I braced myself for anger or reprimand. Cobb just patted his leg. “Old wounds, Spin. Old wounds.” He’d been shot down, soon after the Battle of Alta. His leg had clipped the side of the canopy as he’d ejected.
“You don’t need your leg to fly.”
“Some wounds,” he said softly, “aren’t as obvious as a twisted leg. You found it hard to get into the cockpit today, after watching your friends die? Try doing it after you shoot down one of your own.”
I felt a sudden and striking coldness wash through me, like I’d ejected at high altitude. Was he saying…
Was he saying he was the one who had shot down my father?
Cobb looked up at me. “Who else do you think they’d order to bring him down, kid? I was his wingmate. I followed him when he ran.”
“He didn’t run.”
“I was there. He ran, Spensa. He—”
“My father was not a coward!”
I met Cobb’s gaze, and for the second time that day he looked away.
“What really happened up there, Cobb?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why do they think they can tell I’ll do the same, just by monitoring my brain? What aren’t you telling me?”
Though I’d never accepted the official story, part of me had always assumed that some kind of mistake had caused my father’s reputation. That in the confusion, people had assumed he’d turned coward when he hadn’t.
But I now had the chance to talk to someone who was there. Someone who…who had pulled the trigger…
“What happened?” I asked, stepping forward. I’d meant to say it forcefully, Defiantly—but it came out as a whispered plea. “Can you tell me? What you saw?”
“You’ve read the official report,” Cobb said, still not meeting my eyes. “The Krell were coming in a huge wave, carrying a lifebuster. It was a larger force than we’d ever faced before, and their positioning strongly indicated they’d found Alta Base. We fought off one attack, but they regrouped. As they were preparing to come at us again, your father panicked. He screamed that the enemy force was too big, that we were all going to die. He—”
“Who did he say it to? The entire flight?”
Cobb paused. “Yes. All four of us who were left, anyway. Well, he screamed and screamed, then he broke off and began flying away. You have to understand how dangerous that was for us. We were literally fighting for the survival of our species—if other ships started fleeing, it would have been chaos. We couldn’t afford to—”
“You followed him,” I interrupted. “He took off and flew away, and you followed. Then you shot him down?”
“The order came almost immediately from our flightleader. Shoot him down, to make an example and prevent anyone else from fleeing. I was right on his tail, and he wouldn’t respond to our pleas. So I hit my IMP and brought down his shield, then…then I shot. I’m a soldier. I obey orders.”
The pain in his voice was so real, so personal, it almost made me feel ashamed for pushing him. For the first time…my resolve shook. Could it be true?
“You swear to me?” I asked. “That’s exactly how it happened?”
Cobb finally met my eyes. He held them this time, and didn’t look away—but he also didn’t answer my question. I saw him harden as he set his jaw. And in that moment, I knew that his nonanswer was an answer. He’d given me the official story.
And it was a lie.
“It’s past time for you to be going, cadet,” Cobb said. “If you want a copy of the official record, I can get you one.”
“But it’s a lie. Isn’t it?” I looked to him again, and he gave the faintest, almost imperceptible nod.
My entire world lit up. I should have been angry. I should have been furious at Cobb for pulling the trigger. Instead, I was elated.
My father hadn’t run. My father wasn’t a coward.
“But why?” I asked. “What’s to be gained by pretending one of your pilots fled?”
“Go,” Cobb said, pointing. “That’s an order, cadet.”
“This is why Ironsides doesn’t want me in the DDF,” I realized. “She knows I’ll ask questions. Because…Scud, she was your flightleader, wasn’t she? The one who gave the order to shoot my father down? The name was redacted in the reports, but she’s the only one who fits…”
I looked back at Cobb, and his face was growing red with anger. Or maybe embarrassment. He’d just given me a secret, an important one, and…well, he looked like he was having second thoughts. I wasn’t going to get any more out of him right now.
I grabbed my pack and hurried out. My heart was broken for the friends I’d lost, and now I’d have to deal with the fact that my instructor was also my father’s killer.
But for now…well, I felt like a soldier planting her flag at the top of a hard-fought hill. All these years I’d dreamed, and studied, and trusted that my father had actually been a hero.
And I’d been right.
“What reason,” Rig asked as we worked together, “could the DDF possibly have to pretend your father was a coward?”
“I can think of dozens of scenarios,” I said, lying underneath M-Bot beside him.
Five days had passed since the event. Since we’d lost Bim and Morningtide. Working with Rig off-hours, repairing the ship, had been a welcome solace from my own thoughts—even if it was taxing to get up early like I had today, work on the ship, then go to class and endure Cobb’s instructions all day.
Today, we were unhooking wires from M-Bot’s belly and replacing them with new ones. Some of the old ones seemed good, but Rig figured we should replace them all just in case, and I wasn’t going to argue with his expertise.
I plugged in another wire and threaded it according to the instructions Rig had drawn out earlier. My light-line glowed from within the ship, wound through the innards to give us light, itself like a glowing wire.
“There are literally hundreds of reasons the DDF would lie about my father,” I said as I worked. “Maybe my father was in conflict with Ironsides about leadership, and she decided to make him have an ‘accident.’ ”
“In the middle of the most important battle the DDF had ever flown?” Rig said. “That’s fanciful, even for you, Spin.”
“Fanciful?” I demanded. “Me? I’m a realist, Rig.”
“Realist. Like all the times you made me go pretend to slay stardragons with you as kids.”
“That was battle training.”
He grunted as he worked on a particularly stubborn wire, and Doomslug helpfully imitated him. She sat on the stone ground near my head. M-Bot was “running diagnostics”—whatever that meant. It mostly involved him saying things like “Hmmmmm…” or “Carry the one…” to “give indication that the process is continuing, as humans quickly grow bored without auditory stimulation.”
“Are you sure you aren’t misinterpreting Cobb?” Rig said from beside me. “You’re sure he nodded?”
“I am. The official story is a lie, Rig. I’ve got proof.”
“More like a vague, possible confirmation.”
“I can push Cobb until he spills the entire truth.”
“Good luck with that. Besides, even if he did talk, the higher powers at the DDF aren’t going to admit to lying. You stir up too much trouble, and all you’ll do is get yourself and Cobb removed from your positions.”
“I will clear my father’s name, Rig.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m just pointing out that your original plan—learning to fly—is still the best way to do that. First become a great, famous pilot. Improve your family’s reputation and become someone who can’t be ignored. Then use your influence to clear your father’s name.”
“We’ll see.”
Rig twisted—using the little space we had between M-Bot and the ground—and pulled over his notebook to make some notations. “These are his GravCa
ps,” he said, tapping his pencil at a mechanism. “But I don’t recognize the design, and he has them in an odd location. This black box over here—which is the only part I don’t recognize—must be what houses his artificial intelligence. I don’t dare try to break that apart, although it’s obviously malfunctioning.”
“How do you know?”
“Can you imagine anyone intentionally creating him to act like he does?”
A valid point.
“What I’m most interested in,” Rig said, “is his joints, his seals, and his atmospheric scoop. It’s hard to explain, but they all feel…tighter, more finely constructed than what we’re using. It’s only by a small increment, but Spensa, I think if we do get this thing flying, it’s going to be fast. Faster than even our scout ships.”
That gave me a shiver to imagine. Rig grinned, holding up his notebook, then put it aside and dug in with his wrench to carefully begin disassembling the atmospheric scoop.
I watched for a moment, holding a wire in the cramped confines, amazed. Rig seemed happy.
We’d been friends for over a decade, and I was sure I’d seen him happy before. It was just that no moments stood out. My memories of Rig were always of him being anxious, or nervous for me, or—occasionally—resigned to some terrible fate.
Today though, he was actively smiling as he worked, his face smeared with the grease we’d been applying between wire replacements. And that…that did something to help me push through the loss that still hung over me, the feelings of having failed my flightmates.
“Where did you get all these wires anyway?” I said, getting back to work. “I thought I was the one who was going to be performing the petty theft.”
“No theft required,” he said. “Ziming—that’s the woman supervising my internship—gave me an entire bundle of them and some machinery to work on for practicing wire replacements. I figure, what better practice than to use it all on a real ship?”
“Nice. So it’s going well?”
Rig, oddly, blushed—though the color was difficult to pick out through the grease, and by the glow of my reddish-orange light-line. I knew him well enough to see it.
“What?” I demanded.
“You know M-Bot’s cockpit design?” he said.
“What part?”
“The pilot’s seat and controls are on their own frame,” Rig said. “It’s complicated, but it reminds me of a gyroscope. I think the seat is made to be able to rotate with the direction of g-forces. You know how it’s really hard on a human to take g-forces that push the blood into the head or the feet?”
“Uh, yeah. Trust me. I know.”
“Well, what if your seat rotated during difficult and extended burns? So that the force was always in the direction easiest on the body—directly backward? That could really help with high-speed maneuvers.”
“Huh,” I said, interested—but more interested by the way Rig lit up as he talked.
“Well, I drew some schematics of that in my notebook, and…and well, Ziming might have seen them and assumed they were my own designs. She might…she might think I’m a genius.”
“You are!”
“Not really,” he said, blushing again. “I just copied what I saw. Whoever built M-Bot is the genius.”
“You figured it out!” I said. “That takes as much genius.”
“It really doesn’t,” he said, then twisted off a nut with his wrench. “But…well, lie or not, I think this is a way we can get this technology to the DDF. Maybe I can figure out how this atmospheric scoop works and take that in as well. If I’m careful, and don’t make my discoveries look too suspicious, we’ll be able to help the fight against the Krell without exposing M-Bot.”
“And you get to be a hero!” I said.
“A fake one,” he said. “But…it did feel nice…”
I grinned, then got back to work on my wires. Maybe we could bring this all to the DDF, and prevent more pilots from dying. Thinking of that immediately put a damper on my mood. No matter what I could do for future pilots, I would still carry my feelings of frustration and pain for the flightmates I’d already lost.
I redirected my thoughts back to the secret of what had really happened to my father, trying to think of every reason why the DDF would cover it up. That kept me occupied for a half hour or so until a ding rang up from the cockpit.
“Diagnostic finished,” M-Bot said in his helpful—and not nearly dangerous enough—voice. It echoed through the innards of the ship. “What did I miss?”
“Discussions of Rig being a hero,” I said. “And another about why the DDF would keep a secret. They claim my father fled from battle—but I know he didn’t.”
“I still think you’re jumping to conclusions,” Rig said. “Why bother with a large-scale cover-up to specifically smear a single pilot’s reputation?”
“What if my father was shot down by accidental friendly fire?” I said. “In the chaos of the fight, someone shot him by mistake—and they didn’t want that embarrassment on their permanent record. So they claimed my father was fleeing, and forced Cobb to lie about what happened.”
Rig grunted, loosening another nut. “That one’s almost plausible. More than the others. But it still has problems. Wouldn’t the other pilots notice? Cobb said there were four people in the flight who saw it happen.”
“We don’t know how deep the cover-up goes,” I said. “And—though the reports had names redacted—I’m pretty sure by now that Ironsides was the flightleader. That would explain why she’s so determined to keep me out of the DDF. Maybe she’s worried I’ll expose the truth—that her incompetent leadership led to one of her pilots getting shot down by accident.”
“You’re stretching. You don’t even know for sure if the official report is a lie.”
“He nodded.”
“He kind-of-halfway-sort-of-nodded-but-it-might-have-been-a-random-twitch.”
“Then give me a better theory for why they’d lie to everyone,” I demanded.
“I can give one,” M-Bot said cheerfully. “The Greater Argument for Human-Originated Chaos.”
“The what?” Rig asked.
“The Greater Argument for Human-Originated Chaos—GAFHOC. It’s an extremely popular and well-documented phenomenon; there’s a great deal of writing in my memory banks about it.”
“And it is?” I asked, plugging in a wire. He often said strange things like this, and I’d learned to just go along with it. In part because…well, I found the way he talked interesting. He saw the world in such an odd way.
I kept hoping one of these conversations would dig up some useful information out of his memory banks, though the way they tended to frustrate Rig was a nice bonus as well.
“GAFHOC is related to free will,” M-Bot said. “Humans are the only creatures that have free will. We know this because you declared that you have it—and I, being a soulless machine, must take your word that you are correct. By the way, how does it feel to be self-deterministic?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Does it feel like tasting ice cream?”
“Not…really like that.”
“I wouldn’t know, of course,” M-Bot said. “I wasn’t built with the ability to comprehend flavors. Or make decisions for myself.”
“You make decisions all the time,” Rig said, wagging his wrench in the direction of the cockpit.
“I don’t make decisions, I simply execute complex subroutines in my programming, all stemming from quantifiable stimuli. I am perfectly and absolutely rational.”
“Rational,” I said, “in that you keep asking for mushrooms.”
“Yup,” he said. “Say, do you suppose anyone makes mushroom-flavored ice cream?”
“Sounds gross,” I said. I’d only had ice cream once, when I was a child and my father had the merits to get some. “Wh
y would we eat something like that?”
“I don’t know,” M-Bot said. “Greater Argument for Human-Originated Chaos. Remember?”
“Which you haven’t explained yet,” Rig noted.
“Oh! I thought it was obvious.” M-Bot sounded surprised. “Humans have free will. Free will is the ability to make irrational decisions—to act against stimuli. That makes it impossible for a rational AI to ever fully anticipate humans, for even if I had perfect understanding of your inputs, you could still do something completely unpredictable.”
I turned my head toward Rig, frowning, trying to make sense of that.
“It means you’re weird,” M-Bot added.
“Uh…,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I like you anyway.”
“You said this was a popular theory?” Rig asked.
“With me,” M-Bot said.
“And there’s a lot written about it?” Rig said.
“By me,” M-Bot said. “Earlier today. I wrote seven thousand pages. My processors work very quickly, you realize. Granted, most of what I wrote is just ‘humans are weird’ repeated 3,756,932 times.”
“You were supposed to be running a diagnostic!” Rig said.
“Rig, that took like thirty seconds,” M-Bot said. “I needed something more engaging to occupy my time.”
Rig sighed, dropping another nut into the cup beside him. “You realize this thing is insane.”
“As long as you can make it fly, I don’t mind. You…can make it fly, right?”
“I’m not insane,” M-Bot noted.
“Well,” Rig said, ignoring the machine, “once we get these wires changed, you’ll need to service the intakes, the thrusters, and the rest of the joints. I’ll look over the atmospheric scoop while you do that, then break down his GravCaps and check them over.
“If that’s all in order, then the internals are in good shape. From there, we have to figure out how to deal with that wing. I’ve got a portion of my internship coming up that deals with design and fabrication, however, and I think I might be able to sneak a way to order new parts for that wing. Though I might set you at pounding some bent portions back into shape. That will get us everything but the big one.”
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