Warp World

by Kristene Perron

  She tried to focus on her dathe, and on Fismar’s words.

  I won’t let them win.

  She pulled out her book and smoothed a hand over the pages—bent and torn after Seg threw it across the room. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least read, that always helped to calm her.

  A footstep—she was sure she heard it that time.

  “Shan?” she asked.

  When no one answered, she grabbed her new knife. Heart thudding, she called out in the biggest voice she could summon.

  “Who’s there? Show yourself! I have a knife. I—”

  “I mean no harm,” came the quiet reply.

  A dark figure stepped out from the shadows. Ama tapped the amplight beside her and a faint glow appeared. The figure stepped closer and her breath stopped.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you, Captain.” Cerd spread his hands to show he was unarmed.

  Ama sat up, rigid, knife pointed at Cerd. “What were you doing sneaking around back there?”

  “Only watching—”

  “And waiting to slit my throat.” Ama stood and held the knife out further.

  “—to make sure you were okay. I saw that Pilot Welkin had left you alone. I was—” He raised his hands. “Please, you have nothing to fear. If you don’t trust me, surely you trust Brin’s judgment.”

  Ama inhaled sharply, then lowered the knife a fraction.

  “You don’t deserve to speak my cousin’s name,” she said.

  “I know that better than anyone.”

  Ama just stared for a moment, unsure what to do next. “I don’t want you spying on me.”

  “Then I won’t. Only …” Cerd lowered his head and clasped his hands. “I’ve been inside the walls, and I know how hard it can be once you’re outside of them.”

  Ama’s mouth went suddenly dry. She knew a little about Cerd’s capture and his imprisonment in M’eridia—a prison that made the Secat look tame, by all accounts. Of his escape, she had heard only rumors.

  At her silence, Cerd continued. “And now I’m locked in here. All of us men, locked in here. Training at all hours. Disciplined, sometimes. Even so, we’re freer here than—than other places. At times, when the Lieutenant gives us liberty, I’ll walk through the building. Just walk. Because it’s something I can do. That only means something to someone who’s lost that right once before.”

  Ama’s fingers squeezed around the hilt of the knife. She wasn’t sure what the feeling was that took hold, only that a voice was warning her not to trust anyone. “I don’t need your help, Cerd. Not you.”

  He frowned at the floor. “That’s your choice, Captain. But know that you’re not alone in this. Many of these men came from the Secat—you saw that place, how it was for them. They’re superstitious …” He gestured to her dathe. “But they understand.”

  Ama stared through him.

  He spread his hands once more. “Again, my apologies if I frightened you. I’ll go now.”

  “Can you sleep?” Her question stopped him in place. “I keep trying. I thought once I was out—” Her voice faded.

  “Sleep? Never deeply, no. Open spaces are the hardest. You have to watch the men around you—some were animals coming in, others turned that way once they were locked up, but you never lowered your guard,” Cerd said.

  “I used to swim. When I couldn’t sleep, when something was bothering me, I’d swim. Water always made me feel better. I can’t do that now.”

  Cerd bowed his head again and Ama sensed she had pulled up some unhappy memory. His hands were clasped together and she could see he was rubbing them with some force.

  “Perhaps, in time, sleep will come,” he said, then raised his head. “Perhaps never. But you have your brothers here and, on the names of my ancestors, we’d die to protect you.”

  Ama’s expression softened for a moment, her mouth moving uncertainly before hardening into a thin line. She raised her eyes and locked them onto Cerd’s. She didn’t speak but the look told of what lingered beneath the fear, the dark thing that was poisoning her, the cold anger that ran under everything now.

  He didn’t look away and, for a moment, she saw herself mirrored in his eyes.

  Loss—that’s what she saw.

  “How the karg do you get up here?” Shan slammed the hatch to the roof access door.

  Fismar glanced back at her from where he sat, feet dangling over the side of the warehouse roof. Underneath him, inside the warehouse, his troops snatched exhausted sleep after another rigorous day of training. He looked back out over Old Town as he fished a flask from his pocket, then tossed it over his shoulder. Shan’s hand snapped up to catch it before hard metal impacted her sternum.

  “One drink, Welkin,” he said. “And don’t let anybody know that I’ve got a stash up here. Last thing I need is these thirsty bastards getting into the liquor.”

  She sat next to him, hung her legs over the edge, popped the top off the flask, and drank. A half second later, she spewed the liquor out over the side of the building in a convulsive fit of coughing. Fismar grasped the fabric of her overalls to prevent her from pitching too far forward. “How can you drink that?” Shan asked.

  “It’s a little rough, but I’ve gotten a taste for it. So how did you get up here?”

  “Wedged a ladder between two crates, climbed up the pile, hand-over-handed my way across a pipe, then went through the access. Nobody can figure out how you do it without the ladder.”

  “Good.” He took one more drink, then stoppered the flask and slid it back into the cargo pocket of his pants. “Little mystery is good for the image, so they say.”

  “You sleep up here?” she asked.

  He shrugged and looked out at the guttering lights of the city, his eyes tracking a lone trans making its solitary journey across town under the copper glow of the shield.

  “I sleep where it’s convenient. So, you break the news to Kalder?”

  “Yeah, I gave her the word. I think she’s keen for it but—” Shan let out a long breath. “She’s sideways. One minute she seems normal, next minute she freezes, panics.”

  “Processing is supposed to make ’em sideways. And it’s worse for her because she’s had her world flipped one way, then flipped back again. She’s not even supposed to be here now. She’s supposed to be serving drinks and warming the Theorist’s bed after all that.”

  “Do you think—” Shan rubbed her palms on the ledge. “Do you think she deserved that?”

  “You think deserve means a damn thing? You know how many Outers were brought in for grafting either by me personally or under my commands? Nine thousand, three hundred and twelve. I don’t bet that most of them deserved it either. It’s just what’s done because that’s how it’s been done for a long damn time.”

  Shan swallowed. “Can I get another drink?”

  Fismar fished the flask out and passed it over. “Question is how she makes it back from this. I worked with her today. Saw her eyes when she finally snapped out of the fog. I’ve seen that look. Not just Outers and caj, either. Remember Ettallt’s Collectors?”

  Shan managed to finish a swallow without theatrics and passed the flask back. “Before my time.”

  “Start of mine,” he said. “Charter Commander Ettallt was a genius, one of the best since—Storm, one of the best since Bendure and Etiphar. But what he was good at was moving the pieces, not moving the money. He ended up way under, had to default. Defaulted big, too. Defaulted on his lender, defaulted on his suppliers, defaulted on his corp contract. Everything. The load of gear he walked with? It was almost like he knew it was coming and bought big at the end before he walked. If that was the plan, it wasn’t a bad one.”

  He lifted himself from the edge and walked along the perimeter of the building, his foot coming down so that the outside of his
boot lined up precisely with the lip of the ledge.

  “So then Ettallt had everyone in the World hunting him. It was like a miniature Etiphar run. MRRC contracted any of the top-level units that had assets to spare.”

  He grinned bleakly at the memory.

  “Including mine, of course. Back when I was reputable. Real mess from start to finish. Worst was a platoon that got lured into an ambush by Ettallt. Spent a month at the mercy of rogue caj in the wasteland. Got rescued, got their bodies fixed, no help for their minds, though. Word got around about the murder-suicides. Got so no one wanted to be around one of them, know what I mean?”

  Shan nodded.

  “Biola Anstel was one; I knew him from the academy. Got it back, in his way. Scary to spar with, though. You could tell he wanted to kill you, every time, and he was just holding back on it.”

  “There a point to this war story, Fis?” Shan asked.

  “Kalder’s got that look. She ain’t gonna be what she was—there’s no going back on that track. But she’s got the anger and she’s got the instinct. Saw it today. She’s gonna be okay. Sort of. Just hope the boss ain’t thinking that they’ll be like they were. With the way I think she’s going, he’ll be lucky if she doesn’t take the blade to him.”

  He stopped and stretched his arms. Shan leaned back and looked up at him with a quizzical expression. “Why are you here, Fis?”

  “Huh? We covered that back when we were drowning the dead with the boss.”

  “No, I mean, why didn’t you fight to keep your rank after the Sikkora raid? That mess wasn’t your fault and they had no right to black you. You could have launched a grievance against Parth, through the MRRC. You should be leading a charter command right now, and you know it.”

  “Welkin, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s People and then there’s People. We get fed the line about superiority from the second we come into the World—best drug out there, keeps everyone nice and content. The truth?” He let out a single laugh. “My parents gave me up to the system for the honor of creching their offspring. And maybe enough scrip to move out of the undercity or something, who knows? I grew up running with the gangs on Con-4, sent out to do all the jobs too dangerous for People but too difficult to monitor caj. Wake up, skyrider, the World’s full of caj who think they’re People just because they don’t have a hunk of metal stuck in their neck. Gets worse every year.”

  He stretched again and sighed, face turned toward Cathind.

  “I could have fought, sure. And Parth would have shown up with a squad of facilitators and I’d have ended up right where I am, anyway. Maybe worse. Poke the wrong People on this World and they’ll make it their mission to break you.”

  “So, that offer from Pegno you told me about, you never had any intention of taking it, did you?”

  “That’s enough confession for one night. Get back down and in your bunk, Welkin. Don’t tell anybody, but I’m rousting all ground forces in nineteen minutes.”

  “You’ll be lucky if one of your squad leaders doesn’t end up grenading you.”

  “They’re supposed to feel that way. You know that,” he said. “Means I’m doing my job.”

  The communal hangar sloped into the ground in front of Shan and Ama, the tarmac rolling away at a gentle curve into the stony soil. Behind them the airstrip buzzed with life as various models of riders taxied, lifted, or landed as directed by the automated flight control system.

  “At least the boss got one that’s being kept indoors,” Shan grumbled as they walked down into the hangar. A cacophony of sound greeted them—the hammering and buzzing of saws, drills, torches, and myriad other instruments. Men and women of the People, clad in dirty huchack-fiber overalls, moved between the rows of craft parked in the hangar in all states of disrepair and disassembly. Most wore goggles or glasses to protect their eyes, and hearing protectors adorned most heads. Flitting among the People, utility caj ferried parts and tools with silent efficiency. Other caj took turns lifting heavier parts, bracing them into place in precarious and strenuous positions. Some simply waited by the side of those placed in their charge, awaiting orders. Their bodies were marked with scars and poorly-healed injuries, more than one were missing fingers, while a few were even more disfigured from old wounds.

  Shan followed a blue-striped aisle through the hangar. “Stay on the path,” she told Ama. “Step off and you’re liable to get run over.”

  Though Fismar’s warning loomed, Shan no longer worried that Ama would do anything to attract unwanted attention. The gills had been strategically covered with an improvised neck wrap, and whatever training she had received in processing had stuck. On their trip to the Rider Repair Commons, Ama had played the part of caj with eerie perfection.

  As they neared the back of the hangar, Shan spotted the rider and her shoulders drooped. “What a karging piece of junk. We’ll be lucky to get this thing flying at all, never mind the schedule.”

  She stepped up for a closer look. Like most military transport riders, it was long and cylindrical with stubby wings for mounting weapons. The pair of cannons in the chin-mounted turret were visibly misaligned, and most of the access ports for the rider’s machinery were open. Shan tugged on one such port in the front and it came free in her hand, strands of anchoring wire loose and dangling, as if she had just disemboweled the machine.

  “This rider needs to be stripped for parts.” She tossed the panel to the ground. “He has got to be insane.”

  Ama kept two dutiful paces behind as Shan inspected the rider. Even though she wore a flight suit, her collar was clearly visible. To everyone here, Ama was caj and could be treated as such.

  Shan pulled the digipad from her pocket and reviewed it, muttering to herself as she went. She reached up and twisted one of the lift nozzles, then made an entry.

  “Just the straight workover on the mechanisms is going to take a week. Before we even get into the systems. They said it was flyable, but I’d be scared to even hover it over the tarmac right now.”

  “She’ll work,” Ama said quietly. They were the first words she had spoken aloud since leaving the warehouse that morning.

  “Who’ll work?” Shan asked. She turned back to Ama, but the girl had snapped her mouth closed again and lowered her eyes, aware of her break in protocol. “It’s okay, you can talk. No one can hear us way over here. This is our place, safe, like the warehouse. Understood?”

  Ama glanced around before she spoke. “Understood.”

  “So, who’ll work for us?” Shan asked.

  “The rider.” Ama nodded to the craft and raised her eyes to Shan’s. “She’s a good craft, underneath, and she’ll be good to us—I can feel it. It doesn’t matter how she looks, it matters what’s inside of her. You have to feel that, you have to treat her by what she is and not what she looks like. Then she’ll do for you. She’ll work.”

  “Wait, are you talking about the rider?” Shan asked. “She? Like it’s alive or something?” She leaned forward to look closely into Ama’s eyes. “Is everything okay in there?”

  “You don’t believe your craft has a soul?”

  “Soul? Like some sort of immortal thing that goes somewhere when it crashes?” Shan threw her hands up. “That’s crazy and we don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t know what you did back home —sacrifice animals or whatever—but we don’t do that stuff on the World.”

  “Have you ever had a moment up there …” Her eyes flicked skyward. “A moment when it felt like you were one with your rider? As if you only had to think of what you wanted and the craft would respond?”

  “Yeah, but that’s different. It’s when you get that feel for your controls, not because it’s alive or anything.”

  “Not alive,” Ama said, placing a hand on the rider’s underside, “but connected. I bet there are lots of pilots who know more than you about the con
trols but don’t fly half as good as you do. Because there’s more to it than knowing what buttons to push.”

  “That’s—” Shan shook her head. “Thanks. Or whatever. We’ve got to get to work.” She stepped to the other side of the rider.

  “Shan.”

  “Yeah?” She waited for Ama to appear at her side. When she didn’t, she walked back to find her still with one hand against the machine. “What?”

  “I want to fly.” Ama’s voice was firm but a person would have to have been blind not to see the effort those four words had cost.

  “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to ride along. We’ll have lots of tests to run and—”

  “No. I want to learn how to fly. Like you.”

  The No was on her lips until she looked at Ama’s face. A long stream of air escaped from Shan’s mouth.

  Damn it.

  “This could get us both in a lot of trouble,” Shan said. “Again.”

  Ama’s face was set.

  “Okay, listen, I’ll teach you some basics. Then, if you learn quick enough, maybe you can ride as my copie. Maybe. But not a word, to anyone, got it?” Shan said. “And if Fis or the boss finds out and brings down some kind of shit storm, it’s on your head.”

  “Got it.” Ama’s expression was serious but Shan could see the smile fighting to break through.

  “But first we have to fix this collection of rusty bolts. I’ll show you everything as we go through it. The better you understand how the parts work, the better you’ll know how it all works when we get up there. So pay attention and if you have a question, karging ask it, no matter how dumb you think it is.”

  “Yes, mer.” Ama’s smile cracked through, victorious.

  I’m as crazy as Eraranat.

  “Alright.” Shan tugged another panel loose from the rider, spilling wires and parts to the ground. “Lesson one: clean up.”

  Ama wiped her hands on one of the many rags she and Shan kept close by as they worked, then armed sweat from her brow. She was exhausted but invigorated. For the past four days, they had worked nearly around the clock, sleeping only when their eyes could no longer focus—often dropping off right on the spot where they were working.