by Kalina, Mark
There was a moment of disorientation, and he was "in" the VR, interacting via his VR persona, feeling and seeing simulated data created by the interceptor's computer.
Nas "looked" around. He was alone in a small virtual space; a simple white chamber, like the underside of a small dome. The floor was soft and yielding. It felt like about one gee: standard gravity, which was a bit jarring after so long in high gee maneuvers or in free-fall. Of course, the feeling of gravity, like all sensations here, was just part of the VR.
There was just a single point light source, though he could not actually see it, which was unrealistic, but probably served to reduce the processor power this little virtual room required. He'd seen much better VRs, but the simplicity of this one allowed for a decent sensory resolution. The sensation of breathing and standing in his VR persona "body" felt almost real.
"So, what did you want to talk about?" he asked towards the empty room. "Are you even here?"
"I'm here," Zandy said.
Nas said nothing. Zandy had manifested a high resolution VR body, looking very much like her biosim avatar. She was lovely. And naked.
"I decided, before the battle, that I wanted this," she said, crossing the few steps to stand right in front of Nas. "But there was no time to do it on your ship, and your cat might have been jealous."
"She's not actually the jealous type," Nas said, reaching out and taking the tall, slim woman in his arms. She pressed against him and kissed him, first softly, and then with intensity, pressing her tongue against his.
Nas didn't really go for VR sex, not as a rule, but it seemed that the little interceptor's computer had enough power to make the tiny VR pretty high fidelity, at least where it counted. And maybe it was Zandy who made it better than Nas had expected.
"Is that what you wanted?" he asked, when they were done, lying next to her, feeling her body against his. Her skin was warm and damp, and, for a moment, it didn't matter that it was just VR, just artificial neural impulses generated by a computer program and sent into his brain through a data link.
"Yes. It was what I wanted. I think you enjoyed it, too."
"Sure," Nas said. "I wouldn't mind doing it again, for real next time... or is it more real to you in your avatar?"
"Yes, it's more real in a biosim avatar. Actually, I can't tell the difference, or can't remember a difference, between what it feels like in my biosim avatar and what my birth-body felt like. But this was nice too."
"So now what? You go back to your Fleet?" Nas asked.
"Yes. It's where I belong. My extended family, I guess. I'm sorry for what they did to you, but it's still my home... warts and all.
"And I'm sorry about this, too," Zandy went on. "If we ever meet again, and you're not too mad, I think I'd like to take you up on your offer. Maybe dinner, and then a nice room together for the night... or even a few nights."
"What are you sorry about?" Nas asked.
"You could even bring your cat... I actually like girls, you know."
"Really? OK. But sorry about what?"
"I have to go," Zandy said, and Nas was suddenly alone in the VR.
"Fuck," he said, and disconnected, finding himself back in his command pod on the bridge of the Whisperknife, where, in fact, he had always been.
"Captain," Warez said. "We've picked up a little side-scatter from what I think is a hyper-bandwidth link between the interceptor and the swift-ship.
"Right," Nas said. "That's Zandy heading back."
"Shit!" exclaimed Warez suddenly, and Nas linked into the sensor officer's data feed. And saw what made him exclaim.
The interceptor was an expanding sphere of debris and incandescent gas.
"Demolition charge," Nas mused, not even sure if he was angry or not. That was what she'd been sorry about...
"FTL initiation," Warez said, calmly this time, sending the data to Nas. "Looks like the Ice Knife is out of here."
Nas shook his head, trying for a moment to decide how angry he should be. Fucking missile guidance unit with delusions of humanity, he thought. She has got some fire in her though... and a sense of style.
"Stand by for acceleration," he said, focusing on the command data feed.
"What now, Captain," asked Xulios. "We fucking needed that interceptor... with the cost of the warheads we used..."
"Never mind, Xulios," Nas said. "Warez, get me a sensor scan back along our vector line. There's a more-or-less intact Coalition interceptor drifting somewhere back there. Ought to be worth something."
Whisperknife's plasma drive flared as Nas boosted his ship towards his prize.
21
"Admiral Narita," said Freya Tralk as the tall man stepped up to her.
His steps showed that he was not perfectly adapted to the spin-gravity of the Neomegara Fleet Orbital Station. Stepping with the spin made the pseudo-gravity feel lighter, against the spin made it feel heavier. The admiral claimed to be more used to free-fall, spending as much time as he could aboard the assault-ship Battle Lord, his flag-ship. Sometimes he would even beam back to the ship at the end of a day's meetings and hearings, switching to a backup avatar he kept aboard.
Freya wasn't perfectly used to the spin gravity either, but then, she thought, she was still a bit clumsy in her new custom avatar. It was a superb avatar, she had to admit. Far better than the back-up avatar she had been using. Better even than the one she had abandoned, shot almost to uselessness, back on Yuro IV. It had taken the custom shop more than a hundred hours to complete.
The admiral smiled as he looked down at her. His cloned bio-avatar matched his original height of just over two meters, and he towered over Freya's one meter, sixty six centimeters.
"That was a good report, Demi-Captain Tralk," he said. "I think the board has the answers it needs."
"I hope so, Sir. I have to admit I'm happy to be done with it."
"Yes, I can understand that. You aren't the only one, I think. That civilian captain, Rilk; I think he looked almost celebratory when his testimony was finally over. I'm sorry we had to put him through that, but it was necessary.
"And I'm sorry that you weren't able to keep command of the Ice Knife in the end. But we need that ship repaired and deployed, and we needed you here for the hearings."
"I understand, Sir," Freya said, managing to keep her voice neutral.
"I expect we'll have a command for you soon enough, Captain. We need to make best use of your talents..."
"Thank you, Sir," Freya said. Then, "what do you think will happen, Sir?"
"You mean with the Coalition, or with the infiltration on Yuro?"
"Both, Sir," Freya said.
"Yuro has been 'reinforced' with a substantial squadron. The local SDF is being investigated by Central Throne Inspectorate agents. From the last communication, no one has found the missing Central Throne representative yet, but what's left of his records seems to point to confirming your suspicions.
"The fact is, it's a mess. The local aristokratai families are all being investigated as well, to see if there's evidence of treason. A mess."
"Sorry, Sir."
"Not at all. You didn't cause the mess. And better we deal with a mess in Yuro now than have the system break away with Coalition support in a tenkay or so."
"Do you think this was about grabbing the Yuro system?"
"No," the admiral said. "No, I think it was... well, I doubt they would have turned it down, but I think the Coalition just felt ready to push again."
"So... another war," Freya said.
"It could be. We're reinforcing the frontier systems. If they want a war, they'll get one. And if the situation seems right, they might get one even if they don't want one. That sort of forward deployment tends to have a momentum of its own.
"Their new lance-ships are a complicating factor, but they can't have that many of them yet, and they're quite vulnerable to harassing attacks by swift-ship squadrons," the admiral went on.
"I just wish we hadn't needed to lose an assaul
t-ship to find out about it," Freya said.
"Yes. Captain Ari-Kani will be missed. He was a very good officer. We had big plans for him. Someone will come up to take his place, though, Captain Tralk. The Fleet isn't short of exceptional young officers," the admiral said, looking at Freya.
The ships of the 7th Rapid Reaction Fleet filled the horizon. Staring out of the viewport of the little cutter, Freya could see the myriad ships gleaming like metal spindles, silhouetted against the glowing sky of the world below them.
The huge assault-ships, Stellar Fortress and Battle Lord, dwarfed the ships around them, but those lesser ships were still staggering in their power and sleek presence. A half dozen lance-ships floated, half-visible in the sharp jet shadows of assault-ships, picked out by their blinking station-keeping lights. Beyond those was a swift-ship tender; assault-ship sized herself, and gleaming with the light of one of the moons reflected against her vast hull. In the foreground were the swift-ships: sharp arrowhead hulls, tiny in comparison to the giants that loomed behind them, but their shape radiating speed and purpose, even drifting in orbit.
Freya's attention was momentarily drawn to the shuttle flying in formation with her cutter, as the bigger craft's plasma drive flared, vectoring for the Battle Lord, delivering the Admiral, in his bio-avatar, to his ship.
Her own cutter kept its course, and her attention returned to the swift-ships. They were grouped in their squadrons, surrounded by small craft darting to and fro: their own tiny shuttles, as well as larger shuttles from the orbital anchorage station. Freya's eyes roved across the shapes of the little sleek warships as she waited for the cutter to pivot and boost towards one of them.
But the cutter drifted on, and Freya's lips compressed momentarily in confusion as they passed the last moment where a boost would vector them to last of the swift-ships. She pushed herself back from the viewport and looked up the cramped passage towards the cockpit; had the pilot missed his course? It would be no great problem to correct the little overflight, but Freya hated the thought of her next ship, her new crew, watching with confusion, or maybe even with veiled contempt, as their new captain's cutter failed to manage an elementary orbital maneuver.
But the cutter was still drifting on, well past the swift-ships, and making no move to come about for a corrective burn. They were abreast with the assault-ships now, and Freya could see the docking bay doors of the Battle Lord sliding open to receive the Admiral's shuttle. For a moment the sight took her mind back to an image of the Conquering Sun, and Captain Ari-Kani.
The cutter was turning now, swinging its nose about to aim its thrusters for a burn. Freya wondered if the pilot had been ordered to give her a good view of the fleet before taking her to her new ship. Perhaps. Then the cutter's plasma drive lit, and Freya saw that the cutter was not thrusting to head back towards the swift-ships. Instead it was heading towards the lance-ships. The little craft was clearly aimed at the one nearest to the vast bulk of the assault-ship Stellar Fortress. It was too far to see details with the naked eye, but a reflexive wireless interface command to the little data terminal built into her seat gave her a magnified view. The symbols along the lance-ship's prow, just behind the retracted bow-shields, sprang into clear legibility, proclaiming the ship's name; Fire Blossom.
Her hands went to the datachip, tucked into her uniform's sleeve pocket; "to be read upon arriving at your new command" the note had said. She looked at the tiny chip between her fingers, then turned and tapped the panel built into the seat's terminal, opening the data interface slot. As she inserted the chip, she could feel the cutter spinning about, preparing for braking thrust.
"Welcome to your new command." The interface showed her Admiral Narita's face, a wicked smile written on his features. Muir and Zandy stood just behind him, both smiling like little children let in on a juicy prank.
The admiral continued, the smile becoming warmer. "As I said, your new command will make better use of your talents than the swift-ship that we were obliged to send on for repairs... or for that matter, than the guard-ship that you were still listed as being in command of, in the Yuro System Defense Fleet.
"I suppose it must now occur to you that, given what you accomplished, I could hardly send you back to a little swift-ship without an implied rebuke to your performance. Since I intend quite the opposite effect, I've had to send you to a somewhat bigger command." The admiral's voice was calm, matter of fact, but his face was dancing with mirth.
The admiral went on. "Your executive officer is a persistent sort. Between his commendations for valor in the face of overwhelming odds, and his connections, he seems to have managed to evade his duty of taking command of that swift-ship yet again.
"We also have a good officer as an interceptor wave leader for your ship's First Wave," he said, gesturing to Zandy. "She's young, but her combat record is really quite impressive.
"I expect you'll do well with officers like these, Captain Tralk. I'll have my eye on you."
The recording ended.
"Stand by for docking," said the cutter pilot, as the half-megaton mass of the Hegemonic lance-ship Fire Blossom loomed ahead.