The Parafaith War (20 page)

“Shit …” he mumbled. The rev had a lock-on. Trystin lost a few instants trying to coax an answer from his dead implant before his fingers flickered across the console. Everything seemed to take so long manually.

Three minutes and ten seconds until the translation systems were on-line and synchronized. System power output was at sixty-five percent and dropping. Full shields would drop the available power level below the fifty-five percent required for translation. The revvie patroller was less than fifty thousand kays away-only a fraction of a light-second-and closing, and semitranslation torps ran just below light speed.

In the half-gravity of the cockpit, Trystin’s stomach was rising into his throat. He pulsed the shields, then toggled them off as the available power dropped to twenty percent. As he watched, the available power level began to climb back… twenty-five percent… thirty-five percent… forty-five percent … forty-eight percent… .

“Present free power flow insufficient for translation,” the main console scripted. “Interrogative delay of translation initiation?”

He ignored the question and wiped his forehead, conscious that the small cockpit smelled of stressed human as well as stressed equipment. Not only was his forehead damp, but his whole body was damp. What could he do?

He cut the power to the artificial gravity, and felt his body both rise against the straps and be pressed ever so slightly against the pilot’s couch from the continuing acceleration of the insystem thrusters. His guts rose farther up into his throat in the near null-gee. “Two minutes to translation.” The mechanical words scripted across the console in front of Trystin.

The representational screen flashed red, and a series of dotted pink lines flared toward the screen center-toward Trystin.

Bzzzz! Bzzzz! The power warning light flashed. “Power below fifty-five percent,” scripted across the console.

Trystin’s eyes flicked between the screens and the power meter in the corner of the console, and to the digital clock readings, as he tried to calculate his options. Finally, he toggled off the environmental systems, then watched until the power output inched over fifty-five percent. Then he flicked the guard off the emergency translation stud and slammed it down.

The cockpit flared white, then black, before the entire board powered down with a dull whining sound. The cockpit turned into inert plastic, metal, and electronics, lit only by the faint red emergency lights.

“Systems Inoperative!” The red words flashed across the top of the screens perhaps three times before they too died in the darkness, burned out by the back-power surge created by translation without accumulators.

Trystin wiped his forehead, trying not to shake his head. What else could he have done? Dying a slow death in the cold without power or getting incinerated instantly-what a choice. He sighed.

The door at the back of the cockpit opened. “You couldn’t do a damned thing. Lieutenant. Not at the end. Once you got to the point where the torps had you bracketed with no accumulators and less than enough power for both shields and a translation, you were dead one way or the other. A blind early jump was the best option you had., but you’d still probably end up freezing somewhere in an outer orbit off some system without even enough juice to call for help and not enough heat to survive even if you were heard.” Subcommander Folsom shrugged. “Unstrap. We’ll go to briefing room B.” The slender officer disappeared, leaving the hatch open and Trystin alone in the simulator. Trystin unbelted and slipped out of the worn pilot’s couch. Then he eased his gear bag from the locker beside the empty noncom’s couch. After ducking through the hatch and stepping across the gap from the simulator to the fixed platform, he slowly climbed down the ladder to the gray rock floor of the simulator bay.

By the console stood now-Major Freyer and her instructor, a subcommander Trystin did not recognize who was talking to the simulator tech. “How did it go. Lieutenant?” asked Ulteena Freyer. Trystin wiped his forehead. “I froze to death in deep space … slowly.” “Endgaming. “She nodded. Trystin frowned and paused.

“It’s a old chess term-the game, you know. Look it up. If one player can think a move farther ahead than the other, then he can force the less perceptive player into making apparently logical moves that lead to a trap.” She glanced toward the commander. “Head on up, Major.”

She smiled briefly at Trystin and lifted her gear bag. “Hold tight, Trystin.”

Trystin nodded back at her and then walked slowly out of the bay and into the corridor off which were the seemingly endless small debriefing rooms. Kind as she was, why did Ulteena always act so superior? He snorted. Probably because she was. Back on Mara, she had figured out how to defeat tanks before they arrived. He hadn’t even figured that the revs might have tanks.

He took another deep breath and stepped into briefing room B.

“Sit down. Lieutenant.” Subcommander Folsom smiled. Trystin sat.

“Do you have any idea why you ended up where you would have frozen into a cold cometary lump in some forsaken outer orbit?”

“Was the situation designed to sucker me in?” Trystin wiped his forehead. “Or designed to let me sucker myself in?”

Surprisingly, Folsom leaned back in the plastic chair and nodded. “Now why would we want to do that to you? And why do we use what appear to be antique physical simulators, rather than modem neuronic simulators?”

Trystin had pondered that question himself-certainly more than once, but the rigorous schedule had left him limited time for questions. The entire Service left little time for questions, and only when he was too exhausted to ponder them. “I had wondered that. My first thought was that they’re expensive, and that they probably take a lot of maintenance.”

Folsom half nodded, then pulled at his chin. “That’s partly right. The underlying reason is because we’re still full-body creatures. A lot of feedback to your brain is nonconscious, but you’re still aware of it. The more we can duplicate the entire environment, not just your mental processing of that environment, the more real it seems. Sure, I suppose we could hook each of you up in suits that fed inputs into every nerve in your body, but every damned one of those suits would have to be custom-designed. The physical simulators are much more cost-effective. Also, we don’t have to worry nearly so much about monitoring your system. The physical simulators also have physical limits.” He paused. “Although we have lost a few idiots who screwed things up so bad that the overrides couldn’t compensate quickly enough.” Trystin swallowed.

“That doesn’t happen very often. But back to the original question. Why did I set up this trap for you?”

“So we recognize that kind of situation before it gets out of hand?”

“It’s worse than that.” Folsom squared himself in the seat. “There’s an ancient saying about forgetting that your objective was to drain the swamp when you’re ass-deep in allodiles. Now, what that means is obvious enough… and it’s not. When you’re out there alone in that vette, or when you’re the one in charge of piloting a cruiser or a transport with other people’s lives in your hands, and when everything starts to go wrong-and it does, more than we like to make public-there’s a terrible temptation to let the patterns you’ve learned take over. After all, reflexes, especially implant-boosted reflexes, are far faster than stopping to think, especially when you feel like you only have minutes or seconds to respond. Boosted reflexes make that even worse, because you can respond with trained patterns far more quickly than you can analyze a situation. That’s why you have to anticipate.” Trystin waited.

“Anticipation-that’s the key to being able to think and react, simultaneously. We try to help you at first by deactivating your implants to slow down your training patterns. Later, you’ll have to handle these things at full speed or even at full reflex boost-and it may not be fast enough. Remember, a lot of the time you’re going to be on the wrong side of the time-dilation envelope, and that means you’ll have to react instantly and correctly, while the rev has all the time in the world-comparatively.” Trystin moistened his lips.

The brown-haired subcommander took out a series of sheets and laid them on the small table. “First… your handling of the fusactor dump was quick and effective. Nicely done. I probably would have crosschecked the accumulators earlier, but that’s something you learn with time, and it’s not in the tutorials.” Trystin wiped his still-damp forehead. “Why would the accumulators have blown. Lieutenant?” Trystin frowned.

“I know. They blew because I told them to… but what sort of problem could have caused that to happen?” “Well, ser …” “Don’t stall.”

“Poor maintenance or too many rapid temperature changes. Either that or physical damage-a close-in laser or shrapnel-but that wouldn’t seem likely, since-“

“Since anything close enough to inflict physical damage would probably be enough to take you out. You’re right.” Folsom cleared his throat. “The two biggest causes of equipment failure are the same as they always were, even back when people tried to slash and bash each other with broadswords-operator error and maintenance or construction error. Take it from there.”

“Operator error,” began Trystin, trying to get his brain to operate more quickly. “Would a pattern of dumping too many quick load shifts on the system eventually wear out the accumulators?”

“That’s right. Sure, that’s what they’re designed for, but save that ability for when you really need it. I know, station controllers want you off the lock now. And tactical coordinators want you to react even more quickly, but an extra minute to allow a gentle buildup of thrust and a smooth power transfer won’t change anything, and it might mean those accumulators won’t blow when you really need them.”

Trystin winced, thinking about his abrupt power shifts. “You all do it to begin with. It’s part of the process. What about maintenance?” “Does that mean better preflight of equipment?” “That helps. How would you tell a stressed accumulator from one that wasn’t?” “I don’t know,” Trystin confessed. “There are ways. Some are in the tech library. Some are in the minds of the better techs. I won’t tell you. I’m not being cruel. I’ve told student pilots before, and most never remembered. So I don’t. The ones who want to live go find out.”

Trystin repressed a groan. Another item to dig out of obscure files, manually no less, since his implant linkages didn’t work for anything.

“Back to your flight. Once the accumulators went, why didn’t you just bat-ass above the ecliptic for a dust-free zone and translate?”

“I was still running at eighty-five percent-” “Until you ran into the dust and had to beef up the shields.”

Trystin was beginning to see the pattern. The power he had shifted to the shields was meant to be temporary, but with his out-system velocity and the extended dust belt, the power load had strained the capacity of the fusactor, and its efficiency and output had dropped, and then the rev patroller had shown up.

“So why didn’t you tilt for the ecliptic after you cleared the dust?”

“I shut down all EDI emissions and thought I would be able to coast clear of the first rev.”

“You did that all right, but by then you were in the detection envelope of the second without enough power to outrun a solar-sail ore carrier or a water asteroid on a slow spiral.” Trystin nodded.

“Do you see. Lieutenant? Each decision you made seemed perfectly logical. Except for one. “That toggling of your defense shields was unnecessary, probably the only really overtly stupid thing you did, not that it would have changed the outcome much. Anyway, there are times when you’d just better cut your losses and run for home.”

Folsom stared at Trystin. “Now … I understand young pilots. None of you want to admit that there’s something you can’t handle. There’s a saying that dates back to the first years of atmospheric flight. It’s still true. ‘There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.’

“The other thing that you had to be considering in not choosing a high ecliptic exit was the compounded translation error. Is saving a month-or a year-in elapsed time worth the rest of your life? Some pilots have thought so. I hope you’re not one of them. After all, we do have several million credits already invested in you, one way or another.” . .

Trystin nodded once more, trying not to reveal that the commander had caught him out again.

Folsom picked up the papers from the table and stood. “Not too bad, all in all. Especially if you learn something from it.” Trystin stood. “Yes, ser.”

The slender commander walked out, his steps slow and deliberate.

After packing up his notes, Trystin flicked off the debriefing room lights and walked down the corridor toward the ramps. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to get a shower before his translation-engineering class, and the way he smelled, he needed a shower.

The simulators were on nearly the bottom levels-that was because it was easier to cancel the grav fields generated by the equipment nearer the center of the small moon-or big asteroid-that was Chevel Beta.

He had almost reached J level when he heard someone come out of a corridor below and start to follow him up the ramps. “Trystin?” He stopped and turned.

Jonnie Schicchi trudged up the ramp behind him. “I saw you had Commander Folsom as your setup instructor. Constanzia says he’s a mean old bastard.” “He’s tough,” Trystin conceded. “Everything here is tough.” Schicchi looked down at the ramp. “You figure out the power-translation problems?”

“Most of them, except the second one. As far as I could figure out, you can’t make a translation. ” Trystin wiped his still-damp forehead. “But the worksheet asks for power requirements, maximum distance, and a coordinate envelope. I don’t know.” “So what did you do?”

Trystin shrugged. “Put down the calculations indicating it couldn’t be done. I probably overlooked something, and Commander Eschbech will make me feel like an idiot.” Trystin looked up the ramp. “I’ve got to get moving. I need a shower before class.” “So do I, but I’m too tired to rush.” “See you later.” Trystin hurried up the ramps toward J level and his cubicle. Luckily, all the classes were on D level-as were the few administrative offices.