Thackery’s capsule cover opened. She came out of her conversion cycle first.

Rhodes barely glanced up from his drawing. He should have been more concerned about how his people would recover from their long stasis.

Thinking about it took too much effort. He wouldn’t be able to predict the outcome anyway. He just had to wait and see.

His whole life was a game of wait-and-see now. He couldn’t bring himself to care about much of anything.

Thackery didn’t sit up right away, so he went back to drawing. He and Oakes had been sitting at the table drawing ever since the battalion came back from the lab.

Rhodes started to slip back into his brainless trance when the door opened a second time. He stiffened when he thought Fuentes might be coming back.

Instead, Colonel Kraft walked into the barracks and stopped next to the table.

He watched Rhodes and Oakes drawing for a second before Kraft worked up the nerve to speak. “Do you mind if I talk to you for a second?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” Rhodes replied without looking up from his drawing. “I’m all ears.”

“Don’t worry about it, Colonel.” Oakes pushed back his bench and stood up. “I’m going to take a walk anyway. See you around, Captain.”

“Have a good one, Lieutenant.”

Oakes walked out of the barracks and left Rhodes alone with Kraft. Oakes left the interface active, though. He and Dash would be able to hear every word Rhodes and Kraft said to each other.

Kraft waved behind him. “Do you want to take a walk, too?”

Rhodes looked up for the first time. He had been planning to hold this conversation here in the barracks.

He wasn’t interfacing with Thackery and Koenig—not yet—but he certainly didn’t plan to conceal his conversation from them.

She rolled onto her side facing away from Rhodes and Kraft. She kept her eye closed. If she was listening to their conversation, she didn’t show it.

Rhodes shrugged and stood up. “Okay. We can take a walk.”

The two men left the barracks. The door was just closing when Thackery and Koenig appeared on the interface next to Fisher, Dash, and Oakes.

She gave Rhodes a knowing look through The Grid. No one in the battalion trusted these officers one inch.

“What’s on your mind?” Rhodes asked once he and Kraft started strolling down the hall.

“I wanted to let you know that the brass has decided to deploy you back to the Emal wars.”

Rhodes only nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

“They won’t send you back to Sulia. They plan to deploy you on a different planet. I know it doesn’t make any difference. They’re also scheduling the battalion for a series of training sessions to test out how well everyone is functioning.”

Rhodes nodded again. None of this came as any surprise to him.

Kraft halted there in the middle of the corridor and pulled Rhodes to a halt. “They’re also sending Fuentes back to you. I wanted to be the first to tell you. He’s getting out of stasis tomorrow.”

Rhodes stiffened. “So…..the doctors still can’t find anything wrong with him?”

“Unfortunately not. No one in the governing body knows what’s wrong with him….”

Rhodes raised his eyebrow. “But other people do?”

Kraft shrugged. “I’m beginning to think the doctors suspect. Osborne made a very detailed study of all the battalion’s medical records when he first joined the project. He’s studied them a lot more carefully than anyone in the governing body.”

Rhodes turned away and started walking again. “I’m not surprised by that, either, actually. He and Trudeau had a much more thorough understanding of our circumstances even than Neiland, Irvine, and Montague. It was almost like those three went out of their way to not understand even though they were with us the longest.”

Kraft lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “I also want you to know that Osborne made a very convincing case for taking Fuentes offline—the same way you did. He came very close to resigning in protest over bringing Fuentes out of stasis at all.”

“That does surprise me.”

“Why should it? No one understands your situation better than Osborne—apart from everyone in the battalion, I mean. He realizes Fuentes is a danger to others as much as he is to himself.”

“How are you going to handle that when you activate his weapons systems?” Rhodes asked. “You’ll have to activate his weapons to send him through training. Do you plan to leave him unarmed the rest of the time? I don’t even know why I ask. It won’t make any difference once we deploy in combat. He’ll be armed all the time. He’ll have to be.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Osborne asked the brass the same thing. I don’t suppose they would have thought about it at all if he didn’t bring it up.”

“So what’s the answer? When do the brass plan to activate our weapons?”

Kraft glanced right and left before he lowered his voice even more. “They already are active. They’ve been active for two weeks. If anyone in the battalion tries anything, they’ll be fully armed and dangerous.”

Rhodes looked away, but that only brought him face to face with Thackery, Koenig, Dash, and Oakes all listening through the interface.

Rhinehart and Lauer were waking up from their conversion cycles, too. They weren’t on the interface yet, but they would be soon.

Having their weapons systems active didn’t change how Rhodes felt about any of them. It would definitely change things once Fuentes returned.

For some reason, Rhodes didn’t worry too much about Dietz having active weapons systems. Dietz was the least of Rhodes’s problems right now.

Kraft halted in the middle of the corridor again. “You and the battalion are scheduled for your first training session this afternoon—before Fuentes comes back. You’ll be able to see how well everyone is functioning. If everything works out, hopefully Fuentes will reintegrate into the battalion. The rest of you will have a stabilizing influence on him. That’s what the brass hopes, anyway.” He turned away. “I’ll send you the full schedule. You can let me know if you have any issues with it.”

He walked off and left Rhodes with plenty to think about. Standing around the barracks with fully activated weapons systems was one thing.

Taking them into a training session was another matter entirely. The battalion would have to shoot at their targets.

Nothing would stop any of them from shooting at each other then—if one of them got the crazy idea to shoot at something other than their targets.

He wandered back to the barracks in no particular hurry. He was in no rush to hurry up and get himself or his people shooting at anything.

At least Fuentes wouldn’t be with them—not today. That adventure would have to wait until tomorrow—after the battalion found out if they could navigate even a simulated Grid course without someone winding up dead.

Dietz, Coulter, and Henshaw woke up before Rhodes got there. The others informed their comrades about the new schedule. Everyone had plenty to say about it.

Rhodes listened to their conversation through the interface. “How are we ever supposed to trust our SAMs again?” Coulter asked.

Henshaw gasped. “You don’t trust your SAM?! How can you even say that, Eddie?”

“Fisher killed Dr. Irvine,” Coulter pointed out. “Fisher took control of the captain and turned him into a raving, murderous maniac. The same thing could happen to any of us.”

“We have to trust our SAMs!” she exclaimed. “They’re all we have. The captain told us that from day one.”

“How do we know one of them won’t turn on us?” Coulter went on. “Legacy tried to kill you, but Keon could have done the same thing.”

“Keon would never try to kill me!” she shrieked. “Don’t you even suggest that about my SAM!”

“He might if he malfunctioned,” Coulter argued. “I wouldn’t think Fisher could hurt anybody, either, but he did.”

“That wasn’t his fault, though,” Henshaw countered. “You can’t blame him for that.”

“I’m not saying it’s his fault. I’m saying it happened and we have no way of knowing if or when it might happen again. It could happen on the battlefield. We could be fighting the enemy and one of the SAMs could turn on us instead.”

“We’re all thinking the same thing, man,” Lauer muttered. “None of us wants that, but we all have to live with the possibility.”

Henshaw rounded on him next. “I can’t believe you’re going along with this. You and Wild have been tight from the beginning.”

“This has nothing to do with how I feel about Wild,” Lauer told her. “We have to take all potential risks into account and this is one of them. The SAMs will always be a risk—to all of us. Each of our SAMs is a risk not just to the person carrying that particular SAM but to everyone else in the battalion. Accept it.”

She threw up her hands and turned away. “I am not going to start thinking that way about Keon—or any other SAM.”

“What about Van?” Thackery asked. “She’s Rudy’s SAM.”

“She tried to save his life,” Henshaw countered. “She tried to stop him from killing himself.”

“That’s kinda the point, isn’t it?” Rhinehart interjected. “She took control of his movements—or tried to. She tried to override his free will and make him do something he didn’t want to do—or stop him from doing what he wanted to do.”

“Of course she did!” Henshaw blurted out. “That’s her job—to help him and protect him. What was she supposed to do—let him kill himself—and her along with him?”

Rhinehart shrugged. “Why not? It’s his decision if he wants to end it.”

“No, it isn’t!!” she shrieked. “He was malfunctioning! He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“He was not malfunctioning,” Fisher interjected in his soft undertone. “The brass says the doctors didn’t find anything wrong with him either before he fled the barracks, while he was climbing onto the Ravager, or afterward.”

“This is crazy!” Henshaw’s wild eyes skipped around the group. “I can’t believe you’re all turning against your SAMs.”

“We aren’t turning against our SAMs—or I’m not,” Rhinehart replied. “It is kind of unnerving, though, how dependent we’ve all become on them. We can’t even fight without them. If they go down, we go down with them. We can’t disconnect to keep functioning independently.”

“That’s a good thing!” she exclaimed. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be! We’re supposed to depend on our SAMs.”

“Maybe not this much,” Thackery pointed out.

“I don’t care what any of you say!” Henshaw fired back. “I’m glad I have Keon….”

“We’re all glad we have our SAMs….” Oakes interjected.

“I’m not,” Thackery snarled. “I hate the bastard.”

Everyone turned around to stare at her. “You do?” Henshaw gasped. “Why?”

“Why in the world would I want some stranger getting in my face all the time and spitting his poison into my ear around the clock?” Thackery snapped. “I can never get rid of him even if he makes himself invisible. He’s always there, watching and listening. He’ll never go away—and like Eddie says, I don’t even know if I can trust him. In fact, I know I can’t. I would kill him if I could.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” Rhinehart murmured.

“The captain feels the same way,” Fisher chimed in. “He’s too polite to say so, but he still doesn’t want me around.”

“It isn’t like that,” Rhodes countered.

“Of course it is, Captain. You’re too generous to say it in so many words, but admit it. You would much rather just live your life independently without a SAM. That’s human nature. This whole situation with you, the battalion, and the SAMs—it’s unnatural. It’s contrary to your natural state. You would much rather go back to the way it was before. You can admit it. You won’t offend me by saying so.”

Rhodes squirmed. Fisher was right. Rhodes would much rather not have had a SAM at all.

He was immeasurably grateful that he got Fisher instead of some other SAM, but that didn’t change the fact that this was unnatural. Human beings weren’t designed for this.

His silence answered Fisher loud and clear.

“We all feel that way,” Lauer murmured. “None of us asked for this.”

Rhodes walked into the barracks just then and everyone turned to face him. He was in charge of this battalion. He was the one responsible for dealing with this disaster and coming up with a solution—if there was any solution to come up with.

End of Chapter 13.