Extremis (2 page)

“What expendables?” McGee whispered to Li.

“Casings from your blanks; we’re actually shooting brass, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

Falco’s voice came back. “You can take off your VR rigs now. We’re shutting off the feed.”

And suddenly the world was gone: just gray static and muffled silence.
Purgatory for computers
, McGee mused, recalling his great-gramama McGee’s wondrously byzantine conviction in the particulars of the afterlife and its convoluted theology. She had been part of an obscure Christian sect—Roman Catholicism, it was called—that had all but died out with her generation.

McGee removed the VR rig—eyepieces, earplugs, mandibular vibration transducers—and stared around: the interior of the cavernous warehouse yawned back at him in its shabby emptiness. Scattered along its length were other framework sets of prefab walls and staircases, all marked with reflective and transponder-beaded tape. These were the digital guiderails upon which the computer hung and superimposed the detailed images of a virtual world. An odd collection of workers—mostly in hunter’s camos—were already folding up the constructs with the brisk efficiency of professional stagehands breaking down a set in a live theater.

Li’s voice startled him. “Hey, Sandro, you just gonna stare all day? Let’s get going.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” McGee walked over to join Li, Varazian, and Battisti in policing up their brass—well, not Battisti, since he’d been given the fireteam’s one caseless weapon. McGee snagged his helmet, helped scoop up and sort the various, mismatched cartridge casings.

“Sheesh—5.54 mm Russian. Isn’t that a…a twenty-first century round?”

“Twentieth, Alessandro,” corrected Battisti. “When you are done here, not only will you become part of an action team, but a curator of ancient weapons, no?” Battisti’s strong Hispa accent marked him as coming from the Kreta Archipelago, where many old Latin-based Terran languages were still spoken at home.

“Damn, acquiring an expertise in obsolete slug-throwers wasn’t part of
my
plan,” McGee admitted.

“Nor mine.” Varazian shrugged as he dug the last of his own 8.5 mm brass out from under the wide-footed base of a modular wall-flat. “I figured we’d spend more time training and less time cleaning the garage.”

“The garage needs cleaning every time we use it, Corporal Varazian.” The voice that came from behind them was Falco’s. They all stood, turned, and faced the captain. Although the service formalities had been extremely lax since McGee had arrived at the secret training camp yesterday, he snapped a salute now: after a combat-training exercise, it seemed to him that they
must
be on duty.

Falco noted the salute with a smile. “Leave it to the new guy to figure out we mean business up here.”

Abashed, Li, and then the other two, matched McGee’s salute.

“That’s better. And Li, since you are already a member of the Teams, you should have known better.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“That’s the last ‘sorry’ I want to hear from you, Corporal Li. You’re active now, and that means you set the pace and the example.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then carry on. Debrief in five. Don’t hold us up.”

Battisti let Falco get out of earshot before asking, “You keep secrets from your friends, Harry? When did you get word you were activated to the teams?”

“Uh…just now, when Falco said it. Damned strange notification protocol.”

McGee nodded. “Everything here seems a little strange, if you ask me.”

“Yes, it is,” agreed Li. “And nobody asked you.”

McGee smiled. “True enough. But can’t we at least practice with milspec gear? Even if it’s the old stuff?”

Li frowned. “There’s good reason we don’t, Sandro. First, we don’t have as much milspec as you might expect. Second, and more importantly, we have to save it.”

“Save it? For what?”

“For an operation that really counts. If we start using—and losing—the good gear in day-to-day harrying operations, before you know it the Baldies will have an accurate measure of what we can do and what we do it with. That’s two pieces of intel we want to hold back until the last second—so that we get them to underestimate us right when we’re ready to spring our nastiest surprise.”

“Okay—I get that, but then what’s with all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense?”

“Cloak and dagger?”

“You know, the coded invitations for these readiness assessments. The double cut-outs for sending our replies. The fact that none of us Reservists really know who’s on the faceless command staff that issues the orders and invitations. And what’s with bringing us to Upper Thessalaborea to run through these VR sims? It’s cold as hell up here.”

“And very remote.”

“Yeah—
so
remote that the extra traffic we’re putting on these backroads must be attracting the same Baldy attention HQ was trying to avoid.”

“Maybe, but the way I hear it, the Baldies don’t keep track of much that goes on beyond high population centers—particularly their own.”

Varazian nodded. “And even then, they just try to avoid us.”

“Not all the time.” McGee knew his grim tone would shatter the team’s jocular mood like a stone thrown through stained glass, but he just didn’t care. Unlike the other Reservists—who did not live next to the Baldies—Alessandro McGee knew that the alien invaders were not always so distant and aloof. It was in McGee’s own hometown of Melantho that the aliens had established their own city, had taken schoolchildren hostage, had executed noncompliant humans on the spot, and had ultimately barged unannounced into McGee’s own living room. They had snatched his beloved (and very pregnant) Jennifer right out of his arms and, almost as an afterthought, bashed around a thoroughly uncooperative McGee—enough to put him in the hospital for two weeks.

The group had grown quiet: they all knew the story. Quite possibly, it was known to every member of the Resistance by now. Battisti rubbed his hands on his coveralled knees. “We are done policing the practice area. Let us go to the debriefing.”

“Yes, let’s,” said Light Horse, who reached up to put a gentle hand on McGee’s very large shoulder. “Ready to go, Tank?”

“Ready to kill some Baldies,” McGee amended.

“Ultimately, I think that’s the key requisite,” Li affirmed with a nod. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Van Felsen stood almost inhumanly straight—possibly because she was almost comically short. “Brothers and sisters in arms, congratulations on your activation, and welcome to the special action teams.”

Those who had already earned these honors—seated around the periphery of the small prefab cafeteria/auditorium—applauded long and seriously. No wild enthusiasm, no catcalls: this was a commission to actively and aggressively kill alien invaders, not a fraternity initiation, and the somber tone was a reminder of the mortal resolve that bound them together.

Besides, McGee reflected with a quick glance at the doors leading to the parking lot, a full third of the invitees had been sent their way with thanks, confirmation of their status as alternates, and new orders for their local Resistance cells. But they left without the honor of having been officially reactivated for military service—and without the proud encumbrance of the many duties, risks, and responsibilities attached thereto.

Van Felsen let the applause die before continuing. “So, now down to business, ladies and gentlemen. Most of you are Marines, since that’s what our world specializes in producing at Camp Gehenna—our little vacation spot in the Charybdis Islands.” A few chuckles, and a few reminiscing groans, were elicited by her reference to the sun-scorched, basalt-fanged, insect-plagued expanse that was the Bellerophon Arm’s primary Marine training camp. “However, until such time as Allied fleet elements make a permanent return to this system, all activated personnel are under a joint services command, invoked under the authority of Article Seventeen, paragraph three of the Rim Federation’s Code of Military Procedures. No matter your original branch of service, rank structures will follow Marine norms. Accordingly, rank equivalencies will be issued to anyone coming to us from other services before you leave this facility. In all cases, so as to maintain the continuity of our prewar command structure, all reactivated personnel will assume a temporary rank equal to that which they held when they mustered out of active service.”

A few surprised noises—including a few grumbles—arose.

Van Felsen snapped into a stiffer, and decidedly fiercer, posture. “Stow that. I know that some of you—particularly those who’ve been in the Reserves for a long time—are going to lose a lot of rank. Here’s my message to you: you’re here to serve, not be served. And I can’t have a person who’s climbed up to major in the Reserves, but who hasn’t been qualified on new Marine gear in ten years, commanding folks who were active when the Baldies showed up. It’s not practical, and it will get people killed. As it is, we’re going to have a lot of Reserve officers who, as staff sergeants, will be issuing orders to twenty-four-year-old corporals. Problem is, those corporals have already forgotten more about the latest milspec gear than any preinvasion weekend warrior ever got the chance to learn.” The room was decidedly reserved—particularly when she used the term “weekend warrior.”

“And if I’ve said anything that offends you,” she went on, steering straight into the eye of the potential storm of resentment, “then you can do this unit a favor by letting us know, and we will accommodate your wishes—and escort your sorry, ego-bruised asses right off these premises. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” came the mollified mumble.

“Either you are mute or I am deaf. I’ll ask it one more time. Is that
clear?
”

“Sir,
yes
,
SIR
.”

Van Felsen—who could barely see over the top of the lectern—smiled. “That’s better. You almost sound like a bunch of leathernecks who are ready to march on hell itself—and whom I might consent to lead down that fiery hole. Is that who you are?”

“Sir, yes,
sir
!”

She’s good
, McGee admitted, his throat raw with the primal affirmations he’d bellowed along with all the rest.

“Your orders and team rosters will be in packets passed out after this meeting. They are ‘read and burn.’ No exceptions, no excuses. Read and burn. What did I say, you knobheads?”

The answer was a chorus. “Read and burn!”

“Outstanding. I must say that today you have proved yourself to be pretty damned fine Marines—all of you, even the ‘honorary Marines’ from lesser…er, ‘other’…services.” Van Felsen smiled: it was half joke and half serious. “And since you have all been such good boys and girls, we figured we’d give you a treat and let you watch a holo before bedtime—which in your cases means a day-long drive to your scattered homes.”

“A holo? What the…?” murmured Li, who looked over at McGee, then Battista, then seemed ready to look for Varazian as well—but instead dropped his eyes. Varazian had not made the cut and was already driving home.

The murmurs of curiosity and anticipation grew louder when a decidedly archaic holoprojector—the size of a two-ton shipping container—was wheeled ponderously into the room. Van Felsen stepped away from the lectern and stood before them. “Ladies and gentlemen, this war could well be a fight to the finish. Either our efforts to communicate with the invaders are completely flawed, or they are ignoring everything we say. However, we know that they are interested in at least two things: the conquest of our worlds, and the subjugation of our populations. And once they have finished with the former objectives, we cannot know how they might deal with so many populous, captive worlds. They might allow us to live on as their slaves”—

A grim atavistic rumble arose.

—“or they might simply want us out of the way. We can’t tell which, but the Baldies do seem both amoral and eminently practical. So unless they have some purpose for us in their vision of a postwar scenario, it is possible that their picture of the endgame is a picture in which humanity no longer appears.”

The silence was absolute, tense. McGee looked to either side, saw lips stretched back from teeth, knotted hands, rigid shoulders. He looked down, saw his own immense fists clenched into white weapons of alien annihilation.
Okay, so I guess I look like the rest of my mates right about now. Nothing wrong with that.

“The holo you are about to see is self-explanatory. For sake of clarity, I will say what I should not need to. Under no circumstances are you to divulge the specific or even general content of this communiqué or its existence. Please give it your full attention.”

As if she had to ask for it
, thought McGee, who, with dozens of others, craned his neck to see what he knew must be coming: a face and a voice from human space, from beyond the warp points that led out of Bellerophon.

But neither he nor anyone else in the room was prepared for what they saw: the stationary head-and-shoulders figure of a young man—unthinkably young for all the chest-borne fruit salad that bespoke several decades of campaigns, decorations, and ascension through the general ranks. But stranger still was his face—a face so young, and yet so oddly familiar. Viewing it left McGee with the same haunting disorientation he had felt when seeing teenage and college pictures of a friend he had only known as an adult. This was no different: his brain struggled to connect the young, unfamiliar features to the more mature face of a person he knew now.…

And McGee suddenly knew who, impossibly, he was looking at—in the same moment that Li and Igor Danilenko hesitantly murmured the corresponding name: “Trevayne?”

Other voices took it up hesitantly. “Trevayne? Ian Trevayne?”

“But he’s…he’s dead. Killed at Zapata, eighty years ago.”

“Naw—not dead. They stuck him in suspended animation.”

“Like I said, he’s
dead
. Those meat-lockers are death traps. Everyone knows it.”

“Yeah, well, there he is.”

“Nah, can’t be. That guy is too young,
way
too young. Wasn’t he something like, eh, one hundred forty when he—?”

Van Felsen cleared her throat. “Admiral Ian Trevayne, who fought for and saved the Rim Federation during the—secession—of the Terran Republic, was in fact severely wounded during the war’s concluding engagement, the legendary Battle of Zapata. His body was cryogenically preserved against the hope that one day medical science might advance to the point where it could repair his injuries. While we do not have the details on how that has been accomplished, or why he appears so young, we have confirmed that this is indeed Ian Trevayne, not a modified image or holosim representation of him.”