Sergeant Marcus Crowley’s legs kept pumping, pushing him toward the top of the ridge. In six years of combat, he’d never been this terrified. Bullets sang off rocks all around him, kicking up stone splinters that found their way between his armor plates, through his armor-fiber suit. The rock shards stung like rat bites, but they didn’t stop him.
Nothing could stop him.
No one could stop him.
Least of all, Marcus Crowley himself.
Sweat poured from his skin in a failing effort to cool the heat generated by the noonday sun and his endless running. His new commanders wanted to complete missions—they didn’t seem to care about the limitations of human anatomy.
His body rolled over the ridge and slid down the other side. His feet planted themselves in the crumbling dirt and rock, stopping his momentum. His hands scrambled at his chest webbing, pulling out a grenade, twisting the timer, throwing it back down the ridge, pulling out another, twisting it, throwing it back down the ridge.
On the other side of the ridge, the grenades detonated. The explosions must have been huge—aside from the ear-rending blast, the concussive force literally moved the mountain underneath him. The first blast popped him off the surface like a card slapped from a table by a frustrated poker player. Less than half a second later, the second blast rocked the surface, smacking him in mid-air.
He’d been hit before, so many times, but he’d never experienced anything like being punched by a fucking mountain.
Marcus lost consciousness.
• • •
Earlier that same day, Marcus Crowley and his Sixth Recon squad mates from the 107th Marine Regiment (Recon Bulldogs, hoo-rah!) downtripped from the cruiser Josh Carter to the surface of Vosor 7.
Marcus had seen dawn on five planets, but nothing like Vee-Seven. The soupy atmosphere barely supported human life. His squad’s armed orbital vehicle cut through that atmosphere, heading for the surface. He stared out through his gun mount’s tiny view port. A rising sun touched the dawn sky, lighting it up like iridescent rubies swirled with yellow flashes of burning, golden air. Johnny Cesc had told him about the atmosphere’s chemical composition before they left the Josh Carter, but Marcus didn’t remember and didn’t really give a fuck.
It wasn’t just the ruby-and-gold sky that made Vee-Seven look so cool. Strange, rubbery blue trees covered most of the surface. Those trees made for a Recon trooper’s dream: dense foliage to hide in; plant material soft so it made little noise even when underfoot; and plants that didn’t burn for crap. Recon could hide in that shit for days—they couldn’t even be smoked out.
Vosor 7 operated as a military research outpost. It was in the same system as Vosor 3, but the two planets were so different they might as well have orbited different suns. Vee-Three held some 79 million Planetary Union citizens. Vee-Seven, on the other hand, struggled to support a population of less than ten million. If the military-industrial complex ever went away, Vee-Seven’s population would probably drop to five million or less.
Marcus’s very first downtrip had been on this very planet. He’d done boot here; training how to ride a bucket of bolts from low orbit down to the surface was the first challenge any Union soldier faced—if you couldn’t handle a downtrip, you couldn’t be infantry, let alone move up the ladder into special forces. Marine boot, then a year of advanced training, two combat missions as infantry, then Recon school, another year of training—at twenty-six years old, Marcus had spent more time on Vee-Seven than he’d spent in any other place. He’d met his first husband here, spent six months happier than a pig in shit until Demitrius died in – ironically – a downtrip accident. He’d lived here, loved here, found his calling here—if Marcus could call anywhere in the galaxy home, Vee-Seven was it.
So, he’d downtripped to Vee-Seven more times than he could count. Only this time he wasn’t downtripping for training or R&R; he was here to fight—fight his own people.
This sudden rebellion had erupted two days earlier. Mutineers had seized the James Mallek Research Base just south of the equator. If any demands had been made, Marcus certainly wasn’t privy to them. He’d heard plenty of rumors, but all he knew for certain was that his unit had been deployed for combat. Really, that was the only thing that mattered—command would tell him which way to point his L62.
Marcus breathed slowly as their AOV dropped below five hundred meters. He took his right hand off the top-gun controls, reached down and ran his fingertips along the L62’s familiar shape. There were many like it, but that one was his. If luck held, soon he’d be out of this bucket and have the L62 in his hands. In flight, he couldn’t protect his people. They were headed into a hot LZ, sure, but up here he couldn’t do anything but wait—on the ground, a Recon boy can survive.
Marcus put his hands back on the top-gun controls. There was never anything to shoot at on a downtrip, but he did it anyway. Johnny Cesc manned the bottom gun. Sheryl Everson flew the bucket, while Jay Crossler and Dan “Psycho” Hudson manned the side cannons. Stephen “The Duck” Middleton rode in the AOV’s dead center, mind-linked into both the ECM suite and the fleet net. On a downtrip, Duck didn’t say much to his squad mates; he was probably busy having fifteen or twenty simultaneous conversations with air command, AI systems and low-level net traffic.
Marcus, Johnny, Sheryl, Crossler and Duck made up the active AOV crew. The rest of the squad – Sforza, Philbrick, Nguyen, and Jennings – sat strapped in tight to narrow flight chairs, counting the moments until they could get out of this flying coffin and know the reassurance of boots on the ground.
The Union Admirals, apparently, were none too happy that Mallek base had gone rogue. Rumor was the brass had received panicked reports of a violent mutiny, of military and civilian staff alike being slaughtered. Those reports slowed as the first day wore on. By the second day, the reports stopped altogether.
Rapid reaction forces, a company from Vee-Three’s defense brigade, swept in. The Mallek base guns took them out before they even reached orbit. All the defenses set up to stop Sklorno raids worked just as well against Planetary Union assault ships.
Losing three assault ships and nearly three hundred soldiers and crew had been enough for the Admirals. They’d dropped a one-kiloton nuke on Mallek—no fucking around, no negotiations, no more wasted troops. Word was that there was some serious next-gen tech going on at Mallek, and the gold-caps didn’t care to see if these mutineers could get that tech to work.
Less than five hours after the nuke hit, E-troopers downtripped to take control of the area. It amazed Marcus that people thought he and his fellow Recon soldiers were crazy. Compared to E-troopers, Marcus was as sane as sane gets. Who volunteers to downtrip into a goddamn nuke site? Environmental troopers needed rad-suits, rad-meds, rad-fighting nanocytes and all kinds of things designed to keep their bodies from cooking alive, and on top of that, they still had to fight any other rad-proteted forces vying for control. Usually those enemy forces were Sklorno E-troopers, but more and more outlying conflict skirmishes pitted the E-troopers against Quyth Warriors. It was a disturbing trend: Sklorno and Union alike weren’t shy about using tactical nukes—and where there were nuke craters, there were Quyth.
The Quyth weren’t even in this damn war, yet they showed up in conflict zones. The Quyth claimed neutrality, saying that they were non-combatants on “scientific exploration” missions. Maybe they were neutral, but they were also armed—when threatened or attacked, Quyth fought back. They didn’t seem to need the bulky rad-suits, either. And damn if they weren’t ugly fuckers. But hey, at least it wasn’t like fighting the Ki.
So the Union E-troopers had landed at Malek base, secured the site, then set up the self-assembling radocyte factories. Radocytes would gobble up that radiation. Within a week the Mallek site would be rad-free and ready for reconstruction—hopefully that would happen before a Quyth team showed up.
With the crater that had been Mallek base secured, the E-troopers had moved out to increase their perimeter. This much Marcus had on good knowledge, from a friend who worked on the bridge of the Josh Carter—at the edges of the rad-zone, the E-troopers stopped reporting. There were some screams, a lot of “what the fuck is that?” then nothing.
After that came the really disturbing shit: reports of E-troopers firing on each other. Marcus didn’t believe that, not for one second. Those guys were like the Spartans of ancient Earth—they served ten-year tours of duty, lived together on the same ship, ate together and fought together. E-troopers were a different breed. They struck Marcus as the kind of people who would gut their own mother with a rusty knife before ever attacking one of their own.
Once the entire division of E-troopers stopped reporting in, the gold-caps ordered the Fourth Flotilla into orbit around Vee-Seven, blockading all traffic in and out. The admirality quarantined an entire planet. They didn’t know what was going on down there. To get that information, they decided to drop in the 107th.
“Landing zone locked,” Duck said. “Clear path to grid one-six, two-five.”
Marcus’s jawbone implant let him hear Duck as if the guy were standing two feet away. Sheryl sounded almost as close.
“Roger, grid one-six, two-five,” she said. “Duck, what’s the haps on hostiles?”
Sheryl sounded nervous—and with good reason. The downtrip was a Recon trooper’s worst time, period. With feet on the ground, if shit got hot, you could run away, you could hide. Every Recon soldier’s training included the ability to cram himself (or herself) into less than a cubic meter of space and stay there, unmoving, for days. That skill was part training, part discipline and part backlink-aug: program the BA to lower your heart rate, set your brain waves into a hibernating state, and your respiration slowed to the point where you damn near stopped breathing altogether. The BA monitored low-level communications; it woke you up again if friendly troops were near or if you received shielded atmospheric coms from the gold-caps.
Recon only felt at home on the ground. Recon knew how to forage, how to talk without making a sound, how to find each other no matter how bad things got. Recon knew how to make bows and spears. Recon knew how to prepare the meat of all the known races—humans included. If you couldn’t do any of those things, you didn’t graduate from special ops school. The parachute pin was a badge that said you were a cut above, that you could carry on no matter what kind of ground was under your feet.
In an Armed Orbital Vehicle, however, you and your nine closest buddies were meat-packed into a flying can. You might never even see it or hear it coming. One second you’re in a perfectly good bucket, the next your backlink aug registers your death and starts processing the next-of-kin notification. And an AOV is so easy to hit, so big—not by fleet standards, of course, but when you can cram yourself into a half-meter cubic space and hide for a week, any ship that holds ten people and their supplies looks like exactly what it is—a target so big you couldn’t miss it if you tried.
Marcus wanted out of the AOV, wanted it bad. But all he and his squad mates could do was wait for Sheryl to land the bucket. Until then, she and Duck were the only thing between the squad and death.
“No enemy activity,” Duck said. “First wave air-armor experienced some small-arms fire, but they eliminated the threat. I read AOVs from squads one through five, seven through nine spreading out across the grid. Zero fire reported.”
“Roger that,” Sheryl said. “Dropping to one-fifty meters.”
Marcus heard Jay Crossler mumbling in complaint. Jay was midship, by the port hull, below and to Marcus’s right. The jawbone implant made it sound like Jay was a foot away from Marcus’s ear. J-plants helped orient to a speaker’s location and direction, even when the speaker was beyond line-of-sight.
“Crossler,” Marcus said, “you have something to share?”
“Just a request, sir,” he said. “Sheryl, would you get this behemoth on the ground? I feel like I’ve got a big bull’s-eye painted on my ass.”
“Shut up, Crossler,” Sheryl said. “You don’t mind if I put Recon Six where I was told to put it, do you?”
If Marcus closed his eyes, Sheryl’s voice sounded close enough for him to lean forward and kiss her. Not that he would. Or had recently, anyway. Sheryl could snipe a man from a thousand meters and was bad news up close with a blade, but that didn’t change the fact that she had a hot-as-hell body and could fuck like a minx. Marcus remembered that curve at the small of Sheryl’s back, the way her skin looked in the moonlight. He didn’t swing that way often, but when he did, he preferred a soldier like Sheryl. He shook his head to clear the thoughts. There would be time for that later, if they both lived.
She banked the AOV left and dropped to fifty meters. Marcus reminded himself to breathe—they’d be on the ground and clear of the ship in less than thirty seconds.
“Hostile fire reported,” Duck said, calm as you please. “Recon Four hit by surface-to-air missiles.”
“Shit,” Sheryl said. “Here we go, boys!” She screamed it more than said it, but the j-plant automatically compensated for the volume burst. Sheryl Everson wasn’t the best pilot in the Marines, and she knew it. “Duck, intel. What are they using?”
“Recon Four going down,” Duck said. “Recon Two destroyed.”
“What are they using?”
“Interpo says manpack SAMs,” Duck said. “There were twenty-seven units in storage at Mallek.”
Portable surface-to-air missiles—bad news, two ways. The first way was the most pressing: one soldier armed with a manpack SAM could take out an entire AOV. As thick as the forest was, the AOV’s sensors wouldn’t pick up a thing until it was too late. The second way wasn’t much better: it meant that the mutineers had probably cleaned out Mallek base’s arms stores before the nuke hit. Whoever we were fighting, they would be well-armed.
Marcus didn’t want to wait for a SAM to come up and say howdy. “Everson,” he said, “put us down. Don’t wait for it.”
“We have a landing grid, Sarge,” she said. “Forty-five seconds and we’re there.”
“We’ve been radar locked,” Duck said, still calm as all fucking get-out.
“Everson, now,” Marcus said. “That’s an order.”
“Aye, sir,” she said.
Marcus felt the sweat start creeping along his skin. If a missile connected, he’d be lucky if he lived long enough to die when the flaming AOV smashed into ground. He looked at his gun displays, seeking a target. It gave him something to do. He was on the top gun, so he wouldn’t see jack shit unless fighter units came out to meet them.
Live or die, now it was all up to Sheryl.
“Talk to me, Duck,” she said. “Where’s that lock coming from?”
“Fifteen degrees off nose,” Duck said. “Alert, we have been locked by a second radar, thirty-seven degrees off nose.”
“Heading for ground,” Sheryl said. “Squad, prep for emergency bounce-down, hard landing and immediate evac.”
“Recon One hit,” Duck said. “Three casualties, going down. Enemy striking with a coordinated attack across entire landing grid. Missiles fired at us, repeat, missiles fired at us, fifteen seconds to impact.”
Sheryl’s composure was fading fast. “Hold on, boys! Here we go!”
The roar of the AOV’s engines suddenly stopped; Marcus felt his stomach rise up into his chest as they dropped like a rock. Sheryl was going for a bounce-down: cut the engines, let gravity do its thing, fire up the VTOL blast ten meters from the ground. When timed correctly, an AOV would land with all the impact of a beer coaster dropped on a bar.
Sheryl didn’t time it right.
The AOV slammed into the ground hard enough to crack the frame. Marcus bit through his tongue. Blood filled his mouth. He paused for just one second, enough to re-orient himself and grab his L62 rifle out of its rack. He popped the top hatch and slid out down the AOV’s side.
“Evac, now-now-now!” he said. He sprinted away from the AOV. He wondered if the landing gear had held or if Johnny Cesc was smashed below, an insect crushed under the AOV’s big ol’ footprint. The SAMs weren’t going to stop because the bucket had hit dirt; Marcus and his squad had only seconds to get to a safe distance. There wasn’t even time to grab anyone who might be wounded.
Marcus hurdled undergrowth and sprinted around blue tree trunks. He counted to ten, then slid under a rubbery bush. “Marcus, clear.”
“Sheryl, clear,” he heard from the j-plant. She was somewhere on his right.
“Sforza, clear” and “Philbrick, clear” he heard, but barely, as the first SAM hiss heralded a smoke trail snaking down at the AOV.
Marcus hugged the ground. There wasn’t much of an explosion—most SAMs didn’t kill by concussive force, but rather by plenomite marbles that shredded any material in their path. The expanding sphere of metal kicked up big clouds of dirt and sand, rattling the AOV as at least a dozen of them shredded through the bucket’s armored hull.
“Fuck!” Crossler’s voice. “Duck’s dead!”
“Crossler, get out of there,” Marcus said. He didn’t scream; he’d been through too many firefights for that. The j-plant always normalized volume, so scream or no scream, it all sounded the same to the guy on the other end.
“Psycho, clear.”
Marcus saw it before he heard it, the second snaking trail of a SAM tracking its now-grounded prey. The smoke trail arced through the air, pointing down and moving fast. He sat motionless and watched the missile descend.
“Crossler, clear.”
Two seconds later the SAM closed in.
“Jennings, cl—”
The SAM exploded right above the AOV. Plenomite marbles blasted out, instantly punching a hundred fist-sized holes in the bucket, shattering composite armor in a secondary spray of shrapnel. The AOV held its shape for a moment, then collapsed in on itself.
“Medic!” It was Jennings. He hadn’t been clear after all. “My fucking leg is gone!” His voice came from the left. He’d somehow exited on the wrong side of the AOV, against the standard deployment pattern.
“Oh, fuck, my leg!” Jennings said.
“Jennings, shut up,” Marcus said. “We’ll get help to you, but shut your mouth and deal with it.”
Marcus needed to know who was alive and ready to fight before he could help Jennings. “Cesc, Nguyen, report.”
Neither man answered. Sforza started talking, something he knew he shouldn’t be doing.
“How the fuck can our own guys shoot us down?” he said. Sforza sounded like he was farther away, probably on the far side of the destroyed AOV.
“Sforza, shut it,” Marcus said. “Cesc, Nguyen, report.”
Still nothing. Had they even made it clear? Marcus had to assume both men were dead. Duck, Cesc, Nguyen, dead. Add in Jennings, a liability they’d have to deal with, and the squad’s fighting strength now consisted of Marcus, Sheryl, Sforza, Psycho, Philbrick and Crossler.
Mathematically, Sheryl had done an amazing job. Under intense SAM fire, she’d managed to put the AOV down and keep casualties to thirty percent. That was the math. The reality was they’d lost three friends. Four, if they didn’t help Jennings fast.
“Report injuries now,” Marcus said. “Not you, Jennings.”
No one said a thing. He still had enough people to complete the mission.
That’s when the crossfire erupted.
• • •
When Marcus came to after the mountain bitch-slap, he was already running headlong down the slope, pistol in his left hand. The mountain smashing into him had done something to his right elbow. Something real bad. The elbow screamed with agony, a raging fire and ringing metallic feeling that sent pain halfway down his forearm and all the way back to a knife-stab sensation deep in his armpit.
A shattered elbow joint.
But they would fix him.
They had been fixing him all day, fixing him up so he could keep killing.
Even through the pain, he felt the nanomeds crawling through his arm. A damage-control team, probably. With the repairs they’d already done, was it really that surprising they could heal up a shattered elbow?
Marcus had a natural reflex to look down, look at his sternum, behind which lay his heart.
The same heart that, only two hours earlier, had taken a bullet.
He’d suffered that fatal wound not long after he and his squad fought through that first crossfire.
• • •
The forest roared with small-arms fire and heavy-caliber reports. The crossfire tore through the blue trees, splashing thick, indigo fluid all over the forest floor each time a bullet severed a soft branch or blasted apart a clumpy leaf. Marcus dropped to the ground and instantly started crawling. Blue sap rained down on him, a testament to the amount of fire that came his way.
“Fuck!” It was Philbrick. “Fuck, man, I’m hit.”
“Squad, melt away!” Marcus said, louder than he needed to. “Stay low, get hidden, return fire only if you can do so without revealing your position.”
Melt away meant each soldier would move away from the firefight, try and find a place to hide. It’s hard to complete a mission if everyone is dead, so the first priority was to stay alive long enough to figure out what was going on. They didn’t have the fire power or numbers to fight back against this kind of attack. They were Recon, after all—they were equipped to move fast, not to slug it out.
“Marcus, I think I’m on your right.” Sheryl. She sounded calm, sounded close. Now that they were out of the AOV, his j-plant buzzed when she talked, revealing her proximity. The more it buzzed, the closer she was. Close enough, and the j-plant would turn off her signal because normal hearing would kick in at that range.
“Sheryl, come give me cover.”
She would crawl toward the sound of his voice. He needed her to watch out for threats so he could switch the j-plant frequency to call Fleet. Fleet already knew Recon Five’s AOV had been destroyed. Backlink intel would also show the flat lines from Duck, Cesc and Nguyen. Fleet’s satellite coverage would show the positions of the surviving squad members and—hopefully—of the aggressors. Air support might come soon, it might not, but either way Marcus needed to know where the enemy was so he could get his people out of this.
Marcus’s j-plant carried Psycho’s gravel voice
“Sarge, who are these mother-fuckers?” Psycho didn’t sound confused or scared, he sounded pissed. The j-plant’s buzz told Marcus that Psycho was about a hundred meters away, north by northwest.
“No idea,” Marcus said. “Psycho, can you engage and get their attention? I need time to call Fleet.”
“Fuck, yes, I can, Sarge,” Psycho said. “Moving to engage.”
Psycho was the best soldier in the squad. He was also the oldest. He’d been Recon before Marcus had even hit puberty. Psycho could be trusted to cause maximum damage, yet still stay alive.
“Philly,” Marcus said, “give me a location. Where are you?”
“Oh, man.” Philbrick’s voice sounded weak. “Oh, man, I think I’m … I’m fucked.”
“Stay strong, Philly.” Sforza’s voice. “I hear you, I think I’m close, I’m coming for you.”
“My leg.” Jennings’s voice, much weaker than before. Marcus could hear the pain in the man’s words, could feel the fear of death. “Oh, High One, where are you guys? I’m hurt real bad. Oh, shit, oh, shit, something’s coming!”
“Jennings, what do you see?” Marcus said. “Focus! Report now, what do you see?”
Was it Sklorno? League of Planets saboteurs? Maybe even the Quyth? Marcus needed that info, but Jennings didn’t answer—he just screamed. He screamed and screamed, then coughed, then nothing.
Jennings was gone.
Sforza’s voice: “Sarge, I found Philly.” Sforza sounded like he was about fifty meters back and to the right. Marcus heard bullets whizzing past Sforza’s j-plant. He was under intense fire.
“Sforza, report, what’s Philbrick’s status?”
“Oh, man,” Philly said. “Forz, put this stuff back in me, please.”
“Uh … status ain’t good,” Sforza said. “Philly ain’t gonna make it.”
“What the fuck do you mean I ain’t gonna make it?”
“Sorry, Philly, but half your guts are gone.”
“Oh, man,” Philly said.
Marcus saw Sheryl crawling fast through the woods, a human salamander zipping along the ground. All through the forest above her, bullets shredded branches, trunks and leaves.
“Sforza,” Marcus said, “drag Philly to cover. Give him both of your nanomed injections, then leave him. I need you guns-up.”
“Sir, nanomeds can’t fix this!”
“Goddamit, Forz, do it. Maybe they can keep him alive long enough for us to get help.”
“Oh, man,” Philly said.
The bullet barrage slowed. Gunfire sounded consistent and intense, but the splashing plant juiced dropped to nothing. For some reason, the aggressor’s fire zone had moved off to the left. Marcus stayed low and stayed still. Sheryl slid up beside him.
Without a word, she sat up on one knee. She pressed her long-barreled Y-560 railgun to her shoulder, swept the barrel in slow arcs, her attention focused on the sniper rifle’s scope. Even on one knee, her head was no more than two feet off the ground, just below the lowest branches.
She had him covered. Marcus reached up and tapped a pattern on his right jawbone. It switched frequencies to Fleet, just as Philly’s screams filled everyone’s ears—Sforza was hauling Philly to deep cover, and from the sound of it, some of Philly’s intestines were dragging behind.
Inter-squad frequencies were low-power, only good for a mile or so. Heavily shielded and encrypted, they were hard for an enemy to pick off. Uplinking to the big ships above, however, required a stronger signal. A signal like that could give away location. Marcus had to deliver his information fast, then switch back to the squad frequency.
“Fleet, this is Recon Six.”
“Recon Six, we have you listed as four KIA, and Trooper Philbrick is fading fast, DIMYA?”
DIMYA, the combat acronym for “Does It Match Your Assessment.” Eyes in the sky and computer backlinks were great tools of war, but no matter how high, the tech glitches still happened—nothing beats a soldier’s eyes for final confirmation.
“Fleet, cayute. Repeat, cayute.”
CAIUT, more short-hand for “Correct As I Understand It.” It wasn’t a perfect acronym, but it had settled into military combat parlance not long after the backlinks were installed into every soldier in the Union Fleet.
“We’re pinned down,” Marcus said. “We need to get out of here.”
“Negative, Recon Six. You are to regroup, locate enemy and report back on enemy composition and troop strength.”
The gold-caps still didn’t know who they were fighting.
“Aye-aye,” Marcus said. “Recon Six will locate enemy and report back.” He tapped his jawbone again to switch back to troop frequency. “Squad, time to go to work. Locate enemy and report back. We have to see who we’re fighting.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Crossler’s voice, maybe 120 meters north. “We’re getting slaughtered!”
“Crossler, shut the fuck up!” Marcus said. “We’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it. Psycho, anything yet?”
“Nothing, Sarge,” Psycho said. “I’ll find ’em.”
“Target.” Sheryl’s voice. Her actual voice, not a j-plant simulation. He looked to his right: Sheryl, still kneeling, railgun barrel pointing straight out. Marcus followed the line of her barrel and saw her target: an E-trooper, moving in slow, RP rifle up at the ready. He was fifty meters away. Was he one of the aggressors or just another Union soldier caught up in the firefight?
The E-trooper wore a bulky, red environmental combat suit. The suit was shredded—it wasn’t just designed to stop radiation, E-trooper gear could stop bullets. Marcus wondered what kind of blast could hit hard enough to shred armored fabric but keep the man beneath it alive and moving. The suit’s light-bending ability wasn’t working at all.
“Take him?” Sheryl whispered.
The E-trooper kept coming in, gun up—he looked hostile. That’s why the fire-zone had shifted: the aggressor force was sending in scouts to see if anything remained alive. That meant this fuck was part of the group that had killed four members of Recon Five.
Still, he was a fellow Marine. Marcus had to take a chance.
“Only if he shoots,” Marcus whispered to Sheryl Then, louder: “Trooper, this is Recon Six. Stand down.”
The E-trooper turned to the sound of Marcus’s voice and fired. He got off three rounds on automatic before Marcus heard the tiny, metallic hiss of Sheryl’s railgun, then the trooper’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and bone. The big body sagged and fell, vanishing beneath the waist-high, fuzzy branches.
Without a sound, Marcus and Sheryl circled to the left, crawling across the ground on their bellies. Marcus tapped his jaw as he moved.
“Fleet, this is Recon Six.”
“Recon Six, go ahead.”
“Fire coming at least in part from friendly fire. E-troopers. We dropped one, looking for more intel. Recon Six, out.”
He tapped his jaw again to return his j-plant to the squad frequency. He and Sheryl slid across the soft forest floor, crawling twenty meters to their left before they slowly came up for a look.
Sheryl again rose up on one knee, railgun at the ready. Marcus came up at the same time, his own weapon aimed where the E-trooper had fallen.
Three more E-troopers. Their suits were in better shape. Two still had light-bending camo functioning. Had they been standing still, they would have been nearly invisible. But they weren’t standing still—they were digging at the corpse of the one Sheryl had killed. They desperately tore at his body, shredding what was left of the suit to get at his flesh, lifting long scraps of flesh, broken fingers, even a wet, dangling curl of intestine.
Marcus stared, stunned—he couldn’t be seeing this.
The men were eating the fallen trooper.
One of them was babbling, his voice high-pitched and panicked. “Jesus, no!” he said. He dug his hands into the fallen trooper and yanked so hard the whole corpse moved. The man’s hands came free with something bloody and brown—the fallen trooper’s liver.
“No-no-no!” the man said, then he bit down and tore off a ragged chunk. Through a full mouth, he screamed a scream of insanity and despair. The other two soldiers were doing the same, ripping off bloody chunks of flesh, chewing and swallowing.
“Sarge,” Sheryl whispered.
“Not yet,” Marcus said. He tapped a pattern on the left side of his jaw, activating the ocular uplink in his left eye. The backlink instantly started feeding video to Fleet. He couldn’t keep that on for more than seven seconds, in case there were weasels nearby. Weasels were flying missile drones that waited for a clear signal from enemy ground forces, triangulated, then launched. Audio you could mask for maybe fifteen seconds, but the fatter video signal drew weasels in less than ten. Marcus let the ocular feed run for seven seconds, then tapped it off.
“Okay,” he whispered, “take ’em.”
Sheryl’s railgun hissed three times, whuf-whuf-whuf. One head exploded. One chest erupted. One arm flew off in a nightmare image: the severed arm spinning away, the hand still tightly clutched on another severed arm that was marked with ragged bite marks from where flesh had been torn away down to the bone.
“Hold your fire,” Marcus said. “I’m moving in. Cover me.”
Marcus stood in a half-crouch and moved forward, his own L62 rifle pointed in front of him. He had to move quickly—no telling how many troops were in this enemy unit. How weird was it to think in those terms? These were Union soldiers. No, they weren’t, not anymore—Union soldiers didn’t attack Recon, and they sure as hell didn’t fucking eat each other.
He reached the downed men. Two of them were still moving. The closest one had a hole in his chest where Sheryl’s round had punched through. The man wheezed, fighting for breath. He crawled toward a Hilbers .60-cal, one of the giant guns that had helped shred half the forest. Marcus put three rounds in the man’s head, then stepped over him and knelt next to the man with the newly missing arm.
Sheryl’s shot had taken the man just below his right shoulder. The bone stuck out awkwardly; splintered white, fibrous shreds jutted out in several directions at once. His biceps had stayed attached and now dangled free and dragged in the dirt as the man sat up. For some reason, the massive wound bled very little. The man couldn’t live that much longer, but maybe he’d live long enough for Marcus to get some answers.
“Recon?” the man said. “Thank God.”
This man had been eating human flesh only seconds ago, firing on Marcus and his squad just before that. Now he looked blissfully relieved. And yet, he was still chewing—still chewing a piece of his comrade’s liver.
Marcus kept his rifle pointed at the wounded man. Marcus tapped his jawbone, once again turning on the ocular uplink. “Trooper, tell me what’s going on.”
“Kill me,” the trooper said as he chewed. “Do it quick.”
Marcus tried to control his rage, his fear. That morning, this might have been a good man. The name above his right breast read KIRSHMAN. The unit insignia on his right shoulder read 15th OEG (Orbital-Environmental-Ground). Marcus’s lip sneered back of its own accord—what was this madness? He moved the gun barrel closer to the E-trooper’s face.
“Trooper Kirshman, spit that out. Right now.”
Kirshman stopped chewing. He swallowed. “Kill me,” he said. “Do it now, for fuck’s sake, before it stops me from talking.”
“Tell me what happened,” Marcus said. “Why did you fire on us?”
“Kill me,” Kirshman said. “Please, just do it now, before …” his jaw twitched, then clenched up tight. The muscles in his face seemed to ripple unnaturally. His head shook, while his body remained stock-still.
Movement from Kirshman’s shoulder-stub caught Marcus’s eye. It looked like wet blood, but it wasn’t dripping down like it should have been—it was moving in multiple directions at once. No, it wasn’t blood, it was something … reflective. Something, metallic? Like glitter, maybe?
Marcus felt a tickling on his left ankle. Insects. He ignored it; he had to focus on Kirshman.
The E-trooper’s jaw moved in an awkward way. He seemed to be trying to speak.
But he talked just fine two seconds ago …
Finally, Kirshman spoke. “Are … you … injured?”
It was the same voice, but the cadence was completely different.
“I’m fine,” Marcus said. He took one step, kept the gun leveled with his right arm while he reached down with his left to scratch at his left ankle. He slapped at it, trying to clear the insect away without taking his eyes off of Kirshman.
“Trooper, last chance—tell me why you fired on us, or I’ll kill you right now.”
Somewhere to Marcus’s left, another voice answered: “Because you can be repaired.”
Jennings’s voice.
Without buzz from the j-plant.
Marcus stood and turned, keeping his gun leveled on Kirshman. It was Jennings, standing there, his L62 pointed to the ground.
“Jennings, what the fuck? You’re okay? Your backlink reported you dead.”
“I am repaired,” Jennings said.
Marcus looked at Jennings’s legs. Jennings had reported his leg missing, yet here he was, standing tall. His right pant leg was shredded at mid-thigh. The Kevlar fabric hung in shreds, the camouflage pattern obscured by a coating of deep blood stains.
Why would Jennings say his leg was gone? Could it have been shock from the crash and the SAM explosions?
Through his j-plant, Marcus heard Sheryl’s urgent whisper. “Marcus, what the fuck? Jennings is dead!”
But Jennings wasn’t dead, despite the flat line from his backlink, confirmed by Fleet. Yet here he was. Standing. No missing leg.
“Marcus,” Jennings said. “You will know soon.”
Marcus started to reply, then stopped—the hiss of a missile drew his attention away. He looked up—four-spread incoming.
Shit, weasel fire! The optical!
He’d forgotten to cut off the uplink. Fleet had three or four minutes of precious video, and he had four missiles coming for his ass.
“Sheryl, incoming, take cover,” Marcus said as he turned and sprinted away from the clearing. The running made his left leg itch like poison ivy dipped in nettles. Bullets kicked up dirt and rocks around his feet. He knew the sound of the gun, an L62, same as his—Jennings was trying to shoot out his legs.
Something hot and hard punched into his right leg, spinning him around and dropping him on his chest. Marcus kept scrambling and pushed himself up on his hands and knees. The pain in his leg made him drop to his right hip. He wound up on his ass, facing the way he’d come.
The weasel missiles rained down, each exploding with a combined incendiary explosion and anti-personnel plenomite shrapnel, shredding the spot where the troopers had fed on their own. Blue trees erupted outward in splashy disintegration, sending a wet wave splattering across the already-soaked ground.
Something hit Marcus in the chest. The plenomite shard punched through his sternum, through his heart and shot out of his back. It was like a surgical knife, straight through, with no concussive force. He looked down, watched blood sputter out of his chest, knowing he’d be dead in a few seconds.
He didn’t feel any pain.
He wondered if Sheryl had made it.
Marcus Crowley blinked a few more times, then absently thought about how his mother would take the news. She wouldn’t take it well, and that made him sad.
Consciousness slipped away, and Marcus slumped down to his right side.
• • •
He’d almost reached the bottom of the mountain. He heard voices in his j-plant.
“Sheryl just called into Fleet,” Sforza said. “She’s south of your position.”
Marcus tried to talk, but he couldn’t, and yet his voice spoke anyway: “Acknowledged. Moving due south.”
His voice, but not his words. His body continued down the mountain, due south. His body was acting on its own. It had been since shortly after he’d been shot in the heart.
• • •
Gunfire still echoed through the forest, but now only in faraway spurts.
Marcus rolled onto his back. His chest felt like someone had pounded in a huge nail with a huge hammer, banging away until the rusty, dull point forced its way through.
It also burned. He was alive, yet how could that be? He’d seen the blood pouring out of his chest. Maybe he’d injected himself with nanomeds, but even if he had, the tiny machines couldn’t repair a punctured heart. Shy of a full OR, nothing could repair a punctured heart.
He put his hand to his chest. It still felt wet. He held his hand up to look at it. Blood, of course, his bloody hand silhouetted against the early-afternoon sun.
But not just blood.
Glitter.
His bloody fingers sparkled in the sun.
He rolled to his knees and immediately searched for his rifle. The L62 also had a hole through it. Useless. He tossed it aside, drew his sidearm and stood on shaky legs. The sound of powerful AOV engines filled the sky. Those sounded like the big daddies—not the 10-person jobs used by Recon squads, but rather 100-unit landing ships that dropped in an entire company of infantry. From the sound of it, the whole fucking brigade was inbound, at least ten companies – a thousand marines. They could clean up this mess of cannibalistic E-troopers, then evac Marcus and whatever Bulldogs were left right off this fucking planet.
“Bulldogs, report,” Marcus said.
“Psycho here, killing redsuits at will.” Psycho was a long ways off to his right. Marcus didn’t need to worry about him.
“Sheryl here, with Crossler, both fine.” She was also a long ways off, but to his left.
“Sforza here, Philly is gone.”
Are you sure? The crazy thought flashed through Marcus’s mind. Are you sure he’s dead? Because after Jennings, the mother-fucker shot me.
Marcus blinked. His leg. He’d taken a round. His hands flew to his thigh. Fabric soaked in blood peppered with dirt and plant bits from the forest floor. He found the bullet hole and put his finger through it to search inside. Smooth skin. No entry wound.
“Marcus, are you okay?” Sheryl’s voice in the j-plant.
“Uh … affirmative. I’m fine.”
He was fine. But how could he be fine? He’d been shot in the leg. Not just that, he’d had a hole in his heart. He’d seen dozens of wounds like that in his three tours. Even if a medevac had been right there, it wouldn’t have mattered—getting shot in the heart killed you dead.
The glitter. What the fuck was that glitter? That shit was in Kirshman’s blood.
Kirshman, who had fired on his own troops.
“Forz,” Marcus said. “Check Philly again. Is he dead-dead?
“Is there some other kind?”
Maybe there was some other kind. “Philly has no pulse?
“Philly has no guts,” Sforza said. “No guts, no pulse, eyes wide and glazed over. Think that counts, boss?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, sure.” But did it count? “Bulldogs, stay melted. Full brigade is landing. Stay hidden until you have visual and verbal confirmation of 107th regulars.”
“We have to keep moving, Sarge,” Sheryl said. “The zone is crawling with E-troopers. And what about Jennings? He fired on you. We can’t trust anyone.”
“Jennings fired on you?” Crossler. He sounded ragged, like he’d come close to death himself. “What the fuck, man? Is this E-trooper shit contagious?”
Marcus shook his head violently. No, it wasn’t contagious. Couldn’t be. That was just too fucked up for words.
Jennings’s leg. Your heart.
He couldn’t think about that now. He had to get his people out of there. “Keep moving,” he said. “Everyone track south, make some distance and make it fast. Sheryl, you and Crossler can stay together. Everyone, do whatever you’ve got to do to stay alive. DIMYA?”
“Aye-aye,” Sheryl and Crossler said together.
“Aye-aye,” Sforza said.
“Sarge,” Psycho said, “request permission to continue killing. These guys are slow and stupid. I think I can break the battalion record.”
The record. Psycho was going for twenty-one kills in a day.
“How many you got so far?” Sforza asked. Excitement in his voice. A desperate excitement, as if Sforza needed something, anything, to take his mind of the slaughter, the loss of his friends.
“Sixteen,” Psycho said. “I’m on a mother-fucking roll, bitches.”
“Jesus,” Crossler said. “Hey, Psycho, maybe you shouldn’t get so excited about killing our own troops.”
“Fuck that,” Sheryl said. “Take them out, Psycho.”
The mini-debate froze Marcus. Kill them? Don’t kill them? Was he one of them now?
His stomach rumbled. Loudly. High one, please … not one of them.
He tapped a pattern on his jaw.
“Fleet, this is Recon Six.”
“Recon Six, go ahead.”
“Sitrep. Four casualties. Five troopers active, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy. We’re separated, incapable of cohesive unit action. Repeat, incapable of cohesive unit action. We’re in survival mode. The enemy is clearly E-troops from the 15th OEG.”
“Recon Six, you had direct contact with the enemy.”
“Affirmative.”
“Are you wounded? Did you suffer any wounds?”
Marcus paused, a small, hopeless feeling blossoming in his chest. How long had the ocular uplink stayed on? What had Fleet seen?
“Recon Six, I repeat, did you suffer any wounds?”
Marcus didn’t want them to know. “Negative,” he said.
“Have you or your team injected any nanomeds?”
“Only for Trooper Philbrick, who’s dead.”
“Recon Six, orders are to not use nanomeds, no matter what the condition of the wound, even in a life-threatening injury. I repeat, do not use nanomeds. Do you copy?”
Don’t use nanomeds. Even if a soldier lay dying. The hopeless spot in Marcus’s heart spread from his chest, into his stomach, into his throat.
“Recon Six, confirm the order.”
“Do not use nanomeds,” Marcus said. “Aye-aye, Fleet.”
“Recon Six, we read Private Jennings as active. Have you had or are you now in contact with him?”
“He fired upon us,” Marcus said.
“Treat him as hostile,” Fleet said.
No shit, Sherlock.
“Fleet, listen, I need intel. What the fuck is going on down here?”
A pause. A long pause. In all of Marcus’s twenty-six missions, he had never heard a long pause before. Fleet used a near-sentient computer to map event probabilities. Decisions and alternates were stacked up seven to ten levels deep. Admirals or other commanders managed strategy from a deep-sensory console, a graphical interface that fed them mathematical information in short bursts of programmer code. Everything went into that constantly fluctuating code: troop strength, movement, enemy strength, ammo, supplies, reinforcement numbers and distance, weather … everything. The near-sentient stacked up strategies and orders, logical building blocks designed to deliver the results desired by the Admiral. As soon as a decision was made, orders went out at the speed of light. So even in an ever-changing battlefield, strategy changes were ready to go, order after order backed up and ready for thousands of contingencies. That was part of what made the Planetary Union such a deadly fighting force—millions of units moved as one, instantly changing tactics and hitting like a single organism.
Fleet never hesitated. Never.
Until now.
“Fleet, dammit, give me intel. We’re dying down here. You’re telling me to let my people die instead of using nanomeds? Why?”
Why. The one question a soldier was never supposed to ask. Well, fuck that. He’d watched Philly walk after the man said his leg was blown off. This wasn’t war, this was a fucking horrorfest.
“Recon Six,” Fleet said. “The Mallek base was working on a new kind of nanomed. We suspect that the nanomeds went rogue.”
“Went rogue? What the fuck does that mean?”
“The nanomeds may be causing aberrant behavior.”
“Aberrant? Is that what you call these mother-fuckers eating each other?”
“You are to treat everyone as a potentially hostile, Recon Six, everyone but the 107th. When members of the 107th identify themselves, you are to immediately lay down your arms and allow yourself to be contained. Any sudden actions from you will be treated as hostile.”
Lay down his arms? Were they joking? “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Recon Six, you have your orders! Communicate those orders to your squad.”
Fleet broke the connection. Marcus paused for only three seconds, then tapped his j-plant to talk to Psycho, Sforza, Sheryl and Crossler. He automatically passed on the order, his training making him speak in a monotone free of any emotional reaction or opinion. Marcus Crowley did as he was told and then told his people to do the same:
Stay melted.
Treat everyone as a hostile.
When the 107th shows up, lay down arms or you’re dead.
They all started to question the orders on that last one, but Marcus tapped his j-plant again, breaking the squad-level connection. He just didn’t have any answers.
• • •
Thirty minutes after his call to fleet, a headache came on sudden and heavy. One minute nothing, the next, lead-pipe-to-the-skull thick. Marcus kept moving through the blue underbrush, a silent Recon shade, his camo the exact color and pattern of the plants around him. He fought through the headache, although he knew something was very, very wrong.
What he couldn’t fight through, however, was when his left leg suddenly stopped working.
He fell, his concentration suddenly focused on keeping his sidearm out of the dirt and mud as he hit the ground. He holstered the weapon, then started massaging his leg. No charley horse. No numbness. He sat on his ass. He lifted his knee slowly to his chest, then extended it back out.
And after a one-second pause, his leg repeated the motion.
On its own.
Marcus stared at his leg. He pushed it down to the ground and held it there.
“I gotta get help,” he said. That hopeless feeling clutched his every atom, sending tendrils of panic deep into his soul. His leg had moved on its own. He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t done it.
He tapped his j-plant.
“Recon Six, sound off.”
“Sheryl with Crossler, melted and a-okay.” She sounded close.
“Psycho here. Nineteen and counting.”
A pause.
“Sforza,” Marcus said. “Report in.”
Another pause, then Sforza answered. “Where are you, Marcus?”
Marcus thought about the words of his squad mate. Did Sforza sound … different?
“Forz, you okay?”
“I’m fine. Marcus, are you wounded?”
Marcus shook his head again, shook it several times, not in answer to the question but rather to deny what his instinct told him.
Sforza spoke again. “I’m here with Jennings, Marcus. Where are you?”
Here with Jennings. Marcus felt a deep fear, something even deeper than what he felt when the bullets flew or when an AOV took a hit. The j-plant’s buzz told him that Sforza wasn’t far away.
“Squad, Sforza is compromised,” Marcus said. “Shoot him on sight. Jennings too.”
“Roger that,” Psycho said.
Sheryl’s voice: “Marcus, are you sure about that?”
“Follow your fucking orders! Shoot him on sight. Radio silence from here out. Sheryl, don’t move. I’m coming to your location.”
Marcus tapped off his j-plant, tapped hard enough to leave a bruise. He held his head in both hands and rocked slowly forward, then back, then forward again.
He was fucked.
And he was hungry.
He stood and started sprinting in the direction of Sheryl’s voice.
• • •
His left arm stopped working.
No, that wasn’t right.I It worked just fine.
It worked—he just wasn’t the one controlling it.
His left arm reached out into the air. It twisted, it punched. His fingers made a fist, then stretched out again. He grabbed his left hand with his right, tried to push his left arm to his side and hold it there.
His breath came in short bursts: out-in-out-in, then hold. His arm was moving on its own! He hadn’t signed up for this, no fucking way.
His legs gave out again, both of them this time. He fell flat on his face, mud pushing into his mouth and nostrils. It tasted minty.
He rolled to his back. “Somebody help me!” The blue plants ate up his screams. No echo. “Please, High One, somebody help me!”
His right arm worked still. He reached out and grabbed a thick root. He pulled himself forward, sliding his body through the mud. The headache grew stronger, doubling in intensity. He felt a tingling at the base of his skull.
Rogue nanomeds.
Marcus grabbed another root, kept dragging himself forward. Muddy water soaked through his camo. Even on the arm and the legs he no longer controlled, he felt the cool wetness on his skin.
The Planetary Union believed in two things – technology and education. Even in the military, he received regular classes on science and math. He knew the human body.
It made perfect sense.
A body moved because of an electro-chemical process. Nerve signals sent from the brain induced a sodium-potassium electrical reaction, a chain signal that instantly traveled through any part of the body and made muscles move.
He reached out again. His right hand stopped grasping.
“Please! Someone help me! I can’t stop it!”
Marcus wedged his elbow against another root and used it to drag himself forward one last time. If he could have looked behind himself, he would have seen the muddy trough through which he’d pulsed his body in a last-ditch effort to escape.
The human body was just another machine. A biological machine, but a machine nonetheless. Most of the body’s movements didn’t even require conscious thought. You had to decide to draw your sidearm, decide if you were ready to kill or not, but you didn’t think about the actual drawing of the weapon—you just did it.
Automatic. Mechanized.
His brain triggered that response, controlled it. What if something besides him triggered and controlled that response? The brain only started the process—the rest of it was hardware. If the correct signal was sent, his muscles would react accordingly. If that happened, something might drive his body just as he would drive a car.
• • •
Marcus tried to reach out one more time—his body wouldn’t respond.
His body moved, but Marcus Crowley wasn’t driving anymore. He was just along for the ride—he was just a passenger.
“Marcus!” Sheryl’s voice. Not from the j-plant, from his ears. “Marcus, where are you?”
He heard two people moving fast through the underbrush.
Finally, someone was coming to help him.
His stomach let out a rumble that was little less than a roar.
“Oh, no,” he whispered.
Marcus Crowley suddenly realized he’d wasted his last few momements of control. He shouldn’t have pulled himself through the mud—what he should have done was draw his sidearm and eat a bullet.
But it was too late for that.
Like a marionette raised by a trembling, unsure hand, his body stood awkwardly. His right hand reached for his sidearm. He felt his fingers touch the metal handle, felt the cold, wet mud on the holster’s leather. He felt these things as if someone had taken his hand and moved it for him. The hand flopped at the handle. On the third try, his grabbed the handle firmly and pulled the sidearm from his holster.
“Marcus, hold on, we’re coming!”
His body lurched toward Sheryl’s voice.
Just ten feet away, Sheryl and Crossler broke from the blue underbrush. They stopped. They stared at him for only a second, then they pointed their weapons into the surrounding woods, looking for an enemy.
They didn’t realize the enemy was right there with them.
“Sheryl, run!” Marcus screamed. “Just run!”
She turned back to look at him, the barrel of her sniper rifle automatically dipping down even as her eyes flashed a too-late recognition.
Marcus’s right arm raised the gun and his fingers squeezed the trigger.
The bullet tore through Sheryl’s right shoulder, spinning her around. Her rifle flew out of her hands as she dropped to the ground.
Marcus’s body didn’t have to turn, just pivot. Crossler’s eyes went wide with fear and anger. Marcus’s body tried to shoot, but Crossler was faster. He put two rounds into Marcus’s chest. One bullet tore through his right lung, the other punched into his belly. The world swam before Marcus’s eyes. His body, completely out of his control, fell to the ground.
He wanted to tell Crossler to finish the job. Marcus tried to talk, but he couldn’t draw a breath.
Instead, Crossler ran to Sheryl. He slung his rifle and put pressure on her wound. She didn’t scream, just grimaced. She looked like she’d bitten into a very sour lemon.
Crossler, you undisciplined fucker, finish the job!
Marcus felt the pain directly. Maybe his nanomeds didn’t. They didn’t feel the pain anymore than he would if his car had a flat tire or a dented door.
His body sat up. His hand aimed the sidearm at Crossler’s back and fired three times.
Crossler screamed and fell forward. Sheryl’s sour-face stared at Marcus, then she lurched to her feet and stumbled into the underbrush.
Marcus felt something beyond the pain. He felt hunger. His mouth started to salivate, and he knew why—the nanomeds needed material for repairs.
Marcus’s body crawled toward Crossler.
Crossler, his former friend, his former squad mate, rolled to his back. Chest heaving, body trembling, his eyes widened with horror as Marcus crawled through the mud on his hands and knees.
Marcus thought of how Kirshman had begged for death.
“Oh, please, no,” Marcus said as his hands reached out and yanked at Crossler’s camo-patterned armor.
“Marcus,” Crossler grunted. “Mar … don’t do it. Please …”
Crossler’s armor came off, exposing a bloody chest and stomach.
Marcus wanted to close his eyes, but apparently he didn’t control that anymore, either.
He didn’t control anything.
His head lowered to Crossler’s neck. Crossler screamed. Marcus screamed, too, at least until his teeth sank into Crossler’s throat. Marcus’s head shook itself several times. He tasted something hot and wet, then his head came away with a mouth full of hot flesh.
Crossler stopped screaming. He made a gurgling noise instead.
Marcus chewed.
Someone please fucking kill me, please, High One, please kill me now …
But no one killed him. His head lowered again for another bite.
Marcus couldn’t do anything to stop it.
He couldn’t do anything but watch. Watch, and taste.
• • •
“Marcus, are you closing in?”
The last remnants of sanity clung to Marcus’s thoughts, sickly forcing him to stay aware of the situation. His body fixed itself quickly, so quickly—Crossler’s two bullets were long since repaired.
Marcus’s body followed a trail of blood.
Sheryl’s blood.
He wasn’t hungry anymore, nor would he be anytime soon—he had Crossler’s right arm strapped to the webbing of his backpack. Marcus knew why his body wanted Sheryl. It wanted to convert her. The nanomeds were alive, in a way, and like any living creature, they wanted to expand, they wanted to reproduce.
No one was shooting at him anymore. When his body went over the ridge and tossed those two grenades, the troopers from the 107th must have lost him.
Marcus heard his own voice talking. “Sheryl,” it said. “You’re going to die if you don’t let me help you.”
She was close. He knew it. Somehow the nanomeds driving his body knew it, too.
He moved past an outcropping of rock, and there she was. Sheryl Everson was on her back. She was panting. She must have lost a lot of blood. Marcus remembered the times he’d lain with her: naked, sweaty and laughing. A soldier knows any day might be his or her last, so when you fuck someone—boy or girl—you soak up every last nuance. He’d soaked up a lot of nuance with Sheryl.
Marcus’s hand holstered his sidearm. His body moved toward her.
“We will repair you,” his voice said.
Her wide eyes blinked rapidly in fear. Marcus wanted to help her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything—he was just a passenger.
A rustle from his right.
His head turned to look.
His eyes saw Psycho, saw Psycho’s L62 aimed right at his head.
“Hey, Marcus,” Pyscho said. “You’re number twenty-two. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
Perhaps the nanomeds had forgotten to turn off control to every part of Marcus’s body because, at that moment, he smiled.
Oh, thank you, High One.
Marcus’s hand reached for his sidearm.
Psycho pulled the trigger and – with Sheryl as his witness – landed his name in the record books.