Insignia

  She flipped to an image of a traditional pilot boarding a jet plane. “The first fighters were pilots in the Air Force who remotely controlled the ships in space. They couldn’t keep up with the preprogrammed maneuvers of the Russo-Chinese machines, so they were phased out. Many believed combat had evolved beyond the participation of human soldiers. Both sides switched to fully automated attack fleets. These automated arsenals waged the war until the first Intrasolar Combatants appeared on the Russo-Chinese side. With the advent of neural processors, human beings could finally hold their own against mechanized forces. The presence of human fighters had another benefit—they added a personal element to the war, and this was exactly what the American public needed to remain invested in the fight.”

  Tom thought of all the cereal boxes with Elliot’s face and the way all the girls at Rosewood loved him so much. He wasn’t sure if those girls had supported the fight—he just thought they supported Elliot.

  “For most of the public,” Cromwell said, “this war is a spectator sport. The average American knows they are helping to finance this, but they also know they’re not seeing the winnings. Their only reward is the entertainment they receive from following the battles, and in the last three years of Combatant-driven combat, a sense of national pride when an American wins new territory. It’s important you never take public support for granted. There’s a reason we’re always sending Elliot Ramirez out there for the cameras. He gives the war a face. If exposure weren’t a safety issue, all the Combatants would be public figures just like him. A Combatant is a PR asset, a means of personalizing the war for the general public—even if that Combatant is known only by his or her call sign. One of a Combatant’s most vital roles is to keep the public on our side. But that’s not your most important duty.”

  Tom sat up straighter in his seat, sensing that she was about to get into the fighting itself.

  “America has only had Intrasolar Combatants in the field for three years. That means those of you in this room destined to advance to Camelot Company may be the tactical pioneers in this new era. Every age has seen a transformation of the ideal soldier. Basil Liddell Hart said, ‘Loss of hope, rather than loss of life, is the factor that decides wars, battles, and even the smallest combats.’ And what destroys an enemy’s hope? In ages long past, the mighty Achilles was the most fearsome warrior in the world. His very presence made armies tremble. In subsequent ages, the famous generals took the glory. And now? What is the name that destroys hope in our time? Who is the greatest Intrasolar Combatant? Who is this moment’s Achilles?”

  Tom braced himself for the words “Elliot Ramirez.”

  But Cromwell pounded out something on a keyboard fixed to the podium, and she turned to face the curved wall. Tom’s eyes riveted to the massive screen curving over them. A view of the black expanse of space flared to life on all sides of him. The image focused upon the planet Venus, then Cromwell zoomed into a Russo-Chinese fighter whose call sign Tom knew from the news.

  He’d heard about this fighter. Just a bit, because this Combatant was sponsored by the state of China itself—and no sponsoring corporation meant no airtime. But rumors on the internet said this was the best fighter of all of them. This Combatant never lost.

  “Today,” Cromwell said, “we call the ultimate warrior Medusa.”

  Dead silence penetrated the air as every plebe watched the battle, the Russo-Chinese ships controlled by Medusa danced around the Indo-American forces and maneuvered them into obliteration.

  Chills moved down Tom’s spine. He’d seen clips of battles on the internet, but edited ones, whatever the military wanted the public to witness of the war effort. Any clips favorable to Russo-China were censored, and he was sure it worked the same way in reverse in their countries. So Tom had never seen a full engagement, never had a chance to marvel at how incredible this Medusa person was.

  Major Cromwell’s voice rang out in the darkness. “In the last six months, this single Combatant has changed the course of the war against us. How do we know it’s Medusa alone doing this? Watch. An acute student of tactics can identify an opponent just by watching them in action. You’ll begin to recognize the mind working behind the maneuver.”

  And when Cromwell flipped to a recording of a past engagement on Jupiter’s moon Io, Tom knew which Russo-Chinese fighters were controlled by Medusa. He just knew them. They anticipated the moves of opponents. They fired missiles in space moments before opponents blundered into them. They reacted to hazards the other ships seemed oblivious to.

  “One Intrasolar Combatant can do this,” Cromwell told them. “This is the first age in history when a single fighter has the capacity to sway whole battles.”

  Next, the screen showed a battle on Mercury, where the Indo-American fighters spiraled away after Medusa’s trickery ripped them out of orbit and knocked them into the sun’s gravity. Then the screen showed an intensive skirmish in the asteroid belt, where they were torn to pieces by the asteroids that Medusa used like virtual missiles. The last battle they viewed took place on Saturn’s moon Titan. Medusa blasted a hole straight through the ice layers, spouting liquid methane into space, knocking the Indo-Americans ships into a lethal plunge to the moon’s surface.

  This, Tom thought. This was why he was here. His skin prickled with goose bumps as he watched it all, his eyes fixed on Medusa’s machines every time. Medusa. Medusa. Here was a king. Here was a god.

  He wanted to face Medusa more than life itself.

  If he could be that person, the one who defeated this giant among warriors. . . . then he’d be somebody.

  When the lights brightened around them and Medusa faded from the overhead screens, Cromwell sent them away for the afternoon. And Tom was the only person who strode out of the room feeling dazzled like he’d drifted into some strange dream, his lips pulled into a grin that went from ear to ear.

  Medusa.

  IN CALISTHENICS THE next day, Medusa filled Tom’s thoughts. He couldn’t tear his mind from the Russo-Chinese Combatant even though the Battle of Stalingrad raged around him.

  “I looked up the Medusa myth on the internet,” Tom said breathlessly. He ran beside Vik through the bombed-out streets, both Soviet and Nazi soldiers blasting at them. He’d learned it was a Greek myth about a female monster so hideous to behold, any man who saw her face turned to stone. “Do you think Medusa’s a girl?”

  Vik dodged some shrapnel. Dust whipped into their eyes. “Nah!” he shouted over the sound of gunfire. “Medusa’s a call sign. You can’t tell whether you’re dealing with a guy or a girl from a call sign, especially if we’re talking a Russian fighter. Think about it: Sasha is a guy’s name over there, okay? The person probably went with Medusa because if you end up face-to-face with her, then bam—you’re dead. You saw Medusa fight. It’s appropriate, huh?”

  “Oh yeah,” Tom said, awestruck. He followed Vik into a demolished building, explosions rattling his bones. He’d heard the Russo-Chinese Combatants took on call signs for the same reason the Indo-Americans did: they picked their own when they were promoted to active combat status. It was for the general public. Tom had seen his own share of news snippets about Enigma, Firestorm, Vanquisher, Condor, and the rest of Camelot Company. Of course, now he knew the names behind those call signs: Heather Akron, Lea Styron of Hannibal Division, Karl Marsters, and Alec Tarsus of Alexander Division.

  The building rattled, and they dodged falling plaster as they stumbled into an armory, where they found a solid wall of numchucks. Tom hoisted down a set. “So what happens next? Ronins again?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No ronins in Stalingrad.” Vik led Tom through the doorway into the burning building’s courtyard where some plebes were already in the thick of fighting Nazi ninjas.

  Tom made it five minutes into the strength training session—and then he paused for a moment to wipe away some sweat, and a Nazi ninja swept forward and impaled him through the abdomen. Text flashed across his eyes: Session expired. Immobility sequence
initiated. All feeling seeped out of his body from the chest on down, and he dropped to the ground, sword still jammed in his abdomen.

  “Got killed, huh?” Vik called, from where he was still fighting his Nazi ninja.

  “Looks like it.” Tom tried to sit up, but even though he could move his arms, they kept collapsing beneath him.

  “Don’t bother trying to sit up,” Vik said, noticing his efforts. “You’re supposed to stay where you were killed until the next phase of the workout. You can move your upper body, but you can’t bear your own weight or drag yourself anywhere.”

  Tom gave up on moving and linked his fingers together behind his head. “Why don’t people get killed all the time if relaxing is the big punishment?” he said idly.

  “Because,” Vik answered breathlessly, flashing him a grin before turning back to his duel, “it’s about pride.”

  Pride.

  Tom resolved not to get killed again. For now, though, he contented himself with relaxing beneath the smoky Stalingrad sky, the clank of swords, the rattle of bullets, and the roars of explosions thundering in his ears.

  HIS MUSCLES WERE still sore from the exercise after lunch, but his mood was soaring thanks to acing all of his subjects for the second time in his life in the civilian classes. Elliot spent the first twenty minutes of Applied Sims giving a speech about the power of positive thinking, and then they all hooked into the program for the afternoon.

  Tom snapped into the character of Gawain, a knight of the Round Table from the Camelot legend. A castle fizzed into existence around them. Elliot mounted his throne, playing King Arthur, and announced that the first thing they were going to do was a ritual of fealty.

  Tom watched the other plebes—all playing various knights of the Round Table—kneel down before Elliot, kiss his hand, and receive his sword pats to their shoulders. It made Tom’s skin crawl. They were practically groveling.

  Elliot held out a hand for Tom to kiss, and Tom didn’t move a step closer. He wasn’t going to kneel down and kiss Elliot Ramirez’s hand. He just wasn’t.

  “You’re not swearing fealty to me, Tom?” Elliot asked him.

  “You want my fealty, I’ll swear it. Without kneeling and kissing your hand. Sir.”

  “This ritual fosters team cohesion.”

  “I just don’t want to bow, okay? It feels un-American to me. Sorry.”

  Elliot sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t understand the value of working with others. But if you really don’t want to play along like everyone else, I suppose I can give you a role in the sim other than Gawain.”

  Tom’s hopes soared. Maybe Elliot would assign him to play a Saxon barbarian. He’d love that.

  Elliot raised his hand skyward, modifying the sim.

  Tom’s body shifted into Guinevere’s.

  He stood there, frozen, gaping down at his floor-length dress, the wavy brown hair flowing down to his waist, and, well, his boobs. He was still gaping down at those when the company of knights trundled to the courtyard for the ride out to fight the Saxons. Tom stumbled over his skirt, following them, confused by the way his legs felt like they were slanting at a strange angle.

  “Wait,” Tom called. His voice came out so high, so girly to his ears, that he jumped. It took him a moment to recover from that shock and remember what he was going to say. “My armor disappeared!”

  “No, Gawain’s armor disappeared,” Elliot said. “As my beloved wife, Guinevere doesn’t fight in the sim. She provides moral support. Waves us good-bye and waits for our return.”

  “I don’t get to fight?” Tom blurted.

  “Only people who swear fealty get to fight.”

  Elliot raised an eyebrow, waiting. Tom knew what he wanted: for Tom to apologize, crawl over, and kiss his hand. But he couldn’t. He didn’t crawl to people or bow to them, and he didn’t kiss hands.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.” There was suppressed laughter in Elliot’s voice. “We’ll tell you how the battle went.”

  Tom stood there in the courtyard, listening to the hoofbeats thump away. Then he felt a tentative tug at his sleeve. One of the queen’s attendants spoke: “Your Highness, we were embroidering. Will you join us?”

  The instructions for embroidering wove into his brain. Guinevere liked embroidering. Since Tom was Guinevere, he also liked . . .

  He shook it off, aghast. “I don’t embroider!” he cried, and bolted away from the virtual woman.

  Wild thoughts about what he could do for the next three hours and twenty-eight minutes of the sim ran through his head. He decided to head out anyway, on foot, and fight as Guinevere. But as it turned out, he couldn’t even cross the drawbridge. The simulation informed him, No parameters in place for this action.

  The Guinevere character was restricted to the castle. And her fingers were itching with the need to embroider something. Tom found it all very horrifying. He was not going to let Elliot come back after some awesome battle and find him embroidering.

  So he decided to be proactive. He wielded candlesticks and challenged random guards to duels. The guards just shook their heads and declined to do anything so unchivalrous as fight a lady, which about drove him to madness. So he bashed them over the heads anyway, and they shouted at him that he’d gone mad—yet none dared to restrain their psychotic queen.

  That gave him a brilliant idea.

  He relayed some orders to the castle’s guard and dispatched a messenger boy. Then it became a matter of biding his time. Tom avoided the embroidering ladies by exploring the castle’s corridors. He found a heavy ceremonial sword the Guinevere character could barely lift, but it was better than nothing. The metal scraped over the stone floors as he hoisted it down the flickering, torchlit corridors, searching for a good, defensible spot.

  He wandered into a vast library and beheld an armed knight looming over a stack of scrolls. Perfect. He’d kill this guy, and take his armor and sword.

  “Avast, ye scurvy knave!” Tom cried, getting into character and hoisting up his ceremonial sword. “Prepare to meet yer maker!”

  The knight sighed, then turned around and folded his arms over his broad chest.

  It was Wyatt’s character, Lancelot.

  “This is Arthurian England, Tom,” she reproved, the note of irritation the only familiar thing about her now-manly voice. “It’s not a pirate ship.”

  “Codswallop,” Tom cursed, lowering the sword, the blade clanging on the ground. “What are you doing here, anyway? Lancelot is supposed to be riding out with Arthur to fight the Saxons.”

  “I told Elliot I wanted to defend the castle in case they got around us, and he thought it was a good idea.”

  “Yeah, you’re defending it, all right,” Tom said, nodding to her scrolls. “Are you reading?”

  “I’m playing a more erudite Lancelot who prefers to sit here and defend it with his mind.”

  “He’s not supposed to defend stuff with his mind like he’s Yoda or something. He’s supposed to be Lancelot. He’s a knight. He fights barbarians. It’s fun.”

  “Feel free to go fight them yourself, then. I’m not stopping you.”

  “The sim’s stopping me. I’m stuck in the castle.”

  “Well, feel free to just go somewhere else, then.”

  Tom ignored her and hoisted himself up onto the table. It was a bit tricky—he wasn’t used to Guinevere’s body, the way the hips seemed unbalanced, the weight pressed down at different spots than he was used to.

  “Look, Wyatt, Blackburn did that whole demonstration on me because I wouldn’t tell him who changed my profile. The least you can do is tolerate my presence for a bit.”

  Wyatt’s hand flew to her open mouth, a gesture that looked distinctly girly in Lancelot’s body. “Blackburn asked you about me?”

  “About the person hacking the profiles, yeah. I didn’t tell, though, so don’t worry.” He shifted back and forth, trying to figure out the best way to position himself. “Man, this girl stuff is throwing me of
f.” He settled with leaning back with his legs slung wide. It earned him a scandalized look from Wyatt, but he was comfortable, so he stayed that way. “A wolf is a completely different body, so you expect to move all differently, but a girl’s close enough that I keep trying to move the way I do normally.”

  “You won’t notice after a few more sims.”

  Tom became distracted by the sight of his own boobs. He reached down to grab them. Wyatt cleared her throat.

  “What?” Tom said defensively. “They’re mine.”

  “You aren’t seriously planning to just sit here groping yourself in front of me, are you? That’s kind of rude.”

  Tom dropped his hand, a bit sheepish. “What, come on. You’ve got some new equipment, too. You’re not curious?”

  Wyatt’s armor clanked as she shifted awkwardly in her seat. “It’s not like I haven’t played sims as men before.”

  “Right.” Tom grinned. “So you’ve already done the groping thing.”

  “That’s not what I said,” she protested. Her cheeks flamed so red, Tom began to enjoy himself.

  “You have to have wondered—”

  “I am not having this discussion!” She gathered up her scroll and pointedly moved to another table in the empty library.

  Tom was just getting started, though. He hopped down to follow her to the new table, hoping to annoy her some more, but a low rumbling saturated the air. Screams drifted into the library’s open window, and he knew what must be happening.

  Finally. Tom started for the door, thrumming with excitement.

  “Wait,” Wyatt called after him. “What’s happening?”

  Tom wheeled back around and remembered she had a sword resting forgotten in her scabbard. He closed the distance between them and drew it before she seemed to realize what he was doing.