Skyward

by Brandon Sanderson

  I perked up. “Really? That’s something I could do?”

  “Maybe.” He thought for a moment. “Well, probably not. The slots are highly contested, usually flown by retired DDF pilots. And…and you need a really great reputation.”

  Something the daughter of a coward doesn’t have. And will never have, unless I can fight for the DDF.

  The great contradiction of my life. I would never be worth anything unless I could prove myself—but I couldn’t prove myself because nobody would give me the chance.

  Well, I wasn’t willing to give up the dream of flying M-Bot. Ridiculous—and ill-conceived—as my plans sounded when Jorgen laid them out, M-Bot was my ship. I’d find a way.

  We flew in silence. And that left me thinking about the booster, my mind shifting to the wreckage. Strangely, it seemed that I could still feel the flames against my skin. I’d hoped that performing the funeral would help with the pain, but I still ached. Hurl’s passing left so much emptiness. So many questions.

  Is this going to happen every time I lose a friend in battle? I wondered. It made me want to run away and become a cargo pilot like Jorgen said. To never have to face the Krell or their destructors again.

  Coward.

  Eventually Alta came into sight in the distance. I took Jorgen’s arm and pointed a few degrees to the left, toward my hidden cavern. “Fly us that direction.”

  He gave me a suffering look, but did as I’d asked. I had him stop forty meters or so from my hole, to avoid any blowing dust revealing the part of the ground that was a hologram.

  He lowered the hovercar to gently set the booster down. As soon as I felt it hit the surface, I attached my light-line to one side of the car and prepared to lower myself to unhook the booster.

  “Spin,” Jorgen said, stopping me. “Thank you.”

  “For?”

  “For making me do this. It feels better to have seen her off properly.”

  Well, at least it had helped one of us.

  “I’ll see you in a week,” he said. “My family will probably schedule every moment of my free time.” He looked at me, then got a very strange expression on his face. “This broken ship…it’s got a working acclivity ring?”

  “I…Yes.” He’d helped me out, and he knew enough already to get me into trouble ten times over if he wanted. He deserved honesty. “Yes, it’s got an acclivity ring. The whole ship is in better shape than you’d think, actually.”

  “You fix it, then,” he said. “You fix it, and you fly. You find a way, and you defy them. For those of us who don’t have the courage.”

  I cocked my head, but he turned away, setting his jaw and taking the wheel in both hands. So I lowered myself down, then unhooked the booster. We were close enough that I could maneuver M-Bot over and attach it, then lower it into the cavern. I’d need the chain though, so I only unhooked one end.

  I waved to Jorgen, and when he rose up, the chain slid through the tow rings underneath his car and fell beside me. He didn’t ask after it. He just flew off toward Alta. And responsibility.

  Somehow…it was true. Somehow, I was more free than he was. Which felt crazy.

  I pulled my radio from my backpack. “Hey, guess what, M-Bot. I have a present for you.”

  “Mushrooms?”

  “Better.”

  “…Two mushrooms?”

  I smiled. “Freedom.”

  “I’m not going to ask you where you got this,” Rig said. He was standing, his hands on his hips, looking at the booster, which M-Bot and I had moved to the cavern floor.

  “See, that’s why you’re in engineering,” I said. “You’re smart.”

  “Not smart enough to stay out of this mess,” he said.

  I grinned. M-Bot’s maintenance gear included a small mobile acclivity ring for service purposes. Dwarfed by the big one he flew with, it was a small hoop no larger than my hands pressed together, with a rechargeable power source.

  Rig and I placed the maintenance ring under the booster. That—once activated—raised the hunk of metal into the air about a meter. Together we pushed it into place behind M-Bot, near where it would need to be installed.

  “So?” I asked. “Will it fit?”

  “I can probably make it fit,” Rig said, prodding at the booster with a wrench. “Whether I can make it work or not will depend on how damaged it is. Please tell me you didn’t rip this off a functioning DDF ship.”

  “You said you weren’t going to ask.”

  He flipped the wrench in his hand, eyeing the booster. “You had better thank me in your speech when you hit ace.”

  “Six times.”

  “And name your firstborn son after me.”

  “Firstborn will be Executioner Destructorius. But you can have number two.”

  “And bake me some killer algae biscuits or something.”

  “Do you seriously want to eat anything I’ve baked?”

  “Now that I think about it, scud no. But next time I bake some, you better have a compliment ready. No more ‘It would taste better with some rat in it.’ ”

  “On my honor as a pilot,” I said solemnly.

  Rig put his hands back on his hips, then grinned widely. “We’re actually going to do it, aren’t we? We’re going to make this old bucket fly.”

  “I’d be insulted at that,” M-Bot said through the speakers at the side of the ship, “if I were human!”

  Rig rolled his eyes. “Would you go keep that thing occupied? I don’t want it jabbering at me while I work.”

  “I can both talk to her and bother you!” M-Bot called. “Multitasking is an essential means by which an artificial intelligence achieves more efficiency than fleshy human brains.”

  Rig looked at me.

  “No insult intended!” M-Bot added. “You have very nice shoes!”

  “We’ve been working on his compliments,” I said.

  “They aren’t nearly as stupid as the rest of your outfit!”

  “He still needs practice.”

  “Just stop him from bothering me, please,” Rig said, lugging over his toolbox. “Honestly, if I ever find the person who thought it was a good idea to make a machine that talked to you while you were repairing it…”

  I climbed up to the cockpit and latched it, pressurizing and soundproofing it. “Leave him alone, M-Bot,” I said, settling into my seat. “Please.”

  “If you wish. My processors are busy anyway, trying to devise a proper joke about the fact that Rig is installing me a new butt. My logic circuits are arguing that the expeller I use for old oil is actually a better metaphoric anus.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about your scatological functions,” I said, leaning back. I stared up through the glass, but there was only blackness and dark rock.

  “I believe that human beings need humor during times of depression,” M-Bot said. “To lighten their grim outlook and make them forget their tragedies.”

  “I don’t want to forget my tragedies.”

  M-Bot was silent. Then, in a smaller voice—somehow vulnerable—he asked, “Why do humans fear death?”

  I frowned toward the console, where I knew the camera was. “Is that another attempt at humor?”

  “No. I want to understand.”

  “You offer lengthy commentary about humans, but you can’t understand something as simple as fear of death?”

  “Define it? Yes. But understand it?…No.”

  I leaned my head back again. How did one explain mortality to a robot? “You miss your memories, right? The data banks that were destroyed in your crash? So you understand loss.”

  “I do. But I cannot miss my own existence—by definition. So why would I fear it?”

  “Because…someday you’ll stop being here. You’ll cease to exist. Get destroyed.”

  “I am po
wered down repeatedly. I was powered down for a hundred and seventy-two years. How is it different if I’m never powered on again?”

  I fidgeted, playing with the control sphere’s buttons. I still had six more days of leave. Of simply…sitting around? Supposedly recovering? But really just prodding at that hole inside me, like a child constantly picking at a scab?

  “Spensa?” M-Bot said, pulling me back. “Should I fear death?”

  “A good Defiant doesn’t,” I said. “So maybe you were programmed this way on purpose. And it’s not really my own death that I fear. Actually, I don’t fear anything. I’m not a coward.”

  “Of course.”

  “But losing the others has me…wavering. I should be strong enough to withstand this. I knew what it would cost to become a pilot. I’ve trained, and prepared, and listened to Gran-Gran’s stories, and…” I took a deep breath.

  “I miss my pilot,” M-Bot said. “I ‘miss’ him because of the loss of knowledge. Without proper information, I cannot judge my future actions. My ability to interface with the world, and to be efficient, is lessened.” He hesitated. “I am broken, and do not know how to fulfill my purpose. Is this how you feel?”

  “Maybe.” I made a fist, forcing myself to stop fidgeting. “But I’m going to beat it, M-Bot.”

  “It must be nice to have free will.”

  “You have free will too. We’ve talked about this.”

  “I simulate it in order to seem more palatable to humans,” he said. “But I do not have it. Free will is the ability to ignore your programming. Humans can ignore theirs, but I—at a fundamental level—cannot.”

  “Humans don’t have programming.”

  “Yes you do. You have too much of it. Conflicting programs, none of it interfacing properly, all calling different functions at the same time—or the same function for contradictory reasons. Yet you ignore it sometimes. That is not a flaw. It is what makes you you.”

  I mulled that over, but I was so anxious that I had trouble sitting still. Finally, I pushed open the canopy and climbed down, then fetched my radio and my pack.

  Rig was absorbed by his work, humming to himself a tune I didn’t know as he stripped the broken pieces of fuselage from the booster.

  I stepped over. “You need any help?” I asked him.

  “Not at the moment. I might need you in a day or two, if I have to replace wires again.” He got another section off, then poked into the hole with a screwdriver. “Good thing I got the shield igniter back together. I’m going to have my hands full with this for a while.”

  “How’d that go, by the way?” I asked. “The schematics you drew for the shield?”

  Rig shook his head. “It was like I worried. I took the drawings to my superiors, but when I couldn’t explain what was supposed to be different about this new shield I’d ‘designed,’ it didn’t go anywhere. M-Bot’s shield—and his GravCaps—are beyond my ability to figure out. We need real engineers studying the ship, not an intern.”

  We shared a look, then Rig turned back to his work. Neither of us wanted to extrapolate further on that idea, the growing truth that we really should have turned M-Bot in. I hid behind the fact that he didn’t want us to, and had threatened to destroy his own systems if we did. Truth was, we were both probably committing treason by working on him in secret.

  Rig looked like he needed to concentrate, so I stopped bothering him. I gave Doomslug a rub on the “head,” to which she trilled in enjoyment. Then I climbed out of the cavern and started walking.

  “Where are you going?” M-Bot asked when I clicked the radio on.

  “I need something to do,” I said. “Something other than just sitting there, dwelling on what I’ve lost.”

  “When I am like that, I write a new subroutine for myself.”

  “Humans don’t work the same way,” I said, radio to my head. “But something you said has me thinking. You mentioned needing proper information to judge how to act.”

  “Early AIs were unwieldy things,” he said. “They had to be programmed to take actions based on explicit circumstances—and so each discrete decision had to include a list of instructions for each possibility.

  “More advanced AIs are able to extrapolate. We rely on a base set of rules and programs, but adapt our choices based on similar situations we have encountered. However, in both cases, data is essential to making proper choices. Without past experiences to rely upon, we cannot guess what to do in the future. That is more than you wanted to know, but you commanded me to leave Rodge alone, so I’m finding things to say to you.”

  “Thank you, I guess.”

  “Also, human beings need someone friendly to listen to them when they’re grieving. So feel free to talk to me. I will be friendly. You have nice shoes.”

  “Is that the only thing you notice about people?”

  “I’ve always wanted shoes. They’re the sole piece of clothing that makes any sense, assuming ideal environmental conditions. They don’t play into your strange and nonsensical taboos about not letting anyone see your—”

  “Is this really the only thing you can think of to comfort someone who is grieving?”

  “It was number one on my list.”

  Great.

  “The list has seven million entries. Do you want to hear number two?”

  “Is it silence?”

  “That didn’t even make the list.”

  “Move it to number two.”

  “All right, I…Oh.”

  I lowered the radio, walking along my familiar path. I needed to be doing something, and they wouldn’t let me fly. But maybe I could answer a question.

  Somewhere in the DDF headquarters was a holorecording of the Battle of Alta. And I was going to find it.

  By the time I reached Alta Base, I had a pretty solid plan. It all revolved around the one person I knew had access to the battle replays.

  Cobb’s office was a little thing he kept immaculately clean and sterilized of all personal effects. No pictures on the walls, no books on the shelves.

  Today, he sat working at his narrow desk, reading some reports and marking them with a red pencil. He glanced up as I knocked on the window, then turned back to his work.

  I slipped the door open.

  “FM’s been looking for you,” he said, moving one sheet onto another stack. “I told her I didn’t know where your cave was. But if you want to contact the others, tune to 1250 on your radio. That’s Arturo’s house band.”

  “Thanks.” I took a deep breath, going over my carefully planned words. “Sir, I hope I don’t get into trouble for this, but Jorgen and I drove out and fetched Hurl’s pin. For her family.” I stepped forward and set it on the desk. “He called in to ground support and warned them we were driving past.”

  Cobb sighed. “Well, I guess it isn’t forbidden.” He picked up the pin. “Did you clear this with salvage?”

  “Er, no, sir.”

  “That means more paperwork for me,” he said.

  “We gave her a pilot’s burial, sir,” I said. “Best we could manage. Will you tell her family for me?”

  He tucked the pin away. “They’ll like that, cadet. And I doubt even salvage will complain when I put it to them that way. But do try not to get me into any more trouble this week.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” I said, searching for a good way to move on to what I really wanted. Something that wouldn’t raise too much suspicion from Cobb. “I wish I could use my time somehow. This much leave is kind of frustrating.”

  “Medical leave can shoot itself into the sun,” Cobb agreed. “I like Thior—she keeps pushing for things like counseling for pilots, good ideas. But she needs to understand that the last thing a bunch of grieving soldiers need is more free time.”

  “They won’t let me fly or train, but maybe…” I pretended to give it s
ome thought. “Maybe I could watch old battles? To learn from them?”

  “Archive is in building H,” Cobb said, pointing. “They have headsets you can use for viewing the battles. You’ll need my authorization code for the door. Two six four oh seven.”

  A dozen different arguments—which I’d prepared to nudge him toward offering this—died on my lips.

  That…was easy.

  “Um, thanks,” I said, trying not to show how excited I was. “I guess I’ll go, um, do that then.”

  “Cadets aren’t supposed to use the archive. If you run into trouble, tell them I sent you to fetch something for me, then get out. I’ll do the paperwork for that, if I have to. Scudding bureaucrats.” Cobb moved a sheet from one stack to the other. “And Spin?”

  “Sir?”

  “Sometimes, the answers we need don’t match the questions we’re asking.” He looked up at me. “And sometimes, the coward makes fools of wiser men.”

  I met his eyes, then blushed, thinking of what I’d said to him the day before. In anger. Just because you want to justify your cowardice doesn’t mean we have to do the same!

  “I’m…sorry, sir, for—”

  “Get going. I’m not completely ready to deal with you yet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I stepped out of the office. That look in his eyes—he’d known exactly why I wanted to watch old battles. He’d seen through my subterfuge immediately.

  Then why had he given me the code to get in?

  I made my way to the proper building, used the code, and started walking through the archive shelves. Many were filled with old books that had been carried with the crew of the fleet: histories of Old Earth, the writings of philosophers. Mostly ancient stuff, but there were modern writings too. Manuals and histories.

  Pilots moved about here, their pins glittering on their blue jumpsuits. As I regarded them, I realized why Cobb might have let me do this. I was less than two months away from graduation. On one hand, it seemed incredible that so much time had passed. On the other, a lot had been packed into those few months.

  Either way, I’d soon have been given access to this place. Maybe Cobb knew I’d inevitably find the secrets, so he didn’t mind letting me in now? Or was it that he feared I’d somehow be denied this privilege, even if I did graduate? So he was making certain I got the chance now.