Whereas the newcomers were fairly friendly to one another, a number of the assigned crew of the Eastwood were, in a word, jerks. Like on many other ships the officers who were supposed to coordinate interaction, such as intramural activity on board, saw themselves as petty dictators with a realm to protect. If you didn’t think their way, or admire the things they did, then you were relegated to secondary status. Daivid didn’t like to play those games. The best way to win was to stay out of the way of the regulars, and hang out with friendlies. His new acquaintances seemed like good people to spend a month getting to know.
“What do you think?” Carmen asked. “I like the sushi rolls myself. Six different fillings.”
“The computer never, never puts enough wasabi on them,” Wilbury complained. “I’ve talked to the cooks, and they just stare at me. “‘It’s what’s in the book,’ they say.”
“You don’t think they can really cook!” Al-Hadi laughed. “You know what the service is like. If you were trained as a cleric, you get put into fire control. If you’re rated in navigation they put you in engineering, and if you know how to cook they make you a drill instructor.”
Daivid heard a familiar voice at his back. He turned around to see Borden talking with more animation than he had ever seen before.
“… AI systems the likes of which no one has been able to make for a thousand years,” she was saying. Her audience, a handful of serious-faced officers, were nodding in agreement. “Independent decision-making capabilities but still using the Asimov strictures. It has applications for practically anything. Information retrieval could be revolutionized—with an intuitive structure one of these devices could think like a human brain.”
“The first thing they’ll use it for is mind-control,” a very thin man as tall as an itterim, just loud enough for Daivid to hear. “They’ll install it in brains.”
“That’s illegal!” protested Borden. “They must be contemplating a use in industry.”
His mahogany-skinned, chunky companion folded his arms. “Wrong. The first application will be military. Ever and always. They’ll find a way to kill people with it. You wait.”
“But, Asimov …” the round, dark-faced woman next to Borden protested.
“The most important thing is to use any new technology to preserve life,” Borden said, fervently.
Hear, hear, Daivid thought. That was his philosophy to a T. He ought to have a good talk with Borden one of these days.
“Besides, the difficulty of the mind-brain interface would make it difficult to produce a true mind analog. It has been known for millenia that though the brain creates the mind, that is by no means a simple explanation of the phenomenon.…”
Borden had found like-minded computer-heads. Daivid quickly got lost in the half-heard unfamiliar scientific jargon, and dragged himself back to the conversation going on at his table.
“… Escort duty. The Space Service is really getting their money’s worth out of this ship,” Ti-ya was saying.
“Where are we going next?” Daivid asked.
“Your clerk got full briefings to add to your infopad, but now that we’ve got you we’re heading out toward the Benarli cluster. You’ve probably heard about the Insurgency raids. Our first jump is due in two days, just outside Praetoria.” Daivid nodded. He recognized the name of another stop on the major trade routes. His family had a chain of good restaurants in the space station, a huge rotating spool hanging halfway between the heliopause and the primary. “Beyond that, they’re holding all other information back from us. So we don’t need to worry about it. Piece of cake. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Do you play poker?”
“A little,” Daivid admitted, allowing a glint to show in his eyes.
O O O
Lin, Boland, and D-45 reported to his cabin the next morning before PT for the daily status report.
“We missed your money last night, sir,” Boland said.
“Sorry. It was getting to know some other credits in the wardroom,” Daivid said, stretching his arms out with every evidence of satisfaction.
“Successful night?” Boland asked, with a grin.
“Oh, yes, my money made a lot of friends,” Daivid replied blithely. His winnings were locked up in the safe-drawer underneath his bunk, accessible only by a thumbprint scan. “Progress report?”
“All go and on green,” said Lin. “No problems, except it was hard getting to sleep without any noises except the troopers snoring. This is the quietest ship I’ve ever been on.”
“Jones all right?”
“Aye, sir,” D-45 replied. “I think he’s enjoying himself. He’s got Thielind running back and forth to bring him goodies from the day room.… Well, you didn’t say he couldn’t have provisions, did you, sir?”
Privately, Daivid admired the Cockroaches’ ability to read loopholes into any order, no matter what. “May I remind you he’s supposed to be on punishment? That doesn’t include room service. Thielind is supposed to be fetching and carrying for me. Never mind, I’ll tell him myself. Anything else?”
“Three of us tried to get into the anti-grav gym to work out during off-hours on the late shift,” Lin said. “The chief in charge told us we’ve got to stick to the rota. Sir, I know the ship is crowded, but some of us are rusty on zero-gee skills. It’s been three months since we were last in space. We need more than one shift every four days.” She pushed her infopad toward him. He read through the schedule: long-range weapons drill twice a week, and short-range drill three times a week, both using virtual-reality technology so as not to risk damaging the ship. Daivid could attest that the devices attached to the units’ weapons and handguns simulated exactly the sensation of firing and kickback. Hand-to-hand twice a week. Refresher lectures on the weapons systems were available over the ship’s net, and were required
“I’ll see what I can do,” Daivid said. That meant dealing with Bruno, but if he brought the matter to Iry, she ought to intercede for him.
***
Chapter 6
“Battle stations!” A siren whooped, filling Emmy Lin’s dreams. “Battle stations! Report! Report. This is a drill; repeat, this is a drill!” Lin’s eyes sprang open. She was already standing beside her bunk, reaching for her web suit.
Every light in the barracks went on at once. The Cockroaches sprang out of bed and snatched their new CBS,Ps off the end of their bunks and shrugged into them, shedding their skivvies on the way. The new webs fit like an outer epidermis, adapting to the temperature of the body against the air. Lin took a moment to glance at the chrono glowing over the door: 0400. Typical. Their unit had been placed on third sleep shift. The drill was coming smack in the middle of it. They had only been aboard the ship three days.
“Never mind the grousing!” she shouted, over the usual complaints. “Get the job done.”
“The noises!” Gire complained, lying in his bunk with his hands over his ears. “It’s too loud!”
The small chief gestured at Meyers, who slipped her arm around the medic’s shoulders and helped him up. “What’s the matter, your ear filters not in place?”
The medic felt his head. “The voices are inside!”
Lin sighed. “You left your personal player on again,” she said, patiently. She dug under his pillow and came up with his communications card. Yes, it showed that it was switched to a prerecorded program. Gire often needed entertainment to sleep. Not that he slept much; he had nightmares most of the time when he drifted off. In any other unit he would have been given a medical discharge, but the Cockroaches took care of their own. He was a good field doctor, even though his primary specialty was dentistry, and they all knew he could never make it successfully in civilian life. “What is it this time? Pretty young girls with cultured accents pretending to be men so they can engage in lesbian sex for the pleasure of older men even though a monkey wouldn’t be fooled by their disguises, or a rich family having to deal with skeletons in the closet after the death of a family member they never knew exist
ed?” Gire favored unbelievable scenarios like that that were far removed from his own miserable life. He never talked about where he had come from if he could help it. All they knew was that they’d pulled him out of the wreckage of a small cruiser crushed between two lizard flanks, the sole survivor of a thousand trooper push.
“No …” Gire blinked. His hands groped for the card and switched off the input. He wrinkled his nose at the blaring noise. “What’s all the sirens for?”
“Battle stations exercise,” Meyers said, helping him out of his underwear. As soon as she had yanked down his shorts Gire came to life and started stretching out his CBS,P so it would go on more easily. With practiced hands he drew the body stocking up and on, sealing the front with gloved hands. “Where’s our station?”
“Sanitation,” Lin said dryly, “as usual.”
“Heads up, everyone!” Boland bellowed, his deep voice carrying over the chatter. “Let’s move it! Weapons set for exercise. Non-lethality!”
They jogged into the cabin next door, which was where their armor and arms were kept. Lt. Wolfe and the other two officers were already there, suiting up.
“Evening,” Wolfe said, grinning so that his yellow eyes were slits. The skin around them looked drawn and puffy, making him look older. “Nothing like throwing us in head first, eh?”
“No, sir,” Lin said. “You look like you haven’t been to bed yet.”
“Er, no. Long meet-and-greet session.” Wolfe smirked.
“You leave them any money?”
“Enough for tomorrow,” the lieutenant said smugly. He clapped his helmet on at the same moment as Lin, rendering him faceless and almost invisible as the chameleon armor took over, displaying the wall behind him. The heads-up display inside her helmet gave her a solid red outline showing a warm body, overlaid by the blue image of his energy signature, and topped with a gold tag that carried his ID number and a coded dingbat for rank. That marking served to identify him as one of their own in the case of a scrimmage. Telemetry began to spell itself out in the text box across the top of her readout. Their orders were repeated in text and over their mastoid implants. Wolfe’s voice came over her in-suit comm system. “Squad leaders, troopers ready to rally! Shoulder weapons! Duty stations, double time!”
Lin heard a general-purpose groan from the troopers. He sure was new. Any experienced officer would take it as read that a squad that trained even irregularly would know what to do without being told.
At least he was holding back from the door until the point troopers went out it. D-45 and two of the other sharpshooters unshipped their rifles. Crossed on their backs were sword and can-opener, the latter a hooked and flattened metal rod the same length as the sword, with a pointed screw thread at the other end. The can-opener was the space trooper’s best friend. It could be used with equal success to crank open hull plating, or the suit of an enemy trooper. Pop an opponent’s suit in vacuum with the pointy end, and he was no longer a problem. The screw end was to wind into a bulkhead in case of zero-gee conditions. You held onto it with one hand and your shooting buddy with the other while he fought the enemy, anchoring him. Even so-called recoilless weapons caused some kickback. It was hard to fight a successful melee if you were caroming around the room like a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel. The swords were modeled on classic sabers of ancient Terra, though the point was sharpened to a singularity, the better to pierce through one’s opponent’s armor joints with. Since this was an exercise, the nonferrous blades had guards fastened around them. It was bad form to spit your allies like seekh kebabs, even by mistake.
As soon as the word came over the helmet audio that the hallway was secured, Lin shouldered her way out next, covering Lt. Wolfe’s exit. He looked around too, as he slid out into the corridor, drawing that beautiful pistol of his. She sure would have liked to get a close look at it. Unless she was very wrong about the age of the gun, it was a lot older than the boy himself. There was a story behind that, which, she guessed, the Cockroaches were not going to hear. The sword was also not strictly standard issue, a thing of beauty. The metal gleamed silver and blue, ripples of color playing up and down the blade’s length for the moment that Wolfe had had it exposed. It was almost a pity to quench its cold fire in an exercise guard. He was favored by his family. For a moment Lin felt a twinge of envy, then dismissed it. The Cockroaches were her family. So they never gave her fancy birthday presents. They never forgot it, either.
The others poured out into the hallway behind them. The coast looked clear. No warm bodies were within stated range.
Suddenly, three red forms leaped into their field of view at 20 meters distance. The squad dropped into firing formation, then paused, embarrassed, as they paid more attention to the real-view of the ‘intruders’: three junior ensigns in full dress whites, two males and a female. All three giggled at the sight of an entire platoon in armor in the middle of the night. Lin groaned.
“Sir?” she asked on the private channel that broadcast to his mastoid receiver only. “How many units are participating in this drill?”
“Damned if I know, Top,” Wolfe said, over the same channel. “I was not informed this exercise would be taking place. It wasn’t on my schedule, or I’d have prepared a plan of battle. It could be just us and the computer. Borden, see if you can raise Commander Iry or her aide. In the meantime, we’d better get down to deck B. B-deck forward, zone 6 muster station! Let’s move out!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Lin replied in a dead voice. Stop micromanaging us! she wanted to scream. We know what the hell we’re doing! “Combat names, sir?”
“Er, yes. Yes, of course.”
“We don’t know yours, sir.”
“Blink,” Daivid replied.
“That’s stupid,” Boland commented, “sir. With respect, with your name we should call you ‘Big Bad.’”
“Hey, yeah!” Thielind agreed.
“No!” Daivid protested, but he knew it was no use. He’d gotten the tag Blink pinned on him, too, for his speed with his sidearm. He’d wanted to be called something like Lightning or Nuclear, but his senior officers paid no attention then, either.
The Cockroaches jogged toward the lifts in double-time, weapons at the ready. The scouts, led by D-45, fanned out to cover all approaches, including scanning the ceiling and floors with their infrared visors. Daivid let his eyes follow theirs for a moment, seeing an engineer above the false panels wrenching something upwards between his hands and hacking at it with a tool, two more sitting quietly studying the tunnel to their left, and another pair who were busy but weren’t engaged in engineering at all.
Daivid chuckled. Over the platoon channel, Daivid heard an echoing laugh from several of the troopers. Normally no one would have noticed a courting couple, officially or otherwise, but the heads-up display played no favorites. It revealed all. If you were alive, you could find yourself on Candid Helmet Camera. At last Borden spoke.
“I’ve raised Petty Officer Gruen,” she said. “He says this is a one-on-one exercise. Just X-Ray versus either a virtual reality program or another unit. We won’t know until we get there. Our objective is to capture the enemy beacon. Hits will be recorded by tagging. Survival is less important than achieving the objective, but both would be preferable. Naturally, sir. The exercise will last for one hour, unless the beacon is secured or everyone is ‘killed.’”
“Laser tag, eh?” Wolfe mused. A game which had descended almost unchanged from their ancestors of five millenia ago involved running around in danger territory with artificial weapons that shone a beam of low-level, visible laser light. If your timed shot hit another player, you scored a point. A kill was worth three. The military had adopted this useful technology as a training exercise from the very beginning of the space service, with adaptations for the more sophisticated weaponry the military carried. It saved wear and tear on the ship, the troops, and the non-combatant ‘civilians,’ who might otherwise be struck by stray live fire in the closed environment. “Keeps us alert i
f we can’t anticipate whether we’re facing AI or live fighters we can psych out. Stay with it, troopers. We don’t know who the enemy will be. Everyone else is to be considered a neutral. On stealth. We want to maintain the element of surprise as long as we have to. Is that understood?”
Unable to keep the boredom out of their voices, the Cockroaches chorused, “Aye, sir!” Lin noticed that the red blob that represented Wolfe winced slightly. Good. They were getting through to him. He wasn’t the first baby officer they’d nursed into maturity.
O O O
Wolfe followed his forward point up the forward ladder toward Deck B. It made him nervous that they had to emerge into the ‘war zone’ headfirst. It gave the enemy an advantage. Nothing like being kicked in the head to start off an exercise. Above them, all was dark. The lights had been turned off in zone 6. That way, no one could tell if they were facing AI or live opponents. At first, that was. The readout in the helmet screen would be the same, but a blow from an actual combatant, in identical military-issue armor, was a mule-kick in comparison to the love-tap the suit gave itself when the AI said ‘body-slam.’ It wasn’t a perfect system, but it got troopers used to physical strikes, and didn’t put them in the infirmary for what was just a war game. The idea was to train their reactions, not the ability of their bodies to knit.
Strong Arm Tactics Page 11
