by Dan Davis
“But who’s training him?” Ram said, looking around at the huge empty room. “Who’s training Henry now?”
“I am.”
“You’re a combat specialist? But I thought you were a geneticist.”
Dr Monash crossed his arms. “Our training regimen was planned and implemented years ago by world experts in their fields. I am now continuing to implement their combat training program.”
Ram nodded slowly and looked around. “I got the impression from our captain that you needed help.”
“You got the wrong impression, I’m afraid. As I said, we are well within our parameters. Well within them. And therefore, this means, of course, that you should go back to whatever light duties it is you have now until the end of your days. Your condition will not allow you to do much. Eating yourself into obesity again, no doubt?”
Ram frowned and realized the doctor must have read the file on Rama Seti. “Well, that’s a very tempting suggestion, Doctor Monash, thank you for reminding me of my former aimless existence. But when I saw her, the Captain implied that your parameters were… wrong. Very wrong. In fact, she implied that things are not actually on course at all. So let me ask you a specific question. Is Henry beating the hex champion in Avar simulations?”
Monash looked off to the side. “It depends on the settings, of course.”
“You need me to be even more specific? Alright. When you set it to what the hex champion has been observed doing in the arena, Henry can’t beat it, right?”
Doctor Monash looked over his shoulder and sighed. “Currently. Currently, Henry has been unable to achieve victory in the simulations but that does not mean he will not achieve it by the time we reach our destination. We have time to improve. We will improve. We will.”
Ram jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “What about on the mechanical training dummies?”
“We have no problems.”
“Can he defend himself against them on realistic settings?”
Monash scowled. “The dummies are poorly built. The ones in Omega were far superior. And what is more germane is that they are simply not safe and it would be madness itself to allow Henry to battle these wildly flailing machines and risk injury or worse. No one could disagree with that.”
Ram smiled. “So he can’t beat the dummies or the sims? Is there anything that he can do? Sounds like you have serious problems to me, doctor.”
A woman’s voice caused Ram to turn. “We do.”
It was the AP assistant named R1 and stooped and hunching behind her like some giant lurking monster, stood Henry, with a sheepish expression on his strange face. The top of his head was close to the ceiling.
“Oh, hello,” Ram said, pointing to the door they had emerged from. “Hi Henry, I’m glad to see you.”
“Glad to see you, too, Lieutenant.”
“Call me Ram.”
“Alright, I will do that. Ram.”
R1 stepped forward and held out her hand. “I want to thank you for getting us out of Omega alive.”
Behind him Monash scoffed and muttered. “Barely.”
Ram ignored the doctor and took R1’s small hand in his. It was soft and cool. “You’re welcome.”
“I am so sorry about your injuries.”
Ram released her hand, with some reluctance. “Injuries are a part of the job.”
“And I am very sorry indeed about your poor friends.”
Ram nodded, recalling Cooper being incinerated and Flores being cut to pieces. “Thank you.” He quickly changed the subject and pointed to the doorway behind Henry. “What’s through there?”
R1 glanced at Monash before she answered. “Living quarters, offices, workshop.”
“Alright,” Ram said. “Henry, you feel like showing me around?”
“Okay, sure.”
Ram followed him through the door without speaking to Monash, which Ram knew would infuriate him. But the doctor and R1 both followed Ram and Henry inside, trailing behind in silence.
“That’s my room in there.” Henry pointed to a doorway.
Ram poked his head inside and found a dormitory with two rows of three massive bunks. “It’s very nice, Henry. Very spacious. We were expecting more subjects?”
“They were prepared for up to six subjects from our program,” R1 said, while Monash scowled behind her. “Six g-couches in the launch ship, six berths on this vessel, and multiple staff from Omega.”
“What went wrong?” Ram asked her.
“It is not your concern,” Monash snapped.
“It was not any one thing,” R1 said. “There were multiple failures. Such things are expected to some extent in complex systems.”
“Overly complex systems, maybe,” Ram said.
“Perhaps,” R1 said. “But you understand this program was designed and implemented at an incredible speed under enormous pressures. We were being invaded. We did not have time to arrange everything as we would have liked. Whatever criticisms you may have of our systems, I can assure you that there is nothing we did not think of at the time.”
“I’m not criticizing anyone. It’s just… it seems like these are the most important… schemes… ever in human history and there are always so many problems.”
Monash scoffed. “You have no idea. You have no idea at all! You are merely a subject. You are a product of our systems and you think to stand before me and lecture me on my failures? You don’t understand that we are beyond the cutting edge here. These damned orbs have pushed us beyond our limits and yet we rose to the challenge each time, did we not? We are here, are we not? You are a backup of a backup of an experimental line. And you think yourself worthy of questioning me. Ha! Do not question me. You would not even exist if it were not for me and my colleagues.”
“Alright, there, Doctor Monash.” Henry held up his hands. “Alright, now. That’s enough, now.”
Monash scowled. “Look what you’ve done now, you’ve gone and upset Henry.”
“I’m not upset, Doctor Monash, I just think we would all feel better if we took a moment to—”
Monash strode toward Henry. “Do you understand that I made you?”
Henry sighed. “Of course I do.”
“Do you? Do you really? Well then, I think you should show some respect. Come with me. Come away with me now, you are already late for your fifteen-hundred post-exercise meal. I can smell it, they have delivered, come with me and we shall eat and discuss this evening’s lessons.”
Henry smiled at Ram as he left, following Monash into another room.
“Is there something…” Ram said, addressing R1, “something wrong with him?”
“With Henry or Jacob?” R1 said.
Ram smiled nervously. “I can see quite clearly that Doctor Monash is… in some way suffering from mental health issues. But I meant Henry. He does not seem like a warrior. But more than that, is he… I don’t know. Is he… slow?”
“Far from it.” R1 sighed. “But I know what you mean. Please, Ram, come with me.”
He followed her into a smaller room with nothing inside but an empty table and an array of chairs set before a wall which was filled with a black screen. R1 turned the screen on and flicked through a series of images before choosing a video. It showed Henry in a vast arena, crouched low, advancing on a massive Hex skittering around with its legs splashing in shallow water.
“This is an Avar recording,” Ram said, recognizing it at once.
R1 simply watched and Ram did, too.
On the screen, Henry darted forward across the arena with his huge hands up. He moved so fast that he was almost a blur.
But so did the simulated hex champion, skittering forward on its sixteen spindly tentacles where they clashed together. As Henry grasped at the bulbous thorax above the legs, the hex ducked low, splaying some legs out, folding others up.
Henry twisted away, fending off the attacks that came at him with desperate slaps until one got through and pierced his arm, and then another and more, before Henry fe
ll as the hex speared him and sliced him into minced beef. The recording froze with the hex over Henry’s bloody corpse, its tentacles inside him and others raised in the air, curved like whips.
“So he’s fast,” Ram said. “So fast I can barely see it. But the hex is faster, is that it?”
R1 wiped her lips with her index finger. “This recording was played back at seventy-three percent speed to allow us to make out what was happening.”
“He can move faster than the eye can see?” Ram said.
“Faster than your eye can see, yes. Mine too.”
“And the hex is faster still?”
“No. That is, we’re not certain what it’s upper limit might be. The tips of the two razor tentacles and the two venom tentacles, when whipped through the air in this way, certainly move faster than any part of Henry. But the overall motor speed of the upper limbs between the first and second joints, are in the same range that Henry can manage.”
After a moment, Ram realized she meant that Henry was as fast as the hex.
“So what is it, then? Why can’t he win? Is it the hex poison from the venom spikes?”
“Henry has been engineered so that his physiology automatically counteracts the hex alkaline toxins without immediately impacting his performance. It will still hurt like hell and if he gets stung enough it will kill him but it will take a few minutes. Which is longer than he usually lasts in the arena. So, no, it is not that the toxins slow Henry down and cause him to lose. He also loses the simulations when he is not struck by the pair of venom spike tentacles.”
“Maybe he should use the smokescreen to cut a limb into a spear and use that to kill the hex?”
R1 smiled. “The Rama Defense does not work on the hex, sadly. Not in simulations and not in practice. Before we were cut off, the combat trainers gathered data on the strength of the hex carapace. It is remarkably resistant to puncture due to its structure. The only things that have a chance is the hex venom spikes but even they are likely to snap or fail to penetrate. It is hypothesized the spikes evolved to kill prey animals rather than for attacks on each other. However, the bladed arms do cut into the carapace. They are sharp with molecular precision but also the shape of the blades provides precisely the right cutting profile to penetrate the carapace of the thorax. That is what dictated the combat trainers’ development of these strategies.”
Ram nodded. “When did you lose your combat trainers? Early on, I assume?”
“Some, yes. Others we lost more recently. Two in training accidents. Henry has been trained since day one on how to fight and his training was intensive and practical.”
“So, it’s your techniques, then. The strategies formulated in Outpost Omega just aren’t cutting it.”
“Perhaps,” R1 said, nodding.
“But you don’t think so,” Ram said, peering at her. “And yet you’re too… embarrassed? To say what you do think.”
R1 came and sat beside Ram. “Henry has been engineered to do this. He’s been trained to do it. He wants to do it with everything in his being. He is a very conscientious man.”
“Okay, well, that’s good.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
“He scores very high on conscientiousness. That means he is organized and dependable, displays self-discipline and acts dutifully and he knows that his duty is to achieve our program parameters and ultimately defeat the enemy champion. So, while that can make him a pleasure to work with and just be around generally, his high conscientiousness makes him overly focused and somewhat rigid in his approach. He has a high preference for planned over spontaneous challenges.”
“His lack of creativity.”
“Correct. You, for example, do have a strong sense of duty but you dislike anyone having authority over you. This combination is often found in the military in senior officers who continue to climb the ranks. Your lower conscientiousness means you can approach problems with flexibility and spontaneity, which is an advantage in the kind of small unit engagements you excelled at in Avar and, I understand, in your subsequent short UNOP Marine career, as well as your victory over the wheelhunter champion. Henry would not have thought of burning his arm bones into a spear.”
“So I’m the perfect balance, right? That’s great.”
“Your lower conscientiousness also manifests in your abuse of your body.”
“What abuse?”
“Your addictions to food and to Avar, your relaxed attitude toward personal hygiene, and your repeated avoidable injuries in combat.”
“Avoidable? I was lucky to get out of all those fights alive. It’s a miracle I’m even standing here.”
“I agree. You place your physical self in excessive physical danger because you have a relaxed attitude to your personal safety and to your long-term survival. But it is something that you can work to counteract, if you wish to do so. We would certainly do better with you in the program long-term, if such a thing was possible. In the short term, however, we need you to help with Henry.”
He looked at her and spoke softly. “You know, you’re not like any Artificial Person I ever heard of before.”
“No, I am not.”
“Alright, well, what is it that you want me to do?”
“Draw it out of him. Encourage him to bend and to break the rules.”
A sound behind him made Ram turn in time to see Monash and Henry opening the door.
“You’re watching my training?” Henry said, grim-faced. “Do you not think it’s any good, Lieutenant Seti?”
“I think you’re a wonder, Henry. I’ve never seen anything move so fast in my entire life. I almost feel sorry for that filthy hex bastard. He won’t know what hit him.”
Henry grinned and looked down at Doctor Monash. His face fell.
“You’re encouraging him to break the rules, R1?” the doctor stepped closer to her, glaring. “These rules are in place for a reason.”
R1 lowered her head and her voice. “You know it needs to be done, Jacob.”
He glared at her and opened his mouth to argue before Ram slapped his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up.
“Alright,” Ram said, grinning. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” Henry asked, half smiling.
“I’ll take over your training.”
18.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Ram said. “I think it’s important we get to work right away but I wanted to get everyone together so we all agree on what’s going to happen now.”
He looked around the room. Lt. Commander Xenakis lounged in her chair. Henry hunched over on his stool at the back of the room. R1 sat upright with her hands in her lap, her expression open and expectant. Doctor Monash sat folded on his chair, legs crossed and his hands jammed under his arms. Next to Ram sat Sergeant Stirling and on the other side of the room by the door, Red leaned his bizarre alien body on the wall, as if he was relaxing in a bar. Also in the room was the ship’s small medical team,
“I have asked Sergeant Stirling here and our nonhuman team member Red to join me so they can provide their expertise.”
Monash scoffed and muttered under his breath. “Expertise.”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” Ram said, smiling. “Stirling is subjectively youthful but in his short life he has amassed an enormous amount of experience in combat training and actual combat experience. I believe much of that generalized expertise will prove invaluable, especially in terms of the mindset necessary for achieving military excellence.”
Lt. Commander Xenakis raised her hand.
“Yes, Captain? Er, you don’t need to raise your hand you know, you’re in charge.”
“You’re not bringing in Private Fury for this? She’s been fighting the Hex since they first attacked, in boarding actions and in base defenses and God knows what else.”
Ram nodded. “And when I have specific questions I will be sure to ask for her insights but she doesn’t have the right temperament for this kind of progr
am.”
Sergeant Stirling crossed his arms. “He means, Captain, that Fury’s a surly, short-tempered, misery guts and she’ll just make every one of us miserable before she quits or we dismiss her. You know, Private Fury is an interesting mixture. I don’t know if you know this but Fury worked in anti-terrorism in her youth and she was tasked with assassinating a terrorist, requiring her to lay without moving for—”
“Now’s not the time, Sergeant.”
“Yes sir.”
“We will use Fury as a resource, just as we will use anything and everything that we can between now and zero hour. And that’s why we have our good friend here.” Ram held out a hand, indicating the giant alien in the corner. “Red has extensive knowledge of the Hex because his, er, his people have been at war with them for a long time. And so Red will impart his wisdom especially with regards to the Hex mindset, if they have such a thing.”
Monash huffed. “You’re attempting to gain insight into an alien species through the filter of another alien species who we can barely understand. It is a fundamentally flawed approach even in theory, let alone in practice.”
“We’re going to do it anyway. And I think you’ll find you will understand me perfectly well, doctor. Just as I understand you.”
Monash uncrossed and re-crossed his arms. “No, you most certainly do not.”
“I am grateful for your insights and opinions, doctor. You are the most intelligent person on this ship and I value everything you say highly.”
Monash eyed Ram suspiciously. “Well… that’s good, Mr. Seti.”
“In taking over the senior position of the Omega Program, I am helping to free up Doctor Monash and his assistant R1 so that they can focus on the work that literally nobody else can do. I think it would make sense if Doctor Monash would continue to monitor Henry’s physical performance and work on the incremental improvements that will ensure we get every possible fraction of performance we can.”
Monash frowned. “I can do much more than just that.”
“You can and you will, of course. We will have plenty of challenges to overcome and your brilliance is key to so many of them.” Before the doctor could reply, Ram plowed on. “R1, you’ll continue to assess Henry’s mental health and provide psychological support which I know for certain Henry values highly.”