When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition) by William Barton Page A
Authors: William Barton
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node, deep in bowels of rock, occluded from the Sun? You don’t want to carry a friend back to bitter memories do you? Not when there are so many happy memories to...
o0o
Glow-Ice 9 was no more than a faraway twinkle in the sky when it began, a long streak of red here, then another one there. Two. Three. Ten. A hundred. Chatter of voices on the fleet’s secure DataTrack.
Tally-Ho.
Hard blue stars suddenly winking on all around us as the fleet’s battlecraft lit off their moduli in unison, drives so much more technically advanced than the cheap insystem fusion rockets that were all the colonists had to work with.
Where are the SOCO troopers? I remember wondering. They’ll have... real ships, real weapons, real...
Flash .
Orange globe, momentarily blinding, then a dull, small sphere of pale fire fading, fading. Gone.
Flash . Flash . Flash .
More pale, fading orange fire. People and machines turned so suddenly to vapor, souls gone Orb knows where. Reabsorbed by Uncreated Time.
There was a sudden rattle on the hull, Enemy fire? Violet’s quiet voice: No. I flew through a debris field. Harmless bits that used to be... something.
I checked my sensors anxiously, did my job, making sure everything was as it should be.
Hard flare of brilliant yellow light gouting in space not so far away, shockwave rocking our ship just a little bit, then more debris, like a cheap drum inches from my ears. Enemy fire? I looked in the DataTrack. Yes, a hit on one of the troop transports, a big SOCO ship bringing the soldiers of IX down to mix it up with their friends from XXIII .
No damage at all. Missile deflected. Exploded. Little dings and cracks on our hull healing themselves as bits of missile hardware ricocheted and were gone.
Hard voice from nowhere: “ Athena 7, flyer down ! Sector 823-five-Alpha . Your baby .”
The ship tipped hard under my back, inertial force tickling right through the shields as Violet sent us plunging through the battlesky, lights flaring and popping all around us now. My job. My job. Orb. I held on, adjusting this field, poking at that one, working my control systems, making the modulus do what Violet wanted. Sure. Sure. Easy as hell.
I could imagine her complimenting my work later.
Felt a sharp little sexual thrill.
And, outside my window, Glow-Ice 9 grew from faraway glitter to circular world, to a flat, red ice landscape, flying by below.
“ There ! There !” shouted Dûmnahn. “Got ‘im! Go down! Down !”
As the ship heeled over, stooping out of the sky, something went wang on the hull, groundfire, smallarms projectile, suggested the hull computer, then we were down, skimming behind a long, low ridge of pale, crystalline hills, coming up fast on a dull blue glow, hovering above some kind of mess from which long plumes of vapor jetted like so many frantic old ghosts.
Down .
The ship fell, landing legs extended, rattled on the ground, and was still. Silence for a long, empty moment, then the world groaned softly in my ears as Dûmnahn opened the medbay ramp. There was a machine-gun rattle, the sound of his feet as he ran down the ramp and...
Go. Get up. Do your fucking job!
I unharnessed, slid out of my hole into the medevac bay, brilliant red light pouring in through the open door. There was Violet, meshed in her pilot’s nest, doing her own job and... yes, looking up briefly, seeing me as I ran out the hatch. I imagined warmth in her bright yellow eyes and...
Orb .
Ice 9 was a crystalline mirror under a hard pink sky, ringed by hills and mountains of metal and glass. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, this fantastic Glow-Ice world. Dûmnahn was already beside the crashed and burning warship, not waiting for me, arms extended, extended right through a plume that must be burning his sensors terribly, cutting. Cutting.
Somewhere inside, I realized, grabbing the antifire gun from its socket on Athena ’s hull, somewhere inside that tangled mess, there are living men, men like
o0o
Glow-Ice 9 was no more than a faraway twinkle in the sky when it began, a long streak of red here, then another one there. Two. Three. Ten. A hundred. Chatter of voices on the fleet’s secure DataTrack.
Tally-Ho.
Hard blue stars suddenly winking on all around us as the fleet’s battlecraft lit off their moduli in unison, drives so much more technically advanced than the cheap insystem fusion rockets that were all the colonists had to work with.
Where are the SOCO troopers? I remember wondering. They’ll have... real ships, real weapons, real...
Flash .
Orange globe, momentarily blinding, then a dull, small sphere of pale fire fading, fading. Gone.
Flash . Flash . Flash .
More pale, fading orange fire. People and machines turned so suddenly to vapor, souls gone Orb knows where. Reabsorbed by Uncreated Time.
There was a sudden rattle on the hull, Enemy fire? Violet’s quiet voice: No. I flew through a debris field. Harmless bits that used to be... something.
I checked my sensors anxiously, did my job, making sure everything was as it should be.
Hard flare of brilliant yellow light gouting in space not so far away, shockwave rocking our ship just a little bit, then more debris, like a cheap drum inches from my ears. Enemy fire? I looked in the DataTrack. Yes, a hit on one of the troop transports, a big SOCO ship bringing the soldiers of IX down to mix it up with their friends from XXIII .
No damage at all. Missile deflected. Exploded. Little dings and cracks on our hull healing themselves as bits of missile hardware ricocheted and were gone.
Hard voice from nowhere: “ Athena 7, flyer down ! Sector 823-five-Alpha . Your baby .”
The ship tipped hard under my back, inertial force tickling right through the shields as Violet sent us plunging through the battlesky, lights flaring and popping all around us now. My job. My job. Orb. I held on, adjusting this field, poking at that one, working my control systems, making the modulus do what Violet wanted. Sure. Sure. Easy as hell.
I could imagine her complimenting my work later.
Felt a sharp little sexual thrill.
And, outside my window, Glow-Ice 9 grew from faraway glitter to circular world, to a flat, red ice landscape, flying by below.
“ There ! There !” shouted Dûmnahn. “Got ‘im! Go down! Down !”
As the ship heeled over, stooping out of the sky, something went wang on the hull, groundfire, smallarms projectile, suggested the hull computer, then we were down, skimming behind a long, low ridge of pale, crystalline hills, coming up fast on a dull blue glow, hovering above some kind of mess from which long plumes of vapor jetted like so many frantic old ghosts.
Down .
The ship fell, landing legs extended, rattled on the ground, and was still. Silence for a long, empty moment, then the world groaned softly in my ears as Dûmnahn opened the medbay ramp. There was a machine-gun rattle, the sound of his feet as he ran down the ramp and...
Go. Get up. Do your fucking job!
I unharnessed, slid out of my hole into the medevac bay, brilliant red light pouring in through the open door. There was Violet, meshed in her pilot’s nest, doing her own job and... yes, looking up briefly, seeing me as I ran out the hatch. I imagined warmth in her bright yellow eyes and...
Orb .
Ice 9 was a crystalline mirror under a hard pink sky, ringed by hills and mountains of metal and glass. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, this fantastic Glow-Ice world. Dûmnahn was already beside the crashed and burning warship, not waiting for me, arms extended, extended right through a plume that must be burning his sensors terribly, cutting. Cutting.
Somewhere inside, I realized, grabbing the antifire gun from its socket on Athena ’s hull, somewhere inside that tangled mess, there are living men, men like
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