Free Virtues of War by Bennett R. Coles

looking at a particularly clever simulation.
    It was hard to watch without remembering the violence that had caused it. This kid had been forced to bear the psychological scars of war for the rest of his life. Apparently he would bear the physical scars as well.
    The nightmare started to seep into her conscious mind again, and she angrily fought it down. Maybe hanging out with her wartime colleagues wasn’t the best thing for her right now. She clasped him in a quick hug.
    “Listen, I gotta go,” she said abruptly. “Take care of yourself, Subbie.” Barely feeling his hands brush against her, she turned and fled. His face, the memories, the dreams.
    She suddenly hated her new dress and comfy shoes. She hated the smell of product in her hair. She hated her entire existence. As soon as she got back to her room she was canceling the rest of her leave and heading back to that administrative backwater to which she’d been posted.

6
    Understanding five-dimensional spacetime wasn’t easy. Sublieutenant Jack Mallory knew this well enough. He also knew that a single combat tour and a bachelor’s degree in Physics & Philosophy didn’t make him an expert. Nevertheless, he wasn’t used to feeling quite this useless.
    He scanned the flight controls of his Hawk, glanced at the inactive monitors for his extra-dimensional sensors and, with a sigh, stared out again through the cockpit polyglass at the starry abyss. He’d always imagined that he’d learn to recognize the different colonies by their starscapes, but after training in Terra, deployments to Sirius and Centauria, and now back on home turf, he’d come to the sad conclusion that stars looked the same no matter where you went. Even this far south of the Solar System’s ecliptic, billions of kilometers from the usual shipping lanes, he might as well have been sitting on a rooftop on Earth.
    Behind him, in the main cabin of the Hawk, the scientists were starting to raise their voices at each other. Jack guessed the package still wasn’t ready for deployment. They’d launched from the
Neil Armstrong
more than three hours ago, made a quick sprint to clear from the ship’s gravimetric signature, and then set up to launch a series of probes. But apparently there was still disagreement over the settings for the receivers. Still, after three hours.
    There wasn’t even anything for him to keep busy with as the pilot. The engines were idling, the ship drifting on inertia so as not to hinder the experiment with any accelerations. His usual flight sensors were set to their lowest power setting, capable of little more than telling him when the Hawk was about to crash into something. The hunt sensors, his primary warfare suite, were completely powered down.
    The day’s experiment was designed to test some ivory tower hypothesis about massive interactions in the Bulk—that hidden, fourth spatial dimension invisible to the regular human experience—and the scientists didn’t want any military sensors “mucking things up.” Jack had learned to trust his hunt controls with his life, and he doubted anything the scientists had was any better.
    At least they were finally doing an experiment that actually involved the Bulk. It had been pretty exciting to learn that he’d been assigned to a Research ship charged with uncovering the underlying warped-geometric laws that had been revealed by his little idea during the breakout from Centauria. He’d expected to join a team of extra-dimensional specialists keen on hearing about his real-world experience, but so far, after three weeks on board, all he’d seen was a bunch of people who argued a lot and seemed to spend most of their time working on research for improving power generation.
    Listening to their discussion now, he wondered whether he should dust off one of his first year Physics & Philosophy texts, and start providing some education.
    The waiting was getting painful, and it suddenly occurred to him how even he, a humble