Under Siege

By M.A. Harris

The human race reached the stars millenia ago only to fall into a new dark age. The Corporation of Man returned civilzation to a vast volume of the galaxy. Ruling it with a light and just hand from the vast city fortress of Canyons in the hidden star system of HoldPrime. But now Canyons and the Corporation with human or probably human pirate raiders on one side, and the deadly nanobiologial pest worlds of the dead human civilization on the other the Corporation is becoming decadent and self centered, now forces within threaten to pull it apart.
Artur Daltork, a young man in a civilization of near imortals, of mixed common and aristocrat blood in a status crazed society, finds his family enmeshed by a decades long plot to take control of the Corporate Board, or to destroy it if need be.
This is the story of Artur Daltork, his life, loves and battles, always Under Siege

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.A. Harris
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465998880

M.A. Harris

Born in England in the mid years of the socialist experiment I moved to the US with my parents (economic refugees of a sort with three boys in a country where 1+ was more the norm) I have lived in the US ever since. I am a third generation engineer, a mechanical engineer who has worked for the government, myself, a tech start up and a foreign owned defense middle weight. I have experience in manufacturing, detail design, concept design, product development, and research in both government and corporate environments (in other words I've lived in Dilbert’s world). I usually love my job, (when its not driving me nuts) and have had the luck to work on a broad range of programs, developing concepts and proposals for systems from electromagnetic guns to nuclear electric space probes and remote monitoring systems for long term hospitalized children.Reading came late for a child who had some issues with a form of Dyslexia, but when I got the hang of it I went from having a hard time with Dick and Jane to reading Zane Grey, G.Heyer, Heinlein and Clark with the book hidden in my desk during class in less than six months. As soon as I learnt the wonders of reading and the wonders of the inner mind I wanted to write.In high school and college Arthur C. Clark was my muse (I still re read Rendezvous with Rama every few years) along with L.L’amour, J.Pournelle and L.Niven plus dozens of authors writing on the history of weapons and warfare like Ian Hogg and Keegan. Favorite contemporary authors are, Clancy, Weber, Francis, Ringo, Flint, Correia, etc.I started writing in high school, I was one of the few guys to take typing, convinced that it was a skill I would need for both computers and writing (though my early computer projects were on punch cards or tape.) In several advanced English courses in High School I wrote short stories that got me through on pure bravado if not technical skill.Then life and a career got in the way, I continued to see computers as the wave of the future for writing, and was almost always tinkering with something but time passed and all I did was tinker. Then a bit more than a decade ago I decided that I wanted to write professionally and took the advice of J.Pournelle and S.King on writing, both advising that in the end its about work and some luck, but mostly its about writing lots of words getting lots of critiques and doing more edits. But timing has never been my best skill and I got to the point of actually trying to sell my work just as the old publishing model began to implode.After more than five years of frustration (and having several full length novels at the point of at least being ready for a professional scrub) I discovered Smashwords. I bought my wife a Nook and then we began to acquire and read free and low cost eBooks, many of which were published by this strangely named company, Smashwords.And that’s how we come to meet....I hope you like the stuff I write, I actually enjoy writing it though like all jobs it has its down side (edits and critques) and it bad days (I really need to grow up and stop dreaming.) As I get into this I hope to be able to get to know more of you and get your opinions on the job I’m doing.

Book preview

Under Siege

By M.A. Harris

Copyright 2011 M.A. Harris

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Contact

Investment

Sapping

Breaching

Counter Sap

Heavy Combat

Aftermath

Commentary/Glossary

Afterword

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Introduction ^

This is an aberration, a written record in a world of vid plates and holo casts. As such it is only for those who care to learn the skill and mindset required. This form of communication was obsolescent when our civilization first spread beyond distant Earth. But it lifted us from one world to the stars, tying us together into a society that could understand that the future should be better than today.

My family name is Artur Malcolm Trisk Daltork I am from a primary Daltork blood line, a major Corporation of Man Board family, so my rank name is AltDaltork. During most of this narrative I was, by the rules of the Corporation of Man’s Board, a minor, or MinDaltork. My mother was from the Family Trisk, the most powerful merchant family in the Corporation of Man, a family with no holdings, ploys in other words.

My parents were living on one of the so called barbarian worlds when I was conceived and I am natural born, the only recorded instance of a non decanted birth among Board families (however far down the precedence tree) in a thousand years. Unlike those gestated in an artificial womb my implants weren’t grown in embryo, I was five before my implants were grown in. Those memories, however vague are not ones I cherish; blindness, deafness, numbness, for tendays at a time were terrifying, however temporary. Because of the late start my implants adapted to my brain rather than the mutual adaptation of a natal implant. I am not as dependent on my enhancements as others and am much more aware of their functioning. My daemon, the semi aware cyber mirror/fragment of self that is helper, gate keeper and organizer of my retinue of nano adjuncts, is as much companion as tool.

Being natural born and not decanted I am one of a tiny minority, being half-blood Board and Ploy as well means that I am unique. Born off world and with no implants until I was seven my parents fought clan Daltork’s wish to put me in the crèche, the boarding home and school where Stockholder, and particularly Board, children live, often from birth.

I was twelve when my mother and father were pressured to put me in the youth crèche. There I was an exotic outsider in a culture and era where the dark loom of the future drove many into feral packs. It was not a dark place, the crèche was and is bright and clean and at times a wondrous place for children, particularly for children with caring parents and relatives. But it was a dark time and dark forces were in play.

Few who read this will have ever met me or seen a holo record of me. So I will take a few words to describe myself. I’m three cemee below average height with my father’s broad shoulders and long fingered hands and my mother’s slender toughness. My hair is black with a slight wave, my eyebrows fine and black over the deeply sunk golden eyes of the Trisk. My nose has been called defiantly beaky, my jaw stubborn; those features are separated by lips women have seemed to enjoy kissing. I am by turns arrogant and insecure, gentle and ruthless, but I rarely make the same mistake twice. The rest I hope you will learn in what follows.

The story starts in a battle lost at the beginning of a long siege.

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Contact ^

1

The iridescent mist swirled around me as I trotted down the tunnel. I was close behind my quarry and hoped that, and good sensors, would keep me safe from hasty mines. Frustration boiled in my gut, both at the situation and myself, yet I felt a flicker of wry amusement at the symbolism. For all the enhanced synthvision that attempts to banish the dark, we still spend a lot of time in metaphorical darkness, searching for truth, tracking the things that hide in the shadows of even the brightest day.

After years of maneuvers in similar environs I was almost comfortable with the restrictions of space and sensory data in the dark tunnel. And after the last fifty hours of battle I understood the logic of this tunnel network. One of my finger sized scout flyers was fifty meters ahead of me, on the other side of the mist bank laid by the retreating wardog. The scout burst into the intersection of a large gallery, the second and last flyer joined up to make sure my low-slung quarry wasn't waiting around the corner to kill me.

This was a stupid position for a company commander to find himself in, but I was the only scout left after savage attrition that had whittled us down to the point where a lead scout was the senior surviving officer. With limited resources I'd assigned myself as flank scout to ensure the enemy didn’t discover that I'd left my remnant woefully unprotected and far forward of where the enemy was supposed to be expecting us. While I was almost certain our opposition thought they were trying to catch a routed enemy, I had to keep from getting cocky. We’d been surprised too many times in the first day of this pointless bloodbath.

Two days before I'd been a last minute addition to a scratch force and had been lucky to get an assignment as scouting squad leader. We had deployed out from the main defense works under threat of assault, and taken up what appeared to be a secure position in the outworks. The opfor had hit us before we were really settled into our first position, and we had been in at least loose contact ever since.

After the first chaotic series of retreats I'd had strange nagging feelings about the enemy's tactics and our own lack of success in holding them. After that, the steady, savage, attrition had worn down our troops and my own resistance to my suspicions.

When a flank attack out of a lightly screened gallery had swept away the remains of the command group I had found myself the senior officer. I'd also had a full-blown conviction that we had been comprehensively compromised somehow, and that the enemy was tracking our position and dispositions with a high degree of accuracy.

From that point I’d based my tactics on the conviction we were ‘busted’ and from that point on we hadn’t been surprised again. But I had orders to hold, and too few troopers to do so. Instead I’d pulled back and sideways, letting the enemy think we were at the breaking point and just trying to get out of the way. This had allowed us to carry out a series of ambushes for the oppo’s flanking units while giving the impression of being more numerous and lucky than we were.

These tactics had required baiting the enemy on with some sacrifices of troops I could ill afford to lose. Our losses had been light considering, but using my own men and women this way left me feeling sick and guilty, even knowing that if I didn’t more would have died, at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.

I’d made apparently random use of the command net along the way, making it appear that I was using the lower level net from habit, only using the command net as a supplement. And now I had evidence of the breach, the opfor had gone where pointed every time, but I’d had to ‘use up’ some of my troops to hide that fact from the enemy.

Still, we were out of time and space, I’d used their ‘advantage’ to draw them head on into an ambush. The only problem was that I had too few troops to both hammer their main force and screen my flanks. If I was mistaken and we failed, my people would probably all die, and the fortress strong point we were defending would be taken.

This was the last throw of the battle. Do or die. One flank I had to leave open, but it was unlikely the enemy would be in those tunnels, yet. Since I was in scouting armor, not a major asset on the front line, I’d assigned myself to sweep the threatened flank.

Moving down a subsidiary tunnel I'd almost been killed by a pair of wardogs coming the other way. Muscle memory reactions honed by years of training had killed the first wardog as the suit tacaid filled the tunnel with spoof shadows and distort mist. The second auton had been waiting when I moved forward but vanished in a cloud of iridescent mistwhen I tried to hit it with some bouncer grenades. Now I was following its trace, hoping I could get it before it could report to someone. Chasing dangerous things down dark tunnels on your own was never sensible, but I had to stop it and was too far from my command to get any support in time.

This brief introspection brought me to the edge of the gallery. To the right it stretched for a kilom, left it branched into a series of secondary tunnels, across the gallery this tunnel started up again. Right was the most reasonable direction, the walls of the gallery were made up of storage chambers; it had been a rearming point, abandoned and supposedly empty for centuries.

Under tacaid direction the scouts rose to the roof, one flitted right, the other headed left, I could see far enough down the tunnel in front of me to see it was empty for a half kilom, either that or someone had damned good holocamo.

Almost as soon as the scout flying right had started its scan it detected a flicker of short range communication, but it didn’t ‘see’ anything. I dragged my heavily laden frame into a sprint cursing, the wardog was reporting, hopefully only to its runner, but now I had two kills to make.

All this was flashing through my mind when just ahead I saw the low slung, six-legged shape of a wardog lunge into the gallery. It twisted to bring the long gun mounted in its head to bear but I’d been running with my long gun up. The hammer of deplur penetrators streaming out of my weapon blew the wardogs head and upper body apart as the kinetic energy darts ripped into the cermet carapace and mechanical guts.

The first indication that I’d been hit was my face hitting the floor. Pain in my lower leg and my personal monitor told me the dog had got off a few rounds, they had gone low and one had amputated my left foot.

Instinct and rage kept my fading body going, scrambling forward on one arm, one leg and a spouting stump. I pulled my handgun and amped its drivers far beyond safe. Somehow I threw myself into the opening, my handgun ready.

The figure in light scouting armor was kneeling with a long gun pointed my way, but too high, the first incoming passed over. My handgun slammed me back as it hurled darts at near long gun velocity. Then the world went black.

-o-

Death was not like this, I’d been dead before so I knew. Death was peaceful and cool, not red rage burning in darkness.

I rested for a time in the dark, eyes closed, chest heaving, heart pounding, frustration clamping my forehead, the phantom pain in my leg gone. I’d failed, I’d let my company down, let myself get killed out. At least if I’d really died, I’d not have to float here and stew about it. Real death had some meaning and the Automed made sure you went to sleep before having to deal with whatever failure had killed you.

Tunnel battles were always an open invitation to finding new and embarrassing ways of getting killed. This one was more galling than most since I’d seen the scan and recognized it as a major opportunity to get humiliated. I’d dodged the Sim Master's efforts to get me in during the initial enlistment period. Then, five hours before the sim had started, I’d used up an old favor with a friend to substitute in as a squad leader, if I’d gone in originally I’d have been a platoon lead or even a wing lead.

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut, trying to blot out the face of Rafel MinArrens; his sneering image filled my mind’s eye. If only I could avoid him my life would be a lot simpler and less painful all the way around. But, we were both in the advanced Tactics and Combat thread, so I couldn’t avoid him completely. And it seemed like every damned time we spoke I ended up in a rage and this wasn’t the first time he’d used that and his sneering gaze to bait me into a self destructive act.

This mess would have tanked my combat ranking and I suspected my tactics ranking would be nulled.

Taking a deep breath I forced myself to accept that this was another round to Rafel, I was learning....really I was. Adrenaline and shock stimulant were being washed out of my blood with the assistance of my implants and with the chemicals went much of the tension. Now my body was beginning to remind me I’d not been in a fresher for something like thirty hours. My skintight was good, but not that good.

I opened my eyes into darkness, the simsuit took the cue and the facemask slid back so I could see the small room with its web of resistance tubes running from the swing rings to the suit. The suit had swung round to neutral position, waiting for me to activate the exit command. Rather than use my link I brought my arm around and slapped the big orange mushroom on the chest of the sim suit. The chest piece swung out and away, I pulled my arms out of the sheaths and reaching up for the dismount bar, chinned up and swung onto the step.

Ducking under the equatorial ring I stepped into the dressing area. My holomask and cloak were hung up and daemon assured me that my retinue of sensor nits, gnats and noops had detected nothing while I’d been in sim. Here in the Crèche School I’d hardly have expected a breach.

Feeling naked and exposed as I always did in public places like this I quickly slipped into my sheath. I disliked having to depend on someone else for personal privacy. The necessity of coming down to the sim center and other crèche schooling facilities was obvious but since so much of it was beyond my control, or even monitoring, I disliked the necessity.

For understandable reasons the crèche net limited access by individuals’ noops to the outer layers in private/public spaces. Let one low rank minor have access and everyone would demand it, the net would then either collapse or become an unregulated chaos, like the pubnets. It was frustrating because I knew I could crack the net, I was a better netek than ninety nine percent of the teks who maintained the system but if I did it more than once in a while I’d be nailed eventually and then I’d loose other privileges. Worse my parents, particularly my mother, would make my life difficult, pointing out how stupid I’d been to get caught.

As I turned to the door I sensed daemon and the mechanism hold a short dialogue before the door slipped open, normally I’d not have consciously noted such a low level activity but I was still getting used to interacting with daemon and my public persona again. My interactions with my daemon and with the tacaid in the combat sim suit were of a different quality, the suit’s interface was much blunter and more intrusive, my brain was trying to recalibrate to the more subtle integration daemon provided with my implants and my retinue.

Before I stepped into the sim hall I knew another student was there, but as much as I wanted to keep my failure private I forced myself to keep going. Exiting and looking around at the surrounding sim domes I realized that less than a quarter of the ones I could see were still active. Since opfor and my unit were intermixed that seemed to indicate the opfor had suffered more attrition than I had calculated, maybe my forlorn hope was not as hard up as I had feared.

Daemon put a name tag above the cloaked figure of the other student. Vanessa MinTourin. A name I recognized vaguely from a few advanced threads, and not from my company lists, she’d been opfor. From what I knew of her she was probably a decade my senior and hung out with Rafel’s clique. In the full cloak and mask we were both anonymous, but I remembered a slender form, dark hair, bright green eyes and a flashing smile.

She held up a hand in polite greeting, Well met Artur MinDaltork, at least now. She chuckled a little and rubbed her stomach, I'd heard of your ability with a handgun but that overcharge was unexpected!

For a moment all I felt was satisfaction, I’d taken out the scout!

Well met Vanessa MinTourin, good shooting on your part. I thought I might catch you by surprise. In fact I’d been almost certain I would. Most scouts hesitate to shoot, not wanting to give their position away, but the very best scouts were more aggressive, like Vanessa.

We walked towards the exit, I noted that her mask was simple, old fashioned, a veil that revealed bright eyes under a tasseled fringe. The brilliant green eyes were exotic gleams in the dark slit.

My mask was more complex, more expensive, it showed a simplified and emotion neutralized view of my face, though I liked my personal privacy as much as the next I sometimes felt that the extremes of fashion were ridiculous.

I didn’t know what to say next, so I kept quiet, she was senior to me. After a few steps in silence she spoke again, I can’t believe I let myself get talked into that sim. I hate tunnel battles and long sims where I can’t get out of the suit worse!

She hesitated, Your TandC ranking’s way up there. I always miss points in the post action analysis, would you be interested in doing a review with me? Later, I badly need a fresher, but I’d like to talk to you afterwards?

She might be part of Rafel’s circle and she was also my elder by a significant margin. But I was flattered, and she was very pretty, Certainly. It was my turn to hesitate, In fact if you would like we could wait till dark and eat dinner together? I felt a tight flutter of excitement in my chest.

The green eyes sparkled and she laughed softly, I’d like that Artur. We turned towards the lift bank; her cloak hugged her figure, it didn’t hide the pleasant swing of her hips.

She walked lightly and silently beside me; somehow I got the impression of tension and readiness, watchfulness as well. The combat scout had not all leached out of her yet, no more than my command responsibilities had. I wanted to get back in the action, back to leading. But in that reality I was dead, Vanessa had blown my fool head off.

After we separated at the lift bank I did check sim status. As I shot up towards the commons I got a gratifying update, the trap had worked and the opfor was in the process of getting mangled. Something else was going right as well.

-o-

The flitter stand was on the commons, a large plateau on top of the Crèche School backed by the inside wall of the ninth ring canyon. The whole ring was desert and here it was winter, bitter stinging wind sliced around the massive butte of the School. The commons had a transparent shell, inside it was warm, the grass green.

Various food and drink stands were dotted around intermixed with stands of trees, bushes and flowers. There were a lot of students out this afternoon, people wandering around and there were misty patches of holo distortion all over the greensward. Nearby someone had left theirs almost transparent, or was spoofing, because it looked like she was sunning in the nude. The very thought of doing that in public gave me the shivers.

The flitter that daemon had summoned dropped to the stand and I stepped in. The clearview shell closed and the little bubble smoothly accelerated skywards. It flicked through a port in the commons dome and was buffeted by the winds for a second before compensation caught up.

Five kiloms away the youth crèche loomed, a freestanding butte of simulated reddish sandstone. Most times I took the tram like most other students but I could afford the small luxury of hiring a flitter for the short hop every once in a while. And I wanted air around me after two and a bit days of being entombed.

-o-

Stepping through the armet reinforced door into my apartment I felt the residue of tension slip away. This might not be my true home, it was an assigned crèche room, but it was mine and my retinue had it completely invested.

My room was a ten meter cube molded into the pseudo-sandstone of the butte. The wall opposite the door was a single immensely thick plate of one-way clearview, providing a spectacular view of the desert ring. The space was starkly plain with silver white wood flooring, white cream walls and slender brushed metal structural elements supporting a mezzanine floor that had my bed, big fresher and clothes locker. The colors and simplicity, accented by a few bright splashes of natural materials made the space feel limitless.

The lower floor had a visitor’s fresher near the door, with an autogal and dining area running along one wall and with the table next to the clearview. The center area, around the curved staircase, was taken up with a cluster of settees and comforts in neutral tones with some pillows and coverlets of natural materials in bright reds greens and browns. On the other wall I had set up a workstation so I could turn my back on the universe and focus on my threadwork when necessary.

Sitting next to the workstation was my tool chest on its six stumpy legs. Two meters long and a meter wide and deep, resting on slightly curved metal legs that ended in carved metal paws. The colorful inlays in the thick metal carcass made a flash of barbaric brilliance. It was an artifact of a far off world and a gift from my parents when I had been required to move into the crèche on my twelfth birthday.

The limited retinue I was allowed in the school flowed away from me in a faintly visible mist as I hung up the cloak and mask next to the tool chest. The iridescent puff swirled down into the tool chest through narrow slits in its armored carapace. From the same slits a flurry of slightly larger gnats flew to my hologear to refresh and repair them.

As I often did when coming ‘home’ I walked to the clearview and looked out. Prime was already low in the sky though at this time of the year it was ‘down ring’ so the day was longer than it might have been. After a few moments I turned and walked up the curved staircase to the second floor, stripping off the skintight as I went.

The fresher beat on me with pulses of hot water from all directions as I stood, head drooping, suddenly realizing how dirt tired I was. Almost wishing that I had not agreed to meet Vanessa, but the thought of her made the aches recede a little and excitement burn again.

I stepped out of the fresher and lay on the massage frame to let it work its wonders on my back. I even dozed a little in its warm embrace. Daemon woke me when it was time to go and meet Vanessa.

The clothes locker had some simple things in it, spare tightsuits, my sailing one-piece, armoralls for hunting or rock climbing but nothing for going out. Standing there I flicked through the fashion plates, in the end finding something simple that I liked. Green pants over my normal dress half boots, golden shirt with a high collar and throat ruff, green-black armless long jacket, formal but with flair. The locker had the materials necessary. I put on my refreshed skintight and found the new outfit neatly folded on the output tray. The clothes fit like a sheath and I admired myself in them.

My holomask as usual would simply show my face with some of the emotions and mobility edited out. The holocloak actually looked like a cloak, but my form seemed to be a window into a thundercloud, with silver lightning lancing through it. The image was a sophisticated piece of holoart and I was proud of it since I’d created it. I’d already had a couple of offers for copies and one of these days, when I got over the gloating, I’d pursue the offers. My mother’s commercial instincts simply wouldn’t let me pass up the opportunity.

As I walked to the roof access lift I felt a twinge of loneliness. I knew that the instincts were my mother’s because unlike most of my crèche mates, I had grown up with my parents and had only come to the crèche and Crèche School at Canyons after the Daltork family in the person of my great grandmother had laid down the law to my parents. I had even traveled to other star systems a few times, vaguely remembered now. My childhood had been rich in experience and love. And while I knew my parents loved me still my time at the crèche and school were far from happy. But all the introspection and the depression it brought faded as I stepped out on the top of the butte just as the hired flitter touched down and I had to trot to avoid a wait charge.

-o-

Our daemons had exchanged favorite eating-places and had found one that we both liked, The Ledge. Built high up in the side of the southern radial valley cross-connecting ring valleys eight and nine it was fifty kiloms from the crèche and in a completely different environment. Here it was still winter but the floor of the valley was a high steppe environment of rolling grasslands. Tucked into the land were the homes and small ranches of the people who liked living in this environment. Mostly stockholders, probably a few well off ploys, perhaps a few low rank Boardmembers like my father’s relations.

The flitter dropped onto the landing pad near the restaurant entrance, slipping through the weather baffles to touch down next to the quicksilver wedge of a small but powerful looking private aircar. As I got out of the flitter I saw a column of swirling glitter green mist standing next to the other car. My daemon identified it as Vanessa.

At the mutual recognition the column dissipated and I saw her standing smiling at me as I walked towards her. There was a touch of surprise in her expression, a tinge of something else as well. Good evening Artur, you look very good tonight.

So did she; a simple tube sheath of shimmering material hung from her shoulders, alternately hiding and outlining her form. Over her shoulders was a long sleeved half vest that covered her arms and half covered her chest, somehow we had chosen clothes that matched very well, So do you Vanessa, very good indeed. I tried to put the genuine admiration I felt into my voice and I could detect a faint blush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.

She smiled, and as I crossed the last meter she turned gracefully and extended an arm that I slipped mine through. She was perhaps a cemee taller than me but that was hardly unusual, she looked over at me, That was a very impressive piece of holoart you were displaying, can you tell me the artist? She was frowning, and reached over with her free hand to touch my arm, Wow, that outfit’s real! her eyes were rather wide.

I felt embarrassed, both by the question and the comment. I’d already realized that her clothes were imaged over a tightsuit like most people did. My cheeks blushed, Uh, yes they are real; I prefer it when meeting people privately. My cheeks were hot with embarrassment, I’d screwed this up for sure, she’d be laughing for tendays.

But instead her voice was soft, Wow again! I love it Artur, the feel is so…so real. I forget what real materials supposed to feel like. As we walked forward she continued to stroke the material of my shirt, a lost, wide-eyed expression on her face.

Our holoimages reflected back at us as we walked up to the door, a courtesy for visitors to allow them to discreetly check their mask and cloak before entering a very public place. It was odd to see a column of glittering green mist walking on the arm of a dark cloaked figure, our daemons had given us vision keys through the holo’s but to the outside world we were unchanged.

The Ledge had an all-human staff instead of the usual mix of projections and humans, or projections and autons. A human maitre-de with no apparent mask or cloak lead us between the other tables to a very nice position near the edge. About half the tables were filled, the holoscreens up around them providing the guests privacy.

We settled down and our daemons interacted almost below our consciousness so our retinues could weave a mutually acceptable privacy screen. As that happened we removed our masks and cloaks, Vanessa looked around, Wow again! I’ve never had this good a seat; I guess it must be nice being an AltDaltork! There was a faint tinge of bitterness in her voice.

Uncomfortable I shrugged, I’ve been here a number of times, always been towards the back before, must be our combined ranking, may just be random chance that nobody else of rank asked for a table.

She glanced at me, her face cool for an instant before she smiled and touched my arm, the flicker of something else a memory. We settled into the well-contoured seats to order drinks and eventually food.

We watched the aircar traffic racing past against the soft glow of the sky and talked of sports, school threads, mutual acquaintances, of which we had quite a number even though she was almost ready for the move to the Youth Barracks in preparation for her gradual integration into the adult world, while I had more than ten years to go yet.

The drinks were well formulated, the food cooked to perfection with the assurance that it had been done by hand. We both finished with a light sweet, neither of us had any concerns about the calories. The evening drifted on as we sat sipping caf, one of the reasons I liked The Ledge was the caf, a blend I had not figured out quite yet.

I let my eyes drift over to Vanessa, neatly curled up in the seat that had reformed into a comfort, her movements neat and minimalist she sipped and gazed into the dark distance. Her expression was pensive, far away, on the edge of sadness.

She caught me watching and there was a flash of hardness before the sweet smile returned, You know that was an nasty trap you set, you weren’t were we thought you’d be at all. And you had a lot more firepower online than our estimates led us to believe.

I’d been tracking the battle as well, it was all but over and I was probably not going to end up a laughing stock after all. ‘My’ ambush had smashed the opfor and sent them in a panicked route for the exits. The team leaders now in command of the defense force were very cautiously harrying them to keep them from resetting and trying something else.

The butcher’s bill was savage; a lot of full fatalities, modern weapons in confined spaces tore even full armored human bodies up horribly. No one had found Vanessa and my ‘bodies’ yet and it was possible that we would be listed as MIA, I wondered if our ‘corpses’ would be left in the deebee to be found by some later sim group. I’d run across a few gruesome scenes in the sims over the years, reminders that what we played at in the sims was no game in real life.

This all flashed through my mind as I looked at her curled there, warm and desirable, the juxtaposition made my stomach lurch. I tried to keep my answer analytical, Your command team did it to themselves, got far too complacent about their tag on our command net. We let them see what they expected to see. If you had reported back they’d have realized what was going on. Of course I’d gotten cocky too, didn’t think you were doing much recon, and those damned wardogs caught me completely off guard.

Her eyes were still behind the smiling mask, almost as good as my holo. Then the green eyes crinkled as the smile turned to grin and my heart skipped a beat, We traded ammo and consumables for extra scout dogs. But once we’d gotten you on the run all I was doing was sweeping alternate retreat paths if you tried to break contact. A flare of the nostrils, I told them that you were getting too lucky, but no one listened.

I had to chuckle, What, you don’t believe in luck? She stuck her tongue out at me, which made my heart lose another beat, but I recovered and went on, It’s the curse of the good scout, the damned commander never does listen when you’re right.

She laughed out loud and her laughing green eyes pinioned me, she held out a hand and I was on my feet and standing over her, her hand in mine, she was looking up, her eyes hooded, the mouth curved in a satisfied smile, though there was little of happiness in her face. My voice was a little husky, My Lady MinTourin, would you honor my apartment with a visit? Her hand was warm and firm as she grasped my hand and used it to come to her feet. Her lips molded to mine as my arm slid around her. Her smell and taste made my head spin, she was warm and curved in my arms and there was a subtlety to her response to me that was exciting beyond thought

After a long moment she pulled away gently with a giggle, "We had better go now Artur or we may embarrass ourselves. She turned to pick up and don her masks and cloak. The little aircar she had arrived in was waiting as we stepped out and we settled in, she sat in my lap and we went back to kissing as the car lifted out and pressed us together as it accelerated for the crèche.

Daemon had prepared for our arrival, the lights were dim as the armored door slid open. Vanessa hesitated at the door, glancing around, with a faint hiss, Very nice! she glanced back at me, You know, you never did tell me who did the holo art for your cloak, keeping something from me? she was slipping the short shoulder cloak of the deactivated holocloak onto the hanger next to the diadem of her mask.

I deactivated my mask and cloak, No, I guess I was being coy... I laughed softly, the sound almost catching in my throat, ...you see, the artwork's mine.

There was something like pain in her eyes as she looked at me, then she smiled and shook her head. The reason Rafel is always trying to take you down is because you are so quiet but so damn good, it infuriates him to see such power go untapped. She came to a stop her eyes a little wide at what she had said but I wasn’t really listening, letting the reference to my old friend and enemy slip past.

I slipped my arms around her and kissed her hard and deeply, she returned the favor pressing herself against me. After another unknown time she pulled away with a low moan and almost ran for the stairs. I followed and found her standing next to the bed, as I approached, her light skintight began to open, peeling back from her throat first, the opening going down to her navel and below, the sides rolling back to reveal her in her feminine glory. She was smiling as I reached her, and she was willing as I touched her and we were enough for each other in the time that followed.

<<>>

2

A tenday later I was standing at the clearview of my crèche apartment looking down on the canyon floor as the bitterly cold morning winds blasted dust through the badlands at the buttes foot. The ninth ring was almost all desert much of it so rugged that you had to move around on foot or aircar. Some areas of the ring were extremely hot almost all the time and others cold most of the time.

The crèche and the School were between those extremes. Here in the spring it could be spectacularly beautiful as rain brought forth desert flowers that could coat the ground for as far as the eye could see. The summer was blazingly hot and dry during the day with chilly nights. In the winter it could be killingly cold and bleak.

One of the kids from the children’s crèche had died out there the year before. A troubled boy he’d purposely stripped away his retinue and escaped the track net. He’d frozen to death before anyone had realized he was missing. I’d been one of the searchers as I was an adult ranked rough-land scout due to early experience with my mother and father. From some clues he’d left behind I’d guessed where he’d been heading and what had happened after that. I still woke up with a nightmare of that pitiful huddled body partially drifted over with snow and dust. He’d been trying to get back when his strength failed him, he’d been smart enough to know he was in trouble but too late.

A rustle from behind me pulled my thoughts away from that chilling topic. I didn’t turn I knew it was Vanessa in a simple dressing gown curled up on one of the comforts with her morning caf. The evening before had been filled with fun and good food followed by warm passion. Our second meeting and joining, I knew that she had me but in the cold light of day I wasn’t quite sure why.

Why the dour face my prince? Her voice was light and warm, why did I feel a flicker of anger?

Why did I answer? Sometimes I think I know exactly what that boy who froze to death felt, why he did what he did. I’m fully grown, the meds say my brain and body has fully adapted to my implants. I have the basic education it takes most five more years to get, I’m in the advanced segments of most of the board threads, and you’re what? Six years older and yet I’m ahead of you in the threads we have in common.

She laughed at me, Why thank you for the compliment my prince, the tone was more chiding than biting, but made me cringe inside anyway, But that’s your problem, overachiever syndrome. You’re hearing and seeing too much about the life beyond the crèche and the barracks. I see it too but I only have a few years to go and most of that I’ll be outside the barracks and school and be starting my real life. And you may be full grown and a walking deebee but the immortality won’t fully settle in for another few years, you’re still more vulnerable than you will be.

It sounded like she cared, though I knew she hung around Rafel MinArrens. And that made my mind flicker back to a recent counter example, the sim battle I’d gotten killed out of. An adult would have seen Rafel’s trap for what it was and walked around it. Although I had to admit that meeting Vanessa had taken a lot of the sting out of the lesson.

I turned away from the bleak vista of grays, browns and dull reds to the warmer one of a smiling green eyed girl curled up in the comfort with a warm caf held in both hands. That and the warm memory of last night broke the pall of depression.

She smiled, Rafel says you’re too quick for your own good Artur. My wince at the mention of that name made her wrinkle her nose at me, He’s not your enemy Artur, he’s an admirer, he’s sorry about the split.

He’s had a lot of time to say he was sorry, I half snapped.

She looked a little offended, What is it that you hold against him?

I stared at her in astonishment, could she be that ignorant I wondered. But then it hadn’t really been Corporation shaking, just world shaking to a fifteen year old. He was my tutor, and I thought my friend, during my first years here.

So! What happened?

I threw myself down in the settee closest to the clearview and lay staring up into the pitiless blue of the sky instead of her warm desirability. People started calling me Nature Boy, because I’m natural born not decanted. I didn’t notice at first, but eventually I couldn’t ignore that the problem was mostly with Rafel’s toadies.

They were jealous, some of them still are.

I confronted him about it; he laughed at me, told me to grow up. I tried to ignore it but couldn’t. After that I started avoiding him, but I can’t always avoid his hangers on. I bit off finishing with, like you, just in time.

Then it’s not Rafel, it’s his clique, he’s destined for great things, they’re very protective.

I didn’t snap back, like you, to that either. But I couldn’t drop it, They would have forgotten me long ago if he didn’t goad them, which was impossible for me to prove, I just knew it was true, And if he didn’t care he wouldn’t play games, like tricking me into that frothing disaster of a sim so he could beat me up one way and down the other?

What disaster of a sim? She sounded honestly stumped.

I glanced at her, The one last tenday, where we killed each other. I’d passed it up but he mentioned it in Q and A during a Tactics thread, made me out to be a slacker and afraid to go against him.

She frowned, Against him? Are you sure? I don’t remember him being part of the officer cadre, Artur. She smiled almost sadly, almost mockingly at me, Are you sure you’re not putting more into the argument than there was? He was probably just making general comments on the sim, he does that a lot to help his juniors.

I wanted to jump up and yell a hot denial at that, I had been ahead of Rafel in the tactics and combat threads for at least half the time I’d been at the crèche. Instead I just turned my head back to look outside, tried to blank the anger, Rafel, even Vanessa, out of my mind.

Most of the other few thousand or so children approximately my age in the crèche were much more comfortable with their lives in the crèche and the barracks. I had to accept that I was far from an adult, at least by any official measure. Most times I could convince myself that people a hundred or more years old really were mature, did see things more clearly (sometimes) and reacted to them differently but not always.

You know you’d be a lot happier here if you’d grown up in the crèche like the rest of us. Vanessa said into the silence.

I shrugged, Perhaps, if I knew no better I would be happier? But what explains MinKlaus, the boy who ran away and froze to death? And I wouldn’t trade my childhood memories for a little more happiness in the here and now. Part of what I feel is sorrow for how empty life here is.

Sorry for little me? her tone kittenish, with an underlying anger.

I was angry as well, I’d not give up the memory of circling Hold with my parents in their airyacht when I was ten, hunting Hialt in the Spine with my dad, even visiting other planets, other stars with them when I was a toddler.. I wouldn’t give up a moment with them for any time you care to count here. My voice was getting a little rough at the end, as memories flowed.

There was a rustle from the comfort and I glanced over, Vanessa was staring out the clearview, away from me, her body stiff. Then what made you deign to come down and consort with us lowly people? Her voice was low and thick.

When I was twelve my great grandmother, with all the power of the Daltork family and Board, had insisted that I be brought here to Canyons, ‘to be integrated with the rest of his age group in the Board family.’ My parents had resisted at first, then something had come up and they had to go off world, and they couldn’t take me. In the end they had been forced to place me here.

Vanessa turned, her eyes bright and hard, You’re loving parents couldn’t handle you?!

It was a family decision, not theirs, I replied quietly as I got up, I walked to stand over her and held out my hand, You don’t seem to mind my presence too much my lady, obviously their influence wasn’t too bad. Heat flooded her cheeks as her eyes widened and her lips curled into a sensuous smile.

-o-

The sun was as high as it was going to get as I stood drinking a caf and thinking. Vanessa was gone, she had a prentiss period on the trading floor starting today that lasted for five days and tomorrow I was leaving Canyons for my parent’s home for a tenday, to celebrate my birthday.

Making love had washed away the anger of the earlier argument. We hadn’t even touched on it as we got ready for the rest of the day and had agreed to spend a day rock climbing in ring seven's alpine section when I returned. That wasn’t a particularly challenging prospect for someone who had grown up climbing in the Spine but I was looking forward to the time with her. Her closeness to Rafel made her more desirable not less and the sex made the rest somewhat unimportant.

But for all that I could not get rid of a nagging uneasiness. Why was a young woman nearing the end of her minority spending time with someone hardly half way through? I knew Rafel liked women and she was well up to his standards, why wasn’t she one of his playmates? Then again maybe she was, there was no contract between us saying that we were monogamous

Was some of what I felt for her, the passionately dispassionate attractions some part jealousy. I saw anger when we spoke of Rafel, and the feeling of distance I could detect at times when I was with her, even when we made love. I knew how easy it was to fall under his spell and how hard it was to break away from him. His chiseled good looks gazed back at me from my memory, the black hair, pale skin and cold blue eyes gave him an almost mesmerizing attractiveness, to men and women alike. Combined with a powerful intellect, the instincts of a leader and the tongue of a demagogue he was dangerous in every sense of the word

When I had first come to Canyons, Rafel had been one of my personal tutors, and I’d had a bad case of hero worship. It had only dawned on me later that the contempt I could detect under his hauteur was the real mirror of his personality. That was after I came to suspect that it had been Rafel who had started calling me ‘Nature Boy’ because of my natural birth. It had taken me a long time to get up the courage to confront my hero with this accusation. Somehow he’d seemed almost more offended by his inability to talk his way around a sixteen year-old’s offended pride than my accusation.

It had taken a while for me to decide that Rafel was on the edge of being a sociopath. He had the instincts of a destroyer, always seemed to know how to tear something or someone down, to instantly see weakness. As the years passed the love of destruction, blood and death for their own sakes had grown to dominate.

Vanessa either didn’t see him that way or ignored those traits because of his attractive shell. She liked moving in the circle of power that Rafel created around himself, and he drew a lot of essentially harmless people to him with his personality and the whiff of power he exuded. That power would probably have been his even if he had been from a low rank clan, but he was an AltQuiller as well as AltArrens. Connecting him to two of the most powerful families on the Board, particularly since a Quiller held the chair this Turn.

Having fulfilled my allotment of introspection for the day I thought about my own activities. Today I had a thread in arts and deportment, dance, followed by a financial analysis sim and then a practice session on the field. I needed some practice with the pistol but the schedule was mainly sword. While I was better than average with the sword the Sword Master seemed to have delusions about my potential and was constantly driving me beyond my limits. Tomorrow I’d take the liner out of here, leaving in daylight and arriving an hour later in darkness on the opposite side of the planet, at Athos. I assumed my parents would send the aircar for me.

I felt a warm glow for a moment, thinking about going home, but my daemon reminded me that it was time to head for the School and with a sigh I swung towards the cloak closet.

-o-

Towards the end of the afternoon I danced away from the sword-swinging simulacrum, tired and sore. The buckler had deflected the last blow but my arms were numb and ears ringing. The only good thing that had happened so far today was that I’d gotten out of the financial session early and had had almost an hour's practice with the handgun before heading for one of the outer ledges to meet the Sword Master.

The area we called simply ‘the field’ was not the simple flat space that outsiders might imagine. It was not really a single area or even a single purpose area at all. It had setups for live practice with just about every type of weapon and training for every sort of fighting short of heavy armored combat. Physically it was a series of ledges and caverns in the canyon wall of the ring, stretching for the better part of two kiloms south of the Crèche School. It was usually divided into hundreds of smaller spaces by physical or holoscreens but it could also be turned into larger spaces for melees. The caverns cut into the rock were mainly long gun and handgun ranges. The ledge fields were mainly for hand to hand, and in the last few decades edged weapon combat.

Sometimes the field was used for more than practice, real blood was spilled here.

Today I was on a small ledge field, its privacy mainly obtained by rock walls. In the back of my mind I was grateful for that privacy, this was the third sword style I’d worked today, and I was about to get nailed again. With the small sword or saber I could almost hold my own against even fairly competent opponents but the broadsword and buckler were beyond me. The defensive never seemed right and yet every time I strove to attack I failed.

The heavy weight of sword, buckler and armoralls slowed me down and tired me out. The simulacrum never tired. Thinking about how tired I was I wasn’t paying close enough attention and the sword carried my buckler away and the simulacrum's buckler slammed into my side. The hilt of the simulacrum's sword seemed to float towards the bridge of my nose and the world went tumbling again.

Get up. The Sword Master snarled down at me, she looked like she wanted to kick my armored shoulder. Instead she turned and stalked off. As I struggled up she looked back, Get a drink, take a few, I’m almost done with you, today. The hesitation before the ‘today,’ seemed to get longer every few tendays."

As I hobbled across the sand I wondered, not for the first time if she was a barbarian, she wasn’t wearing a holomask, and not because she was comely, in fact she had an unlikely, hard chiseled, weathered wood aspect. I’d seen sim images of ploys and outworlders who looked that way, etched to an essence. I was too afraid of her to ask.

She was nowhere to be seen after I had shed my buckler, sword and helm and gotten a long drink of wonderfully cool water. I looked at the simulacrum standing calmly with its hands resting on the pommel of the sword point down in the sand.

Rafel hadn’t been far from my mind all day and my jaw clenched again as I stared at the auton. Though I was certain that it would be impossible to prove, I was personally convinced that Rafel was at the center of the growth of the blood ‘sports’ here in the crèche.

Of course he hadn’t been born when interest in zero tech edged weapons had been imported from some barbarian world and taken hold among a faction of stockholder and board families, especially in Canyons. My mother had once mentioned that it had started less than a hundred years before, and my father, just a little over a hundred himself had nodded, agreeing that it had been new when he was a child. But once introduced it had evolved, fighting against simulacrums had morphed to fighting each other with blunted weapons and padding, then edged weapons and real armor with the real chance of maiming or death, however temporary.

Then individual combat became melee meets, sometimes those meets weren’t friendly and a few men and women had died permanently. Dueling, individual and en melee over matters of honor or stock, even board policy, had gradually become if not common, then not unheard of, even a little respectable in certain circles.

When I first came to the crèche, dueling and melee among the crèche youths was forbidden, though training in sword and other edged weapons was already standard. Then there had been rumors of duels in the youth barracks, then a melee was approved and now the rule was that duels were held on the field with seconds and a responsible family member had to be present. In the last two years four young men and three young women had been unrecoverable after duels or melees, and the numbers dead but recoverable was in the many hundreds.

I could be counted among those, I’d been killed by accident in a melee, an almost random thrust through the weak spot in the armpit, through the lung and heart, I’d been dead almost before I knew something was wrong. It had been a dangerous wound, almost as bad as a serious head injury, but I’d been lucky.

On its face one could blame it all generally on Canyons, Stockholder and Board society. And I did - but I was certain that Rafel had accelerated their intrusion into the Crèche. His clique and hangers on had been involved in too many duels and melees for it to be random; in fact it amazed me that his sycophants didn’t see that he was getting them killed at a high rate. He had the contacts and the instincts to drive it but it would be impossible to prove, to even get many to take it seriously.

Artur, I see moments of greatness in you, and you have the constitution of a Hialt goat, but you seem to have the attack instincts of a rabbit and the defensive finesse of a Rocat. I jerked around, the Sword Master had taken me unawares, and I could see that annoyed her as well. She shook her head, If we could get that turned around you'd be unbeatable. She sighed heavily, Get out of here; we’ll start a new schedule when you get back. She turned and there seemed a defeated air to her as she walked away.

<<>>

3

That evening I was still sore, but I was looking forward to the rest of the day. MariBeth, my junior philosophy tutor, had dropped a message to tell me she was holding a little salon this evening and I was invited, food provided. MariBeth could always be depended on to provide a great spread of finger foods and an even better selection of interesting people. She always had someone new to act as foil and most of the people I could truly call friends were part of MariBeth’s circle.

Being just out of the Youth Barracks, and from a minor stockholder family, MariBeth’s apartment was part of an old and unfashionable block built into the wall of ring eight, almost a hundred kiloms from the crèche and school. She lived here because she could swing an apartment with a central room large enough for what she called her philosophical salons.

My hired flitter dropped onto the private landing pad and I climbed stiffly out after suffering the twenty-minute flight in the hard and not very adjustable seat. MariBeth was just inside the doorway looking out as I came in. Unusually tall and strongly built she grinned down at me as I came in, The Sword Master teaching you humility again, weapons master?

"Always MariB, always!