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"Heyyyyy there, Marine Corps!"
"Heyyyyy there, Marine Corps!"
"Bullet-sponge Marine Corps!"
"Bullet-sponge Marine Corps!"
"Pick up your steps and run with me!"
"Pick up your steps and run with me!"
"We are the Sons of UDT!"
"We are the Sons of UDT!"
It was not about physical strength, Wit reminded himself. It was 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical. That's what the SEAL instructors were looking for: men and women who could disregard the pleadings of the body. Pain was nothing, sleep was nothing. What was freezing water to a SEAL mind? What was chaffed skin, wrecked muscles, bleeding sores? The body chooses to be sore. The body chooses to be exhausted. But the SEAL mind rejects it. The SEAL mind commands the body, not the other way around.
The wheel was nothing. The radiation was nothing. The blood in his nose and throat and gums and bowels was nothing. The heat was nothing. The Formics were nothing. They were bugs to be squished, bugs to be stepped upon.
He tried turning it again. It wouldn't obey. The beat of the cadence was like the beat of a drum. He hawked up another globule of blood, spat to the corner of his helmet, and tried turning it again. His arm was going to rip out of its socket. Fine. Take my arm. I have another. And here take my leg, I have another one of those, too. And here take my torso, take it all. But you can't have my mind. I am a son of the UDT. I am a son of David and Jeanine O'Toole. I am a son of Earth. And you, you bug-eyed bastards, cannot have my mind.
He pulled, he twisted, he grit his bleeding teeth. Something broke inside him, something snapped or came loose. A muscle perhaps, or a ligament, or bone. Wit ignored it. He pulled, straining, screaming, burning in the darkness.
The wheel turned. An inch at first. But then more.
Two inches. Three. Six. Twelve.
"Heyyyyyy there, Navy!"
"Heyyyyyy there, Navy!"
"World's finest Navy!"
"World's finest Navy!"
"Set a course and follow me!"
"Set a course and follow me!"
"We are the sons of UDT!"
"We are the sons of UDT!"
CHAPTER 24
Landers
The gamma plasma disappeared. The tunnel of light was gone. Imala responded immediately and spun away, getting clear. She had been in a slow drift for over an hour and it had become harder and harder to stay within the tunnel. Four more kilometers, and she would have collided with the ship. That was far, far too close.
She punched the rockets and took off, accelerating away as fast as she could, the G-forces slamming her against her seat.
"I'm clear," she said over the radio. "I don't know if you can hear me, Vico, but I'm clear."
*
Inside the sealed launch tube, Victor and the others stared at Wit's biometrics on the holopad. All of the numbers had dropped to zero. The heart monitor was a flat line. The flashing message that had beeped and warned of an impending fatality had gone silent. Deen and the others had stopped singing. There was no need to continue anymore.
Imala's voice crackled over the radio. She was clear. She was alive. She was laughing. She didn't yet know what had happened.
