The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines

He turned. Allyn Buckner sat down on the other end of the bench and casually pretended to read a newsheet. He was wearing a conservative green and violet smartsuit and dark data visor.

“Buckner. Why’d you drag me out here?”

“Security, of course. I can’t very well come to your office, or even your home, not without my presence being noted on a dozen e-logs. Nor could you visit me unnoticed. And hotel rooms, restaurants, and places like that all have so many electronics nowadays there’s no way to guarantee a private conversation.”

Billingsworth took another long look at the people passing by. This hardly seemed private … and even an open park had more than its fair share of police surveillance floaters, security scanners, and even roving news pickups.

But Buckner had a point about other possible meeting places. Public establishments were entirely too public, while offices and government buildings were heavily wired for all manner of electronic communications and data access. He would have preferred to meet with the PanTerran VP in one of his own secure meeting rooms—there were ways to avoid the log-in and ID protocols—but this, he supposed, would have to do.

“Well?” Buckner asked with brusque matter-of-factness. He scanned a fast-moving live newsfeed of a religious riot in Bombay, then folded the sheet and dropped it on the bench. “Let’s have it.”

Billingsworth sighed. “Operation Spirit of Humankind is still go,” he said. “Scheduled departure is four months from now … October fifteenth.”

“Give me the details.”

Billingsworth reached out and took Buckner’s hand, shaking it as if in greeting, pressing the microelectronics embedded in the skin at the base of his thumb against similar nanocircuitry in the PanTerran officer’s palm. The ultimate in secret handshakes, the transfer of files stored in the SecState’s cerebralink to Buckner’s files took only a few milliseconds, with no RF or microwave leakage that might be intercepted and monitored.

“Excellent.” Buckner seemed satisfied, in his acidic way. “My people were afraid that the government was going to backstep on this.”

“I don’t understand why you need me to be your … your spy.”

“Not a spy, Mr. Billingsworth. Our associate. In twenty years, if all goes well, our very, very wealthy associate.”

“Twenty years …”

“Think of it as long-term investment. You’ll be … what? Eighty-one? Eighty-two? Young enough to benefit from a complete rejuvenation program, if you wish. And still be rich enough to buy that Caribbean island you want to retire to.”

Billingsworth felt a sharp stab of alarm as a floater with the WorldNet News logo on its side drifted past, its glassy eye on the lookout for anything newsworthy. Humans might forget a face, but not a news bureau AI; he turned his head away, studying the foreplay antics of the couple on the hillock behind them. With a soft whine of maglifters, the flying eye drifted past, moving slowly toward the Fourteenth Street entrance.

“But I still don’t understand what you need with these briefing records,” he said when the snoop-floater was out of range.

“They help us plan, Mr. Billingsworth. The government is notoriously unreliable when it comes to long range planning. You can never really count on anything past the next round of elections. When dealing with business opportunities light-years away, that can be a distinct disadvantage. With this,” he tapped the right side of his head, “we know we can proceed with certain plans, long range expensive plans, without risking the loss of our investment when the government waffles, or changes its mind, or decides to have a war. Besides, you need to do something to justify your shares in this venture, right?”

“I suppose so. But the scandal if this gets out—” he broke off as another congressional jogger bounced past, oblivious and anonymous in his sensory helm. Next time, Billingsworth thought, he would definitely wear one of those, but with the ID functions off. There had to be a way to rig that, somehow.

Buckner gave a thin smile. “Then it’s in both our best interests not to let it get out, right?”

“Yes, damn you.”

“Good. You’ll let me know if there’s any change or new development. The usual e-drop.” He stood up, dropping the newsheet in a nearby recycler. “And cheer up! You’re going to be rich and live to be two hundred, easy. And no one will ever hear about those bad investments of yours last year.”

Buckner turned and walked away, heading toward gardens filling the Mall interior.

Billingsworth watched the couple having sex on the hillside a moment longer, then used his cerebralink to signal the robocar, stood, and walked toward the Fourteenth Street entrance to meet it.

He was sweating, despite the Mall’s air-conditioning, and his breath was coming in short, hard gasps. Damn it, he had to find a way to guarantee better privacy for his meetings in the future.

8

24 JUNE 2138

DI’s Office, Company 1099

U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center

Parris Island, South Carolina

0920 hours ET

“Garroway! Center yourself on the hatch!”

Garroway leaped into the DI’s office, moving at the dead run that had been demanded of him and all of his fellow recruits in Company 1099 since the day they’d arrived at Parris Island.

“Sound off!” Gunnery Sergeant Makowiecz barked without looking up from his desk display.

“Sir!” Garroway snapped back as the toes of his boots hit the white line painted on the deck and he came to rigid attention, eyes locked firmly on an ancient water stain on the cinder-block bulkhead above and behind the DI’s left shoulder. “Recruit Garroway reporting to the drill instructor as ordered, sir!”

“Recruit,” Makowiecz said, his voice still as razor-edged as a Mamaluk sword, “your indoctrination classes are complete and you are about to enter phase one of your training. Are you fully aware of what this entails?”

“Sir! This recruit understands that he will be required to surrender all technical and data prostheses still resident within his body, sir!”

“Well quoted, son. Right out of the book. Stand at ease.”

The sudden change in his DI’s manner was so startling that Garroway nearly fell off his mark. Almost reluctantly, muscle by muscle, he relaxed his posture.

“Why do you want to be a Marine, son?” Makowiecz asked.

“Sir, this recruit—”

“Belay the third person crap,” Makowiecz told him. “This is off the record, just you and me. You’ve seen enough of boot camp now that you must have an idea of how rough this is going to be. You are about to go through twelve weeks of sheer hell. So … why are you putting yourself through this?”

Garroway hesitated. He felt like he was just starting to get the hang of automatic recitations in the third person—“this recruit”—and it somehow didn’t seem fair for the DI to suddenly come at him as though he were a normal, thinking human being. It left him feeling off balance, disoriented.

“Sir,” he said, “all I can say is that this is what I’ve wanted ever since I heard stories from my mother about my great-grandfather.”

Makowiecz placed his palm on a white-lit panel on his desk, accessing data through his c-link. “Your great-grandfather is one of the Names of the Corps,” he said. “Manila John Basilone. Dan Daly. Presley O’Bannon. Chesty Puller. Sands of Mars Garroway. That’s pretty good company. His name is a damn fine legacy.

“But you know and I know that there’s more to being a Marine than a name …”

He paused, waiting expectantly, and Garroway knew he was supposed to say something. “Sir … this recruit … I mean, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I can’t go back to what I was. Sir.”

“You have an abusive father.”

The change of topic was so sudden, Garroway didn’t know how to respond. “Uh, it’s not that bad, sir. Not sexual abuse or anything like that. He just—”

“I’m not interested in the details, son. But hear me, and hear me loud and clear. All abusive behavior by parents or stepparents or line-marriage parents—or by anyone else in authority over a kid, for that matter—does incalculable damage. Doesn’t matter if it was sexual abuse or physical abuse with routine beatings or ‘just’ emotional abuse with screaming fits and head games. And it doesn’t matter if the adult is alcoholic or addicted to c-link sex feeds or is just a thoroughgoing abusive asshole. It’s really impossible to say which is worse, which kid gets hurt the most, because every kid is different and responds to the abuse in different ways.”

“My father yelled a lot,” Garroway said, “but he never hit me. Uh, not deliberately, anyway.” He didn’t add that Carlos Esteban had hit his mother, frequently, and threatened more than once to do the same to him, or that he was an alcoholic who’d disabled the court-appointed cybercontrols over his behavior.