War Games by Karl Hansen

Author:Karl Hansen [Hansen, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Event Horizon EBooks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Jain Maure was gone when I awoke. I was alone in her house. She had a nice place. Cosmetic surgeons could charge fancy fees in Chronus—or at least they could before the war. Did she also exact a pound of flesh from the rest of her clients? I laughed at my little witticism.

I rolled off the wombskin and stood up, wobbling momentarily before I caught my balance. Reflex arcs were not yet completely conditioned. Proprioception always lagged a little behind. But I’d regained most of my strength, anyway. Maybe I was still a little unsteady, but six months ago I’d been too weak to do anything but lay in a Hubbard tank. My recovery hadn’t been easy. Progress meant pain. I’d forgotten how many replacement grafts had been necessary. A little bit of residual nerve damage was the least of my worries. Besides, it was going to get me my discharge from the Corps. And with full disability.

I walked across the room toward a balcony. Like I said, it was plush. The floor was a living carpet of fungoid, almost as pliant as wombskin. Olfactory sculpture wafted pleasant fragrances into the air. Mutable holograms gleamed in midair. All were signed originals by the most famous artists of the System. Bonsai lounges five centuries old stood in planters on both sides of the bed. Spider-silk tapestries hung on the walls. Jewelry worth several fortunes was strewn carelessly about her dressing table—sonic gems sang in ultrasonic harmonies amid the glint of iridium and gold.

As I passed the dressing table, I had an irresistible urge. I paused before it, then took two steps closer, activating its holomirror. An image of myself sprang into the air, facing me: stainless-steel eyes, cold and unfeeling; aquiline nose; proud cheekbones; haughty lips, thin and cruel; skin brown as old copper. I touched my hands to my face and watched my image do likewise, both amazed and pleased. Because it was my face, my old face, the one I’d had before entering the hybridization tanks and becoming a combat hybrid. On leaving the tanks, combrids were almost identical in appearance and build: two meters tall, solidly muscled, well padded with brown adipose, skulls bald and convoluted by wires beneath the surface, eyes protected with nictitating membranes, skin as black as ebony with antiradiation granules and gleaming like obsidian with protective sweat. Loving uniformity, the military made quartermasters stock only one size. They also deindividualized you, and similar facial features accomplished that. But when you mustered out, the contract said they had to give you back your face. They had. Or Jain Maure had, to be precise.

Marcus Detrs, Esquire, scion son of the late Lord and Lady Detrs, the last of his line, heir to a fortune on Earth, stood before me. Lance Corporal Detrs, of the First Ghost Cavalry, was gone. At least his face was. Hybridization and cybersurgery couldn’t be reversed. I’d always have the augmented muscles, reinforced tissues, laminated bones, and other survival adaptations

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