by Joel Dane
PRAISE FOR CRY PILOT
“I picked it up, I started reading. I kept reading. This is that kind of book, intense, involving, with intriguing world development. Recommended. Joel Dane is a writer to watch.”
—C. J. Cherryh, author of the Foreigner series
“Joel Dane’s Cry Pilot is a hyperkinetic and unflinching battle narrative that never loses sight of the truth of being a soldier: The squad comes before all else. Told with momentum and immediacy, Cry Pilot is authentic, exciting, and excellent.”
—Marko Kloos, author of Terms of Enlistment
“In Cry Pilot, Joel Dane has imagined a fascinating high-tech future Earth where ecological collapse and runaway evolution have conspired to create enemies no army has ever encountered before. Told through the eyes of a young soldier seeking to escape a grim past, the action-packed plot holds tight to a human dimension.”
—Linda Nagata, author of the Red Trilogy
“Awesome read! The language takes you into the world of the story. The first-person voice invites you to internalize the world of the character, a time and place strangely prescient. Joel Dane has created a uniquely familiar world reminiscent of the Mesozoic Era of large predators, only in the future. I look forward to seeing what he writes next.”
—Nico Lathouris, screenwriter, Mad Max: Fury Road
ACE
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright © 2019 by Joel Dane
Excerpt from Burn Cycle copyright © 2019 by Joel Dane
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dane, Joel, author.
Title: Cry pilot / Joel Dane.
Description: First edition. | New York : Ace, 2019
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037187 | ISBN 9781984802521 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781984802538 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction. | War stories.
Classification: LCC PS3604.A487 C79 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037187
First Edition: August 2019
Cover art by Matt Griffin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Praise for Cry Pilot
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Burn Cycle
About the Author
My story starts with an ambush.
A grubby street kid spends months getting close to a Garda squad. He tags along after them, begging for food. He shows them into forgotten courtyards and warns them about local insurgents. In return, the squad medic patches him up after a beating and the sergeant tries to enroll him in a corporate school, with three meals a day and a roof over his head.
The boy laughs with them, he cries with them, he cares for them—and then he betrays them.
On the orders of the beloved, merciless leader of the patriot resistance, he leads them into a death trap.
The patriot leader is his grandmother. My grandmother. That boy was me; those sins are mine.
Ten years later, I know there are wrongs you can’t right; there are debts you can’t pay. You can’t stop trying, though. Debts don’t disappear because there’s nobody left to collect them. They stay on the books, accumulating interest.
CHAPTER 1
When the recruiter calls, I’m delivering a package to a partyclub on the 117th floor. Urgent music pounds and holographic projections strafe the dancers. I slide through the crowd, complete the delivery—and my cuff chimes.
“This is Kaytu,” I say.
“Welcome, Maseo Kaytu,” an artificial voice says. “Your request for a recruitment interview has been”—there’s a pause during which my heart stops—“granted.”
“Thank you,” I tell the recorded message. “Thank you, I’ll—”
The connection crashes. It doesn’t matter, though: the appointment information is already on my cuff. They expect me in thirty-five minutes. That’s the first test. If you’re not willing to drop everything, the corporate military doesn’t want you.
As I slip toward the exit, my pulse thumps along with the music. A low note creeps up my spine, and then I’m in the bustling, bright corridor. Boutiques and cafés march toward the atrium with elevators servicing the highest floors of the tower. Chattering families browse the shops and rowdy kids play wall-hockey.
Late afternoon in a Freehold tower.
I grab redbean rolls at a warung and eat in the elevator. A projection on the wall shows the streets outside the tower: maintenance bots spark, adboards flicker, and mobile homes cling to the undersides of a tangle
of highways. A crowd of kids chases a sweets caravan along a curving track, and a flock of new-generation sparrows dives through freight cables.
That’s all behind me now.
The corporate military is in front of me, the recruiter and the future.
On the 186th floor, pillars of skarab drones palpate the air. I cross the foyer toward them and after a fraught pause they allow me into corpo territory, where the air is fresh and the music is stale. Like embassies in the days of nation-states, different rules apply on the corporate-owned floors of Freehold towers. Different laws.
That’s why I’m here.
A massive space opens between the 186th and the 190th floors of the tower. Semitranslucent bubbles slide across rails and ramps and hang from cables like gondolas. Most carry passengers, barely visible in the luxurious interiors. The bubbles split in two when their routes diverge or merge into larger bubbles to form gathering spaces or conference rooms. Light glimmers on the sheen of rounded surfaces, colorful and delicate.
I enjoy the sight until my cuff hurries me along.
With three minutes to spare, I slip inside an empty office with a scented filtration fan. There’s no furniture except for a round table with a lily on it. Maybe a lily. Maybe a rose or a decorative fungus. Heirloom plants aren’t my strength.
I cuff messages to my boss and neighbors, saying good-bye. I send a longer one to Ionesca, my oldest friend, my first love. I tell her that my apartment is hers now; she’s welcome to take whatever she wants and sell the rest.
One way or another, I’m not coming back.
My heart thumps in my chest. I massage my middle finger, feeling the lump of the bonespur implant. I inhale slowly but I don’t flow myself calm. This isn’t a moment for meditative detachment. This is a moment for coiled readiness.
The door bulges and a gawky young man trots into the room. His yellow-black hair is woven through with smartwire, which sways when he walks, giving the impression of a breeze.
“Welcome to Shiyogrid!” he says. “I’ll be your recruiter today.”
“Nice to meet you, san.”
“My pleasure.” Two sitting bubbles take shape from the wall, and the recruiter lounges on one and gestures invitingly to the other. “Would you please confirm your name?”
“Maseo Kaytu,” I say, standing at ease instead of taking a seat.
The lens in his right eye gleams with data. “You were assigned the surname identifier ‘K2SE’ in a refugee camp after the fall of Vila Vela?”
“Yes, san,” I say.
“And when you reached your majority, you took ‘Kaytu’ instead of your original name, your family name?”
“Yes, san,” I say.
“May I ask why?”
“I wanted to leave the war behind, to start fresh. To start again.”
“Mm. I suppose Vila Vela is not anything you’d want to hold on to.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t mean Vila Vela isn’t still holding on to me. I bow my head and say, “No, san.”
“You spent a few years in a refugee camp,” he says.
“Yes, san.”
“Since that time, you’ve been making deliveries in the Coastal Vegas Freehold, doing odd jobs for which you are painfully overqualified.”
“Yes, san.”
He flashes me an apologetic smile. “I’m starting to worry about your linguistic prowess.”
“I’m fluent in mainland English,” I tell him. “I speak Creole and Bahasa, muddle through with Yoruba and Franco-Vietnamese.”
“No Portuguese?”
“A little.”
“Refugee children.” He touches his flowing hair. “You often come with a flair for languages.”
“Yes, san.”
“I’ve recruited a handful of refugees for various positions over the years.” His lens gleams again. “Never into the military.”
I expected this but still feel a prickle of frost on my neck. “No, san.”
“The military does not recruit from a warzone, Mar Kaytu. Surely you know this.”
“Yes, san.”
“Then what are we doing here?” He cuts off my answer with a gesture. “Your equivalency scores are high despite your . . . You live in one of the lower levels?”
Freehold towers average about two hundred stories, with hundreds of suites and studios on every floor. A quarter million people live in the more densely packed towers, which rise in thick clusters around avenues of bridges and walkways and tram tracks. The top dozen floors are called the penthouse, the middle is the belt, and the bottom floors are the gutter, a roiling mass of music and culture, art and anarchy.
“Yes, san,” I say. “I’m from the gutter. Making deliveries gives me time to train for the military. To prepare for this interview.”
“You were raised in a warzone, and you wish to return?”
“I want to serve.”
“Why?”
“Because I—” I take a breath and tell a half-truth. “I want to be part of something bigger than myself.”
“You want to kill remorts,” he says, with a hint of amusement.
“They need killing,” I tell him.
Remorts are the reactivated—the reborn—bioweapons of a previous age. And yeah, the corporate forces need to put them down. So I cuff the recruiter my enlistment information: medical records, fitness qualifications, military intake test scores.
Years ago I’d taken a wrong turn onto a one-way street and now this—joining the Shiyogrid Armed Forces—is my only exit. I need to get out of the gutter and into the military before there’s nothing left to save. I’d started training. I’d read every boot camp manual and watched every embed. I’d spent every spare scrip on a low-jacked combat sim that left me with a bloody nose and a migraine. I climbed the stairways of my tower for six hours a day, carrying packages in both directions. I’d even bought an antique Ambo swing-barreled assault rifle. Despite the introduction of cutting-edge Boaz rifles, Ambos remain the baseline military firearm, so I learned that weapon inside and out.
“Mm.” The recruiter’s lens shines with characters. “This is impressive.”
My pulse pounds in my chest. I stay perfectly still, like I don’t want to break the spell.
“While the military rarely enlists from Freeholds instead of corporate enclaves,” he continues, “we make exceptions for people with exactly these qualifications.”
“Good.”
“However, you’re not simply from a Freehold. There’s no getting around your past. A warzone and a refugee camp? No. Corporate policy is clear. I’m sorry, Mar Kaytu. There’s no way you’ll ever join the military.”
I swallow. “There’s one way, san.”
“Volunteer for the CAV corps?” His yellow-black hair recoils in surprise. “Well, yes, but nobody survives the CAVs.”
“Six percent survive,” I tell him. “Then they’re inducted into the service.”
“They’re given the choice.” The recruiter looks at me with sympathy—or maybe pity. “That’s a one-in-twenty chance of survival, Mar Kaytu.”
“Unless you let me enlist.”
“I can’t, I’m sorry. There’s no reason to move forward with your interview.”
My throat tightens. “Please. I’m begging you.”
“I can’t,” he repeats.
“I know what I look like, I know what my file looks like. But I’m not my file. Take a chance on me. That’s all I need. One chance.”
He stands to leave. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” I tell him, and break his nose with the heel of my hand.
Blood sprays. He cries out and raises his arms. I’m punching him again when a bubble explodes two inches from my face and hurls me into darkness.
CHAPTER 2
I’m a criminal now. Well, I’m a criminal again,
for the first time since Vila Vela.
Nothing is illegal in a Freehold, but there are laws on corporate property. And there are punishments for breaking them.
If you’re convicted of a crime in a corporate enclave—or on a corporate floor, for that matter—they don’t imprison you with other criminals to hone your craft. They sure as gehenna don’t pay for your room and board.
No, corporate prisons don’t limit your environment. They limit your awareness of your environment.
They lock you in blinders. You serve a sentence in Perceptual Alteration technology, which edits your reality by removing trigger stimuli, erasing entire classes of people, objects, and interactions. Lenses and earbugs delete images and sounds from your experience in real time. Certain objects and experiences disappear from your world: weapons, substances, technologies. Entire human demographics. Maybe you’ll never see a beautiful face again. Maybe you’ll never see your own face.
And every time you step over the line, the walls close in even more.
For the simple assault I committed, the mediators encourage me to accept a brief sentence in blinders. I refuse, because there’s another choice if you’re convicted of a crime.
You can volunteer for the CAVs.
Initially conceived of as uncrewed drones, Combatant Activated Vehicles were intended to serve as the first wave of assaults. To trigger mines, to soak smart-swarm damage. To swallow missile barrages like the sinkholes that swallowed Bavaria.
When the AIs developed CAVs, they enabled remote controls as requested. Yet they also required a human occupant for operation. Nobody understands why, not exactly.
The most common theory is that CAVs piggyback on the processing capacity of the human brain. Another is that the AIs wanted to force humans to grapple with the true cost of war. My favorite theory, though, is that AIs are fundamentally unknowable; we can’t even understand the motivations of mushrooms, and we share two thirds of our DNA with them. The AIs don’t have DNA—as far as I know—so we might as well try to plumb the inner life of a musical note.
All we know for certain is that CAVs don’t function without passengers.
CAVs can absorb a tremendous amount of punishment and still recover. The passengers, though? Well, I heard an old-time phrase that describes what happens to them. Most legacy amphibians died centuries before I was born, but the terrafixing reanimated a few species, including frogs. And one phrase always stuck with me: a passenger in a CAV is like “a frog in a blender.”
