The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human. Ian Douglas

Terraview Plaza, Earth Ring 7

       2226 hrs GMT

      “So, did y’hear the latest scuttlebutt?” Staff Sergeant Shari Colver asked.

      “About what?” Ramsey asked.

      “Yeah,” Sergeant Vesco Aquinas said. “The rumor mill’s been grinding overtime lately. Everything from peace with the Xul to war with the PEzzles.”

      “It’d damned well be better than your last butt-load of scuttlebutt,” Sergeant Richard Chu said. “I didn’t like that one at all.”

      “Roger that,” Ramsey said. “They fucking gave it away. …”

      The entire platoon had been grumbling since their arrival back in the Sol system, with morale at absolute rock-bottom. The word was—still unconfirmed but apparently solid—that the Commonwealth was giving back Alighan. Two hundred five Marines hit, Ramsey thought with dark emotion, over half of them irries … and they fucking go and give that shit hole back to the Muzzies. …

      Colver leaned forward at the table in approved conspiratorial fashion. “It’s war with the PanEuropeans,” she said in a throaty half-whisper. “They’re shipping us out next week.”

      “And how do you happen to be privy to that little tidbit?” Ramsey asked.

      “Yeah,” Sergeant Ela Vallida added. “You been talking with the commandant lately?”

      “No, but I have been talking with Bill Walsh.” Walsh was a staff sergeant over in Ops Planning. “He says it’s already decided. They’re pulling together the battlefleet now. And the 55th is on the ship-out list.”

      “Aw, shit!” Corporal Franklo Gonzales said.

      Chu shook his head. “Well, our luck’s true to form, isn’t it?”

      “Shit,” Ramsey said. “Can’t be. We just freakin’ got back from Alighan!” Even as he spoke the words, though, he knew how hollow they were. The Corps could do anything it damned well wanted.

      “Fuckin’-A, Gunnery Sergeant,” Corporal Marin Delazlo put in. “We’re due some freakin’ down time!”

      “Maybe,” Ramsey said, taking in the noise and bustle of their surroundings with a grin, “just maybe this is it!”

      The six of them were in the Comet Fall, a popular bar and nightlife center on the Seventh Ring Grand Concourse. It was large, murkily red-lit, and crowded; perhaps half of the other tables had privacy fields up, making them look like hazy, translucent ruby domes. The house dancers on-stage and the wait staff navigating among the tables all were stylishly nude, with eye-tugging displays of light and color washing across every square centimeter of exposed skin. The club patrons, both those at non-shielded tables and up on the stage with the professional dancers, wore everything from nothing at all to elaborate formal costumes. Music throbbed and pounded, though you needed a sensory helm for the full effect. Ramsey and the other Marines had elected not to wear helms, preferring unfiltered conversation instead.

      His mind drifting, Ramsey found himself following the gyrations of one young woman on-stage wearing what looked like a swirling, deck-sweeping cloak of peacock feathers, a glittering gold sensory helm, and a dazzling corona flammae; she’d been enhanced either genetically or through prosthetics with an extra pair of arms, and her dance movements were eerily and compellingly graceful.

      He was feeling wretchedly out of place. Aquinas and Gonzales both were wearing fairly conservative civvie skin-suits, but the rest of them were in undress blacks. Both sets of attire, by regulations, were acceptable wear for liberty, but it tended to make them stand out somewhat against the gaudy and sometimes extravagant background of evening wear sported by the other patrons in the establishment.

      “Like hell,” Gonzales said after a long moment. “I don’t know about you clowns, but me, I’m just getting started! I’m not ready to redeploy!”

      “That’s right,” Chu said. “I have a lot of catching up to do in the drinking and socializing departments before my next deployment!”

      “Ooh-rah!” the others chorused, and Colver raised her glass in salute. “To downtime!”

      “Downtime and down the hatch!” Ramsey added, lifting his own glass, then tossing it off. “Semper fi!”

      The drink was called a solar flare, and the name was apt. He felt the burn going down, then the kick, and finally the rolling swell of expanding consciousness as the drink’s nano activators kicked in.

      If his platoon implant AI had been activated, he thought, it would be screaming at him by now. Marines were not supposed to imbibe implant-activators, for fear it would scramble their hardware and invalidate their government warranties or whatever. He didn’t care. After Alighan, he needed this. Hell, they all did.

      How the hell could they just give it away, after what we went through out there?

      “Well, the brass is ramping up for something big,” Ramsey told the others, perhaps three or four flares later. He had to focus on each word as he brought it to mind, then tried to say it. He was pleased. No slurring of speech at all, at least that he could detect. “I just heard this morning that we’re getting a shuttle load of fungies in from RTC Mars.”

      “Yeah,” Delazlo said, nodding. His speech was slurred, but it didn’t matter. “’Sh’right. I heard that, too.”

      “Shit. Check your daily downloads, guys, why don’t ya?” Vallida put in. “The fungies arrived yesterday. Forty of them, straight out of Noctis Labyrinthus.”

      “No shit?” Ramsey asked. He hadn’t heard about that. Still, Samar was such a huge vessel, and she was swarming right now with technicians, computer personnel, cargo handlers, mechs, and shipwrights. A freaking regiment could have come on board and he wouldn’t have noticed.

      “No shit,” Vallida said. “Seems they want all units up to full strength, even if we have to raid a nursery to do it.”

      “Shee-it,” Gonzales said with considerable feeling. He was looking a bit the worse for the wear as multiple solar flares continued to burn their way through his circulatory system. “Just what we need. Babies to baby-sit.”

      “Hey,” Colver said with a shrug. “Fresh meat. Don’t knock it.”

      “We all had to start somewhere,” Chu said, the words slurring slightly.

      “The Corps is home, the Corps is family,” Ramsey recited. It was an old mantra focused on the belonging of Marines. “And to hell with the politicians.”

      A waitress walked up to their table, her face a brilliant, sapphire blue, with rainbow luminescence rippling across the rest of her body. “You folks with the 55th MARS?” she asked.

      “Yeah,” Ramsey said. He felt a cold chill prickling at the back of his neck, and some of the drunken haze began evaporating from his mind. The Comet Fall was one of hundreds of nightspots along this stretch of Ring Seven. How the hell could they have tracked the six of them?

      “You heard about us, eh, babe?” Gonzalez said, leering as he reached for her.

      “Nope,” the waitress said, slapping his hand away. “Can’t say that I have. But your CO sure has. You’re wanted back at your ship, immediately. All of you. What’d you do, switch off your AIs?”

      “How about another round for the table?” Aquinas asked.

      “To hell with that,” the waitress said, as she began collecting empty and half-empty glasses. “I could get fired and the boss could lose his license! You people just move on now, before the SPs show up.”

      “So, what have we here?” a young man seated