Death From Above!

by J. I. Greco

  Trip shrugs. “Back up a sec. What was that you said about customers?” he asks, a rumble sounding from somewhere outside the room. “What the hell are you selling?”

  Lock smiles and nods at the far wall. It parts down the middle, the stones becoming like liquid, folding back into themselves until all that is left is an open archway to the street—a street filled with marching machines.

  “Those,” Lock says, pointing out at the machines: Twenty feet tall, armor plated walking tanks, some with shoulder-mounted missile clusters, others with chainsaws for hands, each piloted by a man or woman safely encased in an armored chest cavity.

  Rudy turns around in his seat, an orange slice inches from his lips. “Are those?”

  “Yes,” Lock says.

  Rudy pops the slice into his mouth. “Oh, those are sweet.”

  “Mecha?” Trip coughs out, spitting coffee over his traveling tuxedo’s lapels. “You’ve been building mecha?”

  “Building and selling,” Brenda says. “Like hotcakes. Everybody wants them. The Chinese. The Free Mexicans. The Pocono Regulars. Even got an order from Shunk for two last week.”

  “From Shunk?” Trip asks. “Really?”

  “So now do you see why I can’t spare the labor?” Lock says. “I’m going to have to add a second shift to keep up with demand—maybe a third once we move into production with mark two.”

  “You’ve already got a mark two?” Rudy asks.

  “We’re testing it today,” Lock says. “It’s going to blow the market wide open. Nobody else has anything like it.”

  “What, does it fly?” Trip asks with a disparaging chuckle.

  “Yes,” Lock says.

  “Like, fly fly?” Rudy asks.

  “Should be able to do better than supersonic,” Brenda says.

  Rudy lets out a soft whistle. “Shit.”

  “Bullshit,” Trip says. He starts dumping spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his already full cup, the sugar not sinking, instead just piling up on top of the already sludgy brew. “Flying doesn’t work. Nobody flies. Anything faster than a dirigible gets higher than a hundred feet and blam, Death From Above.”

  “I know, I know, that’s been a problem,” Lock says. “But I think I licked it.”

  “How?” asks Rudy, wide-eyed.

  “Aww, unc, trade secret,” Lock says. “Let’s just say I’m a frickin’ genius.”

  Trip glares at her. “Bull. Shit.”

  Brenda cups her hand over her ear again. “Sir, they’re ready for the word,” she announces.

  “The word is given,” Lock says, fanning her fingers at the ceiling. The stones ripple soundlessly, peeling back to reveal the open sky, cloudless and blue. “Second test flight. Fingers crossed.”

  “What happened to the first test flight?” Rudy asks, looking up.

  Lock puts a finger against her lips and looks skyward.

  With a high-pitched rumbling roar, a mecha with delta wings where its arms should be shoots by overhead, cones of blue fire erupting from its thigh-mounted thrusters. The mecha-jet climbs quickly, higher and higher, a straight line—

  And then blam. Death From Above.

  The beam looks like a shaft of solid blued steel, slicing down through the sky with the crackle of ozone set ablaze.

  The beam’s there for two, maybe three, tenths of a second. Long enough to turn the mecha-jet into a puff of particles, none bigger than the tip of a thumb.

  The particles rain down on the towers and streets of Lock’s Combine.

  “That,” Lock says. “That’s pretty much what happened to the first test flight.” She raises a fist to the sky, extending her middle finger. “Fuck you. Just fuck you.”

  “Told you it was bullshit,” Trip says, spooning coffee sugar sludge into his mouth.

  “Lasted longer than the first test, sir,” Brenda says, placing a hand on Lock’s shoulder. “We’ll get there.”

  Lock puts her own hand over Brenda’s. “We’d better. We’ve already got over a thousand pre-orders.”

  “A thousand?” Trip blurts, sending sludge spitting out over the table.

  Lock sags back into her chair, the ceiling weaving itself shut above them. “I know, I was expecting more by this point, but I guess some people want to see some actual flying first before plunking down the half-mil deposit. Even with my track record of unparalleled success.”

  “You’re getting how much?” Trip asks.

  “It’s one of those if you have to ask you can’t afford it things,” Lock says.

  “The recovery team reports they’ve found the wreckage,” Brenda announces.

  “Bring it in for analysis and tell the engineering team to expect me this afternoon. There’s a lot of work to do.” Lock smiles at Trip. “So, Trip, care to lend a hand? We could use your expertise?”

  “I’m not gonna be your sales manager, Lock.” Trip puts down his cup and wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin. As soon as he puts it down an attendant takes the used napkin away, replacing it with a clean one. “V.P. of sales, maybe, if you throw in the COO and CEO spots.”

  “I was thinking more code tester,” Lock says. “You’re good with that low-level stuff. —And he’s storming off.”

  On his way to the door, Trip yells back over his shoulder. “By the way, I hate the new skin color! Makes you look like an over-roasted turkey.”

  Lock watches until the attendants close the door behind Trip, then turns to Rudy. “So, unc, how’s the wife and kids?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Wound roars away from the Combine, towards the setting sun, the Dodge’s adaptive tires kicking up twin trails of dust behind her.

  “You believe the nerve of that egotistical, self-centered, nanochine-infested freak?” Trip asks, his hands clawed around the car’s steering wheel, his knuckles white, the wireless jack behind his ear blinking an agitated red—no link. He’s doing this manual, and the Wound’s puppy-level AI is not happy about it, wondering what it did wrong. “I’ve got half a mind to invent a practical method for time travel, build a time machine using those principles, put on a snazzy jumpsuit, hurdle back through time to our happy-go-lucky early teens, and stop ourselves from accidentally setting off that All-Mart bomb and creating her in the first place.”

  In the passenger seat, Rudy’s got his stomach unzipped, his hand rummaging inside his guts. “If we had a time machine, I’d go back to stop George Lucas from casting Hayden Christensen.”

  Trip glances sideways at his brother. “What, you wouldn’t stop him from doing the whole Jar-Jar thing?”

  “I like Jar-Jar,” Rudy says, popping the empty vial of raw hallucinogenic ingredients out of his belly-implanted chem synth plant with a hiss. He flicks the empty vial out the open window. “He’s funny.”

  “Remind me to get a DNA test at some point. No way we can actually be brothers.” Trip turns his attention back to the road, ignoring the flashing GameGear screen in the dashboard, pleading to establish a link. “But the correct plan is to stop the prequels entirely… and then stop ourselves from setting off the All-Mart bomb.”

  Rudy takes a pair of glasses — older than he is by a factor of three, kept together with electrical tape and wire, the left lens cracked, the other one discolored with age — out of what used to be a hideaway knife sheath in his right combat boot, and slips them on.

  “Okay,” he says, adjusting his bandolier so he can squint down his nose through the glasses to read the labels on the lids of the vials of chem mixes stored in it. “So we didn’t get the workers we need. We can build some robots to do the work. You’ll see. It’ll work out.”

  “Nobody’s building any robots.” The flashing plea for a connection on the screen gets flashier, with reds and yellows, and now a soft but insistent beep. Trip rolls his eyes and reaches for the screen and it’s big flashing CONNECT button. At the last second, he pokes the physical OFF button instead and the screen goes black. “Nobody’s building anything. What’s the point?”

&
nbsp; “Sure, Lock’s mechas are sweet, but they’re high-end. Not everybody’s going to be able to afford them.” Rudy scans the vial labels, with names like SKYWALKER KUSH - BEGGAR’S CANYON REMIX (THC-A/MESC-A), LORD OF THE HIGHS (THC-A/PEYOTE DISTILLATE), and DON’T EVER USE THIS ONE, IT WILL KILL YOU (SERIOUSLY). “We can serve the low-end market. Warcars for the warlord on a budget.”

  “Warcars? You saw what I saw. She’s got a jet,” Trip says through clenched teeth. “A flying jet.”

  “Yeah, so?” Rudy selects a vial labeled SURPRISE ME and pushes it out of the bandolier with his thumb. “It couldn’t make it to a thousand feet before it got blown away. Nobody’s going to buy a jet that can’t fly, it’s useless.”

  “Today it couldn’t make it to a thousand feet. Today it’s useless. But she’ll figure it out. And she’ll do it sooner than later. It’s inevitable.”

  Rudy jams the vial in through the zippered opening in his belly and attaches it to the synth implant with a twist of his wrist. A hiss and a gentle whine of pumps coming online tell him it’s in place. “She is a frickin’ genius.”

  “Chip off the old block,” Trip says, knocking a knuckle against his temple, a slight begrudgingly proud smile on his long face. “And once she does figure it out, and her jets can fly, really fly, that’s it, end of line.”

  “You really think jets will change the war-machine business all that much?” Rudy zips up his stomach, then sits back, wiping the viscera on his hand off on his jeans. “They’ll still be awfully expensive. There’ll be a low-end niche for us.”

  Trip glares out at the road, and the setting sun. “For maybe a year, two, max. Then the sea-change will really hit. Jet flight is too important, too much of a game-changer. Everybody will want in. Every government already out there, and every wannabe government, they’re going to need an air force. To defend against everybody else’s air force, and to do what governments invariably do, try to take over other governments. Jets turn every other type of warfare into a joke. What good is sending a tank—or a warcar—into battle when a jet can get there, drop a couple dozen bombs, and be back before the tank’s left the parking lot?”

  “Okay, maybe we make boats then. Always wanted to build a destroyer.” Rudy taps his left nipple twice to prime the new vial pumping, then puts his elbow out the window while he waits for whatever effect it turns out to be to kick in. “And the kids would love living on a coast.”

  “You’re missing the bigger picture. Once flight’s back in the picture, every government is going to want—and absolutely need— an air force, and then boom you’ve got yourself an instant new market. At first, Lock’ll have that market sewn up. But the market will be too big, even for her and her zombies. Big markets create competition. Big markets create pressure to innovate. Pressure to reduce prices. And the promise of profits. Huge profits. Every corp, big and small, is going to suddenly be in the jet business, and they’ll have to pivot, because nobody will want the old shit. The tanks and the warcars and the mechs, they’ll be gathering dust overnight. And while they’re gathering dust, all the resources of all those corps are going to be focused on one thing: figuring out how Lock did it. Why her planes don’t get shot out of the sky.”

  Rudy drums his fingers on the side of the door impatiently, his head starting to feel uncomfortably clear. “Somebody’s going to reverse engineer.”

  “Of course. All those resources, it’s gonna happen. So fast it’ll leave Lock whiplashed.” Trip pushes in the dashboard lighter and takes out a cig. “And then it’s floodgates open.”

  “Everybody will be making jets.”

  “Not just jets.” The dashboard lighter pops and Trip lights his cig. “Missiles. Rockets. Anything that usually gets blown out of the sky will be fair game again. And then it’s game over.”

  “There are other businesses we can be in,” Rudy says, squirming in his seat. He’s sweating now. He puts his hand over his stomach—the synth factory is on, humming away. Just ain’t doing anything for him yet. And now he’s getting a headache, too. “Robot nannies, for instance.”

  “I’m not talking game over for our business,” Trip says. “I’m talking game over for civilization. Again. And this time, it may be final.”

  Rudy pokes at his belly, frowning. “I don’t follow.”

  “Allow me to lead you there, then. Planet’s basically been in a constant state of war since the First Reboot, right?”

  Sweat drips down Rudy’s face, and his head pounds. “Right, ‘cause humans are petty, selfish, and generally enjoy being unpleasant to each other.”

  “Yep. But the wars have been, compared to the Big One that led to the First Reboot, relatively minor affairs—Little Ones. Low-speed things. Tanks and swords and trebuchets and walking tree soldiers. The kind of thing that leads to small, regional reboots. No mass mass destruction. At the end of the war, maybe a country or two’s left in ruin, and certainly there are casualties, but overall, the rest of the world chugs on its own merry way, until another of the always-brewing regional conflicts boils over. At which point the cycle repeats itself. It’s not the best situation, but it’s kept humanity mostly alive and kicking, if not progressing, for the better part of two centuries. It’s not peace, but it is in its own way stability. And you know why it’s been like that? Why wars don’t threaten to end all life as we know it anymore?”

  Sweat drips into Rudy’s mouth, tasting of bitter salt, and the pounding headache gains a ringing tinnitus accompaniment. “Um… people are slowly becoming less petty, selfish, and amused by being unpleasant to each other?”

  “Not by a longshot,” Trip says. “People are people. They’re always going to be assholes. That’ll never change. Nor should it. It’s what defines us as a species.”

  Rudy looks down at his bandolier, notices a few of the edges of the vial labels are curled and loose. “Speaking of assholes, did you change my labels?”

  “While you were asleep,” Trip says with a smiling nod. “Mixed ‘em up good.”

  Rudy glares at him. “You don’t happen to remember which one you changed SURPRISE ME to, do you? It’s supposed to be a nice gently bubbly high. This is not bubbly at all. I’m having hot flashes. My tongue is freezing. It’s like Philip Glass is warming up in my ears while the Blue Man Group is playing on my brain stage. And I can feel my knees. Why can I feel my knees, Trip?”

  “Uh, I think I swapped that one with the IT WILL KILL YOU one.”

  “Seriously? You dick,” Rudy says, then shoves his head out the window to let the air whisk away some of the sweat drenching him.

  “What?” Trip asks, keeping his eyes on the road. “The implant has safeties. No mix is really gonna kill you.”

  “No, but it’s doing a pretty good job detoxing me.” Rudy pulls his head back in and quickly closes the window, suddenly feeling cold. He wraps his arms around his chest and shivers. “Which is frankly worse than killing me.”

  Trip shrugs. “Just switch vials then.”

  “Can’t. It’s a flush-cycle clean-out detox mix.”

  “Why the fuck would you make one of those in the first place?”

  “Bernie made me whip it up, for the next time we can swing a date night. I interrupt it before it’s done, I’m down and out with what amounts to the bends for a month, and I blow the gaskets on the synth’s pumps. And you know how hard it is to get replacement gaskets for this thing? I don’t feel like schlepping it to Zimbabwe again.”

  “How long’s the cycle?”

  “Four to eight days,” Rudy says his teeth chattering. “Depending on how hard I’ve been running the motor, lately.”

  “So eight days of no drugs, then?”

  “Yeah. Did I mention you’re a dick?”

  “Want a cig?”

  “Can’t.” Rudy reaches for the heater, sliding it to max. “The nic will interact with the detox agents and give me herpes.”

  Trip switches the heater off. “You don’t have herpes already?”

  “Go ahead. Laug
h it up, monkey-boy. But just remember, the only reason I normally don’t just outright strangle you is because I’m stoned enough to deal with your bullshit.”

  Trip’s smile turns into a satisfied smirk and he stabs a finger at the GameGear, switching it back on. Another stab, this time at the button on the flashing screen, and he lets the Wound’s puppy-AI connect to his mind. There’s a palpable sense of relief from over the connection, and Trip lets go of the wheel, lacing his fingers behind his neck and leaning back as the Wound takes over, accelerating gleefully into the next curve. “Now where was I? Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you why wars don’t threaten to end all life as we know it anymore: Death From Above.”

  “Death From Above?”

  “Death From Above,” Trip repeats, his voice a reverent whisper. “Who knows what it is, or why it does what it does, but thank Shatner it does do what it does, which is keep the skies free of jets. And missiles. And intercontinental rockets. Especially intercontinental rockets. Take Death From Above out of the picture and before long, you’ve got a planet that’s literally flying willy-nilly at supersonic speeds to the next Big One. And the next Big One, there’s a good chance we won’t get a reboot after it. Civilization ain’t what it used to be. Totally not as resilient. It could just be the end. Power down and off.”

  “Well, that’s not good,” Rudy says, his face pale, his hair soaked with his own sweat.

  “Eh, it is what it is. Humans had a pretty good run.”

  “Wait, with all this talk, I thought you were building up steam for something. Like convincing Lock to stop trying to figure out jets.”

  “No, I was just making small talk.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” Rudy says, back to being uncomfortably hot. He rolls down his window. “Think about the kids. Their future.”

  Trip glances over at him, arching an eyebrow. “Kids? What kids?”

  “All the kids. My kids. Your incoming kid.”

  “Oh, yeah. Keep forgetting about them. Well, I guess… if we must, we could try and stop the war.”