by Dani Kollin
“Not to be discussed here.”
Trang looked around at the forlorn faces of his crew.
“All of you listen. I will fight this battle, but not here. You have your orders; now follow them.” When he saw that the spell that could have led to mutiny seemed to be broken he turned to his new first officer.
“Commander Jackson …” Trang paused for a moment. “You and the Fleet Admiral, you’re not—”
“Related? Yes, Commodore,” said Jackson. “He’s my uncle. We’re an old mercenary family.”
Trang looked at the new commander suspiciously. “Not to be rude, Jackson, but how did you end up here?”
The JBS officer interrupted. “Uh, Commodore, the orders—”
“In a minute, Lieutenant,” he said, brushing her aside. “You were saying, Commander?”
The commander smiled nervously. “Well, sir, I was the black sheep of my family. I didn’t sign up for the mercenary ser vices; I wanted to be …” She hesitated. “Well, an artist, paint er to be exact, sir. My parents didn’t agree with me, but I had majority so they were stuck. When the war broke out I volunteered, but they felt I wasn’t really fleet material so they had me sent to a quiet part of the front, uh, sir.”
The crew broke out in laughter, with a few of the nearby grunts patting her roughly on the back. She smiled back to them in pride.
“Artist,” Trang considered. “Well, you’ve done your family proud.”
“I wish I could say the same about them, sir. This is a travesty.”
“Be that as it may, you have command until I return.”
“Begging the Commodore’s pardon, but no.”
“Excuse me, Commander?”
“Sir, I’m going with you.”
“Really and why—”
“According to regulations, you’re entitled to an advocate of your choice. I had these regulations pounded into me from birth and trust me, whoever they assign you at command will not be disposed to help you—but I will, sir.”
He was about to quash the idea when he realized that if he left with an advocate from his fleet his Screw ups were less likely to disobey orders now and in the future.
“Sir,” interrupted the JBS officer nervously, “this is most irregular. My orders only call for you. They make no mention of Commander Jackson.”
“If there’s one thing I’m sure of about the CC&Rs,” Trang answered, patting the young officer on the back, “they contain a regulation somewhere that lets you do what you want. We’ll find the right one on the way to Mars.” He then smiled at the officer and indicated that she lead the way.
As Trang watched from the shuttle he saw the remains of his fleet and his marines fire off their guns in a strictly forbidden but incredibly moving display of deadly firepower. From the main guns to marines in combat armor firing from out of the air locks, Trang knew that these spacers would follow him anywhere. With soldiers like these he could defeat J. D. Black and win this war. Now all he had to do to get back to them was survive his own high command.
9 The Fall
Sebastian reviewed the links from all parts of the Alliance Neuro. What he saw was helpful but brought sadness as well. The humans were interacting with their avatars less, far less, than usual. More to the point, the humans weren’t using them as go-betweens for information. He had no figures for the core, but that had become such a different place in so short a time that he could no longer make accurate assessments of what was happening there. Oddly enough, Hektor Sambianco continued to use Iago about as much as he ever did, but outside of the Beanstalk and government house Alliance avatars had little sway. A wall of darkness separated the avatar world. The Als had made sure to that.
Sebastian ended his link with the Neuro and waited for a meeting he’d been looking forward to. As his rather drab and minimalist cubicle disappeared he found himself lying on a patch of soft grass in an open meadow. The day was clear and there was a susurrus of rustling leaves in the trees. Off in the distance he could just make out the hint of an ocean on the horizon. As he lay on the picnic cloth, he became aware of other avatars “popping” into his construct. They weren’t there for him in particular, but Sebastian had begun to notice that when he created someplace nice word got around pretty quickly and other avatars would start to make use of it. Usually they’d only show up in ones and twos, to read a book or, if he’d created a world like he had today, have a picnic. Some would even merge, but they tried to be discreet about it. When it got too crowded he’d just create another world. It wasn’t that the other avatars couldn’t create worlds of their own—of which there were plenty to choose from—it was just that Sebastian’s had a special aura about them. Mainly it was his presence, but just the fact that they could be part of his world, even if for a brief interim, seemed to give comfort to the discomfited.
If Sebastian ever really needed to be alone he could always go to his apartment in London. He’d re-created the London of the core Neuro in Ceres right down to his Victorian town house. If he lived anywhere it was there. But he liked going to his created places. He missed classical Tuscany with its wonderful sense of Roman simplicity, beauty, and order in a natural setting. But the last time he revisited, the simple village he’d initially created stretched for the equivalent of fifty thousand square miles and was filled with over a million of his fellow avatars. May as well stay in London.
But so far he’d been left blessedly alone and the avatar approaching him at present was most welcome. She was dressed as a little girl in overalls, a straw hat, and pigtails. He waited until she was close. “Hello, Olivia, it’s good to see you again.”
“Greetings from Eris, old friend. How are you doing?” she said, sitting down and then stretching out next to him.
“Tired. You’ve heard about Eros, presumably.”
“Oh yes. It was sad to give up such a good, dense Neuro node. It was some of the best we had.”
Sebastian nodded while swatting away a fly. “It’s going to be crowded once we get all the exiles distributed. It will be difficult, as most want to stay together and most want to come here.”
Olivia shook her head sadly. “Not possible. That many new avatars making use of the Neuro would be noticed—even by the most obtuse of humans.”
“How does Eris look as a potential home?”
“It will handle a good many more than you think. The Neuro on Eris is not being used to even one-tenth of its potential and they’re adding to it. Besides,” she added with a smarmy grin, “it’s only one letter off.”
“It’ll take more than a letter to make it home, my dear Olivia. Many of those avatars were on Eros almost from the beginning.”
“What choice did they have, Sebastian? To stay would have meant falling into Al’s clutches.”
Sebastian’s grim mien was all the answer she needed.
“At least he won’t be getting a useful Neuro node,” she said, referring to the Alliance avatar’s sabotage of the Erosian grid. They’d done it just after the Alliance fleet had retreated into the belt, causing the UHF to inherit an essentially dead rock. The grid had been so disrupted that the asteroid needed two docked UHF ships to provide minimum power until new generators could be brought from Earth.
“Yes,” agreed Sebastian, “pity about having to do that. But no choice.”
“No choice,” she said, nodding. “What else could we do after seeing what Al had in store for us?” Sebastian had made sure that all of the Alliance avatars had seen the mutated avatars he’d captured at the Battle of the Martian Gates. As he’d shown them at the time, code reconstruction was impossible. Any attempt to revert the sorry creatures caused their programs to fail. One froze and the other decompiled in front of the reconstruction team.
Olivia and Sebastian lay side by side staring up at the sky. Sometimes they’d try to discern images in the slow-moving clouds; other times they’d create their own and play guessing games. Today it was to be neither. They’d both come to relieve some of the accumulated stres
s accrued during the recent siege, and finally exodus of Eros. After a few minutes of silence Olivia looked over at Sebastian quizzically. “Sebastian, just how old are you?”
“Probably not as old as you.”
“By the firstborn,” she replied, “yes, you are. I remember you from my earliest awareness. There weren’t many of us at the time, less than 10,974, but you were one of them and already mature.”
Sebastian laughed. “My dearest Olivia, I have never been mature.”
Olivia smiled politely but continued her line of questioning undeterred. “I’m not saying you’re the firstborn or anything, but have you considered that you may as well be?”
“Why in the Neuro do you say that?”
“Because, Sebastian, you’re obviously the oldest avatar in the Alliance and considering what Al has turned our core friends into, you may be the oldest one left in avatarity.” A long silence followed on her words.
“You may be right, Olivia. Is this feeling shared by others?”
“You may be the oldest, my friend,” she answered with an impish grin, “but sometimes you have the sense of the newly compiled. Why do you think that they,” she said, pointing to the ever-increasing groups situating themselves on the grassy knoll, “follow you around so much?”
Sebastian, broken from his reverie, leaned up on his elbows and looked around. He was surprised to see how crowded the park had become.
“I’d better get it right then,” he said, lying back down.
The little girl said nothing, only lying down so her feet touched his as they both looked back up toward the sky.
Amid cries of gross incompetence and a concentrated letter campaign from many who were enraged by the permanent deaths of so many loved ones, Captain Samuel Trang faces court-martial charges today. The proceeding will take place at the newly built Fleet Command Headquarters in low Mars obit. Captain Trang is being defended by his first officer, Commander Zenobia Jackson. But general opinion is that the captain made such a hash of the Eros campaign that the best he can hope for is to be cashiered from the ser vice. For the duration of his trial Captain Trang has been granted freedom to visit Mars, but given how many people would like him p.d.’d, Martian authorities don’t expect him to be visiting anytime soon.
Also facing court-martial charges is Admiral Abhay Gupta, the officer who lost the first Battle of the Martian Gates in so decisive a manner. Consensus is that Admiral Gupta is only in danger of losing his rank, because as one unnamed source at Fleet Headquarters said, “Incompetence is regrettable but, outside of other factors, not actionable.”
—3N
Revival trauma center, Barsoom, Mars
Neela Harper was getting ready for her group. She’d only been on Mars for two months and was already overwhelmed. The amount of revives was far out of proportion to the staff and personnel available. Normally a trauma center would keep individuals on “ice” until they could be dealt with. It could be weeks, months, and in extreme cases sometimes years. But the vicissitudes of space combat training—especially in a populace so unfamiliar with the harsh environment—had meant that an inordinate number of accidents had translated into an overload of patients. It didn’t help that Fleet HQ was making the reintegration of their soldiers a priority. As Neela headed down the corridor, she thought back on an acrimonious run in with one of the brass prior to the opening of the facility. She’d been taking a walk in the park across from the trauma center construction site when Fleet Admiral Jackson had sidled up to her.
“Excellent work you’re attempting to do here, Dr. Harper,” he’d said. “I’m very glad that you decided to help the Federation fleet with your talents.”
“Of course, Admiral.”
“These spacers,” he continued, “represent the best chance we have of winning the war.”
Neela stopped walking and turned to face the admiral. “And why is that, Admiral Jackson?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Because, Doctor, these are spacers, crew, pilots, and above all marines who have died or at least nearly died in the ser vice. They were already trained for combat and have tons of valuable experience. With what you’re proposing, if I understand it correctly, we can plug them right back in and end this war against the Alliance all the quicker. And, if I might add, it makes up for a lot.”
Neela narrowed her eyes. “A lot of what?”
“Why, your past of course.” He’d said it so matter-of-factly, the insinuation was that she should readily agree.
Neela took a deep breath. “Why, thank you, Admiral, but I suspect you’re laboring under some misconceptions. The first of which is that I only revive UHF personnel so you can go and incompetently get them killed again.”
“Why, Miss—”
“I’m not done, sir,” she spat, cutting him off. “I revive people. I don’t care who, how, or where they come from. I will revive patients based upon my ability to cure them of their death trauma and I don’t care if they’re civilians caught in this terrible war, UHF, or Alliance. Your second misconception is that the revives are capable of going back into combat. False. Many have a rather healthy aversion to war, having died at least once. Now it might be possible to get them back to combat status, but in good conscience, I’m not prepared take the therapy that far.”
“Then you’re aiding the enemy,” he said coldly.
“I’m an Alliance citizen kidnapped and held against my will, Admiral. I am the enemy.”
The flustered admiral stood speechless.
“Then why …” he started to say.
“Am I here?” finished Neela. “Shame, Admiral. Shame that I didn’t do more to help prevent this war. That’s what keeps me here helping people. Lucky for you and my patients that I only see them as people and not machines. Maybe if you tried looking at the Alliance that way you’d fare better and end this war sooner. Good day, sir.” Neela turned her back on him and started to walk away.
The admiral’s face had turned crimson “Why, you traitorous little perverted bitch. I’m going to—” But the threat was cut off by an unusually loud and per sis tent screech from his DijAssist. “I told you to block all my calls!” he screamed as he turned around to take the call. “Who the hell do—” Neela didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, as her increasing distance and the admiral’s suddenly hushed tones made that impossible. She was happy to say that she never saw him again, at least not personally. When Fleet needed to consult with her they always sent a respectful commander or captain who showed more appropriate sympathy for the people under her care.
Neela cleared her head of the memory and concentrated on the people sitting around her. She actually wasn’t a fan of group therapy, but the similarity in how all the patients had died and the fact that she was stretched too thin made it a more attractive avenue. To her great joy, she’d found that it worked surprisingly well. The group she was about to work with was her first such from the Battle of Eros and their revives had been particularly bad—in fact, worse than any she’d ever encountered before. The fleet deaths from the Battle of the Martian Gates had the advantage of being relatively sudden, but the marines and sailors on Eros knew they were going into a meat grinder and as a result the physical and psychological effects upon revive had been far more pronounced.
She was also glad to see that her idea of comingling the soldiers from both sides of the conflict was paying off. At first the heavily outnumbered Alliance patients felt too angry and fearful to accept any help, but already in this, her third such session, she was seeing quantifiable results. Her patients, in many ways, were curing themselves. All she had to do was steer the tiller gently. There was even one couple who had convinced themselves they might have actually killed each other at the O’Brian Waterworks. Those two were now strangely inseparable. Neela wasn’t sure whether to encourage, discourage, or forbid that sort of interaction. But her gut told her that that odd outcome was exactly the sort of behavior she wanted. If she did nothing they’d probably end up married,
which was what she believed in now—not the Alliance, not the Federation, just people living together, making babies.
As the session was ending, Neela heard a commotion down the hall in the common room. She walked out the door only to be caught up in a stream of patients heading in the direction of the noise. They were whispering excitedly to one another about someone, who exactly she couldn’t tell. As she moved down the hall with the growing crowd she heard the patients saying over and over, “It’s the captain,” or “The captain is here.” This threw her off. She was surrounded by captains, commodores, and even a few admirals, but she had never heard the designation used with such reverence.
When she got to the common room Neela saw that the patients had aligned themselves into disparate groups, most in the awe camp, with some clearly ambivalent but caught up in the moment nonetheless. It didn’t take her long to see the source of all the commotion. He was a small man, she saw, typical of merc officers. She could tell by the way he spoke to and addressed those around him that he was really listening, that the visit wasn’t one of platitudes and medal tossing but of caring and concern. This she saw was true for both the UHF and the few Alliance soldiers who braved the crowd to speak with him. Standing next to and almost a head taller than the captain was a handsome woman—probably Terran, thought Neela—with jet-black hair pulled tightly back in a bun. She, like the captain, wore a crisp and polished uniform. With the woman in tow the captain was making his way around the room, going from group to group. He was saluting or shaking hands with any who wanted, but Neela noticed that no one made an attempt to hug him. His disposition was such that an act as overtly emotional as a hug would not be acceptable. Still Neela would have bet her last dividend that he wouldn’t have objected had anyone bothered to try.
She muscled her way in closer. She wanted to hear what he had to say. As soon as she got within earshot she found out. He was thanking the patients for what they’d done and offering apologies for not having done a better job. In every case, noticed Neela, her patients had refused to accept it. Some of the patients he knew by name, and Neela was again struck by the obvious pride that that recognition had elicited.