Chapter 3

It was during Gath’s third week at CVS that he finally got a taste of why everyone hated the homeland and the homebodies so much. Up to this point, his outlook on his job and his colleagues had been steadily improving and he was actually starting to like being there. Though everyone was still calling him “groundie” or “ting” or “the TNG”, it was generally not quite as venomous or contemptuous as it had been in those first days. Indeed, among his peers—Medics Bong, Sax, and Zen—he was starting to fit in rather well. He was a competent medic—new and green, of course, but then none of them were terribly far removed from that distinction themselves—he did not complain about the tasks given to him and he did not get offended by their teasing. And then, of course, there was his cooking. The cooking certainly helped break the ice a little faster than it otherwise might have fractured on its own.

Using the frozen meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, egg and cheese proteins, and the grilling apparatus for the wired stove, Gath had taken to cooking fresh breakfasts down in the medical clinic in the hour before it officially opened. At first this was just so he could avoid the horrid cafeteria food the spacies ate, and at first it was only on his own clinic days. And then one day Bong and Zen stopped in early to finish up some reports from a deployment they had done the previous day and had watched, fascinated, as he concocted a breakfast burrito out of egg protein, shredded cheese protein, pork protein he had ground up and spiced the day before, and homemade tortillas he had made out of flour from the BX. To them—to most spacies in fact—the word “cooking” was not even in their vocabulary and they did not understand why someone would waste so much time heating up food and mixing it into exact proportions when the roach pit staff, with the help of the roach pit machines, could do the same thing without any individual effort expended.

They learned why when he offered some of his burritos to them. They were hesitant to try them at first, their concerns the same as that shared by Corporal Relish when he offered her that first sandwich—namely that he was using real meat and real dairy protein. After he assured them that his people—the Britannians—had not killed a single animal for food or eaten a single actual egg or milked so much as a single Diphen muskox during their entire colonization history, they accepted what he was offering and took their first tentative bites. After that, they were hooked, as addicted to his cooking as the Diphen dust addicts were to their illegal mix of agricultural chemicals. Now, every morning before clinic opening, all four CVS medics and usually the med tech assigned for the day would show up to indulge themselves in whatever his latest creation was. They had even started chipping in a few credits to him to help him pay for the ingredients.

On this day—his first day of reckoning, as he would later think of it—he was making chili omelets. The griddle was set up on one of the treatment tables and arrayed around him were bowls of liquid egg protein, shredded cheddar cheese, chopped onions, and a bowl of homemade chili he had prepared for his dinner the previous night. When the grill was heated to precisely 160 degrees, he poured a healthy dose of egg protein onto it and let it sizzle to a firm consistency.

“Who’s up for the first one?” he asked as he dolloped the chili across half of the egg surface.

“I’m the clinic medic,” said Sax. “That puts me in charge and I say I’m first.”

There was some protest at this statement, but Gath bowed to authority. “Onions or no onions, Sax?” he asked.

“Onions, definitely,” Sax said. “Lots of onions.”

“You know, it’s funny,” said Bong as Gath sprinkled a liberal amount of onions over the top of the chili and then added some cheese. “I always thought onions were just a spice that got mixed with salt. I didn’t know they were an actual plant.”

“They grow pretty good ones on Mars,” Gath said as he folded the omelet over and pressed down on it with the carbon composite spatula. “They have a nice bite when you chop them.” He turned to the med tech for the day, a skinny corporal named Riffy Zalenstein. “How’s that toast coming, Riff?”

“Got two slices done,” he replied from his position near the makeshift toaster that Gath had made out of parts from an old towel warmer.

“Put lots of butter on mine,” Sax told him.

“Put your own torkin’ butter on,” Riff said indignantly.

“Put my own butter on?” Sax returned. “What kind of torkin’ place you running here, anyway, groundie?”

Gath chuckled as he carefully flipped the omelet over to let it cook on the other side. When the cheese was melted to his satisfaction, he lifted it off the grill and put it on a disposable hemp paper plate. “Here you go, Sax,” he said. “Enjoy.”

“Thanks, groundie,” Sax said, taking it and snatching the two pieces of wheat toast from Rif.

“My pleasure,” Gath said, picking up the bowl of egg protein and pouring some more on the grill. Just as it was hardening up enough to put on the chili, the hall door slid open and supervising medic Cooler came strolling in, his white shirt fairly gleaming in the overhead lights. He looked at the gathered group and shook his head in consternation.

“Didn’t I tell you people that you can’t operate a roach pit in the medical clinic?” he asked.

They looked at each other with mock innocence for a moment and then shrugged.

“I don’t remember you saying anything like that, Coolio,” Bong answered.

“Whoever damn it!” he said. “It was just two days ago I told you that! And you all promised you would never do it again!”

“No need to take the savior’s name in vain,” Sax admonished.

“I don’t remember that conversation at all,” Bong said. “Do any of you humes remember it?”

No one professed to having any memory of such an event.

“You sure you didn’t dream that slag, Coolio?” asked Zen, a smirk on his face.

“Yes, I’m sure I didn’t dream that slag!” he yelled. “Now get this thing turned off and out of here!”

“Will do, sup,” Gath said as he ladled on the chili. “But let me finish up these omelets first. It wouldn’t really be fair to cook Sax one but no one else, would it?”

“That’s ‘supervising medic Cooler’,” he barked.

“Oh yeah, sorry,” Gath said. “I keep forgetting.”

“Everybody keeps forgetting my title,” he grunted. “And I’m getting sick of it. I don’t want to have to make a report on the mispropriety to the captain, but I will!”

“Is ‘mispropriety’ really a word?” Bong asked. “I ain’t ever heard that used in a sentence before you just...”

“Yes, it’s a word!” he said.

“Hey, you want an omelet, sup?” Gath asked. “I’ll fire one up for you.”

“No, I do not want an omelet,” he said.

“That’s a shame,” Sax said around a mouthful of his. “It’s pretty good slag.”

“They have food in the roach pit!” Cooler cried, quite exasperated. “It’s free food! Why do you insist on preparing food in the medical clinic? I don’t understand.”

“The groundie’s food is better than the food in the pit,” Bong explained. “A lot better.”

Cooler still did not understand. To a spacie, the very idea that food from one source could be better than food from another source was foreign—at least until the spacie tried the food from the better source, which, in the case of Cooler, he refused to do. It was probably for the better. The last thing they needed was Weasel hanging out with them every morning.

“We’ll clean everything up before the clinic opens,” Gath told him. “We always do.”

“And don’t do it again,” Cooler insisted. “I’m telling you, if this happens again, I will be forced to inform the captain.”

“Understood, sup,” Gath assured him.

“That’s ‘supervising medic Cooler’,” he said. “Why do I have to keep telling you that?”

“Oh yeah, sorry,” Gath said mechanically.

“Don’t let these un-contents corrupt you, Medic Stoner,” Cooler warned.

“You mean malcontents?” Gath asked.

“Whatever!” he, barked. “Heed my warnings! I’m warning you!” With that, he stormed out, making no mention of whatever it was that had brought him in in the first place

“I love that hume,” Gath said, shaking his head and chuckling.

“You do?” asked Bong.

“I do,” he said. “He’s like a character in a holo story, one that you think the author might have overdone a little, that no one would believe could really exist ... except he’s real.”

They all pondered that thought while Gath served up the next omelet and then started prepping for the next one.

“Incoming priority message,” barked Commy from over in the corner.

Everyone glanced in that direction. Sax, who by now was about half through his omelet, finished one more bite and then set the plate down on the edge of a treatment chair. He walked over to the com computer to answer the call. As was typical when there was an incoming communication, particularly a priority message, everyone quieted down and paid attention. It could be anything from an injured marine out on the exercise yard to a full-blown invasion of the base by hostile homers.

“Medic Ender here, Commy,” Sax said. “Go ahead and open the link.”

“Link open,” Commy said.

The holo of Lieutenant Sparksafroth, the OD, appeared on the stage. His face seemed a bit strained and distracted.

“Medic Ender, duty medic here,” Sax said. “Go ahead, el-tee.”

“Hey, Sax,” Sparky said. “We got a little situation brewing over near the eastern edge of the valley outside Folsom. Some of the mountain homers are attacking in strength at an outpost of the Norcal homers. Looks like multi-platoon strength, armed with clubs and cutting weapons. The group they’re heading for is a bunch of dirt poor civilians. The captain wants us to intervene, so we’re sending a squad over there.”

This drew a cynical frown from Sax. “Why that’s awfully nice of us,” he said. “What do you need?”

“One medic for deployment,” he said. “Have him or her meet us in the hangar in twenty minutes, ready to roll out.”

“You got it,” Sax said.

The holo disappeared as the communication was ended.

“Ting, you’re up for deployment, aren’t you?” Sax asked.

“Yes,” Gath said, excited at the thought. He had been out on a few overwatch assignments but those had all been routine and boring. This would be his first non-routine deployment. “I’ll get suited up.”

“I can take it for you if you want to finish breakfast,” said Bong.

“No no,” he protested immediately. “I’m up for it. I’ll go.”

“But what about my omelet?” pouted Zen.

“You can make it yourself,” Gath suggested. “It’s not that hard. You just...”

“Me make it?” Zen said, as if Gath had suggested she sprout wings and fly around the room.

“Or ... you can go to the pit and grab something from them,” he amended.

“The pit food is horrible though,” said Zen.

Gath smiled at her. “Zen, you have no idea how much of a compliment you just gave me.”

While everyone except Sax and Bong pondered their upcoming roach pit breakfast, Gath walked over to the locker and checked out one of the medic packs. Designed to be dropped over the top of deployment armor, thus distributing weight across the shoulders, the pack held twenty kilograms worth of medical equipment and supplies. The critical, life-saving supplies were in the front pouches where they could be easily reached without removing the vest, and the orthopedic and minor injury repair supplies were in the rear compartments, where someone else, like a med tech, would have to remove them if the pack was not taken off first.

He dropped the medic pack over his head and headed for the back door to the clinic.

“Be careful out there, groundie,” Bong called after him. “These interventions can be nasty.”

“Will do,” he said, waving at them as he went through the door and headed upstairs to get geared up.

In keeping with the tradition of absolute paranoia at the thought of premature death, a considerable amount of materials technology, engineering, and innovation had gone into the basic suit of atmospheric armor. The primary armor shell consisted of two sections, one for the torso and arms and one for the legs, which were connected together at the waist by a chemically reactive junction called a magic seal. The armor was made of lightweight smart carbon composites that were pliable when in the normal, inactive state, but more rigid and resistant to penetration than steel when activated. A multitude of sensors in the lower layers of the material were able to sense the first touch of a fast-moving projectile, or a pressure wave from an explosion, or the blade of a cutting object, or the edge of a club, and send a signal to a central processor that would activate the armor in less than two milliseconds—more than enough time to prevent penetration by even the fastest moving object and to spread its kinetic energy out along a broad area instead in one place. The outer layers of the armor material—like the covering of the medical pack, or the marine’s combat packs, or the engineer’s survey packs—were chameleon weave material that was dark gray when inactive but able to perfectly match the surrounding environment when activated and powered up.

It took Gath three minutes to don his armor. First came the under gear, a light synthetic cotton piece that covered him from neck to toe, leaving only his head protruding. This layer had a condom catheter that connected to his penis to drain his urine away, a ‘slag catcher’ device that vacuum sealed to his anus for solid waste removal, and more than a dozen kilometers of embedded microtubules filled with a liquid known as aqueous ethylene trichloramine, or AET. The AET was a heat transference medium that could carry away excess body head in hot conditions or deliver heat in cold conditions. A central tube, three millimeters in diameter, led away from the under gear at navel level and would plug into the power and communication interface on the main armor for circulation of the fluid.

The torso and leg sections were put on next and then sealed together. Then came the boots, which were made of yet another thick layer of pliable carbon fiber and covered with chameleon weave. The gloves went on next and then the urine and feces tubes were plugged into waste packs in concealed pockets on the legs. The solid waste pack could be removed and discarded when full and then replaced by another. The urine pack, on the other hand, was actually a recycling component that would remove the water from the urine and return it, as well as some of the potassium and sodium, to the drinking water tank installed on the back of the armor. With this feature a healthy person in good physical shape whose body was being kept at a nice steady temperature by the heat transferring microtubules, could stay in the suit four or five metric days without running out of drinking water. And with food packs and the ability to resupply water to the tank, the theoretical length of time one could remain in the suit stretched to weeks, maybe even a cycle.

Gath plugged in the P&C unit and connected the AET tubing. Instantly he felt the coolness spreading throughout his body, taking away the heat he was accumulating. He picked up the helmet and put it on as well. The helmet was an extra thick collection of permanently rigid carbon fiber layers designed to protect the skull and the precious brain enclosed within it from any conceivable insult. There were no eye slits or openings on the helmet, just a camera system. All was dark in his vision until the helmet snapped into place and started receiving power from the P&C through a series of redundant connectors. The view screens came to life, showing him a three-dimensional, high definition view before him. With voice commands to his P&C module, he could zoom the view in and out, look at tactical maps that would float in the air before him, even mate his view to that of another member of the squad, thus seeing what they were seeing in real time.

He looked left and right, forward and backward, checking the helmet fittings and the electrical connections. Everything seemed as it should be. He then stood before his view screen, which was showing the view of the empty airfield, as instructed.

He pushed the external transmit button on the P&C interface. “Rezzy, switch view screen to mirror mode,” he said.

“You got it, Gath,” Rezzy replied, changing the view.

He was now looking at himself in reflection mode. He could see why many of the homebodies thought that they were inhuman. In full armor, which was the only way the homebodies ever saw them, the effect was to look robotic and alien, with no mouth or nose visible and the only thing resembling eyes a six-centimeter strip of slightly contrasting gray that stretched across the front of the helmet.

“Switch to chameleon mode,” Gath told the P&C computer.

The P&C did not answer him. It simply did as it was told. In Gath’s vision there was a status display up in the upper right corner. The word ‘Cham’ suddenly blinked on in red. At the same time, he seemed to disappear in the mirror as the chameleon weave took on the appearance of what was directly behind him. From this distance the illusion was far from perfect. He could easily make out his own outline and could see the artificial nature of the camouflage pixels. Outside, however, from more than twenty or thirty meters distance and up against a background, he would be virtually invisible to unaided human eyes. He turned and looked over his back shoulder, making sure the back of the suit was working as well. It was, so he switched back to standard mode, which was the mode they stayed in for most deployments.

The last thing was his weapon. He pulled the Z-55 defensive weapon out from the storage locker and hefted it up. It was one hundred and ten centimeters long and made of carbon composite coated with chameleon weave and powered by its own internal power unit. The stock was a thin frame that allowed it to be socked into the shoulder for firing.

The 55’s primary engagement device, effective up to five hundred meters, was a directed microwave transmitter known as the pain maker, or painer, which would cause intense and usually incapacitating pain to any organic life with a nervous system and pain receptors on its surface. The microwaves could be narrowly focused upon a single entity or set to broadly sweep across a seventy-degree arc and make an entire group or herd think twice about approaching.

The secondary engagement device was the incapacitator, or flopper. This was a weapon that would blast out an overwhelming flash of visible light that would overload the central nervous system of any organic life with working eyes and intact optic nerves, thus causing convulsions and the ten to twenty-minute recovery period that followed.

The third feature of the 55, reserved as a last ditch lethal alternative if the first two failed to stop a foe or if the power to the weapon system failed, was a standard chemical reaction projectile launcher that fired three millimeter jacketed hollow point bullets at hypersonic velocity through a rifled barrel. Inserted into the rear grip of the weapon was a magazine that held one hundred and fifty of these rounds. Two more magazines would be carried in the outer leg pockets of his armor.

Gath powered the weapon up and then mated it to his P&C by wireless signal. He put it briefly into “use” mode and a targeting rectical appeared in his vision, moving as he pointed the weapon here and there, showing where the rounds or the microwaves or the visual flash would hit if fired. Once the rectical was calibrated he put the weapon into “standby” mode and tucked it into a holster on the outside of his right leg.

He was now ready to go to work.

He walked through the hall of the residential floor, down the stairs to the main level, and into the tunnel that led to the hangar building. He passed several people on his way—a building maintenance technician, two med techs, and a marine sergeant. All gave him polite nods but no one spoke to him or seemed particularly interested that a fully armored person was wandering about.

He came up the last set of stairs and into the hangar building. In the main staging area near the primary aircraft ingress/egress doors was one of the AVTOL-60s, the smaller of the two types of aircraft in the CVS inventory. Its wing mounted tilt-rotors were both facing upward and sitting idle. A fueling hose had been run from the stored liquid hydrogen tanks on the far side of the hangar and was connected to an inlet on the right wing. The rear loading door beneath the tail was standing open, tilted down to the ground to make a ramp to the inside. Clustered around the rear were six or seven people wearing full armor identical to Gath’s. On a holo stage mounted above the staging zone, in large, three dimensional letters, floated this message:

FOLSOM INTERDICTION MISSION

COMM FREQ SAT A2

TAC FREQ SHORT C1

ID/TRACK FREQ SHORT C4, SAT TA1

Gath looked over the frequency list and then told his P&C to activate those four banks. The command frequency he placed into standby, as there was no reason for him to talk on it or monitor it unless the slag really hit the intake port and he ended up having to command the mission and speak with the OD here at CVS. The tactical frequency was the short-range UHF channel that would be used for communication between team members. He activated that one but kept it on demand transmit for now. The identification and tracking frequencies—one for short range tracking by the individual team members for each other, the other a long range, satellite based tracker that could be accessed by anyone on Earth or above it with the right equipment and the right security clearance—he activated and ordered to open transmit/receive. As soon as he did this a blue identification tag appeared above the head of every team member within his view. He saw Privates Mulholland, Sexorman, and Glibby. He saw Sergeant Lustin and Corporal Betterman—the former with an icon that indicated he (or she, sex was unidentifiable in the armor and the first name was not given) was in command. A turn of his head revealed Corporal Relish, the surly med tech from his first day at the clinic. A red cross icon next to her name indicated she was a med tech. Gath knew that there would be a star of life next to his name in the other team member’s views, indicating he was the medic.

He walked toward the gathering group, opening the transmit link on the tactical frequency by pushing the transmit button on the bottom of his helmet.

“Medic Stoner, reporting in,” he said.

“You’re loud and clear, groundie,” said the voice of Sergeant Lustin—it was a female voice, gruff, commanding, spaceborn. “How am I?”

“Loud and clear as well, sarge,” he returned.

“Anyone not hear the groundie?” Lustin asked the group at large.

No one replied, which meant that everyone had heard him and his communication link was patent.

The rest of the marine squad came wandering in over the next five minutes until all ten were present. Sergeant Lustin then called them all into a circle with tactical channels all in open transmit/receive for a mission briefing.

“Okay, humes,” she said, her voice with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “This is what we got. An ob-sat in low orbit picked up movement of a multi-platoon force of homers moving out of the foothills above Folsom and heading toward a known concentration of antagonistic homers that are clustered in the ruins of a residential area just outside of Folsom.

“The two groups we’re talking about here are the mountain homers and the Norcals. The mountain homers are just that. They live in the foothills and the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, subsisting on wild plants and hunting animals for food.”

“Flesh eaters,” said one of the marines—a male named Private Lipton. “Those torkers creep me out.”

“No slag,” agreed Corporal Betterman.

“The mountain people,” Lustin continued, “live mostly outside of our care. They take none of the food, clothing, or trinkets we provide the homers, at least not directly. They do steal some from the other homers, usually the Norcal civilians on the fringes of the territory, and usually by force. This bunch are staggeringly ignorant and sickly. Their literacy rate is absolute zero and their infant mortality rate is up around five hundred per thousand live births. They live in simple shelters they build out of harvested timber and the hides of deer and wild dogs. Their weapons are simple—spears, mechanical launched arrows with bone heads on them, and clubs—but they are vicious to anyone they consider their enemy; and that most certainly includes us.

“The Norcals we all know. They’re the tattooed freaks who constitute the majority of the homers in this AOR. The group that the mountain people are heading for are probably not members of their military. Intel has determined that the only homers who live in this section of the AOR are members of the gathering class, which is the lowest of the official citizens of Norcal. They are a semi-nomadic bunch that moves around from ruins to ruins harvesting carbon composites like old water pipes, electrical conduits, and pieces of walls and flooring. They trade these to the merchant classes in Sacramento for currency that they use to buy the food and trinkets that we provide. These are usually multi-family groups that are just large enough to have genetic diversity when they breed with each other. And every one of them above the age of thirteen or so will be armed with what they call a ‘long-shooter’, which is a projectile weapon that chemically fires lead slugs.”

“And they’re pretty torkin’ good with those things,” said Corporal Relish. “They can pot you pretty accurately up to three hundred meters.”

“Yes,” said Lipton, nodding. “The projectiles will not penetrate your armor but they do pack quite a punch, especially at close range. And most of them carry carbon fiber bayonets on the end of their long shooters. Do not let one get close enough to you to take a stab with one of those things as they could theoretically penetrate the armor if they hit you in just the right place at just the right speed.

“Our mission is to try to interdict and force these two groups apart. We’ll do what we can from the air, but time is short and they may already be in contact with each other. Odds are we’re going to have to put feet on the ground and get close and personal with the homers. The goal is to drive the mountain people back up toward the mountains.

“Betterman, you’re in charge of Team Angle. You take Mulholland, Sexorman and Glibby.”

“Oorah,” Betterman said.

“Vizzle,” Lustin said, nodding toward another corporal. “You have team Billion with Restring, Goodshake, and Lipton.”

“Oorah,” said Vizzle.

“Me, Relish and the groundie will stay airborne unless we’re needed. Relish, you take primary pilot duty and I’ll handle weapons.”

“Oorah,” said Relish.

“Groundie, hopefully we won’t need you at all, but be prepared for some serious slag. Sometimes these interdictions get ugly.”

“Oorah,” Gath said. He had learned on his previous overwatch assignments that he was supposed to say that when acknowledging something or agreeing with something, even though he was not a marine and was not quite sure what it meant.

“That’s all I got for now,” Lustin said. “Let’s get loaded up and in the air. Flight time is only about seven minutes.”

They loaded up, walking two by two up the ramp and into the belly of the AVTOL. The cargo compartment was set up for just that: cargo. There were no seats or restraint harnesses. Still, it was spacious enough, with room to transport an entire platoon if necessary, though that would be rather cramped. There was no separation between the flight deck and the cargo area, though a partition could be installed relatively easily. The view screens on the sides, rear, and front of the compartment were currently off since the AVTOL’s engines were off, making it dim and cavelike as they entered and settled into spots.

Gath sat against the left side wall, just behind the piloting seat. No one sat immediately next to him. He was unsurprised and unoffended. He was an outsider in a tightly knit squad of combat marines and a groundborn outsider at that. He had yet to prove himself to them. Until then, he would sit alone.

Corporal Relish and Sergeant Lustin were the last to enter the aircraft. Relish sat in the left hand seat—the primary piloting position. Lustin sat in the identical right side seat, where she would control the external weaponry of the aircraft but could also take over piloting if needed. Piloting an AVTOL was not a highly skilled endeavor that required specialized and specific training. Gath was even checked out on AVTOL operations and could fly the mission if needed. The computer, after all, did most of the work and the most taxing thing the pilot ever had to do was adjust a speed dial and operate a joystick. And that was only during specific maneuvers. Most of the time you just told the computer where you wanted to go and what altitude you wanted to fly and it did it itself.