“That’s okay,” Mimi said, walking past. She paused, though, and turned back. “Why do they call you Two-Gun?”
“That’s a long story, ma’am,” Berg said.
“Maybe another time, then,” Mimi said. “Later.”
“…And Tuffy’s on board,” Berg said, excitedly. “Tuffy!”
“Oh, God, Two-Gun, not again,” Drago said, yanking the arm module out.
“But it’s Tuffy!” Berg explained to his satisfaction.
“My sister has one of those dolls,” Crowley said. “So what?”
“Tuffy’s an alien, right?” Hatt asked.
“Nobody really knows what Tuffy is,” Berg said. “Big explosion. The Chen Event.”
“I’m from Florida,” Jaen said, his jaw flexing. “I had family in Boca Raton.”
The entire area for fifty miles around Boca Raton was still a no-go zone. One of the Looking Glasses had, apparently, let through something. That was all anyone could determine about it. But the something had driven everyone for fifty miles around incurably insane. Most had died in the zone since it was impenetrable. Scientists were still, cautiously, trying to determine what was going on in the Boca Zone but so far had come up with nothing beyond… something.
“Sorry,” Berg said. “Didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, I didn’t really know them all that well,” Jaen admitted. “But I know about the Chen Event. We all know. It’s a toss-up which you remember better, 9/11 or the Chen Event.”
“Chen Event,” Drago said. “I was in school on 9/11. I never even heard about it till I got home. The Chen Event, though, I was over at my buddy Tom’s house, playing Counter-Strike. Guy pinged in on us and we spent the rest of the day watching TV.”
“You didn’t stay up long enough,” Berg said. “Who survived the Chen Event?”
“Oh, lots of people,” Jaen said. “I mean they were pulling survivors out of the rubble…”
“No, I mean up close.”
“Nobody,” Drago said. “No, wait…”
“One person, Mimi Jones,” Berg said. “She lived less than a half mile from the explosion.”
“Oh, I remember her,” Jaen said. “That’s her? I never believed it. No way she could have lived. I mean that’s not inside the primary blast radius, but it was totally flattened. No way to live.”
“But she did,” Berg said. “No question about that. No other way for her to get where she was when she turned up. And she turned up with Tuffy. Nobody, absolutely nobody, knows who or what Tuffy is. The speculation is that Mimi got sucked out of the universe and Tuffy came back with her.”
“A stuffed doll?” Drago said. “Pull the other one, Two-Gun.”
“I got real interested in all this stuff,” Berg said. “I figured we were going to be fighting the Dreen forever and I already knew I wanted to be a Marine. So I was going to be fighting the Dreen. I wanted to know what I was going to be fighting.”
“Hell is what,” Top said. “You’d be fighting hell. Got that T-shirt.”
As usual the first sergeant had appeared as if teleporting.
“Sorry, Top,” Jaen said. “We’re working.”
“I know,” Top said. “What’s this about Tuffy and Miss Jones?”
“I…” Berg paused and shrugged. “I’ve got one of those Google search things set up for Tuffy. There have been at least six breakthroughs in technology in the last two years credited to Mimi and Tuffy. There wasn’t anything on them for a few years; they just dropped off the radar screen. Then they start turning up fixing tech issues. Now they’re here. I’m sorry, Top, that’s just damned cool.”
“Yes, it is,” Top said. “For general information, it was Miss Jones who pointed out that there might be problems with exiting the system and helped with figuring out how to overcome them. Bright young lady. Emphasis on young. You don’t joke with her, you don’t chat with her, you sure as hell don’t flirt with her. And remember that the abilities of that thing on her shoulder are unknown but are known to include defensive capabilities. Frankly, Tuffy could probably kill you by looking at you. In other words, keep your dicks in your pants where they belong. Are we all clear here?”
“Clear, Top,” the group chorused.
“Drago, what are the characteristics of a fermion?”
“Fermions are subatomic particles with half integer spin and follow Fermi-Dirac statistics — whatever the hell that is.” Drago said.
“What is important about fermions other than mesons?”
“A fermion particle composed of three quarks is a baryon,” Drago spouted. “A baryon cannot form Bose-Einstein condensates and under normal conditions has a high… breakdown rate.”
“The term you were looking for is degradation,” Top said. “But breakdown shows you understand what it means so that’s good enough. If you detect these fermions what are the possible indicators… Hatt?”
“It means that fermion production is occurring in the immediate area,” Hatt said. “So there’s something making fermions.”
“What could make fermions?” Top asked.
“Uh…” Hatt said, blinking furiously. “Well, Top, a quarkium drive. But then you’d probably get pentaquarks, too. And… neutrinos. Just fermions? I’m not sure, Top. I’d have to kick that one up.”
“I’d probably kick it up, too,” the first sergeant said. “But one answer is a properly tuned Higgs boson. They can generate tuned fermions. They’re where we get the quarks for the quarkium drive and the mesons that power the warp drive.”
“So if we detect fermions there’s a Higgs boson nearby, Top?” Drago asked.
“One that’s been tuned to produce them,” Powell said, nodding. “In their normal state they mostly generate a stream of muons. Primarily in the direction of the nearest unlinked Higgs that matches their spin-state. So if you get a sudden stream of muons—”
“There’s a steady state Higgs that is trying to link,” Jaen said. “I’m beginning to see why we’re studying this stuff, First Sergeant.”
“Because you’re Space Marines,” Powell said, grinning. “It’s a lot more than just hitting the beach shouting ‘Oorah!’ But you’ve got to be able to do that, too.”
“Okay, who knew Top had a physics degree?” Crowley said as soon as the first sergeant was gone.
“He doesn’t,” Jaen said. “He’s got a masters in international relations.”
“You’re maulking me,” Lujan said.
“Straight up,” Jaen replied. “Now ask me where it’s from.”
“I’ll bite,” Berg said.
“Sorbonne.”
“No grapping way,” Berg said, shaking his head.
“What the grapp is a Sorbonne?” Drago said. “It sounds like a pastry.”
“Close,” Jaen said. “It’s a university in Paris.”
“One of the oldest in the world,” Berg said. “I mean, it makes having a Harvard degree look like old news.”
“What in the grapp is he doing as a first sergeant?” Crowley asked.
“Welcome to the Space Mushrooms,” Jaen, Hatt and Berg chorused.
“How do I get out of this egghead outfit?”
“God almighty I’m grapping bored,” Sergeant Lovelace said, lowering the weights slowly.
PT was a requirement every day. The ship’s reduced gravitational level had a tendency to cause loss of muscle mass, fast. Working out was even more of a necessity than in a normal duty station.
“Don’t let Top hear you say that,” Jaenisch replied. “He will find a way to keep us occupied. Got it.”