by B. V. Larson
The conversation ended, as did the meeting. Straker saw some of his officers exchange worried glances, but he ignored all that. He wasn’t giving up on Carla without even making an attempt free her.
He knew she wasn’t dead. That simply wasn’t possible. He didn’t even let him mind explore that idea.
When Trinity landed at the capital’s spaceport, Loco was waiting for Straker with his picked Breakers force. The two men seized hands fiercely and pounded on each other’s shoulders. To Straker, Loco looked thinner and older.
“Been too long, Derek,” Loco said. He put on an air of nonchalance. “I was getting bored with the easy life and partying here at the capital. You oughta join me sometime.”
“I heard it was Campos giving you a workout. When’s she making an honest man out of you?”
“Not sure that’s possible. I’m not the marrying type anyway. Hey, are you feeding me straight lines?”
“Doing my best, buddy, but I’m not hearing any smartass comments out of you. And a kid on the way? What’s up with that? You always swore you’d wait until fifty before you started a family.”
Loco shrugged and looked away. “Things change, Derek. Even for me.”
“Don’t change too much, too soon. We’ve got some serious ass-kicking to do.”
“Yeah, I got that. You know you can count on me.”
“I do.” Straker slapped Loco’s shoulder one more time and said, “Enough of the bromance. Get your troops aboard.”
“Roger wilco.” Loco turned and bellowed. “Breakers, mount up!”
The formation dissolved as officers and noncoms yelled orders. “I see you brought along some of the old guard,” said Straker. “Is that Heiser?”
“Yeah. He’s my command sergeant major. I wanted to leave him here, but he wouldn’t have it.”
“Who’re you putting in your place?”
“Conrad Ritter.”
“I thought he was Sachsen’s Senator?”
“Interim Senator. He gladly stepped down when his cousin Dietmar showed up to take the seat. I promoted him to Colonel and made him my second in command. He’ll do fine back here.”
“Good. Let’s get these mechsuits aboard.” Straker’s heart beat faster as he slipped into the cockpit and the form-fitting sensors closed around him. He didn’t plug in just to walk the giant aboard Trinity, but he ached for the link like an addict lusts after his drug of choice.
Soon enough.
When he’d stowed his mechsuit, Trinity’s android was waiting for him. “Minister Wen Benota is here,” she said. “He’s asking that you meet him in his aircar.”
“Sure. Any idea why?”
“He’s not forthcoming.” Trinity sounded miffed. “Need to know, he said.”
“Well, let’s see what I need to know.” Straker jogged down the loading ramp, across the concrete launch pad, and climbed into the minister’s grounded government aircar. He noticed that the driver and security detail stood outside, leaving Benota alone inside the passenger compartment. “Okay, Wen. What’s this about? You going to try to talk me out of leaving again?”
The large man straightened his cuffs as he sat back in his comfortable seat and gestured toward the one opposite him. “Sit down, Derek. This may take a few minutes.”
Straker sighed and suppressed the urge to be curt with Benota, reminding himself that the Minister was a peer, not a subordinate—in name if not in practice. The civilian government had to be given its due as it transitioned to full legitimacy. “Look, Minister, I know I’ve been gone a while and now I’m running off right away—”
“It’s not about that, Derek,” Benota said. “The New Republic is shaking itself out well enough to do without you in the capital. In fact, better that you’re out there being your usual heroic self.” Benota spoke without a trace of irony. “You make an excellent symbol, and the Director, the Senate and I can use that symbol to club the bureaucracy into line.”
“Then what’s this about?”
“There are things you need to know about the Hundred Worlds before you go sticking your head back into that noose. Secrets.”
“Secrets?”
Benota nodded. “Of the highest level.”
“Get on with it, then.”
Benota took a deep breath. “Derek, Mutuality Intelligence had extensive human intel files on everyone of importance in the Hundred Worlds. The Republic inherited these files.”
“Sure. No surprise there.”
“Now that I’m a minister rather than a mere admiral, I’ve been briefed on these files by my analysts. There are some… disturbing conclusions.”
“About Opter influence? Myrmidon told me a lot about that. It’s probably why the Hun leadership is being so stubborn. The Opters want to keep us fighting. They see the Hundred Worlds as being the weaker side in terms of territory, so they’re content to have them gain ground. That hardly changes anything in the short run.”
Benota picked at a manicured nail and pursed his lips. “No, it goes beyond that. You know how the Mutuality always distrusted reliance on brainlink tech? One link with one machine was allowed, but networks were prohibited, or at least walled off and tightly controlled. The Hundred Worlds, on the other hand, used extensive networks and virtualities. You visited one routinely as a mechsuiter.”
Straker nodded. “Yeah, Shangri-La. Much cheaper and more efficient to just put us into the sim as we traveled from battle to battle—but I always felt it wasn’t fully real, even when I couldn’t put my finger on it.”
“That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Years ago, Mutuality intelligence identified a pattern of discrepancies among reality, official Hun data records, and reports from individuals. This pattern led them to focus selected assets on finding out—”
“Skip the spycraft doublespeak and cut to the chase, will you, Wen?”
Benota stared hard at Straker. “I simply want to you to realize what I’m about to tell you isn’t some wild guess or theory. It’s thoroughly supported by evidence.”
“Okay. Lots of evidence. Got it. And?”
“And, the Hundred Worlds uses brainlink networks far more extensively than a surface look would indicate. Greater than five percent of the populace is chipped and plugged in, and—here’s the kicker—even when they think they’re unplugged, most of the time they’re not. There are secret wireless networks that keep people walking around in an enhanced hybrid reality, where things aren’t necessarily as they seem.”
“Living half in a dream…” Straker thought about the similar diz on Terra Nova.
“That five-plus percent think they control everything—they’re the movers and shakers, the government officials and bureaucrats, the billionaires and the CEOs of major corporations—but they themselves are subtly influenced by these networks.”
“And the Opter agents control the networks.”
“Not… exactly. There are definitely Opter agents among the network custodians, but we believe it’s looser, more distributed than some simple cabal. What’s really hard to grasp is that some of these custodians are themselves heavy users of the virtuality networks, so it’s not simply a matter of the real controlling the virtual. The virtual and the real overlap and influence each other. They diverge on many points, but not enough to break the system.”
Straker sighed impatiently. “I’m sure the brainiacs find this all fascinating, but what does it have to do with the war, with me, or with any practical matters?”
“Is it a practical matter that your family is alive?” Benota asked.
That stopped Straker in his tracks. He found himself having to consciously close his gaping mouth. “Wha… what the hell are you talking about?”
“The people you called your parents. The girl you believed was your sister. They’re alive.”
“Called? Believed?” Straker leaned across and half-reached for Benota to shake him before he caught himself. His mind whirled. “They’re alive—but you’re trying to say they’re not my family?”
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“Biologically, no. The man and woman you knew did raise you and Mara, though, so… ‘adoptive family’ is accurate. No doubt they loved you very much, as they were selected and programmed to.”
“This is insane. You’re crazy!”
Benota shook his head sadly. “As I said, this is solid. Once I realized what it might mean, I had a report prepared just for you.” He held out a datastick. “It’s all on here—suspicions, evidence, analysis, conclusions. There are ancillary reports on Paloco and Engels.”
“So Dad and Mom were…”
“Good people, chosen to be the parents of a genetically engineered, lab-conceived super-soldier called Derek Straker. They volunteered, they were brainchipped—and their memories were selectively edited to make them believe you were their biological child. They took new jobs on a new planet and a year later they reported to their old friends that they were having a son. You. The changes to reality are always subtle so as not to introduce too many anomalies—just enough to hide the truth.”
“And Mara?”
“A genetically engineered mental special. No biological relation to you, though also surrogated by the same parents. Having siblings is healthy to the development of well-adjusted children, even prodigies, so they’re often raised together.”
A sudden fury seized Straker, a rage he hadn’t felt since he thought he was defending humanity’s very survival by fighting the ‘evil alien Hok.’ He’d been duped! He’d been lied to, faked out, jerked around. The seminal moment of his young life, when he’d watched his family murdered by the Hok, was complete bullshit.
Manipulated. He’d been programmed like a machine, made to see what they wanted him to see. Why? To make him hate the enemy more than anything in the universe. To make him a more effective soldier. To make him what they wanted him to be.
And Loco too! And, now that he’d come to think of it, all of the Fourthies with him at Academy who’d thought they’d lost their parents, their brothers and sisters. Was his training even real? What about his encounters with the bully Skorza? Had everything been arranged to build him into the perfect mechsuiter?
Carla was real. She’d come with him, so he was sure of that—but had his brain been tweaked to fall in love with her at Academy?
Straker felt as if the foundational bedrock of his life suddenly turned to sand. He couldn’t trust anything that happened before his capture. Ironically, the Mutuality had done him a favor by showing him what was real.
Or had it? Could everything be a sim? What if he was trapped in a virtuality even now?
“Really messes with you, doesn’t it?” Benota said. “The only way we know what’s real is what our senses and our brains agree on. The Committee knew that once the people stopped trusting their own minds, everything could come crashing down—or become vulnerable to manipulation. That’s why open, aboveboard networks were made taboo.”
The world seemed to rotate around Straker, and his stomach flip-flopped. He grabbed the door handle to the aircar to steady himself. “How do you cope, Wen? How do you know anything for sure?”
Benota spread his hands. “You have to trust yourself and your own judgment—like always. As with any environment filled with lies and liars, look for inconsistencies and build a narrative that makes sense to you. We’re all prisoners inside our own heads, Derek.” He tapped his temple. “This is all we really have.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I have to trust myself, like I always do.” He stared out the window. “I’ve got to act like everything’s real now. I have to start somewhere, and somewhere is me and the people close to me.”
“You’ll have a few days in sidespace to think about it, anyway. I had to tell you before you got near Hundred Worlds networks—”
“—because they might still have access to my brainchips.” Straker snapped his fingers. “I’ll have Trinity do something about that.”
“You trust it to access your mind?”
Straker shrugged. “I bet she could hack me if she really wanted to.” He chuckled. “Actually, I had Frank Murdock working on hacking Hun military networks already. It didn’t occur to me that it would be me he’d need to hack.”
“Then I suggest you make sure you and everyone with you is thoroughly secured against it.”
“I will.” Straker held out his hand. “Thank you, Wen. You might have just saved my life.”
Benota took Straker’s hand in his own ham-like fist. “Just doing my duty to the New Republic.”
Straker squeezed Benota’s palm. “I sure hope you’re on the level.”
“Seeing traitors around every corner?”
“You did switch sides kind of early.”
Benota sighed. “There were good people trapped in the Mutuality system. I like to believe I was one of them—and still am. Not everybody’s cut out to overturn every applecart they see.”
“Like me?”
“Yes. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see someone do it, though. We all have our strengths, Derek. Go and use yours.” He released Straker’s hand and flipped a casual salute. “Good luck, Admiral.”
Straker tossed an ironic salute back. “You too, Minister. Hold the fort.”
“That’s my strength.” He pressed a button and Straker’s door popped open, letting him out into the roars and hot-metal smells of the spaceport.
Chapter 32
Straker, en route to Sparta System
Once Straker got the Breakers detachment settled and Trinity was firmly in sidespace, he met with Loco and Murdock in the conference room. “Indy, you’re invited too,” he said to the air when they’d poured caff and sat at the table.
“You realize that if the machine portion of me takes part, Zaxby and Nolan do as well.”
“Sure. I’m just keeping things simple and hoping the Indy part isn’t as excitable as the Zaxby part.” And, Straker thought to himself, that Marisa Nolan won’t be a distraction to all three of us organics.
Indy’s voice conveyed faint sarcasm. “I will endeavor to remain calm.”
“Good. I’ve got some interesting info for you—all of you.” Straker explained what Benota had told him about the Hundred Worlds, and then uploaded the contents of the data stick.
Loco took it well, Straker thought, better than he himself had. The slim man didn’t even remove his boot heels from the conference table, but merely closed his eyes in thought.
After a moment Loco shrugged. “Freaky, but that was a long time ago. If my family’s still around, I can’t think about it now. They might even be reprogrammed, raising another kid.”
Straker thought Loco was avoiding the wider implications, but his friend always did live in the moment.
Murdock, predictably, jumped straight to the technical aspects. “This helps make sense of a number of anomalies I’ve detected. For example, on Freiheit I discovered an autonomous brainlink network that ran in the background. All it seemed to do was tweak certain aspects of the sensory inputs of those with connected brainchips—made the food and drink taste better, for example. I shut it down, though. Anyone with the access codes could’ve screwed with almost anything in their perceptions—at least, for those with brainchips.”
“You couldn’t hack it?” Straker asked.
“I could have tried, but it would’ve been hard, maybe impossible. It had some high-grade security and, unlike the military networks I used as references for hacking, it was really weird code. I had no starting point, no building blocks. Simpler to just turn the damn thing off.”
Indy spoke. “Might it have been alien-derived software or hardware?”
“Maybe. It used a base-36 pseudo-digital code incorporating six virtual dimensions.” Murdock tapped the aug at the base of his skull. “Now that I have access to Indy’s processing power, I—we—could work on it. Well, except that we’d have to go to Freiheit.”
“No time for that,” Straker said. “We need you guys—all you brainiacs—to access our brainlinks and install the best security you can. We were always br
iefed our links were uncrackable, but obviously the Huns have backdoors for their network tech. I want everyone locked out of our minds unless we grant access—the way it should be.”
“Hey, I don’t want these geeks stomping around my mind. There’s some great stuff in there!” Loco complained.
“Either we let people we trust in, or our enemies might take control of us,” Straker replied. “You want that?”
“No, but…”
“Hey—” said Murdock. “I bet with what we figure out from disassembling your chip code, we can improve our hacking of Hun military networks like you wanted me to, Derek.”
“Good. When do you want to start?”
Murdock jumped up. “Right now! Come to my lab.”
Loco didn’t move. “You first, Derek.”
“No problem.” Straker slapped Loco’s feet off the table. “If I’m not myself when I see you next, you’ll know who to shoot.”
Loco aimed a finger-gun at Murdock. “Him. I’ll start with kneecaps.”
“Hey!” Murdock cried.
“I will supervise the process,” Indy said. “I won’t allow Mister Murdock to tamper with your mind, only with the brainchips themselves.”
“And don’t mess up my suit link,” Straker said, grabbing Murdock by the back of the neck and shaking him as they walked toward the door. “If you screw this up, I’ll kick you in the nuts so hard you’ll need a week of regeneration.”
“Ow. I’ll be careful. Really.”
“When are you going to do it?” Straker asked a few seconds after Murdock sat him in a chair and connected a cable to his brainchip port.
“I’m done. Check your chrono.”
Straker did a double-take. “I’ve been sitting here four hours? No wonder I have to pee so bad.” He left to to visit his quarters. “Indy, another meeting in fifteen minutes. Loco, Murdock, Heiser, me, and you. Food and drink, please?”
“Of course, Liberator.”
Marisa Nolan served a surprisingly good hot meal to the humans, and then sat to eat along with them. Straker made no comment, and Loco, strangely, hardly seemed to notice her feminine presence. Zaxby also joined them.