Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  That’s why I’m tucked inside a CAV in the lab, easing my mind into a meditative flow. Fractal starbursts spin behind my eyelids. My pulse slows, my self shrinks. There’s a clunk in my soul like a vault unlocking. Then golden threads appear in the CAV saddle walls and I’m fully bonded. I needed Ting to pair me the first time, but not anymore. This is all me now, linking the CAV to my brainstem on some subatomic level, until I can’t tell where I stop and the machine begins.

  Then I disentangle myself and start again. And again and again, feeding the techs data. Blazing a trail. Spending my days pairing inside CAVs and my nights checking on my squad, which is currently stationed on another base.

  M’bari suggests that I befriend Tech Commander Gaaldine, to learn more about the approval process. Jag suggests that I spy on the techs, to learn more about the approval process. Cali recommends I break someone’s patella, to enjoy more about the approval process. Basdaq tells me I’m doing great: Keep on keeping on. We’re all proud of you. Sergeant Manager Li assures me that after testing is over, Command will reunite me with the squad. She knows what I need to hear.

  Shakrabarti and Ting don’t say much because they’re still recovering from injuries. Shakrabarti lost half his body during the attack, while Ting lost half her mind while pairing me.

  On day seven, the Ayko techs stuff me into the belly of a diagnostic imaging machine for forty-four hours. Not my idea of a good time, but I don’t care: I’m part of something I believe in. Something that matters. I’m not proud, exactly—I’m not sure I deserve this—but I’m grateful. The techs can lock me in a machine as long as they need.

  We’re going to crack this thing.

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning, Ensign Tech Nanty lenses me to head into the simulation gym.

  “What’s on the schedule?” I ask, instead of checking for myself.

  “Veridical Cliff,” she tells me.

  “Sure,” I say. “That’s clear.”

  She transfers a file. “Veridical Cliff is—”

  “—the most badass CAV operator squad in the Cherzo-5,” M’bari lenses.

  “Hey!” I smile as I trot into the sim-gym. “What’re you doing here?”

  “The Ensign Tech invited me onto channel for a few seconds.” He pings me a deadpan click. “Just to say that about them being badass.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” Nanty explains. “In any case, Veridical Cliff is here to assist with the final stage of your training.”

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  M’bari scrolls through the CAV squad’s file, highlighting key passages for my attention, adding annotations too fast for me to track.

  “Slow down,” I mutter, and Veridical Cliff projects themselves into the simulation gym around me.

  I’m from a Freehold, so my home corporation isn’t really mine. Still, my unofficial home corpo is Shiyogrid. Veridical Cliff, on the other hand, hails from Welcome 12. M’bari tells me that’s why pictograms in an imaginary language scroll across their skinprints.

  “Huh,” I say.

  “That’s deep corporate culture in Welcome 12,” M’bari lenses. “Which is fair enough. They’ve earned the bragging rights. Between them, these seven operators have killed nineteen cataphracts and hundreds of lesser remorts.”

  Identical skinprints are a nice touch, but they’re also wearing identical scowls. Antagonism frosts the air. I’m not surprised, because M’bari flags this possibility as he vanishes. To Veridical Cliff, I’m an untrained cry pilot who stumbled into a win. I’m a petty criminal, qualified for nothing more than being strapped into a CAV to activate the controls. Throw away the corpse when you’re finished and requisition another warm body.

  “We’re here,” the Veridical Cliff captain tells me, “to guide you through the basic CAV combat simulations.”

  “I know the basics, san,” I say. “We could start with more adva—”

  “You don’t know shit,” a stripe-cheeked operator snaps. “Flailing around like a sanitation drone.”

  “If anyone knows shit,” I tell him, “it’s a sanitation drone.”

  Nobody smiles. Well, nobody else. I find myself pretty amusing. And pretty glad that M’bari warned that I’d encounter hostility, and explained why: if cry pilots learn to control CAVs, there’s no need for remote operators. There’s no need for Veridical Cliff.

  “Y’know, because they’re sanitation drones,” I explain, into the silence.

  “We read your file.” The captain frowns. “You assaulted a military recruiter.”

  “Not really, san. I only broke his nose a little.”

  “That’s assault.”

  “In my squad, it’s a love bite.”

  “You assaulted a military recruiter,” he continues. “And chose to serve as a cry pilot. You survived a CAV deployment. That’s how you enlisted. Not by merit.”

  “By dumb luck,” a grizzled-looking operator says.

  “My favorite kind,” I admit.

  “There’s nowhere to hide now, Freeholder,” the stripe-cheeked operator tells me.

  “Nowhere to hide,” the grizzled one repeats. “This comes down to skill.”

  I don’t bother responding. The difference between a CAV operator and a cry pilot is the difference between a snakeskin and a snake. I fought inside a CAV, I killed inside a CAV. More important, I bled inside a CAV. I almost died. None of these splices know how that feels, and my confidence shades into smugness.

  I’ll show them what a cry pilot is.

  “Make yourself ready,” the captain tells me.

  When the training simulation engages, a virtual CAV threads into place around me. Screens brighten, cables unspool. The pilot’s frame pivots smoothly beneath my weight. I’m impressed: remote operators strap into interfaces to control CAVs from afar, but this one is designed for a cry pilot.

  Words flash on my lens—ACOS 23.4 MODULE BASIC.

  The entrance to a simulated combat course appears in front of my CAV. My scans show a maze of ramparts with a dozen hostiles. Tracking mines blaze to life, assault drones launch, and a spindle barrage fires at my position.

  Warheads detonate but I’m already fifty feet away, whipping around a corner. Fast, but not fast enough. Despite my customized interface, this module is designed for remote operators. For squads like Veridical Cliff, who operate drone-CAVs from miles away. The sim is polished and powerful and inadequate. I’m not tapping into my CAV’s full potential. The updated code boosts my power, speed, and precision substantially, but in a real CAV I shatter substantial into a thousand pieces.

  Still, I burn through the maze, then spin to a halt at the exit.

  “Nowhere to hide,” I say, as my score rises into the highest percentile.

  There’s no answer from Veridical Cliff. Instead, my lens tells me to begin ACOS 4.49 MODULE INTERMEDIATE.

  The simulation shifts until I find myself in the terrafixing. A cloudless sky shines around orange mountains. A whitemoss plain stretches beneath me, an uneven carpet of spongy life. Bulbous plants wrapped in diaphanous shrouds flicker into place—and the sim issues orders: Neutralize incoming remort.

  A swarm of remorted umire assault drones crashes toward me like a tidal wave. An individual umire is the size and shape of my fingernail—and about as dangerous—but I’m not facing an individual umire. I’m facing thousands. Destroying an entire swarm requires pinpoint accuracy. Yet despite my sluggish simulated CAV, when I spin to a halt the remains of the umire swarm drifts around me like falling leaves.

  My score hits the top two percent.

  The final scenario—ACOS 3S MODULE EXPERT—pits a single CAV against a cataphract, the most fearsome remort on the planet.

  Or, if lampreys are remorts, the second most feared.

  Remorts like umires and cataphracts are the reactivated bioweapons of the SICLE War,
a global conflict that almost killed the planet. After the war, the corpos developed the terrafixing to reclaim destroyed biomes and regenerate lost species. Unfortunately, it occasionally repairs—remorts—defunct biological weapons as well.

  Oops.

  A single cataphract is more dangerous than thousands of umires. Hell, a single cataphract is more dangerous than millions. Cataphracts are impenetrable assault machines that extrude bio-forged Paladin battlesuits, which shamble into combat like reanimated corpses. Corporate guidelines require deploying no fewer than four remote-operated CAVs against a cataphract. Yet in this exercise I’m alone as a frozen wasteland takes shape around me.

  Ice gleams in the moonlight.

  Wind howls between my CAV ribbons.

  A grooved fore-cab explodes at me through a snowdrift, followed by a sixty-yard cataphract. A segmented serpent with jointed armor, dozens of crushing legs, and arc-ablators capable of blasting holes in my CAV.

  At least there aren’t any Paladin battlesuits.

  Still, the cataphract is awesome and terrifying. I know I’m in a simulation, but I reach for flow automatically. The CAV doesn’t respond—the program doesn’t support pairing—so I leap sideways, slashing with a ribbon.

  I miss.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joel Dane is the pseudonym of a full-time writer. As the son of an Army private and an Air Force staff sergeant, he was raised on war stories and interservice rivalry. He’s the author of more than twenty books across several genres and has written for film and TV, including a dozen episodes of a Netflix original series. He lives in California and Maine—not at the same time—with his family. Visit him online at joeldane.com.

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