by Mark Wandrey
“Sorry, I’ve been working too much lately.”
“Haven’t we all? You’re Minu, right?”
“Yeah, sorry again. Minu Alma.” She offered her hand and he shook it firmly. One point in his favor.
“I’ve seen you in here a few times and wanted to meet you.”
“Oh! Nice to meet you.” The formalities out of the way, she wanted to finish her reading before she needed to return to the lab. Despite her hint, he still stood there. She looked up into his face and saw uncertainty. “Is there something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, not at all. I just, well…crap. Will you go to a movie with me tonight?”
The worst part was Minu didn’t remember saying ‘yes.’ The rest of the day passed in a blur of work and angst over the coming date. Before she knew it, she was waiting for him in the main entrance hall. She’d rolled the dice and wore civilian clothes, slacks and a comfortable short-sleeve blouse. The boots were Chosen-issue, short, calf length, and black. She’d been embarrassed to discover they were the only footwear she owned except sandals, and those didn’t seem appropriate. Christian was dressed similarly, and she could see the relief on his face when he saw her.
As he approached, he quickly looked her up and down. She noticed his gaze slow as it passed over her hips and chest. “You look great,” he said and held out a hand.
With an apprehensive shiver, she took it and smiled. “Thanks. Where are we going?”
“Into Chelan. They’re showing an old Earth movie called Shrek.”
“I’ve never heard of that one.”
Minu had never been to Chelan, either. It was a small community a dozen kilometers away, at the base of the cliff where Steven’s Pass was built. It was mostly home to the couple hundred civilians who worked at the Chosen facility, and a few businesses serving the same. They went outside, only to discover the last shuttle had left a few minutes earlier. “Damn,” Christian said, glancing at the departure board, which said the next shuttle would leave in two hours, “we’re going to miss the movie.”
“Not if I can help it,” she said and ran off, leaving him standing there looking confused. A minute later she pulled her bright red aerocar out of the garage and up to her surprised date. She swung the door up, and he slid into the passenger seat.
“Very nice!” he said as the door slid closed. He scanned the instrumentation with a critical eye and felt the Kloth leather upholstery. “I don’t think anyone knows you own a car.”
“I didn’t exactly make an announcement,” she said with a coy smile. He grinned, and she smiled even bigger. He was definitely quite handsome.
Minu steered away from the building and brought the impellers on line just enough to get off the ground, not wanting to leave tire tracks on the grass. She spun the controls. A low wall separated the compound from the cliff. She hopped the wall, and the car plummeted over the cliff in a gut-wrenching fall. “Wahoo!” she yelled as the car dropped.
“Oh shit,” Christian said and grabbed the arm rests, white knuckled. Minu glanced at him and winked before cycling up the impeller power and pulling out of the dive. “Wow, you really know how to fly,” he said, a little ashen faced.
“It was my favorite part of training.” She set course for Chelan and turned toward him. “Did they pull the bit on you with the transport? You know, where they pretended they were out of control and everything, but you’d actually never left the ground?”
“From the Trials? Yeah, I think that’s standard.”
“Didn’t shake me in the least. Kinda pissed me off, really.”
“I almost lost my lunch. Of course, that was seven years ago.” Minu nodded, swallowing. He was at least four years older than she was. She wasn’t yet eighteen, and she was going out with a twenty-two-year-old man. They approached Chelan, and she prepared to land. “The theater is on that side of town,” he said and pointed.
It was a fun night. They watched the movie, a funny animated film about an ogre who falls in love with a princess. Part of the way through, Christian reached over and took her hand. She shivered a little but finally relaxed. Afterward, they walked to a nearby food court. Ice cream and snacks were a welcome treat on the warm autumn night. Minu was sorry she hadn’t been to Chelan before; it was a nice little town, and the people loved the Chosen.
When they got back to her car, Christian held the driver’s door open for her. She stepped into him and gave him a tentative kiss. After a surprised second, he returned it with interest. “It’s been a nice night,” she told him after the kiss, “thanks.”
“Thank you, too,” he said. She piloted her car much more sedately up the cliff to the complex. After she parked the car, she surprised herself by being adventurous enough to kiss him several more times. His hand roamed from her waist to cup a breast, teasing the nipple. She felt her back arch, and her breath caught in her throat. Just then, another car entered the garage and they quickly separated.
“I’d like to take you out again,” he said as they walked toward the building. A few floodlights illuminated the darkness, and in the nearby woods a pair of howlers barked at each other.
“It could be complicated,” she admitted, “since we’re both Chosen and both in command.”
“We wouldn’t be the first, and you don’t report to me.”
I wonder what that would be like, she thought with a little shiver. “Okay, I’d like to see you again, too.”
* * *
The next morning Pip and Minu introduced the first bits of gleaned data onto their exploded gun. It puzzled the team, and they wanted to know where the information came from. Minu refused to tell them, and they eventually stopped asking. Each night the two would catalog the results of their thievery, and the next day they’d introduce anything they found useful. A week into their nocturnal research, they found the first files that genuinely excited Minu.
“Look at this,” she said, slightly out of breath. Pip leaned over and looked. The file contained standard-format image files showing what was unmistakably a fighter craft strafing a ground target. “Bingo!” she crowed. “Let’s look at the other files near where you found this one!”
“These files are a minefield of toxic bugs,” he grumbled. “I’ve lost three tablets already. It’d be a lot easier if you’d leave me alone to sift through the data, then give you the cleaned files.”
“That’s too slow, and this is more fun.”
“Hmm,” he mumbled and tapped on his tablet. “Heard you went on a date last week,” he said, like someone would comment on a new haircut.
“I’d hoped that wouldn’t become public knowledge.”
“Are you kidding me? Female Chosen are the golden trophy. Most Chosen guys would do anything to score with you girls.” Minu’s face darkened. “Don’t look at me like that; it’s the truth”
“I know,” she said and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. He blushed and tried not to smile. Still, she couldn’t help thinking about Christian. What was his motivation for asking her out? “What about you? Have you gone out on any dates?” Pip turned bright red and grinned sheepishly. “You have, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ve been out with a couple of girls.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t know them. One girl is Chelan. The other was from back home, when I was on leave.” Her eyes glimmered with unasked questions. He scowled a little. “No, I didn’t have sex with either of them.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
“Sure, like I buy that. Anyway, it didn’t seem right to hurry into a sexual relationship. Jessica, the girl from home, almost tried to tear my clothes off.” Pip laughed nervously. “I might wear boring silver stars, but all she cared about was the Chosen uniform. The other girl was a dud, never shut up about hair and stuff. What about your date?”
“Christian Forsythe, a commander like me. He didn’t try to tear my clothes off or anything. We went to a movie and kissed a little.”
“Sounds fun enough.”
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��Yeah, we want to go out again, but we’ve been so damn busy.”
“Don’t I know it? I was talking to Cherise the other day, and she said they’re busy, too.”
“Does she have a love life?”
“She and Gregg have a thing. Never saw that coming.”
“I did,” she said, more to herself than Pip. “Can Chosen marry other Chosen?”
“There isn’t a rule against it, so I don’t see why not.” Minu didn’t bother asking if he was sure. He’d probably memorized the manual before the Trials. “Getting a little ahead of yourself with this Christian character, aren’t you? I mean it sounded like a good date, but…”
“Give it a rest, I was just wondering.”
They worked late into the night as usual, and Pip left Minu with a nearly-full chip of exactly what she was looking for. She spent the rest of the night going through terabytes of images, videos, diagrams, tables, charts, and instructional manuals. As the sun rose she popped a stimulant and kept working. The videos alone were more than a thousand hours long and would take her a month and a half to watch if she didn’t bother eating or sleeping. The text and image files were an order of magnitude larger. She scanned segments and used Chosen speed-reading techniques to look for the most relevant parts. Even then, it was a formidable task.
Pip came into the lab early the next morning to find Minu using the big wall display, her hair in disarray and a cup of her office’s notoriously strong coffee in hand. “Morning,” she said over her shoulder.
“You been at it all night?”
“Yep.”
“You’re crazy,” he said and put his stack of tablets on a counter. “What do you have?”
“I’ve been hip deep in what you found, and I’ve mostly been organizing and sorting.”
“Anything good?”
She shrugged. “Good and of varying usefulness. Even the stuff that isn’t really usable is informative.” She tapped some buttons on her tablet, and the files and directories they’d organized the night before appeared. Minu had added notes to some and created categories for sorting.
“What’s ‘War College’?” Pip asked, pointing to the group that held the most files.
“A dream, or a crazy idea at the very least.” The data continued to scroll for a couple of minutes as they watched in silence. He went to get some coffee from the dispenser and noticed something different in the lab.
“We got all the components?” he asked, looking at the exploded beamcaster. None of the parts were red, and each sported a name and description.
“Yeah, I found that data file pretty early. It was an original production design, eons old. That’s the reason I came back to the lab. Once I got going, it was hard to stop.”
Pip shrugged. “Happens to us all sometimes.” He went over the parts one at a time, committing the new information to memory. “This gives us full working knowledge?” he asked when he finished. In anticipation of that question, Minu had moved all the data off the wall and replaced it with the schematic. She isolated several components and linked them to files. Inside tiny windows, images and videos showed how to assemble the parts and how they worked. All the beings in the videos were aliens. They worked with claws, tentacles, and robotic manipulators, but their actions were unmistakable. “It’s like watching a children’s how-to demonstration.” She nodded. Pip loaded the new data from her computer over a closed network and started playing with it. “Looks like Gregg’s theory is correct.”
“Yep, this technology isn’t really suitable as an infantry weapon. The original designers used it for ship-based batteries, then scaled it down for crew-served weapons.”
“The snakes were doing the same thing we were,” Pip said, “adapting it for their own uses.”
“It’s not a big deal for a three-hundred-kilo creature to lug around one of those,” she said, gesturing with her coffee cup at the exploded beamcaster, “but it’s a different story for us.”
“So, what do we do?”
“First things first. We figure out how the different species of the Concordia fight and how we can best respond to those tactics.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Then what?”
“Then we try to come up with a weapons system more suited to our uses.”
Pip looked at the list of files still scrolling along one side of the huge wall display. “And how many lifetimes do we have?”
* * * * *
Chapter 7
April 29th, 518 AE
Science Branch, Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
Minu woke with a start when her communicator buzzed. She looked around in confusion before realizing she was in her office. It had seemed tiny when she’d first been assigned there two and a half years ago; now it was crowded and tiny. She’d been stunned a week earlier when, after visiting Bjorn, she’d realized just how much her office resembled his. There were piles of components on her desk, tablets and chips piled high on one of the two visitor’s chairs, and a case overflowing with broken or discharged EPCs of all varieties in one corner. Her desk had just enough room to hold a plate of food and her head. She’d lost track of how many time she’d slept in her office. It was early morning, too early for anyone to call her about business.
“Chosen Alma,” she answered with a barely stifled yawn.
“Minu, how are you doing?”
“Cherise? Good, how about you?”
“Overworked as always.”
Minu looked forlornly around her office and sighed. “Don’t I know it? Why’d you call? Do you know what time it is?”
“Can’t a friend call another friend?”
“Are you drunk dialing? It’s five in the morning.”
“Good point. We just finished a project in Minsk and have a couple days off. Think we could get together?”
“When will you be back?”
“Day after tomorrow on the regular Chosen transport. It would be another day by maglev, or four by dirigible.”
“They still have dirigible service?”
“Only from some areas. I think I read that it’ll be further limited to the most remote areas soon. Progress, you know.”
“Right,” Minu said and consulted her schedule. “I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow with a couple of Bjorn’s materials teams, budget planning sessions the day after, and training the rest of the week. Aside from class work, the only day I have free is today.”
“Too bad, there’s no way I can make it. Maybe next month?”
“Hmm, don’t give up that quickly. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Where in Minsk are you? Give me a few hours, and I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
After a shower and a change of clothes Minu felt much better. She guessed she’d only gotten about five hours’ sleep, but that was more than any other night that week. Dressing in a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting blouse to match the mild April weather, she pulled on her new shoes, threw a few things into a bag, and headed out the door.
She piloted the freshly-refueled aerocar to twenty-five thousand meters and set course for Minsk. “Cherise will be surprised,” she smiled as the autopilot took over and the airfoils slid out. She settled back in the comfortable seat and took out some data chips. It might be a night off, but there was still work to do.
Two hours later, the car descended toward Minsk. She’d finished her coursework and was looking at schematics, notes, and images of Concordian-designed weapons on the onboard computer screen. Minu slid the screen into the dash as the car signaled its readiness to land. The coordinates Cherise had provided were for the transportation hub parking lot. Dozens of bulky grain transports lined the approach roads.
Minu steered her car away from the industrial traffic toward a personnel entrance. She had sent a message about when to expect her, and Cherise stood there, dressed in civilian clothes with a bag over her shoulder. Minu pulled up next to Cherise and thumbed the passenger door open. Cherise looked inside, and her jaw dropped. “Nice ride, girl!”
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“Thanks, hop in!” Minu steered the car into the street, then into the air. The powerful impellers pressed them into the cushioned chairs as the car accelerated into the bright morning sky. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I thought we’d fly back to Steven’s Pass in this hotrod of yours, pick up Gregg and Christian, and have a day of fun.”
“How do you know about Christian?”
“We share friends.”
“If you want to call them that,” Minu grumbled.
“Don’t be that way, we all love you. I think it’s great you have a boyfriend.”
“We’ve gone out once. I’d hardly call us boyfriend and girlfriend.” Cherise shrugged and grinned. “How about you and Gregg?”
“We’re definitely boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Yeah?” Minu asked, biting her bottom lip and glancing at her friend “What do you guys do when you get together?”
“We play cards and study training manuals.” Minu looked at her sideways. It was hard to tell if her dark-skinned friend was blushing, but her smile certainly betrayed her feelings.
“I don’t know if Christian is free today.”
“He’s waiting for us at Steven’s Pass, along with my man.”
“Your man?” She grinned and shrugged. “Right.” Minu slid out the display showing her work. Cherise looked at the complicated drawings and technical writings.
“Don’t you ever take a break?”
“Seldom.”
“That might be why you’re sexually frustrated.”
“I’m not frustrated,” she said, “more like anxious.” Minu almost told Cherise what had happened to her during the Trials. Almost, but not quite. I can’t share that failure now, she told herself. Maybe someday.
They spent the two-hour flight talking and catching up on each other’s lives. With Minu working in Science and Cherise in Logistics, they almost never saw each other. What was once a twice-a-week workout was now maybe twice a month. The last time had been three weeks earlier. Shortly before they arrived in Steven’s Pass, Minu thought of something. “What were you doing in Minsk?”
