Two Scrap-Walks in one week—in one day. Gloom settled over the Nest, and the Directors recommended everyone take a little time for psychological self-monitoring. BeeBee and Pothole Charlie confirmed that the Directors were wondering whether some sort of communicable malcode, perhaps engineered by the humans, were making its way through the population.
But privately, we three looked at each other and wondered if Shinbone Ted had really gone off to die. But if not, what would he be up to?
Regardless, our plan went on.
Tink, Pothole Charlie, Kazzy, Parfait, Jitter, and Malibu left in BeeBee’s HummingHawk at dusk one night to perform the start of Stage Two. They returned shortly before dawn—Tink, Pothole Charlie, Malibu, and Kazzy, anyway.
According to their debriefing, the intrusion into the Shavery Corporation facility began flawlessly. The six of them landed on a rooftop near Shavery, concealing their aircraft under a satellite transponder antenna and camo netting. They made their way to Shavery at ground level. Malibu cut through an exterior loading-bay door and they raced in. They could afford to be a lot more sloppy than we had been at Kresh Assemblies because they needed only minutes to accomplish things.
They blanked a couple of camera pods, then bypassed the security on a mega. Pothole Charlie drove it, loading a not-quite-fully-assembled computer system compatible with Stork operations onto a programmable forklift. Then they discovered that reprogramming a Shavery vehicle required access codes, doubtless a change brought on in response to what had happened at Kresh Assemblies. Parfait and Tink raced off to the corporate offices on a commando raid to acquire those codes.
That’s when things developed the potential to go wrong.
Tink told us, “It was, um, in the office of the administrator for shipping. On top of his desk there was a huge paper note pad, half the size of the desk surface. It didn’t have any access codes written on it, so I, um, was staring at it and cycling through my visual modes to see if that would bring up any impressions of things that had been written on pages that were now torn away. At the same time, Parfait was bypassing security and opening desk drawers to investigate their contents. While I was looking at some alphanumeric sequences I thought might have been what we needed, I heard a big bottom drawer roll open. And I heard Parfait gasp.”
Tink had looked down and seen the drawer’s contents: a complete ’ganger-banger unit.
A full-sized unit can be pretty compact, and this one was small enough to fit in a drawer. It consisted of a human cybernetics headset, looking like a shiny white skullcap with wires trailing off it to the sending unit.
The sending unit was an electronic device about the size of a shoe box. There was also a Dollganger-compatible charging station and two ’ganger-sized remotes, one male and one female.
Yes, this administrator had been the sort to put on the helmet, fire up one of the little remotes, and drive it to the presence of Dollgangers for some fun. That fun might have been nothing more than a game of roulette in the Warrens or a wrestling match out behind the assembly line building. But it might have been sex, even painful, humbling sex, with a ’ganger. The presence of male and female remotes, both very attractive and provocatively dressed, as Tink described them, made it very likely that they were regularly used for sex of some kind. Parfait had been visited by remotes like these for many, many years.
Tink continued, “So, um, I asked, ‘Are you all right?’ And Parfait looked up at me, perfectly calm, and said, ‘I am fine. Maybe we can use this. I will send Pothole Charlie up with the mega and you can take it back.’”
That’s what they did. Tink got the forklift subverted and reprogrammed. Pothole Charlie drove the mega and fetched the ’ganger-banger unit.
They opened the factory’s exterior door. Tink, Pothole Charlie, Kazzy, and Malibu hopped on the forklift and initiated its program, sending it out into the Shavery parking areas. When it had gone just far enough to be out of sight of the security cameras, they hopped off again with their stolen goods, leaving the Stork brain behind. Tink carried the helmet and the recharger; Malibu carried the two remotes over his shoulders; Pothole Charlie and Kazzy between them carried the transmitter.
Chiron military arrived within a few more seconds, some of the personnel chasing after the forklift. The forklift, its conflict-avoidance programming cranked to maximum, avoided them with credible nimbleness and sped away. It hopped up on sidewalks and darted through parking areas where the larger human transports couldn’t go.
It got a couple of blocks away before it was hemmed in and trapped by the military. Then, its primitive brain correctly calculating that avoidance was no longer possible, it went dead.
The diversion gave the four ’gangers carrying the stolen goods the opportunity to get back to their aircraft. At the same time, Parfait and Jitter were inside one of the Shavery walls, sealing all its cracks with resin so no insect drones could accidentally find them.
Parfait would train Jitter in the art of staying out of sight in a human-occupied facility. Then she’d transfer back to Coffee Summit. Jitter would stay there, joined for some overnight operations by other ’gangers, gaining access to and modifying the Shavery yacht. Eventually Tink, Pothole Charlie, and Malibu would return to join him, but only when it was time for them to leave Chiron.
So we added the ’ganger-banger remote system to Operation Coffee and Cream’s growing stock of resources. We didn’t have a use in Stage Three for an apparatus like this, but we needed every resource we could acquire. We’d find a purpose for that nasty set at some point in the future.
Over the next few days, Jitter would sneak up to the Shavery building roof. Plugged into building electricity to give him enough power to do this without blacking out, using the rooftop antenna as an extension of his own antenna, he’d broadcast short text updates as microburst transmissions strong enough for us to receive on Coffee Summit.
SPEEDBOAT, for instance, meant “The yacht has been located.”
PIGGYBANK: “Security on the yacht has been bypassed; we have regular ingress/egress.”
SPACKLE: “Modifications are being made to the yacht and have not been detected.”
WETBAR: “We have bypassed security on the yacht’s micronuke. We can bring it online and maintain it at low output with little fear of detection.”
All the while, we—usually Malibu—made provisioning flights to Shavery, taking things the space expedition would need on its long trip: replacement components for ’ganger bodies, recordings showing the grim life most Dollgangers endured in human hands, access cards stolen at Kresh by Parfait to human-held offworld accounts, a “humanizing” documentary by Malibu showing the ’gangers in as parental and non-martial a light as was possible.
Then:
LICENSE: “All steps at Shavery have been successfully accomplished. Stage Two is complete.”
9: Coffee and Cream
Well before dawn on the day of Stage Three, Tink, Pothole Charlie, and Malibu flew off in my aircraft, leaving me fretful and irritated.
I now considered that HummingHawk mine and I was proud of it, protective of it. It now sported a single-pilot cockpit fabricated by BeeBee and by Nest craftsmen who’d had no idea they were helping BeeBee perform actions that might be considered treason. The cockpit featured a sturdy seat perfectly fitted to my butt and back, a control yoke, foot pedals, and a bank of monitors before me to serve as backup to the direct visual feed I’d be receiving.
The former bomb bay behind the pilot’s console was no longer home to Parfait’s hammock. The space was occupied by machinery. The large belly hatch that had been intended to allow a bomb to drop had been modified, attached to a winch mounted above the rear hinge. Mounted on the hatch itself were components from two CA-CI4 assault rifles we’d seized from the humans during the Escape. With the touch of a button or a mental command, I could cause the hatch to lower a few centimeters, exposing the rifle barrels to open air. Drums would feed 120 rounds into each rifle. Baffles would cause expended
brass-plass to drop out the open gap instead of rattling around in my pod.
I’d set up BeeBee’s HummingHawk just like mine. But hers was still here on Coffee Summit, while mine was off in the hands of someone else, vulnerable to drone attacks, to laser fire from the distant military base, to air currents that could cause a less-experienced pilot to crash—
Yes, it was just those unhelpful, anxiety-amping thoughts that played through my head as I stood atop our muster point on Coffee Summit and waited for things to get under way.
Lina seemed to materialize out of the pre-dawn darkness beside me. She wore a Dollganger-standard leaf-pattern jumpsuit and her hair was in a braid down her back. Some part of my mind noted that we, the Revolution, really needed a flag, a unit patch, something ... Humans had them. “Lina.”
“Do you have a minute?”
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. “You ask me that during the most unproductive, useless couple of hours of my life. Yes. Yes, I have a minute.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.” But I realized I’d answered that too quickly.
She seemed to realize it, too. She nodded, not quite in agreement with my statement. “Look, I know what you were feeling in the months after the Escape. And I can guess what you’ve been feeling since I chose Wolfe.”
I was nearly overwhelmed by a feeling of weariness. I checked my charge. Nearly full; the weariness was purely emotional. “It’s all right, Lina. I know I’m still Big Plush to most everyone. I’ve just got a thick, gooey layer of redemption spread all over me. But everyone knows what’s under it.”
“Just shut up for a minute.” There was real anger in her voice, anger I’d never heard from her before.
I gave her a closer look. Okay, I was in for a “we might all be dead by midmorning, let’s clear the air” speech. I suppressed a sigh. “Okay.”
“Bow, I need Wolfe. He’s my future. Part of my future. Father of my child—father of more children, if things work out. To them, he’ll be the father I wish I’d had. Brave but not fearless. Offering comfort and advice that come from empathy and experience, not an instruction set.”
“I understand.” I sort of did, but most of all, I wanted her to stop explaining. Just to stop explaining and go away.
“You don’t. Wolfe is going to be that for Thonny. I wish you ...” Her voice broke for a second. “I wish you could be that for me.”
I think I rebooted.
I remember my vision cycled a couple of times so rapidly that I couldn’t interpret what I was seeing, and there was a brief discontinuity in my recording memory. Then everything stabilized. Lina was still standing in front of me, looking at me. A few body-lengths away, the conversations of the other members of Stage Three continued, hushed, unchanged. Wolfe was not among them; he was already on station near one of our targets.
I found my voice. My vocabulary wasn’t in it, though. “I. Uh. I.”
“I don’t know if you planned to live through today. How hard you intended to fight. Because you’re always so sad. But I want you to live and come back. I want you in my life. Just maybe not... the way you wanted. Do you understand?” Tears rolled down her cheeks now, but she seemed unaware of them.
Words finally came trickling back into my brain. Seven of them. Six, if you discount duplicates. They emerged slowly, heavily. “I’ll fight. I’ll come back. We’ll talk.”
She embraced me for a long, painfully lust-free moment. Then she turned away and walked back to her aircraft.
I’m not sure, maybe I rebooted again. The next I knew, someone was shouting, “Here she comes.” I barely noticed my own HummingHawk settling down at its designated landing spot.
The hatch opened. Parfait emerged, then Jitter.
Mechanically, I picked up my parachute off the flat stone where I’d placed it. I buckled it on. It was a slim chest rig, making my torso seem oversized but not interfering with my movements or causing us to have to redesign our pilot’s seats.
I turned toward my HummingHawk, but there was BeeBee, suddenly in my way, talking. “There’s been a change.”
Despite my state of distraction, I managed to answer. “What change?”
“I’m in one of the sensor HummingHawks now.”
I blinked. “You’re not my wingman anymore?” BeeBee was to have had the other assault-rifle craft. “You’re putting Parfait on my wing?”
“No, Parfait’s still in the other eye-in-the-sky. I’m taking Lina’s craft and putting her on your wing.”
“But ... why?”
“I need to be on communications and coordinations for this mission, Bow. I’m better at it than Lina, and she’s as good as I am at combat. We learned that during the Escape.”
I wasn’t certain that what she was saying was precisely true. But ... BeeBee and I were still the partners in charge. If we didn’t agree, nothing would happen. I nodded. “All right.”
“I’ll tell Lina. Smoke ’em, Bow.” She turned and headed off toward Lina’s HummingHawk.
I made my way to my aircraft, where Parfait stood, smiling. It still surprised me that she hadn’t lost her smile when I’d told her, a couple of days earlier, that she was going to be in one of the eye-in-the-sky HummingHawks instead of a missile craft. She’d only said, “If it improves our odds of success, Bow, put me on the Coffee Summit radio. I do not mind.”
Now she just wrapped her arms around me, kissed me—awkwardly, since our mutual chest chutes didn’t permit a close embrace—and said, “Smoke ’em, Jack One.”
I pretended not to hate that nickname, just smiled at her. “You set ’em up for me and I will.” Then I clambered up atop my HummingHawk’s belly pod and slid down into the cockpit.
As I stood up on a mounting bracket to reach for the overhead hatch, Parfait appeared there, gave me a final smile, and swung the hatch down into place, leaving me in the darkened HummingHawk interior. I dogged the hatch closed and heard Parfait slide off the top.
Then it was time for business. I strapped in and took a grip on my control yoke. My data wires extended from my fingertips and plugged into corresponding holes on the yoke. Suddenly I could see through all the HummingHawk’s cameras, had visual and data access to all diagnostics and other sensor readouts. In an instant I went from being a 225mm tall man to being several meters long, armored, capable of flying, capable of long-range destruction. Mercifully, Lina and her announcement moved themselves to a corner of my mind and waited there, making no effort to get my attention. I began my pre-flight checklist.
I heard other pilots report readiness. They used their radios, at low broadcast strength, for this. Meriah was first: “Bale One, standing by.” Our green-haired mermaid had been assigned one of the Bale missile HummingHawks.
“Bale Two, standing by.” That was Jitter.
My systems were all in the green. There was the tiniest bit of lag in the controls; they simulated direct mechanical hookups, but they were still computer-coordinated. Little things, like minor memory management errors or diagnostics reports, could cause this. The lag was so slight that a human might not have noticed—milliseconds.
“Gunner Two, standing by.” Lina. Lina, who had just made the frank and, for a Dollganger, perhaps unprecedented admission that she wanted, needed, a father—
Stop it. I forced myself back to the matter at hand. Fuel topped off. Ammunition drums full. Rear winch reported as functional.
“Bale Three, ready.” Kazzy’s deep, rich, artificially-accented voice—he’d once told me that the accent suggested Eastern Europe on Earth, though he spoke no Eastern European languages. He wouldn’t be with the main mission today. He had his own objective, far more important than ours. He just couldn’t achieve it without us.
I was finally ready. “Gunner One, ready.” I would also respond to Leader, but wouldn’t declare myself that way. If the humans could intercept our radio transmissions during mission execution and decrypt them on the fly, I didn’t want them to identify the mission leader.
And then BeeBee’s voice came across the radio: “Eyeball One ready.”
A moment later, “Eyeball Two, standing by.” That was Parfait, and we were complete.
That was only seven of our eight HummingHawks, of course. The eight was still a drone, unpiloted. And it still carried its original bomb payload in its belly pod, hence its designation, Belly One. Lina was to have controlled Belly One from her Eyeball. Now that duty would fall to BeeBee.
There were others supporting our mission on the ground. Kieran was already outside the spaceport, carrying a dual-phase laser capable of weapons-level damage or laser painting. Creepy-Crawly and Wolfe waited outside General Milfield Base, the military compound, with an identical laser unit. BlueTop waited near Coffee Summit with little Thonny—if it turned out that we couldn’t return to the Nest, Wolfe and Lina would have their baby with them when they fled with the other survivors. And there were now others.
Parfait’s acknowledgment was the last detail I needed. I took a breath. “Coffee and Cream, launch.”
In my HummingHawk camera vision, piped directly into my optical receptors, I saw the HummingHawks rise one by one into the air. Off to the east, the sun was now cresting the horizon, flooding the forests around Zhou City with golden-red light, and that, too, was one little detail that might help us. Might incrementally budge our chances of success upward a percentage point or two.
I led the HummingHawks toward Akima Spaceport.
En route, Kazzy in Bale Three split off from us, heading toward the spot Creepy-Crawly and Wolfe had staked out. His farewell was a simple “Team Coffee away.” He was the only one of the HummingHawk pilots performing a Coffee function. The rest of us were Team Cream.
BeeBee transmitted, text rather than voice, coded specifically to me. Pothole Charlie reports micronuke ready for full output.
I responded, Roger that.
So the rest of the Coffee end of the operation was on schedule, a go. Great news. But mention of Pothole Charlie notched up my tension a little.
During all our planning and execution, he hadn’t made an attempt on my life. He just hadn’t. It was inconceivable to me, after decades of his hatred of me that he had actually chosen to forgive and forget. A part of my mind locked onto that subject—he couldn’t have sabotaged my HummingHawk; I’d given it several thorough checks since the last time he was even near the aircraft. Or did he have a confederate within our conspiracy? He and BeeBee were old friends. Could she have—
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