Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  Uniques are the rarest. They’re idiosyncratic one-offs, when the terrafixing partially jump-starts a bio-forged tech that doesn’t quite achieve viability. Uniques spin in hopeless circles or tear themselves apart. They’re so broken and pathetic that Ting sniffles when we learn about them.

  Her tears don’t affect her appetite, though. We’re given gelatinous rectangles in vitamin wrappers for every meal. There are five colors, with distinct scents. If you don’t breathe through your nose, they all taste the same.

  Loa isn’t impressed, but Ting and I love them.

  The next morning, we watch a real-time projection showing the ship sluicing into a foam-dock on the coast. A nursurgeon removes the wrap on my face and wrists. She applies a stimulant patch to Loa, fully rousing him from thera-sleep.

  We’re escorted off board, and our lenses guide us from a tram to a funicular that rises to a rooftop terminal. Ting and I gape at the Class C corporate enclave, which is gorgeous with arching roofs and bridges of shifting film. Reef-trees drape like gowns around the spiral towers, flowing with jewel-like filtration grasses.

  Other recruits trickle into the terminal. Ting and Loa stick close to me. A few recruits eye us with curiosity, a few with hostility. Most don’t seem to see us at all.

  The boarding announcement flashes, and forty minutes later I’m sitting in a wide-bodied trirail snaking through the night. I opaque my lens and explore the mil-chan. Arrival is scheduled in 102 minutes, according to my status screen, at 25:3 local time. I find the specificity calming.

  Part of me is still trapped in that CAV, trying to catch a cluster of smartwire with a manacled hand and a lightning strike of luck. That feels like five minutes ago. Part of me is still in the Freehold tower, delivering that final package. That’s ten minutes ago. Part of me is hustling in the refugee camp; part of me is fighting in Vila Vela.

  But the rest of me?

  The rest of me is on the way to basic training.

  CHAPTER 10

  When the trirail grinds to a halt, an announcement directs all passengers heading for Joint Service Training to depart the cars. Loa is subdued as we step onto the platform.

  Ting is fidgety and flashes a message on my lens: “I can’t do this alone. I’m not strong. I can’t do this alone. I will need help.”

  I stare at her in surprise. The private message functionality is locked on these military lenses; they don’t want recruits passing secret notes to each other. Somehow she seamlessly cracked our lenses. I guess she’s good at hacking after all.

  “We all need help,” I reply, then turn off messaging and look toward the horizon.

  We’re on the outskirts of a small enclave, probably eight or ten million people. The ass-end of nowhere, judging from the unlaminated trees growing along the tracks.

  When my lens tells me to board the shuttle, I find a seat in the first car. Nobody smiles at me, but nobody frowns either. That’s a deal I’ll always take.

  Most of the recruits look about my age, early to midtwenties, but a bunch are younger and a scattering are older: even into their forties and fifties. I guess they’re not heading for shock troop training. They all look sleek and confident and well fed. I want to think of them as soft, but I’ve never believed that hardship makes you harder.

  It just makes you brittle.

  The day grows lighter. The shuttle rattles faster. My lens doesn’t tell me our destination. I don’t care, as long as I’m heading away from the gutter, away from the CAVs, away from my past.

  When we leave the town behind, the New Growth extends into roiling gray plains. In this bioregion, the layers of gauzy vegetation are mostly flat, with serrated ridges spreading like veins.

  An hour later, I lens my voucher at the vend menu in the mess compartment. There are flavored tubes like I’ve never seen: rambutang, tarosteen, rosemetal. I buy three, then lean against the wall and stuff my face.

  A tall girl in an austere chop-suit steps beside me. It takes me a second to recognize Cadet Rana from the offshore installation. She knows exactly who I am, though.

  “You survived,” she says.

  “So far,” I tell her.

  “Three volunteers in your group lived. That’s unusual.”

  I look at her perfect face. The whites of her eyes are unstained, and I bet her breath smells of fresh water. “You sound disappointed.”

  “You’re a coward,” she says. “And a beggar.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You begged like—” Rana shakes her head. “Without shame. Without honor.”

  “What good are they?”

  Disgust flares in her face. “Well, you’re here now. Maybe you’ll work out. But I think, beggar, that you won’t last long.”

  There’s nothing pretty about her atonal voice, yet I like the way it sounds. I want to keep listening, so I say, “What happened to your newblue uniform?”

  “That’s civilian gear,” she says. “From Cadet Officers’ Corporate Training.”

  “‘Cocked,’” a beefy guy with black freckles says, pausing on his way into the corridor.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “C-O-C-T,” the guy explains. “Cocked. Cadets don’t wear newblue during basic training. We all start at the same level. That’s the theory, anyway.”

  “Some of us start more level than others?” I ask.

  “Only the shit-hottest cadets sign onto this party, prez.” He scratches his cheek and looks at Rana. “The ones aiming for admiral stripes or the executive suite, you know?”

  “I don’t know much,” I tell him.

  “Combat training’s for the lowest of the low and the highest of the high. Like you and her.” He shows me a cockeyed grin. “And me.”

  “Which one are you?”

  “Low expectations,” he says. “High hopes.”

  After he leaves, I squeeze the rest of the sweetpaste into my mouth while Rana watches. Except for the freckled guy, the other recruits keep away from her. They’re intimidated by her poise, maybe. Or her status. She’s definitely Class A, and the other recruits can smell it on her.

  “What’s a lamprey?” I ask her.

  “That’s the biggest question in the world.”

  “That’s the smallest answer.”

  “I’m not cleared to know. You’re very not cleared to know.”

  “They leave a nasty slime trail.”

  She frowns. “You saw one in the CAV?”

  “Only the traces it left behind.”

  Her frown deepens. “The way you fell to your knees . . . You clung to that aide’s legs like a beaten dog. How is the JST supposed to make a soldier out of that?”

  “Have you ever seen anyone beg for their life before?”

  “No.”

  “I have,” I tell her.

  For the first time, I see a flicker of uncertainty in her face. She starts to respond, then turns and stalks away. The crowd parts, giving me a clear view of her departure. It’s a gift. Her legs are long and her ass is muscular. She moves like someone who knows how to fight and knows how to dance—but doesn’t know the difference between them.

  Ionesca would snap her spine without breaking a sweat.

  The thought warms me as I buy another tube. When I leave the mess compartment, the freckled guy is leaning against the wall. He’s short, but wide and sturdy like a boulder.

  “Hey, prez,” he says. “I’m Pico.”

  “Maseo. Uh, I mean Kaytu.”

  “A Freeholder. Do you know the joke, ‘What did the Freeholder say to the PR investigator’?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. Me, neither.”

  I’m not sure if my wariness is maladaptive in this situation, so I try to smile.

  “I forgot, and can’t check MYRAGE.” Pico pushes off the wall with his shoulders. “One of my fathers came up in a Fr
eehold. He was a scorch artist in Burkinabé.”

  “That’s Africa?” I ask.

  His grin quirks. “You know we’re in Africa, right?”

  “I got a little turned around,” I admit.

  Pico laughs. “The way you move reminds me of him. Of my father. You’ve got that Freeholder stroll, like you’re surrounded by music.” He reaches toward my face. “You’ve got a little—”

  I almost punch him in the throat before I realize he’s wiping a smear of rosemetal from my chin.

  “All gone,” he says.

  I say thanks and scurry back to my compartment, unsettled and nervous. In the Freehold, I know how things work. I know how to read the signs, and I know how to play the angles. Not here. So I minimize my lens and gaze out the window at the dark sky and silvery silos until we reach a security fence, an angled wall crawling with security skarabs.

  We stop there, and wait for three hours.

  When the shuttle jerks forward we’re on Dekka Base property, which looks like twenty miles of terrafixing lapping at the feet of a a cluster of beige buildings. Our destination is a smallish building, a half mile wide and thirty or forty floors tall, though some of those floors are fifty feet high. I catch a glimpse of lakes to the north—one looks like sludge—and a forest to the south, both of them surrounded by rutted tracks and observation towers.

  Then the building swallows us and the windows turn into mirrors.

  “Recruits will depart in single file through the indicated exits,” a voice announces. “Recruits will assemble in accordance with instructions from their lens. Recruits will not delay. Confirm.”

  A few of the recruits say, “Confirm,” then stand.

  After I say “Confirm,” my lens overlays a translucent path on my vision. I merge with the crowd and follow the path onto a shuttle platform in a cavernous terminal. The lens flashes an arrow, telling me to turn left into a cluster of other recruits.

  I don’t want to bump into anyone, so I pause to check that my path is clear.

  “First warning, Recruit Maseo Kaytu,” the lens scrolls.

  The arrow flashes again, so I do what I’m told and shoulder-check another recruit, who swears under her breath. The arrow flashes me into place in a formation of recruits, facing a wall with a Shiyogrid logo. There’s a bench at the base of the wall that’s so dinged and battered it looks like sculpture.

  Ting stands to my left, and a petite blonde covered in jaguar markings is to my right.

  Nothing happens.

  Five minutes, ten minutes.

  After fifteen minutes, an older man mutters to his neighbor—then falls abruptly silent in midsentence.

  Another five minutes creep past, and Ting starts to scratch her forearm. She squeaks in fright and blurts “Sorry,” which means her lens must’ve flashed a warning at her.

  Ten more minutes pass. My feet throb and flurries of activity sound behind me. Shuttles arrive, autocarts deploy, there’s even a jaunty whistle.

  With my peripheral vision, I watch Pico shift his weight. He rolls his muscular shoulders, then laughs. “Y’all got me beat when it comes to staring at a wall.”

  He crosses to the battered bench and takes a dramatic seat. Nothing happens to him. Nothing happens at all. Two more recruits join Pico, then two more again. One of them says something about showing initiative and taking control.

  An hour passes. The muttering increases. Have they forgotten us? Is there a bug in the lenses, making us wait here forever?

  Finally, a soldier strides between the two groups of recruits: the standers and the sitters. He turns to face the standers. There’s a glimmer of flat approval in his face and I suddenly hate those of us who waited: the eager, the patient, the obedient.

  The soldier is whipcord-thin except for his double chin, and wears corporate utility fatigues with a sergeant’s braid.

  “Recruits are here on sufferance,” he says. “You are not necessary; you are tolerated.” His gaze flicks from me to Ting to teenaged Loa. “A few of you are here on extreme sufferance.”

  The recruits on the bench, the ones sitting behind the sergeant, look uncertain. They don’t know what to do. Even cocky Pico frowns. Should he rush back into place? Stay where he is? They might’ve expected punishment, but they didn’t expect to be ignored.

  “Through some combination of stockholding, merit, and luck,” the sergeant continues, “you were accepted into the Joint Service Training of the Shiyogrid Corporation. Only seventeen percent of qualified applicants are accepted.” His focus sharpens. “Recruit Jagzenka! Tell me what that means.”

  The little blonde with the patterned skin shifts uneasily, and I almost smile. The woman with jaguar markings is called Jagzenka?

  “Um,” she says. “I don’t know, san.”

  “Don’t call me san,” the sergeant says. “I’m a noncollateralized officer.”

  “Oh!” Jagzenka says. “I’m sorry, um . . .”

  “HR Sergeant,” the sergeant says. “I am HR Sergeant Zhu. Seventeen percent of qualified applicants—”

  Pico slips forward from the bench to return to formation.

  “Stay!” the HR Sergeant barks at him.

  Pico stays and even manages an abashed grin.

  “Seventeen percent are accepted into JST,” the HR Sergeant continues. “What does this mean?” He points to another recruit. “Speak.”

  “I guess that we’re the best of the lot, HR Sergeant?”

  “Incorrect,” the HR Sergeant says. “It means you are replaceable, by a large pool of equally untalented potential recruits. The feeblest stationary remort would chew you into paste, confirm.”

  “Confirm!” we say.

  “Into a thin gruel. No loss. Every one of you is replaceable.” He glowers at Cadet Rana. “Without exception. And what does that mean? You are not being trained, at this particular time. You are being weeded out. Confirm.”

  “Confirm!” we say.

  “We’re not putting you through the fire to forge warriors on the anvil of adversity. We’re putting you through the fire to incinerate the trash. Confirm.”

  “Confirm!”

  “If you fail to maintain minimum standards, you will be decruited. If you fail to perform, you will be decruited. If your supervisor determines, for any reason or none, that you are not a good fit with the JST, you will be decruited. For any reason or none. Confirm.”

  “Confirm!”

  “If at any point before vesting you decide to decruit yourself, you’ll receive a bonus. A farewell gift, in exchange for not wasting our time. Consult your lens to see your chance of successfully completing basic training—and your rank in your platoon.”

  My lens says:

  Kaytu, Maseo

  chance of completion: 02%

  platoon rank: 48 of 53

  decruitment bonus: 511 c

  CHAPTER 11

  I’ll get 511 scrip if I leave now? That’s good news, but how am I number forty-eight of fifty-three? I haven’t even done anything yet! And I spent a year training for this. When I shift to another screen, I see the explanation: provisional enlistment; CAV.

  Oh. I’m a cry pilot, so they don’t expect anything from me but failure.

  “The JST databases contain millions of comparison cases,” the HR Sergeant tells us. “The numbers you are seeing are not opinion, they are fact, based on your background and behavior. Look at your decruitment bonus again.”

  decruitment bonus: 509 c

  Two scrip less. A murmuring sounds, and the HR Sergeant says, “Every hour that number gets closer to zero. There will never be a better time to leave than right now.”

  In the silence that follows, I hear the hollow thud of four or five soldiers jogging in formation behind us. Except when I catch a glimpse of them, there are at least a dozen moving in perfect synch
ronization.

  Loa asks the sergeant, “I can just walk away, nah?”

  “That’s right, son.”

  “Where do I get my four hundred cred?”

  “On the return shuttle. Step aboard and it’s in your account.”

  Loa scratches his patchy beard. He looks at the rest of the recruits, and then his gaze settles on me. Like he’s asking my opinion. He’s got connections in Opium Civil, whatever that is, and four hundred scrip is almost enough for a gaming rig. Plus, he survived CAV. Without cheating, without hacking—with dumb luck and blind terror.

  So I give him a nod. He should leave now and take the money. Then I focus on the private, illicit message that Ting sent the previous day. I can’t open my own dialog, but I can reply to hers: “Tell Loa that if he wants to start again in a Freehold, contact this woman and use my name.”

  I send Ionesca’s address, then turn off messaging before Ting can respond, because I’m embarrassed. What am I doing? Softhearted idiot. Still, Loa flashes a surprised smile, then trots to the shuttle and vanishes inside.

  Another recruit mutters, “Four hundred? They’re giving me a thousand,” and follows Loa away. I’m not tempted. A two percent chance of success isn’t good, but it’s better than the alternative.

  Three more recruits bustle past, including two who’ve moved to the bench. Not the freckled guy, though. He saunters into formation like he’s crossing his living room.

  The stats on my lens change again:

  Kaytu, Maseo

  chance of completion: 03%

  platoon rank: 45 of 48

  decruitment bonus: 508 c

  Look at me, skyrocketing to number 45. I look around to identify numbers 46 through 48—and realize that Ting is still beside me. She looks more like a curious ferret than ever, her eyes wide and her nose almost twitching.

  A private message pops into my lens: “I can’t go home. And they’re only offering me 18 scrip anyway. You’re not leaving either. Five hundred and eight scrip, but you’re staying. I bet you schooled for this.”