Cyberpunk (28 page)

quitting the academy now and taking up hairdressing.”

I flashed for a mo on this being an absolute perfect opportunity to

flunk out and go home, but
nah
. It hadn’t worked the first time I’d tried

it, and I doubted Dad was any more receptive to the idea. It’d been over

three years since I’d disappeared him, but the last letter I’d gotten from

Mom said the Sears charge account was
still
buggered up.

Thinking about Dad’s fight with Sears, I flashed a little half-smile. I

take my victories where I can get them.

Lucky for me I caught the smile and toggled it off before the S.I.

spotted it. Oblivious, he pulled a collapsible pointer out of his breast

pocket, extended it, and turned to face the map. “This square—,” he

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used the pointer to trace around the red yarn perimeter, “—is the

ComSurEx grid. Sixty-four square kilometers of wilderness; as you can

see, it’s mainly timber, some meadow, a small lake in the center. We

drop you at roughly these points—,” he tapped a pentagram inside the

square, “—4 klicks apart.” He slurped his coffee, then turned to us.

“Scenario: You’re down in nonfriendly territory. You have the

clothes on your back, a used ‘chute, and the basic survival kit. Your job

is to survive for seven days while neutralizing all nonfriendlies you

meet. This means each other;
there are no friendlies in ComSurEx!
”

Putting down his coffee cup, he picked up a thick plastic ring, flat green

color, from my pile. “You’ll all be wearing tracking collars. They uplink

to NavSat and constantly relay your position—,” he looked at me, smirk

cocked, “—so we can recover your body when you flunk.”

I stonefaced. He gave me one of his near-imperceptible eyebrow

arches and continued.

“They’re also how you score a takeout.” With a little creaking sound

he twisted the collar open, then put it around my neck and snicked it

shut. “There’s a wimp switch on the collar,” he said, fingering a pull-tab

under my chin. “To waste someone, yank his switch. This means you

have to get close enough for hand-to-hand, and you have to
win
at handto-

hand, and that brings up the first
verboten
: no knife fights! Too much

paperwork when we send a cadet home in pieces.” Murphy giggled. The

S.I. glared at him, stern, and he shut up.

“We call it a wimp switch because, if you’re injured or you want to

quit, you can yank your own.” To me personal he added, “I’ll bet a

brainy guy like you has
lots
of experience yanking your own.”

To the others he said, “If the switch goes, you’re dead. Worse, you

flunk and have to take my course over again.” He spun around and

jabbed me in the chest with the pointer, shortening it a few inches. “We

all know how eager you are to do
that
, don’t we Harris?”

“Yessir.” Conditioned response. Can’t help it.

“Oh,” he added, casual, “taking the collar off pops the switch, of

course.”

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He turned to the map and traced the square with his pointer. “I’d

also advise against trying to leave the grid. The Grade Fives are

conducting containment exercises along the perimeter. If they catch you

running, they’ll beat the piss out of you. They don’t like cowards.”

The S.I. clasped his hands behind his back and resumed his swagger.

“You have two advantages over real soldiers: I gave you time to get your

boots on, and you won’t be making the actual drop. You can thank some

gutless lawpimp for that: The family of that clumsy fool who broke his

hip last month has filed suit. So no more low-visibility vertical

insertions. For now.” He smiled, crocodilian. “Questions?”

Doug Luger stepped forward, chest puffed, chin jutting out like the

bow of the battleship
Maine
. “Sir! How come Cadet Harris is fully

dressed, sir?” In my head I filed a priority to someday thank Luger

proper for that question.

“Well?” the S.I. asked me, sharp.

The true/true answer was mom’d sent me the jumpsuit for

Christmas, and I’d been wearing it to bed ever since the February night

Luger decided I was an overeducated smartass and convinced my

bunkies that a bare-butt snowdrifting would improve my attitude. I

settled for, “I always sleep in a jumpsuit, sir.”

“I believe I’ll check that out,” the S.I. said, and gave me his best

Menacing Glare w/Implied Crucifixion. Then, as there were no more

questions, he ordered us to mount up.

#

The sun’s big red eye was just starting to peek over the horizon

when we lifted out. At first we flew due east, which was s’posed to

disorient us, then we cut back west-northwest. I tried to talk to

Buchovsky and gave up ‘cause of the fierce rotor noise, but as I strapped

on my canteen I caught a garble of Luger and Kao Vang arguing. The

disturber was hearing Vang clearly say, “No,
I
get to take Harris out!”

Before I could overhear more, the S.I. squeezed into our

compartment and bellowed, “Listen up! This is a
combat
test! If I catch

you cooperating, you
both
flunk! Understood?” Luger and Kao Vang

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were still shouting, “Sir! Yes, sir!” when the helo slowed to a hover and

a crewman yanked the main hatch open. As we yawed around, I did a

quick scan.

A smudge of smoke rising through the pines far to the southeast

marked the academy, the only sign of human life horizon to horizon. We

were maybe two klicks west-southwest of the lake, coming down over a

clearing the size of a hot tub. No way,
no
way we were putting down in

that
; I decided the bit about not doing a jump was just another

disorienter and cussed the S.I. for it. Then the crewman latched a rope to

the hook above the door.

So we weren’t chuting in. We were rappelling. Big fritzing

improvement.

The S.I. smirked around at us, handed Murphy a pair of heavy

leather gloves, and said, “You first.” Murphy looked at the rope

enthusiastic as a man being offered a seriously annoyed live rattlesnake,

and the S.I. shouted, “Wait!” Murphy started breathing again.

“Forgot to mention!” the S.I. continued. “Tularemia season! Don’t

eat rabbit!” He pushed the rope into Murphy’s hands and gave him the

boot.

We waited just long enough to see if Murphy could get up and walk.

He did, so five minutes later we dropped Buchovsky due south of the

lake, and another five minutes after that we were over the southeast drop

point and I was gloved, at the hatch, holding line. Luger and Kao Vang

were grinning like they’d finally settled who got drumstick and who got

white meat, and the S.I. was chucking me under the chin and shouting,

“Remember! Wimp switch!” when he tried to give me the boot, but I

jumped out before his foot connected and he almost—
almost
, dammit—

lost his balance and pitched out with me.

They didn’t wait to see if I could walk, I noticed.

#

As the helo clattered away north, I tried to collect wits and toggle off

my Immediate Compliance mindset. That’s one of cyberpunking’s

permanent side effects, I guess; you start out putzing around with a

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computer for what you can do to
it
, and pretty soon it’s filled
your
head

with binary paradigms and thinkspace partitions.

This time, though, I was having lots of trouble switching off the

military mode, and for one big hairy reason:
Luger
. All semester long

I’d been praying he’d get detailed into someone else’s ComSurEx. We’d

been feeding an attitude clash ever since the Peloponnesian Wars, and

it’d grown up to be a True Hate.

Made good strategic from his viewpoint, I suppose. Objectification,

again: The quick path to status is to find the outsidish geek in the group

and add a new wrinkle to the usual geek-dumping that goes on. Roid

Rogers did a real good job of flagging me as the designated class dump.

By the time Luger came back to the Academy there was a comfy

Torturer’s Assistant niche just waiting for an occupant, and when Rogers

graduated at the end of my second Grade One year it was perfect CPO

(Cake, Piece Of) for Luger to pick up his fallen banner and carry on.

But I for one was tired of gravel in my food, ants in my toothpaste,

and flunking inspection because that zut-head had used my footlocker

for a chamber pot. I was
real
tired of living full-time in tight-zipper

jumpsuits so’s to avoid a repeat of amateur proctoscopy night with

Mengele Junior. Someday soon I needed to zero the account but good!

This started to damper the fear a bit. Maybe ComSurEx was a good

time for settling up? Out here, in the woods, with no staffers between us

and permission—orders, even—to do anything short of wasting the

sucker?

Hmm, maybe. Kao Vang was along too, though. I’d gotten both

Deke Luger and his best apprentice brownshirt, and it sounded like they

were planning an epic geek-dump for me. Still, if I could separate

them...

No plan on how to do that just yet, though. I pushed the issue on the

stack, hoping an idea would pop off if I gave it enough time, and started

checking out my gear.

My canteen was empty. The “basic survival kit” turned out to be a

roll of sterile gauze, a tupperware of water decon pills, and the seriously

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wicked sheath knife all upperclassmen carry. Unscrewing the buttcap of

the knife, I found about a dozen matches and a compass that claimed the

sun rose in the south. That’s how you keep cadets from going walkaway,

I suppose. Nothing in the BSK looked even remotely like food.

I cut off the negative think right there. No water, at least, I could do

something about. Taking a rough bearing from the sun, I headed

northwest to find the lake. Along the way, to pump my attitude, I started

prioritizing my positive situationals.

Positive:
It was real ratty and I wouldn’t step into air with it, but the

thing in my parachute bag was definitely a squarechute. With work, I

could have a decent tent.

Positive:
Buchovsky had the drop point just to my west. I had a

shade less than zero respect for Buchovsky; he’d won his Academy

scholarship by pursuing advanced studies in recreational pharmacy, and

I suspect he smoked a major slice of his headchips in the process. All us

cadets lived and breathed the Colonel’s Number One Rule (“Keep your

head down”), but in the two years since he’d come to the Academy I’d

never once seen Buchovsky put his head
up
.

I stopped walking for a mo, listened for the helo, and took a guess at

elapsed realtime: Ten minutes. By now Buchovsky’d be gone to ground

so hard they’d have to backhoe him out. He was no threat to me.