“Don’t get smartass with me! I don’t like bein’ beat, but I recognize it when somebody does somethin’ I never saw before. I can’t figure it out, unless it was somethin’ brand new they added to your suit.”
“Nothing like that. I just did a flee, execute, and defend in three-sixty mode, that’s all.”
“Bullshit! That’s what all the data said, but I seen a ton of the best of the best and I ain’t never seen nobody able to do that. The human mind and the interface ain’t good enough to make it work.”
“It’ll work. It did work. I can’t tell you how, because I don’t know. I just know that something about that kind of knack is what got me recruited for the Commandos a few years back now. It’s like explaining to a groundling what it’s like to be inside the suit and fight. You either have it or you don’t. Those who have it they somehow spot and train and train and train until it can be executed when needed. I’m surprised I could still do it. Last time I did it I died. They scraped up the pieces and got me into a pickle wagon fast enough to restore me, more or less, but I didn’t know if I still had it until I tried it in there.”
“Teach me!”
“I can’t. I told you. Not even the Commandos and Rangers, the only two organizations where it’s even attempted, can teach it. They can only make you better if it’s already there. Some way in which the brain works. Maybe a mutation, maybe even brain miswiring. They aren’t sure. They been trying to build it into the suits for those who don’t have it for a long time, but they never seem to be able to. The wiring, both suit and soldier, seem to have to be just exactly so. It’s luck. Or a curse. I spent two years in a pickle jar because I could do it, and that’s only because I was lucky. You ever spent any time for major repairs in one of those units?”
She shook her head. “Nope. They had me in for a few days for some burns, but it wasn’t the full treatment and it wasn’t any big deal. Just boring as shit, even with the feel-good stuff they put into you.”
“Don’t let ’em put you in one for the kind of injuries I had. Just—don’t. And don’t let ’em give you that bullshit that you’re not really in pain, that it’s all the consequences of surgery and healing drugs and the reconstitution process and all that. You’re there, you’re aware, you’re in real pain, and you keep living that last hour over and over and over again. When they finally bring you out, you’re whole, but it’s not fun anymore. It’s not fun at all. Enjoy it while it’s still a game, Fenitucci, and then die when it’s your time.”
She looked at him with a grim expression. “It’s really that bad?”
He drained his whiskey. “It’s really that bad. And it never really ends. That’s why they call us the Walking Dead, or, sometimes, the Zombie Corps. There aren’t too many of us. Most blow their brains out in the first year after getting back to duty, or they quit the Navy, or they wind up in rubber rooms. They made me a cop, and I kind of liked the job. It’s busy, always a little weird, and not too demanding.”
“Then why are you gettin’ back in the suit? Hell, man! You’re Navy! You don’t have to do this shit no more! You ain’t Commando now! What’re you tryin’ to prove?”
“Prove? Nothing. They made me a cop, and I just told you I liked it. Beats the Zabulon Five Rebellion three ways from Sunday. Trouble is, once I get a case, I can’t let go until I solve it, or at least find out all there is to know. I’ve got the granddaddy of all cases right now, and I’m gonna need a suit just to see it through. I got to admit, though, I’m so damned rusty I’m beginning to wonder if I can hack it.”
“Rusty! You just zapped the best fuckin’ Marine in the service! I don’t care what you say, you didn’t win them medals and commendations sittin’ on your ass. I seen ’em in your files. You got the Cross of Honor, man! I never met nobody who won that—nobody alive, anyway. You could get busted to swabbie and still rate a salute! And you still got it. I can tell you that.”
“Then I guess you didn’t know. They didn’t tell you?” “Huh? You didn’t make it out in time?”
“I didn’t make it thirty seconds after you went dark. I got so wrapped up in myself at the kill that I forgot to watch my back and something just swallowed me whole and then chewed from the inside.”
“Shit! But that’s why we train, right? I mean, so you remember those things. Besides, if you won all the time, you wouldn’t play no more.”
“It’s no game. I told you that.”
“Hell, man! Everything’s a game! Life’s the game, and then the game’s over. We’re goin’ to hell in a handbasket, ain’t we? I mean, maybe we’ll get off or away ’cause it’s slowed down, but you and me both know humanity’s had it. We’re policin’ the rear guard. Frontier reported some new Titan ships comin’ in now. They’re goin’ to spread at least another hundred light-years after this round. They’ve already started the evacuations, for all the good those’ll do. We’re out of places to put ’em and we’re out of the worlds with the factories and resources to build things where we need ’em. So we may as well all play games, play hard, fight hard, love hard, die hard, ’cause in another couple hundred years, give or take, we’re gonna run out of worlds, and then everything people did in the past thousands of years gets flushed down the toilet. All the books, all the plays, all the pretty pictures, all the ideas. Kaput! Finito! So when you gonna get in the sack with me, huh? They did regrow that part in the pickle jar, didn’t they?”
He chuckled, even though it was an old line—and one of the most asked questions, in fact. “Can’t do it, Fenitucci. I’m afraid I’m beginning to like you, and that makes it impossible.”
“So you want I should kick you in the balls?”
“No, just keep it professional, that’s all. See, there were a whole lot of other people I knew, maybe even loved a little, who got scraped up with me, and while I got four back out, the rest well, I’m the only other one that made it, period. I don’t like going to bed with somebody and then having to scrape her up later.”
“Christ! I’m not talkin’ about a romance! Just a roll in the hay, that’s all. You’re one of the few officers left, male or female, and I got a reputation!”
“You lost. I got to sleep with the sea monster.” She gave him a sneer but didn’t hit him.
“Seriously,” he continued. “Tell me—who sent you in there? You didn’t just happen in.”
“I got a call from Colonel Palivi’s office suggesting it would be a nice time to go down to the base simulator in the kind of terms that indicate that, well, we’re not ordering you to do anything, but you’d better get your ass down there. I got, and they had my suit ready and the tech there told me that I was the live enemy in your sim. Now you know as much as me. More, really, ’cause I don’t know why the hell you need the suit and training. You’re good, but you’re out of practice or you would never have gotten swallowed. Anything that needs a suit is something that should be handled by people whose business it is to fight in them.”
“I agree,” he replied. “But this isn’t about a fight. It’s dangerous, but it’s no fight, because if it becomes one I’ll lose hands down. I just can’t say more right now.”
“Word is you’re gonna try to ride the keel down a hole. That’s suicide, man!”
He stiffened. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody. Well, somebody, but I don’t remember who. It’s kinda the buzz all over.”