《The Gilded Aige》 01. Hitomi When her family''s cargo business folded, the first of her rights that Hitomi Sullivan sold was her right to vote. At eighteen, it hadn''t seemed like a huge deal. A single vote never made any difference anyway. And so that right was packaged up with those of other down-on-their-luck former middle-classers for auction. The package was purchased by the Tram Consortium, giving them a total of eighty-five million votes in the 2080 LAR presidential election. The money had bought her a commission at the Lunar Flight Academy and kept her out of the worst fighting between the Liberal Atlantic Republics and the Eastern Pact States on Earth. The receipt was taped to the ejection hatch cover in the two-year-old Starseeker fighter she had leased from the UAR defence forces post-graduation. Light cracked through the hangar bay, spilling over the receipt. Next to it, her maintenance tech had tacked up a note during the pre-flight. "Don''t even think about ditching my ship." Tomi inhaled and rubbed the head of her good luck sheep, Dublin. Its plush ears danced in the zero gravity. My life would be over either way, so- The clamps holding the Seeker in its rack released, cutting her thought mercifully short and dropping her out into the black void of outer space. Back in flight school, she had had lunar gravity to pull her away from the carrier, and she counted on the jolt to snap her out of her pre-flight reveries. Here in outer space was the carrier''s auto-pilot, guiding her ship slowly away from the rest of the squadron. Tomi took the opportunity to flit her eyes over the comm controls. Music filled the cockpit. Good, cheap music, ripped from the original vinyl. An ancient band called the Guess Who. Playing it in the cockpit was strictly against regulations, but life was short. Really, really short for some people. Best to not think too much about that. Instead, she banged out a pretty bitchin'' drum solo with her fingers in time with the blaring guitar. "Leading Edge, Bankshot is clear." Cymbal crash. The blue field of Earth appeared from under the shadow of the carrier, waiting. A small convoy of cargo ships floated not far away. And beyond them... anxiety and potential death. Tomi brought up the biofeedback display in the corner of her visor, showing her spiking heart rate. Crash. Crash it. A subscription to the readings was costing her forty dollars a month, but she had seen what happened to pilots who ignored it. They topped out and got their flight status suspended. No one (no one important) wanted a stroke in potentia guarding their multi-billion dollar osmium shipment. Should probably cut back on the Amp, eh, Dubs? The rest of the squadron fell from the hangar racks into the void around her as the auto-pilot eased the Seeker towards the orange and white shapes of the cargo ships. A white wall, the Leading Edge loomed up behind her. Lit in the naked light of the sun, the behemoth looked like a slab of marble with the words "Tram" emblazoned on the side in letters the height of a football field. Little more than a floating billboard with a squadron of fighters behind it, the ship dwarfed all the other family owned carriers Tomi had ever been contracted on. All one of them. "This is Lead," the comm chirped. "Red flight, pick up escorts." Tomi glanced up through the cockpit screen toward the convoy just as another Seeker passing overhead blotted out the Leading Edge. Dammit, Tyri, why you gotta fly so tight? "Charlemagne, Bankshot." Tomi forced as much impatience through the comm as she could. "You got an entire solar system out there; you wanna use it?" The comm fell silent for a moment. "Bankshot, this is Wolfsbane." A male voice surprised her. "Charlemagne got bought. I''m flying with you now." "What?" ¡°Charlemagne hit escape velocity. Her contract was bought out.¡± Tomi eyed the pale blue of the Earth over the hull of the growing cargo ship. She had maybe five years to go on her flight contract if she was lucky. That meant at least five hundred more of these runs. Another five hundred passes through jaws of grim death. Tyri had seemed like a lifer. If not quite a friend, then at least a constant face. One of the few other women jocks. And she hadn''t even said goodbye. "She fought two Zetas off a Van Blunt freighter. Five billion dollars." "Well..." Tomi sucked her tongue. "Good for her. Welcome to Red Flight, Wolfsbane. Still flying too close." "This is regulation, Bankshot. You coming down with rubberitis?" "I do not have rubberitis," Tomi grumbled before switching off her comm. "That would mean I''m crazy, and I''m not crazy, am I, Dubs?" Dublin the sheep shook his head as Tomi twitched the flight controls. I just made the mistake of getting attached. Cargo Three was one of the older Atlas class freighters. Over thirty meters long, its dimensions were carefully calculated to maximize load while minimizing loss in case of its destruction. Broad shoulders along its first third supported a pair of rotating engines to maneuver the ship. At the same time, the tightly grouped rear drivers propelled it forward. Armour plating covered the twin mid-ship cargo holds. Atlases were less powerful than some of the newer models, but they were reliable. So reliable that most had been bought up by UAR and were sitting in a junkyard on Deimos. The Atlas her parents had owned always reminded Tomi of an orange and white sea turtle¡ªpowerful, but graceful in its own way. And inside, it was... homey. The music drifted away into the void. "Cargo Three, this is Bankshot," Tomi hailed. "You''ve got two escorts. Maintain position until-" "Cargo Three, this is Grendel. You have four escorts." A new voice broke into the comm. Tomi recognized it a moment before another ship slipped dangerously close to her port, blacking out her cockpit. Tomi slammed her throttle back. The flight restraints pressed into her ribs. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it "Grendel? What the hell are you doing? Two jocks per civ." "You can look up the mission specs, girl." Tomi could hear the sneer in Grendel''s (she never bothered to learn the real names of scuzzballs) voice. This wasn''t her first dance. She''d checked the pre-flight before sitting her ass in the chair. Nonetheless, her eyes darted over her visor''s display, selecting menu options. Four ships were listed as escorts for Cargo Three. Tomi frowned. There were never four escorts for a simple ore run. And there were never, never changes to the mission specs after launch. Flight command was a bunch of water cooler dictators barely held together by a few AI algorithms, but they weren''t careless. It was odd. Damn odd. The heart rate monitor whispered angrily from the corner of her eye. "Grendel, Bankshot. Were there no actual jackals available to fly that thing? There might be fewer kills stolen. Probably smell better, too." "Uh huh, all those kills that aren''t on your board were stolen. Getting rubberitis, B.S.?" "I am not getting rubberitis, Grendel. Just remember who''s in charge on this flight." It¡¯s me, Wing Commander Sullivan. Nice ring. Good pay. Less getting shot at. Yeah, I am, B. S.¡± I have five combat engagements,¡± Tomi shot back. ¡°How about you. Three, was it? I¡¯m the most experienced here.¡± "Bankshot, Grendel. Whatever you need to tell yourself, girl." It was 2081; a person would think that kind of misogyny was lying on the dung heap of history. But wartime had a way of stirring the shit. Not wartime, ¡®tactical economic action¡¯ time. The comm crackled with a dark male voice, interrupting the witty retort. "Whoever''s in charge up there, Cargo Three is eager to get underway." Tomi gave the clear, manoeuvring the Starseeker a few dozen meters off the vast ship''s bow in a standard cross formation. She was alone out in front. Grendel and whoever had followed his sickly stench out here flanked. Wolfsbane hovered aft, above the wake of the massive engines. The Starseeker''s ion thrusters died away with a rattle as the fighter reached cruising speed. Five minutes to Earth. The lie of the lunar shadow turned the globe into a crescent, beige and blue with hints of green algae super-blooms along the edges of the ocean. She had seen a few ancient videos of land that was still green. Forests hadn''t yet been plowed under in the rapacious search for lithium, cesium, and neodymium. And the horrifying Eastern Pact launch platforms had yet to be constructed in an attempt to keep all those things from coming in from space. Four minutes to Earth. Through the cockpit screen, the pair of inscrutable towers hung. The ECG complained violently, and Tomi slammed her eyes shut. You killed my family... financially, you bastards. "Lead. All ships, burn line in fifteen seconds. Secure and switch to short-range comms. Prepare for full manual flight." Shit. She tried concentrating on the way the screen blackened as the blast shutters closed over it. Her visor brightened, and the cockpit around her dissolved into the blue of Earth, backed by a bright star field. Even the air felt thin in her lungs. Nothing was different, of course. The visor was just showing her the Starseeker''s exterior but damned if it didn''t feel like she was sitting in a chair floating through the void. It was the next best thing to being in an Atlas cockpit again, Dad rocking the seat beside her. Music blaring. No regulations telling you what to do. Freedom. The telemetry from the Leading Edge died away as they hit the scrambling field. She was on her own. "Bankshot, secured." Tomi swallowed and tried to focus on her breathing. Nothing to worry about. You do this all the time. Just going to fly these civvies between these two hives of bees and hope no one notices. The ECG beeped. Yellow. Barely passing. Tranquilizers might help. Balance out the Amp. You had to spend money to make money. "Lead. Status check." Peele was in rare, monotonous form this run. Tranquilizers. Definitely. "Bankshot. Tank''s full. Artillery full," Tomi repeated the totals in the corner of the visor. Cost me an arm and a leg, but it''s there. If she conserved enough fuel on this run maybe she could send a little bit of money home this month. Mom and Dad were running out of rights to sell. "Grendel. I got a tank full of tritium, and I won''t take shit-ium." ¡°Grendel, Bankshot,¡± Tomi found the bait impossible to resist. ¡°Is working on that line why the light was on in your bunk last night?¡± ¡°Stow it, Bankshot,¡± Peele grumbled. ¡° Stow it! Burn line in five.¡± The blood pressure monitor blaring marked the approaching line of no return. In a matter of seconds, they would be within the burn-through range of Pact radar. No amount of scrambling was going to help you in there. The Pact would know the convoy was coming in. The question: Were they going to do anything about it? What kind of dancing are we doing tonight? she thought. Oh? Feel like sitting this one out? Please do. Shit, maybe I do have rubberitis. ¡° Beneath her, the cargo ship -- almost exactly like the one her parents used to own -- fired its thrusters. Tomi frowned. Were the freighters dense? Was this their first run? They had to know the protocol. Everyone waited at the edge of the burn line and went through together. Less time in the danger zone, less time for the Pact to react, better odds they wouldn¡¯t waste the resources on the slim chance of catching stragglers. The Atlas toddled toward the burn line. It¡¯s ion engines still burned bright blue. Her heart buzzed in time with the ECG readout. Dublin flopped around against the duct tape holding him against the hull. "Shit. Shit. Lead, Bankshot," she chirped. "I got a line jumper." Tomi watched the chalky white of the launch platforms towering in front of the pale blue atmosphere. She could feel the Pact AI running its various calculations. Would the damage inflicted on UAR surpass the cost of potentially lost ships? In the economics of attrition, which AI was running the best numbers? In their bunks at night, fighter pilots whispered their guesses and superstitions. The early commitment of the cargo ship would make the ships behind that much more tempting a target. She wheeled the Seeker back toward the accelerating freighter, sinking into her seat. Everything would be okay if she could get in front of it before it crossed the scrimmage line. "Just a load of osmium or some bullshit coming through," Tomi whispered to the inscrutable towers of death. "No need to get worked up." "Red Flight, Nightguard! Contact! Contact! Contact!" Hitomi whipped her head over her shoulder. Red lights flashed along the white exterior of the launch towers. Even a hopelessly wet-behind-the-ears pilot would recognize the pattern of navigation lights. In the darkness between the bright red strips, she could make out the minuscule forms of descending fighters. Bloc pilots slept in their ships. "Shit! Shit!" The goddamn freighter had jumped ahead, spreading out their formation. They all could have sailed through the blockade in ninety seconds, and the AI would have remained quiet. No fighters could have gotten to them in that amount of time. Ninety-five seconds, though... Might be enough time to blow apart a UAR freighter. Several thousand kilograms of raw materials were destined to build a few million AI chips for the decades-long chess match the thinking machines were playing. "Port wing. Fifteen inbounds!" "Fifteen on the starboard wing." "Red Flight, Lead!" Peele''s voice was a razor against the static of the comms. "Safeties off. Weapons loose." Hitomi''s sweating fingers flicked the safeties of the coilguns, and the eerily comforting whine of charging capacitors filled the cockpit. Her fingers trembled against the triggers. Shit! Strap on your dancing shoes, Dub. Shit! A blinding flare of sunlight flickered as a squadron of Pact Zeta fighters descended into the Earth''s beige and blue background. Hitomi''s stomach fell through the seat below her and into the ether of black with the screeching of the ECG. "So much for sending money home this month." 02. H.O.C. The second of her right that Hitomi Sullivan sold was her right to speech. The day after, a bot version of her had begun talking to other bots online. There was no point in keeping that right. Nothing but bots online to talk to anyway. With the money, she had put a payment on the Starseeker and paid Dom¡¯s first month''s stipend. With what little was left, she enrolled in an extension course run by an ex-Wing Commander. The course had lasted forty-eight weeks and had been nights listening to people have sex in their bunks interspersed with days trying to perfect high orbital combat. The fundamentals of which -- of combat, not sex -- could be boiled down to three simple rules. One: Slow is dead. Moving targets are hard to hit. Targets moving at a small fraction of light speed are nearly impossible. Two: Fast is dead. High-speed cornering could put enough G-force on the human brain to liquefy it against the back (or front, any direction, really) of the skull. Three: Never get attached to anyone. That third rule could be applied to any number of circumstances -- including sex -- but seemed especially relevant to being a fighter pilot. The first two were in full effect as Tomi banked the Seeker around the freighter, a stream of red-hot pellets flicking past her cockpit. She strained as her flight suit pressurized in a bid to keep the blood from pooling in her feet. Probably four G''s on that turn. Lethality started at six. "Lead, Bankshot. Escort group is turning back!" Six Pact Zeta fighters, little more than cockpits and weapons, skipped past the freighter. They slowed momentarily to take a set of potshots at its hull. The same magnetic fields powering their coilguns deflected most of the pellets. "Cargo Three!" she shouted into her comm, "Estimated time for turnaround?" The reply was delayed, coming back panicked. "We need a full ten seconds for a one-eighty, then another ten to get back up to speed." Slow in the head and the ass. Awesome. The Starseeker circled the freighter, coming up behind the passing Pact squad. Grendel and Wolfsbane split off two and one, respectively. "Lead, Bankshot! Requesting cover fire!" "Bankshot, squad is being flanked by two wings." "Just the three of us, boys." Grendel sounded almost excited. "Four, dipshit." They could all run. They could, at the very least, lead the Pact ships on a merry chase if it wasn''t for the cargo ship drifting leisurely along beneath them. Let the Pact get their hands on that ship, and they might as well sign up to toil in the mines right there. There''s only six of them. "Listen up." Was her voice authoritative enough? Could they hear her hands shaking on the sticks? Was the ship still flying straight? "This is a standard interference run. Try to draw them into the civvy guns." And they''ll kill all of you if you''re not careful there, Wing Commander. "Hey, Crackpot or whatever you call yourself, they''re not paying us to shoot. This is Cargo Three, by the way." "If you don''t want to get to Earth in a Pact prison transport, you''re doing it pro bono," Tomi shot back. The cannons on an Atlas freighter were half to show off to pirates, half for chaffing incoming missiles. Tomi doubted they could fire fast enough to damage a fighter, but it would give the bastards one more thing to worry about and maybe shave a bit off the seven-to-four advantage. One of the Pact Zetas loomed in her display. The pilot''s rookie mistake of not jittering made him an easy target. Lead it to adjust for the power transfer from the engines. Tomi adjusted so the coilguns'' crosshairs flirted just ahead of the engines and squeezed her index fingers on the stick triggers. The capacitors whined, and a stream of brilliant red lanced out from beneath her. By charging pilots for ordinance, we''re ensuring they won''t get trigger-happy. So a one-second burst will run you about three hundred and twenty dollars. The Zeta kicked as pellets impacted its tentacle-like starboard manoeuvring engine. Tiny target, difficult shot, but the least shielded part of the Zeta''s anatomy. Shuddering, it spun away uselessly into the void, unable to right itself. Tomi broke off from the main group on her isolated prey. Her display buzzed, power shunted from the thrusters into the guns. What are you waiting for? Scratched Zeta will net you almost ten grand. Tomi exhaled. She''d done it before. Her fingers loosened momentarily and then squeezed the triggers again. Bright white lit the darkness as the Zeta''s fusion reactor tore open. In anoxic space, it was little more than a pop, ignition of the small amount of atmosphere in the cockpit followed by a blue halo of radiation¡ªSix hundred and forty dollars worth of ammunition for one destroyed Pact ship. The Starseeker brushed through the debris. A thud against the hull that might be a hand or a skull. And one dead jock... Who was too green to even jitterbug. Goddamn it. The first time had been bad, gut-wrenching. But now... it did not bother her as much as she had expected. In fact... even in the midst of the adrenaline spike, she could feel her heartbeat slowing just a little in relief. The ECG agreed. It felt like... glory. A surge of it. Glory surge. "Bankshot, scratch one." "Red flight," comms squawked. "this is Nightguard. I''ve got three additional inbounds. Bogeys. Configuration I''ve never seen before. Fighter sized. Fast." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. "Nightguard, Lead. Friendly?" Tomi could hear the headshake through the comm. "No answers to hails. Assume hostile. Visual in ten seconds." "What kind of dancing d''you think they like?" Grendel mused. "Concentrate on the partners you''ve got." Tomi watched as Grendel narrowly avoided a burst of pellets. "They''ll jitterbug just like the rest of us." She slid in under the freighter, leading another Zeta on. The Seeker rocked beneath as she shook its tail, trying to prevent any target lock. She rose just under the Atlas¡¯s starboard cannon. The Zeta followed and got a taste of shrapnel. White gas puffed from nearly a dozen holes. Its hull had been punctured. Not deeply, but enough that it was venting atmosphere, throwing it off course. The pilot had maybe two minutes of air, enough to get back to the launch platforms if he turned back immediately. Exhilaration surged in her breast. This run could turn a profit if she played her cards right. "I bet they like to rhumba," Wolfsbane chuckled. "Red flight, this is Nightguard!" The communication was frantic. "Visual! I''m not seeing any cockpits!" Tomi''s mouth went dry, and the feeling of elation was promptly replaced by sweaty unease. "Oh shit," Grendel whispered. "They do the goddamn robot." Tomi blinked, nearly missing an incoming Zeta. Drones. Remote piloting fighters had been unfeasible since 2074 when large vessels like the Pact towers and the Leading Edge started scrambling high-speed communications. If the Pact was fielding drones, they had to be mounting resource-intensive ship-based AI with no squishy human organs that could liquefy with sudden acceleration. Say goodbye to rule two. Slow was dead; fast was for predators. "D-don''t panic," was all she could manage. This was wrong! The Pact ran things the same way UAR did. Ninety percent of AI development went into large-scale logistical models that thought ten, twenty, even a hundred years into the future, carefully mapping the course of history to ensure their side eventually sat on the throne of Earth. If that technology was going into fighters, something about the war dynamic had fundamentally changed. "Concentrate." A burst of static ripped into her ears. "...sbane. Hit... comm-" The garbled text disappeared with a burst of blue radiation from behind Tomi''s head. She blinked. Five to three. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we never get attached. "Grendel. I''ve got a missile lock. Zero one out." Grendel might be an asshole, but he was spending the big bucks today. An explosion and a blue flash. Four. "Red flight, this is Lead. Nightguard has been destroyed. Two bogeys will hit starboard flank in fifteen seconds. Remaining contact is heading toward Cargo Three." Blood drained from Tomi''s face. "Valkyrie has been hit!" They''re coming this way! For one ship? Why? Why the shit would they do that?! "Zephyr is down!" Whatever these new ships were, they were tearing through the convoy flank like toilet paper in a shitstorm. "This is Cargo Three. What do you want us to do?" The man''s voice was loud but breaking around the edges. "I..." Shit. What did she want them to do? There were still four Pact fighters to deal with, but as long as they couldn''t focus long enough for a missile lock on the transport, it was reasonably safe. But the new contacts had made short work of at least three other Seekers. According to the display, the new contact was two minutes and some change away, between them and the squadron. If they tried to regroup, they''d be running right towards the wolf''s mouth, and who knew if anything would be there when they arrived. The Leading Edge was a long, lonely six minutes away. She banked sharply, and a big, blue glow filled the port side of her cockpit. At first it evoked thoughts of another reactor going nova. But it was something else entirely. Earth. It was only two minutes off. Through the gaping jaws of death, true, but intel said that the Pact launch towers had a combined capacity of thirty-six ships. Thirty were in play, twenty-four of which were engaged with Red Flight. The towers'' mounted cannons were slow, designed to fend off more significant threats that the fighters couldn''t. And for a few seconds they wouldn¡¯t be able to fire for fear of hitting their counterpart. "If we go between them." Tomi breath shook. "This is stupid. Really stupid." Twenty seconds to turn the Atlas. Two minutes to atmosphere. Maybe thirty seconds in the jaws of death. UAR ground defence could give them some cover fire if they hit low orbit. Depending on how badly they wanted whatever the hell was in Cargo Three. Badly enough to assign four jocks to it? Badly enough that Pact drones were coming after it? We can do it. We can make it. "Cargo Three." Her voice seemed to be coming from someone else. "Pull another one eighty. Between the towers. We can make low orbit in a minute and a half." Hopefully, they didn''t know she was fudging her numbers. "Are you fucking kidding me?" Yeah. This is all one big joke. Nyuk, nyuk. She swallowed. No sense in backpedalling. "Grendel, Bankshot. I need you to keep those last fo-" A pop. Blue light. "Bankshot, Grendel. Three." "-Fighters off us for one minute and then run like your mom chasing dick." Are you really doing this? This is your life you''re talking about. If I lose this ship, I''ll be so deep in the red, Mom and Dad will be shitting blood. "I''ll take Cargo Three in." Guess we''re doing this then, Dublin. The sheep glared back at her, gobsmacked. There was silence over the comm. "Shit. No argument here, Bankshot." Good. Grendel wasn''t going to fight her over it. His assholery was coming in handy for once. The Atlas was already wheeling. The display showed a minute forty-five until drone contact. Over her shoulder, she could just make out the other two Starseekers locked in a circle of death with the three Pact Zetas. Hitomi shoved her sticks forward, feeling the embrace of her pressure suit as the acceleration forced the blood into her stomach. A single Pact fighter loomed in her display. She kept in tight on it. The Atlas was nearly finished its turn. The missile lock buzzed, crosshairs flashed, and Tomi slammed her thumb down on the launch button. A grey streak flew from the Seeker''s starboard wing. "Bankshot. Zero-one out." There''s a half-a-million-dollar goodbye present, asshole The Zeta wheeled away, breaking off pursuit of Grendel. Hitomi spun the Seeker into a one-eighty, taking a moment to appreciate the panicky feeling of her heart thundering and the edges of her vision dimming. That was a good five G''s. The engines fired and she had to grit her teeth, breathing shallow and quick as the Seeker rocketed back toward the Atlas. Her blurred eyes flickered toward the sensor display as she came out of the turn. One minute fifteen to contact. The Atlas would pass between the Pact towers in one minute. In front of them: five fighters and cannons massive enough to turn even the Leading Edge into Swiss cheese. Behind them: an inhuman enemy. And they would all come together for a nice, friendly forty-five-second chat in less than a minute. "Godspeed, Bankshot." Tomi barely heard Grendel''s voice through the blood squirting through her ears. "You''re gonna need it." 03. Forty-five Seconds The third and final of her rights, Hitomi sold was her right to discharge. Now, instead of being able to declare any type of bankruptcy, any debt would hang around her neck. Something she was painfully aware of approaching the Pact towers, her own personal Scylla and Charybdis. They had to be the size of twelve-story skyscrapers, cylinders of white metal hangars with running lights. "Cargo 3, this is Bankshot. Ahead full. Don''t stop for anything. It''s what you''re good at, isn''t it?" "It''s just you, me, and my dumbass cousin co-pilot now. You can call me Gunnar." The reply was strained, not frantic, but tense. "You probably got my entire squadron killed," Tomi spat. "I''m calling you dipshit. What''s the rating on your mag plates?" "They''re rated for thirty thousand newtons, but running past cruising speed, they''ll only hit half capacity." Of course. "Do those Atlases still have the dorsal and ventral vents?" "Still do. Until the next series comes out." Tomi exhaled, suddenly alerted to the ECG that had been sounding constantly in her ear this whole time. The damn thing had to be getting exhausted. "Okay. At random intervals, I want you to blow out half a second of atmosphere from either one or the other. That''ll move you up and down without having to rotate your engines. It''ll make it more difficult for them to shoot your sorry ass but keep you at speed. Got it?" "Yeah." "I''m going to be making sweeps around you, trying to disrupt any missile locks. And I''m gonna be flying backwards. You¡¯re gonna have to call directions in reverse. Got it?" "Backwards?" Just sound confident, like you do this all the time. "There''s a computerized death machine coming after us from aft, I need to keep on it, but that means I won''t be able to use my main engine. We''re gonna soft lock our mag plates, and you''re gonna drag me." Ahead, still puffing atmosphere, was the Zeta the Atlass had ventilated, desperately limping back to its tower. There was no fight left in it, and that wasn''t what she was worried about. The massive cannons mounted on the upper pylons of the stations were turning toward them. "Dorsal! Dorsal!" Tomi shouted. The bolt sailed through the void just below the ascending Atlas. A second shot followed a mere moment later from the opposite side. Red lights lining the towers flashed, "Kinda hoped you''d be late to the dance," Tomi grumbled. She pulled the Seeker above the Atlas as six contacts broke from the port tower in her display. As quickly as the G-forces would allow, she flipped the ship around, facing the rear of the cargo ship. The cockpit hummed as power dumped from the engine capacitors into the coil guns. Enough to punch a hole in even the strongest fighter-class armour. "Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch?" The drone had been stalking on her sensors the entire time, slowly closing the gap between them. Another ten seconds, it would be on top of them, and she still couldn''t see it. Ventral ports shot plumes of atmosphere into space in front of her, and the Atlas descended, pulling the Starseeker with it by the magnetic plates. The tower cannons reoriented. A single star point shifted over the aft end. As she watched, it split into a trio of white lights. There it was! Stealthy as a thief in the night and coming in fast, the drone roared towards them. Her display painted it a bloody red for a moment, and then it was lost. The Seeker¡¯s locking systems complained with a dismal beep. "Okay," she breathed heavily. "Okay. Just gotta be fast. You''re twenty years old, you got fast nerves, strong circulatory system. Graceful legs. Winning personality." She squeezed the triggers. A stream of white-hot pellets shot towards the growing speck. It was a long shot, but her aim was good. Maybe... At the exact last moment, the speck tumbled quickly to the side, still coming strong. It was an impossible manoeuvre, one that would kill any human pilot in their seat. "Shit, shit, shit. Give me tone. Gimme a goddamn lock." There should have been one already. The thing eased out of the darkness like it was coming home from a tough day at the office. Looking to unwind with a little casual dogfight before skulking off to tuck in its robot children and make sweet love to its robot wife. Weapon mounts jutted from either side of it, each bearing a single projectile. Three sensor arrays glared out of its broad front, each one a horrible eye fixated on her. Like the Zeta, it was nearly all engines and weapons and... Crawling skin? As she watched, the machine''s hull shifted, bristling with what looked like dozens of fins. Some were held out straight, while others folded back against its hull. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. It''s changing its fucking sensor profile. So, no missile lock. Sorry, kids. Tomi sneered and started a slow orbit around the freighter''s longitudinal axis, hoping to get between it and the incoming fighters from port. She kept the Seeker''s nose pointed squarely at the tumbling horror coming straight at her. "Cargo, I need your port flak cannon on those ships. They''ll be coming in high." "I''m trying! Your ugly ass is in the way." "My ass is beautiful, and it''s right where it needs to be." A fresh barrage from the tower cannons slipped barely overhead. She fired off another volley at the drone, watching helplessly as it skipped almost merrily to the side. It wasn''t even trying to shoot back. I''m coming to get you! it hummed happily. "Fuck! Incoming to port. My port!" Tomi snapped to her right in time to see a pair of dull blue rocket engines barrelling towards them. She clenched her teeth and flipped the Seeker towards them. Pressure built in her chest as the flight suit squeezed for all it was worth, forcing blood into her head. Her vision tunnelled into black. Sweat poured down her face. The fading crosshairs swept across the blue blobs. Her hands felt cold, numb, but she squeezed. Pop! Tomi gasped. One. A spray of metallic flotsam burst from the side of the freighter, impacting the remaining projectile. A red fireball burst directly under the Seeker, throwing it upward toward the incoming Pact Zetas. Hitomi growled as she was pushed down into her seat. Her neck muscles bulged, fighting to keep her head upright. A proximity alarm sounded. One of the Pact ships nearly grazed her cockpit. And then, they were gone, slipping into the darkness where they could turn around for another pass. The Atlas started pulling ahead of her. She had to get back down into mag-lock range! Tomi sucked air. How long had it been? Forty seconds? Thirty? Five. Tink-t-tink-tink-tink. Sounds of powerful hail overcame her. Pellets impacting the Seeker''s hull. She whipped the ship around to see a horrific trio of lights bearing down on her. Managing to slide the ship back down towards the Atlas, she let off another stream of white-hot pellets. The Seeker was sluggish. That explosion had likely damaged a power conduit, and after the hail of gunfire, the ship was venting its atmosphere. An alarm about it had been sounding for a few seconds but was lost in the din. A laugh escaped her lips as she looked over her shoulder at the giant bluish ball behind her. You''re about to have more atmosphere than you can handle, girl. She tried juking out of the way, but the drone''s guns followed her, peppering both the Seeker and the Atlas. "We''re taking fire down here!" "Shut up, dipshit!" she yelled as the drone tumbled away from another one of her volleys. The white lights, searching eyes of a god, shone down on her. A pair of shots impacted the cockpit shielding, making fang-like dents in the metal right in front of her face. Her visor flickered as the imaging array took a hit. A machine can''t make something personal, she tried to tell herself. It can''t try to poke your eyes out. But it damn sure felt personal. The anemic sensors showed the fighters reaching their turn-around point as blue began to seep into her field of vision. Red streaks of friction formed on the hull. They had hit the ionosphere. Another twenty-five seconds or so, and they''d be in range of the anti-aircraft artillery in West Africa. Better let them know you''re bringing company. "UAR Africa command, this is-" A new pair of dents stared at her, nearly in the same place as the previous pair. The accuracy of the monstrosity was scary. "This is Red Flight... or what''s left of it. Coming in at..." Ti-ti-tink-ti-tink Shit, where the hell am I? The disorientation surprised her. It was getting hard to breathe. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead as heat poured into the cockpit. The drone had closed to within two dozen meters, and it was nearly on top of her. Her visor turned red, and a rapidly decreasing number bubbled to the top of the flight info¡ªoxygen concentrations. Getting a little stuffy in here. Eh, Dublin? The plushie bobbed its head. "Car... cargo. I need-" she gasped through the comm. "I need you to call it in." "What the hell are you thinking, lady? I don''t have access to military channels." Tomi managed to tap the communications panel to her left. "Comms... comms bridged. You... talk." "What- Fuck! Incoming Starboard!" Tomi jerked the sticks to her right, realizing too late that she was still facing backward. The flak cannon fired, spraying shrapnel a second too late. One missile slammed into the freighter''s side. The second tore into the Atlas''s manoeuvring engine, forcing it downward. The opposite shoulder surged upward, knocking the Seeker''s right wing. The motion probably saved Hitomi''s life. An ore container the size of her bunk back on the Leading Edge flew out of Atlas''s exposed cargo hold, narrowly missing the Seeker''s depressed left wing. The drone wheeled out of the way as the container slipped away into the darkness of space. Dipshit was screaming in her ear. Tomi clenched her teeth and looked over her shoulder. The world flickered as the circuits to her visor began to fail. Was what she was thinking the product of sheer brilliance, or the oxygen deprivation? Ehn, either way. She bore down, forcing what little remained of her synapses to keep working, no matter how much they begged for air. Her hands gripped the triggers as sparks flew from the display. A second ore container knocked back and forth in the open hull. Come on. The crosshairs drifted away from the drone and the twin dents before her eyes deepened. Her lungs sucked painfully thin atmosphere. If this didn¡¯t work out she was rightfully and royally screwed. "Down!" The bellowed word broke through her ears as the ore container broke loose, skipping along the Atlas''s hull. Instinctively, she forced the Seeker down, scratching the paint off the freighter. At the same time, her fingers squeezed the triggers. It''ll move down, closer... The drone spun up and away from the freighter, and her shot hit empty space, sailing out into the void and disappearing. The drone... The drone''s port weapon''s platform exploded where it spun. Tomi could swear in the second before it was tossed away by the force that there was a look of surprise in its three beady eyes. "Wha..." The air was thin, fighting against her lungs. "Courtesy of Africa." "That..." she breathed the last of the oxygen in the cabin. The world was getting dark. A pretty, dark blue. "That''s great, dipshit." The world dissolved into heat red streaks as the darkness claimed her. 04. Burn Out Dublin the Sheep was part of the 2060 production run of the City Defenders series commissioned by Haptic International Patriot Products after the Pact States had gained a foothold in western North America. The first time Hitomi had lain eyes on him, he had been sitting on top of a metal box in the back of her Grandmother''s Brighton Ibex. And she had seen him only through her left eye. The right one had been swollen shut. She had been almost eighteen. "Big fight?" Her grandmother had asked in her particular brand of broken English. The Sullivan family was no stranger to accents. "Kara Marcus," Tomi had grumbled, jaw aching. "Don''t come much bigger than her." "My lunch card got rejected. The money''s in there, but for some reason, my personal exchange rate got all screwed up. Kara made the comment that--" She took a moment to appreciate who she was talking to. "That?" "That it was a little... Pactish to want a free meal. So I slugged her in the nose. I think I broke my hand on all the plastic in there." Grandma had smirked and then tapped her fingers pensively on the steering wheel. The flashback faded for an instant, and she was back in the fiery cockpit of the Starseeker, eye no longer swollen, but vision just as blurred; locked on the ejection hatch where the sheep sat above the receipt for her right to vote and the warning note from Dom, her technician. All three had started to singe around the edges. Dublin''s fur turned first brown and then black along his ears. Another instant and she was back in the car. "But, it doesn''t matter." Tomi opined as Grandma pressed on the accelerator. "Graduation is in two months, then I can fly with Mom and Dad." A two-month-long cargo run to Mars and back in living quarters the size of a small apartment might sound like Hell to some eighteen year-olds, but it would beat hanging around Earth in the heat all summer. You could float in your bunk, and focus on the sounds of breathing coming from across the alcove. The people you loved all in one place. And when you got sick of them, you could sit in the pilot''s chair, hanging out in oblivion, like you were the only person in the universe. That was okay by Tomi''s standards. Grandma pretended to be focused on the road ahead, on the lookout for children darting around the nearby Ayn Rand Private School. At almost the exact instant they crossed over the crosswalk, a red banner flickered up over the dash warning Grandma to pull over. "What''s that?" Tomi asked. Grandma sighed, half in weariness, half in embarrassment. "I''m on the assisted package now. It''s an ad." "Since when?" ¡°Around noon.¡± After several seconds of avoiding eye contact, she pulled over into the loading zone. The school had been built over eighty years prior in the age of school buses. None of those around here anymore. A few dilapidated vehicles people were living in, but no school buses. The view out of the windshield was replaced by a man sitting at a fireplace, accompanied by the gentle coaxing of guitar strings. "The Republic Rights Exchange got me the money I needed to get out of a nasty hole. And it puts resources in the hands of the people who can make the best use of them..." Grandma cranked down the volume knob. The ad dimmed, but did not disappear entirely. "I have something to tell you, Tomi." Although unaccustomed to devastation, the way Grandma said the words filled Hitomi with impending dread. "Your grandfather passed this morning." Hitomi blinked. She had to mean the grandfather she knew about; her father''s father because whoever had impregnated her mother''s mother -- the one sitting in the car with her -- was a complete mystery. The anoxia induced hallucination dissolved once again, and she was staring at the ejection hatch cover. The heat in the metal coffin of a cockpit was unbearable. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. There really is no escape. You pull that lever and the next time you set your feet on the ground you''ll sink into a quagmire of debt. A blink and she was back in that car. Passed? Passed what? Like a stone? Second grade? Her brain''s gears slipped a few notches, falling back to the thoughts of graduation. Had he passed some hitherto unknown grade for old men? "He was working through the night and his heart just gave out." So, he was tired? Grandpa had been a fiery, stubborn old sod who refused to pronounce her name the way she preferred. Instead of Tomi with a long O (t-oh-mee), he insisted on ''Tommy''. Tommy girl. On more than one occasion she was sure he had forgotten her name all together. Oh! Ooooooh. He died. Well, why didn¡¯t you say so? That-- that... "I- He wanted to be cremated," she managed. "He said the Earth wouldn''t take him because of all the piss and vinegar." "I know. I sent a message to your Mom and Dad. They''re nearly back." Grandma motioned to the back of the car. "He wanted you to have those." Tomi recognized the metal box from the faded and ripped stickers on it. It would be heavy, filled with slim, black, almost rubber-like disks. Grandpa Sullivan had never let her touch them on her own, but he sometimes he would pull one out and place it on the slender, modern looking machine that slid into the box with them. Crackling music would come out of it. The sheep she had never seen before. Present, spiralling-toward-Earth Hitomi coughed. The two pieces of paper on the hatch were crispy. Black burn marks were beginning to form on Dublin''s head. "Does this mean..." Past, life-in-free fall Hitomi¡¯s mind had gone back to the financial incident in school that had left her right eye swollen. Grandma nodded. "Whatever debts your grandfather had were called in the minute his death certificate was signed. And... if the family sells all its assets we can just barely pay them off." "Okay..." "The house. This car. And... we won¡¯t be able to afford escorts to deal with the Pact blockade. We''ll have to sell the freighter." "No!" She would look back on that moment with an intense shame that would cause her to almost curl into a ball. She had cared more about that old hunk of metal and plastic than she had about the hunk of bone and sinew who had given her shit for bringing friends around the office. That sense of freedom, of being the only person in the entire universe slank away, humiliated it had ever had the nerve to show its face. In its place was a clamouring throng of people, pushing in on all sides in the parching summer heat. And she had cared more about that than she had about the slowly cooling corpse in a long plastic box downtown. The advertisement ended, the view of the deteriorating Toronto suburb came back along with the radio stream of Power Trippin¡¯ AI remake. Grandma didn¡¯t move the car. "Your tuition here is paid up for the next month, we can likely find a way to go one more month until graduation, but it would be better if you could move up your exams." "But..." Her eyes darted around at the run-down vehicles with eyes starting to peer out at the still desirable Ibex SUV. Those eyes belonged to the people who had chosen the more desirable of the two available options: join the military or live on the street. This is it. We¡¯re fucked. We¡¯re fucking fucked. Shit, Kara was right. Somehow, that stung most of all. "Listen." Grandma, seeing the hungry eyes, started up the vehicle and pressed gently on the accelerator. Before approaching dangerous speeds she reached into the back and grabbed the sheep. "When my country got annexed by the Pact States and I left, I had to make some very hard choices. But I did what I had to to survive. I admit I was skeptical when my daughter wanted to marry your father, but..." Tomi¡¯s hand squeezed on the sheep''s soft body, the anxiety and the frustration oozed between her fingers. "Your grandfather bought you this on the day you were born, but there was an emergency with your aunt and uncle on a Mars run, and he never made it to the hospital. Things kept coming up, and maybe he forgot, maybe he was just embarrassed it took so long, but this stayed in the desk in his office. "Both sides of your family are stubborn as hell, Tomi. They keep their heads down and keep trudging forward. That''s what survivors do. And that is what you''re going to do." The blistering heat of the Starseeker¡¯s cockpit roused her from the pleasantly air-conditioned car. All the fear and uncertainty came along with her. And it pissed her right off. She had thought about giving up, but she was a survivor goddamn it. Every thrice-cursed member of the Sullivan family was. Including married-in, barely-escaped-the-Pact-Tunbing Grandma. And so, present Hitomi grit her teeth and forced her synapses to keep firing. The "Don''t even think about ditching my ship." note crumbled practically to dust as she brushed it aside, pulling open the hatch. "Not even in your dreams." A second note was taped to the large, black lever inside. She breathed heavily, closing her hand around the lever. Pulling it meant a life of scraping by just to recover from this catastrophe, but it was a life dammit. Tomi closed her eyes, grasped the smouldering polyester of Dublin down from his perch and hugged it close to her coiled her fingers around the lever. The heat burned through her gloves as she yanked down hard. 05. A Day at the Beach Two things happened after two years in space. The first was the loss in muscle mass and bone density that made life back on Earth increasingly difficult. Facilities existed where pilots could run on their little hamster wheels to keep what little muscle they had, but subscriptions were expensive and most, including Hitomi, opted for the less expensive once-a-week option. The second was a sudden obsession with human waste. After several days on the moon''s surface, a person got to wondering where exactly it all went. Of course, one of those same people would have consumed any number of books and movies about the glories of space travel and then filed away the conclusions to maintain their own sanity. When she had first gone up, Hitomi''s most common expletives had been of the fornication variety. Now? Shit had taken the place of fuck. For situations not bad enough for shit, piss would do. Both of those things made her staggering journey through the lake waters that much worse. She had swum a good hundred meters before realizing she could just stand up in the remarkably shallow waters. It had solved the problem of being sure she was swimming through warm piss, it had created the problem of being a sopping wet bag of bones that was in danger of collapsing under the weight of her clothes. Her one good arm dragged the emergency kit from the escape pod through the algae soup. The other, sliced up by a twisted hatch cover, crushed Dublin against her chest. Watery red blood highlighted his black singed fur. Her good-luck sheep was a sorry goddamn sight. They both were. Her face was pale both from shock and nausea at slogging through the frapp¨¦ of bacteria and swamp gas that had once been a lake. A trail of vomit danced in the ''water'' behind her. A splash. Her left leg buckled, and she fell into the muck, buffering the withering trees from the massive cesspool. Dragging and retching and gasping, Hitomi crawled from the shallows, collapsing on top of the hard shell of the emergency kit. Her matted black hair dripped foulness onto the sandy fish graveyard. The sun baked her space-bleached skin. Everything felt heavy, the earth trying to drag her down into itself. It was trying to eat her. Her trembling arms held up the bloodied, burnt and turgid Dublin to block out the blinding sun. "We should be dead, buddy." Her voice was a croak. The plushie''s head bobbled back and forth, pelting her with sludge. She spat and dropped Dublin into the sand. As strength slowly returned to her muscles, Tomi rolled off the emergency kit, shoving it ahead of her as she crawled on all fours toward the promise of the sheltering trees. Sand and possibly fish guts coated her hands and knees, sticking to the flowing blood from the tear in her flight suit. The clasps on the kit yielded to her clumsy, sweat-soaked fingers, revealing the treasure trove she had bought just days before her first real flight with money she didn¡¯t really have at the time. In those heady days, she had been convinced that crashing onto a desolate wasteland was a much more remote possibility than it had turned out to be. She had always hoped she would have the courage to go down with her ship. The quality of the contents inside were a reflection of that hubris. Two bottles of Nestl¨¦ liquid rations (all the fluids, carbohydrates, and protein a person needs for two days). A ThermoFisher water sterilization attachment. A Black Ice brand wound sealer and accompanying blood replacement package. A Mountain Trail backpack. Two doses of Amp (for those all-night wilderness slumber parties). And most importantly: The thing she had not dared skimp on, even in her youthful, one year prior naivety: a Pritchard Armoury 3mm single magazine Airman coil pistol. Thirty shots. With her uninjured arm, she scooped the gun and rations into the backpack. Shouldering out of her dripping flight jacket, Tomi placed the disgusting sleeve in her mouth and bit down. She lifted the Black Ice machine to the gash running down her arm. It hissed, injecting a dose of lidocaine before loading its first staple. Pop. She screamed into the soaked sleeve even before the pain spiked into her arm. Tears ran from her eyes, washing the slime from the lake down the length of her cheeks. The lidocaine capsule slid out of the device and into her shaking palm. Expired. "Shit." Her voice garbled against the oozing jacket sleeve. She bit down harder, causing the foul, sopping fabric to run sludge into her mouth. The next staple hooked into her flesh with a thump. The pain this time was dulled by the echo of the previous staple. A slow rivulet replaced the steady stream of red slithering down her forearm. The blood package was halfway into its slot when she paused. Expired. So were the rations. She tossed all three into the backpack, running her good hand through her hair. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "You''d be surprised how good some things taste when you''re starving." Her heart sank clear into the muck as she realized the Amp was likely expired as well. Tomi collapsed on the sand next to the carcass of a huge white bird, its glassy eyes staring at her. With a grim finality, she yanked off her helmet and tossed Dublin inside. It was nice in the shade. Maybe she would just lay here for a while, listening to the frothing filth lap against the sand. Didn¡¯t really matter if she ever moved again, really. There was no life to go back to. But she would. She was a survivor. Her mind wandered in the heat, and she briefly fell into the kind of half-sleep that her adrenaline soaked brain would allow, brought out of it only by the buzzing of flies and mosquitoes. And then a new buzz rose above their tiny droning. Her pocket vibrated against her thigh. With trembling fingers, she dug out her phone. The indicator bar at the top scrolled with a message. Wherever the hell she had washed up was still within the LAR communications network. She flicked open the screen and found a map. "You are here." Almost smack-dab in the middle of North America, midway between where the LAR forces were dug in to the East and Pact landing ships were still trying to secure the West. "In fucking No Man''s Land." Her heart sank. If that''s where she was, there was no one coming to pick her up. The Articles of War were very clear that no military presence was allowed to enter this long strip of land running from the North Pole all the way down to Panama. So much for hitching a ride home. But someone was trying to contact her. Maybe someone would come. Messages winked at her. "The best fighter pilots all know this one secret. - Marvellous tips" "Get time off to visit family with this trick. - UAR News Network" She scrolled down, feeling the sting of mosquitoes through her black tank top. "Why did I just get a message you ejected from my ship?! - Dom Gregory" Farther. "Contract #499384402 - Tram Military Services" With the sun creeping up on her from the other side of the withering trees, Tomi squinted. Why the hell were they sending new contracts minutes after she had ditched her ship? No one in Summerland awake to watch for status updates? "Dear Lt. Sullivan. Tram military services is happy to extend to you an offer to complete contract #499384402, rescue of independent transportation contractor. Location: 50.1866456,-98.3421465" Her brow furrowed and Tomi wiggled farther into the coolness, away from the angry sun. "Legal preamble: Due to Articles of War between the Liberal Atlantic Republics and Eastern Pact States, military personnel are forbidden from entering contested territory. According to paragraph twenty-two, subsection four, personnel who have declared emergency status before entering said territory are considered non-combatants and free to act according to the International Law Treaty of 2044." She stared at the text for a moment. A loophole. The mighty legal super-intelligences in Summerland needed a goddamn soldier where none could be sent and luckily for them, the next best thing had been shot out of the sky just overhead. And what independent transportation contractors could need rescuing in the general area? Fucking assholes who had jumped lines and nearly gotten her killed, that¡¯s who. "Kick bricks," she cackled, looking over at Dublin peeking out of her helmet. "They want me to go pull that dipshit out of the mud?! How do you pick shit out of mud? Nyuk. Nyuk. I¡¯ll just lay here and die, thank you very much." She was about to toss the phone aside and wait for starvation to make her expired rations taste like a four-star banquet when the bottom line of text caught her eye. "Upon delivery of the contractor (alive) to the consignee, the sum of twelve million reformed-dollars ($12,000,000RD) will be deposited in your contractor''s account." Hitomi sat up like a shot. The motion caused her head to swim. Vertigo overtook her, and she slowly sank down with her head resting on the emergency crate, choking back the vomit slowly rising in her throat. A goddamn fortune. A fighter jock''s income for a good three years. It was enough to put a down payment on a whole new Starseeker. Maybe even enough to upgrade to the series three. And take a week off while they were painting it! A way back to life. Breath came reluctantly. She was absolutely exhausted, barely in any shape to stand up, but at the same time, there was no telling what kind of shape this asshole was in. He could be dead by the time she got there. She was in the process of pulling the map back up to find where Dipshit had landed when a second message sprang up. "Contract #499384503 - Pritchard Consortium Armed Response Dear Lt. Sullivan, the PCAR is happy to extend to you an offer to complete contract #499384503..." Verbatim it was the same as the previous contract from Tram with one or two differences in the legalese boilerplate. Two identical contracts? Impossible. It never happened. Tram and PCAR, all the big corpo families, took great pains to prevent duplication of effort in their military operations. There was one other difference. Fourteen million dollars. "What the great, glorious shit?" she whispered. "Dub-" Ding. "Dear Lt. Sullivan, Cronstar Logistics is happy..." Ding. Haptic Tri-National. Over the next several seconds another three offers hit her phone and Tomi was nearly back up in the stratosphere. By the time they were done, the asking price had gone up to sixteen million, a counter offer from Tram. "Hot damn!" she breathed. "Dipshit, someone wants you bad!" Tram was the logical choice. Loyalty was rewarded. She could get a discount on that Starseeker. Her finger circled around the large green "ACCEPT" icon at the bottom of the application. Around the dimness of her peripheral vision she could see Dublin staring doubtfully at her. Something''s really wrong here. You need to stop, rest. Get your shit together. Tomi nodded her head in agreement, but by the time she had taken a deep cleansing breath, her thumb had already pressed down on the button. 06. Gunnar Doo-wop blared in her ears as Tomi blindly lurched toward the flashing heartbeat indicator in her visor that told her Dipshit was still alive. The Five Satins, In the still of the night. It did what it could to blunt the piercing sunlight. No shade away from the lake with its dying trees. Nothing growing any taller than a cat, and certainly nothing green. Skeletal fingers of grass reached up from the ground, looking to pull down unsuspecting travellers. Blood-red stains splotched the gaps between them like horrific scabs growing from the toxic land. Copper sulphide, or so the indicator on her water purifier said. Filtering it out and nuking any bacteria would take the better part of the hour, and she was already swallowing cactus fronds. Water sloshed around her feet as she waded through the marshland surrounding the lake. Her legs were lead. Walking in full gravity was like boxing a rock. You could get in all the good shots you wanted, but the rock was going to wear you down eventually. Getting her strength back was going to take time, and more importantly, it was going to take food. The pilot of the Atlas had made landfall not far from where she had. Only five kilometres. That was all, just five... whole... damn... kilometres. It might as well have been twenty for her wimpy twig legs. God, it had to be thirty-six degrees. Her boots were soaked, but her mouth was a desert. The swarming mosquitoes were enough to keep her sweat-soaked flight jacket tightly around her shoulders. Flicking up her visor, Tomi stopped a moment to check on the status of the purifier. Still twenty-seven minutes to ensure drinkability. The next check went to her phone. "Network error. Tram Military Services is unable to provide status on Red Flight at this time." Signals could get in, but she had nowhere near enough power to send them. The mosquito drone quietly drowned out her baleful sigh. "Should... have spent... more time on... that hamster wheel, Dubs," she wheezed. "One lead foot... in front..." Before she got to the end of the sentence, her foot slid along a streak of ruddy muck and Tomi toppled onto her side. Filth slopped up her arm and over her cheek. "The good... thing... about not having anyone around to help you..." Her regaining of her feet was punctuated by several groans of exertion. "Is that there''s also no one around to criticize." Dublin''s flopped over her shoulder from his perch in her backpack. His half-burned smile and glassy plastic eyes stared up at her with merciless ridicule. "Oh, piss off." Tomi struggled her way back to her feet, practically ripped the stuffie from the mud and returned it to its place leering out over her shoulder. "Next time we do this--" she grumbled into the sweat dribbling around her cheeks, ¡°-- you''re carrying me.¡± --- The hill above the wreckage of the Atlas''s cockpit was, in reality, little more than a knoll. Hitomi leaned next to it, breathing heavily and using her achingly heavy phone to shade her face from the waning sun. The world swam around her as Tomi struggled to breathe the hot, humid air. The world seemed so goddamn slow. If the rest of Red Flight had the same experience with the Pact drones that she had, it was entirely likely that most of them had been wiped out before getting back to the relative safety of the Leading Edge. At least three she had heard over the course of a few seconds. Those things had killed them. Had she known any of them? Maybe shared a bunk room with one or two? Played Byzantine Cross with them now and then? She had a hard time putting names to the call signs, but, Jesus Christ, she had to imagine that she had. And now they were dead. Why? What had changed? Why was the Pact fielding drones? Did it no longer need to feed the giant brains determined to squash the LAR in their ponderous economic chess game? And why were they after... Over the side of the knoll, a figure sat on the waterlogged ground, legs tucked underneath him. Behind him was the transparent oblong orb of the Atlas''s cockpit, a trio of parachutes draped over it like silk sheets. Beyond that stood the ramshackle edifice of a house of some kind; a ruin from the days before Pact forces had seized the West Coast. Beside the sitting figure, another was lying on the ground, relaxing. The two of them were just waiting. Waiting for someone to come and pick them out of this cesspool. Sure, just lie there. Sit back, relax, and I''ll Uber your sorry asses back to civilization. She gritted her teeth and wiped the sweat flooding her eyes. You negligent, line jumping piece of shit. Damn, I could sure use some Amp right now. It¡¯s not habit-forming, just gives you a serious case of saggy brain if you stop. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. The sky was darkening, clouds were gathering overhead as Tomi checked the Airman pistol clamped to her thigh. She hefted her pack from its relatively dry place on the edge of the knoll and slowly rose. We''re not shooting anyone. It would feel pretty damned good, but they''re worth sixteen million alive. The pistol jostled against the water-logged legs of her flight suit. Although... they just wanted the pilot. ¡°Just a punch,¡± she whispered to Dublin. ¡°Just a good shot to the solar plexus and a passive-aggressive remark. The ol¡¯ Toronto special.¡± You¡¯re not thinking straight. You¡¯re dehydrated and-- "Okay, dipshits!" Tomi bellowed as she scrambled up the short half meter slope. "Up and at ''em''." Neither of the figures moved. The one lying on the ground stared. The sitting one turned his eyes towards her. In her filthy, white flight suit she imagined she cut quite the imposing figure. Certainly enough to handle a couple of shaken luggers. That''s what survival was about, pretending you were a lot more threatening than you thought you were. Fake it until you make it. Dark circles lined the equally dark eyes of the sitting man as he slowly shook his way to his feet, cargo pants blowing in the slight breeze that was joining the incoming cloud banks. He was nearly a full foot taller than she was, shoulders nearly as broad as the Atlas''s. Dark skin covered in mud poked out from under a sleeveless shirt. His large hand grappled at a short pipe buttressed with wood supports next to him on the ground. The one laying on the ground with his hands behind his head did not move. "What do you want?" Cargo Pants asked. Tomi eyed the broken husk of the cockpit. Various pieces of paper fluttered inside. The charred remains of a hastily printed calendar of some kind. A half-naked woman smiled up at her. Typical lugger fare. Number one-¡± Tomi balled up her fist, feeling the slow heavy air condense just a little further around her. ¡°I have something for the dipshit that nearly got me killed.¡± She swung what she thought was a pretty powerful haymaker ¨C the same kind that had knocked Kara Marcus down a peg or two ¨C at the guy¡¯s face. She had to stretch a little. He turned slightly, and her fist simply skipped off his pec. His only reaction was an arched eyebrow. Was Kara Marcus just easier to punch than she remembered? She was having trouble remembering plenty of things at the moment. It was too goddamn hot. "Fuck gravity," Tomi breathed. "Look, do you have any water? My decon bottle is stuck at ninety-five percent." She started circling toward the ejected cockpit. Cargo pants pointed the pipe at her, grasping it by a handle on its rear. She swallowed the remaining acid in her throat. Lugger pilots typically kept a supply of water in the cockpit in case of emergency. She leaned inside the transparent eggshell, shoving the half-naked pin-up aside, rifling around in the ruined storage compartment. The assembly holding the pilot''s seat in place within the shell had collapsed. It lay on the opposite side of the cockpit, split in two. Tomi marked it as she retrieved one of the aluminum bottles from the compartment. The familiar bile rose at the thought of the crushed ribs and broken bones on the corpse outside. It was the pilot''s seat. The pilot''s seat where someone named Gunnar had radioed her and said his dumbass cousin was his co-pilot. Sitting in the co-pilot''s seat. That was still intact. Something''s really not right with this whole goddamn thing. Tomi swallowed, running a finger around the comforting grip of her Airman. A sudden cool breeze broke through the stifling humidity. It had been two years since she had been on Earth, but the telltale signs were ingrained in her as surely as they were in every human. Another fifteen minutes and the cloud were going to open up on them. "Maybe I should have started with: Who are you?" That¡¯s my line. "You don''t recognize my voice?" Tomi traced the name patch on her jacket. "I landed two cesspools over, I''m sweating like a hog, and I''m thirsty as hell. You must be..." The man pulled back on the pipe. It emitted a menacing clack, freezing Tomi in her tracks. "Gunnar," she finished. "What the hell is that thing?" "It''s called a shotgun." His voice was a bunch of gravel dragged along a kilometre of bad blacktop. "Not as fancy as that pea shooter you''re carrying, but it''ll put a big hole in that flight jacket." Tomi felt a surge of anger passing through her. Bad enough they had probably gotten all of Red Flight killed, he was going to point a gun at her? The index finger of her right hand circled the butt of her pistol. When was the last time you shot this thing? Been slacking off on the hamster wheel and the shoot range. "Put that thing away." She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. "I don''t think so." His clean-shaven face sneered. The lying one still hadn''t moved, his eyes fixed on the clouds forming overhead. "I have orders to get the two of you back to civilization. Alive. So, put that antique away, or I''m going to have to disobey orders." Look at you. Just a little cornered dog. Barking at thunder. As if on cue some dry rumbling pealed from the clouds. "You''re already halfway there." Gunnar lowered the gun with a shaky hand. "What are you..." The man lying on the ground still hadn''t moved. He had said nothing, and as Tomi glanced down at him, she could see his arms weren''t so much bent at the elbow as they were bent just above the elbow. A white shard of bone jutted out of the arm. His focused eyes were glassy and the look of peace on his face was completely slack. A dead man. Tomi''s hand fell away from the pistol as the colour drained from her face. Never actually seen one up close, eh, little dog? A thin trail of blood trickled from the corpse''s left ear. And she could tell from the slope of his ribs that they were little more than gravel in his chest. "My idiot cousin," Gunnar gestured. Loooooot different than just a little pop and a blue flash, huhn? Well, he was weak and stupid. He got half your squad killed. He fucking deserves what he got. The mosquitoes stayed well away from the body. The flies on the other hand flocked. After a moment or two of staring, Tomi could swear his mouth was turning down in regret. Her knees shuddered. Her hand cast around, feeling for support. The humidity pressed in close, stealing the oxygen away. Can''t be in charge if you''re passing out, little dog. Bile forced itself up her throat and onto the ground beside her. Gunnar snorted derisively. "So, you''re going to get us back to civilization?" "Ugh!" Tomi spat between her legs. "I''m fine! It''s... it''s heat exhaustion.¡± Or withdrawal. Or that there¡¯s a broken marionette of a person laying there. I¡¯m..." The next thing she knew, the soaked ground was rushing up towards her and the air suddenly didn¡¯t seem quite so hot anymore.