“Yeah, VR. Very interesting. I got no grief with the Chinese.”
“And you’ll help with the man from CyberNation. A French guy.”
“Seurat. I know his work. He wrote a paper on quantum computer applications that was… passable.”
“I do seem to recall something about quantum computers and Net Force,” Thorn said.
“Yep, that was a crazy English scientist and a dotty old lord. They shot at us, too.” Jay shook his head again. “You know, for an agency that is supposed to be a bunch of desk jockeys riding expensive chairs in dark and quiet rooms, we seem to get shot at a lot.”
Thorn smiled. “Probably that won’t happen here.”
Jay didn’t smile back. “I wouldn’t bet on it, Boss. CyberNation claimed to have gotten rid of all the bad guys, but it’s hard to believe the people at the top didn’t have a clue what was going on.”
“But you’ll help me with this guy?”
Jay nodded, his face glum.
“Thanks, Jay. I appreciate it.” Thorn paused. “So, anything new on the war game hacker?”
Jay frowned again and shook his head. “I’ve been running things down, but so far, nothing. The military sysop is pretty good, and the system isn’t supposed to be reachable from outside, so it isn’t like some wahoo can just dial up and log in, even if he had the codes. We’re dealing with somebody who has been very careful.”
“But you’ll get him, eventually?”
“Oh, yeah. I always get ’em, Boss. It’s just a matter of time… ”
Chang stared through the window, but there was nothing to see save a dense layer of clouds a few thousand feet below the jetliner. Normally, he didn’t take a window seat when he flew, especially on long flights; he preferred to have the aisle, so as to be able to stretch his legs now and then, or attend to business in the toilet.
But the flight had been crowded — relations between China and the United States were at an all-time high, and even with a new airline that added several flights a day to the States, the jets were, so he had been told, usually full. Plus, this was a direct flight to Washington, D.C., and much faster than the old ones where you had to fly to Los Angeles, then switch to an American carrier for the final leg across the country.
Cutting five or six hours from your travel time made this flight much in demand. Normally, Chang would not have had the clout to merit such a flight. Then again, a man who knew as much about computers as he did had some advantages. He had access to reservation codes, and booking his own flight with those had been a simple matter. The state of the industry in China was such that this was not even illegal — nobody had ever worried about it, since nobody outside of himself and a few of his employees even knew it was possible.
He grinned. He would have to plug that hole when he returned home. At least for others…
“Would you care for a drink, sir?”
The flight attendant, a pretty, moonfaced young woman with a bright smile, stood in the aisle, leaning slightly over a couple traveling from Beijing to visit a daughter who, Chang had been told, lived in Baltimore. The attendant’s chest, completely covered under a shirt and buttoned jacket, loomed over the husband, who had the aisle seat.
“Some club soda, please,” Chang said.
The young woman moved on, much to the disappointment of the man seated on the aisle, Chang felt.
The Canadian, Alaine Courier, had provided Chang with some excellent software, and, more importantly, an introduction to a U.S. official who had access to Net Force. As a result, Chang was traveling to Washington to meet the head of the agency, which could not help but be useful. Just to see how the place was laid out, what equipment he could see, anything, that would be wondrous.
There were those in his government who wanted very much for China to be a match for the United States in all things. Properly approached and primed, such men could be most helpful to Chang’s desire to upgrade his systems and technicians. Why, yes, Comrade, I went to Net Force Headquarters. They are so far ahead of us, I fear it will take many years for us to even begin to catch up. Of course, a few million carefully spent would close that gap considerably, if a man knew exactly what to buy and how to use it, but… what are the chances of that happening…?
Chang would rather not play those political games, but in these times, there was no choice — not if you wanted to stay in the race. He did not enjoy such things, but he was learning how to be adept at them. It was, alas, part of the job. Better he know how to do it than not…
Next to him, the woman said, “Did I mention that my daughter and her husband have given us three grandchildren?”
Several times, Chang thought. But he smiled. “Really? How wonderful for you… ”
8
Abe Kent was no Luddite — he used VR training for his troops as much as the next commander — it was just that he preferred reality over virtual reality. Unfortunately, the reality was that there were some scenarios you simply couldn’t do in the real world. The Iraqis and the Iranians, even the Colombians, tended to frown upon a small military unit taking target practice on their citizens, no matter what their crimes.
The days of gunboat diplomacy and backing up private companies like United Fruit were long past, and Kent had no desire to see them come around again, so when you needed to work in the field against a team of Bosnians or Afghanis on their home ground, you dressed your men — and women — in sensory gear and did it in VR. It worked out all right, for the most part, and it was far better than nothing.
But Colonel Kent never lost sight of the fact that no matter how good the electronic impedimenta, no matter how well the stim units worked muscles, the computer scenario was not reality. You could simulate the feel of crawling over a muddy field, the sounds of gunfire, even the heat of a desert afternoon, but nobody broke an ankle, tore a groin muscle, or got fatally shot in VR.
Yes, there had been a few heart attacks in scenarios that were exciting enough to start the blood pumping fast, though most of these, Kent understood, had been using gear that simulated sexual encounters. Kent had never lost a trooper in VR, and he was in agreement with Bill Jordan, the famous gunfighter who had come out of the Border Patrol in the 1950s and ’60s.
Jordan, whose skill with a double-action revolver was legendary — he could pick aspirin tablets off a tabletop at fifteen feet by point-shooting, without scratching the table’s finish — had written a book on gunfighting called No Second Place Winner. Kent had an autographed copy of that book at home and had read it several times.
When talking about fast-draw experts who popped balloons with their side arm’s muzzle blast, Jordan said that in the history of gunfighting nobody had ever died from a loud noise — meaning that you needed to practice hitting a target using a real gun with full-power ammo. Speed was fine, but accuracy was final, and the only way to make sure you had both was to practice using the gun you’d have when the bullets flew for real.
The troops grumbled when Kent took them out to the Marine training field in a pouring rain to practice tactics, but he knew that those experiences would pay off if they ever found themselves in such a situation.
Of course, lying on the sloppy, cold ground in the rain, as he now was, wasn’t the most pleasant way to pass an afternoon, but this was how you got real practice. If your LOSIR gear shorted out when it started raining, this was the place to find that out, not on a real battlefield where somebody was trying to shoot you. If you jammed your assault rifle or subgun’s barrel into the mud and plugged it, best you learn how to clear that, since firing a weapon with a slug of mud blocking the muzzle could get you a face full of shrapnel when the barrel exploded, as it could. At the very least, that weapon would be useless.