with a man in corporate utilities bearing the rank tabs of a senior administrator. A couple of command staff people floated nearby, obviously just released.
I thumped the side of the hatch. “HM2 Carlyle reporting as ordered, sir.”
Singer ignored me for a long moment, continuing his conversation. Then the admin guy nodded, said, “You’re the boss,” and pushed off for the hatch, followed by his staff. Singer turned then, glaring.
“Why did you link through to Synchorbit?” he demanded.
“I needed access to a better DNA library,” I told him. “The ones we have in-head aren’t that comprehensive.”
“What the hell were you doing running a DNA scan? That’s a job for our S-2.”
I started to reply, then stopped myself. Singer was furious, and if I said anything, anything at all, I was just going to make things worse.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Doc! You broke SCP and got tagged by a fucking newsie!”
It was worse than I’d imagined. Secure Communications Protocol is like radio silence, but more flexible. It allows us to talk to others on our command Net, and query local, secure subnets, but not link in to unsecured networks or AIs. Breaking SCP during combat was serious, a potential court-martial offense.
“Sir, I thought Ops Command was secure.”
Singer started to give a sharp retort, then softened a bit. The scowl didn’t leave his face, though. “Normally it would be, Doc. But those damned embeds are up there now, following the hijacking. And they obviously had netbots on the prowl. You understand? You bypassed the chain of command, you idiot, and you told Major Lansky we had CAC prisoners on an open channel. Don’t you think GNN would be all over that?”
“Yes, sir.”
I could just imagine. As soon as the neo-Ludd ultimatum had hit the GNN newsfeeds hours before, the whole world would have been wondering who was behind it, what government. Neo-Ludds couldn’t get to orbit without help. Who had helped them?
There were probably netbots—electronic agents on the Net programmed to listen for certain key words and phrases. Hijack. Marines. Terrorists. DNA. That kind of thing. When they picked up something of interest, they would start probing, looking for more information. That tag I’d sensed had been a netbot shooting down the open radio channel and into my in-head, copying my personal contact data, and slipping away again. With my name, rate, rank, and number, they would be able to figure out who I was, know I was with Deep Recon 7, the Black Wizards … 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 1MARDIV, and that was news. It would be all over the Net; hell, it was probably all over the Net already.
And Deep Recon really hates that kind of publicity.
In short, I was now in a world of shit.
Chapter Four
At least I wasn’t under arrest, or even restricted to base. Twenty-four hours later I was up-El, 35,800 kilometers above Earth’s equator at the Cayambe Space Elevator’s Geosynch Center. The place is a bustling hive of space industry, communications, orbital hotels, and offices. From the Universe View of the sprawling Hilton Orbital Wheel, I could look down at the shrunken Earth with the nearby elevator cable vanishing with perspective into the blue planet’s center. She was a little past full at the moment, spanning just twenty degrees. If I held up both hands side by side at arm’s length with fingers outstretched, I could just about block half of her from view. Off to one side, several of the big, free-orbiting solar reflector mirrors and microwave antenna arrays hung in open space, angled to reflect sunlight onto Earth’s northern hemisphere. Bit by bit, in tiny steps, we were winning against the grinding southward advance of the ice sheets.
At least that’s what the newsnets told us. Sometimes I wasn’t sure I believed them. A good third of the planet’s northern hemisphere was locked in ice, gleaming in the glare of daylight. I stifled a small, cold shudder.
“What is it, E-Car?” Leighton asked, looking at me askance. “You okay?”
Sergeant Joy Leighton, U.S. Marines, was a friend … a very dear friend. Military regulations frowned on enlisted personnel becoming sexually involved, but military regulations rarely acknowledged that personnel are human, not machines. Joy and I had been in combat together, out on Bloodworld, and that counts for a lot. I’d patched her up and dragged her ass out of a firefight. That counted for more. And as long as we didn’t go around flaunting the relationship, rubbing it in the brass’s collective face, no one was going to say a word.
“I’m fine, No-Joy,” I told her, lying through my teeth. “Just fine.”
“I think they’re going to let that whole security-breach thing drop,” she said, knowing I was lying, but misunderstanding the reason for it. “Everything is too public now. They don’t want to be seen as punishing a genu-wine hero.”
I didn’t answer right away, watching the Earth instead. The Hilton’s viewing lounge counter-rotated to the rest of the habitat, providing a half-G of spin gravity but cancelling the dizzying spin of the rest of the universe.
“What hero?” I asked after a moment. “Taking down Capricorn Zeta? We all did that.”
“Actually, I was thinking about the Hero of Bloodworld, the doc who brokered peace with the Qesh. You’re still a highly newsworthy commodity, you know. GNN probably had a whole army of newsbots programmed to follow you, sniff you out as soon as you popped onto an unsecure channel. In any case …” She leaned over and kissed me. “You’re still my hero.”
“Ooh-rah,” I said quietly, a lackluster rendition of the old Marine battle cry.
“That’s not what’s bugging you, is it?” she asked. “It’s Paula again.”
No-Joy is sharp. Paula Barton was the woman I almost married back in ’forty-four when I was still in Hospital Corps training … until she had a stroke while we were in a robot-skippered day sailer off the Maine Glacier. The boat’s first-aid suite didn’t include a CAPTR device—most civilians don’t have access to that technology on a routine basis—and by the time the EMTs got to her, I’d lost her.
I always thought of her when I looked down the North American ice sheet like that. Paula’s death and the ice—the two were inextricably locked together for me now. I hated the ice now, as if it were a living, despicable thing.
“I suppose it is,” I admitted. “Damn it, I just felt so fucking helpless.”
I don’t think Joy resented Paula, the fact of her. I’d been able to talk to her about what had happened off the Maine coast, about what I still felt.
Or didn’t feel. Often all I felt was numb, even yet, three years later.
“There was nothing you could have done, Elliot.” She’d only said those words a few thousand times since I’d met her.
“I know. I know.” I managed a grin. “It’ll be better when they finally manage to melt the damned ice.”
The New Ice Age got its official start in the late twenty-first century as a result
