Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

Now, to hit the mess and get a hot meal. I can already taste the gravy over mashed potatoes, slice of roast beef in its own juices, and hot coffee. Sure, it’s all been assembled from its base molecules in a machine, but so what? I get my meat and potatoes, and it’s not like the natural processes don’t put the same molecules together in the same order. A properly synthesized hot meal is better than reheated ration packs any day. As for “real” food—imported foods from Earth are only for the mega-rich, and it’s not like we’re going to float a farm in the clouds of Jupiter. Sometimes people pay extra for greens from the garden domes of Ganymede, but I can’t tell the difference.

Then, later in the day, after I get all the data-work done, I’ll finally get some leave. A chance to see the family again. They’ve been wanting a big get together to celebrate my promotion to Flight Leader. If I know them, it’ll be a big dinner at Skyview or some other establishment like that. I’m also looking forward to getting some quality time with my girl. She’s been pretty patient with all these exercises going on, and now I’ll finally get to—

Just as I’m about to go out the door I get a message in my cyber-augments.

ATTENTION:

Lt. Michael Vance,

You are hereby directed to proceed at once to the carrier CM-1123 Admiral Marshall Weston, and report in good order with your vessel ready for duty.

The Weston shall depart no later than 1140.

—Squadron Leader Dashiell Bertrand.

All my plans vanish instantly. My carrier will be leaving in less than thirty minutes, and I need to be on her. I put on my helmet and start running.

* * *

All the enlisted get out of my way as I lumber down the corridor. First, because I’m an officer, and second because when two massive Jovians collide at high speed, something’s going to get broken. Boosted musculature and bone only goes so far—physics is still physics. And when you’re that big, falling down in three gravities hurts a lot, too. Then there’s the matter of turning corners—

I have to brace myself with my hands and grunt as I hit an elbow bend in the corridor, rebound off, and then I’m pounding down another corridor.

Everyone in the solar system thinks that being a giant Jovian with enhanced strength is great, but…

OK, it is pretty great. But we pay a price for it. Everything has a cost.

More size and strength mean more oxygen to fuel it all, and more stress on the circulatory and other systems, all while in three times Earth gravity.

My internal oxygen cell activates, keeping my brain sharp, while my muscles keep my giant frame moving at a full sprint in Jupiter’s gravity. I’m having to switch over more and more to my cyber-enhancements just to keep up my speed. We’ve all had to change a lot since the first days when we started gas mining Jupiter, and we’ve kept on changing, trying to keep up on a world that never stops trying its best to pull us down. We’ve become stronger for it, mentally and physically, but it has a cost.

All that extra strength we had to engineer into ourselves meant more bone, and more lung and cardio improvements, and that meant more mass, and so on. Why didn’t we shrink instead of growing? I guess because we’re people who don’t fall down instead of reaching higher. We had a choice, and we decided this world wasn’t going to beat us. So, we took the harder option, the more difficult road, and rebuilt ourselves larger, stronger…

And in some ways more vulnerable. A lot of us are looking at our first heart operation at 50 (in Terran years, not Jovian.) Falls can kill a healthy man. We’ve had to re-engineer our brains to avoid strokes, and all of us have a cyber mesh supporting our whole nervous and muscular systems. Supplemental oxygen isn’t just for spacers at Jupiter; all of us have an internal oxygen system for heavy exertion, or in case of an atmosphere breach. With all that extra mass, we’ve had to enlarge our brains to control our bodies, and that means more cyber enhancement of our brains to keep them working in high gravity.

So, in the end, we made it. We ended up larger, stronger, and smarter, and survived on a planet that’s never stopped trying to kill us. Still, I wonder if we’d have taken the easier way, and shrank and shrank, trading mass for ease, if we’d have traded brain tissue away in the end. I think if we’d chosen to think small on a giant planet, we wouldn’t have made it.

I bring up the map of the station in my cyber-sensorium, and it floats over my sight. I can also feel where I am, exactly, in relation to my destination—Hanger 15. Just as important, I’ve also got a kind of sixth sense of where everyone else is in the base, helping me avoid collisions as I lumber down the corridor. I’m dodging out of the way of a tractor bot carrying crates even before I round the next corner, and the ratings are out of the way before I even come into view. The cyber-network, along with rigorous training, gives us that coordination to work together and know what everyone is doing at an almost instinctive level.

Speaking of which…

Looking through my sensorium, I can tell that Shane woke up early, finished his reports, and is well on the way to the hanger. Looks like he’ll get there ahead of me. Jack is currently staggering down the hallway, suffering an early hangover, as his cyber-systems clear out the alcohol he was already putting into his system. He’s going to have a rough flight out. Taki is