"Or maybe you'd like to know that every single Special Forces soldier dreams up a past for themselves. We know we're the Frankenstein monster. We know we're put together from bits and pieces of the dead. We look in a mirror and we know we're seeing somebody else, and that the only reason we exist is because they don't—and that they are lost to us forever. So we all imagine the person they could have been. We imagine their lives, their children, their husbands and wives, and we know that none of these things can ever be ours."
Jane stepped over and got right in my face. "Do you want to know what it's like to meet the husband of the woman you used to be? To see recognition in his face but not to feel it yourself, no matter how much you want to? To know he so desperately wants to call you a name that isn't yours? To know that when he looks at you he sees decades of life—and that you know none of it. To know he'd been with you, been inside of you, was there holding your hand when you died, telling you that he loved you. To know he can't make you realborn, but can give you continuation, a history, an idea of who you were to help you understand who you are. Can you even imagine what it's like to want that for yourself? To keep it safe at any cost?"
Closer. Lips almost touching mine, but no hint of a kiss in them. "You lived with me ten times longer than I've lived with me," Jane said. "You are the keeper of me. You can't imagine what that's like for me. Because you're not one of us." She stepped back.
I stared as she stepped back. "You're not her," I said. "You said it to me yourself."
"Oh, Christ," Jane snapped. "I lied. I am her, and you know it. If she had lived, she'd have joined the CDF and they would have used the same goddamned DNA to make her new body as they made me with. I've got souped-up alien shit in my genes but you're not fully human anymore either, and she wouldn't be either. The human part of me is the same as what it would be in her. All I'm missing is the memory. All I'm missing is my entire other life."
Jane came back to me again, cupped my face with her hand. "I am Jane Sagan, I know that," she said. "The last six years are mine, and they're real. This is my life. But I'm Katherine Perry, too. I want that life back. The only way I can have it is through you. You have to stay alive, John. Without you, I lose myself again."
I reached up to her hand. "Help me stay alive," I said. "Tell me everything I need to know to do this mission well. Show me everything I need to help your platoon do its job. Help me to help you, Jane. You're right, I don't know what it's like to be you, to be one of you. But I do know I don't want to be floating around in a damned shuttle while you're getting shot at. I need you to stay alive, too. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," she said. I took her hand and kissed it.
SEVENTEEN
This is the easy part—Jane sent to me. Just lean into it.
The bay doors were blown open, an explosive decompression that mirrored my previous arrival into Coral space. I was going to have to come here one time without being flung out of a cargo bay. This time, however, the bay was clear of dangerous, untethered objects; the only objects in the Sparrowhawk's hold were its crew and soldiers, decked out in air-tight, bulky jumpsuits. Our feet were nailed to the floor, so to speak, by electromagnetic tabs, but just as soon as the cargo bay doors were blasted away and a sufficient distance to keep from killing any of us, the tabs would cut out and we'd tumble out the door, carried away by the escaping air—the cargo bay being overpressurized to make sure there'd still be enough lift.
There was. Our toe magnets cut out, and it was like being yanked by a giant through a particularly large mouse hole. As Jane suggested, I leaned into it, and suddenly found myself tumbling into space. This was fine, since we wanted to give the appearance of sudden, unexpected exposure to the nothingness of space, just in case the Rraey were watching. I was unceremoniously bowled out the door with the rest of the Special Forces, had a sickening moment of vertigo as out reoriented as down, and down was two hundred klicks toward the darkened mass of Coral, the terminal of day blistering east of where we were going to end up.
My personal rotation turned me just in time to see the Sparrowhawk exploding in four places, the fireballs originating on the far side of the ship from me and silhouetting the ship in flame. No sound or heat, thanks to the vacuum between me and the ship, but obscene orange and yellow fireballs made up visually for the lack in other senses. Miraculously, as I turned, I saw the Sparrowhawk fire missiles, launching out toward a foe whose position I could not register. Somebody was still on the ship when it got hit. I rotated again, in time to see the Sparrowhawk crack in two as another volley of missiles hit. Whoever was in the ship was going to die in it. I hoped the missiles they launched hit home.
I was falling alone toward Coral. Other soldiers might have been near me, but it was impossible to tell; our suits were nonreflective and we were ordered on BrainPal silence until we had cleared through the upper part of Coral's atmosphere. Unless I caught a glimpse of someone occluding a star, I wouldn't know they were there. It pays to be inconspicuous when you are planning to assault a planet, especially when someone above may still be looking for you. I fell some more and watched the planet of Coral steadily eat the stars on its growing periphery.
My BrainPal chimed; it was time for shielding. I signaled assent, and from a pack on my back a stream of nanobots flowed. An electromagnetic netting of the 'bots was weaved around me, sealing me in a matte-black globe and shutting out light. Now I was truly falling in darkness. I thanked God I was not naturally claustrophobic; if I were, I might be going bugshit at this moment.
The shielding was the key to the high-orbit insertion. It protected the soldier inside from the body-charring heat generated by entering the atmosphere in two ways. First, the shielding sphere was created while the soldier was still falling through vacuum, which lessened the heat transfer unless the soldier somehow touched the skin of the shield, which was in contact with the atmosphere. To avoid this, the same electromagnetic scaffolding that 'bots constructed the shield on also pinned the soldier in the center of the sphere, clamping down on movement. It wasn't very comfortable, but neither was burning up as air molecules ripped into your flesh at high speeds.
The 'bots took the heat, used some of the energy to strengthen the electromagnetic net that isolated the soldier, and then passed off as much of the rest of the heat as possible. They'd burn up eventually, at which point another 'bot would come up through the netting to take its place. Ideally, you ran out of the need for the shield before you ran out of shield. Our allotment of 'bots was calibrated for Coral's atmosphere, with a little extra wiggle room. But you can't help being nervous.
I felt vibration as my shield began to plow through Coral's upper atmosphere; Asshole rather unhelpfully chimed in that we had begun to experience turbulence. I rattled around in my little sphere, the isolating field holding but allowing more sway than I would have liked. When the edge of a sphere can transmit a couple thousand degrees of heat directly onto your flesh, any movement toward it, no matter how small, is a cause for concern.