Passage out-system to the Fourth World always felt the same, no matter if you were in a troop carrier debarking from its orbital station based around Titan or on a commercial shuttlecraft from groundside to low orbit. It felt cheap, tough, crowded, bumpy, uncomfortable, and worst of all, ominous.
And it felt real normal to Ivo Cardoso, even though he couldn't figure out why he was sleeping through all but the correctional burns. He was skunked out of his mind was why, he decided at last when the transatmospheric vehicle around him shuddered hard enough to wake the dead during a docking maneuver. TAVs didn't space-dock that way, so he knew they were putting down on a surface somewhere.
But where? He really must have crashed himself this time, wherever the hell he'd been decompressing. He couldn't remember anything since Earth....
He crooked an elbow over his eyes as a bright light came on, letting his other senses do the walking. He could smell body odor, leather, gum, oil, and that acrid mix of must and mildew that always collected in troop holds like this, no matter the best efforts of air-purification systems. Guys stank when they were stacked three high on yard-wide bunks for up to 6 months at a time; the smell got into the mattresses and in the blankets and in the lockers. And you couldn't get men out-system without transmitting them from the inner planets the hard way: in hypersonic TAVs or Manobra Orbital Veiculos (MOVs), space trucks under chemical-burn and slingshot power.
Cardoso had no doubt that he was still in-system: he wasn't waking up cold as ice in a poly-cocoon with his throat raw from breathing the odorless ultra-pure air of lentocongelar tank. Therefore the ride was just starting.
Ride?
To where?
He shifted the arm over his eyes and his chest began to rise and fall more rapidly: how come he couldn't remember where he was going or how he'd gotten here?
The last thing he remembered with any clarity was the offbase bar on Earth, where he'd taken his blind date from EICSA, Camila O'Flynn....
No, that wasn't the last thing. It was just the last coherent thing he remembered. Then there'd been some guys with a venue to offer, the regular papers to sign, a car ride with them and the woman....
With the woman, Camila O'Flynn. Mae de Deus! He did remember bits and pieces: the silver sedan, some back hangar and an argument he wanted to give those guys about the woman but couldn't get out of his mouth because he was on some kind of drug-induced autopilot. Telano? Carites? He thought it might have been something like that. Or designed obedience fixers. Tough stuff.
Not that he minded being sought out and signed on---somebody other than himself thought he was wasting his time on Earth. But it wasn't legal, or, if the paperwork was, the way they'd gotten him---and here---to sign it wasn't.
That couldn't be right. He couldn't be remembering that Camila O'Flynn had been helped up the same ramp he had, struggling with a pack she could barely hold, let alone understand. His lips quirked behind the shelter of his arm. If it weren't so radically bad, it'd be funny: a woman like that kidnapped onto a troop carrier as a first timer.
That part didn't have to be true, though; he'd had plenty of crazy dreams. She was likely back in her office making coffee, and his "memories" no more real than the maos brancas dragging Mendes towards the solid rock wall on Z-42B.
For his part, he was glad to be out here----wherever he was. Even if someone'd bent the rules. He vaguely remembered that one of the two who'd collared him had known him well enough to call him Ivo, and had all the moves; the right uniform, the right mission parameters (if he could just remember what they were), and his heart in the right place.
Maybe the 203rd had decided they wanted him back, and screw EICSA. There were guys in military intelligence who wouldn't blink at pulling a seam like this---the "you want him; you got him" kind of guys that briefed you when all the briefing you were allowed was a verbal given fifty miles above your target of opportunity.
Still it wasn't right---something wasn't. Was it the way the TAV had docked so damned hard. This wasn't any scheduled commercial carrier on which ten or twenty like Cardoso were booked steerage; paying passengers wouldn't stand for this kind of bounce and jounce. And he could hear creaking and bitching as, around and above him, men slid off their bunks and grabbed their gear from lockers.
Cardoso stayed where he was, not moving a muscle, his face hidden under his arm, until all the noise of leaving men had stopped. Then he took his hand away, unbuckled his crash harness, and sat up.
He could put his feet on the floor, that was something: he had a Level 1 berth. There was a slot against the wall with his ticket in it. He pulled it out, then let it fall back. They had his name wrong. The serial number wasn't his. The destination wasn't given in anything more than high security designators, and nobody had briefed him as to what or where Z-77C might be. Beyond Saturn, that was for sure. And "Z" unigraphs always meant trouble.
But then, trouble was what he'd been trained for. He'd just wished he'd been sober enough to ask the correct questions, or drug-free when he'd been conscripted.
He didn't really want to get angry. There was likely a good explanation, even for doping his drinks, if that was what happened. He could already hear the one about name and serial number: if EICSA hadn't agreed to let loose of him, it was the only way he could have gotten off-planet, no matter who wanted him.
So he had somebody to thank for that part. And there were maybe eleven other guys in this shithole cabin who'd been glad enough to sign on to whatever mission Cardoso stayed where he was, not moving a muscle, his face hidden under his arm, until all the noise of leaving me had quit. Then he took his hand away, unbuckled his crash harness, and sat up.
He should, too. He tried to stand but his legs were rubbery. His head spun. He sat back down, head in his hands, and breathed deeply. Hell of a hangover. Was the trip just now starting? He rubbed his jaw. Not more than a week's worth of beard, or less.
Come on, suss it out. And get off your butt. He took more deep breaths, lowered his head between his knees then raised it and did some fast isometrics, forcing adrenaline into his system. When he reached back to take his ticket out of his holder, the room didn't twirl.
He stood up more cautiously and didn't fall over. Needed to get his space legs back, that was all. Gravity was real light, part of why he felt funny. Maybe the moon, then: or the EOL (Estacao Orbital Lunar) . If it was EOL, he had plenty of time to bitch and there was brass here to bitch to....if it seemed prudent.
He slapped his locker open and a regulation kit was waiting for him there, weapons and all from the heft of it. Before shouldering it, he slid his nail under the vacuum seal and peeked in, hoping to see his personal stuff.....his workbelt, his custom pieces.
They gleamed back at him dully and he shrugged into the pack. Still in the locker were a black jacket and combat helmet, and though the name tag matched his ticket; they'd got his sergeant's rank right. Somebody'd gone to a lot of trouble and he told himself he ought to be able to appreciate that.
He also told himself, as he velcroed his boots on and headed through the lock into an unknown corridor, that he'd better be quiet about how much he didn't remember until he was sure t hat admitting the gaps in his memory didn't get him grounded---sent back to the loving arms of his EICSA therapists, to his motel room----to Earth. For all he knew, somebody'd discussed this mission with him at length and in detail.
Thinking about that possibility, he got gooseflesh as he followed the red line amid the multicolored ones on the corridor floor, helmet under his arm; red lines always got you to the next mess or the debarkation lounge.
Alone in the scantily-lit corridor, listening to his boot heels clank on the floor, he started to remember the uniformed man in the groundside bar saying, "So if you want to sign on, you gotta do it now. Tonight. We're counting on you, Ivo."249Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmsB9fXLzmZ
And there'd been something about Garcia. Either the guy had been Garcia, or had said something about Garcia. He couldn't get it clear. But one of the two big guys had been a guarda captain from black projects, he was almost certain. At least, he'd been led to believe it.
So it was okay---it was his team, anyway. He was moving with more muscle in his stride, almost accustomed in the gravity change, when he came to the end of the red line and saw maybe thirty guys formed up0 for transfer. You didn't chatter in a transfer line; you put on your helmet; checked your packed oxygenator, hooked in your hose, and listened for orders.
It wasn't an exposed planetary or satellite surface they were debarking to, he was reasonably sure---nobody's been issued pressure suits or armor. Not yet. Out of longtime habit, he reached back and slid his workbelt from the pocket in his pack, then settled on his hip.
The worst thing he'd probably encounter in that tube was a pushy stranger or a rent in its pressure membrane, but you couldn't be too careful. By the time he could see the tube's insides over the shoulder of the man in front of him, he had his gloves on, his jacket sleeves mated to them, and his radio up and running, in case there was something on the air he needed to know.
What he heard was, "Welcome to Gonsalves transit station. Please proceed immediately to Gate Nine. That's Gate Zero Niner."
"Shit," Cardoso muttered involuntarily in his helmet, and the man before him gave him a visor down stare. He'd been out of it longer than he thought, long enough to have missed the lunar stopover.
But someobody''d cleaned him up there, moved him, stowed his gear. Because he didn't have a month's beard, and because he realized now this was a guarda transport he was leaving. Gonsalves was a guarda staging area, high classified, in the asteroid belt. Which meant this was some kind of weird superforce jump mission, if it wasn't staging from Titan.
Damn, he wished he could figure out whether it was cool to admit he didn't remember a fucking thing about what was going on.
but if he asked and it turned out this was a "sealed orders" outfit---that nobody knew nada, yet----he was going to make an ass out of himself. And, what was worse, he'd badly shake the confidence of the men around him, many of whom he'd outranked. And he might need their trust.
At least he wasn't going to have trouble with remembering the assumed name somebody had picked for him: on his helmet, and on the tape over his heart, the legend said Ivo.
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