Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

I stuck the tip of my index finger into the small hole still open in my leg, rubbed the blood on my fingertip into the pool of blood on the floor under me, and gave the nano-machines instructions.

I looked at Jalon and said, “You’re wrong, you know.”

“About what?” he said.

The blood was turning black and rising into a small cloud hovering just above the floor. “I’m not soft,” I said. “I’m just torn. Part of me needs the action, but part of me despises the cost.” The cloud was under his chair, almost to the wall, picking up speed.

“Then we’re doing you a favor,” he said, “because we’re deciding for you. You’re out of it now.”

The cloud floated up the wall until it was higher than Jalon, then spread out over him and gently fell, a nano-dew coating his hair, ears, clothes.

“No,” I said, “I’m not.”

Jalon reached to scratch his ear, then dropped the gun and grabbed his head with both hands.

Blood oozed for a moment from his ears and eyes, then turned to more cloud. His body fell forward, his face hitting the desk as his head began to vanish into an ever-darkening cloud. I turned away, grabbed the pack, and headed out of the room.

Outside, I called Lobo on the wrist unit and sat down to wait for him, trying to lose myself in the stars that now promised no new magic, only more of the same.

“I’ve fire-walled the new unit,” Lobo said, “run every simulation I possess, and it comes up clean. I’m ready to take it live.”

We were in low orbit above Osterlad’s mansion, with an hour still to go before the people in the house should wake. “Do it,” I said.

A few seconds later, weapons displays flashed to life across the gunnery console where I sat.

“Everything’s operational,” he said. “I am completely functional again. Thank you.”

“We need to take out the shuttles to buy ourselves a bit more time, so lets use them for a pulse check. Show me the video.”

“What about the house?”

“Leave it alone,” I said. “There were no witnesses.”

Another display window opened in front of me. On it two shuttles sat side by side on a pad. A few seconds later they burst in an explosion I could watch but not hear.

“Pulse weapons check,” Lobo said. “I’m good to go.” The gunnery displays winked out. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I stood and headed for my bunk. “I’m going to rest. Take us to the jump

station, jump at least five times, and file different destination papers each time.”

“Where do you want to go?” Lobo asked.

“Your choice,” I said, “as long as you take us somewhere where we’ve never seen the stars.”

The two journeys began almost at the same moment, but almost half a world apart.

As the People Mover started its silent electric glide into the cliff side, Major Judith Anne

MacIntyre glanced up at the reenforcing arch over the Alpha Entrance. As she had done for the previous two hundred mornings of her two hundred duty watches, she read the bold bronze lettering sealed to the concrete.

The secondary notices glowed inside the first set of retracted blast doors.

A military police warbot sat parked on either side of the People Mover track, turrets extended and ready to enforce the edict.

It was still short of the ten hundred hour’s shift change and Major MacIntyre was alone in the car. As she progressed deeper into the half mile of tunnel, she was able to remove her gloves and flip the hood of her dark blue uniform greatcoat off her neat brunette chignon.

It was a Colorado January morning topside, with two feet of snow on the ground. But a warm, dry, almost summery breeze always blew from the heart of Cheyenne Mountain. Lightly tinted with a thunderstorm’s ozone, it’s the waste heat exhalation of a billion active computer circuits.

The night was naturally warm as Muhammad Sadakan lifted the Dassault Voyageur suborbital off the isolated private airstrip south of Ipoh, Malaysia. Sadakan was both a senior pilot for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s national airline and a reserve captain in the Republics air force. In fact, he was so many things he no longer cared particularly what he was. He would fly for anyone, just as long as they had deep pockets and a generous hand.

Theoretically, Sadakan was on a vacation from his airline at the moment, and there was some truth to this, for flying this potent little bird was a pleasure. A descendant of Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One, the Voyageur was France’s latest entry into the suborbital transport market. The stumpy, delta-winged aerospacecraft was designed for use by the space tourism industry and as the first stage of a microsatellite launch stack.

Tonight it was being used for neither but that was not Sadakan’s concern. He merely had to fly the flight profile he had been given as precisely as humanly and cybernetically possible.

Glancing at the time hack in the corner of his nav screen, he observed he had gone wheels up at the exact moment required on his flight plan. A good omen. He turned the Voyageur to the northeast, pushing the afterburning SENECMA turbofan of the jet drive to full mode four power.

“Good morning, Ralph,” Judith caroled to Major Ralph Pederson as she sauntered up to the duty officer’s work station at the center of the Sweat Pit.

Major Ralph Pederson, the current duty officer of the watch, swiveled the command chair around, surprised. “Morning, Judy, you’re twenty minutes early and did they sell out?”

“Yes, they sold out,” she replied patiently, shedding her coat, “and yes, there will be local television coverage. As for what I’m doing here early, I’m playing good fairy and granting your wish.

You’ve been mullygutsing all week about wanting to get home in time for the kickoff.” She tapped him on the forehead with her light pen. “And so you shall. Go park yourself in front of your boob tube. I’ll take it early today.”

“Judy, I love you and I want you to have my children. Or at least I would if my wife wouldn’t bitch.”

“Forget it, Ralph. You covered for me when I had that flat tire last month.” She squeezed in behind the semi circular watch officer’s console. “Now what’s the dope?”

Around them in the screen-lit dimness of the big hexagon-shaped room, the business of national and global defense went on to the soft click of computer keys and the low murmur of voices. On five of the six inwardly sloping walls were the main displays, six- by three-meter plasma imaging screens each showing some facet of affairs in Earth orbit.

Ranked inward from the big screens were the SO’s stations where two dozen meticulously selected junior officers and senior noncoms went hands-on with the Strategic Space Commands more-than-global array of assets.