Icarus (7 page)

   “So you’re saying it learns as it goes?”

   “Naturally,” she replied as if it were common knowledge. “That’s why
each fighter is assigned to a specific pilot.”

   “What happens if we lose the fighter, but not the pilot?”

   “The pilot gets another ship, of course. The computer’s brain is
backed up in the ship’s flight recorder, so it’s easily downloaded into another
craft—that is, if we manage to recover it. Otherwise the process starts all
over again. In fact, it starts right here in the simulator. All the data
recorded here will be introduced into your actual ship, once you get one
assigned to you.”

   “Sounds easy enough,” Shawn replied, hoping to be done with the
technical lesson. Although he could wrap his mind around basic computer
operations, he had a feeling he’d never fully understand how his brain could be
linked to the fighter. Someone far smarter than he had built this thing, and it
wasn’t his job to learn how to fix it. He just had to learn how to control
it.  

   “Ready for preflight, Commander?” Drake asked over the intercom.

   “Sure thing,” Shawn replied with all the confidence he could muster,
rubbing his hands together and scanning through the controls once more. “Just
tell me how to start the engines.”

   An hour later, Shawn had a firm grasp on the basic operations of the
fighter. Raven had taken him through a quick instrumentation familiarization,
and even a few of the advanced operational levels before she was satisfied he
was ready for takeoff.

   The first level Drake had put them through was a simple point-to-point
mission. They’d flown out in a straight line from the simulated carrier, a
visually indistinguishable counterpart of the actual
Rhea
, circled a
navigation buoy, then returned to land—which Shawn was able to accomplish only
after crashing into the side of the carrier’s landing bay…twice.

   From there, the missions became increasingly difficult. Some levels
contained objects around which Shawn would need to navigate, such as asteroids,
manmade space debris, or unstable spatial pockets. With each type of navigation
hazard, there were multiple ways to circumvent it, and Shawn felt the old
fighter skills coming back with each passing moment.

   He was amazed at the overall realism in the simulator. Everything was
projected in three dimensions, with resolution so high that it was impossible
to distinguish it from reality. This was far different than piloting
Sylvia’s
Delight
, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed being in the small,
cramped cockpit of a sleek and nimble fighter, nor was he aware of the passage
of time outside his sphere.

   “Well, Commander. It looks like you’ve got the basics down,” Drake
said from the control bubble. “What do you think, Raven? Should we see how well
he fares against some targets?”

   They weren’t scheduled for combat training today. Frankly, Roslyn was
amazed at how well her new commanding officer had taken to the simulated
Maelstrom fighter. They’d already progressed through today’s agenda and halfway
into their next session in record time. She looked to Shawn’s three-dimensional
image on her screen. “Well?”

   He nodded back with approval. “Let’s try it.”

   Brunel gave Shawn some quick instructions on weapon arming and
operation. She decided to just stick to the particle cannons and the infusion
beams for the moment, setting aside the various missiles and torpedoes for a
later training session.

   His first task was simple enough: destroy a small, non-moving object
directly ahead of his ship.

   Shawn spoke into the computer, requesting it to charge the particle
cannons to half intensity.

   “Ready,” the female voice responded curtly. When the target was locked
in, Shawn slowly depressed the trigger on the control stick, causing a
pencil-thin beam of blue-white light to emit from the tips of the wing-mounted
cannons. The beams neatly converged on the rotating, reflective object and
vaporized it instantly.

   “That’s one down,” Drake said.

   “Seemed easy enough,” Shawn replied, instantly regretting how cocky it
sounded.

   “Okay, now try this,” Drake offered.

   The target instantly reappeared in front of Shawn’s craft, but when he
attempted to shoot it, it moved slightly out of the way of his beams. Shawn
tried again, maneuvering his craft in line with the target, but it effortlessly
slid past his beams time and time again. Frustrated, he let out a grunt.

   “You’re giving the target too much information.” Roslyn’s image said.

   “What do you mean?”

   “Well, the target knows what you’re planning to do based on the
orientation of the fighter.”

   Shawn shook his head in confusion. “Okay, so how do I shoot the target
if I’m not pointed at it?”

   “You think about it, then you do it.” The explanation sounded as
simple as being told how to breathe.

   “But, I don’t—”

   “Just think about it,” she said with an air of petulance. “Focus on
the target and what you want to do.”

   He sighed deeply. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the
target, about twenty degrees above the horizon of his craft and slightly to the
left. He concentrated on it, wondering how on Third Earth he could blast it
into a thousand spinning pixilated fragments, and, as he contemplated it,
that’s precisely what happened.

   “I didn’t pull the trigger,” he said in surprise when the target
finished dematerializing.

   “It’s the artificial intelligence, Commander,” Roslyn offered. “It
anticipated your move based on the neural inputs from your helmet, like I told
you. The tips of the cannons have reflectors that allow for a few degrees of
movement without having to adjust the heading of the fighter. It’s virtually
undetectable by enemy craft. The computer calculated that the target was within
its firing arc and acted accordingly.”

   Shawn looked at her image uncomfortably. “I still like to be in
control of what and where I shoot.”

   “You are. This is why it takes so long to learn all the nuances of
these new fighters. If you can’t control your thoughts, then the ship will
never respond the way you intend it to. It’s an extremely advanced system.”

   “It’s dangerous.” Shawn replied with raised eyebrows.

   “Only in untrained hands, Commander.” Her tone left little doubt about
her current assessment of his skills.

   “Can I turn it off?”

   “Of course you can, but why would you want to?”

   “I fire when I’m ready, when I’ve calculated all possible variables,
and not a moment before.”

   The disdain in Roslyn’s voice was apparent. “Fine. Simply tell the
computer to disengage the neural interface to the weapons. I would, however,
strongly advise you keep it active for maneuvering, especially when you’re
still getting your feet wet with the new designs. It’ll make the transition a
lot smoother.”

   Shawn was quick to do just that. “Computer, disengage weapons control
from neural interface.”

   “Acknowledged, Commander.”

   Satisfied to have a computer that listened to him for a change, he
smiled appreciatively. “There,” he said with obvious approval. “Much better.
What’s next?”

   Raven’s holographic representation smiled broadly. “Targets that fire
back, of course.”

   
S
hawn
and Roslyn went through more than ten different combat scenarios in the
simulator that morning. While it hardly seemed to have taken a toll on his
executive officer, it had been physically exhausting for Shawn. First, he’d
dealt with moving targets, and then ones that fired back—then a simulated enemy
fighter took a crack at shooting down the commander. All the while Raven looked
on, ready to jump to his aid if he required it. It wasn’t until Shawn had been
confronted with four medium Kafaran fighters—rather testy ones at that—that
Roslyn needed to intervene, and that was only to take a single fighter. Shawn
had done the rest.

   She had to admit, he was every bit as good a pilot as the stories
told, perhaps even better. Had they had more simulator time scheduled, she
would have wanted to find out. True, he was a little behind the times with
communication procedures, and he wasn’t aware of some of the newer tactics that
had been devised since the end of the war, but he was intimately aware of the
basic maneuvers that every young pilot learns in space flight school. It also
occurred to her that Kestrel seemed to have improved on a few of them. By lunch
time, Roslyn could see he was beginning to tire from everything she and Drake
had thrown at him, and she decided to call it a day.

   Just before the spheroid shells opened, Drake called to Shawn over the
communications channel from his position in the control room. “Nice flying,
Commander. Can’t wait to see how you do out in the void.”

  “Thanks, Drake,” Shawn replied wearily, wiping a newly formed bead of
sweat from his brow. “It’s been real educational.”

  “Don’t think this means I’m signing you off to jump into the real thing
just yet,” Lieutenant Commander Brunel called out sharply from the second sim,
tossing her head back and freeing her long black hair from the confines of her
helmet.

   “I wouldn’t dream of it, Raven,” Shawn offered with his most sincere
smile.        

   She stepped down the ladder to the deck and met Shawn at his sim as he
was unstrapping himself from the cockpit. “All in all, though, I’d say you
weren’t half bad.”

   “What she means, Commander, is that you’ve done better than half the
pilots on this ship ever have,” chuckled Drake over the loudspeakers.

   Roslyn craned her head up to the simulator control room.
“Eavesdropping again, Lieutenant I’rondus?”

   “Sorry, ma’am,” he offered, but his tone suggested otherwise. “Guess I
forgot to shut down the microphone. See you both in debriefing.” Drake shut
down the remainder of his controls, and Shawn looked up at the observation
bubble in time to see him make a hasty exit.

   “What’d he mean by that?”

   “Since it’s just you and me in here, you should know that you made it
to level ten without so much as a scratch. That’s a new record.” Her tone held
caution, as if she were trying to halt Shawn’s ego from overinflating. “The
best anyone has ever done is level six.”

   “And who would that be?” Shawn asked as he gathered up the umbilicals
that had connected his flight suit to the sim. “You?”

   “No,” she smiled modestly. “Not even I’m
that
good.”

   “So who is—”

   “Just remember,” she interrupted curtly. “I didn’t say anything. I’d
hate to have the word spread that there’s another sim ace on board. Every pilot
and his brother would be lining up to challenge you. We’ve got enough on our
hands right now, and I don’t want anyone losing focus.”

   “So who’s the other simulator ace, then?”

   She smiled and jerked her head toward the compartment door, indicating
Shawn should follow her. “Maybe if you live long enough, you’ll figure it out.”

* * *

   After the debriefing, Shawn had wrangled up Jerry, Ensign McAllister,
and Lieutenant Maltos for a quick bite to eat. The younger officers grilled him
about his simulator time with Raven and Drake, but heeding Raven’s words, he
was tight-lipped about the whole encounter. All he’d recounted was that he did
well, and that he was looking forward to getting into a real fighter soon—even
if was only for a patrol flight. Truth be told, he wasn’t nearly as excited
about being behind the controls of a fighter as he was about getting back into
space in general.

   With their meal finished, the junior officers retired to the
Rhea
’s
recreation deck, allowing Shawn some time to shower and change back into his
normal service uniform. He sat down at his desk, pulling out the data cartridge
Melissa had passed him the night before. As he absently fumbled with it, an
image of her face crossed his mind. He thought back to when she’d
singlehandedly knocked down two drunken patrols at Jack DeLorme’s bar back on
Minos, and he reflexively smiled. He switched on his computer terminal and
inserted the media, but before it could access the material there was a knock
at his door.

   “Come in,” he called out, flipping the computer into standby mode so
as not allow it to be seen by prying eyes. In fact, it was Melissa who was at
his door.

   “Well, well, well,” Shawn began with satisfaction. “Look at what the
OSI dragged in.”

   “Very funny, Commander,” she said flatly.

   Melissa had changed from her dark gray agent’s uniform into
particularly attractive civilian attire. She was wearing dark, skintight pants
made of a lightweight material, and an equally tight dark green top that was
barely long enough to cover her flat stomach. Over the outfit she had a
waistcoat made of dark brown material Shawn guessed was leather. Her knee-high
boots, buckled in half a dozen places, looked as if they’d seen better days.
Even though she was quite fetching, the foremost item that had caught his eye was
the non-regulation blaster she had slung low over her right hip. Shawn
recognized it as a plasma pistol—a highly lethal and quite illegal firearm.

   “I see we’re dressing informally now,” he smirked. “Are we to duel at
high noon?”

   She dismissed his remark with an uneasy look. “May I please come in?”

   Stepping to within a few feet of her, Shawn peered over her shoulder
lazily. “The weather looks fine out there in the corridor. Besides, I’m not
sure about voluntarily letting an OSI agent into my quarters. It could be bad
for my image.”

   Melissa rolled her eyes and ambled into Shawn’s cabin, striding right
past him to stop dead in the center of the room.

   “I didn’t invite you in,” he said, turning slowly to face her. He
warily held his two index fingers up in the sign of a cross.

   “I’m not a vampire, Commander. I can come and go as I please.”

   Her tone was anything but pleased. Despite her alluring attire, this
impromptu visit, he decided, was going to be distinctly formal.

   “There’s a mirror right over there. I may need you to verify your
claim.”

   She narrowed her eyes at him dubiously. “You have one good day in the
simulator and you’re just full of yourself, aren’t you?”

   “You heard about that?” Shawn wasn’t a bit surprised. Of course she
had. In fact, she was probably monitoring the whole training session from some
secret hideout in the bowels of the
Rhea
, or wherever her office was.
The look on her face confirmed his statement. “Besides, as you know, I’m like
this all the time.”

   “Of course you are,” she replied mockingly. “Just as long as things go
your
way.”

   He flashed a brilliant smile as he stepped closer to her. “I have this
uncanny knack of always making things go my way.”

   Whatever had caused her sour mood, it seemed to melt away the closer
he got. “Ever the optimist,” she said with a faint smile as she stepped a pace
closer.

   “Always,” he said, their bodies now only inches from touching.

   “I understand Raven was with you today.” Her tone didn’t hold a hint
of jealousy. It didn’t need to; it was in the words themselves.

   He smiled mischievously. “So was Lieutenant I’rondus.”

   “Did you play together nicely?”

   “I like Drake just fine, but that’s not really what you want to know,
is it?”

   “It isn’t?” she replied with an upturned eyebrow. “Funny, I thought
I
was the intelligence agent who asked the questions.”

   “So you’ve put your official hat back on, then?”

   “No,” she said, lightly tapping at the leather bindings around the
plasma pistol’s grip. “Just this. It gets me all the answers the usual
questions don’t.”

   “Considering the legal status of that thing, I wonder if I should be
reading anything further into that statement.”

   She gave him her best look of innocence. “Are you questioning my
motives, Commander?”

   “No, just your means.”

   “I always get what I come for, Commander,” she said with a smirk.
“Best you consider that when you believe you have the right to question me
about anything.”

   “Uh-huh. So where are you off to, all dressed down?”
   She purred like a satisfied kitten. “Someplace you may be interested in
seeing.”

   “I don’t know,” he replied noncommittally. “I’m getting kinda partial
to the view in here.”

   Melissa stepped close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body.
Or was it hers? “What do you know…about Ohrep VII?”

   Shawn could smell the sweet aroma of cinnamon on her breath as it
wafted past his face. “It’s a way station, mostly, just beyond the edge of the
Inner Sphere,” he managed. “There are high-speed transports that depart from
there to nearly anywhere you want to go in Beta Sector. There’s a large trading
outpost there, as well. Darus Station has some of the best merchandise this
side of Third Earth, or so I’ve been told.”

   “Both legal and illegal, I hear,” she countered. “Did you…read the
documents I gave you last night?”

   “I’ve been busy.”

   “We’re stopping there to let the OSI Director off before we continue
on with our mission. We’ve also got a few things to…pick up.” She moved closer,
her nose nearly touching the crook of his exposed neckline. She breathed across
his skin as she spoke. “Your orders are encoded on the media I gave you, along
with some special instructions. I suggest you read them, Lieutenant Commander.”

   “Right now?” he all but whispered into her ear.

   Shawn had no idea why she was teasing him. All pretenses aside—and,
judging by her current actions, they were
very
far aside—there was no
other reason to play this game. Going for broke, he leaned down to kiss her,
but she stepped back and he missed her cheek entirely.

   “Yes, Commander. Right now.” She licked her lips nervously, closed her
eyes, and looked as if she were trying to gather her strength as she stepped
back from him. “And I suggest you change out of the uniform. We’ll be arriving
at Ohrep in thirty minutes, and I’ll need you by my side wearing something…less
official.”

   Melissa then turned on her thick-heeled boot and headed out of Shawn’s
cabin as quickly as she’d appeared, leaving the commander to ponder what the
hell had just happened—and why his heart was pounding in his chest.

* * *

   After he’d changed into his civilian attire—dark pants, boots, and a
beige t-shirt—and donned his comfortably worn leather flight jacket, Shawn sat
at the computer terminal in his cabin, pondering whether he should continue
reading the information packet that he had been handed by Krif, or if he should
do as Melissa suggested and read through the data she’d given him. Deciding
that Melissa had taken the greater risk by offering him whatever the storage
device held, he decided to proceed with the latter. He examined the
nondescript, palm-sized translucent cube one final time before inserting it
into the computer’s slot.

   “Accessing,” the computer replied mechanically. Shawn had half-expected
a different response, and was pleased that the
Rhea
’s technicians seemed
to be working on ironing out the computer’s glitches. A blinking light above
the cartridge slot began to pulse in a random sequence as the terminal accessed
the data. “Holocube data uploaded and ready for processing. Do you wish to use
voice-activated commands to navigate?”

   Shawn almost instinctively affirmed the computer’s request, but then
had second thoughts. If, for some reason, his room was bugged, he didn’t want
the offending recording device to pick up any stray audio and alert the
listener to whatever he may discover in the data. He reached toward the screen
and tapped the control that would leave the computer in manual manipulation
mode with the audio playback turned off.

   As he scanned the contents, Shawn noted that there were several
holographic video files and a stash of audio recordings. He would peruse those
later if he could find a suitable and secure location. By their associated
icons, he noticed that several of the documents on the cartridge were
encrypted, but when he tapped at the control that would bring one of the
documents into view, there was no request by the computer for him to enter any
type of password or decryption key. He immediately knew that Melissa had
already taken the liberty of removing all the keys on the disk before she had
handed it to him, giving only visual evidence that the contents were
classified. However, before he decided to thank her for the forethought, he
wanted to give the documents a good read to see if there was anything in them
that warranted such a security precaution.

   The first documents he opened were star charts. Even without the
header label, Shawn recognized the first one as the pre-war map of this sector
of Unified-controlled space. The area that would come to be known as Kafaran
territory was still listed as ‘Unexplored,’ and several member worlds that had
joined the side of the enemy during the war were color-coded to indicate that
they were friendly or neutral systems. The second chart in the file was a
post-war map of Unified space—more specifically, Beta Sector. He noted that the
area of space surrounding Second Earth had become quarantined, an action which
had taken place at the same time the hostilities had abruptly ended with the
Kafarans.