The Drift Wars

by James, Brett

  “You’re never supposed to remember dying,” Linda said. “Your memories are completely overwritten with a scan taken before the battle.”

  “And that’s why we take sleeping pills?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Wait,” Peter said, sitting up. “Did you do that when I first got here?”

  “Down,” Linda snapped, angling her head at the camera on the ceiling. “Or I won’t say any more.”

  Peter lay back. Linda busied herself with the monitor.

  “You’re dead when you arrive at the base,” she said. “Everybody is. Crossing the Drift boundary can damage living tissue, so they kill you before the ship even leaves port. Your body is frozen for the journey, and you’re resuscitated out here. Your memory comes from a scan made aboard the transitship. We call that your version one point zero.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you wake up and go fight. If you die and we recover your body, then they patch you up and send you back to me.”

  “And Saul?”

  “If he took a direct hit from a rocket, there wouldn’t be anything left. Not that I know much about the medical side. I’m not even authorized for the Purple Area. But my point is that you’re stuck in a loop until you survive a battle. I can only take a new scan if you come back alive. Some men will get stuck in the same version for months, fighting dozens of battles but always waking to the same memories, always saying the exact same things.”

  “And that’s why you sit at your desk pretending to work?”

  “Something like that,” Linda said.

  “Are you drawing?”

  “Doodling,” Linda said with a shrug.

  “Doodles of what?”

  “Things from back home, mostly. What I can remember.”

  “I’d like to see.”

  “Maybe,” Linda said, but it sounded more like never.

  Peter changed the subject. “So what version am I?”

  “Two point thirteen,” Linda said, checking her screen. “The two means you’re a sergeant. Three for colonel, and so on. The point thirteen is because you’ve advanced thirteen times at your current rank. I have a chart where I can see what battles you participated in and how long ago it was—both real and in your perception. It helps me check the integrity of your memory.”

  “So how many real battles have I fought?” Peter asked. “How long have I been here?”

  Linda looked away. “I can’t tell you.”

  “What does it matter? It has to be over a year, right? I lost count of how many missions I’ve been on. Somewhere in the hundreds, and a few of those lasted several weeks—”

  “You don’t always remember,” Linda cut in, anxious.

  Peter shut his mouth and waited. Linda tapped her fingertips together, chewing her lip.

  “How long?” Peter asked.

  “I’ll show you,” she said.

  She searched the drawer in the bed, pulling out a mirror and holding it to Peter’s face.

  “Look at that,” she said.

  It took Peter a moment to see the change, that his face was leaner, his skin duller.

  “Oh,” he said, taking the mirror and inspecting the thick stubble on his cheeks. “That long, huh?”

  “Longer than any other patient of mine,” Linda said.

  “How many patients do you have?”

  “Just you since you became a sergeant. You’re only the second patient of mine who has.”

  “Out of how many?” Peter asked. “You don’t look that old.”

  “That’s some compliment,” Linda said, hands on her hips.

  “I didn’t mean…” Peter said, struggling up to his elbows.

  “I know,” Linda said, smiling more to herself than to Peter. “It’s more flattering than you realize.”

  She raised the bed and took his hands, pulling him to his feet. He landed very close to her. Linda smiled up at him, embarrassed. But she didn’t back away.

  “I like that you remember,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “I like it too,” Peter said. “Except for the part about dying.”

  “Right,” Linda said, laughing, covering her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m getting used to it. And there are benefits.” He squeezed her hands.

  “That’s the other reason I don’t talk to my patients. This far from home,” she said, pulling her hands free and stepping back. “You marines are a little too eager.”

  “I’m different,” Peter said.

  “I’ve never heard that one.”

  The chime sounded, calling Peter to his post. He opened his mouth to speak, but Linda held up a finger.

  “Later,” she whispered. “Now get out there and do your job.”

  Peter all but danced down the hall, electrified. But he stopped short at the door to his room. Inside lying on the blanket was Amber’s locket.

  [18.23.7.32::3475.8563.331.1D]

  Fist-size chunks of blue ice floated in the air as in a photo of a hailstorm. They rattled against Peter’s suit as he pushed through, dragged by the dead bodies of two marines whose rocket packs he drove by remote. He moved slowly, the ice limiting the range of his sensors. He had no idea where he was going; he wanted only to be far away when the fighterships returned.

  The mission had been a complete bust, beginning with a serious miscalculation of the enemy outpost’s location. Their target was inside the planetary ring of Catrols, a gas giant deep within Riel territory. Six platoons under Peter’s command had been dropped several klicks away; they then advanced through the ring itself, using the ice as cover. But the cover worked both ways: Peter and his men couldn’t see any better than the Riel, and when the outpost turned up closer than expected, they didn’t even notice it until the Riel opened fire. It was a short, brutal battle. Peter won, but at the cost of half of his men. And then, just as they quieted the outpost, a squadron of Riel fighterships swooped in.

  All the sergeants had been killed in the fight with the outpost. The remaining men were scattered and disorganized—most froze at the sight of the fighterships, and of the few who reacted, none did anything useful. Some fired on the incoming ship’s thick hulls, others tried to flee. All were slaughtered.

  Only Peter had taken cover, slipping behind a blue glacier as the fighterships made their strafing run. He doubted they had even seen him, but there was nothing to gain in taking that chance.

  — — —

  The dead men’s rockets sputtered out, and Peter flung them backward, taking their last bit of momentum. He turned, watching them disappear into the quiet storm and marking their location in his computer. The men were basically intact—Peter had certainly been through worse—so he was sure that if they could be collected, they would be resuscitated. Not that he would ever find out. Even as a master sergeant, he still wasn’t officially privileged to the UF’s practice of bringing men back from the dead. And his knowing about it was a secret between Linda and himself.

  It must be a lot to keep track of, Peter thought, making sure no one ever meets anyone he saw get killed.

  Peter moved deeper into the ring, and the ice grew thicker and larger. Massive glaciers rolled by his scope in colorless dimension, shifting so rapidly that Peter had to use his computer just to dodge past.

  Safely distant from his own mission, Peter scanned his map for nearby platoons that he could link up with. He was looking for a chance to redeem himself, but he was out of luck: the nearest action was a hundred miles away, too far to reach by rocket pack. For him, this battle was over. Irritated, he signaled for pickup. Seventy men lost for only four Riel, he thought. Chiang San will give me an earful over that.

  To his surprise, the battle computer denied his request. “Fightership activity in proximit
y,” it reported. “Retrieval prohibited until area secured.”

  Damn, Peter thought. He dialed up the Riel fighterships on his map and watched the four red dots spiraling through the ring. It was a search pattern; they were looking for him.

  — — —

  Based on their flight pattern, the fighterships would fly right past him. They wouldn’t be hard to avoid—there were plenty of places to hide—but Peter wanted to give a little back. These were the same ships that killed his men.

  Marines normally avoided Riel fighterships, and for good reason. They were fast and well armed, with metal hulls impenetrable to the heaviest weapon in the marine arsenal. But the ice complicated everything, perhaps in Peter’s favor.

  The ice in the ring shifted constantly, and sensors could penetrate only a few hundred feet, making it difficult to navigate. The Riel had solved this problem by sinking transponders into every glacier, which sent them up-to-the-second information on their position and rotation. As a result, their fighterships could plot hyper-accurate courses, weaving through the glacial ice at high speed with only inches to spare. But it was a blind trust, one that might be exploited. The fear, of course, was tangling with an enemy whose weapons far outclassed his own.

  But so what? Peter thought. If they kill me, I’ll just wake up back on base.

  Though Peter had long taken comfort in this way of thinking when things got particularly grim, it was another thing altogether to willingly put himself in the path of death.

  As long as I don’t get blown up.

  — — —

  Peter drained his last battery clip and cast his rifle off into the blue ice. He looked down at the glacier beneath his feet, to the watery pit he had just melted. It was already crusted with ice.

  He pulled all four explosive charges from his belt, dropped flat to the surface, and plunged his arm deep into the water. He released them, spreading his fingers wide to catch them if they floated back up.

  Water clung to his arm as he drew it out, instantly turning to ice. He slapped it off and rocketed away from the glacier. The explosion was silent; light twinkled in the blue haze. Peter watched the glacier split in half, its two parts rolling away from each other.

  The glacier was now directly in the path of the fighterships. Assuming he hadn’t destroyed the transponder, they would mistake one part of the glacier for the whole. By shifting course to avoid it, they would aim right at the other.

  Peter flattened himself to the surface of a nearby glacier and killed all noncritical functions in his suit; it wouldn’t make him invisible, but it would take the Riel an extra second to notice him.

  And by then it wouldn’t matter.

  — — —

  Moments later the four fighterships appeared on his scope. They plowed through the icy belt in a tight line, leaving a hollow cone in their wake.

  Peter glimpsed steel as they shot past, pelting him with ice. He wiped his visor clear just as the fighterships rammed the broken glacier, exploding in such quick succession that they were just flickers of the same fire. But only the first three; the last one swung up, clipping and ricocheting off the glacier. It spiraled out of control, then came to a sudden stop. After hanging still for a moment, it flung back like a yo-yo rolling up its string.

  Peter clicked on his suit and fired his rocket, racing to the other side of the glacier that he’d been lying against. He didn’t have a plan; he was simply hoping that the fightership would overshoot, giving him a head start. But his luck had run out. The fightership whipped over the glacier and curved down, stopping right in front of him.

  — — —

  The fightership spun in place, the trapezoidal window rolling up from below, casting a green light that moved up Peter’s body like a searchlight. It stopped at eye level, and the squashed face of a Gyrine stared out at him. The creature was upside-down, but then the whole ship rotated, orienting itself with Peter. It eased forward until its window practically touched his visor.

  The Gyrine was expressionless—not that Peter knew anything about Gyrine expressions. He saw that it was only a face; the skin was stretched tight at the edges and then melded with the machinery. The entire fightership was a full-body cybernetic.

  The creature inspected Peter with pale green eyes, then eased to his left, taking in his profile. The ship continued around back, disappearing from sight.

  Peter remained stock-still, fearing that any movement would trigger instant death. He felt the Gyrine’s eyes on him, crawling over his back like sweat. An endless minute later, the ship came around the other side, finishing where it started, face-to-face.

  “What happens now?” Peter wondered aloud. As if to answer his question, his rocket pack fired of its own accord.

  — — —

  Peter raced away as the fightership erupted in twin explosions—not, as he first thought, the ship firing on him. Two rockets shot out of nowhere and slammed into the fightership. Its thick hull shattered and the explosion engulfed Peter in roiling orange, searing his skin.

  Peter’s rocket fired again, lifting him from the fire, then aiming him forward. He raced at full burn, ice hammering his helmet. A massive glacier appeared on his scope, directly in his path. He tried to steer around it, but his rocket wouldn’t respond. He tried the override, but it ignored him. He reached up to unbuckle the whole pack, but just then a doorway slid open in front of him. It was just a doorway floating in midair.

  Peter hurtled inside and gravity pulled him to the floor. He tumbled down a short hallway and slammed into the door at the end. He was inside an airlock.

  — — —

  The outer door shut, and air hissed into the room. Peter’s legs burst into flames—his suit, red-hot from the explosion, ignited in the oxygen-rich air.

  An inner door slid open and two men rushed in, wearing black uniforms that Peter didn’t recognize. They raised extinguishers and bathed him in a fog of halon gas.

  “Nice decoy work,” one told Peter as they hauled him inside.

  “Yeah,” the other said as they dumped him on the floor. “Good man. Now stay out of the way, right?” They left without waiting for an answer.

  Peter sat up and looked around. The ship was no more than a single room, with the door to the flight deck set at the top of a high ladder. Figures moved through the dim red light, quickly but quietly. They wore black uniforms, with exaggerated shoulders and pants tucked into high felt boots. It was a menacing look, but they ignored Peter, their attention on the large table in the center of the room and the four men who stood around it.

  Peter got to his feet, wondering how much of his legs were left inside his suit. He walked to the table, over which hovered a projection of Catrols’ icy ring. There were blue and red marks, as in the Sim Test, but they were far more complex.

  Each blue dot was captioned with a scrolling list of statistics—how many men, what sort of heavy weaponry, and how experienced. The red markers were shaped like what they represented, Gyrines or fighterships in this case—and some had live video of fighting in progress. Large green pins rose at various points around the belt, each capped with the head of a colonel or naval captain.

  The men around the table were generals. And this wasn’t a Sim; this was the actual battle they were controlling.

  — — —

  Peter watched the generals move their hands over the table, their motions becoming orders, the troops at their beck and call. One of the green pins blinked and switched to a live feed—a colonel’s face, bloated by his in-helmet camera.

  “All clear here, sir,” the colonel said. “Moving to two hundred and forty-four point twenty-one, but it’s blind up there.”

  “Sending you eyes,” the general replied, his face hidden in the dim light. Peter knew the voice but couldn’t place it.

  The general tapped
the corner of the table, and a blue dot shot forward. It flew past the colonel and exploded, filling in details on a blank section of the projection. Sensor pods. The general leaned in to inspect the new information, his shoulder twinkling in the light—four stars. This was the Great General himself.

  “I know it’s fascinating,” the General said to Peter, “but please don’t stand so close to the table.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said, seeing that his arm was inside the projection. “Sorry, sir.”

  The General’s head snapped up at the sound of Peter’s voice. He glared at Peter, his face twisted between recognition and rage.

  “This is a mistake,” he barked. “Kill this man immediately. And in the future, keep him out of my sector.”

  Several men rushed at Peter. Someone pressed a pistol to his helmet.

  “No!” Peter screamed. He tried to knock the gun away, but his suit was disabled.

  “Oh, get over it,” the man said. “You marines are such sissies.”

  The man squeezed the trigger, twice, and everything went black.

  [14.08.2.65::3948.1938.834.2D]

  “Peter?”

  Linda sounded close, her breathing quick, anxious.

  He kept his eyes shut; the image stuck in his head—the Great General’s face.

  “Peter,” Linda snapped. His eyes opened involuntarily. Linda leaned back, sighing with relief. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I saw something,” Peter said. “Back on Catrols.”

  “Catrols?” Linda went to the monitor. “You were never on Catrols.”

  “I was just on Catrols,” he said. “In the ring.”

  “No,” Linda said, scrolling around. “Not in the ring. Not even in the system. Not ever.” She turned back to him and laid a searing hand on his forehead. Peter brushed it away.

  “I was just there,” he insisted.

  “I…” Linda looked from him to the monitor. “The computer’s never been wrong.”

  “Then they’re hiding something,” Peter said, sitting up. “Because of what I saw.”