Flagship Victory Read online

  Of course, they still had to locate Felicity Station. All they would know for sure was that it orbited the planet, somewhere.

  But Engels and her forces knew where it was. By herding the Tenth Fleet at the right time with Dexon’s and Zholin’s forces, she’d ensured it was on the other side of the gas giant from where the enemy had entered—and it was even now using its limited maneuvering engines to stay as far away as possible.

  “Helm, impeller maneuvers,” said Engels. “Bring us into position. Transmit to our two hemispheres to begin surrounding the enemy.”

  She watched the holo-display as each half of her ambush forces maneuvered outside the enemy’s range of vision on impellers only, remaining under EMCON. This was only possible because she had complete intelligence on the Huns, and they had nothing on her. Her ships moved as stealthily as they were able, and soon formed a loose sphere around the enemy.

  With Indomitable directly in the Huns’ search path.

  “Activate decoy number 14,” she said.

  One of the many moonlets seeded with emitters over the last three days slowly turned on an eclectic suite of electromagnetic sources. As she’d not been sure of the relative positions when the enemy entered the gas cloud, she’d directed Trinity to set up more than twenty decoys. Now, number 14 masqueraded as Felicity Station—directly in front of Indomitable.

  According to plan, Zholin would be maneuvering his outside force into position to catch any leakers from the ambush, and Dexon would be racing forward at true light cruiser speed, much faster than Braga would expect. The time he would think he had to escape was even now flowing away like sand through an hourglass.

  Chapter 8

  Straker and Don on Terra Nova

  “So they don’t chase anyone beyond the diz?” Straker asked Myrmidon as they walked down the passageway behind the weird Opter diz of Baltimore. Now and then, human Facets in simple uniforms strode by on purposeful errands, ignoring the two men. “You walk away and you’re free?”

  “The barriers recognize my bio-code. Ordinary Facets are stuck there until they meet the parameters to move on to another diz.”

  “And what are those parameters?”

  “None of the participants knows, at least in advance. Only the controllers know. In some, everyone moves on quickly. In others, only a select few graduate. Rather like life—nobody knows the rules, and it’s not fair.”

  “But you can get out.”

  “I can.”

  Straker lowered his voice. “Can we talk here?”

  “Yes. Agents and their trainees are given a lot of leeway, including the leeway to speak wildly during roleplay.”

  “So you’re a big cheese in the spy community?”

  “Big enough to have freedom of movement, small enough that nobody wonders why I’m here.”

  “Like the Lazarus Inquisitors.”

  “Like that.”

  Straker chewed that over in his mind. “I bet you’re a clone.”

  “We’re all clones, Derek, grown in larval pods and raised in communal crèches—just like our insectoid Facets.”

  “All but me.”

  Don shrugged. He seemed to shrug a lot, especially when he didn’t necessarily agree with something but didn’t want to argue.

  “Are you trying to imply I’m a clone too?”

  “Clone, genetically engineered, a warrior designed and built for a purpose, grown in a womb instead of a vat… is there any real difference?”

  Now it was Straker’s turn to shrug, and think for a moment. “Did you give the Mutuality their cloning biotech?”

  “Of course.”

  “Dammit, you make it seem like humans can’t come up with anything themselves.”

  “They can, but getting something for free—and knowing you’ll get something for free, if you’re one of the elite few who know about the Opter gifts—makes human societies complacent—which is exactly what we want. Why work hard at research when you know some aliens are so far ahead of you?”

  “Because they’re dangerous?”

  “Until now, we’ve been very careful not to present a military threat.” Don opened a door and stepped through. When Straker followed, he shut it tight. “This diz is Cupertino.”

  Unlike Baltimore, the street they entered was merely drab, not dirty and littered. Drably dressed people walked the sidewalks. All the people wore mirrored goggles that covered and sealed their eyes, and wrapped around to plug into their ears as well.

  The people were also talking to themselves—or, of course, to others, presumably via comlink. They must be viewing a virtual overlay of at least sight and sound. Some made motions in the air to manipulate virtual objects or controls.

  Don led them down the street to a café where everyone sat in his or her own tiny booth. Robots served them dull food while they continued to talk to and touch the air.

  “This is a diz too?” Straker said. “Doesn’t seem so bad. They probably see and hear a world that’s much nicer than the real one.”

  “It’s not bad, at first. Yet, the suicide rate here is higher than in the one we just left.”

  “You let people kill themselves?”

  “You’re asking the wrong questions, Derek. You need to put aside your gut reactions to what you see.”

  “So what’s the right question?”

  “There is only one right question when it comes to sentient beings, Derek.”

  Straker looked around, pondering, trying to remember the bits and pieces of philosophy, religion and psychology he’d picked up in his life. “Okay. Why?”

  Don nodded. “That’s it. Why do people do things? Learn that, and you can influence them. Add power, and you can control them—and yourself.”

  “So why are they acting this way? Disconnected from everything real, living in a virtual world?”

  “You’ve had experience with virtuality. You tell me.”

  Straker thought about Shangri-La and the way he felt there. “It’s seductive. It’s life-porn, feeding pleasure and banishing pain. But that’s not real life.”

  “How many humans actually want to live real life? How many, when presented with comfort, take it without critical thought? In our tests—almost all of them.”

  “If that were true, human society would go all virtual, then collapse. Only a small percentage of people actually get addicted to VR.”

  Don chuckled. “That’s what you’ve been told? In reality, when everyone’s doing it, when it’s the way to make your living and conduct your life, it becomes the norm. The only thing that keeps everyone from going virtual is economics and regulations—in other words, those at the top keep it limited, and under control.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Because they know that a bunch of drones who’ve lost touch with reality are no fun to rule, and they eventually become less productive, not more.”

  Straker looked around. “But why do this, here? What’s this diz for? In fact, what are any of them for?”

  “All dizzes are meant to turn Facets into humans, or weed out the ones who won’t adapt.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me.”

  Straker thought. “For some reason, you—we—don’t simply want human-shaped hive drones. We want people who can pass in the real human societies. For that, they have to have real experiences. But I don’t see how this is real.”

  Don shrugged. “They don’t stay in one diz forever. They progress through them.”

  “Right... So they’re really just progressive training scenarios.”

  “Of course. Let’s move on. This one’s called Campus.”

  They passed through another door into an area that resembled a large school. Pleasant but uninteresting buildings squatted among indifferently landscaped walkways. Groups of people lounged or walked here and there—always groups. They showed a mix of humanity’s range of physical characteristics. Their only difference was their clothing. Each group wore clothing of a specific color—green, blue, red
and so on.

  Two groups approached, reds and greens, each composed of about fifteen people. Smaller groups of blues and yellows looked on.

  They met at a narrow point of the walkway. Straker expected them to flow through each other, or perhaps each to move to one side and go by, but instead the people deliberately blocked each other and began to argue.

  “Why don’t they just move past?” Straker asked.

  “They wear different colors.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  The argument escalated to yelling and threats. “They hate each other.”

  “Why?”

  “Different colors.”

  “There must be some grievances between them, right?”

  “Not at first.”

  Straker watched as the people began fist fighting—clumsily, though, like children, wrestling, pulling hair, punching ineffectively. “This is some kind of setup, right? Another scenario?”

  “Of course.”

  “So you made them fight?”

  Don shrugged. “The diz controllers don’t force people to do anything. They merely set conditions and let human nature take over. In this case, Facets new to the diz are given colored clothing.”

  “And what are they told?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. They must be told that the other color is bad or something.”

  “No. In fact, there are countervailing pressures. For example, those who’ve formed attachments in other dizzes are always given different colors.”

  “So those guys stay friends.”

  “One might think so.”

  Straker turned his head back and forth from the brawl to Don. “You’re saying they don’t.”

  “It’s very rare. Within days, the new Facets have nearly always adopted the viewpoints of their color—which other colors are their enemies, which are their allies or neutral, their supposed reasons to fighting.”

  “So there are reasons.”

  Don smiled faintly. “Of course. The greens occupied a red dorm nine years ago. The blues beat up a yellow last month. The purples are being favored by the faculty this term, and the oranges paid them off. Yesterday, the reds didn’t get dessert because the blues took them all first. The greens feel like they’re under-represented on the communal councils—and so on, and so on on.”

  “Stupid reasons to fight. Are those things even true?”

  Don shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters! Truth matters!”

  “It should. But does it? Or is it only belief that matters?”

  “You can’t make something true just because you believe it!”

  “But what if you believe you can?”

  “That’s insane!”

  Don shrugged.

  “You’re totally corrupting these people.”

  “By giving them colored clothing?”

  “By taking children—even if they look like adults, they’re only a couple years old—and leading them astray.”

  “All we do is introduce a Facet to a diz with a certain set of conditions and see what happens. We don’t tell them how to act. Once the Facets experience what they need to, they’re rotated out and into another diz, where they’ll learn different lessons. Eventually some begin to develop critical thinking skills.”

  “And the rest?”

  “They’re stuck. Or they get moved to a different diz track. Even I don’t know the ins and outs. It’s up to the controllers.”

  “Or they die, like that woman.”

  “Something like that. Come on.”

  Don led them to another diz, composed of grand, beautifully decorated interior spaces. There were no windows, but warm artificial lighting made it seem comfortable. People sat at rows of machines with screens, performing incomprehensible work. Robots rolled among them, dispensing drinks and food so people didn’t have to leave their workstations. Occasionally, someone got up from their seat, to use the facilities apparently.

  Some people were fat, some skinny, but all looked unhealthy. Many sucked on smokesticks or vaporsticks while they worked. They all seemed completely lost in what they were doing, seldom speaking to anyone even as they were packed in, shoulder-to-shoulder.

  The one strange thing about the place was the noises coming from the workstations. They beeped and rang and played music incessantly. Now and again, someone would raise a hand or even jump to their feet in triumph as the machine in front of them would make loud, equally triumphant sounds—but the worker would soon sit back down and continue pushing buttons or touching screens, performing their obscure tasks.

  “What are they doing?” Straker asked as the two men strolled among the workers. “What’s on those screens—that looks like more like entertainment than work, but the people don’t seem happy. Except for a few now and then, that is.”

  “Very perceptive. It’s called entertaskment—a combination of tasks and entertainment. They’re rewarded with credits for completing tasks, and the credits can be traded for special tasks that provide more reward.”

  “And what happens when people earn enough reward credits?” Straker figured they would buy residences or vehicles, travel or take vacations, eat out and party, invest in businesses or buy art… what did people do with money anyway? He’d had so little time and opportunity to use it during his life he hardly knew. He mused that he must have a lot piled up in his military pay accounts in the Hundred Worlds—not that he’d ever get access to it, of course.

  “They can buy things,” Don replied, “but they seldom do.”

  “Really? Why not? What do they do with the credits?”

  “They move up to higher reward tiers, where they actually have to risk their credits in hopes of winning more.”

  “Risking? Winning? That sounds more like gambling than work.” Straker knew something about gambling, from Shangri-La or from the usual games troops played, wagering drinks or luxuries or hard cash when they had it. He’d never been all that interested in playing those games—which had made him that much more of an outcast, until he’d made enough rank he wasn’t expected to play anyway.

  “It is gambling, but it’s never called that.”

  “What happens when they win a lot? When they get rich?”

  Don smiled without humor. “What do you think rich people would do?”

  Straker hazarded a guess, not that he was particularly familiar with rich civilians. “Become entrepreneurs, or big-businesspeople? Or celebrities, entertainment stars? Do they go on planetary cruises and drink the finest wines? Or run for elected office, gain power?”

  “You’d think so, but with rare exception, no.”

  “What do they do, then?”

  “They keep gambling, bigger and bigger. Until they lose it all and fall back to the working level, where the rewards are small, and so are the risks. Where all they have to do is show up, put their minds on autopilot, and slave away.”

  Straker stopped and turned to face Don. “Are you trying to make this about me? That I’m gambling, always bigger and bigger, until I lose?”

  “Is that how you see yourself?”

  “That’s how people around me see me, sometimes. My woman—my wife, Carla, I mean—says so sometimes. That I can’t keep from gambling. But my gambles aren’t to win a vacation or more credits.”

  Don opened his hand and made a there-you-are gesture at those around them. “Neither are theirs, really. If they really wanted that vacation, or those credits to actually build lives, they’d take them and stop gambling. But they don’t. Because it’s the game that matters, not the gain.”

  “And you think I’m the same.”

  “That’s not for me to answer.”

  Straker turned away, sucking breath through his teeth and thinking. “The difference is, I have a goal. I want to free mankind. You’ve brought me here to a place where a different branch of mankind is enslaved in crazy ways, but it’s really the same old shit. Happy slavery, with people that
don’t even know they’re being controlled and manipulated, is still slavery.”

  “As it was with you.”

  “As—what?”

  “When you were a mechsuiter.”

  “I was happy… I was! I had a purpose, a noble purpose… I thought.” Straker rounded on Don, angry. “Okay, you got me, you and your word games. Maybe I was being manipulated before. I sure didn’t know the full story. But I broke out of all that. I made my way out and I made a real difference. I’ve freed more than half of humanity from a tyrannical government, and I’m planning on liberating the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “The Hundred Worlds.”

  “Hmm.” Don’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a great speech, for a trainee. I’m glad you’re enjoying your roleplaying.”

  Straker nodded, realizing he’d been skimming close to speaking too plainly inside the diz. If anyone were listening, they might start to wonder, so he slipped back into his role. “Just trying my best, boss. I have to learn to act like the humans.”

  “You’re certainly making progress.” Don turned away, and Straker followed, his mind awhirl with the things the Opter-man got him thinking about.

  Don led them to another diz, called Milgram. This one consisted of rooms behind one-way glass. Each room was divided into two parts, reminding Straker of the chambers with the Kort readying itself to eat a naked Carla Engels. Don halted Straker to observe one pair of rooms.

  On one side, a white-coated researcher with a large handtab opened a door and let in a young woman in ordinary clothing. “Sit here,” the man said, and she sat in a chair before a table with two large buttons—one red, one green—and a standard screen.

  In the other chamber, a young man—Facet, Straker reminded himself—was strapped to a table, and wired with leads to machinery.

  “What’s going on?” the woman asked.

  “Simply read the screen into the microphone,” the researcher said.

  “What is six times five?” recited the woman into a microphone.