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Authors: William H Keith
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forward glacis, a slashing attack that peeled back armor and severed her primary actuator links. She felt her legs go numb, but she was able to shift the strider’s command function back to Ryan, hoping that it was her linkage that had been damaged, not his. “C’mon, Ryan,” she cried into the ICS. The Wraith was getting up again, staggering erect. Sinclair’s machine was terribly damaged, but still more than a match for the smaller, lighter Warlord. “Move! Move!”
A salvo of M-21 rockets slammed into the RS-64’s already battered glacis. Explosions tore through the heart of Assassin’s Blade, and Katya felt her linkage slipping.…
Katya found herself blinking at the smooth, gray metal of a link module’s overhead. Numb with the aftereffects of battle lust, it took her a moment to remember where she was… what she was doing.
Today’s engagement had been a full-realism sim managed by an entire orchestra of AIs to allow thousands of striderjacks and technicians to experience the joint virtual reality of a full-scale war. Katya’s new unit, the 1st Confederation Rangers, had been up against warstriders jacked by the Confederation’s staff command and naval contingent.
She’d not really expected the exchange to become so… personal.
“Colonel?”
Turning her head, she saw Allen’s face peering into the module’s opening at her. Ryan Green stood just behind him. “Hi, Kurt, Ryan. I guess we lost, huh?”
“Something like that,” Allen said. “You okay?”
Deftly, she unplugged herself from the three feeds jacked into her temporal and cervical sockets. Her hair, short on the sides and neck to keep it clear of her hardware, was longer on top and in front and had plastered itself across her head. She ran her fingers through it, dragging it off her face.
“Not bad, considering I just took a hundred megs through my belly.” Unstrapping herself from the link module, she swung long legs off the padded couch, stooped to get through the opening, and stood up on the gleaming white deck outside. Dozens of other link modules surrounded her, some occupied, most empty.
“Colonel Alessandro?”
Turning, she saw the gray-uniformed figure of one of the games monitors, standing behind her with a compad in her hand. “That’s me.”
“You’re dead, Colonel. You and both of your crew members.”
“So I gathered.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have an active link with the Rogue? How about my opponent in that last exchange?”
The technician glanced down at her pad, palming the interface to open a new feed. “According to the battlesim AI,” she said, reading the screen, “you inflicted sixty percent damage on the Battlewraith you attacked. One of its crew members was killed, one more badly hurt. The third was able to return fire. His missile barrage touched off your Warlord’s fusorpack.”
“The one I killed. Who was he?”
The technician checked her pad again. “The simulated casualty was General Sinclair himself. But you must have known that, Colonel. Your initial shot was quite accurate.”
“Hey, if we’re dead, when’s the funeral service?” Ryan wanted to know. “I’d like to attend.”
“That may depend on my court-martial,” Katya said. She meant it as a joke, but she couldn’t help wondering what was going to come of her actions this morning. She’d broken several regulations in today’s full-combat simulation, as well as showing some rather impetuous recklessness. There was bound to be some fallout.
Katya didn’t care. It had been worth it, damn it. Worth it and then some.
She felt lots better now, having killed Travis Sinclair.
Chapter 5
Most of the worlds of the Shichiju have at least one sky-el, a space elevator that makes travel between the planet’s surface and synchronous orbit cheap and simple, if considerably slower than ascraft passage. Grown from synchorbit by enormous factories that nanotechnically transform carbonaceous chondrite asteroids into
A salvo of M-21 rockets slammed into the RS-64’s already battered glacis. Explosions tore through the heart of Assassin’s Blade, and Katya felt her linkage slipping.…
Katya found herself blinking at the smooth, gray metal of a link module’s overhead. Numb with the aftereffects of battle lust, it took her a moment to remember where she was… what she was doing.
Today’s engagement had been a full-realism sim managed by an entire orchestra of AIs to allow thousands of striderjacks and technicians to experience the joint virtual reality of a full-scale war. Katya’s new unit, the 1st Confederation Rangers, had been up against warstriders jacked by the Confederation’s staff command and naval contingent.
She’d not really expected the exchange to become so… personal.
“Colonel?”
Turning her head, she saw Allen’s face peering into the module’s opening at her. Ryan Green stood just behind him. “Hi, Kurt, Ryan. I guess we lost, huh?”
“Something like that,” Allen said. “You okay?”
Deftly, she unplugged herself from the three feeds jacked into her temporal and cervical sockets. Her hair, short on the sides and neck to keep it clear of her hardware, was longer on top and in front and had plastered itself across her head. She ran her fingers through it, dragging it off her face.
“Not bad, considering I just took a hundred megs through my belly.” Unstrapping herself from the link module, she swung long legs off the padded couch, stooped to get through the opening, and stood up on the gleaming white deck outside. Dozens of other link modules surrounded her, some occupied, most empty.
“Colonel Alessandro?”
Turning, she saw the gray-uniformed figure of one of the games monitors, standing behind her with a compad in her hand. “That’s me.”
“You’re dead, Colonel. You and both of your crew members.”
“So I gathered.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have an active link with the Rogue? How about my opponent in that last exchange?”
The technician glanced down at her pad, palming the interface to open a new feed. “According to the battlesim AI,” she said, reading the screen, “you inflicted sixty percent damage on the Battlewraith you attacked. One of its crew members was killed, one more badly hurt. The third was able to return fire. His missile barrage touched off your Warlord’s fusorpack.”
“The one I killed. Who was he?”
The technician checked her pad again. “The simulated casualty was General Sinclair himself. But you must have known that, Colonel. Your initial shot was quite accurate.”
“Hey, if we’re dead, when’s the funeral service?” Ryan wanted to know. “I’d like to attend.”
“That may depend on my court-martial,” Katya said. She meant it as a joke, but she couldn’t help wondering what was going to come of her actions this morning. She’d broken several regulations in today’s full-combat simulation, as well as showing some rather impetuous recklessness. There was bound to be some fallout.
Katya didn’t care. It had been worth it, damn it. Worth it and then some.
She felt lots better now, having killed Travis Sinclair.
Chapter 5
Most of the worlds of the Shichiju have at least one sky-el, a space elevator that makes travel between the planet’s surface and synchronous orbit cheap and simple, if considerably slower than ascraft passage. Grown from synchorbit by enormous factories that nanotechnically transform carbonaceous chondrite asteroids into
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