34
“Two more minutes,” Darcy shouted. “Come on, push it!”
“Easy for her to say,” Tomiko gasped out from beside Rev while she ran.
Darcy Millsap was a civilian contractor for DSS, one of the companies that performed the augmentations. In her black and copper unitard, she looked like a poster child for fitness, but the two O2 cannulas inserted into her nostrils were proof enough that she couldn’t do what the Raiders and sappers were doing . . . and that was killing themselves.
The treadmill under Rev sped up, and he grunted in frustration. This was far, far more difficult than he’d expected. Maybe he’d gotten too used to his augments, taking them for granted, but physics was physics, and biology was biology. His body needed lots of oxygen to support it, and even his improved lungs were not up to the task.
Just do it. Two more minutes.
He reached down deep as his lungs bellowed and his legs seared with fatigue.
“Faster!” Darcy shouted as she strode in front of the Marines like a DI.
Rev wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he entered the environmental spaces six hours before. Maybe hang out, get some tests, just get used to a lower O2 atmosphere. What he hadn’t expected, however, was to be put to the test like this. And even when he was told, he hadn’t expected it to kick his ass so much.
He was superman, right? The best that human science could make, right?
So why was he feeling like such a candyass?
“One minute! Don’t stop!”
Rev started lurching, his pace getting rough, but he was not going to quit.
There was a crash from the other side of the space. Rev looked up to see Gunny Jin, the sapper platoon sergeant, collapse, his body in a jumble at the base of his treadmill.
A couple of the other sappers start to move to help him when Darcy yelled out, “Don’t stop! We’ve got him.”
A corpsman in a full helmet stepped up to attend to the fallen Marine, and Rev lowered his head to gut out the final few seconds.
It seemed like forever before Darcy shouted, “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and stop!”
“Thank God,” Rev muttered as he came to a halt. It took an effort of will to remain standing tall and not lean over, hands on his knees. Hell, it took an effort not to puke.
He looked up at Darcy, hoping against hope that they were not about to jump right into another torture session.
“Take five while we run some scans.”
Beautiful words: take five.
Two DSS techs and three corpsmen started down the line, collecting blood, having each Marine exhale into a mask, and running scans.
“Some shit,” he said to Tomiko, who tried to gain some sort of control over her breathing.
On the other side of Tomiko and Tanu, Staff Sergeant Montez suddenly lost her balance, stumbled back against the bulkhead, and slid to a sitting position, her eyes glazing over. Rev jumped off the treadmill to help, but the motion constricted his field of sight, closing it off to tunnel vision, and he had to grab the front of his treadmill to remain upright.
Darcy was at the staff sergeant’s side immediately. “We’ve got her.”
Still holding the front of his treadmill, Rev wanted to help, but the medtech who joined Darcy was far more qualified.
“Take a seat if you need to,” Darcy told them.
Twenty-eight Raiders and sappers immediately sat down.
That helped. Rev watched the staff sergeant for a moment to make sure she was OK, but she was conscious and talking to the medtech.
“Breathe into this,” one of the mech corpsmen, shanghaied for this, said, holding a mask up in front of Rev’s face. “Four good, deep breaths.”
Rev leaned into it and complied, a bit of the dizziness coming back.
The corpsman checked the readout, nodded, then slapped a vampire on Rev’s arm to take his blood. After a quick scan, he moved onto Tomiko.
“I wish they’d given us more of that goose DNA,” Rev said when the corpsman moved onto Tanu. “Why stop when they did?”
Tomiko shook her head slightly and said, “For the same reason they didn’t give any to the mech-heads and tankers.”
“Not the same thing. They already gave us some of that stuff to give us better lungs and feed our augments. To give us more stamina when we run,” he said, tilting his head back to the treadmill track.
“But the more they give us, the greater, you know . . .”
Rev did know. The more augments they were given, the greater the chance for the rot.
But if they couldn’t breathe when they got to their target, then they wouldn’t last long enough to catch the rot.
“It’s not like it would be a totally new augment. They already pumped us up with damned DNA. Would it hurt to goose that up a little more?”
“Damn, Rev. You still got enough energy for a weak-ass pun like that?”
“I try,” Rev said, mustering up enough energy for a chuckle.
“Alright, listen up,” Darcy said, striding to the middle of the space. “We’re halfway through the first session. This was at six-point-six percent oxygen. We’ll be dropping it to six-point-four percent next.”
A chorus of groans reached her, which she waved off as if shooing a gnat buzzing her face.
“But first, we need to get you fed. Tanista, if you’ll get the XL-12s?”
One of the medtechs took out a box and opened it, then tossed Darcy a dull white tube before he started passing out others to the Marines.
“This is the newest nutritional sludge, specifically formulated to help your bodies cope with the lack of oxygen as well as counteract the more toxic elements you’ll be breathing in.”
“Has it been tested?” Lieutenant Omestori called out.
“What do you think we’re doing here?” Darcy answered. “I told you it was brand new. So, just eat and relax. We’ll start Phase Two for today in about twenty minutes. We’re supposed to give the paste time to be absorbed.”
“Paste? That isn’t a good omen,” Tomiko said.
Rev watched as the medtech passed out the white tubes. “She said we were at six-point-six percent. I thought the planet was at six-point-nine percent?”
“It is. But maybe they’re doing this so we think six-point-nine percent is like a day at the beach.”
Rev just grunted. He didn’t need to be tortured to know he wouldn’t like it.
The medtech tossed Rev his tube. Rev popped the cap and took a sniff. It had a faint almond smell.
He looked at Tomiko, then raised his tube as if in a toast and tapped hers.
“Here goes.”
He squeezed the tube and took a big mouthful. It wasn’t horrible, almost reminiscent of cookie dough but with a weird undercurrent and aftertaste.
“With all the great froggy chow on the ship, we’re eating this shit,” Tomiko grumbled.
“It may not be beef burgundy-whatever, true. But it isn’t that bad.”
Rev tilted his head back and squeezed the tube empty.
“It ain’t cookies, either.”