I’ve decided to post the first three parts of chapter 1 of Dropship down, just to give people an idea of what that’s going to be like.
Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.
Chapter I: The Conscript
o/b droopy 385, altitude 27000m, climbing
Montgomery, Celestia II
2097.208.0913 local time
As her altitude indicator dialled through twenty seven thousand meters, the drop ship was thrown violently sideways by the exploding missile. Immediately the aircraft went into a steep, near vertical dive as alarms screamed into her ears. A Christmas tree’s worth of coloured, flashing, indicators demanded her attention as she looked over her right shoulder, trying to see the damage to the wing. The explosion hadn’t damaged enough optical sensors to hamper her view, though she noticed the image inside her flight helmet’s visor was lagging as the system struggled to compensate for partial data. She knew it tried to calculate missing parts of the image based on the surrounding sensors.
When it had caught up, microseconds later, it gave her a clear view of the engine nacelle, or at least what was left of it. The right gun turret was gone. All she could see was jagged holes with smoke pouring from them. It looked as if large chunks of shrapnel had passed straight through the forward emdrive. She spoke into the intercom, giving the battle damage report that procedure dictated the copilot should. She spoke louder than she had intended.
“Detonation. Very close, starboard side. Damage… hydrogen fire… hull decompression and… impact damage. We have obvious external damage and we’re losing fluids. I think the front emdrive is completely gone.”
No one acknowledged her report. There was an augmented reality overlay displayed in her visor, which showed countless components on the starboard side of the drop ship outlined in yellow, red and several shades of dark orange. A crowd of diagnostic icons insisted many things were badly wrong. Most importantly, the starboard cryogenic system was failing fast and they were trailing large clouds of vapour, making them visible for at least thirty kilometres in every direction. Just about every system that was meant to hold pressure was losing it rapidly and temperatures were already close to the point where super conduction would deteriorate into normal, resistant conduction.
As electrical resistance increased, the superconductors would get hotter, which would rapidly cause the emdrive to melt if emergency systems didn’t shut it down quickly enough. Other icons indicated a host of other problems. The system annoyingly also insisted on informing her that things like the telemetry system was only partially working too. It was information that was irrelevant to their predicament that the pilot assistance AI really shouldn’t be bothering her with. Without the cooling system, their main motive force was gravity and the only thing telemetry could do if it was working, was let the accident investigators know that it had happened. Assuming they ever found the crash site, a few thousand kilometres from the nearest friendly position.
“Cooling is about to go,” she said into her mic.
Again, there was no response. Geoff ‘Wil’ Wilbur, her pilot and vehicle commander should have responded. He would have, if he could, she was certain. She suddenly realised that one of the indicators that normally only came on during testing, meant that the flight control system was no longer receiving control inputs. She switched the controls to her station, though she didn’t change the flight path. Thankfully, the warning indicator disappeared. Her control column was still working, then. Her visor was still displaying warnings for high speed descent. Contrary to old, aerodynamic, flying machines that were in danger of ripping their wings off when they went too fast, the drop ship she was flying was so massively solid that that wasn’t supposed to be possible. It briefly occurred to her that it might not be true with certain kinds of battle damage, but she had no indications that the drop ship had suffered that kind of structural damage. She decided that getting to thicker atmosphere was worth the risk. She couldn’t be certain all of her passengers would have gotten to an oxygen mask when the pressure hull was breached.
After a few seconds more she decided that there was nothing more she could do to the control system that was going to change the outcome. The liquid hydrogen cooling system for the emdrives had ruptured somewhere near the starboard engines. Emergency valves had cut in before the fire had gotten out of hand but that meant that the two starboard emdrives that needed cryogenic cooling to deliver any significant thrust, weren’t getting it. The front drive was destroyed but other than the cooling problem, she thought the rear one probably still worked. The system claimed it did, anyway. With no power on the starboard drives, the only direction the Droopy was going, was down.
At best this was going to be a slow crash, rather than a Hindenburg style fire ball. There was no chance they were flying home. Both of the drop ship’s starboard emdrives were effectively useless. She could disable the safeties, allowing the remaining starboard emdrive to draw power. Without cryogenic cooling that would almost instantly turn it into a pool of molten metal. It was still something that was worth doing in the moments before they hit the ground. It should bleed off a little velocity, at least. It was a testament to the EV-722’s legendary ruggedness that the drop ship hadn’t already fallen out of the sky yet. The instructors back in flight school had repeatedly claimed that a Droopy could fly aerodynamically but she had never really believed them. Officially, it was a ‘lifting body’ but it seemed that was a term that designers were allowed to use even if in reality what they manufactured was more like a brick with small wings, which was fairly close to what a Droopy was.
Altitude was dropping fast and airspeed was stable. They were at terminal velocity. That speed was giving them aerodynamic lift, though she couldn’t use it until they had descended into breathable atmosphere. Still, they were gliding, in the same sense that a stone that has been aerodynamically shaped by nature’s whim glides. She spoke into her mic again, giving a summary of their situation, but knowing that it was futile.
“Wil, the starboard cooling is out on the emdrives. Rear one would work, if it had cooling, I think. The pressure hull is compromised. Lost… guidance electronics too… There’s no way she’s making it back or to orbit. Crash landing at best.”
Geoff Wilbur, her pilot and commanding officer who was seated to her right, still didn’t respond at all. She couldn’t pretend he was busy any longer.
She clicked her helmet visor to transparent, which switched off her \gls{var} feed from the outside of the ship, allowing her to look around the cockpit. She wasn’t prepared for the smoke and scattered debris. She could hardly even see the tiny cockpit windows. The space was barely recognisable. The smoke looked like it might be pink? Was she imagining that? There was a reddish haze and small pieces of debris on her visor. Nothing in her field of view was on fire, thankfully. She could see that fragments and shrapnel either from the missile or the hull had dug themselves through parts of the cockpit and a significant portion of the instrument panel in front of her. As her flight helmet seemed to be working fine, she didn’t actually need it, but it certainly looked ominous. In addition there was what could only be human tissue and blood spread all over the panel in front of her too. It didn’t feel like it could be hers. She had to steel herself before she finally dared to turn her head right to look beside her.
Geoff was obviously dead, his upper body a barely recognisable heap of bloody pulp. She quickly looked away again. She couldn’t help but swallow before looking around the rest of the cockpit. The smoke was clearing slowly through a number of jagged, fist sized, holes through the starboard side of the hull. She had to close her eyes and swallow a few times more before she clicked back to the light and sanctuary her helmet view offered. She took a few more deep breaths and forced herself to concentrate on the more immediate problem of the impending crash.
Giselle Simard’s apartment, La Tribune
Marseille, Earth
2093.250.0954 (four years earlier)
She’d packed the few things she considered valuable in her rucksack. It wasn’t like she had many possessions that were worth anything. One of her favourite possessions was a nice Nokia-Samsung reader that she used a lot. She wanted to take it with her as it held most of her collection of books. She’d bought it from a guy across the street for a third of the retail price and had almost certainly fallen off the back of a truck somewhere. It was a potential hassle she didn’t need; so she decided it was smarter to leave it behind and wistfully threw it on the pile with her other discarded belongings. Underwear, spare socks, her cheap prepaid communicator and some sanitary products and cosmetics made up the rest.
Another gadget she owned was a set of mediocre AR contacts that she had never dared to use. She turned the case over in her hand. It was something else she would have liked to take with her, but wouldn’t. They’d been a gift from a boyfriend. They were of the type that was cheap because they were ‘ad enhanced’; it meant they interfaced with every marketing system nearby and profiled the user extensively. The resulting digital signature was very specific. She’d read a number of articles on the subject. There was no way to know for sure if the police had some way to link her to the ad profile, but if they could, they’d be able to find her very easily. She was far too worried the police could find her if she used them with any regularity, so she opted to leave them behind now too, throwing them on the pile. There were stories around the neighbourhood of people that had been arrested because law enforcement had isolated their ad profile. It was the same reason why she didn’t have any active social media accounts. She knew of too many people who had been tracked down and arrested that way.
The last thing she took was her martial arts gear. It was bulky, but she had had a compression bag that she packed it into, making it as small as possible. Surely the military wouldn’t mind her practising martial arts? She’d read that it was actually compulsory to practice at least one martial art. She went around her aunt’s tiny apartment one last time, but couldn’t really think of very much else that would be useful. It wasn’t as if she owned worthwhile things other than clothes and she would be provided with uniforms by the military. Everything she needed fit into her backpack.
When everything was packed she’d tried yet again to explain to her aunt that she was going to the conscription office. The small woman looked ill, sitting in her chair. She was only in her mid fifties, but it was always a question how lucid she might be, even in the mornings. She stood in the doorway looking at the underweight woman.
“I’m going,” she said.
He aunt looked over to her, shaking her head. “Don’t!”
“I’ll get arrested sooner or later, auntie Giselle.”
“I don’t want you to go!”
“Your ration card can’t feed us both and it keeps getting harder to get enough money together to get by!”
“Just… stay…” Giselle said weakly. “We’ve managed so far… haven’t we?”
“No. We’re not managing. It keeps getting worse. I just want to arrive without handcuffs on. I can’t carry on living like this. I’m going to go in.”
Her aunt tried to get up, already too inebriated to be immediately successful. She stepped towards the woman, to make sure she didn’t fall. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Don’t leave me, I took care of you when no one else would!”
“I have to go. I’ll send money when I can, I promise. I’ll have a salary.”
She gently pried her aunts’ hands off her wrists and took a deep breath. The woman was crying.
“Goodbye, auntie Giselle. It’s for the best,” she said, wondering if that was actually true.
With one more glance back she left the apartment. It was hard but she didn’t stop and hurried down the apartment buildings’ stairwell. She wasn’t sure she could hold on to her resolve faced with her aunt’s tears. Twelve storeys below, the streets of La Tribune were subdued. They always were when the midday heat was building. It was almost autumn, but it still looked to become another blisteringly hot day. When it got dark, there would be more activity. A lot of it wasn’t the kind of thing you really wanted to be involved in. Not much good went on on the streets of La Tribune after dark.
Would the woman even remember where she had gone she wondered? Eventually, maybe. Perhaps she should have left a note as well? Her resolve wavered for a moment, then she grit her teeth and pressed on towards the end of the street. She’d send her aunt a message.
She’d had to consider how to get to the conscription office without getting arrested on the way. It would be bad luck to be taken in at the last moment after two years of successfully living ‘underground’ as people tended to call it. Putting herself at the tender mercy of law enforcement when she’d decided to sign up anyway seemed stupid. You could never really be sure things wouldn’t go downhill once you were in the clutches of the Marseille police or the Gendarmerie. There was even the off chance someone had reported her presence at the incident two nights before. Two people had gotten stabbed and another shot, which the Police certainly would want to know more about. She’d gone with a friend to a shady transaction on the promise that he’d sell her some cheap mdma and coke from the deal that she could then sell on, but things had deteriorated into an argument about… she wasn’t even sure what. The price maybe? She hadn’t done any of the lasting damage, but she was close enough that she’d had to throw away a top that had blood on it that wasn’t hers. It would be extremely unlucky though, if the police figured that out, she thought. On the whole the people in La Tribune showed solidarity in their dislike of the Gendarmes and municipal Police. It was still better to be careful.
It hadn’t been hard to talk Ludo, an ex boyfriend a few years older than her, into dropping her off on his electric moped. How exactly Ludo himself had gotten out of conscription was a subject he was very closed mouthed about. She’d asked him of course, but he’d never given her a straight answer. He certainly didn’t need to dodge the police, he had valid ration and ID cards and everything as well as usually enough cash to blow. She kind of liked Ludo, though he had a knack for trouble that seemed to be escalating. She didn’t know what he was into, but the impression that he was getting in deeper with the gangs that she tried to avoid was getting steadily stronger. Ludo wasn’t interesting enough to have more than an intermittent and very casual relationship with, but he was kind of fun, she had to admit.
The only logical way for him to have avoided military service would be if he had a medical condition that wouldn’t allow him to serve. Most medical conditions, even very serious ones, would be treated by the military assuming you agreed to a longer conscription term. There was a limit to the term extension they could force on you, though, it was ten years, she thought. If your condition was so expensive to cure that the term extension went beyond that limit, it became a choice. You could get medical dispensation, or take the deal. It was one of the many ways in which the Armed Forces sucked people in and tried to hold on to them as long as possible. Ludo, logically, would have to have been given such a choice to be able to live out in the open without having completed his service.
Maybe that was why he didn’t want to talk about it, it wouldn’t go well with his tough guy image if he had a obscure medical exemption. In any event, he was late as he always was. She hadn’t told him where she was going and had agreed to go with and ‘hang’ him after she’d finished shopping. He would be expecting a date, of course, with a predictable ending. She’d never given him a reason to assume differently. She knew it was unlikely that she’d keep the appointment. She felt a little guilty, but it would have been an eighteen kilometre walk through the heat from La Tribune to the conscription office, all the while with the possibility of being questioned by policemen who might want to know why exactly she wasn’t able to use public transportation and what she was doing so far from her last known address at a time of day when no one in their right mind went out. Most of her life went on within the confines of La Tribune where it was possible to avoid the police patrols and checkpoints if you knew your way around. Walking all the way across town would make avoiding them almost impossible. Ludo would be disappointed if she didn’t keep their appointment afterwards, she knew. So be it. He turned up on his electric moped a good fifteen minutes after the agreed time, which she gave him a disapproving look for. He just shrugged.
“What? I had some important business.”
“Uh huh. Just… take me to Bonnevelne.”
“All the way over there? Can’t we go somewhere closer?”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” she lied.
He looked a little irritated as she hopped on, but he went.
Bonnevelne was a mid range shopping area where all the big chain stores were represented. It was the only one in a wide area. Shopping areas tended to be scarce with so little disposable income among the remaining inhabitants of the the planet. There were other shopping areas that catered to the affluent, but even the price of a coffee would be insurmountable there. That kind of retail commerce tended to be in chic, fashionable areas, like the old harbour in Marseille. She doubted the security would even let her in. Also, high class shopping areas didn’t usually have a Armed Forces Recruitment centre.
“Wait here,” she said, hopping off. “I’m just going to take a quick look in there.”
“What? Hold on! Wait a sec!”
She was already off the back of the moped and called back to him, “I’ll just be a minute.”
She disappeared into the massive budget fashion store, H\&M Primark, took a few turns through the aisles and checked if Ludo was anywhere to be seen. It was comfortably busy inside. Most of the people she saw had probably been born outside the European Union. More migrants to fuel the planetary colonisation machine. She checked back behind her one more time. Satisfied that Ludo hadn’t bothered to come in after her, she left out of the opposite side of the store. From there it was a short walk past some fast food chains and a large electronics store to the side street where the conscription office was. She checked behind her several times more, but there was no sign of Ludo. It should take at least ten minutes before he became impatient.
o/b droopy 385, altitude 16000m
Montgomery, Celestia II
2097.208.0914 local time (four years later)}
The engineers who had designed the drop ship’s external view system had arranged it to give the pilot or anyone who could log into the pilot’s VAR view a real time image that was stitched together from the triple redundant sensors placed all over the outside of the hull. The data was processed by the ship’s computers, essentially turning the sensor information into a photo realistic three dimensional model of the surrounding area. That was then used to give you an unobstructed view in any direction you chose, as if you were looking from where you were sitting in the cockpit but without any ship’s bulkheads, windows, struts or anything else in the way. Right now, there was a dark spot in this 360 degree VR, which was probably the exact direction to where the missile had detonated. Normally the processing needed didn’t result in any perceptible delay. You could look through any part of the aircraft. There was normally a light wire frame superimposed over the image. It helped to find buttons on the instrument panel and indicated what the dimensions of the drop ship were, but you could switch it all off if you wanted. It was like sitting in a glass bubble with some flight information superimposed over your view, though even that could be disabled. It was quite spectacular once you got used to the feeling of being strapped to the front of trackless roller coaster. Matching the viewpoint to where the pilot was physically sitting helped with spatial orientation, or so the flight instructors had told her. Aside from trainers specifically designed to have the same functionality as the Droopy cockpit, she had never flown anything that had a different view system to compare it to. The instructors had never mentioned how well the system also worked if you wanted to ignore bloody carnage inside the cockpit.
She spoke into the intercom, keying the cargo bay channel and hoping her loadmaster, a stoic Staff Sergeant named Leibnitz, would be capable of answering.
“Leib, you still with us?”
There was no response. On the unlikely chance his mic was out she pressed on.
“Near miss from a SAM. Wil’s dead, we’re losing altitude and heading in. Prepare for crash landing.”
No reaction came.
There was nothing she could do about it, she didn’t have time to clamber into the cargo hold to figure out what was going on. Doing so probably would do more harm than good. The ship’s autopilot routines should take them down as safely as possible, with or without her, but it was far from infallible. It needed human supervision in case it started doing something crazy, particularly with so many damaged sensors. She knew staying in the cockpit was the sensible choice if there was to be a chance of getting down on the ground alive, no matter how much she wanted to check the cargo bay. She also decided against checking the cargo bay’s video feed. It could only make the decision whether or not to go back harder. She hoped that Leibnitz was alright though she knew he too would have answered her if he could. The rest of the starboard side had been slightly closer to the SAM than Geoff. She focused on putting the image of Geoff’s corpse out of her mind and concentrated on finding a suitable place to land instead.
There was enough airspeed that the drop ship still had lift, but the rate of descent was high and it had to stay that way to hold on to that lift and keep the aircraft controllable. She had some forward thrust available from the hydrogen turbines, they both appeared to be working, though the right hand one was showing less efficiency. It probably had some holes in it. Unlike old turbine powered aircraft, the turbines on a Droopy where there mainly to generate electrical power. As liquid hydrogen was also needed to super cool the emdrives, it made sense to use it as fuel too. In any case, a Droopy couldn’t stay airborne on the turbine thrust alone. Without at least one emdrive on each side working, the machine wasn’t capable of more than an assisted glide. She set the power as high as she dared, decreasing the rate of descent a little, but almost everything related to the hydrogen system on the right hand side of the vessel was either destroyed or cut off from supply by the damage control system. Applying thrust threatened aerodynamic stability, which wasn’t all that hot on a Droopy even when it was working properly. These ships were very much designed around their emdrives. Normally that was fine. You could lose an emdrive on each side and even then it would still fly reasonably well, just not both on one side. The carbon armour enclosing the drives was much better protection than anything an early 20th century flying machine had ever had, but it wasn’t up to withstanding a near miss from an orbital class SAM.
They continued to descend steeply while she focused on finding the least dangerous landing site that they could reach. Her efforts to get the Droopy more level were taking them close to stall speed. The flight computer was protesting about it. She craned her neck further round, cycling through visual options that allowed her to inspect the outside of the aircraft. Besides the holes in the starboard side of the cockpit, there was a line of vicious looking gashes along the rest of the fuselage too. There was also a surprisingly large hole in the starboard wing that made her marvel that it was still attached at all. She dreaded finding out what had happened to her cargo of infantrymen. The SAM, a huge TEL launched missile that she thought was probably of the Chinese FM-65K type, was designed to take out the massive orbital landing barges that were used to move heavy equipment to and from orbit, It had detonated some distance from them. Had it been any closer it would have been the end of all her worldly problems. Seeing the damage around her she found it hard to believe that she herself was unhurt.
She clicked her view back to “in cockpit”, a sub conscious, misplaced hope making her unable to stop herself looking at the mangled heap of flesh to her right again. She took a deep breath. Wilbur was only remotely recognisable as a human being. She’d liked the man but forced herself to stop thinking about it. She’d become good at that. A lot of people she knew, some of whom she would have described as friends, had already died on this planet. A detached part of her mind thought it was strange that there was no trace of the man’s flight helmet. Beyond his remains were a number of holes in the fuselage where large chunks of shrapnel had entered the cockpit before ripping Geoff to shreds. There was a lot of blood and tissue smeared along the right hand side of her pressure suit. The zero friction nanoscale coating on the outside of her visor had cleared the blood and muck that had been obstructing her view a few moments earlier. By now she was almost completely convinced none of the blood was hers. Not that it would be the first story about someone who hadn’t realised they were wounded she’d heard.
Wilbur had done a good job in dodging the first Chinese SAM, but two had been fired at them. With missiles the size of a FM65K, that constituted a significant effort on the part of the Chinese. It was the second one that had done the damage. She swallowed down more bile and turned forward, towards her displays and clicked her helmet back to external view. They’d lost enough altitude that the computer showed her a line with her projected flight path. It displayed where it expected the Droopy to hit the ground if she didn’t make any course adjustments. It also helpfully mentioned that the projected speed of impact had a high likelihood of being fatal for all passengers and crew which it did by displaying a death’s head icon and “92%”. Laura absentmindedly imagined the software design meetings that had led to the decision that a death’s head would be the best way for the flight software to communicate survival chances during an emergency.
The drop ship she was flying was a EADS model EV-722 “Oie” which meant “Goose”. It was nicknamed a “Droopy” by everybody in the EU military. It was the main way of getting troops and material around the theatre of operations. Currently, the ‘theatre of operations’ was the planet Celestia II, the second and only habitable planet in the Celestia system. The Droopy had been designed as the first attempt to apply emdrive tech to the problem of tactical military transport. A Droopy wasn’t the latest in military tech by anyone’s definition. In fact, it had been in service longer than almost any other aircraft in history. Only an ungainly 20th century American bomber called a B-52 Stratofortress could claim an even longer service life. She’d read an intelligence brief that the Americans were in the process of converting them to emdrives though the exact reasoning behind the modification was lost on her. A B-52 bomber was aerodynamic, making the emdrives seem rather superfluous and far too big to practically store on a space ship, after all.
Droopies were battle proven, solid and had been continually upgraded for many decades. She had never found much to complain about the vehicles’ quality though it certainly looked antiquated. It was designed around the systems and cargo volume it had to accomodate. It wasn’t terribly manoeuvrable, but it was rugged and the crews loved them. ‘Droopy gets you home’ was often repeated among the flight crews as well as the troops that were regular passengers, like it was a sort of mantra. Of course, she’d seen more examples than she could remember where that hadn’t been true. She was certain that Droopy 385, which she was trying to get onto the ground in as few pieces as possible, wasn’t ever going to get anyone home again.
All other ‘small scale’ airborne and vacuum weapons systems in EU military service were unmanned, with the exception of orbital landing barges, but those relied purely on emdrives – no aerodynamic design beyond what was needed to keep it upright in free fall. Laura had no idea why its designers had bothered with that feature. As if there was some advantage to dying upright? Chances of of surviving if you were in a free falling landing barge were very low. It wasn’t like anyone was issued a parachute any more.
Other than Droopies and the landing barges, all other small air and space craft were operated by a combination of AI and remote control. They were drones. Electronic counter measures conditions meant that all drones were equipped with semi autonomous AI. Ideally they were operated at distance by a pilot however. The stupidity of AI systems was universally cursed. The problem with remotely operating drones was the quality of electronic counter measures. If a control link was severed there were means by which ground troops within line of sight on the ground could request tasks from drones. It worked reasonably well if the task was close enough to the preprogrammed templates and the troopers had some idea of what they were doing. Reality seldom seemed to be quite that helpful and letting AI handle all drone functions seldom led to the desired results. If you wanted AI based drones to work well, you needed constant human oversight.
On the whole, AI had never really delivered on the promise that the technology had once seemed to offer. So, after a few disastrous failed attempts, most notably at the battle of Marrakesh in 2039, a policy of human pilots for human cargo had been brought back. The EV-722 was improved and put back into service as the primary drop ship. Pilots like Laura were still responsible for operating Droopies, and that was the way had been for the entire 71 years since the drop ship had been introduced into EUAF service. The version that she was about to crash into the ground however, was called a mark 27, the most recent iteration of the tactical utility transport version of the design. However good a piece of equipment the Droopy was, the one she was in was going down and they were a long way from any friendly support.
EUAF R&R Zone, New Vegas
Overton, Celestia II
2096.202 (a year earlier)}
It was her first time on in-theatre leave at the resort zone of New Vegas. The settlement had the ambition to be a city, it certainly advertised itself that way. On the flight in it had looked more like a medium sized town to her. An area almost as big as the town itself was dedicated to a third echelon support base. It made sense to do major maintenance on equipment while the associated crew was on leave. The support base had quickly sprung up next to the EU’s primary R&R destination on Celestia, offering New Vegas a source of income from its permanent staff and logistic needs in addition to all the soldiers on leave, manically spending their wages. She could see three very large buildings, presumably hotels, under construction by the waterfront. The massive building printer frames had nozzles busily moving back and forth, spewing out a concrete and fibre mix to create the structures, also placing multi-coloured data and power cables as they moved. Along the waterfront she could make out quite a few people, which had to be vacationing EUAF personnel.
She was looking forward to her leave. Mostly. The last three months had been exhausting and while the army did plan rest days for its aircrews, it didn’t always mean it actually happened. She knew she was in need of some downtime. With two months travel time by star ship back to Europa or Earth, “in theatre leave”, as the Army called it, made operational sense. Sending people back home would require four months of travel time, passing through contested space twice. Since that wasn’t safe or practical, there was funding as well as staff available to make sure that there was suitable entertainment for the troops not too far from where the fighting was. It had been three months since EU troops had landed on the planet, but New Vegas was already transforming on account of all the EU troops that it catered to. On a slow day at the LZ, she had discovered some old brochures in the depths of of Celestia’s local net, praising New Vegas as a wonderful Space Cruise destination. It seemed the town had once been making some headway to becoming a premium market vacation spot for the wealthy. Now, it was almost exclusively concerned with providing distractions for the EU’s vacationing military. Celestia II was a pretty planet and New Vegas had a National Geographic quality coastline that was being put to effective recreational use.
In the years after the Chinese invasion, New Vegas had fallen on hard times with the both the local and interstellar tourism industries completely disappearing. That wasn’t necessarily a result of the Chinese invasion, Laura knew the PRC’s massive population had a substantial wealthy component. If tourists weren’t visiting Celestia, it was because the PRC didn’t want them there. That meant that economically, the EU’s arrival was a godsend, but the previous incarnation of New Vegas had almost completely disappeared. It had become a party town filled with nightclubs, bars and the businesses that catered to what troops were looking for on leave. Soldiers wanted alcohol, gambling, drugs and sex, interspersed with some more relaxing things like food, cinema, swimming, golf, football, pool and other sports and leisure activities. All soldiers in the EU military were expected to practice a martial art, so there were also quite a few places to practice. New Vegas was catering to those needs and the EU was willing to pay to make sure all of it was available, pretty much with the exception of the drugs. Not that that made much difference, it’s always been impossible to stop drugs. Off world and designer drugs were very expensive however, there was no way for smugglers among EU personnel to bring in enough to satisfy demand. The drugs the Celestians could provide from their local stock however, were plentiful and cheap. Mainly that was cannabis and the pungent smell was all over the place in New Vegas. You could hardly fault the locals for getting what business they could out of the EU presence. Laura had heard some rumours that the Celestians were growing coca too, in the mountains, but according to several infantrymen she’d overheard it certainly wasn’t having an effect on the price of cocaine yet. There was stiff discipline in the EU military if you got caught but in reality the only thing the military sought to do was curb excess. The EU military simply couldn’t afford to get rid of everybody that lit up the occasional joint.
Of what was on offer, Laura had always been into sensations like sex, adrenaline and food far more than things which dulled the senses. She’d done her share of experiments, but been so annoyed with what it did to her performance in the dojo that she’d almost immediately given up on anything that altered her consciousness other than caffeine and sugar.
She’d arrived in New Vegas together with a few hundred other troops from LZ Danjou. She’d ferried in a Droopy with a full platoon of forty raucous, singing infantry troops. Laura had then dropped the Droopy itself off at the maintenance facility for third echlon overhaul. She’d probably be flying a different one back to Danjou. One good thing about being a droopy pilot was that she seldom had to pay for her own drinks. The ground troops tended to be rather appreciative of droopy crews, obviously all the more so if they were young and female. They knew who was who among the pilots and her crew had a good reputation for coming through when the going got rough. She always ran into people from units that had been pulled out of a tough place by the forty second squadron. If she stopped to think about it, she had to admit that both she and the other droopy crews often took extreme risks getting to and from EU positions. It was nice that it was at least appreciated by the troops she was doing it for. She’d also never really been short of attention from men, so she didn’t think she would be needing the services of the various brothels that blatantly advertised their services all over New Vegas.
By the second day she’d spotted a sufficiently attractive specimen while out swimming. He obviously wasn’t wearing his fatigues, but she could tell he was an officer because he was wearing a ‘Army Officer’s Academy’ t-shirt. She knew that the institution was in Dresden at the old German Army officer’s school. She was on leave and he wasn’t in her chain of command, which made him fair game. She came out of the water, expressly didn’t fix her bikini top so that it was showing more of her breasts than strictly necessary or decent and walked up to him.
“Hey soldier, come here often?”
Not much more was required. He turned out to be a Major in the Cavalry and his name was Jurgen Brockdorff. He seemed nice enough and she didn’t waste any time and they were together in her hotel room before dinner. His leave ended several days before hers, which was just as well because he seemed a little smitten. It was fun, but she decided it was better that it came to an end, because she sensed he was a guarded about his home life. She strongly suspected there must be a spouse back home. Not that that was strange. Jurgen had had military ageing therapy, just like she did and was ten years older than her. Him having a wife and possibly a family fit right in the normal profile for career military officers. It didn’t matter to her, but she wasn’t looking for complications so a nice clean break seemed the most sensible course of action.
Laura thankfully found that she was able to relax on leave. She’d found herself a seaside bar where the bartender, a woman named Marianna, made wonderful cocktails both with and without alcohol. Marianna was an American settler, born on Celestia and talking to her was intriguing. She found she got along well with the woman, who was a few years older than her. Even just a few casual conversations with someone who wasn’t a soldier were very welcome. Conversations with Marianna taught her about the way the planet was before the PLA arrived. She also learned also how the Chinese troops had behaved when they came. She’d been concerned that being on Celestia for her leave would constantly remind her that the war was close by. The concern had been unfounded. New Vegas was peaceful and other than the comings and goings from the maintenance base and the military vehicles that were everywhere, it could have been a resort town anywhere.
New Vegas was a better holiday that she’d ever had on Earth… though she vaguely remembered a beach somewhere from when she was very very young. She wasn’t certain if the man in her memories was her father, she didn’t really remember him. He’d certainly been gone before she was quite conscious of the concept of family. The town had a Kyokushinkai karate dojo she visited, though it wasn’t busy and the level wasn’t all that high, still it was interesting and educational to practise karate for a change. There was an hour a week of aikido there, which she was able to visit twice too. She swam a lot, went scuba diving and sailing, all courtesy of the EU army and even tried her hand at both of New Vegas’ golf courses, which she found to be terminally boring. She also found some more pleasant male company for the second week of her leave. Despite the relaxed pleasantness of her temporary life of leisure she really was feeling ready to head back to the droopy squadron by the end of it. She wasn’t completely sure why. After a moment of self reflection she had to admit that she was missing active duty. She craved the action and the idea of actually doing things made her feel alive. It was a bit of an awakening, learning that she actually liked being a drop ship pilot, a job that forced you to do your best work when situations got the most difficult. She didn’t mind leaving New Vegas when the time came and didn’t even feel any apprehension when she flew the droopy she was ferrying back towards Danjou. It would be more than five months before she got another chance to come back to New Vegas.
EUAF Recruitment Centre, Bonnevelne
Marseille, Earth
2093.250.1043 (nearly 3 years earlier)
She walked in to the office, which was decorated like it sold adventure holidays and presented herself to a thirtyish looking woman seated at the reception desk. The soldier looked bored. She wore a speckled camouflage uniform which was familiar from news feeds. People in EU army uniforms were a very rare sight on the streets of La Tribune. She’d read somewhere that the camo pattern was called flecktarn and hadn’t changed much from what the German National Army had worn a century and more before, back when national armies were still a thing. The woman had reddish hair in a short ponytail and her name tag read ‘Berger’. You could never be sure about age these days but she thought the odds of a junior administrative soldier on a recruitment posting having received ageing treatments weren’t high. Some people were talking in a room off to one side and she could just make out some movement through the open door.
“Can I help you?”
The woman had a slight German accent to her French.
“I’d like to register for conscription.”
The soldier looked kind of tough, Laura thought. She had three chevrons on her sleeve, with a shorter horizontal bar just beneath them. That might mean she was a type of Sergeant? She wasn’t certain. There were some other insignia on her uniform which she didn’t know the meaning of.
“Alright. Let’s see. First, thumbprint on this gizmo here, then an iris scan with this… DNA swab… inside of your cheek and a drop of blood.”
She put her thumb on the scanner, then had to look into a kind of camera. Lastly she ran the swab fingerprint, an iris scan and a swab from the inside of her cheek for a DNA check. Last was a small pinprick of blood from her index finger.
“OK,” Berger continued, “just a few seconds to process it all…”
The woman entered some data into the terminal, then looked at her with an expression she found hard to place.
“So… a little late, are we?”
She didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“Says here you were supposed to report… about two years ago?”
“Err… sorry? I guess?”
The woman didn’t really appear to care, just rolling her eyes at her and shaking her head. She knew exactly how long she was overdue for her original conscription date, but she managed to stop herself from making any smart ass comments. She didn’t think doing so was going to improve the woman’s opinion of her. She wasn’t certain whether Berger actively disapproved of her or was simply annoyed by something on her screen.
“You want a new name?”
“What?”
“You can choose a name. It’s the law. Or you can have the computer assign one. Computer suggests… Christina Magdeburg, Sarah von Bruhl or… Laura Clausewitz. You can choose whatever you want, as long as it fits the guidelines, though.”
“Why is it suggesting all German names?” She thought Laura Clausewitz didn’t sound too bad. She’d always liked the name “Laura”.
“Look. All I know is that the given name is randomised from what was popular around when you were born, together with some regional DNA considerations or something. Last name is something to do with a genealogical database or the like and I think regional DNA is also factored in to that. I don’t really know, to be honest. It does tend toward choosing the last names of famous people, or it seems to as far as I can tell.”
“So there was a famous person named Clausewitz? Or Von Bruhl?”
“Probably. No guarantees on how famous though. Could just be an obscure entry for a tennis player or a one hit wonder pop star a century ago on Wikipedia.”
“Who were these people?”
“Don’t know. It doesn’t say.”
She’d already known that changing her name was an option but the automated name generation was a new twist. She’d even given it some thought when she read about it. She wanted a new start… and there were some things from her old life that she could do without. It would probably be best if people like Ludo couldn’t just look her up. A little anonymity might be good, she’d decided.
“Just one sec, let me check that this Clausewitz person wasn’t a total idiot.”
Berger waited not quite patiently while she checked on her communicator… Carl von Clausewitz. He was a General in the nineteenth century and author of a book, it seemed… it must be a famous book, as it was the first hit on the search… It was called “On War”. How fitting, she thought. She also saw that there was a message from Ludo, asking where the hell she was.
“I’ll go with Laura Clausewitz.”
“Uhmmm… alright. Really?”
The woman seemed a little surprised.
“Isn’t that OK?”
“Just doesn’t happen very often. People who want a new name make up all sorts of strange things for themselves. Movie star names are popular. Had one guy who wanted ‘Optimus Prime’ after some 20th century cartoon, believe it or not.”
“A guy wanted to be named after a cartoon character?”
“That’s what he said. Mostly, people just stick with their birth name though. He did, too, in the end. ‘Optimus Prime’ was against the guidelines.”
She didn’t feel like she had better ideas.
“I’m sure. Laura Clausewitz it is.”
It sounded foreign to her own ears. She’d get used to it, she decided.
“OK. Your call.”
The woman pressed the enter key three times in rapid succession.
“All done. Just one more thing, get into that booth, strip naked. It’ll 3D scan your body and face as well as weigh you. Keep your hair in a ponytail.”
“Right. Completely naked?”
“That’s what I said. The army isn’t interested in modesty. The scanner will determine your sizes and I’ll hand you an overall to put on. You can use your own underwear.”
She wasn’t really interested in modesty either. She’d mostly asked to be sure Berger really meant naked.
“Alright.”
She went into the booth and after identifying herself with her thumbprint as well as a few beeps and flashes of light the screen directed her to change posture a few times, displaying an example, then flashed and beeped more and eventually displayed the message “scan complete”. A moment later the Berger cracked the door and handed her an overall and some sneakers.
“Right, put those on.”
When she emerged Berger looked her over for a moment. Her expression was hard to judge. Was it mixed feelings? Resignation? Her face changed into a more serious expression.
“The law says I’m to inform you you’re now a member of the Army of the European Union. You are therefore subject to martial law from this moment forward. So, welcome home.”
‘Subject to martial law’, sounded awfully serious.
“Alright… why did you say ‘welcome home’?”
“Old informal army tradition. New recruits are welcomed home. Not all that crazy really. The army is the only home many soldiers have ever known. I just like saying it.”
It wasn’t something Laura had ever heard of, but she tried to remember it for future reference.
“So, now what?’
“Follow me.”
The woman led her into an office with a large table and gave her a empty military duffel bag.
“Alright, your bag. Unpack everything, item by item. It all goes into the duffel bag. Rules are I have to check everything you have with you and before you ask, the answer is ‘no’. There’s no privacy here. I am legally allowed to check, smell, operate, read and view and whatever else everything you have with you.”
Laura complied without complaint, taking everything out one by one.
“You’re a martial artist? What’s your poison?”
“Aikido.”
“Black belt, eh? Cool. That should serve you well. What’s that?”
One thing she had done in the two years she’d been dodging the draft, was pass her Shodan exam, or first dan. At least the time hadn’t been completely wasted.
“Hakama. Traditional Japanese trouser skirt thing we wear when we practice. It’s a bit of pain in the ass, if I’m honest.”
The woman nodded, seemingly genuinely pleased, but continued paying close attention to each item that went into the duffel bag. Laura could understand the military wanting to know what conscripts took onto a base. A lot of the people she knew would certainly have brought along a substantial stockpile of drugs and possibly weapons.
“Right, looks like you don’t have anything that’s restricted. That’s the first time in weeks.”
“People try to bring illegal stuff?”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff some people try to sneak past me. I have to call the MP’s most days.”
“Some people must freak out. Doesn’t that get dangerous?”
She shrugged. “I can take care of myself. Also, I have this,” she pointed to a chord around her neck. “The MP’s are just across the hall.”
“Panic button?”
“A call the MP’s button. Excited civilians aren’t usually a reason to panic,” Berger said it with the matter of fact bearing of someone who didn’t worry too easily.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“You’re not spending your whole conscription doing recruitment, are you?”
She laughed, “hell no. I’m on light duty. Recuperation.”
“You were wounded?”
“Yep.”
“What happened?”
“Chinese bomb blew my legs off.”
“Seriously? When was this?”
“About eighteen months ago. Medical troops know their shit, eh?”
“But so… do you get out soon?”
“No. I switched. I’m a lifer now.”
“You’re staying in the Army after you lost your legs?”
“They fixed them too.”
Laura shook her head, “what do you normally do?”
“Pioneer. You know what that is?”
Laura shook her head.
“It’s a type of Combat Engineer. Clearing minefields, destroying obstacles that kind of thing. Sometimes we build a bar for the troops or put together a new base or something. Usually it’s fun. Lots of variation. Mostly good people in the engineers. I like it there. Better than where I come from, that’s for sure. Now, that was a lot more than one question, so let’s move on.”
Laura looked at the woman again, seeing her in a different light. She wondered if there was something to what she said or whether she was just nuts. Five minutes later she’d signed one more form and been escorted to a spartan room with sturdy oak furniture. It reminded her of a retirement home lounge.
“You’ll wait here until transport arrives. There’s free coffee and tea from the machine. Oh, there should be some cookies left over there, too, if you’re lucky.”
“Transport?”
“To pre-basic holding. Basic training starts every few weeks. You’ll be kept busy at pre-basic till it does. Any questions?”
“Uhm…. Well… can’t I just come back when the training starts?”
“Look you know a lot of people avoid conscription right? You must have too, seeing as you were supposed to report almost two years ago?”
Laura’s expression must have gotten a bit concerned, because the woman continued with a more reassuring tone.
“Don’t worry, I don’t care and the army doesn’t really actually do anything about it either, but what it does have is pre-basic. It’s insurance against people changing their minds.”
“There’s no way around that?”
“Oh there is. You can get out of it by putting up a bond to guarantee you’ll be there when basic starts, but you don’t have enough in your account. It has less than a euro in it, I looked. It’s also frozen, of course, since you’re a tiny bit late for your conscription date. I’m required to check it. Lastly, your bond would be astronomically high, seeing as how you’ve been missing for two years. Unless you’re a master magician and have a very large amount of cash in your pocket that you just hid from me somehow, you don’t have a choice.”
Laura wasn’t thrilled. Pre-basic sounded a lot like prison.
“So I just go there and wait?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll get you a uniform, three meals a day and keep you occupied with some tests and basic army primers and training. Relax, you’re in the army now.”
Laura was a little flustered. She hadn’t really expected things to go quite so fast. Well, she had, sort of. She’d taken into account that they wouldn’t exactly make an appointment for her to come back… still, it actually happening was more unnerving than she’d expected it would be. There was too much draft dodging going around for the army to let people go once they’d got their claws in, which she knew, obviously. She’d packed all necessities, but the reality of being carted straight off to a military facility was only now dawning on her. She realised she hadn’t really thought through how final today’s decision would turn out to be. Still, it was what she’d wanted, so after she’d adjusted to the initial shock she decided it would be best to simply see where all this took her and try to be as positive about it all as she could manage.
“OK, I guess I’ll just wait around.”
“Good. Trust me it’s not so bad. They’ll give you some course work and possibly some aptitude tests to see what’s the best place to train you. You seem like a good enough kid. For what it’s worth, I really prefer not to have to call out the MP’s on any of you.”
Laura suddenly realised that she’d been a lot closer to that happening than she thought. It was a sobering thought. She was about to settle down to wait when she noticed a chart with rank insignia on the wall. She’d seen it before, online though she hadn’t made any special effort to remember it. She walked over and tried to commit it to memory, realising she wouldn’t manage all in one go. She was able to determine that the woman at the reception was a Staff Sergeant which was apparently one rank higher than a normal Sergeant. One of the other insignia on the woman’s uniform was a Close Combat Badge, she realised. The chart didn’t explain what that actually meant, but combined with the knowledge that she was recovering from an injury, it seemed likely that it must be some sort of indication of combat experience. She settled down to wait. She grabbed her communicator, which had accumulated a whole row of increasingly annoyed messages from Ludo. She sent one back.
“Ran into Gendarmes. Go home.”
It was the simplest way to get him to let up she thought. He might have questions about how she could text while under arrest, but he would just have to live without the answers. Then she switched the communicator off, realising she should get a new one if she really wanted to be free of the La Tribune scene.
Several hours later, after reading everything that was in the waiting room, a white minivan pulled up with two men in the same speckled camouflage. Each had a pistol, body armour and shoulder bands bearing the letters ‘MP’. She was the only passenger at the office. They didn’t restrain her or anything, but in the olive green overall, carrying her duffel bag, she still felt a lot like a prisoner. When she boarded the minivan, she’d looked all around, but she didn’t see Ludo anywhere. Presumably, he’d taken her message to heart.
Two more young men, actual prisoners, also in olive drab overalls, were picked up two blocks away, at the police station. They were handcuffed. One of them was about her age and quite attractive, the other was overweight which she felt tended to make people look older. Despite that she guessed that he too was probably about as old as she was. She wondered how they’d gotten caught.
