::I’d say so,:: Jared said. He felt the captain was veering into “too much information” territory.
::But we are a different breed, no doubt about it,:: Martin said. ::We even have a different naming scheme than the rest of Special Forces. We’re named after old science fiction writers, instead of scientists. I even took a new name, when I switched over.::
::Are you going to switch back?:: Jared asked. ::To a normal body?::
::No,:: Martin said. ::When I first switched over, I would have. But you get used to it. This is my normal now. And this is the future. The CDF made us to give them an advantage in combat, just like they made the original Special Forces. And it works. We’re dark matter. We can sneak up on a ship and the enemy thinks we’re debris, right until the pocket nuke we stuck on their hull as we scraped by goes off. And then they don’t think about anything anymore.
::But we’re more than that,:: Martin continued. ::We’re the first people organically adapted to living in space. Every body system is organic, even the BrainPal—we’ve got the first totally organic BrainPals. That’s one improvement that’s going to be passed down to the general Special Forces population the next time they do a new body edition. Everything we are is expressed in our DNA. If they can find a way to let us breed naturally, we’ll have a new species: Homo astrum, who can live between the planets. We won’t have to fight anyone for real estate then. And that means humans win.::
::Unless you don’t want to look like a turtle,:: Jared said.
Martin sent a sharp ping of amusement. ::Fair enough,:: he said. ::There is that. And we know it. We call ourselves the Gamerans, you know.::
Jared fuzzed a moment until the reference came into his head, from back in the evenings at Camp Carson, watching science fiction films at ten times speed. ::Like the Japanese monster?::
::You got it,:: Martin said.
::Do you shoot fire too?:: Jared asked.
::Ask the Obin,:: Martin said.
The sled entered the ring.
Jared saw the dead man almost as soon as they slipped through the hole in the side of Covell Station.
The Gamerans had informed Special Forces that Covell Station was largely intact, but “largely intact” clearly meant something different to troops who thrive in hard vacuum. Covell Station was airless and lifeless and gravityless, although some electrical systems remarkably still had power, thanks to solar panels and hardy engineering. The Gamerans knew the station well; they had been in it before, retrieving files, documents, and objects that had not already been destroyed or looted by the Obin. The one thing they didn’t retrieve was the dead; the Obin still came to the station from time to time and might notice if the number of the dead dramatically reduced over time. So the dead remained, floating cold and desiccated through the station.
The dead man was wedged up against a corridor bulkhead. Jared suspected he hadn’t been there when the hole in the hull they slipped through was made: The explosive decompression would have sucked him right out into space. Jared turned to confirm this with Martin.
::He’s new,:: Martin confirmed. ::To this section, anyway. The dead drift a lot around here, along with everything else. Is that someone you’re looking for?::
Jared drifted toward the dead man. The man’s body was parched and dried, all the moisture long since boiled away. He would have been unrecognizable even if Boutin had known him. Jared looked at the man’s lab coat; the name tag claimed him to be Uptal Chatterjee. His papery skin was green. The name was right for a colonist, but he’d clearly been a citizen of a Western nation at one point.
::I don’t know who he is,:: Jared said.
::Come on, then,:: Martin said. He grabbed the railing with both left hands and propelled himself down the corridor. Jared followed, letting go of the railing on occasion to get past a dead body bumping through the corridor. He wondered if he might find Zo? Boutin floating in the corridors or other part of the station.
No, a thought said. They never found her body. They found hardly any colonist bodies.
::Stop,:: Jared said to Martin.
::What is it?:: Martin said.
::I’m remembering,:: Jared said, and closed his eyes, even through they were behind his cowl. When he opened them, he felt sharper and more focused. He also knew exactly where he wanted to go.
::Follow me,:: Jared said.
Jared and Martin had entered the station in the weapons wing of the station. Coreward lay navigation and biomedical research; in the center was a large zero-g lab. Jared led Martin coreward and then clockwise through the corridors, pausing occasionally to let Martin pry open deactivated emergency doors with a jack-like piston. Corridor lights, fed by the solar panels, glowed feebly but more than enough for Jared’s enhanced vision.