Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  “Confirm!” Voorhivey yells for no reason.

  Li doesn’t exactly smile. “We’re on the cutting edge now. We’re bagging a lamprey. Now. Today. DNA extraction is on deck and we’re turning the tide. After techs probe one of these fuckers, the rest is easy.”

  “Nothing like a hard probe,” Shakrabarti murmurs, with a simmering look that makes Basdaq clear his throat.

  “In a few weeks, DivCom will announce that we won a war nobody knew we were fighting.” Sergeant Manager Li’s soft voice is intense. “You’ll be the reason. You’re saving a million lives today and nobody will ever thank you. It doesn’t get better than that.”

  After a moment, Pico says, “You’re kind of a freak, Sarge.”

  Li leans against the transport wall and closes her eyes. “I fit right in.”

  Five minutes later, to everyone’s surprise, an official briefing flicks onto our lenses. Nothing unusual at first: call signs and unit comps, PR directives and cost-benefit analyses.

  We’re tasked with sweeping and securing floors of a Freehold tower, and then the briefing authorizes use of dedicated ammunition against the target remort. Coils of pink vapor condense from a fog and form a lamprey as the narrator says, “Current indications suggest that lampreys are nonlocal exudations of bio-forged SICLE communications protocols.”

  “The fuck does that mean?” Cali grumbles.

  “Dedicated Boaz ammunition will impede the ability of the lamprey substrate to achieve critical-mass ratio,” the briefing says, before reeling off a minute of incomprehensible science.

  “Simple,” Sergeant Manager Li says. “We’re all clear?”

  “They appear out of nowhere,” Voorhivey says.

  Basdaq rolls his heavy shoulders. “And we hit them with brane cans.”

  “Is that all?” Cali asks.

  “Life is simple,” Li tells her, “at the bottom of the organizational chart.”

  CHAPTER 44

  We don’t drop in paraframes, thank sagrado: the lamprey hasn’t materialized yet, so there’s no signal interference. Instead, the rumble of the transport turns deafening as the pilots switch to hovermode, and my lens shows me that we’re motionless above the Belo City rooftops.

  A panel retracts in the side of the ship and dispensary drones roll through the security film toward the Tower Seven roof, heavy with launchers and warheads. A missile platform follows on a swivel base, with enough firepower to kill an orbital carrier.

  The other platoons jeer at Alfa Platoon, who will be positioned on the rooftop, far from the action. Alfa rises from the benches in perfect sync, filing through the transport toward a ramp that extrudes sideways.

  Except the ramp crashes when it’s half-extruded, hanging from the ship like a tongue.

  Buggy military shit.

  Alfa pauses in place as if they expected it, and an engineer somewhere forces a reboot. When the ramp finishes unfurling, Alfa moves forward like a single animal. The panel closes behind them and I realize that we move that way too now, without a wasted motion.

  Not that we’re all so flawless.

  “Don’t screw up, Kaytu,” Cali tells me on squad channel. “One more reprimand and they send your ass-crack home.”

  I pretend that Kaytu, Maseo isn’t framing my entire world right now. “You sure? I think I’ve only got the one.”

  “How does Cali not have a reprimand?” Shakrabarti asks.

  “Because she was raised proper,” Pico says. “She’s all class.”

  “I fatherfucking am,” Cali says, spitting on the floor.

  The Freehold rises around us as the Antarmadesha descends. Dingy walls with caged balconies and grimy windows blur past. A spark catches in my chest, and I ignore Cali and Pico. This is my world; these are my people.

  “Oooh,” Ting says, her wide gaze watching. “Reminds me of home.”

  “It’s horrible,” Shakrabarti says.

  We drop ten floors, twenty, fifty, threading through walkways and bridges and skyroads. I catch sight of a skinny teenaged boy on a railed sidewalk making an obscene gesture at us.

  I’ve never seen him before, but this is a Freehold: I know him.

  Bay and Gimmel Platoons deploy on floors nine and eight, and then it’s our turn. The transport hovers outside the seventh floor, activating pillbug drones that repeat the lockdown message in four languages. The first two squads of Dee Platoon egress at different locations to sweep different sectors.

  We’re the last squad to deplane. I’m first through the film into the seventh floor, with Shakrabarti at my side. The emergency door is open, cracked wide by remote access, which is good news: the residents haven’t disabled Garda access, despite whatever history happened here.

  In Vila Vela, we would’ve shot the Antarmadesha from the sky.

  The drones roll into a wreckage-strewn corridor. The emergency door must’ve crashed into a food stall: broken chairs and fried lichenballs are scattered across the floor, and a splash of teaseed oil from a hot-cooker drips down the wall.

  One of the pillbugs emits fire retardant at the hot oil and Basdaq sends a swarm of drakonfly drones zooming deeper into the building.

  Shakrabarti and I prowl forward. The hallway looks like Vegas except it’s narrower than I remember. There’s a beetle farm on a makeshift porch, a becak repair workshop, a trip dance platform. The smell is more familiar than my own heartbeat. The scent of a thousand lichen-spices from a thousand corners of the world mixes with industrial vats of the hygiene lotion that every gutter kid hates.

  There’s sweat and mess, but also hope and ambition.

  Welcome home.

  All that’s missing is the music. With my Boaz linked high on my harness—and switched to nonlethal Boaz squirts—I follow the broadcasting drones. Please stay in your habitation. We apologize for the inconvenience. We respect the sanctity of your home. We are here to ensure your safety.

  “Central atrium is the choke point.” Li indicates the juncture at the end of the hallway. “If they’re going to—”

  “Someone’s thirty feet ahead of point,” Ting says. “Not in his room.”

  She overlays a drakonfly scan onto my lens, and I see a thermal print of the guy, supine on the floor beneath a scrum of trash. An old man, a hundred pounds of dust and skin, sleeping off a long night.

  “Watch for the ambush,” Li murmurs.

  Which is possible, but unlikely. Everyone knows you use a kid for ambush bait, not an old man. With a derelict old guy, you run the risk that corpo troops will blow him away just to clear a path. A smart-mouthed kid, though, he’ll lead a whole squad into a death trap.

  Shakrabarti cycles back in the formation and Ridehorse takes aim. I see her targeting icon lock in—

  “Stand down!” I snap. “I’ve got this.” I lens my visor open. “Hey! Old-timer?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “San!” I send a silent request to Basdaq: “Give him a sting.”

  A drakonfly flashes forward and sparks the man’s leg with a tiny shock.

  “San!” I repeat. “Apartment number!”

  The trash shifts and a leathery face appears. “Garda arsloch,” he grunts in some kind of German creole. “Substraire sich.”

  “Your hab number, san!” I say. “Wohnen nummber, directeur.”

  While he’s mumbling, Ting scans him so completely that she maps his bile ducts. The entire might of the Shiyogrid technology faces off against this frail old wreck and detects no threat.

  I knock his shoe with my boot. “Directeur, please.”

  He tells me I’m a corporate shitpuppet and gives me the number of his apartment.

  I pull him upright and pass him back along the line for M’bari to sort.

  “Don’t play games,” Li lenses me. “This is a hot zone.”

  She’s almost r
ight. It’s a hot zone, but it’s also someone’s home. There are finger-painted murals on the doors. There’s a basket of toys beside a stack of battered readers. Kids live here. Yeah, gutter hallways are crisscrossed with tripwires, but not the kind that trigger explosions.

  That’s not the danger we face.

  The danger we face is anger.

  If we kill an old man with a nonlethal squirt, two hundred of his self-appointed grandchildren will pour from the cracks, baying for our blood. Especially if this Freehold has some kind of dubious history with the corpos.

  Ridehorse and I establish positions at the central atrium until Ting flashes the green. We cross to the widest southern corridor while Cali and Elfano—looking naked outside her meka—take the northern. Time locks secure residents inside their apartments. The clicks sound like Pico cracking his knuckles every morning.

  I sight down empty hallways. Nothing moves except for the birds hopping around in the cages hanging outside half the doors.

  Pico and Shakrabarti sweep to the west, following three drakonflies. They lens the all-clear, and the rest of the squad funnels into the corridor behind them. Basdaq sticks close to Ting; she’s too valuable to lose. Jag sweeps the alcoves and transoms. Ridehorse and I watch the rear, backwalking a path that our lenses feed us as a drakonfly clings to the ceiling overhead, bulbous eyes alert.

  We unfurl around two more corners, watching every direction at once despite the assurances of the drones. Signals crash, signals fail. Signals fall to countermeasures.

  “This place is an anthill,” Jagzenka says on-channel.

  “It’s a termite mound,” M’bari says.

  “It’s like the labyrinth level in Chop Sty City,” Shakrabarti says, talking about a MYRAGE game. “I got roasted in that maze a hundred times.”

  “Nice foreshadowing, Shak,” Pico says, clearing a northern hallway. “You’re so dead.”

  “We’re all dead,” Ridehorse says, gloomy as always.

  “This quad’s only one slice of the tower,” Sergeant Manager Li says. “There are what, Kaytu? Two hundred fifty-six apartments on a floor?”

  “In prefabs, yeah.” I keep sweeping the corridor. “A lot of them are knocked through.”

  “What’s that mean?” Voorhivey asks.

  “The joining walls are torn down,” Ting explains. “And the apartments are combined into a bigger one.”

  “More are subdivided,” I say, on point with Ridehorse again. “Cut up into smaller units. There are only a hundred apartments per floor in the penthouse, but maybe six hundred in the gutter.”

  “No way!” Voorhivey says on-channel. “That violates a dozen regulations!”

  Ting sends me a madly giggling cartoon at exactly the same time as I ping her a laugh. M’bari glances at a panel of writhing graffiti and tells Voorhivey, “There are no regulations in a Freehold.”

  “You lived like this?” Cali asks me, sidling past.

  “Yeah.”

  “No wonder you’re such a crappy human being,” Pico says.

  A blast of music behind a closed door makes Voorhivey pivot and Jag crouch. M’bari mutters to them and we finish clearing the floor.

  When the last locks are affixed, the pillbug drones roll through the hallways, thanking the residents for their patience. Sergeant Manager Li sends drakonflies onto the western ledge, which is really just an exterior walkway running the length of the block.

  We watch the quiet corridors and drone feeds until she gives the green, and then we zipper-feed onto the ledge. This low in a Freehold, the condensation makes faint billows of mist. Another tower rises sixty yards in front of us, and there’s traffic on the rails and in the tangle of bridges and boardwalks.

  We spread out, our weapons active and our sweeps live.

  The rest of Dee Platoon is arrayed within a quarter-mile stretch to our north and south. The rail and roadway traffic slows to a stop, halted somewhere upline. The avenue below us is obscured by wires and walkways, most of them draped in banners or filmurals. A bunch of kids muck around after a ball near a traincar painted with bright flowers.

  Bay Platoon indicates they’re in position on a ledge above. Gimmel does the same. An Orit Gal dronebud tentatively lowers into sight, picking through the tangled walkways. A voice like the Hammer of Mars blares from the drone, informing residents that a curfew is in effect.

  One of the kids throws a chunk of koncrete at the drone. The rest of them keep playing until two adults drag them into the traincar. The message repeats, and the walkways clear.

  Except a dozen caravans and cargo trailers remain on the street.

  “Tell them to take shelter in a building,” I lens Li. “Get them moving.”

  “Who?”

  I send her images from the street level. “Them.”

  “People live in those?” she asks, then switches to command channel.

  To my relief, another announcement tells citizens to clear the streets entirely. It’s followed by tight-beam demands aimed at the traincars and trailers, and even a few disarmed rounds, which clatter ominously.

  In moments, the crosswalks and platforms fill with people. Half of them push mobiles and caravans into the shelter of the adjoining buildings, and the other half simply abandon their homes for the tower lobbies. I try not to think about all the gutter roaches hunkering down in the target area, keeping their eyes closed and hoping the storm will pass.

  “Now we wait,” Voorhivey intones.

  Jag laughs at him. “You’re such a splice.”

  “I’m not the one who thinks she’s a panda.”

  “Jaguar,” she says. “They’re jaguar rosettes.”

  “Extinct bears all look the same.”

  “Channel,” Li says gently, and everyone shuts up.

  Feels like the quiet before the storm. Next comes the bait . . . and the tsunami.

  CHAPTER 45

  Five minutes pass and the faint throb of music sounds above us. Two more minutes, and a crash echoes through the Freehold.

  When Ting targets the source of the sound, it’s just some kids throwing junk down a chute. Elfano’s pointed ears flatten and Voorhivey starts humming, which still happens when he gets nervous, despite all the progress he’s made. Cali elbows him sharply, which also happens.

  A drone swoops suddenly between the buildings, dodging cables and banners to hover above a suspended recharge cistern. It has a narrow tail and a bulbous head, like a mutant mushroom. Hooked talons extrude from the base and clamp onto the cistern grate. A faint yellowbeige glow seeps through a pattern of tiny holes.

  “That’s the bait?” Ridehorse asks.

  “Looks like the same L-tech as Los Anod,” Jagzenka says.

  “Which blew half a city into chunks.”

  Voorhivey tsks. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.”

  “The thing about you, Voorhivey,” Pico says, “is that you’re adorable.”

  “And I’m right. The bait’ll attract a lamprey. We’ll hit it with brane cans. And then, uh . . .”

  “Engineering will extract a sample,” Sergeant Manager Li says.

  “How?” M’bari asks.

  “Up close and personal, with handheld extractors. They can’t use drones because of signal interference. Our job is to immobilize the lamprey and protect the engineers.”

  The yellowbeige light brightens and my grip tightens in my Boaz sleeve. I tense for action, but nothing happens. We wait on the ledge. Twenty more minutes creep past. The hum of maintenance drones mixes with the gurgle of filters. Another ten minutes pass. Too long. The walls loom above us like sentries, the windows like gun barrels.

  If we don’t keep things moving, this will turn into a clusterfuck. I’ve already got two reprimands on my lens, but if this Freehold explodes I’m going to forget the mission, forget the lamprey, and try to keep my squad in on
e piece.

  I open a private channel to Sergeant Manager Li. “We started a clock when we landed, Sarge. Gutter roaches won’t hit a platoon in full gear . . . unless we stick around too long.”

  “Command knows urban warfare, Kaytu.”

  “Yes, Sarge,” I say.

  “Plus, we can’t do shit to make this happen faster.” She switches to platoon channel. “Everything’s smooth as flowcore, so far. All floors secured, all platoons in place. Drones are green. There’s only one thing to do now.”

  “What’s that, Sarge?” Basdaq asks.

  Li loops us Voorhivey’s recorded voice: “‘Now we wait.’”

  The tension eases. We’ve drilled for this. We’ve faced dozens of monsters, creatures designed to overload our fear receptors. We’ve held position for eight hours, for ten hours. TL once ordered us into surveillance readiness for twenty-nine hours before sending us against Platoon 0316.

  Another twenty minutes pass—and the bait unfurls like a flower, into a glowing yellowbeige octopus. Weird light bathes the street and the Freehold holds its breath.

  “Sweet biyo,” Pico gasps.

  “What?” Voorhivey asks, bringing his Boaz up.

  “That bait really does look like M’bari’s ass-tat.”

  It really doesn’t. It looks like a pulsating ocean creature, but not from any ocean on Earth. Ridehorse asks how long this is supposed to take, and Sergeant Manager Li says she doesn’t know.

  I flick a blank message to Ting, and a moment later she lenses, “What? Do you want something? Do you want to talk? Are you wondering why we’re doing this here? Or why there’s nothing about lampreys on MYRAGE? Because I have a theory.”

  “I was going to ask if this is a private link.”

  “Oh! I always keep us private at first, unless we’re already not private, in which case I don’t . . .” She trails off for a second. “Um. What do you need? Do you want to know what the bait’s made of?”

  “Not really.” I’d planned to ask if there are still people in the caravans, but instead I say, “Why are we doing this here? And what is it made of?”