The room was three-quarters full. Thirty-odd pilots slumped in chairs or moved sluggishly up and down the aisles. Eyes were half-lidded, legs trembling, and everyone’s skin was pale and sweaty. Every uniform she saw was in some state of disorder. She didn’t see Cal anywhere.
Not knowing what else to do, Amelia counted chairs, trying to focus on the simple task. She was halfway through her fourth attempt when the door at the front of the room opened. The sound brought them all raggedly to their feet. Several people stumbled.
“At ease, ladies and gentlemen. Take your seats.” His voice marked him as the general she had heard in the hallway. He was edging toward the later boundary of middle age. His regulation haircut was yellow-gray, and there were a few extra folds of skin at his neck that had nothing to do with overeating. Even from her seat, Amelia could see that his eyes had the hardened, intent look of a fighter.
“I’ll make this quick. We need pilots for the ships ARKS, TIMMON, and SHERT. Your names will be called in order of rank. You will then be escorted to the hanger and tested for compatibility with each craft. If you are rejected, you will be taken back to the infirmary and quarantined until the nanobots are purged. Any pilot selected will receive further orders at that time. Good day and good luck.”
He left by the door through which he had entered, leaving them at the mercy of a young woman who read names off of a data pad in a voice that echoed piercingly through Amelia’s aching head. As each name was called, the candidate rose and was walked from the room with an armed and helmeted guard at each shoulder. The time between candidates varied widely.
Amelia was third to last. Her legs were jelly as she walked to the door. Her escort fell in behind her. Halfway down the hall, she staggered and went down on one knee. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as the guards each took an elbow and lifted her back to her feet.
“Don’t sweat it, kid. This is bordering on cruel and unusual punishment.” The guard on her right squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. His helmet covered the upper half of his face, obscuring his expression.
“Needs must.” The guard on her left frowned at his counterpart but shifted so the hand on her elbow took a little more of her weight. Much to the discomfort of her pride, they all but carried her the rest of the way down the hall. She couldn’t recall ever having been quite so relieved to see a hangar door.
“End of the line.” The guard on the right pressed his fingertips to the pad by the door. The lock popped open and the soft noise echoed in the cavernous room beyond. “You’re on your own from here. There are two ships left. The hatches are open. Go in and have a look around. We’ll be back for you one way or the other.”
Amelia staggered into the hangar. Unlike most of the similar facilities she had been in, the lighting was dim. The room was enormous. It was empty except for three ships that were parked in a loose triangle in the center of the vast space.
She forgot her uncooperative stomach and shaking legs a moment after laying eyes on the ships. They were unlike anything she had ever seen. Amelia crossed to them slowly. Each was a different type, and looked like they had been built by someone who had never seen a spaceship.
The first looked more like it belonged in a museum than in the most advanced unit in the fleet. It was heavily built with blocky, blunt edges. The stubby delta wings angled downwards as though the ship were too tired to carry them upright. Lines of little bumps that couldn’t possibly be rivets cut across the ship at irregular angles. The paint job was uniformly gray with bold, block letters designating the ship TIMMON. She was a bit relieved to see that the hatch was shut. It seemed silly to be picky, but it was one of the ugliest aircraft she had ever seen.
ARKS looked like it had been designed by someone with too much of a sense of humor. It was birdlike to a fault: hawk-nosed and stork-legged with long, tapered wings. Some idiot had even painted feathers on it.
SHERT was all long, slender lines. The arched wings were barely a hand span wide. It looked like the slightest breeze would snap them. Curious, Amelia touched the leading edge. The whole wing rippled and she snatched her hand back in surprise. When the movement had settled, she ducked under the wing, examining the construction. A few minutes later, she gave up. Whatever smoke and mirrors were holding the ship together were beyond her ability to identify.
Just aft of the wing, the hatch stood open. Beyond it, the interior was dark. Amelia hauled herself carefully inside. She felt along the walls on either side of the door, looking for the light switch. Though she found nothing, they flickered twice and came on with an audible hum. She checked under her hand, but the section of wall looked the same as all the rest. The harsh white light lit up a small cockpit. There was a command chair in the center, but no visible control panel. To all appearances, the ship didn’t have so much as a power button.
Amelia walked around the room clockwise. The walls were curved in a way that made her think of the inside of an egg. The multidirectional light cast strange shadows around the interior. Amelia stood for a moment, wondering what she was supposed to do next. Her escort had said to have a look around, but how that was going to help anyone decide if she was worthy of a ship, she didn’t know. Were they watching to see what she did?
She finally sat down in the chair. The impact gel reformed to fit her body, but the chair still felt too large. She checked the arms carefully, looking hopefully for the access tabs. Unsurprisingly, there were none. Frustrated, she rubbed the contact points on her fingertips. The imbedded microchips tingled minutely. She never really noticed the sensation unless she was paying attention to it.
With a sigh, she leaned back into the chair. There had to be some way to link in. Remembering the lights, she placed her hands on the arms of the chair in the position the tabs would have been on a standard control panel. Her hands slid into the gel and kept going to up her wrists. The gel tingled warmly and she felt the initial static surge up her fingers as contact was made.
The cockpit went dark. Noises shrieked through her head. In her shock, she was unable to tell if they were human or machine. Sick colors swirled in front of her eyes. Get out. The contact points burned and her fingers spasmed painfully. A sweet, rotting scent assaulted her nose. Get. Out. The cacophony increased exponentially as she wrenched her body out of the chair. Amelia reeled for the hatch in the dark, barely noticing that the violation of her senses had ceased. Finding the opening at last, she threw herself out.
Her foot caught the edge of the door and she hit the floor hard on her shoulder and hip. She lay there, smelling nothing more offensive than jet fuel and oil, but her ears rang and her stomach heaved. She forced herself up on her hands and knees, and wretched dryly for what felt like hours. What the hell had that been? She shook her head, trying to clear it. If that had been the test, she had failed it. She wasn’t compatible with that ship.
Amelia sank back to the floor, letting the cool surface help settle her racing heart. When she started to shiver, she got to her feet. The green EXIT sign over the door looked inordinately appealing. She didn’t want to go through that again. Ever. Knowing she would forget it all within the week was no consolation at all.
As they had been told countless times, this posting was voluntary. If she chose to walk away, it wouldn’t affect her record, rank, or flight status. She could go back to her old unit and her old life. Only one in three hundred succeeded at this anyway. There was no shame in not meeting those odds. Maybe it was time for her to go back to the real fight.
Amelia started towards the door. She wanted to lie down and sleep until this was all a distant dream. Halfway along the length of the third ship, she stopped to catch her breath. Another wave of nausea hit. She closed her eyes and put a hand out to steady herself.
The ship’s skin was silky smooth under her hand. Her fingertips buzzed warmly as though trying to link through the exterior. Amelia opened her eyes and looked more closely. There was no access point—nothing at all to indicate it was possible to interface with the ship fr
om this location. She pulled her hand away. The red “‘S’” in ARKS was above her head. The dim light glinted off of the featherlike paint job.
Amelia stroked the ship’s skin again, shivering at the electric jolt that shot down her arm. She cursed under her breath. If whatever it was that had happened with SHERT had shorted out her control chips, she wasn’t looking forward to getting them reprogrammed. It would take months to be back at the top of her game by the time she was done adapting to all of the minute differences reprogramming generally caused. She pulled her hand back. The sensation stopped.
Apprehensively, Amelia tapped each fingertip with her thumb, the signal for a basic chip check. After a moment, the muscles in her thumb contracted twice. All clear. No major damage.
She resumed her trek to the door, letting her hand trail along the ship’s surface. The sparks resolved themselves into a low-level purr. It was almost pleasant. The open hatch came as a surprise. Her fingers tripped into open air and she found her feet stopping as well.
Amelia stood in front of the door, looking into the darkness. She didn’t want to fail. Even knowing the odds were stacked against her, living with not having tried everything wasn’t good enough. She didn’t think whatever had happened before was going to kill her if it happened again. Decision made, she climbed inside. The cockpit was more or less the same as the other for all the obvious differences in outer structure. There were no viewscreens, monitors, or recognizable controls here either.
Hands sweating and stomach sinking, Amelia went straight for the chair. She didn’t want to think about what she might be setting herself up for too closely. Her heart thumped wildly as she dropped into the seat.
Her body sank the usual quarter inch into the impact gel. As previously, her hands kept going until they were submerged to the wrists. She tensed to pull them free, not wanting to be trapped for whatever was coming next. Before she could do more than that, the odd tingling started again. This time it was more pronounced and moved from her fingers upwards. Her breathing slowed and evened out as the sensation bled into her chest. Everywhere it touched, her muscles quieted.
When it ran up her neck, information exploded rapid-fire in her mind. She suddenly knew that the gel acted as a conduit in a flight control system vastly more complex than anything she had ever dealt with, taking cues from the nanobots as well as the original microchip control system.
Welcome. We are Arran, Rani, Keith, Samuel. All of the ship’s information, pilot logs, manuals, performance capabilities, and even maintenance records were stored in the ship’s memory, and could be accessed with a thought. Your thought now, the ship whispered in her head, linked so closely to her nervous system that no hard readouts were necessary. Her mind processed the influx of information as a voice. According to previous pilot logs, that was apparently a typical if occasionally unsettling response.
Calling up the proper preflight procedure took no time at all. Amelia felt giddy as her fingers flicked through the standard control patterns that had been drilled in since she began flight school. Through the neural feedback, she felt the ship respond perfectly, flashing through the checks like a dream. It was so much better than relying on information on a monitor.
With no visible instruments or way to see outside, she still couldn’t figure out how the ship got where it was going. Like this. A nanosecond later, her vision went dark. When it cleared, she had a bird’s eye view of the hangar. She turned her head and felt the camera that was acting as her eyes track with the movement.
Two uniformed men were standing easily in the center of the triangle made by the three ships. In a dizzying rush, her vision zoomed in on first one nameplate then the other. The ship’s database identified them as Captains Liam Cole and Todd Burke, both Sun Dodgers. Burke tossed a flippant salute her way. Burke, Todd. The ship’s voice sounded in her head. Rank: Captain. Enlisted on March 2, 2081. Amelia stopped the readback with a thought. There would be time enough later for exploring just how detailed the database was.
Regretfully, Amelia focused back inside the cockpit, disengaging gradually from the ship. Her new flightmates were obviously waiting for her. Amelia stepped out of the ship and walked towards them, feeling better than she had in at least four days.
“Well, now! There’s a surprise.” Burke’s voice identified him as one of the guards who had escorted her here. He had removed his helmet. “They’re not often compatible with women, you know. ARKS has done it once before. One of the other ships has had two female pilots. Congrats on being the fourth. Unless I’m missing one somewhere. You do look a damn sight better than before. That’s the medic system at work. Gives the nanobots a little extra jolt to patch you up. Doesn’t work on the big stuff though, so try not to break anything.”
Cole cleared his throat pointedly and stepped forward to offer his hand. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant?”
“Redgrave. Amelia Redgrave.” She took his hand and shook it. “Thank you, sir.”
“ARKSA then,” Burke cut in. “Could be worse.” At her blank look, he grinned. “The names come from the first letter of each pilot’s first name. It’s supposed to be lucky, of course. Just makes for some weird-ass callsigns, if you ask me. Not to mention how awkward it’ll be in the long run if the ships keep outlasting the pilots the way they have. But that’s tradition for you.”
Captain Cole caught her eye and sighed theatrically. “This way, Lieutenant Redgrave. You’ve got a medcheck, two briefings, and dinner with the rest of the flight. Burke can save the rest of his chatter for the mess hall.”
As she moved towards the door, they fell in on either side of her. Amelia permitted herself another smile. Arran, Rani, Keith, Samuel, and Amelia. ARKSA. One in three hundred didn’t sound half bad anymore.
Son of Man
by Jason Palmer
I. Bitten
Tom closed his eyes as the dense lights of Charley’s colony dropped precipitously and the stars sprang up all around the glass elevator. At the top of the sheer cliff, the elevator rotated to face the inside of Charley’s ranch. The structure, a matrix of carbon steel supporting angled sheets of clear Lucite, rambled along the cliff edge. It was some style. Tom had been up here twice before and each time felt like he was going to puke.
“C’mon in, Doc,” said Charley. “Long time no see.”
Charles Elliot III, speculator in hurtling nickel-iron real estate.
“Charley.” Tom took a few cagey steps inside. Lots of space.
Charley waved him into the kitchen, where a forest of liquor bottles lined the bar and counters. A nearby ion cloud turned highball glasses into weird monochrome disco balls as Charley poured them a couple of Manhattans. “Show you why I called.” He lifted the flap of his unbuttoned paisley shirt and turned his side toward Tom.
Something like a giant white-tipped pimple, practically a nipple, glistened a few inches beneath the right armpit.
“Jesus, Charley,” Tom said.
“Don’t say it like that. You’re going to scare me.” Charley continued holding up his shirt while Tom took a closer look.
“No, no. I’m sure it’s nothing to be afraid of. What happened?”
“A spider bit me.”
“A spider? Out here?”
Charley shrugged. “I know.”
Tom took a poke at the healthy skin close to the new nipple. “That hurt?”
“No.”
Without warning Tom splashed some whiskey from an open bottle onto the nodule, making Charley hiss. “Ow, goddam it, I already did that.”
Tom frowned at the mighty blemish, sipping his Manhattan. With only a junior flight college and a half-mile ring of assorted outpost trash around the Needle, he spent most of his time delivering babies and treating VD.
“Keep it clean and we’ll monitor it, okay?”
“Monitor it?” Charley let his shirt drop. “They teach you to say that in med school?”
Tom drained his drink. “That’s right.”
“Quack. Want anoth
er?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
They forgot about the spider bite.
When Charley asked him to stop again a week later, Tom let himself in and quickly poured a shot of Stoli—astronomically expensive outside the system—and drank it down.
“Have another,” said a tired voice from the hall. Charley’s outline stood there in the swimming ghostlight of the great gas cloud, one hand propped on the wall. “You might need it.”
“What’s up, Charley?”
Charley shuffled to the slightly brighter kitchen. “What’s up?” He began drunkenly peeling off his shirt. “I look like I went swimming with a shark, that’s what.” Shirt balled in his fist, he leaned against the counter and exposed his side.
Tom winced. It looked like the work of some kind of necrotic venom. A red-brown mass of tissue—not skin, not blood, sunken and pitted—spanned four or five of Charley’s ribs. Tom poked the healthy skin around it.
“It feels fine,” Charley said, as if it were the damnedest thing.
“When did you first notice it changing?”
“Three, four days ago.”
“Jesus, Charley, and you didn’t call until today?” He talked down his chest, inspecting the necrotic tissue.
“I was busy.”
“Yeah, busy drinking.” Tom poured out four shots of Stoli and clanged one back. He slid two to Charley. “Alright. I’m going to say it probably is a bite, but I’d like to come back and swab some cells, make sure.”
“Damn straight it’s a bite.” Charley held up a folded napkin and gently lifted a corner. It contained a flattened spider in a fan of yellow goo.
Tom didn’t get too close. “Found the little bastard, huh?”
“I thought only the rats and roaches lasted longer than a couple of weeks.”
“Hasn’t been a ship in months.”
Pressure Suite - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3 Page 15
