gave him the option of blasting his way out of any trouble pretty quickly.
“I’m not close enough to detect if they’ve got force fields,” Rob said.
“How fast are they moving? I need to get to a manhole cover before they see me.”
“They’ll be on you in two minutes. I can get some sneekbots close enough to check for force fields.”
“My guess is they’ll have them off. They’re creeping around just like we are. They don’t want to attract attention, and force fields are goddamn easy to detect.”
“So you reckon I should just use kinetics on them?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, boys,” a chirpy female voice said. “Let’s have some fun here. They gave us all these beautiful weapons to try, didn’t they? Let’s see now, what haven’t we used yet? Oh, I know.”
Morton checked his virtual vision to see where she was. “Cat, don’t…” Behind him, the town and sky turned incandescent white. The ground started to shake wildly, and the blast wave roared—
The environment dissolved into colorhash static. Strange tingles rippled up and down his skin. Then there was only his standby mode virtual vision, a row of blue line symbols glowing against a dark background. He heard his own breathing, amplified by his helmet. His arms and legs were stretched out spread-eagle style, held comfortably by plastic bands.
“Goddamnit,” Morton groaned.
The plyplastic around his arms expanded. He reached out and took the helmet off. Lights were coming on overhead, revealing the small nulsense chamber. The simulation team was staring in at him through a curving window, all looking pretty pissed off. Morton gave them a what-can-you-do shrug. He was standing at the center of a shiny gyrowheel, a meter off the ground, his feet held safely by plyplastic boots. They released his feet and he jumped down.
There were four other gyrowheels in the chamber, each with a squad member exiting the simulation. He walked over to face the Cat. A pretty heart-shaped face grinned down at him, white teeth emphasized by brown skin. Her appearance was late twenties. Seeing her for the first time, you’d assume she was a first-lifer; her outwardly frivolous attitude made it impossible to imagine her at any other age. While the rest of the squad were in standard dark purple sports shirts and black trousers, she’d found herself a Sonic Energy Authority T-shirt and punk jeans. He wasn’t sure how she managed that; squads were never issued with anything else than navy clothes. Presumably she just went up to the civilian training staff and told them to give her what they were wearing. Her raven hair had been cut short, like all of them, except she’d added purple feather streaks tipped with silver.
“That was more like it,” she said brightly, and hopped down. On the ground she was ten centimeters shorter than Morton.
“What the hell was the point of that?” he asked.
“We haven’t used the baby nukes before. We’re here to try out every possible combat scenario. Right?” She gave the simulation team a breezy wave. Nobody behind the glass actually dared scowl back, but they all looked sullen. “They were a real blast!” She laughed.
Morton wanted to give her a slap—except he didn’t dare. The Cat had been put into suspension before he’d been born, and wasn’t due out until about a thousand years after his own sentence was finished. He remembered the day she’d arrived at their barracks. No individual had ever been given a four-strong escort before, and they’d all looked nervous. “You can’t use nukes against individual soldiers, for fuck’s sake,” he raged. “Are you deliberately trying to screw this up for the rest of us? Because I’m not going back to suspension just because you fancy having a big joke. I’ll kick your warped little ass out of this training camp and into orbit before that happens.”
The rest of the squad froze, watching intently. One of the simulation team moved back from the glass.
The Cat puckered her lips up to blow Morton a fulsome kiss. “The mission was already screwed, tough guy. If one alien knows we’re there, they all do. You should read your intelligence briefings on that communal communications of theirs. You weren’t going to get inside the force field. Taking out the nest of them on the outside was the sensible option. Remember: Inflict as much damage as possible. Do not allow yourself to be captured.”
“It was not the only option. We could have got out of that. Rob and I were working on it.”
“Poor boy. So desperate to hang on to your body. It’s not that it’s remarkable in any measure.” The Cat gave him a playful slap on his cheek. It stung.
“Screw you!” Morton growled.
She headed for the chamber door. As it opened she batted her eyelashes at him. “See you in the shower, tough guy. Oh, and for the record, it’s not at all warped, it’s actually a very pretty bottom.” She wiggled it as she left.
Morton let out a long breath and unclenched his fists. He hadn’t realized he’d clenched them to start with.
“Okay, thank you, people,” the simulation team chief said. “That’s it for today. We’ll resume at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Morton stood where he was as the rest of the squad headed out. He was taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. Rob Tannie came over and put an arm around his shoulder. “That was impressive, man. You’re either insane, in love, or you’ve got a massive death wish. Do you actually know what she did to get suspension?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point. It’s what we’ve got to do together in the future that’s important.”
Rob gave him a strange look. “You sound like them.” He jerked a thumb at the window.
“Oh, what the hell,” Morton said, suddenly very tired. “We’re all going to die the second we drop out of the wormhole anyway; we’ll never reach Elan itself.”
“That’s the spirit. But take it from me, as someone who’s already been through re-life: don’t mess with the cute demon. She’s seriously bad news.”
“Remind me to introduce you to my ex-wife someday,” Morton said as they walked out of the chamber.
Morton didn’t even know which planet their training camp, Kingsville, was on. He suspected a Big15 world: Kerensk, judging by the violet-tinged sun. If so, they were a long way from the megacity.
Kingsville was vast, sprawling over a region of low desert foothills. Northward from the camp, the gentle mounds gradually built up into a tall mountain range that stretched across the horizon, their distant peaks covered in snow. The desert spread out in every other direction, a rumpled plain of powdered yellow clay littered with crumbling boulders. Small, hardy native cacti bushes clustered together at the bottom of every slight depression, thick gray stems with a fur of spindly leaves no thicker than paper, and just as dry.
Rumor among the convicts in the camp was that if you could get to the other side of the desert, they’d let you go, that the navy wanted to see how good their wetwired systems were at sustaining humans in hostile conditions. Certainly there wasn’t a fence or guardbots. The only way in or out was by aircraft.
Huge cargo planes had brought in the whole camp from whatever metropolis this world boasted, and were still delivering more prefabricated building kits every day, along with supplies and weapons systems. Kingsville had been divided into twenty-three sections, with a big geodesic dome at the center of each one. Inside the domes were the main training facilities, the technical labs where the troops were wetwired with the best the Commonwealth had, and the canteen. Row after row of barracks cabins radiated out from each dome, sitting on the dusty soil like black bricks. Around them were the firing ranges and suit testing courses.
As Morton made his way back to the squad’s barracks in the baking late-afternoon sun, the noise of the camp swirled around him, completely familiar now after two weeks’ residence. He’d been immersed in the training and wetwiring so intensely it was as if his earlier lives were just TSI dramas he could barely remember accessing. Dull repetitive thuds of kinetic rifles echoed in from the range where the division that was due to land on Sligo was practicing. The whine of compressor jets was constant as the planes came and went from the adjoining airstrip five kilometers away; after the first night it never bothered him. Jeeps and trucks growled as they raced around the compacted dirt roads that linked Kingsville’s sections and the airport. Shouts and chants from squads out pounding their way around various grueling courses as they got their bodies into shape for the navy’s great counteroffensive. Sixty percent of them were convicts working off their suspension sentence, while the rest were various freelance security types and idiotically enthusiastic human patriots keen to show the enemy what a bad mistake they’d made in attacking the Commonwealth. Even now, Morton still hadn’t worked out if they were all on the biggest suicide mission ever dreamed up, or if they were going to be of some use. But he did like to think their squad was tough and smart enough to produce some effective results. Even loopy old Cat played her part most of the time. And it was anyone’s guess, along with considerable barracks-room speculation, what mayhem she’d commit on aliens, given what she used to do to perfectly innocent humans.
The oblong box that Cat’s Claws had been assigned was fifteen meters long and four wide, partitioned into three simple areas. The bunk and main living space for all five of them was at one end, washroom in the middle, and finally a small rec room with a couple of deep sofas and a Kingsville network node where you could access the camp’s library of TSI dramas, which were mostly soft porn. Kingsville’s link to the planetary cybersphere was monitored by an RI, which regulated all calls in and out. You could talk to anyone you wanted, including the media, but topics were restricted. Any mention of the types of weapons, training, or possible dates for the counteroffensive would be blocked instantly. Like the rest of Cat’s Claws, Morton hadn’t received any calls. He guessed that meant he didn’t have anyone to call, either.
The door shut behind him, cutting off the heat and dust to provide him with a decent air-conditioned climate. The abrasive purple-white sunlight was filtered by the windows, giving the interior an Earth-normal spectrum. He went over to his bunk and started to undress, letting a servicebot catch his clothes. Rob and Doc Roberts were doing the same. The Cat was already in a shower cubicle, singing away merrily out of tune. Somehow, the simulations made them as sweaty and dirty as if they’d been out crawling around in the real desert.
He stayed in the shower a long time, luxuriating in the hot water and using up a lot of gel. His e-butler played him a file of old acoustic rock tracks, allowing him to forget about the training. Parts of his skin were still sore and sensitive from all the inserts he’d been given; and some of his new OCtattoos were so intrusive that he’d developed a mild rash. The water beating against them helped numb away the aches. Even his thoughts were calming as he hummed along to the guitar melody. The artificial weapons instruction memories that seeped into his brain each night made his sleep fitful and shallow, mixing with unwelcome dreams. It was one of the reasons he was so irritable during the day. What he wanted was a whole twenty-four hours off to relax and rest. He didn’t think they’d ever get that; the pace of the camp was too fast.
Like all the troops, he wondered when they’d be deployed. They were all due another two sessions of wetwiring in the clinics that filled the lower floor of the dome. And sessions were always conducted three days apart. It didn’t take a genius to work out that once they’d familiarized themselves with the systems out in the desert training fields they’d be heading out to the Lost23. Another two weeks at most, he reckoned.
It was quieter than usual when he got out of the shower. Usually there’d be some kind of argument or banter going on in the living quarters. Today there was only a low murmur as he toweled himself down.
“Hey, Morton,” Doc Roberts called. “Get your ass out here, you’ve got a visitor.” That brought a round of raucous laughter.
A maidbot handed him a polythene packet containing a fresh set of clothes. He took his time dressing, suspecting a joke.
It wasn’t. A beautiful young woman was sitting on his bunk, with Rob, Parker, and Doc Roberts clustered around like wolves eyeing up raw meat. Even the Cat
