Ian Douglas - The Complete Legacy Trilogy - Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines

That sobered him. His mother was, what? Forty-one? She’d be sixty-one or older by the time he saw her again. Regular anagathic regimens and nanotelemeric reconstruction made sixty middle age for most folks nowadays, but twenty years was still a hell of a chunk out of a person’s life. How much would he still have in common with any of the people he left behind?

“We’ll be in hibernation for the whole trip?”

“Hell, yes! That transport is going to be damned cozy for thirteen hundred or so people. We’d kill each other off long before we reached the mission objective if we weren’t. Besides, they wouldn’t be able to pack that much food, water, and air for that long a flight.”

“No, ma’am.” In a way, he was disappointed. Part of his dream included the thrill of the journey itself, flying out from Earth on one of the great interplanetary clippers or boosting for the stars on a near- c torchship.

Anderson was accessing some records with a faraway look in her eyes. “I’m checking your evaluations,” she told him. “Your DI thinks highly of you. Did you know you’re up for selection for embassy duty?”

“Huh? I mean, no, ma’am.” The way Makowiecz and the other DIs kept riding him, he’d not even been sure they were going to recommend him for retention in the Corps, much less … embassy duty? That was supposed to be the softest, best duty in the Corps, standing guard at the UFR embassy in some out-of-the-way world capital. You had to be absolutely top-line Marine for a billet like that, and be able to keep yourself and your uniform in recruiting poster form. But the duty was the stuff dream sheets were made of …

“It’s true,” she told him. “And I won’t bullshit you. The Ishtar mission is a combat op. We’ll be going in hot, weapons free, assault mode. The abos are primitive, but they have some high-tech quirks that are guaranteed to raise some damned nasty surprises. So … what’ll it be? A soft billet at an embassy? Or a sleeper slot and a hot LZ?”

He knew what he wanted. Plush as embassy duty was supposed to be, he’d always thought the reality would be boring. In fact, most duty Earthside would be boring, punctuated by the occasional day or two of truly exciting discomfort, pain, and fear during a combat TAV deployment to some war-torn corner of the planet. The Llalande mission might be hardship duty and combat, but it was offworld … as far offworld, in fact, as he was ever likely to get.

It would be what being a Marine was all about.

“Um, ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“I have a friend who joined up the same time I did. Recruit Collins. She’s in one of the female recruit training platoons.”

“And …?”

“I was just wondering if she was being asked to volunteer too, ma’am.”

“I see.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And that would determine your answer?”

“Uh, well …”

“John, you presumably joined the Corps of your own free will. You didn’t join because she joined, did you?”

“No, ma’am.” Well, not entirely. The idea of signing up together, maybe getting the same duty station afterward, had been part of the excitement. Part of the thrill and promise.

But not all of it.

“I’m glad to hear it. Contrary to popular belief, the Corps does not want mindless robots in its ranks. We want strong, aggressive young men and women who can make up their own minds, who serve because they believe, truly believe, that what they are doing is right. There is no room in my Corps for people who simply follow the crowd. Or who have no deeper commitment to the Corps than the fact that a buddy joined up. Do you copy?”

“Sir, yes … I mean, yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sure your DI has drilled this line into your skull, even without implants. The Corps is your family now. Mother. Father. Sib. Friend. Lover. In a way, you cast off your connections with everyone else when you came on board, as completely as you will if you volunteer for Ishtar and report on board the Derna for a twenty-year hibe slot. You will have changed that much. You’ve already changed more than you imagine. You’ll never go back to that old life again.”

“No, ma’am.” But he wasn’t talking about a civilian friend. Why didn’t she understand?

“And you also know by now that the Corps cannot be run for your convenience. Sometimes, like now, you’re given a choice. A carefully crafted choice, within tightly defined parameters, but a choice, nonetheless. You must make your decision within the parameters that the Corps gives you. That’s part of the price you pay for being a Marine.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So. What’ll it be? I can’t promise you’ll end up stationed with Recruit Collins, no matter what you decide. No one can. The question is, what do you want for yourself?”

He straightened in his chair. There still was no question what he wanted most. “ Sir, this recruit wishes to volunteer for the Ishtar billet, sir, ” he said, slipping back into the programmed third-person argot of the well-drilled Marine recruit.

“Very well, recruit,” Anderson replied. “No promises yet, understand. We’re still just screening for applicants. But if everything works out, and you complete your recruit training as scheduled, it will be good to have you on board.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Very well. Dismissed.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

He rose, turned, and banged through the door, scarcely able to believe what had happened.

The stars! He was going to go to the fucking stars! …

Headquarters, PanTerra Dynamics

New Chicago, Illinois

United Federal Republic, Earth

1725 hours CT

“PanTerra Dynamics is going to the stars, gentlemen,” Allyn Buckner said. “We have personnel on our payroll on the Derna , and they will be on Ishtar at least six months before you. Now … you can work with PanTerra, or you can be left out in the cold. What’s it going to be?”

The virtual comm simulation had them standing in a floating garden, high above the thundering mist of Victoria Falls, in the Empire of Brazil. The building actually existed—a combination of hotel, conference center, and playground for the wealthy. Terraced steps, sun-sparkling fountains, riotous tangles of brightly flowering greenery to match the remnants of rain forest around the river below, Orinoco Sky was an aerostat city adrift in tropical skies.

Buckner, of course, was still in New Chicago. His schedule hadn’t allowed him the luxury of attending this conference in person. In fact, perhaps half of the people in the garden lounge in front of him were there in simulacra only. Haddad, he knew, was still in Baghdad, and Chieu was linking in from a villa outside of Beijing.

Through the data feeds in their implants, however, each of the conference attendees saw and heard all of the others, whether they were in Orinoco Sky in the body or in telepresence only.

Buckner was glad he was there in virtual sim only. The decadence of the surroundings fogged the brain, sidetracked the mind. It was easier to link in for the meeting he’d called, get the business over with, and link off, all without leaving the embrace of the VR chair in his New Chicago office.

For one thing, it meant he could cut these idiots off if they imposed on his time.

“You Americans,” Haddad told him with a dark look. “For a century you’ve acted as though you own the Earth. Now you are laying claim to the stars as well. You should remember that Allah is known for bringing down the proud and arrogant.”

“Don’t lecture me, Haddad. You’re lucky even to be here, after that business the KOA pulled in Egypt.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Besides, I thought you Mahdists didn’t believe in the Ahannu.”