When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition) (33 page)

A day later we were summoned to a special meeting of senior tactical combat teams, making me wonder just where the time had gone. Years. The war’s been going on for years already, Violet and I cocooned together, wandering through the wilderness of nothing between the worlds.

We had no idea why they’d interrupted our little vacation, but it didn’t matter. There was really no place to go on Telemachus Major, not anymore. No place where scenes like the one in the park weren’t being played out, people doing what people always do, when they can.

Bitter moments when I envied Violet her status as a nonhuman. No way of knowing how optimods would behave, if they were free.

Better, I hope.

They sat us down in a big amphitheater, kems beneath the surface, down deep where the bombs had never reached. There were scars here, of course, footsoldiers had battled in these underground warrens, Thulians come to capture the corporate world, Corporate soldiers come to take it back.

So now a thousand of us sat murmuring in our chairs while two corporate security executives, one in Standard ARM blue, the other wearing the red and brown of General CHON, bracketed a free-lance technarch in a colorful civilian toga. Little man with big green eyes and a piping voice, too valuable to be harassed by lawyers, too smart to sign a restrictive contract.

Must be wonderful, being free. Free as a
ronin
scientist is how the saying goes.

The murmuring gradually faded, people and things turning in their seats, waiting while the execs made their introductions, then listening as the little man with the squeaky voice made his presentation, all about the new All-Purpose mark one Tactical Assault Craft, about how we, as senior combat teams, were being given the wonderful opportunity to volunteer for this new duty.

Retraining to be had.

Exciting new front-line duty in your future.

Opportunity for advancement, you see.

Advancement and promotion.

Promotion to what, I wondered, but by then he was telling us how much we pilots would enjoy flying this splendid new high-performance battle platform, how much we combat systems operators would enjoy its new weapons systems.

Particularly the firehaze projector.

I glanced at Violet, who cocked her head to one side, pretty as can be, and muttered, “What the hell.”

They made us volunteer before taking us down to see the prototype. Very few teams stayed behind.

o0o

ATAC-1.0022, waiting in a row of identical vehicles on a landing stage inside a small corporate habitat, a dirigible world at the heart of something called a carrier task force, was externally identical to the partly mocked-up prototype we’d been shown on Telemachus Major. Same double-ended boat shape, same dull bronze hull with its two dark-gray, side-mounted field modulus pods, same four articulated landing legs ending in flat black saucers, same unobtrusive hatch mounted just under the matte-finish nosecap.

Seeing her for the first time, Violet and I stood at a little distance, admiring the sleek, clean lines, not quite like the day we’d come to board our first Harbinger turretfighter. Still less like the day I’d walked up to
Athena
7 and found Dûmnahn waiting to greet me.

I tried to imagine this ship, in front of me now, roaring through the atmosphere of a large habitat, maybe streaking through the skies of a real world, plasma tail streaming behind.

There’s beauty in these birds of war.

Maybe that’s why we’re all so easily fooled.

Violet went first, popping the hatch, which dropped open, unfurling a small, rigid ladder, and disappeared inside. I waited a second, then followed her in, looking around in the half light. Much better than the prototype, which had had generic crash nets and pretend control panels. Violet was already sitting in the left-hand seat, a seat whose nets and harnesses were recessed, invisible, were supposed to appear like magic when needed, running her hands over the armrest controls, looking forward at the dead gleam of inactive freeze-frames.

I slipped into the right hand seat, the CSO’s workstation. Directly in front of me, slightly below face level, was a modern combat interface, retracted now, dark. Beyond it was a flat surface with a gleam like black marble.

Seeing me look, Violet said, “Stereotaxis hood.”

I nodded, imagining what it would be like when all this stuff was live. We’d feel like we were riding our little seats, naked in space. Scary as hell, maybe. That’s how it’d feel.

Violet thumbed the system master switch at her side. There was a soft whine from somewhere, a faint vibration, a puff of warm air from a pair of vents down by our feet. A rapid scroll of data as freeze-frames erected themselves here and there, green and amber indicator lights cycling overhead as discrete emergency panels talked to themselves, to each other.

All’s well.

Is that what they’re saying?

Better be.

I twisted in my seat and looked over my shoulder. Behind the cockpit was a niche holding a single narrow bunk, set up for zero-gee sleeping, off to one side an exposed zero-gee toilet and a collapsible mistbath, to the other a tiny kitchen module, refrigerator and oven doors side-by-side.

Violet was looking at me, head cocked, not quite smiling.

I shrugged, trying not to grin, and said, “Feller could have a good time in a place like this with the girl of his choice.”

Violet looked back at the little bunk. “Beast,” she said.

o0o

Target number one for Carrier Task Force Alpha was a place called Ogygeia, not far from the proximal end of the Centauri Jet, many weeks travel from Telemachus Major, off the distal end.

Even from far away, Ogygeia was lovely, a pale blue dot hanging in the megascope screens of the pilot’s lounge aboard the carrier, where we waited with our little ships, slowly drawing closer, undetected, unsuspected. And that’s just the way it looked once we’d launched into free space, Violet and I alone together in our little ship, like a pair of long haul truckers, bound from world to world.

But our wing of two dozen ATACs drew closer, bearing down on Ogygeia, which grew in our secondaries from a blue dot to a mottled freckle to a lovely blue and white ball, Violet watching and watching, watching from my arms over the backs of our combat seats, until she said it was just like Earth.

No Moon, of course, but you can’t have everything.

I found myself wondering, briefly, just when she’d been to Earth, who’d been with her then.

Her long past sometimes hung over us, like the ghost of a shadow. And I just didn’t want to imagine myself one of those horrid people who feel they must completely possess a lover, erasing any past that hasn’t been shared.

One day, the last day, Ogygeia hanging immense before us like some child’s fancy balloon, lost in space, the alarms came and the fleet drew together in full combat array, Violet and I disentangling ourselves at last, scrambling over the seats, netting ourselves in.

One. Two. Three.

The stereotaxis device came on and we were dustmote gods, flying together, side by side through the dark sky, riding our witches’ seats, waiting for the defenders to rise. Waiting, I called up the gunnery interface, which obligingly unfolded from its console, filling with the usual amber-green-blue array of combat data, dots and lines, objects and vectors, tensor numerics flickering beside them.

I said, “Not much. Not much here at all.”

Violet took one hand off her armrest controls, reached out to stroke me briefly on the forearm.

Somewhere behind us, still plunging down from the infinite deep, the carrier task force was coming, empty carrier ready to take us in when our job was done, corvettes with their circling swarms of defensive fighters ready to disgorge their marines, finish the job that we would start.

I looked at peaceful Ogygeia one last time, thinking just how really
pretty
the god-damned place was, then I put my head in the gunnery interface and got my ass to work.

Defenders rising.

Bright amber sparks, amber showing us unmanned vehicles, not even harboring so much life as a Dûmnahn might represent. AIs, lightspeed computer nets. What the hell. Call them missiles. We fired on them from as far out as we dared, directed energy weapons lingering on mirror bright hulls, heating, heating...

I watched as the warheads cooked off one by one, red disks appearing briefly against the backdrop of the fake planet, reflecting red off man-made clouds, man-made seas, vector lines fading, tensor numerics gone like that.

OK. Much closer now.

Careful, boys and girls. They’ll have saved shorter range surface-to-air missiles for later on. Right now...

Swarms of fighters suddenly appearing, like magic, hundreds of engines blinking on, so many blue pinpricks in the sky, much closer than we expected. Somebody, somebody in one of the other ships, whispered, “Fuck. Lying doggo, the bastards!”

Very clever, launching long before we’d arrived, putting themselves in remote orbits around Ogygeia while they waited for us to come, pilots powering down their little ships, sitting there all alone, silent.

While we’d come prowling on in, confident in our stealth, our surprise arrival, so far from the main battle lines.

But they’d known anyway.

And maybe our corporate masters had known too, merely hadn’t bothered to tell us.

What difference can it make? they’d have asked themselves.

None at all.

Expendable is expendable.

Right?

That’s what we pay you for.

Time to see if this fancy new targeting computer can do its job. I started picking out targets for myself, feeding navigational data to Violet, counterforce data to my counterparts in the other ships of our little fleet. No sense getting in each other’s way.

Our two dozen ATAC boats flew apart, squadron blooming like an invisible flower. Imagine how it looks on the combat scopes of our worthy opponents. Imagine the vector lines, tensor numerics, revealing our few numbers.

We opened fire, I and my comrades, and the sky started to twinkle all around as enemy fighters were destroyed.

Hundreds dying right now.

No one will miss them.

Not when we’ve finished what we came to do.

I could hear my friends whooping and hollering through the command circuit. Look at that. Look at ‘em go. Yee-hah.

It’s a lucky soldier who has this experience, showing up for battle possessed of an invincible edge. Ogygeia. Remember it well, Mr. Murphy. Next time. Next world, they’ll be ready.

I imagined myself part of a twinkling sky seen from some defender’s cockpit. See that one over there, that nice, silvery little twinkle? That’s Murphy and Violet, gone to their reward.

Our fleet formed up into a flat line, bridging Ogygeia’s circumference like a string of blue modulus pearls. By now, we’d be visible in Ogygeia’s sky, people on the ground, innocent civilians, if there is such a thing, looking up at us, listening to the air raid sirens moan.

I heard the flight commander’s crisp voice: “
Alpha
? ATAC-1 Rainbow here. We’re go for ground.”

Some corporate admiral’s voice in reply: “Roger, Rainbow Leader. We copy you go for ground.”

Yee-hah.

The red dots of short-range SAMs began sparking off the ground as we approached, looking for all the world like so many fireworks, Roman candle balls puffing heavenwards, heading our way. My defensive weapons, preset, began snuffing out our share as Violet fought her controls, killing our velocity, slowing us, slowing...

We slapped through Ogygeia’s eutropic shield with a jolt, sky changing from starry black to cloudy blue just like that, air suddenly screaming round our hull. Behind us, I knew, a long yellow plasma trail would be forming, but I couldn’t be bothered to look.

The command circuit said, “Oh-twenty-two? Rainbow. Primary target grid six-bravo. Secondary twelve-trillium. Then targets of opportunity to fifty percent load.”

Violet said, “Roger, Rainbow. Six-bravo. Twelve-trillium. Ops to fifty.”

As the ground flattened under us, I bent my face to the hood, tracking, assigning, managing my resources. Pulled it out again and took a quick look, realtime. There. Low green hills, covered with tall trees. A yellow grassland, encompassing the snaky twists of a small silver stream, beyond it, backed by snowy gray and white mountains, a wide cityscape of slim tan buildings.

Violet said, “Six-bravo, Murph.”

“Right.”

Head in the hood again.

Hit the firehaze.

Watch it sparkle in my weaponscope, backscattering radar as we flew over the city. Wonder what they call it?

Called it.

Called it!

I... hit the detonator.

Hit the detonator and pulled my head out of the hood, twisting in my seat so I could look back through the stereotaxis sim and see it happen.

Ah.

Just in time.

Curtains of purple haze hanging like a magic fantasy over the tan Ogygeian cityscape.

Not even time for a heartbeat.

The haze turned to pure white light, white light that slammed to the ground like a heavy foot, heavy foot under a million gees acceleration.

The city disappeared, just like that, going out with the light, going away, gone.

Imagine.

Imagine.

Peal of thunder sweeping round the world, bowling over forests, sweeping everything from its path... I took a deep breath, unable to imagine.

Violet said, “OK. Lets head for twelve-trillium.”

Twelve-trillium. Then targets of opportunity, if any.

I took another deep breath, wondering why the hell I felt like I was suffocating right now, and croaked out: “Rog. Twelve-trillium. Go.”

She put her hand on my forearm again, very briefly.

Then we went about our business.

Thirteen. Down on Ogygeia

Down on Ogygeia, when the battle was over, the skies were a beautiful, serene, clear blue. Cloudless. Utterly cloudless. Standing on the ground by the edge of a landing stage we’d made our own, you could look up into the sky and see nothing but blue, other than those times when the carrier would slowly rise, slowly transit the sky like an improbable moon, itself stained blue by the sky, ejector ports hanging open, defensive turrets motionless, modulus exhaust grids gleaming with a special blue light all their own.