Crave reached over and tapped on the flat arc for Thwip’s benefit. Hashes on crew around Charis’ location emerged—their names and ranks floated next to dotted symbols. From the look on her face and her location movement, she was mid-issue on a series of commands to the group around her. The crew broke off in different directions, their hashes radiating away from her marker like starlight. Thwip watched her grey face in the loop. She must have retracted her mask; she was eating a strip of something dark. Wheck did the same.
I still have the unit’s early history waiting for my review, after the mission specs.
When he glanced up from the flat arc, Crave was watching him, his mask still transparent so that Thwip could see his eyes.
“Next task.”
Thwip instructed from the flat arc, and Crave used his trepid to execute the maneuvers he couldn’t yet perform as one by one they cut and snapped through the next eight endo-exo bridges together. Thwip recorded their progress in the log.
As they separated the eighteenth bridge, the entry unsealed, and Skregs and Wheck ducked through into the 0-lab. Surrounded by the three Novas in their suits, Thwip felt naked by comparison.
“Where do you want us?” Skregs asked. It was a moment before Thwip understood that Skregs was speaking to him.
Wheck nodded at Thwip’s silence. “Too many pilots gaff the formation, Skregs.” He looked over the open trepid container. “They allocated you an entire latest-gen trepid set to tinker with?”
“It doesn’t have weaponry,” Crave noted.
“Still.” Wheck leaned over Crave’s shoulder to see the suit laid flat on the arc. “Hood and suit, plus all of the other tool packages. The trepid-issue medpen alone is worth hundreds of thousands of credits. Quite a demand.”
“Aaiane told me to ask for what I really wanted or needed. That’s all I did.”
Skregs sat at the flat arc opposite Thwip’s across the lab. “I asked for my shaving kit and ongoing refills, and I thought I was pushing it.” Wheck snorted, and Skregs crossed his arms. “Your ask wasn’t any more ambitious, Wheck.”
Wheck browsed some of the tools Sanders and Blyku had sent, his brows furrowed with interest. “How would you know, my friend? I haven’t told you what it is. I think I’m close to guessing Charis’, however.”
Charis’ expressive eyebrows pinched high, and she glanced up through the loop at Wheck, though without breaking the conversation she was in with—according to the flat arc—Flying Space Officers Purliroi and Axesmee.
Skregs looked skeptical, then nodded to Thwip. “Since this is the first time we’ve been terrestrial long enough to get a sweetener, we made a wager on who can figure out one another’s asks first. I like to shave Pre-Cygnus style: razor and no scan protection. Haven’t done it since academy, but Crave guessed mine as we boarded, damn it.”
“What are the terms of the wager?”
Wheck leaned back from the tools and looked at Thwip with a gaunt grin. “If we tell you, you’re in.”
“No one guessed yours before you revealed it,” Skregs told Thwip, “So that’s no point to anyone. There’s still three up for grabs, and Crave’s ahead by one. You only get one guess per sweetener.”
“I’m in.”
“The winner of the wager gets to change the flag at Sovrin One and report mission victory to General Aitith, however it happens. That piece of history goes to them. And whoever is guessed out first is in charge of explaining workup basics to you.” Skregs gestured grandly to himself.
“It’s always been my dream to be used as a penalty in a bet,” Thwip said, amused. He watched Crave make the last incision. His face was always still. What sweetener would he choose?
GET A-STAT AND GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP SO I CAN SEAL YOU IN AND START THE BLOCK OF DUTY I PREPARED. Charis, still talking to crew and greyed out, sent the message in text to the four of them. Thwip watched her on the flat arc. AND THWIP, SUIT UP!
Skregs stood, went to the wall arc, and swiped in. “Nova opsec. One of us always stays awake when another is sleeping. Wake duty rotations are each two hundred fifty hours, so during that span of hours, whoever has the duty remains awake while the rest of the unit sleeps, and sleeps when the unit is awake. So on sleep shift, you’re awake for eight hours, the unit wakes and you go to sleep for four hours, then you’re awake for four hours, then you sleep another eight, then you get up and the unit goes to sleep, and you repeat the cycle. You get more sleep on sleep shift, so you can catch up and rest from previous periods of overexertion and stress. Charis still has a few days left on her rounds.” Skregs pulsed the schedule to the arc. “You’ve got it on your hood.” Thwip went in to his hood through the tether and displayed the schedule on his flat arc. “Each rotation gradually shifts into the next person’s, so our sleep cycles aren’t harshly interrupted. And of course we always have overlapping parts of shift when we’re all awake.”
Thwip checked the schedule, looking for his name. Wheck’s next. They’ve added me to the tenth rotation. I can be ready sooner.
Crave responded to whatever Charis said to him behind her mute mech with, “Good watch.” He looked at Thwip from where he was seated. “Let’s stow these items so you can get to the PT module and suit up for sleep shift.”
“A-STAT: Always stow and tack. On ship all items are required to be secured after use in case of emergency,” Skregs explained.
Thwip grinned. “Skregs?”
“Yeah?”
“I know what A-STAT means. It’s basic space procedure.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’ll go with you to the lab to help you suit up,” Wheck said, watching Thwip.
Skregs raised his brows at Wheck, as though his volunteering was surprising. “Then we’ll get A-STAT here.” He stepped up to the flat arc and looked at Thwip. “Any special instructions?”
“No, but we should separate the exo- and endoframes first. Then we can A-STAT the gear.” Under Thwip’s guidance, Crave and Wheck divorced the exo and endo.
“Fuck me,” Skregs said looking at the split layers of the suit. The endo was stiff and vestlike, and the exo’s full human silhouette looked thin and pathetic without its framing or suit sculpt activated. “That can be done?” He pulsed through the data on Thwip’s arc, muttering, “Twenty-six incisions…”
Thwip magnified the schematic. “It can be done only if you can get inside the suit both manually and with security swipes and know exactly where and how to make the incisions—that information is restricted trepid NTKO—and you have the precision tools to do so along with the skill, especially for the nine innermost points. Splitting the sixth point, this one here, makes it possible to strip the remote power resupply mech in case you want to void the auto-connection or re-tether to a nonofficial source.”
Crave pulsed Skregs his SOCs from their work and Skregs went through the capture on his IF in high speed, watching incision by incision.
“Could be useful,” Skregs said.
“Or dangerous,” Crave added.
“Like breaking your own arm to survive?” Thwip said. “But more dangerous because nonofficial power sources aren’t secure, so an error could mean the suit goes black or works against you, or your team. I bet we could bring the endo online through the beta tether, even though it’s separated.”
With the split complete, Crave racked Blyku’s tools into wall storage, and pulsed the seal shut.
Thwip swiped out of his log, untethered his hardhood from the flat arc, palmed it, and jogged out of the Vesper-0 through the lower hangar past crew and up toward the Vesper’s PT-med module, Wheck stalking along angular and lanky at his side.
“Is it SOP to sleep in trepid?” Thwip asked him.
“Always do.”
The lab crew reviewed Thwip’s medical data and sealed him inside his trepid, then Wheck walked him back to the V-0 sleeping module evenly on half-tether. They went in silence, Thwip visualizing how the signals traversed the suit’s systems and practicing pulse control.
Crave joined him each evening after his scheduled duties. He only spoke in context of workflow discussion, but he was always there, offering to assist. Skregs and Wheck would trickle in later, Wheck often straight from space flight, Skregs usually from the command deck. Wheck maintained Thwip’s log for him, and Skregs went through some of the mission’s details aloud, briefing Thwip as he worked with Crave. They’d finish their work, A-STAT the lab, and head together to the V-0’s sleeping module. Still on wake duty, Charis would confirm in text that they were sealed in securely, never appearing on Thwip’s IF except in greyscale.
By his fourth day as a Nova, Thwip was 40 percent into the fractal trepid suit’s systems and 80 percent off the tether on his own suit. He was ahead of the workup schedule, but the command sequences were becoming more advanced, and the final increments of progress came in smaller leaps.
By the seventh day he had a full grasp of the conventions of trepid pulse combinations, and by evening he walked around the Vesper’s flight deck off-tether, watched closely by Leo and Skregs.
The next morning, Thwip woke to Wheck and Skregs leaning over his sleep hold. Crave stopped behind them, and after asking Wheck about a schedule adjustment with the pilots, departed for breakfast.
Wheck pulsed Thwip the Vesper module location R4C6:01EE. “Intel there for your review this shift.” Thwip accepted the breakfast container Wheck offered and left with Skregs, who secured the module so that Wheck could sleep.
Skregs parted from Thwip at the lower hangar deck. Thwip brought up the Vesper’s schematic on his IF and, carrying the container, headed for R4C6:01EE.
He watched his chem balancers slide as his body moved, waking itself. Crave and Charis were both on private mode; even their locations weren’t available. Wheck was asleep in the V-0 module and therefore also on private. Skregs retracted his mask to eat a breakfast scramble, transitioning to greyscale, muting the rest of the loop. Down the C6 corridor and past double A and double B, Thwip minimized the map: he’d committed it to organic memory. Time for a test. He took two right turns, then a left that led down an incline. At the bottom he took a left down another incline, then the third right.
Double E should be ahead. His body map lit at the shoulder, as though something had struck his suit, but the object did not register on his scan. Slowing his pace, he turned and scanned the corridor again. Empty. What did I hit? The wall? Could my suit have malfunc—
A spray of musical alarm bell sounds and proximity warnings flashed on his IF, and he tripped forward, hit the floor in a full sprawl. He rolled out of the fall, rose back to standing, and immediately found himself on the floor again. He crouched, scanned. His alarms were quiet. The only active movement on his IF was his chems. They tipped and he felt a cool, foreign sense of concentration—the benefits of adrenaline without the panic. A hint of a shimmer—the light reading to his right glitched—he adjusted his scans and caught the faint outline of a shoulder, then grooves of feathered chasing. Charis was standing a mere meter from him at the exact angle that defied the best hardhood running the best local scan invented to date. It was masterful trepid usage.
He hit the floor again. She crashed through his loop mechs and seized his tether—he pulsed to push her off his access. His reflexive system defense was clumsy, but he reacted in time to accomplish the maneuver and stood panting, scanning for her as she changed positions.
“Thwip, that was good. I’m satisfied. You’re ready.” Charis’ voice came through Thwip’s hardhood over chatter and her face appeared in color on his IF for the first time.
Her hair is red.
Charis out of greyscale, with an unexpectedly high voice to match her usually silently moving lips, arrested his attention. Her expressive brows were red as well, arched over large gold eyes above round, pink cheeks: a sweet-faced picture in complete contrast to her presence. She walked farther down the ramp leading to the double-E module. “Form up, let’s go.”
Thwip looked to Skregs in the loop for direction, but he was still greyed out.
He rescued his breakfast container from the side of the ramp, where it had rolled after he dropped it during her attack, and followed Charis.
“Nice trepid maneuver, Feathers. How did you evade my suit’s scanni—”
“Feathers?” she repeated, her brows furrowing.
Thwip gestured to his hardhood and she took his meaning.
“It’s fletching!”
Fletching? “I see,” he said, doing his best to imitate the noncommittal tone Leo often used. He searched the term on his IF. Sticks and feathers, arrows—
“Why not hearts?” she asked.
“Hearts?”
A curved smiled twisted up her face, higher on the right than the left. It balanced out her genetic cuteness, gave her a slightly devious look more suited to her personality. She gestured toward her hardhood in clarification, the same way he had gestured toward his.
“Oh.” He laughed. “The love letters were a honeypot.”
Her brows lowered and the smile vanished. She dashed swift-footed into the module and he lost her on his scan. Trying to form up on her flank, he trailed her at the fastest speed he could manage—half the pace of hers—turned two corners, then guessed right on the third, anticipating that she might lay him out again. His query about fletching was still on his IF: HISTORY OF ARCHERY. ARROWS AND BOWS, TARGETS… When he turned the corner, the space opened up high and wide. Charis waited in the center, surrounded by more weapons than he had ever seen in one location. His hood scanned in WEAPONS DECK, RESTRICTED and his intel light flashed as she attached full WD access to his swipes. He pulsed the fletching information to his peripheral for later and walked farther into the deck. There were personal arms racked into containers along the walls. Larger weapons packages rose in protective casings sealed to the floor. The right side of the space extended behind a security wall that safeguarded large-scale ranged weapons and volatile armaments.
“Trepids have a dozen sheaths. Keep them filled. Keep them varied.”
“Filled and varied,” he recited. She walked. He followed.
“There are more potential primary weapon combinations than your talons. Do you know your sheath points on trepid?”
“Two side hip sheaths, two back center, two wrist, two ankle, two lower back, two interior quick grab.”
“Good.”
“I dissected them yesterday on the sweetener suit I’ve been using.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“It’s part of my workup. I need to know how they work.”
“Dissecting the best weapons tech,” she muttered aside, then addressed him louder. “That’s like slicing up a face to figure out why it’s beautiful. There’s probably a sim you could have tested on.”
“It’s never the same.”
They arrived at a huge open trepid container arranged against the center of the left wall. There was nothing around it, and its position drew the eye, elevating it above the rest of the tech present on the WD. The fractal suit had come encased in a large individual container. This container was fifteen times larger. Embedded inside were the unit’s identical backup trepid suits, hoods, and personal weaponry, along with other tools, necessary accessories, and space for the suits and tools they currently wore. Thwip walked forward toward the gear allocated to his hardhood symbol and palmed his second hardhood.
If I didn’t know my call name, I would probably call me Honeycombs.
He sensed Charis’ eyes tracking him. He wa
s off the tether now, but still self-conscious about the series of movements and pulse commands required to maneuver the suit smoothly.
“We have our own custom talons?” he asked, examining his weapons.
“Affirmative. Well? Arm yourself.”
He sheathed his short talon on his right side. “Do they work for anyone else?”
“Everyone in the unit, but never as well as for the Nova they belong to. I roll doubles with triggers always on tip index and sniper mechs on the back two of my lefty. Please tell me you don’t have some by-the-manual weapons pulse org.”
Thwip frowned.
“That’s just great. Tell me, Honeypot.” She gestured for him to be quick about it, but the curved smile returned.
“I run extra tiers, and I can pinkie-swivel, so I’ve set a double toggle. I don’t run the load up top as heavy as you might, but I’ve always got something standard and unexpected ready to pulse on both trigger fingers. I haven’t had workup yet in weapons, so I’m not sure if or how that will evolve with custom talons.”
“That’s why you’re here. If you couldn’t defend your tether controls, then you wouldn’t have been ready for this shift. I’d rather not have you vulnerable to someone who can turn you into a walking tragedy.”
“But only the unit, Leo, and Blyku can cut in on my tether, and only with permission.”
“Anything outside the unit is categorized as a risk.”
“Even handlers and PT techs?”
“Can’t be avoided. But crew is not the same as unit. Nothing is.”
“Wake duty as a protection.”
She nodded. “Nova security is perfect. Your setup is passable for rest, but not ready for combat. We don’t ever organize for rest. The day you think that shit won’t go down, it does. I promise you that. It’s the way of the universe. Your unit needs you to be ready from this moment forward. I need you to be ready.”
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