The Dogs of God

by Chris Kennedy

  Which makes sense, if the whole thing was designed as a recruiting tool, he thought, as he finally brought the pilot console online. But these are connected to something real.

  He grinned at Marigold. “Ready?”

  “One moment,” Marigold said. “The targeting system is a little different.”

  Richard waited, skimming through the list of options on the display. The gunboat seemed far more flexible than the briefing notes suggested, although Bagehot had warned them they wouldn’t have access to the real manuals until they were used to the simulators. Richard understood the logic, but he didn’t like it. He’d prefer to know what he was getting into before he got into it. The display switched back to normal as Marigold sat back, looking pleased with herself. Richard smiled and pressed his hands against the console. The entire gunboat quivered.

  “Hey,” Richard said. “I…”

  He kicked himself as Marigold laughed. It was a military-grade simulator, a training tool for pilots…not a computer game he could play in the privacy of his room. Of course there were going to be sensations. He gritted his teeth and carefully lifted the gunboat off the deck, steering towards the hatch. It grew harder to remember that it was all simulated as the gunboat glided through the hatch and out into the inky darkness of space. He rotated the craft slowly and spotted a carrier, a modified freighter, surrounded by green light. The IFF system bleeped up a reminder the carrier was a friendly ship.

  “Well,” Marigold said. “What now?”

  Richard frowned as he steered the gunboat around the carrier and out into open space. The craft felt jumpy, as if the slightest touch on the controls would be enough to send her into a gallop. He knew how to drive, but the gunboat felt as if he’d swapped his mother’s car for a sports car, one of the fastest vehicles on the road. It was more than he could handle…he gritted his teeth, reminding himself that he’d felt just as scared when he’d first driven his mother’s car on the main road. He wasn’t going to lose control and crash. There was literally nothing to crash into.

  He reminded himself of that again and again as he pushed the limits a little further. The gunboat wasn’t quite as responsive as a starfighter—the gunboat was too large to match a starfighter’s performance, while lacking the armour of a capital ship—but it was surprisingly fun to fly. He threw caution to the winds and spun around in a crazy loop, feeling convinced the experience was real. The simulator was good. It made him wonder, suddenly, if he would ever get out of the device. Was it good enough to simulate the rest of his life?

  You’re being silly, he told himself. Who would design a simulator to trap you?

  “Having fun?”

  Richard jumped, nearly wetting his pants. Bagehot was right behind them…how the hell had he gotten into the gunboat? Richard hadn’t realised the man could open the hatches from outside…he scowled as he fought to still his beating heart, cursing himself for the oversight. What sort of idiot would build a gunboat simulator that couldn’t be opened from the outside? Anything could happen inside the simulator, anything at all.

  “Yes, sir,” Richard managed. “I…I’m just experimenting.”

  “Bring the weapons systems online,” Bagehot ordered Marigold. “You’ll be ready to start shooting at targets now.”

  He reached forward and tapped a code into the console. The display lit up with a handful of red icons, glaring balefully at the crew as they converged on the gunboat’s position. Richard gulped as he saw the closing speed, unimaginably fast by human standards, even if it was a great deal slower than light. Marigold bit off a word and started to work, taking pot-shots at the enemy missiles as they drew closer. Richard remembered himself and took control of the gunboat, throwing the craft into a series of evasive manoeuvres. They weren’t fast enough to keep one of the missiles from detonating far too close to the gunboat. The display pulsed red, then blanked.

  “Hard luck,” Bagehot said. “What did you do wrong?”

  “I stayed still too long,” Richard said, “and the missiles got too close.”

  “Among other things.” Bagehot tapped the console once. The simulation reset itself. “Try again. Try, try again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Richard muttered.

  He forced himself to take control of the gunboat as they ran through the simulation time and time again, struggling desperately to remain alive a few seconds longer each time. The enemy gunners were good—or the computers were cheating bastards, he wasn’t sure which—and they kept scoring hits even when he was sure they wouldn’t be able to get a solid lock on him. Tricks and tactics he’d used at home simply didn’t work so well on the battlefield, he noted; cunning moves that looked dramatic weren’t remotely realistic. The gunboat’s only real advantage was speed and relative stealth for its size. But too much speed made it impossible to remain stealthy.

  “This isn’t a starfighter,” Marigold said as Richard skimmed too close to an enemy hull. “You can’t go so close…”

  The gunboat slammed into the enemy ship. The display pulsed red, then blanked.

  Richard scowled, forcing himself to sit upright. His body ached. It felt as if he’d been sitting in the chair for hours. He glanced at his watch and frowned. They’d been in the gunboat for around four hours, perhaps longer. His muscles were threatening to cramp. He sat back, breathing deeply as he tried to relax. His head was starting to hurt.

  “I think it was easier on the computer,” he said, ruefully.

  “It was,” Marigold agreed. “But it was a little less rewarding, too.”

  Richard glanced at her. “Do you know how many times we got killed out there?”

  “Yeah.” Marigold looked back at him. “But I also know we managed to kill a bunch of simulated aliens before they managed to give us a simulated death.”

  Richard snorted as he heard the hatch opening behind them. Bagehot climbed into the craft.

  “Had enough?”

  “I’ve got aches and pains in places I didn’t know I had,” Richard admitted. He’d felt tired and uncomfortable after PE, but never quite so sore. He’d done as little as he could get away with in gym, while the sadistic bastard of a PE teacher had concentrated on Colin and the other sporty boys. He had the feeling Bagehot wouldn’t let him get away with anything in the academy. “Is that normal?”

  “You get used to it,” Bagehot said dryly. “Unbuckle yourself. I’ll see you outside in five minutes.”

  Richard struggled to unbuckle himself. His fingers felt cramped, as if he’d been typing for days on end. He had to fight to get them to cooperate long enough to undo the buckle and stand upright. His legs wobbled so badly that he nearly fell forward and cracked his head against the display. Marigold stumbled beside him as her legs twitched helplessly. Richard didn’t laugh. He didn’t feel any better himself. They practically had to hold each other upright as they stumbled to the hatch and fell through. A passing tech snorted as he saw them. Richard was too sore to be angry.

  “Well,” Bagehot said. He eyed a datapad. “You’ll be pleased to know that, between you, you got yourselves killed a grand total of five hundred and seven times, taking billions of pounds worth of experienced gunboats with you. Aren’t you lucky you got all those mistakes out of you before we put you in a real gunboat?”

  Yes, Richard thought dully. You’d probably take the money out of my pay.

  He snorted at the thought, then forced himself to focus. It was no time to let his thoughts start to wander. Bagehot discussed their mistakes in brief detail, explaining what some of them had done wrong while glossing over others. Richard listened carefully, silently noting the moments when Bagehot was focused on his mistakes. The naval officer was a far better tutor than any of the teachers he’d endured back on Earth. For one thing, Bagehot didn’t humiliate his students in front of the class.

  “You’ll be swapping roles tomorrow,” Bagehot said when he’d finished. “And you’ll keep swapping roles until…when?”

  “Until we know what we’re doing,” a
recruit said. “Isn’t that what you told us?”

  “Quite.” Bagehot gave him a wintery smile. “And now we’ve all had enough for a moment, you’re going to join me in a celebratory jog. Follow me.”

  Richard groaned openly as he tried to stumble after the older man. His body ached desperately, begging for mercy. The remainder of the class didn’t seem to be in any better state. He rubbed his hands together, then rubbed his legs as he forced himself to move down the corridor. A handful of passing techs laughed at them as they passed. Richard felt a flash of the old humiliation at always being last, mingled with an odd sense that it actually was making him feel better. The jogging was getting the blood flowing once again. And it helped that—for once—he wasn’t at the very back of the class.

  “Keep moving at a steady pace!” Bagehot shouted as he led them further down the corridor. “Don’t allow yourself to stop until I say so.”

  Richard felt sweat trickling down his back and pooling in his pants as Bagehot led them into the mess hall. The other recruits turned to stare as they went by, their gazes following Richard and the team…Richard was sure they were laughing behind their blank faces. Of course they were laughing. There wasn’t one of them who looked remotely overweight, let alone unfit. Richard felt like a joke. And yet the Navy had had faith in him. Or had it? It might have decided to let things play out and see what happened.

  “Sit and eat,” Bagehot ordered. “You’ll be doing something different this afternoon.”

  “Shoot me now.” Marigold plunked herself down next to Richard. “If I’d known I’d actually have to jog…”

  “It’s for your own good,” Bagehot said, appearing beside them. “We want you to be healthy.”

  “Hah,” Richard muttered. He’d heard that before, from too many sadistic PE teachers, to take it too seriously. “You just want to get some use out of us.”

  Bagehot proved to have very good hearing. “You’re right,” he said. Richard silently gave him points for being honest. “But it’s in our interests—and yours too—to keep you healthy. Isn’t it?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  The hell of it, Richard decided after two months on the naval base, was that Bagehot had a point.

  Richard had always detested team sports. He’d regarded PE as a couple of hours of undiluted suffering, the sort of torment that was normally reserved for murderers, muggers, and high school bullies in the deepest, darkest pits of hell. But Bagehot was good at forcing him to press his limits without pushing him too hard, something he would have liked if he’d had a teacher like Bagehot at school. Richard knew he’d never have the raw strength of a Colin—or the handful of even more muscular cadets he’d seen on the base—but he was healthier than he’d ever been. His paunch was gone, replaced with muscle. He honestly wondered sometimes if anyone would recognise him if he went back home.

  Not, of course, that he had much time for wondering anything. Bagehot kept them busy, moving between the simulators and endless drilling in emergency procedures, that it was somehow anticlimactic when they were finally allowed to fly real gunboats. Their skills were so ingrained in them that it never really dawned on Richard that he was doing it for real until he’d landed the gunboat back on the hangar deck. And then it struck him that he’d just earned his wings. Bagehot congratulated them all that night, then sent them back to work the following morning. Richard had to admit, the drills had paid off. It almost made up for the nickname the makeshift squadron had earned from the remainder of the cadets.

  “They’re calling you the Redshirts,” Bagehot had told them. He didn’t say who they were, but he didn’t have to. They knew who was talking about them. “They think you’re going to be wiped out the first time you go into battle. And you’re going to prove them wrong, aren’t you?”

  The words mocked Richard as the team continued to train, working through hundreds of increasingly difficult simulations covering every possible engagement…or, as Bagehot reminded them, every engagement the tactical analysts could imagine. Richard died a thousand simulated deaths, learning from each and every one…Bagehot made it clear, time and time again, that they had to learn from their mistakes. It wasn’t very comforting to know that starfighter pilots had worse odds of survival when they went into battle for the very first time. If they died—and Richard had met enough real pilots to know they were good—how would the gunboats cope when they went into battle? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “We’ll be leaving tomorrow for McCleery,” Bagehot informed them. “Make sure you’re packed. The shuttle will be departing at 1000 precisely.”

  Richard felt a thrill as he packed his carryall, making sure to pack everything he needed before stuffing in his eReader and a handful of other luxuries. Bagehot had been promising them a chance to take part in a real live-fire exercise, but—for reasons Richard had been told were well above his pay grade—the exercises had been delayed time and time again. He had the feeling, reading between the lines, that certain superior officers weren’t convinced the gunboat program was viable. The Navy had an immense budget, but it couldn’t afford to waste resources on every crazy idea from the NGW program. Richard and the others had discussed it and decided they’d just have to try their hardest to convince the senior officers to believe in them. He didn’t want to go home and admit defeat.

  But it wouldn’t be my fault if they cancelled the program, he told himself. They’d find something else for me to do, right?

  The shuttle voyage to HMS McCleery was somewhat disappointing. He’d hoped for viewports, for a chance to see deep space with the naked eye, but the shuttle lacked even a single viewport for the passengers. He sat back and read an eBook for a few hours, then forced himself to sleep. Bagehot awoke him a few hours later and chivvied him and the others through the airlock and onto the makeshift carrier. Richard couldn’t help being thrilled, even though he knew McCleery was a testbed rather than a giant fleet carrier. The starship hummed constantly, even when she was drifting in interplanetary space. Her crew seemed calm and professional. He almost felt at home.

  “They’ll be putting us at the sharp end tomorrow,” Marigold predicted after they went through yet another safety briefing. The carrier and the gunboats would be staying out of the way, isolated from the remainder of the squadron. “I think they’re intent on testing us under harsh conditions.”

  “As long as they don’t give the enemy too many advantages,” Richard pointed out. “We could lose without even having a chance to win.”

  “They won’t do that in a real exercise,” Allen said. He’d been a gamer, too, back in the civilian world. “They’ll want to keep things realistic.”

  Richard wasn’t so sure. It had taken him longer than it should to realise that the simulators deliberately hyped up enemy capabilities while putting a limit on theirs. The enemy had a far greater chance of snapping off a shot and actually scoring a hit, while if there was the slightest chance the gunboats would miss, they would. Bagehot had told them, when he’d asked, that it would make things a great deal easier when they actually went into a real engagement. And yet, live-fire or not, it was still an exercise. The tactical officers might make things a great deal harder for them.

  The discussion went on and on until Bagehot chased them to their new barracks, pointing out—rather dryly—that they had to be up early the following morning. Richard had to smile at his droll expression, then took his bunk and laid down. It was astonishing just how easy it had become to forget that nearly half the team was female. They were his friends…he felt an odd little lump in his throat as he realised they were all his friends. Was that what it felt like to have true friends? To know there were people he could relax around without having to guard his words for fear they would be used against him? Or to believe they wouldn’t beat him up seemingly at random? The thought made him smile as he closed his eyes. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t trade the last two months for anything.

  He was still smiling the followin
g morning as they ate a handful of ration bars and boarded their gunboats. McCleery didn’t have a proper flight deck. The gunboats were latched to her hulls like shuttles; they were designed to boost themselves away from the carrier rather than be expelled from the launch tubes like starfighters. Richard wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but it was easier than launching from a hangar deck. He rather suspected Bagehot had done it on purpose. It would make their lives just a little easier as the simulation began.

  “You have your targets,” Bagehot said. A cluster of red icons—a couple of outdated freighters and a handful of tiny asteroids—appeared on the display. “Go get them.”

  Richard glanced at Marigold, then keyed the touchscreen. The gunboat lurched as it picked up speed, heading straight towards the targets. His tactical display tightened rapidly as the targets opened fire, bursts of laser light shooting through space. They wouldn’t do any actual damage if they hit the gunboat, thankfully, but Bagehot would chew them out for letting themselves be taken off the flight roster. The exercises had only just begun.

  He sucked in his breath as the display continued to fill with icons. The Royal Navy had deployed two entire squadrons of starships—including a pair of fleet carriers, a single massive battleship, and a dozen cruisers—to the exercise, giving their crews a chance to practice before they moved to the war front. It looked as if the two squadrons were trying to kill each other, the fleet carriers launching starfighters to take out the battleship before it came into firing range and blew them both to atoms. Richard wondered dryly why the two carriers didn’t run in different directions. The battleship could only catch and kill one of them.

  Maybe the real idea is to give the crews a chance to see what losing feels like, he thought as he turned his attention back to their targets. Bagehot had made it clear that there would be a certain degree of randomness in the exercises. The planners hadn’t tried to script the whole thing from beginning to end, picking the winner before the two squadrons had even been assembled. They wouldn’t be able to predict anything about how they’d go. And make sure we learn something from it before the plasma bolts turn real—and deadly.