Tales from the Academy

Chapter 13

"Company, attention to roll call!" Alby stood in the ranks and watched Jer Naddel call the roll. He stifled a yawn. This was way too early in the morning! He was just getting adjusted to being able to sleep late when he'd been rudely dragged back to the Academy.

After their late-night escape from Vorsworth House they had eventually ended up in Vorbar Sultana at the legendary mansion of the Vorkosigan clan. Anny had been more-or-less adopted by the Vorkosigans and when none of them had been able to think of anywhere else to go, Anny had dragged them there. Everyone except Anny had been relieved that all the really important people: Count, Countess, and Imperial Auditor were not at home. But there were still plenty of staff and the Auditor's wife had been a gracious hostess.

Alby had been amazed at how… alive the place had been. People (like them!) coming and going at all hours, servants bustling, children shrieking, kittens scampering and Lady Ekaterin ruling it all with a firm but enlightened hand. When he compared it to the crypt he had grown up in it was like emerging into the sunlight after years underground. And somehow, the Vorkosigan's cook was even better than Maria! The Lord Auditor's two-year old daughter seemed to have formed a special attachment to Anny and she followed her everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. The foursome of cadets made numerous expeditions into the city during their stay and little Helen could not go with them—much to her annoyance.

He had cringed a bit when it was announced that there was going to be a special dinner. The memory of how the last one of those had ended was still fresh in his mind. But the dinner had been as refreshing a change as Vorkosigan house itself. The cadets, themselves, were the guests of honor and two special friends of Anny's, a Commodore Koudelkas and his wife attended with several of their daughters and their husbands.

One of those husbands was a serious-looking ImpSec Commodore who was also a Komarran. Jer seemed to know him by reputation and the commodore seemed to know all of them… somehow. The two Komarrans spent quite a bit of time talking. Commodore Koudelkas' wife, a lovely woman named Drou, was nearly as attached to Anny as little Helen. As the evening progressed it became apparent that Drou considered Anny as her own personal project. Alby couldn't help but notice the expressions of what he could only classify as hurt on the faces of Drou's real daughters, but the woman seemed oblivious to them. Maybe Alby was just more attuned to the symptoms of parental neglect…

Even so, it was a splendid dinner and a splendid evening. The two commodores didn't appear to have any trouble with Anny's aspirations or her choice of friends. Oddly, Alby found himself getting on better with Lady Ekaterin's thirteen year old son, Nicholai than with any of his other new acquaintances. He was a product of Lady Ekaterin's first marriage and it was obvious that he was a bit jealous of all the attention his younger half-siblings got. Alby wondered what his own bothers would have thought of him if they'd ever had the chance to know him.

Alby's mother tracked him down the morning after their departure (not much of a trick since all she had to do was ask Kurt where he'd dropped them off). But when Alby made it quite clear he wouldn't be coming home she'd cut the connection and not called back. It didn't bother him as much as it should have. He was still angry about the confrontation with his father.

I'm just a replacement! An interchangeable spare part. 'Uh, sir, the last two vorsworths have broken down and there are none in the storeroom.' 'What? Well don't just stand there, get the Quartermaster on the line and get another one shipped up here right away!' It had rankled from the time he realized what the true score was, but now it was all breaking out into the open, like a scab torn too soon off an unhealed wound… and it hurt. It didn't matter to his father who he was, just so long as his last name was Vorsworth and that he did what he was told.

Well, suppose I don't? What are they going to do about it? His crack about whipping up another one wasn't a possibility anymore. His parents wouldn't live long enough to see it through. He was all there was. At least if they wanted another Vorsworth in the military. He did have an older sister. Much older. Thirty years his senior. He'd met the woman exactly once at the funeral of some extremely distant cousin. Apparently she had committed the sin of marrying for love instead of marrying who she'd been told to. Gabrielle was never mentioned in Vorsworth House. Maybe I ought to give her a call… But his father had been an only child and none of his grandfather's siblings had survived the occupation, so you had to look very far afield to find any other branches of the Vorswoth family.

"Worth… Worth!" Jer's voice snapped him out of his musings.

"Uh, here!"

"Glad to hear it," said Jer, getting a small laugh from the rest of the company. Jer called off a few more names and then turned and saluted Anny. "C Company, all present or accounted for, sir." Anny returned the salute and then faced her company.

"Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a good rest while you were away because there isn't going to be much rest on the schedule from here on. As I'm sure you are all aware, the coming year is going to be much different from the last one. We'll still have drills and enough physical training to keep you up to form, but the emphasis is going to be on classroom work, simulations, and study, study, study! The day is going to come when you'll miss the obstacle course and 40 kilometer hikes." This produced a groan from everyone. "Thanks to our winning the pentathlon last year we're still the Honor Company and obviously we have the fewest demerits in the battalion. But that is not a license to slack off! There are several other companies not that far behind us and we are not going to allow them to overtake us. We are going to remain the Honor Company for the rest of this year, is that clear?"

"Yes sir!" Alby shouted along with the rest, but privately he wondered if they would be able to do it. And, of course, there would be the next Vorbarra Pentathlon at the end of the year. If they didn't win it again, they would lose their spot as the Honor Company no matter how well they did in everything else. Still, the critical thing was to avoid getting stuck with being the duty company again. They would have to make some really serious screw-ups to fall that low and eventually some company in the incoming freshman class would be stuck with the job anyway, but there was no telling who was still out to get Anny or what they'd stoop to. They were going to have to stay on their toes.

Despite Anny's comments about the changes coming, the rest of the morning was spent exactly like every morning the previous year: physical training and drill. Just to make sure they hadn't forgotten everything during their two week leave, Alby supposed. It all seemed entirely familiar, although they found themselves chuckling over the sight of the new class of cadets. It was nice not being a plebe anymore!

But after lunch the changes became apparent. They marched off to one of the classroom buildings that Alby had never had cause to enter before and spent the rest of the day being lectured. They had three courses that day, one in Barryaran military history, one in mathematics and—to his initial delight—one in computers. The classroom environment was something new for Alby. Growing up, his parents had hired tutors for him instead of sending him to a regular school. He had come to realize that this had been their way of squeezing twelve years of schooling into just nine, so he could enter the Academy at age fifteen. The most amazing thing about the classroom process was how easy it was to slack off. With a tutor, you were front and center every minute. Here, the instructor was talking most of the time and even when he called upon a student, there was only one chance in sixty-five he would call on you. Alby quickly found himself becoming bored. Even the computer class was a disappointment. It was being taught at an elementary level that Alby had mastered years earlier. He supposed that this was for the benefit of cadets who hadn't had as much exposure to computers. Each student was provided with a computer pad to follow along with the lesson, but Alby quickly discovered how to turn his to more interesting subjects…

"Mr. Worth."

Alby jerked upright in his chair. "Uh, yes sir?" The instructor, a young lieutenant named Dubrovin, was staring at him.

"Would you care to show the class how you'd handle a problem like this?" Alby glanced at the main display screen at the front of the room and instantly saw that it was just a basic information search problem.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I'd do it like this." He switched his own pad back to the lesson plan and then hooked it to the main display—even though they hadn't been instructed how to do that. His fingers flew over the keyboard and a dizzying sequence of screens flashed by and a moment later he had the solution. He leaned back and smiled.

Lieutenant Dubrovin looked at the display with his mouth hanging open. Then he frowned and looked back at Alby. "That is definitely… the correct answer, Mr. Worth. Would you mind doing it again? This time slowly enough that we can see what you are doing. Please explain each step." Alby did so. Since he hadn't been paying attention, he knew he probably wasn't doing it the way Dubrovin wanted and the Lieutenant confirmed that when Alby was done. "Interesting, Cadet. However, I would prefer that you use the methods I have been teaching here, understood?"

"Yes, sir." Alby sighed. Boring! Dubrovin called on him several more times before the class was over, but Alby was paying attention now and gave him the answers he wanted. When the class ended Dubrovin called for him to remain behind.

"Sir?" Alby eyed his departing comrades uneasily.

"Don't worry, I won't make you miss the dress parade," said Dubrovin as if reading his mind. "I just wanted to ask about your skills with a computer. They're quite impressive."

"Oh, it's just something I've always been interested in, sir," replied Alby. "I've been tinkering around with them as long as I can remember."

"Well, I might be able to use you as an assistant instructor. A lot of your comrades will probably need the help."

"I'll do what I can, sir."

"Good. Dismissed." Alby saluted and hurried after the rest of the company.

[Scene Break]

After the evening dress parade and dinner Alby discovered one other major change from the previous year. He was coming out of the shower room, with nothing but a towel around his waist, when he came face-to-face with Anny! "Gaak!" he exclaimed.

"Cadet?" said Anny, trying hard not to smile.

"What… what are you doing here?" gurgled Alby.

Anny sighed. "If you'd bothered to check the bulletin board you'd have seen that Sergeant Byrne's old bunk space is now the company office. I'll still be bunking in my cottage, but I will be spending quite a lot of time in the barracks, doing paperwork, you know. So, you might want to keep your trousers handy." Anny turned and went into what had once been Sergeant's Byrne's room. Alby went the other direction and hastily dressed. A number of cadets were laughing at him. He glared at Jer, who was trying not to laugh, too.

"You set me up for that, you rat," he growled.

"Who, me?" said Jer. "You might recall that I did remind everyone to check the bulletin board for announcements this morning."

"Yeah, but you didn't say why!"

"If I announced it all myself, what's the point of having a bulletin board?"

Alby just growled and flopped down on his bunk, pulled out his 'pad, and tried to do his homework. He noticed that Anny stayed in her office until just before Lights Out and then left to go back to her cottage.

The next afternoon found the company marching to another new building for instruction that even Alby found interesting. "Introduction to Simulators" had not sounded like much when he saw it on the schedule, but he quickly realized that it was probably one of the most important classes he would take at the Academy. Modern combat, either on the ground or in space, was so technical, so expensive, and so deadly that attempting to train new soldiers in a realistic fashion would inevitably end up with an empty treasury and a lot of dead cadets. The way around this was to use simulators: computer-controlled devices that could duplicate a combat environment but without the danger or the expenditure of real ordnance. Of course simulators had been in use long before Man had left Old Earth, indeed, they'd first been invented to help get off Earth, but they were only crude approximations compared to modern simulators. The building they were in, Vorwood Hall, was filled with the things and C Company was assembled in a large room that held at least a hundred.

"All right, gentlemen," said their instructor, a Lieutenant Carstairs, "if each of you would take a seat in one of the capsules, we can get started." He indicated the rows and rows of simulators, each one looked rather like the cockpit of a small shuttle or one-man lightflyer, except there were no windows at all. "Please don't touch any of the buttons," Carstairs continued. "The technicians will be along to help you. Go ahead: they're all identical, just find an empty one and sit down."

The cadets dispersed and Alby found one in the third row back. He gingerly squeezed through the open door and sat down on a padded seat. There were only a few buttons to be touched and he managed to restrain himself from fiddling with them. The seat had a safety harness as if the simulators could actually take flight, but the only other object of interest was a rather sinister-looking helmet that was poised over his head. After a few minutes an enlisted man came along and helped get the harness fastened. "What's this for?" asked Alby. "These things don't move, do they?"

"No, sir, but once the neural connection goes live your body will go limp. We wouldn't want you to slump down on the floor, would we?"

"Heavens, no," said Alby. "How unmilitary!"

"Plus you'd lose the connection if your head wasn't in the helmet. There you are, sir, ready to go." The man moved on to the next capsule. With the harness fastened, Alby was pressed back into the seat and his head nearly immobilized. The helmet was on a slide which would lower it onto his head. It all felt like some Time-of-Isolation torture device…

After a few minutes Alby heard Lieutenant Carstair's voice over a speaker that was built into the helmet. "Okay, I think everyone is ready. I'm going to close the doors to your capsules." A moment later there was a hum of servos and the door slid into place, sealing Alby inside. He wasn't terribly fond of enclosed spaces, but he noticed the emergency release lever on the door. As long as he could always get out, no problem. "Next," said Carstairs, "is to lower the helmet with the neural connectors. These will almost completely cover your head and block your vision. There's no need to be alarmed. There is an emergency disconnect button under a shield by your right hand. Please do not use it unless you feel truly panicked. Okay, here we go." The helmet slid down over Alby's head and he did feel a moment of panic, but he fought it off. I don't like this…

But there was no option except to endure it. Simulator training was essential and anyone who couldn't handle it was going to have serious trouble completing the course at the Academy. Non-Vor cadets would just be expelled and Vor cadets… he'd heard whispered stories about where such cadets ended up. "The final step," said Carstairs, "is to calibrate the neural interface. This is going to take a few minutes, so just sit back and relax. You may feel some momentary dizziness or vertigo or see flashes of light, but that's normal." Alby tried to relax as he'd been told but instead sat there tensely waiting for dizziness, vertigo and flashes of light. He did experience a few, but they weren't bad and he slowly relaxed. He reminded himself that there was nothing physically invading his brain, it wasn't like the neural connections that jump pilots had to have installed. Even so, a scanner, linked to a computer was analyzing his brain waves and preparing to insert information directly into it.

After what seemed a lengthy wait Carstairs addressed them again: "Very good! We are ready to proceed. For this first session we will start with something simple. Brace yourselves."

There was a moment of disorientation and then Alby found himself standing in the middle of a battlefield. A tortured landscape stretched away in all directions. Craters pocked the ground, charred tree trunks, stripped of foliage, stood here and there amid the rubble of shattered and smoldering buildings. The rest of the company was scattered around him. They were all wearing infantry combat gear and they all looked just as gobsmacked as he felt. It was all utterly convincing. He knew that he was really still sitting in that simulator capsule in Vorwood Hall, but every sense told him otherwise. He could smell the smoke, he could hear and feel the crunch of the rubble beneath his boots…

Without warning the dazzling glare of a plasma arc shot past his face and he could feel the heat from it. Explosions erupted all around.

"Take cover!" Anny's voice screamed at him through the speaker in his combat helmet. Without a second thought Alby threw himself into a shell crater and hugged the ground. More explosions shook the air and dirt and debris rained down on him.

"Holy shit!" he gasped.

"C Company, stay down!" Anny's voice again. "I've just received orders that we are to fall back 500 meters to the south until we reach friendly positions. There's a compass on your heads-up-display, look at it! I repeat, we move south! Keep low, crawl if you have to, make full use of any cover. Move out!" Alby looked and saw the tiny display projected on the inside of his helmet visor. Sure enough, there was a compass and south was to his right. He scrambled around and started crawling in that direction. He reached the lip of the crater he was in and steeled himself to keep moving. More plasma bolts were streaking overhead and explosions still tore up the world around him. He waited until there was a lull in the fire and then launched himself forward, crawling like mad until he tumbled into another crater. He fell right on top of someone else and he saw that it was Patric Mederov. The boy wore a lunatic grin on his face.

"Is this cool or what?" he shouted.

"They're shooting at us, you maniac!' he screamed back.

"Yeah!" Patric lurched up out of the crater and disappeared. Alby paused a moment to catch his breath and then followed. But Patric was nowhere to be seen and then a nearby explosion filled the air with smoke and dust and by the time he reached the next shell hole, he was all alone again. But as he made his next dash he pulled up short when he saw Patric lying on the ground with a huge, smoldering hole blasted right through him. Not real… it's not real! But it sure looked real. He could smell the stink of cauterized flesh and he swallowed down the saliva that was suddenly pouring into his mouth. He knelt there frozen for a moment until an explosion sent him sprawling. Coughing and spiting dirt he dragged himself into the next shell hole and lay there shaking.

"Worth! Keep moving!" The voice came through his helmet speaker and he thought it was Anny. He twisted around but saw no one. How did she…? Then he noticed that the heads-up-display didn't just show which way was south, it also showed a swarm of dots that represented the company. Anny's command helmet probably allowed her to identify all her troopers. But how the hell can she keep track of everyone in this insanity? But he did as she'd ordered and kept moving. Yard by yard he made his way toward the objective. He passed more bodies. At one point he saw someone lurch to their feet and dash forward—only to be blasted to pieces before he'd gone ten steps. Stay down, stay down…

After what felt like hours he tumbled into a trench and saw the remains of the company huddled there. Maybe twenty-five others. Over half of us killed?

"All right, we are all here," said Anny, who he saw about twenty yards away. "Good job."

Another voice came from the speaker. "Mission completed. Simulation terminating." The trench and the battlefield and all the survivors faded away and Alby found himself sitting in the simulator capsule. He halfway expected to be covered with dirt and dripping sweat, but he wasn't even breathing hard. The door swung open and he unfastened the safety harness and got out.

Everyone began to talk excitedly about their experience. Alby went over to Patric. "Sorry you got killed, big guy," he said.

"Me?" exclaimed Patric. "I made it fine! But I saw you sliced in half by a plasma arc!"

"Not me, must have been someone else."

"No it was you," insisted Patric.

But as they compared stories it became obvious that every single person in the company was convinced that they had made it to safety while seeing comrades messily killed all around them.

"Attention," commanded Lieutenant Carstairs after awhile. He had a grin on his face. "I hope you found that entertaining. You all responded well to the simulators. Next time we'll find something a bit more interesting for you. Dismissed."

They were still talking about their experiences at dinner and in the barracks afterwards. You'd think we'd been in a real battle, thought Alby. But he had to admit that it had been darn impressive. He'd heard about things like this, but he'd never experienced it firsthand. In the empire the technology was strictly controlled. Not because of any concerns about military secrecy—the techniques were used all through the Wormhole Nexus—but because of concerns about what it could do to Barrayaran society if it became commonly available. Because it could be used for a lot of things besides military training. With the right software a user could experience anything that someone could think of. A person could be a warrior, a lover, an explorer or just about anything they wanted and it would all be perfect. A perfect world filled with perfect people and perfect adventures. With something like that available, who would want to bother with the dreary, dirty, boring real world? It could be more addictive than any drug. Several planets—including Old Earth—had come to the brink of collapse because their people had started spending all of their time in fantasy worlds instead of the real one doing the dull, but necessary things like growing food and generating power. These days it was closely regulated on most worlds, although there were a few…

Over the next few days they used the simulators several times and Alby could see how easy it would be to become addicted. Everyone in the company was eager to 'play' some more. It was fun, but their other classes were more demanding and not nearly as much fun. Most nights Alby sat on his bunk studying until Lights Out. Then, one evening…

"Hey Alby." He looked up and saw Jer standing at the foot of his bunk. "Anny wants to see you." He jerked his thumb toward the company office.

"Now what's up?" he started to grumble, but then he caught the serious expression on Jer's face. "What?"

"Just go see her."

Puzzled, he did so. No one else was in the small room so he didn't bother to salute. "You wanted to see me, Anny?" Her face was as serious as Jer's and a queasy feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach. What's going on?

"Yes," she replied and handed him a flimsy. "Alby, you've been transferred—to G Company."