The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines. Ian Douglas

I don’t know anything anymore. You ready?”

      Dressed now in her khakis, she pulled on her uniform cap and tugged it straight. “Ready and all systems go,” she told him. “You feel ready for lunch?”

      He brightened, with an effort. “You bet.” If they only had a few more hours together, he was determined to enjoy them, instead of brooding about the might-have-beens and the never-would-bes.

      They left the room, stepping out onto the hotel concourse. Pacifica was a small city erected on pylons off the southern California coast, halfway between San Diego and San Clemente Island, a high-tech enclave devoted to shopping, restaurants, and myriad exotica of entertainment. Two days after their graduation from boot camp, they were in the middle of a glorious seventy-two—three whole, blessed days of liberty. They’d already been to the Europa Diver, paying two newdollars apiece to take turns steering a submarine through the deep, dark mystery of Europa’s world-ocean, all simulated, of course, to avoid the speed-of-light time lag. After that they’d checked into the pay-by-hour room suite and entertained themselves with one another.

      Now it was time to find a place to eat. The restaurant concourse was that way, toward the mall shops and the sub-O landing port. White-metal arches reached high overhead, admitting a wash of UV-filtered sunlight and the embrace of a gentle blue sky.

      In another forty-eight hours he would be vaulting into that sky, on his way to the Derna at L-4.

      And after that …

      “What do you do,” he wondered aloud, “when you know you’re not going to see Earth again for twenty years?”

      “You are gloomy today, aren’t you? We won’t—”

      “I know, I know,” he interrupted her. “Our subjective time will only be four years or so, depending on how long we’re on Ishtar … and most of that time we’ll be asleep. From our point of view, we could be right back here a few months from now. But all of this …” He waved his hand, taking in the sweep of the Pacifica concourse. “All of this will be twenty years older or more.”

      “Pacifica’s been here for forty-something years already. Why wouldn’t it be here in another twenty?”

      “It’s not Pacifica. You know what I mean. All of these people … it’s like we won’t fit in anymore.”

      “Take a look at yourself, John. We’re Marines. We don’t fit in now.”

      Her words, lightly spoken, startled him. She was right. In all that crowded concourse, Garroway could see three others in Marine uniforms, and a couple of Navy men in black. The rest, whether in casual dress, business suits, or nude, were civilians.

      Their uniforms set them apart, of course, but he also knew it was more than the uniform.

      And now he knew what was bothering him.

      It was as though he’d already left on his twenty-year deployment, as if he no longer belonged to the Earth.

      It was a strange and lonely feeling.

       Hab 3, Deck 1, IST Derna

       Orbital Construction Facility 1, L-4

       1240 hours Zulu

      Keep thinking about the money, she told herself with grim determination. Keep thinking about the money … and the papers you’re going to publish … and winning the chair of the American Xenocultural Foundation. …

      Traci Hanson lay halfway out of the hot and claustrophobic embrace of her hab cell, flat on her back on the sleep pad, eyes tightly shut as the technicians on either side of her made the final connections. She hated the prodding, the handling, as if she were a naked slab of meat.

      Which, of course, in a technical sense she was. The idea was to preserve her for the next ten years, to feed and water her while her implants slowed her brain activity to something just this side of death.

      IV tubes had been threaded into both of her arms as well as in her carotid artery beneath the angle of her jaw. A catheter had been inserted into her bladder. She knew her implant was supposed to block all feelings of hunger, despite the fact that she’d had no solid food for a week, but her stomach was rumbling nonetheless. She was uncomfortable, sweaty, ill-tempered, she hadn’t had a decent shower since she’d come aboard the Derna, and now these … these people were sticking more tubes and needles into her.

      “Relax, Dr. Hanson,” one of the cybehibe techs told her. “This’ll just take a moment. Next thing you know, you’ll be at Ishtar.”

      “‘Relax.’ Easy for you to say,” she grumped. She opened her eyes and turned her head as far as the tube in her throat would let her. The hab deck was still crowded with Marines, most of them busily cleaning or working with weapons and other articles of personal equipment. “You have to go through this with every one of those people?”

      “Sure do,” the tech told her. “That’s why it takes so long to work through the list. There’s only about thirty of us, and we have twelve or thirteen hundred people to prep this way.”

      She noticed that her blood was flowing through the tubes in her wrists, and the thought made her a little queasy, despite the suppressant effect of her implant.

      “How are you feeling?”

      “Okay, I guess,” she said. “Uncomfortable. The pain in my arms is going away, a little.”

      “Good.”

      “It feels like this damned mattress pad is melting, though. It feels wet, and kind of squishy. Am I sweating that much?”

      “No. It’s supposed to do that. Think about it. For the next ten years, you’re going to be lying here, breathing, eating, drinking, eliminating, filtering your blood, all through these IV tubes. Medical nano and the AI doctor built into these walls are going to be monitoring and handling all of your body functions. The one thing these machines can’t do is safely turn you over every couple of hours for ten years. Can you imagine the problems you’d have with bedsores if you just laid on your ass for that long? By the time you’re asleep, the pad will have turned into a kind of gel bath. It’ll support you gently, just like you were in a pool of water … and the gel gives the medical nano access to your back so it can rebuild skin cells and keep your circulation going, keep your blood from pooling, y’know?”

      “It feels … like I’m sinking.” Thoughts of drowning tugged at her mind. She wasn’t thinking clearly, and she was having trouble formulating the questions she wanted to ask. “Will … I dream?”

      “Maybe a little, when you’re going under, and when you’re coming out. The AI doc will be initiating REM sleep as it takes you down. But most of the time? No.”

      One of the other techs laughed. “I know I wouldn’t care to have to deal with a decade’s worth of dreams,” she said, “especially knowing I couldn’t wake up!”

      “I … think the Ahannu sergeant is Cydonia at the Institute. Ahannu Buckner is a real bastard. Manipulative. Make me rich …”

      “I’m sure that’s true, Doctor. Would you mind counting backward from a hundred for me?”

      “Counting … backward? Sure. Saves power. But what about the Hunters of the Dawn? They won’t have to wait in line, not with PanTerra. A hunnerd … ninety … uh, no … ninety-seven. Eight … nine … Ishtar. It’s beautiful there, I understand. …”

      “You’ll be able to see that for yourself, Doctor, very, very soon now.”

      Hab 3, Deck 1, IST Derna

       Orbital Construction Facility 1, L-4

       1405 hours Zulu

      The surface of the world of Ishtar blurred beneath the hurtling Dragonfly, jagged mountains and upthrust volcanic outcroppings among gentler rivers