by Jerry
Len sighed. “You may think that.” He caught my eye and shook his head very slightly. “But if I were you I’d take it no further.”
And indeed I did keep thinking that, for another few months.
But it’s interesting how everyone gets so very upset about those North Korean rocket launches that keep blowing up, isn’t it?
2013
THE EXCHANGE OFFICERS
Brad R. Torgersen
Does technology change the nature—and meaning—of sacrifice?
The solar panels crumpled.
I didn’t hear them, but I felt them through the stimulus-feedback system. My proxy’s hands and feet still gripped the spars of the extended boom to which the panels had once been attached. Now those panels were splintered and floating away in bits—dangerous debris in an orbital zone already too clouded with fast-moving hazards. Not that I cared much at the moment. Half the team was red-lining towards black, and I had no telemetry from the other half at all, even though they were literally within shouting distance.
As long as I was still Operating, I knew only what my proxy knew, saw only what my proxy saw, and felt only what my proxy felt.
At present, my proxy’s camera eyes focused on the Chinese combat capsule which had collided with Grissom Platform. A stealth job. We hadn’t seen them coming. One of the capsule’s bay hatches snapped open—shards of ruined solar panel flinging away—and several vacuum-suited figures appeared at the threshold. They wore modified copies of the latest Russian suits, only beefed up with sections of hard plate, not too different from the SAPI stuff I’d trained in and worn during my younger days on the ground.
Of course, back then I’d also carried a rifle.
No such luck five hundred miles from the surface of the Earth.
I spoke several obscenities.
If all of us had still been Operating, we’d have been able to overwhelm the enemy in moments. Each proxy moved faster than a man, and possessed many times the strength. But I seemed to be the only one who’d not been affected by the EMP weapon—which had fried so much else in the last five minutes.
“Hang on, Chopper,” said a familiar voice in my ears.
“Chesty,” I said, exhaling with relief. She’d been several kilometers distant, testing new equipment. The EMP had spared her too.
“How many Marines does it take to fight off a Communist horde?”
“Just one, and I’m it,” she said. I detected a grin on her face, based just on the sound of her words as she spoke them.
“Well, then you’d better make it fast,” I replied. “Because these guys are for real, and unless the Air Force and Navy want to lose several hundred million dollars worth in equipment to a hostile Chinese takeover, you and I are all that’s left to stand in their way.”
“Sounds like the perfect odds,” she said. “Just the two of us. Not a lot different from when we started, eh?”
Mission Control looked more like a penny arcade than a command center. No long desks populated with keyboards and computer displays. No super-sized jumbo screens on the walls. No bespectacled engineers with headsets perched on balding scalps. There were only control booths arrayed uniformly in neat bunches. And in each booth sat or stood an Operator, male or female. Most of them were United States Navy or United States Air Force personnel—the facility being a joint USN-USAF operation. As the United States Army’s latest exchange officer to the Orbital Defense Initiative Station, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Both because of my rank, and because of my uniform.
“This way, sir,” said the tech sergeant who was playing tour guide on this, my first duty day at ODIS. She took me between the booths—my eyes catching glimpses of hooded people in olive-drab long underwear, each of them contorting this way and that, and their hands, arms, legs, and feet sprouting with innumerable wires—until we arrived at a booth labeled with the number 23. It was dark, and the tech sergeant reached in to snap on a small overhead light.
“Home sweet home?” I said, peering in.
“Yessir,” she said. “You’ll be in one just like it during simulator training, but once that’s over with, we’ll be putting you here for the other nine months that we have you.”
Simulator training. I frowned. I’d cut my teeth flying ground attack and surveillance aircraft in over a dozen countries on four continents. Though, to be honest, I’d never set foot in an actual plane. The inside of one ROV control trailer looked like any other. What more could there be to learn? I gave myself a week to figure out the particular hardware and software that ODIS used. The rest of train-up time would be a snoozer—something to bore me while I waited for an actual mission.
A second tech sergeant arrived with a differently camouflaged person in tow. This one’s pixilated duty uniform instantly marked her as a United States Marine. She had streaks of silver in her hair and lines on her face, and like me, bore the bar of a Warrant Officer.
I instinctively stuck out my hand.
“Dan Jaraczuk,” I said as she grasped my palm, and gave me a satisfying shake.
“Mavy Stoddard,” she replied. Her eyes were large, brown, and intelligent, with just a hint of hardness to them. I guesstimated her to be about ten years older than me, though she was one notch lower on the Warrant Officer totem pole. Which wasn’t too unusual. Many Warrants spend years climbing the enlisted ladder, before finally putting in their packets for Candidate School. I’d jumped as soon as I was able, right from Specialist, because it had been one of the quickest routes I knew that might take me here, to this place—a small fortress of cutting-edge space technology located at Hill Air Force Base, in the desert valley wilderness of Northern Utah.
My tech sergeant nodded to her peer, then turned back to me.
“Warrant Officer Stoddard is going to be joining you for your training cycle. She’ll be in 24 when she’s done. We don’t get a lot of Army or Marines at ODIS, nor Warrant Officers of any sort, so you’ll have to forgive us if were not up to speed on the courtesies.”
“Most people just call me Chief,” I said.
“That will confuse some of the Navy and Air Force folk,” Stoddard said, correcting me. “I think we’ll both be doing them all favor if we just stick with sir and ma’am.”
I nodded, not wanting to contest the issue. “Fine by me.”
Stoddard tilted her head slightly—sizing me up. I got the sense she didn’t necessarily appreciate my informal manner. But then again, she didn’t have to. I’d paid my dues, and logged my hours. Whatever the Marine standard might have been, this wasn’t Jacksonville nor Quantico. And until some Captain or Major decided to get up in my business, I was going to be as informal as I wanted—one of the perks of the position, or so it had been said when I’d come out of Fort Rucker, Alabama, right before Basic Course.
The two tech sergeants watched us as Stoddard and I watched each other, then one of them cleared his throat and said, “if you’ll keep following us, we’ll show you to the simulator room.”
“After you,” I said, motioning with my arm and putting a smile on my face.
Stoddard simply turned and walked away, the tech sergeants taking us rapidly out of Mission Control, through a series of hallways past office doors and junctions that were filled with milling Air Force and Navy personnel, until we passed through a set of double doors into a room that looked not too different from the one we’d just left. Only, each of the booths was double-sized. Room for two Operators.
“Right seat, left seat,” I said, surveying the equipment.
“More or less,” said a woman’s voice. Stoddard and I turned to see a flight-suited Air Force colonel approach us. The colonel’s hair was dark red and buzzed down past the usual female standards. Her face was plain, but her eyes were bright and she carried herself with confidence. She had a clipboard under one arm and read our name tapes on our uniforms as she stopped in front of us.
“Stoddard, right. And . . . Jadzook? Jarezuck? How the heck do I pronounce that?”
“Jare
-uh-chuck,” I said slowly.
“Okay,” said the colonel. “Well, however you say it, for the duration of your time at ODIS I’m going to be calling you Chopper. That’s your Operator Sign when you’re in training and on missions. Stoddard? You’ll be Chesty.”
Stoddard raised an eyebrow.
“As in, Chesty Puller,” the colonel added.
Stoddard blinked, then smiled her understanding.
“My name’s Fern McConnell,” said the colonel, “but around here everyone knows me as Valkyrie. As your CO during your exchange officer stints, you will report directly to me. I know your in-processing people already went over rules and regs and standing orders for the installation, so what we need to get clear here today is what I’ll be expecting from you, and what you can be expecting from me.”
“Yes ma’am,” Stoddard and I both chimed in unison.
“The Orbital Defense Initiative Station is an experiment,” McConnell said. “When Congress and the Senate jointly agreed to dismantle NASA, much of the prior funding and all of the facilities were consigned to the Department of the Navy. Since the Air Force already had a strong space interest, the Secretaries of the Air Force and the Navy put together a unified program designed to protect United States interests in orbit, and beyond. But the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs wouldn’t sign off on it—nor could he dig up additional funding—unless our cousins the Army and Marine Corps could tag along for the ride, too. This means what while you both are here as a favor from us to your respective services, I expect no less from you than I expect from any of my other Operators. I am tough, but I am fair, and if either of you have a problem with anything or anyone, I expect you to come to me with it first. Copy?”
“Roger that,” I said.
“Yes ma’am,” Stoddard replied more formally.
The colonel looked at us both, then took a deep breath, and continued.
“My full resume is posted on the ODIS intranet, but just so you know, I did two combat tours—one in the Middle East and one in Africa—as well as three trips to the International Space Station.
“It’s because I’ve got the space rating and the flight hours that they assigned me to head up ODIS. My Operators never climb into a cockpit nor a space suit, but you’re every bit as vital to ongoing United States space readiness as any astronaut ever was. The public doesn’t give a damn because people long ago decided space was boring and run-of-the-mill. But since the Chinese put their first probe on the Moon, the politicians in Washington D.C. have been nervous about us losing our edge in a new space race.”
I nodded, knowingly.
The People’s Republic of China had been announcing plans for a lunar base, even before their first successful robotic landing. With the Russians doing most of the heavy lifting to the aging International Space Station, it was left to America’s military establishment to decide if free men would walk on the Moon, or take a back seat to the world’s newest assumed superpower.
“Unlike the last time America went to the Moon,” the colonel continued, “this time we’re doing it in steps. Not one-shots. And because the entire thing is rolled up under the significant umbrella of the Department of Defense, there’s not been as much sensitivity to cutbacks as during the Apollo years—though certain politicians, and a certain President in particular, have done their worst.”
Again, I found myself nodding.
“Don’t wake the Chinese dragon,” one notable political blogger had shouted when news about the creation of ODIS had gone public.
Thankfully for my sake, such alarmism had been ignored.
We were definitely going back.
But not before there was enough infrastructure in orbit—Earth’s, as well as the Moon’s—to ensure that we were going for keeps.
Which is where ODIS came in.
“We don’t fly the usual ROV here,” the colonel said, her eyes piercing as she looked at us. “The stuff we run is actually two or three generations past anything either of you have ever flown or driven in your careers. This is not joystick work. The ODIS environment is immersive, because the machinery you’ll be piloting is billion-dollar stuff, and designed to work in one of the most hostile environments possible. The training is also immersive—train as you fight,’ I think the Army always says? Well, here at ODIS we train as we Operate, and you’ll have plenty of time to work the kinks out and make all the usual beginners’ blunders before we let you at the real thing.”
I momentarily looked up at the white-tiled ceiling, imagining that I could peer through the roof and up through the sky, to where ODIS Operators were busily putting together the several orbital docking and receiving platforms that would be taking on material and manpower bound for the Moon.
Cybernauts, one Army Times headline had quipped, when the basics of the ODIS mission were made publicly known.
I’d taken one look at the program—concluded it was by far the coolest thing I’d ever seen—and immediately determined that, one way or another, I was going to be a part of it.
Each of the Chinese suits had the familiar hammer, sickle, and stars of the People’s Republic of China emblazoned across a breast. The troops slipped out of their capsule—a solid dozen of them!—and began tethering themselves to Grissom Platform. They didn’t have guns that I could see, though if there was a gun that functioned in vacuum and microgravity, I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to recognize it in any case. I guessed that the Chinese had banked on their electromagnetic pulse weapon to do their dirty work for them, and because my proxy was—for all intents and purposes—still motionless on the solar panel boom, they probably assumed my circuits had been turned to toast along with all the rest.
Somewhere out there, though I couldn’t detect or see her yet, Chesty was coming in hot. I held myself still and waited, watching the Chinese move closer to me and then, white-knuckled moments later, over me, advancing towards Grissom Platform’s central modules. Those modules were uninhabited at the moment—no astronauts on staff for a thing only half built—but they could be made to power up and provide life support in a pinch. The Chinese moved with such rapidity and purpose, I began to wonder how much information about the platform’s engineering had been leaked or smuggled to the PRC prior to this, their most brazen attack on the United States to date.
Did they worry that anyone back on Earth might notice? Or care? Or were they so convinced that the EMP had eliminated all electronic eyes and ears that they were willing to just walk in and take the platform—daring someone on the ground to say or do anything about it?
There was a whoop—no, not quite, more like a cry; a war cry.
“OOOOORAHHHHH!”
Chesty—or rather, her proxy—appeared for an instant, her experimental maneuvering pack’s micro-jets blasting tiny trails in the emptiness of space. She shot past me and thunked into the side of the enemy spacecraft. I watched Chesty hang there on the capsule’s side for a moment, her contorted body depressed into the ablative shielding. Had she overshot the mark and terminated herself?
With relief, I saw her begin to move—servo-assisted joints flexing as she picked herself up out of the depression and turned around.
The Chinese had seen her too, and were not amused.
Half their squad began reeling themselves back towards the capsule.
I waited like a spider, just aching for a chance to strike, then shot up from where I’d been laying prone on the solar panel boom.
Two of the six got my titanium fists in their face bowls.
The crunch on my knuckles was ever so satisfying.
They flailed and reflexively pulled their hands up to their faces. I couldn’t tell if I’d actually cracked the bowls badly enough to vent atmosphere—unlikely, given the fact each bowl was supposed to be meteorite-proof—but I’d definitely given them something to think about.
Chesty was prepared for the remaining four. She’d crouched directly in front of the mouth to the capsule’s hatch, like a wrestler—her mechanized head swiveling th
is way and that as she sized up her four on-rushing opponents.
“I’ve got these,” Chesty said. “You better check on the others, before they do something both of us will regret.”
“Roger that,” I said, and spun to face the remaining Chinese.
Rather than come for me, however, they’d redoubled their efforts to break into Grissom Platform’s central modules. Two of them had unfurled computer pads with ribbon cables, each cable snaked out and plugged into the now-exposed electronics near a main airlock. I began advancing on them—pulling myself hand-over-hand and foot-over-foot like a chimpanzee—when the world suddenly turned to grainy static. I yelled in frustration, feeling all my senses go dead. Had the Chinese set off a second EMP? And what about Chesty? If my proxy was kaput, that left her and her alone to combat the enemy—twelve to one. And even a Marine has her limits.
With the Operator suit on, I looked like a lab rabbit.
Hundreds of thin wires and cables snaked away from the one-piece body suit that hugged me uncomfortably in all the wrong places. Chesty was in the same predicament, though I had to admit the suit was much more flattering on her than it was on me. We were each standing on a yellow line with two yellow-painted footprints in front of it—to note our starting positions. Three meters in front of us, also poised on yellow-painted footprints, were our proxies.
Robots, really. Man-sized and fully articulated in ways not even the real thing had ever been. I experimentally snapped my right fingers a few times, and watched as my proxy’s hand made the same motions, and even achieved a similar effect, though its plastic, ceramic and metallic flesh clanked and dinked more than it snapped.
“Please don’t do that,” said an Air Force master sergeant who’d been supervising Chesty and me during our first day in the suits. We’d already logged two weeks going over mechanics and theory, hitting the books and soaking our brains in math, diagrams, and history lessons on the development of these, the United States’ most sophisticated remotely-operated vehicles in existence. Even a single arm from one of the proxies was worth more than my retired mother’s five-bedroom McMansion in the Bay Area.