Semper Human. Ian Douglas

first, a rifleman, and whatever else—cook, personnel clerk, aviator, storekeeper, computer programmer, general—second.”

      “Today we say, ‘every Marine is a weapons sysop first.’?”

      “Somehow, Captain, that just doesn’t have the same ring.”

      Garroway continued to scan lightly through a flood of downloads. He was starting to get the hang of the new implant as he used it. It was responsive and powerful, and he was beginning to get the idea that he hadn’t even begun yet to glimpse its full potential.

      Here was another one, from a world called Gleidatramoro, a kind of trading center and interstellar marketplace in toward the Galactic Core frequented by several hundred races. It was, he noted, another artificial world, like Kaleed. Didn’t people live on planets anymore? A human mob had formed in Gleidat’s capital city and attacked … that was interesting. They’d attacked a number of s-Humans, whatever those were, then gone on to dismember several hundred AIvatars. Cross-connecting on the unfamiliar terminology, he learned that s-Humans were a superintelligent genegineered species of human, while an AIvatar was the human, humanoid, or digital vehicle for an advanced artificial consciousness.

      How, he wondered, was that different from a robot?

      The riot on Gleidatramoro had spread when several non-human species had intervened on behalf of the AIvatars. Several thousand individuals of various species, human, non-human, superhuman, and artificially sentient, had been killed, many of them irretrievably. The humans currently were bottled up within the capital city in a bloody stand-off, and both they and the non-humans were calling for help.

      Again, Anchor Marines had been sent in to regain control. The situation on Gleidatramoro was still fluid.

      And here was an invasion of Propanadnid space by a human warlord named Castillan, who’d launched his armada under the ringing battle cry of “death to the Proppies!” And another, a terrorist attack on an asteroid defense system in the Sycladu system, an attack with, as yet, no known motive. And still another, an attempt by the human population of Gharst to unplug several million t-Humans … the Homo telae of the local Net. So much for human sensibilities opposed to electronic genocide.

      The list went on … and on, and on, hundreds of incidents during the past thirty days alone. There were far too many, scattered across far too large a volume of space and among far too many worlds, for a single Marine division to have a chance of coping with them all.

      The total number of violent clashes and incidents—some nineteen hundred during the past month, according to the latest tally—was utterly trivial compared to the tens of billions of populated worlds and habitats that made up the Associative. On the other hand, there’d been nine hundred such incidents reported the previous month, and four hundred the month before that. There appeared to be a kind of background noise count of violent encounters, of riots, revolutions, and bullying neighbors, but overall the numbers had been low, perhaps two hundred a month, an indication, Garroway thought, that this Associative might have it on the ball so far as galactic governments were concerned. Lately, though, there’d been a sharp increase in the numbers, and so far there was no sign that the trend had peaked.

      “Almost twenty thousand of these incidents,” he told her. “That’s more than the number of men, women, and AIs in my division. What are the Marines supposed to do about it? We can’t invade all these worlds. And we can’t protect billions of planets that haven’t been hit.”

      “No. But you can investigate this. …”

      A virtual world enveloped Garroway, emerging from his new implant. In an instant, he was surrounded by deep space, within a blazing shell of brilliant stars.

      There were millions of them, most red or orange in hue, which contributed to an overall red and somber background. Ahead, bathing nearby gas clouds in searing, arc-harsh blue radiance, was the Core Detonation.

      “The Galactic Core,” Garroway said, whispering. “The center of the Galaxy.”

      “We did do a number on it, didn’t we?”

      She almost sounded proud.

      Marine Assault Carrier Night’s Edge

       Synchronous Orbit, Dac IV

       Star System 1727459

       1914 hours, GMT

      Lieutenant Garwe snapped back to consciousness, bathed in sweat, his breath coming in short, savage gasps. He was falling … falling into the Abyss. …

      No, not falling. He was on his back in a linkcouch, the overhead softly glowing. Lieutenant Amendes leaned over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Easy does it, Gar. You’re safe.”

      “The squadron—”

      “It’s okay, Gar,” she told him. “You’re out of there.”

      He sat up slowly, head spinning. Amendes reached up and removed the brow circlet that had linked Garwe to the Starwraith battlepod through its on-board AI. It took him a moment to readjust after the sharp transition, to remember where he was.

      The carrier, yeah. The Night’s Edge.

      The compartment was circular and domed, with a close-spaced semicircle of twelve linkcouches, half of them still occupied by other members of the squadron. At the far side of the compartment was the main console, just beneath the glowing arc of a holofield.

      “Won’t be long now,” Lieutenant Cocero said from the console. He was watching over a Marine technician’s shoulder. “The Skipper’s down. So’s Pal.”

      Major Lasenbe, the squadron’s Wing Commander, punched his fist into his open palm. “Damn!”

      On a linkcouch nearby, Captain Xander sat up abruptly as though coming wide awake out of a bad dream, her fists clenched. “No, no, no! Shit!”

      “The gasbags are overrunning the compound now,” the Marine tech reported from the console. “They’re in among the buildings now, killing the off-worlders.”

      Garwe slid out of his linkcouch, fighting against the shaking weakness in his legs. Above the console, within the holofield’s glowing depths, Garwe could see a terrified face—the high brow, dark skin, and contrasting golden eyes of a supie. A data block beside the image identified her as Vasek Trolischet, the xenosoph who, unlike the Marines of the 340th, was physically in the gas giant, and unable to escape. The sound was muted, too low for Garwe to hear what she was saying, but from the look on her face, she was terrified.

      Abruptly, the holofield filled with static, and Trolischet’s fear-distorted features blinked out.

      “We’ve lost contact with the Hassetas base, sir,” the technician reported.

      Two more of the Blue Flight Marines emerged from their artificial comas, blinking in the soft lighting. On a viewall on the far side of the compartment, the disk of Dac, vast and striped in hues of brown, salmon, and pale cream flowed in banded serenity, the violence in its depths masked by the giant’s scale.

      Major Lasenbe stood behind the technician, hands now at the small of his back. “A cluster fuck, Captain,” he told Xander without looking at her. “A Class-one cluster fuck.”

      Xander rolled off the couch and came to attention, though she still looked drawn and pale, and seemed to be having difficulty suppressing a tendency to tremble. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m … sorry, sir.”

      Lasenbe turned. “At ease, Captain. I’m not chewing you out. They should have sent you in with the pick-up ship, not fifteen minutes ahead of it. Maybe those poor devils would’ve had a chance, then.”

      “Is the transport still going in, Major?” Xander asked. “We could reinsert—”

      “No point. The gas bags are wiping out the compound as we speak.”

      It would