Actionable Intelligence

Rarely has the concept of 'total war' been imagined to such extremes. That's all I'll say about this unsettling dispatch from the not-so-distant, militarized future. -the ed

Location secure. Basement with one entrance, and Pace had good cover on that entrance. Comm rig secure, and operational. Could be that the antenna wasn't deployed, but that wasn't Pace's problem. Everything was showing green, so his job was to sit tight and wait for orders.
One prisoner. Male, adult, civilian. He was testing his restraints when Pace looked up from the comm.

Pace went and sat down next to him.

"Have you got some water?" asked the prisoner.

Pace gave him a drink from his canteen.

When a scenario started, the system would use all its processing for the fighting. Prisoner vocalizing unprompted meant it was winding down, but Pace'd get in trouble if he let on that he knew that. They were supposed to be training for war, not figuring out how to beat simulations.

"You from around here?" asked Pace.

Prisoner was a sim. Civvies were always sims; there was also the pause-click way sims processed questions. Quick blank pause, then, "Lived here all my life," he said.

"Family?" asked Pace.
"Had one," said the prisoner. "Before the war."
"Before the war," said Pace, and sighed. "What was that like?"

Longer pause. Wasn't a typical approach. System took longer to respond to atyps, and could be he'd get in trouble for breaking protocol. But he'd had an interrogation course that said forming friendly connections with prisoners could lead to immediately actionable intelligence. Scenario was winding down, so there wasn't anything to learn, but he wasn't supposed to know that.

"It was brighter," said the man. If system was right about how real civvies were, civvies were sad a lot. Well, if it was right about civvies, they got blanked a lot. Screaming and twisting and crying when it had the cycles for it, or falling down and lying still when it didn't. But when they weren't getting blanked, they were mostly sad.

"There were things we had to do, and we were all worried about jobs and the economy and all that," said the civvy, not sounding any less sad. "Forget it."
"Must have been nice," said Pace. "Going out, working. Family."
"Yeah," said the man. "Nice."
"What's your name?" asked Pace. "Mine's Pace."

Pause-click-pause. No response. Sometimes the simulations would do that. Hit an invisible wall, and get no response until system had enough cycles to come up with something.

"Aw, c'mon," said Pace. "If I get relieved, you'll be taken to a POW camp, and they'll get everything. If your guys find us, same thing happens to me. No point in pretending we can keep anything back." That was true. The POW exercises were the worst, just the worst. No point in even thinking about a POW exercise. This one was combat, and it was almost over. "I'm Pace. Cadet, Blue Division, A1120-F9A4."

Pause-click-pause. Nothing.

"War orphan, you know? According to records, my mother's name was Audra. That's all they got. I'm fourteen. You?"

"Braiden," said the sim. "I'm Braiden. I'm just a civilian; I don't have a number or anything, Pace. Can you loosen up the ropes, please?"

He couldn't. It was a quick way to get things back to script. Give a civvy a chance to do harm, and all of a sudden, he'd been a spec trooper all along, and Pace was in trouble for being duped. Bullshit, but those were the rules of the game. Pace didn't like keeping restraints tight, not even on a sim. He'd been through enough POW exercises to know how those hurt. But he'd also been blanked often enough in combat to know how bad that hurt, so he couldn't let Braiden loose.

"Sorry," he said. "Gotta sit tight, until we get a signal. What'd you do before the war?"
Pause-click. "I was an assistant," said Braiden. "I worked for a lawyer."

"Lawyer?" said Pace. Interrogation courses had said not to let subjects, which were based on data from real, archived scans, know when they were giving something away; just stay neutral, keep them talking. Pace stayed neutral.

Braiden shook his head. "Used to be. . . you know how there are rules, now? Regulations?"
"Sure," said Pace.
"Used to be, there were. . . well, say that you'd been given orders to take and hold a position, and you were forced back from that position. And then let's say the officers felt you could've held longer."
"System would analyze the data," said Pace, "and there'd be a ruling. From a higher ranked officer."
Pause-click. "Right," said Braiden. "But it used to be that when there were situations like that, they'd argue it out. Lawyers were people whose job was to know the rules of how to argue things out, and they'd be hired to help one side or the other."
"Seems like kind of a waste of time?" said Pace.
"Yeah, well," said Braiden. "We used to have time to waste, before the war."

Having someone to argue for him was… so many times, system would give the data, and the officers would rule wrong, and there was nothing Pace could do about it. Not even if they let him argue, because he wasn't good at arguing. Maybe if there was someone on his side, whose role was arguing, he'd-

"So," said Pace. "What did you-"

Braiden froze, and then the simulation stuttered, stopped. Pace unplugged, blinking up at the training sergeant. "Medium pass," said the sergeant, severely. "Hit the showers; debrief in twenty, then a refresher on actionable intelligence."

Pace saluted, headed to the showers. Seemed someone watching didn't like the way he'd handled the interrogation. Well, nothing wrong with a fresher. The officers who'd built it had put everything into the system. Trick was getting as much out as he could.

A few years back, one of the cadets had gotten a game called 'checkers' from one of the sims. They'd started playing that during breathers, and it'd gotten to the point where even the sergeants didn't give extra duty when they caught cadets at it. This time, Pace had learned about 'lawyers.' Wasn't something immediately actionable, not like checkers, but it was—something. He'd pass it, quietly, around to the others, they'd check it against the intel that they'd gathered, use it when gathering more intel.

There was a war on, and Pace was going to fight it. Wouldn't be long, either. He was in his fourth year as a cadet, and it was four years, then field postings. Could be he'd wind up blanked in a rocket strike, or have to run a POW exercise, but for real. You didn't get intel just for you, though. He was learning, from the others, that anything learned got passed down.

Pace showered, and headed in for the debrief, looking forward to the fresher course on interrogation. But—checkers was good. It was a game, but it wasn't an exercise, it wasn't a scenario they had to learn so they'd fight better. You could play checkers and lose and not get blanked, or win and not blank anyone, and you didn't need the system to help you play it. Fun just for fun, and nobody getting hurt and twisting and crying and puking as they blanked. It was worth knowing things like that.

And now 'lawyers'… when Braiden talked about a soldier retreating and an officer thought he should've held, maybe system would say that the soldier was right. But the soldier was still a soldier and the officer was still an officer. Maybe something outside, apart, would keep the officer from getting the soldier blanked, maybe not. 'Lawyers.'

Everything had been different before the war. Officers didn't like talk about before the war or about after the war. But there had been a before the war, and there was going to be an after the war, whether or not the officers wanted it. Had to be. They'd put everything into the system, so it'd train the soldiers right. System had taught them fighting, and system had taught them how many more soldiers there were than officers.

It was going to be a while before lawyers were actionable. Could be that Pace would be blanked before that happened, or run into a POW scenario and not come back. But lawyers was good intelligence, and when the time came, they'd act on it. He'd pass 'lawyers' to the third years, who'd pass it to the seconds. When the time came, they'd act on it.