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  “Yes, sir!” said Sadir, turning sharply and marching away as the door hissed closed. All spit and polish, thought Michael. But would he have the balls for a firefight?

  The room was Spartan and efficient. There was a writing table and small chair in one corner, a single bed along one wall opposite the videophone screen and intercom panel, and a standing dresser and closet along the third wall. Two ceiling panels filled the room with soft, green light. A full dress uniform had been laid out on the bed: blue jacket, matching pants with red stripe, belt with silver buckle, shirt, tie, socks, and on the floor black jump boots gleaming in the light. His beret, with insignia of rank, was on top of the dresser, next to the faded picture of a woman and young boy. Michael touched the frame of the picture, checked the contents of drawers, the clothing hanging in the closet. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and stared at the picture for a moment in the total silence of the room then removed his clothes and crammed them in the wall hamper. Naked, he opened the door to the shower stall in the corner next to the closet, set the control to warm, and stepped inside. As the door closed, six streams of warm water hit him from all sides for ten seconds, and shut off. He soaped his body and hair, rinsed with a one-minute blast from the showerheads, then rubbed depilatory into his beard and rinsed again, mind blank.

  Back in the room, Michael toweled himself dry, went to the dresser and put the picture in the top drawer. He dressed, checked his reflection from the blank video-screen.

  Still slim, cheeks a bit hollow, perhaps. Not bad for forty five—seventy-seven Arkon, that is. It was silent in the room. Horribly silent. He adjusted the beret on his head, the insignia gleaming. The combat marine in the video screen looked back at him sternly.

  Welcome back, marine, it said. You are Arkon’s finest. Michael sighed. This was what he had wanted—a long time ago.

  Floyd Mootry was waiting alone for him in the sixth-level officers’ mess when he arrived. The dim light came from two electric candles on a linen-covered table set with plates and silverware, Mootry came out from a darkened corner with a glass in each hand.

  “That was quick,” he said, smiling.

  “It sounded urgent, sir,” said Michael, saluting sharply. Mootry didn’t return it.

  “What’s my name?”

  “Floyd,” said Michael uneasily. He took the glass offered to him.

  “Some Chablis—for a special occasion,” said Floyd. “The finest of Brown’s planet. Seventeen years old. Sit.”

  They sat down at the table, facing each other. Michael sipped cautiously, and the wine burned a path into his stomach. “To the Corps,” said Floyd, and their glasses clinked together. “I’m not kidding when I say it’s really good to have you back again, Mike. You’re going to find out quick how much times have changed. And not for the better.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Floyd drained half his glass in one gulp. “No sense of mission anymore—no wars to be fought—all this survey work on planets with aging histories, no cultural connection to the Federation, or Arkon, or a queen who’s more myth than reality. Most colonies have strayed from their original goals, gone in their own directions, and with a few exceptions they have no feeling of connection with anything off world. We’ve expanded too far, Mike, and lost touch. We’ve reached the fringe of the Federation, both of us are close to mustering out, and these people basically don’t want us here.”

  “Sure sounded like that on the recording I heard,” said Michael.

  A steward arrived and served their meal: a small steak for Floyd, three small mounds of mashed potatoes, a mystery vegetable and something reminding Michael of pork chops. “Want a bite of real food?” asked Floyd.

  “Better not. My stomach is out of practice.” They finished eating in silence, and then Floyd filled their glasses again.

  “You’re not going to recognize many people. Half the crew mustered out on Brown’s planet. We’re all getting old together, you and me especially. We’re the oldest, now, two old girenes looking for a place to rest. Even Belsus is old, two hundred years overdue on retrofit. Survey ships are always last in line these days. No laser armor, hopper suits, IR glasses instead of night helmets, weaponry as old as the colony below us. Those bastards on Brown’s planet wouldn’t give me anything last time around. ‘Finish the survey, then comes the retrofit’, they said. Well, this drop finishes it.”

  “We still have some tread left,” said Michael.

  Floyd looked at him solemnly. “We might need it on this planet fall, Mike. We might need all of it.”

  “I’m leading the drop team?”

  “Who else? Maybe half a dozen combat-experienced marines on board, the rest fresh out of basic with clean underwear, no scars, no nightmares, not one day of combat.

  “How about Massey, or Underhill, or—”

  “Gone—all the men from zee-squad. Massey used most of his pension for a deep-sleep birth on a freighter heading back to Arkon. Can’t see doing that. Can’t see it at all.”

  “Kari still here?”

  Floyd smiled. “I was wondering when you’d ask that. Yeah, she’s still here—but so’s Krisha. When they’re not making it in the cubicle they share, you can find them in the gym.”

  “So some things haven’t changed.”

  “Yeah. But they’re still good marines. Just don’t turn your back on Krisha. She still remembers you and Kari.”

  “That was twenty years ago, Floyd.”

  “Most of it in deep sleep—for all of us. They’re dropping with you, and I don’t want you waking up with a live grenade in your sack. Behave yourself.”

  Michael took a long sip of wine. “You expecting bad things on this drop?”

  “Maybe—maybe not. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. That voice on the recording—no shouting or screaming—just a quiet threat, and it pisses me off. I’ve been thinking about Emerson for months, even looked up the founding history, the first survey. It sounds like a paradise down there, a good place to end it, and now….”

  “…We get threats,” said Michael. “We won’t really know ’til we get down there, Floyd. When do I go?”

  Floyd drained his glass, filled it again. “The team is assembled. I can give you another forty-eight hours Arkon to get ready.”

  “Forty-eight days is more like it. I can’t even walk straight yet.”

  “The drop team hasn’t been up much longer, and I think they’re ready enough. The machines work you quick, Mike. You’ll just have to hurt more than the others. Two days is what you’ve got, and two nights to go over what we know about Emerson. I want this survey done in a hurry.”

  “Tothwelt. That’s what Diego Segur called it.”

  “Whatever. Get down there, get it done and then you and I—well—we stay, go back to Brown’s planet to raise bees and grapes or we go our separate ways. It’s mustering out time, for both of us. This is the last drop for you and I. Let’s get it done. If there has to be a firefight, then—then maybe that’s a good way to end it, too. I’m sure you don’t feel like it, but I’m ready for some sleep. Breakfast here at oh-four-hundred, something light, and then you hit the gym. I’ll have your team assembled in the drop bay at sixteen hundred to meet you. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Michael.

  Floyd got up; looking tired, and leaned over to put a hand on Michael’s shoulder.

  “Oh-Four hundred, major. Just like the old days.” Floyd lurched away from the table, and quickly left the room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  There was no sleep that first night, or what passed for night in the routine of HMS Belsus. For Michael Queal the concepts of day and night had long ceased to have meaning, replaced by a cycle of work and rest encouraged by programmed light intensities and colors in the work areas of the ship. Morning was a warm, orange glow, day brightening to flat white, evening following in deepening hues of red. The body responded with the memories of a yellow star that was Arkon’s sun, though even on the hollow asteroid of Michae
l’s birth interference filters had been used to achieve the same effects. Arkon, the spherically-domed city-ship within a planetoid shell, had been home to ten thousand souls whose ancestors had traveled a thousand years to escape the decay and religious wars of old Earth. A thousand year journey towards the galactic center to find an Earth-type planet had found nothing.

  The yellow star had adopted them, and they had been content until Victoria the First had come to power. Her scientists had used the high star densities near the galactic core to develop a hyper drive that followed the changing patterns of folded space. She had built small ships to sail the folds of space-time and sent them out in all directions to find new worlds and new life forms, and to bring with them the doctrine of the New Christians to those who could understand.

  There were none who could understand, but there were new worlds, three within ten light-years of Arkon. Victoria had lived long enough to hear about them, name them, follow the progress of the first small colonies of humanity spreading sentient life in a seemingly lifeless galaxy. These she named Blue Haven, Victoria and Israel. Together with the lonely, floating city of Arkon, three Earth-like planets became charter members of the Rubion Federation, the name coming from that of Victoria’s lineage on her father’s side.

  In the darkness and silence of his cubicle, Michael thought about these things. He thought about five thousand years of human history since the exodus from Earth, the hundreds of Victoria’s descendants who had kept the expansion going, fighting the first wars with dissident colonies refusing allegiance to a capital city that was not even a planet, a city of wealth and ease, safe from blazing sunlight and weather’s violent moods. The tiny ships sailed away from Arkon, filled with adventurers, scientists, genetic engineers, those who simply yearned for open skies and wind and unlimited land on which to raise their children. Many of the ships had never been heard from again. And the first survey ships were sent out to find them.

  All but three had never returned to Arkon.

  Michael’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been marines before him, fighting the wars on Israel, Ceti, and Rubion, running down the renegade freighters that sprang up to sell the booty of devastated planets. He had joined the Corps at eighteen, continued a family tradition of nearly two hundred years. He’d been decorated for valor and wounds received on Israel and Rubion and a freighter they’d surprised a hundred light years from Arkon. Sharp pieces of metal had become a permanent part of his bones, the price paid for a battlefield commission received on Rubion. By age thirty, the fighting ended, he was a marine captain without a war to fight, chained to an Arkon desk, pushing paper. Mira had been happy, content with their elevated position in a bubble-encase society, had ignored her husband’s misery with his job. His own attitude had been the problem, he realized. Why couldn’t he have been content with the life he’d had, Mira there for him, loving him, his son arriving when they’d nearly given up hope of ever having a child?

  Michael gave up on sleep, got up from his bed and went to the video console to punch out access to the ship’s database on Emerson. It was a short file, and he read it quickly. A thousand light years from Arkon, he was at the Rubion Federation edge nearest the galactic core. A thousand light years away his former wife and son were—were even still alive? And what did it matter now? He’d made his decision, as Mira had made hers, and there’d been nobody there to see him off the day he’d shipped out on Belsus. His only reality, his only immediate future, was on an emerald planet spinning below him, a planet colonized by farmers and fishermen and a handful of agricultural genetic engineers.

  It was a beautiful planet—but hostile to his presence.

  He read the file through twice more, then shut down the terminal as the ceiling panels in his room began to glow a dim orange. Morning was near. The silence was suffocating. In twenty minutes he showered and dressed and left the cubicle for his first full day after a long sleep.

  The officers’ mess was empty, but smelled wonderfully of fresh-baked bread from the adjacent galley when he arrived. The twenty-four hour tea urn steamed and grumbled as he poured himself a cup before sitting down at a bare table in dull, orange light, his mind unfocused.

  An orderly came out of the galley, carrying a pan filled with fresh rolls. “Good morning, sir,” he said brightly. “I thought only bakers got up this early. Fresh out of the oven, sir, and some of my own jams on the table here.” He arranged the rolls on a platter, served two of them to Michael and started back to the galley when Michael didn’t offer a reply.

  For God’s sake, be decent to the man. He served you breakfast.

  “Smells delicious,” he shouted after the man.

  Michael ate quickly, drank a second cup of tea and left the mess, turning left and walking the gray, featureless curving passage halfway around the bow of Belsus to reach the gym. Bright lights came on as the door hissed open. No change, same Aeroflex machines of his memories, same pain, especially when you were fresh from deep-sleep. He stripped to shorts and shoes and went through the circuit slowly, cautiously, the machines’ resistance responding to his stress levels as measured by the flex-cable monitor strapped across his chest. In ten minutes his legs and shoulders were aching. In twenty they were afire with pain. Tears were in his eyes as he finished the circuit and switched on the evaluation output screen. He stared at the readings in dismay. “Terrific,” he said out loud, “I have the fitness of an eleven-year-old child.”

  The scientists had told him there was no deterioration of the body during deep sleep.

  He didn’t believe them.

  Michael toweled down and sat on a bench to rest. Sweat glistened on his face again within seconds, a heart thump loud in his inner ears. Two days to get ready. No way.

  He went through the circuit a second time, and was mid-way through it when the door hissed open and someone else came into the room. At the moment he was not free to look around, for he was locked in the grasp of a rope-net-climber sim, titalloy claws pulling on his arms and legs at a level only slightly below the threshold of dismemberment. A musky odor wafted over him as he struggled.

  “Hi, Mike, I heard you were up again.”

  Kari.

  “Up, but still half-awake,” he growled, climbing another six feet on the shuddering, swaying machine.

  “Nice view from down here,” she said as he reached the top and began clambering down. “Deep sleep does good things for you.” She was standing in front of him, a smirk on her face when he reached the floor and looked at her past the tangle of metal cables making up the machine.

  The first thing he noticed was her hair. It framed her thin face in an auburn, billowy mass down to her shoulders. “What happened to the butch-cut?” he said sarcastically.

  Kari’s eyes narrowed. “Krisha likes it this way, so I let it grow. What do you think?”

  “It makes you look like a woman,” he said, then turned away from her to grab a towel, and wiped his face. Standing there in a shoulder to knee, spandex workout suit her body looked hard yet somehow soft in all the right places. It made him angry. “Still with Krisha, I hear. How’s it going with you two?”

  Kari’s smirk broadened, and she put hands on hips, thrusting her breasts forward. “Oh, you know me, Mike. I’m always ready to go either way. You still have a nice ass, but I see some flab on the rest of you. Better work it out quick, ’cause I hear this drop might give us some trouble.”

  “Yeah—maybe,” said Michael. He threw down his towel and saddled up on a leg-press machine, adjusted the hydraulics to a hundred kilos, and began pumping.

  “Mind if I join you?” said Kari, but he didn’t answer. She settled herself on the bench-press next to him, fiddled with the control unit until the monitor registered eighty kilos. She finished thirteen reps easily, long, smooth strokes while he struggled to finish ten. When they finished, his face was glistening with sweat and Kari wasn’t even breathing hard. She looked at him, amused. “Don’t worry about it, Mike. I’ve got a thre
e day head-start on you.”

  It was said in a friendly way, and Michael smiled as they sat facing each other. “Am I getting that transparent in my old age?” he said. “Hey, you’re looking good. Really.”

  Kari smiled, reached out a hand to touch his knee, and then drew back sharply. Her eyes shifted to the door behind him as it hissed open.

  “Well, isn’t this cozy,” said Krisha Elg from the doorway. “Maybe I should come back later.”

  Michael sighed. Kari laughed, and slapped him on the knee. “Our major is definitely out of shape. He has a lot of work to do.” She stood up and went to the next machine without looking back at him. Krisha swaggered past him in spandex bra and knee-length pants, sat down on the bench press machine, dialed the control to a hundred kilos, and looked over to be sure Michael had seen it. Her hard, chiseled body already glistened with sweat, and he guessed she had warmed up by running the long corridors of Belsus.

  Unlike Kari, there was no softness about Krisha Elg. She was as tall as Michael; black hair cut close, and had a pretty yet hawkish face with sharp features and thin lips. There were prominent veins on her forearms and shoulders. She glowered at him from deep-set eyes, looked him up and down appraisingly. “Yep, there’s work to be done. You look tired, Major, and the day’s hardly started.” She lay back on the machine, did ten slow reps and sat up again, breathing deeply. “Ah, that works the kinks out. Ready for a firefight when you are, Major.” She gave him a venomous look, hands on hips, and tensed her muscles in display.

  “I’ll be relying on that, Captain,” said Michael. “You’re the best marine I have in the drop team, and I’m putting you in charge of security. We’re going to need experience on this one.”