Exo

by Fonda Lee

  “I worked on it the whole time you were missing,” Leon said somberly. “When I finished it this morning I knew we’d get you back, ’cause you were meant to have it.”

  “Here we go,” shouted Vic. Twin streams of heat-seeking micro-drones spat from the scrambler’s undercarriage and swarmed across the terrain like a plague of red-lighted insects. Leon jumped back up with his field glasses and called out coordinates as the red lights coalesced on the ridge in a row of clear targets. Pulse rifles whined and field artillery barked to life. The eastern ridge lit up in a series of impressive explosions.

  A brief cheer went up. Jet lowered his E201, wiped the night scope free of dust, and glared up at the ridge with a satisfied look of deeply personal vindictiveness. “That’s what you sapes get for taking one of ours.”

  A strange sense of unreality was coming over Donovan. An hour ago, he’d been trying to save rebels from his own erze mates. Now he was standing on the other side, warm with camaraderie, his heart jumping in triumph as the enemy was blasted to smithereens. The soldier in him twitched with the compulsion to get his hands on the nearest weapon and help his friends; some other, confused part wanted to escape, to get away from all of it.

  He found the medical tent easily enough; it was right by the Warren entrance and had Nurse erze markings on its quick-assemble frame. Inside, five injured exos were sitting or lying on small folding beds. The nurse-in-erze, a calm, older man named Sanjay, took a quick look at Donovan, decided he wasn’t in critical condition, and instructed him to wait. Jet waited with him, shifting impatiently but apparently unwilling to leave him on his own.

  “How’s your back?” Donovan asked him. “After, you know.”

  “I had three cracked ribs and a ruptured spleen. It wasn’t so bad, but I was stuck lying in a therapy tank in the Towers for a couple of days.” Jet’s voice fell. “Just about went out of my mind.”

  Donovan started to grin; he couldn’t imagine Jet would be any good at lying still.

  Jet wasn’t smiling, though. He was uncharacteristically quiet, his arms stiff by his sides. “I had no idea if you were alive. Or what they were doing to you. I’d seen those videos …”

  “Jet,” Donovan said quickly. “I’m okay.”

  Slowly, Jet nodded. “Yeah.” Then he looked at Donovan and his mouth curved in a smile that was more like himself. “You are so screwed, man. That is the last time I ever leave you alone with a girl.”

  Donovan laughed uncomfortably.

  “You think I’m joking,” Jet said. “Vic came to visit me, three times, while I was out of commission, and I was so worried I couldn’t even enjoy it. What good is being shot up if you can’t enjoy female sympathy?”

  “Three times, eh?” Donovan said.

  “D? Jet? That you?” The voice calling them was familiar.

  “Cass?” Donovan made his way over to the cot at the other end of the tent. Cassidy reached out a hand and Donovan squeezed it between his own. Jet came up on the other side and took her other hand.

  “Are you two ever a handsome sight for painkiller-addled eyes,” Cass said, a wide, slightly loopy smile lighting up her face. “You made it back to us. I knew you would.”

  “Oath and erze, Cass,” was all Donovan could say. “Your shoulder.”

  “Does it look bad?” she asked, nose scrunching with worry.

  Donovan hesitated. Cassidy’s exocel was ripped to ribbons down to the muscle under the skin. The panotin looked dark, slick with blood and bits of hanging flesh. It crawled in a creepy way, feebly trying to knit the flayed sections back together. “It could be worse,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.

  Cassidy turned her head to Jet instead.

  “It looks like you went through a meat grinder,” he told her.

  Cass sighed in resignation. “TGINS.”

  “TGINS,” Jet agreed. Thank Goodness I’m Not Squishy.

  “Grenade explosion,” Cass explained. “I’m being evacked. I’ll be in a tank for weeks.” She looked crushed. “It was insane what we found in there. Miles of War Era tunnels, filled with supplies and weapons and erze knows what else. We killed dozens of squishies. Captured dozens more. Fighting room to room the whole way.” They paused at the sound of more machine gun fire and a distant mortar explosion outside.

  Donovan swallowed a lump of shame. He was the one they’d all been worried about, but what he’d suffered suddenly seemed to pale next to the injured soldiers who’d been fighting for hours. “Why didn’t they just blow the place up?”

  “Command wanted all the data we could get our hands on—computers, files, prisoners.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “And they couldn’t blast the cave without knowing for sure you were out of it.”

  “Donovan!” A loud trilling exclamation preceded Nurse Therrid, who came up to them, trailing his translation machine and his nurse-in-erze. While Sanjay broke open packs of panotin replenishment gel for Cassidy’s wounds, Therrid drew Donovan aside to another bed. His fins fanned wide in exuberant greeting, then folded in concern. “Thank erze you’re safe. It makes me ill to think of losing exos I’ve known since they were Hardened.” The translation machine started to repeat him in the voice of a young man, but Therrid smacked it off so they could converse without it.

  Years had passed since those childhood zhree-human school encounters; Donovan saw Therrid far less often now. They’d grown apart, of course, separated inevitably by the status of their species and the work of different erze, but he still liked Therrid a lot. All the early exposure to humans must have had a formative effect on the Nurse; he now specialized in treating exo soldiers-in-erze. A third-generation colonist, Therrid understood several human languages fluently and garnered fin-flicking disapproval from some of the older zhree for his overly familiar manner toward natives.

  “I’m all right, zun Therrid,” Donovan reassured him.

  “Let me be the judge of that, hatchling.” Therrid would probably continue to call him a hatchling until he was fifty, Donovan suspected. He had Donovan undress, then took his temperature, looked in his eyes and mouth, examined his cerebrospinal nodes, and had him armor up and down several times. He made Donovan lie down and maneuvered a portable scanning array over him. “You have a bruised lung, and two of your ribs are fractured, though stabilized and healing. You’re showing symptoms of panotin depletion, elevated stress, tissue trauma, and malnutrition.” Therrid strummed a sighing low note. “It sounds bad, but it’s nothing that enough rest and proper nutrition won’t fix. You’re lucky you’re young and have an eighth-generation exocel. I’m clearing you for reduced duty but scheduling you for three therapy tank treatments, five days apart.”

  Therrid tapped out instructions on a computing disc and passed it to Sanjay. The Nurse’s opaque yellow eyes closed and opened sequentially, shifting his focus back as Donovan sat up. “Donovan, listen carefully. You may suffer effects from your ordeal that aren’t apparent yet. The stress of being separated from one’s erze affects exos just as it does zhree. You were only gone for twelve days, but if you notice odd behavior or strong feelings of anxiety or depression, you must let me and your superiors know. Distrust, hostility, or a sense of isolation from one’s erze could be signs of mental trauma.”

  Of going squishy-brained. Donovan stifled a grimace. “Yes, zun.”

  Jet had left during the exam and returned with a slightly-too-large spare uniform jacket. The Nurse cocked a fin in his direction. “I would think, though, that having Vercingetorix here as an erze mate would be traumatizing enough as it is.”

  Jet gave a slow shake of his head, the corner of his mouth hooking up. “Don’t try being funny around humans, zun Therrid. The translator doesn’t accurately capture your sarcasm.”

  “Thank the Highest State you’ve recovered, Vercingetorix. You’re an insufferable patient even by human standards.” The Nurse turned back and clasped his pincers tightly to Donovan’s hand. “Go in erze.”

  Donovan took the uniform jacket from Jet and
shrugged it on as they exited the tent. Outside, the sky had barely begun to lighten over the smoking eastern ridge. A team of scouts, Vic and Leon included, had begun to climb toward it on foot. Other officers were guarding the perimeter, but most were busy taking the Warren apart. Soldiers-in-erze emerged from the wrecked entryway carrying crates, weapons, boxes of storage discs, computers … and bodies, many bodies, wrapped in black bags. Everything was being loaded into T15s, which were now arriving and departing with regularity. A couple of Soldiers stood out among the humans, one of them walking the perimeter, the other speaking into a comm unit to coordinate scanner plane sweeps of the area. The sounds of battle had fallen mostly silent; any Sapience rebels still alive and at large had by now probably fled deep into the wilderness.

  Donovan faced the open tunnel into the hillside. The first time he’d entered it, he’d believed he wouldn’t come out. Less than twelve hours ago, he’d walked out, eager never to see it again. He didn’t really want to go back inside. Surely Commander Tate and his fellow officers would understand if he didn’t want to revisit the scene.

  “Hey,” Jet said. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” Donovan steeled himself; he wasn’t going to beg out, not now, not in front of everyone. He straightened his borrowed uniform. You’re a stripe, dammit. He went back into the Warren.

  The Warren was a scene of carnage. Bullet holes, burn marks, and blood splatters marred the walls. Stone and metal rubble littered the floors and entryways. The clogged air smelled of dust, gunpowder, and burnt explosives. Donovan and Jet stepped over the debris, following the tunnel into the wide cavern Donovan had walked through yesterday and where days before he’d been pelted with rocks and forced to his knees in front of Saul.

  Donovan’s eyes drifted to the long line of bagged bodies against the wall. He wondered if Saul was among them. It was easy to imagine him stoically wading through battle, bellowing orders until the end. Most of the other rebels—paranoid Javid, white-haired Kathy, and Tom with his LIVE FREE knuckles—they were probably all dead too. All these tunnels, all those heavily armed insurgents … Like Cass had said, the firefight that had raged in here had been terrible: bullets spraying against limestone and metal catwalks, bodies sprawling across passageways, all the noise of enclosed gunfire and screaming.

  Jet stopped someone and asked where the Commander was. They found her in a room just off the main cavern, one that had not been among the few Donovan had seen during his captivity. She was sitting with her elbows on a small table, chin propped on one set of knuckles, listening with a faint, attentive frown as Thaddeus give her the account of the rescue operation in Rapid City. Under the harsh yellow light of a portable lamp, Tate looked different. Donovan had never been able to tell how old the Commander was; exos aged slowly, but the job had no doubt eaten away at some of that advantage. The tight black curls of the Commander’s hair had gone a touch gray, and sometimes her hands trembled from a neurological disorder common to exos with fifth- and sixth-generation exocels.

  “Reyes. Mathews.” She noticed them standing, armor down, in the doorway and motioned them in. “The Nurse cleared you for duty?” she asked Donovan.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. We need everyone we can get. We’ve got the Risk Area more or less secure now, but it means there’s barely a skeleton crew back in the Ring Belt patrolling the sympathizer-heavy neighborhoods. We’re already down to calling in non-Hardened reservists.” She pulled a screen toward her and dug thin wire-framed reading glasses from her pocket. “Things could get worse. We’re already getting reports of hot spots in Rounds Four, Eight, and Eleven. There was a bombing in Rio just an hour ago.”

  That was to be expected; a SecPac crackdown in one part of the world usually incited terrorist cells in other parts of the world to retaliate with attacks and bombings. “Close the door,” the Commander said. When it was shut, and they were seated on overturned crates around the table, she said, “You may have noticed a few Soldiers roaming about. They’re here to observe and provide logistical support, primarily. Don’t fool yourselves, though; with the new High Speaker due to land tomorrow, you can be sure everything is under zhree scrutiny. There are some discussions I’d rather keep among exos.” She turned to Donovan. “I know you’ve been through a rough time. But tell us everything that happened, in as much detail as you can.”

  Donovan swallowed, then nodded. He started with the firefight at Corrigan’s house. “I was careless,” he admitted. He told them about chasing Anya out the back door, Kevin and Brett knocking him out, taking him captive, torturing him. “They set up a recorder. One of the sapes, he makes those videos …”

  Jet’s expression turned dark. “Sick animals,” he said under his breath.

  “Kevin Warde.” Commander Tate said it like a curse. She turned to Thaddeus. “Any word on the manhunt?”

  “Every patrol team in Rapid City is searching for him, but like before, he’s slipped underground like a rat,” Thaddeus said. “His SecPac file is a mile long, but his list of sympathizer friends is even longer.”

  Donovan shifted uneasily. Kevin deserved to be hunted down and atomized, but the fact that he was so good at eluding death and capture meant Anya had a better chance of escaping, and for that, Donovan was weirdly grateful.

  Tate scowled and turned back to Donovan. “Go on, Reyes.”

  Donovan continued recounting what he had been through. As he did, the questions became more specific, more interrogative. He grew nervous. Would they think he’d done something wrong? Been negligent in some way?

  “Did ‘Max’ provide proof she was your biological mother?” Tate asked.

  “Um, no …”

  “When was the last time you saw her prior to these events?”

  “When I was five. Before I was Hardened.”

  “But you still recognized her?”

  “Yes.”

  Tate raised her eyes from her screen. Her gaze was not unsympathetic, but it bored into Donovan a little too long for comfort, as if she were trying to solve an equation and he was part of the answer. “It must have been very strange to meet her in a Sapience camp.”

  He squirmed a little under his commander’s scrutiny. “It was. I was shocked. Confused.” A little quietly, “I still am.”

  “Did you get the impression she still felt attached to you? Did she speak to you at length?”

  A tightness was gathering in Donovan’s chest. His mother was in a SecPac detention center by now. “Yes.”

  “Reyes, this is important.” Tate leaned forward. “We met with fierce resistance when we attacked the Warren. The insurgents had enough time to destroy some of their files, in fact, many stayed to wipe out as much as they could. We think Sapience has plans for a major attack of some sort, on or around Peace Day, but we haven’t found any concrete evidence, and the lower-level operatives we’ve interrogated are all in the dark.” She pulled off her glasses and tapped them on the table; she did this when she expected answers. “Did ‘Max’ tell you anything you think might be important? Did she ever reveal anything, intentionally or unintentionally, or ever hint at what Sapience might be planning to do?”

  Donovan tried to think back on the conversations he’d had with his mother. He could recall them in general, especially how he felt during them—awkward mostly—but had she ever said anything important, strategically? He didn’t think so. If she had, he’d missed it; he’d been too weirded out by the whole situation, deliberately avoiding any topics involving Sapience instead of trying to glean useful military intelligence. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “She didn’t tell me anything about their plans.”

  After a moment, Tate nodded as if she hadn’t expected any different but was disappointed nonetheless.

  “Do you remember the other terrorists you met in the bunker?” Thad asked, shifting to other, more straightforward questions. “Kathy and Javid—what were their last names?” The queries continued. What types of weapons had Donovan observed the insurge
nts using, and how many did they have? Did he know anything more about Widget and the location of the cell they were planning to transport him to? Had Kevin mentioned the identities of any other exos he’d tortured and killed? Donovan’s palms were sweating now. He wanted to help, to be as thorough as possible, but after the last question, he already felt as if he’d failed in some way. There were some things he plain didn’t remember, and some he didn’t know. And he didn’t want to reveal too much about Anya. If he told them about her family being part of the algae farm standoff, SecPac might be able to locate her through her relatives.

  Thad slid a screen in front of Donovan. “These are photos of the insurgents who were killed in the strike last night. Can you identify any of them as Saul Strong Winter?”

  Donovan scrolled through the images. The faces of dozens of corpses flicked by, bluish-white and clinical. Some of them you could pretend were just sleeping, but others appeared to be frozen in the moment of anguish before they died, eyes and mouths still open. The photos had been taken on site with a bright flash so the morbid images looked washed out, unpleasantly stark. A lot of the faces had blood on them, some had head wounds, and a few were particularly gruesome—half a jaw blown off or a chunk of the skull exposed. Donovan found Tom, then two other men he recognized but whose names he did not know, their faces intact but so obviously dead. He did not find Saul.

  “How about these prisoners?” Thad said, pulling up another set of photographs. “Recognize any of them?”

  Donovan pointed out Kathy, looking haggard and hopeless, handcuffed and standing against a blank wall, just one of several defeated terrorists bound for detention centers, trial, and then prison or execution. An odd mixture of disappointment and surprisingly strong relief washed over him as he reached the last photograph. “I don’t see Saul,” Donovan said. Tate sat back, nostrils flaring in a frustrated sigh. Clearly, she’d been hoping that the senior Sapience commander would be among the dead or captured. Part of Donovan wanted to flip through the photographs a second time, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. The other part was inordinately glad he hadn’t come across Saul’s face, staring out at him with lifeless eyes, a cigarette still clamped between blue lips.