***
Telisa reported to Magnus the next day in a cargo bay which had been turned into a small gym. Magnus was wearing his usual skinsuit, and Telisa had donned a tight-fitting exercise suit in anticipation of her training.
“You have strong legs,” he observed. Telisa thought he sounded like he was getting ready to sell her as a slave.
“I guess it’s from the slide dancing,” she said. “I was a slide dance champion at my school.”
“Excellent. That may help you out with your agility and balance, which are important for many types of combat.”
He doesn’t mean to be so brusque, she thought. He’s just being businesslike.
“The training takes place as pure sim, pseudo-sim, and actual practice. The idea is that you learn concepts and strategy from the VR sims. Sometimes it’s necessary to hardwire certain physical responses into you, and that’s where the pseudo-sim comes in. In the pseudo you wear a helmet but you use your body for real, with the computer providing your sensory feedback. That way the actions you perform result in real coordination skills. Then there’s also a certain amount of the real thing. In hand-to-hand combat especially, the pseudo-sim can’t simulate the forces that occur.”
“You mean I need to practice getting hit?”
“Yes, but more than that. With the VR helmet on, you can shoot and punch and kick for real and battle virtual opponents, but at this facility we have no way to apply forces to your body as you work out. We can make you feel your opponents through the neural feedback, but if you get kicked it doesn’t throw your real body off balance. There are certain balance and feedback aspects you must learn about striking an opponent, the feel of resistance on impacts, and the sensation of getting hit. Of course we can make it all work in full VR, but then only your brain experiences it, absent your real nervous system. No body hardening occurs as a result. You have to get used to using your real muscles for all this to work best.”
That first day Magnus illustrated the use of the three training methods and the strengths and weaknesses of each one. She started in a pure virtual environment, with her body completely cut off from the real world. Telisa sat off-retina while a virtual environment computer sent Telisa a five-sense VR input through her link. From there, the link sent impulses into her spinal cord and visual cortex.
In the VR simulation, she possessed a body that was strong, fast, and trim. The environment was configured to look like a large auditorium with mats on the floor. She wondered for a moment if it had been created as a model of a real place. She could hear Magnus’s voice here, and it sounded as if he were close by, but she did not see him anywhere in the illusory gym.
Magnus showed her how to fall backward and roll forward, and she practiced until she understood how the moves were to be done. The sim felt nearly real, including the sensation of falling onto the mat. After the initial trials, she found herself atop a low white wall that appeared in the center of the workout area. Magnus instructed her how to roll with a fall, and she practiced this. Each time she stood up after a drop, she blinked to find herself atop the wall again. After a while she noticed the wall was getting taller.
“It’s getting harder,” she said.
“Remember, it’s not real,” came Magnus’s disembodied voice. “Keep going.”
Telisa dropped and rolled a few more times. The falls were becoming jarring. Telisa felt anxiety building inside of her, but she suppressed it. He’s testing me, she thought.
“Just out of curiosity, what’s the point of doing this to failure?” she asked levelly. “It is inevitable that eventually I’m going to get hurt… not for real, of course, but…” Telisa realized that she would be able to learn from experiencing breaking bones and getting shot in VR, without ever having to recover from real injury. But it would still hurt like hell.
“Three reasons: you need to know how the technique fails, you need to be able to perform it under stress, and you have to lose your fear of discomfort.”
Discomfort. He means my fear of pain.
Telisa sat atop the wall again. She dropped, ready to collapse forward into a roll. When she hit the ground she felt a pain in her foot, then she fumbled the roll and the impact knocked the wind out of her. Her head hurt.
“Good. Again,” Magnus said.
The pain went away. She started from the wall again. This time it looked still higher. She hesitated. Should she complain again, or go through breaking something? She felt her body shaking in the virtual world. She took a deep breath and fell off the wall.
This time the snap was loud and a spike of agony came with it. Instead of rolling forward, her legs collapsed beneath her as she fell to the ground on her tailbone, shocking her entire spine. She rolled weakly to one side, crying out as the pain crested… then she found herself on level ground, whole again.
“When a person gets severely injured for the first time, often they panic. And sometimes it’s traumatic mentally as well as physically. But believe me when I say that it gets better. A person can become used to getting hurt just like anything else. You learn to deal with the pain and the damage calmly, and your fear of it will subside. After a year of this you’ll avoid injury, but you won’t fear the injury itself. It will still hurt, but you won’t shy away from it if it’s something necessary.”
“So I’ll be able to think clearly about it, and suppress my instincts?”
“Yes. The decision, for instance, about whether or not to fight will be a rational one, and it won’t be made based on your fear of injury.”
Having learned the proper form for the rolls and the falls, she left the pure VR environment and went to the gym. There, Magnus fitted her with a pseudo-VR helmet that provided her with fake sights and sounds along with an instructional program. The first time she tried the roll, it was much clumsier and more painful than she had last achieved in the VR trials; now she was rolling with her own body in the real universe. Magnus said that the pseudo helmet was extremely useful for conducting mock fights with ranged weapons, and useful to a lesser degree for practicing unarmed combat moves. Here, she would train her muscles and increase the stamina of her real body while still in environments generated by the computer.
Finally the helmet was put aside, and Magnus ushered her into the center of the mat that covered the floor of the tiny gym. Without warning he pushed her backward violently, and she fell hard, slapping the mat too late.
“We can’t do that with the pseudo VR,” he said, “at least not at this facility. You did well enough for the first time… at least you tucked your chin to your chest.”
Telisa stood back up, regarding Magnus carefully now. She felt slightly intimidated by the attack and dreaded that he might hit her next. Was this to be another lesson in pain? He looked so strong, so invincible, the cut of his muscles visible even through the heavy skinsuit. She squared her shoulders and tried to hide her feelings.
“Let’s see some forward rolls without the helmet,” he said. “Your body already knows how to do this, so it won’t be much different than the pseudo.”
Telisa finished up the rolls and falls as he instructed. Magnus did not attack her again and he seemed satisfied, although he did not say anything encouraging, either. She wobbled back to her quarters completely exhausted. She went to sleep that night trying to decide if she was mad at Magnus for pushing her, or grateful that he took her lessons so seriously. The next morning was an agony of sore muscles and bruises, but Telisa remained determined. She would not shirk from these lessons no matter how difficult they became. She would separate herself from the spoiled academic brat impression her resume likely made with the team. Mastering her combat skills would prove she was worth more than just writing esoteric papers about extinct alien races.
The voyage stretched out into weeks as Telisa trained for an hour in VR, an hour with the PR helmet, and an hour in real physical training every day. She learned falls, strikes, locks, and throws for unarmed combat. Soon she added training programs to study assem
bling, cleaning, configuring, and firing various ranged weapons and took part in mock firefights in the PR helmet.
Telisa learned how complex weapons software had become. Their weapons recognized their authorized users and were loaded with physical signatures of their intended targets. A laser pistol would not fire at a person it recognized from its friendly list, and a rifle could avoid lethal hits on friendlies with its limited ability to alter the path of the projectile in-flight. Those same weapons could be set to wound or kill their enemies, picking places to strike appropriate to their settings. Soon she knew how to use their existing target libraries, as well as configure new target signatures in the field.
She felt good about her new skills and came to realize she was lucky to have been selected as Magnus’s secondary. She could not imagine medical or piloting programs to be as varied and interesting as what she was learning. Never before had she thought about the vast array of moves and countermoves mankind had developed for shooting, sparring, throwing, and grappling. Telisa wondered if the Talosians or the Trilisks had spent so much time figuring out how to destroy their fellows.
As time went on, no one questioned her combat studies. She wondered what, if anything, Magnus had told them about her performance. Since she was a solitary student, she had no one with whom to compare her progress. She looked forward to the physical sessions as a welcome release from the tedium of the voyage.
She also discovered she was starting to become attached to Magnus. She found herself staring at his image in her mind’s eye, summoned from her link memory. She had images of the entire crew and the Iridar ferreted away there. Out in space, she had no place to download the images, so she had to keep them tucked away in her link. It had a lot of storage capacity, but not an unlimited amount. She would have a lot in there by the time they returned.
At first she had found Magnus distant and mysterious, almost rude, but through the lessons he gave her, she saw that he genuinely cared about her. His voice, which had at first sounded cold and flat, started to sound softer, almost intimate to her. Telisa wondered if it was just wishful thinking on her part. She resolved to find out—after their first expedition.
Thomas spent more and more time in the command room as they neared the planet. Telisa gave him plenty of space as her own nervousness increased. If the Space Force detected them here and caught them, Telisa would find herself under arrest before their expedition even began. She tried to calm herself and put her faith in Thomas, but it did not work.
Jack dropped in on Telisa and Magnus in the gym. He did not usually stop by in person like this, since they could all communicate through their intracranial links. Telisa wondered if he was curious to see her training.
“We drained the gravity spinner down pretty far from the planet and took a little look-see,” Jack explained. “No sign of the original exploration vessel. We’re going to insert into an orbit where we shouldn’t be detectable by the ground bases.”
“Then we’ll select our site?” Telisa asked.
“That’s the plan. Thomas should skip us in closer—”
Lights on the ceiling flashed red and Telisa’s computer link emitted a warning tone with a calm synthetic voice instructing her to find the nearest g-damper. There was one terrible second when panic rose in her throat and she froze, then she was scrambling for the exit. Magnus ran behind her, a protective hand on her back. Jack had run for the other side.
Telisa came to the first pod, nothing more than a port in the corridor just large enough for a person to slip into. The tiny chamber was designed to protect a person from sudden accelerations that the pilot might have to apply in a combat situation. She slammed into the dampener module and grabbed the mask to put over her face. In less than three seconds, the tiny cramped space filled with protective foam and Telisa was plunged into darkness. Her only connection with the outside world was her wireless computer link, still droning its warning.
Telisa wondered if the dampener module would be her tomb. If the ship was blown apart, would the module break open and spill her into space, or would it remain intact until she suffocated? Or would the ship tumble into the atmosphere until she cooked to death? Telisa took a long gulp of oxygen and tried to calm down, telling herself that whatever was going to happen would happen. It was out of her hands now.
The ship buffeted violently. An explosive sound of metal clunking and rockets firing echoed into the g-dampener.
She screamed, but it wasn’t the end; the ship was still rocking back and forth. Suddenly everything smoothed out and Telisa waited, just breathing, wrapped up like a child in a metal womb. A distant rumbling became noticeable. She could do nothing but listen.
Purple paste. I should have stayed at home, she thought.
“We were spotted by a Space Force supply ship,” Thomas said over the link. “Luckily those things are slugs, and lightly armed. Just hang in there, we’re going to be planetside in a few minutes.”
Spotted by a UNSF ship. Telisa’s terror washed away into a terrible sadness, a feeling of being cheated. If the patrol had found them, there would be no expedition, no grand adventure.
Telisa waited forever… and then she waited some more. Finally Thomas’s voice came again.
“You can leave the pods. We’re on the ground.”
Telisa brought up her pod controls with her link and actuated the release. A spray of liquid dissolved the foam and the hatch opened. Telisa discarded the breathing mask and carefully made her way out. Her workout suit was soaked, but she ignored the discomfort.
The four crew members gathered around the galley. Everyone was wet from a foam wash. As a group, they reminded Telisa of a bunch of shipwrecked rats shivering on the shore of a deserted island.
They all linked into the computer and Thomas brought up a display of the sensor readings that the ship’s systems had obtained during their stressful landing. He used a mental interface to the machine to indicate spots on the virtual map.
“You can see the ruin sites to the north and west,” he pointed out, as the sites he referred to blinked in red on the display. “But what really interests me is an installation up in the high ground to the east. I picked up a power source there, and was getting some pretty weird readings from it.”
“I don’t know what you think we’re going to do,” Telisa said. “You were paying attention when the Space Force tried to kill us, weren’t you? Do you think they’re just going to let us go now? They’ll be here any time now!”
Magnus spoke up in Thomas’s place.
“No, we’ll have some time. We may as well continue as best we can.”
Telisa was perplexed. She turned her wide-eyed stare to Thomas. “What? Is that true?”
“I’m equipped to screen us from orbital detection. We fired off several electronic countermeasure modules before entering the atmosphere. I think their jamming window was wide enough to hide us. The chances are good that they don’t know the location of our landing site. They might not even know that we landed for sure.”
Jack stepped up beside Magnus.
“I admit this is one of the worst things that could have happened, but we can still make it out of this. I’m not going to just give myself up. We can go and check this place out and get some artifacts. Then if the ship hasn’t been found, we might be able to make our way out without being detected,” Jack said.
Telisa was speechless for a moment. Then she said, “They know someone’s here, though. They’ll bring in more ships.”
“That’ll take time—probably weeks,” Magnus said. “There probably aren’t many security people in system. It’ll mostly be scientists. There’s a chance they might not even come after us.”
“We’ll probably have to sell the artifacts somewhere other than Earth,” Jack conceded. “The best prices are on there, but it’ll be too risky to try and bring them in for a long time.”
“If they do come for us…” Telisa started.
“None of us will ask you to do anything but defend
yourself,” Jack clarified. “I understand that you didn’t sign up with us to kill UNSF people.”
Telisa nodded weakly. “Okay… so we’ll look for artifacts and hope for the best,” she said. She didn’t feel as confident as she tried to sound. Instead she felt embarrassed at her outbursts.
“How far is the anomalous site?” Magnus asked.
“About sixty-five klicks.”
“We’re going to be walking it too, if you’re serious about avoiding detection,” Telisa said, getting drawn in despite herself. Her excitement returned as she thought about the Trilisk artifacts again. “How large a power source did you detect?”
Thomas smiled as her enthusiasm returned.
“Enough to power a small city,” he said. “I’m thinking it’s military. Just the kind of stuff we need to get filthy rich.”
“How much you wanna bet four Terrans aren’t going to pass Trilisk security?” Telisa said.
“We’ll only have to deal with the purely automated stuff. This civilization’s clearly dead; there probably won’t be any Trilisks around.”
Telisa raised her eyebrow. “Probably?” she asked.
Terrans had never encountered a live alien of any race. The ruins of three different races had been discovered, but they were from ancient times and were no longer around.
“Well, they are aliens, after all,” Thomas said. “I try not to make assumptions about things like that. For all we know, this is just the local power plant, anyway.”
“Then why don’t we try some of the other ruin sites?”
“Because we’re after intact tech, and there’s a greater chance of finding intact stuff in a place that still has power. The entire site might be sealed up completely, utterly unaffected by the elements.”
Telisa nodded.
Thomas grinned wide. “That would be a find that could make us, if we can get back off this planet.”
The Trilisk Ruins Page 7