LITMIR.BIZ

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last time he hit you … if there’d been a cop in the living room that time, or even a security robot, recording what happened, do you think he would have touched you?”

      “That’s not—”

       “Would he have hit you if anyone was there?”

      She struggled with the thought for a moment. “Well … no.”

      “Then he can control himself. Don’t you see? He hits you because he can, because he knows he can get away with it, and it’s a way of exercising power. And it’s not just the hitting. Words can hurt as much as fists sometimes, you know? What the downloads I’ve been looking at call emotional abuse. And the way he spies on us, tries to go through our private cyberfiles …” John shook his head, feeling desperate. “That’s why I’ve got to leave, now. I just can’t take it any longer. If I don’t leave now—”

      “I know, son. I want you to go.”

      “But I don’t want to abandon you.”

      “You’re not. I told you to go, didn’t I?” She managed a smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been thinking … I’ve been thinking about my sister in San Diego, maybe going up and seeing her.”

      “If you do, Mom, don’t come back. Please?”

      “We’ll see. As for you … you’ll be careful?”

      “As careful as they’ll let me be.”

      “It’s just that … Wouldn’t the Navy be … well … cleaner?”

      He laughed. “No muddy foxholes on a high guard cruiser, that’s for sure. But, no. I’ve wanted to go with the Corps ever since I read Ocher Sands.” He’d liked the downloaded drama so much that he’d bought the hardcopy book as well. He’d been enticed by the fact that it was about his great-grandfather, “Sands of Mars Garroway,” and his grandmother, Caitlin. But he’d been permanently hooked by the tales of Marine men and women serving off-world, on the moon, Mars, and the Jovian satellites.

      “I hear it’s awfully hard. The training, I mean.”

      He reached down, picked up a flat stone the size of the palm of his hand, and sent it skipping out across the waves three … four … a fifth skip before it sank. “Yeah. And I’ll tell you the truth, Mom. I don’t know if I can cut it. But I know I have to try.”

      “I imagine with that kind of attitude, you’ll make it. I’m proud of you, Johnny.”

      “Thanks, Mom. Are you … you’re sure you’ll be all right?”

      “I’ll be fine. Will you be okay?”

      “Sure! Plenty of fresh air and exercise? Plenty to eat? And plenty of friendly, helpful drill instructors to remind me of Dad in his more emotional moments, just so I don’t get homesick.” He didn’t add that Lynnley would be there too. His mom knew he and Lynnley had been seeing each other, but he didn’t think she would understand their pact. She might think he was joining the Marines just because Lynn was joining, and that wasn’t the way things were at all.

      “One question, son.”

      “Shoot.”

      “Do you still want to be assigned to space duty?”

      “Well … sure. I’ll take SMF if it’s offered. That’s where the real excitement’s at, you know.”

      She made a face. “Yes. I know. But you might be gone … a long time.”

      “Probably. A couple of years, maybe, for a hitch on Mars. That’s not so bad.” He hadn’t told her that he’d already dreamsheeted for Space Marine Force duty with the recruiter. Not that he was all that likely to land a space billet, but he wanted the chance, and bringing that bit of news into the conversation would … complicate things.

      “Let’s just wait and see what happens, okay?” he told her.

      She smiled. “Okay.”

      They turned around and began strolling back up the beach toward the steps leading up the cliffs to the house.

      IP Packet Osiris

       En route, Mars to Earth

       1847 hours Zulu

      Dr. Traci Hanson was still furious, two days after she’d left Mars. How dare they interrupt her work at Cydonia? There couldn’t be anything so demanding of her particular attention and expertise back home that warranted dragging her away from the Cydonian xenocomplex, to say nothing of the sheer, insane cost of stuffing her on board a constant-g packet that would have her back on Earth within a week.

      “The hell of it is,” she growled at one of her cabin mates, “the institute ordered me home, but I think your people are pulling the strings.” She was lying on her couch, flat on her back and feeling miserable.

      Gunnery Sergeant Athena Horst snorted. “Who? The Corps?”

      “No. The Pentagon. The government. Hell, whoever it is who’s running the show these days.”

      “You didn’t do so hot in civics in school, did you, babe?”

      “Only the federal government can afford to give us a cruise back to Earth in such luxury,” Hanson said with a sneer, glancing around the cramped, gray-green compartment that was quarters to her and three Marines for the duration.

      “Well, they’re not my people. We’re as much in the dark about this redeployment as you are.”

      “I was talking with Lieutenant Kerns a little while ago,” Staff Sergeant Krista Ostergaard put in. “The scuttlebutt is that we’re being reassigned to a new mission. An out-Solar mission.”

      “That means Llalande,” Master Sergeant Vanya Barnes said. “Shit.”

      “You don’t want to go to the stars, Van?” Ostergaard said.

      “I don’t want to be gone twenty years.”

      Horst shrugged. “Hell, why not? The time’ll pass like that,” she snapped her fingers, “thanks to old Einstein. And it’s not like we have families back home.”

      “The Corps is home,” Ostergaard said.

      “Fuckin’-A,” Horst said, and she exchanged a high-five hand slap with Ostergaard. “Semper fi!”

      Hanson frowned and looked away. She was uncomfortable with these women, with the posing and the brassy-cold hardness of body and of mind that she was coming to associate with all of the members of this peculiar subspecies of human known as U.S. Marines.

      The Osiris was a small vessel, mounting an eighty-five-ton hab module normally outfitted for eight people, two to a cabin, not counting the AIs at the controls. A small lounge area, a galley, and the communications suite completed the amenities. For this passage, though, the admin constellation of Marines on board, composed of six women and six men, had been packed into the four compartments, with the one extra slot—for the ship’s sole civilian passenger—provided in the lounge. Hanson had been given a choice of sleeping there or in one of the two compartments assigned to the women. She’d chosen to share quarters because the lounge, which connected all four cabins and the galley, was less than private, with Marines of both sexes tramping through at all hours of the vessel’s artificial day and night.

      She’d begun regretting the decision within hours of boosting out of Mars orbit. These female Marines made her nervous with their bad-ass attitudes and nanosculpted bodies. They were rough, strong, and as foul-mouthed as their male Marine counterparts, flat-chested and hard-muscled, with technically enhanced eyes that seemed to look right through her.

      They’d been polite enough, true, but her forced incarceration had left her irritable and sour. She was at least a borderline claustrophobe, and none of the compartments on board

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