“I like my way better,” Horst said. She shook her head. “Give me a twenty-one-twenty with an arpeg popper any day.”
“A … what? Arpeg?”
“The Remington Arms M-12 underbarrel self-guiding rocket-propelled 20mm grenade launcher, RPG Mark Four, Mod 2, select-fire, gas-actuated, laser-tracking, self-homing round in high-explosive, armor-piercing, or delay-detonated bomblet or intel submunitions,” she said, rattling off the words as though they were a part of her, “with select-fire from an underbarrel mount configuration with the Marine-issue GE LR-2120 Sunbeam pulse laser with detachable forty- or ninety-round box magazine and targeting link through the standard Mark Seven HD linkage—”
“Whatever you say,” he replied, interrupting when she took a breath. “I’ll stick to legal briefs, thank you.”
She laughed. “Washington must really be pissed with the Frogs,” she said. “Being taken down by a self-homer arpeg round is a hell of a lot cleaner than being fucking lawyered to death.”
He smiled blandly, then looked away, pointedly taking an interest in the docking approach on his seat-back screen. Clearly, he shared little in the way of language or attitude with the Marines. He wondered if PanTerra was paying him enough for this assignment.
The shuttle docked with the Derna, drifting gently into a berthing rack mounted on the flat underside of the reaction mass dome. A number of other TAV craft were already docked, their noses plugged into a ring of airlock modules circling the transport’s core just forward of the slowly spinning hab-module access collar.
There was a slight pop as cabin pressures matched, then the Marines around him began unbuckling, floating up from their seats and forming a queue in the central aisle. He unbuckled his own harness but kept hold of the seat arm, unwilling to let himself float into that haphazard tangle of legs, arms, and torsos.
“Mr. Norris?” a voice said in his head. “Have you had zero-g experience?”
He thought-clicked on the noumenal link. “Yes,” he said. “A little, anyway.” He’d had other offworld assignments with PanTerra—on the moon, on Mars, on Vesta, and twice on mining stations in the Kuiper Belt. All had been steady-g all the way—PanTerra always sent its executives first class—but he’d endured weightlessness during boarding and at mid-trip flipovers.
“Even so, it might be best for you to remain in your seat until the Marines have moved out. A naval officer can help you board the transport and get to your deck.”
“Who is this?” He didn’t recognize the noumenal ID: CS-1289. An artificial intelligence, obviously, but ship AIs generally went by the name of their vessel, and this one felt a bit broader in scope than a typical ship AI.
“You may address me as ‘Cassius,’” the voice said. “I am the executive AI component for the command constellation on this mission.”
“I see.”
“Colonel Ramsey regrets that he cannot receive you in person,” Cassius went on, “but he is still on Earth attending to the details of mission preparation. And Cicero has not yet uploaded to the Derna.”
“Cicero?”
“General King’s AI counterpart.”
“Who’s General King? I thought Ramsey was the mission commander?”
“Colonel Ramsey is the regimental commander and, as such, will have operational command on the ground at Ishtar. General King will have overall mission command, including all ground, space, and aerospace units.”
“The CEO, huh? He supervises the whole thing from orbit?”
“The analogy is a fair one, Mr. Norris. Once the Pyramid of the Eye has been secured, and assuming direct real-time communications can be reestablished between the Legation compound and Earth, General King will likely transfer his headquarters from the Derna to New Sumer.”
Norris nodded, then wondered if the disembodied voice in his head could see the gesture. “Gotcha,” he said. His briefing at PanTerra had covered Marine space-ground command structures and procedures in some detail, but he would need to know the people involved, not just the TO&E. General King, evidently, would be his primary target, but Ramsey would be the one to watch. He would have to get close to both men if his assignment for PanTerra was to succeed.
Waiting, only somewhat impatiently, he watched the last of the Marines float out of the aisle and through the King Priam’s forward lock. Patience had never been one of Norris’s best or most reliable assets; he needed to keep reminding himself that he was committed to a twenty-year-plus contract in objective time, that even in subjective time there was no need for hurry at all.
Angry with himself, he thought-clicked through some meditative subroutines in his implants, seeking peaceful acceptance. Within moments the medical nano in his body was subtly altering the balance of several neurochemicals, lowering his blood pressure, slowing his heart rate, inducing the patience he required.
“Mr. Norris?”
It was an external voice a human voice this time. He opened his eyes. “Yes?”
A Navy officer floated in the aisle next to his seat row. He wore dress whites and appeared very young. “I’m Lieutenant Bolton. Will you come with me, please?”
“Of course.”
The lieutenant gestured toward a storage case forward. “Uh, pardon my asking, but do you need a drag bag?”
“Drag bag?”
“Microgravity Transit Harness, sir. An MTH. To help get you—”
Norris frowned. He’d seen MTHs used in civilian spacecraft, and a more undignified mode of travel was hard to imagine. “That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant. I’ve been in zero g before.”
“Very well, sir. If you’ll just follow me?”
Grasping fabric handholds on the tops of the seats around him, Norris pulled himself gently from his seat and maneuvered his way into the aisle. For a dizzying moment his visual references spun and shifted; he’d been thinking of the cabin as having the layout of a suborbital shuttle or hypersonic TAV, with seats on the floor. During acceleration out from Earth, of course, down was aft, toward the rear of the cabin, and he felt as though he were lying on his back, but it was easy to translate that in terms of the acceleration one felt during the suborb boost from New York to Tokyo.
Now, though, all references of up and down were lost. The seats were attached to the wall, he was hanging in midair above a long drop toward the cabin’s rear, and Lieutenant Bolton was swimming straight up, toward the forward lock.
It’s all in your mind, he thought, angry again. He closed his eyes, grasped the next handhold forward, and grimly pulled himself along. When he opened his eyes, just for a moment, perspectives had shifted again and he was now moving down, head first, into a well, with Lieutenant Bolton looking up at him with a worried expression. “Mr. Norris?”
“I’m fine, damn it,” he said. “Lead on!”
The worst parts were the twists and turns, though the airlock was small enough and without contradictory visual cues, so he could catch his breath. Damn it, when was someone going to find a way to provide constant gravity, no matter where you were on a ship or what the ship was doing at the time?
Inside Derna’s inner hatch, a sign had been attached to one wall saying QUARTERDECK, next to an American flag stretched taut by wires in the fly and hoist. Lieutenant Bolton saluted the flag, then saluted again to another naval lieutenant who floated there. “Permission to come on board.”
“Permission granted.”
An asinine ceremony, Norris thought with