Chapter 4

The trainee, Roger, did indeed reflect on what David had told him with regard to the accepted ways of the people who had been born and raised on New Woden.

He found it hard to believe that little Rosie was already the mother of twins, but all the things that David had pointed out about her abilities as a trooper were undoubtedly true. She was the best soldier in his squad by a mile and he realised he would have to adjust how he thought about her.

He admitted to himself that part of the reason for attacking Miller had been about jealousy; Rosie was a beautiful looking girl, stunning even, with her youthful freshness. Like most of the twins on Woden, she had blonde hair and blues eyes. He figure was petite, but he already knew she packed a punch. While his own upbringing said it was wrong to think about girls of that age in that way, he couldn't deny that he had been and was doing so even now.

He tried to shake thoughts of the young trooper from his mind and managed that quite easily by bringing a picture of David's soot-covered face to mind. The image was still so fresh and so comical that he laughed out loud as he crossed the drill square.

Roger entered the blue barracks and immediately sought Rosie out. She eyed him warily as he approached and Roger knew he would need to be convincing in his apology if he was to avoid the squad spirit being irreparably damaged. An idea came to him and he pulled her to her feet and pulled her close so that he could kiss her soundly on the lips.

The kiss was not the kiss of an adult to a child, but rather a full blown passionate kiss, with open mouths and duelling tongues. Roger was dimly aware of the hoots and ribald comments from the other members of the group who had gathered round, but he tried to put everything he had into the kiss.

When they broke apart he could see that Rosie's cheeks were flushed.

"That was by way of an apology," said Roger. "I'm really sorry for embarrassing you that way earlier. I was treating you as if you were a little girl when in reality you're a grown woman. I hope you can forgive me?"

Before Rosie could answer Roger spun on his heel and searched for Miller. He spotted him and walked over to stand in front of him then extended his hand.

"I acted like a fool and I hope you too can forgive me. It was none of my business and I promise it won't happen again," he said.

Miller took his extended hand and they shook, a grin appearing on Miller's face.

"It's something that could affect our squad, so it is your business. As to whether it happens again, I guess that's up to Rosie, but I'm certainly hoping it does!"

Miller had neatly turned Roger's comment into a joke by pretending to misinterpret what he had meant by 'it happening again'. Roger had of course meant the fact that he had attacked Miller, but Miller had chosen to focus on what Rosie had been doing to him instead.

It was a half-hearted joke at best, but as is often the case in potentially difficult circumstances, it was enough to break the tension. The other two members of the squad — Sally and Eric — walked over and all five of them shared high-fives. It was enough; the squad had dealt with its problem.

With relief that things had gone better than he could have hoped, Roger took advantage of the fact that his apologies had drawn a crowd to describe what he had seen at the General's quarters.

"His face, neck, shoulder — heck his whole upper half — were covered in black soot. I don't know what happened, but he was filthy!"

Simon knew that one of the other groups had been planning to try to get to the General and he shared what he knew.

"From what I've heard, one of the red group is a wizard when it comes to technology. It seems to be common knowledge that the General always drinks the same thing — a mixture of orange, grapefruit and lime juice — and red group were going to tinker with the General's replicator. Their plan was to change what the replicator produced whenever someone asked for that exact drink. It sounds as though their plan worked."

The mood inside the barracks had already been good because of the success they had had in taking a little retribution against the squad leaders. The success of the red group in actually getting to the General lifted the mood even higher and all of them agreed that kudos were due to the red team.

The shout of one of the squad leaders cut through the babble of excited chatter though.

"QUIETEN DOWN! SHUT UP!"

The blue group showed that their training was beginning to instil obedience into them by immediately responding to the shouted order. The squad leader walked into the sleeping area of the barracks and looked at the assembled troopers.

"Alright you lot, the fun ends here. No doubt you've already heard about the unfortunate accident that the General had this evening? Let me spell out for you what happens from here on in - in words of one syllable — it ends here! Do you understand?

"All of the squad leaders know that the recent run of accidents has been largely inspired by you trainees. We've agreed to stop the mind games and treat you as if you were adults, but in return your little tricks have to stop. I'm warning you, if there's even a suspicion that someone has tried something — then the squad leaders will show you what real retribution is like. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir," replied most of blue group.

It wasn't good enough for the squad leader.

"I DIDN'T HEAR YOU - DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?" he bawled out.

"YESSIR!" came the shouted response from the entire group.

"Good, now what are you doing up, it's time for lights out."

Ben and Simeone wasted no time in getting their programme underway. Ben had already selected sixteen of his tribe to be part of the next four intakes to David's training camp and he wanted them to have DNA transplants before then.

Simeone was surprised when his DNA was used to update the memories of only four of the volunteers, but Ben explained his reasoning.

"How many pilots do we need and how stupid would it be to have pilots without science officers, navigators or communications officers? My plan is to convince Captain Marlon to let his officers take part in our little DNA upgrade exercise. That way we'll have all the officers we need to put together four entire crews!"

Marlon was happy to oblige and even the officers from the WS Scout were keen to do something in return for the pledge that the people of New Woden had made. It was not that surprising that the officers had turned from being highly suspicious, to highly appreciative. The promise of greater protection and better weapons had turned them quite easily. So, within a matter of days Ben and Simeone had four skeleton crews and Simeone's job of giving them some hands-on practice of actually flying a space ship began in earnest.

Sarah had also been busy, tasking drones and some of the Benites to construct the buildings that would serve as the officer academy that Ben wanted.

There was no need for the trainee officers to learn about tactics and military history — their inherited memories and the DNA upgrades would see to all of that — but what was important was the opportunity to test out scenarios and see how the trainees reacted in combat situations.

The basis for much of the work of the academy was therefore a comprehensive suite of virtual reality rooms. The rooms could be connected to each other so that one trainee could be pitted against another in simulated war games.

The simulators had all been tested and Sarah was shocked at how real everything seemed when she was immersed into the virtual reality world.

The suites first 'live' test involved several of the officers from the WS Scout. They had tele-ported down to Aetherkraal to donate their DNA to some of the Benites and while they were there, Sarah prevailed upon them to help her with her simulation project.

Hansa the communications officer and Beegs the navigator agreed to help out.

"Am I right in assuming that both of you have been through the Space Academy?" Sarah asked, as they walked towards the newly constructed buildings.

"Yes, why?" both of them replied.

"The simulators I want you to try out for me are set up for people who have a good grounding in military tactics," Sarah explained.

Both men were intrigued, as they had never been exposed to this kind of technology before. It sounded like fun to both of them.

For the purposes of this test, Sarah set each of the officers up individually. She explained what they could expect to happen. The events in the virtual reality world would be recorded so they could be played-back and the performance of each individual could be analysed.

"When you put on the VR suits you'll find yourself for all intents and purposes actually in the scenarios. You'll be able to speak to the characters and your orders will be carried out. It starts off at a pretty basic level and then gradually builds up in terms of difficulty," she said.

Hansa and Beegs were relaxed, laughing and joking with each other as they parted to go to the rooms allocated to them. Hansa pulled on the bulky all-in-one VR suit before pulling on the gloves and the head-set.

The suit and gloves had thousands of small sensors embedded in them and the take from these sensors was fed directly into Hansa's head via the head set. The head-set also provided the visual aspect of the virtual reality scenario and when he pulled it on, Hansa found himself standing in a sunny glade in the middle of what looked like a dense forest.

He turned a full circle and spotted a path off to his left, but before heading towards it he took stock of the equipment he had at his disposal. Looking down, he saw there was a pulse rifle in his hands — it looked real enough and he felt comforted by it.

"Man, this setting looks absolutely real. Everything looks just like it should ... AAahhhhhhh!"

Hansa pulled the head-set off and found that he was on his ass on the floor of the VR room. In the scenario, a mountain lion had appeared out of nowhere and it had made straight for him. He back-pedalled as fast as he could until he felt himself falling with the mountain lion just beginning its leap for his throat. That had been the point at which he had ripped the head-set off in panic. The relaxed and joking Woden officer who had entered the room only minutes before was now a gibbering wreck!

Sarah was watching the scenarios in the VR control centre and was disappointed at how poorly the first officer had done. This was about further testing of the system and Hansa had barely lasted a few minutes. She turned her attention to Beegs who was in a different scenario.

Beegs was approaching a small group of houses located in a broad clearing in what looked like jungle. He had his rifle at the ready and was keyed up for any trouble that might emerge. Sudden movement from the door of one of the houses caught his eye and he aimed and fired in a single movement, before dropping prone onto the ground.

Once he was down, Beegs rolled sideways to change his location and hopefully confuse and avoid any enemy fire. No fire came however; instead there was just the sound of the wildlife in the jungle around him. The noise of the various birds and animals was enough to jar his now strung-out nerves and his eyes were darting from house to house — looking for more trouble.

Five long minutes later there was no change in the situation and Beegs decided it was worth moving forward. He could see the slumped body of the enemy soldier he had shot lying in front of the first house and he clambered to his feet so that he could approach it cautiously.

Adrenaline was rocketing through his system and it made his movements strangely jerky, as he tried to control the sudden surge of energy it provided.

Beegs' head swivelled from side to side as he walked nervously forward until he was standing over the body. He used his boot to roll the corpse over and was shocked to see the face of a young boy, perhaps only ten or eleven, lying in the dirt at his feet. There were no signs of weapons and Beegs began to realise that he had just shot an innocent civilian.

A quick search of the house identified an even younger girl curled up, terrified, in a corner. It was clear she had watched her brother being gunned down and she was fearful that Beegs was going to kill her next.

Beegs ripped his head-set off in disgust at himself. He had been so on edge that he had fired before identifying what he was shooting at.

"Always verify your target! You know that, they taught you how to do that at the academy! Now you must look like a complete idiot to these people! That was the kind of mistake even a new trooper would have avoided, but you were so nervous you forgot your training at the first sign of potential trouble!" he thought to himself.

Sarah entered the VR room and could see that Beegs was feeling sorry for himself at how poorly he had done.

"Cheer up," she said brightly, "at least you managed to fire a shot, even if it was at an innocent boy. Your friend didn't even manage that."

The fact that Hansa seemed to have fared even worse than he had was of some comfort and Beegs tried to put a brave face on things.

"It's been a while since I've had to do anything like that. We had something similar at the Academy when I was there — we called it the shooting gallery. I used to be quite good at it, but I guess I'm a little out of practice," he said sheepishly.

"You can try it again if you like? Not the same scenario obviously, but if you'd like to get some practice in then I can set another one up for you," suggested Sarah.

Beegs decided he had made a big enough fool of himself for one day and declined the offer. He was intrigued to find out what had happened to Hansa that meant he hadn't even managed to fire a shot.

Sarah led him back into the corridor just as Hansa emerged from his VR room. Neither of the Woden officers was keen to share their experience, but eventually Beegs' curiosity got the better of him.

"I only managed to kill a ten-year-old boy, how did you get on?" he asked.

"Ummm, not very well to be honest. I found myself in a forest and before I knew it there was this fucking great mountain lion leaping for my throat. I didn't have a chance to fire," admitted an embarrassed Hansa.

"These units are something else, aren't they? I mean, everything seemed so real I soon forgot that it was only virtual reality," said Beegs, changing the subject to save his friend squirming any more.

"You're telling me? That mountain lion certainly seemed real enough. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life and I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to pull off the head-set."

"The scenario is programmed to simply close down if you're mortally wounded during it," said Sarah. "I can assure you that you wouldn't have experienced any physical harm."

"Well, thanks for letting us try it out," said Hansa doubtfully. "Perhaps we should be on our way back to the ship ma'am."

Sarah agreed and helped arrange for the two officers to be tele-ported back to the WS Scout. Once they were gone she went in search of Ben to let him know that she thought the training academy was ready and to share her news about how disappointing the Woden officers had been.

Ben was nowhere to be found however, and neither was Simeone. Sarah found some of her offspring that were part of the DNA transplant programme and they informed her that Simeone had persuaded Ben to try his hand at piloting the WS Clarion, Simeone's ship. Sarah smiled at the thought of her twin commanding a space craft.

"I get what you mean now, it is different actually experiencing it," said Ben. "I thought I was heading directly for that planet but had to adjust several times or we would have overshot by quite a distance."

"It takes a lot of experience to try to navigate by eye alone, that's why we have navigation officers on big ships and why I rely on my AI and the Clarion's instruments. Try some of the tighter manoeuvres now and see how you get on," suggested Simeone.

Ben showed that he had learned his lesson and used the AI to help navigate for what he was going to try to do next. He picked out the closest planet and used the memories he had inherited from Simeone to try to perform a classic sling-shot.

The aim here was to achieve an elliptical approach to the planet and use it to gain additional speed almost as if the ship was being shot from a sling. Ben concentrated totally on what he was doing and found that he had a natural feel for the angle of approach.

The sling-shot worked perfectly and the Clarion raced off into space, the planet receding quickly behind it.

"That was perfect, you're a natural at this!" enthused Simeone. "Give me a few more weeks with you and I've no doubt you'd be better than me. You've really got a natural flare for flying..."

Simeone broke off from his praise when he saw that Ben didn't appear to be listening any longer. Ben had his eyes shut and Simeone had come to realise that he did that a lot. He waited for Ben to snap out of his apparent day-dream.

When Ben's eyes opened, Simeone saw excitement gleaming in them.

"AI steer a course to the asteroid belt immediately on our right. Increase speed to three-quarters full," Ben ordered.

The view on the large screen at the front of the bridge showed that the ship was turning ninety degrees and then it increased speed.

"What's so interesting about an asteroid belt?" Simeone asked with curiosity.

Ben realised his excitement had leaked out and he immediately became more guarded.

"Nothing really, I just thought it might be good practice — you know, flying through such a congested area," he replied.

Simeone didn't believe that explanation for a second, but he had learned when to press Ben and when to leave things alone. Ben's answer suggested this was one of the times not to try to push his son for more information.

The Clarion didn't take long at three-quarters speed to reach the asteroid belt and Ben took steps to make sure they didn't come to any harm.

"AI reduce speed to a crawl and use your scanners to chart our course so we avoid any collisions," he ordered.

"Affirmative sir," the AI responded.

Once Ben was satisfied that the AI had things under control, Simeone saw that he closed his eyes once more.

Ben couldn't believe what he had found. His awareness, heightened by the power of the metals, had picked up that there were traces of metals of power strewn throughout the asteroid belt. He sensed the metal was of the reddish-gold type, the one that had boosted the effect of the other metals and brought his first ever 'worldview' above the planet.

With his eyes closed he mentally darted between the huge lumps of rock and ore, gathering up every last scrap of the metal that was there. For safety and secrecy, he reached out and deposited what he gathered in his bedroom in the great house at Aetherkraal. Once he was finished, he opened his eyes again and found Simeone studying him.

"Welcome back," Simeone laughed.

He didn't push Ben to find out what he had been thinking about, but Ben felt he had to say something.

"Er, sorry. I was thinking about Sarah and I must have got carried away. She does that to me," he muttered.