He wasn’t going to sue anybody. He knew that, the colonel knew it, but a lot of people sued a lot of other people these days–there were more lawyers in D.c. than there were roaches–so they’d stuck him in bed, started an IV with antibiotics, and given him the television remote. They’d also given him one of those short, open-up-the-back hospital gowns.
He looked at the time sig on the TV screen.
He’d come back from the raid and been examined at noon. So he was stuck here until noon tomorrow.
Boredom and cafeteria food loomed and threatened.
Jesus, A nurse came in, and with her was the colonel. He grinned real big.
“Very funny, sir. Wait until the next time you get shot.” “Not my policy. Sergeant Fernandez. I don’t make the rules, I just do what they tell me.” The colonel sat on the foot of the bed and glanced up at the tube.
“Anything good on?” “Best things are reruns of still Love Lucy and trash sports. I just saw the middleweight North American sumo winner–he goes maybe one-eighty, two-hundred–beat the heavyweight– a fat guy pushing seven hundred pounds. Big guy came roaring in, the little guy stepped aside and tripped him. Fatso fell out of the ring, shook the camera he hit so hard.” “David and Goliath,” Howard said.
“There is a precedent.” “David cheated, he used a sling.” “Goliath had a sword.” “Yeah, and only a fool brings a knife to a gunfight.” “How’s the leg?” “Fine. I could take you on the obstacle course right now.” “Uh-huh. I’d almost rather be doing that than going home.” “Your mother-in-law still there?” “Until next Sunday.” “Serves you right. Sir.” “.I stopped by the office on the way over here. Seems there was a complaint about you from one of the civilian instructors in the feeb unit.
Did you know that you were “vicious, brutal, perhaps even psychotic”? A man unfit for Net Force service, and a man who was very likely a threat to public safety?” “Yes, sir, I believe that pretty much sums me up.” “What did you do to this Horowitz, Sarge?” “I leaned on his desk and told him he should think less about posturing and more about doing his job.” “Lord, Sergeant, how do you expect to get away with such behavior? What kind of savage are you?” “An unrepentant one, sir.” “Well, I will send word to Mr. Horowitz that I have taken his counsel and disciplined you appropriately.” Howard reached over and took the TV remote, pointed it over his shoulder at the wall-mounted set, and clicked the power off.
“No television for the next hour. Sergeant.” “I thought the idea was punishment, sir.” Both men grinned.
By the time she got back to HQ, Joanna Winthrop knew the party was over.
The terrorists had been taken down, the stolen plutonium recovered, and the only thing she had to do now was figure out who had gotten into her workstation and used it to give the Sons of Whoever the information about the shipments.
But somebody had told her that Julio Fernandez had been shot and was in the infirmary and so, instead, she bought a small vase of flowers and went to see him.
He was the only patient in the infirmary. Since a lot of the Net Force staff had opted for the long holiday, including, apparently, the medical staff, the place had an echoey feel to it.
“Sergeant Fernandez.” “Lieutenant Winthrop.” “I heard you got shot.” “A scratch. I’m stuck here overnight, SOP, but I could go out dancing if they’d let me.” She put the vase on the table next to the bed.
“You’re just lying here, doing nothing? No books, no entcom?” “The colonel was here, you just missed him. He turned the set off. I’m being punished.” She raised her eyebrows.
“For being shot?” He chuckled.
“No, even Howard’s not that hard-assed.” He told her about his computer class.
It was a funny story. When he was done, she laughed.
“Tough CO, isn’t he?” “Yeah. I really wanted to see how the middleweight wrestler was going to do against the light heavyweight.” They both laughed.
“So, how are you doing?” Julio asked.
“I heard about the workstation business.” “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll figure it out.” “Any suspects?” “At the top of my list? Jay Gridley.
He doesn’t like me.
He thinks I slept my way into this job.” “Seriously?” “That he thinks I used my feminine wiles?
Or that he planted the leak in my station? Yes to the former, no to the latter. We aren’t buddies, but I respect his abilities. Though if you tell him I said so, I’ll deny it.” “Deny what?” “He might keep stuff from me, but I don’t think he’s nasty–or stupid–enough to try to implicate me in a federal crime. After this assignment, I’m back with our unit, so I’m no threat to his position.
And he has to know I’m going to figure out who did it. Just a matter of time.” There was a moment of quiet when neither of them spoke.
“So how was it?” she asked.
“The sortie?” “By the numbers,” he said.
“The bad guys weren’t in our league. They were outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and outgunned.
Only mistake we made was mine. I’d been awake, I wouldn’t be spending the night here with my leg propped up and a draft on my butt. One of the yabbos hiding in a sensor nest had a few rounds of AP in her weapon.
Fortunately, she was either rattled or a lousy shot. She cooked off most of a thirty-round stick and only nicked me one time. Guy with her was a better shooter, but he was using hardball and tracer, his ammo couldn’t pierce the suits.” “Too bad I missed it,” she said.
“You’ve been on a few field ops.” “Nothing lately. The-colonel thinks I’m more useful in front of a computer. Last time I was in the field, I was in the HQ tent thirty miles away from the action.” “He’s right,” Fernandez said.
“Grunts like me are a dime a dozen, but a computer genius is harder to replace.” She smiled.
“I need to get back to work. Anything I can do for you?” She saw him hesitate a second, and wondered if there would be an off-color remark. If he was looking for an opening, this was a good one.
He shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but thank you for asking.
I’ll catch up on my sleep. See you when I get out.” He flashed her a nice smile.
She resisted a sudden urge to lean over and kiss him. She was really beginning to like this guy.
“Later, Julio. We’ll talk about computers when we get all this straightened out” “I’d like that. Thanks for stopping by.” Another hesitation, then: “Jo.” Jay Gridley had given up on the cowboy scenario because it felt too slow. True, speed in a scenario didn’t translate tort– real time–but if you were poking along on a horse when you felt like racing on a big Harley motorcycle, it made a subjective difference.
So now Jay turned to one of his favorite action heroes, borrowing from one of the early classic James Bond movies, Thunderbolt.
Over the landscape he flew, zipping through the air with the famous Bell Rocket Belt on his back.
Of course, in RW, the Bell device was not a belt at all, but a large and very heavy backpack.
And it didn’t have much of an operational range in RW either. Jay had done some research when designing his scenario. The original rocket belt was essentially nothing more than a pair of fuel tanks, some handlebars, a throttle, and a couple of rocket nozzles. How it worked was, hydrogen peroxide sprayed into a fine mesh, producing a very hot and hard steam that spewed from the rocket nozzles with a few hundred pounds of thrust. It was loud, dangerous, and you only had twenty-some seconds of lift, maybe thirty with the right fuel mixture and tuned nozzles, and that was it.
You could lean in the direction you wanted to go, and later some maneuvering jets were added, but if you were a hundred feet up in the air when the gas ran out, you were going to fall and smash into the ground real hard.
A later version, the Tyler Belt, was a bit more efficient and gave a little more flight time, but the hops were still short and quick. A small jet-engine model that was theoretically capable of giving the wearer half an hour in the air had eventually been designed, but the U.s. military had claimed exclusive use of the new engine for its Cruise missiles.
So the personal backpack craft of science fiction just kind of fizzled out. The existing rocket belts wound up in museums or television commercials or movies, but that was it.
Jay’s version of the rocket belt had a secret –but theoretically possible–fuel and a miniature jet engine that gave him an hour in the air and an automatic safety reserve to allow him to land when the fuel ran low. He could have given it infinite power in VR, of course, but that took some of the fun out of it. Realistic limits were better for the scenarios he created.