Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  The quiet sign flashes. Silence falls. We wait.

  We keep waiting.

  Ting can’t stand waiting. She gets jittery and impatient. So does nervous Voorhivey and pessimistic Ridehorse. Pico hunkers down happily. Basdaq hunkers down unhappily. Petite Jagzenka is a cat, and I wonder what came first, her jaguar markings or her personality.

  I’m good at waiting. I’m even better if I’ve got a view of Rana. The squad members look almost interchangeable in our fatigues, but my gaze drifts in her direction. I don’t know. Even her stillness is eye-catching, and—

  A horrorbeast erupts through the floor. Not a cataphract, but along the same lines. A fifty-foot-long mucus-worm with sparking thorns and a circular mouth. A shrunken, grotesque cataphract. Ting shrieks; Voorhivey backpedals. Calil-Du bellows and Rana lenses an image capture: the crown shimmers in a recessed nostril above the worm’s mouth.

  “There!” she says.

  “No way to reach it,” Ridehorse says. “Without getting ate.”

  “Eaten!” Ting cries, and the worm slams across the roof toward us.

  A chunk of rubble catches my hip and spins me around. The day dims and I’m on my belly. There’s screaming, the scuffle of slippers. My cheek burns.

  When my vision clears, I see Calil-Du get hurled off the roof—and caught in a safety net. Rubble sprays me and I roll to my side and find myself looking at the substructure of the nearest balcony.

  In that instant, I see the plan.

  We need to lure the creature onto a balcony, then drop the whole thing a hundred virtual floors. That’ll kill the worm—plus every squad member who acts as a lure—leaving the survivors to pull the jeweled crown from among the corpses.

  “Get on the balcony!” I yelp, raising to one knee.

  Pico frowns at me from behind a vend-bench. “The what?”

  “Draw the worm to the edge!” Rana shouts, understanding immediately. “Lure it onto the balcony!”

  “No way!” Pico says, but he rises, bellowing at the creature and waving his arms.

  Shakrabarti throws handfuls of gravel and Werz shouts what I think are lyrics to a Maghrebi song.

  The worm makes an unearthly noise and undulates toward them.

  “Go-go-go!” Basdaq yells, dodging toward the balcony. “Ridehorse, c’mon!”

  Pico gets flattened by a spray of mucus as M’bari and Jag backpedal onto the overhang. The worm follows, heaving and rippling. The floor shudders every time its body slams down, and the support struts squeal and tremble.

  Werz, Voorhivey, and Hefco are smashed off the balcony as the worm crowds the rest of the squad against the railing.

  I’m sprinting across the rooftop toward the creature when Rana shouts, “Kaytu! Stop, you gutter fuck, and take out the balcony!”

  She’s right. I’m in the best position. The mucus-worm is venting slime in the other direction, and I can climb under the balcony and kick the struts until they snap. I can drop the monster and the squad—and complete the mission.

  We can win this thing.

  I’m the only recruit with a shot at the target, but I hesitate. Basdaq throws himself into the gaping maw of the worm to draw it farther onto the balcony. Ridehorse kicks at an oozing growth. The worm wheels around and swallows her. She’s so tall and bony that it seems to choke before swiveling toward the rest of the squad and—

  I can’t do it. I can’t sacrifice them.

  I know this is just an exercise. I know nobody’s going to die, I know nobody’s in danger. I know my duty, but I can’t. So I attack the creature and yell, “Gazi, get the crown. I’ll bring the—”

  I never say what I’ll bring, because a gout of slime slams me into darkness.

  CHAPTER 18

  When I wake in the hangar’s infirmary, Pico gives my shoulder a comforting punch and Basdaq gives me a sympathetic nod. M’bari considers me thoughtfully, like he’s filing away information. Ting flirts with Shakrabarti and Werz, completely oblivious. Calil-Du isn’t clear on what happened, but Jag watches me with her slow gaze, and Rana’s lips tighten in anger as we assemble for another attempt.

  “What was that?” she asks, slipping beside me.

  “I choked,” I tell her.

  “You didn’t choke.”

  “I did, Rana,” I say. “I lost the channel. I choked.”

  “A beggar,” she says, her eyes cold. “And a liar.”

  “I just—”

  “You’re weak, Kaytu. You chose failure.”

  She’s right, of course. I’m shaken to realize how right she is. I know why I joined the military: I’m chasing a feeble approximation of redemption. Fighting remorts won’t wash the sins from my soul, but at least I’ll use my bloody hands for protection instead of destruction.

  Except my past has apparently planted tripwires in my heart, ones I’ve never suspected. I led one military squad to slaughter; I can’t sacrifice another, not even in a training exercise.

  I’d rather choose failure.

  My platoon rank plunges, which means the TLs noticed my screwup. And a reprimand sigil flashes on my lens: a two-day negative performance review.

  Kaytu, Maseo

  If you get three reprimands at the same time, you’re discharged from basic training. Fortunately this one will vanish in two days if I don’t fuck up again. From what I hear, it’s the monthlong—or permanent—reprimands that you have to watch out for.

  So I buckle down and throw myself enthusiastically into Full Contact Negotiation, classroom lectures, and failing another capture-the-crown exercise.

  As we’re trotting to barracks, our lenses tell us to make way for a superior unit. Moving as one, we swivel into place against the corridor wall and Group Gabrielle jogs past, wearing boots instead of slippers. Chins high, arms swinging, eyes forward. They’re so good that they don’t even pause to jeer at us.

  “Smug fuckers,” Calil-Du mutters, in direct violation of discipline.

  Pico snorts a laugh and Ting giggles. Our lenses flash the green and we return to barracks for hygiene and mess hall and sleep.

  The next morning we run four trap laps and complete a work shift, and then we’re back in the hangar hunting a cartoon-looking crown and getting our asses kicked by a defensive protocol dressed as a horrorshow.

  Except in our second run, everything clicks. The enemy is a vaguely upsetting geometrical figure the size of a railcar that lashes out with beams and struts. It shifts and rolls across a fake expanse of New Growth, creating a nauseating optical illusion. Reconfigured moskito drones emerge from its vents and throw darts that sting like wasps.

  “Why can’t we just take down a cataphract?” Ridehorse grouses, in the cover of what looks like a melted orchard. “Like normal recruits.”

  “Normal recruits don’t take down cataphracts,” Basdaq tells her. “They interdict them until a CAV comes.”

  “Fine,” Ridehorse says. “Then a knuckletank or—”

  “The crown’s inside!” Ting blurts, pointing at the enemy figure. “That central hub is changing in a nonrandom sequence; there’s a pattern. Look, look . . . There!”

  The gleam of jewels appears inside the thickest section, then vanishes again.

  “No way,” Calil-Du says. “The scrawny splice is right.”

  “It’s a sort of periodic tessellation,” Ting explains. “If tessellation means a series of repeating tile shapes in a—” A moskito drone stings her. “Ow!”

  “Protect Ting!” Rana says. “We need her.”

  “Move her back!” Calil-Du bellows. “Go, go!”

  I’m surprised that Calil-Du knows what Rana means. Pico throws Ting over his shoulder and hauls her out of range. Ridehorse and Basdaq trot behind them like human barricades, swearing and jerking from moskito stings.

  “Kaytu, Rana!” Calil-Du shouts. “Shit! You’re o
n me; we’ll open a hole for Jag. Tell us when, Ting.”

  “Not yet . . .” Ting says, as a strut unfolds from the enemy and sweeps Rana into a gauzy fungus-tree. “Oh!”

  “Shakrabarti, step up!” Calil-Du shouts. “Pico!”

  “Chief!” Pico says.

  “You and the twins”—she means Gazi and Werz—“attack at, um, on—”

  “On Ting’s five,” M’bari calls out.

  Calil-Du grunts. “Ting! Give us a countdown!”

  “Not yet,” Ting says, peering at the target from behind Ridehorse and Basdaq.

  Another strut unfolds at us, but this time we’re ready. I roll and Calil-Du dodges while Hefco eats a barrage of moskitos and falls in a screaming heap.

  “Ten-nine!” Ting sings out. “Eight, seven . . .”

  “Go!” Calil-Du shouts, and throws herself at the target.

  A hinged beam stomps her to the ground. Shakrabarti and M’bari charge past as another beam thrusts wildly. Pico slams to his belly and the attack misses him by inches.

  “Five!” Ting shouts. “Four!”

  Pico scuttles forward on his hands and knees. The target emits a blast that flattens Shakrabarti and knocks me onto my ass.

  Jag grabs my collar and tugs me to my feet. “Meatshield,” she growls.

  Great. She’ll use me like a walking rampart, to absorb any damage the creature throws at her. Still, the job’s the job. A doughy splat traps Pico as I stumble closer with Jag’s hand on the small of my back, keeping contact, moving together.

  M’bari runs into a ripsaw of plates, which opens a hole into the center of the target. Pincers slash down from above, and I throw myself between them. I feel a rib break and my arm burn. Sweat beads on my face from the pain.

  While pincers squeeze me, Jag climbs my back, puts her foot on my face, and pushes off.

  I catch a glimpse of her blue slipper disappearing inside the central hub, and then medical spray hisses from an unseen nozzle. My forearm cools. The sharp pang in my chest fades. I gasp for air, my legs trembling, slumping in the grip of the machine.

  Behind me, Pico’s pained voice says, “My dads wanted me to become a psycounselor.”

  I groan a laugh. “You’re too selfish for a helping profession.”

  “Selfish? What am I, Shakrabarti?”

  “I’m not selfish,” Shakrabarti’s muffled voice says, trapped somewhere inside the geometrical shape. “I’ve just got a healthy sense of my own worth.”

  “Of your own beauty,” Pico says.

  “That’s what I’m worth,” Shakrabarti says. “A thousand sunsets.”

  From behind a tangle of plates, M’bari says, “I’d make a great childcare consultant. All the tests agreed.”

  “Then what’re you doing here?” Pico asks.

  “Wrestling my demons,” M’bari says. “Oh, wait, no. That’s Kaytu.”

  “I think my rib is broken,” I say.

  “He’s wrestling demons?” Pico asks.

  M’bari decides to give me a break. “Yeah, there’s one on his left shoulder saying, ‘You’ve got a chance with Rana,’ and one on his right saying, ‘Try your luck with Shakrabarti.’”

  “He doesn’t have an angel?” Ridehorse asks.

  “His angel tells him to stick with his hand,” Pico says.

  The struts and pincers gently disengage, and our lenses flicker online. Before I can read the message, cheers and shouts echo across the hangar.

  Jag did it: we captured the crown.

  CHAPTER 19

  My reprimand sigil vanishes in the middle of the night. I’m surprised at the depth of my relief. I didn’t think I cared, but it’s like a throbbing toothache is finally gone.

  And the day only gets better.

  We’re told to wait in line at our lockers. We assemble with effortless speed. Nobody breaks formation. Nobody shifts, nobody mutters. And this time I know that yes, we will stand here until we collapse.

  Except it’s only ten minutes before the TL and Admin lead an autocart inside.

  “Barracks Chief Calil-Du,” TL calls.

  “TL!” Calil-Du barks.

  “Remove your slippers.”

  Calil-Du does as she’s told. “TL!”

  The autocart dispenses a pair of combat boots. Not slippers. Boots. Adjustable reinforced combat-issue boots.

  “Step forward and take your boots,” Admin says.

  “You earned them,” TL says, and calls each one of us forward in turn.

  Kaytu, Maseo

  chance of completion: 09%

  platoon rank: 36 of 42

  decruitment bonus: 180 c

  5323 rating: BB

  I’m the third-lowest-rated member of Group Aleph. I don’t care about that. I’m getting dinged for enlisting through CAV. I don’t care about that. I’m getting dinged for fucking up the other day, and I don’t care about that either.

  Because when TL says, “Recruit Kaytu, you earned them,” she’s right. I earned those boots. And about that, I’m surprised how much I care.

  Twenty minutes before lights-out that night, we’re showered and shorn and prepped for the morning. Except half of us keep opening our lockers to gaze at our new boots: combat-ready with three-setting soles and lens-active countermeasures.

  We’ve settled into a pre-sleep routine where three clusters of recruits gather to bullshit about the day, reminisce about MYRAGE shows, and talk shit about Groups Bay and Gabrielle, who have become our sworn enemies by virtue of existing.

  I enjoy talking shit, but I never spent much time on MYRAGE as a kid. My grandmother mistrusted cooperative-media technology. She still remembered stories handed down to her grandmother about the SICLE War.

  SICLE stands for Socially Immersive Curated Learning Environment. Unlike MYRAGE, SICLE started as a nonprofit educational initiative. Students attended VR classes taught by teachers halfway across the world. A million discussion groups and debate clubs and art teams thrived. Entertainment and politics exploded onto the platform, along with hobbies and shopping and sims and sex, into vibrant, immersive, engaging communities.

  Then the sorting began.

  SICLE ran algorithms to ensure that users encountered the most positive experience possible. Your interests and preferences led you to like-minded people. Communities grew more vibrant, more engaging, more immersive.

  And more distinct.

  People soon lived in starkly divergent worlds from their neighbors. Curated media experiences led to rifts between shared realities. Different communities learned different facts that proved conflicting claims. SICLE gave the people what they wanted—a caring, inclusive, informed community . . . of people exactly like them. Unity and loving-kindness flowered within groups, but between them, mutual incomprehension led to mutually assured destruction.

  Civil wars erupted.

  Virulent nationalism and sectarian violence scorched the Earth.

  After decades of conflict—after mass graves and mushroom clouds—the nation-states battled themselves into a stupor. That’s when the megacorporations finally beheaded the nations and unleashed the terrafixing protocol.

  They saved the planet. They saved the human race.

  In the wake of SICLE’s decommission, dozens of new platforms sprang into place. For no good reason, MYRAGE became the standard, and it operates within strict limits. It curtails the spread of immersive affinity groups. Community size is limited, and randomness and transience are enforced.

  Of course, the squad is a pretty powerful affinity group itself, so I don’t exactly miss my ability to chat about MYRAGE. I just laze on my bunk, watching the military channels and listening to the barracks chatter.

  One cluster of recruits forms around Basdaq, who even after all the training still looks avatar-handsome and acts a little stuffy. Another f
orms around Pico, who is neither handsome nor stuffy, and the third is composed of Werz and Gazi and a few stragglers.

  The rest keep to ourselves. Rana is in the last group, even though she could gather a group of her own by crooking her finger.

  When I ask M’bari why she doesn’t, he says, “Basdaq gets off on helping people. Pico gets off on making them laugh. Rana’s all about Rana.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  He looks surprised. “Like her? I want to be her. She’s Class A down to the cellular level. She’s the goal, Kaytu. She’s the reason I’m here.”

  I’m not sure what he means. I can see that Rana is special, and I know her father is a Colonel Executive, but the shades of power among shareholders still confuse me.

  Ting sticks pretty closely to Pico’s group. She amuses him, and he protects her from Calil-Du. Not physically; in our melee combat trials, Calil-Du is third-ranked and Pico’s second, but he won’t hit the chief outside of a spar, while she’ll hit anyone, anytime. She doesn’t know how to handle his humor, though. She beat his ass once, and even during the beating he had the entire group laughing at her.

  The evening after we get our boots, Rana rolls to the side of her bunk and looks down at me. She’s in the top level to the left of me—I’m in the middle. I blank the screen on my lens where I’m watching a documentary about lichen ants.

  “You’re only ranked low because you enlisted through CAV,” she says. “You’re better than number thirty-six.”

  “That’s the sweetest thing you ever said to me.”

  She gives me a chilly look. “Volunteers rarely finish basic, so you’re getting dinged for everyone who ever failed.”

  “I don’t give a shit about my rank, Rana.”

  “You should.”

  “I’ll take the hit for being a volunteer. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the CAVs.”

  “What are you talking about? You could’ve enlisted.”

  I laugh. “It’s not that easy.”

  “You click the agreement, you’re in. Nothing’s easier.”