by Joel Dane
We talk about Pico for a while. We talk about Ridehorse, and Ting fills me in on the rest of the squad. Shakrabarti is in the next room, growing back his toes. Basdaq is down the hall and expected to make a full recovery. Cali’s broken collarbone and the burns on Sergeant Manager Li’s calf were outpatient procedures.
The news about M’bari isn’t great: the shock round that tapped his head was a vintage neuroweapon and he’s in thera-sleep in another wing.
Other news is better. Other news is miraculous: Elfano survived. Apparently there isn’t much left of her beyond a head and spinal column, but her suit kept her brain active. In a year or two, sagrado willing, she’ll walk again. Maybe she’ll even grow back her pointy ears.
“So,” I finally ask Ting. “Did we get what we needed?”
She wrinkles her ferrety nose at me. “Well, I don’t know what we needed exactly, what counts as necessary as opposed to—”
“Did we identify the lamprey, Ting?”
“Oh! Yeah, no. The extractor didn’t isolate any genetic material.”
“Not any?”
She shakes her head. “It’s like lampreys weren’t bio-forged.”
A messy transcription scrolls onto my lens:
—no genetic profile. Zero. None.
Are you saying they’re not organic? They’re machines?
They’re organic and machines. They’re remorts.
With zero genetic profile?
Or with unprecedented cellular defenses.
What the fuck are we looking at here? This is like nothing we’ve seen, this is not like anything any of us has ever seen.
“Wait,” I say, skimming the transcription. “Lampreys aren’t remorts?”
“Maybe they are.” Ting closes one eye thoughtfully. “I mean, if they’re based on a SICLE weapon with genetic defenses? That makes sense. Nothing else makes sense. Except maybe they’re not based on bioweapons with genetic defenses.”
“If they’re not remorts . . .”
“Yeah,” she says. “Boom. It’s a whole new world.”
“Who is that in the transcription you sent?” I lens.
“C-suite generals, mostly. They’re a little panicked. I mean, unnerved or nonplussed. Oh! I wonder if—”
“If you ask if plussed is the opposite of nonplussed, I’ll punch you in the ventricle.”
She sticks her tongue out.
“They have to be remorts,” I say. “Nothing else makes sense.”
“There’s nothing like them in the databases. They don’t have a genetic signature and, I mean, everyone’s dumbfounded. Nobody knows.”
“You don’t have any personal theories?”
“I can’t read them.” She makes a religious sign she copied from Ridehorse. “They’re all kinds of wrong.”
“And what about that blackout? The entire Freehold lost power.”
“It wasn’t just a blackout. Something—” She pauses. “We made an incision into that lamprey and found ourselves on the operating table.”
“What does that mean, Ting?”
“We opened a window, but the lamprey looked at us.”
“Ting! Stop talking shit. What happened?”
“Um, well, we probed the lamprey for genetic tags, right? For tDNA sequences and the rest and—and when we linked to the military processors, to analyze the samples? The lamprey crashed a thousand firewalls and breached a million systems and analyzed us.”
A chill touches my spine. I don’t know what she means, but I know it scares me. “The lamprey hacked the corpo systems?”
“Not really, but pretty much. Do you want to see a transcription of that?”
“No, I—”
!SYSTEM INTRUSION ALERT!
!ANOMALY-BASED DEVIATION DETECTED!
!SATURATION SYSTEM INTRUSION ALERT!
!SYSTEM INTRUSION ALERT!
!SATURATION SYSTEM ENCROACHMENT ALERT!
!INTRUSION ALERT!
!INDUCTIVE ANOMALY-BASED DEVIATION FLAGGED!
ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED
“Ting, enough!” The scrolling stops. “So the lamprey accessed corpo systems, and that caused the blackout?”
She scrubs her amber hair with her fingers. “Not just corpo systems, though. It hacked vend machines and concert recordings and ratification guides.”
“Sagrado,” I breathe. “Are they intelligent?”
“The corpo’s looking into that,” she says, and lenses me: “I don’t think so. I tracked the hack and it’s weird. Random. It grabbed as much trivia and gossip as proprietorial stuff.”
I watch one of the medical monitors, my mind whirling around questions I’m not smart enough to ask. Finally, I say, “So what’s Javelin thinking now?”
“That they need a corpse.”
“A lamprey corpse?”
“The theory is that they don’t dissolve if they’re dead,” Ting says. “Dissolving is like a, a stage in their life cycle. If we kill them, we stop the cycle. And getting a sample didn’t work, the probe didn’t work. So that’s the next step, getting a whole corpse.”
“Except nothing short of a hellfrost strike kills these things.”
“CAVs might. Enough CAVs. If they send dozens and dozens.”
I shiver at the thought of all those dead cry pilots, and Ting changes the subject until my meds put me to sleep.
On my second morning in sick bay, Calil-Du shoves inside my room. Her head is freshly shaved and an evil light glints in her eyes. I expect her to talk about the lamprey, but she says, “The services are tomorrow.”
She means the funerals for Pico and Ridehorse. “I know.”
“You think it’s come as you are?”
“Huh?”
“You’re going like that?”
I don’t know what she means. “Well, I’ll get out of bed first. They’re releasing me this afternoon.”
“And you’re planning on rolling up to the funerals in your ugly-ass fatigues?”
We don’t have dress uniforms, because we live in the cracks between the services. We’re in Javelin but never really left basic. Plus, there are no Javelin uniforms, dress or otherwise.
“What?” I ask. “I’ll tuck in my shirt.”
“No.”
“My civilian stuff is—”
“You’re wearing this.” She lenses me a high-fashion gown that all the stylish Class A men are wearing this season. “And don’t whine about the cost. I’m buying.”
“Oh, I see now,” I tell her. “You think I’m Shakrabarti.”
“Muh?” she says.
“If you’re looking for a fashionboy, you want Hoppy Two Toes in the next room.”
“Please piss me off,” Cali says. “I’d love an excuse to dump you on the floor and step on you.”
“Well, what are you wearing?”
“Some old rags.” She lenses me an image of herself cocooned in what looks like the same high-fashion gown she already showed me. “I’ve had it for years.”
“You clean up good,” I say, giving a low whistle. Although actually she does not clean up good. She looks like an executioner at a tea party.
“Asshole,” she says, clearly pleased.
“But I’m not wearing that dress.”
“Why not?”
“Because it costs more than I’ve earned in my entire life. Plus, it clashes with my eyes. How about this, Calil-Du? I’ll shave my head and we’ll go as twins.”
So she dumps me on the floor. At least she doesn’t step on me.
After the medics kick her out, we argue on our lenses until I agre
e to wear a kurta she approves of, which is a long golden skirt and a black-and-red smartwired shirt. I don’t only agree because I’m planning to cannibalize the smartwire into lockpicks. I also agree because Pico would laugh to see me dressed up fancy as a Class B gooddog.
“You hear about the lamprey?” Cali asks, after ordering the kurta.
“That we didn’t get any gene markers? Yeah.”
“It’s not a remort. No genetic information? That’s the fucking opposite of a remort.”
“It’s not an alien, Cali.”
She lenses me a shrug. “You know what shits me? Pico and Ridehorse died for nothing. We didn’t extract DNA, but Li keeps saying that they advanced the mission, that we need to know what doesn’t work, too. I asked if she knows what doesn’t get her teeth knocked out.”
I check squad channel. “And she enrolled you in a seminar on combat trauma integration.”
“It’s not combat trauma,” she tells me. “I just want to stomp on her intestines.”
“That’ll prove you’re integrated.”
“Nah.” She shows me an evil grin. “But it’d relieve my stress.”
The next day, there’s a formal funeral with a hundred people who never met Pico and Ridehorse, which involves solemn speeches and sharp salutes. After the military service, though, a few dozen members of Pico’s family arrive via projection. One of Pico’s sisters plays a bamboo flute as the children fold origami boats.
I sit with Pico’s father, the one who’d been a scorch artist in Burkinabé. He tells me stories about Pico’s childhood. I tell him stories about basic until a corporate message flashes on squad channel, reminding us not to discuss proprietorial corporate information such as the existence of a new class of remorts.
“He’s a hero,” Ting lenses me privately. “He died fighting lampreys, and they’ll never know.”
“He wouldn’t care.”
“I care! They’re saying he died in a training accident. I hate them.”
Ridehorse’s faith requires a monthlong service at her home. Her family asks us to burn everything she owned and invites us to live with them in the High Atlas enclave. Tingting bursts into tears; she’s never been invited anywhere before. Oh, and Ridehorse’s family calls her Annie, which is short for a nine-syllable name I can’t pronounce, and which makes my eyes fill with tears.
Then there’s a small service with the squad, which involves sloppy drunks and gales of laughter.
The laughter surprises me.
Ting managed—thankfully, nobody asks how—to collect dozens of loops of Pico and Ridehorse over the past few months. Clips of them screwing around, making jokes, making trouble. We laugh till we cry, till there’s no difference between laughter and tears.
Voorhivey—of all people—hijacks a luxury elevator for the funeral, which moves us in endless loops through the building. Cali is drugged out of her bald skull, wearing her horrible dress, stomping her way through a lamentation dance. Shakrabarti sprawls on a swingchair with streamers dangling from his half-healed foot, while Jag is curled on his lap painting jaguar rosettes on his chest. M’bari attends via a hologram. He’s deep in conversation with Sergeant Manager Li while I’m on a swing, buzzing on military-spec soft-drugs with Ting pushing me.
“I don’t think—” she says, as I swing toward her. “What still bugs me?”
“What,” I say, at the top of my arc where she can’t hear.
“—what killed them,” she says, when I return.
“Huh?” I ask, when she can’t hear.
“—nobodyevenknowswhytheydied!” she blurts the next time I’m close. And over the next few swings, she explains. “Lampreys killed them. The worst things since the SICLE War. Maybe even before then. Pico and Ridehorse died fighting a genocide-class weapon. And nobody knows. Their families don’t know.”
I stop swinging. “We know.”
“It’s not enough,” she says, with a hitch in her voice.
Tears pool in her eyes, so I send her a click that means tell me.
Pictures of her mother as a girl immediately bloom around me: she’s bulkier than Ting, with the same pointy nose and oddball smile. The collage shifts; her mother ages. Ting’s birth is the brightest moment in her mother’s life, and seven years later becomes the darkest.
Her mother disappears into a basement so off-grid that there’s no MYRAGE connection. The pictures vanish. There’s nothing, except Ting’s voice: “There’s nothing about her on any channel, in any database. Not about her. A few dates, sequences, addresses. Nothing that matters. She’s gone like she never existed, like her life never happened. Just because she—she got addicted, she sold me to that manufactory—that doesn’t mean she’s nothing. When we steal memories, we erase people. That won’t happen with Pico and Ridehorse. I won’t let it.”
CHAPTER 51
Anvil Squad is protected from the feverish reaction to the Belo City blackout by virtue of rank. We hear that the executive suites and research units are furiously reevaluating strategies and shifting resources, but nobody bothers the grunts.
Works for me.
M’bari is still recovering, so we’re depending on Sergeant Manager Li for gossip. She says there are three primary schools of thought about lampreys:
The terrafixing protocol reevolved lampreys from a cyber-warfare intrusion module: a weapon built to infiltrate data labs, bypass signal defenses, and download the contents.
Lampreys are the physical forms of weaponized computer viruses, complete with cellular defenses, created when the terrafixing regenned invasive algorithms into corporeal form.
Sophisticated patriot groups created lampreys in an attempt to destroy the corporate hegemony. Supporters of this theory point to previous insurgents with impressive capacities, such as the Plaguemaker of Vila Vela.
I’m halfway through physical therapy in the immersion tank when a command-level authorization overrides my lens. Despite being surrounded by calming gel, I feel a jolt of nerves. Is this another deployment? Are we following waves of suicidal CAVs to collect a lamprey corpse?
Except when images brighten on my lens, I’m looking at a dozen models striking poses. Statues? Sims? Some strange MYRAGE event? No. I’m seeing a dozen versions of Shakrabarti, each wearing a different outfit.
“Um,” I say.
“Which one do you like best?” Ting asks me, opening another screen with her face. “He keeps asking for my opinion, but I don’t know about this stuff.”
“I thought you were keeping a low profile.”
“I am! That’s why I always dress so boring and don’t know anything about fashion! He’s cute in the little fringy one, don’t you think?”
“I mean a low profile with your . . .” I pause a moment too long. “Hacking.”
“Oh! Oh, well, I didn’t override your lens just to ask you about Shakrabarti.”
“No?”
“Course not. I finally got a private link for you. With Rana.”
“Right now? A live line? No way.”
“Yes way! All the way. Where there’s a will way! You ready?”
“Sure, yes,” I say. “Thanks. And Tingting?”
“Hm?”
“He looks glossily rakish in that sparkle-suit.”
Ting giggles. “What does that mean?”
“No idea.”
“I’ll tell him!” she says, and shifts the connection.
The various Shakrabartis shatter, and a default bluescreen fuzzes into place. I try to set the immersion tank to private, only to discover that Ting already took care of it.
There’s a lag as the link extends into interplanetary space. A haze appears on a field of blue. I opaque my lens. The blue turns black and the haze turns into a million pinpricks of ancient light. Space surrounds me. I feel weightless in the therapeutic gel, and only the fain
test trace of the immersion tank peeks from behind the dark sprawling universe.
A Flenser craft drifts into view.
Just one ship, because space is rather large. Even in a massive fleet, the ships aren’t visible to each other with the naked eye. The craft floats through the nothingness, spinning slowly. It’s cone-shaped and gawky, because one of the great tragedies of the space race was the death of a billion youthful fantasies of cool, streamlined designs that screamed “interstellar ass-kicker.”
Instead, we got cones. Space cones.
Still, as the craft angles closer to my viewpoint, I’m impressed by the curved foametal hull, and the trawler-drive pulling the ship is a marvel of AI engineering. The array rings gyrating along the length of the cone are just goofy, though, like bracelets on a pear.
My perspective shifts through the rings, through the hull, and into the craft. This corridor looks nothing like the triangular one in Dag Bravska; it’s claustrophobic and lined with machinery, twice as tall as me but barely as wide.
The hallway vanishes and Rana appears in a transmission chamber. Her skin gleams and her lenses glow green. Her expression is serious, almost stern. Almost angry. That’s just Rana, though. I know she’s happy to see me, even though her lips barely move.
That’s okay, my lips move plenty.
She’s wearing a billowing suit that looks like white flavorant swirling through a glass of black chai. Flensers don’t wear tight uniforms like marines. They wear flowing gowns of programmable material that extrude and retract on command to let them interact more fully with the cramped environment.
So I say, “You didn’t have to get dressed up just for me.”
“I’m glad to see,” she says, after a lag, “that you still think you’re funny.”
I laugh, for no reason except that I’ve missed her voice. “I’m glad to see you’re still you.”
A hood extrudes from her uniform, like she’s pulling a cloak around herself for privacy. “You’re lucky your message got through. Ting says you stole an authorization?”
