Insignia

by S. J. Kincaid

  “There aren’t any missiles on that ship. Remember?”

  “I’m not using missiles. I’m ramming it. Pow. Big explosion, right at the base. If it doesn’t wipe out everyone in the building, it’ll at least take out a good chunk of them.”

  Tom grew cold. That plan could work. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Actually, Tom, I will.” Nigel knelt down carefully out of arm’s reach, smiling tauntingly into his face. “Remember how Blackburn planted that memory of the scorpion in your head? I thought it might be useful, so I figured out how to implant memories, too. As soon as the Spire’s in flames, I’m planting a new memory in both our heads. You’ll remember destroying the Spire for the census device, and I’ll remember you doing it, too, despite my heroic attempt to stop you. The public will blame Elliot, the military will blame you, and I’ll be the only hero here . . . And as one of the only surviving Combatants, I’ll have to be CamCo. I’ll even have a clean conscience about it—isn’t that the greatest?”

  Tom’s mind was blown. Nigel was some kind of diabolical mastermind—and he’d been turned down for CamCo?

  “Yeah, that’s right, Raines,” he sneered. “I am much, much smarter than you.”

  “Nigel, come on, wait!”

  With a last, taunting smirk, Nigel hooked himself in.

  Tom watched him fade into the program, raging at his useless legs, the arms that refused to let him heave himself up. He pounded his fist on the floor, frustrated. He craned his head up as far as he could to see Nigel’s slack face, and the screen looming over the Combatants. Then his gaze riveted to Elliot. Tom saw the moment Elliot lost control of the fighting—because he gave what looked to be a relieved laugh, and a certain happiness washed over his features. He had no idea that this wasn’t his proxy come to his rescue but rather the doom of them all.

  Tom saw Nigel’s ship spinning around in the upper atmosphere, whirling away from Medusa altogether. An ignorant observer might’ve thought it was some clever tactical ploy or even showmanship, the way he aimed it right into the Earth’s atmosphere, the fire blaring around the heat shields. Tom heard a few appreciative murmurs from the spectators as Nigel streaked down toward the land mass below.

  Then Tom realized with sudden, dizzying shock that Nigel was through the upper atmosphere, that his ship was hurtling toward the ground at breakneck speed, setting coordinates for Virginia. The lights of Washington, DC, veered into sight as he dipped lower, and then beyond that to Arlington. The Spire rose over the land.

  Nigel was really going to do it. No one knew that ship was an enemy. No one knew they had to stop it. Nigel was going to take out the Spire and destroy everything Tom had.

  Tom did the only thing he could, unleashed the single weapon he had.

  He gazed straight at Nigel, gritted his teeth, and thought out the phrase Tiny spicy Vikram . . . TINY SPICY VIKRAM!

  And then it happened. The adware virus file unloaded from his processor like a hydrogen bomb rolling its way out of a bomb bay. A sense of lightness snapped through Tom’s brain, the virus deleting itself from his processor as the stream of code danced across his vision, deserting him, slamming Nigel, triggering.

  He sprang out of his seat like he’d been slapped by some giant, invisible hand.

  “‘Your computer is infected,’” Nigel read, seeing something in his vision center. “‘Click here to download protection for your PC.’ . . . I’m not a PC! I don’t need a . . .” His voice changed again, something else scrolling before his wide blue eyes. “‘Free money. Click here for details.’” He fumblingly tore out his neural wire, but it didn’t stop the barrage of ads. “‘Learn the ultimate belly fat-busting secret.’ . . . What is this, Raines?”

  “Sounds like it’s the ultimate belly fat-busting secret.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” Nigel’s face grew cloudy again as he seemed to see something else, his voice growing deeper and thicker. “‘Become a mystery shopper.’ . . . ‘Get paid for your opinions.’ . . . ‘Find out who’s searching for you.’ . . . ‘Congratulations, you’ve won a free’ . . . ‘Swat the fly and win a hundred’ . . . ‘Make money from home.’ . . .”

  His voice grew slower and slower, like the wheels of a train chugging to a stop, and his slim fingers threaded through his black hair and tugged on it, as though he hoped gripping his head would stop the ads Wyatt’s virus was unpacking in his brain. The screen overhead showed Nigel’s ship whirling out of control, hurtling toward the Spire.

  “Whaaat isss thiiiiis . . .” Nigel stepped toward Tom as if wading through some thick swamp. Slowly, sluggishly, he keeled toward him, reached out to grab him. “Raaaines . . .”

  He staggered right into arm’s reach. Tom punched him.

  Nigel reeled back, his head crashing against the corner of his chair. He crumpled to the ground and stayed there.

  Tom couldn’t drag himself over to Nigel with the immobility program stopping his arms from bearing his own weight. So he grabbed Nigel’s skinny leg, dragged him over, tore the neural wire out of his slack grip, and then shoved it into his own brain stem.

  The program enveloped him. Tom’s brain was sucked straight into the navigation system of Nigel’s ship, a jarring shift of consciousness. His senses zinged with the machine’s sensors, the logical parameters of the vessel’s computer warring with Tom’s human brain. He forced himself farther, the machine humming around him, plunging deeper into the command system. He became enveloped by every connection, every stream of code, even as the view on the Rotunda’s screen jolted toward the target. He flashed between the ship and his organic body, where his heart was pounding with terror. He saw—for the briefest instant through his eyes—the screen, with the uneasy stirring in the Rotunda and Elliot’s shocked expression as everyone gazed at the screen where Tom’s ship was on a collision course with the Pentagonal Spire.

  And then Tom veered, pulling out of the death plunge, soaring back up through the silken clouds into the upper atmosphere again. The blue sky drained into stark darkness around him. Tingles of excitement climbed up his spine as the Earth curved beneath him and the stars resolved in vibrant life about his vessel.

  Medusa’s ship had clamped upon the satellite they were competing to seize. Tom gazed at her vessel—a sharp, scythelike thing—through the thermal sensors of his own, and he was glad the virus, the easy cheat, was gone. This was how he wanted to face her. His kind-of girlfriend, his idol, his archenemy. Warrior to warrior.

  This was going to be their first real battle.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Chapter Thirty

  TOM FOUND INTERFACING with a machine in space strangely similar to interfacing with the body of an animal in Applied Sims. The commands and controls registered themselves in his thoughts as soon as he hooked in. He knew how to crank his engine to full the same way he knew how to lift his leg and step forward—it came so readily. Another flexure of his thoughts, and he sent his vessel charging straight at the satellite, determined to deploy his own clamps and grab it. He’d either tear it from Medusa’s grip—unlikely—or destroy it. If she took off with the prize, it was over. If he destroyed it, at least they both lost.

  She veered aside just in time to avoid a collision. When she made for Earth, though, he veered in to block her way and made another grab at the satellite.

  She used net-send, targeting his ship with her message—since she couldn’t know what IP address she was dealing with. Are you turning this into a zero-sum game now?

  Tom messaged back, What’s a zero-sum game?

  Are you an idiot?

  Sure I am. Deranged, too.

  A pause. Then, You. I should’ve known.

  Should you have?

  No one else would’ve risked destroying that satellite. Medusa dipped a wing at him. Tom felt sure she was amused, even as she dodged his next attempt t
o barrel in and destroy the satellite. No one but you. Oh, and me.

  And then with one sharp twist of her ship, she flung the satellite at him. He dodged just in time to avoid the sure defeat of losing both his ship and the prize. But Medusa was heading toward him, obviously having decided upon a new strategy: destroy his ship and then take off with the satellite. Tom frantically reoriented himself as Medusa’s vessel veered in behind him and then hung back against the black tapestry of stars like a calculating predator.

  So who were the idiots flying before you? she messaged.

  Tom changed his strategy, too. If she’d let go of it, maybe he could try just bolting in quickly, grabbing it, and hoping to beat her down to Earth. He used the American satellite grid, trying to find the target satellite’s new position. It’s a long story.

  Brace yourself for a tragic ending.

  Just as Tom found his position, space junk appeared on his thermal sensors—Medusa had twisted around and used the wake of her engine to hurl a mass of steel toward him. Tom’s heart jerked, but he didn’t dodge in time. The steel rocked the vessel he was steering, knocking him off course, then forcing Tom to bank downward to avoid her next improvised weapon of space debris. Medusa passed Tom’s ship, then slowed abruptly, trying to catch him in the fiery plume of her engine. Tom banked downward, letting her shoot far past him.

  He tried to twist and evade her sensors, but she whipped around and cut back into his path. He looked at the data coming from the Indo-American satellite grid again, searching for space junk he could use as a weapon. He located the remains of an orbiting space telescope he could use to damage her. But when he tried to force her toward it using the wake of his own engine, she neatly evaded the trap by dropping toward the upper atmosphere, using gravity to propel her out of harm’s way, and Tom almost careened into it himself.

  He was aware of his heart slamming in his body, shocked by the near miss. The Russo-Chinese satellite grid must’ve been more comprehensive than the Indo-American grid. Medusa seemed to know every floating piece of debris in the area, where to find it, where to steer him, where not to get maneuvered herself.

  He felt his distant body, his teeth grinding in frustration, because he would kill right now for access to the Russo-Chinese satellites so he could see what she was seeing.

  And it occurred to him that he could have it.

  Maybe one cheat wasn’t so bad.

  Tom headed farther from the old satellite they were chasing, then he took a chance. Wyatt’s virus was gone, but he concentrated on his neural processor, buzzing in his head, only half aware of how to do this. He sensed his processor’s connection to the internet, and then let his brain do the work for him. Those bolts of electricity joined with the signals of his brain, the signals of his neural processor. He snapped from his own flesh. Both the vessel he controlled and the body he owned grew distant and cold as he groped frantically through the internet toward that Russo-Chinese satellite subsystem he knew had to exist.

  His consciousness jolted into a satellite—an old, clunky one with primitive thermal sensors. He couldn’t see Medusa, couldn’t orient himself, so he jumped to the next one.

  Then it happened.

  His brain melded to the satellite, or tried to—and he encountered another mind reaching for the same one. Another consciousness, another set of neural impulses free-floating in space, maneuvering outside the scope of a physical body.

  Tom snapped back with shock into his vessel, and he stared with his vessel’s sensors toward Medusa’s vessel in space, shaken to the core of his being. He had a sense, an unsettling sense, that she was doing the exact same thing.

  Medusa messaged him. You’re like me.

  Tom couldn’t think for a full second, so stunned it was like his brain and his neural processor had gone totally silent. Then, We’re the same, he messaged her.

  And it all made sense.

  Medusa was extraordinary, because she was extraordinary. She accessed satellites. She could delve into the Indo-American systems just like the Russo-Chinese systems. She could enter machines the way he could. She could see ahead because she could see ahead where other Combatants could not. She could even interface with the ships around hers, the ones connected to the internet but not connected to her brain, because she was just like Tom. She had the same ability he did.

  As though the realization galvanized her, Medusa bombarded him with an artillery of space debris, ignoring the satellite altogether—as though she’d realized Tom was more of a threat than she’d ever supposed. Tom evaded the trash—old satellites, chunks of rock—much more easily now, attuned to the same satellite system she was, using the same advantage she was using, the Russo-Chinese and Indo-American satellites relaying information straight into his neural processor.

  Medusa suddenly decelerated, forcing him downward toward a hunk of granite orbiting the Earth. Tom steered so quickly to evade it, he sent his vessel hurtling in an uncontrollable circle. But his sensors picked up something else, then—the satellite. The very one they were out to collect, jolting straight into his electromagnetic sensor sight. He deployed his clamps and seized it as he rocketed past, dragging it down with him toward the vast blue sphere of the Earth.

  Medusa charged after him as he descended into the atmosphere of the planet, heat shields lighting up on all sides of his vessel, around the satellite. Tom sped up his descent as much as he dared, knowing that if he went too fast, he’d burn up the satellite and his ship with it.

  Medusa grew dangerous now, truly dangerous. Out for blood the same way Tom had been when she held the satellite. She hurtled toward him, and he knew now this would be a fight to avoid mutual destruction. She shot straight toward him, threatening him with a collision. Tom swung downward to avoid it, found himself accelerating too quickly, the heat sensors lighting up madly in his vessel. He decelerated but still plunged off course, trapped by gravity, well away from Washington, DC—torn down toward a chaotic mass of storm clouds.

  Medusa retreated just as Tom’s vessel plunged into the eye of the storm. Black clouds enveloped him, lightning crashing around him. Turbulence pounded his vessel on all sides. He adjusted course, dodging the thunderheads, the flashing of lightning that would end this in an instant, and then tried to tap back into the Russo-Chinese satellite system to orient himself—

  And found Medusa’s consciousness waiting there for his, inhabiting the satellites. She struck at him like lightning, ripping him out of the satellite systems and into the vast miasma of the internet. Chaos rocketed Tom as his brain zinged through the tangle of connections among billions of machines, Medusa dragging him down some unknown pathway.

  New connections flashed through him. Tom jerked suddenly into the neural processor of Elliot Ramirez.

  Tom could see the Rotunda through Elliot’s eyes, too, and feel his shock when Medusa planted a command into his brain from the inside. Elliot stopped pretending to control the ships and his body began twirling and dipping like he was ice-skating in the middle of the Rotunda. Across from him, Svetlana Moriakova gaped at his pirouettes, his leaps, then dissolved into laughter.

  So Tom focused on Svetlana with Elliot’s eyes, her IP address scrolling across Elliot’s vision center. That sent him lurching into her processor, and he ordered her to open her lips to scream, “I’ll eat your souls! And bathe in your blood!” He felt her cheeks heating up and saw through her eyes the spectators glancing at one another, puzzled by the strange behavior of the two young people.

  And then with a thought of his vessel, Tom snapped back into it. One last violent jolt, and his ship freed itself from the grip of the storm. He felt Medusa’s consciousness following him, grappling for control of his ship. He felt her mind trying to access the clamps, trying to get him to release the satellite—to drop it into the ocean, destroy it, before he could win.

  A thought crawled into Tom’s brain. If Medusa could access Elliot’s neural processor, and he could access Svetlana’s—why couldn’t he access hers? He aba
ndoned the fight for the clamps and made for her ship. Just as he interfaced with it, Medusa moved her consciousness to defend it.

  But Tom didn’t access her ship. It was a feint.

  He delved instead into the connection between her ship and some neural processor somewhere, Medusa’s processor transmitting from somewhere on Earth. He pursued it and found himself interfacing with a network based in Washington, DC, even. His consciousness interfaced with the network, brushing past the security measures of the Chinese embassy, and there he found himself in the surveillance subsystem, dancing between various rooms inside the embassy. Then he found a private one, with a girl hooked in with a neural wire into an interface port. He gazed through the security cameras, his human brain making sense of what the cameras were seeing.

  At first glance, the girl in military fatigues was almost what he imagined—thick black hair in a braid, full lips, a small, delicate face. And then the camera shifted to take in the rest of her face and he finally knew why her call sign was Medusa.

  A mythical female monster so hideous to behold men died if they looked on her face . . .

  The rest of her face was mottled like the cratered surface of the moon, bulging up around one of the dark eyes. Fleshy patches covered one side of her skull where the black hair had been seared off, the scalp scarred over. She must’ve been in some terrible accident. Her lips and nose twisted down as though they’d melted into the rest of her face. Tom forgot all about the fight in one mind-numbing instant as he gazed upon the disfigured girl he’d grown so obsessed with.

  Then it came to him.

  He knew how to win.

  Tom almost couldn’t do it. Almost. Because he was vicious, yes. But this was only a weapon because she liked him, and because she knew he liked her. He knew this was crossing some line he could never step back from again.

  Another part of Tom’s brain, connected to his ship, knew it was hurtling toward DC. He knew even now he was losing control of it as Medusa fought to wrest it from him. He knew they were plummeting toward the ground, and either he would win this or she would—and he couldn’t lose. He’d be done for. Blackburn would destroy him.