef, pork and lamb, and mounds of side dishes. Off to the side he saw a dance floor outfitted with a music system. A robotic bar stood nearby.

“It’s a party!” Stevie said. “And look what I found!”

Vango turned to see the woman dressed in a hot red number that showed a lot of skin and seemed to be supported by sheer willpower. Matching heels and clutch, plus a diamond necklace and bracelet combo, completed the outfit. “Very nice.”

He noticed others had changed their clothing as well. They must have found the civvies in their rooms, or…. Experimentally, he tried to conjure a lit cigar, a common VR trick for programs that allowed it.

The stogie appeared in his hand.

He willed it away, worried. “What the hell does this mean?” he said to Lock.

The tall woman surveyed the scene, and Vango followed suit. Many of the group were sampling food and drink. Canyon had taken a seat and begun eating as if he feared the banquet would disappear. Stevie had a highball glass in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other and had cranked up the music. Now she swayed, her eyes closed, dancing alone on the parquet floor.

“It could be a graduation party…or our last meal,” Lock said. “A transition of some kind.”

Token stepped nearer with narrowed eyes. “Or a reward, like Pavlov’s dogs. Maybe they decided to spare some processing power, give us a night of fun, and tomorrow we’ll be back to the training regimen.”

“No matter what, I suppose we should enjoy it. But it makes me uneasy,” Vango said.

Lock and Token nodded.

“Go play along,” Vango ordered. “Don’t spoil it for the others. We’re dancing to their tune in here, so let’s make the best of it.” With mixed emotions, he walked over to Stevie and took her in his arms.

Later, they lay in Vango’s bed, wrung out from athletic lovemaking.

“Not bad for a dead woman,” Stevie said.

“Yeah, we’ve been ignoring that, but…how do we explain it?”

Stevie shrugged. “Who cares?”

“I care. It’s an anomaly, and it must mean something. I feel like if I could only figure that out, I’d have a big piece of the puzzle.”

“Oh, Vee, why can’t you just live in the moment? Enjoy life as it comes and quit thinkin’ so much.”

“I’m not built that way, Stevie.”

“Well, I am, and I’m not tired. Let’s go back and get plastered.”

“What if the sim is so good we’re hung over in the morning?”

“All part of the fun.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

“Like I ain’t heard that before. Come on.” She leaped up, tugging on his hand.

“No, you go on. I need to think for a while.”

Pouting, Stevie flounced off.

Later, Vango dressed and looked in on the party. He didn’t see Stevie, only about half of his people in various states of debauchery, depending on their inclinations. He found Token nowhere in evidence, which didn’t surprise him. The man was happily married and Vango had never seen him drunk or out of control, despite the high-pressure lifestyle of an aerospace pilot.

Well, good for him.

Knocking on the door to Stevie’s room brought no answer, but a memory and a premonition made him ease the door open – they had no locks – and let the light from the hallway spill onto her bunk. Though it didn’t surprise him, he felt his heart clench anew as he saw the lighter, the spoon and the needle still clutched in her hand.

They – whoever they were – had allowed the full range of human vices, it seemed. Vango found it still hurt that he wasn’t enough for her, but not as much as the first time around. And, at least in this incarnation, she wasn’t being carried out on a stretcher.

Suddenly afraid, he stepped over to put a finger on her neck. Thankfully, her pulse beat strongly. Would they let her overdose and die? Certainly not.

The limits of the virtuality dragged at him, frustrated him with his own helplessness. The only place he felt freedom and power was within the flight sim, which was undoubtedly what they wished. Already he felt a Pavlovian urge to find a simulator and lose himself in flight.

Instead, he shut the door and went to bed. For the first time in what seemed like days, sleep fled. Eventually, though, he caught it.

Chapter 5

When he awoke, the lack of detail and the flatness of affect within him told Vango that those in control had withdrawn the brief grant of near-normalcy, restoring the sensation of inhabiting a plastic simulacrum again. Well, at least now he didn’t need to eat, drink, or pee. He sighed and rolled out of bed.

When he led his assembled comrades into the room full of simulators, it took him a moment to identify the difference in the room.

Then it hit him. The shield, Earth and orbiting warship of EarthFleet hung on all four walls, along with the flags of the nations of all the pilots present. Vango’s eyes teared up with the display, calling forth a surge of patriotic and martial pride that threatened to overwhelm him. The others seemed to be sharing the experience.

The cynical part of him wondered if they weren’t being manipulated even beyond the obvious. Would the controllers insert such emotions into their minds, despite all law and regulation to the contrary?

But what could he do about it except try to maintain his bearing and dispassion, and to help the rest do the same?

“All right, people, snap out of it,” he said with a voice like a whip. “Maybe the controllers thought we needed some extra motivation today, and that’s all very nice, but none of us are cadets, saluting flags and singing songs. We’re professionals, and we know why we fly. I have to believe what we’re doing here is critical to our fight against the Meme. So let’s play their games again, and by God we’ll show them that no matter what they throw in our way, we’ll win. Board your simulators. Good luck, and good hunting.”

With that, he climbed into the simulator and plugged in his link, feeling the expansion of the senses that came with it. His vision now extended millions of kilometers and encompassed thousands of objects – rocky asteroids, icy comet bodies, the moons of nearby Jupiter, incoming Meme ships and the friendly task force from which he prepared to launch.

This time he found himself strapped onto an interceptor of some sort. Was this a new way of deploying fighters? Vango searched his HUD for weapons, but still, the game gave him only a highly maneuverable fuselage, sensors and communications.

The comms linked him with his comrades, but no amount of trying would raise the Fleet net or any other entity. So, they were still on their own, except for the mission brief display, which changed with the objective.

This latest scenario showed a monstrous incoming Meme fleet, at least sixty Destroyers plus attendant smaller craft, speeding directly toward Earth, though still out beyond Saturn’s orbit. The EarthFleet task force was already maneuvering to interpose itself.

“Everybody see that?” he said, marking the enemy with a caret. “That’s what we’ll be flying against.

A series of double clicks came back, shorthand for acknowledgement. “Looks ugly,” Token said, an understatement no doubt voicing the thoughts of many.

“Ain’t nothin’ but a thang,” Stevie chimed in, and her boundless confidence cheered him. “We score high enough and maybe we get another party tonight.”

Vango couldn’t fault her logic. “The primary objective’s a little different this time,” he pointed out. “Token, me, Lock and Stevie are directed to get within five thousand meters of Destroyers, but separately. The rest of you get to run interference.”

“Five thousand meters? Easy peasy,” Stevie said.

“Don’t get cocky,” Lock said. “Nothing’s been easy so far. There must be other factors that make it harder. I mean, look at the screening forces.”

“Good thinking. Everyone stay on your toes.”

“Hey,” said Token, “You guys notice they upped the simulator resolution? Everything looks full standard now, like it’s almost real.”

Vango checked his. “Now I see. Maybe that’s the point of this mission, to get us used to the real thing again.”

A moment of quiet passed. “Any chance this is real?” Lock asked. “I mean, real real, as in happening in real life?”

“If it is,” Vango said, “why wouldn’t they give us any weapons? And there’s no way our bodies could take the Gs these things pull, even with gravplate compensation. We can’t be inside real ships.”

“Could we be in remote control, and these are missiles? Maybe they’re using our minds and skills while our bodies are in regen.”

Token spoke up. “Nope. It’s been tried. We’ll be operating light-seconds away from the cruisers. The delay is too great for anything but close-in work. That’s why all EarthFleet missiles have the best self-guiding algorithms possible, including true random evasion generators. Although…now that you mention it, these birds do seem more like missiles than anything.”

Vango experimented with his time sense and found that he could control it, for the first time since he woke up here. In fact, it appeared he was in charge of everyone’s temporal speed, so he sped things up tenfold in order to make the inevitable maneuver-to-contact phase pass faster. When the interceptors carrying his squadron – that was how he thought of them now – entered the engagement envelope, they kicked him free with a blast of fusion gases.

Vango slowed the temporal ratio to one-to-one, and then further to ten-to-one, giving everyone an order of magnitude more time.

Lock spoke into the calm. “Look at your mission brief. Notice anything different about it?”

Vango did as she suggested. It took him a moment. “There’s a date. May 11, 2110.”

“Decades in the future,” Token said. “Wonder why?”

“More head games,” Stevie replied. “Just quit wonderin’ and fly, boys and girls.”

Vango said, “Good advice. Fly now, speculate later. We’re coming up on the merge. Dropping to temp standard.”

Now each pilot could control his or her own time sense, allowing for maximum effectiveness as they approached the engagement zone. Vango slowed the world by a factor of more than 100 as a flock of stingships closed in.

These were semi-intelligent sharks of the void whose sole purpose was to screen the larger ships against missiles and small craft. They used short-range biolasers and tiny countermissiles to thin out their enemies.

Normally the stingships died in droves when faced with sophisticated EarthFleet fighters, but they were cheap, they absorbed firepower, and now and then they killed something, especially missiles. And they never hesitated to collide with their targets, kamikaze fashion.

Faced with thousands of them in a broad cloud, Vango directed four of his twenty-four to sacrifice themselves, detonating their powerful suicide fusion bombs to clear a path through the mass.

The remaining twenty drove through the hole, and the stingships couldn’t follow fast enough, not with these new hot birds.

On the other side a picket wall of a dozen living frigates waited, each slim Zeppelin shape crewed by a trium of Meme. These ships launched sprays of tiny countermissiles. When the human craft dodged them easily, they opened up with their fusors, incandescent blasts of superheated plasma, like flamethrowers in space, reaching tens of kilometers before dissipating.

These caught two of Vango’s comrades, and then they were eighteen.

“Not bad,” Vango said over the net.

“We’re kickin’ ass!” cried Stevie.

Lock said, “They won’t make it that easy. Something’s going to spring.”

“She’s right. Stay frosty,” Vango said.

Token marked ships ahead on their HUDs. “Cruisers coming up.”

“Bypass them,” Vango ordered. “The mission objective specifies only Destroyers get us the win, and only us four.”

“Yeah, and I want to win,” Stevie replied.

She wants to earn another rendezvous with her vices, Vango thought. At least we’re in VR, so she can’t overdose…and one of those vices is me. But what about when we’re done? They’ll have to put her in rehab or something. Obviously they know about her addiction. I don’t want to lose her again.

The cognitive dissonance of that thought, the nonsense of Stevie being alive when he knew she was dead, threatened to undo him. He froze, trying to make sense of these conflicting thoughts.

“Vango, pay attention!” Lock snapped, and Vango threw his craft into a violent spiral to avoid an incoming trio of hypers. “Get your head in the game!”

“Thanks,” Vango said. “Sorry.”

He analyzed the cruiser pattern and decided to do something different this time, something he’d thought about but hadn’t tried. “Canyon, you and Slapshot suicide on the center cruiser. We’re punching straight through before they recover. We’ll lose fewer that way than everyone running the gaps.”

“Right, boss,” Canyon said, and led his wingman on a mad spiral path toward the midsized ship. He was picked off by a fusor ten klicks out, but Slapshot made it to impact.

The result was spectacular, far greater than Vango expected. The simulated suicide charge must have been increased to at least a hundred megatons, and the cruiser crumpled and died in a fusion fireball.

“Woohoo!” yelled Stevie. “Destroyers, here we come!”

Sixteen pilots and their suicide craft dove for the hole in the line, easily outracing the ships that tried to slide over and fill the gap. Beyond, the Destroyers came on in a compact mass, at least forty of them.

“This is insane,” Vango muttered. “Too many in too small a space. They’ll blanket each other with defensive fire. We can’t dodge all those fusors.”

“That’s the twist,” Lock said matter-of-factly. “Last I remember, it took everything we had to take down one Destroyer. How can anyone fight so many?”

“We don’t have to fight so many,” said Token. “This is a game, remember? All we have to do is get us each of us four to within five thousand meters of a Destroyer.”

Vango grunted. “Token’s right. We can do that.”

“Still gonna be hard,” said Wild Bill from up ahead. “We should perform a rolling detonation to white out their sensors. These uprated suicide charges should pump out a hell of a lot of EMP interference, assuming the sim takes that into account.”

“Good idea. Give me a minute and I’ll set it up.” Vango further slowed the world outside himself, yielding enough time to run 3D calculations and issue instructions to his twelve sacrificial lambs. “See you all back at the barracks,” he said as he sent the data packets. “Drinks are on me.”

Clouds of countermissiles issued forth from the Destroyer mass and closed in on the EarthFleet squadron. One by one, Vango’s people detonated their ships to clear the way through and provide enormous electromagnetic pulses, blizzards of jamming that blinded the enemy. They tended to blind his people as well, but all they had to do was fly their courses toward the huge targets.

Belatedly, those targets began to maneuver. If this were real, Vango would have laughed at the idea that ships two kilometers in diameter, with armor five hundred meters thick, would run from a few fighters, even armed with hundred-megaton fusion warheads. An explosion of that size would still need to be nearly in contact to do significant damage, because the vacuum of space provided no medium to carry a blast wave. Five-kilometer-distant detonations wouldn’t even singe the enemy.

Good thing it wasn’t real.

When the last of twelve detonations dissipated, Vango found himself and his remaining four-ship in superb position, spread fifteen klicks apart, each pointed at a Destroyer that was frantically accelerating sideways, hoping to dodge. The big ships weren’t nearly fast enough, though, even spreading out in all directions.

Fusors vomited into space, reaching for him, but with his accelerated time senses they seemed to move in slow motion, and he easily anticipated their paths. Maneuvering to avoid the white-hot zones, he closed toward his target like a gazelle in a dispersed herd of buffalo.

Stevie blasted at maximum and was the first to cross the five-thousand-meter line. Vango expected the usual notation to appear in the mission tracking module, but it didn’t, this time. Closer and closer she flew, until a fusor blast seemed to reach for her. Vango wondered why the sim was waiting to record her score.

Then his sensors fuzzed and he lost all HUD cohesion for a long moment. When his viewing capability returned, he saw an expanding zone of annihilation ten kilometers wide. Stevie and the Destroyer were simply…gone. Another Destroyer on the edge of the sphere of death spun slowly, severely injured.

“Mother of God,” he breathed. “What in hell was that?”

“Mother for sure,” Lock replied. “The mother of all suicide bombs, a thousand times as big as anything I’ve ever seen.”

“More like ten thousand times as large,” Token said, ever the human calculator. “Remember the square-cube law. Double the blast radius needs eight-ish times the power. What the hell makes a bang that big?”

“Antimatter,” Lock said. “Has to be. Total ee-equals-em-cee-squared, one hundred percent mass to energy conversion. I heard a rumor they were experimenting with it.”

Vango laughed, but grim. “So they did give us weapons after all. Let’s go out in a blaze of glory. See you all on the dance floor.”

Token crossed his line, and then Lock. Each disappeared in another blinding flash, vaporizing at least one of the Destroyers and damaging others nearby.

Vango felt no trepidation, only satisfaction at completing the mission combined with anticipation of another night with Stevie, as he approached five thousand meters and awaited detonation.

Thus, it came as a shock when, just seconds in realtime, minutes in slow time before he broke the imaginary sphere, the face of Daniel Markis, his father and Chairman of the council of Earth, appeared in his HUD.

“Hello, Vincent. The fact that you’re seeing this means the end is near. The headshrinkers didn’t want me to record a message for you, or for any one of your fellow heroes, but I insisted.” Daniel Markis grimaced. “And when I insist, I damn well get my way.

“But I wanted you to know that I love you, and my pride at what you’re doing for humanity is boundless. I have no idea what you’ve figured out from within the virtuality you inhabit, but you deserve to know the truth before you go.

“We used you, Vincent, over and over. There are many of you: minds copied from the real Vincent Markis and from the others you know. Stevie, whom you loved, and who now lives on only in this form. Lockerbie, who chauffeured me around the fleet when I came out for inspections. Token, who flew with you against the first Destroyer.

“It may help you to know that the original, corporeal Vincent Markis is right now on his way to EarthFleet’s first conquest of another star system, and I hope he’ll live a long, happy life.

“But I’m sure you’re wondering now about yourself and your comrades. We call them – you – engrams.

“It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made to authorize copying your mind and loading it into semi-organic brains controlling the new XM-58 capital missiles, some with antimatter warheads that cost as much to build as a cruiser. But if I ordered it done to others, I had to order it done to you. Anything else would be cowardice on my part. To command is to order the death of what you love.

“And I apologize for not telling you the truth until it was too late to change your fate. Early experiments showed that if we explained everything up front, in a small number of cases engrams would rebel, refuse, or even go mad. We couldn’t afford that. So, the experts designed the program you experienced. We’ve had one hundred percent success with it. You and your squadron have died many times, but you’ve killed a hell of a lot of Meme ships. In fact, you’ve changed the course of the war.

“The one difference for you – the copy of you that’s seeing this, that is – is that this time the Destroyers you face are making their biggest push for Earth ever. Whereas before the engrams increased effectiveness and reduced corporeal casualties – I apologize for having no better term – this time, your sacrifice protects the planet itself. I can’t tell you whether we’ll stop this latest assault. I can only tell you that you’ll have done your part, above and beyond.”

Daniel Markis raised a hand, as if in blessing. “I hope you can forgive me for what I’ve done to you. Your sacrifice may save us all. Farewell, Vincent, my firstborn son. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

Epilogue

“These new semi-organic control modules are a pain in the ass,” said Missile Tech First Class Pedro Weinauer as he fitted the half-meter black box into the last of the flight of twenty-four XM-58 capital missiles.

The cylindrical bodies, huge for weapons but small compared to even a one-man fighter, sat lined up on the flight deck of the assault carrier Peterborough. A line of cones kept the hustle and bustle of operations away from the delicate devices.

Warrant Officer Hudson stared flatly at Weinauer. “Shut up and finish. I’m initiating the integration program.” She input a code into the Vango module – the master – and closed the access panel. “Network looks good. Everyone take an hour. Get some chow or some rack time. We start on the next set as soon as these are movable.”

Weinauer nodded. “Thanks, boss,” he said, leading the half-dozen missile techs waiting nearby toward the enlisted mess.

Hudson checked her secure control pad and stared at the hard cables snaking across the deck, connecting the brains into a network. After launch, they would go wireless, using microwave and laser comms.

But until then, would take that hour until the modules achieved full integration, more or less. Something about the variability in the Meme-derived bioprocessors made the exact time uncertain. Then, the grabships would load the weapons onto the interceptors and they’d be sent into battle.

Hudson shrugged. Finicky or not, these things were taking down Meme warships. It didn’t matter much what weird shit they put inside to make them work. In fact, she didn’t really want to know.

She shivered. Sometimes she felt like the boxes were alive and looking at her.

***

Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2110 A.D.

Use of human engrams to guide missiles must be viewed as a mixed success. Their performance exceeded that of our best digital control systems, but the expense in time, resources, and particularly the moral cost to those who knew, the knowledge that our finest minds were being replicated, trained and deliberately sent to inevitable death, caused me to wonder whether it was worth it.

I must reluctantly conclude it was. During the Meme’s latest brutal assault, use of our most skilled and dedicated officers’ engrams brought us within a hair’s breadth of victory. To quote Wellington, it was a damn near-run thing, which in no way detracts from the efforts and heroic sacrifices of the virtual replicants. Without them, we would have lost the entire Solar System. At least now we have a chance to rebuild. Though Earth herself lies mortally wounded, the Mars colony is robust, and Jupiter’s moons contain the bulk of our spaceborne industry and military might. While we hold those, hope remains.

We have not heard from Admiral Absen, of course. Five years remain until Task Force Conquest arrives at the Meme system of Gliese 370, thirty-six light-years from us. Even if he wins in that place and immediately returns with help – an unlikely scenario, given the difficulty of bringing any conquered territory under new sway – at least forty-five years must pass.

Until then, we are on our own.

The End of What Price Humanity?

Read on for an excerpt from the First Conquest, which continues the story of Reaper and Bull as they assault another star system, and more!

Excerpt from

First Conquest

Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest, Book 1

Sergeant Major Jill Repeth, EarthFleet Marine Corps, gasped as the slimy tracheal tube withdrew and she began to breathe on her own again. Lifting her hands to rub her face, she carefully opened her eyes for the first time in what must be nearly forty years. Lighting glowed dim and no klaxons wailed, no strobes flashed, so she figured Conquest to be on schedule, nearing her destination.

Repeth felt the living coffin, another product of adapted enemy biotech, loosen on her lower body, and she winced when the catheter probes withdrew. Naked, she was birthed anew. She welcomed the sound and fury to come; after nearly sixty years of Marine service – plus the forty in stasis – she still looked forward eagerly to righteous battle. Neither guilt nor moral ambiguity troubled her thoughts of killing aliens hell-bent on genocide.

Sixty years. She’d never expected to serve for that long, but the Eden Plague virus conferred immortality and rapid healing, so such spans were now commonplace. She could have easily been an officer by now, but she’d always hated the idea of separation from the rank and file. Offered her choice of warrant or commission many times, she had always refused, preferring to stay where she was most comfortable – top enlisted Marine in a front-line combat unit.

Looking around, she marveled at the rows upon rows of the biotech cocoons that had kept everyone alive, healthy but in stasis for the last four decades. Lines of them extended in a vast adult nursery, incubators of military personnel. She could see at least a thousand of the things from where she stood, in various stages of processing, BioMed personnel bustling among them, and she knew there were many thousands more spread throughout Conquest and the ships attached to her.

Stumbling for the female showers in the deliberately heavy gravity that matched the target planet the astronomers had named Afrana – she was grateful for the protocol that decanted key leaders in order of rank. Brigadier Stallers and the rest of the Marine brigade’s officers should have been awakened ahead of her.

Under hot water she soaped and sluiced, scrubbing remnants of bio-gel out of her ears, and then gingerly tested her cybernetics. As far as she could tell, her laminated bones and polymer-enhanced musculature had come through without degrading.

Holding up her hands, she extended her claws in sequence to their full two centimeters, starting with the thumbs. The pain of the ferrocrystal knives slicing through her skin from beneath was familiar, comforting.

Like the anachronistic bayonet, she seldom used the cutting blades in combat, but they’d come in handy for covert missions, back before Earth had been unified.

Thoughts of Earth threw her mind back to her last view of that fragile blue marble hanging in space, and all the hopes and dreams of its inhabitants. Leaving behind everyone there was hard, and once again she crammed down the gentler part of her humanity, coating her soul in armor not so different from what she wore in combat. Only one man was allowed past that façade: her husband, Commander Rick Johnstone.

Having him along kept her human, but the time for softness was past. Conquest and the ships attached to her had one simple mission: kill any Meme craft in the Gliese 370 system, destroy all resistance from the aliens nicknamed “Hippos” on the planet Afrana, and then colonize.

She thought then about the briefings on the Hippos, what little they knew. So called because they were huge and gray and thick, they were reported to have technology similar to Earth’s, or possibly better.

It’s gonna be a hard fight.

Repeth touched her palm to the locker she had closed forty years ago and it hissed open, revealing her carefully packed kit. Looking in the mirror set inside, she saw a severe, strong-jawed face, intense brown eyes, and skin tinged with the blood of at least one Hispanic ancestor.

A warrior’s face.

Once dressed in crisp utilities she felt like a Marine again. With her starched eight-point cap settled carefully on her head – an affectation from her wet-navy days – she went in search of coffee, information and her commander, in that order, probably all in the consolidated wardroom, where officers and senior NCOs ate.

Drawing a steaming cup of “lifer-juice,” the muddy coffee dispensed by the industrial-sized brewer, she nodded at Brigadier Stallers sitting with his battalion commanders. One of those was her own, infantry Major Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros, originally of the Israeli Defense Forces before volunteering for EarthFleet Marines. A hulking brute of a man, he was the only one that seemed completely normal without hair; the cue ball was his usual look.

Bull caught her eye and lifted his cup. She raised hers back in greeting, but doubted his held coffee. He stood up, nodding to the brigadier, then waved Repeth over to a table nearby, growling at a lone Navy ensign. The young man hastily grabbed his powdered eggs and found another place to be.

“Good decade, Smaj,” Bull greeted her as they sat down.

She accepted the familiar corruption of “Sergeant Major” with good graces, knowing such nicknames built trust and camaraderie. “Good freakin’ four decades, Bull,” she replied, “but it feels like I only slept for a week.” Repeth sat down across from him and reached over to tilt his cup toward her with one short-nailed finger. “Ugh. Can’t believe you’re still drinking that dreck. I should space it.”

Bull pulled the protein shake back protectively. “Don’t you dare. I used all my personal allowance on this stuff. Can’t stay big on Navy food.”

“Who cares if you stay big? Your cybernetics provide most of your actual strength. Besides, it gives you gas like a sick hound.”

“I like to be big. You think this huge noggin would look good on a skinny body like yours?” He reached up to run a hand over his basketball-sized cranium.

Repeth held up her hands in surrender. “All right. So what’s the word?”

“Word is, All-Hands assembly at 1500 hours. Word is, Earth got hit five years ago by sixty-four Destroyers. We don’t even know if anyone’s left.” Bull slurped more of his shake, pensive.

Repeth pursed her lips and put on a stoic front. “Can’t help that. We knew when we left it was long years of travelling at best, a one-way trip at worst.”

“We might be all that’s left of the human race.” Bull hid a fleeting expression of deep concern.

She leaned over to pound her index finger on the tabletop in front of the big young Marine officer. “Listen, sir, I’ve been in active combat longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve spoon-fed green lieutenants and I’ve made and I’ve broke battalion commanders like you. But I’ve seen you over the past few months – before the forty years – hell, you know what I mean – and I know you’ve got what it takes. So just do your job the best you know how and have faith in ol’ mother Repeth.” Unconsciously she patted her left breast pocket where her father’s ancient leather-bound small-print Bible rested.

Bull’s mouth quirked up in a smile at her gesture. He reached up to his neckline to reveal a heavy ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain. “I got faith, Smaj. But Moshe Dayan said faith and bullets’ll get you farther than faith alone.”

Repeth laughed. “Amen to that, my bulky brother. No atheists in armor, eh? Pass the Lord and praise the ammunition.” She clapped him on the shoulder, a sensation like slapping wood. “I see the NCOs are up. Suggest you finish that glop and start doing some officer stuff. Find your drip-nose lieutenants, tell them mommy and daddy will make everything all right.”

Bull rose with her, draining his plastic cup and folding it into a cargo pocket. “Yeah, lieutenants. Making simple shit hard since Christ was a corporal.”

Repeth tsk-stk’d good-naturedly at his irreverence.

The Jewish major grinned. “You don’t like the way I talk, Smaj, that’s your cross to bear.”

“Why do I feel like you set every Gentile you know up for that line?” With a rueful snort she took her leave and refilled the coffee mug, intending to see to her awakening troops. It was NCO business to get them ready so officers didn’t have to.

Crossing the floor, Repeth spotted Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen sitting alone in a corner. Usually the slim Vietnamese highlander was easy to overlook, except that today she saw he wore the blinding white high-collared uniform of the Naval Stewards, EarthFleet’s specialized protective police service. She’d given up surprise at Spooky’s changes of uniform; he’d long since passed into legend within the clandestine services of Earth.

He’d gotten the nickname long ago, before the aliens salted Earth with the Demon Plagues, with which the Meme had tried to reduce humanity to mindless animals. Later enhancements – combat nanites in the blood, cybernetic implants like Repeth’s, and his dedication to the martial arts – had only enhanced his legend.

I’m one of the handful of people aboard that knows he’s a covert operative – spy, assassin, intimidator. Should have figured he’d show up; he’s always where the action is.

“G’day, Spooky. Nice look.” She sat down, knocked her coffee cup against his tea mug. “You playing bodyguard this trip?”

“Thank you, Jill. Of course, a Steward’s role extends beyond personal protection of the senior staff.” His accent was precise, perfect upper-class English, an affectation adopted so long ago that it was unshakeable. “Are you still playing at being Australian?”

She noticed he didn’t exactly answer her question, a common occurrence with Spooky. Jill chuckled. “Lots of Aussies in the Marines, so I pick up the dialect, that’s all. But are you doing anything, uh, specific, or just keeping an eye on things?” And I refuse to ask why you even came on this mission, she thought. You’ve always done exactly as you pleased and somehow you get away with it.

“As you say, keeping an eye on things.” Spooky’s gaze roamed the room, searching, she knew, for anything out of place.

Repeth wondered whether he was hunting traitors and spies again…ugly work, work she never wanted to have to do again. Guarded, she watched him for a moment more. “Good to see you on the job, but I have things to do. Look me up sometime.”

“Oh, you can be sure of that.” His look was unfathomable.

She ignored the comment and stood up, bowed formally to him as if they were back at the dojo, then put away her mug and went looking for her troops.

***

The all-hands assembly approached rapidly as the BioMed staff hustled to get everyone decanted and on their feet in time. Some of the last ones ended up listening to Admiral Absen’s address in the locker rooms, but most clustered around screens in their designated wardrooms and messes, sat in filled auditoriums, crowded into conference rooms or stood on the flight decks of assault carriers, staring at giant screens.

Cameras focused on the main auditorium podium so everyone throughout the ship would see and hear the admiral’s address. “Attention on deck!” Thirty thousand pairs of boots snapped together in unison across the ship as Absen entered its largest amphitheatre.

Front and center with the rest of the off-watch senior bridge crew, Master Helmsman Otis Okuda imagined he could feel the crash through Conquest’s deck plates. “Take your seats,” came next, and he was happy to sit. Okuda understood the need for artificial gravity to be set high, but disliked it nonetheless. His was the realm of trackless space, of piloting starships through the implanted cybernetics in his brain, not clomping around with his boots in the mud. Coal-black skin glistened with sweat at the unaccustomed effort.

“Good morning Conquest, and welcome to the year 2115,” Absen began, prompting a murmur of amusement from the audience. “A few of you have been out of stasis during the trip, but for the vast majority, you have been asleep since 2075, and as most of you already know, a powerful Meme fleet was due to hit Earth in 2110. Ladies and gentlemen, as I told those near me when I found out, there’s nothing we can do about it. Word of the outcome won’t even reach us here for thirty-one years.”

Absen cleared his throat. “If EarthFleet won, some of us might eventually return home, but even then it will be a different solar system. Those you know might be alive, but after a hundred years of separation, they won’t be the same people you knew.”

Sweeping the room with his pale sky-colored eyes, the cameras transmitted his craggy intensity throughout the ship. “And if we lost, then we might be the last true humans in existence. So just as I told you forty years ago when we started, I tell you again in all sincerity: Conquest is your world, and the people here are your family, your clan, your tribe, your nation. If we do not conquer here, there is no retreat, no surrender. If we do not conquer here, we cannot run. If we do not conquer here, humanity dies.”

Pausing to let that sink in, he turned to his senior officers sitting behind him. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Absen concluded, looking pointedly at his watch, “we are nine days out.”

***

Relieved that the All-Hands had been short, Master Helmsman Okuda settled comfortably into the sunken pit of the bridge’s helm station, surrounded by holodisplays. The 4D screens were nearly superfluous as long as his linked cybernetics functioned, but like the manual controls in a computer-directed airliner, they comforted him. Besides, regulations required them, and no one ever died from too many redundant systems.

He reached up to his medusa, slotting retractable plugs into the interface sockets in his skull. Soon he resembled the mechanism’s namesake, his ebony shaven pate a nest of snakelike wires.

Initiating the link opened his mind to a whole new universe. Godlike, he flew in the center of nothingness, perceiving the cosmos in all directions. He smelled the interstellar winds, tasted hydrogen atoms as the magnetic scoops swept them into fuel collectors, heard the radio sirens of pulsars and quasars and stars of every kind – Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Magee’s High Flight stood enshrined in the heart of every helmsman, every pilot.

His sense of touch remained deliberately unaltered, essential for grounding a linked helmsman in the real world. Hands resting on the complex suite of manual controls, he brushed them lightly like a pianist, and though his nerves now transmitted impulses with the speed of fiber optics, nothing had ever really improved on the sensitivity of those ten digits.

Short of direct computer control, of course. Okuda had that option; he could turn any and all functions over to one of Conquest’s supercomputers, and he sometimes did, but ultimately, piloting had to come down to one helmsman.

Or woman. He thought of his wife Celia, Master Helmsman of the assault carrier Temasek, and the few days they would have together before Conquest initiated separation into its component ships. When it did, the massive mothership would spawn a fleet, and opportunities for visits would be rare. No doubt all those with lovers and spouses aboard – an unusually high percentage, since procreative ability was one criterion for the mission – were thinking the same thing: what will sex be like after forty years in stasis?

Thirty-seven minutes after his watch ended, Okuda found out it was still almost as good as piloting a starship.

***

Admiral Absen’s address still echoed across the crowded flight deck as she announced, “I am Sergeant Major Repeth.” Her amplified voice reached the whole formation as she stood in front of Second Marine Battalion, over one thousand enlisted troops. They were arrayed on the largest available open space of the assault carrier Temasek, which still clung like a remora to Conquest. Major ben Tauros and the other officers would arrive soon, she knew.

“Those of you who have served with me know I like to be called by my first name. Swede,” she asked, turning to her rawboned Alpha Company First Sergeant, “tell these diggers what my first name is.”

“Last time I heard,” First Sergeant Gunderson drawled, “it was SERGEANT MAJOR.” This elicited a few muffled chuckles from the newest Marines and groans from the oldest.

“How right you are.” She walked down the line, glorying in the precise ranks of well-trained troops. “Now some of you may have heard of some stunts I pulled in my younger days. I’m an old and crotchety woman now,” she said, drawing some laughter, as the Eden Plague kept everyone fit and youthful in body, “and I have no interest in showing you how tough I am. Back in the day, a woman had to prove herself to a bunch of stupid macho boys. Any more, I just let my record speak for itself. I’ve killed more squids and blobbos than you greenies got boogers in your noses, and I still ain’t got my fill.”

“Besides,” she smiled nastily, “I know the lot of you young studs and studettes have the latest upgrades, just like me. You have laminated bones, cybernetic nerves and muscles, nanite speed and strength and the Eden Plague to heal you up after you break yourselves. This task force was given the best of Earth’s limited resources, so I’m not going to let you waste it on stupid schoolyard games. I will say this once and once only.” She swept the ranks with machine-gun eyes. “Do not test me. I would rather cull this herd of troublemakers now than let one stinking shitbird among you besmirch Second Battalion’s good name.” She scanned up and down the ranks, searching for any smirks, any hint of attitude or challenge, determined to make her example right away, as she always did.

A man stepped out of the ranks and swaggered up to her. He was big, and young, a corporal with a permanent anger on his face. A mutter went through the ranks.

There’s always one, Repeth thought with resignation. She wondered how the man had made it past the psych evals that were supposed to detect problem personalities. Best to get it over with quick.

“Finner,” she read off his name tag. “You sure you want to do this, Corporal? Even if you win, you lose.”

“I watched recordings of your little demonstrations,” the man responded with a sneer. “It took you whole minutes to barely beat better Marines than you, only because you had fancier cyberware. Now we all have the same, and I say your reputation is bullshit.”

The whole assembly watched and waited in silence for her response.

Repeth’s answering smile did not reach her eyes. Prominent eyeteeth enhanced her wolfish expression. “Take your best shot then, Private.”

His shot was a good one. Had she not been ready, it might have connected. A low, vicious kick at her knee, at least it showed the kid had some combat skills and street savvy.

It didn’t matter.

Repeth kept her claws in. To use them would be to prove her challenger right, since those were a modification available only to covert operatives and Stewards. Instead, she simply demonstrated a lifetime of personal combat experience and training.

She slid her leg back just enough to avoid the strike, then snapped it forward to plant her heel in the patella of his weight-bearing leg. It bowed unnaturally backward at the knee with a sickening crunch. Before he could fall, she stepped forward to seize the other leg, still in the air. Her elbow came down on that knee to destroy it as well.

Finner’s crybernetics had already shut down the pain, fooling his body into thinking it still had a chance, so even as he collapsed, his fists were striking out with surprising power.

Repeth turned her thigh into the blows, accepting a few bruises before driving the knife-edge of her foot through his guard and into his jaw, knocking him down, half-conscious. She then stamped both of his elbows to ruin.

It was over in three seconds. Finner lay broken on the deck, with knees and elbows smashed and inoperable. Absent those joints, all the implants and augmentation in the world couldn’t get him on his feet again.

Repeth hadn’t cracked a sweat. Her voice rang out. “This man’s squad leader, front and center.”

A stocky female sergeant double-timed forward to report, looking justifiably concerned. “Sorry, Sergeant M-“

“Shut it,” Repeth cut her off. She reached down to strip the fallen man’s rank tabs from his uniform, placing them in the other woman’s hand. Then she ripped the squad leader’s sergeant’s tabs off and put them in her own pocket.

“You should have handled his attitude yourself before this, Corporal. Take him directly to the brig. Tell them to disable his cybernetics before they treat him. Get moving.” She deliberately turned her back on the newly demoted noncom, waiting until she and her squad had carried the miscreant off.

Raising her voice to address the battalion again, she said, “I hope this lesson is not lost on everyone here. Not the lesson that I can take any one of you, because military discipline is not based on who’s the best brawler. The lesson I hope you learn is that this never should have happened. That shithead should have been dealt with long ago by his squad leader and his platoon sergeant and his first sergeant – who will all report to me after this formation concludes. We’re gonna be in a fight to the death in just a few days. There’s no room in this battalion for weak links like that.”

She looked around, searching for further problems, or challengers. This time she found nothing. This time, she thought, they know it’s as real as it gets. Fear of death doth wonderfully concentrate the mind.

Repeth’s smile became genuine, almost warm, lighting up her bony triathlete’s face. “But for those of you who give me one hundred percent, I will back you to the hilt, and so will your NCOs. If you have a problem, you bring it to them and they will bring it to me. You do not bring your problems to officers, unless you mistakenly think the problem is me, which is proof positive you are hallucinating, at which time you will be sent to BioMed for psych-eval. Am I clear?”

A thousand throats roared as one. “Clear, Sergeant Major!”

“We have nine days to get ready before we climb into the sleds. The training schedule is posted and I expect nothing less than your best. The only easy day was yesterday.” She saw Gunderson motion with his eyes off to her right and she turned to see Bull, his company commanders and a gaggle of lieutenants watching the drama from a discreet distance.

“Battalion: tench-hut!” She marched precisely to the center front of the formation and turned it over to Major ben Tauros with a perfect salute that nevertheless managed to convey that certain worldly confidence common to all senior noncommissioned officers. The fact that her commander overtopped her by a full head and eighty kilos somehow did nothing to diminish her presence as she marched to her position to listen to Bull’s first pep talk.

Yeah, it’s good to be a Marine.

To continue reading FIRST CONQUEST, Stellar Conquest Series, book 1,
click the link below:

Read FIRST CONQUEST from Amazon

Books by David VanDyke

Plague Wars Series
The Eden Plague
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin
Nearest Night (Summer 2016)
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes The Destroyer
Forge and Steel

Stellar Conquest Series
The Plague Wars continues 100 years later!
First Conquest
Desolator
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Conquest and Empire

Star Force Series - with BV Larson
Outcast
Exile
Demon Star

Books by D.D. VanDyke

D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.

California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends
In a Bind
Slipknot
Off The Leash

For more information visit http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/

Cover by VISIONS

Formatting by LiberWriter

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Steel’s First Temper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

A Hotter Forge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

What Price Humanity?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue