6
Six hours later, Rev was feeling almost human again, thanks to the restoratives Navy medicine had pumped through him. Most of the class was out at the E-club, which was normally off-limits for recruits, but with Phase 1 completed and Phase 2 not to start until Monday, they’d been given special permission.
Rev didn’t go. Bundy hadn’t snapped back from the exertion as quickly. He would, the nurse had assured him. It was just going to take his sixty-seven-year-old body a little longer. And if Bundy wasn’t ready to go, Rev felt obligated to stay with him. He’d never have made it without the older man’s help. And with Rev staying, Cricket, Krissy, Tomiko, and Orpheus Talamage had decided to hang out in the barracks as well.
The thought of a cold beer was pretty tempting, but there was something to be said for a quiet evening playing cards after the almost six full days of Hell Week.
Rev had been shocked when he heard Bundy’s age. Sixty-seven was middle-aged for most aspects of life, but it was positively ancient for Direct Combat. And for Bundy to volunteer for service and pick DC, well, he didn’t understand it.
“Double slam,” Cricket said, slapping down the cards.
The edges of two of Rev’s cards lit up red, and with a sigh, he dumped them in the pit. He’d only needed a four or a nine and he’d have finally won a hand.
“You nervous about Monday?” Rev asked the table, but he was looking at Bundy.
“No. Why?”
“Getting the interface.”
Bundy laughed and twisted his body so that Rev could see the back of his neck. “Already got one.”
Rev was surprised, and he leaned in to look. “I don’t see anything.”
“You think I’m going through boot with an open jack? No. Got it sealed with plastiderm before reporting in.”
“They took mine out before reporting,” Cricket said. “Not that it matters. We’re getting military issue now.”
“Not jacks,” Rev protested. “Interfaces.”
“Like it makes a difference?” Krissy asked. “A jack is a jack. So, are you going to deal or not?”
Rev frowned as he pulled the cards in the pit and ran them through the shuffler. An interface was a tool. A jack was something to escape reality. They weren’t the same.
“All we need them for is to work our armor, right? Just a simple interface.”
“And run all our weapons, communicate, all of that. You’ve seen Twilight Soldier, haven’t you?” Bundy asked.
Of course he had. The series of six holovids had swept the galaxy a century before, then had a re-edited resurgence after the war broke out. The main characters were more robot than human, with powers that bordered on the supernatural.
“None of that was real.”
“Maybe not,” Bundy said. “But maybe it isn’t that far from the truth. Whatever we’re going to get, we’ll find out soon enough. High throughput jacks, medi-nanos—"
“I could have used the medi-nanos during Hell Week,” Orpheus said as he checked the cards Rev dealt him. “I don’t know why we didn’t get them first.”
“Too easy,” Cricket said. “Oh, and double slam.”
“Hell, we didn’t even pass yet,” Krissy said.
“Read ’em and weep.” But Cricket was right. He’d drawn right into another double slam, and this time three of Rev’s cards were ejected.
“Real nice deal there, Rev,” Krissy said with a frown as she emptied the pit and shuffled them.
“Anyone know what kind of nanos we’re getting?” Rev asked. “I mean, they’re just boosting what we’ve got, right?”
“Military grade, Rev. Military grade. You’re going to want something to stabilize you if the Centaurs take off an arm,” Cricket said.
Civilian medi-nanos, like what he still had coursing through his body, could diagnose what was wrong and inject a fair number of drugs when needed, but that was about it. Traumatic injuries were a little out of their scope. It made sense that his current nanos would be boosted with some specialized ones that had more capabilities.
Rev was OK with that, but there’d been a few rumors that there was much more that would be done to them, even augments. Which couldn’t be true. Corrective surgery for something like eyesight was one thing, but augments that enhanced the human body beyond the norm had been illegal since the Corolla Wars.
He just wished the DIs or the officers would be more open with them, and he didn’t understand why all the secrecy. They were the proverbial mushrooms of ancient lore: kept in the dark and fed shit.
* * *
“Recruit Pelletier,” the tech said, poking his head into the waiting room.
“Go get jacked,” Krissy said, giving him a slap on the upper arm. She knew what Rev thought about jackheads, and she’d been teasing him since reveille.
She’d been doing that a lot—teasing with a definite flirting aspect to it. Rev didn’t mind most of it—she was a good-looking girl with a great sense of humor—but he was taking the whole jack/interface thing personally.
“I told you, it’s just an interface, not a jack,” he growled as he stood up.
“Same damned thing,” she said to his back. “Best of luck, young fellah,” she chirped.
He lifted a single finger behind his back, hearing her laugh as the door closed behind him.
He knew by now that there was some truth to what she’d said. Okay, more than just some truth. But he wasn’t getting this to while the time away playing total immersion games and withdrawing from society. As Bundy had said during their card game on Saturday night, if he was going to be able to function as a Direct Combat Marine, he had to be able to connect to his armor and weapons. This was just an upgraded version of the interface he’d have gotten in the guild. Nothing more.
Still, he was a little nervous as he followed the civilian tech down the corridor to a small room dominated by a reclining table, a control panel, and an imposing-looking arm that hovered like a vulture over the table.
The tech told him to take off his singlet and underwear, then put them in a plastic bag and seal it. Once Rev was standing there naked, the tech waved at the table, telling him to lie down on the metal. Which he did, only to utter a hiss of protest. It was frigid on his bare back.
The tech rotely confirmed his name and birthdate. Satisfied that Rev was really Rev—once again, Rev didn’t know who else he would be inside a secure military camp—the tech sprayed a cold mist on his left thigh, making Rev jump.
“Awfully close to my balls,” Rev protested.
“Don’t care. Plenty more where those came from,” the tech muttered, then pulled a tube with a needle attached from the underside of the table.
A rather large needle.
“Don’t move if you want to save your jewels,” he said as a light emerged from the tip of the tube.
Of course, Rev jerked, but the tube suddenly extended, the needle piercing his inner thigh. He yelped, but he barely felt it. Evidently, the mist had done its job. There was a slight burning, but not much else. The needle retracted, and the tube slipped back into place under the table.
“What was that?” Rev asked.
“Just some tracers.”
Which meant nothing to Rev.
The tech—Christopher Neu-Langsford, according to his nametag—moved over what looked like a vulture arm and fanned out a part that looked like the vulture’s beak.
Rev didn’t like the way it looked, and he felt extremely vulnerable lying there naked as the tech busied himself with the arm.
“Where’s the interface?” he asked, more just to break the silence.
“The what?”
“The interface. What you’re going to implant. I’d like to see it.”
The tech scrunched his eyebrows for a moment, then said, “Oh, the jack.”
It’s not a jack. It’s an interface.
“I don’t do that here. This is NM.”
Which, once again, Rev didn’t understand. He was about to ask what NM was when the tech stepped back and said, “OK, you need to remain still for this. So, we’re going to clamp you in place. Lay your arms flat against your side, palms down.”
Rev hesitated, but he really wasn’t in a position to argue. He did as he was told, and part of the edge of the table folded up to form a band over his wrist. If he felt vulnerable before, that had just doubled.
The tech centered the arm about half a meter over Rev’s face. “I’m going to run this down the length of your body.” He stepped back to his console.
“What’s it gonna do?” Rev asked, his voice faltering just the tiniest bit as he stared at it.
“Don’t worry. It’s not going to hurt you. Just a little tickle.”
Don’t be a wimp.
A light circling the rim of the fan turned on, then . . .
. . . pain, like nothing Rev had ever felt before, washed over his body. He screamed in agony, or at least he thought he did. He could feel every cell come apart in a field of fire. His very being started to disintegrate, but he knew he was still alive because the dead couldn’t be tortured like this.
And suddenly, it was gone, like the last wisps of a dream.
“You lying bastard,” he spat, pulling at his restraints, his one desire to get up and beat the shit out of the tech—consequences be damned.
The tech casually strolled over to stand above Rev, looking down at him.
“Why the hell did you lie to me?” Rev spat, sucking in air through his nose as the pain began to fade—but not fast enough for his liking.
“Would it have mattered? You were still going to get neuromapped one way or the other.”
Rev tried to jerk free, almost snarling at him.
“Besides, I said the NM wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“And what do you think just happened to me, you stupid fuck?”
“When the NM activated the tracers, you only thought you were in pain. It stimulated your nociceptors, as if you were being hurt, which sent the signals through your thalamus and on to your ventromedial nuclei in your cerebral cortex. Like I just said, you only thought you were in pain, but nothing was actually being done to you. You’ve suffered no bodily damage.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I know what I felt!”
“No, really. How do you feel right now?”
The question was crazy. He’d just been tortured by this sick bastard, but . . . as he did a quick inventory, he realized he felt fine. Nothing hurt, and everything seemed to work, the best he could tell while lying on the table.
In fact, he couldn’t really remember the pain. He knew he’d been in agony just a minute before, but only in the abstract.
“I . . . I guess I feel OK,” he said cautiously.
“So, like I said, the NM wasn’t going to hurt you. If I release you now, are you going to behave? You’re not going to get up and knock my head off?”
“I didn’t need to be held down for the scan, right? That was to protect you.”
The tech gave a slight smile, and he didn’t bother to deny it.
“No, I’m not going to jump you,” he said with a sigh. The memory of the agony was quickly fading further.
The tech pressed a release on the bed, and the restraints retracted. Rev sat up, and the tech took a quick half-step backward, wary. But Rev had been telling the truth. He wasn’t angry anymore. It was as if it had never happened.
Rev flexed his arm, trying to remember how it had felt.
“Can I get dressed now?”
“Sure. We’re almost done here.”
“What about my interface? Who’s doing that?”
“Not me. And not today. We just neuromapped you, and based on the results, your jack and all of your augments are going to be printed, custom made for you.”
“All of my augments? You mean the interface and the medi-nanos, right?”
The tech looked at him and laughed. “You think that’s it? You’re going to fight the tin-asses with only those?”
“What do you mean? I’m getting armor, right?”
“Look, Pelletier. You’re going into Direct Combat. You’re getting all the augments we can give you to keep you alive and killing the enemy. How don’t you know that?”
Rev blanched. He’d known about the interface. That was how Marines controlled their armor and weapons, or how sailors flew their ships. And as Bundy had said, he’d get boosted medi-nanos. But anything else was news to him.
“What are they going to do to me?”
“Hell if I know. I’m in diagnostics, not augments, and I don’t know what you’re slated for. Pretty primo stuff, though, you can bet on that,” he said, his eyes lighting up as if he were a jackhead talking about the latest and greatest game.
But this was reality, not a game, and he didn’t like the thought of anything being done to his body. What if they cut off his junk like they did to the Eunuch regiments back in the Corolla Wars?
“I’m OK with the interface, but I don’t think I want any augments.”
It wasn’t surprising that he’d feel that way. Human augmentation was taught to be evil, something that must never happen again. The Eunuch regiments were not even close to being the most egregious human manipulation of the Lost Century.
“Not much of a choice there. It’s a done deal.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” he asked.
The tech laughed at that and asked, “Yeah, and who are the tin-asses going to complain to? No, you agreed to it when you accepted Direct Combat. You’ll receive them sometime over the next week. After you get your uploads, I’d imagine.”
He could see Rev was dubious, so he said, “Look, they’re not going to make you into some monster. You’ll still look like you, mostly.”
Mostly?
“You’ll just be better. Stronger, better eyesight, shit like that. Hell, I’d give my left nut for some of those.”
Which brought Rev back to the Eunuch regiments, something he didn’t want weighing on his mind.
But stronger muscles and better eyesight weren’t bad, in and of themselves. Not much different than people in the real world getting their eyesight corrected. Maybe Rev was just letting the Lost Century get the better of him.
“And this time, when I say it won’t hurt, I mean it,” the tech added. “You’ll sleep through it all and wake up a superman.”
Rev didn’t believe a word of that, but he wasn’t sure if there was a damned thing he could do about it.