Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

“Yeah, but, I
mean .
 . .”

“What?”

Mike took a
breath and searched for the words.  “I mean in an actual battle, firing actual
weapons at actual people?”

“Yeah? 
Well,” said Bobby, “they were trying to kill me, and they had volunteered to be
there just like I had.  They knew the risks; so did I.  I guess it
felt good.”

Mike
laughed.  At first a nervous giggle, but then a full-throated belly
laugh.  “You hard-hearted son of a bitch,” he said.  “You’re a
cold-blooded killer!”  He laughed again.  Bobby laughed a
little too.  It wasn’t quite true, what he had said, but it sounded good
to the fans and the war buffs, and it put them off the scent of how he really
felt.

“I guess so,”
Bobby said, “I guess that’s what made me an effective soldier.”

“I guess it
did,” Mike replied.

Bobby downed
his remaining whisky.  “I’m turning in now, Mike.  It was good to
meet you.”

“Well,” Mike
said, “before you go I’d like to make a toast to the returning hero.”  He
raised his glass.  “
To .
 . .” 
He paused blankly.  “I’m so sorry, what was your name again?”

“Karjalainen. 
Bobby Karjalainen.”

“Yes! 
Yes, I knew I knew your face.  Goddamn!  Great book. 
Great
book.” 
Mike grabbed Bobby’s hand, shaking it vigorously as he continued.  “To
Bobby Karjalainen, and all those like him, to whom we owe our freedom, and
because of whom we can sleep safely in our beds at night.  Chin
chin
!”  Bobby clinked glasses with him, though his own
was empty.  Bobby slipped from his stool and made to leave but Mike
grabbed his shoulder.  Bleary-eyed, Mike looked straight at Bobby
and said, with all the sincerity he could muster, “Welcome home, Bobby. 
Welcome back to Mars.”

The port was
sparsely populated.  Flights from Earth arrived only every two
years.  For most of the time the space was used for warehousing and the
staff on duty today were security personnel from the main USAN base at
Marineris.  They knew exactly who was coming and they knew exactly what
they were bringing with them.  Every milligram had to be accounted for on
the flight and, in addition to the exorbitant cost, a thorough medical and
psych exam was necessary before anyone could be cleared for interplanetary
flight.  The cost would have made the trip off-limits to Bobby but
the army picked up the tab both ways; as a volunteer for the military on the
way out and as a war-hero on the way back.

On finishing
his final tour Bobby had been paraded as something of a poster boy back in the
USAN.  His easy smile looked as good on the bulletins as it did on the
posters, and he maintained enough gravity to make his flip and scripted answers
to the tougher questions (tougher, but not tough.  No one in the media would
be dumb enough to ask an actual tough question) seem weighty and
considered.  He had consented to a ghost-written book,
Return of
the Warrior
, about his experience in the Commander Program.  The only
part people were interested in was the Battle of Lahore.  Bobby signed off
on the book, even though it bore scant relation to the events it
depicted.  It had been jazzed up into an adventure story with just enough
true horror and grit left in to make it seem serious and worthy.  In
reality it was a trashy and jingoistic thriller to be chosen above others
because of the words ‘true story’ (in fact, ‘
The Explosive True Story
!)
and the picture of Bobby looking suitably determined and heroic on the cover.

Bobby had
ridden his fifteen minutes expertly and had enjoyed every moment.  He’d
been on seven different chat shows across four countries and had spoken at two
prestigious universities.  The rock star life had been great, but the
travelling and the easy availability of admiring women had eventually come
between him and Askel.

After initial
training Bobby had served two outstanding virtual tours out of the famed
‘Kentucky Sheds’.  It appeared he was preternaturally gifted at remotely
piloting attack mechs and drones, and he had an unusually well-developed
sense of tactics and strategy.

His
prodigious skills had not gone unnoticed and when he volunteered for the newly
announced Commander Program he had been snapped up immediately.

As one of the
first volunteers Bobby had been in the Commander Program more or less from the
very beginning.  His training group had worked closely with Helios
Matériel
Corporation, one of the top military contractors,
in developing the command drones.  Initially these had been adapted
standard drones with little or no ammo.  Important systems had been moved
about the chassis in order to make room for someone to sit inside.  This
worked out okay in initial VR training but in field trials the problems became
more and more apparent.  The command drones were underpowered, under armed
and under armoured.  When it became clear that no amount of rejigging was
going to solve the problems, Helios brought in their second most senior
designer and briefed her to rebuild the design for the command drones from
scratch.  Her name was Askel Lund.

Bobby worked
closely with Askel.  He knew what was needed and he was always keen to
test prototypes on the training grounds.  Bobby was a passionate advocate
for the command drones to be armed.  Initially it had been thought that
with the firepower of eleven battle drones at his or her disposal there would
be no need for the command drone itself to be fully armed.  Bobby knew
that in a tight-spot the command drone would need to defend itself, maybe
even using manual controls.

He knew too
the value of armour.  The Commander Program had been sold as a glorious
return to the days of ancient warriors, risking their lives in honourable
battle for the greater good.  Some of that made sense to Bobby, but he
didn’t think solders should be throwing their lives away as a sop to some crazy
ideas about honour and valour that were centuries out of date.  Death on
the battlefield was a possibility; it didn’t have to be a duty.

Askel worked
at the design and refined it with Bobby’s input until she had honed it down to
something usable and effective.  The command drones stood four metres high
and looked very similar to the humanoid mech drones they commanded.  This
was important, as it prevented the enemy easily identifying and picking off the
commanders.  The command drones had space in the body cavity from where
the commanders piloted them.  The commander’s head was exposed to the
front to allow the situational awareness that was at the heart of the program,
but could be sealed off in a split second.  A Plexiglas screen would
instantly deploy to protect the pilot from any incoming threat.  Once, in
the training field, Bobby’s visor deployed when a bee harmlessly bumbled past
at a distance of five metres.

The headsets
the pilots wore relayed live information to them via audio coms and a head-up
display.  Advanced algorithms processed all available data and, based on
the situational scenario, mission objectives and a detailed analysis of the
pilots previous actions, would only display information deemed likely to be
useful.  Commands could be issued to the commander’s drones visually,
verbally or via predetermined ‘situational’ responses.  The drones had a
huge array of fully customisable routines in addition to their independent
heuristic evaluation techniques and constantly adapting AI.

Askel and
Bobby had kept their relationship secret, fearing it would jeopardise their
respective positions.  They thought it might be perceived as
unprofessional.  The clandestine nature of their liaisons just added to
the fun for Bobby but Askel had found it difficult.  She took her job
seriously and she hated the idea of the cliché that their relationship was; the
serious professional woman bowled over by the rugged, handsome and rough-round-the-edges
man in a uniform.  To her there was more to it than that.  She felt
that she understood Bobby, having come from a well-known and wealthy
family herself, and she knew that she saw a different side to him than he
showed to the rest of the world.  Bobby was the easy-going, up-for-anything
guy, modest with it even though he knew how easily he fell to almost any task
at hand, and he projected a what-the-hell, devil-may-care
roguishness that the people around him loved.  He was dependable, smart,
just-a-bit-crazy-but-not-too-crazy
and above all, something of a bad-boy.  Crucially, not so bad that
he was dangerous to know, but just bad enough that hanging out with him felt
very slightly naughty.  When you were with Bobby it felt like you might
get caught and told off at any moment, and that was a
good
feeling. 
Askel knew that feeling; all those who knew Bobby experienced it at one time or
another.  But Askel felt she knew something that few if any others did;
the real Bobby, the man at the core.  That Bobby was sensitive, thoughtful
and filled with a restless, searching melancholy.  That was the true
Bobby. 
Askel’s
Bobby.

Bobby
shuffled along the check-in line, observing his surroundings.  The
building was large and like most buildings on Mars was mostly
underground.  It was pressurised against the unbreathable and low pressure
Martian atmosphere, with a minimum of the structure above the surface. 
The entrance bays were served by ramps sunk into the ground.  Thick
reinforced Plexiglas skylights made up the bulk of the above ground parts of
the structure.  The skylights were bordered by rails on which were mounted
brushes and power-jets which periodically whooshed up and down them,
clearing the ever-present Martian dust which accumulated whenever the
wind got up, which was often.

They had
transferred from the landing vehicle through an airlock into what was, in
effect, a large coach.  They were then driven the few short kilometres to
the warehouse terminal.  Another trip through an airlock and they were
ushered through to this larger area.

Bobby was
relishing the luxury of space as he moved slowly up the line.  The journey
from Earth had taken six months.  Since he had stepped into the ‘bone-shaker’
HLV back in Ontario half a year ago this was the largest space he had been
in.  From the HLV he had transferred to an HEO shuttle which had taken him
out to the interplanetary craft, where he had spent the bulk of the
journey.  That ship never landed; it was on a permanent elliptical orbit
around the sun.  Once every two years you could hop on near Earth, and hop
off six months later at Mars.  The eighteen month return trip was unmanned
and used primarily to transport freight, the most precious of which was the
deuterium on which the early Martian economy had been founded.  A second
interplanetary solar orbiter was on a different orbit; Mars to Earth in six
months with the eighteen month journey on the return.

The solar
orbiters were functional but, necessarily, minimal.  Space was at a
premium.  The ships had been designed so as to
feel
as big as
possible to their inhabitants.  The crew was limited to one doctor and one
engineer, all other roles being fully automated or seen to by service
drones.  There was a gym, use of which was highly encouraged, and a
combined refectory and day area in addition to the cabins.  Cabins were equipped
with entertainment centres, Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) units and other
home comforts.  Customers could also opt for ‘Enhanced Sleep’ where, by
means of drug therapy and careful electromagnetic manipulations of the
subject’s brain, the user could sleep for extended periods of up to three or
four days at a time.  This was a good option where there was, essentially,
nothing to do for six months, but too much ES could lead to extended feelings
of fatigue and headaches.

When the
solar orbiter was close enough to Mars the passengers transferred to an HMO
vehicle which took them down the landing craft in Low Mars Orbit.  From
there it was a mildly hair-raising trip down to the landing site.

Bobby was now
two people away from being processed.  He could hear the two security
personnel in front of him processing the line.  It was standard stuff;
name, occupation, purpose of visit.  It was, he thought, largely
pointless.  No one gets to stowaway on an interplanetary space
craft.  Every person is checked and rechecked and monitored constantly
through all stages of the flight and every transfer.  If a passenger
caught a cold the security services would know it before they did.  This
was just a hangover from an earlier way of doing things.  It felt like
this was how you
should
run a terminal, so this was how they did run a
terminal.

Bobby stepped
up to the first border guard, who did not look up.  “Hold out your comdev
and state your name, nationality and purpose of visit.”

Bobby moved
his weight from one leg to the other.  “Robert Harvey Karjalainen, USAN, I
live here.”

The guard
looked up, acting for all the world as if Bobby’s identity had come as a
surprise to her.  “
Bobby Karjalainen
?” she said.

Bobby looked
her in the eye.  “That’s right,” he said.

“Bobby Karjalainen
the war hero?”  The guard squinted at him.

“I served,”
Bobby allowed.

The guard
exaggeratedly gestured to her colleague.  “Hey!  We’ve got us a war
hero here.  How about that?” she said.

Bobby looked
away.  The guard said, “Mr Karjalainen, could you please turn your face
toward me as I have to positively identify you.”  It was nonsense. 
Bobby’s comdev, like everyone else’s, was biometrically encoded to him only and
facial recognition at all points on the journey confirmed his identity. 
Whether a border guard thought Bobby looked like his most recent picture on
file was neither here nor there.  Any imposter would have been picked up
on the ground at Ontario, and ever since then the system had had a lock on him.