Infinity Squad Read Free Page B

than we could ever use or want in our lifetime?"
    Ann-Marie snorted. "Hell-Spiders."
    "Prudes," Juan spat.
    "Assholes with officer's bars?" I asked.
    "Weapons!" Zazlu cried. "Revolvers, rifles, grenades, bullets! And every month they ship us more! We must constantly build new warehouses to store it all!" He held up the weed in front of him and squinted at it.
    "And in the parts of Earth where such things are grown, what do the hard-working people living there want the most?"
    "Cable TV?" Juan offered.
    "Clean hospitals?" I shrugged.
    "Rape-free afternoons?" Ann-Marie asked.
    "Weapons!" Zazlu said. "We have weapons, they want weapons! We want certain chemicals, they have these chemicals! Supply meets demand! Everyone is happy!"
    I rubbed my forehead. Either the weed was getting to me, or I was really dense. "But how are you getting the weapons out of the armory, off the planet, onto a starship and through the wormgate without anyone knowing about it?"
    "That is the genius! I do not have to! The switch is made back on Earth!"
    "Wait," Ann-Marie Butcher said, sitting up, "Do you mean that out of all those crates that say 'Rifles, Class-A' sitting in the armory-"
    "Two out of a hundred have something very special for Zazlu," he beamed, propping his feet on the table.
    "Genius indeed," I chuckled.
    "Until another Hell-Spider sneaks on base," Ann-Marie said. "And we break open one of the crates in the armory and try to fight him off with one hundred pounds of weed." Zazlu tried to pass the joint to her but Butcher waved it off, annoyed. "Alright, Lieutenant, we've buttered you up enough," she said. "It's time you told us what it was like."
    "What what was like?"
    "Dying. Coming back. The new body. What's it feel like?"
    "Ah, you don't want to hear-" Then I looked around, and noticed even Juan sitting more attentively. Zazlu too. I sighed. "Okay. Well, first of all, the only things that saved me were this- " I tapped the buffering band around my forehead, "and this." I patted the Colt .45 in my holster.
    "So like the First Lieu says, never leave the barracks without them. I mean it- all of you, all the time." I gave them my best Serious Lieutenant Look. The most important thing I had learned in Officer Candidate School, and that was from the janitor.
    "In fact, with spiders breaking into the base now, it might be a good idea to wear them to sleep, too. I'll suggest it to Ridley when he gets back from patrol. Which would be when, Zaz?"
    Zazlu thought for a moment. "Should be already past. Immortal Squad guys started getting back a few hours ago, I saw."
    I nodded. "Anyway, wear 'em. All the time."
    "Lieutenant?" Juan prodded. "The dying?"
    I sighed. “Fine. First of all, it sucks. Pain like you've never felt before. And you're there. The bands don't take you away until AFTER it happens. You're awake the whole time you're dying, you know you've died, and it feels... wrong. Like it shouldn't be. And then you wake up again, and..."
    I looked at my young, strange hands and flexed them. "You feel loss. You know you can't go back. Ever. So, no matter what the Immortal Squad guys tell you, no matter what the General says- you guys try to stay alive and in your real bodies, no matter what. It's not worth it."
    The group sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating my words somberly.
    Then Juan said "Should we say no to drugs too, Dad?"
    "Juan, I swear to god..." I began, but then I was laughing too.
    He was young, he didn't know. And I was alive when by all rights I shouldn't be, so how bad was it really?
    From the bunk nearest the door, Private Rex Grimstone leaned out past his makeshift privacy curtain. One data feed was projecting right to one lens of his coke-bottle glasses, another on the conformal screen he wore wrapped around his wrist, another to the stiff datapad he held in his hand. "Someone's coming! Immortal Squad!"
    Smiles turned to straight lips.
    "Which one?" I asked.
    "Lesko Crulan," Grimmy replied.
    I relaxed. "Ah, let