Hero at Large

by Timothy Ellis

  "That is seriously bad-arse."

  Both women were staring at me. I struck a pose, hands resting on the grips of both guns. The guns were rock solid on my thighs, and didn’t move as I did. The holsters were part of the suit, with no straps of any kind. I remembered the girls moving, with their guns solid against their thighs as well, so it had to be the design of the suit. In old flat screens I remembered holsters needing extensive straps to hold them steady, or without them, the gun moved as the person moved. I was quite happy to have rock solid guns.

  "Yeah!" yelled Aleesha, suddenly grinning.

  Amanda poked her head around the outer door, grinned, gave me a thumb's up, and left again.

  At the bottom of the package was a charging unit designed for two guns, and six charges. I plugged it into the power on the desk, and then plugged in each charge, and both guns, noticing as I removed each, the holsters changed as each holder vanishing as each went into the charger. I changed back to a belt, and made a mental note I should first double check I had clothes on underneath.

  A pinged message arrived from the Tool man, with a link to his drop account. I activated it, and was taken to a bank site, where I authorized payment of the invoice. Immediately I received an email with a copy of the invoice, and dozens of permits for carrying obvious weapons, seeming to cover most of known space. There was also an advice my guild memberships had been updated with the permits. I sent him a thank you in reply, and an assurance when I needed something again, I'd be in touch with him. He pinged back a thank you for my custom. I pondered for a moment, and wondered just how much of a discount I'd really been given, beyond a free gun.

  "Are you up for a dinner guest?" asked Alison.

  "Sure. Your boss?"

  "No, our second pilot. He's not much of a combat pilot. Pilot is actually his secondary, and he does the boring running around jobs a real combat pilot baulks at. In his case, it saved his life, as our combat pilot was the only one of us killed. He's wanted to meet you ever since we heard you'd pulled through in the hospital. His name's George."

  "By all means," I said.

  George turned up just before dinner. He was dressed in a brown overall. I couldn't tell if it was a real overall, or a belt suit. Dinner was pleasant. We talked about piloting and simulators, found we had an interest in strategic computer games that bored the ladies, and swapped game experiences. The ladies steered us back into more general topics. There was a warm camaraderie between Aleesha, Alison, and George. It made me feel part of the group. I speculated maybe it was the whole idea. After dinner, we cleared away, and settled into easy chairs. I turned to George.

  "Is that a suit you have on, or real clothes?"

  "Suit of course, why do you ask?"

  "I didn't see that sort of overall on the clothing menu, so I wondered."

  "Ha, yes. I do a bit a dabbling in suit programming."

  "Just clothes?"

  "What do you mean, just clothes?"

  "Well it strikes me the suit would be really useful for camouflage, sort of like a chameleon effect. Blend you into the background. As long as you don't move, you wouldn't be seen."

  His jaw dropped, and he started grinning.

  "Brilliant!"

  His eyes glazed for a very long minute, and suddenly he wasn't there. Well he was, but he perfectly blended into his chair, and the room behind. When he moved, he looked ridiculous for a moment as the suit adjusted, and we all burst out laughing. He joined in, as he waved his arms around.

  "What did you do?" demanded Aleesha.

  "I quickly wrote a new program to link my sensor package with the suit processor, and had the suit match my background. It worked?"

  "Totally," I said. "It was that easy?"

  "Only if you know the basic code behind the suit and the sensors, but otherwise, yes. Where did you get the idea?"

  "I remember it from a really old flat screen movie I saw a couple of weeks ago."

  "How old?" asked Alison.

  "2012," I said. "The second of the original Sherlock Holmes movies."

  They looked at me.

  "So I like old flat screen movies."

  "That's not old, that's ancient. Prefer full holographic myself," said George.

  "What else can you do with the suit?"

  "What are you thinking of?"

  "Well the suit does a proper space suit, so is it capable of doing other shapes than just clothes. Will it do animals or objects? I'm still thinking combat camouflage, but that would be a start, wouldn't it?"

  A slow grin spread across George's face, and again he went glazed for a bit. He stood, and suddenly there was a gorilla.

  Alison grinned, and smacked him heavily on the arm.

  "Now you've got your true self on display, yeah!"

  We all laughed, including George. He turned to Alison, and then there was two of her, except one of them was stark naked.

  "Oops."

  Alison started looking angry, and then her double was suddenly wearing the exact same clothes she was.

  "That's better," she said.

  George was suddenly himself again, back in the brown coverall. He looked at Alison.

  "Sorry about that. The suit was only generating a single overlay. When I got it to mimic a person, the sensors only gave the suit the data for the person. Since clothes are an add-on, I had to tell the suit to do two layers, where it was only programmed to do one. Um, it was also accessing memory, and I wasn't specific enough about which memory to use. Sorry."

  I bit my lip. The obvious question was, had it been an accurate representation of the naked Alison? But I figured she'd hit me if I asked.

  "So it can do anything from memory? If you saw something in a movie, vid or hollo, you could reproduce it?"

  "Oh boy, I gotta play around with that idea, I love it," crowed George.

  "Stick to the Gorilla, it's more you," said Alison.

  George settled himself back in his chair, and turned to me.

  "By the way, I meant to ask you, you haven't really looked at all the options on your PC yet, or at the software the General gave you, have you."

  It was not a question.

  "No, not really. How can you tell?"

  "For a start, none of your social settings are available. The moment you set foot outside this hotel, there will be a lot women wanting to know your social status, so you better have it visible."

  "Social status?"

  This was something I'd not had on my old PC.

  "Did you use single sites at home, looking for dates?"

  I looked at him for a bit.

  "Sixteen at home, too young."

  I could see the ladies were following all this, but keeping out of it.

  "Ah. Sorry, didn't realize. Well some years ago, someone brought out a social app which allows you to set up a social profile, which is accessible by anyone who has the app, allowing them to see the details you put public. So people can tell immediately what your partner status is, sexual preference, and the like. It cut through all the unwelcome hitting on people which went on, and gave everyone a chance to see if an approach would actually be welcome, before attempting it. It was a major hit, and was subsequently bought and incorporated into PC's. So it's now normal practice for people to show a public profile. If you don't want to use it, you can set it to 'Don't bother me', but very few people do that."

  I'd missed something.

  "Back up a bit, a lot of women wanting to know my social status?"

  "Hey, why do you think we have you holed up in here? Apart from those wanting to kill you, the whole station knows about what you did, and like it or not, you're a celebrity now. Women dig celebrities."

  He grinned at me. I looked around at Aleesha, and she nodded. So did Alison. I shook my head. I'd never been popular with girls at home, just Sarah. I couldn't imagine anyone being interested in me for defending myself. I shrugged it off.

  "Ok, I'll check the social settings. Anything else?"

  "May as well check
on anything you haven't looked at yet, even if it doesn't seem relevant. They always put useful stuff under seemingly non relevant menus."

  "I will."

  George stood, nodded to Alison who also stood.

  "We should be going. We'll leave you to play with your new toys."

  There was a round of goodbyes, and they left, leaving me with Aleesha. She settled herself in a chair covering the door, and I left her to whatever she was up to with that glazed look on her face which meant she was only partially here. Sister talk, I speculated.

  I dived into the bathroom, then the kitchen, and sat back down in the sitting room with a bottle of water. I activated hollo controls, but didn't use the screen this time, starting into the social menu.

  The first submenu was the public profile. Preferred name, home base, sex, partner status, sexual orientation. Easy answers.

  Social status? Drop down choices, 'approachable', 'available', (what was the difference?), 'actively looking', 'not looking', 'leave me alone', and 'approach at own risk'. I laughed. Hmmm, I set 'not looking'. Show status? Yes. Public profile? Yes. I worked my way through the rest of the options, most of which I ignored.

  The next submenu contained some very personal settings, and I laughed again. So that was what George was trying to tell me. One of the settings was 'suppress autonomic sexual reactions'. Thinking about first thing that morning, I thought about turning it on, but didn’t. The next setting was 'enable control of sexual activity'. I pondered that for a moment, and left it, not at all sure what it was talking about. I continued through the menus, turning a few things on, others off, and ignoring the rest.

  When I'd completed the social menu, I went back to the suit menu. I wasn't too happy with the belt around my waist. It didn't take long to find an option which allowed the position of the belt to be set, and I selected 'around hips', followed by 'integrate suit belt mode with pants'. I set those on, and the belt loosened, slipped down, and interweaved itself into my jeans as if it was a real belt.

  Another setting gave me a choice of belt buckle look. An option was called 'wear suit in belt mode permanently'. The pop up help stated when set to no, removing pants would also remove the belt. Set to yes, undoing the top button of the pants would detach the suit from the pants, and return it to default belt wear position. I remembered Amanda had been sleeping in the belt, so turned that on.

  I kept going into other areas I'd not looked at so far, and then checked emails. Another pile waiting for me. I went into the settings, and changed a few things, one of which left an unread inbox counter on my visual display at all times. Another setting turned on pop up warnings for urgent emails, or emails on my personal friends list. Having been reminded of it, I added Amanda, Aleesha, and Alison, and pinged Alison for George's contacts. He immediately pinged them back to me, and I added him as well.

  The emails were mostly junk mail, but one was a notification of a minor bounty payment. Thirty thousand credits. I chuckled, being minor indeed compared to the others, given what I'd seen so far. I didn't recognize the sender, but I sent off a thank you anyway.

  As I was doing it, an email came in from the local shipyard, notifying me Wanderer's repairs would be completed in two days' time. No mention of how much though. I sent them a thank you, and added I would let them know when I could get there, as I was still not recovered enough to get around anywhere yet. A reply came back immediately saying it was fine. They were happy to store the ship as long as I needed. Well it was something I didn't need to worry about for a while, anyway.

  A ping came in from George, asking if I'd looked at the General's software yet.

  "Doing it now," I sent straight back.

  I had forgotten, again. The first one was a sensor package for the PC, and I activated it and set it to passive nearby scan. This would give me warning of any hand-held weapons within firing distance of me, and it integrated with the guild overlays to notify me of anyone likely to be trying to collect the bounty on me, being nearby. It also seemed to sharpen my general awareness, although I could not pick why.

  There was a set of pilot packages as well, stuff military combat pilots used to overlay on the systems of any ship they were flying, so they could set their personal preferences without needing to spend time on it. I went through these, and because of all the time I'd spent on simulators when younger, I was able to understand most of what was there. I set things the way I wanted them, especially what information I wanted displaying on the view screens, and where. In combat, it was important to have information about what was going on quickly findable when you needed it. But since you needed to see what you were shooting at, it was not good to clutter up the display too much.

  For a moment I pondered the difference between game combat, and real combat, and wondered if the skills were truly transferable. I hoped I’d never need to find out.

  The most important of these were actual flying parameters. The basics of flying are thrust, pitch, roll, and bank. Thrust is what engines produce to make you go forward, usually controlled with the left hand on a forward and back lever. Pitch covered moving the nose of the craft up or down, controlled by the joystick or control column, depending on the size of the ship, and used by the right hand. Roll controlled the way the sides of the craft, especially if it had wings, moved up or down relative to forward motion. It was usually controlled by the joystick and the right hand. Bank moved the nose left or right and this was done by foot pedals.

  Most of this hadn't changed in six hundred years, from the earliest flying machines. At least as far as talking about the basics was concerned. Early science fiction had replaced the joystick with flat touch panels, and while these were available, a true pilot preferred to 'feel' the movement of the ship, something a flat panel can't provide. I’d tried a number of times, and always went back to the joystick.

  But I had a problem. While it hurt to move my left arm, I could handle the thrust lever. But using the left pedal was going to be a problem. I thought about it for a bit, and reversed roll and bank. I needed to turn left and right more than I needed to roll the ship, so I moved bank to the joystick, and roll to the pedals. Now all this was set, I just had to pulse my overlays and preferences to the ship systems, and it would be ready for me to use by the time I was strapped in.

  Suddenly I yawned. Tiredness swept over me. The water bottle was empty, and I didn't remember drinking any of it. Aleesha looked as though she hadn't moved, and I wondered for a moment what she was doing.

  "Heading to bed," I called across to her.

  She waved a hand without otherwise moving.

  I went into the bedroom, and dug out my boxers and sleep shirt. I contemplated running some hot water over my left side, and decided not to. I changed quickly into my sleepers, paying attention to how the suit unwove itself from my jeans into a belt around my hips, padded into the bathroom in bare feet, catered to bodily needs, let the mouth cleanser do its work, and slipped into the bed.

  In seconds I was asleep.

  Nine

  I was sitting in my command chair, in space.

  Two identical women stood behind me.

  No ship, no life support, no nothing.

  Just me, in my chair, in space.

  Space around me was not familiar.

  As I looked around I saw no planets.

  There were many asteroid fields.

  In the distance, two gas giants.

  A movement in front of me caught my eye.

  A black dot had appeared at long range.

  As I watched, another dot appeared.

  Then another.

  Then ten, a hundred, a thousand.

  Space in front of me turned black.

  I lurched upright in bed, terrified, covered in sweat. I called the lights on, and sat there trembling. Amanda came awake beside me, and also sat up. I was too upset to notice her nudity. She pulled me into a hug.

  "Nightmare?" she asked eventually, as she let me go.

  "Yes. Always the same one. I
'm flying along in space in just a chair, always the same system, and space in front of me turns black. I wake up terrified. I've been having the same dream since I was a kid. This one was different though. There were two women behind me this time. That's the first time I've seen someone else in it."

  She looked at me strangely.

  "What?" I said, deadpan.

  "I've had a similar dream, had it recently in fact. I'm standing behind someone in a chair, in space, next to my sister, and space ahead of us turns black. The same dream?" She looked at me incredulously. "Hold on a sec, I'll ask Aleesha if she's had it as well." Her eyes went vacant for a moment. "Yes, she says she's had the same dream as well. Neither of us reacted to it like it was a nightmare though. What do you know that we don't?"

  "Prophesy," I whispered.

  I'd always wondered if I had the nightmare because the Keepers had told me enough as a child to make it scary. Now I had to wonder. Could prophesy be real, and was I caught up in the middle of it?

  "Spill it," she demanded.

  "Sorry, it's just some daft stuff I got told as a child. End of the world stuff they tell you to get you to eat your greens."

  "Fun place, your home. Still, all three of us with the same dream? Ok, keep your secret, but if all three of us start having it at the same time, I'm going to want to know specifics."

  "Fair enough."

  We lay back down, I turned over on to my right side, and tried to go back to sleep. This became somewhat harder to do, when I felt the shape of a naked girl pressed up against my back. Still, sleep did return.

  An unknown time later, we were awoken by an explosion, which rocked the entire station.

  Ten

  Amanda was out of bed, back into yesterday's underwear and slinky outfit, and out the door, before my feet even hit the floor. I dressed as fast as I could, and followed. I found her in front of the sitting room com unit, watching a hollo from the station news service, showing a group of three ships standing off at a long distance. She turned to me.