Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  My fingertip runs along a curved alloy shell. I’m saying good-bye to my squad. I’m saying good-bye to the CAVs, too.

  Shadows move like snakes. There’s the scent of musk and oil. A thousand cry pilots died inside these saddles; a hundred cataphracts felt the killing lash of these ribbons. I press my forehead against a CAV shell and feel the coolness on my skin. A ribbon curls around my left wrist. I’m not frightened. I’m not even alarmed. The touch of alloy feels right on my skin.

  I stand there for a long time. I stand there until the world returns.

  * * *

  • • •

  We spend the next morning on conditioning, and the afternoon in a class covering the structure of corporate joint ventures. Nobody knows why, not even M’bari. The instructors use the rotating deployment of Javelin as a case study of trans-corpo coordination within a wider framework of entrepreneurialism.

  “I’m transferring with you,” Ting lenses me from her workstation.

  “What?”

  “To that Garda department in Mosiah.”

  Which means she eavesdropped on my conversation with the Djembe again. “How?”

  “I’ll make some adjustments to the assignment schedules.”

  “Tingting.” I lens a warning sign. “If you screw around, they’ll find out what you are.”

  “I want to stay with you.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’re good at this. You swat down missiles like . . .” I grope for a pop culture MYRAGE reference. “Like the Eye of Bhima.”

  “That’s not a thing, Maseo.”

  “You know what I mean. What’s the name of the monsoon beast in that Thoi Tiet game?”

  “You’re such an ignorant roach,” she says.

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “I’m a well-informed roach.”

  “Stay close to the Sergeant Manager,” I tell her. “She’ll look after you.”

  “She doesn’t know me. None of them know me but you.” She feeds me audio, and makes her voice small and pathetic. “You’re my best friend.”

  I turn in my seat to glare at her, but she doesn’t raise her head. I can’t tell if she’s serious. I don’t know what to think, and for some reason a suspicion rises to the front of my mind. “How old are you, Ting?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “That’s what your file says.”

  She stays silent, which is all kinds of wrong, for Ting.

  “Tingting,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “I turned sixteen last month,” she says.

  “Sagrado, Ting. You’re just a kid.”

  “Don’t you pity me,” she snaps. “Don’t you dare—I’m not—I’m not just a kid. You know that. You’re the only one who does.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  She closes our private channel and ignores me. I’m not sure how to make her stay in Javelin instead of trying to join me, but I won’t push her. At least not yet.

  After class, the squad heads for a third-floor courtyard.

  We lens the vend cart and lounge around in the unfiltered air. Well, most of us do. M’bari is fully recovered, but some bureaucratic snafu is keeping Basdaq in the hospital. He needs to report for duty before they can release him, but he can’t report for duty until after he’s released.

  I chew on a yeasty tube while Shakrabarti and Voorhivey and Jag play a clunky MYRAGE fami-sim about people playing clunky MYRAGE fami-sims. It’s either satire or stupid, I can’t tell. Probably both. They open permission for spectators, though, so we cheer and jeer and enjoy the half-screened sunlight.

  Ting’s still ignoring me, the lying little genefreek. I’m considering pulling her aside when the base channel announces that quarantine is officially over.

  Everyone checks their messages. I mostly get channel spam, but Ionesca also sent a five-perspective film about phylogenetic diversity in soda lakes. Jag chatters happily with her parents, and M’bari patiently answers questions from what sounds like a dozen kids. Shakrabarti stands at attention and gives two-word responses to questions I can’t hear. Voorhivey is greeted with songs, because his family is in the middle of a festival, while Cali and Ting aren’t greeted by anyone at all.

  Cali digs into a softbowl with chopsticks, shoving food into her face. Ting hugs her skinny chest and blurs through MYRAGE channels.

  Then an announcement flashes across our lenses, and Cali bellows, “Sweet fucking biyo!”

  We’re third on rotation for deployment supporting a CAV assault. The new gear is ready, the revised strategy is in place, and there’s even a motivational annotation: Secure a lamprey or die trying! It probably sounds more poetic in the original language.

  “Now we just need Ojedonn and Yin/Yang,” Voorhivey says.

  “There’s been another delay,” Ting says.

  We all look at each other. “Delay as in attack?” I ask.

  “I think so.”

  Basdaq lenses from the treatment ward: “Another transport hub?”

  “A power grid, I think. The early reports aren’t clear.”

  “How many casualties?” Voorhivey asks.

  “Eighteen thousand and counting but I don’t think—I mean, Ojedonn, Gazi, and Werz weren’t even in that city. They’re just delayed.”

  “I don’t give a shit about eighteen thousand,” Cali says. “Long as it’s nobody I know.”

  I’m ashamed to admit that I agree. Sergeant Manager Li claims that nobody thinks lampreys are intelligent, but these things really are focusing on military installations now. Even if they’re just obeying some automated defensive protocol, the change in tactics is chilling.

  “Nothing we can do,” Voorhivey says, “except secure a lamprey—”

  “‘Or die trying?’” Shakrabarti says. “What kind of splice finds that motivating?”

  “I like it,” Cali said.

  “Asked and answered,” M’bari tells Shakrabarti.

  Cali is still trying to figure what he means when Sergeant Manager Li summons us to a briefing. There’s a pit in my stomach. We’re third in line to head into the shit, and I’m transferring away. I’m about to tell the squad that I’m leaving, and I can’t admit why.

  When we reach the conference room, Sergeant Manager Li projects the weekly stats. She talks us through strategic venture objectives and performance expectations. There’s the usual tedium of self-assessment, organizational effectiveness, and core values.

  Li closes the projection. “It’s that time, colleagues and gentlefolk.”

  “We heard, Sarge!” Cali growls. “They’re sending us out! New ammo, new city, and with a hundred fucking CAVs! These splices think they’re gunning for us? We’re going to fall on the next lamprey like a, um, a . . .”

  “A one-legged elephant down a Freehold stairwell?” Ting offers.

  “Yeah!” Cali punches Ting happily on the shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “Like that!”

  Li’s gaze sweeps the room. “The question, Private Calil-Du, is who precisely is we? In the past few days, two CAV units responded to lampreys. Both failed. Catastrophically.”

  “Cataclysmically,” Ting says.

  “Lampreys cut through a dozen CAVs without sustaining more than moderate damage.”

  “What happened to the support troops?” Shakrabarti asks.

  “Ninety-six percent survived.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Which is why the new rules of engagement shift infantry forward,” Li says, “into the red zone. We’ll support the CAVs at extremely close range.”

  “That’s . . . less good.”

  “We’re gonna drop on them like an anvil,” Cali says. “Like an elephant with an anvil. Down a fucking stairwell.”

  For a moment, even Li stares at her in disbelief. “Well. Now that you are fully apprised of the situation, I
need your assignment requests. Are you going to stick with Javelin or return to your Shiyogrid career path? Jagzenka?”

  “I’m sticking, prez,” Jag says, and the prez means for Pico.

  Li glances at the projection. “Basdaq?”

  “If they ever let me out of here,” he says from the treatment ward, “I’m with you.”

  “M’bari?”

  “Javelin,” he says.

  “Calil-Du?”

  “You aren’t transferring me out of here,” Cali says, “until no lamprey is left unfucked.”

  “Voorhivey?” Li asks.

  “My mom’s going to kill me,” he says. “She was marines. Her mom was marines.”

  “Voorhivey?” Li repeats.

  He sighs. “Javelin.”

  “Ting?”

  She makes a little noise in her throat. “Yeah. I mean, me too. I mean, Javelin.”

  “Shakrabarti?”

  “Javelin, Sarge.”

  “Kaytu?”

  I’m trapped between two betrayals. Either I abandon my squad and pass the Djembe’s test or I have to face the fact that I’m not a soldier, that I’ll never be a soldier. If I stay, I’m making a mockery of the sacrifice of Tokomak Squad—and Pico and Ridehorse. If I stay, I’m calling them fools for fighting for the corporation, fools for dying.

  “Garda,” I say.

  It doesn’t go over well.

  CHAPTER 55

  After I’m released from the infirmary, I head to the gazebo for a little solitude. I’m not sure how I feel. Resigned, mostly. At least that’s what I tell myself. Not defeated, not disloyal: resigned.

  The bench is cool through my fatigues, but the air is warm and smells of cultivated coral and regenerating seawater. A cascade of reflections glint in the windows facing me. When I raise my head, a flock of passenger pigeons darkens the grids of sky between the buildings of Ayko Base.

  Then they’re gone, and I’m alone again. Until I’m not.

  “Something’s fucking with you.” M’bari steps into the gazebo from the terraces. “That’s the only reason you’d leave the squad.” He slides onto the seat beside me. “You grew up in Vila Vela during the insurgency?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then the refugee camps.”

  “Yeah.”

  M’bari falls silent when a squad of Welcome 12 troops strolls past. We watch them file into a lift, then watch the lift angle through the administration building.

  “How’s your leg?” M’bari asks.

  I touch my thigh, feeling the film beneath my pants. The bandage covers a puncture wound from where Cali stabbed me with her chopstick.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  “Cali, huh?”

  I snort. “Yeah.”

  “You’re going to miss her.”

  My throat clenches. “I’m going to miss you. I’m going to miss all of you.”

  “Except Voorhivey.”

  “Even him.”

  M’bari tosses me a snack tube. “The Sergeant Manager didn’t ask me to talk to you.”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “It should’ve. You’re not stupid.”

  I pop the tube. It smells like lichennut and citrus. “Where do you get this stuff?”

  “You want to stay with the squad,” M’bari says, “but something’s pulling you away.”

  “I don’t—”

  M’bari lenses me a request to shut up. “You can’t talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Remember the first day in training?” He props his boots on a gazebo bench. “The two of us on dorm overwatch, marching around like toy soldiers.”

  A smile tugs at my mouth. “I remember looking at you, seeing the wheels turning. I remember thinking, This one’s a planner.”

  “I remember looking at you, too,” M’bari tells me. “And I remember thinking, This one won’t leave you behind. This one won’t leave anyone behind.”

  A flush of shame warms my neck. “I’m sorry.”

  “Something’s fucking with you.” He stands and squeezes my shoulder. “I just wanted to tell you that I understand. And that I’ll miss you, too.”

  In barracks that night, Cali tries to pretend I don’t exist, but she’s incapable of pretense. She keeps scowling at me and swearing under her breath. Jag and Shakrabarti crawl into my bed, eager to convince me to stay.

  I don’t let myself be convinced. The hurt in Shakrabarti’s face shatters my heart, and the disbelief in Jag’s crushes the fragments. I’m betraying my friends again, trapped in a nightmarish loop, replaying my worst moments over and over again.

  The night feels cold after Shakrabarti and Jag slouch away. I’m left with nobody except myself, just like after the Doom of Vila Vela, but what did I expect? A new family, unbreakable bonds? Brothers and sisters who’ll never leave me and a grandmother who—

  Ting interrupts my self-pity with a private message. “You need to see this!”

  “Go away, Ting.”

  “Not until you see this!”

  I almost blank the channel, then realize that Ting will never leave me. Maybe she’s an annoying little sister, but she’s still my sister. So I say, “I’d rather arm-wrestle a lamprey than watch another one of your cuddle-chans.”

  “It’s not a cuddle-chan!”

  “Go away,” I tell her. “I’m sleeping.”

  “You are not.”

  “Fine,” I say. “What is it, then?”

  “It’s a cuddle-chan.”

  “Tingting.” I roll onto my back. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. It’s just . . . you keep trying to pay off some debt. You try and try and try, but who are you even paying? There’s nobody there but you, Mase. You and—me. And I mean, I guess I worry about you.”

  “You worry about me?”

  “No,” she says. “Shut up. Yes.”

  “Go away,” I tell her, my bleak mood lighter. “I’m watching a cuddle-chan.”

  I close the link and stare at the ceiling. She’s making sense for once. I’m the only one who sees the ledger. I’m the only one who calculates the interest. I can’t save Tokomak Squad. I can’t save Sergeant-Affiliate Najafi or her squad or her son. I can’t save the two thousand two hundred and thirty casualties, killed after Sayti’s modified terrafixing protocol struck the orbital Garda HQ.

  A war crime.

  I’d only been fourteen, but that’s no excuse. I still remember Sayti with fondness. With love. What does that say about me? I’m a tangled mess of knots and snarls. And I’m abandoning my squad. Not to pay off my debts, though. The reason I’m leaving is simple: I was raised a patriot but I’m a soldier now.

  * * *

  • • •

  The new Boazes look just like the old ones. The new brane cans look the same, too. Still, Sergeant Manager Li assures us that the gear is upgraded.

  “How are they upgrading our tech to kill a lamprey,” Voorhivey asks, “when they need to kill a lamprey to learn how to upgrade our tech?”

  “That’s above our pay grade,” Li tells him.

  “We’re so screwed,” Jag says, rubbing a rosette on her forearm.

  “That is our pay grade,” Li tells her.

  Ting wrinkles her nose. “Anyway, we’re mostly backup for CAVs.”

  “Because that worked so well in Belo City,” Shakrabarti says.

  Cali cracks her neck. “Long as I’ve got a trigger, I’m happy.” She scowls at me over the spray-patch covering her nose. “And a loyal squad.”

  “I’d settle for one without an impulse control disorder,” I tell her.

  M’bari drifts between us, and Jag mutters, “Down, orca,” to keep Cali from going for my throat.

  “What’s the fathe
rfucker still doing here?” She spits at my boots. “This isn’t a Garda fight. It’s a fucking waste of training.”

  “He’s not Garda yet,” Li says.

  “The update shows Werz due to depart in six hours,” Voorhivey reports, changing the subject and not quite looking at me. “And Gazi and Ojedonn are on another transport, three hours later.”

  The mood lightens, and Sergeant Manager Li leads us to an enclave mock-up for a live weapons training exercise. Impact towers loom overhead, with reinforced skywalks and the shells of dangling railcars.

  We trot into position and handshake the other squads, establishing compatibility, before we’re hit with pulses designed to mimic the lamprey signal interference. We communicate via paleo bursts, coordinating our disposition in the mock city.

  Everything works smoothly, except that instead of getting easygoing chatter from the squad, I’m getting curt professionalism.

  Our new crossweave armor is clammy and bulky, though the power-assist is kickass. We’re like stripped-down mekas. On common channel, squads bond over complaints about sweating inside the crossweave armor, then share recipes for cooking the fungus growing in your ass-crack. The military is nothing if not refined.

  Finally, bright green goo splashes across twenty yards of the street.

  “That’s the mock-up bait,” Sergeant Manager Li says.

  “Prettier than the old bait,” Ting says, keeping her gaze on the signals sweep.

  “I’ve got anklewraps that color,” Shakrabarti says.

  Voorhivey peers at him. “Green anklewraps?”

  “They’re spectrum sensitive,” Shakrabarti explains.

  “Sweet,” Voorhivey tells him. “I once saw a pair of—”

  There’s a loud crashing, and a fake lamprey bursts through a domed roof. Cali gives a mocking laugh. The lamprey looks perfect, a meaty pink sphere with rotating plates and jutting chains, except there’s nothing viscerally disturbing about it. Unlike the real thing, it looks like the result of human design. It’s ugly but not upsetting.