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  Jason watched in amazement as the large, physically fit Mason pounded at the slender girl. “Who’s it gonna be, you or me? Hit me so’s I can feel it!” Mason grunted out that last, and then he slipped and fell down. At least, it looked like he slipped. Everyone thought, like Phil did, that Mason’d just stumbled somehow. None of them even saw Ell’s staff strike him.

  Ell dropped to her knees beside Mason. Exhausted, but clinging to her staff to stay upright she said, “Sorry, sorry, dammit, I didn’t know what to do!” She looked over her shoulder at Zymonds with big round eyes and said, “Call the medics! Ma’am? Call the medics!”

  Phil was staring at Ell, wondering what she was whimpering about but then a chill rushed over him, leaving all his hair standing on end. He slowly realized that Mason wasn’t bouncing back to his feet from his little “slip.” He stepped over to look at him and saw blood pouring out of Mason’s deformed nose. His upper lip was split so wide his upper left canine was visible and his headgear was twisted out of kilter. Mason’s chest still rose and fell, but the lights were completely out!

  Cadet Lieutenant Johnson called an ambulance with his AI and had Zymonds take the squad for a couple of laps around the field. Donsaii was crying and didn’t look like she could stand up. Johnson let Ell stay behind while they ran though she joined them at the next training station. As they ran Phil watched out of the corner of his eye and saw the MPs asking her and Johnson some questions while the ambulance picked up Mason.

  The next day the “official line” was that Mason “deflected one of Donsaii’s blows” onto his own head. “Freak accident.” Mason was to be chastised for engaging a cadet in such “aggressive combat.”

  It seemed that no one really comprehended what had actually happened but Phil. Phil? Cold chills washed over him for days… anytime Donsaii came into view… freezing cold chills. Mason was quick, and strong, and taught unarmed combat day in and day out, but when he pushed Donsaii to her limit she just took him down. Hit him so hard that, even with that heavily padded stick, it was two weeks before he came back on duty.

  Maybe what had happened to me back in Chapel Hill wasn’t so embarrassing after all? Phil did wonder how such a physical combat monster could be such a whuss at running or anything else that required stamina? Was she just “putting on”?

  They received their milspec AI hardware about then. They’d actually been doing completely without AI for the first few weeks of Basic Training. It seemed pointless to Phil but he agreed there was something to the concept that you should and could learn to function without AI. The milspec hardware was something else though. Back when they’d fitted them for uniforms, moulds had been taken of their heads and ear canals and the new AIs fit their heads like they’d grown there and had two earpieces that completely occluded their ear canals.

  They were marched into an auditorium. A slightly chubby upperclassman stepped to the front of the room and said, “Listen up smacks. You hold in your hands a true high end AI. I’m here to tell you why it is so much better than the pieces of crap you’ve been wearing your whole lives. The thin tube on a good civvy ear bud fills about a third of one ear canal and all it does is deliver sound from your AI to you. You may be wearing two eartubes, but the only reason really, for having two is so you can get stereo if you’re having your AI play music to you. These custom fit milspec earpieces completely occlude both ear canals and produce a 30 decibel drop in sound transmission from the outside. They have a mike at the outside that picks up incoming sound and sends it to the AI. The AI takes that incoming sound and “compresses” it so that loud sounds like explosions and gunshots don’t damage your hearing. Then it plays it back into the depths of your ear canal for you to hear. Even better, say you’re next to an explosion that makes a 160 dB volume, which could really damage your hearing. That 30 dB drop from the earpiece only gets you down to 130 dB, which is still pretty painful. Well the AI pulls out all the stops and plays an inverse, or out of phase, sound wave into your ear canal that actually cancels even more of that volume. So, on the one hand they’re high performance ear protectors. On the other hand, they can, at a simple “enhance hearing” command, increase the volume of quiet sounds. And you can have it enhance certain frequencies to pick up things like breathing, or whispering or footsteps.” Algorithms for picking up different things are built into the AI so you need training in how to use them.

  “Your new AI headbands are custom fit too. A lot of you probably have custom fit headbands but they’re for comfort, these fit so they don’t come off if you get knocked around and they’re tough. You can play rugby in them and, right after a scrum, you look up and your HUD screens will still be right there below your eyebrows.”

  The instructor demonstrated that the cameras were shock resistant by having them put their headbands on, giving them all a feed off his cameras, then he took his headband off and whacked it against his desk! The motion was dizzying, but there wasn’t any of the static and fuzz that had perturbed the record of Ell beating the crap out of Phil back in North Carolina.

  “Of course, your new cameras see into the infrared and ultraviolet and can project those images onto your HUD, which is great at night.” Phil noted that the belt packs containing the CPUs were smaller, heavier, flatter and, the instructor said, more shock resistant than civvy ones too. They came generic and then the Cadets could download their own AI’s personalities and subroutines into them. Then software mods brought their AI’s thought processes up to military standards as well.

  The instructor went on, “You may have noticed that whenever you change to a new earpiece for your civvy AIs that it messes up your sound perception for a while. That’s because your brain learns how the curls and flutes of your external ear shape sounds and uses that data to determine where sounds are coming from. The sound tube from your AI messes up your perception until you get used to it. Well it’s even worse with these milspec earpieces because they alter and process incoming sounds a lot more than the simpler effects that that little civvy tube does when it’s occluding a portion of your ear canal. So you’re gonna spend all your time training on your new milspec gear, running in it, fighting with it on, sleeping in it. You’ll also be having training courses in what the military software can pull up and display for you.”

  Wearing it day and night quickly got them used to the auditory perception changes and after a few days they once again knew exactly where a sound came from.

  Using the infrared vision projected on their HUD at night also took getting used to. For this, instead of projecting information around the periphery of their vision like an AI normally did, the AI actually projected a ghostly version of the world right over the real world that was too dark to see.

  How better to learn to use this stuff than to use it to play sleep deprived night war games? They were awakened at midnight, and taken off into the forest, with laser sensor webs strapped all over their bodies and M-25s with target laser under-barrels in their hands. Ell and Phil’s squadron, “G” or “Guts”, was up against “F” or “Fox” squadron. Phil was pissed because their squad from Guts got tasked with defending the “Guts” flag while most of the rest of the squadron was out flitting through the night trying to take the “Fox” flag. Cadet Captain Andrews chose the big offense, small defense strategy on the “best defense is a good offense” theory. Now personally Phil favored the offensive himself, he just wanted to be out there on the offensive, rather than stuck back with the single squad that sat on its ass around the flag waiting to be attacked. Their squad’s lieutenant was sick so Zymonds was in charge and had positioned them loosely in a two-layered circle around the flag bearer. Phil was in the inner layer and the two in front of him were a little guy named Cbarnek and, to his irritation, Donsaii. So he’s out there as a defender, already pissed. Then he’s teamed with someone he doesn’t like, who despite Phil’s constant rudeness is insufferably nice to him. Finally, they’re not even on the front where you’d expect the attack to come from, nope, they’re
covering the rear quarter. Zymonds’ voice came on the push over their AI’s, “Any sightings?”

  “No” comes back as a routine chorus. But there was a “Yes” mixed in there and so Phil had his AI Chuck flash a map in his HUD to see who it is. Donsaii’s position was flashing red! “Chuck. Boost infrared.” he stared out into the dark over Donsaii’s head.

  Zymonds came back on, “What’re you seein’ Donsaii?” She sounded tense. Phil realized that Zymonds was just a couple of years older than him—probably not as blasé as she acts.

  “I’m not sure,” Phil snorted in disgust to himself, but silently because their mikes are turned up to send even sub vocalizations out over their local net. “Faint movement, I think.” Yeah, sure, what’s she thinking with? passes through Phil’s mind. “Yes, couple of movers, tree to tree, heading 67 and 69, hundred meters out.”

  “Chuck. Map.” Chuck designated the locations Donsaii’d called out on Phil’s map on his HUD and when he had Chuck flip him back to infrared, he also spotted them as tiny fading sparks on his field of view. Donsaii’s steady little green spark was just below their position and to the right in his field of view. But Phil didn’t see anything out there himself.

  Donsaii came back on, “They’re flitting again. Permission to take ‘em out?”

  Zymonds, tersely, “NO! Give me a count.”

  “Five now.”

  “Zabrisk, Cbarnek, you see anything.”

  Phil almost said no, but then he saw a flicker of motion on his HUD. “Yes Ma’am, faint motion.”

  “Okay, backup squad to left rear quadrant. Donsaii, you take ‘em on. The rest of you hold fire until you can pick up targets off shots at Donsaii.” The words “take ‘em” had barely registered on him when Phil’s HUD lit up with a rip of five streaks from Ell’s laser (he counted them later on an AI replay). Phil thought, shit, she’s firing on auto; Zymonds’ll have her ass. Sure enough, the next thing on the net was Zymonds, “Donsaii! Single shots or bursts of three, dumbshit!”

  “Yes Ma’am, I am Ma’am.”

  Phil’s thinking to himself, Goddamn! ‘Cause he’s realizing that she’s just so fast that that she might actually be taking single aimed shots!

  For her part, Ell was in the zone, thinking that in the dark, no one would know what she was doing or how fast she was moving. It was incredible fun to just drop deep in the zone “let it rip” without worrying that someone might get hurt or freak out over her performance.

  Zymonds came back with, “Don’t try to bullshit me, Puke. Single shots! And move before someone targets your site.” Goosebumps are running up Phil’s spine as he realizes that none of the attackers have shot back at her. Course it might be that she shot at shadows. Or it might be that none of them picked out her location despite the bright flashes from her laser. Or… it might be that she hit all five with that burst, ‘cause a hit turns off your laser and, if you move from where you were when you got hit, the referee AI deducts a bunch of points from your team’s score.

  “Already moved Ma’am.” Phil didn’t see her move, so he thought she was lying. He watched carefully for her to move after her response, wanting to prove her to be a liar.

  Ell could now see quite a few more intruders. Deep in the zone, she shot the closest, carefully moved to the next, waited, shot, moved to the next, waited and shot that intruder too. That being a burst of three, she held fire and moved over behind the next tree.

  What Phil saw was another burst of three from a spot two meters left of where the first burst came from. This time he did see a flicker of movement as Donsaii moved to the right.

  “SINGLE SHOTS, GODDAMNIT! TAKE THAT GUN OFF AUTO!” Zymonds was sounding really peeved now.

  Damn it, Ell thought, she’d said I could use a burst of three which was one of the settings on their M-25s. “Yes Ma’am.” She’d have to slow down her firing rate even more, but it was so hard to tell how much time was passing in the zone.

  Phil stared into the dark. Another burst of four shots in two pairs came from a new location to the right! Slower yes, but still faster than any normal person could fire aimed shots. The shots hadn’t come from where he thought Ell was, but it couldn’t have been anyone else, the other cadets from the squad were all too far away.

  Before Zymonds could yell at her again, all hell broke loose. There was laser fire coming from everywhere it seemed. Phil fired a couple of random shots in the direction that he’d seen some muzzle flashes and then Chuck said, “You’re dead.” Sure enough, he looked down at his laser and saw that its ready lights had gone out. Chuck asked, “You want a feed on the battle?”

  “Yeah,” he said, disgusted. He couldn’t go anywhere, so there was nothing to do but watch the battle on the referee AI’s map. The map Chuck fed into his HUD put him at the center and their flag back to his right. Sure enough, there were green “F” for Fox designators everywhere out there. The major Fox thrust was rolling right over his position!

  The hair went up on the back of his neck again. There were also red “Fs” designating “kills” all over the map in front of Donsaii’s position. Chuck was overlaying his real field of view with the HUD map so he saw another flurry of shots from Ell’s approximate position and sure enough, four more green “Fs” switched to red “Fs.”

  Well some Fox member got the Guts’ flag about then and so the battle was ended. They sat there for a few minutes while Cadet Captain Andrews decided where they’d rally. While he waited, Phil got Chuck to overlay Ell’s shots with the red F’s out there. As best he could tell, and that’s pretty good with a milspec AI working positions out of its memory. By his count all but four of her shots took out targets. The four misses were followed up less than a second later with successful kill shots! Yes, she’d missed, but she knew she’d missed and she’d remedied her errors. No one from F troop shot Ell - because she always saw and “killed” them first. She was still killing F troopers right up to the moment the Guts flag went down. Phil just couldn’t absorb what he’d just seen—it couldn’t be possible, yet he’d been witness to too many of her feats of speed and coordination—they couldn’t all be flukes.

  As their squad gathered for the march over to where the larger “offensive” part of the squadron was, Phil steeled himself to hear her bragging about her feat. Sure as hell, he would have been gloating over a performance like that. Instead, she came around, patting the rest of them on the back, saying things like, “Come on.

  “Buck up.

  ”Next time we’ll get ‘em.

  “They just got lucky.”

  Phil looked around at the rest of the faces and realized that they were all depressed about the loss. Not a one of them had seen what Ell’d done and, believe it or not, she wasn’t pointing it out to them!

  Zymonds came up behind her with a livid appearance. “Donsaii! Yeah, you better try to cheer up this squad. Maybe they’ll forget who started blasting off like a movie star with ‘endlessammo.’ Jaysus! How many shots you got left in that M-25 anyway?”

  “Ma’am,” she looked down at her laser. She looked back up at her, “Five shots Ma’am.”

  “So you only took thirty-five shots huh? Jeez. I thought it’d be worse than that, the way you were blasting away.”

  “No Ma’am.” Phil waited for her to point out that she’d ‘killed’ thirty-one Fox troops with those thirty-five shots but, no, she just stood there at attention. Phil thought she would at least point out that none of the Foxes got past her position. But she didn’t. Even though a grudging admiration for Donsaii had been blossoming inside Phil, he wasn’t going to point it out for her.

  Phil realized that, although Zymonds was acting pissed, she wasn’t really. None of the upperclassmen rode Donsaii as hard as they rode the rest of the Doolies. Phil just didn’t understand it. He himself didn’t actually hate her anymore but just couldn’t see what everyone else was mooning over.

  “Form up!” The squad ran to their places and Phil consoled himself that he didn’t actually have t
ime to point out her incredible feat for her, though truth to tell he’d had plenty of time before Zymonds formed them up for the march. As they marched, he thought about how someone was bound to figure it out. After all, a review of the battle would show all those Fox “dead” in front of her position. It looked to him like the main Fox push was right over Donsaii and the ones who actually got through to take their flag were a few stragglers to the right side of that thrust. Phil then thought there must be some kind of “targeting efficiency” rating that the computers calculated for the staff and that would surely thrust her feat into the limelight. Later he realized that the system probably had just not been set up to recognize whose laser was responsible for each kill so they wouldn’t do such an analysis. Not expecting any marksmanship feats they wouldn’t have the AIs set to take note of what had just happened. In any case, Phil kept quiet and no one else seemed at all aware of what had occurred.

  For sure, the cadets in Guts squadron were mostly just bummed out by the whole thing, losing and all.

  Phil did have Chuck check to see how Donsaii had done in their live firing practice with a real M-25. That was the weapon that the lasers were supposed to match in weight and feel. Actual M-25s had actually been lightened and the laser hung coaxially under the barrel to create the practice weapons. The lasers even fired blanks to give a kick like a real M-25. Donsaii’s numbers on the firing range were very good, but she wasn’t the best in their little squad.

  It just didn’t make sense to Phil.

  Donsaii might be kicking ass in combat situations but her performance on endurance tasks continued to be laughable. They went for a long run one morning each week and she was guaranteed to be full of fire at the beginning, dying in the middle and dropping out, puking or practically being carried before it was done. Up in the dark before dawn, they fell out onto the training field. Anderson stepped up to the front of the formation and bellowed, “You Pukes ready to run?”