Ghost Wing (The Ragnarok Saga Book 4)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  He looked perplexed for a moment like he didn't understand what she said. Sam wondered if the man ever took downtime himself. Was he just a nonstop machine for his work? Then Max nodded.

  “I can see the sense of that. You all look tired, even if you can’t actually get physically tired. The toll on the emotional processing of everything around you still adds up. We’ll do four hours of rest, and then back to it. Sound workable?” Max asked. He looked directly at Sam, and she nodded her reply. “I’d offer longer, but we’re getting too close to Neptune. We need to spend as much time as we can preparing.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from around the room at that notion. None of them wanted to be a gently expanding cloud of dust out there.

  “All right. Take a break. You’re welcome to rest anywhere in this virtual Hermes. I’ve set up assigned rooms for each of you, so you can actually go try to nap if you’d like. But get in whatever sort of rest feels best for you. We’ve got a lot to handle, after,” Max said. “Dismissed.”

  Sam started to stand with the others, but Max called to her before she could. “Sam, I’d like to see you a few minutes, if you would. Gurgle too, please.”

  Shit, this was it. Gurgle was being pulled from flight duty. That sucked, because he’d almost always been able to go with her on their adventures. It was going to be hard for the little guy. But in this case, it was best for him. She’d taken a big chance giving him a shot at the outside world.

  “Gurgle isn’t an uploaded mind, is he?” Max asked when they were alone.

  Sam was surprised at the question. How had he known? “No, he’s not. He originated from inside the software. The game spun him up to be a companion for me.”

  “I find it hard to believe that the game made every companion for every player quite so compelling. Otherwise, Afterlife has a lot more server hardware than the Army knows about, which I doubt,” Max said.

  “Gurgle not like others,” Gurgle agreed. He still looked like a dragon, albeit a smaller version of one in this virtual world. If he were the full Valhalla size, he’d have taken up a third of the room.

  “He’s a special case.” How much should she explain? Was Max aware there had been two true AIs spawned from the Valhalla software as it desperately tried to adjust itself to compensate for the demands of the human minds present? Both of those AIs were dead now. But they’d brought Sam into the world, and her path changed everything she touched, including Gurgle. Now he was - well, Sam wasn’t entirely sure. Was he a real AI himself? Or just an exceptionally smart program? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know how to find out. All Sam knew was Gurgle was her friend.

  Max held up a hand. He must have seen the hesitation on her face. “I don’t need the full story. If you two want to tell me someday, I’d certainly be interested. But it’s not why I asked you to stick around today. You know Gurgle isn’t performing as well as the others?”

  “Gurgle know. Gurgle sorry, try harder.” The drake looked down at his claws.

  “It’s not your fault, I think. It’s your code. It’s not the same as the human minds. I took a peek, and it’s different in some pretty fascinating ways,” Max said.

  “Can you fix it?” Sam asked.

  “It’s not broken. Just different. But to answer the question - no. I can’t alter the code of any of you. The copy protection they put in place on our minds is damned good. I won’t say anything is unhackable. But this is close,” Max said.

  “If no fix, what I do?” Gurgle asked. Sam raised her eyebrows at the rare I pronoun. Gurgle tended to refer to himself in third person most of the time. He was clearly trying to impress Max.

  “I think the same traits which are making it hard for you to focus on the detail-oriented skills involved in flying a Wasp might make you ideally suited to other tasks,” Max said. “Are you any good at fixing or building things?”

  “Is he ever!” Sam said with a laugh. “You should have seen him save my ass that way when we first met.”

  “About what I’d thought. How’d you like to be the chief engineer of the Hermes?” Max asked. “You’d be in charge of the drive, the power generation, and organizing repairs for any damage we take. The Hermes has repair bots to manage and fix any damage we take in combat. But the intelligence operating them is basic at best. They’d run a lot smoother with someone guiding them.”

  Gurgle looked at Max, gazing into his eyes. Then he glanced over at Sam. She nodded slowly.

  “This might be really good for you,” Sam said.

  “But want to protect you,” Gurgle replied.

  “And I appreciate it. But you’re out here now, alive. In the real world, not Valhalla. You will be able to make your own life out here. This might be the start,” Sam said.

  “Then Gurgle do,” the drake said, nodding his snout sharply.

  “Good! Now that’s settled, I can let you two go get a break. I’ve taken enough of your time,” Max said.

  “Show Gurgle engines and repair bots first?” Gurgle asked.

  Max looked surprised but offered a pleased smile. “Sure, Gurgle. I’d be glad to.”

  They both faded from Sam’s view. She chuckled. Neither of them had even thought to say goodbye before going poof on her.

  “Boys and their toys,” she said.

  “Indeed,” came a voice from nearby.

  10

  Sam turned and found herself face to face with Xiang. He was an enigma to her, one of the few Valhallans on board the Hermes that she didn’t have the best read on. Most of the people who’d volunteered were warriors Sam had known for some time. Xiang was new to the final level of Valhalla Online when the call for pilots had come down. He’d snapped up a spot right along with the rest of them.

  Sam hadn’t learned much about him over the last two days, but that wasn’t strange to her. Most of them didn’t talk about their old lives at all. He’d shown courage and a natural tendency to lead during their first few engagements. She’d given him a wing command, and he’d never handed her a reason to regret that assignment.

  “May I join you?” Xiang asked.

  “Sure,” Sam said. “The other two just left. What’s on your mind?”

  “I am finding my mind drifting toward after, during this brief sabbatical of ours. Time not spent in the cockpit makes me wonder what life will be like after we are no longer needed to save the planet.”

  “It’s a good question. I’ve wondered about it a bit myself. I imagine there are a lot of things we could do that humans can’t,” Sam said.

  “There are, but I suspect we’re thinking of different things,” Xiang said. “You’re thinking of doing risky things that would kill physical humans. I am thinking that we will never die, and what that might mean for a long-term stock portfolio.”

  “We can be killed,” Sam said.

  “By the computer we are housed in being destroyed, yes. But not by age,” Xiang replied. “A well-protected uploaded mind might survive hundreds of years. Even thousands. What would that be like, to watch the centuries roll by?”

  He was right. What would it do to Earth, if people were able to jump into a computer and become immortal? How were they going to handle people who lived for hundreds of years, even thousands? The idea of that much future was an alien thought even to herself. What sort of reaction would Earth have once they realized what they’d wrought in their desperate move to stay alive?

  “I can see you’ve reached some of the same conclusions I have,” Xiang said, his eyes narrowing.

  “You read faces very well,” Sam said.

  “I’ve made a career of it, my dear,” he said.

  It was the first time Xiang had mentioned something which might be related to his life from before he was uploaded. Most of them didn’t talk much about who they were before they were uploaded. It was a taboo discussion topic in Valhalla, but she wondered if more background was going to spill from all of them now that they were back out in the real world. They might be able to visit old friends and fam
ily. How strange that would be.

  Sam’s parents didn’t even know their daughter had a “ghost” version of herself. How would they react? Would they see her as a second daughter? Or a monster? The thought made her want to cry. She pushed it aside. Sometimes it felt like that was all she did - push the hard feelings away to deal with them another time. Later, once all this was done, she would see about putting some sort of life together for herself. Or that was what she kept promising herself, anyway.

  “I think we need to be careful about our futures. I don’t necessarily trust those in power right now to have our best interest at heart,” Xiang said.

  “You talk like you know them,” Sam said with a chuckle.

  “Oh, I know the UN president quite well. Nicholas Stein and I go back a very long way together,” Xiang said. There was something about the way he said it that made Sam want to shiver. She stifled the reaction, not wanting to give this man any more information about herself than she had to.

  Sam was good at reading people. It was possible that she’d met her match in Xiang. She recognized in him the same skills she had at reading peoples’ moods, emotions, and reactions. But Xiang struck her as someone who used that tool to manipulate others. Maybe she’d made a mistake putting him into a position of leadership. But maybe not. Being able to lead well was a form of manipulation, after all. That skill might be part of what made him effective as a wing commander.

  “We can count on each of us looking out for each other, anyway,” Sam said.

  “That much I am sure of. We have more in common than not. A threat against one of us would be a risk to all of us. I hope we can all support each other in what I am certain will be trying times ahead.”

  “Yeah, I can only imagine half the adjustment issues we’re going to have, getting settled into something that resembles a normal life,” Sam said.

  Xiang laughed aloud, a deep and rolling chuckle. “My dear, I doubt any of us are destined for something so boring as a normal life!”

  She didn’t doubt him. Each person on their team was a warrior willing to step out of safety to defend Earth. It was a damned fine group of people to be a part of. That she was leading the squadron still amazed her, but Max had made the position official shortly after they arrived on the Hermes and no one had said a peep in protest.

  Alarm bells rang. Sam hadn’t heard klaxons like that since she’d been back in the physical world. The lighting around them went red, and the visual effects went fuzzy around the edges. She felt like Xiang and the rest of the room around her were barely there at all.

  “What the hell is happening?” she asked.

  “Something is drawing away most of the processing power from the ship’s computers,” Xiang said. “It’s limiting the intensity of our simulation as a result.”

  There were only a few things that would cause a sudden draw of computing power like that. All of them involved the ship being in a crisis of some sort. Sam wasn’t at all surprised to hear Max’s voice a moment later.

  “All pilots to your ships. We have detected probable attack vessels on long-range scanners. This is not a drill. We are under attack.”

  The room faded out completely, and Sam found herself back in the familiar fighter she’d flown for so many simulated runs. It felt subtly different this time, and she wasn’t sure if that was a real sensation or her imagination. This was a real steel and alloy Wasp. Before, she’d always flown simulated vessels. The sims were incredibly realistic. But this was no sim. It was the real deal.

  They were going to face off against enemy ships that weren’t simulated, too. The sim aliens had been based on Max’s best guesses. What was coming at them might be similar to that, or might be anything at all. The thought sent chills down her spine.

  “All wing commanders, sound off,” Sam said.

  “Grimalf, wing one up.”

  “Harald, wing two up.”

  “Xiang, wing three up.”

  “Jorn, wing four up.”

  “Yvette, wing five up.”

  Sam checked her own wing. All five of the other pilots showed ready to launch. “Wing six is up,” she said.

  They were really going to do this. Sam felt the engines building up power inside her like a surge of adrenaline hitting her system. The ship was alive with energy. The ship was her, her body, and she would fling herself into the void blazing away with her guns at an enemy she didn’t know or understand, praying all the while that this tiny taste of the life she’d just recovered wouldn’t end today.

  Enough. Lead now, worry later. “Launch in wing order. All wings launch as you’re able. Let’s do what we’ve been training for.”

  11

  Sam felt the thrust of launch like a vibration through her body. It was the strangest sensation! Was this something like what Gurgle felt when he was flying around as a dragon? There was a brief moment where she felt vertigo as her mind adapted to all the data streaming into her senses. The fighter was feeding her everything it received - radar, visual images, feedback from sensors, it all hit her like a physical blow. The constant drills over the past few days had been effective enough that she was able to sort through it all rapidly, though.

  Ten objects were streaking toward the Hermes. They were moving fast - very fast! Based on the trajectory there was no doubt they were coming at the ship from Neptune. If there’d been any hope of some kind of peaceful resolution with the alien ship, it was gone now. This was a clear act of aggression. No other way such a move could be interpreted.

  “Look alive, folks. We need to slam those bogeys before they can nail our home base,” Sam said. Her wing was the last to launch. The others had already fanned out in a cone, with her wing at the center of the formation. That was her design. She’d read about cones being an effective formation in a novel once, and the simulations seemed to back up the theory. By spreading out in that manner all of their ships could focus maximum firepower on any enemy in their path.

  “Put on a little speed. We want to catch them as far away from the Hermes as we can,” Sam ordered. The wings called in their compliance and boosted toward their targets.

  Range closed precipitously. It still boggled Sam’s mind how quickly their fighters could chew up the distance. At the speeds they were all moving, their window of engagement would be tiny. They needed to take out all of the ships quickly, or they’d shoot past.

  “Enemy ships are firing something!” Harald reported. “Hard objects, presumed missiles.”

  “Evasive action! Fold the cone into a spiral!” Sam ordered. Her radar picked up twenty missiles coming from the enemy ships.

  The ships on the outside edge of the cone darted in toward the center. Their flight paths became a spiral, slowly tightening as the vessels farther back in the cone joined the knot. The new formation looked something like a corkscrew. It would allow them maximal anti-missile coverage of each other with their railguns. But Sam watched the range indicator as they moved. The formation shift was taking place just before they’d be able to fire their own missiles. If they missed the window, they’d never be able to get their own shots off in time.

  “Fire now!” Sam said. “Missiles away.”

  Twenty-eight of the ships managed to respond in time, which Sam thought was fairly good. The other two had been busy making sharp course corrections to avoid slamming into each other as they came into the spiral. They missed the window for a missile launch. She could hear them cursing over the radio, but there wasn’t time to worry about it right then. They could be dealt with later.

  Each of the ships that managed to fire launched four missiles, their entire payload. This was all or nothing. If a single ship made it past them, it might be able to kill the Hermes. They had no idea what the enemy’s capabilities might be at close quarters. The only thing they’d learned so far was that their missile range was significantly higher than the Wasps. Overkill was the order of the day. Fifty-six missiles tore through space toward the ten alien ships.

  The alien missil
es struck her own formation a moment later.

  Her people all fired railguns, pellets streaming from the nose of each ship. They filled space ahead of them with iron shrapnel. At their velocity, those little pellets carried enormous force. Connecting with even one of them would blast any missile to bits. That was the theory, anyway. It had never been tested against alien tech.

  The alien missiles somehow detected their counter-fire and swept outside the railgun fire, steering around her ships. Only five targets were caught. The others swept past them. That was all right with Sam. Those missiles would have to turn around and come back at them. It was precious seconds that her people could use to counter their second pass.

  But the alien missiles weren’t turning. Sam realized with horror that she’d miscalculated their range by a long shot. Her fighters hadn’t been the target. They were continuing on, heading directly at the Hermes! The enemy didn’t just have longer range missiles. They had at least twice the range of the human weapons.

  “Wings three, four, five and six, come about and burn toward the Hermes. We need to take down some of those missiles,” Sam said. “Other wings engage any surviving enemy ships.”

  It was going to be tight. Now velocity was working against her fighter. Sam flipped her ship over and burned as hard as her structure would allow, working to overcome her previous vector and return to the Hermes. Every second she took to decelerate and accelerate again those enemy missiles were getting further away. But they’d lost a lot of velocity maneuvering around her formation. There was still a chance she could catch up enough to nail them with her railgun.

  The deceleration ended while the alien ships were still a little distance away. Sam had a chance to watch their reaction to the human missiles at relatively close range.

  The alien ships gave a spirited attempt to destroy the missiles. Sam watched on her sensors as what looked like some sort of laser beam fired from the nose of each alien ship, blasting apart missile after missile. Their counter-missile fire was so damned effective! Half of their shots blew apart while they were still too far to accomplish anything. The other half continued in.