Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (39 page)

“Thank
you.  Good night.”

The stream
ended.

Venkdt stood
up from his chair and immediately began pacing.  “How was it?” he said.

“Good,” said
Kostovich.

“Too short?”

“The length
was fine.  Nobody has an attention span anymore.”

“Will it make
any difference?  To anything?”

Kostovich
shrugged.  “Who knows?  You got your point out there.  And maybe
no one will notice that you didn’t deny destroying
Ares-H 17
.”

“That’s not
even a USAN ship!”

“Exactly. 
You were right to avoid it.  If you’d tried to explain it’s not a USAN
craft all people would have heard would have been ‘
Areas-H 17
’
and
‘USAN’.  So just leave well alone, like you did, and hope nobody notices.”

Venkdt
finished his pacing and sat back down.  “What are we going to do,
Dan?  If they turn up here in that big ship, spoiling for a fight?”

“Well,” said
Kostovich, “as I believe I have demonstrated, we have the capability to render
them harmless.  A surgical EMP strike, which we are quite capable of,
would turn
Ephialtes
into an oversized tin can and nothing more.”

“And then
what?”

Kostovich looked
confused, briefly.  “And then it’s over.  It’s the only
interplanetary military craft in existence, and it took four years to
build.  Once it’s neutralized, that’s it.  We would be, literally,
beyond reach.”

Venkdt shook
his head.  “Christ, we don’t want to let it get to that.”

Kostovich
nodded.  “You’ve got six weeks or so to politic and manoeuvre and bob and
weave, but you can be confident that as a
fallback
,
and if you have to, you can take them out of the game, militarily.  And
relatively safely, too.  Obviously, there will always be risks when you’re
detonating weapons in conflict but we should be able to take that ship off the
field of play without harming any of the crew.  Wouldn’t that look great
on the streams, too?  Powerful
and
benevolent.”

Venkdt shook
his head again.

Elspeth had
never interviewed a celebrity before.  She had hardly interviewed anyone
before.  She had followed Bobby’s exploits on the streams during the war
and had bought his book on the day of release.  While she was too level-headed
to be called a fan she was certainly in awe of Bobby Karjalainen and that added
to her nervousness at the thought of interviewing him.

She was
eighteen years old and looked even younger.  She was worried Bobby would
not take her seriously.  She thought it important that the impression she
made from the very beginning was one of maturity and seriousness.  From
everything she had seen and read it seemed like Bobby was quite a strong
personality, and if she couldn’t approach him as an equal the interview would
not work.  It would end up as one of those bland press calls where the
subject spouts a few meaningless words, glad simply to get their face on the
screen.  Elspeth didn’t want that.  She wanted to get something
unique.

From her
research she was fairly sure that no one had thought of asking Bobby about his
return to Mars and his relationship with his dying father.  That would be
interesting on its own, and it came with the possibility that Bobby might get
emotional or defensive.  Either way, it would make for compelling
viewing.  In order to put a strong figure like Bobby in that position she
would have to establish herself as a solid presence in her own right. 
Someone like Bobby, she thought, wouldn’t be pushed into a corner by a gauche
eighteen-year-old who didn’t really know what she was doing. 
It was absolutely vital that she cover that up; that she should appear calm,
authoritative and used to dealing with powerful personalities.  Although
that was the exact opposite of the truth Elspeth believed she would be able to
fake it.

She had
rented a room at a local college.  She wasn’t sure if that was a good
idea.  Maybe it would play badly with her age, making it look like she was
doing a school project or
somesuch
.  But it was
the only place she could afford.  Her own home would make it look even
more like a teenager’s project and it would be presumptuous to ask to do it at
Bobby’s place, as well as giving him home advantage.

She arrived early
and set up her equipment.  She had borrowed a moderately good camera which
she set up behind her right shoulder.  She had arranged two chairs not
quite facing each other, one for her and one for Bobby.  She set up her
old camera so it would be looking over Bobby’s shoulder at her.  She
planned to cut in shots of her asking questions, nodding and looking
interested.  She had seen this set-up many times on the more sober
streams - the ones that covered politics, business and so
forth - and she thought it seemed suitably serious.  She
shot some test of footage on each of the cameras, sat in each of the chairs,
and she was happy with the results.

Bobby was
late.

After ten
minutes she started to wonder if he was coming at all.  Should she send
him a message reminding him, or would that seem desperate?  Against her
impulses she decided not to message him but to wait.  She thought that
would be what an old pro would do.

After twenty
minutes she was starting to feel despondent.  Her last message from Bobby
had been over a week ago.  He was probably busy with glamorous speaking
engagements and had forgotten all about it.  She started to feel that she
had been a fool to have ever believed that she had landed an interview with
Bobby Karjalainen.  She felt a strange mixture of emotions; anxiety,
disappointment and embarrassment.  But underneath it all there was still a
scintilla of undying hope: maybe Bobby Karjalainen
will
turn up
.

At half an
hour Elspeth was considering packing her kit away.  She had only booked
the room for an hour and it looked like she had been stood up.  She sat in
her interviewers chair and thought about what she might do with the rest of the
day.  Whatever she did would be overcast with the massive disappointment
of having failed at this one thing she had been planning and looking forward to
for weeks.  It seemed like the only acceptable option she had would be to
mope about all day, feeling sorry for herself.  That seemed like a plan.

Bobby was
already stepping into the room when he knocked on the open door.  He
bounded towards Elspeth without waiting for an invitation.  “Hi, Bobby
Karjalainen, you must be Elspeth Ross?”

“Yes,” said
Elspeth, “it’s great to meet you in person at last.”

“Good to meet
you too, Elspeth, you’re a little younger than I expected.”

Elspeth had
to think fast to parry.  “You look a little younger in the flesh, too,”
she said.

“I’m late, I
had some family business to attend to,” said Bobby.  Elspeth noted that it
was not an apology, merely an explanation.  She expected that Bobby had
never really had to apologise to anyone.

“
It’s
fine,” she lied.  “Shall we get started right
away?  I know you must be busy and I really appreciate your making time
for this.”

“Why not?”
said Bobby.  “Let’s do it.”

Elspeth gestured
to the chairs.  “If you sit there I’ll sit here and ask you a few
questions.  I was going to ask about the war, a little bit about your
family history, and about your plans for the future.  I’ve read your book
so I’ll ask a little bit about that and maybe get you to expand a bit on some
of the anecdotes from there, how does that sound?”

“All sounds
fine to me,” said Bobby.

Elspeth
hesitated.  She was going to ask one more question before the interview
and she wasn’t sure whether it would put her at a disadvantage or if it was
even the sort of thing a professional interviewer would say.  As much as
she wanted to be a hard-hitting journalist there was no getting away from
the fact that Elspeth was polite and considerate.  She felt compelled to
ask anyway, but as a further justification she told herself it might be a
clever tactic, lulling Bobby into a false sense of security.  “Are there
any topics you would be unwilling to discuss?” she said, at the same time
thinking she may have just shot herself in the foot.

Bobby paused
for a second in thought.  “I don’t think so,” he said casually.  “If
there’s anything I don’t want to say I just won’t say it,” he added with a
shrug.  “Shall we do it?”

Elspeth
looked to her camera over Bobby’s shoulder.  She tapped her comdev to set
the camera on
preset
two, where it framed her head
and shoulders.  After her intro she would set it back to
preset
one, a longer shot favouring her but with the back
of Bobby’s head and shoulder the foreground.

“I’m speaking
today to Bobby Karjalainen, author of
Return of the Warrior
, veteran of
World War IV and son of
Hjälp
Teknik
CEO Jack Karjalainen.  Bobby recounted his experience of war in his
bestselling book and became something of a celebrity on the lecture
circuit.  Since he left the army he has toured Earth extensively, but has
now returned to his home on Mars.”

She flipped
the camera to
preset
one and turned to face
Bobby.  “Bobby,
Return of the Warrior
recounts the story of the
Commander Program on Earth and your experiences with it.  Could you tell
us a little about that?”

“Well,” said
Bobby, “the Commander Program was dreamt up a couple of years into World War
IV.  The idea was to return to an earlier sense of martial chivalry, which
some felt had been lost, and also to give commanders in the field a greater
sense of situational awareness that is simply not available to soldiers
operating drones through IVR.  I don’t think we were expecting the
controversy we got.  To many people it seemed totally unacceptable to be
putting military personnel in harm’s way.  But for most of human history,
that’s how it was.  People forget that.  People now think of war as
being fought by drones but even in World War III there were soldiers putting
their lives at risk on the battlefield.  Before the twenty-first
century drones didn’t even exist; wars were fought between people, face-to-face. 
I think what’s happened is that over time we’ve lost track of that sort of
thing.  People expect wars to be sanitary and safe but the truth is that
even in a modern war, a drone war, people get killed.  We call it
collateral damage or whatever, but people get killed.”

“And what was
your role in the Commander Program?”

“I signed up
for the program at the very beginning, before there even was a program to speak
of, so I was involved in setting up and testing the hardware, and developing
tactics and organisational structures.”

“So you were
quite heavily involved in shaping the program?”

“I was. 
We worked with some great designers from Helios
Matériel
Corporation and adapted existing drones so that they could take pilots. 
That turned out to be more complex than we thought it would be, so we had to
redesign the command drones from the ground up.  I was a test pilot for
that, so I got input on the final designs.”

“Were you
happy with the designs?”

“More than
happy.  Our concerns were listened to and the designers really worked with
us to provide the sorts of machines we needed, and that would do the sorts of
things we needed them to do.  Once we had the hardware, of course, we had
to move on to the harder task of developing tactics and training up the pilots
to use them.  I have to say, the volunteers we got for the Commander
Program were absolutely first-class.  I think it takes a particular
type of person to be willing to walk on to a battlefield where the enemy will
be trying to kill them, and the guys we got were terrific.”

“Where were
you first deployed?”

“Well,
initially, I had trouble getting out of instructing at the school.  The
program was so new we didn’t have enough instructors, so I was stuck training
for eighteen months or so.  But in the end they let me go.  I told
them that battlefield experience would make me an even better instructor, and
though I don’t think they believed it, they let me go.”

“And you went
to Pakistan?”

“I did.”

“Can you tell
us about that?”

“Well, I
think
it’s
pretty well-documented what went off
over there.  It’s all in my book.”  Elspeth sensed this was one of
the things that Bobby had in mind when he said if he didn’t want to say stuff
he wouldn’t say it.

“And the
Battle of Lahore?”

“Yes, I was
at the Battle of Lahore.”

Elspeth
guessed this would be a great place to leave a pause.  Maybe Bobby would
be compelled to fill the silence with something revelatory, but if not the pause
itself would be dramatic.  It seemed that Bobby wasn’t going to step in,
so having given the pause enough time to do its job Elspeth continued.

“That must
have had quite an effect on you.”

“Yes.”

Another
pause.

“Did it
affect your faith in the Commander Program?”

Bobby
thought.  “It didn’t affect my faith in the program, but obviously an
experience like that does, as you say, have an effect.  We had all trained
for war but nothing really prepares you for it.  I served two tours at the
start of the war as a drone pilot in Kentucky but I quickly found that
physically being on the battlefield is another thing entirely.  And of
course, the loss of colleagues is something
that .
 . .” 
He stopped, searching for words.  “It’s something that is very difficult
to deal with.”

Elspeth knew
she was on delicate ground but was eliciting some great stuff.  “Knowing
what you know now, and with the experiences you had, would you still have
championed and supported the Commander Program the way you did at the
beginning?”

“Yes I
would.  We have a way of life and a way of doing things in the USAN that
is worth defending.  Our enemies deny their own citizens freedom. 
They are not free to practice their own religions, or to trade with each other,
or to say what they want, or go where they want, or do they want.  Half of
Earth is shrouded under dark, intolerant, ignorant systems of government. 
Sometimes we forget that our way of life isn’t just the natural order of
things.  We live in a system that allows people to experience freedom of
ideas and expression, and economic freedom.  It’s this system that has
brought us great wealth and great privilege.  When you look at the other
side and the misery and poverty they live in, brought about by their repressive
and intolerant governments, I think it’s easy to see that it’s worth it to
fight for what we have.  I know that my fellow commanders who died on the
battlefields of Lahore and elsewhere would have done that gladly rather than
live under the darkness of the Asian Bloc.”

“Would you
like to take a break?”

“No, I’m
fine.”