Halfheroes

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  His first kill had been fun. Kind of. His spotter had directed him to a potential training camp, his superior officer had confirmed it as a target and given him the green light. Niles had positioned the drone, fired, and the sensor operator had guided the missiles, hitting three buildings which flashed brilliant white on the screen. When the smoke had cleared, there were no buildings, no innies. No nothing. Level One cleared.

  But it got boring, fast. There was no Level Two. After a few months, he asked his commanding officer for some changes. Otherwise, he'd walk. He'd been surprised when he was given what he'd asked for. He found out later that his record was already better than the most experienced air force drone pilots. The army loved beating the air force at its own game. Now Niles had a private space for his shifts. He only had to interact with the rest of them at debriefings.

  His other request made everything more interesting for a while. He didn't want his sensor operator piloting the missiles. What was the point of that? He'd fly the drone, then had to let some jerk in the next room flew the missiles. No. Niles wanted all the credit for. And, as he'd promised, his record improved still further.

  The boredom had been inevitable. The army dudes weren't stupid. They'd prepared for it. When they saw how bored Niles was in debriefings, they called him in.

  That was when they had shown him the leaderboard. It was all off the record. Imagine if the lib-tard media found out drone pilots were competing against each other for the most kills. Niles loved it.

  Then, eight weeks earlier, the impossible had happened. He'd been knocked off top spot of the leaderboard. The air force had responded. Wingman#1 was top of the board. What kind of lame user name was Wingman#1?

  The problem was, once Wingman had got the top spot, he pulled away. There was nothing Niles, or the army, could do about it. According to his commanding officer, the air force had been given priority coverage of a busy area of Afghanistan. Things might change, in a few months.

  A few months was an eternity in the gaming world.

  Niles got creative.

  At first, he put more hours in. When that wasn't enough, he changed tactics on the strikes. Instead of the pinpoint targeting, he looked for maximum casualties. He used three Hellfire missiles when one would have done the job. His kill rate went up by thirty percent. He was their best pilot; so long as he didn't get too enthusiastic, they would overlook some collateral damage.

  Niles worked out that the scoring system didn't award any points for killing the mini Bin Ladens. Where the hell did they get off? Little kid terrorists would only grow up to be adult terrorists, right? He got halfway down the corridor to the commander's office before stopping himself. Instinct told him that not everyone might see the problem the way he did.

  Even within the unfair limitations, Niles got tantalising close to Wingman's high score. The problem was, he couldn't see any way of overhauling it.

  The answer, when it came, was obvious. It would take all his ingenuity, some advanced hacking, and some fancy piloting.

  In his cockpit, he used the dead time flying long passes far above the Afghan countryside to patch into the training drones kept on the base. There were six in total, four of which were flight ready.

  Niles wasn't stupid. He knew that his superior officers looked down on him. A gamer, however good, was still a gamer. Not a soldier. They thought he knew nothing about his country's enemies.

  They had underestimated him. Niles knew exactly who his country's enemies were. The drone strikes in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Yemen. The speeches he'd heard on TV. The stuff he'd read online. Muslims were the enemy. Everyone knew it, but few dared say it out loud.

  It had taken Niles all of ten minutes to find the biggest mosques in the United States. Friday prayers was the busiest time. They'd be packed with terrorists then. He had military flight plans ready to upload when the day came. Four drones would go out on training missions. All four fitted with a full complement of Hellfire missiles.

  Wingman would never catch him after next Friday. In eight days' time, he would be a real hero. KaKill would be a legend.

  The titan showed up five hours into his shift. Niles hadn't seen the email from Titus Gorman, but his superiors had. While he sat in his cockpit, cocooned in his private world, the full might of the US army rolled into action around him. The fact that Niles had insisted on a private working area meant it was easy for the base to be evacuated without his knowledge. By two in the afternoon, he was the only living soul in the long, low building that served as the drone control centre.

  The call patched through to his headset was from the boss, General Storrman. Niles knew the guy hated him. He also knew the general needed him. So he showed him no respect at all.

  "General Stores! How's it hanging, big man?" As Niles Cahill, he couldn't look other people in the eye, let alone speak to them, but as KaKill, he was fearless, cocky, and didn't give a shit what anyone thought. "Got some new ragheads you want me to obliterate?"

  The response, when it came, was as unexpected as it was terrifying.

  "Cahill, shut up. You may only have minutes to live. I want you to listen and I want you to listen good. Have you checked your email?"

  Niles tapped keys while he spoke, bringing up a separate window on his third screen, filtering emails by time and date.

  "Not had time, what with touring Afghanistan, keeping our guys and gals safe out there, blowing up shit and HOLY FUCK."

  He was looking at an email from Titus Gorman. A personal email. From Titus Gorman to Nile Cahill. But not the one he dreamed about when Titus invited him over to talk about developing and testing new games for him. No. This one said there was a titan on its way over to kill him. Niles felt tears sting his eyes, hot and shameful. The voice in his ear spoke again.

  "Good. Then you know what's coming. You fall under my protection as a member of the US Army, and I don't intend to let Gorman's flying man come over here and murder you."

  Niles snivelled. "Thank you, sir."

  "Shut up and listen. We have air defence patrolling the area, ground-to-air missiles are ready, and an entire battalion is surrounding the base to protect your worthless ass."

  Niles swallowed. The general was still on the line, but he wasn't speaking. The seconds dragged by. Niles felt outrage grow alongside his terror. Why would Gorman target him? Not only was he a geek, he was a hero.

  "Cahill. We are allowing you to defend yourself. The training drones are available. You can use one of them. I gave orders for them to be armed and found four of them were already battle-ready. Would you know anything about that?"

  "Give me all of them!"

  "What?"

  Niles was babbling now. "All of them. I can control all four."

  "No. No one can control two safely, let alone—"

  Niles heard another voice, sounding as if it were on speakerphone, before the sound cut out. The general had muted the line. The voice had sounded a hell of a lot like the president.

  "Cahill. You have control of all four. The titan has been sighted. Good luck."

  Niles was too busy to pick up the lack of sincerity in the general's tone. He was sending commands to the four drones on the base, and watching all his screens at once as they left the hangar and took to the air. Information from radar and from the pilots circling the base was already coming in.

  The titan approached from the south. The patrolling aircraft opened fire, but the target flew erratically, sometimes dropping like a stone, then reversing direction. Its flight path often took it between two aircraft, making it impossible for them to attack without risking hitting each other.

  While the aerial battle continued, the massed troops on the ground could only look on.

  In quick succession, all twelve of the fighter jets, and the six helicopters backing them up dropped from the sky, one by one. They hit the ground hard enough to shake up their occupants, without causing serious injury. The aircraft themselves, after landing, continued to move. Wings bent or snapped, rotor
blades knotted into each other like twisted cable ties.

  Three minutes after the first sighting, the titan was alone in the sky as the drones rose to meet it.

  Niles relaxed, fear dissolving into excitement as he used his phenomenal gaming skills to their limit, his eyes flicking between all four screens, his fingers a blur of speed across the keyboard. He also used voice commands he had programmed himself, and two Bluetooth foot-pedals he had adapted to allow him to switch between the various cameras mounted on the drones.

  There was no more Niles Cahill, there was only Kakill, the most feared gamer on the planet. As he sighted the titan and moved his drones into position as if they were his own limbs, even Kakill disappeared. There was only a succession of moments seen on four screens from twenty cameras. Time had no meaning. Death had no meaning. There was just the game. And winning.

  Niles spoke the command he had planned for his mosque attack, sending it to every drone at once.

  Sixteen Hellfire missiles detached, four from each drone. The screens were now split into grids. Adrenaline flooded into Niles' brain as he tried to pilot sixteen missiles. He could see the titan. It was moving away, heading west, fast.

  The missiles' cameras tracked the titan as Niles guided them, keeping the fleeing figure in sight. He was gaining on it.

  The titan pulled the same trick it had with the planes, dropping suddenly. The Hellfire missiles were far more nimble than any plane. Nudging one joystick with his left hand while using keyboard shortcuts to link the other missiles to the movements of the first, Niles flipped the Hellfires at a speed which would have made any human pilot unconscious.

  He spotted the target below and followed again, baying for blood. The missiles were definitely gaining. He could make out details now. The dark outfit and helmet worn by the flying man, the ground rushing by in a blur of sand, dusty roads and metal fences. Then concrete, some yellow markings.

  He looked beyond the titan at the long, low building it, and the missiles were approaching. It looked familiar.

  "Shit."

  Niles hit the override and pulled the missiles into a climb.

  Nothing happened. He hit the button a second time, then a third.

  On-screen, the titan changed course and headed up. A second after it did so, forty ground-to-air missiles chased it into the sky. The Hellfires continued on their ground-level trajectory.

  Kakill's final word was broadcast to General Storrman, the assembled officers present in the briefing room, and the President and White House staff listening remotely.

  "Mommy."

  Milliseconds later, the complex was destroyed by sixteen Hellfire missiles. The ground-to-air attack on the titan culminated in an impressive, and expensive, firework display heard as far away as Albuquerque.

  The military prepared a press release announcing the titan's death, but the video footage shot by the superbeing in question, showing the spectacular result of their failed attack, left them looking powerless and frustrated, just as Titus Gorman had promised.

  Congresswoman Tennessee Murdoch was the third name on Titus Gorman's email. Her chief of staff alerted her to the fact at 6:45am, during their breakfast meeting. All other meetings and public appearances for the day were cancelled, and Murdoch was taken into protective custody.

  The president called her personally and assured her that her safety was now his top priority. Murdoch, whose affair with the president had begun before he took office and was still ongoing, believed him.

  She spent the day in a bomb-proof shelter. The coffee was bad, the pastries stale, and her temper was short. Shortly before the news of the titans' first victim was announced, the shelter inexplicably lost the satellite link, and the television went blank. Her mood, now, was as black as the screen, particularly as there was no cellphone signal. Murdoch raged at her staff, her security team, and anyone who got close. The hours passed slowly for all present.

  Thirty minutes after the death of Niles Cahill in Nevada, the president of the United States received a text on his personal cellphone. After he had read the message, it vanished, and he could find no trace of it.

  The president dismissed everyone from the Oval Office and sat, unmoving, with his head in his hands for four minutes. Then he sighed and picked up a phone, asking for a secure line.

  The message had read:

  Titus Gorman here, Mr. President. I'm not planning on killing Tennessee Murdoch. I'm going to make her an offer. I know about the two of you, but that's small beans. When she emerges, unscathed, at midnight—when, in other words, I've failed—she will receive a text offering my protection in return for everything she knows about the funding, and running, of your presidential campaign. I think she'll take my offer. Don't you? If she makes it through the day, that is.

  At 11:42pm, an extremely unusual tragedy unfolded in the Washington bunker. A security specialist's firearm malfunctioned, and Senator Tennessee Murdoch was accidentally shot twice in the head and once in the chest. She died of her wounds before reaching the hospital. The president sent thoughts and prayers to her husband and children at such a difficult time.

  29

  "If you can dream my dreams, if you can get inside my head while I'm sleeping, maybe you can send me a message. If you can do that, maybe you can do the same with Gabe, or with someone else here."

  Sara had been thinking aloud most of the day. TripleDee wasn't convinced Daniel's apparent ability to slip into someone else's dream was useful.

  "Just stay the fuck out of my head, freak."

  "You're missing the point." Sara was more patient with Triple than Daniel thought he deserved. "A group of halfheroes has never been together in one place like this before. We might unlock new abilities."

  It was no surprise to Daniel when Sara's intuition proved to be correct. The following morning, TripleDee admitted to the most vivid dream he'd ever had. He'd woken up drenched in sweat, still half-convinced he was with a team of mercenaries, breaking into a palatial building in an African country. In the dream he was there to plant the suggestion in a prince's brain that he should depose his father.

  "Thing is," he admitted to Daniel and Sara, "that's not one of my abilities. I'm just strong, and bulletproof."

  "And stupid," added Daniel.

  "Daniel, you're not being helpful," said Sara.

  "Sorry. Just didn't want him to miss out one of his special abilities."

  "Piss off, Harbin, you're no Stephen Hawker."

  "King."

  "That's where you're wrong. Stephen King's a writer, you thick bastard. Ha!"

  Sara interrupted.

  "The dream, Triple."

  "Yeah, right. In the dream, Ray was there, telling us the route was clear."

  "Ray?"

  "The little guy Danny boy couldn't hit back at the house. He can see a few seconds into the future. Handy. Thing is, I'd never met him until he came to Newcastle."

  Sara admitted she was the only one of the three who wasn't sure she'd dreamed someone else's dream. Her night had been filled with disconnected images, sounds, and smells that changed quickly, overlapping. Nothing clear. But she was sure few of the dream fragments had originated from her own subconscious.

  "I have homework for the pair of you," said Sara.

  Homework turned out to be straightforward. The three of them agreed to keep silently asking themselves two questions: am I conscious? and, am I dreaming? In her teens, she had read about the technique in a book on lucid dreaming.

  "But what's the bloody point?"

  Daniel wondered, not for the first time, if he'd be able to resist the temptation to give the Geordie whinger a big, satisfying slap when they were out.

  "The point is to wake up inside your dream. If you can become conscious within a dream, you can take control, direct your actions. Instead of being an actor, you become the director. If you are connecting with the other halfheroes, you might be able to do the same when you're awake."

  Daniel shifted on the stone floor, looking
over at Sara's face in the other cell.

  "And if we can connect, what happens then?"

  Sara smiled. "I don't know. But I hope it's good."

  Two nights later, Daniel dreamed of George. She had planted ideas in others' minds so subtly that they believed they'd had the idea themselves. Her ability had enabled them to break out of Station. In this dream, she was doing the same, leading him through stone corridors, following the route they'd seen Howell take on his ill-fated escape attempt. As he pushed her wheelchair, Daniel watched her gesture towards cell doors, which disappeared as he looked at them.

  Something strange was happening around Daniel's body. Silvery lines, the thickness of a single strand of a money spider's web, flowed alongside him, reaching outwards like deep sea creatures blindly groping for food. He looked down. The strands originated in his solar plexus, his heart and—when he turned to check—his head.

  He slowed as he passed the open cells. All was darkness, a smudged blackness which coiled in on itself like something living. Strands similar to those drifting around him floated out of the gloom, lit from within, their sinuous progress purposeful as they sensed, and responded to, his presence. They swam towards his own strands, coiling around them, releasing, then coiling again.

  The window was open. It was hot, mid-summer hot. No one could sleep in this heat. The woman with the knife was panting, her eyes wide. She thought I was there to rob her. I just meant her to keep her distance. I didn't know it would happen. She took three paces back, four, five. I could have stopped her. The curtains moved in the breeze, and she fell.

  He was back in the corridor. He was Daniel Harbin. The image of the woman falling was a sun-bleached Polaroid, the ghost of someone else's dream.

  As he walked, a new point of view became available. He observed his progress from above as if he was being filmed. The vantage point would have been impossible in reality as his vision would have been blocked by solid rock. He looked to one side then the other. There was only darkness at first, then, as his body below continued to push George's wheelchair down the corridor, he discerned brighter patches in the shadows. He drifted closer. Each patch was made up of three sources of light close together, a slow-motion writhing flow of bright threads.