10
The bus pulled into a round driveway for what looked like a high-end mountain resort. Huge trees, probably planted during the first terraforming, surrounded the two-story building.
“Look, a Navy bus,” Tomiko said, pointing out the window.
Rev leaned over her, and yes, a dark blue version of their bus, with Perseus Union Navy written on the side, was parked to the side.
“The skipper said the navigators and some of the other specialties have to get some of the same mods we’re getting.”
“But why here out in the mountains? And this place doesn’t look like a hospital.”
Rev shrugged, then said, “Probably to keep it quiet.”
“I still don’t see why all the secrecy. I mean, we heard the rumors before they told us.”
“And we didn’t believe them, did we?” Rev said.
He didn’t want to get into an argument with Tomiko. They’d been together since getting off that first bus, along with Cricket and Yancey, and that meant she was his oldest friend in the Corps.—and she was a safer seatmate than Krissy, at least until they were out of boot camp.
It was a reversal of roles, though, for the two of them. Tomiko was the gung-ho one, the one ready to kick Centaur butt, the hard ass who could outrun and outfight them all. Rev was the hesitant one. But after the colonel’s brief, she’d been the one to complain, to question, while Rev had come to accept their situation.
It wasn’t that he liked it. He was still apprehensive about the procedures. But his stepdad had always told him to accept what he couldn’t change, and this fit the bill. There was nothing he could do about his situation, so he might as well save his energy for what he could change.
They filed off the bus. Rev took several deep breaths of the clean, crisp air, then followed the others through the huge double doors into the main building.
I’m going in a human. What will I be when I come out?
The lobby was extravagant. This had either been a resort or maybe some sort of facility for the uber-rich, like a detox center, before the government had taken it over. An elegant table had been set up to the right as they entered, and they filed through where two pleasant aides welcomed them, then gave them bracelets to wear.
“Feel free to wander around, but don’t leave the building or main garden. Your bracelet will let you know when they’re ready for you.”
Rev waited for Tomiko, then the two wandered toward the back of the lobby to an atrium where several Navy recruits, in their dark blue singlets, were sitting in small groups in chairs along the side. But the focus of the room was a huge grand piano. With no empty seats, Rev and Tomiko headed to the piano bench.
“This is gorgeous,” Tomiko said, stroking the real wood, the grain so polished it seemed alive. “Bet it cost a couple years of our pay.”
“More than that,” Rev said as he sat down on the left side of the bench.
The badge read Mason-Hamlin, and Rev thought the piano had to be hundreds of years old.
Tomiko stroked the keys softly, then raised her right hand and played the melody of Where ‘Ere You Are, a love song that had been popular several years ago. The notes rang true and clear.
“I didn’t know you could play,” Rev said.
“Most of my life,” Tomiko said with a smile, then started to play the next stanza.
Rev brought his left hand into position, then slipped into the counterpoint. Tomiko’s eyes grew large in surprise, and she faltered for a moment, then settled her weight in her seat and started playing in earnest.
She was a better player than Rev, he realized, but he held his own as the two of them soared into the song, filling the atrium.
Where ere you are,
So will I be.
The darkest night, the farthest star,
You will always be a part of me.
Rev looked up where one of the sailors was approaching, her soprano as light as a bird in the higher registers.
My heart is true.
It beats for you.
Remember my touch as you ply through space,
Feel my love and remember my face.
At the end of her call, Fyr Dorcester, one of the Marine recruits, picked up the response as he strode forward, his baritone raspy, but in tune.
Back and forth, Fyr and the sailor, Rev and Tomiko, wove the tale of love being separated by events beyond their control.
Rev hadn’t played since he entered Secondary School, and never on a real piano, but it was like the Muse of Music had taken over his hands. As the two singers joined voices in the final stanza, where they pledged their undying love, Rev and Tomiko played the same notes a chord apart.
The piano held the sustain, slowly fading away, when applause broke out. The sailor blushed and gave a slight bow.
“And I didn’t know you could play, either,” Tomiko said.
“Three years. My mom made me learn.”
“Three years? Not bad, bro.”
And it wasn’t bad, he knew. He’d done OK. He felt flushed with pride. Ever since he’d arrived at Camp Nguyen, everything had been Marine this, Marine that. It was nice to forget that for a moment, to remember what it meant just to be human.
Recruits, both Navy and Marines started to gather, some shouting out songs to be played, when Rev’s bracelet vibrated.
“Do you know—” Tomiko started before Rev held up his wrist so she could see the small flashing light.
“Oh,” was all she said.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Rev stood up, and Tomiko said, “Catch you on the flip side, Rev.”
He located his door, and as he walked over to have his life changed, the notes of Tomiko’s next song followed him.
* * *
An hour or so later, after yet another full-body scan and a depilatory shower that removed every hair on his body, Rev was sitting in a hospital gown as a civilian in medgrays handed him a plastisheet.
“Mr. Pelletier, what you have now is a Form SC-3383, which lists what augments and mods you will receive over the next two days. You are receiving the Profile Six pack, and I’d like to go over them with you now.”
Finally.
Rev started scanning the list, trying to make sense of it.
From Captain Aloiose’s brief of the day before, he knew the augments were essentially broken down into three areas: mechanical, biosynth, and organic.
Mechanical were perhaps the easiest to understand. The jack he’d already received was mechanical, as would be the polyamerase support webs added around his joints and the plates around his skull. The medical nanos also fell into this category.
Biosynth were harder to classify or for Rev to understand. The colonel’s eyes were biosynth, partially organic and partially mechanical. In his case they used organic materials and synthetics to create a usable organe. For Rev, the only one he knew beforehand was his battle buddy, something he still didn’t quite understand. It was described as something like a personal search engine.
The organic modifications were simply a polite, non-alarmist term for what was genetic and biological modification, and that was what still gave Rev the heebie-jeebies.
His eyes went straight to Category Three, the organic mods.
The first one he saw took him aback. Among the numbers and scientific talk, the words woolly rhinoceros jumped out at him.
The civilian was listing some of the mechanical mods, but Rev interrupted him to ask him what that was.
The man looked over, saw the entry, and said, “Ah, that one’s new. We’re using recovered woolly rhino DNA to build up the PBM, the Peak Bone Mass, of the diaphysis in your skeletal system. That and the polyamerase webbing will make your bones stronger. You’re going to need that to support the other mods and resist fractures.”
Rev caught the stronger bones part, but woolly rhinos? The thought was creepy.
“Aren’t they extinct? I mean, like tens of thousands of years ago, in cave man times.”
“Well, yes. But they had the strongest mammalian bones ever discovered, and we found thousands of them over the centuries in the Russian Biological Preserves back on Mother Earth, frozen in time.”
“And you can just put their DNA into me?”
The tech looked surprised at the question. He gave Rev a strange look, then said, “This is old technology, Mr. Pelletier.”
“Am I getting any more animal DNA?”
“Well, not technically. We’re not just injecting animal DNA into you. We’ve modified DNA and RNA from various sources that you’ll get.”
“OK, then, what modified DNA from animals will I get?”
“Well, if you want some, look at Number Forty-Three in this section. That’s modified pigeon DNA in your hippocampus, so you’ll be able to navigate on any planet with a magnetic field. Number . . . uh, yeah, there it is. Number Forty-Nine. That was developed from the bar-headed goose, which will make your lungs more efficient. Then if you look back at Number Thirty—"
This was making Rev queasy, so he held up his hand, palm out to stop him.
“I am required to go over each of your modifications with you,” the man said.
“Just say them. No need to go into their history.”
“Very well, if you want. Let’s go back up to . . . Number Six, I think was where we were. Number Six is AQT-419S, Amerase Tactile Enhancement. Number Seven is . . .”
The civilian went on, reading aloud from the list. Rev didn’t understand what most of the items were from the description, which sort of defeated the purpose of the tech reading them off, he thought. Some made sense right away, such as the mesh that would be placed under his skin, or the modification to his liver to increase the output of testosterone. Most of them, however, remained mysteries to him. The tech would probably explain each one, but at the moment, Rev just wanted to get this over with. He was more interested in what he’d be in the end, not a laundry list of items.
“Do you have any questions?”
Lots of them.
But he wasn’t going to ask for a clarification on all of the eighty-two listed items.
“No.”
“Then I need you to confirm that you accept the list and the possible complications,” the tech said, holding out his copy of the plastisheet, the retinal scandot on the bottom.
“That I accept? I have a choice? What happens if I disagree with woolly rhino DNA being injected into me. I mean, they went extinct for a reason, right?”
“First, it won’t be injected, as you said. The vector will be modified adenoviruses that you’ll breathe in.”
Rev didn’t care how they were being administered, only that they would be inside of him.
“OK, breathe in. But if I don’t want rhino or pigeon DNA?”
The man actually blushed as he broke contact with Rev’s eyes. “Well, you really don’t have any choice. Your suite has already been compiled. We can’t take anything out.”
“Then why the hell did you even bother to tell me all of this shit if I don’t have a choice?” Rev barked, feeling his anger rise at the absurdity of a false choice.
“Legal reasons. This has to be voluntary.”
“But if I say no, it isn’t voluntary.”
“We like to say that if you’re being volunteered, then it is voluntary. Just not from you guys,” the man said with a half-assed smile.
Even he knew it was bullshit. And despite being a recruit for fewer than six weeks, Rev knew the game.
What was being done to them might be necessary, and the colonel might say it was legal, but if they ever managed to survive as a race, and any of the augmented Marines even lived through their enlistments, then there may be ramifications down the line. The powers that be were just covering their asses in the possibility that all of this might come to bite those asses in the future.
Like his stepdad said, don’t fight what you can’t change.
The guy had mentioned something about complications. Rev didn’t even bother asking about them. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. He sighed and grabbed the sheet, pulled it forward, and looked into the scandot, saying, “I accept this.”
With a relieved smile, the man put the sheet in a folder.
“Anything else? Any further questions?”
Rev glanced at his copy again, wishing he knew what each of the items were. He figured he understood about ten of them. The rhino bones, the eyesight, the . . .
As he looked at it, he realized something was missing.
“Wait a minute. What about my battle buddy? I keep hearing about it, but I don’t see it here.”
“Your battle buddy? Oh, you mean the CCR-32 Didactic Interface. I explained that. Item Number Twelve.”
The words battle and buddy were not in the official name, and tech didn’t really tell him what it was.
“And this thing, what does it do for me?”
“Well, it’s a modular reactive QA and data repository with recast capability.”
“A what?”
The man frowned, then said, “Think of it as an AI that is implanted inside your skull.”
“WHAT?”
This was getting into Genesian or Deimer territory, and that had to be illegal, even now.
“An AI, sort of. You’ll be going places where there isn’t an undernet. The battle buddy, as you Marines call it, will have petabytes of data on hand for you.”
“That’s just a library, then, of sorts,” Rev said, a little relieved.
“More than that. Your battle buddy will be able to foresee what you need in a given situation and provide it without being asked. And as I said, it’s a reactive QA. You’ll be able to hold internal discussions with it. For your DC designator, research has shown that capability will be particularly important.”
That caught Rev’s attention. He still didn’t know what his designator was going to be. He knew it would be Direct Combat, but that could be in any one of eight broad fields. He hoped it would be in either the Zero-Five field, armor, or the Zero-Four, mech.
“You don’t know? You’re going to be a Zero-Two. Zero-Two-Three, to be exact.”
Rev’s eyes grew big. Zero-Twos were Reconnaissance, the Marines who went out alone or in small teams, without the armor that protected the rest of them.
And Zero-Two-Three? Rev waited a second as the knowledge surfaced from his upload.
Rev was going to be a Raider!
* * *
Still in shock, Rev was taken to the operating room. A Raider? He didn’t have the mortality rate of Raiders in his upload . . . probably something that the brass did on purpose. But it couldn’t be good. They were the DA, the Direct Action component of Marine Recon, and they went out, almost naked, for all practical purposes, behind enemy lines. Where recon squads tried to avoid the enemy, Raider teams made contact as their mission.
Alone in the room, lying on the operating table, an IV dripping saline into his arm, he waited, his thoughts bouncing back and forth in his skull like a bird trying to escape a cage. He was sure he’d have gotten Armor or Mech, which together made up over seventy-five percent of DC. He’d never considered Recon, and he certainly would not have selected it given the choice.
When the door into the room finally opened, his nerves were so frayed that he yelped. Actually yelped.
Five people walked in, three civilians in medwhites, a Marine in medwhites, given the Lieutenant Colonel’s silver leaves attached to the surgical cap on his head, then one more person, a woman with an insignia Rev didn’t recognize on her cap.
“Reverent Pelletier, I’m Doctor Annalyn, and I’ll be heading Team One of your transformation.”
“Team One?”
“Yes, Team One. The process will be completed in four phases and will take approximately twenty hours, barring unforeseen complications. My team won’t be doing the entire process. There will be two more teams involved. We’ll get started in a few minutes, so do you have any questions for me?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Very well. Colonel?” she said.
“Recruit Pelletier, I am Lieutenant Colonel Randalf. I’m your advocate for the process. And this is Red-Master Kumar of the Frisian Host, the Congress of Humanity observer.”
“Observer?”
The Host was the military arm of the Frisian Mantle, the traditional strategic opposing power and sometimes enemy of the Union. That was before the Centaur invasion, of course, but even if they were now allies to fight a common enemy, there was still tension and more than a little distrust between the two nations. Rev never imagined he’d meet a Host, much less have a Host officer here in the operating room with him.
“Yes, observer,” the red-master said in an easy-going voice. “Just making sure you only get the approved mods. Can’t have a bunch of Union super-soldiers running around after we defeat the Centaurs, right?”
She sounded like she was joking, but Rev thought what she said might be pretty close to the truth.
“Well, let’s get this show on the road. He’s been prepped?”
“Yes. Confirmed,” one of the team answered.
“Lettie, are the adenoviruses ready?” Doctor Kumar turned to ask one of the others.
“Yes, sir,” the woman said, holding up a small cylinder.
“Then administer them, please.”
The woman pulled out a small mask from the end of the cylinder and moved to Rev’s head.
“Is that going to put me to sleep?”
“No,” the woman said. “These are your organic mods. I need you to breathe deeply when I put the mask over your face.”
She lowered the mask, covering his mouth and nose, and said, “Breathe.”
Instinctively, Rev held his breath. There was extinct rhino DNA inside of that.
Don’t be a wimp.
With a mental sigh, he took a deep breath, then another.
“We’ve got an eighty-four-point-three infusion rate,” the woman said.
“Good, good, then no reason to delay. Let’s put him under. Doctor Uribe?”
“Wait, that’s it? For the DNA stuff?” Rev asked.
He didn’t feel any different, and the process, for all his nervousness, was rather anticlimactic.
“Yes. That’s the easy part.”
“But I didn’t feel anything?”
“You wouldn’t. It will take time for the modified DNA and RNA to make any difference in your body. But they’re in there, believe you me. You should be noticing some differences in a couple of weeks. With some, you’ll never notice a difference. So, unless you have something else?”
“No, sir,” Rev said.
“In that case, Doctor Uribe?”
The doctor reached out to the IV line and said, “Mr. Pelletier, I want you to start counting down from one hundred.”
This time, Rev only reached ninety-nine.