by Joshua Guess
I frowned as I finished a bite of sandwich. My curiosity momentarily took a back seat to pure, hedonistic pleasure as I savored the first real Swiss cheese of my life on my ham sandwich. “So people just walk around being invisible?”
Paulson laughed at that, choking on his own food a little. “No, you’re still thinking of it as individual parts. So long as it has power, Sand can be as dense or airy as you need it to be. It can be strong as metal or serve as a fabric. It’s designed to be a multipurpose tool for almost any use. Most communities keep themselves covered by swaths of it overhead. The Gaethe don’t care, really, but we have good reason to keep our numbers hidden.”
Rinna nodded. “Over the last twenty years people all over the world have been adopting it. We know the Gaethe are worried about the Sand, but there’s not a lot they can do about it. It’s not like they can destroy it—the stuff is everywhere.”
I scratched my jaw, finding stubble there. Sloppy of me. “What about EM weapons? Can’t they just blanket electromagnetic pulses and render it inert?”
“Nope,” Paulson said. “It’s shielded.”
The implications were huge. I knew there was no chance I’d learn more than a small fraction of what these people were planning, but I could make some informed guesses. Distorting population numbers was obvious; you don’t want the enemy to know how many strong you are. When you’re talking about numbers in the millions, the potential advantages to having ten percent more bodies than expected are enormous.
Secrecy above the ground was also a brilliant double play. Surely the Gaethe were trying to figure out just what was going on in the many hidden communities out there. Some would be living openly in towns, just as they had done for centuries. Others would barely seem to exist at all. With whatever attention the Gaethe gave humanity focused on the obvious efforts of the surface dwellers to hide from the invaders, the defense forces had free reign to operate on the edges of society with little scrutiny.
Being literally underground with everyone above serving as a distraction was another big advantage. All the pieces and parts clicked together for me. They were working toward something game-changing. There was no other reason to have employed such drastic changes across the entire planet.
Not that I voiced my suspicions. I mean, hey, if the people of Earth wanted to take on a technologically superior and deeply entrenched force, I was behind them. I’d even help. But I had every intention of keeping my cards close to my chest.
The reason was as simple as it was paranoid. I didn’t trust them. There wasn’t an active distrust, and the way Rinna had saved my life made me more than a little fond, but I didn’t know them. Even if there was no deceit in their hearts, these were still people who had lived under harsh conditions and spent their lives acclimating themselves to the idea that they might have to make terrible decisions to combat their enemy.
It had already been made clear to me that I was seen as a useful tool, an attitude I was familiar with. Valuable, certainly, but a tool. I was more okay with that than any sane person should be, but the healthy dollop of self-preservation wired into my genes made me very nervous about being used. Doing my part to fight the Gaethe was a goal I could get behind. Being expendable was not.
After lunch the slew of videos, audio files, and text documents continued. There’s no way to give more than the broadest of strokes about the history of even a half-destroyed world in an afternoon, but by the end of the meeting I had begun to grasp the edges of it.
The similarities between Earth and the UEE were as striking as the differences. Both of us utilized the same basic power sources—fusion energy—but other technologies reflected the societies themselves. It was divergent evolution on the short scale. The UEE had been stacked with minds brilliant in every branch of science, yet our greatest advances were in biology and large-scale technology.
We had to make ourselves longer-lasting and more durable for the rigors of living in space, as well as food production. Hence our leaps forward in gene surgery, genetic engineering, and epigenetics. Our population needed to grow and working in space is difficult at best, so we created systems to fabricate materials from nearly anything we could find, from asteroids to comets. We have and use nanotechnology—Jax is a great example—but it’s not our technological zenith.
Space forced us to zero in on a few very difficult and deadly challenges. Earth, with its much more broad set of problems, required a more generalized set of solutions. The steady march of technological growth wasn’t as advanced as what the UEE had produced either on its own or with help from alien species, but was more impressive overall for its utility and for how robust it was. My people certainly hadn’t come up with a system as pervasive and useful as the Sand for something as simple as construction, much less a global weapons platform.
As we cleared the table at the end of the meeting, I felt a little of my apprehension fade. My fascination with the technological elements was a result of my upbringing, because when your life depends on it every second there’s no other way to be.
Despite my misgivings, I couldn’t help feeling a strange pride and some hope. This wasn’t a rage-driven plunge into extinction. These people had a strength of character I just hadn’t expected, more impressive if Rinna and the others were a fair sample of the rest of humanity in general. They suffered under oppressive conditions but bore the weight without being crushed.
As I hobbled back to my bed, leaning on my guard escort, I listened to the voices babbling away in the corridors and on the terraces. Pieces of conversations jumped out at me. People talking about their children, their work, even idle gossip. They weren’t the voices of the defeated, no matter what the Gaethe had done to this planet.
Gritting my teeth against the swelling pain, I decided I wouldn’t be one of the defeated either.
Fourteen
I’m not sure what Vera and her science teams were hoping to get from observing and testing me, but I know they were surprised. The doctors told me it would be weeks before I was ready for any sort of strenuous activity, but three days later my bones were already well on their way to being healed.
I have to admit, watching the building confusion on the faces of the lab technicians as they took two sets of images of my injuries each day make me chuckle. The combination of my genetic advantages and the almost magical properties of the nano-machines working to fix my broken bones caught everyone off guard.
On the fourth day, I started working out.
I entered Bravo 2’s training center while toting a couple new pieces of gear. The first was a thin rectangle clipped to the breast of my borrowed clothes—a uniform identical to the one Rinna wore—that served as a communication and storage device for Jax. The thing magnified his transmissions, allowing them to be sent more easily to the eggheads studying us. The idea that every aspect of my biological and neurological functions would be constantly broadcast bothered me a little at first, until Jax reminded me that Ceres monitored me the same way.
The box also had a speaker built into it, which was more annoying than you can imagine. Sometimes I forget other people can’t hear Jax, and it was decided that verbal communication with him would save time during any question and answer sessions.
The second part of my new collection was one of the neural interface bands used to control the Sand. The idea was for Jax to study and learn how it worked as I used it, so he could copy its functions and hopefully improve on them. It was a remarkably good idea; the bands were, after all, just dumber versions of Jax.
My last piece of gear wasn’t as obvious. In my right hand I held a cane, which I leaned on slightly. The cane was made of Sand, but it represented only a fraction of the total volume of the stuff on my person. Almost my entire body was sheathed in a thin layer of the stuff, invisible beneath my clothes. Paulson told me it was the best way for me to get used to utilizing Sand as a tool and weapon. I took him at his word.
The training ground was huge, housed in an offshoot of the main sha
ft. The cavernous room was a vast half cylinder laid on its side, the zenith of its arc hanging thirty meters above. Rinna waited for me not far off, barefoot on a smooth circle ten meters wide. Aside from that bare batch, the rest of the enormous space was filled with dunes of Sand varying in depth from a few centimeters to twice my height.
Other members of the defense forces watched from the sidelines, no doubt eager to see if the enhanced pilot they’d heard about really was some kind of superman. I didn’t look at any of them directly, and controlled my breathing in an attempt to wrestle my heart rate back down to sane levels.
“Didn’t know we’d have an audience,” I said as I stepped into the circle.
Rinna smiled. “They’re going to be helping out with the second part of our lesson today.”
I did my best not to flinch. When we’d begun discussing the regiment needed to allow Jax to adapt the technology in the neural bands, Rinna emphasized the importance of combat. It made perfect sense; the armor was meant as a fighting platform, and the huge variety of body movements and contortions involved would give Jax a lot of useful data.
The only problem was my complete lack of combat training. When you’re expected to fly a ship, not a lot of thought is given to martial proficiency. Also I’m pretty sure someone on Ceres thought better than to train their more-than-human underclass how to kill efficiently in melee combat.
“Sounds great,” I said, putting all the enthusiasm I could muster into the words.
I can help, Jax said inside my head. He didn’t use the speaker, and I got a sense of something like amusement from him. I responded with a tightly focused sense of agreement.
Jax sent a signal to the Sand composing my cane, recalling it. The stuff filtered up my sleeve like a candle melting upside down and spread itself across my body. I barely felt it moving as it rejoined the mass wrapped around me.
Rinna eyed me. “All joking aside, if the pain starts up or you get tired, say something. You’re not close to being fully recovered yet. No trying to push through it, okay?”
I nodded. Much as I didn’t want to look like a complete moron in front of these people, self-preservation trumped all. More time in the medical bay than was strictly necessary didn’t appeal to me.
We started off with basic movements. I felt ridiculous at first as Rinna demonstrated different ways of walking and positioning my limbs. It was baby stuff, really. Then I began to notice the Sand less and less. I would take ten steps at a normal gait, then ten high steps, then ten utterly ridiculous leaps. When I started the ten normal steps again, I was barely aware of the Sand at all. The little display in the corner of my vision showed a real-time plot of the neural band’s integration with my brain, Jax, and the millions of grains creating the thin suit around me.
With every set of exercises it was the same; repetition created efficiency. By the end of the first hour the moments when I noticed the Sand began to stand out, the exception rather than the rule. Our exercises had become more complex. Rinna was putting me through a Tai Chi routine, which involved managing delicate balance and movements of all my limbs at once.
It was on the third repetition when I realized that rather than tired, I felt strong. My movements were more crisp, better aimed, and my balance was nearly perfect. Like air pressure, the tiny interactions of the interlocked Sand had become so perfectly spread out across my skin that I couldn’t feel them at all, even as I was being buttressed by them.
This was something I could certainly get used to.
***
I was feeling more confident when the calibration exercises ended. Rinna seemed pleased, though a quick glance at the soldiers hovering at the edges of the space deflated my buoyant mood a little. None of them looked thrilled for me.
Rinna gestured at me. “How’re you doing? Think you can handle a little light training?”
Say yes, Jax sent.
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’m probably going to embarrass myself horribly, but I’ll give it a shot.”
Rinna smirked at me. “We’re always gentle with virgins.”
Integrated computers can’t save me from my own reactions. I sputtered for a response for a second before realizing what she actually meant. It was too late, though. Rinna laughed so hard she doubled over, hands on her knees. When she came up for air, she wiped tears from her eyes.
“Oh, man, that was great. Must have touched a nerve.”
I bit the inside of my lip, determined to say nothing. I couldn’t help noticing the stone-faced men and women around the room were smiling, now. Of fucking course they were.
“Let’s get to it,” Rinna said, purging herself of one last guffaw. “Williams! Front and center!”
Williams trotted up, a human block of muscle roughly the size and shape of a refrigerator. As he fell in, my vision lit up in the bright green lines of a tactical overlay.
What are you doing? I thought at Jax.
Helping.
I wasn’t sure how the threat assessment and targeting system would help, but I gave an internal shrug.
Rinna nodded to me. “Since you’re still in recovery, no one is going to beat you up today. We’ll start with some basic throws, but you won’t be taking any of the falls until your bones are able to take it.”
With that she and Williams fell into a deliberate and steady dance. The two soldiers circled each other, hands extended and elbows bent as they searched for openings. Williams moved well and not just for his size; the man glided across the stone floor like a ghost.
A cloud of information blinked into being. Both combatants were outlined in green, major body parts bisected with thinner lines. Every measurable factor was being analyzed in real time, from the angle at which limbs were extended from the body to estimates of weight distribution. Jax’s assessment was in line with my own observations as Rinna slipped in and dropped her hips as she snaked an arm around Williams’ waist and tossed him like a bag of rocks.
The movements made perfect sense to me. I chalk it up to decades of relying on mathematics and my own spatial reasoning skills, but I could have picked out the tenth of a second when Rinna took Williams’ balance. I saw the first throw as both one movement and a collection of them, and did the same for every throw after.
I learned the names of the handful of throws she demonstrated without needing them repeated. Jax took care of that, too.
“Normally I’d start even slower by making you do exercises and breaking balance,” Rinna admitted as Williams stepped back after being thrown for the tenth time. “If you’re terrible, we might go back to that. So, wanna give it a try?” She waved me forward, putting up her hands in the loose grappler’s stance.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. Not with you.” I pointed at Williams. “I’d like to give him a shot.”
Rinna gave me a wry smile. “Williams might not think you’re as cute as I do, Mars. Walk before you run.”
I shrugged. “If I’m going to go hand-to-hand with any Gaethe, chances are they won’t think I’m cute either.”
“Your funeral,” Rinna said, stepping back. To Williams, she said, “You break him, we’re gonna have words.”
A flash of concern crossed the big man’s face, which told me a lot about Rinna and her relationship to her troops. “Yes, ma’am,” Williams said.
I’m not a small guy. In the measurements of my hosts, I’m a shade over six feet tall and about a hundred and eighty pounds. Williams had half a head on me, but had cartoonishly broad shoulders and a heavy build. He might be twice my weight.
When he came at me, I slipped in just as Rinna had and dropped the big fella easily. It wasn’t as smooth as what I’d seen Rinna manage, but Jax hadn’t perfectly adapted to me being taller than her. Otherwise he copied the throw perfectly.
It wasn’t as if Jax took me over. He could, in an emergency, but any other time it would be counterproductive. Conscious, the two of us would fight for control in that situation, negating any positive effect Jax’s control might have.
>
Instead Jax did the same trick from when I’d fired the rail gun at the scout ship. I did the best I could, making the broad movements, and he directed the finer elements. When I rotated my hips and legs, he added a bit of English here, micromanaged my balance there. It was a ruthlessly effective form of symbiosis.
When Williams thumped to the floor with a surprised oomph, Rinna cackled delightedly.
“You cheeky motherfucker,” she said, waving a finger at me. “You’re cheating.”
I grinned sheepishly. You didn’t get to lead soldiers in a fight to reclaim your home world by being anything less than smart and observant. “Hey, I’m still injured. I have to use whatever advantages I have.”
Her smile transformed from playful to…look, I don’t want to say evil, but…
“Oh, no, I’m very happy,” Rinna said. “If Jax can help you pick things up that fast, then we won’t need to screw around. Today is more Judo. Tomorrow we’ll tackle something new. Ever heard of Krav Maga?”
Fifteen
“Why does this thing need so many propulsion systems?” Rinna said from inside the hull of the Valkyrie.
Her top half was inside my pod, the rear wall of which had been removed to allow access to the complex of systems housed behind it. I was trying not to check out her ass as she moved from one position to another to get a better angle for her scanning equipment.
“It doesn’t need all of them,” I said, “but our scout ships tend to find themselves in unpredictable situations. It’s better to have backups for your backups than a dead pilot.”
“Stop staring at my ass,” she said, voice echoing hollowly against the walls of the ship. “Or take a picture. Jax says he can do that for you.”
“Little electronic Judas,” I mumbled. Jax had taken to communicating with the hand held computers most of the people here seemed to use. Figuring out how to bypass the security had been laughably easy for him, which led to Jax broadcasting things like my growing crush on Rinna to whoever happened to be nearby. Even to Rinna herself.
