by B. V. Larson
“I can’t see anything other than a small blue ball.”
He grunted unhappily. “They told me you were a pilot.”
“I am,” I said, “but I’ve never used a control system like this. I’ve always used my actual eyeballs.”
“Ah…” he said thoughtfully. “I see what the problem is. You’re attempting to see the planet with your optical organs. You must work with your sym, and use your mind. Will yourself closer.”
I tried it, and it worked. I zoomed in sickeningly fast. The vision of Earth swam and wavered. It was alarming to behold.
“Is this some kind of telepathy?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Your sym reads your neurological biochemistry. There’s no magic involved.”
“Fascinating…” I said, looking around and zooming at the Moon. I could see every crater, including the shadows of the darker side. “I’ve noticed my sym no longer tries to make me angry.”
“Yes, that function has ceased to be useful. Now, it is learning your engrams, just as you’re learning to control your relationship with it. In time, you’ll find your perception enhanced dramatically while flying this fighter.”
I believed him. Already, I could tell that space all around me was accessible. I turned away from the Sun and toward the outer planets. I looked for a bright spot, found Mars, and zoomed in again. The reddish-brown world swam into view. I could see the polar caps, and I laughed.
“I can see Mars!” I shouted to the others. “Honest to God, I can see Mars from here. Up close!”
“They’re all glad for you,” Tand assured me. “Now, pay attention. We must fly.”
The ship’s flight controls were almost as simple as the single button on my disruptor. Everything boiled down to pushing a few ethereal buttons, monitoring various instruments, and using my perception-enhancing sym-link to direct the ship.
Below Hammerhead, a hole had opened up in the deck of the carrier. We dropped through it. We fell down a long shaft full of flashing lights. After what seemed like a half-mile, we fell out of the bottom of Killer and hung in open space.
Looking around, I saw the big ship in detail. There were other fighters out here, maybe a hundred of them. They were performing maneuvers—dodging, firing at invisible targets, and skimming close to the mothership’s hull on practice attack-runs.
“Now, we must turn on the anti-grav system,” Tand said. “Do it manually.”
I signaled Samson, who found the recessed button and pressed it. In an instant, we were all weightless.
Killer had artificial gravity, maintaining a pull that felt pretty close to one G. Out in open space, in order to tolerate being thrown about, we needed to ignore gravity completely.
“Take us to that rock over there,” Tand ordered.
I looked around, following his perception. “You mean Mars?”
“Yes. Over there.”
Shaking my head, I engaged the engines as he’d shown me. The ship bucked, but that was only registered with our senses visually. Inside the ship, we didn’t feel a thing.
“Whoa, that’s a weird sensation.”
“You’ll get used to it. Fly the ship. Increase power.”
I goosed it. I’d been dying to find out what this baby could do, and I wasn’t disappointed when I put the hammer down. We zoomed away from Killer with startling acceleration.
The fact that I couldn’t feel the acceleration was both disconcerting and pleasing at the same time. The G-forces I’d just applied—hell, we might have all died without the anti-grav system.
“Keep going,” Tand urged. “Full speed. We need to get out into open space to test our weapons for the first time.”
He got no arguments from me. I was flying again. If you know anything about pilots, we’re as happy as pigs in manure when we’re cruising around off the ground. This ship was the most amazing thing I’d ever had the pleasure of flying.
When we were something like half-way to Mars, several million kilometers from Killer, Tand had me slow down and drift.
“When I’m not aboard, you’ll have no one to tell you what to do—other than Fleet Command. They will not have time to hold your hand. You will only get general orders, such as attack target X, etc.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think that you do. You must train your crew. You must become as close to them as you are to the sym that lives in your blood. They will keep you alive. Your task, besides flight, will be to make tough, fast decisions.”
I thought about that. Independent fighter command? That seemed crude, but with a zillion different kinds of aliens flying ships around, I guessed it made some kind of sense.
“Won’t there be a squadron commander or something like that?”
“Yes,” he said, “but it’s our experience that new crews rarely listen well. They will swarm a designated target, but not with enough coordination to maintain a tight formation.”
“I see... Show us how to use the weapons.”
He began doing so, and we were both soon so absorbed that we didn’t notice when Dalton drifted near.
He had a wrench in his hand. He squared himself behind Commander Tand’s broad, leathery skull, feeling for leverage by hooking his legs on a bundle of pipes that ran over the deck. Before I had time to ask him what he was doing out of his seat, he slammed his wrench into Tand’s bony head.
“Ha!” Dalton shouted. “I got him, guys!”
I disabled my sym and looked at him in disbelief. Tand was bleeding. He was out cold, slumped in his seat.
“Take over, Blake,” Dalton said. “Fly us home to Earth. We’re free at last!”
=18=
When I turned off my enhanced perception, I was instantly returned to the cramped quarters of Hammerhead. With a growl of frustration and disbelief, I threw a punch at Dalton. He dodged away and looked at me in shock.
“Okay, I get it,” he said. “You like it here. They bought you off with flying a fighter again. Or maybe you’ve gone—”
“Shut up,” I said. “Do you really think the Fleet will let us escape? They’ll find us again. They’ve got to have some way of finding us by our syms. Did you even think of that?”
“Who cares?” Samson said, floating up from the mid-deck to the flight deck. “The Fleet is pulling out. They won’t delay to hunt down one crew.”
I looked at Tand. He had been a good officer. Shaw was a bastard—but Tand had been very focused and professional.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked.
“I’ve got an idea…” Dalton said, pointing toward the airlock.
Becoming angry, I climbed out of my seat.
“This isn’t our war, Leo,” Gwen said, touching my arm. “You have to admit, this is the best chance we’ll get.”
“Yeah,” I said, “yeah okay. It just took me by surprise. Everyone get to your stations—but leave Tand alone. We can leave him marooned on Earth for now.”
They scrambled into their positions around the ship, bumping their heads into equipment because no one was used to null-G yet.
Remembering what Commander Tand had taught me to do, I first scanned for Earth. For a panicky instant, I couldn’t find it. We were farther out than we had been the first time I’d seen our home world.
But then I spotted it, and I zoomed in.
“Everyone hang on to something,” I said. “Applying thrust.”
The ship bucked and swung around in a sickening loop. I closed my eyes to prevent a wave of vertigo, but my mind kept feeding me data. I could see it all.
We were heading toward Earth at a violent pace, accelerating steadily. How fast could this little ship go?
“Hammerhead,” I heard a voice in my mind say. “This is traffic control. We’ve detected a protocol breach. You’re about to leave the exercise zone.”
My face screwed up into a grimace of worry. I didn’t even know how to operate the com system. Experimentally, I tried simply talking to it.
“Traffic con
trol,” I said. “We’ve got a problem. We’ll let you know when we’ve got it fixed.”
This was nothing like the carefully coded back-and-forth exchange between Navy pilots on Earth, but I wasn’t surprised. A hundred worlds probably had a hundred different communication protocols.
“Hammerhead, this is traffic control,” the voice continued. “You’ve exited the safe zone. You’re ordered to reduce your speed and alter course immediately.”
“Working on it,” I said confidently.
“Go faster!” Dalton hissed. “Get us home!”
I didn’t even look at him. I was too busy trying to use my enhanced perception to scan local space.
Tand had hinted that detection systems like radar and lidar were inherent in the interface I was using. I only had to allow the computers to send that data to me, to let me see what was around our ship.
After another few seconds, I managed to enable the sensors. A mass of data flooded in, stunning my mind with moving diagrams and colorful shapes. All this was overlaid on a magnificent view of space around Hammerhead.
There were contacts. Lots of them. The big one had to be Killer. Far away, maybe a million kilometers off, were more big ships like ours. Each carrier was hanging in space at a great distance. Around them were swarms of tiny contacts, like bees circling a dozen hives.
As I grew more able to interpret the massed data, I saw that many of the closest spacecraft were converging on our position. We were passing another carrier, in fact, and its fighters looked like they were chasing us.
“It’s no good,” I told my crew. “We’re surrounded. They’ll start shooting soon. Even if they don’t, they’ll recapture us when we get to Earth—I don’t even know if I can figure out how to land in an atmosphere without burning up.”
I looked around the group.
“It’s your call, Blake,” Dr. Chang said. “We can’t see like you are able to.”
“You’re a bloody coward,” Dalton said. “That’s all this is.”
“I say go for it,” Samson said. “We’re all going to get killed in this crazy war, anyway.”
My attention turned toward Gwen. “What do you think?”
She looked frightened. “I don’t want to die right now under their guns. I’ll take another week of life and hope for more.”
I nodded and killed the ship’s acceleration. Turning my attention aft, I was able to spot our carrier and focus on it. Hammerhead dutifully swung around and headed home.
“Everyone hang on,” I said. “I’m going to kill the anti-gravity system.”
“What?”
They scrambled to strap in. I killed the anti-grav and we were suddenly being torn apart by what registered to my sym as mild acceleration compared to what we’d been pulling before.
Handling the ship as gently as I could, I contacted Killer again.
“Traffic control,” I said. “We have regained control of our spacecraft. There was an accident, and we’ve got an injury. We’re heading for base. Please clear for an emergency landing.”
“Hammerhead, switch over your manual controls to remote-enabled when you get within ten thousand kilometers. We’ll take over from there.”
All around us, I saw a cluster of thirty fighters imitating our maneuvering. They swung close, examining us curiously.
My crew stared out at them, able to see them with their naked eyes, they were so close.
“You weren’t lying,” Dalton said. “Do you really think they would have shot us down?”
“No army likes deserters,” Samson said.
No one else spoke while we flew back to Killer. When we got close, I engaged the remote piloting option, and we were drawn up into the carrier.
Five minutes later, we opened the hatch. A dozen armed troops surrounded our fighter. They aimed their disruptors at us, and we put our hands on our heads. These weapons didn’t look like much, but they weren’t going to fire on low power this time.
An angry group of thumping creatures with bulging back muscles and skins like rhino-leather boarded Hammerhead. They marched us off the ship, took our sidearms, and shoved us into our group pod.
The pod sank into the deck. It had become a prison again. I had no idea what they were going to do with us. They hadn’t even asked any questions.
But I didn’t think they were happy about our attempt to go AWOL.
=19=
Shaw ran his eyes over a flimsy slip of screen-paper. These computers, which were like sheets of cloth, could display anything you desired. They were lightyears ahead of conventional tablets and notebooks back on Earth.
Lightweight, highly responsive and intuitive to use, screen-papers were everywhere aboard ship. We’d all been issued a personal unit as well when we’d qualified for flight training.
“You’ve all been reduced in status,” Shaw said. “Your failure has lowered my rank as well, because I’m your immediate superior.”
I saw his triangle was now silver. My crew had carried silver circles, now they were coppery, and mine was silver. What surprised me was they changed on their own. Apparently you didn’t have to pin on new ones. They must be controlled remotely.
“Sir,” I began, having worked out my lie ahead of time. “I accidently disabled the gravity controls. Commander Tand was knocked unconscious as a result and—”
Shaw threw up an irritated hand. “Save your lies. The investigation will be conclusive.”
“Who will perform this investigation?” I asked.
“Commander Tand, of course.”
Dalton made a pained face.
“I see…” I said. “That seems like an easy way to bring down a competitor, don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about?” Shaw demanded.
“Officers gain rank by dueling or outperforming their superiors, right?”
“Of course. There is no other way.”
“Ah, but there is,” I said. “An opportunistic officer could claim another man’s underlings were insubordinate. That way, the rival’s score would suffer without requiring any direct conflict.”
Shaw curled his lips back to show me an overabundance of teeth. “This is why I hate primates! You think like dishonorable dogs!”
I cocked my head to one side. “Then it’s happened before? Good officers have been reduced in this way?”
“Yes, it has happened. Honest predators always lose against such tactics. Most of our top commanders are primates precisely because you’re naturally underhanded!”
This was all news to me, and my mind was churning as to how to use this tidbit. I knew that I was considered by everyone aboard to be a sneaky primate. If they were going to prejudge me anyway, I figured I might as well own it.
“Listen, Shaw,” I said. “There’s no need for you to join in our punishment. I’ll take full responsibility. I’m a new pilot, flying for the first time. The fault was mine.”
He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Don’t you think I know that?” he demanded. “But your failure is my failure.”
“It doesn’t have to be. It’s unreasonable to expect a perfect performance from a rookie pilot. Do all your pilots fly like experts their first time out in space?”
He shrugged and chuckled.
“No,” he admitted. “Most of them fly like birds with a broken wing.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I can fly, but my mistake was due to natural distraction. I was overwhelmed by open space. Disoriented.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “Why are you so willing to take all the blame?” he demanded.
“Because that’s my path to honor.”
He showed me his teeth again, but I could tell he was beginning to buy it. I only hoped there wasn’t a log someplace recording the fact that I’d waited a full three minutes after Tand was knocked out to turn off the anti-grav.
“You’ll learn your fate during the next work period,” he said at last.
Then the pod doors shut, and we were locked in for the night.
/> We schemed all night long, just the way primates everywhere tended to do, apparently. When the pod doors opened again, we had our stories straight. Everyone’s report would match down to the last detail.
But, as it turned out, none of that mattered. Commander Tand himself opened the pod at the start of the next shift, and he looked at us with baleful eyes.
“Here is my fine pack of failures,” he said. “It took all I could do to prevent them from gassing your pod while you slept in it.”
None of us had slept much, but we’d never thought it might be our last moments of life. We all stayed quiet and listened.
“Scoundrels, all of you,” he said. “When that anti-grav system was accidentally disabled, you should have contacted traffic control immediately. Instead, you tried to fly back to Earth!”
I blinked three times before that sank in. When it did, I lowered my head in shame and mumbled an earnest apology.
“I’m sorry sir,” I said. “I’d only learned how to fly Hammerhead minutes before the accident.”
“That’s what saved you,” he said. “I emphasized the stepped-up training schedule. I explained that your home planet was probably the only landmark you knew in space. Still, it was a hard sell. Most of the upper officers are primates, you know.”
“Is that right?” I asked, as if it was news to me.
“Yes, and like you, they’re suspicious of the motives of others. Predators are always more direct. Your type—creatures that have always been the hunted as well as the hunters—you’re always filled with guile, treacherous.”
It was clear when he said these words that he believed there was nothing lower in the cosmos than a primate. Still, he was giving me more hope than ever. He spoke of these things as if they were foreign ideas that he’d recently learned about and didn’t yet fully comprehend. I could barely believe my luck, but it sounded like the Commander was falling for it.
Over the last few weeks, I’d come to understand that even though everyone aboard was genetically related, we weren’t all alike. We’d evolved on separate worlds for many generations. We’d taken on characteristics that were unique to our backgrounds and our personalities.