45
The next two months were as if Rev and the rest of the Raiders were in a holding pattern. They were kept on high alert, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, but without an emphasis on training. And while the Raiders were kept confined to the base with orders to keep quiet about the events on Earth, the rest of the Marines were allowed to go out into town on liberty, see their families, and generally get back to a semblance of normality.
The main focus of the post-invasion galaxy, it seemed, was how the Council and the various governments wanted to spin what happened. Rev thought it was ridiculous to try and gin up some fake facts. The invasion of the Home System had been too widely disseminated to hide the events. But slowly, Rev and the rest could see the subtle changes, or at least, the slanting of the script. No one asked for their input, but they could see how it was no longer an invasion, but an attempt at negotiations to end the war that unfortunately ran into miscommunications. The landing on the Mother was an act of respect and an assumption that all negotiations would take place there.
And to Rev’s amazement, large swathes of humanity evidently believed it. Oh, there were some that voiced disbelief. The Children of Angels were resurrected and making noises, and various groups either wanted to pursue the Centaurs to their homeworld and destroy them or were accusing the Council of selling out humanity in exchange for the corporate acquisition of certain technologies.
“Think that’s our Three?” Radić asked as they watched the holofeed in the rec room in the newly built barracks.
Not all of Nguyen’s barracks had been rebuilt yet, but with the Raiders stuck on base, the command evidently thought they’d be easier to control in a building, so they’d gotten the very first one finished.
The feed showed three Centaurs being greeted by a small group of politicians. The voice-over said they were part of a delegation sent to coordinate with humanity so as to keep any flare-ups of violence from occurring.
“Doubt it,” Rev said. “With only two of the Threes on the Mother, they don’t want to take any chances.”
Rev knew there were now four Threes, but before leaving New Mars, he’d been told that was still classified, and none of his team had the need to know. He felt a little guilty about lying to his team right now, but orders were orders.
“Yeah, all we would need would be if there’s only one Three on the Mother, and one of those assholes suffers a heart attack, or whatever they have,” Tomiko said.
“And of course, they’re still hiding the fact that the Mother is wired to blow herself to Kingdom come,” Hussein said, repeating one of his constant complaints.
By now, no one was replying to that anymore. All of the rest of them could see what that kind of knowledge could do if that leaked out. Tomiko didn’t think that would ever surface into the light of day, and Rev agreed with that.
He wasn’t even that upset about being held incommunicado. It was boring. He looked forward to getting the keys to the jail, and he thought it was going too far, but it was probably for the best.
That wasn’t Hussein’s only complaint. The initial rumor had been that all of the assault teams were going to be put in for medals. Rev and the MDS lieutenant might even get the Hero of Humanity Medal. But if the invasion of the Mother wasn’t an invasion, then no one could have done anything worthy of recognition. To Hussein, if one took his rants at face value, it wasn’t a medal itself that mattered, but rather their erasure from history and being treated like “yesterday’s trash,” to use his most common description.
For Rev, it was barely a blip on the radar. He’d lost medals before, and except for his Humane Service Medal for saving Kat, they meant little to him anymore.
Tomiko reached out with her toe and nudged Rev’s elbow off the chair arm. “Whatcha got planned for the afternoon?”
“Watch the news. Maybe take a nap. Maybe two naps. Eat chow. Then it gets busy. Watch a show. Get a snack. Go to bed. You know.”
“Busy day. But how about a game of Knock On after chow?”
They’d played Knock On three days running, but then again, it wasn’t like they had a lot more to do. “You get the others and tell me when.”