by R. M. Meluch
“Okay.”
“Very good.”
“Set,” Farragut commanded the program. Touched his hand to Jose Maria’s virtual blade. Felt the razor of pain. Felt blood hot and wet in his palm. “Reset.”
The pain and blood vanished. He nodded satisfaction. Looked to his opponent. “Ready?”
“Sir.” Jose Maria bowed.
Farragut cocked his saber back in both hands for a mighty swing.
Quick, too quick, Jose Maria was there, under Farragut’s cocked elbows, and opening up his rib cage. The sword actually fell, clattered against a virtual wood floor. Farragut’s hands clutched at his gushing chest. Knees hit what felt like wood.
Choked. Ripped off the mask.
Gulped dusty air deeply into his undamaged chest in the aftermath of vanished pain.
Jose Maria’s voice sounded above him, solicitous, “Are you well, young Captain?”
“Yes, dammit. Embarrassed.” Hauled himself to his feet. Mask jammed back on. “I want a rematch.”
The second round was almost a battle, John Farragut’s brute strength against Jose Maria’s cat-footed finesse. The elder man became the instructor. “Do not watch my eyes, young Captain. My eyes will not cut you.”
From anyone else, Farragut might have taken insult, being offered advice during a competition. But the doctor was so genuine, and so skilled, Farragut took it for the help it was meant to be.
Ended up dead again, winded and wiser. He spoke up from the ground, blinking sweat and sunlight from his eyes, “Don Jose Maria de Cordillera, would you mind working for me?”
“In what capacity?” Jose Maria refastened the silver clasp in his long black hair.
“Weapons instructor for my Marines. Or is that against the Neutrality?”
“I cannot see how it could violate neutrality unless you mean to arm your Merrimack with swords,” Jose Maria said in whimsy.
“I do. You in?”
Jose Maria absorbed bemusement. Said at last, “I can teach martial arts. How you make use of it is your business.”
“A little sophistic there, hm, Jose Maria?”
“A lot sophistic. Mea culpa. I shall do penance.”
Something slipped there, past the man’s temperate benevolence. A hostility against Rome.
And it was personal.
18
AT THE NAVAL SPACE FLEET base outside of Lawrence, Kansas, Marines ran through the shoot/ don’t shoot drills—or in this case, slash/don’t slash drills, for they were armed with swords. The program presented friends and foes unexpectedly—colonist, Roman foot soldier, ship’s dog, LEN emissary, Roman Centurion, U.S. Marine, cow.
Farragut was damn serious about this part of the sword training. If you don’t pass this part of the final screening, you don’t serve on board Mack when she flies again in anger.
And Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue wanted to serve on Merrimack. All the Marines did. Because John Farragut was damn serious about who got slashed and who didn’t. She had to get this right.
Fortunately, racquetball had always been a popular sport on the Mack, so they were all pretty good at not whacking each other in close quarters.
Squash was also popular. Squash was the captain’s game, because the ball was smaller, harder, and the damn thing didn’t bounce. You had to smash it like hell to make it go. You give Farragut the wrong shot and he’ll smash you back to Philadelphia, rocketing that little green bullet around all four walls of the court. But he’d never nailed anyone with his racquet.
Still left the problem of separating friend from foe. Neither racquetball nor squash was any help with deciding that.
“Do you slash or don’t slash the cow?”
Nobody quite knew.
“It’s a dumb question. Don’t slash the cow,” said Cowboy.
“Are you sure?” said Kerry.
No. He wasn’t quite sure. Was pretty sure.
Not good enough for Kerry Blue, who usually passed tests by the skin of her teeth. “You gotta know. And you can take it from me, telling an examiner his question is dumb never ever works.”
“I’ll ask Jose Maria about the cow,” Reg Monroe volunteered quickly.
“No, it’s my question. I’ll ask him,” Kerry said.
“I’ll ask,” said Carly. “I speak Terra Rican.”
“Like that man don’t know English better than any of us,” said Kerry.
Twitch Fuentes turned to the nearest Y chromosome. “Just what is it with the girls and the old guy?”
Cowboy shrugged. “They think just ’cause Cordillera’s good with a sword that he’s good with his sword.”
“Could be,” said Kerry with a haughty, you-can-be-replaced shift of her shoulders. “I don’t think there’s a soft spot anywhere on that man’s body.”
“He’s gorgeous,” said Reg. “He moves gorgeous.”
“Oh, yeah, the moves.” Carly fanned herself with her hand, suddenly very very warm.
“He’s refined,” said Reg, in what she thought was a refined voice. “Something you baboons wouldn’t understand. He’s dynamic. Intelligent. Rich.”
“Rich,” Carly said.
“Rich.” Kerry nodded.
“Old,” Cowboy said.
“Which means his kids are grown up,” said Carly. “Got that skat over with. Can he be any more perfect?”
Flight Sergeant Shepard weighed in with a mouth full of pretzels and salt crumb spray: “Okay, so what’s he supposed to see in you?”
A three-way pause, then, “Shut up, Dak.”
John Farragut took to the sword naturally. Disrup tors, splinter guns, tag seekers, and contact stunners were really too civilized for his inner barbarian. Although he was a decent, compassionate man, once committed to killing an enemy, he found the true violence of hacking sword to bone held a savage satisfaction he didn’t get from modern, sterile exterminations at long range.
He had mastered all the training routines which Jose Maria had left for him while Jose Maria trained Marines in Kansas. By the time Jose Maria came back to Kentucky, Farragut was eager to try out a new program. And Jose Maria had brought one. It was called Nemo.
“What’s it about?” Farragut asked, loading the program into a V mask.
“You will see,” said Jose Maria.
They went outside to an empty corral on the Farragut property, which had become John Farragut’s usual place to practice with his sword. The corral gave him a wide space without real obstacles to interfere with his virtual training world. He shut the gates to keep out children and horses.
The new routine’s space requirements called for a long, rather narrow fighting area. Farragut pictured a banquet hall, and positioned himself appropriately, away from the fences, which he would not be able to see during the simulation.
He fitted on the mask, plugged in the leads.
The sun’s warmth and scents of the corral’s horsey dust vanished into the virtual biting cold and wet salt sting of sea spray. Nothing at all like a banquet hall. A metal deck rolled underfoot. The heavy buffet of open air nearly unbalanced him. He saw, by the flicker of lightning, that he was on the heaving deck of an antique submarine on an angry iron gray sea. Waves spilled white foam over his sealskin-booted feet. He gripped the sword in both hands.
Something rose from the spume—dark, blue-black, fantastical—like a giant beanstalk, but with suction disks. A tentacle.
File name Nemo. Farragut barked a startled laugh. “It’s a giant squid!”
The stalk whipped about, circled Farragut’s legs, constricted. And suddenly he was upside down, in midair, high above the deck. Blood rushed to his head. The thing swung him in the howling, bitter wind, dizzily high.
His stomach heaved with the drop.
Prickle of grass stubble bit into his palms. He cursed, because he’d lost his grip on his sword. Blunt solidity of compressed dirt against his back confused him. Couldn’t see. His mask had gone black, blank. A horse nickered from somewhere. He must have exited the program.
Had not asked to.
He pulled off the mask. Inhaled warm dust. Could not open his eyes for the bright sun stabbing from above.
Quiet crunching of grit under bootsoles neared. A shadow across his face let him open his eyes. Looked up at Jose Maria de Cordillera haloed by the sun.
“What happened?” said Farragut. “The program quit on me.”
“You died, young Captain.”
“Did not.” Then, rather meekly, “Did I?”
“Headfirst onto the deck. Your skull split open.” Jose Maria offered down a kid-gloved hand to his fallen pupil. “Death was instantaneous.”
“Oh,” Farragut said, disappointed. “Well, hell.” Then, protesting, nearly a bleat, “It was a squid!”
“Yes.”
“A squid.”
“You did not expect a squid? Well, then, fight within the moment, young Captain. Do not anticipate.”
Farragut snugged the V mask back over his head. “I want a rematch!”
“I thought you might.” Jose Maria reset the program, stepped out of the corral. “Do not laugh at the squid.”
“Right.” Farragut tested his grip on his sword, flexed his knees into a mobile, stable stance. This was a matter of pride.
It wasn’t like he could expect to be fighting tentacled monsters on board his Merrimack.
At the Naval base in Kansas, Cowboy Carver, Dak Shepard, and Twitch Fuentes battled the giant squid in the new Nemo program, while the women of Red Squad were still messing with the No Guns program. Kerry Blue, Carly Delgado, and Reg Monroe weren’t finished with that asymptote with the bullwhip. Hated—hated—that cocky, sneering, leering son of a beagle kicker. Even with the program toned down, the bullwhip hit you like a two by four. The pain seized up your chest, blotted out your vision, while that guy laughed, and the bullwhip sizzled the air, and there was the death stroke because suddenly you were pain free and breathing easy in the dark of your mask.
Before they left this program, the women were determined to hack that stupid whip into pieces, then yank out the guy’s hose and hack that into pieces, too, before killing him.
Came the day. Bullwhip came at Carly, licking his thin, smarmy lips, and laughing at her brandished sword. Carly wasn’t big, and she was bone thin, but most people had the sense to be afraid of her. Bullwhip didn’t. “Little stick girl,” he taunted. “You are going to take my scalp?”
“Hell, no,” Carly said. “I’m taking your ears and your tail.”
Literal—machine minds were always stupidly literal—Bullwhip answered, “I don’t have a tail.”
“The hell you say.”
And Kerry and Reg snagged his bullwhip on the backswing as Carly charged in from the front and tackled him low. Kerry and Reg sliced the whip into twelve pieces while Carly choked the guy into the ground, bony forearm across his throat. She held him down while Reg debagged him for Kerry to do the deed.
Kerry froze on the upstroke, shrieked, “He don’t have one!”
And everything vanished. The program ab-ended, as programs will when the parameters are exceeded.
Carly and Reg were left holding down air on the parade ground.
Kerry pulled off her V mask, yanked her sweat-matted hair free from its band. She hovered over the empty spot on the ground at her feet where Bullwhip should have been. “Well, damn. No wonder he was so mean!”
“So what do you do with the cow?”
“What?”
They were back to slash/don’t slash drills.
“The cow,” said Reg. “What’s the right answer? Slash or don’t slash?”
“I don’t know,” Twitch brushed aside the question, annoyed.
“Well I gotta know,” Reg dogged him. “I’m not gonna get left dockside for not slashing the cow when the examiner thinks we’re having burgers for supper.”
Twitch let his shoulders slump. Reg was not going away until he gave her an answer. He asked, “Is it mad?”
“What?” Reg wrinkled up her face.
“Is it a mad cow?”
Reg gave an angry tsk. “Cows don’t get mad.” Reg Monroe had never seen a live one and had no interest in livestock, but she was pretty sure from the pictures she’d seen that those tranquil stupid creatures couldn’t mount a convincing mad.
“Oh, yeah, they do,” Twitch assured her. And the issue became terribly funny. Cowboy and Dak started doing mad cow imitations. Devolved into sniggers.
Reg walked away, let her sword drop over her shoulder. “You guys are useless.”
“Oh, sync-up.” Kerry fit her mask on to return to the drill.
Cowboy called from behind her, “Hey, Kerry Blue!”
Kerry spun round, sword in hand. Cowboy was there. Flying at her with a wild maniacal moo.
And ran right up her blade to the hilt. Her sword point jutted red out his back.
Hot sticky splash wet her hands. Cowboy’s sagging weight dragged down her sword. “Oh, hell! Reset!” she commanded the program.
Instead of resetting, her mask went dark. The weight, the wetness, the smell remained.
Kerry ripped off her mask with a sticky hand to see what was hanging on her sword.
Howled, “Medic!”
Lieutenant Colonel TR Steele stormed into Internal Investigations to yank his Marine out of interrogation.
“Colonel Steele, we are not finished here.”
“Yes, you are, sir!” Steele told the II officers. “You do NOT take up anything with my Marines without going through me!”
Yeah. Anyone kick Colonel Steele’s dog, it’ll be Colonel Steele, thought Kerry, standing expressionless at attention. It was an oddly comforting thought. She would choose, a million times out of a million, her chops-busting CO over these cold, desk-riding ferrets, the dreaded double-Is.
“Colonel Steele, we are not talking mere negligence here,” an investigator explained. Full colonels all of them. There were no low-ranking double-Is. “There is compelling evidence that the incident under investigation was not an accident. There exists a computer record from Merrimack of the Marine saying quote I want him dead unquote. An incident regarding a married lover. One Jamie ‘Cowboy’ Carver as a matter of fact.”
“I didn’t know the fid-squucker was married!” Kerry cried out loud.
One big jutting forefinger and a tight-shut mouth from Colonel Steele told her to slam it.
“Internal Investigations has a duty to find the truth behind the incident,” said the investigator.
“I’ll tell you the truth behind the incident,” said Steele.
Truth was Cowboy Carver was an oversexed son of a rabbit who couldn’t keep his shirt on or his pants zipped. Truth was Steele wanted him dead. Truth was he was glad Kerry killed him. Truth was Steele only regretted that Cowboy hadn’t stayed dead. Damn medics were too damn good. Truth was Kerry hadn’t checked the V mask parameters before running the program.
And truth was Colonel Steele proceeded to lie for Kerry Blue. Steele took the fall for not controlling the situation.
Internal Investigations let Kerry go. Slapped Steele with a rep.
“One last question, if you will, Lieutenant Colonel?”
Steele waited. Posed in a silent demand: Ask, damn you. Knew, just knew, the double I was going to say: So, is she any good?
The investigator twirled a light stylus indolently. “So what is the proper answer to that cow thing?”
It was raining when Colonel Steele ordered Kerry Blue to get her ass out on the perimeter for sentry duty.
She’d known this was coming. Well, it beat the hell out of Internal Investigations detention.
She pulled up the hood of her slicker, shouldered her splinter weapon. “Sir?” she asked at Steele’s back, the prelude to a question.
He roared, patience at an end. “What?”
“Why’d you take the hit for me?”
He thought she was being coy. Turned to bellow at her. But Kerry was looking up at him with honest puzzlement. She didn’t know. The little id
iot had no clue.
His voice dropped into the gravel, soft with restrained anguish. “Don’t ask me that, Marine. Don’t ever ask me that.”
“Captain Farragut, your crew and Marine contingent have suffered more casualties during Merrimack’s refit—at peace, in dock—than any five other ships in their most recent battles.”
“It’s not uncommon for soldiers to suffer casualties Earthside, Admiral Mishindi.”
“From car crashes and skiing! Not from sword wounds!”
“Haven’t lost anyone,” Farragut offered.
“Close. You came very close with that Carver fellow.”
Jamie Cowboy Carver. That had been over-the-line back-from-the-dead close. “Yes, sir.”
“And I’ve been receiving an ungodly number of med reports of reattaching limbs and closing deep wounds. Your blood requisition is way over budget. What I really mean to ask, John, is: what the hell are you doing?”
“We’re shaking out the bugs. It’s a new way of fighting for them.”
“It’s old! It’s millennia old! What do you think you’re doing making your crew fight each other with swords!”
“They’re not fighting each other. They’re fighting virtual enemies with swords. But they’re in real close proximity to each other. Makes a difference when they can do real damage to each other.”
“Yes, yes, it does. The difference is they do real damage to each other!” Mishindi bellowed the obvious, the whites of his eyes stark rings between the darkness of his irises and the darkness of his face.
“They’re learning not to. They’re getting damn good at not hurting each other. Takes time is all.”
“And the value of learning to fight with swords at all would be? Something I can tell the JC?”
“The value is that there’s no on/off switch with a sword. No signal jamming against a sword. No shooting a hole through your bulkhead with a sword. And a sword can get through an exo-suit.”
“This is ridiculous. Unnecessary. Wasteful. And—swords! It’s—it’s something I’d expect out of Rome!”
“No. Funny, that,” Farragut smiled. “Romans like the newest, best, highest-tech toys. They’ve always loved new inventions. Hand-to-hand fighting is a lost art in Rome. Of course, they all think they’re hand-to-hand experts by birthright. But none of them train on it. They’d sneer at my swords like a German tank brigade would sneer at the Polish cavalry.”