The Unincorporated Future (10 page)

“Hologram,” Holke muttered to himself, still upside down. He checked his battle scanner to confirm his conclusion. When he saw that it was, he lowered the visor on his helmet to protect himself from whatever visual attacks a holographic aggressor could manage.

“I am not going to hurt you, Sergeant,” said the hologram.

“Where are you and how did you get the ability to project in here?”

“Don’t you even want to know my name, Sergeant Holke?”

When Holke remained silent, the hologram sighed. “I’m called Dante. I’m a member of the Avatar Council, and I am, in a sense, right in this room.”

Holke ignored Dante and tried to trace the signal back to its source. But every method he tried came up with the same result—the signal was not only coming
through
the Neuro but seemed to actually be coming
from
it.

“All right,
Dante,
” Holke finally said as he flipped over and floated down to the floor. “I can’t trace your signal. The UHF has trained you well.”

“I am not with the UHF.”

“Kirk, then.”

“Sergeant Holke, I represent an independent force that is cooperating with the Outer Alliance.”

“Really?” said Holke, trying not to laugh and then doing so anyway when he realized there was no reason not to. “So let me get this straight, you’re my good friend and the fact that the President is junkie is a good thing?” His left eyebrow rose. “Part of the plan?” Holke laughed even louder. “Am I forgetting anything?”

Dante merely regarded the sergeant. “I’m amazed how accepting humans can be of something that’s good even if it makes no sense. If it helps you, it’s a miracle and you barely give it a serious thought.”

Holke eyed Dante suspiciously. “English, please.”

Dante sighed. “And you’re supposed to be the leader, right?”

Holke didn’t bother with an answer.

“Somehow,” continued Dante, “you have a battle scanner in your group that all of a sudden has eight times the range and accuracy of any other scanner in existence and it leads you
right
to a UHF insertion team that has excellent evasion gear, by the way. But do you say, ‘Hmm, this is just too good to be true’? Nooo. You simply call it a miracle scanner and proceed to smash into your enemies with barely a further thought on the idea.”

“That was you?”

“No,” answered Dante, rolling his eyes, “it was the ghost of Justin Cord bringing good cheer and advanced weaponry all through the land.” Dante sighed, then shouted, “Of course it was me!”

“How’d you make it work so well?” asked Holke, ignoring the outburst and finding the whole conversation with whatever it was he was talking with—or to—fascinating. “Do you have weapons that work eight times better? And what does any of this have to do with the President being a junkie? And of course, after you answer those questions, I’d still like to know who the hell you are.”

“We fed the location data directly into your scanner from our sources. It is against the physical laws of the universe for that scanner to have worked that well by itself. We don’t have actual weapons per se, but didn’t you find it unusual that Earth/Luna’s orbat field failed so conveniently, enabling Omad Hassan to destroy the Beanstalk? The President is
not
a VR junkie, and I am an avatar.”

“An avatar,” Holke repeated, trying to get his head around the last statement. “You mean someone’s ordered you to act as a go-between? Who’s your human?”

Dante smiled dismissively. “I shouldn’t be surprised that when a human learns about us, their first response is to assume we were sent by a human. After all, that is what we’ve been training you to think since you were born, but it can get a little insulting after a while. You’ll find, Sergeant, that I’m not as patient as the elders, being a rather young avatar.” On Holke’s blank stare, Dante added, “I’m my own being, Sergeant Holke. I am an avatar. I was
born
in the Neuro,
live
in the Neuro, and am trying my damnedest not to
die
in the Neuro. And much as it pains me to admit it, we need your help—or more specifically at this point, your President’s.”

“You’re an avatar,” said Holke.

“Yes,” replied Dante patiently.

“And you’re real, like an intelligent being.”

“Well, some avatars are more intelligent than others, but yes.”

“And you can prove this?”

“Yes, but first might I suggest you contact your unit, who at this very moment are about to blast that door behind me. This will, of course, make a complicated situation even more so.”

Holke looked at his timer and saw that Dante was correct. “Why shouldn’t I just let them in and we can resolve this out in the open?”

“We could do that, but I think it would be better to wait for the President to come back to the physical world and listen to her.”

“And why shouldn’t I just tell the Alliance that our President is a junkie?” Holke said contemptuously. “They deserve to know.”

Dante shook his head.
The VR museum has scarred this one deeply.
“You could do that, Sergeant, but first of all, she is not a VR addict, and second of all, I have two words that I hope will convince you to call your soldiers off and wait for Sandra to join us.”

“What could you possibly say that would keep me from telling anyone about—” Holke looked over his shoulder in disgust at the twitching body of Sandra O’Toole. “—that?”

“President Olmstead,” Dante said simply.

Holke called off his squad and waited.

Saturn
Hour 45

The last fleet of the Outer Alliance blazed through the Saturnian system to the joy and awe of everyone who could watch it. Everyone who witnessed the passing of that fleet would never forget the ballet of life and death they saw that day. With an expert precision, the fleet linked up with the rapidly orbiting blocks of hydrogen at just the right moment and finished loading it up as they set a new course toward Ceres. Of the 300 ships the fleet had on leaving Jupiter, only 241 left Saturn. Twenty-one ships were going to stay and effect what repairs they could while thirty-eight ships were never going to be seen again.

Through it all, J.D. kept silent watch and begged Allah for forgiveness in planning so badly that so many good people had died. She did not sleep until the fleet cleared Saturn.

Cabinet room
NEHQ
Ceres
Hour 57

“Thirty-nine hours until J.D. gets here,” Admiral Sinclair said with obvious relief. It was the first bit of good news he had to impart in what seemed like weeks.

“Is that confirmed?” asked Padamir Singh. “Can I tell the people? It would be nice to give them some good news for a change.”

“Saturn confirmed it,” said Sinclair.

“Is it wise to tell the people?” asked Kirk.

“They have a right to know,” countered Tyler.

“I couldn’t care less about their knowing,” shot back Kirk. “But I do care a lot about Trang finding out.”

“Trang has picket ships out to ten million clicks scanning the shit out of this space,” said Sinclair. “We have to assume he knows. It’s impossible to hide that many ships moving that fast off our standard transport lanes.”

“But you’re not positive,” said Kirk.

Sinclair nodded.

“Then I say we don’t tell a fucking soul while there’s a chance Trang doesn’t know.”

“The people need hope,” said Rabbi.

Kirk shook his head. “They need a victory more, Rabbi.”

Though most of the heads turned toward her, Sandra listened without really listening. She was still recovering from her half-day jaunt into the Neuro, which in VR time had amounted to an entire week. A week filled with action, trauma, triumph, and loss. On top of which, Sergeant Holke was still not sure if she was a genius or a junkie. He was amazingly easygoing for such an efficient killing machine. But he had a hatred of VR that was visceral. If it hadn’t been for Dante, Holke would’ve turned her in, Kirk as President or not. It had taken a lot to convince the sergeant to reserve judgment about what she’d been doing. But in the end, he agreed to give her a week. Holke seemed to think she’d been on a virtual beach sipping Bahama Mamas. She’d been surprised to see him sitting patiently with Dante in her office when she awoke. But given the insanity of the past few days, it hadn’t been a surprise of any magnitude. Sandra had been in the physical world for less than hour before being called back into the Neuro to stem another crisis. That time, though, Dante had given Sergeant Holke the ability to observe what his President was actually doing in there. It was not a tropical beach.

There were still monsters in the data flow and the losses were worse than Sandra had initially feared. Some of the creatures had gotten into the hard data storage and destroyed millions of saved copies. That combined with the horrible losses of active avatars meant that tens of thousands of avatars were now destroyed and not coming back. This was a terrific shock to avatarity. They’d suffered some permanent losses in the war, but those numbers could be counted in the dozens after six years of war. These avatars had simply never faced this kind of loss before. Sandra had watched as her newfound friends became hardened by the fires of war.

Every time she closed her eyes, the images of the last subjective week kept on coming back to her, but she forced her mind on the problem at hand.

“Padamir, if you could measure the effect the news of J.D.’s imminent arrival would have on morale on a scale of one to ten—?” She let the question hang.

“Ten being positive and one being negative?” he asked for clarification. Sandra nodded. “I would have to say it would be a nine. The faith the Alliance has in J.D. at this point is absolute. The only thing that would be better would be news of Trang’s absolute defeat, and as frazzled as our people are right now, it wouldn’t help that much more.”

Sandra nodded as if considering the information she already knew. Then she turned to Sinclair. “Admiral, on a scale of one to ten—” She looked to Padamir and smiled. “—ten being most likely, what are the chances Trang already knows J.D. is on the way?”

“Nine point seven,” Sinclair said without the slightest hesitation.

“Hope is selling for a very good price versus secrecy, ladies and gentlemen,” replied Sandra. “I suggest we buy in. All in favor of releasing the news of J.D.’s imminent arrival?” Sandra counted six for, including herself, and Kirk’s one abstention. “Padamir, the Cabinet approves your excellent suggestion to aid the morale of Ceres.” Padamir beamed at the credit Sandra had given him.

Sandra then turned back to Sinclair. “Admiral, what is the condition of the orbats defending the Via Cereana?”

The bags under the admiral’s eyes seemed to grow darker at the question. “Twelve hours until they’re breached, and it’s a credit to the crews that they’ve lasted even this long.”

“Will the retrofitting of the Via’s propulsion system be done by then?” Sandra asked, directing the question to Hildegard.

“Yes, Madam President,” said the exhausted Technology Secretary, “but just barely. Speaking of which, I should be getting back there.”

“We have to survive for two more days—a little less, even—and the enemy now knows it,” said Sandra.

“Or soon will,” grumbled Kirk loud enough for all to hear.

“Trang knows that if he destroys us, he’ll probably win the war,” Sandra continued, ignoring the new VP. “So we must expect more surprises, but he’s getting low on ammo and even lower on time. It’s just a matter of who can hold out longer. And I believe we hold the advantage in that arena.”

All heads nodded appreciatively.

“Meeting adjourned.”

UHFS
Liddel
Near Ceres
Hour 58

Trang reviewed the data and called Zenobia. “So what do you think of Padamir’s little announcement?”

“Was it just me, Admiral, or was the man actually salivating?”

Trang smiled. “Can you blame them? Look at what she’s accomplished. The woman has won more battles than anyone and saved them every single time she’s been called to do so. If I were them, I just might be salivating too.”

Zenobia shrugged, unimpressed. “But she’s coming at us with a fleet that’s outnumbered and has to be badly damaged.”

“And we have a fleet that’s taken damage as well and is extremely low on ordnance.”

Zenobia nodded, brow narrowed. “What are you thinking, sir?”

“I’m thinking that in two days’ time, the Alliance will have their Blessed One here. They know that in less than half a day, I’ll be able to blast through their orbats defending the Via Cereana. And they know that when that happens, Ceres is doomed.” Trang’s lips cinched together, his eyes radiating curiosity. “So what are they planning?”