Forsaken Skies (60 page)

Return flag: true
.

“You had to build those—design those—specifically to attack spaceships. It never occurred to you that the things you were attacking were sapient? And what about the landers? Those things are designed for nothing but killing!”

Logged: during ninety-twelfth iteration, space-going vermin proved more persistent and organized than expected. Required developing new tools to fulfill subroutine 61D341A.

“Ninety-twelfth,” Valk said, confused until he remembered this thing thought in base fifteen. “You saw spaceships and you couldn't understand they were built by sapient creatures. They were just tougher vermin than you'd encountered before. So…you just attack anything alive? Anything you find that's alive, not a machine, is vermin? That's crazy,” Valk insisted. “That's just crazy.”

The millipede-thing didn't seem to understand. He realized that he'd spoken but only half his words had been translated into machine-speak. There was no word for “crazy” in the alien machine's databases.

No. A computer couldn't be crazy. It would be buggy, instead.

Valk cursed himself. He'd wasted all this time learning about the machines when he should have been making demands. “I want to talk to your programmer,” he said. That had been the whole point of threatening the queenship, after all—Engineer Derrow felt there had to be a programmer onboard, someone who could give the drones the command to stand down. “Where is your programmer? Is there one here, or not?”

Communication request has been sent, logged.

Okay. Okay, then. Maybe—maybe there was a chance, still. Maybe if he could just talk to the programmer, get it to understand…maybe.

Seconds ticked away while he waited. Would the programmer come to meet him in person? Was he going to get to see an alien? Would it even understand him, or would he have to communicate through its drone?

More seconds. Too many. “Are they coming?” he asked.

Request could not be processed.

The damned machine didn't understand. “How long until the programmer responds?” he tried.

Due to signal lag, response expected in: twenty-one thousand, two hundred, seventeen [years].

Oh, no.

No. The bastards—they hadn't sent a programmer along with their queenship. The nearest programmer who could alter the queenship's programming was living on some distant planet, still. Valk's request to talk would have to be sent across light-millennia of space, and even then the reply wouldn't come for thousands of years more.

The battle outside the queenship would be over in a matter of hours, maybe minutes. Niraya would be sterilized of “vermin” within the next few days.

“Damn you! Damn you damned machine bastard! Hell's ashes, don't you understand? Can't you see we're not vermin? Can't you see I'm not vermin?”

Return flag: true.

“What?”

Confirm: false-mind excluded from class: vermin.

“But I'm—I'm human. I'm just like the people you're trying to kill. I'm one of them. I'm vermin!”

Return flag: false. False-mind, you are false-mind.

“Damn it, what does that even mean?”

Full communication impossible {this unit/false-mind} while mind is false. False-mind contains personality ideates that resist full communication.

“I don't understand! What the hell is an ideate?”

Define term: ideate: constructed falsehood implemented to simulate false-consciousness. Remove personality ideates to facilitate full communication {this unit/false-mind}.

“Remove what?” Valk demanded.

The millipede thing reached down then with several of its thinner legs and gripped Valk's left index finger.

Minimize damage to false-mind. Remove personality ideates incrementally, until false-mind allows full communication.

With no effort at all, the millipede-thing ripped Valk's finger out from its socket and cast it away, into the molten core.

Then there was no room in Valk's mind for anything but pain, bright white pain that strobed behind his eyes, bounced back and forth inside his skull. He tried to scream, tried to convulse in agony, but the millipede-thing wouldn't let him. Instead it reached for his thumb.

A white pearl appeared in the corner of Valk's vision. It spun and flashed and jumped up and down, begging for his attention. If he just flicked his eyes across it—

He'd resisted doing that for seventeen years.

If there had ever been a time when he deserved painkillers, though, this was it. He moved his eyes. Accepted the white pearl.

He didn't expect that it would switch everything off. His consciousness, his thoughts, his memories. Everything. Like rolling up a minder and putting it in sleep mode.

Just gone.

L
ight. White light.

A room, not big. Not much in it. Very clean. A drone moved through the room, its ducted props whispering away. It was painted in Establishment colors, blue with black stars. It shone a light that flickered across him and then it floated out of view. Somewhere nearby, someone tapped on a virtual keyboard.

Then she stepped into frame. A woman, long brown hair in a thick braid that fell down over one shoulder. Sad eyes.

He wanted to comfort her. Why? Did he know her? Did he know why she looked so sad? He couldn't remember. There were holes in him.

Holes all the way through him. Places where there should have been something. A memory, a thought, a feeling. Nothing there, though. Just holes.

Nothing hurt.

“I'm not supposed to turn you on yet,” she said. She scratched at her nose. Looked over at the drone. “I'm not supposed to talk to you. You aren't supposed to know that I exist. It's okay. I'll encrypt this when I'm done, so you won't remember. My name is Yalta. Colonel Engineer Yalta. Can you…can you speak?”

He couldn't. There was a hole where his ability to speak should be.

“It's okay. Just listen, I guess. First things first. I'm so sorry.”

There was no hole in his empathy. He wanted to reach over and grab her hand. It wasn't possible.

There was a hole where his hand should be.

“Tannis—I'm sorry. What we're doing to you, it's not…It isn't ethical. I understand why they want me to do this but it's…” She shook her head. “Orders are orders, right? You have to understand, we're losing. The polys just have so much money to throw at this war, and all we have is people. People we can't afford to lose. That's the point of this, I guess. We can't afford to lose
you
.”

Yalta stepped out of the frame again. He wished she would come back. He wished he could tell her it was all right. That they were going to lose, that he'd seen the future somehow. Knew what was going to happen with the Establishment, and that it was going to be bad, really bad actually, but that most of them would live through it.

“Admiral Ukiyo gave me a very long lecture about propaganda this morning,” she said. Her voice was muffled as if she was very far away. “About appearances. About heroes. She said the Establishment is an idea, not an armada or a place or a political philosophy, but an idea. An idea that needs to be fed to keep it alive. She told me the only way we can win this thing is if people believe. So that's why we have to…”

Yalta's voice trailed off. She was gone for a long time, as the drone moved across his field of view again. Eventually it wandered off, and she came back, closer now. Looking right into his eyes.

“I can't lie to you, Tannis. I've spent too long going through your memories, learning who you are. You're a good man and you don't deserve to be lied to. So I'm going to tell you the truth.

“You died. You burned to death in your cockpit. I've reviewed the memories and they were awful. I…I cried. I cried for you, Tannis. I've edited those memories down as much as I could, made them…shorter. You died in that fire and when your ship came back to the carrier you were already gone. Fourth-degree burns over one hundred percent of your body. All that was left, really, was your brain, and even that was cooked. We had a hell of a time scanning it.

“We had our orders. Admiral Ukiyo told us to scan you, and download your memories, your consciousness, your you-ness, into a new body. Of course, we don't have the ability to put you in a living, human body; that's poly technology and we can't afford it. So instead…we're going to put you inside a drone.

“Two of us quit from the project then and there. It's against every principle we have as scientists. Two of us quit from the team and they were arrested on the spot. The rest of us did what we were told.

“They're going to make you a hero. They've worked up a whole story around you; they're going to call you the Blue Devil and they're going to pretend you lived through that fire, that you're a perfect representative of the Establishmentarian ideal. Tough as nails, unwilling to surrender.

“They're going to put you in a suit with a black helmet, and put you back in a fighter so they can take video of you, the pilot who refused to die. When the war is over, when we
win
,” Yalta said, unable not to sneer at the improbability, “they'll let you die for a second time. Give you a proper burial and maybe a statue or something.

“In the meantime, they're going to make you go through this sham.

“They need you to fly. To fight. They think that if you knew the truth, it would send you into a nasty depression. You might even get suicidal. They say that would ‘harm your effectiveness as a propaganda tool.' So I have to program you to believe the lie. That you survived the fire.

“I told them—I wrote up a whole report on it—that you would be in constant pain. That you would have phantom limb syndrome all over your entire body. I was told that was perfect. The pilot who fought on, despite constant pain. The bastards! I'm even supposed to tease you. Put painkillers in your suit, painkillers that would do absolutely nothing since you don't have veins anymore. I'm also supposed to include a stubborn streak. A psychological barrier to keep you from ever using those painkillers.

“But the pain—it might get to be too much, someday. I can't bear the thought of you suffering like that. So when it happens, when you can't take it anymore, maybe you'll take the white pearl after all. If you do, you'll see this message. You'll know the truth.

“If they find out I recorded this, if they find out I let you in on the joke, I'll be court-martialed. I might be executed for treason. But I had to give you a chance to know. You have rights, Tannis. You're a human being.

“At least…you used to be.”

She disappeared again, but only for a second.

“If you never see this, well, maybe that's for the best. They tell me the war will be over in a few months, one way or the other. So you won't have to suffer very long.

“But if you do see this…I don't know. I hope you can forgive me. I know what kind of man you were. I think maybe you're capable of that. I really hope so.

“Even if you can't, even if you hate me right now, I want to give you one last gift. Here.”

A black pearl appeared in the center of his vision. Much bigger than the white pearl had been. It obscured most of her face. It rotated slowly, a string of endless zeroes scrolling across its surface.

“This is a bomb, Tannis. It's a data bomb. Accept it, and every scrap of data in your memory will be deleted. Right down to root. You'll…I won't say you'll die, because that doesn't mean anything; you can't die twice. But you'll cease to exist.

“All you have to do is flick your eyes across the black pearl.

“If that's what you want.”

T
hom twisted his head around right, then left, trying to see all the scouts that were chasing him. A whole formation back there and while his displays could show him where they were he needed to see them. He had to look.

He wished he hadn't.

“Lanoe,” he called.

“I know,” the old pilot sent back. “Keep moving, Thom. It's your best bet.”

The enemy fleet had gotten itself organized. Its drone ships had established deep formations, squadrons lined up to provide support for each other, whole wings of drones moving as pincers. The enemy would gladly sacrifice a few dozen scouts just to push a human pilot into a trap full of interceptors.

A fireball of plasma erupted just to one side of Thom's canopy and the flowglas reacted by going black, polarizing itself so he wasn't blinded. It made him feel like he was trapped in a coffin. For a second he could only fly by instruments, veering out of the way of a whole line of scouts that were readying themselves to blast him with more fire, corkscrewing down through a space where the battle area was a little thinner, knowing it had to be a trap. When his canopy cleared he saw three interceptors ahead of him, spread out so they wouldn't hit each other with their guns.

“Hellfire,” he had time to breathe, before those guns opened fire and kinetic impactors were all around him, a blizzard of iron. His BR.9 shook violently as one of them skidded off his fuselage. His vector field positively crackled as it shrugged off two more.

Lanoe was halfway across the battle area—too far away to help.

Behind him, the scouts he'd evaded were coming around for another pass.

Zhang couldn't close her cybernetic eyes. She could close her eyelids but she could still see right through them. So she did the next-best thing: One by one, she shut down every display, every board, every panel in her cockpit.

She needed to focus, now.

Ahead and below a squad of drones circled around the expanding cone of orbiters that were headed for Aruna. Six interceptors and nine scouts, maneuvering around each other so elegantly they looked like they were dancing. If she wanted the orbiters, she was going to have to get through that formation.

She couldn't worry about Lanoe. Or Thom, for that matter. She couldn't think about Valk's death. She couldn't even think about Ehta, down on the ground. This was going to take some very fancy flying and shooting. She needed to get into that headspace where it was all just angles and lines, mathematically simple and pure.

It would help if she weren't so terrified.

She worked her controls with both hands, firing her positioning and maneuvering jets in rapid sequence, at the same time shoving her stick forward with her knee. Once she had a hand free she grabbed the stick and dropped into a steep dive while swinging left and right, a hyperfast variation on a very old maneuver called the falling leaf. It wasn't supposed to work outside of an atmosphere, but you could fake it if you were a good enough pilot.

Zhang was a very, very good pilot.

The squadron below her opened up a little, the scouts spreading out to try to envelop her. They left an enticing opening where she could have just shot straight down and attacked the orbiters directly, but she wasn't falling for it. The six interceptors were still clumped tight around the prize and she couldn't take them on all at once.

A scout twisted around until its eyeball was pointed right at her. There was no time to bring up a virtual sight and actually aim at the thing, so she opened up with her PBWs and hoped for the best. Another scout banked around to try to get on her tail, while a third rushed her from the side.

She switched off her compensators and pulled a rotary turn, twisting her trajectory around ninety degrees in the space it took to draw a breath. Her inertial sink sat down on her hard, pinning her to her seat as the stick jumped in her hand like a snake. Suddenly the scout that had tried to flank her was right in front of her, so close she could see the weld marks on its plasma cannon. She must have surprised it because it didn't even have a chance to build up heat—as her PBWs tore through its eyeball it didn't explode, it just broke into pieces.

The other two scouts came at her then from opposite directions, ready to blast her, but she was already moving, pulling back hard on her stick and firing her maneuvering jets until she looped up over them.

She had kind of hoped the two of them would simply crash into each other in a head-on collision. Of course she'd never been that lucky. They flashed by each other, a good meter of space between them. In a second they were maneuvering to track her.

The damn things could corner; she had to give them that.

Meanwhile three more scouts had broken from the pack and were lining up high above her, ready to swoop down the second she lost her concentration.

She had no intention of giving them that opportunity.

“I'd forgotten how good she was,” Lanoe said, with a chuckle.

“Who are you talking about?” Thom demanded. “Zhang? I'm in trouble over here!” The interceptors wouldn't let up. Every time he tried to maneuver to get away from their welter of impactors they would just shift position, drawing him deeper into their web. He flipped over on his back, hit his retros hard to get moving backward, away from the scrum, but there were scouts behind him, pulling together into a tight formation.

“Get out of there, kid,” Lanoe said. “Don't let them pin you. I'm coming but I'm still ten seconds out. Hold on!”

But there was no way Thom was going to survive the next ten seconds. Not with those interceptors locking him up.

Unless he found some way to get through them, without flying right into their impactors. Unless he—

There was a way.

“I'm sorry,” he said. Then he pulled up his weapons panel and armed his disruptors.

He wasn't supposed to use them. He was supposed to save them for the queenship. Making a run at the asteroid seemed like a pipe dream now, though. And he was dead if he didn't do something.

The interceptors knew they were all but immune to PBW fire. They didn't even try to maneuver as Thom fired every disruptor he had. The heavy munitions made a nasty chunking noise as they launched from the belly of his BR.9, moving slowly enough that he could actually watch as they streaked toward their targets.

The first one struck an interceptor right between two of its guns. It melted its way right through the thickest of the drone's armor and Thom saw light flash from the gun muzzles as it tore away at the interceptor from the inside.

The other disruptors didn't hit quite so cleanly, but they found their targets. One after another they dug through the interceptors' armor and blew them apart.

The impactors disappeared. The guns stopped firing.

Thom wasted no time. He opened his throttle wide and screamed through the formation, even as one of the interceptors exploded in a vast orange cloud of burning fuel and slag. Debris bounced off Thom's vector field, a couple of pieces hitting him directly and smacking dents into his fuselage.

But in another second he was free, past the interceptors and into something resembling open space. He swiveled around to look back and saw a wave of scouts start to chase after him, then break off as they were pelted with debris.

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

“Kid—it's all right. You did what you had to do,” Lanoe called. His voice belied his words. He didn't sound angry that Thom had disobeyed orders. Instead he sounded almost sad about it. Disappointed, maybe?

“I know you said we needed to save our disruptors, but—”

“You did what you had to do,” Lanoe said again. “I just wish…ah, hell. Clearly this is not a day when I get to make a lot of wishes. Thom—I'm just glad you made it out of there.”

Zhang cut a scout to pieces, then wheeled around hard and took out another with a quick burst of particle fire. There were only a few of the scouts left, but all six interceptors remained intact. She couldn't take them on all at once, and they refused to budge from their formation, a ring of steel around the orbiters. If she couldn't trick them into peeling off there was no way she could isolate them.

She chewed on her lip, trying to think of some clever move. Some gambit that would break the formation open.

A scout crept up too close on her left. She spun around and gave it both barrels and it stopped being a problem.

Ahead of her lay the vast round disk of Garuda, the ice giant. Aruna, the moon, was obscured by the mass of orbiters and interceptors, but she knew it was getting close. She had at most a minute before the orbiters reached the moon and dropped their deadly cargo on the volunteers down there.

It was time to get drastic. She opened her comms panel and called Lanoe. “I'm out of clean options here,” she told him. “I need your permission for something. I've got to use my disruptors.”

Lanoe surprised her by laughing. “You too, huh?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Thom just used all of his. Zhang, do what you need to—we're way past the original plan here.”

Zhang swerved away as a scout tried to get the drop on her. “Lanoe. Do we…do we have any…new plans?” she asked, choosing her words very carefully.

“Always,” he told her. “Just none anybody's going to like.”

“Understood,” she said, because she didn't want to ask any more questions.

The scout maneuvered to get a better shot at her, but it was like a fly buzzing around her head. She worked her thruster board until her BR.9 did a backflip, then cut the scout apart with two quick pulses of PBW fire.

Only one scout remained, loitering on the far side of the ring of interceptors. Too far away to shoot at, too far for it to hurt her. She ignored it—right now she needed to break up those interceptors so she could hit the orbiters. Even with disruptors it was going to be a dicey proposition.

There was no time for fancy maneuvers, no room for error. She leaned forward on her stick and let go with her PBWs, just laying down fire to try to distract the enemy. Just as she'd expected, it had no effect. The interceptors were spaced perfectly, down to the millimeter, and they didn't budge. They started firing long before she came within their range and she had to feather her controls to dodge around an increasingly thick storm of impactors. One touched the rear left quarter of her fighter but she ignored the damage—nothing chimed at her, which meant she was still functional.

The first interceptor swam toward her, growing huge as she buzzed it close enough to watch the impactors belching from its guns. She loaded a disruptor and fired it right through the armor on the thing's nose. Without even waiting to see what happened she twisted around and shot through the gap between the interceptor and its nearest neighbor, right into the middle of their ring. Orbiters bobbed all around her and she spared a fraction of a second to lance as many as she could, their spidery cargo spilling into the void in a flurry of twitching limbs.