Star Strike: Book One of the Inheritance Trilogy (The Inheritance Trilogy, Book 1) by Douglas Ian

Author:Douglas, Ian [Douglas, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

14

2611.1102

Suit Locker

UCS Samar

Dock 27, Earth Ring 7

1315 hrs GMT

“So? How does it feel?” PFC Sandre Kenyon asked him.

Garroway blinked, testing the mental currents. “It feels…empty. Kind of like back in boot camp. When we didn’t have our implants activated, y’know?”

She nodded. “That’s exactly what it’s like. Because that’s what it is, at least up to a point. You still have Net access, comm access—”

“But we can get Achilles back?”

“Oh, sure! He’s still there,” she reassured him. She laughed and nudged Garroway in the ribs with an elbow. “He just doesn’t know what he’s missing!”

They were sitting side by side on one of the benches in the locker, surrounded by the silent, hanging shapes of emergency pressure suits. All of his attention, however, was focused inward as he took a self-inventory of his electronic systems. His implant software was still running. Achilles, however, the platoon AI, did not appear to be on-line.

He shook his head, partly in confusion, partly in admiration. “How the hell did you learn this, Sandre?”

She shrugged. “I’m a vir-simmer, remember? Back in my misspent civilian youth, I programmed the micro-AIs in sensory helms. I knew there had to be a back door. I just needed to find it.”

“It’s still amazing.”

Garroway continued testing the feel of his internal hardware. In a way, it was like that horrible stretch of time in boot camp, the empty time, when he’d been deprived of any cereblink hardware at all. He still had most of his connections for communication, for linking into other computers, or for downloading data off the Net. What was missing was Achilles, the AI Electronic Assistant that served both as guide through the military cyberworld and as an unofficial tattletale and voice of authority.

“Yeah, well, I had some expert help, too,” Sandre told him. “Did a favor for Vince, down in the 660 maintenance shack back at RTC Mars. He uploaded some secure code for me, gave me a head start.”

“Vince? Staff Sergeant Gamble?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t think that old son-of-a-bitch ever had a helpful thing to say to anyone!” He made a face, and imitated Gamble’s acid tones. “Especially puke-recruits.”

She laughed. “You never tried, um, feminine wiles on the poor dear. Besides, we’re not recruits any more. We’re Marines.”

“Ooh-rah.” He said it automatically, almost sarcastically, but he still felt a small, sharp chill of excitement as he spoke. Boot camp was over, the initiation complete, the metamorphosis from civilian to Marine accomplished.

Even so, he’d been feeling a bit of anticlimax. For almost two weeks after their graduation ceremony on the tenth of November, Garroway and the rest of the newly minted Marines had sat around in a temporary barracks at Noctis Labyrinthus. The forty survivors of Recruit Company 4102 had expected to be shipped out to different units almost immediately, but when their orders didn’t come, speculation and rumor—“scuttlebutt” in ancient Marine and naval parlance—had fast become their primary, if highly unreliable, source of intel. Day after day, they’d stood watch, held practice drills, and carried out field

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