The Hands We're Given

by O E Tearmann

  They were almost out of the room before Aidan managed to clear his throat. "Um, logistics?" He hated the squeak that came out. The logistics team kept moving. Aidan drew a deep breath, forced his voice to strengthen. "Logistics?"

  The four people froze in the doorway. Aidan hurried across the room to join them as the rest of the base filed past, getting back to their days.

  "So who's Ed?" Aidan asked, and Kevin blinked as if he'd just woken up.

  "Er, sorry, sir. Contact, sir. He's a Go Systems on-call serviceman. When the delivery rigs break down on the road, he's the one the local ZonCom outpost sends out to do diagnostics, but we contract with him to arrange breakdowns nearby. He provides us with his employee codes for opening the main door on the rigs, and we crack the shipping containers and share the takings with him. The missing goods from the trucks are blamed on Fringers crazy enough to live out here, scavenging the stranded rigs. We make sure to leave burn holes and tampered wiring behind us. He's arranged something great for us this afternoon, two trucks at once, but Ed will start to look suspicious if-"

  "We waste all his time standing around talking, let's go!" Lazarus put in impatiently.

  Kevin fixed him with an icy stare. "We have ample time to brief the commander," he stated, every word perfectly annunciated. Then he glanced at Aidan, and gave a quick, tight smile. "Sorry sir. I'll go on this run, apologize to our contact and be back before sunset. With your approval."

  Aidan stared blankly at the other man as his mind buzzed. He was supposed to command around here, and he didn't know the first thing about what his men were doing. Maybe this was a chance to fix that.

  "No, I think I'll go," he suggested, wishing he sounded more sure of that. "I'll meet with our contact and make the apology in person. He should get to know me anyway."

  Kevin blinked several times. When he spoke, each word came out as if it was being carefully chosen from a shelf. "Ah, sir, that really isn't necessary. Commander Taylor's been leaving contact liaison to me for the last four years-"

  Aidan wondered how long it'd be before he'd stop being compared to a dead man. He covered the thought with his best professional smile. "I understand that, and I'm happy to leave it in your hands, but I'd like to meet our Grid contacts in person and see how our logistics team works in the field." He kept his eyes fixed on Kevin, though he could feel the eyes of the other three people on him. Don't look away, he told himself. Don't look away, don't blink, don't chicken out. "Does that sound okay?"

  Kevin was the one who looked away, glancing from the two women on his left to the man on his right with an expression that reminded Aidan of the lady who'd helped out with childcare on his home base wondering if it was safe to leave the kids to someone in training.

  Then the man gave him a polite smile and a nod. "Of course, sir." He glanced down, touched his tab. "I just sent the requisitions list and the passphrase we use with Ed to your handle. I'll be ready for a debrief when you return if you'd like one, sir. You've got a three-hour window before the next low-level drone flyover, and the satellites are out of range right now."

  Aidan felt his heart pulse in his throat, but he smiled back. "One last thing. First names?"

  Kevin closed his eyes for a beat too long to be a blink. "Right," he said with a quick smile. "I'll keep it in mind. Safe run, everyone. Better use the chill vests, it's a hundred and fourteen in the shade today." With a quick salute, he walked briskly away down the hall.

  Aidan glanced at the three base members still watching him, blank faced. He smiled. "Well, I guess we better go."

  He walked down the hall asking himself if he'd made the right decision as he read over the information he'd been given, but an odd sense of calm came over him once he was in the seat of the all-terrain bike. His layers of chill vest, slick poncho, gloves and helmet cocooned him, making it easier to breathe. Behind a helmet he didn't have to look anyone in the eye.

  The microtube mesh flexed around him as he shifted on his seat. "Go," he murmured into his helmet mic, and the electric motors on the bikes sizzled to life, humming as Dozer hit the button to open the garage door.

  The heat hit like a wall as they rode out, but Aidan didn't have a lot of time to think about that. Yvonne revved her bike and shot off, the other two right behind her, and he had to scramble to keep up.

  The wide wheels of their all-terrains moved easily over the wiry grasses, sending up plumes of dust whenever they hit patches of dirt between the scrubby plants.

  Aidan still couldn't believe how close they were to the Grid down here. They were still in the protection of the foothills, but there were hints of the city all around. They passed the ruins of pre-Incorporation houses. Their tires bumped over the crumbling remains of an old concrete walking path at one point, hints that maybe Denver Metro had been even wider in the days when this part of the country had been more forgiving.

  Aidan had heard once that this place used to be called Golden. He could see why. The land rolled hot and yellow all the way to the smudge of the Denver Metro Grid on the horizon.

  Finally, the grey band of I-70 came into sight, sizzling in the heat.

  "Covering." Lazarus's voice crackled in Aidan's ear, and he watched the man and Sarah peel off in opposite directions above the road. Good. They'd set a perimeter watch and make sure the drop-off happened seamlessly. He and Yvonne continued down towards the shining white rig stuck on the side of the road, the baggage trailers attached to their bikes rattling.

  A Go Systems delivery rig was a featureless white bullet of a thing on eighteen wheels, gaudy advertisements scrolling along its sides. But this one's advert panels were dead black, and a man was standing beside panels opened up in the side, tool boxes open at his feet.

  "Spotting," Yvonne added in Aidan's ear. He nodded, then realized she wouldn't see the gesture.

  "Right," he agreed. "Thanks Yvonne."

  She stopped just uphill of the truck, acting as a lookout for the interaction. So far, the team was really working well in the field, Aidan thought, feeling a little of the tension in his chest ease. Maybe what Damian had said was right. Maybe they really were a good crew dealing with personal problems.

  He pulled up with careful deliberation and killed the engine, not wanting to freak the man beside the truck. Pulling off his helmet and setting it over the handlebars, he tugged the bike's little slick tarp over it and walked down the embankment to the road.

  "Hi," he called when he was ten feet away. The man in the yellow jumpsuit looked up with a frown as Aidan came up.

  "Okay, what-" He got a look at Aidan below the hood of his slick poncho, and stiffened.

  "Man, I don't know you." The comment came out as a complaint.

  "Aidan Headly, Commander. Just assigned." Aidan had been ready for this. Carefully, he held out his American star pin in one gloved hand.

  The man gave him a disgusted glance. "Yeah? How far is it to Neverland?"

  "Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning," Aidan parroted, repeating the phrase he'd read.

  The repairman eyed him. "And which way's the wind blowing?"

  Aidan blinked. "What?"

  The man's shoulders stiffened, his weight shifting. "I said which way's the wind blowing?"

  "East?" Aidan asked weakly. "I mean, look I've got the requisitions sheet from my logistics division, but there isn't anything about wind on it. Here, I'll show you-" He dug under his poncho for his pad, but glanced up at the sound of the man taking a step back.

  "Fuck that noise, I'm out."

  Aidan's stomach clenched as the man bent and started packing up his tools. Fingers fumbling in his haste, he yanked out his tab. "No, look, here's the req, we're getting coffee, milk concentrate, fortified granola, protein powder and-"

  "Man, do you think I'm going to buy an emailed req list and some stupid pin anybody can print?" the older man snarled, glaring a
t him. "I didn't do nothing you can pin on me, and I just got these rigs fixed. So you can go back to your boss at HQ and tell him that I'm straight. And then go fuck yourself." Slamming his tools into his bags, he slung them over his shoulders, his old fashioned water-cooled vest whirring as his body heat rose with exertion.

  Aidan stood frozen, mind racing. The guy thought he was a ZonCom investigator posing as a Duster to test him out for fraud. The guy must know there was a chance he was under watch, and he was paranoid. There was some kind of second pass phrase nobody had written down, nobody had told the new guy, and they were going to lose this gigantic shipment because of it.

  Ed stomped to the side of the first rig and typed in the code that directed the vehicle to rev up and return to its pre-planned path, slamming and locking the panel with his employee pass card. The autonomous vehicle lumbered off the shoulder of the road and back onto the highway, already picking up speed.

  Aidan felt his heart start to race. He had to do something. He had to do something now. They were going to lose all this food because he'd fucked up. He was going to fuck everything up.

  Glaring at Aidan, Ed turned to the open diagnostic panel and started typing in the code that would turn the second Go rig back on and send it back down into Denver Metro, out of reach for the Wildcards.

  Event File 10

  File Tag: Reorganization

  Timestamp:14:20-4-2-2155

  Aidan felt his chest constricting with panic. The first chance he had to prove himself in the field, he was going to screw up. Maybe nobody would die if they missed this shipment, but he was going to lose this chance to show that he was a decent commander, lose their respect and lose any chance he had to hit the ground running in his new command. Damn his luck!

  He jumped at the sound of running feet and the yell behind him. "Ed! Ed DON'T!"

  Ed and Aidan both looked up as Yvonne came barreling down the rise, racing to stand beside them, her chill vest whirring as it cooled her down. She glared at the repairman. "Ed, you shithead."

  The man blinked at her. "Yve, what the… How do you get to Neverland?"

  "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."

  "And which way's the wind blowing?"

  "To the place where the sidewalks end, asshole. This is my new commander, what the hell? Why'd you send half our shipment away?!"

  Ed snorted. "You were late and he wasn't legit. Tell your new commander to get with it, because he doesn't know shit. I don't care how legit he looks, if I don't hear both pass codes I'm out of here. You know the deal."

  Under her hood, Yvonne's eyes went wide. "Yeah, I know the deal," she managed distantly. "Sorry Ed."

  The heavy set man gave her another one of his disgusted looks. "Yeah, well, let's get this show on the road. I want out of the heat. Move your asses."

  When he turned away, Yvonne glanced at Aidan. "Commander, I'm really sorry. We-"

  Aidan swallowed down his panic. "We'll talk later. Let's get moving on the shipment."

  They drilled holes with a handheld electric drill for the look of the thing, opening the rig, and Aidan and Yvonne loaded up their bikes with the boxes. Lazarus and Sarah took turns coming down to load their bikes as well, keeping one person on guard at all times.

  Nobody said a word, but by their body language Aidan knew how his crew were reacting. Yvonne was contrite, but the other two were pissed. One more thing he'd have to deal with later.

  Finally they were loaded up, and Ed's share had been neatly loaded into his personal Go Car. He shot them all a glare as he closed the rig up. "Next time, get your shit together," he muttered, brushing past Aidan to enter the code and slam the rig's panels closed, locking it with his employee pass card. The Go Rig rumbled to life, moving off like a gigantic animal waking from sleep.

  Finally, Aidan turned to Yvonne and Lazarus, meeting one glare and one contrite stare. He could feel a yell trying to claw its way up his throat. He fought it down.

  "I should have been told that there was a second pass code," he stated finally, quietly.

  Lazarus dropped his eyes, his expression still sullen.

  Yvonne wet her lips. "Sir, I'm just used to running these with Kevin. I didn't think about it."

  Aidan drew a few deep breaths. "We lost half of that shipment," he stated, keeping his voice even with every bit of self control he had.

  Yvonne dropped her eyes. Lazarus held Aidan's gaze with narrowed eyes. "She forgot, okay? Big deal."

  Big deal? Aidan almost lost it right then. Yeah, it was a big deal. It was a big deal that they were leaving him hanging, that they had lost resources, that everything could have gone so wrong. What if the guy had really freaked and pulled a weapon? What if they'd lost him as a contact because they freaked him out?

  But he forced that shout down too. He refused to be the kind of man who screamed at people.

  "We'll talk about it at base. Let's get back," he stated quietly.

  Yvonne nodded. Lazarus turned away without a word. Feeling the hollowness as adrenaline drained out of his blood, Aidan climbed back onto his bike.

  "-complete shit show," he heard Lazarus's voice mutter into his mic as he pulled on his helmet. Followed by Sarah's sharp voice snapping, "Shut the hell up, Laz. We all screwed up okay? Drop it." Her blank UV-reflective helmet visor turned in his direction, and he heard her voice again. "Commander…"

  "Let's focus on getting back to base," Aidan muttered into his mic. "We'll talk there, okay?"

  "Yessir," the two women agreed in his ears.

  "Yeah," Lazarus's voice grumbled. Aidan gritted his teeth and revved his bike.

  Despite the heat, his hands were shaking when he pulled in, and he had to force himself to breathe steadily. "I'd like to see everybody in my office," he managed as the others pulled their helmets off, focusing on hanging up his gear in order to avoid looking at them.

  Sitting behind his desk, he hid his hands as the two women took the available chairs. Lazarus opted for slouching against the wall. Aidan swallowed hard. How was he going to handle this? What would work?

  Everyone was staring at him. He had to say something.

  "Look," he managed finally, "I'm not happy about the screw-up with the unwritten pass code, but I'm not worried about that. What worries me is how we handled it after that. We're not helping each other by copping attitudes, getting pissed or blaming one another. So, how do we stop this from happening again?"

  Silence blanketed the room for too long. Aidan realized that he was holding his breath only when his chest began to ache. It was Lazarus who finally broke the quiet.

  "You can send the right people out to do their jobs," he muttered, loping out of the room and down the hall.

  Aidan considered stepping out and demanding that the man come back, but he couldn't face it. Instead, he turned his eyes to the two women, noticing that Sarah had reached over and taken Yvonne's hand. Damn, they were lucky to have somebody they could do that with.

  "Do you guys think that's the best fix? For me to let everybody do what they're used to and stay out of it?" he asked, surprised by the gentleness of his own voice.

  Yvonne looked away. "I'm the logistics specialist, sir. Not the officer. I'm just…" She fell silent, staring at her hand in her wife's.

  Sarah glanced up at Aidan and managed a small smile. "We'll be more on top of it in future sir. Sorry."

  Aidan sighed. "Okay. In future, we need to get this right. Dismissed."

  Slowly, the two women stood and stepped out, moving as if they might break something on the floor if they trod too heavily.

  For a moment, Aidan hid his face in his hands. But he didn't have time to indulge himself, not yet. Forcing himself upright, he wearily pulled out his tab and messaged the cook. Not long later the prefab floor creaked as Andrea stepped inside. "Um, Aidan? You messaged me?"

  Aidan smiled up at the
sweet faced woman. Finally, somebody who had listened when he asked not to be called 'sir' all the time. The little girl in her arms smiled at him, and he managed a weak smile of his own and a wave. "Hey, yeah. Sorry to call you up when you're busy."

  "It's okay," Andrea replied with a smile, adjusting Henrietta as she spoke, "Jim's just working on something he needs to focus with, so I'm taking Hen. Can I help?"

  "Yeah," Aidan pulled up their food supply report on his main console. "I was hoping you and I could talk about how to stretch our food supply. The requisitions you were expecting got cut in half." He tried and failed to keep the frustration out of his voice as he said the words.

  To his shock, Andrea didn't so much as use a curse word. Instead, she sat down beside him and studied the readouts, handing Henrietta a teething ring to keep her amused.

  "Okay, yeah. If we do the menu like this… " With one hand, she tapped the hologram, moving and reorganizing food prep plans with Aidan for half an hour. Soon they had a menu that was almost as full as it had been, and Aidan's chest expanded. They were okay. They were going to be okay.

  He glanced at Andrea with a grateful grin, and she managed only a small smile in return. "They screwed up again, didn't they?"

  Aidan felt his smile fade. "Um, yeah. Kind of. Yeah…"

  He glanced back at the screen, considering. Again. This had become what this crew did. Screwed up. Mistrusted one another. Blamed others for their mistakes. And Sector expected him to fix that? Where would he even begin?

  The touch on his shoulder almost made him jump out of his chair. He turned wide eyes on Andrea, and found a wider smile this time.

  "Things will work out better next time, Commander."

  Aidan felt his stomach drop. Even the cook was trying to tell him it was going to be okay. He must really look hopeless. But he pasted on a smile. "Yeah. Thanks, Andrea. Feel free to get back to your day, and thanks."

  "Sure," Andrea agreed with a nod.

  For a few minutes after she left, Aidan stared blankly at his console. Finally, he shut it down and stood, turning away. It was already past seven, and he'd had enough. He couldn't handle any more.