The Star Gate

by Dean C. Moore

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE UNCHARTED PLANET, AGEMIR

  “All right, you three, get your gear, we’re headed out,” Patent instructed Ariel, Satellite, and Starhawk, the second they had responded to his summons and gathered around him.

  “Um, shouldn’t you consider spreading the joy, sir? It doesn’t seem fair we get to hog all the action.” Ariel glanced around her at the Alpha Unit encampment. Some cadets were assembling the component parts of the printers and synthesizers they’d be relying on at some point to modify weapons and cobble together makeshift solutions when the gear they came with came up short. Though most of the teens seemed as tuned out as ever, lost in their video games. The ones wearing VR headgear needed to be gotten around as they were essentially navigating blind and gesturing meaninglessly—at least relative to the outside world.

  One trainee was particularly perplexed with the jumble of gear in front of him. “What is this shit? Why do people keep dumping shit on me!”

  A fellow cadet demonstrated for him how the pieces of his sniper rifle fit together. The nonplused one didn’t seem particularly grateful. “Forgive me if I’m not a LEGOS guy, okay? What idiot turns a gun into a jigsaw puzzle anyway?”

  Ariel wheezed and swung her head on a pivot back to Patent. “It’s possible I’m tracking your reasoning a little better now, sir.”

  “Trust me, young lady, there’s no one more embarrassed over the state of readiness or lack thereof of my cadets than I am, being as their readiness for war is my sole responsibility. But running a few paces behind Omega Force is not an enviable position on a good day.”

  Ariel swallowed hard.

  Starhawk picked then to speak up. “Sir, I’d like to take this opportunity to reiterate what a sniveling coward I am.”

  “Noted.”

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate you saving me the long itinerary of proofs.”

  “Sadly, it’s all burnt into memory. You’re still coming.”

  “But…”

  “I’ve been informed that we’re already under attack and this entire planet and everything on it is nothing more than one elaborate video game built to imprison us on one or another level forever.” He must have been mad enough for his voice to carry because you could suddenly hear a leaf drop. And then the cadets all charged him at once screaming some variation of “Oh, can I come, sir?!”

  Suddenly Starhawk was the fearless soldier of the hour, leveling his assault rifle on the rest of the team now encircling them. “Get back! I’ll gun down every last one of you if I have to. You heard him, he chose me. Me! So just get over it and get back to your sorry-ass last-generation video games.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Patent said. “Fear not, you’ll all get your chance to play. I promise.”

  The circle of cadets disbanded mumbling their disapproval and sounding as if someone had gutted them and then handed them their insides to carry back to their hovels.

  “We leave in two,” Patent said.

  Satellite was mumbling to himself. “I’m going to have to design something that can communicate across video game levels if we get separated. No way I can do that in two minutes.”

  Patent groaned. “Just grab what you think you’ll need; you’ll have to assemble it on the fly. Omega Force is not going to stand around waiting for us to get ready.”

  Ariel was already dashing about getting whatever she thought she needed. Good girl. She was the one model cadet Patent was trying to mold the others into, a perfect balance of technical and fighting prowess, a bit green still, as were the rest of the cadets, but definitely the best balanced.

  Patent retreated to gather up his own toys. He was quite the inventor himself, and would have considered a tour with the army corps of engineers if they ever constructed anything on his level, and if he was less of a fighting man. He was still responsible for as much as a third of the tech Alpha Unit relied on; he was proud of that, considering the next generation on line really did have him beat in this area. But it was hard to retire from his engineering duties entirely to focus wholly on training as some of his weapons designs required a certain amount of sheer insanity in their application that the kids couldn’t quite master. He and Bette Midler shared a form of divine madness that was still in preciously short supply, and often just the thing to get them out of a pickle. He was rummaging through the back of his head now to see which of his inventions might possibly apply to their current situation.

  ***

  DeWitt, Ajax, and Cronos emerged from the jungle to meet up with Leon and Crumley. The latest three to enter the fray popped up their helmet-mounted goggles that looked like night-vision glasses, but it was daytime. The Augmented Reality visors used different tech to replace the actual forest in front of their eyes with a see-through version, like looking through the various gelatin layers of an architect’s drawing to see how the entire building was put together. The trees, the rocks, everything showed as transparent layers which could then be peeled back if the obstacles were still inhibiting sight too much because there were just too many “gelatin layers” between you and what you wanted to look at. Without even the see-through outline of the trees and rocks, as soon as the soldiers ran in the desired direction their nanites would override the signals being directed from their brains to their muscles to move them around the obstacles they could no longer see as they continued to hone in on their target. Today that target was a young boy—DeWitt’s young boy.

  “No, Sir. Nothing.” That was Ajax reporting in.

  “On the plus side, the tech is great. I can see freaking forever in the middle of the jungle. On the minus side, it doesn’t seem to help.” That was Cronos checking in.

  “We can do without the language, soldier.” Leon liked to keep his killing rated PG-13.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leon craned his head from Cronos to DeWitt. DeWitt just gave Leon a sad look and lowered his eyes.

  Something in the corner of their eyes had both Leon and DeWitt turning their heads.

  Leon noted the book in Cronos’s hands, The Holy Wars and the Resurrection of the Knights Templar, Circa 2250. He was reading it as he awaited instructions on what to do next. “We’re supposed to be looking for DeWitt’s kid,” Leon said sternly.

  “Yeah, what the hell?” That was DeWitt. Leon really didn’t feel like he needed a parrot on his shoulder right now.

  “I am!” Cronos insisted. “Besides, they’re searching for something forever beyond their reach in this one. It’s perfect homework. And besides, I’ve got my sensors all set to let me know if I get within a 100 parsecs of that kid.” Cronos still hadn’t looked up from his book.

  “Put the book away,” Leon said, trying to stay neutral on the subject, for fear the parrot on his shoulder might lunge for Cronos’s throat if Leon indulged the same feelings.

  Cronos stowed the book in a pouch also made of chain mail dangling from his belt. “Sheez. Anyone heard of multitasking around here?”

  Leon struggled to ignore, for now, the fact that Cronos had gone native with his body armor, opting for silver-metallic bird feathers as a kind of chain mail, over which he’d emblazoned a bright red cross in true Knights Templar fashion. If the guy was going to go psycho, now of all times, so long as he could still fight well, it was actually a secondary concern. All other concerns could come later.

  “Maybe it’s time we stopped looking for the boy,” Leon suggested.

  DeWitt glared at him with eyes afire. “Come again?”

  “He’s a kid, isn’t he? He could probably teach us a thing or two about virtual reality gaming. I’m guessing he’s already found his way to level two. That means our job is to look for the way in.”

  The others nodded as if genius were suddenly contagious. Leon knew that just meant they’d given up on knowing what to do, and so were ready to try anything, and do anything they were told. On the one hand that made for great compliance with his orders; on the other hand, it meant he had some morale boosting to do befo
re the defeatism overcame any desire to be rescued from it. It was a little early in the game for his people to be feeling this beat, considering they’d yet to encounter the enemy, at least in any incarnate form. That may have been the problem. How do you fight something that technically isn’t even on the battlefield, like this AI that had constructed this diversionary reality for them?

  Crumley handed out the new rifles to Omega Force as he’d done to Alpha Unit a while earlier. “A gift from Corin,” he said. The rest of the special forces team were already throwing their old rifles over their shoulders in favor of the new one, figuring if Crumley was handing them out, that was good enough for them. But he did come bearing footnotes also. “The settings can be dialed up here,” he said, pointing to the dial in the rifle stock, “if more nano-repair disrupting ability is needed, depending on what level of this doctored-reality game we end up on. This should keep the bad guys from coming back from the dead. I’ve already tested it out; definitely kicks ass over our conventional weapons.”

  Cronos appeared to be the only one not particularly enthused by the weapon; he’d slung it over his shoulder and kept his grip on his broad sword instead.

  “Thanks, quartermaster,” Leon said.

  Leon took the lead. The others wouldn’t have to be quite so alert marching behind him, which meant they could relax their guard a while, recharge and regroup faster without their nervous systems being pushed to the max. Crumley refused to drop back into the number two position, marching beside Leon, prepared to take a bullet for him if need be, or likely something far worse, considering where they were.

  “What’s the fastest way to a man’s heart?” Ajax waited a beat. “Through his chest with a sharp knife.” Ajax was already sounding off with his equivalent of “march in step to the tune”; in his case, it was a matter of marching in step to the sexist jokes. At least he was buying himself time going the more self-deprecating route.

  Ajax gave them a couple seconds to laugh or not before pressing on. “Why shouldn’t you let a man’s mind wander?” A professionally timed beat. “Because it’s way too little to be out all alone.”

  The men really were starting to keep time to the rhythm of his jokes. “How are men like parking spaces?” A couple striding steps. “All the good ones are taken, and the ones leftover are disabled.”

  “You getting ready for Cassandra’s arrival from now?” DeWitt asked. He had a head for strategic thinking, which was why Leon had relegated him to the number two spot. Crumley was far more qualified on experience alone in every way, but he just didn’t want the job. Like any philosopher, he considered his highest calling to spew out far superior options to any you could arrive at the livelong day, but Techa forbid he had to act on any of them or pick one solution above the others himself. Philosophers were not men of action, as a rule. Crumley came as close to an exception as it was possible to come, reminding Leon of the longshoreman philosopher, Eric Hoffer. “Figuring you better get into practice defusing her, to keep your head?” DeWitt continued after Ajax.

  Ajax frowned. “Techa, I hate being this obvious.”

  Leon smiled, secretly pleased to see his men were already rebounding the second they could slide it back a gear or two on the differentials of their minds. Usually it was just the opposite: anything less than full-tilt and his people got twitchy; Cassandra was even worse that way. But they all had their breaking points, and searching for a kid all day long in a world where seconds was far longer than it took to die could wear anyone down fast.

  Leon marched until he found himself at the edge of a bluff looking straight down. They were high enough up from the valley below for this planet’s equivalent of condors to soar on the updrafts for hours—an idea that they’d taken to without prompting. Not too far to the soldiers’ right came the roar of a waterfall; it had been growing louder the whole time as if they were nearing Cape Canaveral in time to hear a rocket blasting off.

  “Ajax!” Leon barked.

  Ajax ran up to stand by his side, flanking him, with Crumley on the other side of Leon. “Jump off the cliff, please.”

  “Honestly, I’m not that depressed. I mean it’s DeWitt’s kid. I’m sure he’d like to jump off.”

  “It might be the way, or a way, to the next level.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  Leon panned his head right. “Then we try the stunt over by the waterfall.”

  “I mean, what happens to me? I’m sorry if that sounds like a really dumb question, but consider my inability to work through to a solution a correlate of how emotionally invested I am in said solution.”

  “You’re upgraded with this generation’s nanites, remember? It’ll take a lot more than that to kill you.”

  Ajax was still hitting him with the disbelieving face. “In theory, sir. If I wanted to teach theory, I’d have stayed in the classroom.”

  “Option B is I push you, which truthfully, works better for me.”

  “Me, too!” The others chimed in.

  “I hate all of you!” Ajax took another look down and a deep breath. “You couldn’t pick someone who isn’t afraid of heights?”

  “You jump out of airplanes for a living!” Leon exclaimed.

  “Yeah, with a parachute. Big difference. B.I.G. difference.”

  “This is me stepping behind you to push your ass off,” Leon said.

  Ajax raised his hand in a “just give me another second” gesture. Then he ran back from the edge of the bluff—looking as if he was running away; only to turn abruptly and take a flying leap off the bluff.

  His hollering all the way down had a strangely relaxing affect, like the whistling wind serenading the soldiers.

  Ajax landed face down. Leon and the others had to engage their goggles to zoom in and see his state. He was a bit of a bloody, smashed up mess. Leon said in his defense, “For the record, I guess right more than I guess wrong.”

  There was a moment of mournful silence that the wind as it kicked up was doing its best to destroy with breaking branches sounds; the screaming of the splintering wood momentarily eclipsing the roar of the waterfall.

  “Wait!” DeWitt cupped his hand to one ear. “I can hear the women cheering back on Earth.”

  “Very funny,” Ajax said, peeling himself off the ground. The front of him was flattened like a pancake. He had to pick up the shattered pieces of his skull to make the “egg” whole again, sticking them back into place until he finished the jigsaw. His nanites were already rushing to heal the rest of the mess. His blood crawled back into his body—that was perhaps the creepiest sight of all.

  “Well, Natty and Laney are definitely holding up their end of things,” Leon said. “Time we started earning our keep. Who wants to try jumping off the waterfall?” Dead silence. “Seriously? After what we just saw? How much more insurance do you need?”

  “I say we elect Ajax for this assignment, and all others of the kind as a penance for his politically incorrect jokes. Anyone else with me, raise your hands.” That was DeWitt. He could be a little insubordinate that way, Leon thought, trying to usurp control of the unit right from under Leon’s nose. But Leon did applaud initiative in his people; and sometimes that meant dealing with some of the less pleasing aspects of being gung-ho. Everyone’s hands were high in the air before Leon could squash this line of reasoning.

  “Fine.” He pressed his COMMS located in his ear. “Get your ass up here, Ajax. We have a waterfall for you to jump off of next.”

  “How did I…? Oh. Never mind.” He looked up at them. “And how the hell do you suggest I get back up there?”

  “Jump, jackass!” the rest of them shouted at the same time.

  Ajax sighed into their COMMS. “I swear the air is really thin up there.” All the same, he squatted down and blasted off from the ground as if he had rocket boots on. He landed on the crest beside the rest of his team in just one try. “Cool.”

  “Ah, bunny can hop, but can she twitch her ears?” Cronos said, slapping Ajax on the butt.
>
  “Hey, for the record, I do the sexist pig jokes around here, you hack.”

  “Maybe we should leave the suicide attempts to me,” DeWitt said staring over at the waterfall, sounding, well, genuinely suicidal.

  “No!” Everyone shouted, including Ajax, who probably figured he deserved the penance. “We actually like you,” Crumley said.

  They hiked in the direction of the waterfall.

  ***

  Starhawk panted and tried to keep his head up in between staring at his feet to make sure he didn’t trip on the rocky terrain or just collapse face down on a craggy rock, both of which could put a real crimp in his day. He wasn’t in shape for this kind of uphill climb. So looking up at the hill ahead seemed pointless unless he wanted to put his life at even greater risk by succumbing to defeatism. Still, his curiosity got the better of him. There was Patent, up ahead, dragging a two-wheel cart behind him; the thing followed along like an obedient dog, though it looked more like a giant dung beetle he’d made a pet of. It carried Patent’s peculiar weapons. Starhawk saw no reason why his pet “dung beetle” shouldn’t do double duty. So he crawled up on top and promptly tried to go to sleep.

  The AI-onboard the robocart was evidently weighted down already with Patent’s gear and didn’t appreciate the extra encumbrance of Starhawk’s weight; it started making mechanical wheezing sounds. Patent didn’t even bother to look around. He just grabbed the rope he had slung over his shoulder, fastened one end around his waist, the other end through the “nostrils” of the dung beetle and continued marching, barely missing a step, and not feeling the weight in the slightest. He was probably proud of the fact that pushing fifty he could still out-stamina a bleeping robot. What a clown. Starhawk shook his head at him and settled back into sleep mode.