Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 5

Madge shook her head in exaggerated disdain, flinging her long hair out behind her. "It's no use, Cris, he can't help it. It's because Instructor Rekka and Senior Instructor Nhlappo are both women." She leaned over the table, shoving her face against Arun's. "Admit it, you can't handle being given orders by a woman."

"Yes, I can."

"There's nothing to be ashamed of." She settled back in her chair and grinned at Cristina. "Boys of your age are emotionally immature. It's a proven scientific fact. You can't think too well because you've only one thing on your mind."

"Him more than most," added Springer, joining the group.

"Hey, that's not fair," Arun protested.

"Isn't it?" answered Madge. "How would you feel if I had led Delta Section instead of Brandt? Could you handle that?"

"Well, yes. Why wouldn't I?" It was true. Madge was a natural NCO, at least when she dropped the vampish act.

"You hesitated!"

"Leave him alone," said Osman. "I can't believe you're defending what Rekka did."

"We're not, turkey-man," said Cristina. "Rekka was cruel tonight, but we've all of us had that kind of drent in the past and we don't start crying every time an instructor says something to hurt our little-widdle feelings. At least, we women don't."

Springer joined in. "You know, if there's one thing useful I've learned from ancient Earth history, it's that they used to have all-male combat units. If our masters thought of the Human Marine Corps as a serious military force, rather than breeding stock, I reckon we'd have single-s.e.x units. Anyway, lover boy here is always griping about Rekka or Nhlappo. Aren't you, Arun?"

Arun threw his hands in the air in frustration. "Oh, come on, guys. Rekka's given me a hard time, and Shlappo will tomorrow, or I'm a Hardit. And you," he pointed at Springer, "are supposed to be on my side."

Springer gave a curt laugh. "Rekka's giving you a hard time, eh? You seem to be having a lot of those recently. When you had your hard time with that alien scribe, were you thinking of our instructor? Did you imagine Rekka's sweet face on that Troggie body? Is that why you... oh, how did your alien friend describe it? ... activated your mating p.r.o.ng?"

Cristina dug an elbow into Springer's side. "Lighten up on him will you? Arun's right. He's our squad mate. We should"

"I know. Sorry." Springer looked serious. "I apologize for my inexcusable behavior... Cadet p.r.o.ng." Laughter bubbled out of her. "Sorry, Arun. Frakk it, I couldn't resist."

Arun replayed Sergeant Gupta's words in his mind. He wouldn't crumble. He would get through this. "Guys," he pleaded, "get off my back. Please."

Springer studied him for a while before arriving at a conclusion. "Look, I tell you what, Arun. I won't call you Cadet p.r.o.ng again if you promise not to call us 'guys'. I can't stand it when people talk to me as if I'm neuter, or a man. I'm a woman."

Cristina snorted. "Speak for yourself, grandma. I'm only in cla.s.s G-2."

"Okay," admitted Springer, "girl or woman at your discretion, and then only until we're in graduation year. Deal?"

Springer extended her hand. Arun shook it.

"Thank goodness for that," said Madge. "Springer's been spouting drivel about you ever since we saw your mating p.r.o.ng performance. I think she's jealous." She winked at Arun and whispered to him loudly enough for all to hear: "You do realize she dreams about you?"

Arun laughed the same as everyone else.

But, no, he hadn't.

* Chapter 07 *

After all the excitement and pain of the day, Arun decided to turn in early, drifting toward sleep as soon as he closed his eyes. On the cusp of dreams, he imagined a familiar and comforting feminine scent.

"I'm sorry about before," said his dream girl.

He opened his eyes and discovered that, for once, reality was better than his dreams. Springer was crouching on the floor by his rack, with her hand on his shoulder. "I thought you could do with some company," she said. "Will you let me make it up to you?"

Arun grinned. "You're the best, Springer, but please don't put any weight on my left leg. Did I mention? I had a Troggie claw go through earlier today."

Cadet Phaedra Tremayne named Springer by her friends due to her boundless optimism grinned back and carefully clambered in beside him.

Springer was a squad mate, which meant they'd gown up together, shared the same school dorm for the past few years before making cadet, and then moving to the Charlie Company's underground hab-disk. That made his feelings toward her somehow both complicated and simple at the same time, but always strong. She was more than the comrade he was often buddied with in combat drills. She was a good friend, and several times recently she had kept him company in his rack, as she liked to call it. He tried hard not to think what that meant for their friends.h.i.+p.

Later, when they lay together in comfortable silence with Springer idly running her fingers through his hair, she suddenly blurted out: "I bet you're thinking of her right now."

"Her?"

"Yes, her. Xin Lee or is it Lee Xin? She can't seem to make up her mind."

Arun fumbled for a denial. He couldn't find one, though, because Springer was right. He'd been drifting into a heavenly dream existence filled with Xin's essence.

"Shhh, it's okay," she said. "More than okay. I think you having a crush on her is kinda cute." She kissed him tenderly on his forehead. "I was only thinking aloud. Xin is cla.s.s G-1. At the end of next year, a.s.suming she graduates as a Marine, they'll remove her contraceptive implant. She could have kids. You could have kids with her."

"Me? But I don't want to. I mean, I'm only 17. You and I are both only 17."

"Yes, but you could. I have to wait another two years and only then if I measure up to someone else's definition of what makes a good Marine."

"What's this all of a sudden about kids? Do you want to get pregnant?" Arun sat bolt upright. "Do you want my kids, Phaedra?"

Springer narrowed her eyes. There weren't many people she allowed to use her real name and get away without violence. "No and no. Not right now, and anyway, that's not the point. I don't get a choice. That's what gets me. I have to win someone else's approval to use my own body." She gave her head an angry shake. "You don't have the same implant. I guess you don't understand it. Not being a girl."

"We're all slaves, Springer. We're slave Marines. Bred to fight and die for the White Knights. Our bodies belong to them."

"True. But sometimes I think female cadets are slightly more slaves than you are."

He looked down at his friend who was staring wistfully up at the ceiling. She looked lost. Arun found himself echoing Sergeant Gupta's words. "Life isn't fair, Springer. Sometimes all you can do is suck it up and keep your head proud and high, the sign of a Marine. Wait for your luck to turn and then seize your chances with every fiber of your being."

Springer twisted round and stared at him, astonished. Then she rolled her eyes and shrugged.

The words didn't belong to him, and he felt an idiot to have spoken them. Arun didn't know what else to say he never did so he hugged her.

At first Springer relaxed into his embrace, but then she wriggled free and slipped away out of his rack. She was fleeing, unsteady on her feet.

"Don't go," begged Arun. "I'm sorry for talking such stupid drent."

"You didn't," she said. "I just want to be in my own bunk, is all." She paused trying to catch her breath. Arun swung his legs out of bed.

"No!" she shouted, her back to him still. "Get back in your rack and wipe that frown off your silly face. I worked hard to replace it with a smile. Don't you waste my efforts. There. That's better. Goodnight... Cadet p.r.o.ng."

"I know you too well," he shouted, angry because she was hiding something from him.

The unspoken rule of the dorm and the entire hab-disk was that you pretended not to notice when its residents moved between racks during the night. Now he sensed hidden eyes alert, their owners poised to intervene.

Springer finally turned back and looked him square in the face. Tears streamed from those eyes, but those eyes! They were blazing beacons of violet. The skin of her eyelids was scorching, her tears vaporizing into emotional steam. He reached for the water canister he kept beside his bed and drenched her eyes with its contents. Her eyes were shut now, the lids still steaming.

"More water!" he barked.

Someone got the hint and threw another water canister to him. Arun tipped the contents over Springer's face, quenching the fire in her eyes.

"Thank you," she said, blinking away the drips.

She sounded abandoned, frightened. He would never forsake her, but she was half-hidden behind a fringe of steam, and he could hardly blame her. He tried to hug her again, but again she pushed him away.

"Tell me, what's wrong."

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that. I know you too well. You had one of your visions, didn't you?"

"It's not a vision, Arun. I don't see things. I keep telling you that. I just get a feeling. Just now I felt that you..."

"What, that Rekka would hand me my a.s.s on a plate?"

"No, not her. I don't know who. Really I don't, so just drop it. Get some sleep, instead. Please, for me. You'll need your strength."

"Strength for what?"

"Change. Yes, that's it. You're going through changes. Metamorphosis. You'll become something new. Or die trying. No it's gone. Whatever I thought I'd sensed... it's gone. Arun, honestly, I probably just imagined it."

Unconvinced, Arun framed her face with his hands. "Be fair, Springer. You can't just dangle me by a thread and then cut the cord as if it doesn't matter. Think! What kind of changes?"

She shook his hands away. "Leave me alone, Arun."

Arun felt a confusing blend of emotions as he watched his friend pad away to her rack.

Then she stopped and turned around, bringing a flash of hope to his heart. "I'll tell you one thing, Arun." Her face creased into a frown. "At least you try to understand me. Have you noticed that since we made cadet everyone's turning into emotionless robots?"

Had they?

"There's not a single person in Detroit who could even attempt to understand me the way you did just now."

"Thank you."

She shook her head sadly. "I didn't mean that as praise. I love you Arun, but I pity you even more."

Yeah well, I love you too, thought Arun. But I wish you made sense sometimes.

Solving the mystery of Springer's words would have to wait for another day. She'd retreated to her rack, wrapped in private thoughts.

Arun lay back down on his bed and closed his eyes, basking in the warm glow that came whenever he marveled in his good fortune at counting Springer as his buddy. Before long, though, his thoughts drifted along the pa.s.sageway outside and down Helix 6 to hab-disk 7/14 where he pictured Xin asleep in her rack, the gentle ebb and flow of her breathing beckoning him.

Today Xin had acknowledged Arun's existence. Everyone laughed at him for falling in love with a girl so far out of his league, but today she had noticed him.

And Arun had a secret weapon to win her.

The meddling in the human Marine genome threw up a host of surprising side effects. Not all were as pretty as Springer's eyes. She had her visions of the future too, although they might be nothing more than vivid waking dreams.

Arun had his own special talent. Freakish genes might be what powered his ability. Or maybe he only thought he had a talent, and really it was a manifestation of psychosis. Whether true or imagined, if he set his mind a problem to be solved, on rare occasions he could feel his subconscious sifting through all the variables until an answer exploded in his mind, sometimes days later, leaving his brain feeling badly bruised.

He gave a brittle laugh.

So far he'd only used his ability to get into trouble.

He laughed again, softer this time. Getting into trouble was another talent of his. What else was youth for? No wonder Rekka was usually p.i.s.sed at him.

Settling back into his pillow he immersed his mind in a new problem.

He held a woman's face in his hands, idly caressing the infinitesimally fine down on her cheeks. Just like he'd held Springer's face in real life scant minutes ago. The eyes regarding him from this face were not violet, though, they were as dark and dangerous as a Troggie tunnel. And this girl's skin was as perfectly smooth as ablative armor.

How do I get you to notice me? he asked Xin's face. Could you ever love me?

Xin gave the slightest of smiles, daring Arun to find out.

A sense of cogwheel teeth engaging filled his head, of noisy gears dripping with lubricant. It was a peculiarly mechanical sensation as if his mind were an apparatus constructed from bra.s.s, iron, hardwoods and oils. The gears turned faster; the smell of hot lubricant grew stronger. The floor of his mind rumbled with a low hum of power. This wasn't imagination. This was real. He, Arun McEwan, could do something no one else could.

He felt his problem being a.n.a.lyzed from scores of perspectives. Xin was chopped, sliced, and spun around to be measured from every direction. Whole universes sprang into being, filled with strategies and tactics, and their likely outcomes. Unpromising solutions died away, replaced with more promising lines of attack in a fecund blooming and culling of ideas.

Satisfied that he'd unleashed his talent, Arun left the hard work to his subconscious and drifted off to sleep. As his day finally floated away, he noticed the common thread that connected the galaxy-sized rooms containing the most promising solutions to his question.

For some reason he could not explain, the answers all involved him playing Scendence.

* Chapter 08 *

The following morning, Arun settled for a gentle walk in place of his regular pre-inspection workout. He kept away from the busy spineways and transit corridors, settling for the quiet pa.s.sageway to the neighboring 6/10 hab-disk and back. Gentle motion, nothing violent, and make use of your stick. That's what the medic had said the previous night. She seemed to know what she was talking about. Given that less than a day earlier a claw had gouged a great chunk out of his thigh, and a shrapnel fragment had cracked his knee, he'd told the medic he was amazed he could walk at all.

"Why do you think the White Knights spent all that effort redesigning us?" she'd said. "Blast us and we get up again and carry on fighting. But your leg is now mostly filler and wishful thinking. It will still take weeks for your muscles to fully regrow, and knees are always troublesome healers. You'll have to recalibrate your battlesuit every other day to account for the changes in muscle strength."