Tales from the Academy
Chapter 17
"About time you got back here, Worth!" snapped Cadet-Lieutenant Levey. "Goofing off again while everyone else works. You damn well better not screw us up today!"
Alby stifled a yawn, but said nothing in reply. He'd been awake for thirty-six hours straight and could barely keep his eyes open. He quickly shucked off the set of fatigues he'd been wearing and put on a slightly cleaner set. No time for a shower. Oh well, no one will have to smell me except me once I'm in a pod.
The order to fall-in came just as he was sealing up his boots again. He grabbed his greatcoat and followed the other members of G Company down the stairs and out onto the parade ground. A light snow was falling and Alby pulled up his collar and shivered. The First Sergeant called the roll and then turned the company over to the Cadet-Captain. This was a Vor named Garron. Unlike Levey, he didn't seem such a bad sort and hadn't given Alby all that much trouble—even when he was deliberately screwing up. He wasn't sure if it was because Vorgarron was a nicer guy or if because tormenting Alby was simply beneath him and he left it to his more enthusiastic subordinates. Vorgarron was from a very important family, so Alby suspected the later.
Vorgarron gave a short and not-terribly rousing speech to fire up his company for the impending maneuvers and then marched everyone off to Vorwood Hall. The other companies of the battalion were all converging on the same location and it took a while to get everyone inside and up to their proper rooms.
Alby's sleepiness vanished as he prepared to enter a simulator pod. In just a few moments he would find out if all the hours of effort he'd spent were going to pay off. He thought he'd done everything right, but there were an enormous number of variables and if even one of them were wrong it could send up signal flares to the controlling personnel or maybe even crash the whole system. Oh, but if it worked…!
The pod's door swung shut and Alby strapped himself in as he'd done dozens of times before. All through Vorwood Hall six hundred other cadets were doing the same thing. Somewhere, Anny would be cringing and bracing herself for the pain. But thank God today there wouldn't be any pain for her. Even if everything else went wrong he could take pride in that.
The helmet slid down over his head and the usual moment of dizziness that came with starting the neural link flickered past and then Alby was standing in full combat gear in the hanger bay of some huge warship. Rows of assault shuttles were lined up in front of him. Vorgarron gave the command and the company began to board. He'd been through this before, but he glanced down the bay and saw that the rest of the battalion was there doing the same thing. Good. He wanted them to witness what was coming! Or at least he hoped it would come. The mere fact that the simulation was up and running was a good sign.
"Shake out the lead, Worth!" snapped Vorlevey. "Get aboard!"
"Yessir." He scrambled up the loading ramp and found an unoccupied seat and strapped himself in. Everyone was excited, but they quieted down as they received their mission briefing through the display in their combat helmets. Alby paid little attention since he already knew the mission—far better than anyone else here! It was actually a fairly simple operation, the only thing making it novel for the cadets was its size. The battalion would drop in a large crescent and then converge inward on the objective. One company would act as a spearhead by advancing slightly in advance of the rest of the battalion, the idea being that the enemy reserves would be sent against that spearhead, allowing the other companies to envelop the defenders. Alby perked up his ears when the briefing got to the point where it would assign the spearhead company…
"… G Company will lead the advance," said the computerized voice. A loud cheer echoed through the assault shuttle and Alby's voice was part of it. Not because he wanted the honor of leading the way like the others did, but because it meant that the simulation program that was running was his and not the proper one. It's working!
Of course it wasn't actually his simulation. He'd had neither the time nor the expertise to build a simulation of this size from scratch. He'd just taken the existing, planned, simulation and using the authorization that Lieutenant Dubrovin's codes gave him made a few modifications of his own. Until those modifications became obvious, no one should notice what he'd done. He hoped.
The briefing wrapped up and a moment later Alby felt the shuttle lurch under him and then he was pressed back against the acceleration pads as the vehicle launched. The acceleration lasted about a minute and then they were in Zero-G. The simulator was able to mimic physical sensations precisely so Alby really felt like he was weightless. And when he arrived dirtside his gear and weapons would weigh him down and he would get tired and sore exactly as if it were real.
The shuttle began to vibrate as it entered the atmosphere and despite knowing this was all a fake, Alby felt nervous. He never liked this part of an assault drop. The simulator couldn't create actual emotions in a person, but it could duplicate all the physical sensations that went along with the emotions—and let the person's imagination do the rest.
Alby reined in his imagination and hung on as the shuttle finished its reentry. The ride grew smoother although there were a few sharp banks as the vehicle changed course. Then the thrusters kicked in again.
"Stand by!" shouted Vorgarron.
The shuttled touched down with a sharp jolt and the rear hatch fell open. "Go! Go! Go!" all the officers and NCOs were shouting. Alby slapped the release on his safety harness and spilled out the hatch with all the rest of the company. The platoons and squads quickly sorted themselves out and deployed to either side of the vehicle which only waited a moment before lifting off in a spray of dust.
The surroundings were very like that war-torn landscape he'd seen in the first simulation session months before: shattered trees, burned buildings, blast craters. He quickly found one of the latter and hunkered down. The main action in this simulation wouldn't come until later, but there were still random bits of mayhem thrown in and Alby didn't want to attract any of them. Not because he was afraid of getting hit, he'd made sure that wouldn't happen by tagging himself as an observer, but he didn't want to give it away to his comrades by not taking cover like the rest of them.
"G Company, move out!" commanded the captain and Alby started forward in a low crouch as he'd been trained, the other members of his squad on either side of him. He could hear the rumble of explosions in the distance, but nothing seemed to be happening in their immediate vicinity. They covered about a kilometer and he was sweating in his combat gear and getting tired. They halted for a minute to let the stragglers catch up and then Vorgarron addressed them:
"Okay, guys, that was the easy part. We'll be running into real resistance just up ahead. Stay on your toes and let's kick some butt!" Most of the others cheered but Alby thought: Oh yeah, a major butt-kicking is imminent!
The advance began again. They covered a few hundred meters and then cadets started calling out:
"Contact! I've got multiple contacts! Presumed hostile, range five hundred meters!"
"Yeah, I've got 'em, too!"
"At least a hundred contacts!"
"And they're coming this way! Range closing fast!"
"Hey, aren't hostile blips supposed to show red on this display…?"
Alby grinned when he heard that last comment. The blips on his Heads-Up-Display were reading a bright pink.
"All right, pipe down, all of you!" snapped Vorgannon. "Looks like we've accomplished our mission already. We were supposed to draw in the enemy reserves and here they come! Find some cover and get ready to open fire!"
They scrambled to obey. Alby found a spot with a good view, but Levey, his platoon commander, decided it wasn't defensible enough and ordered him to another spot. Alby stuck his tongue out at him, but Levey couldn't see it because of the helmet visor. Alby shifted to the new position and waited for the show to start. It didn't take long.
"Visual contact! I… I… think," said a sergeant on the left of the line.
"Yeah… what the hell are those…?"
Alby caught sight of a large pink object bounding through the ruined buildings to his front. Then another. And another. Yes! It's working!
"What the…?" came a dozen voices over the communicator.
"Never mind what they are!" shouted the captain. "Open fire!"
That was an order no Barrayaran Vor—not even Alby—could ever ignore. Seventy fingers pressed triggers and a storm of fire roared out from G Company's line. Plasma arcs, hyper-velocity rail guns and various other mayhem-makers blasted the approaching enemy with…
… no effect whatsoever.
The already tortured landscape was tormented some more as gouts of flame and eruptions of dirt appeared all around the pink shapes, but that was all.
"They're still coming!"
"What are those things?"
"Some sort of force bubbles…?"
"Keep firing!"
Everyone except Alby continued to blast away, but the targets got closer and closer. Finally they emerged from the smoke and flames, close enough to see that they were…
"Rabbits!"
"Giant Rabbits!"
Indeed, three-meter tall (if you included the long ears) pink rabbits. They were bouncing along on their hind legs and they cradled enormous daisies in their fore legs as if they were rifles. They had dopey grins on their rodent faces and didn't seem the slightest bit concerned about the firepower that was bouncing off their furry hides. Although the fire was now slackening off as the cadets stared in gobsmacked wonder.
"It's a trick!" shouted Alby to get things rolling again. He started blasting away and most everyone else did so as well. The rabbits were no more affected now than they had been before, but they bounded to a halt right in front of the cadets' line and leveled their daisies.
As Alby watched in glee one of the bunnies pointed its flower right at Cadet-Lieutenant Olaf Levey. A stream of what looked like soap suds shot out with the force of a fire hose. The stream leapt across the fifty meters and engulfed Levey completely. He vanished for a moment and then the soap bubbles quickly popped leaving the hapless cadet standing there wearing a ballerina's outfit. Combat armor, weapons and helmet were all gone, replaced by a girl's tutu, slippers and a small tiara. All pink, of course.
There was an instant of stunned silence as everyone took this in, but then the rest of the bunnies fired and G Company disappeared under a tidal wave of bubbles. When they cleared all the cadets were outfitted just like Levey. The boys looked at themselves and each other in shock and embarrassment.
The bunnies bounced closer.
They paused ten meters away and their grins became anything but dopey, revealing rows of very un-bunny-like fangs. They growled, too.
Okay, this was the critical moment. Alby knew the simulator was feeding them all the physical sensations that would go with terror, but there was no way it could override the free will of the cadets. They could still react with humor, indifference, anger, or outrage if they chose. Alby decided to give them a nudge.
"Run!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and then turned and fled.
Then, just like his first simulator experience where every cadet thought he was coming through okay while everyone else was getting killed on either side of them, here every cadet could see all the other cadets running, leaving them alone to face the ravenous bunny-monsters. Within seconds all the rest of G Company was running for real. Back the way they had come, through the craters, past the ruins, with bouncing pink death close on their slippered heels.
"G Company, why are you falling back?" The voice of their battalion commander reached them despite the lack of combat helmets or communicators. A chorus of shouts was the reply but then Alby added: "We have encountered overwhelming enemy forces, sir. Request immediate assistance."
"Acknowledged. But dammit, what's going on there?" The battalion commander was a regular commissioned officer and not a cadet.
"Hard to explain, sir," gasped Alby.
"Crap someone must have thrown in an unscheduled tactical problem."
"You might say that, sir."
"All right, C Company is coming to your assistance. Try to rally on them."
"Right, sir! Thanks!" Oh yeah!
The boys were about at the end of their strength when a line of armored troopers appeared just ahead. "G Company! Hit the deck!" shouted someone who sounded like Anny. Everyone gladly obeyed and Alby skidded to a halt in the dirt. A storm of fire passed over their heads as C Company opened fire. Alby twisted around to look back at their pursuers. I sure hope I did this right…
He had. Unlike G Company's ineffective fire, C Company's weapons had an immediate, though unusual effect. Instead of blowing the enemy into pink hasenpfeffer, the overgrown leporidae were abruptly transformed into bunnies of the ordinary garden variety which immediately ran like, well, rabbits. In a matter of moments they had all vanished into the blasted landscape leaving the cadets, victors and vanquished, staring at each other.
"What the hell happened to you?" demanded a C Company trooper. Alby thought it sounded like Jer Naddel.
G Company picked itself up off the ground, a few automatically brushing dirt off their tutus. Many were blushing a pink nearly as bright as their outfits. But not all. Some were red with fury. Levey was nearly foaming at the mouth.
Someone laughed. Then a few more. In moments C Company was roaring with laughter and pointing at their hapless comrades. As Alby watched, more troops arrived. The whole battalion was converging at the decisive point. The laughter spread through the ranks as each company took in the spectacle before them.
"You!" snarled Levey suddenly, pointing right at Alby. "You did this!"
Alby looked down at himself. He was still in combat gear. No pink tutu. Crap, when I tagged myself as an observer it must have…
"Oops."
But before anyone could move, the battalion commander addressed them again. "All right, this has gone far enough, I'm terminating the exercise."
A moment of dizziness and Alby was back in the simulator pod in Vorwood Hall—in the same room with all the other G Company cadets…
He tore off the safety harness, pulled the emergency release handle on the pod, scrambled out, and ran like a rabbit.