And that, he thought, explained the giddiness. He’d seen and recognized two of his erstwhile recruits, and the relief he’d felt had been palpable.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
They’d found the inside bar and been making their way toward it when a silver-haired man wearing a golden glow and little else greeted them. Warhurst did a fast ID check, and almost came to attention. “Senator Sloan?”
“Correct. And you are … Gunnery Sergeant Warhurst, and Privates Danvers and Garroway. Welcome to my home.”
“It was good of you to host this party, sir.”
“Not at all, not all. Least I could do. I, ah, see by your public data, you’re on your way to the MIEF.”
“I’ve requested the transfer, sir, yes. Don’t know yet that they’ll give it to me.”
“Mm. Yes. A Marine goes where he’s sent. Still, I should think that a man with your record will get that billet, especially since the MIEF is going to be rather dramatically expanded over the next few months.”
“Sir?” He’d heard scuttlebutt, but nothing certain.
“General Alexander’s proposal did pass, Gunnery Sergeant. A reinforced Marine Expeditionary Force is going to be sent into Xul space.” Sloan gave Warhurst an appraising look. “What do you think about that, anyway?”
“As you say, sir. A Marine goes where he’s sent.”
“Yes, but … against the Xul? That’s a tall order if I ever heard one.”
“The Xul are not invincible, Senator. We’ve proven that several times over.”
“What do you think about General Alexander?”
“I don’t know the man, sir.”
“Yes, but you must have an opinion.”
Warhurst shrugged. “From everything I’ve heard, he’s an excellent officer. And a good Marine.”
“Good enough to take on the Xul?”
“Why are you asking me this, sir?”
“Oh, just taking advantage of an opportunity. I have several hundred Marines in my home for the day. Seemed like a good opportunity to get a feel for their morale, their caliber. Their esprit. How about you, Ms. Danvers? What do you think about fighting the Xul?”
“Sir! The Marines are gonna kick Xul ass. Sir!”
Sloan laughed. “And you, Private Garroway?”
“Doesn’t much matter what I think, sir. It’s all up to you people in the government.”
“How’s that?”
“Sir, the Marines will do their job, no matter what. Their job is whatever the government tells them to do.”
“Yes?”
“So, the way it seems to me … the government just needs to make up its collective mind, if it has one, about just who the enemy is, what it wants done to him, and give the appropriate order. And we’ll do the rest.”
“In other words,” Warhurst added, “you start it. The Marines will finish it. Sir.”
Sloan looked serious for a moment, then nodded. “That, Gunnery Sergeant, is not as easy as that. But we’ll do the best we can.” He studied his drink. “My question for you is, though … the Xul are so far ahead of us in technology. Ahead of us in numbers, too, if they’re really spread across the entire Galaxy, the way it appears they are. The MIEF is going to be horrifically outnumbered, outgunned, outclassed, right from the start. Do you really think you have a chance in hell of pulling this off?”
Warhurst pulled himself up straighter. “Sir. Like the private here said … we will kick Xul ass. Assuming, of course, that they have one.”
“I sincerely hope you’re right, Gunnery Sergeant,” Sloan said. “I sincerely hope you’re right.”
1811.1102
UCS Samar
In transit, Alighan to Sol
1430 hrs GMT
The passage from Alighan to Sol took six weeks. For most of that time, the Marines on board the Marine assault transport Samar would be in cybe-hibe; four companies of Marines required a lot of consumables—air, food, water—and took up a lot of space. It was far more economical to ship them in electronic stasis, sealed inside narrow tubes and stacked ten-high in the cavernous vessel’s cargo holds, the meat lockers as they were known to the men and women who traveled in them.
Escorted by the destroyer Hecate, the Marine transport Samar had departed Alighan three weeks earlier, engaging her Alcubierre Drive as soon as she was clear of the bent spacetime in the vicinity of the local star. Almost three hundred men and women were in meat-locker storage, passing the voyage in blessed unconsciousness.
For Gunnery Sergeant Charel Ramsey, however, sleep—or at least the dreamless emptiness of cybernetic hibernation that mimicked real sleep—had been deferred. He was one of seventeen Marines in the 55th Marine Regimental Aerospace Strikeforce designated as psych casualties.
And they weren’t going to let him sleep until he was cured.
“We can edit the memories, you know,” Karla told him gently. “That would be the easiest course for you, I think.”
“Fuck that,” Ramsey said. “I don’t want to forget. …”
“I understand. But it’s going to mean a lot of work on your part. Very difficult, even painful work.”
“So what are we waiting for?” He took a deep breath. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
In Ramsey’s mind he was in a forest in eastern North America, back on Earth—oaks, tulip trees, and maples; rhododendrons, ferns, and mountain laurel, and a fast-moving stream splashing down across tumbled piles of limestone boulders, many thickly blanketed with moss. The sky glimpsed through the leaf canopy was bright blue, with sunlight slanting through the branches at a low angle, as if in the late afternoon.
It didn’t matter that the woods scene was an illusion.
Within his external reality, he knew, he was in Samar’s sick bay, in one of the compartments reserved for this type of treatment. Karla was the ship’s psychiatric specialist AI; “Karla” was derived from Karl Jung, the name given the feminine ending because Ramsey found it easier to talk with women than with men. The AI appeared to be a handsome, middle-aged woman in a blue jumpsuit, seated on a boulder next to him. With her dark and lively eyes, black hair, and square jaw, she actually looked a bit like his mother, going back to perhaps twenty years before she’d died; he wondered if that detail was deliberate.
Probably. The Corps’ psych AIs didn’t miss very much.
“You can start,” Karla told him, “by telling me about your relationship with Thea Howell.”
“We met about a year and a half ago. She was in the 55th MARS already, Alpha Company, First Platoon … though she hadn’t gotten promoted to staff sergeant yet, and been moved up to the platoon sergeant’s billet. I was transferred in from 2/1. …”
He