Regardless of advisability, when I got back to the Nest from our HummingHawk raid, I plugged in for a quick recharge, then got up a little while later for a full day of work.
It was part of the conspiracy’s plan of deception, of course. Not out of paranoia, but out of a need to make use of all resources for our survival, all ’gangers in the Nest had their time heavily scheduled: work shifts, recharging/down-time shifts, even recommended socializing periods. You couldn’t sneak a series of unauthorized covert mission shifts into your schedule other than by using recharging/down-time shifts for those purposes. We had to do this very carefully or risk detection, risk collapse.
My work this day was operating a digger. Mister Science had developed the vehicle from old human designs. We’d fabricated the thing from human-scale artillery shell casings and other parts. The result was a torpedo-shaped device with a grinding cone at the front end and treads along the body—bottom, sides, top. We used it to drill new tunnels through earth and rock, expanding the Nest.
I was back at home after my shift, dressing in a leaf-camo jumpsuit in preparation for my trip outside, when my home’s exterior buzzer sounded. I mentally accessed my home’s front cameras and saw Pothole Charlie at my door.
That was ... disquieting. I was alone at home. He was alone. I suspected he harbored a grudge, even lethal intent, against me from the old days.
But the humans have a saying, “Never let them see you sweat.” Dollgangers don’t sweat, but we understand the concept. I bypassed my stairs, slid down the brassy fire pole that ran from roof to ground floor in my staircase atrium, and opened the front door.
He gave me a look that betrayed nothing of what he might be thinking. “Card game business.” So I led him to my study.
He plopped down at my table to wait while I did a routine fast-check on the room’s security. Then I sat down one chair away from him. “All secure.”
“I had an idea.”
“Do tell.”
“The Zhou City nuclear power plant.”
I thought about that. Built on very stable bedrock by the first wave of developers who’d followed the terraformers to Chiron, the complex was outside but close to Zhou City. It was older technology but very safe and reliable, requiring little oversight or maintenance. “Not viable.”
His eyebrows rose. “Why not?”
“Because Akima Spaceport and General Milfield Base have their own mini-nukes. If we take out the city plant, sure, the city goes dark, but neither of our targets does.”
He put on a disdainful expression. “I wasn’t talking about taking it out, Bowen. I was wondering about setting up a ’ganger post there, a hideout. It’s mostly automated, the security on it is minimal, and there are below-ground chambers used in the early days for its personnel needs that are empty now. Some of them are walled off.”
“Oh.” Now I felt stupid. I readjusted my thinking. “And it’s close to the spaceport.”
“My thought exactly.”
“I’m not sure we need it for Operation Coffee and Cream, and just setting it up as a station would draw resources we probably don’t have. But for the future, it’s a great idea. Let’s code-name it the Juice Factory.” We were heavily invested in code-names, the better to avoid detection by the humans or even our own Directors if a transmission or conversation were intercepted. And Zhou City had several juice factories, manufacturers of fruit juices and other human beverages, which would contribute to misinterpretation. I actually had a lot of affection for human fruit juices. “We can bounce the idea off the others at the next card game.”
“Good.” He nodded. His conversation done, he stood.
Once I’d shown him out, I returned to my study and minutely scrutinized the chair where he’d sat, the underside of the table there, every surface he’d touched all the way back to the exterior of my front door. But there was no sign of tampering, listening devices, corrosive fluids, or explosive charges.
Had he just visited to bounce an idea off me? It seemed inconceivable.
***
After darkness had fallen, I returned to the drone encampment, which BeeBee had nicknamed Coffee Summit.
The little clearing where we’d stashed the drones was well-lit by a nearly full moon. The camouflage netting was unchanged, draped across the aircraft, stirring a little in a night breeze. Routinely cautious, I lifted one fold of the netting and moved beneath the broad canopy of concealment.
I modulated my eyesight from light-amplification to infrared and could barely detect that one of the drones had its power up—live but on power-saving standby. I moved that way and saw that it was the one I’d piloted. The hatch atop the pod was open. And as I took another step, Parfait popped partway up out of it. She gave me a smile.
She looked different in infrared vision—she was all shades of green rather than her lunar white. But she was different in another way. She did not wear the shawl I’d seen her in at every meeting we’d had since she joined the Revolution. Her hair, straight and snow-white, hung to just under her chin.
She waved me over. “Come on in.”
When I slid into the pod, I discovered that she’d been at work. She had cut some of the finer netting from overhead, I assumed from a place where its loss would not be relevant, to fashion herself a hammock. She’d also strung netting at the front of the pod to create a sort of pilot’s seat, far more secure and comfortable than the improvised rope harness I’d had the previous night.
She gave me a look that included just a touch of insecurity, of worry. “Do you like it?”
I nodded. “Sensible, practical, comfortable.”
“Hmm.” Her tone suggested that this was not quite the answer she was hoping for. But she changed the subject. “I have an inventory.” She extended her open hand toward me.
I touched it, fingertips to fingertips. Our data wires emerged from beneath our fingernails and connected. Direct uplink was far faster and more secure than any sort of broadcast.
Immediately I received her inventory of the drones. We had three bombers, two with bombs gone—bombs left behind at the Kresh Assemblies factory. There were three drones bearing one rack each of Bale missiles, four missiles per rack. We had two drones equipped with upgraded sensor packages. Her inventory included the fuel status of each HummingHawk, and there were damage and power throughput efficiency reports on each machine. The most extensive damage report dealt with harm sustained by the landing skids and pod underside of BeeBee’s drone, all repairable.
“Good work. Thanks.” I withdrew my hand. I shucked my backpack. “I brought you a charger. You can splice it into the lines supplying power to any of the fan assemblies. When the drone is live, you can draw a trickle charge from it. I also brought some components so we can begin installing direct controls—make these things into aircraft we can actually pilot.”
“Good.” She didn’t sound at all interest. “Bow?”
“Yes?”
Then she was kissing me.
It caught me by surprise. In the years prior to the start of the Revolution, she’d treated me with the same contempt that BeeBee and others had, calling me Big Plush and making it clear that I was unwelcome. That had continued until the day of our escape from Zhou City, the day we stole the Stork. After that, I hadn’t spoken to her, not until BeeBee had brought her into Operation Coffee and Cream. But she’d backed my every decision as a member of that conspiracy, and now—
It doesn’t take a Dollganger much time to get out of clothes. We wear simple garments and no undergarment. In moments we were naked in the hammock, trying to make each other happy. I switched back to light-amplification visual mode and could see, by the one little sliver of moonlight that made it through the pod hatch, that though Parfait chose most of the time to conceal her body, there was nothing at all wrong with it. She was slim and flawless, elegant of design, a beauty from head to toe.
When we were done, she nestled against me and powered down for a while. I stayed live and alert to protec
t us both, and I thought about what had just happened.
I didn’t love Parfait and she didn’t love me, so far as I knew. She had apparently needed me, needed somebody, not surprising in light of her weeks of isolation at Kresh Assemblies, and I’d been happy to share affection with her.
What amazed me, though, was that even after years being the most ill-used sort of toy there was, she could still find pleasure, find comfort in sex. I found it reassuring, a hopeful sign, that she could. So I held her, and she slept.
Later, when she awoke, we actually did do a little work. I installed a new control interface in my drone, bypassing the indirect computer controls. With that interface in place, we could then install a control stick, pedals, and other controls. A real pilot’s seat would also follow. Parfait, quick and eager to learn, would take the remaining interfaces I’d brought and install them in most of the other drones. Soon they wouldn’t be drones at all.
8: Stage Two
News intercepted from Zhou City made it clear that the government and press had gotten some details right, some wrong. Dollgangers were indeed blamed for the destruction of the Kresh Assemblies plant, but the event was not described as a tactical strike on a drone assembly plant. It was portrayed as a terroristic act of murder against a civilian business.
In the Nest, ’gangers shrugged and assumed that no ’ganger had actually been involved, that it had been an accident, that the humans had decided to blame us so they could whip up their troops into a more murderous state of mind.
Those of us who knew the truth shrugged and got back to work.
Neither BeeBee nor I had much to do with Stage Two of Operation Coffee and Cream. BeeBee spent much of her time recruiting; we needed far more than our original roster of seven to accomplish Stages Two and Three.
Me, I was acting as chief cook and bottle washer for the Dollganger Air Force. This meant that I installed and field-tested controls, modified the computer software that made the drone control systems work more like human aircraft controls, flew the craft to hone my skills, and trained others as pilots.
Pothole Charlie and Tink didn’t need instruction. Like me, they just took the craft airborne and learned how the HummingHawks performed. Nor could they have spent much time receiving training anyway—as with BeeBee, the demands on their time, especially Pothole Charlie because of his Director duties, kept them in the Nest most hours. Trouble was, the fact that both of them were experienced pilots was irrelevant. Neither was going to be on the airborne assault phase of Stage Three.
Kieran, too big to fly any of our aircraft, was still invaluable. Quiet as a ghost when he wanted to be, faster and stronger than just about any ’ganger, he found a source within half a night’s trot of the Nest of aviation fuel, at a human family’s small crop-dusting concern. He stole a liter or two of the fuel per night and transported it back to Coffee Summit, building up our fuel supply—we were using less in our training than he was acquiring. The loss to the crop-duster business was so slight, by human standards, that the owners never noticed.
Parfait and I continued our—what was it? An affair or a relationship? Years before, decades really, I’d asked Doc Chiang what the difference was between those two forms of human interaction. He mulled over the question for a while and finally told me, “Based on my personal experience, you enter a relationship not knowing how long or how far it will develop. It is exploratory. It is a possible path to a mutual future. You enter an affair with an expectation that it will be of limited duration.”
Which, now, still left me uncertain about what we were doing other than sleeping with one another. Nor did Parfait seem to be in any hurry to let me know her thoughts on the matter.
The conspiracy did add recruits. We picked up Kazzy, who was styled on 21st-century cinematic vampires and had the extended upper canine teeth to show for it; a lot of ’gangers thought he was hot, and he was. Meriah joined us, with her green hair and fair complexion; usually a normal-looking woman, she could strap herself into a powered fish-tail and become a mermaid, and was well-adapted to water activities in either mode. Jitter, ever-moving, rich brown in color and covered with geometric tattoos, had been the mate of Richter before Richter was killed during the Escape; Jitter was welcome for his alertness. We added Creepy-Crawly, a real exotic: female, tall, blue-skinned, six-armed, her features and her usual clothing styled after the goddesses of ancient India, she climbed as well without multi-mode gear as I did with it, and was known for her sniper skills. And there were others being primed to join our ranks.
But we didn’t get everyone we wanted, and one day, as BeeBee and I were sneaking our way back from Coffee Summit to the Gopher Hole, she brought up the subject. “It’s not going as well as I’d hoped. Some of the ones I was counting on won’t join us. They hear the phrases ‘something very important’ and ‘can’t tell anyone’ and ‘danger’ and ‘a serious time commitment’, and they say, ‘Don’t tell me any more. I can’t help you’.”
I frowned. “Like who?”
“Silverback. And Shinbone Ted.”
That was bad news. Silverback was an exotic, made in the form of a gorilla, a species of primate that thrives on Earth but isn’t found on Chiron. He had upper-body strength like no other ’ganger and was quiet, methodical, and brave. Shinbone Ted had worked with BeeBee in the Chiron military as an intrusion specialist. His skills would have been really useful to us.
I sighed. “I’m sure you’ll find others just as valuable.”
She offered me a sour little smile. “That’s why I’m talking to you now. I want to bring in Lina and Wolfe.”
“Lina has an eight-week-old baby. And we don’t know Wolfe’s loyalties.”
“Reverse that analysis. Wolfe has an eight-week-old baby and we do know Lina’s loyalties.”
“Fair enough. But we still don’t know Wolfe’s.”
“Lina trusts him. Trusts him enough to make him her mate. To raise a child with him. Dollgangers choose better than humans when babies are at stake. I trust Lina’s judgment. I’ll recruit her first, and she can decide whether and how to approach Wolfe. We know he’s a good man. You’re a good man, and she chose him over you.”
That stopped me where I was.
BeeBee took another three quiet steps before she realized I was no longer beside her. She stopped, too, and turned to look at me. In her light-amplification visual mode, my frozen expression must have been plain to her. “Bow, that was a joke.”
“I’m guessing you develop your comic timing planting demolitions charges for the military.”
She moved up to stand before me and pulled off her sun shades so I could see her face, her eyes. “I guess I crossed a line. I didn’t realize it. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” I brushed past her and continued on toward the Gopher Hole. “Sure, recruit her.”
BeeBee hurried to catch up to stay beside me. “I need to cross another line.”
“Sure, why the hell not?”
“I need to talk to you about Parfait. And about you and Parfait.”
I didn’t look at her. “Have you been making recordings of us? Have they been everything you hoped for? You going to critique my technique?” I went on before she could continue. “I’m not going to hurt her, BeeBee. I’m not the fire-and-forget kind of man.”
“I know you’re not. And that you won’t hurt her. But, Bow, she’s already hurt. She’s damaged. And we all understand why. But it means she likes to hurt and kill humans. I’d thought, I’d hoped, that she’d purged it from her systems during the Escape. But now I’m not sure. I keep thinking that maybe she didn’t send a fire alarm to Kresh Assemblies that night, that maybe she somehow sent a trigger command to a detonation charge.”
“Uh.” That thought had crossed my mind during our return from Kresh Assemblies, but only fleetingly. Parfait had shown no sign that she was doing anything but following orders, following the plan. She’d shown no excess of emotion, nothing like witnesses had seen on her during the Escape.
<
br /> BeeBee kept going. “I trust her to protect the Nest and its secrets with her life ... but that doesn’t mean that, in the heat of battle, she won’t deviate from the plan and kill a human target, maybe compromising the operation. Fouling up its timing.”
I looked BeeBee’s way again. “We can’t ease her out of the operation. We need all the help we can get. And you think she’s damaged now? Let’s suggest we don’t trust her.”
“I agree.”
“And she’s a promising pilot. So ...” Blast it, I couldn’t just dismiss BeeBee’s thoughts. She’d said once before that she was smarter than I was, and while I’d never admit it to her, she was right. And not taking every opportunity to be cautious would result in a dead Dollganger ... and probably a dead Nest. “For Stage Three, let’s put her in one of the sensor HummingHawks. No missiles, no guns, no bomb. The only thing she can do as an eye in the sky is keep us alive.”
BeeBee nodded. “I like that. When you tell her, don’t let her change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“She’s good at changing minds.”
“I won’t.”
***
Tink initiated Stage Two. First, another member of our conspiracy had to “die,” and Jitter volunteered. A Scrap-Walk by Jitter would not be questioned by the Nest population, which knew how he’d mourned his mate in the months since Richter had died.
Trouble was, the morning Jitter departed, with ersatz skin-flaps hanging open and wires protruding for the cameras to see, word came that Shinbone Ted, too, had taken the final walk. Shinbone Ted left behind a recording in which, stone-faced, he merely said, “We did the right thing by escaping, but I’ve gone from a life of decades of deadly hide-and-seek for the humans to one of kill-or-be-killed for the Nest. And I see no sign of it ever ending. I can’t live with that any more. Goodbye.”
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