I press my hand against the steel side of the cargo bay and feel the 
coldness of the metal The outside temperature cannot be more 
than 150 Kelvins: it's winter, we're over the ice caps, and it's just 
before dawn. I've never been inside an airplane before, it feels so 
old-fashioned. It's quite noisy, and I'm used to the freedom that an 
ornithopter offers. I only know that we're using a plane for 
"defensive purposes". If we need defense...and it's important 
enough to risk one of the Kinder...in the dead of winter...this can 
only have something to do with the War. I will not allow myself 
the luxury of terror or of pride. I have volunteered, and must now 
complete my responsibility. Others' lives may depend on it.

"Adept!"

I stand at attention. One of the advantages of a cyborg body is that 
certain rote movements can be hardwired in. Legs locked, finger to 
forehead, it is impossible for my body to break form.

"As you were, Adept Yoko." In the dim light of the cargo bay I can 
make out his shape, but I don't need even that cue to let me know 
that Stentor-Sensei had come back to join me. Winter storms make 
for terrible flights, that only stands to reason--our other two 
companions, the pilot and the co-pilot, would need to keep the 
plane on course. As he comes into sight, I find myself smiling in 
empathy: even he, the greatest ascetic the Haus had ever known, 
has been forced to wear a down jacket and long pants in place of 
his usual rags.

I offer a bow. He repeats my motion.

"Yoko, I will now brief you on the particulars of your mission. At 
2300 TH yesterday, a small transport ship crashed on the Bradbury 
Ice Shelf. Crew were killed. The cargo was not destroyed. The ship 
was transporting a cargo of Boomers for shipment to the front 
lines. We have reason to believe that three of the Boomers have 
become activated."

"Permission to speak."

"..."

"Any news of a crashed transport ship, even if it was from accident, 
would have been on the short-wave, and so would have been 
reported in the dormitories. I have heard no such report. I am 
forced to conclude that this has been deliberately kept silent. 
Further, if this is of enough importance to send one of the Kinder 
on a search and destroy mission, I can only deduce that there must 
have been..."

"Correct, Yoko. There were three Dobermans aboard the ship." 
Stentor-sensei begins to pace. There is no lower half to his face, 
only a great hole filled by a speaker that juts through his head. I 
imagine him frowning now. "It is standard practice to interface the 
Dobermans' activation codes to the same computer that monitors 
the vital signs of the crew: should they be ambushed by the enemy, 
or should they die of some other cause, the Navy has a dangerous 
mine at its disposal in the form of a renegade ship. In the event of a 
crash, the crew will have ground-based missiles assist in the 
destruction of the ship. Unfortunately, the weather conditions are 
such that scoring a direct hit was impossible until well after the 
crash."

He stops his pacing and looks at me. Though he has not even 
eyeballs, his stare is as penetrating as I have ever seen. "Yoko, it is 
of the highest importance, for the security of the entire population 
of Mars, that they be retired with the utmost efficiency. In about 
three minutes you will parachute into the general vicinity of the 
crash--the Dobermans will have been forced to stay by the wreck 
to avoid exposure. Count fifteen on your fall, and you _should_ 
deploy below the cloud layer. You are armed with a topographic 
map of the understory and a krystographic map of the known 
crevasses in the ice field. You also have a ceramic blade to retire the 
Dobermans."

"What are they armed with?"

"Densematter projectile bullets. You should be able to hear one 
fired from a quarter kilometer away even in high winds. 
Unfortunately, the noise is loud and sharp enough that it has a 
tendency to cause avalanches, so it will benefit you to maintain the 
advantage of surprise. They'll be acting independently, but if they 
perceive you as a threat, they will have no reservations about 
attacking." He pauses, and lets me know how much my well-being 
means to him. Each sensei practically adopts one of the Kinder, and 
I have been under Stentor-sensei's guidance for over five years 
now. Our bond is very close. "You have fifteen hours' pressurized 
O2 in your third lung and a radio beacon that will alert us when 
you have completed your mission. That is all. White in battle, 
Adept Yoko."

"Walk in faith, Sensei."

We each place a fist over our sternums and clench twice--dedicating 
two of our heartbeats out of honor and respect. And then I am 
alone.

"Two minutes thirty seconds to jump."

I have my back to the cargo bay wall. My knees are pressed to my 
chest, my arms cross against my shins.

"One minute thirty seconds to jump."

I stand relaxed, my mind is clear. The rust-red armor shell will 
protect me as I descend. My parachute is red also; but when I peel 
back the outer layer it will be gray, to camouflage the shell I leave 
behind when I touch down. I think of the Dobermans below me, 
how their quantum minds must deal with the terror of the storm.

"One minute to jump."

At forty-seven seconds I scream, a primal focus for my energy. I 
scream loud and long, letting the strange chemicals in my spirit free 
to bubble. I thrash my head, swing my arms, rock upon the 
ground, claw at my armor. I must build, but I dare not release, my 
energy. I twist my body, feeling the chi flow in my contortions. I 
must break free! These walls, this machine cannot contain my spirit! 
My convulsions find a rhythm, and I dance, letting the idea my 
ancestors clothed under the name Shiva guide me, in these few 
moments redefine my being!!!

I jump in silence.
--
one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-
thirteen-fourteen-fifteen and I tear the ripcord. Even after my years 
in the Haus, it still feels as though I am falling too slowly. The force 
of gravity in my adopted home is only about two-thirds that on 
Earth; but that affects only my weight, not my mass. As the 
parachute deploys I feel the snap of my body as opposing forces 
tug at one another. For an instant I feel my "true" weight; and then 
I am descending, aiming for the white of the wreck that still 
smolders in my IR vision.

I take a moment to glance at the scene. Water ice flakes are 
blowing in great wind that rushes across the landscape; I feel them 
battering the shell around me. I can "see" the flat monotony of the 
ice sheet; it won't be until I switch to visible that I shall be able to 
pick out the crevasses. I am also unable to locate the Dobermans. 
As with any surprise, this is good and bad. While I cannot tell 
where they are lying at the moment, it is doubtful that they, in 
turn, are aware of my presence. The exterior of the shell should be 
equal to that of the surrounding air, in the unlikely event that they 
have IR; if, more likely, they have night vision, the camouflage on 
the shell will help to cloak my decent.

I touch down and the sides of the shell fall off like leaves in the 
Terran autumn. Fortune has been with me, there are no crevasses 
in my immediate area. I scramble out from underneath the 
parachute, blade drawn. Vis light shows nothing; I am safe, for the 
moment. I slit the edges of the parachute and expose the white 
camouflage. It is the work of a moment and I have hidden every 
trace of my arrival.

Carefully and quietly I approach the wreckage. The impact crater is 
small, perhaps 30 meters across--they must have been able to slow 
their decent. I check my own reasoning: if they hadn't, the 
Boomers wouldn't be "alive". I don't want to go into the crater, as 
anyone could have the advantage of higher territory on me; but I 
don't have the luxury of companions, so I slowly decend below the 
lip.

It is one of the advantages of a carbon dioxide atmosphere that 
fires are rare. The oxygen that the ship carried has burned out, but 
the wreckage itself is still warm--perhaps they were carrying 
something else I don't need to know about. The ship wreckage is 
about ten meters in diameter. It consists in large part of metal 
blackened from friction with the atmosphere, but there is some 
shattered computer equipment and other, irregular shapes 
protruding from the hull.

One of them is moving.

My reactions are at least a factor of ten greater than any Boomer's, 
but he has the advantage of surprise. The gunshot is a high chirrup 
in the thin air. I am more than prepared for it, I am dodging it fast 
enough to actually follow its motion. My opponent has the bad 
luck to be armed with a semi-automatic weapon rather than fully 
automatic, and he's taking the time to line up a second shot. I draw 
my sword in a quarter of a second, by which time I've managed to 
close the gap between us to nil. The sweep as it comes out cleaves 
his torso in two, making his shot go wild. I whip my sword around 
my head and aim to cleave his arm from his body before he hits 
the ground. He's learned his lesson fast, though, and isn't even 
taking the time to aim--at point blank range. I sever his arm at the 
shoulder, but not before he can fire. The shot grazes my left cheek, 
down and away from my eyeball. It's not even a light wound. 
Three more swipes of my sword and he has been retired.

Before I can turn a new volley of fire sounds from above and 
behind me. Most of the bullets are near misses, but two blow off 
parts of my left arm--one in my forearm, one in the elbow. I jump 
up and over the wreck, pulling my left arm against my body and 
swinging my right arm over my head, compensating for my 
reduced weight. My trajectory takes me to a safer position, and I 
reassess the battle. The second Boomer is descending towards me, 
firing at will from some kind of a rifle. He opens his mouth, 
preparing to use his laser. As he powers it I shift my position, 
keeping low behind the ship. Naturally, his laser blast is a miss, and 
he pauses, trying to center on my location.

He begins to pace, trying to find a target, but is finding none. It is a 
capital fault of a purely mechanical brain that, because its 
algorithms are known, it can be edged into making a logically inept 
decision. If a Boomer's visual systems encounter a humanoid shape 
that is emitting a good deal of heat, it will presume that it is a 
human being, and may very well attack. In this instance, it does, 
not noticing that the body's temperature is far too high for a 
human. It is merely attacking it's comrade's torso, heated by a 
small amount of liquid fuel.

The intensity of its attack renders it unaware of my counter. From 
behind I leap, spinning end over end, and ram my feet into its 
shoulder blades. It collapses, still firing its gun, onto the ice. 
Following through on my maneuver I slice it in half from head 
through its chest. The second Boomer has been retired.

It isn't until I stand that I realize I have made a tactical error. The 
mass of the Boomer's bullets and the force of their firing have 
punched into the ice. As I step off the torso, my right leg dips into a 
crevasse. I can feel that it's wedged, but I have the blade. It will take 
a moment to extract myself.

It will be a moment I do not have at my disposal, for the third 
Boomer is firing down on me. Quickly I lift the (still slightly 
moving) Boomer's torso in front of me as a shield and use his 
weapon to return fire. There is enough light now for me to see my 
adversary, running towards me with his mouth open. I have no 
time. I slice off my leg and leap upwards and to the side. I hear an 
explosion--the laser blast must have destroyed the remaining 
ammunition.

I keep in motion, taking small leaps on my one remaining leg: that 
is both the most easy method of movement for me in my current 
state and the most difficult thing for my opponent to hit. I am at a 
supreme disadvantage, bodily and tactically. There seems no 
option but to shut him down, no matter what the cost to myself. I 
hear him reloading his rifle, and decide that now is the time to act.

My jump takes me four meters up into the air. If I fight well, I 
should be able to cleave his face apart, removing his visual threat 
and forcing him to berserk; there is the chance that I may hit his 
other brain and retire him completely. My blade is drawn, I am 
descending. He sees me, and readies his weapons.
--
I feel the interface withdraw from the base of my skull, and the 
room swims back into focus. I am lying on a long stone slab in a 
room somewhere in the Argyre center. My body, naturally, is 
unscathed: it has all been a simulation. Beside me, Stentor-sensei is 
shaking his head sadly.

"Adept Yoko, do you know the difference between a martyr and a 
warrior?"

I reply in the negative. I'm still dazed from the reality of what I 
have gone through.

"A martyr believes so highly in a cause that his--or her--life 
becomes secondary to that cause, for without it their lives have no 
meaning. A warrior believes in nothing so highly as to die without 
forethought. Before each battle, you must think of whether you 
should die. During the battle, you may think how you shall die.

"In the simulation that you have just gone through, you assessed 
the situation correctly two times out of three. You did not let a flesh 
wound tempt you to be vindictive, and you did not let a major loss 
interfere with your performance in your battle.

"Your third fight...you came so close, but you failed. The lesson in 
the end is twofold. First, you must not fear to mutilate yourself if 
there is a more important goal to achieve--but what is that goal? 
You did not ask yourself, 'Where do I go from here?' You only 
severed your leg and continued your fight.

"Sensei, I think I follow your mind, but I do not understand--what 
should I have done?"

"The best thing to do, Yoko, would have been to run away. Yes, 
that's right, end the battle in failure. You should have concealed 
yourself in a crevasse and activated the beacon to signal your 
victory. When the plane returned, they would not be able to find 
you with a surface scan, but they would have detected the Boomer. 
Then reinforcements would have arrived."

"But--but isn't that putting more people in danger?"

"Putting more people in danger versus having one killed. Yoko, 
you have learned the ways of the martyrs too well, for being 
imperiled is far from being dead. If you say, 'I am able to die so 
that my friends might live', this is pride, not humility. If you do 
without saying so, that is humility, not pride. Do you understand?"

"I think so, yes."

"Then go now and meditate on it, this has been enough exercise for 
today." Stentor-sensei helps me to my feet. We walk side by side 
past rows of the other kindred, all fighting imaginary battles in 
cyberspace and in their hearts. "Be humble enough to admit that 
you are defeated, Yoko, and you will live. There is no shame in a 
martyrdom by surrender. If you are able to lay down your 
weapon with as much conviction as you draw it forth, you will be 
wise, your battles will be victories for the spirits of your kin, and 
you shall lead your community to happiness and wisdom."