Future Shock, page 23
Hamish braced himself. The range was closing rapidly, but they were still outside optimum firing range for mass drivers ... technically. The largest starship humanity had ever produced was still smaller than a grain of sand on a beach, when counted against the sheer immensity of interstellar space, and even the best contemporary sensors couldn’t hope to guarantee a hit if the fleet fired from long range. Hell, the target might just have enough time to realise it was under attack and alter position to evade the incoming fire, although that raised the spectre of accidentally steering into the path of another volley. He’d never heard of it happening in real life, but ...
“Fire,” he ordered.
The display sparkled as the mass drivers opened fire, sending dozens of projectiles rushing towards their targets. The projections updated rapidly, practically guaranteeing hits ... the enemy ships opened fire at the same moment, their mass drivers responding to his volley by spitting venom at him. He shook his head in disbelief. The FTL sensors were giving him plenty of warning. It felt almost as though he was cheating.
“Signal the squadron,” he ordered. “All ships are free to evade incoming fire. All point defence is to engage at will.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hamish nodded, watching as the mass-driver projectiles neared their targets. The OpFor was trying to alter position too, but they hadn’t had time to build up their speed, and it looked as if they’d been caught by surprise too. The umpires were probably going to have a field day afterwards, he noted coldly; surprise was something difficult to simulate, certainly not in a military exercise in deep space. They’d all learn a great many lessons from the whole affair ... he put the thought aside as the range continued to close, three icons going dim as they were struck with mass-driver projectiles. Their fighters were doing what they could to cover the motherships, but it wasn’t enough.
“Stand by plasma cannons and laser lances,” he ordered. The enemy ships were boosting desperately – probably trying to charge their jumpdrives too, if he was any judge – but they just didn’t have time. They weren’t going to build the speed they needed to get out before it was too late. Hell, his ships were closing so rapidly that they wouldn’t need the FTL sensors to find their targets. “Engage on my command.”
“Aye, sir,” Georges said. Both fleets were still spitting mass-driver projectiles at each other, but as the range closed – and point defence became more effective – the projectiles became less useful. It didn’t stop them. The projectiles were little more than compressed pieces of rock, and there was a near-infinite supply floating around in space, just waiting to be mined. “All ships ready to engage.”
Hamish gritted his teeth. “Fire!”
The display updated again as the squadron plunged into the enemy formation. His earlier thoughts mocked him as the range closed sharply and then started to open again, their weapons tearing through the enemy ships and leaving them dead in space. The point defence crews engaged the fighters, using FTL targeting sensors to ensure a hit ... the enemy ships altered their positions, trying to bring the rest of their weapons to bear on his ships, but it was already too late to save themselves. One ship managed an emergency jump, the rest lay dead in space. It was over.
“We won!” Georges sounded as though he was grinning like a loon. “They’ll be buying the beer tonight!”
“Definitely,” Hamish agreed, although he knew he wouldn’t be drinking. He and the officers on both sides of the engagement would have to sit down, talk through everything that happened from start to finish, then submit recommendations to their superiors. Every analyst in the military – every military – would be doing the same, trying to learn from the exercise before the navy had to take its ships up against a real foe. “Signal the OpFor CO, inform him that we are claiming victory, then order the squadron to stand down from exercise stations.”
“Aye, sir,” Georges said.
“And inform the crew I said well done,” Hamish added. The engagement had been a little one-sided, but they’d still learn a great deal from it. “They all did very well.”
He tapped his console, bringing up the all-ships display. Ten ships had taken part in the simulated engagement, two had been destroyed and two more had taken minor damage ... the next time, he reminded himself, the damage might not be fixable with the press of a button. The mass drivers had been less effective than he’d hoped, although the simulators were programmed to assume the projectiles had missed if there was any realistic prospect of them doing so. A real engagement would be fought without that handicap. He shook his head quietly. A real engagement would present all kinds of surprises, no matter how much they knew from the future records. The Diyang might already be changing their tactics in response to their recent defeat.
“The OpFor has acknowledged,” Georges said. “Their CO says he’ll get you next time.”
“Noted.” Hamish suspected the CO probably would. Defeat was a great teacher, particularly when its students didn’t suffer anything beyond embarrassment. It would spur the losers of the first match to greater efforts, when the second started. “We’ll adjust our own tactics too.”
He sighed, inwardly. The face of warfare had changed, and it would change again as more future technology became available. His training had been state of the art, years ago, but now it was so primitive it was actually harmful. How much didn’t he know? He didn’t know.
We’ll catch up, he promised himself. The gulf was wide, but it wasn’t unbridgeable. Until then ...
He cleared his throat. “Signal the squadron,” he said. “All ships are to prepare to return to base.”
“Aye, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: Combined Marine Training Centre, 2308
The Jarheads weren’t even trying to hide.
Major John Montrose sucked in his breath as the futuristic monsters charged the enemy position, moving so quickly the defenders found it hard, almost impossible, to track and engage the attackers with any sort of weapon. The Jarheads fired as they came, launching blast after blast of plasma fire that swatted drones out of the air and killed missiles before they came remotely close to harming the future marines. They tore through the defences with a combination of precision and savagery that chilled him to the bone, wiping out the defenders with casual ease while leaving the hostages completely unharmed. It was designed to be a difficult exercise, even for the most capable soldiers in the world, and yet the future marines were crushing it.
He swore under his breath. Kratman City was a giant training arena, a makeshift city designed to teach soldiers how to handle themselves in urban environments. It was crammed with remote-controlled weapons and booby-traps, as well as all kinds of unpleasant surprises intended to minimise the advantages of advanced technology and put the recruits on equal footing to their enemies. It should have taken weeks for the marines to clear it, weeks during which the defenders would have plenty of time to do horrible things to the hostages and adjust their tactics to drive back the invaders. Instead, the defenders had been crushed so rapidly they hadn’t had a chance to rally, and two-thirds of the hostages had already been freed. It looked as though the operation had already been a success.
Fuck, he thought, numbly.
He shook his head in disbelief as a handful of IEDs detonated one after the other, deliberately triggered by the invaders. They didn’t wait for the shock to subside before they charged into the haze, tearing through the defenders before they had a chance to recover. A tank lumbered into view, main gun already traversing to open fire, only to be blown away before it managed a single shot. The Jarheads kept moving, pausing only to liberate two more hostages and escort them back to the lines. They hadn’t bothered to erect a proper barricade around the city. John wasn’t sure if it was carelessness or a simple faith they could crush the enemy before they could escape ... if so, he reflected grimly, they were right. A defence that should have lasted for weeks had crumbled in less than an hour.
Another explosion blasted up, a fireball rising into the air and glowering balefully at the men on the ground. John didn’t know if the Jarheads knew it – he hadn’t brought it to their attention – but they’d already won. They’d saved two-thirds of the hostages and delivered a crippling blow to the terrorists dominating the city, perhaps even giving their victims a chance to fight back and extract revenge for how they’d been treated. If the exercise had been real ...
He shuddered, again. Civilians didn’t realise how tricky hostage-rescue missions could be, particularly in the middle of a war zone. Military officers quietly agreed that a certain number of casualties were acceptable, even though it sounded heartless – or worse – to their civilian counterparts. The Jarheads wouldn’t be in trouble if they lost three-fourths of the hostages – Kratman City was designed to make hostage-rescue hard, if not completely impossible – but they’d already won. He checked his terminal, accessing the live feed open to the umpires alone. So far, they hadn’t lost a single hostage ...
“There’s going to be one hell of a mess to clear up,” Colonel Browne noted, crossly. “It’ll take weeks to rebuild the city.”
John snorted. Kratman City was almost completely pre-fabricated, from the combination of small shops and apartments to towering skyscrapers, as was the robotic population. It wouldn’t take that long to replace the damaged buildings and drones, while most of the other weapons and vehicles were outdated, destined for the scrapheap if they hadn’t been given one final chance to make themselves useful. The smoking remnants of the tank and other vehicles would be scrapped, now they’d done their duty. It wasn’t a problem.
“We need to know what they can do,” he said. No human military could hope to match the Jarheads. Anyone who passed the Royal Marine Commando course was tough – if you weren’t tough, you’d be binned before you got yourself or someone else killed – but there were hard limits. He’d seen men wounded or killed by IEDs ... even in training accidents. A real combat zone could be a great deal worse. “And here ...”
He shook his head as the last of the defenders crumbled before the onslaught. The umpires were going to go nuts, as they tried to analyse the data they’d collected. Would they demand their own version of the Jarheads? Or would they insist the machines be withdrawn from combat? On one hand, they did save lives; on the other, they encouraged their operators to take fearsome risks in the certain knowledge their lives were not in any real danger. John knew a drone operator who’d been court-martialled for flying his drone into an enemy fuel dump, destroying both the drone and the dump. He’d been pardoned, but it had been a near thing. The beancounters had moaned about the cost of replacing the drone, as if it would have been cheaper to let the enemy continue the offensive ...
And we couldn’t ask a live pilot to take on a suicide mission, he reminded himself. That would be a bit much, even for us.
The racket slowly died away as the exercise came to an end, the Jarheads withdrawing from the combat zone with the last of the hostages. John scowled as he saw the robotic men, women and children ... they’d always given him the creeps, their faces an uncanny valley of something that was disturbingly close to human, but subtly wrong. He’d heard stories about rich men who built themselves robotic families, the wives programmed to be tender and loving and the kids designed to be perfectly behaved ... the thought was sick. It wasn’t real. It was nothing more than an illusion. The idea of losing himself in such a fantasy was appalling. He couldn’t understand the appeal.
“They’re not securing their hands,” Browne noted. He sounded like a man trying to find something – anything – to criticize. “They could be attacked at any moment.”
John snorted. It was standard procedure to cuff the hostages as well as the terrorists during hostage rescue missions. Some terrorists tried to hide amongst the hostages, some hostages wound up sympathising with the terrorists and fighting on their side when the rescue began ... some could even be so badly traumatised by their treatment that they’d lash out at both sides or run right into the gunfire. Better to cuff them than bury them, even if they looked completely harmless. But what were the unarmed robots going to do to the Jarheads? One might as well punch a tank and expect it to explode.
“I don’t think it matters,” he said. His eyes lingered on a robotic little girl, her face a little too long and her arms a little too short. “They’re not in any danger.”
Browne made a rude noise. “We’ll see,” he said. “Do you think our masters will try to duplicate those ... things?”
John shrugged. “I guess so,” he said. The drones had never quite replaced humans on the battlefield, not after a string of disasters had made it clear the military always needed a human in the loop. He’d seen drone command networks jammed or hacked in the field, causing the drones to freeze in place or attack their own side. “Once they solve the communications problem ...”
He scowled, inwardly. An operator on the far side of the world couldn’t hope to have a proper feel for the battleground, nor could he work with the natives or fill any one of a hundred other roles that could only be filled by boots on the ground. It was even harder in space, where the time delay ensured it was impossible for a distant operator to respond to a crisis in time to save the day. But in the future, that had changed. Would there still be a role for him? Or would he find himself replaced? Assuming he survived the war ... he hadn’t checked to see what had happened to his other self, in the other timeline. It wasn’t as if they were the same person.
“Good luck,” Browne said, stiffly. “I’ll see you at the debriefing.”
“I’ll be sure to bring my briefs,” John said. The joke fell flat. “And my report, when I have a chance to write it.”
He looked back at the training ground as Browne turned and hurried away. The city was still burning, the flames being left to burn themselves out. There was no one in the city now, nothing save for damaged robots and sensors that were easily replaced, but it still felt as if he was gazing into a nightmare. It was hardly the first time he’d seen a city that had been converted into a war zone, and the city wasn’t even real, yet ...
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
***
The Combined Marine Training Centre, Private Hattie Notting decided as her platoon marched across the street towards the pub, was distinctly bizarre. It was a vast tract of land in the United States – with troops and vehicles from all over the world – where officers and sergeants ran around like crazy as they tried to put together some kind of joint training program that would integrate ideas and technologies from every nation and the far future. Some parts made sense to her – they were much like her own training centre, back in the future – while others struck her as absurd to the point she wondered just what the base’s commanders were thinking. The military base didn’t just include a firing range and everything else the trainees needed, but a shopping mall that included restaurants and eateries from all over the world. And a brothel that was carefully not acknowledged by the authorities. Hattie hadn’t worked out why until she’d looked up the legal position. Prostitution was not technically legal. Not here.
And they have it on a military base, she thought. What does that say about them?
She put the thought aside as they entered the pub. It was larger than she’d expected, with tables heaving with military personnel from all over the world. They looked ... rougher ... than her peers, she noted, lacking both the polish of Terran Marines and the bioengineering that made the marines an unstoppable fighting force. There was something in the air she didn’t like, a sense the situation could turn bad very quickly. Or perhaps that was the tobacco. Her lungs were engineered to sweep such substances out of her body, without doing any real damage, but it still smelt unpleasant. A handful of men were even injecting themselves with something. She hoped to hell they didn’t have any weapons.
The bartender eyed her warily, his eyes flickering over her and her peers before giving a very visible shrug. “What can I get you?”
Hattie shrugged back. “What’ll you recommend?”
“Beer, beer, or more beer.” The bartender waved a hand at the bottles behind the bar. “Or you can have something more fancy, if you like.”
“Beer will do,” Hattie said. She had no idea what it would taste like, or even if there was any point in drinking it. Alcohol would be swept from her bloodstream too. “Just one glass, please.”
The bartender eyed her. “Your card?”
Hattie blinked, then remembered the cards they’d been given. The idea of paying for food and drink still struck her as absurd, although the locals didn’t have gene-engineered algae-based foods – let alone anything more advanced – to cut the price of food down to the bare minimum. The briefing had said as much, but ... she found the card, tapped it against the reader, then accepted the offered pint. It didn’t smell very good, she decided as she made her way to an empty table and sat down. The rest of the platoon were having fun ordering their own drinks.
A display was blaring in the corner. “Senator Michelle Clooney was arrested by the FBI this morning, after information from the future starships revealed that she took money from Chinese and Russian agents in exchange for promoting the interests of both nations,” the newsreader said, calmly. “The Senator’s office has yet to issue a statement, but her husband has gone on the record denouncing the whole affair as a political smear campaign mounted by her opponents.”
The image changed. “In other news, the economic downswing has only worsened following the news from the future,” a different newsreader said. “Corporations are cutting R&D budgets until they know which departments are already obsolete, despite government pressure to retain as many jobs as possible. Speaking in Washington today, Congressman ...”
Hattie scowled. That wasn’t going to end well. She had grown up in a society where she hadn’t needed to work to eat; the locals had not. There was going to be real trouble soon, if she was any judge, and it wouldn’t be resolved in a hurry. She had barely had time to study the local history files, but one thing was clear: a great many people were living permanently on the edge.
