He took off the suit and handed it to a skeletal robot made of a few slender tubes of silvery metal. Wearing only his undersheers, he stepped onto a conveyor belt and pa.s.sed through the scanner bank. Everything looked clear to the automated system, which routed his examined and cleaned skinsuit back to him. Magnus calmly dressed and made his way out of the side tunnel.
Past the last checkpoint, Magnus stepped on a conveyor belt that whisked him over towards the merchant cargo area. Magnus came to the Iridar at last. The gray ship rested amongst many other cargo vessels on the main deck. It had a round flat shape like a pancake slightly inflated with air. Eight giant struts held it above the landing area.
Magnus let himself aboard and checked the security logs to make sure everything remained in order. He had several electronic traps waiting for any UNSF electronic attack operative who may have attempted to compromise the ship while the crew was gone.
When he"d satisfied himself that all was secure, he went to his tiny quarters and opened a communications port through his link. He stared at a blank spot on the wall, making it easier for him to see a visual display in his mind through the link.
A face resolved on the virtual screen. A bearded man with a bald head and thickset neck. The man wore the uniform of a UNSF officer.
"Henman. We"re getting ready to head out. Do you have the latest for us?"
The man nodded. "Sure do. I got the bases and the satellite info for ya. There"s a clear continent you can try out, a good distance from any of the heavies."
Henman would know. He served as an intelligence officer in the organization that kept tabs on communications across the entire human civilization. Magnus wondered, who watched the watchers?
"Yeah, well we"ll make that choice when we get the info."
Henman guffawed. "You guys do whatever you want, you just make sure that money gets to my kid."
"We stick to our deals."
"Awright then, we got nothing to argue about. You got anythin" for me?"
"Yeah, we have a new team member. She"s a xenoarchaeologist, and get thisa"she"s Captain Relachik"s kid. Not that they keep in touch anymore... still, pretty amazing."
"Wow, whatta angle! You guys are slick. Talk about an insurance policy. If the Seeker gets on your tail, all you gotta do is play your ace. Nice."
"Do you really think that"s what we"re up to? Thomas is pretty into these artifacts, and so is this girl. I don"t think it"s like that."
"Jesus, how can you fight through a whole friggin" war and still be so naive? You musta caught something from that femme that really made you lose your mind."
"I hardly know her. I just think that if Jack was planning on using her as a shield he"d mention it to me."
"Well, s.h.i.t, it"s a good thing I"m here to set you straight," Henman said. "Of course that"s what they have in mind. And if you know what"s good for you, you"ll play along. These guys didn"t hire you for your picnic skills, pal. Don"t get attached to this bimbo, they may be needing to cash out their policy at some point, y"know?"
"Hrm. Maybe... anyway, I just wanted you to make sure she was clean. It makes me nervous, having someone along so close to the force. Besides us, I mean."
"She"s too obvious to be a spy," Henman said.
"Yeah that"s what Jack says. Can you check her anyway?"
"Yeah, I"ll friggin" check."
"Good. Then I"ll see you next time."
"Yeah. I hope you do, Magnus. Grow up and get real, and you"ll make it just fine." Henman rolled his eyes and broke the connection.
Magnus sat back for a moment, thinking about the new kid, Telisa. He knew Thomas and Jack weren"t angels, and he wasn"t either... but would they really blackmail the old captain with her? And if they did, would he go along with it? Magnus shook his head. He didn"t really have the stomach for that kind of s.h.i.t, he decided. He could convince them to drop her off somewhere quiet if it came to that. He had enough blood on his hands for a lifetime.
Chapter Three.
Three days later Telisa was in deep s.p.a.ce on an illegal mission with three mysterious men whom she had only known for a week. The enormity of her venture began to make itself felt. She worried about her decisions and wondered if she had made a terrible mistake.
But she had never felt more alive in her life.
Her quarters were small but completely private. The showers on the ship were barely larger than human-sized tubes and the kitchen was the size of a walk-in closet, but she had known it would be like that. She considered it a small price to pay for money, career, and adventure.
The quiet surprised her the most. Without the thousands and thousands of microdevices embedded in almost every manmade object talking to her link, s.p.a.ce seemed quiet. And the Iridar had a few hundred such services on board, a lot of traffic compared to an undeveloped planet. Once there, she realized she would have practically no contacts on her link at all. That must have been what it was like before humans had links, she thought. The world must have been so silent and lonely in those times.
One of her tasks during the voyage was to organize packs of equipment to bring with her on various kinds of sorties from the ship. She started with one basic pack that she would need at all times. Clearly the medical supplies were a good choice as well as her tablet device, which she would use as a reference when evaluating artifacts. Although her link might be usable for that, the handheld device contained more memory and computational power. Telisa decided to keep her stunner in the primary pack. Having it around helped to dispel her nervousness.
Magnus carried a stunner as well, strapped to his belt, but it was hardly his only weapon. Telisa considered it reasonable since security was his job, but she still found his everyday gear slightly barbaric. The man lived in his Veer Industries military skinsuit; Telisa read about them and learned that they were light and flexible but capable of absorbing a great deal of kinetic and electromagnetic damage. He had some kind of a sleek black slugthrower strapped to his back, also of the notorious Veer Industries. Telisa thought it looked large enough for two-handed operation, but she imagined that the mercenary could probably wield it with one. There was also a long knife at his belt. She wondered how he managed to get such items near the s.p.a.ceport. It might be that they stayed on the ship at all times, but she wasn"t sure; after all he was a smuggler.
With Magnus in the group she did not feel a great deal of fear about who or what they might encounter in their travels, although she had not grown to feel trust for Magnus himself. He seemed somewhat distant and she didn"t think they had become friends yet, although he was always polite.
The second day of the trip, after Telisa had adapted to the feel of the ship, she met Jack in the galley.
"How are you getting along? Everything okay?"
"Yes, it"s about what I expected," she said.
"I have something that may help with the tedium of the trip. Each of us has a secondary skill set that we use to back each other up on missions," Jack explained. "I"m the backup pilot, and Thomas has medical skills that may be useful in certain situations. Do you currently have any unusual skills that we should know about?"
"Not that would help on a mission; not that I can think of, anyway," Telisa said guardedly.
"We"re covered pretty well in most areas already; the only one of us I can think of that doesn"t have a secondary is Magnus. He"s currently the only one with significant combat skills. Perhaps we should check your apt.i.tudes in that area?"
Telisa looked at Jack for a moment. Did he expect her to balk? She nodded serenely. "Very well, I a.s.sume that Magnus will be a.s.signed to this?"
"Of course. He can take you as an apprentice of sorts. How about you get together with him tomorrow, and he can go over some basics. We"ll see how it works out."
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 antic.i.p.ation 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 high 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 of 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 ill.u.s.trated the use of the three 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. Since her link did not have the bandwidth or neural connections necessary for a five-sense VR connection, she used a tack-on unit that could be adapted to anyone within a few hours, using temporary, noninvasive linkage with the spinal cord and visual cortex.
In the VR simulation she possessed a body that was strong, fast, and trim. The environment was set up 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" voice here, which sounded as if he were close by, but she didn"t see him anywhere in the illusory gym.
Magnus showed her how to fall backwards and roll forwards, 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 dropped, she found herself atop the wall again after a few seconds. After a while she noticed the wall was getting taller.
"It"s getting harder," she said.
"Remember, it"s not real," came Magnus" disembodied voice. "Just do your best."
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 h.e.l.l.
"You need to know how the technique fails. And you need to be able to perform it under stress."
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. One more time," Magnus said.
The pain went away. She started from the wall again. This time she thought it looked quite a bit higher. She hesitated. Should she complain again, or go through breaking something? She realized her body was 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 and 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 really hurt 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 you need to do."
"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 they 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 was 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.
"Let"s see some forward rolls without the helmet," he said. "Your body already knows how to do this, so it shouldn"t be that much different than the pseudo."
Telisa finished up the rolls and falls. Magnus didn"t attack her again and he seemed satisfied, although he didn"t 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. If she did that, the others would just decide that she was a spoiled academic brat, someone useless for anything except writing esoteric papers about extinct alien races.
The voyage stretched out into weeks as Telisa trained an hour in VR, an hour with the PR helmet, and an hour in real training in the gym every other day. She learned falls, strikes, locks, and throws for unarmed combat. Soon she added training programs to a.s.semble, clean, and fire various ranged weapons, and took part in mock firefights in the PR helmet.
She felt good about in her new skills, and came to realize that 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 realized the almost infinite 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 realized that 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 s.p.a.ce, 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"d have a lot in there by the time they returned, she thought.
At first she had found the man 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 were just wishful thinking on her part. She resolved to find outa"after their first expedition.
Thomas spent more and more time in the command room as they neared the planet. Telisa gave him plenty of s.p.a.ce, as her own nervousness increased. If the s.p.a.ce 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 didn"t work.
Jack dropped in on Telisa and Magnus in the gym. He didn"t 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 came out of FTL 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. He should skip us in closera""
Red lights flashed on 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 dive into. The tiny chamber was designed to protect a human 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 and she screamed. But it wasn"t the end. The ship was still rocking back and forth. Suddenly everything smoothed out and Telisa just breathed, wrapped up like a child in a metal womb. A distant rumbling became noticeable, but Telisa just waited.
Oh s.h.i.t. Oh s.h.i.t. I should have stayed at home, she thought.
"We were spotted by a s.p.a.ce 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 wet, but she ignored the discomfort.
The four crewmembers 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 sh.o.r.e 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 the h.e.l.l you think we"re going to do," Telisa said. "You were paying attention when the s.p.a.ce 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 actually will have some time. We may as well continue as best we can."