Callisto Deception

by John Read

  Serene put a finger to her ear. “Shepherd, do you read me?”

  “You’re not transmitting,” I said, expecting to hear an amplified voice in my ear. “They’re jamming encrypted frequencies. Switch to analog, and just don’t say anything that will give away our location.”

  “Amelia’s drone entered a different hangar. We’ll find her,” Avro said.

  Kevin reached into a pack, retrieving an infrared pulse beacon. He reached around the building and stuck it to the wall, increasing our visor clarity.

  We paused, taking note of the situation. Several of our comrades were engaged in firefights around the compound. My visor displayed fragmented data. Our troop strength indicator flashed at the bottom right. Of the fifty-one soldiers that survived our entry into the base, thirty-nine remained.

  My visual overlay amplified by Kevin’s beacon, I scanned the nearby buildings, and zoomed in on the palace where one of our soldiers was held hostage. Amelia. She winced in pain, one arm reaching across her chest to hold her shoulder. She’d been shot, and her resistance suit was probably jabbing her in the shoulder, stretching her biometrics to their limits.

  Avro gave the signal to us and the troops with us. “Amelia’s a hostage in the atrium,” Avro said. “It looks like her suicide vest has been deactivated.”

  “It’s a trap,” I said.

  “I know it’s a trap,” Avro said.

  “I’m going to get her,” Nash said, and took off running toward the palace.

  “No!” Avro yelled, but as Jamaal approached the palace stairs, a sniper opened fire. Jamaal exploded in the street, his suicide vest burning the pavement.

  “Well shit, that didn’t work,” Nash said as he respawned to become another solider behind us.

  “From now on, let me do the rescuing,” Avro said.

  I glanced at my display: “Thirty troops remaining”.

  A voice with a fake Russian accent resonated through twinned bullhorns located along the palaces roofline.

  “Deactivate your vests, and surrender,” it said, the sound echoing off the hangers behind us. I smiled, recognizing the voice as that of our own commander, Chris Tayler.

  “Kill me!” we heard Amelia yell.

  “We don’t have a shot!”

  “You will all be killed,” Tayler’s voice said, tough, clearly a threat; we could detect the encouragement in it. He was probably glad to be at the end of this simulation, too.

  “Why is he holding a hostage?” I said.

  “He’s trying to draw us out,” Serene said. “We’ve got a lot of firepower and thirty more vests. We’re about to do a lot of damage, whether we breach the compound or not.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Serene, tell everyone to hold their fire,” Avro said.

  She did, and everyone held a defensive position. The gunfire ceased and an eerie silence settled over the base.

  “It appears we have a standoff,” Avro shouted across the boulevard.

  “Maybe, but you’re still all going to die,” the voice said.

  “We can still negotiate.”

  “No, I don’t think we can,” said the voice.

  “Why are they holding a hostage?” I whispered to Serene. “It makes no sense.”

  “They’re using Amelia to draw us into the open,” she answered. “Wasting our resources on a rescue instead of an assault.”

  “Maybe we can do both.”

  Kevin nodded, and a serious look crossed his face. “You know what’s interesting about Turing computers?” We looked at him and shrugged. “They’re programmed to think they’re human. The Turnings are programmed to simulate human consciousness, which itself is an illusion. Consciousness simply combines memories with feelings, giving a person the illusion of a constant stream of thought.”

  “Get to the point, dude,” I said.

  “To pass the Turing test, a computer must convince a human that it’s not a computer. The way it does this is by accessing emotions and memories from its past, even if that past is artificial.”

  “Kevin, you’re brilliant,” Avro said, and got up to begin walking toward the palace.

  “Avro, where are you going?” I said.

  “To access the machine’s emotions,” he said, removing his helmet and tying back his headscarf. With his tanned skin, he looked as if he belonged in the Middle East.

  Our snipers had cleared the road between us and the palace, but the Russians had formed a perimeter around us, and the palace was heavily guarded. They knew we were after Central Control and were doing everything they could to distract us.

  No shots rang out as Avro stepped into the street. He reached for his shoulder, and unbuckled the suicide vest. He threw it into the street then drew his gun, and tossed it aside. He put up his hands.

  “Hold your fire,” said the voice. “I want to hear this.”

  “Before I die, I have one important question to ask her. Amelia, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you,” Amelia cried in the background.

  “Amelia, I’ve loved you ever since we met. I’ve loved you across the stars. In the evening, and in the morning, when we eat, and when we play.”

  He took two paces forward, stepping slowly towards the palace.

  The snipers held their fire, listening to everything Avro had to say.

  “It’s too bad it ends today, but I’d trade every day from this day forward for one more chance to see you again.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds before we kill you,” said the commander.

  “That’s all I need,” Avro said. “Amelia Shepherd, will you marry me?”

  “Yes, yes!” Amelia yelled, and struggled against the captor’s grip.

  I almost choked. The words penetrated my consciousness like a sword, tearing me from the simulation, and I forgot that we were at war. And for the briefest of moments, I felt joy.

  Serene hit me on the back of the head. “Get your gun ready and point it at that door,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Just do it!”

  I raised my gun and Serene did the same.

  “Let me see her,” Avro ordered. “Let me see my fiancé, just once, then you can kill me.”

  Behind the wall, Amelia struggled, wiggling herself from the captor’s grasp, and she stood in the palace doorway, a huge grin on her face.

  “Fire,” Serene ordered.

  I pulled the trigger, and the bullet leapt from my gun. Time seemed to move in slow motion as the round streaked across the boulevard. The projectile penetrated through Amelia’s heart and out her back, puncturing the ignition layer on her explosive vest.

  The compound’s lobby erupted like a volcano. Marble cinderblocks blew outward from the facade, and the entire front of the building crumbled to the ground, filling the street with dust and blocking the sniper’s view.

  “Move in!” Serene ordered, and we bolted toward the opening created by the blast. Bullets ripped through the air, but without clear line of sight, most of them missed.

  I made it to a grand hallway, as the palace filled with smoke and dust from the explosion, and bustled with American troops. Guns blazed as we attacked the soldiers inside.

  The display ticked our troop count down, “twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three”, but it didn’t matter; we were so close.

  One of our soldiers leapt forward, running full speed ahead, diving over where we knew the underground bunker was. He shook off his vest, tossing it onto the floor in the middle of an atrium. A six-meter fuse connected him to the vest. He stood behind a pillar and hit the trigger. The vest detonated and the concrete below gave way, revealing a hole two meters wide in the floor.

  “Grenades!” I yelled, and we all reached for our belts, releasing the pins in fluid motion, chucking the weapons into the floor.

  “Fire in the hole!” someone yelled, as a plume of dust shot from underground.

  I slid to the edge, and peered over.

  “Looks like a three-mete
r drop,” I said.

  Avro wrapped a rappelling line around a column, backed to the edge, and jumped. “Clear!” he yelled, as he reached the bottom.

  “You four, guard the hole; everyone else, down you go,” Serene said to a group of US soldiers.

  I grabbed the line, and dropped in over the edge, landing in a mess of busted displays and holovisions shattered by our grenades. Dozens of bodies lay among the rubble. Along the walls sat several wounded Russian officers, their faces covered in blood. They held their hands above their heads.

  The dust began to clear. Nash and Singer lit flares and tossed them toward the walls.

  Nash looked pissed. “I’m fucking tired of dying,” he said to a man holding his hands in front of his face. The Turing was terrified. “You know what it feels like?”

  “Like this!” he said, and shot the Russian officer in the head. “Like this,” he said, and shot another.

  Singer walked up to him, and put his hand on this shoulder. “We have to find the commander.”

  “Where’s Commander Tayler?” I said.

  “Gyde Ob-che-yeh,” Serene said phonetically in Russian.

  “You speak Russian?” I asked. Serene just shrugged.

  Our hostages remained silent, but I caught several of them looking towards an adjacent hallway. Gunfire from above us ended in an explosion; bits of ceiling rained down. Our number reduced to seven.

  “This way,” I said and led the way into the hall. It had only two doors. One was open. I stopped at the door and nodded to Nash. He cocked his rifle and turned the corner. Nash got off two rounds, but I heard three cracks. He took a bullet in the neck, stumbling forward and falling into the room.

  Avro and Serene formed up behind me. I peeked around the corner. “Clear,” I said. Two men lay on the floor. One was dead, but the other crawled towards us. Serene turned the corner and put a bullet in the man’s head.

  "Shit," she said. “We’re out of men.”

  “Well it’s a good thing you’re here,” Avro said. “Try the other door.”

  I nodded, fired two rounds into the handle, and kicked the door open.

  We busted through to find Commander Taylor sitting behind a desk surrounded in holoscreens. He looked relaxed, probably glad the simulation was over. The commander wore the official uniform of a Russian general. He put on his cap and stood as if ready to leave. The action caught us off guard; two shots went off, and Avro and Singer dropped to the ground. We heard a revolver cocking, but Commander Tayler put up his hand. I dropped my gun.

  To my left, a female officer pointed a gun at my ear. On our right, another officer held up her gun. The women were beautiful.

  "So," the commander began. "You think you've made it to the end. You think you've won."

  "Someone sure gets into character," Serene said. “So, you’ve just been hanging out, in this palace surrounded by broads, while we slave away in the dessert.”

  “Call it a vacation.” The commander walked to me, and ripped the detonator from my vest. The fuses popped from the C4 like snaps on a child’s winter coat. He brushed some imaginary dust from my shoulder then did the same for Serene.

  "I assume you've learned a few lessons along the way. You had to, to get this far."

  "Sir,” said one of the commander’s mistresses in English. “We should execute them immediately,"

  "Not yet, baby. I want to talk to them."

  "What's left to learn?" I said. "We've been beaten down, built back up, learned to accept pain. We've fought, we've reconciled. What’s more to learn?"

  "This is war, John, a war of ideals. It's not about good and evil, it's not even about freedom. This war, and every war, is about power. It's about one man sitting at the top doing everything he can to stay there."

  "And when he's dead, it's a house of cards," I said.

  "Sometimes, but not always. Look around the room. All of these people, these officers, need power for their very survival. We are Russians occupying a foreign land. The people don't want us here, they hate us. Democracy will never work here because the moment we're not in power, we're dead, and we're not going to let that happen.”

  "You're trying to teach us one more lesson. That we’re fighting a system and not just a man,” I said.

  "Precisely. These men and women, the officers and soldiers, were neither good nor evil. If things had been different, you could very well have been in their shoes."

  "What are you going to do with us?" Serene asked.

  "I would have you start over, keep going until you've learned all you can, but I think you've learned the most important lesson of all."

  "And what's that?" I asked.

  "Always have an ace in the hole," Tayler said and looked to his left as Kevin turned the corner and entered the room.

  "Hey guys," Kevin said. "What's up?"

  "Kevin, your vest,"

  “What about it?

  "Trigger your damned vest!"

  Kevin undid a Velcro sash from his jacket, revealing the trigger for his suicide vest.

  He looked at Commander Tayler and, in his most serious tone, said, "Das vadanya, Commander."

  In a flash of heat and pain, the simulation ended.

  We materialized on the front porch of the beach house in our Hawaiian T-shirts. The evening sun sat on the horizon, bisected with layers of stratocumulus silhouetted in a light pink haze. We ached with the pain of death; it would be several minutes before the pain diminished, but most of us tried to hide it; a talent we’d gotten good at after several dozen deaths. Nash collapsed and Avro helped him down into a chair.

  War is hell, as General Sherman once said, but for many generations, it was a rite of passage. Our primal brains were deceived. We were a band of brothers, and sisters, albeit a very tired one.

  Tayler wore a crooked smile. He was proud of us. I wanted to hit him, to punish him for the agony he’d caused us over the past weeks. “You may assign yourselves call signs now,” he said.

  Avro stayed with Nash, talking with him while resting a hand on his shoulder. Jamaal Nash had been willing to endure pain to save others on several occasions. Later that night, we’d give him the call sign “Gofer,” for his tendency to run into danger.

  Kevin stood tall, having gained respect for his technical prowess (and suicidal tendencies). We’d give him the name “Steeplechaser.”

  Though he was the quietest one in the group, when Luke Singer spoke, his words were profound and timely. He was given the call sign, “Sage”.

  Amelia’s call sign became “Big-Guns Shepherd,” because she’d released far too much firepower on the Pacific fleet during Pearl Harbor.

  Serene Johnson became “The Acrobat.”

  I'm not sure what they thought of me. John Orville, a product of circumstance, not really a hero, just someone in the right place who happed not to get killed on Earth or on Mars. I entered my bedroom, looking at my reflection on a tarnished mirror, into my tired eyes. I didn’t know myself anymore. I’d changed so much that my nature no longer matched my self-image. They later gave me the “Immortal” because, as Serene said during several sims, “That bugger didn’t die?”

  I splashed cold water on my face and rejoined the crew on the deck.

  Avro got up from talking with Nash, and joined Amelia at the railing. They held hands and turned to face the sunset. Amelia looked back as they walked in the sand. "I'm keeping my last name," she said.

  I turned to Commander Tayler. "We've got a wedding to plan," I said.

  The commander looked well rested; the dessert simulation had taken a much lighter toll on him. "If you need an officiant, I'm registered."

  Serene grabbed my arm, and threaded hers under it. "You'll be the best man, I assume," she said.

  I looked at her and smiled. "I guess that makes you the maid of honor."

  "Nah, that honor has already fallen on Kevin.”

  Kevin took charge of wedding planning. We just had to put up with his constant complaining about SpaceNet. Du
e to our increasing distance from Earth, download speeds were slowing to mere gigabits per second. Despite the slow internet, by sunrise the next morning three custom black 1940’s Chrysler Imperial limousines pulled up in front of the beach house.

  The limos drove along the shore, past Pearl Harbor and into downtown Honolulu where we stopped in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. Wedding bells chimed, playing the traditional wedding song which, as Kevin pointed out, was a bit anachronistic; the song wouldn’t be written until 1969.

  Avro stood at the front of the sanctuary with Commander Tayler. They wore air force blues, their jackets lined with the appropriate medals. Red, white, and blue flowers arched over the altar. A congregation of hundreds of service men and women in uniform chatted amongst themselves. Kevin had set the date to December 8th, 1941; he said, “it wasn’t hard to find Turings to attend a wedding for the heroes who saved Pearl Harbor.”

  Serene and I entered the sanctuary, arm in arm. Doves in beach-white cages cooed as we walked in through the vestibule. I took my position at Avro’s side, and Serene stood across from me. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy played softly in the background.

  Kevin and Luke came in next, arm in arm with Turing supermodels in matching blue dresses. I looked at Serene who rolled her eyes.

  The wedding song played from an organ. The service men and women in the audience stood, turning to face the bride.

  Amelia walked down the aisle, arm in arm with Jamaal Nash. Nash exchanged a slapping man hug with Avro and kissed Amelia on the cheek before taking his place amongst the groom’s men.

  Commander Tayler welcomed us all together, and signaled for the congregation to take their seats.

  “My superiors informed me you were a couple. I even questioned their decision to bring you along. Relationships breed drama, and your lives have been full of it. As I recall, Amelia, you were living in a padded cell?”

  Amelia blushed.

  “Avro and Amelia met in the darkness of a Martian storm. They freed Amelia from immoral imprisonment, and Avro led Amelia to safety. But it wouldn’t be their last adventure. They’ve hidden from a rogue defense force, and almost been blown up in a space ship that contained none other than a nuclear reactor. Avro and Amelia are heroes and I’m proud to join them together today by the bonds of marriage.”