Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The rope snapped, and I plunged toward the canyon floor, some three hundred meters below.
Later on, Squad Sergeant Judiah Pope would learn that my rope had been cut, but his investigation into the incident would prove futile. Problem was, everyone in the Eighty-first Squad wanted me dead. Everyone except Dina, who felt more pity than resentment toward me, and my older brother, Jarrett, who would rather I experience pain. A whole lot of pain.
Pope had us ascending and rappelling a wall of mottled strata that South Point's first cadet corps had dubbed "Whore Face" since she offered so many good hand and footholds. The sergeant had, in all of his oratory splendor, told us, "You fuckin' first years ain't gonna get the luxury of no combat skins yet. You're gonna climb this face with ropes, then you're gonna come down this face with ropes. No superhero bullshit. Now I wanna hear you call out. On belay? On! Ready to climb? Ready! Don't let me see you screwin' up."
My father, a soft-spoken mineralogist who worked for the Inte-Micro Corporation, had always told me that only the ignorant resorted to profanity. I had never heard more swearing than I had during the end of my first year at the academy, even though most of the second, third, and fourth years I had met seemed pretty bright, and right there in the South Point Academy Code—a code none of us would dare break at the risk of immediate dismissal—was the admonishment to be at all times polite and courteous in our deportment, bearing, and speech. During my second day on Exeter, the rocky moon on which the ancient Racinians had chosen to build their facilities and on whichGenerals Ky-Tay and Jotanik of the Seventeen System Guard Corps had chosen to build South Point Academy, Pvt. Joey Haltiwanger had told me that the cadre was nervous over the mounting political tension between the colonies and the alliances. That's why everyone remained so intense, and that intensity grew even more fierce as we struggled to finish our first year's training and get onto the Order of Merit list for promotion.
)While that may have been true for some, Pope belonged to a camp all his own. The twenty-year-old second year stood a quarter meter shorter than most of us, had skin like singed rubber, and had a gap so large between his bottom front teeth that you swore someone had knocked out a tooth. For a long time I considered him no more than a disgusting little man, a military cliche overcompensating for the curses nature had wrought upon him.
So I was falling, watching the rope drop away from me, feeling the wind rush over my face and flutter through my black training utilities as though it wanted to morph them into a parachute. And there, down below, stood Pope, a diminutive grim reaper, scowling, pointing a finger at me, and though I couldn't hear him, I knew he swore at me. I gaped at him, my eyes burning, and thought of breaking orders and activating my skin to save myself. Finally, he hit me with the CZX Forty, and I came to a slow stop about a meter off the dusty ground.
For a little while there, I hadn't been sure if Pope would save me. The day before, my poor time on the confidence course put my squad in third place during the platoon competition.
"What're you doing, St. Andrew?" Pope asked, still aiming the CZX Forty's big barrel at me. He thumbed a button on the antigrav rifle's stock panel. I dropped to the dirt, tripped, and fell to my knees. His boot suddenly connected with my jaw, and I slammed onto my back. Exeter's pale blue sky scrolled by and got me dizzy. The majority of the cadets training on Exeter had been raised above ground, but people like my brother and I who had spent most of our lives in the mines of Gatewood-Callista still had trouble adjusting to all that real, nonsimulated space overhead and had developed mild or even severe cases of agoraphobia that kept the academy's shrinks busy. Sure, Jarrett and I had been to the surface and had seen the heavens, but only on rare occasions, given the cost of renting an environment suit. My father had bought me a trip up for my eighteenth birthday, hopefully my last celebrated on that godforsaken satellite, and I had reveled in the night sky and had dreamed of coming to Exeter and becoming an officer in the Seventeen System Guard Corps so that I could, like so many other eighteen-year-old colos, shed my second-class roots.
As I rubbed my smarting jaw, I realized that all of my dreams had come terribly true.
"Get your ass up!"
Spoken like a true leader "Sir, yes, sir!." I cried.
By the time I got to my feet, nine young men and women about my age had surrounded me and were staring at the dust-covered pariah before them.
Pvt. Rooslin Halitov, also a native of Gatewood-Callista, jabbed me with a stubby index finger, then turned up the blue flame in his eyes. "Don't know about the rest of you," he began, stealing a glance over his shoulder, "but I'm tired of carrying this gennyboy. I say he dusts out right here, right now." Halitov gritted his teeth, which made his blocky face seem all the more hatchet-shaped and drew out the veins in his tree trunk of a neck. He poked me again, then traced his finger along the two-inch, cross-shaped birthmark on my cheek. And that's when I grabbed his wrist.
And Staff Sergeant Claudia Rodriguez grabbed mine. The tall, humorless woman had the grip of a shraxi, and I was one to know since I had once inadvertently run into two of those nocturnal little bastards on my way back to First Year Barracks. Luckily, Jarrett had been with me and had pried them off before they had sunk their teeth into my arm.
