The Drift Wars

by James, Brett

  — — —

  The alarm was bad news, especially if Garcia hadn’t knocked out the ship’s communications. If the flagship got a distress signal out to the nearby base, the mission was doomed.

  Peter knew that it was Windham’s fault; he had either been too slow or failed outright. Unfortunately, Peter’s orders for either scenario contradicted each other: fortify this room or assault the other. He debated both sides, wishing—for the first time in his life—he had the battle computer’s dispassionate guidance.

  He decided to attack the other engine room. In a worst-case scenario, he would find Windham waiting for him. He ordered two men to stay behind and lined the rest up at the interior door.

  Peter took up position at the back; the explosion triggered by his death would be fatal to everyone, so it was best if he led from behind.

  He gave the signal and they moved out.

  — — —

  Peter was struck by the beauty of the engine. Clear glass tubes as wide as hallways filled the room in complex pipework. Arcs of pure energy crackled inside, feeding two massive helical chambers that pulsed with unshielded fission. He looked away; he had work to do.

  The door to the starboard engine room was on the other side of the vaulted room, but there was no apparent way across. Peter motioned his men down to a tube thirty feet below that ran in the general direction. They leaped in, racing forward in single file.

  The gravity here was weak and Peter landed softly. Energy attacked his feet, snapping against the walls of the glass tube. His radiation warning light flashed, but it was too late for that. He would just have to push through. Fortunately, he was the only one privy to that information; his men had enough to worry about.

  The tube took a hard right and ran beneath a sun-bright fission chamber. The men banked through the curve, then suddenly stopped. Peter was furious, until he saw why.

  A stack of bodies lay across the tube, Windham’s entire platoon, set out as neat as firewood. Peter turned sideways and eased past the other men.

  There was movement on the other side of the bodies. It looked like a marine, but something was wrong. His combat suit was pale white and deformed, flattened on both sides. Peter waved, but the man fled when he saw him, leaping from the tube and falling into the darkness below.

  Peter gazed over the edge, jerking back as bullets sparked against the tube at his feet. Machine-gun-toting Gyrines fired down on him from a high platform.

  Shoving through the pile of bodies, Peter raced toward the shelter of an overhead tube. He signaled his men to follow, but they were too busy to notice, firing back at the Gyrines. He opened the comm—no reason for stealth now—but before he could speak, the tube shuttered from a heavy impact, nearly throwing Peter from his feet. A shadow fell over him.

  As he turned to look, he was knocked forward. Thick red fingers wrapped around his torso, hoisting him into the air.

  The fingers squeezed, cracking his suit and then his ribs. The pain was far more than his suit could numb. He tried to scream, but his lungs popped, collapsing. He was lifted high and then stopped, weightless, as the giant hand reversed course. It swung him forward, his head aimed straight at a thick I-beam.

  Peter heard a loud clunk and everything went black.

  [14.08.3.17::3948.1938.834.2D]

  Half-drunk and half-mad, Peter burst into the computer room wearing nothing but pants. The room was empty; everyone else had gone to sleep. There was a big battle tomorrow, but Peter had lost interest in such trivia. He had skipped the briefing and holed up in his room with a bottle of Saul’s whiskey, thinking about Amber. Or trying to.

  His memories of her had been fading quickly; when he tried to imagine her face, he saw only a blur. He came to the computer room to read her old letters, hoping they would bring her back to him. He missed her. He missed the good feeling that came from thinking of her. He needed that more than ever, stuck out here, all his friends dead.

  Peter paged back to her earliest letters, those she had sent him in Basic. He was drunker than he’d figured, jerking and mistyping, but he finally managed to open one. It was blank. And so was the next.

  “Stupid computer,” Peter grunted, hitting the side of the monitor. He paged through her letters, pounding the keys, finding blank after blank.

  The first actual letter was only two months old. “My dearest darlingest Peter,” it read. “Today we held a picnic in the town square, offering to feed anyone who brought along steel to be recycled. Charlotte, as you would expect, brought only an old watering can, but Ms. Johnson drove up in her husband’s front-loader and said we could have it if we wanted…”

  Peter shoved to his feet and threw a kick at the terminal. It flew off, knocking through four rows of monitors and shattering against the wall. He felt a bone in his foot snap.

  A picnic? Peter thought, disgusted. That’s what I get?

  He ripped the locket from his neck, breaking the chain, and fumbled it open. The hair spilled out. He rolled a clump between his thumb and finger. The color was wrong—light brown with sun-bleached highlights. He threw the locket at the terminal and limped away.

  Back in his room, he took another slug of whiskey, then pulled on his suit, letting it numb the pain. He’d have to find someone to look at his foot, but who? Linda? He’d never had to deal with an injury before.

  Of course, I have all-new recruits tomorrow, Peter thought. They’ll probably get me killed instead.

  — — —

  “I refuse to answer that,” Colonel Chiang San said, leaning his fork on the edge of his plate with much greater care than the task called for. The colonel was a precise man, but his current assiduousness was simply because he was drunk.

  “I will say that I’ve been here longer than any of you,” he continued. “I’ve been here so long that I can’t even remember the Livable Territories. I doubt that any of you lot even have three months.”

  The colonel looked up from his fork and gazed, with bloodshot eyes, at the dozen officers seated in his private dining room. He picked out the hook-nosed, brown-skinned man opposite him. “How about you, Vadiraj?”

  “Three months exactly, sir,” came the sheepish reply.

  “A real veteran,” boomed Chiang San, knocking his fist on the table and upsetting his fork. He took a moment to replace it; then, satisfied, he picked it up to use as a pointer. He asked each man at the table the same question. Most had been on base for under a month. None of them ranked above sergeant.

  The ranks of both lieutenant and major had been replaced by the battle computer. The computer made instantaneous decisions, taking into account every piece on the battlefield, with results far superior to those of human officers. It was only at the higher levels—colonel and up—where men still excelled. And at the lower. Sergeants would be human for as long as marines were because no man would follow a robot into combat. They had to be inspired—or needled—by someone with as much at stake as them.

  In the modern chain of command, sergeants reported directly to colonels, who then reported to the generals. Sitting at the top of the heap was the Great General, the four-starred commander in chief of the entire United Forces, marines and navy alike.

  So when Chiang San wanted to loosen up, he did so in the company of his most senior sergeants. His Sunday dinners were one such occasion, during which he pointedly drank as much alcohol as the rest of the attendees combined. At least that’s how it looked to Peter, but this was only his second time at the table.

  “And you?” the colonel asked, offering his fork to Peter.

  “Twenty-five days, sir.”

  “Twenty-five days?” The colonel said, making a show of not believing it. “So little?”

  “Twenty-five days and sixteen missions, sir,” Peter said, although his private count was well over a hundred. “It feels like a l
ong time.”

  “I’m sure it does, son.” The colonel set the fork down but missed the table. He bent over to retrieve it. “Nothing warms an old warrior’s heart like hearing kids talk about hard times.”

  Chiang San reached for the fork, but it got away from him. “Let’s see what you think when you have four hundred under your belt,” he said, dropping to all fours and crawling under the table.

  “You’ve fought four hundred battles?” asked one of the sergeants, awestruck.

  “Four hundred and twelve victories,” the colonel said from somewhere to Peter’s left. “But to be fair, the odds of survival go way up when you stay at the back.”

  Sergeant Vadiraj stood up, puffed out his chest, and raised his glass. “To four hundred and twelve victories,” he called out. The colonel popped up next to him, fork raised proudly.

  “No,” the colonel said, slapping the glass from the sergeant’s hand. “What a terrible thing to drink to.”

  The room waited as the colonel pulled to his feet and tottered back to his chair. Vadiraj didn’t even wipe the wine from his face. The colonel settled and replaced the fork, then lifted his own glass with sudden enthusiasm. “To four hundred and thirteen!”

  The men toasted, pounding the table, then attacked the steaks in front of them. Peter didn’t know how Chiang San managed to get real meat, but he fought the urge to rip it apart with his teeth.

  “So tell us, my young sergeant,” Chiang San said to Peter, “just how many victories in the Sim Test you’ve had.”

  Peter forced a hunk of steak down his throat, then gave the answer the colonel already knew: “One.”

  “One victory, says the officer who, in spite of his four short weeks of active service, and his…” the Colonel leaned back and peered at Peter, “his tall stature, already has four tactics registered with the battle computer. Four, gentlemen! I don’t believe anyone in the room can match that.”

  Peter reddened as Chiang San drew confirmations from around the room. Peter knew he should be proud; few new tactics were registered these days.

  The battle computer, as far as artificial intelligence went, was more of a librarian than an officer. It didn’t invent tactics but sifted through its catalog and calculated the best fit for the situation at hand. Early on, when its memory banks were nearly empty, just about anything became a registered tactic. As the database filled, not only was it harder to think up something original, but there were fewer opportunities to do so. Peter’s success was anachronistic and as puzzling to himself as it was to others.

  “I myself have only two,” the colonel said. “Whereas I had thirty wins in the Sim Test before I even made sergeant. Perhaps you could explain this…inconsistency.”

  “There’s nothing at stake in the Sim Test,” Peter said. “It’s only a game.”

  “The most important game, if you ever want one of these.” Chiang San tapped the eagle pinned to his collar. “Or maybe you like getting shot at.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Peter said. A look of shock passed over the colonel’s face. He glanced at Peter, then into the glass in his hand. “That’s strong balls,” he said confidentially to the wine. “I’m surprised he’s lasted twenty-five days.”

  “I—”

  “I don’t want your luck running out,” Chiang San continued, looking at Peter. “I can’t take you off the roster, but I can…and I do…order you to work on the Sim every chance you get. It can’t be that hard. Just look at Vadiraj.”

  “Sir?” the sergeant asked, perking up at the sound of his name.

  Chiang San looked surprised, as if he had forgotten Vadiraj was in the room. “Tell me again how many wins you have,” he said.

  “One thirty-seven, sir,” the sergeant replied proudly.

  “One thirty-two,” Chiang San corrected. Then, behind his hand, he said to Peter, “Doesn’t count if you win the same battle twice.”

  “If I might ask, sir,” Peter said, hoping to sidetrack the conversation, “how many losses have you had? In the field, I mean.”

  The colonel glared at Peter, hard and sober.

  “Only generals lose battles, son,” he said. “The rest of us just fight them. And if they lose, we don’t sit at this table. We lay out there!” The colonel pointed his fork at the window, out to the desolate black Drift. The fork trembled; he cast it to the table and pushed to his feet. He raised his glass, wine slopping. “To fallen brothers,” he boomed. The men all stood, glasses high.

  “To fallen brothers,” the young men roared, then grew still, their thoughts turning to those they had lost.

  — — —

  The last of Peter’s blue dots blinked out as a wave of red washed over them. He had lost the Sim twenty minutes ago—his eighth of the night—and was too tired to do anything but watch it play out.

  “You’ll have to try harder than that,” Chiang San said, walking into the computer room. His combat suit was decorated with a stream of orange koi-fish, but scored black, and it smelled of burned carbon.

  “I can’t crack this one,” Peter said.

  The colonel squinted at the terminal. “That the Battle of Oenopides-7? I fought there, you know.”

  “You did?” Peter checked the date on the screen. “But that was thirty-five years ago.”

  “The dates around here are screwy,” the colonel said offhandedly. He set his helmet down and took a seat. The cold of space radiated from his suit. “Government secrets and what all. Show me the playback.”

  The battle replayed at ten times speed—this time taking only three minutes for the computer to annihilate him. Chiang San gave a thoughtful grunt.

  “You played football, didn’t you?” he asked.

  Peter nodded.

  “Well, you need to stop.” The colonel ran the playback again. “Look at that,” he said. “You rush in the moment the ball snaps. Nothing covert there. Remember, the enemy doesn’t know anything about you at the start of the battle. When they see you coming, they’ll assume the worst, that this is a major attack and you’re a hundred divisions strong. They’ll hole up in the best spots and wait. But if you convince them you’re weak, they’ll find their confidence. Lure them out of their cover and they’ll make a much better target.

  “What’s this?” The colonel said incredulously, jabbing a thick-gloved finger at the screen. “Did you just order a whole regiment forward without knowing what’s to their north? These aren’t just dots on a screen, Garvey. These are men like you and me. Men who are counting on you to bring them home alive.

  “Try this battle again and forget everything you know about it. Use your sensor pods and your scouts to flush the Riel out, and double-check everything before you move. The Riel are fast, so don’t trust their reported position. If the dot isn’t solid red, then you haven’t got eyes on them.

  “Things move fast in a battle, but you still have to take your time. Only advance from a position of strength and keep your path of retreat open. A full regiment is a strong force, but if the Riel cut them off, they’ll be swallowed up from all sides.

  “As you see here,” he added, as Peter’s regiment blinked out for the third time.

  Peter frowned. “I think it’s beyond me, sir.”

  “You do, do you?” the colonel said, laughing with surprise. “Now that’s irony if I ever heard it.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. The point is, we won this battle in real life, so I know it can be done. You only have to figure out how.”

  “But I haven’t even studied military history—”

  “The Sim Test is not about what you already know, it’s about what you can figure out. And I have every reason to believe that you’ll get the hang of this.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said, trying to sound encouraged.

  Chiang San studied Peter, then reached into his
pocket and pulled out a golden locket. “I believe you dropped this,” he said.

  Peter stared at it.

  “It looked important,” the colonel said, setting it on the table between them.

  Peter popped it open. The hair inside was dark brown, just as it was supposed to be.

  “That hair belong to anyone I know?” Chiang San asked.

  Peter shook his head, self-conscious, and clamped it shut.

  “Someone back home then,” the colonel concluded. “That’s hard stuff. Hard enough when I did it, and back then the war was a lot closer to home.”

  “You have a girl, sir?”

  “Had. A good one too. But this job changes how you see things. No one back home can understand what we do out here. What we’ve seen.” Chiang San watched his own fingers drum the table.

  “Enough of that,” he said, looking up. “So how many of these Sims have you actually won now?”

  “Three, sir.”

  “Not bad. That’s two wins in as many weeks.”

  “Vadiraj’s up to one fifty-three,” Peter said.

  “Don’t compete,” the colonel said sternly. “Not with him, not with anybody. It’s us against the Riel, not against each other. Sergeant Vadiraj is good—he keeps his head and he’s methodical. He wins battles and he brings his men home alive. Seems to me that you could learn something there. You don’t get to be as old as I am without taking advice every once in a while. Or asking for it.”

  Peter nodded, unsure.

  “You’ll make it, kid,” Chiang San said, clasping a cold glove on Peter’s shoulder. “And that’s the only promise you’ll ever get out of me.”

  [14.08.2.64::3948.1938.834.2D]

  “They bring you back.”

  “How?” Peter asked.

  Linda worked on the monitor overhead, her mask off, relaxed. Peter’s straps were undone, dangling over the edge of the bed.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Other people do that work. They heal your body and then bring you to me. I heal your mind.”

  “But I don’t always die,” Peter said. “At least, I don’t always remember dying.”