Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

assured that when this is over, I'm going plant my boot - and a JAG officer! - a half meter up the ass of those responsible."
Firenze had no response, caught somewhere between fury and numbness.
The colonel sighed. He leaned forward and admitted, "I know you have little reason to believe me, especially after the Agency gave you the PR tour, but we are the good guys. You were brought here to help us save lives. I was told you're the absolute best chance we have to crack some nasty ICE, and I'd like to talk with you."
Firenze snorted. He didn't drop his scowl, but he listened. There was never harm in gathering more data.
"I'm going to be straight. I'm a soldier, so are my men. We get told what to do, when, where, and how. A unit like mine? We get a little more leeway on the specifics, but it's still prescriptive. We don't choose the 'why'. But you? You're not a soldier. You're a civilian with a textbook bootcamp jammed in his brain, dressed up, and thrown to the wolves. You still reserve the liberty to ask 'why', and the right to say 'no'."
"Then, why?" Firenze asked.
"Because I need you, my team needs you, and a lot of civilians you've never heard of, need you. Because you're a genius with a known habit of peeling open blackboxes and poking things you shouldn't. Because your profile says you're brilliant, driven, curious, and that you'd be an unlikely fit for my unit. The Agency believes that the best route to compliance is to blowtorch your hippocampus. I think the best way to get cooperation is to give you every reason you should work with me. I'll lay it out, clear and simple, and see if you're the right man for the job."
"And if I'm not?"
"Then you leave, I stay, and we all lose. But it's your choice. Let's walk through how we got here and figure out the best route forward."
Firenze nodded. He'd always enjoyed thought experiments. Even here, he could indulge the colonel.
"Do you remember how you arrived? Do you remember anything after the flitter landed?"
Firenze shook his head. "Not really. Just... a blur. A really shitty blur."
"After you got off the bus, you showed odd signs. You responded to things that weren't there, yelled, twitched, changed your rhythm of speech when prompted. I had you brought down to the infirmary. That was a good thing because you went into seizures right after." The colonel placed a datacard on Firenze's blanketed lap. "There's your record, feel free to go through it. According to the docs and medbot, there was an error with your imprint. The Agency tried to slide a lifetime of soldiering through your hardjack, along with operational resources - encryption standards, a few netsec classes you hadn't taken - but there was some interaction between the imprint, your mask, and the loyalty worm. Doc hadn't seen anything like it. He said it was 'as if your memories had an immune response' to the foreign data."
Firenze tilted his head and listened. This was new and interesting. If he lived, it might make good research material.
The colonel advised, "Don't quote me on the specifics, I'm not the doc. What matters is, you rejected it. They tried to put in a base-level command: 'you will not betray the State'. That's dirty pool, but I can understand the sentiment. A lot of lives depend on you, and the Agency isn't one to trust when they can verify." Halstead sighed. At that moment, he looked like nothing so much as a tired father, trying to apologize for his son accidentally running over Firenze's dog. Except, in this case, it wasn't the dog that got flattened. It was Firenze.
"Sir, this is fucked up." Firenze interrupted, "Why me? If they think they need to shackle me, then why bring me? Why not use someone from your team?"
"I asked that, myself. Repeatedly." Halstead answered. "But remember what I said about soldiers? We're not entitled to the 'why'. The best answer I got was that someone, somewhere, decided you were God's gift to counter-AI hacking. It was determined that making you into a soldier was easier than making a soldier into you."
"So someone just picked me at random, and I got screwed?"
"Welcome to the army." Halstead replied. "There are upsides. You get three hots and a cot, and you get to save the world by shooting bad guys." He grew serious, again, and continued, "But we're not the Agency. We cut out the brain worm, left most of the knowledge. You've got the data for soldiering, but you're no soldier, not yet. Training will be hell for you, trying to catch your body up to your brain and teach you to use those things locked up in there." The colonel asked, "Tell me, what's the beam-steering time of the PAGP99 radar?"
"Approximately eight nanoseconds." Firenze replied. His words spilled out of his mouth like a reflex. He froze in horror and said, "That's creepy."
"Yes, it is." Halstead agreed. "It takes years of training to get a mastery of the data jammed in your head. When I first heard what they did, I was horrified. You can't just 'make' a soldier."
"Well, they sure tried." Firenze said. He ran the scenario through his head, abstracted his situation. Despite the ache in his bones and the beeping of the monitors, the question intrigued him. Retreating into theory was comforting. It let him ignore the fact that practical application had just mugged him in a dark philosophical alley. "I might be evidence towards the contrary."
The colonel snorted. "You're no soldier. If you were, this entire talk would have consisted of, 'Here's the mission, get your kit, and be ready by oh-dark-thirty.' Knowledge doesn't make you a soldier any more than fighting. It's a holistic view, mind and body. Consider the soldier and the ganger: both fight for territory, carry symbolic colors, keep a code of honor, and are willing to fight, die,