Temporal Liaison Officer.”
“Temporal … what?”
“You’ve been under a long time, General. I’m here to help you click in.”
A hundred questions battled one another for first rights of expression, but he clamped down on all of them and managed a shaky nod as reply. With the captain’s help, he sat up in his opened hibernation pod as the gel—a near-frictionless parafluid consisting of nanoparticles—dried instantly to a gray powder streaming from his naked body. He’d trained for this, of course, and gone through the process several times, so at least he knew what to expect. Focusing his mind, bringing to bear the control and focus of Corps weiji-do training, he concentrated on deep, rhythmic breathing for a moment. His first attempts were shallow and painful, but as he pulled in oxygen, each breath inactivated more and more of the nanogel in his lungs. Within another few seconds, the last of the gel in his lungs had either been expelled or absorbed by his body.
And his vision was clearing as well. The person-sized mass resolved itself into an attractive young woman wearing what he assumed was a uniform—form-fitting gray with blue and red trim. The only immediately recognizable element, however, was the ancient Marine emblem on her collar—a tiny globe and anchor.
Gods … how long had it been? He reached into his mind to pull up the date, and received a shock as profound as the awakening itself.
“Where’s my implant?” he demanded.
“Ancient tech, General,” Schilling told him. “You’re way overdue for an upgrade.”
For just a moment, panic clawed at the back of his mind. He had no implant! …
Sanity reasserted itself. Like all Marines, Garroway had gone without an implant during his training. All Marines did, during recruit training or, in the case of officers, during their physical indoctrination in the first year of OCS or the Commonwealth Naval Academy. The theory was that there would be times when Marines were operating outside of established e-networks—during the invasion of a hostile planet, for instance.
He knew he could manage without it. That was why all recruits were temporarily deprived of any electronic network connection or personal computer, to prove that they could survive as well as any pretechnic savage.
But that didn’t make it pleasant, or easy. He felt … empty. Empty, and impossibly alone. He couldn’t mind-connect with anyone else, couldn’t rely on local node data bases for information, news, or situation alerts, couldn’t monitor his own health or interact with local computers such as the ones that controlled furniture or environmental controls, couldn’t even do math or check the time or learn the freaking date without going through …
He started laughing.
Schilling looked at him with concern. “Sir? What’s funny?”
“I’m a fucking Marine major general,” he said, tears streaming down his face, “and I’m feeling as lost as any raw recruit in boot camp who finds he can’t ’path his girlfriend.”
“It can be … disorienting, sir. I know.”
“I’m okay.” He said it again, more firmly. “I’m okay. Uh … how long has it been?” He looked around the room. A number of other gray-clad personnel worked over cybe-hibe pods set in a circle about the chamber. Odd. This was not the storage facility he remembered … it seemed like just moments ago. His eyes widened. “What’s the date?”
Schilling leaned forward slightly, staring into his eyes. Her eyes, he noted, were a lustrous gold-green, and could not be natural. Genetically enhanced, he wondered? Surgical replacements? Or natural genetic drift? She seemed to be looking inside him, as though gauging his emotional stability.
“The year,” she said after a moment, “is 2229 Annum Manus, the Year of the Corps. Or 4004 of the Current Era, if you prefer, or Year 790 of the Galactic Associative. Take your pick. Does that help?”
He wasn’t sure. His brow furrowed as he tried to work through some calculations without the aid of his cerebral implant. The numbers were slippery, and kept wiggling out of his mental grasp. “I went under in … wait? I’ve been under for something over eight hundred years?”
“Very good, sir. According to our records, your last period on active duty was from 1352 through 1377 A.M.” Her head cocked to one side. “I believe you called it ‘M.E.’ in your day. The ‘Marine Era?’?”
“?‘A.M.’ means … meant something quite different. Antimatter. Or morning, if you were a civilian.”
She looked puzzled. “Morning? I don’t think I know that one.”
“From ‘antimeridian.’ Before the sun is overhead.”
“Ah. A planet-based reference, then.” She dismissed the idea with a casual shrug. “In any case, you were promoted to brigadier general in 1374, and were instrumental in the victory at Cassandra in 1376. The following year—that would be 3152 by the old-style calendar—you elected to accept a promotion to major general and long-term cybe-hibe internment in lieu of mandatory retirement.”
“Of course I did. I wasn’t even two centuries old.” His eyes narrowed. “How old are you, anyway, Captain?”
She grinned. “Old enough. Older than I look, anyway.”
“Genetic antiagathic prostheses?”
“Some,” she admitted. “There are a fair number of people alive in the Associative now who are pushing a thousand, and that’s not counting uploaders. Partly genetic prosthesis, partly nanogenetic enhancement. And I’ve spent two tours so far inside one of those pods.”
“Really?” He was impressed. “In the names of all the gods and goddesses, why?”
She shrugged again. “Cultural disjunct, I suppose.”
“Copy that.” The gulf between civilian life and life in the Marine Corps had been enormous even back in his day. It might be considerably worse now.
“The Corps is my home,” she added. “Most of my family was on Actinia.”
He heard the pain in her voice, and decided not to question her further on that. Evidently, he’d missed a lot of history. Eight centuries’ worth.
The numbers finally came together for him. “Okay. I’ve been out of it for 852 years. I take it there’s a crisis?”
Again, that perplexed look. “What makes you think that, sir?”
“An old expression, ancient even in my day,” he replied. “?‘In case of war, break glass.’?”
“I … don’t understand, sir.”
“Never mind.” He looked around the chamber that had changed so much in eight centuries. Eleven other pods rested quietly in alcoves around the oval space. His command constellation. The other waking personnel appeared to be working at reviving them. “What’d they do, rebuild the place around us?”
“Moved you to a larger facility, about three hundred years ago. You’re in Eris Ring, now.”
“Huh. We got hibed in Noctis Lab. On Mars.”
“That facility was closed, sir, not long after they brought you up here. The whole of Mars is military-free, now. The Associative’s been downscaling all of the military services for a long time, now.”
“I see.” He was looking forward to catching up on history. It promised to be very interesting indeed. “Eris? A planetoid?”
“Dwarf planet, Sir. Sol system … one of the scatter-disk objects.”
“TNO,” Garroway said, nodding. “I know.” Trans-Neptunian Objects was a catch-phrase for some thousands of worlds and worldlets circling Sol beyond the orbit of Neptune, most beyond even the Kuiper Belt. Eris, in fact, according to history downloads he’d