The Hands We're Given

by O E Tearmann

  Escaping to his room, he leaned against the door and let out a long, slow breath. Day Two: official disaster.

  "Good evening, Aidan," Omi's automated voice remarked quietly in the room. "You have arrived later than I had been instructed to expect."

  "Trouble came up," Aidan muttered. Turning, he glanced at the image of the girl keeping a pretense of sitting on the edge of the bed. Finally, he flopped onto the bed, grabbed a pillow and covered his face.

  "I don't know if I can do this."

  "My auditory equipment is not able to parse that comment," the AI's quiet voice replied.

  Aidan had to chuckle at that. Shoving the pillow under his head, he closed his eyes. "I don't know if I can do this. Today was a complete clusterfuck."

  The image of his sister leaned in, a smile on her digital lips. "Then we will analyze the issues and find solutions to improve tomorrow."

  Aidan shook his head, sighing. "I wish it was that easy."

  There was a modulated chuckle. "It is only your second day. There is a saying. Third time, lucky."

  Smiling weakly, Aidan forced his eyes open. "Third time, lucky. Yeah. Maybe."

  Event File 11

  File Tag: Failure To Report

  Timestamp:19:45-4-2-2155

  "Guys?" Kevin almost ducked back out of the rec room as the blasts of noise slammed into his ear drums. On screen, holographic cars rammed one another off the track.

  "Aw, you gamma bastard!" Sarah wailed in her seat between the two cousins, waving her joystick so her car barreled into Lazarus's racer and pushed it off the other side of the simulated road.

  "Guys?" Kevin repeated, raising his voice, "Can you turn it down? Logistical question!"

  "Ever heard of off-duty?" Lazarus called as his car sideswiped Yvonne's into a tailspin.

  "Yes, actually," Kevin shot back lightly. "But I can't achieve the blissful state until I finish my mission report and turn it into Sector. Five minutes guys, have pity."

  Finally, Yvonne glanced back at him, smiled weakly and waved her joystick down. The game froze on screen, and three blank faces turned his way. Kevin's eyebrows rose.

  "Something wrong? It really won't take that long. I'll be out of your hair in a jiffy."

  "It's all good!" Sarah replied, but her voice was too high, too false.

  Kevin eyed her cautiously. "Right. Well then, why did half of Ed's delivery get removed from our requisition tally? I never got a report from anyone, hence my gracing you with my presence."

  Stepping inside, he dropped into a cross-legged seat on the floor, hands on his tab and eyes on his friends. "Did Ed get spooked by our tardiness and send a rig off before you arrived?" he asked solicitously, mind already lining up comforting words. It isn't your fault. Drone flyovers happen. I understand. We'll be fine.

  But Yvonne, who usually looked him in the eye when she was eager for absolution, picked at her fingernails. Kevin's heart fell. That was not a good sign.

  "We… kind of screwed up," Yvonne admitted quietly, leaving her nails alone and beginning to poke the escaping stuffing back into the ancient blue couch cushion.

  On the other side of the couch, Lazarus snorted. "We did fine. He screwed up."

  "Which he?" Kevin asked patiently, though he was afraid he already knew the answer.

  Lazarus stared fixedly at the screen. "The guy tells you to stay home. He drags us out there, fucks over the pass codes, loses us half a shipment, and now he's blaming us. I'm telling you, man, he's an asshole."

  "Care to explain that a little more thoroughly?" Kevin tried to hold Lazarus's gaze, but the older man wouldn't look at him.

  "Like I said, he fucked over the pass codes."

  "How exactly?" Kevin asked. He glanced from Yvonne, back to picking at her cuticles, to Sarah, staring at Lazarus. He wasn't looking at anyone.

  A leaden fear crept up Kevin's spine and curled around his brainstem. "You didn't tell him the secondary pass code. Did you," he stated woodenly.

  It had seemed like such a good way to reassure Ed, promising him a second pass code that no one would write down. If it wasn't written, it couldn't be hacked.

  But it could be forgotten.

  Silence. Kevin pulled off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. "You morons," he added wearily.

  The couch creaked as Lazarus jumped to his feet. "Hey, Kev, don't land this on us! You're the officer. You're the one who always does these contacts! Yve forgot was all. Lay off!"

  Kevin raised his head, giving the other man a squinting look composed of one part nearsightedness and two parts annoyance. "And no one reminded her?"

  "Who made that my job? If he doesn't know what he's doing, how's that my problem?" Lazarus demanded, opening his mouth to say more until his cousin touched his hand.

  "Laz, chill." Yvonne glanced at her officer, smiling weakly. "Sorry, Kev. Really."

  Kevin sighed. Slipping his glasses back into place, he ran a hand through his hair. "Tell me someone explained the situation to the commander and apologized."

  "For what?" Lazarus demanded, self-righteous to the last. "We didn't order the guy who knows what the hell is going on to stay home, and we weren't the ones who thought we knew everything about everything! He's the one who fucked up. He can live with it."

  Turning away, the munitions officer flumped back into his seat and turned the game back on, viciously racing his car down a holographic open road.

  Kevin's gray eyes narrowed. Slowly, he stood and stepped to the couch. With the precision of a machine, he took the controller out of Lazarus's hand and shut the game down.

  "Hey!" Lazarus glared up at him in bewildered anger, "I didn't hit a save point!" Then he met Kevin's eyes. Whatever else he'd been about to say died on his lips.

  "You may want to fuck over our last chance to stay together as a unit." Kevin stated into the quiet, "and that's your prerogative. If you want out, apply for a transfer. But, if you want us to stay together, do everyone the courtesy of borrowing a crowbar and getting your head out of your ass, because the longer you act like a petulant plebeian neophyte, the greater chance we run of being disbanded. Examine your priorities."

  Lazarus sneered. "Cut the school principal shit, Kev, I'm older'n you. You want somebody to kiss up to the guy, you do it." Grabbing the controller back, he turned the game back on and resolutely fixed his eyes on it.

  Anger burned up Kevin's throat. He turned away stiffly before it escaped him and stalked out of the room. "Idiots," he hissed under his breath. "Immature jackasses. All of them."

  Disgusted, he slammed open the door of his room, kicked it shut and almost slammed his tab down before common sense overrode the instinct. He dropped with a sigh onto the bed as the rage began to ebb. Overhead, his scrounged ropes of soft-light LED swung with the force of the door's slamming, making the lighting flicker. Even the painting displayed on his wall screen juddered fractionally.

  Kevin drew a long, slow breath. He had to get himself under control. Pulling off his glasses, he set them on the packing crate he'd rigged as a nightstand and covered his face with both hands.

  He'd almost punched Lazarus. The boy who'd taught him how to handle a manual truck after he'd spent a lifetime with Go vehicles. The eighteen-year-old who'd comforted a sixteen-year-old he'd found sobbing in a closet on the younger boy's third day in the Dust and never breathed a word. The man who'd helped to keep Kevin from running himself into the ground when he'd failed everyone and Commander Taylor had died. One of his best and oldest friends. He'd nearly punched one of his oldest friends.

  How had they gotten to this point?

  "This is not going well," he muttered to his empty room.

  There was a tentative tap on his door. He forced himself to straighten. "Yes?"

  The door opened on Topher's nervously smiling face.

  "Uh, hey, man. Hear
d you going down the hall…"

  Kevin gave a quiet bark of laughter. "My, I'm getting indiscreet in my old age." He glanced up, nodding in the boy's direction. "Come in if you want to. Shut the door."

  Carefully, Topher took a seat on the edge of Kevin's bed, staring at the screen on the opposite wall rather than the older man's face. The simulated painting's colors reflected gold in Topher's black hair.

  "Laz and the girls being dickwads again?"

  Kevin sighed. "That obvious?"

  Topher watched as the screen changed paintings. "Where's that?" He asked idly.

  Kevin glanced up, and smiled at the painting full of color and light. "A hundred or so years ago, that was a café on the Colfax Expressway. It used to be Colfax Avenue, did you know?"

  Topher gave an incredulous laugh. "The Shit Strip? People used to hang out there?"

  "Before Incorporation, sure. Before they turned it into a four-lane highway. Suppose they had to, with all the migrants from the Coasts coming inland." Kevin glanced at his base mate with a tired smile. "Granted, it had a bit of a reputation, even then."

  It was so easy to see the fourteen-year-old boy who'd arrived on their base clutching his small duffel bag when he looked at the twenty-year-old. Kevin still remembered how much he'd felt for the younger boy. He'd arrived in exactly the same way. Parents dead, still shivering with the shock, barely holding it together. Trying to be brave.

  And here they both were, both still trying to be brave. About to lose another family. The thought was a little sliver of glass in the guts.

  Wearily, Kevin gestured at the screen. "You know, we're supposed to be out here fighting to bring that back. But, some days, I wonder if that's achievable. Especially when we're so preoccupied with ripping into one another." Glancing at his hands, he sighed. "I almost punched Lazarus tonight."

  "Good!" the junior transport specialist exclaimed. "He could use it. He's been a dick since Taylor…"

  For a moment, the room was quiet. Then Kevin shook his head. "Toph, Laz and the ladies are the closest thing I've got to siblings. They kept an eye on me when I was placed on Base. They're essentially the reason I survived when I got out here. But lately it feels as if…"

  He sighed, shook his head once more, then reached over to lift Topher's favorite fedora hat off his head and meet his eyes. "Are you doing okay? If I'm this frazzled, I can only imagine how you're feeling."

  Topher gave him a dour look. "Kev, don't do that."

  "Fair enough." The older man replaced the hat, which made the younger roll his eyes.

  "I mean don't try to take care of everybody else so you don't have to think about you."

  "Was that what I was doing?" Kevin asked, blinking theatrically. "I never would have guessed."

  Topher did an encore performance of his eye roll. The screen flicked to a new scene.

  "Where's that one?" Topher asked quietly.

  Kevin studied it. "Old Union Station. Used to stand at the end of Sixteenth Street downtown."

  "Where all the fancy CES level trains come in and all the EagleCorp Security buildings are?" Topher asked, wide eyed. "Damn. They sure wrecked that place. Freaks most people out just looking down Sixteenth, with EagleCorp sitting there." He gave a quick twitch of a shudder.

  And no wonder, Kevin thought. After all, that was where Topher's parents had died in custody. Where Cavanaugh Corporation had made Kevin's parents' deaths look natural, EagleCorp had splashed the news of Topher's family's capture and killing all across the news streams, branding them as terrorists. Kevin still wasn't sure which was worse.

  "It was people who wrecked the place, though," Kevin amended quietly. "Not the Corps. The station got burned down in the Dissolution. Eagle just stepped in and used what was left when things fell apart."

  Topher kept his eyes on the painting. "Wish it was that pretty now."

  "Me, too," Kevin agreed quietly.

  For a few heartbeats, man and boy sat in silence. Topher drew a breath. "So, what's going to happen?"

  Kevin shook his head. Raising his eyes, he studied the painting as he spoke rather than looking at Topher's face.

  "Right now, I don't know. But just in case, Toph, keep an eye out for a base you like."

  Topher shifted beside him. "Yeah, but... I like it here."

  Kevin closed his eyes. "Yeah," he agreed quietly. "Me, too."

  Event File 12

  File Tag: Goods Acquired

  Timestamp: 2-4-2155/ 4-3-2155

  For a long time after Topher left Kevin sat on his bed, watching his wall screen cycle through its images. Around him, the base settled into sleep. His base. His family. People he loved, for all their vices.

  People he'd failed. Again.

  People who were going to be hungry because he hadn't stood up to the new commander and insisted on his place in the field. He should have explained his contact with Ed and its precarious nature. He should have demanded his field position. But then the commander had turned and looked at him and…

  And he'd caved. And they'd lost half a rations shipment.

  His fault.

  Silence slowly crept in to fill the rooms. And then the clock read midnight, and the base was still. Moving with care, Kevin reached under his bed and lifted out a black bottle. The white pill fizzed as he slipped it under his tongue.

  His fault. His responsibility.

  As the StayWake began to tingle through his blood, Kevin stood at the tiny sanitation station in his room and put in his contacts, glad the prescription Damian had worked up for him was still printing well out of their 3D rig.

  He turned and silently slipped out into the hall. He could feel the focus coming into play as the drug went to work. The movement of his muscles smoothed out until he moved like a precisely tuned machine, his reaction time halved. The painless tightness settled in behind his eyes as the cocktail of modafinil, dopamine and norepinephrine precursors kicked in.

  Sliding the door of his office open as soundlessly as he could, he brought up his screens, entered his password and his biometrics, and sat down to type.

  By one in the morning the first half of Kevin's work was done. Pocketing the data card his console extruded, he shut it down and headed out.

  Exiting the garage was the noisiest part of the whole affair, but Kevin had learned how to get around that little issue. Opening the maintenance door for the building's air filtration system, he slid himself and his bike carefully past the humming air filtration unit, wary of snagging his slick poncho on the whirring machinery behind the unit's casing. Then he was out into the warm night air, closing the door softly behind him. Walking his bike a thousand feet away, he glanced over his shoulder, the world made green with the night vision built into his helmet visor.

  No movement. Clear.

  The bike's electric motor sizzled into life.

  Kevin rode for an hour and a half, his wide all-terrain tires eating up the uneven ground.

  He heard his destination before he saw it: a low buzz as the harmless yellow-and-white delivery drones of the Sunshine Company, one of American AgCo's subsidiary brands, buzzed their way out to make their deliveries and buzzed their way back for restocking and recharging.

  It had always reminded Kevin of ancient pictures of beehives. Conveniently located in what looked like the middle of nowhere by American AgCo to ensure delivery drones had less distance to go when crossing the Rockies, it was fairly convenient for Dusters too, providing that the Duster in question was clever and extremely careful.

  Kevin met those specs. After all, Cavanaugh had put good money into training him. He'd started learning the basics of management for automated distributions centers in preschool. Who was he to let a good education go to waste?

  The thought turned his lips up in a sour smile.

  Finally the long shape of the delivery drone distribution center came into sight. Kevin
drew a calming breath. Parking his bike outside the short range sensors' perimeter, he got it covered, flicked the night vision off on his HUD. He pulled out his tab, bringing up his tracker.

  On screen, blue and red dots traced ellipses and circles within circles. Kevin studied the patterns. Good. He'd timed it well. The long range security drones that trawled the Dust weren't due in this area for another four hours if they kept to schedule, and the Sunshine Food Delivery Center's own short-range guard drones were busy patrolling the warehouses.

  Carefully, Kevin pulled the small black square of a signal box from his pocket. Calibrating it, he hit the button. He imagined he could feel the soundless blast as the signaller sent its code out across every frequency, exploiting a flaw in the warehouse compound security's diagnostic system. It would trick the compound into assuming it was in diagnostic mode for routine repairs and should ignore any human being crossing its sensor field or any breaches of electrical flow for the next two hours.

  Kevin smiled thinly. Now for the interesting part.

  Walking fast, he slipped to the smallest of the prefab block buildings, the windowless cube grey in the blue starlight. The door's key code pad gleamed black.

  Kevin carefully pulled a grey disc the size of his palm out of the inner lining of his slick poncho, activated the handheld EMP, and pressed it to the key code pad. His skin tingled with the electric blast, and the tightness behind his eyes intensified.

  The door clicked.

  Stepping inside, Kevin wrinkled his nose at the blended scents of stale beer, unwashed clothes, unwashed man and hopelessness. He supposed he ought to be grateful that the security foreman left out here alone was happy to drink himself to sleep every night, but it was never easy to see the big man sprawled snoring in his chair in this tiny, single-roomed prison of a living space, so obviously giving up on life and on himself.