No Life Like It

(On Spec, Spring 2003)

Garrett banged his bug-face with the heel of his gloved hand.  “It’s too goddamn hot,” he said and slapped the side of his helmet again.

“Shut up, Doc, they’re coming,” CandyAss said over the company channel.

Through the snarl of vines, Garrett could see CandyAss’s long body about two-and-a-half yards ahead, working point.  Fatigues blurring into the jungle floorcover.  Dull black virtual combat helmet turning slowly as he scanned the target zone.  CandyAss crouched, picked up a smooth stone, dropped it into a pocket, then eased ahead two more yards.

Garrett snorted.  CandyAss liked to collect stuff.  He had an odd assortment from the Middle East—stones, shell casings, coins, a piece of an Israeli helmet.  And even though everything he took in a sim disappeared on the ride home in the hellevator, he still liked to do it.

“Damn heat regulator is screwing up again,” Garrett said, explaining.

“You heard him, Private.”  Captain Braddock jerked a gloved hand across his throat.  “Cut it!”

CandyAss dropped out of sight among the ferns. “Everybody down!”

Gunfire exploded out of the jungle.

Garrett tongued the sound clit, dampening the crack-crack of automatic weapons’ fire.  He crouched low, waiting for instructions from Braddock.  Sweat ran into his eyes as he scanned the bio-screens on the inside of his visor.  Heart rhythms, brain waves, vital signs all combat-normal.  Even for Michaels, the new guy.  Raid, they called him.  Kills bugs dead.

Garrett huddled in the trail mud as rockets burst the tree beside him.  Leaves and shredded bark ticker-taped onto his back and legs.  He looked up, wiped the mud from his visor, and belly-crawled.   More rocket fire.

“Second Wave, cover pattern Delta.  CandyAss, you’re still point.  You call it.”

“Hold position,” CandyAss said.

Bio-screen skipped off scan.  Wilson, William A., Pte. in miniature glowing letters.

Garrett pinpointed him on the grid-tracking window in the upper right of his visor, then crawled fast through the underbrush, armored elbows and knees digging into the soft ground.  He pushed his way through dark ferns, rolled over a log, dropping onto thorns and heavy leaves.

Bullets cracked overhead.  Garrett ducked.  Wilson’s bio-screen showed a bullet wound, left anterior thigh, a large exit wound posterior; the femur was shattered.  Pulse and resps high. The virtcom suit had dosed him with 5 cc morphine already.

More rocket fire.

“Second Wave,” CandyAss said, “let’s be nimble, let’s be quick.” He rabitted through the brush, firing into the trees.

Garrett crawled up beside Wilson, who had pulled himself under thick jade-green leaves.  “Bill, can you hear me?” Garrett said, jamming the bush out of the way.  “Don’t move, okay?”

 “Jesus, Doc.  I didn’t get down fast enough.  They’re gonna fry my ass for taking a hit this early in the sim.  Jesus, this hurts.”

“First hit, right?”

“Yeah.  I been clean through twenty-eight drops.”

Henderson and Michaels scrambled past Garrett.

“Make it quick, Doc,” Henderson said,  “or you’re gonna get left behind.”

“Keep your shirt on, Henderson.” Garrett pulled a probe from his bag.  “This is going to hurt a bit, Bill.”  Garrett nestled the probe into the wound. “But it’ll feel better in a second.”  He released the lidicaine, quickly filled the entrance and exit wounds with sealant, then glued suit patches over the wound sites.

“It’s a little hard to breath in here,” Wilson said.

“Here,” Garrett said, increasing Wilson’s oxygen flow.  “Remember the first sim, when Henderson took a chest hit and couldn’t breath, and I pulled her helmet off.”

Wilson took a deep breath, laughed through the pain.  “Yeah, they canned the sim right then and there, and you were in shit head-first, man.”

“Got a good look at this oversized warehouse they use for these sims.”

“And you just about got your ass kicked back to Syria!”

“That morphine helping?”

Wilson nodded.

Rosalynn Esperanza stopped, crouched beside Wilson.  Slapped his shoulder.  “Jeez, Bill.  Some guys’ll do anything to get outta the grunt work.”

“Shut up, Ros,” Wilson said.

Garrett tongued over to Base channel.  “Foxtrot Company, Second Wave, Medic Garrett.”

“Foxtrot Medic, go ahead.”

“Foxtrot:  one hit. Wilson ,William A., Private.  Sending bio-read and location, now.”  Garrett dumped the hot-link to the MASH.  “Evac to this position.  I’m moving on.  Garrett, clear.”

“Foxtrot Medic.  Data received.  Evac team en route.”

Garrett rapped Wilson’s visor.  “See you in briefing, man.”

Wilson grunted.

#

The briefing room filled with cheers as Wilson sauntered in.

Garrett crossed his arms, and leaned back. 

Sheila Henderson passed her bug-face around. “Pay up, assholes,” she said.

“You picked me?”  Wilson stared.  “I been clean—“

“—through twenty-eight drops.  Yeah, yeah, we know,” she said. “It’s statistics, Wilson.  Don’t take it personally.  Besides, the money’s going to a good cause.”

“Yeah, right.  Up your nose.”

“Fuck you.”

Captain Braddock climbed up onto the platform and the room scraped into silence.  Garrett propped his boots up on the back of Ros’ chair.

 “Just some housekeeping before we begin the debriefing.  Next scheduled sim will be 0600 Saturday and it’ll be urban.  And maybe an alien scenario, too, but that’s just a rumour.  The Nerds seem to have something up their collective sleeve.  As soon as I know anything, I’ll pass it on. And don’t forget:  at 2100 tonight, there’s a little get-together at the club to celebrate Garrett’s birthday.  And, of course, Mr. First-Hit Wilson is buying.”

Cheers and whistles erupted. 

Ros turned.  “Happy birthday, old fart,” she said to Garrett, then grinned.

#

Electric guitar cranked through another riff.  A roar erupted at the crashball table.  Garrett peered through the cigarillo smoke.  Ros danced her victory dance and collected her winnings.

She clomped across the club floor dragging Wilson with her and flopped onto her chair.  “C’mon, Bill, just quit while you’re ahead.”  She pushed him into the chair beside her.  “Oh, right,” she said and winked at Garrett before leaning toward Wilson, “you’re not ahead. You’re the one who lost!”  She threw her head back and howled.  Wilson scowled at her. 

Garrett laughed.  He’d expected to be miserable tonight.  In fact, he’d planned on it.  But Ros wouldn’t let him out of the bar.  She leaned on the table, breathing beer and garlic into Garrett’s face.  “Whipped his ass again, Doc.  21-10.”  She flopped back in her chair.  “Your heart’s just not in it tonight, is it, Bill?”

More shouting at the crashball table as Henderson and Michaels gloved up.

“Want another beer, Doc?” Wilson said.  He lurched to his feet and headed to the bar without waiting for Garrett’s reply.

“You’re looking pretty goddamn morose, for being the birthday boy,” Ros hollered above the music and the chanting of the crashball crowd. 

Garrett snorted, and laughed again.  “I told you, I like to have my space on my birthday.”

 “What’s the matter?  Ain’t Army life all it’s cracked up to be?” Ros said.  “Or is this something bigger, something you wanna blame your Mother for?”

Wilson banged the pitcher of beer on the table.  “Nah, he just doesn’t like the fact that he ain’t gonna get laid this year ’cause we’re stuck here at fucking ‘virtual bootcamp.’”

Garrett grinned up at him.  “Your Mother know you talk like that?”

“Like what?” Wilson said, then turned to Ros. “Henderson’s killing Raid.  You shoulda seen that last point.  She’s been practicing.”

“You gonna take her on, Bill?” Ros said.

“No way, Ros.  It’s not my night.  Besides,” he threw a grin at Garrett then turned back to Ros, “she’s ten times better than you.”

“Bullshit!”

Wilson rolled his eyes.

Garrett laughed, and refilled his mug.  “Twenty credits says you can’t take her,” he said.

“Get outta my way.”  Ros rocked to her feet, shoved Wilson aside, and headed back to the crashball crowd.  Wilson followed.

Garrett sipped his beer.  Nah, the Army’s okay, he thought.  He’d been scared shitless when the second round draft started after things in the Middle East theatre blew apart two years before.  But his life in the EMS in Seattle on the Life-Flight team had mired itself to a standstill.  There was a freeze on training, a freeze on funding, and a freeze on wages.  The only option available had been management.

Fuck that, he’d said to Carla, his partner on car.  She’d just laughed, and told him what they both already knew, that Ira Garrett was too much of a 911-junkie to spend the next decade of his life behind a computer monitor.

The Army had been interested in his EMS experience from the start.  In March of ’24, after initial training, they sent him to Damascus for a year, riding ambulance on the south side, then later triaging for a MASH unit further north in Syria when the shit really hit the fan.

Six months ago the Army pulled him from his unit and dropped him into a specialized virtual reality combat training company.  A new program, they said, to be used eventually to combat-harden troops before they had to actually experience real combat.

Garrett refilled his beer mug from the pitcher Wilson bought.  Across the room, Ros slammed another point home.  Henderson’s face flushed, she downed two more shots of tequila, and served, the crashball a streak of blue light.  Michaels and Wilson cheered Ros on.

Out of the wall of speakers behind the crashball table, the lead singer of White Rabbit hollered about his burning balls.

Whatever happened to real music? Garrett thought.  He and Carla had argued about music regularly.  She’d liked this kind of screaming loud shit—made her feel alive, she said—whereas Garrett was more of a classical music kind of guy—Mozart, Brahms.  Garrett swirled his beer around in the glass. He had learned a lot from Carla, how to push the envelope on protocols, bend the rules a little to make the system work for their patients, how to listen to your gut and brain simultaneously.  But he’d retreated a little after she was killed.  Tended to play it safe, too safe, maybe.  The Army suited him.  Discipline, routine.  Kept him from thinking too much, feeling too much.  In fact, the Army fit him almost too well, especially this virtual combat training duty.  So comfortable.  Much less stressful that the streets of Damascus.  Or even Seattle.  He liked the virtcom sims:  knowing they were simulations made them more like full-blown arcade games, took the shit-pissing terror out of the combat part of the Army, as far as he was concerned.

The technical team that designed the virtual reality combat training—the Nerds—had programmed the virtual combat suits to take simulated hits and induce appropriate pain responses.  The rationale was that experiencing hits, and the subsequent pain or disability, while in the combat zone, was critical to removing the fear from the soldier, and when the fear was gone, the soldier could continue to function.  And functioning soldiers were still cheaper than equipment.

Ros scored another point.  Henderson scowled, took up her position again.

Garrett stood.  He looked toward the door.  The music throbbed inside his head.  Smoke burned his eyes.  But he picked up his beer and found a stool along the bar near the crashball table instead. 

CandyAss joined him.  “Happy birthday, Doc!”  He slipped a small gift-wrapped box along the counter.

Garrett raised his eyebrows.

“A little something clandestine,” CandyAss said.  “For your suit.”

“You know we’re not supposed to put anything on the suit,” Garrett said as he grabbed the box and tore off the wrap.   He flipped the lid.  Inside the thin cardboard box lay a child’s sticker:  Marvin the Martian, ray gun in his white-gloved hand, attached balloon saying, “Take me to your leader!”  Garrett threw his head back and howled.

CandyAss grinned.

#

Garrett’s bare feet slapped onto the floor.

Sirens wailed in the hallway.

Those motherfucking Nerds and their 0300 sims, he thought sourly as he pulled on his virtcom suit.  He clamped on the jointed sections of body armor, then wrestled into his fatigues and boots.  He snapped his bug-face in place, tongued the boot-up clit.  The oxygen and video display came on-line.

He walked to the locker room, his company pounding past him.

“Move your ass, Doc,” Henderson said, her radio voice loud in his ears, as she jostled him out of her way.

Never run, Garrett had been told at the paramedic academy.  Unless you’re running away, and then run fast.  Need to keep the adrenaline down, pulse slow, respirations easy.  Too much adrenaline makes your hands shake and narrows your vision.  Makes it hard to be watchful.  And being watchful will save your arrogant hard-ass more than once, they’d told him.

And it had.  More than once.

He and Carla had been first car in on a shooting called in by the police.  But for some reason she’d been in too much of a hurry, trusted too much when the Code Fives said the scene was secure.  Hadn’t waited for him, so that they could go into the scene together, him watching her back.  The way it was supposed to be.  The way they’d always done it before.

Carla and two cops went down.

“Glad you could make it, Garrett,” Braddock said.  “Lose the fatigues.  Just the virtcom suit and the armor,” he said, his face barely visible through the darkened bug-face visor.

“But they don’t have any goddamn pockets,” Garrett complained, holding up his hands. 

Braddock shrugged.

Garrett stripped out of his fatigues.

“What the fuck is that?” Braddock said, pointing.

Garrett looked down.  The Marvin the Martian sticker gleamed against the flat black belly armor.  “A birthday present,” he said.

“Jesus H. Christ, Garrett.  Remember:  Army:  rules.  You’d better scrape that goddamn thing off before the next sim or the Nerds’ll have a shit-fit.”

Garrett geared up, collected his weapons, and climbed into the hellevator—a sardine can with wings and retro-jets, free-falling from a converted Stealth-D cargo shuttle.  A soft landing in the combat zone.  Sometimes the zone was quiet; sometimes it was full of fire and brimstone.  They’d accomplish their mission, recon back at the hellevator, and take-off, vertical jet thrusters, going up.  Rendezvous with the Stealth. 

Without their fatigues, his company looked like a bunch of armed bob-sledders. Garrett scrambled to his seat and strapped himself in.

Thirty-three drops, and he still hated the hellevator.  It felt like dying every time the clamps let go and the hellevator went down.  Even though these were just sims, he knew one day it’d be for real, and a virtsim could never be as ass-puckering real as reality.  And that knowledge scared Garrett.

“What’s up, Captain?” someone asked.  Garrett checked his on-line.  Raid, heart rate racing.  Garrett had lost money on him ever since Raid joined the company a month ago—he’d bet each time Raid would take the first hit.

“Nerds said only that it was an alien sim, people,” Braddock said.  “Nothing else.  We’re going in blind.”

Garrett groaned.  Not another alien sim.  In his first alien sim, the “aliens” swooped out of monkey-puzzle trees.  They had truncated wings and tiny faces on long skinny necks.  They fired on the company’s position with some sort of ray-gun.  “What shit is this?” Garrett had complained during the debriefing.  “The Nerds got nothing better to do with their time?” After the flying aliens came the tentacled aliens, then the slime-dripping reptile aliens.  And last week, the plague of green elf-like aliens.  That was when Garrett started in with his Marvin the Martian impressions:  “You make me ve-ry, ve-ry angry.”

A voice broke in over the helmet radio:  “Two hours to drop.”

“Two hours?” Michaels said. “Jesus, I shoulda gone pee before we left.  Can we pull over?”

“They woke us up at three-fucking-o’clock in the morning just to sit in this tin can for two hours?” Ros said.

“Hey, Wilson, how are you feeling today?” CandyAss called out.

“My head’s killing me.  I musta—”

Garrett tongued the volume, turning down the chatter, and closed his eyes.

I’m thirty years old, he thought as the hellevator spun a little.  The big three-oh.  Hell, I’m the oldest one here. twenty soldiers crammed into the hellevator, and every single one is younger.  Except for the Captain.  Ros’s twenty-four.  CandyAss’s twenty-three, just like Henderson and Wilson.  Michaels, twenty-one.  Shit, he thought, some days I even feel old.

#

“Drop in twenty, on my mark.”

Garrett jerked awake.

“Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen—”

 He let his breath out, forcing his body to relax.  He watched his own pulse rate fall on his bio-screen.

“How you doing, Doc?” Ros said.

“I’m too old for this shit.”

She laughed.

Garrett thought he might puke.  Way too much beer and not enough sleep.

“Hey, Doc,” Michaels said.  “It ain’t the fall that’ll kill you.  It’s the sudden stop at the bottom.”  He laughed.

“...nine, eight, seven...”

“Very funny, Raid,” Garrett said.

“This is it, people,” Braddock said.  “Hold onto your back teeth.”

 “—two, one.  Mark.”

The clamps banged away, and the hellevator fell, shaking and rattling. 

Garrett’s body shook with the vibrations of the hellevator.   He flicked through the bio-screens to distract himself.  Everyone checked out.  He called up the tracker grid, but nothing was on-line yet from the Nerds.  Blind as blind can be, he thought.

The rattling increased.

The retro jets fired.

The hellevator hit hard, jarring Garrett’s neck and back.

“External monitors unavailable,” CandyAss said.  “The goddamn Nerds are always fucking with the equipment.”

“Okay, people,” Braddock said.  “Cover pattern Charlie to exit—both Waves.  Wilson, seeing as how you took first hit yesterday, you’re point.  Go.”

The aft door fell away and the company spilled out of the hellevator into night.  They scrambled to a safe position in a grove of trees.

“Listen up.”  Braddock waved the company down into the wet grass.  “Alien sim.  Setting is a big palace with a lotta small rooms.  Graphics should be coming on-line now:  tracker window.  Yeah, there they are.  Okay, I’m getting the rules.  Here’s the gig: clean sweep, no prisoners.  Every alien gets hit.  It’s a surprise party, so boys and girls, be quiet, stick to scramble frequency.  We pull our own wounded this time.  There’s no evac team.  Is that clear, Garrett?  No evac team.” 

“Clear.” Garrett had taken all four of his hits doing evacs.

“This is a non-stop sim.  No Base contact.  And no Nerds.  Everything’s pre-programmed, so we’re on our own here.  Seems we’ve graduated to the next level.  Ready, people?  On my mark.  Wilson, you’re still point, First Wave.  Henderson, you’re point, Second Wave.  Okay?”

“Got it, Captain,” said Henderson.

“Mark.”

Garrett was Second Wave.  He flowed through the trees behind CandyAss.  First Wave was well ahead, barely visible through the rain.  Garrett whacked up the lux count on his visor.  He would prefer to use his own eyes, but the night and peripheral vision enhancers made his real eyes seem unreliable.

First Wave broke out of the trees and scuttled across a wide lawn.  Second Wave covered. First Wave worked up to the wall of the stone building.  Then went up the wall and onto the flat roof.  Second Wave skirted to the west side of the building. 

Lights were on in several high windows, but all the lower ones were dark.  Henderson led them to tall arched doors.  CandyAss cut through, and they were inside.  Garrett upped the lux again and added infrared detection. 

A dining room.  Carpets—Turkish or Middle Eastern.  Nice wood floors.  Furniture all wood, too, hand-carved.  Looked familiar to Garrett.  Like stuff he’d seen when he was in Syria.

Henderson opened a door, moved out into a hall, waved them to follow.  The hall was dimly lit with low wall lights.  Stairs at one end.  She motioned for a floor sweep.  Room to room. 

Empty.

Up the stairs.

Garrett shifted his weapon, loosened his shoulders. Henderson was waving at him to hurry up.

Second floor:  sweep.

CandyAss eased inside the first door.  “Jesus,” he said.  A single shot.  “One.”  Garrett swept in after him, keeping his eyes to his assigned quadrants of the suite.

“These are ugly motherfuckers,” CandyAss said. 

Garrett stole a glance.  Octopus tentacles, bubbled reptile flesh for a head, with two chicken-like legs.  CandyAss nodded him out.  Clear.

Garrett swept the second room.  CandyAss, the third.  Garrett, the fourth.  Single shot to the torso.  The tentacles wriggled as the alien went over backwards and lay still.  “Two,” he said.

Stairs.

Gunfire exploded above them.  Scrabbling, running sounds.  Screaming and shrieking.  Several aliens poured out onto the polished stone stairs.  Henderson raked them, blowing pieces away and splattering green-blue blood over the walls and stairs.

Henderson and Michaels secured the stairs while Garrett and CandyAss continued their floor sweep.  She waved them on.

A door opened at the end of the hallway.  Garrett fired.  A head hit.  “Three.”

“Four.”

“Five.”  Garrett chased into a room, dodged a leveled weapon, and fired.  “Six.”

“Seven. Eight. Nine.”

“Clear.”

They reconned at the stairs with Henderson and Michaels.  Esperanza and Braddock were already there.

Garrett flicked through the bio-screen scan for both Waves.  Clear.  The tracker showed positions.  First Wave was two floors above and scrambling fast.  Gunfire echoed down the stairwell.

Henderson led them up the shiny stairs, through the bodies, onto the third floor.  She and Michaels controlled the stairwell while the teams began the sweep.

CandyAss shot open a locked door, pushed his way in.  Garrett stuck close to his back end.

Michaels’ bio-screen froze the scan.  Head hit, flatlining.  Henderson’s pulse soared.  She took a hit to the chest.  Then another.  A third in the left shin.

“Back me up, CandyAss.  Michaels and Henderson are down.”

CandyAss provided fire cover, calling Esperanza and Braddock for back-up.

No evac, Garrett reminded himself as he slung his gun across his back.  He dragged Henderson into an empty room, his forearms cradling the sides of her bug-face to protect her c-spine.  Michaels had been decapitated and just lay still.

Goddamn impressive graphics, Garrett thought. Destruct flashed across Michaels’ bio-screen.  Shit, Garrett thought; he’d do Michaels as soon as he had Henderson stabilized.

Garrett worked on Henderson, while CandyAss secured the floor.  Spinal cord severed at T7, left lung blown open, two big holes in her chest armor.   BP dropping fast.  He filled the wounds with nano-sealant

“This is a bad fucking hit, Garrett.”

“No shit.”

“Can’t feel my legs.”

“You’re gonna be okay.  It’s just a sim, remember.”

“I’m gonna complain about how much these fucking hits hurt.”

Pink frothy blood gurgled out of her mouth.  “Jesus, Doc, I’m gonna die,” she said matter-of-factly.   She convulsed.  Ventricular fibrillation; no carotid pulse.  Garrett flipped off her chest armor and whacked her sternum with a precordial thump.  Nothing.  He initiated the high O₂ dump into her helmet, watched her face through the visor.  Breath sounds in her right lung—air was going in—nothing in her left lung.  He hooked up the defibrillator to the paddles built into her suit and shocked her at 200 joules.  Then 300.  He upped the joules again, working quickly through the defib protocol.  No response.  Bio-screen showed asystole.  He prepped the epi, and injected it.  Nothing.

CandyAss stepped in the room.  “Time’s up, Doc.  Gotta move.” 

Garrett stood.

CandyAss held up a gold ring.  “Souvenir,” he said as he tucked it inside his armor.  Garrett snorted.

Destruct flashed across Henderson’s bio-scan.

“Ah, shit.”  Garrett pulled the can from his bag.  He sprayed Henderson from boot to bug-face with the nano-foam.  They’d eat the body, suit and all, then eat each other.  No trace.

“Okay, but I have to destruct Michaels on the way.”

CandyAss nodded.

#

The hellevator pushed into the night sky.

“Good work, people,” Braddock said.

Garrett was too tired to care.

“Yeah, sure.  Two losses.”

“At least one was Michaels.”  Ros laughed.

 “Michaels is buying tonight,” CandyAss said.  “He took First Hit.  Hey, Garrett, means you finally won the pool.”  CandyAss grinned.

Garrett shrugged.  He hated doing sims with destruct commands built in.  Empty seats on the hellevator reminded him that some day the virtsims would end, and the real shit would begin.  Reminded him of sitting in the hallway outside the OR waiting for Carla’s doctor to come tell him what he already knew.

#

White Rabbit whined out of the speakers. Garrett rubbed his eyes, then rolled his head down, stretching the muscles in the back of his neck.  He drank V8 juice.  Twenty minutes ’til the debriefing.

“Jesus, I’m tired,” Ros said.

CandyAss landed on the stool next to Garrett.  “What’s up, Doc?” he said.

“Very funny.”  Garrett clunked his juice glass on the bar.  “Who picks this shit music?”

“Me,” Ros said.

CandyAss twisted on the stool.  “I got something to show you.”

Garrett turned.  CandyAss opened his hand.  In it, a gold ring, a wedding band.

Garrett shrugged.  “Nice,” he said, frowning, “you proposing?”  Then his pulse leapt, and his vision narrowed.  He lowered his voice.  “That’s the shit you took from the sim.”

CandyAss nodded and scratched the back of his head.  “Uh-huh.”

“Lemme see,” said Ros, taking the ring out of CandyAss’s hand. “But all the other stuff you took—the stone, that coin, the piece of that flying alien’s ray gun—they all vanished when the sim was over.”

“Like, no shit.”

“Why would they start using real props?  Just to have guys like you steal them?” Garrett said.

“It wasn’t a sim.”

Garrett rested his elbows on the bar.  “What are you talking about?”

“Jesus, CandyAss,” Ros said, “it was an alien sim.  You’re not going to tell me we were wasting real live extra-terrestrials, are you?”  She shook her head.  “All because the Nerds used a real prop.”

“They weren’t aliens; they just looked like aliens.  To us.”

“That’s weird, man,” Garrett said.  “And paranoid.”

“Really fucking paranoid,” Ros added, tossing him the ring.

CandyAss shrugged, plucked the wedding band out of the air. “Maybe.”  He licked his lips.  “You seen Michaels?”

#

Clank.

“What the fuck?” CandyAss flipped through the console menus.  “Captain, they’re dropping us!”

“What?” Braddock said.

Garrett groaned.  They’d been scrambled while still at the club.  Hadn’t even made it to debriefing time and the Nerds had them back at it.  Garrett checked the bio-screens.  Everybody combat normal.  Actually, more quiet than usual:  everybody was tired.  Not even a peep out of Michaels the whole way.  He and Henderson had been waiting in the hellevator , bug-faces on and completely suited up when the rest of the unit climbed aboard.  Neither of them said a thing when the crew harangued them.  Not even Michaels.

Clank

The hellevator descended.

“Mothership?” Braddock said.

“Communication’s down.  Shit.  There they go:  all our external leads are down, too.  No contact.  Those fucking assholes.” 

“What’s our free-fall trajectory termination point?”

“Our trajectory will take us to...the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean.”

“Plot in a course for Pearl Harbor, and see if this thing can fly us that far.”

“Stand by.”  CandyAss clicked through calculations on his console. “No good, it’s too far.”

“What about Alaska?  Or the coast of Washington?”

CandyAss rolled the console ball.  “Negative.  Maybe Vancouver Island in Canada.”

“Okay,” Braddock said.  “Plot in a course.  Transfer console to manual, and fly us as far as you can.”

“Flight jets not responding.”

“Well, shit!  All right, people, prepare to eject.”

“Ten-four,” CandyAss said.  “Stand-by...blowing side panels...now.”

Explosions rattled the hellevator as the fore and aft walls disappeared into the night.  Wind screamed through the interior.

“Ejecting both Waves, on my mark...four...three...two...one...”

Garrett closed his eyes and held his breath.

“Mark.”

Garrett opened one eye.

“Goddamn motherfuckers!” CandyAss shouted.

“C’mon, CandyAss, blow us clear.”

“There’s a malfunction.”  CandyAss hammered on the console with his fist.

It’s just a sim, Garrett told himself.  It’s just a sim.

“Individual chairs, boys and girls.  You know the drill,” Braddock said.  “Eject the back-up rafts, CandyAss.”

“Rafts away.”

Garrett released the clamps on his chair, counted down for ejection, scanned the bio reads.  Everybody’s rates were up where they should be.  Except CandyAss’s, which were high.

“Hey, Raid!” CandyAss said.  No response from Michaels.  “Hey, Raid, give us a howl.”

Garrett stared across at Michaels, tried to see inside his dark helmet.  Kicked up his lux count, stared again.  Jesus, he thought, his face doesn’t look right.  “Michaels, you okay?” he said.

“Let’s go, people!”  Braddock shouted.  “Henderson!  You’re first, remember?”

Henderson ejected, her rockets shooting her straight out the side. 

Wilson next.

“Doc?” said CandyAss.

“Yeah?”

“The bugs killed Raid dead.  That’s not Raid, man.”

An alarm on CandyAss’s console:  “Incoming,” he said.  “Two o’clock.  Stilleto-19s.  Their ours.”

Esperanza released her chair clamps.  “Later, CandyAss,” she said, before disappearing into the dark.

“Garrett, you’re up,” Braddock said.

“Captain, they’ve locked onto us.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Friendly fire from two o’clock.”

Garrett ejected.

#

He came to, rocking back and forth, flares from his seat lighting the underside of his chute.

The bugs killed Raid dead.

“Doc?  Captain?  CandyAss?”  Ros’s voice.

He tongued the company channel as his helmet flashed through the bio screens.  Esperanza:  stable vital signs.  No injuries.

“Ros.  It’s Garrett.”  He flicked up the grid.  She was about half a mile away.

“Doc.  Jesus Christ.  I’ve been tracking your descent.  I keep losing the video in my bug-face.  When I reboot, it comes back on.”

“You in the water?”

“Yeah.  I’m almost to one of the rafts, but the swell keeps moving it away.”

“Stand by.”  The water was coming up fast now.  Garrett hit the retros.

The chair splashed hard, going deep.  Garrett released the chute, and waited for the chair to buoy him to the surface.  His helmet died, plunging him into darkness.  He hit the reboot and the video came back on line.  The chair pushed him to the surface.

The swell lifted him, spun him in his chair, then rolled him under.  Kicking and gouging at the water with his arms, he righted himself.

“You there, Doc?” Ros said, static muffling her words.

“Yeah.  Had to reboot.”

“I’ve got the raft.  I’m almost in.”  Breathing hard.

Garrett flicked through the bio-scan.  Henderson, CandyAss, Braddock, Michaels, no read at all.  Wilson, unresponsive, penetrating object to the chest, BP 90/60, pulse dropping.  No read on any of the rest of the company.

“Wilson, can you hear me?” Garrett shouted.

“This is Ros, Doc.  I’m in the raft, and I’m coming to get you.  Turn on your headlamp for visual.”

“Wilson’s at four o’clock to your position, maybe a quarter of a mile.  He’s unresponsive, hemorrhaging a lot from the looks of his bio-read.”

“I’m coming for you first.”

“No, get Wilson.”

“Don’t be an ass, Doc.  You know the drill.”

Garrett pounded his hands against his chair arms.  Wilson’s bio-read showed asystole.  “He’s coded, Ros.”

The raft slashed through the waves and swung alongside Garrett.  Ros grabbed at his chair.  He released his harness and rolled into the raft, knocking her down.  She pushed him away. 

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Okay, then we break out the transmitter and launch the flares.”

“Yeah.  Sure.” 

Garrett knelt in the bottom of the raft as Ros swung it around and gunned it to Wilson’s location.  He dug out the searchlight, flicked on the power, shooting light out into the darkness.

“We’re almost there,” Ros said.

The light caught reflectors on a dark form bobbing in the water.  “There,” Garrett said.

Ros eased the raft alongside Wilson’s chair.  A spear of metal, some wreckage from the hellevator, impaled him to his chair.

“We can’t pull him into the raft with that thing sticking out,” Ros said.

Garrett let out a deep breath. “You’re right.  But here, hold his chair against the raft.”  She grabbed at the chute ropes.

Garrett scrambled on top of Wilson, careful not to stick himself on the shrapnel.  He twisted off Wilson’s bug face, and eased it over his head.

“Christ, Doc,” Ros said, “what are you doing?  You know the rules.” 

In the light from Garrett’s headlamp, Wilson’s face looked swollen and blue.  Garrett tossed the helmet into the raft, reached inside Wilson’s virtcom suit for his tags. 

“You took his goddamn bug-face off!  Are you nuts?” Ros yelled as she pushed Wilson’s chair away from the raft’s soft hull.

Garrett scrambled back into the raft. “I want the memory in his helmet.  The tags are for Shona, his wife.  How far do you think it is to Vancouver Island?”

“What?  For his wife?  Let’s just set off the flares, get the transmitter going.  Do the drill.  We’ve—”

“No.  We quit using the radio channel, flatline our suits, dump the transmitter overboard, and get as far from here as we can before daylight.”

“You are nuts.  They’ll roast your ass!”

“Didn’t you hear CandyAss?  They were Stilletos, Ros.  It was friendly fire.  Bugs killed Raid dead, remember?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

“But, it’s just a sim.”

“It’s your call, Ros.  You’re the superior officer now.  You’re the leader.”

“It’s just a fucking sim, Doc!  Did they put you up to this?”

“We got scrambled before the debriefing, Ros.  Did you talk to Henderson?  Or Michaels?”

“No, but so what?”

“When has Michaels ever shut up?  I looked at his face, through the tint in his visor:  his face didn’t look right; it wasn’t Michaels’ face.”  He took a deep breath, struggled to keep his balance as the raft rolled with the waves.  “You saw CandyAss’s ring.”

“Fuck you, Garrett!”  She scambled to the transmitter tub, jerked it open.

Garrett pulled his revolver, wondering if he could even use it on Ros.  Shoot her in the back just like that asshole had done to Carla.  His pulse banged and his hands shook.

Ros looked back at him, lit up by his headlamp, her bug-face smooth and dark.  She crouched.  “Those Stilleto pilots were just doing sims, weren’t they?” she said.  “Just like us.  They have no idea who or what they blew out of the sky.  And they don’t care:  it’s just a sim.  Hell, they don’t even know if they’re really even flying.”

Garrett didn’t say anything.

“Who did we kill in that palace?” she said slowly.  Then, with a single long howl that deafened Garrett, Ros heaved the transmitter over the side of the raft.

Garrett heard her flick off the company channel.

“Ros?”

Then her bio-read flatlined as she shut down her virtcom suit.

Garrett took a deep breath and shut his suit down.  He twisted his bug-face over his head.  Ice-cold seawater burned his skin, and the roar of the freezing wind deafened him.  Ros waved him into the shelter as she spun the raft around, and ploughed east, toward the distant coast of Vancouver Island, which he could only imagine out there on the sea’s dark horizon.

The End