Forgotten and foresworn until another crisis nears.
Until another crisis nears, my boys, until another crisis nears.
Forgotten and foresworn until another crisis nears.
No children women born will serve as soldiers to defend
Without the praise or citizenship at the service end
They say the cannies lack all ethics, blood-warm heart, and head
Beyond the safety of the squad, the tactics, and the bed.
But it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, you’re the best.”
But when the ceasefire silence falls, it’s “Canny, take a rest.”
It’s “Canny, take a rest,” my boys, it’s “Canny take a rest.”
But when the ceasefire silence falls, it’s “Canny, take a rest.”
We wouldn’t mind a country or a planet of our own
A home to watch the seasons change, to reap what we have sown.
But corporate’s got us patented, marked and titled like a herd.
Our souls are static noise; our fair concerns are never heard.
So it’s “Get ’em, canny; stop ’em, canny; canny, nothing more.”
Another bottle troop to die upon a distant shore.
For as it is and as it was, forever so it seems,
But know, and fear: when canny sleeps, the canny plots in dreams.
Editor’s Introduction to:
WHAT PRICE HUMANITY?
by David VanDyke
David VanDyke is a former U.S. Army Airborne soldier and USAF officer who has rapidly become one of the leading military science fiction authors. Here is a tale of future space war that seems as if it’s going to follow a familiar pattern. Be warned. It doesn’t.
WHAT PRICE HUMANITY?
By David VanDyke
With their vast, intelligently designed living ships, the hostile aliens we call Meme employ superior strategic mobility in the outer Solar System. They are able to operate with few bases and no resupply more advanced than the nearest collection of asteroids and cometary nuclei. They lurk within the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, losing themselves among millions of objects across incredible distances, consuming ices, metals and silicates to refuel, replenish and reproduce.
While gathering strength, they raid, attacking our outposts and asteroid acquisition operations, our transiting cargo ships and task forces, looking for easy victories, forcing us to expend more resources than they. In accordance with their conservative—the misinformed might say cowardly—nature, they hit and run, always with the aim of preserving themselves while damaging us.
In return, we employ heavy sweeps of areas where we suspect their presence. When we meet them, we defeat them if they stand; thus, they seldom give battle. Screened by clouds of living hypervelocity missiles, they flee faster than we can pursue until we retire again to the orbit of Jupiter, the true edge of human territory.
Thus, for a time, we fight the classic asymmetric war. Our machines, our discipline and our locally superior firepower are mismatched by the Meme ability to strike with little warning, inflict damage, and withdraw with impunity.
That is until, every decade or two, reinforcements arrive from beyond the Solar System.
Each time, the Meme gather to conduct a massive assault, hoping to penetrate our defenses and damage our single, fragile home planet. Each time, we have beaten them back with great losses, heroic sacrifices. Each time, their remnants withdraw to the outer reaches to continue their guerrilla warfare and await the next push.
And each time, they come closer to wiping us out.
We are losing this war, not because we are getting weaker, but because they grow stronger more rapidly than we are. And they can afford to lose, whereas we must win, every single time.
To continue to win, I believe humanity has no choice but to consider inhumane solutions to inhuman threats, to fight fire with fire.
And yet, if we ignite this conflagration, might we not burn down our own house?
—Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2109 A.D.
***
“Do you know who you are?”
The woman’s warm, professional voice soothed him. “Sure. I’m Vango Markis. Captain Vincent Markis, EarthFleet, Aerospace branch, I mean. What happened? Did I get hurt?”
“Nothing we can’t fix. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m blind. Why can’t I see?”
“You don’t have use of your eyes.”
“Why can’t I feel anything? Will I fly again?”
“We’ll explain all that soon, Captain Markis. For now, we need to re-baseline your cognitive profile while we work on your body.”
“Call me Vango. It’s my call sign. You’re a doctor?”
“I am.”
“How bad is it, doc?”
“You’re not dead. You’re thinking clearly enough to converse.”
“But will I fly again?”
“Yes, Captain Markis. You’ll fly.”
Vango detected a false note behind her calm and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. How bad could it be? Between the Eden Plague’s healing and the reconstructive nanotech, if the brain made it back alive and undamaged, the body could eventually be regenerated, cell by cell, good as new.
That must be it. He couldn’t remember, but he must have been hit bad, really bad, worse than he’d ever been. He wondered about the other fliers in his squadron. Did they make it back?
Make it back from what, though? He couldn’t remember.
“Doc, what happened?”
“What’s the last thing you recall? Tell me your last memory of anything at all.”
“I’ll rack my brain.” He tried to laugh, but felt no muscles respond. How was he speaking? It must be a low-level neural link, audio only.
“Was that supposed to be humorous? Humor’s a good sign. Now please answer the question, Captain Markis.”
“You can call me Vango. Really. I remember…I remember heading back to Earth from Callisto, sealing into the coldsleep cocoon. Hate those things, the slime and everything. Don’t trust captured Meme biotech.”
“Do you remember waking up?”
“No.”
“Do you remember anything after that? A mission, perhaps?”
Vango mulled this over, trying to strain out the most recent memory among the many sorties he’d flown against the Meme, but everything seemed to muddle together. “I’m not sure. I remember a lot of missions. Last one I’m sure of is when we beat the Destroyer.”
“That’s all right. Confusion is to be expected.”
“Why aren’t I in full VR link? Is my visual cortex damaged?”
“We’re taking it slow, working from the ground up. We’ve already done as much as we could while you were unconscious. Now we have to ask you a battery of questions. Please bear with us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please let me know when you’re ready.”
“What’s your name, doc?”
“My name’s Sue, Captain Markis. What’s yours?”
If he had eyes to roll, he would have, and didn’t bother to insist a third time she call him Vango. “Humor’s a good sign.”
“Humor’s a good sign.”
“Okay, fire away.”
“Is there a fire?”
“No…go ahead and ask, I mean.”
Although the doctor’s voice rang with tones of purest English, Vango couldn’t precisely identify her accent. Still, he thought it sounded a bit unnatural. A translation program, then, for someone speaking another language. Software often stumbled over idioms or translated varying phrases exactly the same.
“Where are you from, doc?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts. How about you?”
Interesting. His guess about Sue as a non-native speaker of English seemed to be wrong. “I’m from Carletonville, South Africa, as you should know.”
“Why should I know?”
“We need to move on, Captain Markis. I have many patients to attend,” Sue said. “We’re going to start with maths. What’s five plus eight?”
“Thirteen.”
“Twelve times three?”
“Thirty-six.”
“The value of pi?”
“To how many decimal places?”
The questions went on like this for hours, becoming rapidly more complex and covering language, history, science and more. Vango found himself happy to exercise his mind and felt little fatigue, experienced no difficulty.
“How’d I do?”
“Very well, Captain Markis. Tomorrow we’ll run some more sophisticated tests.”
“Tomorrow? What’ll I do until then?”
“Sleep. Pleasant dreams, Captain Markis.”
“Dammit, I’m not–”
Vango awoke with no sensation of drifting or lethargy, nor did he remember dreaming. It was as if someone threw a switch and he came whole unto consciousness.
“Good morning, Captain Markis. Did you sleep well?”
“I think so. Can I see something today?”
“Auditory tests will be conducted today.”
“I can hear you just fine, Sue.”
“We still have to run the tests.”
Vango sighed mentally and compartmentalized, telling himself it was just another hurdle to be jumped, another step toward getting back into the cockpit.
The day dragged, and at the end of it he was almost glad to be put to sleep.
“Good morning, Captain Markis. Did you sleep well?”
“You can ditch the script, Sue. Just talk to me like a normal person. English isn’t your first language, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“But you said you were from Massachusetts.”
“That’s true.”
“It’s true that you said it, or what you said is true?”
“Both are true.”
“What’s your first language, anyway?”
There came a perceptible pause. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to discuss anything further about myself at this time, Captain Markis.”
“At this time? Why?”
“We don’t want to skew the tests. You and I must remain emotionally detached.”
“Who said?”
“That’s another thing I can’t discuss. You’ll understand in time.”
“Maybe I want to understand it now. Maybe I’m sick of your damn tests and won’t take any more until I get some information.” He wasn’t fed up—not quite—but perhaps as a negotiating ploy…
“Your readings do not indicate sufficient agitation to refuse. Besides, you’re a military man. You raised your hand and swore to uphold Earth’s constitution and obey the lawful orders of the officers appointed over you.”
“Are you an officer appointed over me?”
“No, but I’m relaying the instructions of those who are.”
“Then I demand to know who’s giving the orders.”
“These orders come from Admiral Huen.”
“Not from my father?”
“Chairman Markis and the Council of Earth have delegated authority to Admiral Huen in these matters. You know how the chain of command works.”
“Does he know what’s happened to me?”
“To which ‘he’ do you refer?”
“My father.”
“Your father has been briefed.”
“Why can’t I talk to him?”
“You must complete the program first. Now, Captain Markis, we must proceed with the testing regimen.”
Vango sighed, or tried to, though he felt no lungs, no air. “Sue, you’re one hardass bitch.”
“You’re not the first to say so. We will now continue with the testing regimen.”
“Then for the love of God, please tell me I get to see something today.”
“Yes, a bit later. Touch and smell baselining will take a couple of hours. Afterward, you will see.”
He steeled himself for more tedium. “Okay, let’s get moving.”
The first visual Vango received was of a blank plain, a whiteness broken only by the hint of a horizon at an indeterminate distance. He looked down and saw his feet, his legs and his torso, and when he moved them into view, his hands. They lacked the exquisite detail of the real thing, though, identifying this as a VR sim, a virtuality not so different from what he saw when he linked in to the computer network in a fighter, though of lower resolution.
“Is that better?” Sue said.
“Hugely. You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck inside your own head with no one to talk to.”
“You might be surprised.” The horizon clarified, and the plain took on a texture like carpet. “Walk, please.”
Vango walked. Shapes appeared, resolving themselves into three-dimensional geometric representations—cubes, pyramids, spheres—then into more complex objects such as chairs and tables, houses and cars, airplanes and Fleet spacecraft. Each time he was asked to identify and interact with the items.
“Look, I’m acing these tests. Obviously I’m not impaired, right?”
“Not significantly. Your cognition is running above ninety-seven percent of normal.”
“Then please, may I see something real? Link me into the grid. Give me full VR with people in here. I’m sick of playing your games.”
“These are not games, Captain Markis. They are evaluations designed to identify flaws.”
“Flaws in what?”
“Your ability to perform to specifications.”
“You make me sound like a part in a machine.”
“What is a pilot but the most important piece of his craft?”
“Like you’re the most important piece of the mechanism of modern medicine?”
“Of course.”
“Doc, are you even human?” Vango meant it as a joke, but the question had an unexpected effect, bringing on an extended pause, and then he felt himself losing consciousness.
When he came to, no Sue spoke in greeting. Instead, he woke up in a dimly lit, nondescript chamber bereft of windows.
Not his bed and not his room. Not a bunk in an officer’s shipboard stateroom. Someplace dirtside, then. He felt about one G of pull, which meant he was likely on Earth in some kind of medical facility.
Swinging his legs out of bed, he stood in loose-fitting pajamas and bare feet on a warm, carpeted floor. The motion evidently triggered the lights, showing a small desk with a chair, a wall locker and nothing else.
All this confirmed his suspicions. He occupied a high-class simulation. His body must still be undergoing reconstruction in a nanotank. He’d never been injured badly enough to need one for more than a day, but a full rebuild would take months. He resigned himself to a stretch inside the virtuality, and afterward the inevitable VR-addiction detox, the bane of those who spent too much time in the link.
Opening the room’s locker, he found a flight suit with his name and rank on it and pulled it on, along with socks and boots. Better to obey the rules of this virtuality than override them, if that was even allowed. As an experiment he tried to call a lit cigarette into being, and then a cup of coffee, but failed. So, no freebies.
Suitably attired, he squared his shoulders and opened the door, finding a hallway that could have come from any Aerospace-branch barracks, with the usual art on the walls showing fighters, bombers, attack and transport craft from eras stretching back to the Wright Brothers.
“Token!” Vango felt a greater flood of relief than he’d expected as he spotted his tall, ebony-skinned wingman stepping into the hall, similarly attired.
“Hey, Vango. You getting rebuilt too?”
“I guess. They haven’t told me much for sure. Nothing s
ince the tests.”
“Yeah, me neither. And they didn’t let me contact anyone.”
“Maybe we’re on slow time. That way it won’t feel like months.”
“All the more reason to let us talk to someone.”
Vango looked up at the ceiling, a common habit when addressing a ship’s computer or a sim’s controller. “Sue, you there? Anyone?”
No answer came.
“Maybe this is more testing,” Token said. “Maybe we’re supposed to figure things out for ourselves as a way of keeping us occupied.”
“I don’t appreciate being played games with. I don’t usually like to drop the Markis name, but I hope someone’s listening when I say I doubt my father will be pleased when he hears we’ve been poorly treated.”
Token waited a moment, eyes also lifted as if to see whether that declaration would bring a response, and then he shrugged. “You know how doctors are. Petty gods. They’ll claim medical necessity.”
“We’ll see.” Vango strode down the hall, banging on doors until more than two dozen people stood in the hallway, all of varying degrees of familiarity, but none unknown. He had the odd feeling that some of them were out of place, as if they didn’t quite match with his recollections, or with each other.
That was it. He was certain they hadn’t all served together at the same time. And one of them…
“Stevie?”
The short, blonde lieutenant as usual crackled with energy and filled out her flight suit in a way that made him ache with powerful nostalgia, though oddly, not the lust he expected. Before, when they’d been involved, she’d been his wildest fling, full of fiery chemistry.
“Hey, Vee.” Her strong Southern-U.S. accent brought back a flood of memories. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Vango seized her in a crushing hug, drawing catcalls and whistles from the others as he kissed her tentatively, she more enthusiastically. “Stevie, I don’t understand,” he said into her bobbed hair. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”
“Guess not, old son.” She slapped him on the butt and pushed him to arm’s length, continuing in a Mark Twain drawl, “It seems reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
There Will Be War Volume X Page 27