When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition)

by William Barton

  o0o

  Target number one for Carrier Task Force Alpha was a place called Ogygeia, not far from the proximal end of the Centauri Jet, many weeks travel from Telemachus Major, off the distal end.

  Even from far away, Ogygeia was lovely, a pale blue dot hanging in the megascope screens of the pilot’s lounge aboard the carrier, where we waited with our little ships, slowly drawing closer, undetected, unsuspected. And that’s just the way it looked once we’d launched into free space, Violet and I alone together in our little ship, like a pair of long haul truckers, bound from world to world.

  But our wing of two dozen ATACs drew closer, bearing down on Ogygeia, which grew in our secondaries from a blue dot to a mottled freckle to a lovely blue and white ball, Violet watching and watching, watching from my arms over the backs of our combat seats, until she said it was just like Earth.

  No Moon, of course, but you can’t have everything.

  I found myself wondering, briefly, just when she’d been to Earth, who’d been with her then.

  Her long past sometimes hung over us, like the ghost of a shadow. And I just didn’t want to imagine myself one of those horrid people who feel they must completely possess a lover, erasing any past that hasn’t been shared.

  One day, the last day, Ogygeia hanging immense before us like some child’s fancy balloon, lost in space, the alarms came and the fleet drew together in full combat array, Violet and I disentangling ourselves at last, scrambling over the seats, netting ourselves in.

  One. Two. Three.

  The stereotaxis device came on and we were dustmote gods, flying together, side by side through the dark sky, riding our witches’ seats, waiting for the defenders to rise. Waiting, I called up the gunnery interface, which obligingly unfolded from its console, filling with the usual amber-green-blue array of combat data, dots and lines, objects and vectors, tensor numerics flickering beside them.

  I said, “Not much. Not much here at all.”

  Violet took one hand off her armrest controls, reached out to stroke me briefly on the forearm.

  Somewhere behind us, still plunging down from the infinite deep, the carrier task force was coming, empty carrier ready to take us in when our job was done, corvettes with their circling swarms of defensive fighters ready to disgorge their marines, finish the job that we would start.

  I looked at peaceful Ogygeia one last time, thinking just how really pretty the god-damned place was, then I put my head in the gunnery interface and got my ass to work.

  Defenders rising.

  Bright amber sparks, amber showing us unmanned vehicles, not even harboring so much life as a Dûmnahn might represent. AIs, lightspeed computer nets. What the hell. Call them missiles. We fired on them from as far out as we dared, directed energy weapons lingering on mirror bright hulls, heating, heating...

  I watched as the warheads cooked off one by one, red disks appearing briefly against the backdrop of the fake planet, reflecting red off man-made clouds, man-made seas, vector lines fading, tensor numerics gone like that.

  OK. Much closer now.

  Careful, boys and girls. They’ll have saved shorter range surface-to-air missiles for later on. Right now...

  Swarms of fighters suddenly appearing, like magic, hundreds of engines blinking on, so many blue pinpricks in the sky, much closer than we expected. Somebody, somebody in one of the other ships, whispered, “Fuck. Lying doggo, the bastards!”

  Very clever, launching long before we’d arrived, putting themselves in remote orbits around Ogygeia while they waited for us to come, pilots powering down their little ships, sitting there all alone, silent.

  While we’d come prowling on in, confident in our stealth, our surprise arrival, so far from the main battle lines.

  But they’d known anyway.

  And maybe our corporate masters had known too, merely hadn’t bothered to tell us.

  What difference can it make? they’d have asked themselves.

  None at all.

  Expendable is expendable.

  Right?

  That’s what we pay you for.

  Time to see if this fancy new targeting computer can do its job. I started picking out targets for myself, feeding navigational data to Violet, counterforce data to my counterparts in the other ships of our little fleet. No sense getting in each other’s way.

  Our two dozen ATAC boats flew apart, squadron blooming like an invisible flower. Imagine how it looks on the combat scopes of our worthy opponents. Imagine the vector lines, tensor numerics, revealing our few numbers.

  We opened fire, I and my comrades, and the sky started to twinkle all around as enemy fighters were destroyed.

  Hundreds dying right now.

  No one will miss them.

  Not when we’ve finished what we came to do.

  I could hear my friends whooping and hollering through the command circuit. Look at that. Look at ‘em go. Yee-hah.

  It’s a lucky soldier who has this experience, showing up for battle possessed of an invincible edge. Ogygeia. Remember it well, Mr. Murphy. Next time. Next world, they’ll be ready.

  I imagined myself part of a twinkling sky seen from some defender’s cockpit. See that one over there, that nice, silvery little twinkle? That’s Murphy and Violet, gone to their reward.

  Our fleet formed up into a flat line, bridging Ogygeia’s circumference like a string of blue modulus pearls. By now, we’d be visible in Ogygeia’s sky, people on the ground, innocent civilians, if there is such a thing, looking up at us, listening to the air raid sirens moan.

  I heard the flight commander’s crisp voice: “Alpha? ATAC-1 Rainbow here. We’re go for ground.”

  Some corporate admiral’s voice in reply: “Roger, Rainbow Leader. We copy you go for ground.”

  Yee-hah.

  The red dots of short-range SAMs began sparking off the ground as we approached, looking for all the world like so many fireworks, Roman candle balls puffing heavenwards, heading our way. My defensive weapons, preset, began snuffing out our share as Violet fought her controls, killing our velocity, slowing us, slowing...

  We slapped through Ogygeia’s eutropic shield with a jolt, sky changing from starry black to cloudy blue just like that, air suddenly screaming round our hull. Behind us, I knew, a long yellow plasma trail would be forming, but I couldn’t be bothered to look.

  The command circuit said, “Oh-twenty-two? Rainbow. Primary target grid six-bravo. Secondary twelve-trillium. Then targets of opportunity to fifty percent load.”

  Violet said, “Roger, Rainbow. Six-bravo. Twelve-trillium. Ops to fifty.”

  As the ground flattened under us, I bent my face to the hood, tracking, assigning, managing my resources. Pulled it out again and took a quick look, realtime. There. Low green hills, covered with tall trees. A yellow grassland, encompassing the snaky twists of a small silver stream, beyond it, backed by snowy gray and white mountains, a wide cityscape of slim tan buildings.

  Violet said, “Six-bravo, Murph.”

  “Right.”

  Head in the hood again.

  Hit the firehaze.

  Watch it sparkle in my weaponscope, backscattering radar as we flew over the city. Wonder what they call it?

  Called it.

  Called it!

  I... hit the detonator.

  Hit the detonator and pulled my head out of the hood, twisting in my seat so I could look back through the stereotaxis sim and see it happen.

  Ah.

  Just in time.

  Curtains of purple haze hanging like a magic fantasy over the tan Ogygeian cityscape.

  Not even time for a heartbeat.

  The haze turned to pure white light, white light that slammed to the ground like a heavy foot, heavy foot under a million gees acceleration.

  The city disappeared, just like that, going out with the light, going away, gone.

  Imagine.

  Imagine.

  Peal of thunder sweeping round the world, bowling over forests, sweeping
everything from its path... I took a deep breath, unable to imagine.

  Violet said, “OK. Lets head for twelve-trillium.”

  Twelve-trillium. Then targets of opportunity, if any.

  I took another deep breath, wondering why the hell I felt like I was suffocating right now, and croaked out: “Rog. Twelve-trillium. Go.”

  She put her hand on my forearm again, very briefly.

  Then we went about our business.

  Thirteen. Down on Ogygeia

  Down on Ogygeia, when the battle was over, the skies were a beautiful, serene, clear blue. Cloudless. Utterly cloudless. Standing on the ground by the edge of a landing stage we’d made our own, you could look up into the sky and see nothing but blue, other than those times when the carrier would slowly rise, slowly transit the sky like an improbable moon, itself stained blue by the sky, ejector ports hanging open, defensive turrets motionless, modulus exhaust grids gleaming with a special blue light all their own.

  Every now and then, you’d see a little ship come and go from the carrier.

  Or see some smaller ship accelerating away from Ogygeia, heading back into the starry deep.

  They’d set up a mobile garage here, bringing ships down from the carrier, emptying it of all but its own defensive squadrons. When that was done, the carrier task force would head back to reload, take on new ships, new men, new machines. And we, here, would marshal ourselves, would mount the next attack from Ogygeia, using it as a non-mobile carrier, striking deep into the heart of the Centauri Jet itself, striking at the heart of Ultima Thule.

  When people under assault haven’t got a chance, why don’t they just give up? What’s the point of going on, when you can’t win?

  If they give up now, we won’t kill them all, just the leaders. The workforce of the Centauri Jet is too valuable a resource to be so utterly destroyed. That’s just what the corporate heads have said.

  Don’t they believe us?

  Walking with Violet, away from the landing stage, toward the pilot’s cantina, toward the little row of huts we’d call home for the next few weeks, thinking these thoughts, I smiled to myself.

  Not believe us? Not believe the proud, self-made men who enticed their ancestors out here with lies and more lies? Not believe their bosses, the men and women they dealt with day after day after day, long before the war ever came, long before Ultima Thule?

  Violet said, “I like it when you smile, Murph. What’s so funny?”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking about the Thulians.”

  She gave me an odd look, didn’t say anything else as we walked on.

  Near the edge of our impromptu base, beside the forcefence grounds maintenance had set up, there was a little footpath, path made in the last day or two, being walked over and over again by heavy-footed aeromarine guards. Walking along it, you can look out through the pale purple glimmer of the fence at the ruins of the city beyond.

  This area hadn’t been firehazed, so there was plenty left to see. Most of the buildings were intact, low buildings typical of the architecture used on Ogygeia, the faux-Greek cityscape so popular on your older sort of habitat, from back in the early days of the eutropic shields, around the time they stopped building inside-out worlds like Audumla.

  Funny how I still think of Audumla as normal, how these places that mimic real worlds are the new-fangled oddities.

  Maybe they are. There’s only one natural world, where people walk around under an open sky, sky that thins all the way up to open space, where there’s no eutropic shield, a world where, if civilization fell, men and women could live on until the end of time.

  Think of that.

  Think of our technology failed, of all the people on all the colony worlds dying, one by one.

  I wonder how many people are left living on Earth?

  I wonder how many of us could get home again, if it came to that?

  Enough?

  Too many?

  Meaningless words.

  Maybe someday I’ll ask Violet about Earth. Maybe she’ll tell me something different from the things I learned about in Porphyry’s diorama. Or maybe she’ll just tell me Porphyry’s world is the one true Earth. Maybe someday. Not today. Maybe never.

  You hate to kill a dream on purpose, however faded it’s become.

  I thought about walking through the back country of Audumla, Styrbjörn at my side, pretending I was some old-time man in an old-time forest on Earth. Funny how that fantasy’s no longer so comforting.

  On the other side of the forcefence, we could see some people on the marble steps of a nearby building, standing in the shadows of its faux-marble colonnade, trying to pick the lock on its bright and dented brass door. They had the electronics access plate open, and were fooling with the control structures, obviously having no luck.

  It isn’t possible to guess how something like that works. If I was over there, I could show them how to do it.

  When they saw us walking along, saw me looking at them, they stopped, stood back in the shadows and stared. Three grown men. A little boy, maybe five or six years old. A rather attractive young woman, so young she had something of the child about her.

  Afraid we’ll do something about them, call the... authorities?

  I realized with slight surprise they were merely staring at Violet.

  After all, what more can we do to them?

  We walked on, went on into the pilots’ cantina, where we sat with our friends, all of us so happy to be alive, to have survived another battle, marveling that not one single ATAC vessel had even been damaged, much less destroyed, either by accident or by enemy action.

  And praying with all our might that our luck would hold.

  I felt like praying, though there’s nothing left to hear my prayer.

  I miss old Orb.

  He was all I had.

  So we drank our beer and ate our pretzels, laughed with our temporary comrades, and watched a freeze-frame documentary sequence about ongoing negotiations between the leadership of the Human Defense League, the councils of Ultima Thule, and the chief executive officers of the allied corporations.

  Thulians now saying they’d be willing to take a look at outside binding arbitration.

  The corporations let some spokesman from Standard ARM do their talking: Nonsense, he said. We can win the war with no help from you or anyone else. Win it no matter how many Thulians have to die. Three words, he said:

  Surrender.

  Restoration.

  Reparations.

  In that order.

  Later, in our quarters, when we were holding each other close, Violet told me she thought there was something funny about this HDL business, about these negotiations. Like they’re not really trying to stop the war, to... resolve the parties’ differences. Like they don’t really care what happens next. Like something’s... up.

  But what can they do? I’d asked.

  What can they really do?

  o0o

  Let’s go on a picnic.

  Just the two of us.

  The sun-no-sun is shining, the sky is blue, the air is warm, the winds are soft.

  I liked seeing the shine in Violet’s eyes when I said those things to her as we lolled about in our room, week’s work done, wondering what useless, dull thing we could do with our day off.

  Her voice was very soft when she told me what a great idea she thought that was.

  Just like in the olden days. Just like before...

  Three more days.

  Then we mount our steeds and ride hard for battle.

  Maybe there’ll never be another chance like this.

  Maybe that’s what made her eyes shine so, though I confess all I imagined was getting her out under a featureless blue sky, getting her down on the warm ground, sprawling myself naked on top of all her welcoming softness, and dreaming there was no tomorrow, only today.

  It’s OK to pretend isn’t it?

  Just for now?

  We got our stuff together, pulling the blue bl
anket off our bed, going on down to the cantina and picking up a big bag of carryout food, sandwiches, drinks, little hotboxes of this and that. Headed on down to the motor pool, marshaling our arguments. It’s not against the rules is it? Of course not.

  We imagined ourselves wheedling so well.

  When we got there, the motor pool sergeant proved to be an old mechanic we’d known for years, a sturdy cyborg named Elcano, designed somewhat along the same lines as Dûmnahn, a gleaming, upright cylinder almost two meters tall, with eight sturdy black legs arranged around the bottom end, six long, spindly robot arms around the top, belt of extensible sensors and replaceable toolmounts girdling his waist.

  Very pleasant baritone, the soft voice of an attractive man.

  Well, no, it’s not against the rules, and a picnic did seem like a great idea, but... Well, the Ogygeian eutropic shield is damaged, you see, leaking air—it’ll all be gone in a month or two—could blow out unexpectedly, any time now...

  Violet rapped her furry knuckles on his bright chrome chest, bringing out a hollow, almost musical sound. “So what? Throw a couple of space kits in the back of that little ATV over there. We’ll know what to do.”

  There were kits, compact, packaged vacuum emergency suits stacked in their familiar blue cartons, over by the back wall, next to a pile of old nuclear batteries.

  A couple of his sensors extended, one looking at the boxed-up spacesuits, the other at the jeep. “Well, sure. I know that. But the truth is, there are still plenty of survivors out there, people who don’t know about the leak.”

  People who imagine they’ll somehow survive.

  Violet: “So?”

  “Marines’re gonna stop you at the gate, Vi. Nobody’s gets outside the perimeter without a full combat kit.”

  Violet, sounding exasperated now, said, “All right. Hand ‘em over.”

  Elcano’s voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, not even his insides, sounded mournful. “I’m sorry, Vi. I can’t issue a positronic rifle to anyone who doesn’t have a combat infantry badge. You know that.”

  And so much for picnic day. I started to bend down and pick up our blanket and bag of food, wondering if we could find some secluded corner somewhere... somewhere where we could just god damned well pretend we...