11
“You feel any stronger?” Yancey asked the others. “I tried to do some pushups this morning, but I couldn’t even do thirty of them.”
“You did just have surgery, dipwad,” Orpheus said, throwing a crushed Sunny Orange cup at him.
“Really, Yance, you need to stop that. The docs told us to take it easy for the week,” Bundy said. He swept an arm around the white-painted room, the hum of the filter unit a constant reminder that they were still in a hospital, albeit one that looked like a resort.
“I know, but just a few push-ups. What could it hurt?”
“It could make you reject your augments, that’s what.”
Yancey flipped his hand at him as if brushing away a fly.
Rev didn’t know if all this was necessary. He was a little sore, especially around his joints, and the spider web—the netting under most of his skin—itched, but he didn’t feel much different. It wouldn’t do much good to argue, so why waste the energy? Besides, it was a week of lounging around, with their only duties being the twice daily scans and chowing down on the admittedly good food they were being served.
Rev rubbed the medical bracelet on his wrist. It was monitoring his condition around the clock, so he wasn’t sure why they needed the full scans.
Bundy leaned forward and quietly asked, “You remember Wight?”
Rev hadn’t really spoken to the big recruit. He was a volunteer, and unlike Bundy, he was part of the group that didn’t seem to appreciate the conscripts.
“You see him here?”
Rev looked around the room. Most of the class were there, playing cards, watching the holo or just shooting the shit in groups. Other than their rooms, this was the only place they were allowed to access for the next five days.
“He was on the bus with us,” Tomiko said.
“I don’t mean then. I mean now. Or in the last two days since we got augmented.”
Rev had to think back, but he couldn’t remember seeing the recruit. Not that he was looking.
“I talked to Gorsovik, his buddy. They came in together. Instead of joining us here, Wight got taken to another ward after his procedure.”
“So?” Yancey asked.
“And today, well, he didn’t make it.”
“What? So, he’s going to be a Ninety-Nine now?” Rev asked.
“No. He didn’t make it. As in, he’s dead.”
Rev spun around to look at Bundy in shock. Dead?
“H . . . how?” he asked.
Bundy shrugged, then said, “Rejection, I’d imagine.”
“What do you mean, rejection?” Krissy asked, beating Rev to the punch.
“Rejection. His body rejected his augments.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.” Rev said.
“Come on, Rev. Didn’t you have to sign a release?” Tomiko asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“It told you about the possibility of rejection. Two percent, it said.”
Rev thought back. The tech had said something about complications, but since he had no choice in the matter, he hadn’t pursued that rather pertinent fact. Now he wished he had.
“I . . . I didn’t really read it,” he admitted.
Tomiko just rolled her eyes. Again. She was good at it. That, and fighting.
They were quiet for a moment, then Yancey shrugged and said, “I guess we all made it, so, sorry for him, but we’re in the clear.
“That doesn’t answer my question, though. Do any of you feel stronger? Do you, Bundy?”
“No, and I won’t.”
“What do you mean? No offense, but you could use a little more muscle, grandpa.”
“And I’m a zero-nine, armor. What do I need more strength for?”
“Wait, you didn’t get a strength upgrade?” Rev asked.
“No. Like I said, I don’t need it. Ten and I don’t need it in armor. Udu and Fyr don’t need it in mech,” Bundy said.
This was news to Rev. He’d assumed they’d all gone through most of the same modifications like greater strength.
“Well, then, what did you get?”
“Neurotransmitter booster, so we can react quicker—”
“I got that, too,” Rev said. “Quicker reflexes.”
“I think there’s overlap. But I also think that’s different. You got quicker reflexes, which are part of the reflexive arc. The signals just go to the spinal cord and back. You don’t have to think about it. For us,” he said, pointing to Ten, “we need to be able to see a need, then engage a target. Now, we’ll be able to take in data, process it, and react quicker. Same for the mech guys.”
“How do you know all of this?” Rev asked.
Bundy looked surprised at the question, but he said, “I asked Thump.”
“Who’s Thump?”
“My battle buddy, of course.”
Now it was Rev’s turn to be surprised. His AI had been implanted as well, but after the initial test upon waking up from the procedure, he’d cut it off. There’d be more time when he’d have to use it when they got out of their medical isolation and back to training. He never imagined that the Bundy had voluntarily started to access it, much less name it.
“Have all of you used your AIs already?” he asked the others.
He refused to call it a battle buddy. It wasn’t a buddy.
All except for Ten nodded.
Rev wanted to comment, but as he and Ten were evidently outside the norm, he held his tongue.
“OK, so you got this fast-nerve augment. What else?” Yancey asked.
“Integrated targeting and fire control, tactile terrain feedback.”
“Advanced medi-nanos,” Ten added.
“I think we all got those,” Tomiko said. “And ours are optimized for burns.”
There was a moment of silence. Rev didn’t know exactly what his medi-nanos would do, but the fact that the three armor recruits had something specifically optimized for burns was disquieting.
“But we all got the spider webs, right?” Yancey asked, looking around at the others.
“I got it, and mine itches like crazy. I don’t care what the docs say,” Rev said to the laughter of others.
“I’ll help you scratch those places you can’t reach,” Krissy said with a comical leer.
There were a couple of salty comments, and Ten said, “No bang-bang, you two. Can’t take a chance of infection while we’re in medical jail.”
Rev knew she was yanking his chain, but still, he could feel his face flush. Krissy was incorrigible, and sitting close by, and her gaze wasn’t entirely humorous.But he liked it.
“So, you treadheads don’t get superman strength. Anyone else?” Rev asked.
“I don’t,” Fyr said.
Fyr, like Udu, hadn’t been part of the original group, but after his duet with Tomiko, he was hanging out with them more often. He was a quiet, earnest man in his late twenties who gave up a journeyman position in the fabrication guild to volunteer.
“Which makes sense,” Bundy said. “We don’t need extra strength, and neither do the mechs.”
“I’ve got rhino DNA,” Tomiko offered.
“Me, too,” Krissy chimed in. “And you know what they say about rhino horns.” She tried to leer at Rev again, but couldn’t hold it and broke out laughing joined immediately by Tomiko.
Rev shook his head. “Lewd, unprofessional, and possibly criminal.”
“Guilty,” Tomiko said, snorting.
“Private Regis, report to Exam One,” the voice came over the intercom.
“Time to go get prodded,” Krissy said, standing up. “They need to make sure I’m not going all mutant on them.”
“Don’t bend over in there,” Yancey called out to her as she walked to the door, and he got an upraised middle finger in return.
Something was bothering Rev about all of this talk.
“Maybe you don’t need max strength in a tank, but it can’t hurt, right? And if your tank goes down and you have to leave it, wouldn’t it be better to have it?”
Bundy grimaced and looked at Fyr, then Tomiko, then Cricket. None of the three were going to answer, so he cleared his throat.
“The less we get done to us, the better in the long run.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rot,” Udu said.
Rev frowned. The only thing he knew that was called the rot was the cancer-like disease that ravaged the Eucharans during the Corolla Wars. But he couldn’t mean that, right? The Eucharans were sad victims of their attempt to become gods.
“What are you saying?” Yancey asked, his good mood gone.
“The rot. When we try and control nature, it sometimes fights back. The more we change, the higher our chance of contracting it,” Bundy explained.
Rev went numb. What had he gotten into?
“So, what you are saying is all of us are going to get the rot?” he asked, not believing what he was hearing.
“No, not necessarily. But they want to limit the changes to what we actually need for our mission. And the mechanicals, like your spider web, that won’t do anything. But the organics, even the biosynths, they’re what can be dangerous. And you Zero-Twos and Threes, and the Zero-Sevens—you get the most augments. That’s why they gave me armor. I’m sixty-seven, and my cells aren’t as healthy as yours. I’ve got a much higher chance of getting the rot,” Bundy said.
“And you’re a volunteer, not a convict,” Udu said.
“I don’t think that’s what it is,” Bundy said, sounding as if he might be trying to convince himself.
“And they screw us convicts over?” Rev asked, incredulous.
Only it wasn’t just that, he suddenly realized. It was cell health and stability. His initial interviewer had mentioned his cellular stability and lack of genetic drift. She probably had this in mind from the beginning, he knew, and she tried to steer him to DC. And he’d let himself be herded, thinking she was doing him a favor.
Tomiko moved closer and put an arm around Rev’s shoulders. “It was in the release.”
“I didn’t read the damned thing,” Rev said, voice bleak.
There was an awkward silence, then Yancey burped and said, “What the hell do we care about the rot? The Centaurs are going to kill us long before that.”
And something broke inside of Rev. His anger fled, and he started laughing.
“Hell, we won’t last a month, right? Who cares about the rot?”
One-by-one, everyone joined in.
Yancey got up and grabbed Rev around the neck, then gave him a sloppy kiss on the forehead. “So, who’s going first? You or me, buddy?”
“Recruits, refrain from physical contact while in the rec room,” one of their minders announced over the intercom.
And that started a new round of laughing.
Yancey gave the speaker the finger, then sat in Tomiko’s lap. “How about this, leech?”
“Did you just call her a leech?” Tomiko asked between laughs as she pushed him off. “She might be Navy.”
“Navy? Might as well be a leech.”
“But one who outranks your recruit ass!” Cricket said.
It took a couple of minutes before they managed to get back to a semblance of normalcy. Finally, they just sat in silence. Their relative mood was much, much better. Rev knew he had to come to terms with what had been done to him, but Yancey had it right. With a seventy-eight percent mortality rate, rot would be the least of the worries for most of them.
Rev slowly looked at each of his fellow DC recruits—no friends. Three years from now, most of them would be dead. It was a sobering thought.
“How many days until our discharges?” he asked, the germ of an idea forming.
“One thousand fifty-three days and a wake-up,” Cricket said. “Why?”
“Listen up, then. You know where Leteeka’s is, on West Central Boulevard?” Everyone nodded. “OK, then. On our last day in the Corps, one thousand fifty-three days and a wake-up from now, we need to get together again. I’ll buy a bottle of something, something expensive, and we’ll share it then and tell a few sea stories.”
“Nice thought, Rev, but the chances—” Tomiko started before Rev cut her off.
“But that’s where you’re wrong. Look, guys. If we swear to be there, I mean swear right now, then nothing can keep us from doing it, right?”
“Uh, I don’t think it works like that,” Ten said, sounding uncertain as if not knowing how to pop Rev’s bubble.
“I know how things work. But why the hell not? Maybe Saint Chesty will protect us. Or maybe not, I know. But I want to see all of us right there before we get discharged.”
Rev didn’t believe in any supernatural powers from that long-dead Marine from Twentieth Century Earth and now the unofficial patron saint of the Corps, but he couldn’t just accept that three-quarters of them were going to be killed in the war. He was feeling helpless, and he wanted to wrestle back some sort of control over the situation. He knew a simple promise to make it back wasn’t going to ensure that, but at least it was a proactive start.
The others looked at him, clearly uncomfortable.
Finally, Yancey broke the silence with, “Shit, we all know Grandpa’s a lifer. He won’t be getting out.”
“That’s the plan,” Bundy admitted, the first time he’d done that. “But hell yes, I’ll be there to see you knuckleheads off. I swear it.”
It was one thing for Rev to pop this on them, but it was another thing altogether for Bundy, the mature one, to join in.
“Who else?” Rev asked as he looked the rest in the eyes.
And one by one, he could see them accept the concept, at least in spirit. Cricket, Tomiko, Orpheus, Ten, Fyr, Udu, and finally Yancey. All agreed.
“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Hands together,” Tomiko said, standing up.
The nine recruits, strangers seven weeks ago, stood in a circle, their hands locked in the center.
“Do all of you hereby swear to meet at Leteeka’s on the day we’re getting discharged, to raise a glass in a toast?” Tomiko asked.
With a loud ooh-rah, the pact was sealed.