Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  “I know! It’s great. What’re you going to say?”

  “Private, Ting?”

  She wrinkles her nose in confusion. “What? Oh, me! You want me to leave!”

  “I don’t even know how you got into a private channel.”

  “I’m sneaky!” she says, and vanishes in an explosion of squealing purple hamsters.

  “O-kay,” I say, and start recording.

  I tell Ionesca what happened since my arrest. I tell her I’m okay. I tell her that one day I’ll visit. I tell her that every time I make the right choice, I feel her hand on my shoulder. And every time I make the wrong one, I feel her teeth on my neck.

  “That’s sweet,” Ting says, after I send the message. “Sort of.”

  I jerk in surprise. “Sagrado, Ting!”

  “Oh.” She smiles hopefully. “Um, hi again? I’m not very good at privacy.”

  “You’re a champion at irritating, though.”

  “I’m sorry.” She ducks her head. “Except not really.”

  “You can’t just eavesdrop on people, Ting.”

  “I didn’t do it for no reason!”

  “No?”

  “No! I did it ’cause I was curious.”

  I know I should knock her around, but instead I laugh.

  “Also,” she says, “M’bari wants everyone to meet up. He found something. I’ll link you into his channel, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say, and the world changes.

  Projections of glassine walls rise around me and unfold into a massive ice-blue castle. Instead of sitting in my message interface, it looks like I’m standing beside Ting on a crystal bridge.

  At the far end of the bridge, Pico, Rana, and few others—not including M’bari—stand at an archway made of stylized organs. Lungs, kidneys, hearts. As we head down the bridge to join them, I see that in MYRAGE Pico portrays himself as a chubby, adorable version of a terrifying alien-monster, and tall, gaunt Ridehorse takes the form of a muscular centaur. Voorhivey makes himself look like Basdaq’s younger brother, square-jawed and authoritative. Jagzenka doesn’t go full jaguar, which surprises me. Instead, she appears as a saffron-tinted teenaged boy with lavender eyes.

  Rana looks like a default Rana, which I expect. Of course she does. But Calil-Du looks like a default Calil-Du, instead of a berserker with a dripping battle-ax. That’s a surprise.

  Pico waves a few tentacles at me and privately pings, “Cali defaulted to norm after she saw Rana. She started as a horrorwaif.”

  I send him a laugh and ask on the public channel, “Where’s M’bari?”

  “Not coming.” Ridehorse shakes her mane. “He told me to say that there’s more to the story than we’re about to see.”

  “More what?” I ask.

  “What story?” Cali asks.

  Ridehorse trots through the archway. “C’mon.”

  We all follow and end up inside a build of a space station, watching a nine- or ten-year-old boy wander the three-floored hallways. He doesn’t look like anything special. One of his eyes is yellow and the other is white, but the MYRAGE interface tells me that’s the fashion for kids in an interplanetary habitation.

  A supertitle says: The Dag Bravska Research Habitation.

  The name doesn’t mean anything to me.

  The kid’s bouncing a ball—not exactly a ball, but close enough—down the triangular hallway, chatting with the projection of a friend, a girl whose face floats beside his. A dozen people bustle past, mostly scientists and researchers, judging from the info-tags. About half of them are walking on different surfaces of the hallway. The walls that slope inward around the kid function as floors for other people. Back in Vila Vela I spent a week playing a MYRAGE sim based in a derelict hab, so in theory I understand vector plasma.

  I still expect people to bump heads, though.

  And actually I don’t understand vector plasma, not really. The AIs claimed that gravity doesn’t exist but still developed vector plasma as a sort of artificial gravity. Basically, every adapted molecule in spacefaring habs and vehicles is infused with—or bonded to—vector plasma, which acts as a magnet, pulling those molecules toward the assigned down pole.

  The kid’s ball is drawn toward a vector plasma pole that acts as a gravitational magnet, as is the kid himself. So are every one of his gut bacteria, all the molecules of his clothing and food and drink.

  Well, not every cell, because the effect wears off. Techs need to cycle objects—and people—through an adaptation process to keep them responding to the artificial gravity. Which means that some objects, toward the end of the cycle, are lighter than you’d expect. Some are kept weightless too. You might want low gravity on your fragile artwork so it doesn’t break if it falls. You might adjust your own weight to compensate for an injury or to suit a personal preference.

  And variable-grav toys looked pretty amazing to me as a kid. To the boy in the hallway, vector plasma is just how life works. He walks along, chatting with his friend, not a care in the world.

  “What the fuck boring shit is this?” Cali asks, looming behind the boy in the simulation.

  “M’bari says it’s worth watching,” Ridehorse tells her. “So it is.”

  “How would M’bari know what’s worth watching?” Voorhivey asks.

  “He talks to people,” I say, watching the kid turn a corner in the hab.

  “I talk to people,” Voorhivey says.

  “Yeah, but he listens.”

  Voorhivey shoots me an obscene gesture, more at ease with himself than when he started training.

  “Boring-ass shit,” Cali mutters.

  “Nothing in space is boring,” Rana says.

  “It’s okay,” Cali says, immediately backpedaling. “It’s kind of cool.”

  Pico laughs at her. “Do you know what a peachtree is, prez?”

  “No,” she says. “Fuck you.”

  “Look,” Jagzenka says, gazing at the projection. “There.”

  A hatch opens behind the boy. Our perspective sweeps inside, to a research lab where scientists swipe on screens and consult modules. An info-tag tells me that they’re running high-level analysis of the Puebleaux Waypoint. There’s even a false window, showing deep space outside the hab, with the Earth a bright star.

  A researcher who is either wearing a skullcap or rocking fungal hair frowns at a display. A second researcher shakes her head, like she doesn’t understand.

  “I don’t think I like this,” Ting says, in a little voice.

  “Nobody cares what you like,” Cali says.

  The first researcher clutches her right eye in agony. She screams. Even though the volume is muted, the sound makes me shiver. Her lens melts into her eyeball and a screen expands, strobing interference across the lab and—

  We’re back in the hallway, following the boy.

  He turns suddenly, like he heard the researcher’s scream. Behind him, a man walking on a different surface drops a tray of seedlings. They float around him as he reaches overhead.

  Except he’s not reaching, he’s being pulled. Vector plasma tears him limb from limb. The sound kicks in with a thousand shrieks. The boy flees. People die and machines explode. Walls crumble. Foam bursts, sparks fly. Yellow fumes swirl and globs of fluid splatter and—

  Silence.

  We’re outside the Dag Bravska habitation. We’re floating in space, looking at a conical space station surrounded by interlocking rings.

  Peaceful, from this angle. Quiet. Home to forty thousand people. Then a divot appears in the hull. A triangular shadow that expands into a crease.

  The station ripples—and implodes.

  Wreckage streams past, bits of gear and broken corpses, and forty thousand faces surround us, the faces of the dead. One face grows large. The boy in the hallway.

  A red stamp appears across his i
mage: TECHNOPATH.

  The dead faces start speaking: “Technopaths kill,” they say, over and over. “Technopaths kill.”

  “Fucking genefreeks,” Cali mutters.

  “One little kid took down a whole hab?” Pico says, defaulting to his normal appearance. “That’s not right.”

  Technopaths kill, technopaths kill, technopaths kill . . .

  “Was it even on purpose?” Voorhivey asks, chewing his knuckle. “It didn’t look like—did he mean to do it?”

  “Does it matter?” I ask.

  “No.” Jagzenka watches a chunk of debris float past. “Anyone born with a quantum superposition computer in their brain is a genocide-class weapon.”

  Technopaths weren’t designed as weapons. They were designed via Wix genetic manipulation, for ambitious parents who wanted to prepare their children for mind-machine interface. It was nothing special, just a convenient input device. And an impressive competitive advantage.

  But after ten generations, when a throwback is born, that shit has gone seriously awry.

  “There’s more to the story,” Ridehorse says. “That’s what M’bari told me.”

  Like she summoned him, M’bari’s message appears on the projection. “Rumors say it wasn’t a technopath.”

  “Then what was it?” Voorhivey asks the interface.

  We wait a moment for another message. Nothing comes.

  With a gesture, Rana returns us to the crystal bridge. Her jaw is clenched and her dark eyes are hot. “It was a technopath.”

  “Then what’s M’bari talking about?” Voorhivey says. “Who cares about some once-in-a-century meltdown? It’s got to be something else.”

  “Fuck you,” Cali snarls at him. “You heard Rana. It was a technopath.”

  “It had to be.” Rana shakes her head. “The rumors . . .”

  “What do the rumors say?” Jag asks her.

  “I can’t—” Rana pauses. “There are rumors that a remort attacked a hab.”

  A chill of realization touches me. “A lamprey did that? Escaped the atmosphere and crossed a million miles?”

  Her gaze catches mine, with a flare of anger or fear. Maybe because I’m right, maybe because she’s Rana. “M’bari should keep his conspiracy theories to himself.”

  “What kind of remort reaches escape velocity?” Voorhivey asks. “Did the terrafixing regenerate an orbital launch array?”

  “No,” Rana says, and turns herself into an ice statue that shatters on the floor.

  “Whoa,” Pico says. “That’s a little literal.”

  Everyone leaves except me and Ting. I expect nonsensical chatter from her, but for once she’s quiet. Maybe she’s shaken by watching forty thousand murders, even just in a simulation.

  After a minute, all she says is, “All those people. Just erased.”

  When I log off, I feel a chill in the MYRAGE arcade. Nobody expects the corporate officers to tell us everything—we know we’re just grunts. But we’ve been carefully not thinking much about lampreys, and that simulation makes it harder. That simulation makes us wonder what they are, and how we’re going to fight them.

  I catch Rana leaving the arcade. Her gait is crisp and her jawline unwelcoming. I walk beside her in silence for two minutes, because I’m not sure how to broach the subject.

  She veers along a little-used corridor and into the deck with the orbital pods. A pod opens for her. She climbs inside. I hesitate, but she doesn’t close the pod so I follow her into the cramped interior. The hatch closes and the two of us are folded together like origami. I feel her forearm on my hip and smell the sweetness of her breath.

  This isn’t about romance, but I feel myself respond to her nearness. Her breath quickens and I tell myself that she feels the same. It’s still not about romance, though.

  “You wanted privacy,” she says. “Here’s the closest thing.”

  “You’re not afraid of lampreys. You don’t care if one of them tore apart that hab. So what’re you afraid of?”

  “If I were you, I’d be afraid of getting a third reprimand.”

  “Yeah.” Why did I follow her? What am I after? I’m not entirely sure, but I keep talking. “Okay, good point. What’m I saying?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I—I grew up in Vila Vela,” I hear myself tell her. “During the war.”

  “You were a refugee,” she says. “I heard.”

  “I fought. As a kid. For the patriots.” My heart is suddenly beating fast, like I’m hanging off a two-hundredth-floor balcony. “For the Ess Ayati.”

  She freezes. “You fought for the Plaguemaker of Vila Vela?”

  I don’t say anything, because there’s nothing to say.

  “Do they know?” she asks.

  She means the corpos, the military, the JST. “No. I don’t know. I switched out IDs when I was transferred to the camp. A few days before they Doomed the city.”

  “That’s the reason you signed up for the CAVs. They’d never let you into the service if they looked too close into your background.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s the reason you’re afraid of yourself, too. Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because that’s how humans work, Rana. Once I tell you a confidence, you’ll feel obliged to tell me one.”

  “That only works if you don’t admit it’s what you’re doing.”

  “Except that’s only true if you’re not smart enough to realize that of course it’s what I’m doing, so it’s better to be honest and—”

  “Shut up,” she says. “You’re such a splice.”

  Something in her toneless voice makes me smile. To my surprise, she smiles back. And I know this is pathetic, but despite her elbow in my thigh and an airlock hinge jabbing my neck, I feel a flash of contentment. I’m happy here, the two of us curled up together, watching the indicator lights paint patterns on her cheekbones and glint in her nighttime eyes.

  She looks at a panel on the wall. “It’s my father.”

  “CE Rana-Cain.”

  “He wants me in the Flensers, not some dubious pilot program. Lampreys scare him more than anything I’ve ever seen. And . . . well, you fill in the blanks.”

  I think for a second. “You’re worried that if a lamprey destroyed that hab, your father will pull you from the program? To protect you?”

  “He might try to pull me,” she says.

  “You think it was a lamprey. You really do.”

  “It can’t be. A million miles from Earth.”

  I shake my head. “C’mon, Rana. Not even a Corporate Exec can reach into the JST and reassign personnel.”

  “There’s that naïveté again,” she says.

  “I know I sound like Voorhivey, but there are rules.”

  “And my father knows how to bend them.”

  CHAPTER 28

  We’re in the middle of a seminar on cataphract interdiction when an alarm sounds. Our lenses direct us to a bank of autocarts that dispense dummy gear. There’s gridmesh armor, a battlecuff-linked com-plate with remote drones, a rampart gun, and medkits and missiles and mines.

  There are also two launchers loaded with high-temperature explosive spindles that look like transparent chopsticks, and a rack of Boaz IIIs, complete with canisters and harnesses.

  The Boaz III intervention rifle is shorter and blunter than an Ambo and clasps around your forearm like an alloy gauntlet with dorsal barrels and a retractable ventral nozzle. Boazes link to wearable harnesses to help with recoil, not to mention aiming and reloading and proprioceptive balancing. There’s no stock, because you don’t brace a Boaz with your shoulder like you’re pushing a plow. That’s what your harness is for, though heavyweight Boazes link to stripped-down exoskeletons. The fragile, clunky finger-pull activation of an Ambo is replaced by a whole-hand mechanism, radial activation
or twitch trigger, depending on how you score. And Boazes don’t fire rounds, they fire liquammo, pulse-resistant smartfluid ammunition metabolized from consumable canisters.

  The Boaz IV—the latest model, as far as I know—offers selectable fire, from single-shot to streaming. They say a real Boaz artist can lay a thread of liquammo through a crack in a rampart, then set it to whipping on the other side. Of course, most soldiers aren’t artists. We just hose down the enemy, which is why Boaz rifles are called squirtguns.

  There used to be single-operator assault systems that could flatten enclaves with one burst, but after the SICLE War the ban on genocide-class weapons grew teeth. So while a series IV is nothing compared to the crater-makers of the war, it’s the best we’ve got.

  Of course these Boazes are loaded with nonlethal shock liquammo, and the mines with adhesive foam.

  We only graduated from Ambos to Boazes four days ago. We still thrill to the sight of them. I’m suddenly down to a single reprimand again and I thrill to the sight of that, too.

  Kaytu, Maseo

  Ting takes the com-plate, of course. Gazi gets the medkit. M’bari and Werz reach for the launchers. I elbow Voorhivey aside and grab the rampart gun.

  Ramparting isn’t my strongest skill. Recruits who grew up playing MYRAGE games kick my ass every time. Still, it’s one of my favorites. The rampart gun is a shoulder-harness-mounted weapon that fires canisters the size of my fist. At the operator’s signal, the canisters expand into configurable ramparts dense enough to withstand hits from anything short of a hellfrost. Or, depending on the setting, spongy enough to enmesh tank treads . . . or even an entire Jitney, at fully inflated porosity.

  A good rampart squaddie lays down barricades and bulwarks not just for defense but to preclude the enemy from establishing strong positions—and to force them into a killbox.

  We’re ordered to report to the elevator, and a thrill shivers through the entire group. We’re heading outside to fight another team. A nonlethal exercise, but we’re finally facing real opponents. This is the beginning of the end of our training, the last stages before we’re deployed into actual warzones in Anvil Month.