The thought came unexpectedly, unbidden, but he thought he recognized the surge of emotion that rode with it. He was over the hump.
Time after time in the past weeks, Makowiecz and the other DIs had hammered at the recruits of Company 1099: “Sooner or later each and every one of you will want to quit. You will beg to quit! And we’re going to do our best to make you quit! …”
Every man and woman going through recruit training, he’d been told, hit a period known as “the wall” somewhere around halfway to three-quarters of the way through, a time when it felt like graduation would never come, when the recruit could do nothing but question the decision to join the service in the first place.
For those tough enough to endure, the wall was followed by “the hump,” a time when training became even tougher, when the questions, the doubts, the self-criticism grew ever sharper, and then …
“Garroway!” Makowiecz’s voice snapped in his head. “What the hell did you just do?”
“Sir!” he replied. “This recruit took command of 1st Squad when the acting squad leader was incapacitated, sir! We then took the objective, sir!”
He braced for the inevitable chewing out.
“Well done, Marine” was Makowiecz’s surprising reply. “What would you have done differently if you had been in command from the start?”
“Sir, this recruit would have attempted to reconnoiter the objective with one fire team in the lead, the other two in support, and attempted to correlate hyperspectral data from all vantage points before moving into the open. Sir.”
Philby, frankly, had screwed up, ordering the squad to advance into the open, knowing those guns were up there but without knowing their exact positions. In any race between man and laser, the laser was going to win.
Garroway kept his opinion of Philby’s tactics to himself, however. They were all in this together, after all. Gungho …
“Outstanding job, Marine,” Makowiecz told him. “Your support is on its way. Second Squad lost its ARNCO. When they reach your position, you will take command. Sit tight until then.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
He was over the hump.
Graduation might be another five weeks off, but he felt like a Marine.
Makowiecz had called him a Marine!
Even getting killed an hour later didn’t dampen the feeling. The Army SpecOps commandos were literally buried behind the ridge, their heat signatures masked by solid rock, their fighting holes hidden by boulders. They waited until 2nd Squad arrived and was just settling in, then rose like ghosts from their positions and cut down the recruits with simulated laser and plasma gun bursts before they knew what was happening. “You’re dead, kid,” one of the black-armored commandos had said as he grabbed Garroway from behind.
It didn’t matter. He was a Marine. …
13
9 OCTOBER 2138
Pacifica
Off the California Coast
1105 hours PT
Garroway grinned at Lynnley. “You know, this would be a lot more fun in zero gravity.”
“You!” she retorted, giving him a gentle punch in the chest. “Aren’t you ever satisfied?”
“Well, if anybody can do it, you can,” he replied. He checked his inner timer. “I guess we’d better be moving.”
“Unless we want to be listed as AWOL, yeah,” she told him. She stroked his arm gently. “It’s been good, being with you like this. Thanks.”
“Real good. I’m … going to miss you.” He shook his head as she rolled out of the bed.
The walls and ceiling of the room showed a view of space—Earth, moon, sun, and thick-scattered stars, slowly circling. The view was an illusion, of course; for one thing, even in space the stars weren’t that bright when the sun was visible.
“I’ll miss you too,” Lynnley said.
“I still don’t want to believe we can’t see each other again. Maybe ever.”
“Don’t say that, John! We don’t know what’s going to happen!”
“Sure we do! I’m on my way to Ishtar, and you’re going to Sirius. I checked a star map download. We’ll be farther away from one another than if one of us stayed on Earth!”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t make any difference, does it? Even one light-year is too far to think about.”
“Well, you know what I mean. We’re going in two different directions. And I’d hoped we’d get deployed together.”
“Damn it, we both know how unrealistic that idea was, John. The needs of the Corps—”
“Come first. I know. But I don’t have to like it.” He balled his fists, squeezing tight. “Shit.” He got out of the bed and began picking up his clothes. He and Lynnley had been fuck buddies off and on for a couple of years now … nothing serious, but she was fun to be with and therapeutic to vent at and fantastic recreation in bed. He’d thought of her as his closest friend and somehow never even considered the possibility that they would end up in different duty stations.
“Simulation off!” he called, addressing the room. The view of space vanished, replaced by empty walls that seemed to echo his loneliness.
“Look,” she told him, “we’re both getting star duty, right? And we’re both going about eight light-years. There’s still a good chance we’ll be tracking each other subjectively when we get back.”
“I guess so.” She meant that their subjective times ought to match pretty closely. Since they were both heading eight light-years out, they’d be spending about the same times at the same percentage of c and aging at about the same subjective rate.
But he didn’t believe it. Things never worked out that neatly in real life, especially where the Corps was concerned. If he ever saw her again, one of them might well be years older than the other.
He sighed as he started pulling on his uniform. How much did that matter, really? They both knew they would be taking other sex partners. With the future so uncertain, there was no sense in meaningless promises to wait for one another. It wasn’t like they shared a long-term contract.
“I think,” he said slowly, sealing the front of his khaki shirt, “I’m just feeling a bit cut off. Like I’ll never be able to come home again.”
“I know. Everything, everyone, we leave here is going to be twenty years older when we see them again. At least. My parents aren’t happy about it, but at least they understand. And they’ll only be in their sixties when I get back.”
“I just don’t understand my mother,” he said. “How can she consider going back to that … man?”
“Like I told you once before, you can’t protect her. You can’t live her life. She has to make her own decisions.”
“But I keep wondering if she’s going back to him because of me. Because I’m going to Ishtar.”
“That’s still her issue, right? You have to do what’s right for you.”
“But I don’t know what that is. Not anymore. And I feel … guilty. She wasn’t happy when I saw her yesterday. About my going to Ishtar, I mean.”
“I think