Hardwired

by Walter Jon Williams

  Argosy’s a smaller and more maneuverable craft than the other shuttle that Pony Express met in the sky, but the delta can still fly rings around her.

  Missiles are coming from behind, radar-homers whipping in tight converging loops from the frigates. Cowboy keeps his minigun firing while dropping radar decoys and sideslipping the missiles. He’s flying right-wing-down at the end of his maneuver, the translucent Pacific blue beneath him, a surface geometry of tinted depthless glass...and then the shuttle’s there, a giant black-nosed shadow with visible sonic shock waves moving like spiderwebs over its giant wings, gone in an instant but burning its image into Cowboy’s gunsight eyes. Cowboy’s tried to stitch her with his minigun, but it doesn’t look as if there’s been much damage. Pony Express does flip-flops in the Argosy’s slipstream, the vast sonic boom moving through its spars like an earthquake through California soil, making a sound too deep to be heard by anything but gut and bone...

  Cowboy feels the crystal in his head burning hot as he controls his ship, twisting it, pointing the nose up, cutting in the air brakes and throttling back. Pony Express slows as if it’s hit a sea of honey in the sky. Cowboy’s neck muscles clamp down against the g-forces draining blood from his brain. Then Cowboy drops the nose and feeds more fuel to the engines as he triggers missiles that will loop and follow the shuttle.

  He’s just performed what’s known in the trade as a yo-yo, which should bring him out behind the Argosy in the classic kill position, but the maneuver’s cost him speed and it will take him a while to catch up. He can feel Orbital breath on his neck. The next pair of frigates are dropping on him like falcons, a classic bounce, their big rockets giving them faster acceleration than any delta can hope for. Cowboy’s still jinking even in his dive after Argosy, but a laser burn blows some of the rear sensors and he can see heat-seekers on his trail, bright needles rotating through the sky.

  He and Andy have planned for this. After passing the shuttle, Cowboy yo-yoed right while Andy did another yo-yo to the left, presenting the frigates with two separate and diverging targets. The frigates opted to keep together and bounce the leader, but that’s left Andy free. He sweeps out of his yo-yo with the frigates right in front of him and his crystal humming with the sound of heat-seekers asking for a target, and he drops a pair of missiles that turn one frigate into a dazzling eruption of fuel and flashing oxidant, tumbling alloy scraps and burning insulation. The other frigate breaks away, dropping thermite decoys, leaving Cowboy free. But there are still missiles after him, distracting him from the vast target just ahead. He drops more thermite and suddenly there’s a rattle on the armor, metal vaporizing on the Chobham. Someone’s spent minigun rounds, falling from on high.

  Suddenly Andy is gone. His delta is tumbling and breaking up into a sheet of flame, and all Cowboy knows is that for a few seconds there’s a weird electronic EEEEEEEEEEE noise wailing distantly in one ear, the sound of a radio broadcasting the melting of its own components... Cowboy thinks that Andy may have sucked a minigun round into an intake, but he’ll never know. Other things are attracting his attention.

  He’s still getting radars pulsing from six enemy craft, so that means the frigate struck with the antiradiation missile is still in the game. The Hyperion-class is tough, Cowboy knows; the missile may just have bounced off its ablative shield. That means five frigates against three deltas, and one of the deltas has only two missiles.

  Blackness fills his vision as Cowboy nears the shuttle, as his heart labors to keep his brain supplied with oxygen in the face of his acceleration. The shuttle is a big target directly ahead, but two more frigates are swooping at him from on high–– their acceleration is appalling–– and suddenly there are more missiles coming at him than he can deal with. Systems shriek as he sideslips, fires antiradiation-homers, pops the minigun targets again, and tries to put a wall of thirty-millimeter rounds in front of the frigates... He’s close enough to the nearest to see the bright splashes of hits, but suddenly there are red lights flashing in his mind, the dorsal minigun signaling it’s out of ammo. More red lights are layered onto his perceptions as a laser vaporizes some hydraulics and Pony Express begins to vent control fluids into the atmosphere, and then there’s an even bigger red light, this time outside the canopy, as one of the antiradiation missiles finds a home. The target frigate simultaneously loses parts of a control surface and its aerodynamics, and runs into a solid wall of unforgiving air, coming apart in about a tenth of a second... The other frigate jitters away, punctured with minigun hits, trying to get its redundant systems on line. Cowboy redlines the engines and feels his head punched back onto its rest. He’s lost some of his control surface, but his computer seems to be compensating. He’s only got about three minutes left before the shuttle touches the desert floor.

  The leading frigates have looped and are boring back for him; the two other deltas, Maurice and Diego, have yo-yoed around, and the rear two frigates are trying to bounce them... They’re smarter than their friends and have split, each going after a single target. Cowboy launches radar-homers for the shuttle, a big slow target right on the horizon. He pops the belly turret and fires for the two frigates right ahead, and suddenly one of them– maybe the one weakened by a head-on encounter with an antiradiation missile– is erupting in smoke. He sees the hot flare of rockets as the pilots eject, but suddenly there’s a laser lance punching through his polymerized flesh, and Pony Express begins to die.

  Crystal systems boil and explode in the heat of coherent light and the delta becomes unstable as both the main fly-by-wire comp and its backup bubble and fade. Cowboy shrieks as control systems invade his head. The delta’s aerodynamics are superb, but at this speed anything that tries to maneuver is inherently unstable, and anything that doesn’t is a target. Cowboy’s fighting his craft, making minute adjustments, and even though he’s coping with them one by one, there are more oscillations coming in than he can deal with. The air turns hard, and the delta shudders, losing more systems, and begins to corkscrew toward the ground. Agony is trying to crawl up out of Cowboy’s anesthetized body. He’s blind but for the news from his displays, hydraulics, and airflow, punctured systems and reluctant control surfaces. He’s lost his view of the target and he howls in protest. Dimly there’s a feeling of the earth coming up…

  And then he’s bottoming out over the Sierras, the mountains’ green fingers reaching up to tag him but falling short, and Cowboy is hauling back and feeding alcohol to the burners again. His crystal has built the necessary routines to keep Pony Express on the wire. There’s not much room in his head for anything else, and he looks up into the blue sky, his vision returning to seethe shuttle a vast shadow in the sky, beset by black shapes that swoop and dart like swallows. The speed of the fight has slowed down and its cubic volume decreased; Cowboy can see it all from his point of low vantage. There are only three frigates now, and one of them seems to be damaged and keeping its distance. One of the deltas is staggering away, trailing fire, the other doggedly staying in the fight, dodging Orbital missiles. There are only seconds left before the shuttle crosses the Sierras and drops to a landing at Edwards.

  Pony Express arcs upward. A tone sounds in Cowboy’s crystal; he fires a heat-seeker automatically, but his artificial eyes are fixed on the Argosy. More tones sound, and the delta jars with each missile it launches. A frigate trails flame and tumbles to an encounter with a mountain, but Cowboy’s mind is full of control surfaces, blazing crystal, knowledge of engine and surface heat, eager weapons systems, the compelling flood from the electron world pouring into his mind at the speed of light... He’s a creature of the interface now, his brain a processor. His black wings shudder in torment. The spars that are his ribs moan. Heat flashes through his black epoxy skin. His heart threatens to explode as it feeds alcohol to the engines. The target fills his narrowed vision. He rolls and sprays the shuttle’s belly with minigun rounds, but he’s out of ammunition in a few seconds and all his missiles are gone. The shuttle is battered, but it�
�s a tough ship, still on target for landing. The mountains drop away and Cowboy sees nothing but desert rolling on to the brown horizon.

  Neurotransmitters fall on crystal, electrons pour from Cowboy’s sockets at the speed of light. Control surfaces bite the air, howl in anger. The interface demands a certain solution, and the decision is taken without conscious volition. But somewhere in Cowboy’s mind there is a realization that this is the necessary and correct conclusion to his legend, to use himself and his matte-black body as the last missile against the Orbital shuttle and win for himself a slice of immortality, a place in the mind of every panzerboy, every jock…

  Cowboy accepts the decision of his crystal. A bark of triumphant laughter bursts from his lips as the shuttle grows larger and larger in his vision.

  A black fragment intervenes, spiraling between Cowboy and his target. Cowboy recognizes Maurice’s distinctive delta, sees the damage on wing and fuselage, Maurice’s sky-blue helmet in the cockpit, its opaque face mask fixed on the juncture of his delta’s course and the shuttle...Argosy explodes as Maurice drives his delta into the juncture of wing and fuselage.

  Cowboy’s crystal is coping with the impact of alloy shuttle parts vaporizing themselves on the delta’s battered skin before Cowboy realizes that his own death is no more, that it’s been usurped by Maurice, and by the time that’s brought home to him, the shuttle and Maurice are well in his wake, rubble spilling to an impact with the Mojave, stirred by the wind of his passing but no longer a thing that can interact with his own destiny. Anger rises in his mind at the thought of his fate being stolen.

  “Target destroyed. This is Cowboy. It’s done.” He’s crossed miles of desert during the course of his short transmission. He doesn’t pay any attention to the acknowledgment. There are still two frigates behind him, both crying for vengeance. He’s out of weapons and has only a few thermite decoys left. He hauls in a tight turn to the south, dodging out over the desert, the delta invading his mind again as the unstable craft vibrates, his correction of the control surfaces lagging behind as he begins his high-stress maneuver. But there’s a frigate right behind, its laser blowing away more sensors, heating the delta’s polymerized skin, seeking a weak place in the armor... Cowboy dodges one missile, then another, tries to sideslip the frigate while triggering a thermite decoy. His crystal is humming a warning that there are only a few minutes of fuel left.

  The frigate tries to follow the nimble delta but can’t, overshooting; but a missile pulls harder g’s, and Cowboy, with his burned rear sensors, hasn’t seen it. It runs up one of his twin Rolls-Royce engines, and suddenly Pony Express is unstable again, venting droplets of molten alloy as it slews across the sky. Cowboy’s mind adjusts control surfaces, fuel flows, balances. Fury explodes in him. He looks for the target and finds it, hauling Pony Express in a tight S-turn to head straight for the frigate and knock it bodily out of the sky... But with one engine gone the delta has lost its acceleration, and Cowboy can’t catch the Orbital frigate. Another laser lances into Pony Express from behind, the crippled frigate coming up for the kill.

  Cowboy turns to look over his shoulder, shrieks in rage at the infrared vision of more missiles boring in. He drops thermite and dances out of the way, but it feels as if his control is eroding. The maneuvers are making the delta more difficult to handle, and the rough ride is glitching up more systems. There are red and orange lights all over his remaining engine display. An Orbital laser punches out a panel, melts a spar. Pony Express lurches, recovers. More missiles are on the way. Cowboy tries to haul the delta around for the ramming maneuver again, but the controls won’t answer any radical course changes.

  He can feel Pony Express moaning with the strain. He knows the delta might be tough enough to survive the missile that will take out the remaining engine, that he might be able to land it on the desert if he doesn’t lose any more control surfaces. Data swarms into his brain, the craft telling him that it’s capable of surviving. The missile comes nearer. There are no more decoys to drop. A steel guitar plays sadly in his mind. Cowboy gazes up into the sky and sees only emptiness.

  Rockets flame as he rides up and out of the delta. A wall of wind smashes his face mask. Sky and earth tumble. He screams with the pain that suddenly surges up from his body, no longer masked by the anesthetic and by the demanding swarm of data from his sockets. Suspended in the air, his brain swimming, he never sees the final impact as Pony Express slams into the desert. His body has not fully awakened when he lands. Fortunately the desert is still; his chute collapses and drapes itself over a Joshua tree. The hot desert air scalds his throat with every breath. Pain shrieks at him in ever-insistent tones. He knows some ribs have gone, probably when he was wrestling Pony Express after the laser burned his comps, and his left forearm apparently failed to clear the cockpit when he punched out, and it’s now hanging ragged and bloody. Amusement rises and he laughs, and then the laugh turns to a cough and he feels something break inside. He tastes blood in his mouth. He turns his head to spit, and something runs down his face.

  Cowboy punches the quick release and frees himself from his chute, then pulls off his helmet and takes the dead studs out of his skull. He rolls carefully onto his side and tries to get to his feet. He fails, spits blood, tries again, succeeds. His left leg scraped the canopy punching out and it feels like it’s lost a lot of skin, but it doesn’t seem broken. He takes a pair of steps and laughs again, then bends over as coughs rack him, as blood fills his mouth. He hawks it out and then straightens his shoulders defiantly.

  He’s landed on a rocky ridge overlooking a two-rut desert track. A column of smoke rises a mile away, where Pony Express fell after it tore itself to pieces battling the air. Another, vaster black pillar stands far to the north where the wreckage of Argosy lies tangled with a delta.

  A pair of sonic booms throb through the air, and Cowboy can see the infrared signal of the two frigates circling back toward Edwards. Cowboy gives them the finger and grins. “You lost, you bastards.” He cackles and begins to hobble down the slope.

  There’s a growling, whining noise coming from down the track, and Cowboy props himself against a scalding rock and waits. It’s a chrome turbine tricycle coming to investigate the wreck. Cowboy reaches for the pistol in his holster and fires a pair of shots into the air. The driver’s head turns and acknowledges his wave with a nod. The trike pulls off the road and the driver begins walking up the slope.

  It’s a dark-skinned woman with a shaved head, some kind of bodybuilder, with her muscles increased and shaped by hormones, her breasts as irrelevant on her massive expanse of chest as a pair of peas. She’s wearing an alloy reflective mesh bikini top and baggy reflec trunks, with soft moccasins laced up above her ankles. Cowboy sees freckles on her shoulders, deep beneath the dark skin, and a necklace of bleached rattlesnake skulls. She looks at him with sea-green eyes.

  “You look in bad shape, linefoot.”

  Cowboy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a half ounce of gold. “You can earn a second one of these if you get me to Boulder City,” he says. “I don’t want to go through any Free Zone customs checks, either.”

  She nods. “Fair enough. But I don’t think you’re gonna make it that far, not on desert roads.”

  “That’s not your worry.”

  “You got a med kit someplace?”

  Cowboy nods upslope. “Yeah. With my chute.”

  Wordlessly she moves upslope to the chute, drags it off the Joshua tree, and weighs it down with rocks. She picks up the med kit and brings it down.

  Cowboy is sitting down when she gets back, the gun hanging limp in his hand. She takes it from him and puts it back in his holster. He almost faints with the pain as she pulls off the top of his g-suit. She cleans up some of the blood, disinfects the cut, tapes up his ribs, ties up his broken arm in a sling. Then she fires some endorphin into his right biceps and the drug whispers gracefully between his pain receptors and his efficient hardwired nerves. He fades so fast that she has to hel
p him down the slope to get him on her cycle. As he mounts behind her he notices three freshly killed rattlesnakes draped over the handlebars.

  He can hear sirens from the north, and there’s a billow of dust on the track, moving closer. She wrestles the trike off the road and cuts across country, moving slowly so as not to raise a dust cloud. The jouncing is easier on his ribs than he thought it would be.

  Occupied California extends east to Beacon Station. The trike weaves down desert trails, up mountain ridges, drives fast across a dry lakebed. Cowboy leans his head back against the rest and drowses. The endorphin murmurs in his mind. The trike gets onto the expressway east of Silver Lake and the ride gets easier, the turbine screaming. Cowboy watches the working of the driver’s powerful shoulder muscles as she dodges potholes. Dead snakes flap in the wind. Amusement rises in him again.

  “Hey, lady. You’re driving right into a legend, you know that?”

  She gives him an incurious look over her shoulder. “I figure that legend’s your own business, man.”

  “I wish I could see the screamsheets.”

  “I wish I could see the other half of that gold. I don’t suppose that’s gonna happen right now, either.”

  He laughs, coughs, laughs again. “You remind me of somebody. ”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel good?”

  He laughs some more. Licks his dry lips. “You got any water?”

  She hands him a plastic squeeze bottle. He fills his mouth, spits it overside, fills his mouth again and swallows. He hands her the squeeze bottle and she clips it to the trike frame. Cowboy leans back and closes his eyes again, feeling the cycle swerving under him like a carnival ride. The setting sun licks the back of his neck.

  With his eyes closed he can still feel the punch of the afterburners, the song of the missiles in his crystal, the feeling of Pony Express living in his nerves, his veins. Gone now, a wreck on the desert floor. The last of the working deltas, the last not cannibalized to make the graceless panzers that Cowboy dislikes. He’s got more reason than ever to hate them now that, for a short while, he’s been a flier again.