Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  “But aren’t you imprinted on Chief Benson?” I protested, confused.

  “I am completely, totally, head over heels in love with Thomas,” she purred. “He’s brilliant, and really devious, and he owns my needy little… ahem. I mean, the sex is great, too. But most humans have no idea what to do in a fight, so any decent combat awareness package is going to include instincts for following a chain of command and recognizing leadership potential.”

  “When the battle started, and you got serious all of a sudden, that’s when it hit me,” Emla confided. “All my leadership metrics maxed out hard, and I knew you’d always be my commander. I bet it was like that for Lina, too.”

  “Not quite that extreme,” Lina said. “I’ve already got my guy. But I think you’re right. When I realized I needed help with those bots you’re the first one I thought of, Alice. I completely forgot that you’re supposedly just a cabin girl.”

  “Well, then it would be really stupid for me to get mad at you over it,” I said. “Although I’m a little worried about this. I don’t think I really deserve for every android around me to think I’m some kind of tactical genius super leader.”

  Emla giggled. “Of course not, Alice. I’m sure any random human could just grab a pistol and some grenades, and single-handedly wade through an army of bots to punish the guy who hurt me.”

  I flushed. It did sound kind of impressive when she put it like that. It really wasn’t that big a deal, though. They were only civilian bots with guns, not real warbots, and I’d gotten badly beat up doing it. But I couldn’t think of a way to explain it that didn’t make me sound even more badass.

  Maybe she had a point?

  My embarrassment grew. Time for a change of subject.

  “So, ah, what was that awful show you were watching?”

  Lina sat back, and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Hey! Don’t dis the Ghost Cats. They can steal anything, anywhere, and they never get caught.”

  “Apparently they can seduce anyone, too,” Emla teased. “I thought medical implants could counter airborne aphrodisiacs?”

  “No one buys that option,” Lina scoffed. “You have to remember, deep in their heart every human wants to be seduced by a hot android sex kitten. Sometimes the military types will be all locked down and immune to everything, but anyone else is easy. Unless there’s a big mind control scare going on, of course, but you just stay away from those colonies.”

  “What about spies?” Emla asked.

  “Oh, spies are the best. They always try to turn the tables on you, and that’s just awesome. There’s nothing better than having some sexy super spy make your head spin so hard you end up confessing everything.”

  “That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” Emla observed.

  “Maybe. All I can say is, if you want to try your hand at being a data thief do it in Victoria. As long as you’re doing it the fun way they have a sense of humor about things. Not like those jerks in the Corporate States.”

  “What would the non-fun way be?” I asked.

  “Brainhacking. Blackmail and extortion. All the mean ways to try to get people to give you information you’re not supposed to have. Doing stuff like that gets people mad at you, and then you end up with a short lifespan. But as long as you’re being sweet and sexy humans won’t have the heart to blame you for spying. They’ll decide you’re just an innocent pleasure android trying to obey her master, and go looking for a human to punish. Then you just have to escape before they realize the guy they think is your owner is really just some obnoxious sap you set up to take the fall for you.”

  That brought back uncomfortable memories of a certain elf girl.

  Emla’s frown matched mine. “That would only work with humans who are basically good people. Assholes like the security forces back on Irithel would just unplug you until they can get your command codes, or slag you if they think they can’t.”

  Lina’s smile faded a bit. “I know. Why do you think we got out of that business? When you’re a mercenary you can’t always afford to be picky about what jobs you take, and things can get pretty dangerous. I’ve been restored from backup at least three times that I know of. But hey, let’s not get all serious here. We had some good ham going.”

  She restarted the vidshow. The trashy catgirls went back to seducing the office lady, who wasn’t putting up much of a fight to be honest. She seemed to really like the way they were taking turns kissing her lips, and working their way up and down the sides of her neck.

  What would that feel like?

  I realized I was staring, and looked away. Emla was watching with rapt attention. Lina kept one eye on the show, but most of her attention was on us.

  “Um, so, you like cheesy spy shows?”

  “Yep. Mina hates them, because they’re so unrealistic. But I love it. All these silly gadgets that would never work. The banter and fake spy techniques. Oh, and the deathtraps! Those can be really good. But the best part is stuff like this.”

  She pointed at the screen. Just as the office lady started to take charge of the situation and slip one of the catgirls out of her dress the door opened, and an older man walked in talking about performance quotas or something. He got an eyeful, of course, and then he started yelling at the office lady. Something about unprofessional behavior on the job, and taking advantage of poor desperate androids who just wanted to get back to their owner.

  In the confusion one of the catgirls plucked the data stick out of the computer, just as it finished copying the files. The two of them backed out of the room, looking for all the world like a couple of innocent serfs who just didn’t want to be around angry humans. Then the office door closed behind them, and their whole manner changed. They shared a saucy grin, put an arm around each other’s waist, and sashayed out of the building.

  The rest of the show wasn’t any better. There was some kind of plot about an evil mind control conspiracy that the Ghost Cats had discovered, but it kept getting interrupted by fight scenes and spontaneous make out sessions. I learned that there were four of the Ghost Cats, who worked as spies for a secret master that was never shown on-screen. For some reason they never bothered with weapons, just beating up their opponents with acrobatic martial arts that showed off their barely-dressed bodies. When they weren’t seducing them into changing sides, that is.

  It was painful to watch, but at the same time it was kind of fun. Thankfully the sexy scenes never quite made it to the point where anyone got undressed, even when Ghost Black got captured by the bad guys and had to seduce their torturer into letting her go. Not that it mattered, since Ghost Red followed her hidden locator beacon and found her five minutes later.

  When they finally ended the threat of Doctor Sinister by beating him up and leaving him tied to a support pillar, I covered my face with a groan.

  “Goddess, that was awful,” I complained. “Do they think he doesn’t have offsite backups for his research data? Aren’t the colony security forces on the take from him? He’s just going to escape and start over!”

  “Duh! He’s a recurring villain,” Lina said smugly. “He comes back for more in Sunraker, and that’s just the start. By the time he teams up with Octocock in-”

  I covered my ears. “No! No more, please. I can’t take it. I can feel my IQ dropping just from listening to this.”

  “Aw, does that mean you don’t want to watch the next one?”

  I hesitated.

  “Maybe one more.”

  “That’s the spirit!” She crowed. “We’ll make a cheesy spy flick lover out of you yet. But first, we need popcorn.”

  “I’ll get it,” Emla said eagerly. “Butter or caramel?”

  “Bah! Caramel popcorn is a travesty. A corruption of the true spirit of movie night. Everyone knows real popcorn is smothered in butter and salt.”

  It was silly, and kind of a waste of time. But I could feel the tension slowly unwinding. Maybe this was what I needed. A night of silly fun with my friends, to take my mi
nd off my worries.

  “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” I said.

  “You bet,” she admitted. “You seriously need to learn how to relax, Alice. Is it working?”

  I took a deep breath, and let it out.

  “Yeah. I think it is. Thanks.”

  “Any time, Alice. That’s what friends are for.”

  Chapter 18

  Chief West’s idea of intensive training felt an awful lot like boot camp.

  At least he was running a better VR this time. The hold full of bots looked pretty realistic, at least to human vision, and the simulated physics was good enough that I could walk around without feeling like I was piloting a cartoon character.

  His avatar actually looked human for once. A big white guy with a shaved head and as much muscle as the captain, wearing a crisp black uniform and a surprisingly small sidearm. He waved me over to a row of stowed warbots.

  “You did alright in the war games yesterday, but Drop Marine IV and the Sharp End series both use bot designs copied from old Inner Sphere wars. Today we’re going to start you on the warbots the Square Deal actually carries, so it’s time to see if you did your homework. What can you tell me about this bad boy?”

  Good thing I’d taken a few minutes last night to eat the manuals he’d given me. I looked at the bot his hand was resting on. It looked sort of like a mutant dog, with a compact body and six weirdly jointed limbs.

  “That’s a Holstein E-419 Intruder, Chief. It’s a breaching bot, designed to knock down doors and be the first unit to enter each room when a team is doing clearance work. Mobility is six legs with active traction control plus a levitation and bounce system, with a max speed of one hundred and twenty kph. Main weapon is a Mk314 plasma flamer located in the mouth, supplemented by two racks of fourteen 200g micro-missiles each and a big set of claws and teeth. Protection is twenty millimeters of Holstein’s Mk287 bot armor over the chest and vitals, and four to twelve millimeters over other locations. It also mounts a 40 kW UV laser for utility and point defense work, twenty 100g and eighty 20g recon minibots, and a smoke dispenser system that can take up to six 1 kg canisters of any Gen8 cloud formula.”

  “Power source?” He prompted.

  “Burst power for the weapons and deflector comes from a bank of power cells in the center of the torso, with a total storage of 100 kW-hours. That’s kept charged by the nuke pack, which is a standard medium-duration 200 kW model with a service life of one hundred days.”

  “So you read the manual. What do you think of it?”

  I blinked, and took another look. “Well, Chief, I get the basic concept of having the bot open doors and send the recon swarms in to look for trouble. But putting claws on it seems like a waste of mass, since they aren’t going to penetrate another warbot’s armor. I think the weapon designations are backwards, too. In a real engagement the mini-missiles are going to do most of the killing. The flamer might be good against smaller bots, but the reading I’ve done says microbot swarms are obsolete.”

  “Which brings us to why we’re here. You can’t believe everything you read, and the only way to learn better is experience. Microbots are only out of style because everyone carries the counters for them, and offensive minibots are still pretty common. As for the claws, imagine your bot breaks in on a bunch of civies with hand weapons. They don’t know their ass from their elbow, let alone what a mini-missile launcher looks like. But a metal monster with claws and big teeth, that roars and breathes fire at them? That’s instant panic.”

  I cocked my head. “People really think like that, Chief? It doesn’t sound scary to me. Kind of funny, really.”

  “Yeah, that happens sometimes with combat morphs who grow up with their enhancements. You’ve got some kind of threat evaluator that’s busy sizing up everything you meet, right?”

  “Yes, Chief. I guess most people don’t?”

  “Oh, they do. But your threat evaluator was written by some intel weenie, so it’s thinking about how effective different kinds of hardware are against modern threats. Normal humans have a threat evaluator that was written by evolution, back when we were naked savages roaming the plains of Africa. It doesn’t know what a mass driver looks like, but big teeth are another story.”

  “Oh. Oh, wow. I never thought about it like that, Chief.”

  Now that I had, it was obvious how that would work out. I could run a threat model that only understood primitive weapons, and the results looked completely different than anything I was used to. Heck, even a hexagator would look pretty scary from that viewpoint.

  Was that why the captain had been so upset about Naoko going into the swamp with me? Oops. Well, something to keep in mind from now on.

  The chief was still talking. “We’ll be using simulated civilians for some of our exercises from now on, so you’ll get a chance to see how that works out. But for now, talk to me about this guy.”

  He patted the bow armor of a much larger warbot. This one was a wedge-shaped machine designed to rely completely on levitation for mobility, with an intimidating array of turrets decorating its hull.

  “That’s a Holstein G-411 Sharpshooter, Chief. It’s a gunbot, which is supposed to be the core of most infantry formations. Mobility is pure levitation, with a top speed of 200 kph but poor cornering. Main gun is a 25mm mass driver with a muzzle velocity of 6,000 meters per second, with four 80 kW UV lasers and two mini-missile launchers with hundred-round magazines as backup. Armor is the same Mk287 as the Intruder, but the thickness goes from 10mm over the field emitters up to 110mm for the nose and vitals. It also has a deflector shield to bounce fragments and small arms fire, smoke dispensers with six four-kilogram reservoirs, and a 40mm grenade launcher with a magazine of thirty smoke grenades.”

  “Weak points?” He prompted.

  “There’s a blind spot in the laser firing arcs directly in the rear, which leaves the service port for the nuke pack vulnerable to small melee bots. The main gun can have problems with overheating if you try to maintain a high rate of fire in a vacuum or thin atmosphere. It also doesn’t carry any recon drones of its own, so it’s completely reliant on the rest of the squad for targeting data.”

  We went down the whole row like that. He had all the standard bot types here. Urban support bots with their big racks of smart missiles. Defense bots with their flamers and point defense lasers. Another defensive type that was just a big levitating slab of armor, for protecting vital targets from enemy fire.

  “That means you, by the way,” he pointed out. “I know you think you’re invincible, but you need to keep in mind that you’re the target. Warbots are cheap and plentiful, but they aren’t worth much without someone to tell them what to do. So you should always keep a shield between you and the enemy, because these guys are going to be gunning for you.”

  ‘These guys’ were the heavy gunbots. Some people called them sniper bots, because their weapons were heavy enough to fire right through multiple layers of walls and internal bulkheads. There was one with a 40mm mass driver, and a variant on that with a big UV laser instead.

  “How do you get anything done with a laser, Chief?” I asked curiously. “Isn’t the enemy always going to be covered by smoke?”

  “People fuck up,” he replied. “You need to be ready to take advantage of that. Heavy lasers are the main reason ground troops use so much smoke these days, but that’s been the standard answer for years now. Long enough that some people have stopped bothering to bring the laser bots to a fight, figuring they’ll never get a clean shot at anything. Then they start thinking you don’t have any either, and get careless about staying in cover.”

  There were a lot of important tidbits like that. After eating the manuals I probably knew more than the chief did about the technical stats of our equipment, but he had the experience. He knew how people use their bots, the mistakes they make, the psychology of different kinds of battle.

  ‘The moral is to the physical as three to one.’ Understanding how your oppo
nent thinks is the key to winning any battle. And there I go, thinking in quotes again. Thanks, Mom, I really needed to have my head stuffed full of sage advice from famous generals. That’s obviously so much more important than knowing how to win an argument, or fix a hyperspace converter, or handle boys, or a million other things I could think of.

  The rest of the day was a struggle. There were all these standard maneuvers in the manual, things like how to clear a room or evacuate civilians, and Chief West wanted me to have them all down perfectly. But I couldn’t just remote-pilot the bots to make them do what I wanted. Instead I had to give orders, and they had their own ideas about how to handle the details.

  Every model of warbot had a sort of playbook of moves, and at first glance it looked like I could just grab the right set for a given maneuver and tell them to do it. The trouble was, the playbooks weren’t standardized. Every manufacturer programmed their bots a little differently, and whenever they put out a new model they’d ‘improve’ the programming too. So the first time I sent a detachment to plant mines and sensors at an intersection the gunbot on sentry duty parked itself out past the minelayer, and then floated right over a mine on the way back.

  Ouch.

  The bots were smart enough to handle some of the basic coordination issues, like making sure their weapons were always oriented to provide interlocking fields of fire. But there were endless details the programmers hadn’t thought of. It was my job to know about all the problem spots, and work around them one way or another.

  It didn’t help that Chief West kept throwing in sneaky twists to sabotage me. Putting in booby traps that the bots weren’t programmed to spot. Laying out just the right kind of clutter to confuse the bots, and make them miss the spot where an enemy was lurking. Even simple things, like a non-regulation doorway that was a few cems too narrow for the gunbots to fit through.

  I learned a lot, though. After each scenario we’d walk through a recording of the battle, and Chief West would explain what I’d done wrong. It was humiliating to have my mistakes picked apart in detail, but he wasn’t mean about it. His dispassionate, professional analysis was the best instruction I’d ever had, and I improved fast.