The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  Firenze should have laughed this off, just some ranting of a soldier against the enemy, but there was a frank honesty here that sent chills through him. The old man was honest about the brain virus. Why would he lie about this? "Why are we even working with him?"

  "Because soldiers don't get a choice. We have to deal with him if we're going to save lives."

  Firenze said, "Alright. I follow you. What's his name?"

  "Berenson." Halstead spat it. "The Devil himself. Give him any name, he's still the same monster."

  "Okay, so: don't talk to strangers, don't go outside, and avoid this dude. Got it." Firenze commented.

  Halstead patted him on the shoulder and said, "Good, your snark's back. That means the fire's still burning. Get your fluids up, get some solid food, and then someone will show you to your bunk. You'll be working with Lieutenant Donegan, our EWO. This will not be easy, but I've seen your file, son, and you thrive on challenges. You will adapt, you will overcome, and you will triumph. Just remember: today is always the hardest day."

  #

  "You're dead! You are all dead!" Sergeant Clausen snapped, as he stopped the timer. "Too slow up there, mission failed! Can someone tell me what just happened?"

  The Sergeant stood next to Lieutenants Poole and Donegan. The the two officers watched silently, occasionally compared notes, and muttered with lowered heads. Sergeant Clausen, though, climbed up, onto one of the shipping crates, to get a better view of the makeshift training ground: a combination of crates, plasterboard, and holographic imagery mashed into a makeshift Airship. Standing over the "dead men", the massive soldier glared down, his expression somewhere between glowering and puzzling, as he waited for his answer.

  Firenze doubled over, on his hands and knees, hands pressed out flat on the cold cement floor, drops of sweat plunging from his clumped hair, to detonate against the gray tiles. He could taste the salt in the air, his stink mixed with the acrid stench of gunsmoke. Blanks. Training rounds, synced to a VR-suite and laser tag marker, to simulate live fire environments without the risk of live rounds. His nose hurt from the stink, his ears rang from the fading echoes of the simulation, and every muscle screamed from tension and terror. God. What is the real thing like?

  He wasn't a soldier. He was a graduate student. I am going to die.

  He couldn’t see. Sweat clung to his glasses, blinded him like snow, turned the laser-HUD to color-splashed chaos. His heart pounded, beat against the walls of his chest, like fireworks on Foundation Day.

  “I'll tell you what happened, Sarn't." That was Rutman's voice. Firenze couldn’t look up, couldn’t even raise his head. He heard Rutman speak, in that slow-easy-slur, "FNG's too slow."

  FNG. Fucking new guy. Me. Firenze tried to stand. His arms gave out, and he crashed to the concrete. His muscles shook. His core hurt, from the concussion grenades. His brain swam through a stew of sweat, adrenaline, and failure-induced-rage. Too fast. We're moving too fast! I can't crack the sec while sprinting down the damn hallway. If we just stopped, just for a moment-

  Firenze heard boots thump into the cracked floor, the "whoof" of air forced from lungs. Clausen had jumped down. Oh, shit. A shadow fell over him, and Firenze could feel the stare. Firenze squeezed his eyes shut, tried to will away the world. The sergeant asked, "Alright. Why?"

  Silence. No one answered.

  Firenze opened his eyes, turned his head up. Sergeant Clausen stared dowm at him. Not angry, not disgusted. Worried.

  Firenze wanted to curl up, and die.

  His own thoughts tore at him. Why can't you cut it? Every one of these soldiers is going to die because you can't pull your weight. They are all going to die, and it’s your fault, and everyone knows it-

  He didn’t have an answer. All he had were excuses. He pleaded, “"Sir, I'm not- we're going too fast. If I'm going to lock this down- it's delicate, and all the shooting and running-"

  Clausen didn't answer. Donegan took that honor. The EWO’s voice cut, as he called from the observation platform, “This isn’t school, princess! You don’t have time to sanitize your damn code! Set your box, prep for ICE, and hammer down. Good enough is good enough, and perfect gets men killed.” The words stung. Cut. He’d hoped for an ally in the “netboss”, but instead, he’d found a nemesis.

  Donegan was an ass. He was arrogant, snide - the kind of too-smart-teacher who liked to ask ‘impossible’ questions on the first day of class, not to challenge the students, but to assert dominance. Firenze had faced profs like him, before. He’d answered that question, every time, and braved the semester of hazing that followed. Each time, he’d walked away with his four-point-oh and a smug handshake.

  But here?

  Every mistake, every miscalculation, every bad call - Donegan was right there, to tell him exactly how he’d gone wrong. It was one thing to be called out by that guy. It was an order of magnitude worse to be called out, correctly. The truth was, Firenze wasn’t good enough.

  He’d failed.

  A tree-trunk arm looped under his shoulder, hauled him to his feet. Clausen pulled him to his feet, and looked him dead in the eyes. The sergeant said, "Once more."

  "I can't-"

  "I don’t know those words." Clausen punched him in the shoulder, just hard enough to hurt. "Step up."

  Firenze glanced around. The team leaned against posts throughout the makeshift "Airship", half-sat on prefab consoles. Every one of them was grody, sweat-stained. They chugged from water bottles, and scrubbed dirt from their goggles. Kawalski argued with Hill, a tersely-animated exchange about ‘base of fire’, mobility, and a split hallway. They all watched him. Some, like Rutman, glared dead at him, chewing on a fist-sized chunk of dip. Others watched surrepitously, from aside-glances and peripheral stares. But, they all watched. They stood, and watched. He was held up.

  Without thinking, without meaning, the traitorous truth slipped his lips. He said, “I’m not good enough.”

  "Bullshit.” Clausen snapped, in a voice so commanding that if he’d told him that blue was red, Firenze would have believed him. The sergeant said, “You’re the best there is. You just keep getting in your own way. The el tee’s right. Forget perfect. Get it done."

  You don't know a damn thing about network security, Firenze wanted to scream. Instead, he said, "I’m failing."

  "Yep." Clausen agreed. "And we're gonna run this until you stop. So fix it. Or we’re gonna get real sick of this room."

  All the eyes were on him. The team, scattered around the room, pretending not to watch him The officers, huddled on the platform. Donegan’s team, plugged into the TACNET feed. Firenze could feel the weight of it. Even breathing was a struggle, a desperate fight to resist the urge to scream, run, curl up - anything but meet those judging eyes. He muttered, "They all hate me."

  "Wrong.” Clausen said, in that implacable voice. “They're disappointed. They'll only hate you if you quit."

  "I can't-"

  "Not an option. Run. It. Again."

  Firenze wanted to cry. Not the ‘cute’ kind of sorrow-tears from vids, but an ugly, desperate, I’m-fucked-and-can’t-stop-it sob. He wanted to tunnel back in time, and stab himself, for looking inside that damned box. You just had to know, didn't you?

  In any other place, any other time, he would have run. He would have hid, tucked himself inside the bosom of the net, and washed away this horrible world with another, better version. He would have woken up from the nightmare.

  But this wasn’t any other place. This wasn’t any other time.

  Clausen shoved a bottle into his hands. The plastic was cold, slick. He nodded, thanks, and took a chug. Water, blissfully cold, poured down his throat, assuaged his screaming muscles. The spike of ice pieced his brain, pushed the doubt away with a rush of pain.

  He had no choice.

  "Alright, people. Stack up! We go on mark!" Clausen commanded.

  Firenze took another gulp, replaced nebulous fear with certain, frozen ache. He closed his eyes, focused on the brain-fre
eze. When he opened them, Kawalski was waiting.

  She stood square in front of him, green eyes stabbing out from under a garrison cap. “Come on, Princess.” She said. “They promised us the best.” Her voice was rough, like she'd gargled gin since she was seven, but there was clarity in her tone, and an earnestness. She wanted him to succeed.

  That makes it worse.

  She stared at him, took his measure. "Hey!" She snapped, "You with us?"

  Firenze blinked, slowly. The pain receded. The ache remained. The doubt remained.

  Donegan had turned away, to whisper with Lieutenant Poole. Clausen stood back on his boxes, ready. Kawalski stared right at him. There was no choice. None. Maybe it was perverse, but the moment it truly dawned on him, the moment he grokked it, some of the fear left. It was pointless to cry. It was useless to run. A sort of tranquility washed over him with that acceptance, a peace of the damned. There was only one way out of this.

  You're in the army, now!

  He almost wanted to laugh, if only in defiance of tears. There was no choice.

  He met her stare, gave a curt nod. He answered, and tried to pretend he meant it, "Yeah. I'm good. Let's do it."

  Kawalski gave him a shark-tooth grin in reply, and nodded. She clapped his shoulder, and declared, “Fucking A, Princess. Let’s hit this bitch!”

  He gave his best lying-nod back, as the team took up positions. What was it that Halstead had told him? It had to get better than this. He just had to remember: today was the hardest day.

  #

  Hours became days. Days became weeks. Weeks ceased to have meaning.

  Life was a blur of gunfire and code. Morning came with "PT", runs through warehouses that he couldn't avoid, pull-ups and jumps and weights and crunches that left him dead tired before he was fully woke. He puked up his guts a dozen times. Day after day, he’d dry heave in an abandoned silo while everyone ran circles around him, rather than leave him behind. He’d escape to breakfast, and try to eat alone, so no one would have do deal with the FNG that kept getting them killed, made them run the sims until they collapsed. Every day, he’d hope he could have thirty minutes without the stares, without Rutman and Hill and the jokes about "Princess this" and "Princess that" and the crossed wires in his brain.

  It never worked.

  He'd sit down, crack open his muffin and stare at the freeze dried "berries" inside, and before he could convince himself to try to swallow the thing, he'd be flanked by macho assholes who called each other nonsense names like "Scooch", "Tuber", "Dag", and the always-confounding "Bugtuck".

  There was no escape.

  They ran simulations, died over and over, in new hallways and junctions, tried to save surprise civilians and cut through concealed enemies and ambush "kill boxes". He wrestled with networks and tried to dodge bullets. He cracked an AI while someone dragged him down a hallway by his ‘buddy-handle’. He popped pressure doors and sealed bulkheads, while dodging the scalding dust from Hill’s machinegun.

  Lunch came as a relief, but right after, it was back into the mix. He had a scance few minutes to update his kit, prep better programs, build new defenses against their hunter/killers, come up with spam screens to hold off the torches. Every millisecond was critical, every line of code precious. Cut a line, alter a function, shave clock cycles. Move forward to the next node, hardlink, shave transmission time. Blow disused relays with physical charges, force the reroutes on enemy netsec. Close doors to alter enemy defenses. Alter the net from the physical. Alter the physical from the net. Everything hinged on everything else. It was madness.

  Donegan was better. The man was an ass. His code was crude and brutish. He treated his mask like a leashed dog. But he built a wicked toolbox, and had the skill to use them, right. He was less a surgeon, more a butcher. He flipped between TACNET defense, and aggressive pressure on the opfor net, without losing ground. He could push entire rings of counter-hackers off balance, manipulate the battlespace, and still pop off shots between runs. It was an terrifying juggling act, as he kept only the most catastrophic balls in the air, avoided and neutralized the maximum risks, while he maneuvered the team into advantageous position. Donegan didn’t try to hold the whole net. He would give ground, sacrifice entire systems for peak moments, and physically wreck the hardware he couldn’t control. "Digital triage", Donegan called it. It was unlike anything at university. Firenze could only watch, take note, and imitate.

  The only thing Firenze was actually better at was countering the Phalanx AI. Donegan’s dance was effective against predictable computers and fallible humans. Against a high-end limited AI, the unsubtle nature of his shortcuts and brute-force cracks became a liability, and his speed was laughably inadequate. In contrast, Firenze’s expertise and mask synchronization let him outflank the Phalanx, and code around textbook executables. Where Donegan had to start from the edges, and race the AI to the center, Firenze could load a poison-pill, and blast the admin right off the net. The problem there was that he needed to be jacked in. That meant unconscious. That meant stationary. On a battlefield. Every time he loaded up, he exposed his team to flanking, encirclement, and overrun; terms he'd rapidly come to understand as "death, death, and more death".

  He spent his afternoons with the network teams. They brainstormed. They ran sims against each other, consulted plans and diagrams of the Airship networks, hardware and software, and picked over every piece of the puzzle: did the Sentro Suite have a problem with buffer flow? Was the L566 chipset particularly prone to overheating? How did the Phalanx Security Intelligence prioritize multiple threats in of a particular configuration, when lacking access to three local cores?

  Dinner was solitary. He'd try and stop the headaches, sit in his bunk and fiddle with his assist box. The mask understood, at least. She'd try and defrag his head, perk him up with comments about "Hey, you're faster than Lieutenant Jerkface in a run against the Phalanx, right?" or "Hey, you didn't puke today! That's three in a row!" He'd agree and thank her, but then go back to staring at the security maps. They'd sit there and cut up the day's sims, plan out a quicker (always quicker) route for the evening, and then agree that this time it should work.

  Evening runs exposed new flaws, more deaths, and the occasional lucky break. They pounded at each scenario until they cleared it, like clockwork, then they’d run another, just to fail, and get something think about during dark hours.

  Late evening was more PT, and Hill dragged him down to the boxing ring to pound on him. The first few times, he'd tried to escape, but someone always forced him back inside the ropes. It didn't matter if he had to "work on protocols". It didn't matter if he could barely stand. Somewhere along the line, someone had decided that he needed to be a fighter, and so into the arena he'd go, and let Hill pound him into oblivion, while he flailed back, useless, and wondered why universe hated him so very much. Some days, he wished he'd just chosen “Treason”, and died in jail. It would have been faster.

  But every night, when Hill put him into the mat, he’d pick himself up. He’d stand up, and lean on the ropes, and do his best to smile, like it he wasn’t broken. He pretended to endure, out of pride. He'd always been the best, the smartest kid in the room. He clung to that scrap of ego, let it fuel him. He had to succeed. He couldn't fail, he wouldn't! He wouldn’t let Donegan and the Agency and the jackass professors and the perverse universe win. He'd endure, and every night, when he staggered to bed, he'd tell himself, "Today was the hardest."

  He'd black out before he hit the pillow. Dawn would be on him before he felt the mattress. And then, he would start the hardest day of his life, all over again.

  #

  The punch landed against his stomach. It hit like a freight train, and rammed the air from his lungs. He gasped, tried to fight the urge to fold. He pulled his arms up, desperate to block Hill’s next punch. The blow struck against his forearm, drove his own fists into his face, but his guard held. Firenze reacted by touch, twisted back to snag Hill’s arm and lock it, pulled the soldier
into a dronetown cop-lock.

  Unlike the street toughs caught in that arm-bar, though, Hill barely paused.

  With a sudden twist of the commando's elbow, Firenze's hold vanished, and he found himself spun out of position-

  He followed the momentum, whirled, drove his elbow towards back of Hill's skull-

  But Hill wasn’t there. The soldier staggered forward, and the would-be-blow barely grazed the back of his shaved head, before it passed into empty air.

  For a moment - a split second, really - Firenze had a chance to think. He’d almost formed a plan, when Hill struck.

  The lights swung overhead, and he slammed into the mat.

  Firenze scrambled to get atop the melee, but Hill was already there. A leg viced him against the mat, so strong that the blue plastic stretched white around his head. The whole world stank, of sweat and industrial cleaner. He curled up, on instinct, tried to ward off the inevitable blows-

  Hill pushed him down. An iron hand closed on his neck, forced him back. Weight pressed on his legs, forced his defensive shell open-

  The first punch landed on his chest. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, just enough force to remind him that he’d been hit. Cherry taps, for the FNG. He's taunting me.

  Desperation and anger blended. Firenze moved with an inhuman howl. He bucked, hurled Hill’s arm away. He kicked up, drove his knee into Hill’s dick. The soldier froze, a look of shock on his face. His jaw hung open, eyes bulged. Firenze snatched him, flipped the hold, hurled the man to the mat.

  He reared back, and hurled down a punch. Another! A third!

  The lights spun, again. He slammed into the plastic, bounced, the edge of the cement inches from his face. He tried to turn, to see what was coming-