There Will Be War Volume X

by Jerry Pournelle

  Vivid memories flooded into him, of the medics carrying her cold, dead body out of her quarters on a stretcher, the rubber hose of her speedball addiction still wrapped around her arm. Nobody came back from that, Eden Plague or nanotech notwithstanding…right? “What’s your last memory?”

  Stevie’s face turned cagey. “I remember dumping a plate of gumbo on your head in a restaurant in the Quarter.”

  “That’s it? The very last memory? Come on, Stevie, this is important.”

  “I remember going to the infirmary.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Bitch cut me on the street. It was pretty bad. Bad enough they stuck me in an autodoc tube all day.”

  Something made Vango ask, “Did they put you under? General anesthesia?”

  “I guess. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  Vango turned to Token. “What’s your final memory before waking up here?”

  “Getting on the transport back to Earth after we beat the Destroyer. Getting in the cocoon.”

  “Me too.” He pointed at Lock, a slim, no-nonsense female senior transport pilot well known for getting out of extreme scrapes. “What about you?”

  “The same. Coldsleep. After the Destroyer.”

  “Wild Bill?”

  The calm, taciturn man said, “After. Coldsleep, too.”

  “Does anyone have a final memory of anything except going into coldsleep or an autodoc?”

  All of those present shook their heads or muttered negatives.

  Token said, “Is it possible we were all damaged in the cocoons? Maybe our bodies didn’t come out of coldsleep properly, but they were able to salvage our brains.”

  “So,” Stevie cocked a hip and raised a finger, “we’re disembodied brains? Like in some old pulp movie?”

  “Until they rebuild our bodies,” Vango replied. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “But what about the autodoc?” Token asked.

  Vango rubbed his jaw. “I think it’s not about coldsleep, but getting put under. Something went wrong. Something new and unexpected.”

  Wild Bill sniffed. “Then why haven’t they simply told us what’s going on? We’re not children. We can handle a little bad news. Hell, it’s just a vacation in VR. We’ve all been here before. Where’s the sun and the surf, the ski slopes, the mountain meadows? We should all be hang-gliding by day and clubbing by night. Instead, we’re in this,” he gestured, “this institution. Something’s not right.”

  Vango growled deep in his throat and slammed the heel of his hand into the nearest wall, then again, and again. He could feel pain and a sensation of injury, so the virtuality was sophisticated and accurate, almost flawless. “Sue!” he yelled. “Someone talk to us, or we’ll…”

  Stevie turned, shrugged in apology and kicked Wild Bill in the crotch. “Sorry, dude,” she said as he rolled in agony on the floor. “Try to remember it’s just VR.” She put a booted foot into his ribs with enthusiasm, and then reared back for a stomp, until three others grabbed her and pulled her back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lock said, taking a fistful of Stevie’s flight suit near the neckline and shaking the smaller woman.

  “Trying to get the warden’s attention.”

  Everyone paused for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened.

  “It was worth a try,” Vango said, standing over Wild Bill, “but no more of that. We might not be hurt physically, but with pain feedback enabled we can be mentally damaged.”

  “Psycho bitch!” Wild Bill gasped, holding his genitals.

  “Pussy,” Stevie replied. “I’ve taken worse beatings,” She struggled in Lock’s grip. “Now let go of me unless you want some too.”

  “Everybody throttle down,” Vango said. “Is this all it takes to set us at each others’ throats?”

  They had the decency to look sheepish.

  “So what’s the plan, Vango?” Token asked.

  Everyone was staring at him, even the others of similar rank. He wasn’t sure who was technically senior. Apparently the Markis name was the tiebreaker. People expected him to lead. No big deal. He was used to it.

  “First, no more brawling. We’re EarthFleet officers, not a bunch of street punks.” He glared at Stevie, who merely grinned at him. “Second, it seems like we have two choices. We can wait, or we can do something. Anyone here the waiting type?”

  Voices raised in denial until Vango waved them down. “Good. Half of you go that way with Token, the other half come with me this way.” He pointed emphatically down the hall to match the directions as he spoke, and then took off.

  When both Stevie and Wild Bill followed him, Vango stopped and said, “Bill, you better go with Token.”

  Wild Bill shot Stevie a poisonous glance and then sneered. “Fine. Keep thinking with your prick.” He turned to stalk off.

  Vango sighed. He’d sent Wild Bill off because he didn’t trust anyone else to handle Stevie, not because he was lusting after her. Until the situation clarified, he would keep an eye on her, keep her under control.

  Not that he’d done very well at that the last time around. She’d died, after all, because he hadn’t been able to compete with a needle and a packet of white powder. Like every day since, he wondered what that said about him.

  At the end of the hall in the direction he’d chosen, Vango found a room full of old Mark III flight simulators. Those with him crowded past and ran their hands over the machines, checking them for function and status. Stevie jumped into one and reached for the link wire, plugging it into her skull before he could object.

  That made Vango reach up to touch the socket in his own skull. “Does anyone else think it’s weird that we’re inside a VR sim looking at flight simulators that have been obsolete for years?”

  Lock nodded. “Yeah, and pointless. Why bother with representations of simulators anyway? Usually we just request a revision of the virtuality and suddenly we’re flying. This seems…primitive.”

  “Walking before we run?” said Butler, a tall male warrant officer. “Still evaluating our responses?”

  Vango frowned. “I suspect you’re right. Stevie, can you hear me?

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you see?”

  Stevie had begun manipulating the manual controls, standard backups even though all functions on modern craft were handled via link. “Only one program, labeled XM-58. Extremely high maneuverability and acceleration. Whatever ship I’m flying, it’s shit-hot, hotter than anything I’ve ever tried before. Can’t find the weapons, though.”

  “Probably not available until later,” Lock said.

  Vango ran his hand over the simulator’s shell. “Until later…why?”

  Lock gave him a stare as if he were dense. “They obviously want us to use these things. Look at this room. No doors. Even the one we came in disappeared. Eleven of us, eleven simulators. We’re in VR, remember? They can control our environment in detail and they’re not telling us anything, so obviously they want us to play along. The others are probably experiencing the same thing.”

  Vango remembered Lock was always a thinker, even smarter and more driven than the usual elite pilot. “Fine. Let’s play.” He hopped into one of the chairs and reached for the link.

  The others followed suit.

  Like Stevie reported, the program put him inside the cockpit of the fastest, most maneuverable ship he’d ever driven. Sure, it might be an imaginary craft, something never built, but what point to simulate a phantom?

  And the vehicle obeyed the laws of physics. It had limits, though those limits were extraordinary, and he felt nothing of the body—no G forces, no vibrations, no feedback.

  Forgetting about his situation within the greater virtuality, he lost himself in the joy of flight, launching from and landing on moons and planets, ships small as frigates and large as carriers and everything in between, zooming within cruising fleets, buzzing his way past near-collisions in trajectories far too dangerous for reality.

&
nbsp; At no time was he able to see the craft itself, though, neither interior nor exterior, even reflected in shiny surfaces. He had the impression it was cylindrical, like a fuselage, although that may have been an artifact of the sim.

  After several subjective hours, just as he felt he had achieved basic mastery of the thing—building on his extensive experience with less capable craft, of course—a new section appeared on his avionics display: a standard sensor panel. It cued him to an incoming Meme hypervelocity missile.

  He easily avoided the missile, and it vanished. Two came next, and then four, then more, doubling in number each wave. Eventually he was brought down by one of thirty-two, at which point the count stabilized until he passed that level. Then it doubled again until he couldn’t dodge them all no matter how he improved.

  This exercise presaged a run of combat scenarios of ever-increasing complexity. He encountered squadrons of Meme stingship fighters, corvettes, frigates and cruisers, all the way up to Destroyers, those massive, kilometers-wide living battleships, firing at him with missiles small and large, with fusors, even with the less-common biolasers and scatterguns.

  Never was his ship provided with weapons, though he was allowed to self-destruct using his internal suicide fusion bomb, or ram when all hope of escape was lost, exploding that selfsame warhead on contact. Not an advisable tactic, usually, but something every pilot no doubt contemplated in his or her heart of hearts. Better to go out in a blaze of glory and take one of the hated enemy along.

  Fatigue began to set in. A check of the sim chrono told him he’d been at it for ten hours straight, but he pushed himself for a couple more, hungry to complete whatever process this was, to see the end of it and, he hoped, regain the real world and his freedom.

  He was still at it when he lost consciousness.

  Once more Vango woke up in the featureless room with its nondescript furnishings. This time, when he stepped into the corridor, his comrades awaited him. Vango prevented his own door from closing. “Can you go back into your rooms?”

  A couple of people opened doors. “Seems like it,” one called. “Why?”

  “I’m trying to find out how much they’re going to push us to do what they want. So today, we’re not playing in their sims.”

  “So what are we gonna do?” Stevie said, stepping up to him and grabbing him around the waist.

  “Exactly,” Vango replied with a slight blush. “We’re going to do anything but play along. Have sex, talk, play word games, whatever you like. Just don’t go to the simulators. Let’s see what happens.”

  “Ooh, I like this plan already,” Stevie said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into his room to the hoots and hollers of the others. Inside, his dead former girlfriend—or whoever she was—stripped out of her flight suit to stand naked in front of him, posing like a short, buxom pinup model. “Like what you see?”

  “Of course,” Vango said, his voice even. “Only one problem.” He stepped out of his own flight suit and spread his arms. “Not working.”

  Stevie stared at Vango’s lack of erection. “That never happened before.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Let’s try a little harder, then.” Stevie pushed him onto his bunk and soon both were doing their best to bring about the desired result.

  “Damn,” she said after a few minutes. “These bastards turned off the fun parts.”

  “I was afraid of that. They’re not going to make it easy to entertain ourselves.”

  “I never heard of a sim like this. Even in training, there’s rules, right, Vee? They’re supposed to treat us the same in or out of the virtuality. That’s the law.”

  Vango stroked Stevie’s hair absently as they lay naked on the bed. “Yeah, that’s the law. The fact that they’re not following it means something.”

  “What if there was a coup? Somebody else took over when we were lying injured. Hell, it could be years later than we remember.”

  “If we’d all boarded the same ship and had the same last memories, I might believe that, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. And you were dead, believe me.”

  “I’m not jonesing either.” Stevie slapped the inside of her elbow as if to raise a vein. “I mean, I kinda want it, but mostly because I’m bored.”

  “Bored with me here?”

  Stevie laughed and rolled onto an elbow. “It’s that small-town insecurity that makes you so edible.”

  Vango sighed. “Not today, it seems. Speaking of edible, have you felt hungry or thirsty yet?

  “Nope. Haven’t even had to pee.”

  “That settles that, then.”

  “Why us, though?” Stevie asked. “Why these twenty-four people?”

  “Well, I served with all of you one time or another.”

  “Really?” Stevie jumped out of bed and pulled on her flight suit. “I don’t know most of these people, but you do? Maybe you’re the nexus. Come on, let’s go find out.”

  That possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He dressed quickly and started pounding on doors, rousting everyone into the hallway again. “I presume you all got the same negative results we did?”

  A few raunchy jokes floated his way, but all eventually agreed that sex simply hadn’t been allowed to work.

  “Stevie pointed out something I missed,” Vango said. “I’ve served with every single one of you at some time, but she hasn’t. Is there anyone here who knows everyone from before, like me?”

  No one raised a hand.

  “So for some reason, I’m the center of all this. It makes me wonder if you’re all real, or just sims within the virtuality.”

  That started them buzzing. Wild Bill, now seemingly fully recovered, stepped forward. “I feel like myself. I remember my life. I can describe it in detail if you want.”

  “Proves nothing,” Stevie retorted. “Vango says I died. I don’t remember that. But from his point of view, we could be programmed to say or do anything.”

  “How can we be sure any of us are real?” Lock said.

  “We can’t,” Vango replied. “But we seem to be consistent. If we had writing instruments, we could probably construct a time line and some matrixes showing when and where we served, what our last memories were, what all our relationships were. But we don’t even have that. Our rights are being violated. Earth law and EarthFleet regs regarding VR says nothing can be done inside a virtuality without our consent, and that we can leave at any time.”

  “Except in case of medical necessity,” Lock pointed out.

  “That covers keeping us here, but not failing to provide information, forcing us to do all those tests, giving us nothing to do except what they want…”

  Token spoke. “It might be operational necessity.”

  “How do you mean?” Vango said.

  “What if what we’re doing is vital to the war effort?”

  “Then why not tell us that? We’ve all dedicated our lives to fighting the Meme. What’s the point of keeping us in the dark?”

  A hand went up in the crowd, attached to a big man called Canyon. “What if it’s not friendlies that have us?”

  “Come again?”

  “What if we’re not under EarthFleet control? What if we’ve been captured by the Meme and they’re, I don’t know, studying us?”

  The pilots’ faces all reflected varying expressions—shock, skepticism, disgust, thoughtfulness—as that idea percolated through their minds. Conversation began, turning to chatter and argument.

  “I don’t believe that,” Vango said, raising his voice to cut through the noise. “Remember, the Meme can blend with prisoners. They can take over their bodies and suck all the knowledge out of them. Their biological and genetic sciences are far superior to ours. That’s why we use reverse-engineered Meme tech in our coldsleep cocoons and other devices. So, there’s absolutely no need to study us in VR. They already know all there is to know about the human race, and if the Meme had captured us, they’d already have blended with us against our wills.”


  “How do we know they haven’t?” Lock said, looking around.

  “I guess we don’t,” Vango replied. “Stuck in VR like this, we don’t know a damn thing except what the controllers want to tell us. So I guess the question is, do we play along with what might be some unfair and extralegal crap on the assumption it’s all necessary, or do we assume this is all bullshit and resist as best we can?”

  “Is this a democracy?” said Lock, giving him a hard look.

  Vango nodded to her in thanks for reminding those here of their military discipline. He realized she was probably the oldest, longest-serving among them. If she hadn’t been happy to remain a chief warrant officer, she’d no doubt outrank everyone here.

  “Yeah, what do you say, Markis?” Canyon said. “You’re in charge.”

  “Everyone agree to that?” Vango asked. “Some of you O-3s might have dates of rank earlier than mine, so if you want the job, say so now. Otherwise, I’m it and you’ll follow my orders from now on.”

  He looked around, searching for disagreement and finding none. “Then we’re going to play their game for now. We haven’t been abused, and this thing feels to me like some kind of extended psychological test combined with training. It might be meant to keep us occupied or it might genuinely be teaching us how to fly a new vehicle. And that’s what we do, people. We fly. So follow me, and let’s fly.”

  At the same end of the hall as yesterday, he opened the door to the simulator room and waved everyone in. Twenty-four modules awaited them in the room, and the chamber seemed larger, confirming Vango’s suspicion that it didn’t matter that they’d split up the first time. All roads led to these simulators.

  Vango’s first surprise came when the simulator activated an IFF-Blue Force module that kept track of friendlies. Even before he launched from the asteroid he found himself on, he saw twenty-three other contacts designated friendly, each with appropriate personal call sign.

  Experimentally, he spoke. “This is Vango. Anyone read?”

  Chaos immediately broke out in the audio link.

  “Pipe down, people,” he said. “Looks like they gave us a common net, so use standard protocols and keep the chatter to a minimum.”