The Eternity Brigade by Goldin Stephen & Goldman Ivan

Author:Goldin, Stephen & Goldman, Ivan [Goldin, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parsina Press
Published: 2013-12-31T07:00:00+00:00

INTERLUDES

The process was indeed painless and seemingly instantaneous. Scarcely had Hawker stepped into the scanner when he found himself lying in a small tub of liquid. It was a bad disorientation, to be standing one moment and lying down the next; he gasped, and accidentally swallowed some of the salty water around him. He choked a bit, just as two men grabbed his arms and helped lift him out of the tank. Something felt odd about him. His stomach was queasy, and his body felt extraordinarily light. “I think there’s something wrong with me,” he managed to gasp between chokes. “I feel kind of funny.”

“Perfectly normal,” one of the men replied. “You’re on the Moon now.”

He was led into a room with other resurrectees, without being given much chance to think about the predicament. His steps were light and bouncy, and he felt almost drunk, except that his mind was absolutely clear. He was given some clothing, a one-piece jumpsuit that zipped all the way up the front, and told to wait for instructions. He mingled with the other soldiers—there were at least fifty of them so far—and listened to their amazed conversations about how they never expected to go to the Moon, and how fantastic this new process was compared to the old freezing method. Hawker, as usual, did not join in any of the conversations; he merely wandered around the room idly, observing.

The room kept filling up as more and more people were resurrected from their shady half-lives, and eventually Hawker saw some familiar faces. Bounding across the room, oblivious to the startled looks of the other soldiers, he threw his arms around Green and Symington and hugged them for all he was worth. The other two were startled, but equally enthusiastic.

“What do you think of the process, Hawk?” Green asked when the glad noises of reunion had died down.

Hawker shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t feel any different. It sure beats the freezing and waking up in a hospital bed.”

“Yeah, and it’s all so sudden,” Symington added. “It seems like just this afternoon Dave sent you that email, and now here we all are—on the Moon, for Christ’s sake!”

Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a lieutenant who called them to attention for his briefing. First, he told them, they were no longer a part of the United States Army. The United States had been incorporated three years ago into a union with Canada and Mexico, called the North American Complex, or Nacom. They would still be fighting to preserve the land of their births, but it had undergone a change.

The reason they were on the Moon was more difficult to explain. Nacom, along with several other major world factions, was building a series of space colonies, using material mined from the Moon for construction. Nacom’s intelligence service had learned, however, that the Russian-Arab bloc was intending to use its space colony as a military base, from which it hoped to dominate the world. To guarantee

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