The Hidden War

by Michael Armstrong

  “They? Who?”

  “Never mind. You’d better get ready.” She jerked her chin again at the fake sun. “Good shooting.”

  “Who?” he persisted.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it. Go.” Minae held out her hand to him. “Good luck. Make some kills for me, okay? Maybe after you’re back, we can, uh, relax together, swap war stories.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” He shook her hand again, felt the warmth of her bare fingers.

  “See ya, Ace.”

  “Later.” He looked back at her as he went inside. “Ace.”

  As he turned away he thought he saw her cringe at the word.

  Krim eased into the presence of the remote Poddy. As good as the simulations seemed, entering the actual Poddies felt different, the same way actual physical sex—enhanced or not—felt different from the artificial projections he’d sometimes used. Perhaps knowing that he existed someplace distant and real—even in a tele-presence projection—made the flight seem real.

  Out in the Beyond, though, distant as his presence might be, Krim knew that what he saw, what he experienced, all of it was real, actual, and unknown. When he connected to that distant Poddy, hurtling through space at a quarter light speed, simulated as his senses might be, everything was real. He might receive information in certain ways, but the symbols and icons for that information represented actual physical things: a harpy was a bogey was an alien probe.

  He entered the Poddy, and the Poddy attacked.

  Now, with the intensive simulation training, Krim felt his senses honed to a molecularly thin edge. Every star, every far-away mote, Sam had blanked out to pale white dots, the red shifts of their light filtered away. Sam extended his senses to ten seconds out, visualizing approaching objects, projecting their paths, so all Krim had to do was see them, target them, and fire. He knew he saw not the physical reality of targets, but the artificial reality. And yet it became real; the mind made its own reality in its own perception. It never saw the thing itself but the projection of the thing, the way the brain interpreted the thing to make sense of it. At near light speed, no real thing made sense; only the representation of the thing made sense.

  His right fist controlled all movement, moved the vision he saw as well as the way the Poddy turned in its great line of acceleration. Krim soared down that path, one lane of assault through one sector of the outer solar system, the lane decided months ago, and he merely riding that rail, that launch vector.

  The first object came up. Yellow dots were anomalies, rocks to destroy or comets to shred. This dot glowed yellow, and he targeted it, the red circle hovering over it, then locking on as Sam calculated the trajectory. Krim fired, feeling the rocks tumble away from him, the kinetic rounds hurtling toward the yellow dot. The two rounds hit, energy expending into energy, the rock breaking into smaller and tinier rocks. Sam confirmed the kill, analyzed it: just a rock.

  Again. Another yellow dot. Target. Lock. Fire. Krim flowed through the motions as the dots popped up in his vision, the numbers flickering next to them as Sam labeled the order to target and kill them. One, two, three, a triple, then a slight break, then one, two, three, four. Target, lock, fire; target, lock, fire; and on and on. He danced through the run, his motions sure and fluid. Sometimes Krim would power up a glowing dot on the projection of his fist before him, and he would watch the dot swirl through his vision, creating loops and curlicues as his fist moved from target to target to target. Hieroglyphics in the dance, they sometimes seemed to spell letters, but usually seemed nothing more than the abstract of the attack.

  Occasionally a yellow dot would flow below him, too far to shoot upon, and Krim would target and tag it, saving its position for the next Poddy launched behind him, for the next pilot who would make the sweep-up run. Krim flew on, the count of his kinetic rounds dropping, his speed decreasing despite the shedding of mass.

  In the distance, a bogey glowed orange. Sam powered up the projection, and it grew more distinct, brighter. An orange beast, a harpy: he targeted it, waited for Sam to lock on. The ring hovered, moved away, and he targeted it again. “Sam?” he asked.

  “Too distant.”

  “Move in.”

  “We’d have to blow the evasive-maneuvers nuke.”

  Krim bit his lip—felt as if he bit his lip—and rejected the option. Before, he would have fired the nuke, accelerating closer. But the new parameters . . . He targeted again. “Lock on it, Sam.”

  “It’ll miss.”

  “Manual target override. I’m locking on, firing.” He squeezed his finger, and felt two rocks hurtle away. They tumbled beyond.

  “Miss,” Sam said.

  “Good.” Krim smiled, hoping, hoping . . . Yes. The bogey turned, the harpy coming toward him now, closer, its face staring up at him. “That’s my baby—got your attention, eh?”

  He brought the target up, centered it on the harpy. “Target override off, back to you, Sam. Is that a lock?”

  The ring clicked on the harpy, stayed. “Lock.”

  “Firing.”

  He squeezed the trigger, sent two more rocks at the harpy. He waited, squeezed again, fired two more. The rocks fell upon it, and the image showed the harpy flinging them aside and away. Seeming to flap her wings, the harpy came toward him, dead on, moving right at him.

  “Uh-oh,” Krim said.

  Again he aimed at the harpy, waited for Sam to confirm targeting, then fired. He moved the target sight just a hair away from the harpy, overrode the lock, and fired again. The first rounds tumbled away, missing, and the second group came closer, but still rolled away.

  “Crap,” Krim mumbled. “Bring up the nuke, Sam.”

  A fluorescent green target came up then, and Krim quickly moved it over the harpy. He barely had to target it; the harpy moved straight at him, its mouth widening and its teeth gleaming at him. His movements swift but determined, Krim sighted on the harpy, barely waiting for Sam to lock and confirm before he squeezed the trigger. The nuclear-tipped round fell straight down toward the harpy, not wavering until just before the nuke came upon the bogey. As the harpy shoved the nuke out of its way, the nuke exploded. Screaming in agony, the harpy broke into pieces, wings and legs and claws breaking apart.

  “All right, Sam!” Krim screamed. “Good shooting.”

  Another harpy appeared. “Didn’t we destroy it?” Krim yelled. “I thought we destroyed it!”

  “It’s a new one, right in the shadow of the first.”

  “Crap.” He glanced at his magazine count: ten loads left. Moving the sight, now red again, he fired as soon as Sam made the lock, five bursts, one-two-three-four-five. The rounds rolled off the harpy, and she seemed to laugh.

  Krim’s fingers flew as he powered up more options. Nothing. He’d expended his rounds. “Ram it,” he said. “Prepare final download. Initiate auto-destruct sequence.”

  “Download: done. Preparing upload. ADS on.”

  “ADS in—when will we ram it?”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “At ram impact. Upload in ten.”

  “We must confirm kill,” Sam said.

  “Damn that. We go back whether it’s a kill or not.”

  “Negative,” Sam said. “Mission parameters do not allow that.”

  “Sam, we’ve got to make that upload.”

  “Uploading mission recording.”

  “Thanks. Make the disconnect in ten.”

  “Negative. We cannot disconnect until we ram. Five seconds.”

  “Override.”

  “Negative. Three seconds. Two.”

  A quick flicker of light shot out from the harpy, and Krim’s vision went dead.

  “Two,” Sam said. “Two seconds to impact. Two. Two. Two seconds to impact. Two.”

  “Override. Power up vision.”

  “Vision powering up. Filters down. Two seconds to impact.”

  The bogey appeared, the real object, in real space. The stars flowed before him, short tails of their
redshift trailing behind, and rocks tumbled away. A great crater yawned in front of him, deep and dark. Beyond he could see the expanse of the ship, a cylinder—no, a cone, he realized, a narrow cone, its point chopped off, and the maw before him the circle where the tip would have been.

  “Manual override, auto-destruct.”

  “Auto-destruct stopped at two seconds,” Sam said.

  “Manual-destruct.”

  “Manual-destruct powered.”

  “Sam, the trigger initiates it. Prepare disconnect.”

  “Disconnect function disabled.”

  “Crap.” I won’t be going back from this one, Krim thought. “Okay, destruct on three. Is that thing open?”

  “The bogey’s pulling us in.”

  Krim smiled. Sucker. “Ready. One. Two. Three.”

  He pulled the trigger. Krim heard the soft click of the audio feedback, felt his finger slow, then push against the slight resistance of the firing mechanism. He waited for the flash, for the brief pain, for the end of his presence. As the sharp disconnect came, he told himself it was only a presence, that his body lived back on Redoubt Ya, that it would be no worse than jerking out of a simulation. The . . . trigger . . . clicked.

  And there was no light.

  MANUAL DESTRUCT INOPERATIVE. DISCONNECT INOPERATIVE. SENTIENT ANIMATED MODE INOPERATIVE.

  “Sam?”

  The word INOPERATIVE floated before him. He opened his fist, looked at his hand, and saw his hand shred away. The bogey moved toward him, the crater expanding, and he fell again, as he had fallen so long ago, into the maw of the beast, into captivity.

  But not into death this time, he thought. No, not this time into death. Something worse, he feared. Something much, much worse.

  Chapter 12

  As he waited nervously in the bay of the alien ship for the Terrorons to come and take him, Krim thought back to when he had been captured by Thom. Then he had felt not so much fear as anger—anger at failing, anger at not saving the Jack. His long imprisonment had been a blessing then, for it served as atonement for his failure. Now, dead in the dark, his systems down, not only unable to disconnect and return his tele-presence back to Redoubt Ya, but unable even to destroy the Poddy, he felt not fear, not helplessness, but relief. Ever since the Beats had lost, ever since he saw his home world vanish, he knew that death would provide the only relief. Let the aliens come, he thought. Kill me, torture me—I don’t care.

  Slowly, his senses came back up. The darkness faded, and the Poddy showed him the inside of the alien bay. His hand appeared before him, and then his other hand, as if he had a body now—as if the Poddy fighter had become his body. Krim thought about the mechanism of the telly-op fighter. Intellectually he knew that he operated it from trillions of miles distant, that his body on Redoubt Ya at this very moment saw all this and reacted to this, but it did not seem that way. He seemed separate from his body, as if this were another body with his intelligence occupying it. Yet his body was the fighter, a tin can expended of kinetic loads, now still and calm, a hunk of sensors and the computing power to record, analyze, and send home those sensory impressions.

  He looked at his hands, at the arms connecting them to his body. Krim’s consciousness floated in the bay of the alien ship. The targeting sight had vanished. The red lines showing his position had vanished. Still, he could look around him, look behind him, and he could focus on the farthest bulkhead and examine it rivet by rivet, scratch by scratch. Rivets, he thought, seeing them. They have rivets. Incredible. In all their alienness, they have rivets.

  The ship’s air washed over the Poddy, the motion triggering senses he didn’t realize the Poddy had: he could feel the air, smell it, analyze its chemical composition down to the tiniest percentage of nitrogen—nitrogen! Krim could take its temperature—a balmy 10 degrees Celsius—and track particle counts, stray debris. Dust floated in the bay. Dust!

  A hatch opened.

  His sensors turned at the sound, and he whirled around to face the alien. A great eye glared at him, dark and deep, flecks of gold floating around the eye. A Terroron? he thought. Was this the repulsive slug—a great eye? He backed the magnification down, zoomed out, until he saw its body, its shape, its—

  Human. She was human—a woman, a real woman, a person, Homo sapiens sapiens, right down to lips and face and eyes and nose and body and breasts and blond wavy hair.

  Human!

  A man came behind the woman, then another man and another woman, four of them. They pushed a cart with instruments upon it, tools and probes, and he knew not what. Krim focused on them, scanning them, examining the pores of their skin and the slight wrinkles in their faces. The woman had a few gray streaks in her hair, as did one of the men. He looked at their hands, at the gold rings on the middle fingers of their right hands. He looked at his own hand, at the gold ring on the middle finger of his right hand.

  Beats, he thought. Holy Moloch Screaming Angel Mother of Solomon Lucien Golgotha: Beats.

  Sisters and brothers of the Jack, of the lost asteroid, of the home that had gone into Ur, that he had seen vanish, that he had convinced himself had gone on, never to return: they lived! Some at least lived, had survived, their faces vaguely familiar—that man, was it Snyder, who had heroically destroyed a battle cruiser just two months before the end? The older woman, was that Ferlie? Beats! Krim wanted to cry “Friends! I am here, I live!” But dumb, he could not speak.

  The woman he thought might be Ferlie took some tool and leaned over him, over his sensors, and he felt something come open. Her eyes hovered over him, her face. Ferlie looked down at him, and he looked up and saw in the mirrors of her eyes what she saw in him. Then he turned his own sensors inward, toward the hatch that had been opened on the Poddy, and the thing that Ferlie had found within.

  He saw the pulsing mass inside the Poddy fighter, the same thing he had seen inside Nurel’s Poddy after they had pulled her up from the Jovian depths. Filling half the tube of the Poddy, a thing like a glowing jellyfish oozed and pulsed, circuits winding through it, circuits connecting to the Poddy and the Poddy’s sensors. His sensors whirled, back at the thing that was him, up at Ferlie. She followed it, moved, watched as he watched her move.

  “It’s alive,” Ferlie said.

  Krim—it’s me, Krim! he tried to scream again.

  “Human?” Snyder asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Human, yes! he tried to say. It’s me, your friend, your brother, Krim!

  Ferlie pulled a probe out from one of the machines on the cart, connected it to him, and then connected it to the machine through her body waldo—pulled the clumsy hood up over her head, and jacked in through her navel to the machine and to the Poddy.

  Krim raced through the circuits, pushed his consciousness into the slender connection, into the computer, into her. He eased gently, smoothly, making his body become her body, and hers become his. He pulled her being, her presence, into his presence, so she saw what he saw—saw herself looking at him and him looking at her.

  “Who?” she asked him. “What—who are you?”

  “It’s me,” he said inside her. He held out his hand, made her look at the ring on his hand.

  “You?” she asked. “A Beat! You’re a Beat. Who did this to you—the Ameruss Dominion?”

  He pulled the ring off his projected hand, held it up to her, showed her the engraving inside, let her read it.

  “To K from C,” it read.

  “K?” she asked.

  “Krim,” he said. “Krim, of the Screaming Angel. My mate was Corso.”

  “The ship that saved us, that sent us into Ur,” she said. “You—you lived? We thought all the fighters had been destroyed. That . . . that is the legend.”

  “I lived; I was captured. I was imprisoned and released and I came out here, to fly—to protect this brave new society from the evil Terrorons.”

  “From us,” she said, laughing.

  “From you.” He looked at himself again, asked, “Wh
at have I become?”

  “I don’t know,” Ferlie said, pulling away. She backed away, out of him. He saw her yank the probe out of her body waldo, pull the hood off and shake her hair out. He remained connected to the little box.

  “Ferlie?” Snyder asked.

  “It’s a Beat,” she said, pointing at the Poddy. “It says its name is Krim, of the Screaming Angel—mate to Corso.”

  Me! he thought.

  “Krim?” Snyder looked at the pulsing mass in the Poddy. “That’s him?”

  “His presence—something. But he talked to me, took me inside his consciousness . . .” Ferlie touched her ring. “Showed me his ring, the ring that Corso gave him.”

  “Give him a voice,” Snyder said.

  Yes, Krim thought, a voice. Snyder connected a probe, did something to the box, the machine. Krim searched through its circuits, found a sound board and a vocoder, and spoke. “It’s me,” he said.

  “Krim?” Snyder asked. “After all these years? You? How? Why?”

  “I don’t know how,” Krim said. “Corso . . . Does Corso live?”

  Snyder looked at Ferlie, then back to Krim. “Corso is here, on this ship. She . . . she said she felt a ‘familiar presence.’ We have been tracking your probes, have seen them every time they warped the skin of Ur, and Corso said that your probe, this one felt . . . felt—”

  “Familiar,” a woman said.

  Krim turned his probes toward her, saw her. Corso. Around her neck on a gold chain he saw her ring. He focused on it, looked at the familiar whorls and etchings of the design. He looked at his own hand, his right hand, his right middle finger, and at the ring there. Back at her hand. At her face. At her eyes and her nose and her chin and her lips and her hair, and he remembered.

  Corso. Her face had become slightly wrinkled, her hair grayer, but it still flowed in dark brown waves to her shoulders. Her flat nose, her almond-shaped eyes, her large lips, the light mahogany of her skin . . . Corso. She turned her right side to him, and he saw why she wore her ring on a chain around her neck, the ring that should have been on her right hand. From below the elbow of her right arm, she had no hand, only a tool pod, a prosthesis that held a thin probe.