by Tom Germann
She paused for a second and I could see some of the others frowning—probably because they had missed the obvious stuff. Two carried on. “Well, Eight, you may be the new guy and kinda slow, but at least you picked up on it. Keep it up. Everyone else, you’re dismissed. Let’s get back to cleanup and debrief. I have the feeling that there will be more operations coming our way soon enough.”
Two finished shutting the system down and then walked out of the briefing room. The rest of us got up and sort of bunched up while we cleared the room.
I checked my internal comms and there was a message. Our timetable had been changed. Our last official debrief was set for tomorrow, and it looked like I had an hour free today because the meeting had been shorter.
I waited while everyone else cleared out of the room and then followed. I had time to do some studying, so I headed for my room and my internal system.
I got to my room and went in. I had set the far wall to look like a view outside of a big window. I’d downloaded it before I left Earth and it was set up on a twenty-four-hour cycle. There were some vehicles driving by now, heavy movers. It was the only thing I had left from the Project, aside from a burnt teddy bear that I had stuffed into the one storage box under my bed.
I was going to lie down and use my plants to access the system to study up on the Earth invasion. There was footage that was still restricted that maybe would help me understand how the robot invaders worked.
I heard a noise behind me and tried to whip around, but you can’t really whip around in these shoeboxes that we live in. I ended up bashing my knee and cracking my elbow.
I stopped trying while I cursed under my breath and saw that Two was standing in the doorway watching me.
She stepped in and the door slid closed behind her. She just stood there watching me. I had backed away when she stepped in, so I was pressed up against the wall.
These cubbies are six feet long and four feet wide, with six feet in clearance for the height. The ‘beds’ fold up, becoming benches or at a stretch a couch that can be sat on with storage underneath. Bathrooms are down the hall and are unisex.
Our living spaces are not really meant for socializing or meeting. In a pinch you could get three people in one room, but they’d have to be friendly. The overhead has clearance for a head, but you still have to be careful as there are bulkheads up there.
I’d smashed myself in every way possible, with a few combinations that no one who had not been in a cubby would believe.
Now Two had cornered me here and I was hoping that she wasn’t going to beat the hell out of me.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the plain wall. She was a bit shorter than me so she didn’t bump her head on the overhead like I had. Her brown eyes were dark and cold. Her head was shaved with just a hint of fuzz, and I found myself staring at a small scar on her left cheek. She flushed when she realized I was looking at it and then glared at me.
“I got the scar a few years ago from a close call during an operation against some raiders. I was lucky. They weren’t.”
I looked away from her. I didn’t want to irritate her more, as I was the new guy. Not only was I not good, I was a burden on the section. I didn’t know what to say.
She continued. “You’ve joined us after the section lost a senior member. You’re taking that member’s spot. Everyone feels that loss. The section is now less than it was. You are making everyone remember every time they see you that our old Eight is gone.”
She uncrossed her arms and gestured at me. “With time, everyone will get used to you and we’ll come to accept you. Right now you’re getting used to being here with us and how the section works. We’ve been working together for years, most of us, in fact. You need time to fit in. We get that. You aren’t hated, even though it may feel like it sometimes.”
She stopped again and looked me up and down. “You just hit the ground with us and you’ve done one training exercise, one operation, and some training. You did okay. You also have shown more thought than everyone else and noticed the relation between the system and the new alien race’s home world. I think you could fit in. But Eight, if you want to be here, then you have to make the effort. I get the feeling that part of you doesn’t know what it wants. Want to be here, Eight, or you are never going to fit in. You need to make up your mind.”
She turned, opened the door, and stepped out not locking the door open so it slid closed again.
I just stood there for minutes staring at the door. I couldn’t move or think.
I wanted to do the right thing. I had to atone for the evil I did. But Two was right: Deep down, I didn’t want to be here. But I couldn’t go back because it was all gone.
I was going to do the right thing.
Eventually I came back to myself, dropped the couch back to bed mode, and then went to bed. I didn’t need to check my vitals. I knew that they were all over.
Eventually I settled down and fell asleep. The dreams I had were dark and dreary, but I slept.
War Exercise
We were going to be coming out of star drive soon. We all knew that we needed to stay on schedule. We had supplies that may well be critical by this point that the outpost personnel would need.
They had lots of spare parts, fuel, and food, but there was always the chance that something had used up their stockpiles.
Then there was the fact that we needed to get this information about the destroyed site to a courier as soon as possible so that they could zoom for home and let Earth know.
I tried not to wonder what would happen if those aliens had the ability and range to strike directly at Earth with no warning, no time to prepare.
I kept telling myself how big space really was and how long it took to travel. I found it difficult to believe that, though.
We had been briefed by the second officer that as soon as we came out of transit we would be going to full emissions control. I sat there with everyone else at the table and had no clue what he was talking about. We weren’t at war or anything, but the rest of the briefing gave me the information I needed.
This was going to be the first war exercise I was going to go through. During a war exercise the ship exits star drive roughly in location. The ship then goes to full emission controls and carries on as if it is trying to infiltrate the system while evading enemy sensors and ships. The exercise would go on for up to four days depending on how the captain felt.
It was interesting to hear that this system was the preferred place to run these tests. Deep in the gravity well where the space station sat orbiting the sun there were dozens of huge scanner arrays evaluating every element of the system. Supposedly there were planets missing that should have been there and the sun did all sorts of amazing things.
There were also rumours of new experiments being run that would bring about super weapons and completely revolutionize our lives.
Sure.
What I knew for a fact was that the space station only had a dozen people on board at any one time. Yet for every person, there was an AI for them. There were even rumours of a Level 5 AI running the entire station.
That was crazy. On board our ship there were only three AIs that I knew about: Jane for combat sim, Steven the nut doctor, and whatever AI actually ran the ship’s systems. The crew called it whatever, but I never found out ‘cause we never talked. Eesshhh, I thought. Ship crew.
I figured that the story was exaggerated, but it was possible that there were more than normal here. In the depths of space, far from Earth and the solar system, it was likely the safest place to carry out dangerous experiments.
I didn’t think that anyone wanted to knock the moon out of orbit or anything like that. That would be bad.
Well, the ship came out of star drive right about where they thought they would be and we immediately went to ‘general quarters.’ Why the hell did they call it t
hat? No clue. Just another weird tradition that we had to go along with.
I mean, I fully support doing these drills. That’s how you get better at your job. Even pretending that you are about to be attacked has a benefit. It’s just the names that they insist on keeping from way back when. I always thought that they should simply have a siren that went off, and a voice screaming something like, “CONTACT!” would do the job, but what do I know. I’m really still just new to all this.
The problem with emission control on a spaceship or starship is that you have to turn off all the electronics and deploy a neutral shield around the ship that will hopefully block some of the sensors looking for you. At least in theory.
So as soon as we came out of star drive, all but the minimum required tech was shut down. We armoured up and then, again on minimal power, walked down to the lander and boarded.
There are mechanical systems in place on ships so that if something happens locally, doors can be opened and closed manually. We had to open two doors and then the lander hatch manually with no assistance. That was no fun at all and it took a while. And we did this all while wearing powered-down armour.
We were standing around in passages lit with minimal battery-powered emergency lighting. Everything was a dull red and black as there were only a few lights on. Conserving battery power was the main objective.
We eventually got the doors opened and boarded the lander. Then the door needed to be sealed, which was One’s job. I was able to hook myself up to the umbilicals and then secure myself into location with several straps. There was no mag lock available because the power was off. Now if we launched then, the ship would have power and we could mag-lock ourselves to the frames like always.
But till then, we couldn’t.
I was in decent shape. It was hard to really run as there was only the one treadmill that we could access, but I thought I was in good shape.
I was wrong. Every step in armour that is mostly powered down was hard. There was just a trickle of power going through to keep the suit system in sleep mode and prevent it from turning completely off. My helmet was open, though, because nothing was functional at this level and I didn’t want to strain my life support.
All the benefits of the armour that I was used to were gone.
Picture walking down the passage in bad lighting and having to step carefully while wearing almost three hundred pounds of armour and equipment.
I was used to the suit being like a second skin, not an outer coating of lead that didn’t want me to move.
By the time I was in the lander I was soaked in sweat. My bodysuit felt clammy and disgusting and I swear that all the different connection points felt like they were jabbing me.
Fully powered up we would have been in and ready to deploy within forty seconds. It felt like it had taken hours to get positioned.
We were all just standing around, strapped in, doing nothing. The smell wasn’t that bad yet, but I knew it would get worse in what was really just a small area. I considered simply standing there and chatting for a while to stay awake. But I knew that we could be here for days.
So I leaned back against the wall and locked my suit joints in place. Three of the others had already closed up and likely gone to sleep, including Two. I triggered my helmet and it slid shut. As soon as it clicked into place I felt the cool draft as the shipboard systems took over on my air supply. I closed my eyes and then all was darkness.
I woke up to a blaring shriek, feeling like something had died in my mouth.
It took me a second to realize where I was; I felt like I had drooled while I was sleeping. Thankfully I couldn’t fall over as I had locked my suit joints before sleeping. In fact, I couldn’t move at all, which was a good thing. I could see the rest of the section moving, though.
I turned off the alarm that had been sent by Two and unlocked my suit joints. I could feel the suit fully powering up and I felt more alive.
Two’s voice came over the comm line. “Up and at ‘em, everyone. Drill is over. We’re heading in-system as per normal. I believe we were picked up, again. The ship crew never learns. You can’t sneak up on this system. Back to the racks, and let’s get cleaned up. Armour, then us, you stinky pigs. We’ll do a quick debrief over a meal after that.”
The work was easy. We had been in armour that was at a trickle charge. A relatively fast diagnostic check and then we were all getting cleaned up.
There were no real points that came up in the debrief. We were armoured up fast and into the lander in what was an acceptable time. Everyone else had sealed up and gone to sleep. If the ship had detected a serious threat the ship AI would have pulsed us a screaming wake-up call, mag-locked us as we were, and then ejected the lander, maintaining telemetry until it—or we—was destroyed.
That made me a bit nervous until I realized that if something was going to hit the ship, like a missile, it made sense to drop both landers and both shuttles. Five targets were going to cause more issues to a guidance system than one.
We would all be flying all over the place to dodge and there must have been some sort of countermeasures that would be taken, but I didn’t know what they could be.
This had never come up before and the captain was improvising. I wondered if a shuttle or the other lander would be thrown in front of the ship to take a missile hit. It made sense, but none of us had been told anything.
Two did run a scenario that the AIs had come up with as an alternate method of blocking any threats. If we were running, then either the shuttle or lander would be dropped behind us as the ship pulled away from the system. Both were much faster than the ship and could intercept incoming missiles from the rear, with some luck. There was some sort of evaluation going on to see how they could add more layers of armour or other countermeasures.
It would be great to block missile hits with a shuttle or lander, but we only had four total. If they were going to save the expensive starship, then they needed to make sure that the less-expensive bait ships could take a few hits. Preferably not with us in them.
Two had mentioned that the Corporation had theoretical backup plans for this. I had no clue what they were and we weren’t told. It made sense that some sort of plan would exist, though. At some point someone would make space battles effective.
I didn’t bring it up at any meeting or even to the AIs, but it seemed that putting missiles in space was common sense and shouldn’t be that difficult. But I was just a new Marine and there had to be reasons why that wouldn’t work.
So I simply got myself ready as we headed in-system.
This trip lasted only a few days and was pretty straightforward except for extended travel time through an asteroid belt that seemed to run through the entire system.
One of the ship’s crewmembers came down and briefed us on the asteroid field and why we were generally safe.
I walked into the briefing room and had a seat. The crewmember was already there. She was an okay-looking woman with the standard spacer’s cut and it looked like she had just gone in to have her head shaved. She was standing instead of sitting and was trying to work the podium controls for the projectors, I guessed.
Two was tapping the tabletop with a finger and then stood up and went over to help the woman. The briefing was just past the start time. I guessed that the crewmember was new at this.
As Two was helping her power up the system manually and load the data stick for the presentation I couldn’t help but compare the two of them.
The crewmember was wearing a baggy ship suit that made her look like a blob, and she seemed nervous. Probably because she wasn’t used to presenting to us grunting Marines.
Then I compared her to Two in her bodysuit while the projectors started finally coming online.
Two was way better looking than the presenter. I mean, it wasn’t just the tight versus loose clothing. It was the entire attitude, and th
e fact that Two was not walking into walls.
I found myself wondering what the crewmember looked like under that baggy suit. She looked like she had curves.
I was just sitting there checking them both out when I had a flashback to my time in court. I had been ogling Ms. Smirko the prosecutor in her business attire when the judge had started talking to me about it.
He continues. “I understand you come from a troubled family. But nothing in your past could possibly begin to grant you the permission, even in your own mind, for what you have done. I also understand from the psychological evidence that you may not fully understand what is going on and what you did. Such a disconnect from reality is disturbing to everyone and may cause some to fear how you would react.” He pauses while considering Ms. Smirko with a professional smile. “Women have the right to dress for business and work in a manner that shows them as the enlightened people that they are.” He paused for effect, and I’m pretty sure he planned that out in advance. “It would be inappropriate for you to be treating a professional such as Ms. Smirko as an objectified symbol of male regression. It could also, given the charges that have been brought against you, be viewed as threatening.”
The judge continues and is addressing not me as much as the cameras. “Please do not ogle the women in the room as sex objects, Mr. Slate.”
I had to look away then and stare at the wall for a minute while I shivered. I didn’t think that anyone had seen it. The flashback to court had been real, and I could still see Ms. Smirko’s plastic smile, plastic body, and the way all the men in the courtroom had ogled her.
When the briefing started I was careful to look at the projected data over the table. I couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge the existence of the crewmember. I didn’t want her to feel ogled. She didn’t do a very good job after she botched the introduction, anyway.