The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (16 page)

“There is so
much I still want to do,” he tells my corpse.

Hope.

ETA: 100
days

I have just
finished reading the complete the Jeeves and Wooster series today.
Say what you like, but the classics are remembered for a reason. I
read them all because I enjoy them and because I don’t have
anything else to do today. Or tomorrow, or the days after that.
Time I have in surplus. I sleep twenty hours out of every
twenty-four. It’s still not enough. When the moment comes I will be
awake for eighty hours straight, but until then my free time seems
infinite.

To keep myself
sharp, I run the engine statistics and make slight recalibrations
which improve efficiency by some infinitesimal amount. It takes me
two hours. I am bored.

ETA: 75
days

I can feel the
fear, even now, even out here. They told me that the drugs would
cut down on the adrenaline, cut down on all the hormones that would
make me feel nervous. They were right for a change, but there is
more fear than chemicals. A thin note of complaint plays in my ears
as the sensors do another sweep. Fear is a pattern of thought. I
can see it in my own EEG if I want to. You can tell a lot from
those little brain waves, especially if you have time.

I have time. So
much time.

Exactly five
kilometres to my left and a few hundred metres behind me is my
wingman. Baris and I haven't spoken in a while. Three months, four
days and twenty seven minutes, more or less. My instruments tell me
that he is still in position.

Don't get me
wrong, I like the guy. We had long chats at one point, but words
run out eventually. What is there to say these days, really? He is
still alive. So am I. We finished our last philosophical argument
months ago, and now we settle down to wait. We keep our minds to
ourselves in an attempt not to think about the mission. I hate our
mission.

We fly the most
destructive weapons humanity has ever produced. We are Armageddon’s
helmsmen. We are the stars of death and war, and we are coming for
you.

At sub-light
levels, so don’t hold your breath. Baris and I fly two of only a
handful of the experimental bombers that are part of the Long Shot
project. We are Earth’s last chance, and we will never be able to
forgive ourselves.

We are going to
bomb the Enemy. Or, at least, humanity's enemy. If we were flying
to bomb my personal enemy, we would be flying in the wrong damn
direction, believe me.

ETA: 62

Nervous. Of
course, the drugs won't do anything about that if it’s only in my
mind. My camera scans the stars for something. Anything. A comet
passed a few light years away. I watch its light-memory from years
ago, record it for later. I detect a rock coming closer, light
seconds away... scanning. All I can do is watch and wait.

When the
Lottery chose me for the war, my parents tried to get me off it on
psychological reasons. My half-brother even tried to take my place.
Didn't work, though. It seldom does. The tests they made me do
(they made us all do, at some stage) showed that I was:

1) Highly
intelligent (apparently), BUT with negative leadership qualities
because

2) I am so
deeply introverted that

3) I sometimes
forget that other people can't read my mind. Or even that they
exist at all.

I wonder if
Baris can read my mind. Perhaps I should tell him about my
fears.

No.

Either he has
his own fears, in which case mine will merely compound them when I
intrude in his solitude or he has no fears, and I will create them
when I intrude in his solitude.

Of course.
Academic.

Back to books
for me, for now. Perhaps Sherlock’s rational thought will be
comforting.

ETA: 60

There are two
dimensions of personality in which the MilNav are interested.

Negative. Bias
thought towards own position. Correct:

There are many
dimensions of personality in which the MilNav are interested. Every
Sol person sits personality tests at set stages in their lives. One
of the vital dimensions is extraversion/ introversion.

The extremes of
this scale are highly amusing. Some people have nervous systems
with low excitement of the brain. They need to look for interesting
activities, stimulation. Extroverts. Tend to be social, friendly,
charismatic. Entertainers and serious party animals, they often die
young while chasing another hit of excitement. They serve only on
the biggest spaceships and stations, where their primary duty is to
raise morale. Under the guise of second junior officers they pull
pranks and drink a lot. Few make it any further up. Battle
commanders need a temperate personality.

Some people
have systems in which arousal is so high that sitting quietly and
staring at the wall is an intense experience. We are better
thinkers that soldiers. We are the introverts, and we mostly live
inside our own heads. Try to avoid the exciting world, because over
stimulation of the nervous system = negative health
consequences.

As you might
expect, this does not make us popular at parties.

58

There was this
girl.

It doesn't
matter.

56

Still nervous.
Did I mention I am slightly neurotic, or did the military already
tell you that? Would have been a lie, anyway. Hyper-neurotic is the
word. So is Baris. I've seen his scores when I hacked the system
one time. So are we all.

Neurotic is all
part of the genetics. Paranoia we were taught at our specialized
flight school.

Forever looking
over our shoulders. Forever second-guessing ourselves. Compulsive
checkers of safety seals, emergency lights, vectors, food
preservatives and so on so on so on. What is a curse for normal
people is a
blessing
out here. Out here, you can never be
sure enough. Of anything. That’s why they choose us, train us, send
us. We check everything always, and we survive.

Carefully does
it.

A rock. About
the size of my fist. Travelling at the same speed as us plus ten
percent, same direction, nearly. I've been watching it for days
now, just in case.

Spent the day
checking the engine algorithms. There was a .0-0090000200032 error
in one of them. Correcting now... done.

54.1

She sure was a
beauty. Even by modern standards. Even without surgery.

My options
were: research scientist, recluse, finance analyst, computer
programmer. None of these seemed endearing. That was
pre-enlistment, naturally. Once enlisted, there was only really one
option.

I wonder where
she is now? Doesn't matter. Going for a run.

54.2

Virtual run.
Complete. Tired now.

53

Received: LS-1
from LS-6.

Harmless

It drives the
psychologists wild. We don't talk for days, months, and then that's
all we have to say to each other. One little meaningless word? They
rave about it as if we are telepathic. As if we accidentally
invented Einstein.

Stupid. Why
need more? One word says all.

Baris is OK.
Still sane. Still healthy. He has also been watching the rock. A
few of the scans I ran showed high metal. Abnormally high metal
readings. Probe? Negative. Just a rock.

Baris agrees.
Just a rock. He knows that I know that he has been watching that
rock for days, and so have I. Not like there is anything else out
there. That’s what he was saying: just checking that I know.

Just checking
in.

Extroverts
can't take the silence. They need constant talking. Constant
conversation to stimulate them. Tend to go mad in extended
isolation. Not hypothetical. They have run tests. Crews isolated
for long periods of time like we are have to be introverts or
stored in the deep freezer. We are both.

Send: LS-1 to
LS-6

Y.

50

The Long Shot
project. The name says it all. The technology was apparently easier
than the crew problem. Then they found us, the few, the talented,
the disposable. They lock us in vast bombers and send them into the
stars to attack high value targets. They don’t expect us to
succeed, but if we do we achieve more than a battle fleet ever
could.

We travel
quietly but so, so terribly slowly. This means we take about two
years to get to our destination. Two years in the same ship. Crews
go crazy. The personal interactions lead to conflict. We don’t play
well with others, so the silence is refreshing after living on a
planet of twenty billion souls.

That’s why they
send us out alone. Of all humanity, only we are able to bear
it.

Inside each
ship is a single mind, and inside each mind is a whole different
reality, a whole different universe with unique rules and
experiences. We can spend eternity exploring just one of these
internal universes, and still there will be unknowns. This is true
of all humans, but especially of us. Each mind is a treasure, a
wonder, but if we die out here there will be few who notice, fewer
who care. After all, who cares for a few more deaths in a conflict
that has consumed thousands of lives already.

War is hell. At
least it’s quiet out here.

We are deep
space bombers. Deep. Deep introversion, deep into enemy territory,
deep water, deep trouble.

All this is
possible because of the hyper drive. Everyone’s heard of it, and
how it allows us to Jump at faster than light speeds. Only two
people understand it, and they are the two most intelligent people
on Earth, but that's OK. For some reason the Jump needs to be
piloted by a human. Computers can only do so much, it seems. It is
a delicate job.

The Jump works.
We copied it from the Enemy, before we were fighting. The good old
days. I met one once. Seemed OK. Can’t say more for most
humans.

Once again, why
am I fighting in this war?

Should I remove
that last part later? Who cares? What are they going to do, court
martial me for writing bad things about them? This diary is meant
to be confidential, so they can’t use it in court. But they read
it.

Of course you
do.

Stealth.
Jumping is just too obvious: may as well let off a few fireworks
and announce yourself on every radio frequency available. We have
tiny FTL engines. Tiny Jumps. Tiny energy to be noticed. When we
get close enough, we go sub-light. It takes months to get to the
target as sub-light because

48

It doesn’t
matter. I hate parties.

47

I told them
that I wanted to take my music. Old stuff. Good stuff. The Admiral
said no. I said I was taking it anyway. He said that was going
against a direct order. I asked what he was going to do about it?
Kick me out of an army I never wanted to fight in? Send me
home?

He said I could
be court martialled. I asked him, what then, threaten to put me in
solitary confinement until the end of the war?

He laughed at
that. I knew he would. I got my way. The music plays over me in my
ship’s womb-like cockpit. I’m suited up, suspended in gel. The suit
gives me force feedback to exercise in, and controls the ship. It
feeds me, and keeps me healthy. It’s a strange experience.

Safe?

44.1

Who am I
kidding?

44.2

Have you ever
seen the design of my ship? I doubt it, as even I don’t know every
part of the damn thing. Only three people on Earth have access to
all the blueprints. It isn’t a secret to say that almost all of it
is made up of a huge sub-light engine ringed with a hell of a lot
of bombs and covered by a thin skin of crazy stealth technology.
The Jump drive and cockpit are tucked inside somewhere like tiny
appendixes that the surgeons just couldn’t be bothered to remove.
The whole thing costs more than a small Pacific island.

The plan is
straightforward: we Jump far from the system undetected, and spend
a few months getting up speed. All that time accelerating means we
arrive in the system sub-lights at speeds that only missiles can
match. And there will be missiles. They know about us. A few of us
got close enough to drop our bombs a few times, apparently. Lots of
destruction. They can’t stop us unless they can predict us, and
detect us a long way away, but neither is likely. We pass through
the system like the Devil’s own shadow, avoid interception, drop
our bombs and are gone like a bad dream.

Then we Jump
our way home, tiny distances at a time.

Average
casualties for this job 47%, including people who just don't bother
to go home afterwards (32%, maybe).

That’s why they
send us out in pairs, now. Supposed to help.

I'll go back.
This time, I will talk to her. Defend myself against those
creeps.

30

Countdown.
Checking life-support systems.

29

Rechecking
life-support systems.

28

Engines.
Checking. Disagree with computer's analysis. That’s why they don’t
send robots. We joke that they can’t: the robots would get too
lonely.

27

Checking the
computer. This is crazy; I don’t want to bomb anybody. But humanity
lies in the scales of my actions, according to the propaganda.
Personally express disbelief.

26

Computer error.
All fixed now.

25

Check and
recheck bombs. Ready to begin 20-day countdown check.

22

OK, who left
the time-dated message on my system? Popped up today and scared the
living blood out of me. So no thanks to whomever that was. For the
record, I am not planning dissent. Or passing through the system
without sending out my bombs. Is that what happened in the past,
did Long Shots mutiny? And if anyone touches my family there will
be trouble.
Trouble,
do you hear me? Read my record. I can
and will find you.