Free Winds of Vengeance by Jay Allan Page A

ancient disease had returned in some mutated form. But then it became apparent that only the Tanks were affected. And despite the efforts of the greatest medical and scientific minds in the republic, every attempt to cure or prevent the disease ended in failure.
    It was a genetic abnormality, that much the researchers had surmised, some kind of malfunction in the cloning process, one that was not detectable before outbreak. Some donor DNA was more susceptible, that became clear as more cases developed. Cameron was fortunate. His own Fortis DNA had exhibited one of the lowest incidence rates of all the genetic lines, with just one case so far out of one hundred specimens. The average was much higher, almost five percent…and one DNA line, the Larsons, had lost sixteen of the ninety-four of their number who had survived quickening.
    “Second squad’s positioning is back within mission parameters.”
    Cameron nodded as the AI’s report pulled him from his rambling thoughts. Nodding was a pointless gesture, he knew, but instinctive nonetheless. He couldn’t imagine commanding in the field without the sophisticated computer personality assisting him…but he wondered sometimes if people had become too dependent on technology. Knowing the AI was watching everything, that he could access all its input and analyses directly in his mind, even as he did his own memories…was it too much? Could it help but degrade attentiveness?
    And encourage wandering minds thinking of names and training and the Plague…
    He didn’t have an answer…and the AI that was privy to his thoughts didn’t offer one. His training had also included some time with an old-style AI unit, the kind the Marines on the fleet used, before First Imperium technology moved human computer technology hundreds of years into the future in an instant. The Marines back then had given their primitive units names, but that practice had fallen out of favor. A Marine thirty years before would speak to his AI, identifying it by name, to activate it or to make clear he was speaking to the unit and not, say, another Marine on the com. But that wasn’t necessary anymore…even when Cameron spoke to the AI, the unit was integrated fully with his brain. It knew he was speaking to it before the words came out, even as he formulated what he was going to say.
    The bond between a modern Marine and his AI was far closer than it had been in the days of the fleet. Most Marines came to think of the machines as extensions of themselves, some voice from the back of their mind helping them keep track of things. And it felt weird to give part of yourself a name.
    He turned to the side, his suit almost anticipating the movement, the AI acting on his thought impulses, precisely controlling the elaborate servo-mechanicals to make the move seem almost completely natural. Cameron remembered when he’d first arrived to begin training. There had been weapons and suits of armor waiting, old models, the one the Marines on the fleet had worn into battle.
    Cameron and his fellow trainees got the chance to try out the old-style fighting suits, and he had gained an appreciation for the older officers and instructors, men and women from the fleet who had worn the almost medieval suits in battle. Cameron could still remember wincing as more than a dozen needles and probes sliced into him, and the feeling of barely being able to walk in the hulking, clumsy armor was as fresh in his mind as it had been that day. He wondered how the Marines of the fleet had endured it. He’d asked one of his instructors at training camp, but the only reply he’d gotten was that Marines did whatever had to be done.
    And it was the only reply he needed. Some things had changed. AIs, armor, weapons. But some things remained, as true now as they had been then, and years before that, beyond the Barrier, when the Corps had fought its great wars before the coming of the First Imperium.
    Marines did whatever had to be