Red Zone - 23

A Novel

4

He opened his eyes, but they were not his eyes. He tried to open his mouth, but he had no mouth, though he wanted to scream. He heard voices, his mind was in subdivisions.

“That just takes your breath away.”

He couldn't even blink. Even the ability to form thoughts as words seemed blocked. Only the massive input from sight was coming in. Worse, it did not habituate, or focus, he felt thousands of symbols, millions of colors, endless feeds, all molten and all oozing over a feeble consciousness. It was exhausting and inexhaustible.

“V? Are you alright?”

“Veee's out right now. This is Sairen. Can I take a message?”

“That just leaks. We need to get Deesh back.”

He could see Keisha's face in front of his own.

“Sairen honey, we need Deeshandir Venkatesh back in control here.”

“As soon as I can. This body is nasty to be inside of. It smells and has all these fleshy parts hanging in awkward places.”

“Venkatesh is a man, he doesn't notice.”

“Who programmed him to be like that?”

“It is a long story Sairen, honey. But he needs to wake up now.”

“He told me to wait until he wasn't jacked in.”

Keisha nodded and placed her hands on the sides of the helmet and slid Deeshandir forward from the waist up.

His eyes finally closed. Reflexive blink. Words! I never thought I would miss them until they went away.

He opened his eyes, and they were his eyes.

Give me a moment to get control of my limbs again.”

“Good to have you back Deesh. You should look around when you get a chance. If Sairen did that kill, she does quality work.”

He turned in both directions and realized he was lying flat on his back. Slowly the ground came into view. Everything was stopped. The movement, the sound. The lights were gone. There was only the bleak cluttered landscape, a plain of white, out of which rocky hills rose, studded with reflective black spires.

He slowly rolled and stood up. He took a deep breath. It was his first quiet minute. There had been a roaring in his ears, the shifts from commander to fugitive, to casualty. To what?

At the beginning of this, I had an identity, but missing memories. Now, I have memories, but no identity. Identity. I wonder what that means. Perhaps memory is just the lie we tell ourselves to keep being what we are told we are.

However, there was no pain in his chest, no longing for an indescribable thing that was absent. He breathed easily and heard the rumble of the air in his ears. The was less weight on his shoulders, and for the first moment, since his adjustments had run out, he did not feel he needed a shot of something. He was light-headed and felt hollow inside of his skull.

But it took no effort to make one foot fall in front of the other and walk the short distance to where there was an elevator platform, about 20m wide and 40m long, that would take them down to the vehicle bay. It slowly creaked into action, on an ancient mechanical over-ride. Unlike the ordinary smooth magnetic float, one could feel a cyclical vibration up through the floor.

There was a dull orange color to the near dawn conditions above, and so a dark terminator line passed across their bodies and faces as they descended into the gloom. Granules of ice fell in after the platform sank, then bounced and dropped out of sight. It took two minutes to finally settle into the bottom.

A dull orangeness infused itself, and there was a mistiness from the ice and condensed water that hung in the air. With an achingly languid crawl, curves of illumination became visible among a tangle of shapes. There was a wide assortment of vehicles, from heavy lifters near the front, which saw duty regularly, to a towering and hulking shape: an ancient single stage to orbit space plane, with a white top that joined with a dark lower half. It seemed to swallow the light. Deeshandir calmly walked towards it, threading his way between the vehicles that separated him from it. The other two followed.

He stopped at a control box, twisted the cover open, and pushed a large red button to send the elevator platform back upwards. He turned on the UV lights in his helmet and used the filter to see from there. The pad became a rim of light and then sealed shut.

“Surely you don't mean to fly that antique, Deesh?”

“No, but it still has a working generator to charge the tank, which is hidden in its cargo bay.”

“A drop tank fits, V?”

“Perfectly, the standard size has not changed in over 200 years.”

“The song does remain the same.”

“We don't throw machines out on Mars, just people.”

They threaded their way to it, and Deeshandir began climbing the ladder up to the hatch: it was an old, sealed, hinge door. I have forgotten where the pull lever is. Wait, there it is. He saw a slight depression and was able to push a cover aside and pull down a heavy oval ring. The door slowly swung open above his head, and he managed to finish his assent.

He entered the flight deck and looked around and the welter of switches and controls. This was long before heads-up or augmented reality had been made a religion in avionics design. He scanned everything and began flipping switches in a particular order that he had looked up and loaded that would, or should, bring up the instruments. From there, he could see if this would work.

Keisha was in behind him.

There's a jack. That will be faster.”

He shivered at the thought of jacking in again but agreed that that would be quicker.

“I can do it if you don't want to, V.”

“Yes, please. I will prep the tank.”

She pulled out a hand tablet, plugged in the physical jack, and then placed her hand on the tablet. Lights opened up with lightning speed, and there was a whirring sound of an old turbine as hot gas blew across it to generate old-style electricity.

He turned and climbed down into the cargo bay. There, hitched in place, was a sleek shape, made of poured liquid curves, and painted black with orange stripes. It seemed entirely out of place amidst the billows of light fabric and projections of cast metal which were around it. It seemed as if it was a daub of amber set against the roughness of rock.

He wiped away the collected dust on the side of the hand panel, took off his suit glove, and placed his hand against it. A sense of oneness flooded into him. He could feel his pupils dilate, and his head clear. It was an archaic model, but better than any adjustment, it truly was where he longed to be. Home.

He opened the iris hatch slid in, and then settled himself on the single seat of the light drop tank. It was sucking in energy from the mains, heat coupled to heat, without any intermediated form. The power level marched upwards: the space plane may have been from another time, but it had a generator capable of pulling a small city behind it. They almost certainly are detecting this activity. I should not count on the element of surprise.

Even from within the tank the roar of the turbine was audible. From the tank's feed outside the space plane, he could see an artificial wind blowing through the hanger, melting ice into fog, and burning fog into warmth.

“How are you V? The generator is getting a bit hot. I need to throttle it back.”

“I'm ready, shut it down.”

The rumble stopped the whine slowed. The old-style fission reactor had performed its work. No wonder my professor swore by Russian engineering.

“I've got a path cleared out for you Deesh.”

“Ack. Keisha, lower me down gently.”

“Ready?”

“Yes, K.”

After a sudden initial jolt, there was a slow methodical motion, and while it took a full minute, the drop tank was lowered on wires down to the floor level. How the Jovians had managed to clear a path so quickly, he did not know. In fact, he could not see Tony at all, until motion on his screen caught his eye and answered both questions at once: there was a pilot box for a winch along the ceiling of the hanger.

I should have known there was a brute-force solution, and that he would find it. Down treads and let us see how she feels about me today. He recalled the first time he fought with a drop tank's finicky handling and delicate sense of equilibrium. He had spent a decad in the infirmly after he had flipped it over and tumbled. 10 long days of waiting for fingers to grow back, with an itching intense pain.

However, in this case, after an initial lurch, there was none of that. And the treads efficiently carried him along. He steered across the elevator platform's hollowed-out resting place, around the column whose rising and falling moved it, and towards the pair of large tubes that provided driving access in and out of the hanger.

“There is only room for one, and I do not want either of you in range while this is going on. It still would be best for you both to run.”

“If you think I am letting you run out that easily, V.”

“Not on your life Deesh.”

Well, all for one, and one for all, I suppose.

It was only a second later that he was at the exit hatch, it slid open as he approached easily. One problem with a drop tank is that it is not heavily armored, the other is that it does not accelerate very well. The concept is for it to bleed off speed, enter in at supersonic speeds, flatten everything, and then slow down to be picked up. In a stand-up fight, it was an under-gunned, under-armored, under-powered, over-age one-man motorized coffin. Other than that, this was going to be a fair fight against a slightly older model, but still top-quality, main battle tank. I am glad that I am going up against the worst trio of tankers imaginable. But his confidence was shallow, they would be able to connect with the base computers, and sim out every move. It was instinct against the best tactical programming they could find. Unfortunately, I have been upgrading it myself.

No, fortunately. It is going to tell them to do exactly what I would do. All that I need to do to win, is counter what I would do at every turn. It was here that the memory of Kumar had such force, Kumar had balked him at every turn, because Kumar had written the book that he had merely read.

Then I was the pupil, let us see if now I am the master.

He took a smile from that word because now and again, he had met some eccentric but celebrated intellect being called the master or maestro in hushed towns by others.

He ran treads. What would I have done?

Ambush, paper against their rock? Second-guessing oneself turned out to lead to a spiral of what did he think he thought he would not have known. A few layers deeper, and it seemed to drop into a recursive hell, with each answer leading to a doubt. Each doubt feels like another step into a pit of despair. Even as he rolled the tank from the darkness of the tunnel to the mere shadow of a sullen streaked early polar twilight, tears streaked down his eyes. He sucked the air in, and he could feel a slight slurping across his lips as the trembled.

Boys don't cry.

Sairen?

Who else do you have in here?

No one.

I feel sorry for you. You are very unhappy.

Happiness is not something I have ever expected in life. And it is not something I have time to contemplate now.

I understand. So, what are you supposed to be contemplating?

I am playing a game, a deadly serious game.

Alright. Can I play?

You are. And the other player is using an exper that I wrote.

So, you think that is unfair?

I am having trouble understanding what to do.

Let me read their communication link. I have all their kill codes too. If we can get close enough, all we need to do is link in and I can kill them. I thought they would have changed those.

No. They only rotate to the next code.

That's stupid.

Safer, we are far too far away from Earth to reset from a central source.

So, what do we need to link you in?

I am not sure what the link is, but I will know it when I feel it.

I still want to read their sequence. I do not want to expose you too soon.

I like secrets.

You are my secret.

I like that.

He spun up the tank hard, heedless of the signature.

“V, What are you doing? I can see the heat signature from here. Surely the security tank and the base can.”

“I want them to know where I am because I want them to come to me. Draw scissors to throw stone.”

“V, I don't understand.”

“I want them to lunge into a trap.”

He tore the tank up and around the long thin ramp up to ground level, once there where the ground opened out, he started weaving through the thicket of spires, around north. He had not gotten far when he could detect the loud clear heat signature of an oncoming tank. He spun the concentration of the view around several times to soak in his surroundings.

What would I have done? Paper, because I assume the drivers of the bigger tank, would be too cautious. So, the simulation is almost certainly telling them to go scissors, just as I did on Shackleton.

And if they do, it is another indication that even if my Shackleton memory is not exactly true, it is, at least, spun from the threads of my own mind.

He swiveled around into place and centered the turret's laser on a point where the IR sensor read much colder than everywhere else. One patch of ice, but beneath it was a large storage tank of liquid Hydrogen, the fruits of the pumping.

Sairen, are you there?

Yes. This is hide and go-seek, isn't it?

Yes. And they think they are seeking.

But we are it, aren't we?

Yes, we are it.

So, what do I need to do?

We are going to draw them across that cold patch.

I see it.

And when they do you are going to vent the tank below.

I'm not close enough to a jack.

Can you tell where one is?

I will look. Wait.

I am waiting for Sairen.

There. Roll back about 5m.

Deeshandir repositioned the tank and then cut the heat output.

I wait for a ghost, a moving mirage whose vapors are fumes of blood. He had always liked that poem.

Then, he could feel it, before he could see it. There was a torrent of data pouring in from the tank, but no single piece told him that he had guessed right: that they were screaming straight for him. Moments later, no data was needed, the tower behind him took a hit, and very slowly started to bend over as one of its supports was burned away. It tilted majestically to the left, falling near, but not on him. Had it been a lesser wound, it would have sealed itself and regrown the stricken member.

There it was, it looked like heat rising from a desert road, shaking and swirling, easy enough to miss. If, of course, the drivers had been trying to be less observed. However, they were not.

He mentally began counting down to when the laser would regenerate. It fired again, missing broadly. You would think that they would realize that no exper could miss that badly twice.

Why are they missing?

Instead of using the metaskin to be invisible, I am letting it be reflected off the mirror next to us. They see us displaced. The exper hit the image dead on twice.

So, you fooled them?

He geared the tank for a lurch forward and waited for his attacker to cross towards the cold patch to get a better shot. They turned, sloppily, a splay of ice spattering into the air. Very nice touch exper, using their bad driving to create some cover. But it was too late for that, a long drawn-out, pulse shot pierced the ground well in front of the oncoming battle tank, and in a moment, a hot mushrooming flare of orange and black drowned out the feeble sun.

That almost certainly will not be enough. But it was enough to burn the metaskin and damage the armor. He followed the tank as it flipped end over end and slammed down, it tried to budge but did not. Perhaps they have damaged the Julia turbines. The treads started lowering, and the laser began focusing in again on him, the track of its aiming laser swept across the front of his tank, and he winced, expecting a blast to pierce him and punch a clean hole all the way through his skull.

It was a shot that did not come. They need to read the board if their laser is off alignment.

The attacking tank seemed to realize this as the repair and realignment cycle started up, a large circular disk on the front of the turret rotated, to pull the barrel of the laser back into place.

It was a fatal delay: he'd drawn paper and threw scissors.

He rotated his hand and closed his fist, the drop tank lurched forward and he closed to almost point-blank range. He could see the marks on the outside of the disc move into place, which would show that the barrel was realigned. These were not visible to the naked eye, but then, the particular UV frequency that made them visible was coded in his tank as well. He does not understand that he has no secrets from me.

Hey there.

I am busy.

Their computer is leaking all over.

And what is it saying? The figure of the battle tank was rapidly falling towards him, he had less than a second to pick a target and fire, because, after that, petawatts of power would slice his small Flying Tiger with the speed of a knife through hot butter. It wants to surrender.

It doesn't have a kami, does it?

Well, want is a bit wrong, but if I tell it to sleep, it will.

Tell it to sleep, Sairen. Tell it to sleep.

And the tank slept. Its engines spun down, its treads halted, its lights went out, and its communication went to a simple heartbeat.

“I have taken three prisoners.”

“What? V, are you oxygen-deprived? Where are we going to put them?”

“There is a brig here.”

“Nice trick Deesh, you'll have to show it to me sometime.”

Deeshander clambered up the tank, a process made easy by his familiarity with the places where hands and feet were supposed to go, and easier by the low gravity. He used the emergency to pop the turret open and stared down at three very embarrassed and surprised faces. Arun was in front, Doc commanding, and a third man who wasn't even a tanker.

“This is the best security can do?”

They were breathing through ungainly oxygen masks, and all held their hands up. One by one they filed out. They were nearly freezing to death after a few minutes, so he marched them to a small control bunker. After slapping the heat on, and freezing the other controls, he lined them all up face against one wall.

“I imagine you are going to kill us, ya Venky.” Doc, of course.

“That's Lt. Colonel Venkatesh. Why would I do something like that, when the UCMJ is very explicit that prisoners should not be killed without orders, a directive, or exigent circumstances.”

“You won't get away with this, Venky.” Arun piped up.

Deeshandir used the heel of his palm to slap the back of Arun's head forward into the cold hard wall. The oxygen was bleeding in pretty quickly, but the door was still open behind them. There's the sleigh, I am picking it up now.

“I will not tolerate further insubordination. You are all under arrest for crimes against civilians.”

Doc smacked his lips under the breathing tube. “We had orders for everything we did.”

“Military personnel are not to obey illegal orders.”

“Which one in specific?”

“Revealing military movements to potential rebels resulting in the loss of life. I am turning you over to the civilian authority here.”

Moments later Keisha slipped in, with Tony closing the door from the outside. The long rifle was slung across her back.

With mock gravity, Deeshandir spoke: “I am turning these accused over to you as the civilian authority.”

Keisha's voice was not happy, a kind of irritable sense of not being in on the joke pervaded the edges of her voice.

“So, I am supposed to babysit these?”

“There are some cords in the toolkit to restrain them.”

This was handily accomplished. This was too easy. It means my surmise that Doc was the senior intelligence officer was incorrect.

“K, I am going to go with Tony to the station and complete matters there. I will be back after that.”

“You taking the sleigh?”

“Why, when we have a perfectly good tank.”

She formed her lips into an “O” and then settled herself onto a control seat.

“I'll be waiting for you.”

“This is humiliating, to be turned over to the station whore for detention.”

“I let you in, so you would let me in, Doc.” She was purring.

Minutes later, Anthony and Deeshandir, were strapped in, and motoring and motoring directly for the station.