Forge and Steel

by David VanDyke

  “That’s all right. Confusion is to be expected.”

  “Why aren’t I in full VR link? Is my visual cortex damaged?”

  “We’re taking it slow, working from the ground up. We’ve already done as much as we can while you were unconscious. Now we have to ask you a battery of questions. Please bear with us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please let me know when you’re ready.”

  “What’s your name, doc?”

  “My name’s Sue, Flight Lieutenant Markis. What’s yours?”

  If he had eyes to roll, he would have, and didn’t bother to insist a third time she call him Vango. “Humor’s a good sign.”

  “Humor’s a good sign.”

  “Okay, fire away.”

  The voice paused. “Is there a fire?”

  “No...go ahead and ask, I mean.”

  Although the doctor’s voice rang with tones of purest English, Vango couldn’t precisely identify her accent. Still, he thought it sounded a bit unnatural. A translation program, then, for someone speaking another language. Software often stumbled over idioms or translated varying phrases exactly the same.

  “Where are you from, doc?”

  “Cambridge, Massachusetts. How about you?”

  Interesting. His guess about Sue as a non-native speaker of English seemed to be wrong. “I’m from Carletonville, South Africa, as you should know.”

  “Why should I know?”

  Awkwardly, Vango struggled for words as he always did when confronted with the fact that his father, Daniel Markis, was the Chairman of the Council of Earth, the man most people thought of as humanity’s political leader. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  “We need to move on, Flight Lieutenant Markis. I have many patients to attend,” Sue said. “We’re going to start with maths. What’s five plus eight?”

  “Thirteen,” he answered automatically. Maths? Didn’t Americans say math for mathematics?

  “Twelve times three?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “The value of pi?”

  “To how many decimal places?”

  The questions went on like this for hours, becoming rapidly more complex and covering language, history, science and more. Vango found himself happy to exercise his mind and felt little fatigue, experienced no difficulty.

  “How’d I do?”

  “Very well, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Tomorrow we’ll run some more sophisticated tests.”

  “Tomorrow? What’ll I do until then?”

  “Sleep. Pleasant dreams, Flight Lieutenant Markis.”

  “Dammit, I’m not –”

  Vango awoke with no sensation of drifting or lethargy, nor did he remember dreaming. It was as if someone threw a switch and he came whole unto consciousness.

  “Good morning, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Did you sleep well?”

  “I think so. Can I see something today?”

  “Auditory tests will be conducted today.”

  “I can hear you just fine, Sue.”

  “We still have to run the tests.”

  Vango sighed mentally and compartmentalized, telling himself it was just another hurdle to be jumped, another step toward getting back into the cockpit.

  The day dragged, and at the end of it he was almost glad to be put to sleep.

  “Good morning, Flight Lieutenant Markis. Did you sleep well?”

  “You can ditch the script, Sue. Just talk to me like a normal person. English isn’t your first language, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “But you said you were from Massachusetts.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It’s true that you said it, or what you said is true?”

  “Both are true.”

  “What’s your first language, anyway?”

  There came a perceptible pause. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to discuss anything further about myself at this time, Flight Lieutenant Markis.”

  “At this time? Why?”

  “We don’t want to skew the tests. You and I must remain emotionally detached.”

  “Who said?”

  “That’s another thing I can’t discuss. You’ll understand in time.”

  “Maybe I want to understand it now. Maybe I’m sick of your damn tests and won’t take any more until I get some information.” He wasn’t fed up – not quite – but perhaps as a negotiating ploy...

  “Your readings do not indicate sufficient agitation to refuse. Besides, you’re a military man. You raised your hand and swore to uphold Earth’s constitution and obey the lawful orders of the officers appointed over you.”

  “Are you an officer appointed over me?”

  “No, but I’m relaying the instructions of those who are.”

  “Then I demand to know who’s giving the orders.”

  “These orders come from Admiral Huen.”

  “Not from my father?”

  “Chairman Markis and the Council of Earth have delegated authority to Admiral Huen in these matters. You know how the chain of command works.”

  “Does he know what’s happened to me?”

  “To which ‘he’ do you refer?”

  “My father.”

  “Your father has been fully briefed.”

  “Why can’t I talk to him?”

  “You must complete the program first. Now, Flight Lieutenant Markis, we must proceed with the testing regimen.”

  Vango sighed, or tried to, though he felt no lungs, no air. “Sue, you’re one hardass bitch.”

  “You’re not the first to say so. We will now continue with the testing regimen.”

  “Then for the love of God, please tell me I get to see something today.”

  “Yes, a bit later. Touch and smell-taste baselining will take a couple of hours. Afterward, you will see.”

  He steeled himself for more tedium. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

  After the hearing, touch and smell-taste processing, the first visual Vango received was of a blank plain, a whiteness broken only by the hint of a horizon at an indeterminate distance. He looked down and saw his feet, his legs and his torso, and when he moved them into view, his hands. They lacked the exquisite detail of the real thing, though, identifying this as a VR sim, a virtuality not so different from what he saw when he linked in to the computer network in a fighter, though of far lower resolution.

  “Is that better?” Sue said.

  “Hugely. You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck inside your own head with no one to talk to.”

  “You might be surprised.” The horizon clarified, and the plain took on a texture resembling carpet. “Walk, please.”

  Vango walked. Shapes appeared, resolving themselves into three-dimensional geometric representations – cubes, pyramids, spheres – then into more complex objects such as chairs and tables, houses and cars, airplanes and Fleet spacecraft. Each time he was asked to identify and interact with the items.

  “Look, I’m acing these tests. Obviously I’m not impaired, right?”

  “Not significantly. Your cognition is running above ninety-seven percent of normal.”

  “Then please, may I see something real? Link me into the grid. Give me full VR with people in here. I’m sick of playing your games.”

  “These are not games, Flight Lieutenant Markis. They are evaluations designed to identify flaws.”

  “Flaws in what?”

  “Your ability to perform to specifications.”

  “You make me sound like a part in a machine.”

  “What is a pilot but the most important piece of his craft?”

  “Like you’re the most important piece of the mechanism of modern medicine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Doc, are you even human?” Vango meant it as a joke, but the question had an unexpected effect, bringing on an extended pause, and then he felt himself losing consciousness.

  Chapter 2

  When he came to, no Sue spoke in greeting. Instead
, he woke up in a dimly lit, nondescript chamber bereft of windows.

  Not his bed and not his room. Not a bunk in an officer’s shipboard stateroom. Someplace dirtside, then. He felt about one G of pull, which meant he was likely on Earth in some kind of medical facility.

  Swinging his legs out of bed, he stood in loose-fitting pajamas and bare feet on a warm, carpeted floor. The motion evidently triggered the lights, showing a small desk with a chair, a wall locker and nothing else.

  All this confirmed his suspicions. He occupied a high-class simulation. His body must still be undergoing reconstruction in a nanotank. He’d never been injured badly enough to need one for more than a day, but a full rebuild would take months. He resigned himself to a stretch inside the virtuality, and afterward the inevitable VR-addiction detox, the bane of those who spent too much time in the link.

  Opening the room’s locker, he found a flight suit with his name and rank on it and pulled it on, along with socks and boots. Better to obey the rules of this virtuality than override them, if that was even allowed. As an experiment he tried to call a lit cigarette into being, and then a cup of coffee, but failed. So, no freebies.

  Suitably attired, he squared his shoulders and opened the door, finding a hallway that could have come from any Aerospace-branch barracks, with the usual art on the walls showing fighters, bombers, attack and transport craft from eras stretching back to the Wright Brothers.

  “Token!” Vango felt a greater flood of relief than he’d expected as he spotted his tall, ebony-skinned wingman stepping into the hall, similarly attired.

  “Hey, Vango. You getting rebuilt too?”

  “I guess. They haven’t told me much for sure. Nothing since the tests.”

  “Yeah, me neither. And they didn’t let me contact anyone.”

  “Maybe we’re on slow time. That way it won’t feel like months.”

  “All the more reason to let us talk to someone.”

  Vango looked up at the ceiling, a common habit when addressing a ship’s computer or a sim’s controller. “Sue, you there? Anyone?”

  No answer came.

  “Maybe this is more testing,” Token said. “Maybe we’re supposed to figure things out for ourselves as a way of keeping us occupied.”

  “I don’t appreciate being played games with. I don’t usually like to drop the Markis name, but I hope someone’s listening when I say I doubt my father will be pleased when he hears we’ve been poorly treated.”

  Token waited a moment, eyes also lifted as if to see whether that declaration would bring a response, and then he shrugged. “You know how doctors are. Petty gods. They’ll claim medical necessity.”

  “We’ll see.” Vango strode down the hall, banging on doors until more than two dozen people stood in the hallway, all of varying degrees of familiarity, but none unknown. He had the odd feeling that some of them were out of place, as if they didn’t quite match with his recollections, or with each other.

  That was it. He was certain they hadn’t all served together at the same time. And one of them...

  “Stevie?”

  The short, blonde lieutenant as usual crackled with energy and filled out her flight suit in a way that made him ache with powerful nostalgia, though oddly, not the lust he expected. Before, when they’d been involved, she’d been his wildest fling, full of fiery chemistry.

  “Hey, Vee.” Her strong Southern-U.S. accent brought back a flood of memories. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”

  Vango seized her in a crushing hug, drawing catcalls and whistles from the others as he kissed her tentatively, she more enthusiastically. “Stevie, I don’t understand,” he said into her bobbed hair. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”

  “Guess not, old son.” She slapped him on the butt and pushed him to arm’s length, continuing in a Mark Twain drawl. “It seems reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

  Vivid memories washed over him, of the medics carrying her cold, dead body out of her quarters on a stretcher, the rubber hose of her speedball addiction still wrapped around her arm. Nobody came back from that, Eden Plague or nanotech notwithstanding...right?

  “What’s your last memory?”

  Stevie’s face turned cagey. “I remember dumping a plate of gumbo on your head in a restaurant in the Quarter.”

  “That’s it? The very last memory? Come on, Stevie, this is important.”

  “I remember going to the infirmary.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Bitch cut me on the street. It was pretty bad. Bad enough they stuck me in an autodoc tube all day.”

  Something made Vango ask, “Did they put you under? General anesthesia?”

  “I guess. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  Vango turned to Token. “What’s your final memory before waking up here?”

  “Getting on the transport back to Earth after we beat the Destroyer. Getting in the cocoon.”

  “Me too.” He pointed at Lock, a slim, no-nonsense female senior transport pilot well known for getting out of extreme scrapes. “What about you?”

  “The same. Coldsleep. After the Destroyer.”

  “Wild Bill?”

  The calm, taciturn man said, “After. Coldsleep, too.”

  “Does anyone have a final memory of anything except going into coldsleep or an autodoc?”

  All of those present shook their heads or muttered negatives.

  Token said, “Is it possible we were all damaged in the cocoons? Maybe our bodies didn’t come out of coldsleep properly, but they were able to salvage our brains.”

  “So,” Stevie cocked a hip and raised a finger, “we’re disembodied brains? Like in some old pulp movie?”

  “Until they rebuild our bodies,” Vango replied. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “But what about the autodoc?” Token asked.

  Vango rubbed his jaw. “I think it’s not about coldsleep, but getting put under. Something went wrong. Something new and unexpected.”

  Wild Bill sniffed. “Then why haven’t they simply told us what’s going on? We’re not children. We can handle a little bad news. Hell, it’s just a vacation in VR. We’ve all been here before. Where’s the sun and the surf, the ski slopes, the mountain meadows? We should all be hang-gliding by day and clubbing by night. Instead, we’re in this,” he gestured, “this institution. Something’s not right.”

  Vango growled deep in his throat and slammed the heel of his hand into the nearest wall, then again, and again. He could feel pain and a sensation of injury, so the virtuality was sophisticated and accurate, almost flawless. “Sue!” he yelled. “Someone talk to us, or we’ll...”

  Stevie turned, shrugged in apology and kicked Wild Bill in the crotch. “Sorry, dude,” she said as he rolled in agony on the floor. “Try to remember it’s just VR.” She put a booted foot into his ribs with enthusiasm, and then reared back for a stomp, until three others grabbed her and pulled her back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lock said, taking a fistful of Stevie’s flight suit near the neckline and shaking the smaller woman.

  “Trying to get the warden’s attention.”

  Everyone paused for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened.

  “It was worth a try,” Vango said, standing over Wild Bill, “but no more of that. We might not be hurt physically, but with pain feedback enabled we can be mentally damaged.”

  “Psycho bitch!” Wild Bill gasped, holding his genitals.

  “Pussy,” Stevie replied. “I took worse beatings in juvie.” She struggled in Lock’s grip. “Now let go of me unless you want some too.”

  “Everybody throttle down,” Vango said. “Is this all it takes to set us at each others’ throats?”

  Most had the decency to look sheepish, except for Stevie and Bill.

  “So what’s the plan, Vango?” Token asked.

  Everyone was staring at him, even the other flight lieutenants who he thought might have more seniority. Apparently the Markis name was
bigger than the difference between two flight lieutenants’ dates of rank. People expected him to lead. No big deal. He was used to it.

  “First, no more brawling. We’re EarthFleet officers, not a bunch of street punks.” He glared at Stevie, who merely grinned at him. “Second, it seems like we have two choices. We can wait, or we can do something. Anyone here the waiting type?”

  Voices raised in denial until Vango waved them down. “Good. Half of you go that way with Token, the other half come with me this way.” He pointed emphatically down the hall to match the directions as he spoke, and then took off.

  When both Stevie and Wild Bill followed him, Vango stopped and said, “Bill, you better go with Token.”

  Wild Bill shot Stevie a poisonous glance and then sneered. “Fine. Keep thinking with your prick.” He turned to stalk off.

  Vango sighed. He’d sent Wild Bill off because he didn’t trust anyone else to handle Stevie, not because he was lusting after her. Until the situation clarified, he would keep an eye on her, keep her under control.

  Not that he’d done very well at that the last time around. She’d died, after all, because he hadn’t been able to compete with a needle and a packet of white powder. Like every day since, he wondered what that said about him.

  At the end of the hall in the direction he’d chosen, Vango found a room full of old Mark III flight simulators. Those with him crowded past and ran their hands over the machines, checking them for function and status. Stevie jumped into one and reached for the link wire, plugging it into her skull before he could object.

  That made Vango reach up to touch the socket in his own skull. “Does anyone else think it’s weird that we’re inside a VR sim looking at flight simulators that have been obsolete for years?”

  Lock nodded. “Yeah, and pointless. Why bother with representations of simulators anyway? Usually we just request a revision of the virtuality and suddenly we’re flying. This seems...primitive.”

  “Walking before we run?” said Butler, a tall male warrant officer. “Still evaluating our responses?”

  Vango frowned. “I suspect you’re right. Stevie, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you see?”

  Stevie had begun manipulating the manual controls, standard backups even though all functions on modern craft were handled via link. “Only one program, labeled XM-58. Extremely high maneuverability and acceleration. Whatever ship I’m flying, it’s shit-hot, hotter than anything I’ve ever tried before. Can’t find the weapons, though.”