by D. Rus
Cornelia smiled sarcastically. Our aggression amused her. She did not care that we didn’t want to be touched.
Stepping closer to me, she said in a whisper that the entire group could hear, “Lucky, don’t think that a nap in the regeneration capsule is all it takes to get away from sweet Aunt Cornelia. Every time you are on leave, you are to come to me, promptly, like the clockwork of a high efficiency antenna. I will make this easy for you by passing an order to certain channels, ha-ha!”
Guffawing, she gestured at the round-bellied spacecraft with massive atmospheric nozzles and rudimentary wings, “Get on board, ya walking dicks! The Coliseum isn’t the most prestigious college of the Russian Space Forces, but you’re no third generation aristos yourselves. Study like fleet officers should, and be so kind as to die heroic deaths in your first battle. Perhaps it’ll get this shady establishment shut down, and I’ll be transferred to regulars… So long, woodbots!”
Chapter Four
Earth. Russia. The Kremlin. An excerpt from a top-secret report:
“…final activity of the sower ship observed on April 18. After dropping the artifacts on Japanese territory, the UFO entered a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean.
Sixty-four hours later, the ship sent an encrypted radio signal in a nonstandard frequency range.
Right after, all the bearers of the alien artifact instantly lost their minds. Those crystals that had not yet attached to a specific owner immediately discharged all of their power, transforming into trivial diamonds and sending the person nearest to them into a vegetative state. They seemed to be able to do this from almost 400 feet away.
That was how the battalion guarding the special storage room number 52 lost over 70 percent of its personnel. All the medical tests show that the victims have zero brain activity. The explanations provided by psychics and true ecclesiastics are strikingly similar; they claim that the victims are missing a very complex astral body – a soul…”
We were put in the hold and left there. Our only visitor was a pert girl in a one-piece flight personnel uniform, her head shaven in stripes which glistened with the golden circuits of brain implants.
With a frightening predatory smile, she showed us how to use the seat belts on the wide, hard, tiltable operator seats designed for warriors in heavy CAS. Her hands moved like they had a mind of their own; as they snapped our belt buckles shut, we could feel warm palms over our bodies.
She was with us for only two minutes, yet managed to paw half the guys in our “Baker’s Dozen” group. They exchanged perplexed glances, then looked away in embarrassment. The girls in our group could barely suppress laughter and furtively wiped away their tears; this was their first laugh since the transfer.
After warning us that the flight would be rough, the pilot advised us to be on our best behavior as she pointed a finger up at the watchful gun turret mounted on the ceiling.
I nodded understandingly. It would take the two pulse guns mere seconds to shoot the hold full of soft traumatic shells, knocking all the trouble makers off their feet and leaving them with moderate lung injuries.
Actually, my new artificial associative memory was slowly restoring my neural connections and supplying me with more and more information. For instance, I was pretty sure that the shuttle itself was a multipurpose landing bot, class “Hamster.” What gave it away were the multiple slots on its armor and the short, rudimentary wings – also known as cheeks in pilot slang – designed not for flying within atmospheres, but for equipping standard weapon modules which changed a ship’s configuration from a heavy attack spacecraft to a stationary defense center tower.
The growing rumbling of the thrusters reached our ears. The shuttle’s sturdy exterior stated to vibrate as did the armored passenger compartment. The group hurried to take their seats along the walls, putting on their seat belts. The Hamster was raised on the hangar’s grippers and noticeably shook as it was pulled out of the gate by the invisible magnetic field cables. The on-board siren gave a signal, warning the passengers of something unpleasant and saying "goodbye" to the losers who did not have time to fasten their seat belts. After that, the shuttle shot into the sky.
All seventy passengers grunted in unison; the insane acceleration of gravity knocked the air out of us. It was like getting kicked in the chest by a mighty horse. We couldn’t even draw a breath as if a heavy weight had crushed our chests, testing the strength of our ribcages.
Everyone’s medical bracelet beeped, and we all felt the needle of our personal injectors sink into our wrists. Because of the extreme physical overload, our dormant implants activated. Various check lists and the long columns of quick tests flashed on the periphery of my vision. The clever device determined the source and degree of danger and displayed a complex 3D visual with sections such as “situation forecast,” “recommended courses of action,” “possible outcome,” etc.
Either the ascent phase was over, or the onboard monitoring system kicked in, but the physical stress suddenly abated, and the shuttle smoothly flew along its course, no longer trying to impress us with aerial stunts.
The pilots were lucky because personal implants did not shun from suggesting the most inhumane methods of dealing with those who posed a threat to their bearers. These relatively harmless suggestions included: “generating and forwarding a report regarding the disruption of flight mode during the transportation of non-combatants,” or “imposition of (verbal/written/with entry into account) (fine/punishment) in accordance with offender’s rank.” The more severe ones were: “open the dividing plate in the marked area and sever the energy controller’s optic fiber block,” or “render the passenger to your left unconscious, use his body to shield yourself from the fire of the IMP-K-1x2, then open the hatch to the cockpit. The exhaustive code search script is attached. Recognition frequency carrier detected.”
After the threat disappeared, each implant monitored its bearer’s surroundings for a few more seconds, then briefly displayed the current module statuses, and turned off. I barely had time to skim an excerpt from my system log:
Blood filters. Status: OK. Resources: 99%. Workload: 27%.
Nanofactory. Status: OK. Resources: 96%. Workload: 99%. Reaction mass supply: 72%.
Neuronet. Status: acclimatization 14% complete. Resources: 100%. Workload: 0%.
Reserve nervous system. Status: sprouting 9% complete. Resources: 100%. Workload: 0%.
ROM unit. Status: phased data archive extraction. Resources: 99%. Workload: 46%.
RAM unit. Status: Yellow. Failed self-test EK81XX3, technical assistance required. Resources: 99%. Workload: 3%...
While I analyzed what I saw and realized to what extent I was now a cyborg, the others slowly came to. I heard constrained swearing as the guys made some serious threats directed at the pilots. The few girls we had in our group – about ten, all trying to stick together - also did not hold back from cursing.
“I’d tear those bitches’ manicured hands off!” whispered Lina who sat to my right.
Her baggy one-piece suit completely concealed the curves of her athletic body, saving her from having aggressive outbursts. Every time she caught someone looking at her appraisingly, her blue eyes filled with cold plasma as she was seized with the desire to incinerate the lewd boor.
I had no choice but to experience her rage, and, frankly speaking, I was sick of falling victim to the illogical female hormonal storm. My hands started to shake, while my mind egged me to give her a left hook to stop all this. Lina also caught my emotions, and, guided by the location of Sirius in the constellation Virgo, would either flare her nostrils in indignation, or guiltily drop her suspiciously shining eyes and bat her eyelashes.
We were playing ping-pong with our feelings. The Doc was right; we would have a lot fun together.
A force field suddenly appeared in the hold; a handsome Georgian had left his chair, deciding to play the tough guy, and attempted to break into the cockpit in order to give the impudent pilots what for.
>
The gun turret on the ceiling did not open fire; the force field it had activated was enough to stop him. He was put in his place quite mercilessly; the force field dealt him a punch, and he flew back, slammed into the closed loading ramp, then soundlessly slipped down to the deck floor. K.O.
The descent had been rough, although without counter-air defense maneuvers. It had shaken up my stomach, and I tasted sour bile. My esophagus was sterile as we had been fed intravenously all last week.
I didn’t feel anything when the landing probes touched the ground. The passenger seats were firmly attached to the inner armored compartment for protection in the event of nearby explosions and emergency landings.
Our pilot girls obviously showed us mercy this time. Usually during landing, the shuttle would enter a free fall plunge, or even turn on its cruise engines to propel itself downward and slow down a mere thousand feet away from the landing site.
The ramp instantly dropped. The siren barked, its red light blinking, and urged us forward with a splash of subsonic sounds: Get off, meatballs!
Group 13 rushed outside. I had to get in front of Lina so that the more high-strung of the troops wouldn’t accidentally trample down my master-gunsmith. Those bustlers went flying as they crashed into me. I was always a big guy, but now I must’ve been way over 200 pounds. Armored bones, artificial joints, multiple modules, and a bucketful of super-heavy nanobots made of rare earth elements found at the bottom of the periodic table – all this added at least 70 pounds of high-tech alloys to my body.
“Ouch!” came the cry of yet another oblivious fellow as he bounced off me. It was that shortish guy who had been in front of me back in the hangar, the one that wouldn’t stop staring at the high-tech wonders.
Barely suppressing my desire to kick his plump behind, I grabbed the chubby youth by the collar of his uniform, lifted him off the ground, and shook him, “Watch where you’re going!”
He cast a nervous look at the sound emitter. “I got scared… That sound hit me over the head like a baseball bat. Nearly blew my brains out.”
I nodded at the crowd by the hatch. We could hear content female laughter outside as another female battalion brightened up their dull working day by making flat jokes about the new recruits.
“Steer clear of them unless you want to be trampled,” I warned the guy. “And have some pride. Stay ahead of me; that siren doesn’t bark at me for some reason. What’s your name?”
The young man wrinkled his freckled nose, “Name’s Macarius. They signed me up to be a mechanic. Said I’d rotate fighter tails for a few years, complete a personal hormone therapy course, then do a year of “milking,” and then I could be a pilot myself! What’s milking, by the way? My head is in a muddle… I know for a fact that in pilot slang, it's what they call the mandatory draining of fire units and reactor waste from holding cells. But something smells fishy… Will I have to sit in a hot zone for a year? What did I do wrong?”
I exchanged glances with Lina and shook my head, “I don’t think so, Mac… We’ll see. Maybe you won’t have to be on that farm. Judging by the artificial meteor shower, Earth’s inhabitants stole quite a lot. Why don’t you become our mechanic? I got a glimpse of my job stats, and apparently heavy fighters require personal mechanics. The hawks need just one mechanic per team, but military crews get private babysitters.”
The youth, who looked no older than 16, filled with indignation, “But the servobots usually work fighters, and I can control three at a time by the way! Well… if they’re all of the same type, that is…”
He stopped short, realizing that this was a thinly veiled offer of a future high rank pilot. His eyes lit up with hope: “Oh, of course I want to work on a heavy space fighter! Which model do you have? Wasp? Or bumblebee? I hope it’s a bumblebee! Bumblebees have active shields in addition to the passive force fields. They’re energy hogs and don’t have the highest force vector, but they're still sick. Their survival rate is one third higher than that of spacecraft of comparable class. Maintainability, versatility… Space Volga-Don Shipyard says it all! Quality mark!”
I looked at Lina again. She smiled and nodded. First, the young man didn’t give her obscene glances. And second, he seemed to be fertile ground for the ROM archive extraction process, meaning he would make a great mechanic. I understood very little from his hasty speech.
Most of the group had gotten off by then, and we saw a formidable figure in lightweight field armor and a Corinthian tactical helmet appear in the open hatch. She bellowed through her helmet’s loudspeakers: “Do you need a personal invitation from the Dictator? Move it! You have seven seconds to get in formation, starting now!”
The girl reinforced her order by brandishing a sparking stun gun.
We raced toward the hatch. Judging by the sound of a smack and another “ouch,” Macarius got slapped on the behind.
The group squinted under the bright sun, shifting their feet as they stood on the huge runway field. The camouflaged airport with a two-mile-long radius was studded with scorched spots created by plasma exhausts. It looked like some pilots have had to take off and land using cruise engines only, without the aid of the force fields of spacecraft catapults.
Ten female sergeants circled group 13 like herding dogs. Trying to get the group into formation, the sergeants did not shun from kicking and using shockers on the newcomers. Slowly, the group formed a straight line; none of us were masochists or retards.
A drone hovered over our heads. It was a tiny thing the size of a soccer ball, yet it had enough arms to take out a modern rifle company.
We slipped to the very end of the line, which earned us a discontent glance from this… what should I call him… Terminator? The senior officer standing aloof had obviously been a man once. Now, all that was left of him was the head and a stump of his spine. Steel and high-strength composites replaced everything else. His ammo belt did not cover much, and his artificial body glistened in the sun.
The cyborg clearly read Lina’s and my stats and made a peremptory gesture to the formation’s right flank, “You two! To the start of the line, move!”
We had no choice but to obey. I felt someone’s angry eyes upon me again. This time, it was the big, sullen guy who had been in the first position before we arrived. Hmm, someone’s already eager to make their way up.
Putting on a gloomy look, I returned his angry stare to let him know that I was not about to take any crap from him. The ones who would had been left on Earth, or sent to the bioreactor.
“Group 13, attention!” barked a girl standing to the side, covered with moving tattoos. Her light, wide-open toga revealed her alluring body. But the spectral pattern gliding over her skin gave me a headache, and I had no desire to study her succulent flesh.
Her telepathy was so strong that everyone instantly stood at attention, wide-eyed, spines crunching from the effort.
“A psi-mod,” a warrior from the second row said hoarsely.
The second row consisted of our “trash” or “makeweight” as Cornelia Prime had maliciously termed them: paramedics, supercargoes, supporting bot drivers, heavy weapon operators, all sorts of mechanics, and god knows who else. They had all retained their reproductive functions and evaded the bioreactor. A fellow victim of the transfer – a former programmer, now a heavy infantry cyber-mod – called it “being conditionally suitable for genome diversification.” They had given him a year-long extension to replenish the sperm bank of Fifth Rome. After that, an AI would add up his points on his record card and decide if the army needed his contribution.
“At ease!” the cyborg waved his hand.
The telekinetic grip of steel relaxed. The group shuddered and wheezed. The Terminator smiled disdainfully and resumed speaking, “Welcome to the Coliseum, a virtual space force academy. I’m Captain Lucius Romanoff, curator of the Chronos experiment at this establishment. You will spend the next 15 years here. You will not leave here without 10,000 flight hours and a virtual ace silver star. If you do,
it’ll be as fuel bricks.”
The thunderstruck group began to vociferate, looking at each other in search of support. Fifteen years of training?! Some of us would be sent to retirement by then, or fed to the bioreactor.
Lucius gave us a crooked smile again, “Relax your asses, warmbloods! Less than a year will have passed in the real world; the virtual world time passes 16 times faster; 16.3, to be precise. And don’t ask where this coefficient came from; no one understands the time string theory in our space sector except for ten AIs and two or three scientist elders.”
The group heaved a collective sigh of relief and surveyed the cyborg. We were no longer completely human ourselves; a significant part of our bodies was now steel. Nevertheless, there is a chasm between a cyber-mod and a true cyborg. In fact, they two are more different than a human and a banana; at least humans and bananas share50 percent of their DNA.
I was surprised as I listened to my body. It turned out that in addition to abstract language concepts, I had also received certain emotions. I knew not whose knowledge I had been imbued with, but its original bearer clearly had a dislike for terminators, feared women in armor, and fervently worshipped space fighters.
The captain kept talking. He obviously had no lungs, and did not need to open his mouth to speak; his steely, harsh voice came through external loudspeakers: “…the alpha-modernization you have been subjected to is practically useless without proper unification with your psychomotor systems and the merging of your minds with the implants’ functions and capacities. Essentially, you have been given a seed which you still have to grow. You must do so laboriously, with great care, fertilizing it with your own sweat and blood. The degree of your own 'overclocking' depends entirely on your faith and diligence. Solve a thousand integrals in your head, and the nanites will reinforce the newly formed neural connections, mark them with pointer addresses, and enter them into the resource worksheet. After that, the given brain sector will become available for active and background tasks, and your intellectual and mnemonic abilities will increase.”