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upgraded implant his ear. There were no trailing wires or hard metal plugs.
inside the shield was transparent. Sometimes he
almost
was there. But it also functioned as a screen, so that true could accompany
the virtual versions pouring directly into his mind. It sounded confusing,
but he got used to it. He supposed Chip and
Morninglory had thought their own virtual worlds were as normal as an
afternoon stroll, too. The intelligent mind, species indeterminate. A
wonderfully adaptive mechanism.
"Ready?" Commander Ekkadli said. "Yes, sir," Jim replied. "Yes,"
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from Tick. Everything fell away.
or the purpose of training, both Red and Blue Ships were virtual mirrors of
the actual Queen of Ruin. Jim and Tick "rode piggyback" on the Queen's
equipment and received continual updates on the Queen's real-time data. Jim
had trained himself to disregard the feed and relegate it to a barely felt
stream of data whispering along the bottom of his attention. He was only
slightly aware of it as his mind slipped into the virtual Red Ship like
fingers sliding into a glove.
All around him he saw the stars as a ship would see them: tiny hard pinpoints
that became a rushing stream of numbers if he focused on any single one of
them. Off in the distance he saw the ominous bulk of
Blue Ship. It seemed to flicker and blur: Tick was ducking in and out of
subspace hundreds of times a second, a classical defensive maneuver.
Jim blinked and saw a different view. This was of trajectories,
probabilities." patterns. It drew not only on the database of ship to-ship
warfare maintained by the Queen, but also on Jim's own experience. And he saw
a pattern. Suddenly he knew what Tick as going to do next, and with no
conscious thought whatsoever e ducked his own ship into subspace and brought
it out a conSiderable distance from his previous position. Where he had been
space was now curdling, a dark bloom where Tick's gravity rorters were
focused.
"Missed me," Jim sent.
Tick didn't reply, though Jim felt an impression of bleak that was at odds
with Tick's usual cheerful disposition. Blue vanished then into a shrinking
bubble that indicated a subspace penetration.
Jim expanded his awareness and waited for a new appear. Patterns and
arrangements and designs. That was was. That was all anything was, right
down to the subc dance. As he contemplated that extraordinary idea waited for
a new pattern, something tickled him from the of his awareness, but before he
could focus on it space boil at the limit of his perceptions.
Tick again no doubt. But when he brought his attention to on the disturbance
he realized he was no longer in the training session but was now fully
monitoring the Queen's feed. It wasn't a game anymore.
Those were real ships out
Lots of them. The Red Death's contract was to run Hunnzan blockade of the
Alban inner systems. For days seen no trace of it. But now Jim saw ship
after ship from subspace. He saw them and saw what their revealed: the
Hunzzan ships saw the Queen, too. And there too many of them. The pattern of
the future was predictable.
And if that pattern remained unchanged, he could chance for the Queen
or his mates or himself. No chance at Jim blinked off his inter force helmet
and looked around.
Commander Ekkadli was gone. That was no surprise. He would be rushing toward
the command deck and his huge console. He, the chief pilot, and the assistant
pilot would be fighting the Queen in her doomed run. The four junior pilots
would also be plugged into the systems, ready to step in if one of their
seniors was incapacitated or killed.
"Those are Hunzza," Tick whispered. "Now what do we do?"
The limber Heestahn didn't look good. His glossy fur was limp and dull, and
his normally cheerful features sagged.
"Not much," Jim said. "We aren't even junior pilots yet."
But something stirred in Tick's dark eyes, some dream of glory. "We can
watch," he said. "We're still plugged in to the ship's systems.
If something happens to the others, then we'd be the only ones left.
We could save everybody. We'd be heroes..."
Jim stared at him. "Are you out of your mind? We'd be dead. We've only been
training for a few days."
But the idea was blowing Tick up like a balloon. The old gleam returned to
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his eyes. His face stiffened. "Maybe you, Terrie. But
I've been training for something like this all my life."
"It's crazy. We'd have to lose six pilots and still have the ship.
And even then we'd still be the two juniors. Is it possible to lose six
pilots and not lose the ship, too?"
"Sure. It's happened before. Depends on how well those lizard boys do their
jobs with the viral data-probes. Data-probes are funny things.
Sometimes they don't get through at all. Sometimes they fry synapses on one
or two. Or a whole bunch at once never know." Tick squirmed in his chair.
"Anyway, what else we got to do? Were you planning on taking a nap?"
Jim felt the weight of the helmet ring around his neck. "I you're right about
that. Look, Tick. Don't do anything me, okay?."
He hadn't revealed his own gifts to his fellow trainee. even deliberately
allowed himself to be defeated several training sessions in order to keep his
talents concealed. hard rational part of him had already evaluated Tick: he
was a far more gifted pilot than the
Heestahn, and he plumbed the full depth of his own ability.
There was a lilting humor in Tick's voice, but not far that lilt hummed a
sneering kind of scorn. "Don't worry, I'll take care of you."
"Okay, partner, see that you do." Jim moved his chin, inter force field
shrouded him once again.
It didn't seem like it should be, but the space where battle was being fought
was a great and pocked by stars that turned into numbers and ships that darted
among them like flickering golden
A chill began to rise in him until it filled his skull. itched as the nerve
endings there became painfully the ship's systems. He felt as if
he could reach out and those flickering ghosts now closing a ring of death
Queen. And then he realized he could do that. He could them with his fingers
and his fingertips would boil with the of gravity distorts, of phased lasers,
of great bombs jittering waves of subspace.
The Queen could destroy if she so desired. She wasn't helpless.
And in that moment of realization he saw something saw a new pattern, one that
didn't yet exist. But it could
the Queen did this and ran that way and attacked in this manner. He saw how
the enemy systems might be confused and led astray, and how the
Queen could take advantage of that. He saw... "Pilot trainees, what the guard
do you think you're doing? Shut the flut up. You'
rejiggering our webs."
It was Commander Ekkadli's voice, harsh and rough with strain. Jim shivered
as he realized what he'd almost done. Unconsciously he'd moved to take
control of the Queen's systems and act on the pattern he saw. But he was only
a trainee, green as grass. Good God. He might have killed them all.
"Sorry..." he murmured, conscious of Tick chuckling some where in the
background.
He cut himself partially out of the net so he wouldn't inadvertently disturb
the real pilots at their work, but kept a full-system feed running into his
skull so he could watch. Watch my own death? he wondered.
Because that was what he knew he was observing. The pat terns had changed
again, shifted by time through space as the pilots aboard the converging
Hunzzan ships wove their own planes and angles of attack, selected and
deployed their own weapons of destruction.
Then he saw something utterly weird. "What the hell?"
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