Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) (17 page)

“So you’re in contact with them,” I stated.

“We’re alone out here,” he said, almost snarling. “How do you think we survive? It’s not by the good graces of the Cascadia Republic that we’re alive. It’s by brokering information. Our contacts around the world are what make us valuable. We wheel and deal information and technology to everyone. We take no sides.”

“You mentioned another nation,” I said quickly. “A ‘Dominion’. Tell me more about them.”

“Oh, the Kergueleni,” Ebenezer said solemnly. “They were the pinnacle of pre-Plague civilization. Your history courses don’t teach about them, of course, because the implications are huge. They’re the ones that built the space elevator, and they had to temporarily abandon it during the height of the Plague outbreak. They’re the ones that invented faster-than-light travel. They sent the first colony ships off into the black void of space. To say that anyone could have bested the Cascadia Republic is blasphemy these days, which is why your leaders don’t want you to know. All information concerning the Kerguelen Dominion is classified. Blacked out.”

I shook my head.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “You can’t just make an entire country disappear. Freedom to access any information is guaranteed by our Articles of Incorporation, except in matters of national security.”

“What’s more dangerous to national security than admitting you’re not the only super power?” Ebenezer shrugged. “In any case, no one’s heard from them in over one hundred and fifty years. They might not even still exist. The last contact, if you could call it that, was when a Republic dropship attempted to enter their airspace and was downed with all hands lost. Since the Cascadians could never confirm that the incident was an act of war and not a malfunction, they never retaliated. And they never sent anyone to investigate.”

I was startled. “If people knew about this—”

“
People
would be scared or upset. But those are ‘animal’ emotions, not pseudo-robotic intelligence and logic, my boy. And I’m sure that if any robotic adult found out, they’d justify the government’s actions in the name of protecting the Republic.”

I shifted in my seat, leaning in toward the old man. “If I wanted to meet the Kergueleni, how would I do it?”

He laughed and shook, almost spilling his drink. “If I knew that, I’d have another trading partner. Like I said: they’ve not been heard from in over one hundred and fifty years. And if you did actually end up on their shores…well, let’s just say they’ve no fondness for the Republic that built upon their gains and stole their greatest asset—the elevator. You’d probably never make it back alive.”

“But they’re technologically advanced?” I asked.

“Their pre-Plague technology was equal, and in some cases superior, to anything the known galaxy has today.”

“One last thing,” I said, rising to my feet. “Where were those locations you found broadcasting on the ultra-low-frequency bands?”

“In the old States,” he said, groaning as he stood, “they would have been called Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia. That’s as precise as I can determine. It may only be one of those places, or fuck…it might be all three.”

“Thank you, Ebenezer.” I shook his hand. “I thank you for being a friend in these dark times, and look forward to seeing you again someday.”

Handshakes were still so strange to me. I softly wiped my hand on my pant leg.

“Godspeed, Pax Faustus. I hope we do, indeed, meet again.”

“It was a pleasure meeting you, sir,” Rebekah curtsied. “And do you have any more of that rum?”

The several hundred young volunteers gathered in the auditorium of the Bionics Research Facility. There was visible excitement on their faces as Marshal Burnham took the stage. He stood there emotionless, briefing his new troops.

“As most of you know,” he started solemnly, “the Republic has never had a standing army. We’ve never had a fleet-scale engagement with our navy. We’ve had no need. A small, but disciplined force has provided the necessary security for over two centuries. In the wake of engagements against this new threat of the Infected, that force has been nearly expended.”

He paused. If there was a way for an enhanced form to mentally pause and clear their throats, the marshal made that noise, before continuing.

“As you know, this threat against the security of the Republic is unprecedented. Most of the juveniles and children are being sent to the colonies in cryostasis. You few have been selected for advanced bionics training based on your aptitude at this very center, and also your prowess with the
Slayers
gaming simulation. Your society thanks you for your willingness to serve.”

He gestured to the screen.

“Now: Major Isis Walling, of the Republic Vanguard.”

A beautiful blonde woman in a military uniform appeared on the screen behind him. At first, she looked real, but then I realized that this was an avatar. I had met her during my rescue from Omaha, but clearly that shiny metal death machine wasn’t the gorgeous woman on the screen. I would later learn that warrior forms spent time actually
inside
the neural web; their giant metal bodies weren’t suited for the everyday recreational needs of the human mind, so they could willingly shut down their bodies and live in a digital sandbox with their peers. This avatar made them feel more human inside the simulation and her’s apparently represented what she would have looked like if she had never given up her organic or enhanced forms.

“We are honored by your willingness to serve,” Major Walling started. “In the face of this new threat, it will be the responsibility of the entire human race to protect the planet we’ve tried to restore. Cleaning up the toxic chemicals and repairing the ecosystem on this world has taken longer than it’s taken to terraform other worlds entirely. But we’ve fought for this planet because it is our home, and it will always be our home.”

Some scattered applause crackled through the audience.

“You will be placed in the neural interface for dozens of hours at a time—longer than you’ve ever been before. You’ll be catheterized, fed intravenously, and literally live inside the simulation. You will be taking the fight to the enemy as a warrior form, but without having to make that permanent transition. You will become the zombie slayers you’ve always imagined.”

The room erupted in applause and cheers. For a room of hardcore gamers who loved even the Digibook and EagleVision versions of the game, getting to actually play the simulation against real zombies was a thrilling prospect. When it quieted down, Major Walling asked bluntly:

“Questions?”

At first, the room was silent. A tiny hand of a girl, barely ten years old, was the first to go up.

“Why children instead of enhanced forms?” she asked.

“You’re the best for the job,” Major Walling chuckled, which netted some cheers from around the room. “We have your neural interfaces on file and know you can operate the machines. We have your scores from the
Slayers
game and we know you’re talented. And finally, adult enhanced forms can’t use the interface in the way you can, nor can the implanted warrior forms operate a machine other than the one they reside in. Our top scientists are looking for software patches to the biologic problems we’re facing with ‘bouncing’ paired organic brains from one robotic form to the next. It simply can’t be done with existing programming at this time, and a solution may be months away— time which we do not have.

“Any other questions?”

One more hand raised up as a teenage boy spoke.

“Is there a threat to us for being in the interface? Can we die in the machines?”

Major Walling shook her head, “No, no. You will feel pain; you have to if you want to know you’re being hit. But it’s not enough to die from, as the simulation numbs what you would experience to a tenth of what you would actually feel.”

The marshal took the stage again and ordered the dismissal of the “troops,” with the expectation that they would be in the makeshift cafeteria for breakfast at 0600 and then in the tubes at 0700 for a long day of war games.

Burnham’s cadre and technical staff from Luna had been busy building the simulations. They used real-world elevation and imagery data to recreate the area around Colorado Springs. During these iterations of training, the children wouldn’t be operating actual warrior forms, but would instead be working in a virtual reality system. Whereas the
Slayers
game used augmented reality to overlay digital objects on actual space, this VR system replaced reality entirely, and it was hyperrealistic to reflect the accuracy of the sensors of the warriors we’d be piloting.

We went “into the tubes” at 0700 as expected, but the technicians had never tried to link four hundred operators at a time before. There were technical snags getting kids into the tubes, and glitches in the software when trying to dump all of the users into one instance. We shut down for an hour but were forced to stay in our metal coffins while the techs tried to solve the problem. One of the kids, Cyrus Dooley, suggested that they just load smaller instances in the meantime.

He’d later become one of my company commanders.

Finally, we were back into the system, loading in groups of sixty to seventy. We ran the simulations over and over and over. It was fun, but toward the end of the day, performance of the pilots was down.

We exited the tubes at 1708. That was a long day. With all the sensor electrodes, catheters, and intravenous drips that had to be stuck into us, it didn’t make sense to have short training days. We’d have tomorrow off from the simulation, while the techs figured out the integration issues.

An entire apartment block had been reserved for the out-of-town recruits, just across the street from the BRF, but I still had my apartment in the tower a few blocks away. It was a short five-minute walk back to my place, and I arrived home to a lovely dinner on the table prepared by Rebekah.

As we ate a dinner of braised chicken, the lights of the city twinkled and glowed outside the window of the dining room. I could barely make out the distant flicker of lights of Old Vancouver on the horizon.

“You look really tired,” Rebekah said in between bites.

“I’m exhausted,” I said. “It’s not real inside the computer, but it’s made to feel so real that it actually wears out your muscles and your mind.”

“It sounds like fun,” she hinted.

“I wish you could join us, babe,” I said, swallowing the saucy food, “but every one of these kids has incredible experience with both the game and the remote system. It would take you a long time to get used to it. It’s taken years for most of these kids.”

She frowned.

“I’ll tell you what we can do: let’s go play
Slayers
tonight. Out in the city.”

Suddenly, she was smiling.

We finished dinner and put the dishes in the dishwasher—a device Rebekah now swore would never get her to leave the capital. We had a short walk to the electronics store where I picked up a standalone EagleVision headset for Rebekah. It had less general functionality than using the paired headsets that went with the digibooks, but it was also a lot more immersive and didn’t require carrying anything else to play the game.

She put the gloves on her hands, attached the wireless sensors to her shoes, then placed the headset over her eyes…and started giggling. I remembered the first time, so many years ago, that I’d first wore mine, and felt the same giddiness.

Rebekah kept looking around, reaching out with her hand to touch the things that she knew weren’t there. Occasionally, she’d pull the glasses away from her head just to compare the difference between the real world and the augmented world.

We walked to a tea shop around the corner to start a beginner’s quest line. After learning how to move her hands to select items on the screen, she completed the gestures tutorial. By squeezing her hand into a fist, she could punch the imaginary zombies. By making a gun with a finger and a thumb, her hand turned into a digital pistol on the display. Two fingers brought up a machine gun. Her whole hand brought up the rocket launcher. This simple act entertained her for an hour. I watched through my display as her hand turned into a gun, then a rocket launcher, and so on. We completed a few small “numbers” quests where we had to shoot a predetermined number of zombies in a certain time period.

She smiled ear-to-ear. “What else can we do?”

I figured it was time for a warrior quest line. The augmented display wrapped your body in a wireframe warrior form, so when others looked at you, it appeared that you were actually inside the robot. When your hands moved, the robot’s hands moved. When you walked, it walked.

Rebekah followed my instructions and “got inside” her robot. When I did the same, she screamed and ripped off her headset.

I took mine off and saw her crying. Panting. Gasping in between sobs. I asked her what was wrong and tried to put my arms around her. She shoved me, then ripped off the gloves and sensors and ran off.

I picked up her things and sat on a bench on the street, under the streetlight. Some moths swirled around it high above my head, casting shadows under the moonless Pacific sky.

At least half an hour had gone by when she came sulking back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Those things. They…they killed my family.”

“But they saved us, remember?” I countered, reaching for her hand. “They pulled us out of Omaha.”

“Pax,” she sniffled, “my whole family. Everyone I had left.”

“They were defending the border,” I said. “I know it’s terrible. But you know what we’re up against now. They can’t take any chances.”

“They know,” she snapped. “They know the difference between zombies and people. They just lump everyone together to make it easier to murder them.”

I couldn’t argue. We’d been taught that everyone east of the mountains was a zombie: some were more vicious, and some were more tame, but all of them were space-god worshipping savages who wanted nothing but to kill us all.

“I can’t apologize for them,” I sighed. “I didn’t do that. I was almost killed along with you. But you can’t say that if you saw an enemy coming that you wouldn’t kill first and ask questions later. In fact,” I continued, “I know you would. You have.”

Both of our minds were in the same place now— where she’d smashed that man’s head in with a rock on the way up to Beartooth Pass.

“It still hurts,” she grumbled. “At least you still have your family.”

I had nothing else to say, so I just pulled her close to me on the bench and held her until I started getting so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. She was snoring softly and fast asleep on my shoulder, tucked close to my body. I lifted her up, cradled her in my arms, and carried her back to our apartment.

In the morning, I ate breakfast in the cafeteria with the other recruits. I had already started selecting my company commanders and squad leaders based on their aptitude, leadership, and personality. Cyrus Dooley was a natural leader, probably even better than me. Definitely better than me. Morgana Dell, who had been training to be a pilot since she was a child, had amazing reflexes and an uncanny ability to outrun and outmove her opponents. She was always one of the last ones standing. Kaelis Richardson was another phenomenal player and had won the regional
Slayers
championship this year. I learned who I could trust, and who others would trust. I’d have to delegate a lot of combat ops, but fortunately, I’d have a crack team of strategists and operators calling the shots from up above.

This day was spent almost entirely in the main assembly hall, with a few breakout sessions in the classrooms on specific tactics or commands. We detailed the strengths and weaknesses of the warrior forms with diagrams. It wasn’t particularly exciting, and many of the kids were bored until we showed combat footage clips from Omaha and a few other incursions.

It was strange watching myself on video, being pulled out of the cage with Rebekah and hoisted into the hovering dropship. Then I saw something on one of the films that made me ill: a destroyed warrior form with the tag number AG842 on its shoulder.

Adara Goodman.

She had given her life for me and I’d hardly thought about her since then. Occasionally, I wandered back to memories of us as kids, but never of her at the battle. I guess it was because I only anecdotally knew she was there.

The last of the combat camera clips from the warriors finished, and then the final segment showed the front of the starship
Paradise Falls.
The MAC gun fired and the camera shuddered as the multi-ton iron projectile blasted into the ruins of Omaha, which disappeared under a cloud of dust and debris that blocked the scene. The camera angle remained transfixed on the site and the video went to time lapse, speeding up, then slowing down as the dust cleared a day later. Nothing was left…just a giant crater one kilometer across, with the ruined buildings blown to rubble for another two clicks to either side.