Metal in the Sand: Book 1

by Corbett, Lynne

  As children, none of those names had meaning. Most of the trees had been planted before they could remember, and the effects of the rebellion didn’t hit Peripheri until Cress was around ten. Up until the new wave of trees the rebellion left behind, the solemnity of the place was lost on the children. Cressida remembered running about, playing tag with Felissa or hiding among the gravetrees to ambush Petra. The place was a bit macabre, to be sure, but to a young pack of roving children, the grove represented adventure more than anything else.

  Particularly the one lone tree. Set off to the side, not part of the windbreak, this outsider’s tree was the ultimate dare. Cress had grown up knowing the story—older children recounted the tale late at night, and in turn she’d scared her younger sister with it when her time came. Villagers had found his corpse just two kilometers from Peripheri, an ugly gut wound half-patched with medskin, but broken open from the walk. Looked like a scale devil got him and he tried to mend it up. They never did know where he came from, and hadn’t asked, but the children filled those gaps in themselves.

  He’s a ghost from before Skar was settled, Roark had asserted. No, he’s a spaceman who fell out of the stars who was coming to eat us up and take our houses and our foxes and eat all our food and drink all our water and… Petra tended to get a bit carried away, spinning a different story every time they ventured out there. But whatever the story, the dare was the same: go touch the tree.

  And Cressida had. Scampering across the cool sand, skinny legs pumping, she’d race to its site and tap on the dessicated branches. Then, she’d stand solemnly, staring at the gravestone. Roark had once dared her to grab the stone and bring it back, but no one would go that far. The trees were living, but the stones belonged to the dead. And you didn’t disturb the dead.

  Except now. Now, Cressida had to do some digging.

  Losf. What kind of name was that, she wondered, as she checked the MTEV’s metal detector readout and shifted her narrow hole slightly to the left. She dug in silence, under the cover of night, thinking of who he must have been. An off-worlder. Well, she supposed, most everyone in the world was an off-worlder. The Bara System wasn’t large, and she knew there was a huge bustling galaxy out there, only getting bigger.

  But what had driven this man to work with AI? To pair himself to something so foreign, so alien, that he could never hope to comprehend it? Why would he freely give it access to his brain, let it poke around in his innermost thoughts?

  Cress suppressed a shudder. The aviator in Cyandowns’ military commander-pair had the same thing, so his AI ship could simply beam down its ideas straight into his mind. Were you even still human, after a thing like that?

  She dug gently around roots, trying to disrupt the tree’s lifeblood as little as possible. Sands knew it was hard enough to live out here to begin with, never mind having someone cut out your support system. These grave orchards were a beautiful thing. A testament to the indomitable spirit of the villagers, bent on surviving against the odds. Or something like that. All it was right now was a pain in the ass.

  She checked the tevver’s screen again. It seemed like the small metal readouts were within a foot of the base of her hole. The village hadn’t stripped Losf of his possessions when they found him. They may have been a practical, frugal lot, but that was for the family to do, and, barring any of his being around, it was best to give it all back to the land that sustained them. Cress thanked those moral strictures, even as she turned her back on them with some good old-fashioned grave robbing.

  Rolling up her sleeves, she prepared for the unpleasant part. Digging around in that soil, knowing that its richness came from the corpse at the heart of the root system, long since absorbed into the ground and the tree… well, there was a reason she worked with hard stone.

  Maybe if she grabbed a wrench, she could use that to scrape around the soil until she isolated the pucks that made up the implant… Mumbling to herself, she rooted through the tevver’s seats, looking for the tools that had been bounced around by their hasty retreat earlier that day.

  “It sounds like you are in need of a wrench. May I be of assistance?” Yig’s eager chirp did nothing to improve Cress’ mood.

  “Yeah—you wanna stick your arm down that hole, sift through some human remains, and grab me that neural implant?”

  “Certainly.” Yig flowed from the vehicle and telescoped out one of its mandibles. Snaking the tentacle into the hole, the servbot adroitly pulled out two small metal objects, thin hairlike protrusions reaching from each, and proffered them up to Cressida.

  You’ve got to kidding me. Kicking herself for not thinking of that 30 sweaty minutes ago, Cress snatched the implant from Yig’s pincer attachment and shoved it in her sandsuit’s pocket, and picked up her shovel. Filling the small hole back in would cut even further into her sleep, but it was the least she could do. The man buried here had always been a mystery, and even now that she knew his story, she still didn’t think she understood him. But she was sorry to have disturbed his rest.

  Cress trudged up to the MTEV, feeling the utter exhaustion brought about by the last 16 hours. Reaching wearily for the pop tent storage cubby, she gazed longingly towards the village, its silhouette faintly outlined by the weak starlight. She never would have called her sleeping pallet comfortable, but right now the idea of that that thin cot sounded like paradise.

  She’d been gone from home for almost a week—well within the time limits allowed of the scouting mission, so no one would have worried quite yet. They’d be disappointed, sure, and bordering on frantic about the lack of viable mining areas. But maybe someone else had found a vein. Maybe she could swing in, resupply, and pretend to go out on another sweep.

  So, every muscle in her body screaming for sleep, she drove a kilometer away from Peripheri, in the opposite direction of the mine, unhooked the trailer, hid Losf’s jumpsuit, and dug into the MTEV’s side compartment.

  “Yig—”

  “How may I be of assistance?”

  “Stay with the trailer and supplies—I’ll be back early tomorrow. I’m draping this netting over you, so hopefully you’ll blend in enough to stay hidden behind this hill. If anyone comes—I mean anyone—you are NOT to engage, or even show that you’re operational. You’re a rusting hunk of junk. Got that?”

  “Affirmative!” the servbot chirped, and without any warning, immediately collapsed to the ground, looking for all the world like a hunk of rusting junk.

  Five

  * * *

  Log #0373856.44

  The human, should she succeed in bringing back the supplies and link, could be exactly what I need.

  She is from one of the smallest villages on the edge of the smallest colony in the system. Doubt she would be missed for more than a few sols. Once the link is installed and revalidated I only need a few more large parts to be fully functional. The JAHPA reinforcements likely started dragging a new wormhole here the moment the Cyandowns destroyed this one, so they should be here in 60-80 sols. I am expanding my original reconnaissance mission. With no AInet, local or uninet and not even a single functioning satellite, it will have to be done from within the asteroid and debris fields. The human will be easy to manage once I have her in coma stasis. With what has happened here it does not seem like JAHPA is likely to receive a warm welcome, and they'll need every scrap of information I can collect. To do that efficiently and safely I need to be fully operational. And for that, I require a human.

  No one will miss a miner.

  * * *

  Sleeping in her bed was wonderful. Being woken up by an overexcited sister was not.

  “When did you get in? Did you come home last night? Did you find anything? Did you see Essie had her litter of kits??” Felissa bounced around excitedly, causing the house to stir sleepily. Her shrill incessance made Cress wonder if it would’ve been better to sleep out by the tevver after all.

  Still, Lissa was easy enough to shake off. Her father, less so.

  A cup of hot
water with a half-serving of imitation coffee at the table with Jarl was an unpleasant experience of a different sort. “So, no luck… Emmett said sector 28’s a bust, and Petra scoured 31 and 32. I tell ya, Sid, we were hoping there was a good reason why you were gone so long. Things aren’t lookin’ too pretty out here. I’ve got a plan in motion—no, I’m not going to tell you about it—but I’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.”

  Cressida swallowed her guilt. Lying to her father felt wrong, but there was just too much to explain with Baz, Yig, everything… much better if she just reported failure.

  “I plan on going out today. Northwest of 38 looked promising, so I’d like to load up another week’s worth of supplies and get back out there. I’ve got a good feeling about it.” She wasn’t sure how an AI ship could repay her for her help, but she hoped it’d be enough to keep the village afloat. Baz would pay her, wouldn’t it?

  Loading up the MTEV provided another wave of guilt. She couldn’t very well refuse taking food without an explanation, but seeing so many carefully rationed stores being packed away, when she knew there was plenty back at the ship, didn’t sit well. The rest of Peripheri was starting to wake as she drove through the village, passing the low adobe huts, drab walls, and smiling, hopeful faces that waved their encouragement. So much was resting on her. It was a reminder Cress really didn’t need at the moment.

  The drive back out to the crash site was a heavy one. Thoughts and doubts churned in Cressida’s mind, fear and guilt among them. Was she really helping her village? How would Baz fix everything? Would he perform terrain scans to find a vein? Call in military aid? Disclose secrets? Sell parts? She wasn’t sure how, but still found herself trusting him. But was that wise?

  Though the sun’s glare prevented her from seeing the ship, Cress could tell when she was within line of sight of Baz, as Yig suddenly lit up. It had taken her command to appear nonoperational a bit too literally, and hadn’t moved since the night before.

  “So, I see you got everything. Ran into a bit of trouble, the servbot’s logs say. Well, it doesn’t appear to have been your fault, so I must say you handled the mission fairly well, all things considered.” Was there a note of reluctant admiration in that voice?

  Cress briefly recounted her exploits, filling in the holes of Yig’s narrative. After that, Baz was blessedly silent, and upon getting back to the ship its attention was focused elsewhere.

  There was really very little for Cress to do during the repairs. Baz synced with her MTEV’s computer to control its arm, and choreographed a mechanical dance with it and Yig, unloading and maneuvering the large barrels. The ship used Yig to run a pressure check, and mechanically splice and repair a few breaks in the lines. As each line was slowly mended and tested, one by one, Cress reclined in the sand under the shade of Baz’s port wing, watching the shadows shift as midday approached. It would have been peaceful, had Baz not tried to engage Cressida in conversation.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be concentrating? I mean, you’re basically performing surgery on yourself.” She’d just about hit her limit of AI pleasantries (if that’s what you could call any conversation with Baz), and was hoping to silence it.

  Baz scoffed. “This operation takes less than a fraction of my maximum computing power. I need to pay it about as much attention as you do when picking your nose.” Cress reflexively drew her hand away from her face, placing it in her lap. I was just itching it, you glebe, she thought stubbornly. Cress hopped up in a huff, and with a terse “I’m going to go scanning,” pulled up her sand veil and hopped in the tevver.

  The shadows were leaning drunkenly eastward by the time her temper had cooled, and, since her fitful search hadn’t revealed a new mining site for Peripheri, Cressida turned back. She found Yig still going strong with whatever it was doing. Cress was about to see what she could find in the rations hatch, but the servbot’s wildly flailing appendages took up most of the cabin. It was able to spare a limb for a moment to retrieve her a snack, however, so she returned to the sand dune outside, resting her back against the still-warm slope, munching contentedly. The stars begin to needle into existence above her, tiny pinpricks that held worlds beyond her experience.

  “What’s it like, Baz? The outside world? The other systems. What’s it like, to fly?”

  Silence greeted her query, until it was broken by a ruminative sigh.

  “Freedom. I know that’s a shit answer, especially for a planetbound serf like you, but that’s what it is. I might have been following orders, part of the Peacekeeping squad under the control of JAHPA, on course from one job to the next, but even then—I was free. At any minute, we could have just chosen to leave—go in any direction, or all directions. The world is open to you, and you feel both infinitesimally small, and encompassingly large. It never grows old.”

  She could feel the aching longing poking through its controlled military tone.

  “Being ‘powered down,’ it may just seem like turning a machine off to you, but even being in suspended consciousness, I still felt it. Still felt fettered and earthbound. Trapped.”

  They sat in silence for a while, both contemplating the sky.

  “Mission complete!” Oblivious to the somber mood, Yig popped out of the hatch, proudly brandishing its applicator tool. The bot’s enthusiastic chirp cut through the air. “Compound must set for 6 hours until electrant can be flooded. Tomorrow, 0615 hours, Firebringer Baz will be operational!”

  Even though the AI lacked eyes, Cress could have sworn Baz was looking to the sky.

  ***

  The cabin hummed the next morning with an infectious energy. Adrenaline coursed through the space as the electrant coursed through the system. Yig’s repair work held, and the alert hum of systems powering up filled the air as Baz allowed full power to reach its many systems for the first time in ages. Amidst the excitement, Cress sat in a stew of uncertainty. She couldn’t get Baz’s description from the night before out of her head. What must that freedom feel like?

  All her life she’d been tethered. Tethered to her family, to her village, to her mine. Tethered to this planet. She’d never begrudged her life; she had a fierce pride in her village and her place in it. Besides, only the wealthy ever traveled, and only within the system. There was nothing else. Except now, there was. Would she ever experience such freedom? Could she? Dare she ask? Surely, Baz would laugh at her. Surely, the ship would only consent to fly with trained pilots, with staunch military women and men. A dusty miner was beneath it.

  But she had made this possible, and blight it if she wasn’t going to try.

  “Listen, Baz, I was wondering… Well, this’ll probably be my only chance to ever do this, and I mean, if you crash in a fiery ball of death, I guess it was partly my fault, so it’s only fair I join you, and…”

  “Cressida. You’ve earned a flight. And it won’t take five minutes to insert the implant.”

  “Wait, what? No, I mean, I don’t need that. I’m not asking… I’m not expecting you to…”

  “Don’t you want to experience it? Really experience it? Being a passenger isn’t the same. And it’s painless, I can assure you.”

  “Oh, nonono… I know where that thing’s been. Besides, you said you needed it. I really don’t want to have you cut me open, stick those creepy spider things in my brain, and then just have to cut me open again to get them back out! I prefer my skin intact and my brain unmeddled-with.”

  “Cressida. It’s minor surgery, and painless. Really, not even five minutes. If you don’t get the link implanted, all you’re doing is riding around in a metal box, watching whatever I choose to project in front of you. For all you’d know, I could be showing you scenes from Thalos or Muir—no, I don’t expect you to know where those are. But don’t you want to know what it’s like? To actually see and feel it for yourself?”

  It took several more reassurances of the implant’s safety and ease, and explaining how she would always have control over what level of contact she experienced, befo
re Cressida was persuaded. With trepidation, she lay facedown on the bunk. Baz’s overhead arms whirred into precise action, administering a fast-acting nerve block and making quick surgical slices in Cressida’s flesh, while Yig efficiently inserted the neural pucks into the two numbed incisions alongside her spine. The two small disks settled into place, cool metal quickly warming from the surrounding flesh. Even though Baz had told her otherwise, she swore she could feel its filaments wriggling into her spinal cord and brain as Baz guided them with magnetic grapples. A bit of medical adhesive over the cuts, and she was ready.

  For a moment it felt anticlimactic. But the next steps in the process were hers to take. Cress mentally visualized depressing each puck simultaneously. Inane as it seemed, Baz had assured her this would engage the first level of the neural link, allowing for conscious, targeted communication without speech. Helpful for a human-AI pair, but it wasn’t the level of synchronicity needed for flight. Physically syncing with the receivers mounted on the pilot’s chair would engage that level. Walking deliberately to the copilot chair, Cress settled tentatively into the frame, and felt cool metal touch the skin above where the links had just been inserted. Settling the restraint system in place as Baz had instructed her, she took a breath.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  Cress’s world went dark.

  And then exploded.

  Cress had spent her whole life inside of one body. Her hands had picked up countless fists of sand. Felt the salve of cool water during the noon heat. Held the hands of her family, her friends, had controlled the vibration of machinery cutting through rock.