Battlespace. Ian Douglas

suggest that it is inhabited. We do not know by who.”

      Sirius. Garroway felt the word strike hard, like a blow to the stomach. Lynnley!

      The Marine company watched in silence as the golden needle-shape emerged from the ring, accelerated, and the image was suddenly and disconcertingly lost.

      “These images were transmitted ten years ago by the explorer ship Wings of Isis,” Dunne’s voice went on as the blast of static was replaced by another view of the ring. “We do not know what happened to the Isis, but we must assume she was destroyed. There’s been no word from her since these images were received.

      “The Wings of Isis had a crew of 245, 30 of them Marines, as well as several AIs. We have no real hope that any of them are still alive out there—or, if they are, that they will still be alive ten years from now when we arrive in-system. However, the Marines do not abandon their own. Accordingly, MIEU-1 is being prepared to deploy to the Sirius system. Once there, we will recon the area and assess the situation. We will attempt to make contact with whoever or whatever is operating that stargate. If necessary, we will organize a boarding party, enter the artifact, rescue human survivors if any, and maintain a beachhead, providing security for a science team which will perform a threat evaluation of the structure.”

      Profound silence attended this announcement. Garroway found himself grappling with a dozen questions. How big was that wheel? How were they supposed to get inside, ring a chime at the front door? What kind of defenses did the thing have? How the hell were the Marines supposed to draw up a battle plan when they didn’t even know the nature of their enemy?

      But more pressing still were the unanswered—and unanswerable—questions about Lynnley.

      In subjective terms, the time he’d actually been awake and not crowding the speed of light, it had been less than a year since he’d seen her last, just before he’d entered cybehibe for the voyage to Ishtar. He missed her. In his mind, she was still very much alive, alive in his recent past. The knowledge that it had been eleven years since whatever had happened out at Sirius had happened seemed completely surreal.

      Dead eleven years? No. He couldn’t get his mind wrapped around that one.

      The images from Sirius faded out. Garroway sat, once again, at a table in the barracks, his laser rifle partially disassembled in front of him.

      “Questions?” Dunne snapped.

      “Gunnery Sergeant?” Sergeant Houston said. “What if we don’t want to go?”

      “Come again?”

      “What if we don’t want to go? I’ve got six years in sub, twenty-six ob. I‘ve done my bit. I want out, man.”

      “This is not a volunteers only mission,” Dunne replied slowly. “The brass is treating this like an ordinary deployment, with two exceptions.

      “First, if you’re within one year of your scheduled retirement, you can request an exemption. Since your expected OTIS—that’s your objective time-in-service—since your OTIS will be on the order of six months to one year for this mission, you may opt for taking an early out instead.

      “Second, there will also be a case review board. Anyone with special needs or hardships arising from this deployment can talk to them. I’m given to understand they will not be unreasonable, and that they will consider each application on a case-by-case basis.

      “However, I would ask you to think very carefully before deciding to remain on Earth. Things are different here, now, than we knew them twenty-some years ago. If you elect to stay behind, you will be given psychological assistance, including special programming for your implants to help you … adjust.”

      Again, low-voiced murmurs sounded in the room. By now, every man and woman in the room had heard about the watchdog program that had taken out six of their number the other night at the condecology in ELA, and they didn’t like it, not one bit.

      “I don’t know about all of you,” Dunne added, “but I’m gonna be damned glad to get back out there!”

      “We’re with you, Gunny!” Corporal Bryan called out, using Dunne’s new rank for the first time. It sounded a bit strange … but right.

      “I’ve also been told to tell you,” Dunne went on, “that for those of you who stay with the MIEU, there will be an additional rank increase immediately upon returning. They’re also in the process of putting through a special payment incentive. The word is it’ll be fifty percent of your standard paycheck, above and beyond combat pay, hazardous-duty pay, and XS-duty pay.”

      And that, Garroway thought, would come to a very nice sum. He took a quick moment to download the appropriate pay scale tables in his mind. Yeah … very sweet. As a corporal with over three years’ subjective in, his base pay would come to n$1724.80 per month. Fifty percent of that was an additional n$862 plus change per month. That, plus the bonus for hazardous duty, extrastellar duty, and combat …

      He gave a mental whistle and wondered if that kind of money made the Marines into modern-day, high-tech mercenaries.

      “Is that ob or sub, Gunny?” someone asked.

      “Yeah,” someone else added with a laugh. “It does make a difference!”

      “Strictly subjective time, people, just like your base pay.” There were groans in response. “Can it!” Dunne added. “It’s bad enough the government pays you while you’re sleeping your sorry lives away in cybehibe! They’re not paying you for time that shrinks to no time at all while you’re traveling at near-c!

      “Any other questions?” There were none. “Carry on,” Dunne said, leaving the Marines to discuss the news.

      A few—Sergeant, now Staff Sergeant, Houston and Corporal, now Sergeant, Matt Cavaco—felt that arbitrarily ordering the Marines to go to Sirius, rather than making it a volunteer-only mission—was just flat wrong. Most, though, were excited by the prospect, both for the extra pay, and because of the distinct alienation many of them were feeling from Earth. Those few who’d gotten passes to go ashore in the past few days had returned with less than happy news about the planet, and about its inhabitants. Damn, but Dunne was right. The background culture of North America had changed and in some unpleasant ways.

      There was a lot else about the local scene Dunne had not mentioned, but the other Marines in the company had been discussing it endlessly for the past several days.

      It wasn’t just the shifting jargon and language, the strange new religions and philosophies, or the everchanging buzz about numnum persies or zaggers, whatever the hell those were. Where to begin?

      Politics were one issue. The voices calling for separation were louder, more strident, than ever. Aztlanistas had been calling for independence since well before Garroway had been born, but the debate now approached open warfare in some of the Latino slums of LA, and in the borderlands of southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Strife was building with the Québecois, too, as the Canadian winters worsened. Their claim to western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley was less viable even than that of the Aztlanistas, since it had been the British Empire, not the United States of America, that had taken their old territories in the French and Indian Wars. Still, it made for amusing and often virulent name-calling on the public forums and news feeds.

      There were more rules and regulations. Most states could now arrest and prosecute people for breaking one or another of the citizenship laws, dictums prohibiting any behavior that might disturb good social order and public decency. That sounded so much like the articles of the Uniform, Code of Military Justice—specifically the one about “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline”—that some Marines were speculating that America was now a military state. And with far more convicted criminals than prison space, more and more felons were being turned loose with specially programmed watchdog nano injected into their bloodstreams, nano that could evaluate their behavior against