Exo

by Fonda Lee

  Remembering when he and his father had been down there brought Donovan a fresh stab of grief, along with a poignant jolt of sympathy. Those little kids were walking into something they didn’t understand yet. A few of them might not survive the procedure, but in a week or so, the rest would be exos, like him. Would they come to see themselves as fortunate or burdened? The lucky ones or the victims? Were they gaining something or losing it?

  A hand smacked his ass. “Hey there, good-looking stranger.” Cassidy Spencer winked at him when he turned around. She gave him a high five with her left hand—the right arm was still in a sling. “Nurse Therrid said I could find you up here, med-leave buddy.”

  Seeing his erze mate buoyed Donovan a little. “Hey, Cass, what are you in for?”

  She gestured toward her arm. “Checkup and physio. You want to see?” Donovan was about to say that was quite all right, but Cass loosened her sling and pulled it down to show him her bare shoulder and upper arm. There was a lot of scar tissue, but it really wasn’t as bad as he’d expected and he told her so.

  “The lateral node branch was too damaged, so this is as far as my armor goes now.” She armored up but the panotin stopped beyond her shoulder blade, as if it had run out or been halted by an invisible dam, leaving bare, puckered skin exposed down her right arm. “The good news is,” she added cheerfully, “because the damage isn’t over any vital organs, if I regain all muscle function in my arm, I can still be combat rated.”

  “That’s great news,” he said.

  “Ugly as a baboon’s arse, though.” She sighed. “At lease your scars don’t make you look bad in a swimsuit.” She punched him in the shoulder. Donovan winced, not from the punch. Cass’s voice softened; she said contritely, “I’m joking around with you because I can’t think of anything to say that could possibly make what you’ve been through any more bearable. I’m sorry about your dad. He was an important person, but he was your dad first.”

  Donovan blinked and nodded wordlessly. Damn Cassidy—she could make you laugh or make you cry with a few words. “So,” he said, clearing his throat and changing the subject, “what’ve you been doing on leave to keep from dying of boredom? I found out that watching the news is a bad idea.”

  “Terrible,” Cass agreed. “Every crisis you hear about, you know your friends are out there dealing with it, that they’re in danger and you’re not, and you feel so useless you could kill yourself. I can’t watch the news. You know what I’ve been doing instead, though?”

  “What?”

  “Chatting with Soldiers.” She looked pleased with herself. “You know, trying to improve my Mur language comprehension, so I’ll be like you, not even needing the translations. Some of the older zhree are standoffish with humans, but the younger ones don’t mind. I think they see a crippled stripe and feel sorry for me.” She rolled her eyes ruefully. “Sometimes they forget I’m there; you wouldn’t believe how much they talk around me.”

  Most humans feared Soldiers—they looked terrifying, and no one had forgotten that they’d crushed humanity during the War Era. Donovan, who understood Mur far better than most, knew that zhree Soldiers were not all that dissimilar from human ones—they dealt with periods of extreme boredom interspersed with periods of extreme violence, and when they weren’t seeing action they passed the time complaining, telling stories, making bets, and giving one another grief. “Learn anything interesting?” he asked Cass.

  “They gripe an awful lot about homeworlders,” she said. “About how the High Speaker doesn’t support the colonies. He’s still stuck on Earth, you know, inspecting things, asking questions, and it’s making them all pissed off and nervous. The Soldiers are all convinced that the Rii are going to attack soon, and the way things are going, Kreet is going to hang Earth out to dry. Some of them have fought the Rii in other places and they think the homeworld isn’t taking the threat out here seriously enough.”

  “There were a bunch of zhree fighters in the sky on Peace Day,” Donovan recalled. “Do you know what that was all about?”

  “Oh yeah. Rii drones were detected and shot down in Earth airspace. The Soldiers were all talking about it, but I don’t think many humans noticed because of the Sapience attacks that were going on.” Cass rubbed distractedly at her damaged shoulder, frowning. “It makes me think that it might not even matter whether we win against Sapience or not. We might all be scorched in the end anyway. Someone ought to give that newsflash to the sapes.” She shook her head and smirked in self-exasperation. “Man, I’m really cheery, aren’t I? Let’s not worry about it right now. Not much we can do anyway, besides wait to see what happens next.”

  “Right,” Donovan said. What happens next. His stomach gave a lurch.

  “I have to go there, zun Therrid,” Donovan insisted. “There’re only a few hours left before Sapience’s deadline, and then they’re going to start killing hostages.”

  “I’m sure your commander and your erze mates will not let that happen,” Therrid reassured him, taking hold of Donovan’s arm and escorting him gently but very firmly back to his room. He’d found Donovan trying to leave the medical wing. “There is even, I understand, a squad of Soldiers present and ready to take control of the situation.”

  Donovan pulled his arm free of the Nurse’s grasp. “That’s the problem.” The standoff was a no-win situation. The things Cass had said—they’d suddenly and clearly brought back to mind everything his father had told him, right before his disciplinary hearing, about what the bigger stakes were. “SecPac won’t wait for the deadline; they’ll storm the algae farm any minute now and kill the terrorists, and if they don’t, the Soldiers will.” The outcome was obvious to him now. “They have to, after everything that’s already happened with the High Speaker watching. They can’t look weak. They have to prove they’re in control of Earth, or the High Speaker will be even more convinced the planet isn’t worth hanging on to.”

  “You may be right,” Therrid conceded, “but hopefully the High Speaker will think differently if the rescue attempt is successful and the hostages quickly recovered. Soldiers and exos working together to handle the crisis, just as your erze master has been advocating.”

  Donovan shook his head adamantly. “But that’s not how other humans will see it. Some or all of the human hostages will end up dead in the fighting. So it’ll look like SecPac slaughtered a whole lot of squishies just to save two shrooms and an algae farm.” He paced the room, hands dug into his hair as the whole picture came into focus for him. If SecPac didn’t resolve the situation immediately, it would look weak and incompetent to the zhree. If it went in with guns blazing, then exo stripes would be viewed the way Sapience wanted them to be—as villains. Live on international news, the whole world would see armored humans fighting alongside aliens against other humans. Something unnatural, something to be feared and hated, not respected and emulated, as his father had so vehemently wanted. Even if the standoff was resolved to the High Speaker’s satisfaction, the outpouring of goodwill following the Prime Liaison’s death would vanish, more sympathizers would flock to Sapience, and soon the violence would be even worse than before.

  “Can’t you make an exception to my leave so I can go there?” Donovan pleaded.

  Therrid was patient, but now the movement of his fins grew stiff with displeasure. “Donovan,” he said. “You’ve suffered a great deal. Now you have to stay back and trust your erze. You are one adolescent human. What do you even expect to do if you go there?”

  Donovan let out a groan and started pacing again. “I don’t know for sure, but I can’t just sit here and watch. Things are going to go badly, I know it.” Jet would be rushing into a building full of heavily armed terrorists. Anya would be shot dead on the spot. He’d already tried to convince himself that there was nothing he could do about it, that he should leave the fight to others, but as the fateful hours ticked by, he couldn’t make the conviction last.

  If there was one thing his father and mother had had in common, it
was the relentless belief that a person had to act for a greater goal, no matter the personal cost. As much as he wanted Saul to pay for what he’d done, the bloodshed about to happen at the algae farm was something neither of his parents would want. Of that, Donovan was certain. “I have to try and stop it,” he said.

  He started to move around Therrid to get to the door. The Nurse shifted swiftly to block his way. “You’re not to leave the Towers, you infuriating hatchling. That is an order.”

  Donovan took a step back as if he’d been shoved. Nurse Therrid was not Soldier Werth, he was not Donovan’s erze master, but he was still zhree, and a direct command delivered in such an unequivocal tone made Donovan quail under the instinct to obey. Therrid walked to the door, touching a few controls to set it to lock behind him. “You’re a brave and well-meaning human, Donovan,” he strummed, less harshly, “but this is for your own good.”

  Donovan trembled, glaring in hurt at the Nurse. The walls and doors of the Towers were practically indestructible; once Therrid confined him in here, he wasn’t getting out.

  That’s it, then? His father’s voice came into in his head. You intend to give up?

  Donovan’s fists clenched. His armor wavered, as if it possessed a mind of its own and was not in agreement with him. I’m sorry, Therrid. This really is going to hurt me more than it’ll hurt you. Before he could think about it a fraction of a second longer, he leapt at Therrid, throwing his body across the Nurse’s rounded torso, and punched him in the nearest big yellow eye.

  Donovan’s armor dropped before the blow landed, completely involuntarily, as terrifying a feeling as if he’d abruptly lost the ability to breathe. If he hadn’t known it would happen, hadn’t been expecting the physical shock, he would’ve frozen. Instead, he pushed through it, pushed through the trip wire in his brain that prevented him from attacking zhree. He winced from the unfamiliar sting of bare-skinned knuckles striking a hard, rounded surface, the jarring impact of his mortifyingly vulnerable body hitting Therrid’s armored hull.

  It was Therrid that let out a high trill of pain. The zhree stumbled back on three legs, two other limbs flailing, the sixth one clapped to his eye. He was more surprised than actually injured, and any zhree, even a Nurse, was stronger than a single unarmored human. If he’d been thinking quickly, Therrid could’ve easily overpowered Donovan, but he’d obviously never imagined that a human—one of his humans, an exo—could turn on him with such suddenness. Donovan didn’t waste his two seconds of opportunity; he rolled away from Therrid, jumped through the door, and slammed the lever to slide it closed. “I’m sorry!” he shouted before the entrance sealed, locking Therrid inside. He caught the long, shrill whistle of zhree profanity before it was cut off, and then Donovan was running down the hall.

  After a couple seconds, he forced himself to slow to a walk. It wouldn’t be too long before Therrid overrode the locking mechanism, or Sanjay or another Nurse wondered where Therrid had gone and found him in Donovan’s room. He didn’t have much time to get clear of the Towers, but it wouldn’t do to arouse suspicion by tearing through the halls as if he were on fire. He took the curving ramp down a level, feeling wildly jittery and a little sick from what he’d done; his armor was still knocked out. Breathe. Breathe. Calm down, he willed himself, and as he walked casually out of the building, bare feet stinging from the cold, he felt sensation tingling a little painfully back into his nodes, like a frozen limb regaining circulation. If Therrid reports me for assaulting him, I’ll be stripped for sure, he mused, but the thought caused only a brief flutter of panic, nothing that compared to his updated standards for true disaster.

  Still plenty of likelihood of that—and not much time.

  It took an hour of tearing down the US-26 on an electricycle to get from the Round to the algae farm. A skimmercar could have made the trip in less time but the e-cycle was the only thing in the garage at his house (his father’s state skimmercar was gone) and he couldn’t afford to risk being apprehended by spending any more time than necessary within the walls of the Round.

  He’d had to go back to the house for clothes and boots, and for a few seconds, he’d paused in the foyer, stricken at the thought that no matter what happened, this would not be his home any longer. His father’s belongings were still everywhere—his hat hanging from the coat rack, his papers on the table, even the coffee-ringed mug he’d used on the morning of Peace Day was still on the kitchen counter. It was as if his father were simply at work as usual but would be back; he might walk into the house any minute. The apparent certainty and cruel impossibility of it slowed Donovan as he tried to leave; even in his rush, he found himself paralyzed half in and half out the front door. Only after a moment, when his gaze rose past his own bedroom window to the roof and he saw that someone had lowered the flags of the state residence to half-mast, did the hard truth rear up again: His father was gone and this stately but stiff-mannered house where Donovan had lived most of his life would pass to another Prime Liaison.

  Donovan swallowed, then he pulled himself together and ran.

  It was already late afternoon on what had been a crisp October day; the sun was on its way down and Donovan raced the shadow of his e-cycle lengthening ahead of him on the pavement. A few skimmercars passed him, but otherwise he was alone on the road, and on any other day he might have enjoyed the long stretch of scenery. This whole area, within a hundred-mile radius of the Round, had been a charred and war-torn wasteland after the War Era; there were large craters and furrowed ridges of earth to either side of the rebuilt highway, but their outlines were obscured by the rolling sea of wild prairie grassland and replanted cornfields that had long since grown over the old battlefields.

  Donovan turned on the e-cycle’s headlights and leaned forward, putting on even more speed as the sky turned indigo. SecPac would wait until it was dark to attack, when they could take full advantage of night equipment that the terrorists did not have, but they would not wait long.

  He saw the cordon miles before he reached it. The first SecPac officer he came across didn’t recognize him in the gathering dark, with Donovan out of uniform. “I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to turn back,” said Sebastian, waving him to a halt and pointing back down the highway. The road ahead was blocked by large orange cones. “This is a secure area.”

  Donovan paused long enough to lift a hand from the handlebars to show the man his stripes. “I need to talk to Commander Tate,” he said. “Right away.”

  Sebastian blinked. “Reyes? I thought you were—”

  “Long story, no time to explain,” he said, and drove between the cones and up to the main congregation of vehicles and people before the other exo could say anything further.

  He’d indeed arrived just ahead of the action; it was an orderly but busy and tense scene he entered. Pulse rifles were being handed out, ammunition loaded, night scopes attached. Everyone with their armor up, talking in terse, short sentences, breath rising in puffs of steam, anticipation and combat readiness in the air. Donovan jumped off his e-cycle and hurried toward the sound of Commander Tate’s voice barking out orders.

  Thad and Jet were with her, locked in intense conversation. Jet listening, fingers drumming the top of his E201, Thad talking to Tate and pointing at different sections of a screen displaying a blueprint of the building, the Commander with the end of one arm of her eyeglass frames clenched between her teeth as she studied the plan. Donovan ran up to them. “Commander, wait,” he blurted. “Don’t go in, not yet.”

  Jet’s mouth fell open. It might have been the first time in their lives that Donovan had seen his best friend completely speechless.

  Commander Tate recovered from her surprise first. “Reyes.” She pulled the wire arm of her glasses from her mouth. Her eyes narrowed in a flat, deadly expression. “What in the name of oath and erze do you think you’re doing here?”

  “Commander, don’t send them in there. We might get a few of the hostages back alive, but it’ll be a bloody massacre,
you know it will. The whole world is watching. We can’t—”

  “You are entirely out of line, Reyes. I don’t know what is wrong with you, but I don’t have the time to find out right now, and frankly, I don’t care.” Tate started walking away. “Someone get this insubordinate, squishy-brained lunatic out of my sight.”

  Thad locked an armored hand on Donovan’s arm. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “There has to be another way!” Donovan shouted at Tate’s back. “I have an idea; there’s a chance we can talk them down without any killing—just please listen; what have you got to lose?” Ariadne came and took hold of Donovan’s other arm, and they began to pull him away; he yelled at Tate, “This is what the shrooms want us to do, but is it what you want to do? Is it?”

  Tate stopped. She turned around and stalked back to Donovan until she loomed in front of him. In a low, dangerous voice she said, “Watch what you say, Reyes. There are Soldiers stationed around here, and if we don’t act tonight to resolve this crisis, they will override SecPac’s authority and do it themselves. You have no idea what kind of pressure we’re under.”

  “I do,” Donovan protested. “My father told me. If the High Speaker loses confidence in zhree control of Earth and withdraws support, we’re scorched as soon as the Rii attack.” He kept talking fast, words spilling out of him. “But this isn’t like the raid on the Warren and you know it. The gunmen in there know we’re coming. There are innocent people inside, and even if we take the building, there’s a good chance we’ll have to bring the human hostages out in body bags, along with twenty sapes who haven’t done anything yet besides make threats.”