Five by Five

by Aaron Allston

  The head design appeared to make the greatest concession to human esthetics, most closely resembling the helmet worn by a retarius fighting in the gladiatorial arenas of Ancient Rome. The crest, which would have been of a fish design on the helmet, had become a tube ending in a bright light. The faceplate became a solid, curved triangle of darkened plastic behind which burned two blue pinpoints of light.

  The blue points expanded slightly as the door slid closed behind Greg. “Greetings, Captain Allen. If you would take your place here on the table.” The robot’s voice had a slight buzz—not unpleasant, but enough to guarantee its mechanical origin could not be denied. The construct had been designed X1N, but the humans had translated that into the word Shin, as per the Chinese pronunciation.

  “Is there a problem, Doctor Shin?”

  The construct paused. “This unit is not a doctor, Captain. It is a mobile patient care facilitator and interface with the Unity’s xenobiological and xenophysiological databases. It is no more an doctor than a stethoscope is.”

  Greg shook his head. The Qian had clearly designed Shin to appeal to the human propensity for treating everything as if it was alive. To have the machine carefully deny that it was alive worked against that purpose. Even so, he imagined it made sense to the Qian in some odd way, so he hopped up on the table.

  The compartments on Shin’s torso opened and the more delicate arms emerged. Greg found them decidedly spiderish, with multiple joints to the fingers and arms. “Please roll up your right sleeve.”

  Greg unbuttoned his grey fatigue shirt’s cuff and rolled it back past the elbow. The place where the Qian-supplied appendage began and his flesh and blood ended couldn’t be picked out by the naked eye. Greg thought for just half a second, and what appeared to be soft, pliable pink flesh became an angular, icy blue sculpture of what a hand ought to be. The demarkation between flesh and the prosthetic became a ragged line and if he looked very closely, he could see ivory ghosts of where his bones thrust into the Qian device.

  A blue light bar played down over Shin’s faceplate and back up again. One silvery spidery hand grasped the device and the other wrapped itself around the narrow band of flesh at his elbow. The construct tugged at the wrist, but the graft held firm.

  “Satisfactory.” Shin’s small arms retracted and vanished. “You have adapted well to the nanite interface. Do you have pains ever?”

  “Do you mean actual pain, or impressions of a phantom limb?”

  “Input on either subject would be satisfactory.”

  Greg looked at the blue lump. “The arm communicates pressure, heat and cold perfectly well. Pain, too, but it blunts it. It never gets past the point of being an annoyance. Sharp pain, as if the limb has been cut off, no, never. Phantom sensations I get from time to time, when I’m very tired. I can lose control of the arm—it freezes or gets melty depending.”

  The eyelights blinked on and off asymmetrically, which Greg found a bit disconcerting. “Do you often exercise the advanced interface capabilities?”

  The pilot shook his head. “I can handle being plugged into this piece of machinery because it’s replacing a part of me. Using it to plug into an appliance or fighter, no, those aren’t parts of me.”

  “You never felt that your fighter was part of you?”

  “Got some xenopsychological programs running there, Shin?”

  “Deflection and evasion.”

  Greg chewed his lower lip. For as long as he could remember, he had felt planes and fighters, even aircars and land transport or boats had been part of him. He couldn’t explain it—none of the pilots who felt the same way could—except to say that he felt more complete at speed, piloting something. He figured his brain was wired for it, and even though the arm would let him plug in—bypassing eyes and his other senses—that just didn’t feel right.

  “Yes, I have. I do, when I am piloting in the usual manner.”

  “Do you ever get a sense of the device performing functions for which you have not been trained or briefed?”

  “Meaning?”

  The construct stepped back and its eyes blinked again. “Neural systems adapt to new demands and stimulus. Neuroplasticity remaps portions of your brain to process new information. Do you perceive anomalous or unexpected input or abilities with the nanite construction?”

  Greg shrugged. “Sometimes, here on the Unity, it feels as if there’s a GPS built into the arm. I don’t get lost very much. Not at all really. Is that what you’re asking?”

  “That reply is within statistically acceptable norms.” Shin’s head came up. “You would do well, Captain, to recall that this unit is not autonomous. Addressing it as ‘you’ introduces a level of imprecision into the conversation which consumes processing time.”

  “Right. Got it.” Greg smiled. And I’ll ignore it. “Was checking on my arm the only purpose for my being called down here?”

  Shin’s body spun around at the waist and one of the long upper arms reach into a cabinet. The stubby-fingered hand plucked a boxy little device from a slot in what looked like a charging bay. The torso whirled back and the construct extended the device to Greg.

  No bigger than a pack of cards, the grey resin device had a galaxy of blue, green and red lights flowing through it. They almost looked like dust motes floating in a sunbeam. The device had a visual depth to it that belied its size. Greg found it mesmerizing.

  Jennifer would have loved it.

  Shin’s buzzing voice broke through his private thoughts. “You have been approved for the issuance of your Nomad. It will function as your Shrike’s brain for all navigational purposes. You cannot fly your ship without it. Star maps and mission parameters will be uploaded as needed. You are, Captain Allen, approved for flight service.”

  Smiling, Greg reached up to take the device. As his right hand approached it, however, the prosthesis shifted. Fingers melted back into the palm. His hand flattened, a depression into which the Nomad would fit perfectly opening up at the end of his wrist.

  Greg concentrated, pushing his joy aside. His hand returned to its normal shape and color. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Anomalous, but not so great a statistical deviation to cause concern.” Shin’s wrist rotated and placed the Nomad in Greg’s hand. “Welcome, Captain Allen, to the 301st’s active duty roster.”

  –5–

  Greg Allen smiled as he stepped onto the Unity’s flight deck. Seven of the squadron’s dozen Shrike fighters had been assembled on either side of the broad deck. The Qian had built them according to their perception of human esthetics, making the starfighters a curious amalgam of history, fantasy and lethality.

  The fighters shared the Unity’s master design elements, employing what appeared to be wood and brass in the art-deco construction. While the fighters could enter atmosphere, and flew well therein, Qian technology had rendered the need for aerodynamics secondary. In atmosphere, the defensive shields would deploy like an invisible skin, sharpening angles and making the fighters far more maneuverable than imagined just glancing at them.

  Just under nineteen meters in length, and featuring a wingspan of thirteen and a half meters, the Shrike had curved wings with a scalloped rear edge. The domed cockpit sported a fin on top. The fighter’s split tail had rudders which repeated the scalloped followed edge. They were hardly necessary to the function of the fighter, but that they looked like they belonged to human eyes, and that was why they existed.

  He approached his Shrike and could not help but have his smile broaden. While the fuselage, wings and tail appeared to have been built of cedar planks and unpainted, the nose had been decorated with the sharp teeth and eyes akin to the nose-art designs used on the fighters flown by the Flying Tigers in World War II. Even though air combat had changed significantly since the middle of the 20th century, that antique iconography still resonated with humans. Hence the design and unit name.

  He walked beneath his fighter’s belly, letting his flesh and blood hand trail along the smo
oth surface. It almost felt like wood, but he knew it couldn’t be. My other hand feels like flesh and blood, too, but it isn’t. That was the reason he didn’t reach up with his right hand to touch the ship. He didn’t want to see it react to his fighter the way it had to the Nomad unit.

  As he came around he looked up toward the cockpit and his throat instantly thickened. His name had been painted there in a delicate flowing hand. Jennifer’s hand. His wife had insisted on doing that with each of his fighters, to keep him safe. They had even joked that she should do the same on the aircar.

  If only you had, darling.

  He turned away, swiping at a tear, and caught the attention of the woman inspecting her Shrike beside his. Petite and of Asian origin, Lieutenant Sun Lan quickly averted her gaze.

  Greg walked over. “Magnificent, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, Captain Allen.” She glanced up at him, her smile modest. “Forgive me if I intruded.”

  “You didn’t.” Greg pointed back to his Shrike. “The Qian probably didn’t know, but they modeled the painting of my name on painting my late wife had done.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Do you truly think they did not know?”

  Greg hesitated, following the logical course of her question. The Qian did seem to know everything—and revealed very little in return. So, either they did not think he would have much of an emotional connection back to that image, or they did not care, or they wanted to study his reaction. Or they simply thought I could use a good-luck charm.

  “That’s a good question.” Greg nodded toward the nose of her Shrike. “Do you think they understood what that paint scheme might mean to someone from the People’s Republic of China?”

  “Perhaps.” She nodded thoughtfully. “The Flying Tigers supported China against Imperial Japanese aggression, so they are favored in our memories. The west’s continued aggression, however, has tainted that memory. The Qian, you will note, used red paint here which is the same hue as our flag. Perhaps of more concern to us is that while we comprise the largest percentage of the human population, we have only one pilot in the squadron, whereas America has two, the west has six.”

  “You’re considering Captain Rustov a westerner?”

  “You would not?”

  Greg smiled. “What I’d point out that every permanent member of the United Nations security council has one pilot in the squadron.”

  “But America has two.”

  “I think we get the spare for being the first to Mars.” Greg held his hands up. “But we’ve gotten a bit far afield from my being touched by that signature. While I’ve enjoyed flying a Shrike simulator, I’m looking forward to dropping into the cockpit.”

  “As am I.” Sun frowned. “I would estimate they will require a hundred hours in an actual ship before they allow us to fly combat missions.”

  Greg glanced toward Colonel Clark’s office. “The colonel should brief us soon. We jumped three times in rapid succession last evening. They probably brought us to some backwater where we can run missions.”

  “I hope you are correct, Captain.” Sun Lee reached up and patted her Shrike’s fuselage. “Now, if you will forgive me …”

  “Right, me, too.” Greg wheeled around and mounted a set of roll-away steps to the cockpit. Maroon velvet upholstered the command chair, all buckles, fittings and trim had been done in brass. Even the command stick on the right and throttles on the left had that antique build. The only things which were not antiques were the LED displays build into the command console. On the whole the cockpit would have been familiar to a pilot flying on the Western front in 1914, though nature of the information and the holographic targeting head’s-up-display likely would have seemed a bit odd.

  Greg dropped into the command chair, but didn’t buckle in. He reached out for the command stick, willing his right hand to remain normal. The stick had toggle on top. A flick of his thumb would cycle through the Meson cannon, the Baryon Missile Launchers or the four laser cannons. Another thumb switch would allow him to pair, quad or delink the lasers. The trigger under his index finger would fire the weapons, and the stick itself would let him fly the craft. The rudder pedals under each foot aided in that latter task.

  Twin pulse jets, one mounted beneath each rudder at the aft, provided atmospheric and sublight thrust. Between them sat the gravitational jump drive which allowed the fighters to travel through hyperspace, though at reduced speeds and for shorter distances than a ship like the Unity. The Nomad unit would handle hyperspace navigation, though maneuvering a Shrike onto an outbound vector was up to the pilot.

  He’d only flown a Shrike simulator previously, but Qian technology involved the ability to manipulate gravity. The same technology which maneuvered the fighter in space allowed the simulator to put pilots through a very real and exhausting flight experience. Even so, Greg wanted time in the cockpit because no matter how good the simulation, it just wasn’t a substitute for logging hours in actual flight.

  The hangar bay’s public address system crackled. “All pilots report to the briefing room in one-five minutes, flight ready.”

  Greg, a wide grin on his face, vaulted from the cockpit and landed on the deck. As Sun came around the nose of her Shrike, she grinned, too; though not nearly as openly as he did. They raced down to their living quarters, he going left and she right. He squeezed himself into a small cabin which, at present, he shared with no one.

  He shucked his uniform and replaced it with a flight-suit which was primarily blue, but trimmed at cuffs and throat with white. Red epaulets and stripes running down the legs, as well as gloves and flight helmets completed the uniform, though the latter two components would be waiting in the Shrike. The Qian had designed the uniform, choosing blue for Earth’s color, white trim for the clouds and red for Mars, upon which the scientific community had come to agree life had first evolved in the solar system. The Americans, Russians and French were happy to suggest a different origin for the color scheme, and the yellow star at the back of each helmet had been a concession to the Chinese. Everyone else clung to the Qian origin story and thought the other nations were just silly.

  Slipping the Nomad into the thigh pocket designed for it. He headed to the briefing room. As he entered the narrow room, he inserted the Nomad into a rack similar to the one in the Medical Bay, and took his place around the lozenge-shaped briefing table. The holographic projection unit centered on it remained dark. By happenstance, Greg found himself seated at Colonel Clark’s left hand, opposite Major Taine.

  The colonel waited for the others to take their places, then began the briefing. “The 301st has been given its first mission. Yes, we’ve not be trained in the Shrikes. Yes, we are under-strength. Yes, any mission under such circumstances would rightfully be considered a suicide mission.” He glanced down, half-closing his eyes. “Except this one.”

  Nick dismissively waved a hand toward the holoprojector. A cone of light shot upward revealing a vector graphic of a planet and the spiral path of a shuttle rising up into orbit. The ovoid ship gradually distanced itself from the planet, and as the image grew smaller, the Unity appeared hovering above the planet’s pole.

  “We’ll be coming into the Haxad system as close as we can get to the fourth planet. A Haxadassi ambassador is going to be coming aboard for transport and we are going to do her the honor of escorting her ship to the point where it links to the Unity’s hull. The flight plan is being loaded into your Nomads right now. The mission should take less than an hour and it will be as big an honor for you as it will for the ambassador.”

  Sun raised a hand.

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Will the flight be the full extent of our interaction with the Haxadassi?”

  “You mean will there be a formal review and holo op like there was when we were leaving Earth?” The colonel shrugged. “I have no information about that at this time, but you’d best hope there isn’t. The Haxadissi are centaurs—if you got rid of the horse-half and stitched on a boa constr
ictor’s body. Upholster the rest with scales. They’re mean and nasty, disdainful of anything that isn’t scaled, and vocal about it. They were not in favor of the 301st’s formation, so this honor guard is punishing us or them or both. If I learn more, I’ll let you know. Now, go get your Shrike’s ready to fly. We know this is our first mission, but I don’t want anyone watching to have reason to believe that’s true. Dismissed.”

  The pilots rose, but the colonel rested a hand on Greg’s shoulder. “Just a minute, Captain. Major Taine, if I could have a word.”

  The door hissed closed behind Sun Lan. “We’re the ranking officers, which means I get to lead this parade. The two of you are paired at the rear.” Clark pointed toward the holograph. “If something happens, the two of you are to shepherd the ambassador’s ship to the Unity, or back to Haxad Four—whichever provides safety fastest. I don’t care what you hear over the comms or what you see on your displays.”

  Damienne frowned. “Is there a threat, do you know?”

  Clark folded his arms over his chest. “Gravitational fields limit the number of places where ships can emerge from hyperspace; and different ships can travel different distances in different amounts of time. The wonders of all that are important to astrophysicists. For a military man it means that there are no front lines in space. While it isn’t likely the Zsytzii are going to pop in, it can’t be ruled out.”

  The major nodded, the lights gleaming from her dark hair. “And the calculations for escape vectors have been loaded to our Nomads?”

  “No.”

  Greg’s stomach tightened. “Why not?”

  “You two are my hole cards; and anyone holding hole cards really doesn’t want the other players knowing about them. It’s not that I don’t trust the Qian; it’s that I don’t mind them underestimating us. I’m content to let them think we have blind spots. That means I know what direction they’ll use coming at us.” Clark shrugged. “Might never amount to anything, but I’m not one for leaving anything to chance.”