by O E Tearmann
An hour later they were lying in the yellow grass, watching a tiny black box and the mercifully grey sky above it.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on." Kevin heard Tweak whispering in a staccato mantra through his helmet's mic. Kevin was almost whispering it beside her as they lay watching the delivery drone they'd picked out buzz along its trajectory, a box in its articulated grip. All the special runs and barter deals he'd done in addition to his usual duties to get to this point would be wasted if this didn't work. All the care he'd put into getting the little coder out here to run her test safely would be wasted.
He glanced at the readout in the corner of his HUD. "Tweak, we've got twenty minutes before we've got to head to the next test site. There's a ViperDrone pass-over and a satellite twenty minutes after that."
"I know, I know. C-come on, you f-fucker. Move y-your ass," Tweak whispered, her controller gripped in her hand. Under the drone's trajectory, her infrared emitter lay like a crouched predator.
The drone passed over it. Tweak sucked in a breath and hit the controller's button. Kevin hit 'record' on the control panel inlaid in his glove, and a flashing green light steadied into record mode in the corner of his helmet's HUD.
For a split second, Kevin was sure that it had failed. The drone flew on.
Then it stumbled in the air. It wobbled. It flew in a circle. It lumbered around and headed back the way it had come.
"Did it…?" Kevin began, but Tweak was up and running to her device, grabbing it up and hugging it like a pet. Standing carefully, Kevin watched her as she bounced up and down in delight, looking like a little kid who'd just won the spelling bee.
"Yes, yes, yes! Yes! Yes! It w-worked!" she yelled as she scrambled back to him, her slick poncho flapping around her tiny body.
"It w-worked! It w-w-w-worked!"
"I saw," Kevin agreed, unable to keep from smiling himself, half in amazement. This crazy idea had actually worked. Unbelievable.
"It worked!" Tweak crowed again, grinning up at him as she bounced on her toes, cradling her creation. Then she broke and dashed for their bike. "Let's go let's go next test site I wanna see! Wanna d-double check!"
Grinning, Kevin pulled the bike's slick tarp off. "All right, hang on, it gets rocky ahead."
He barely felt the pressure of her arms around his waist through the layers of two slick ponchos. As a bonus, his assurance had proven correct. She didn't panic about touch with this much fabric between them.
This time it was a small red and white drone with a bag. It spun in a dizzy circle when it caught Tweak's infrared-encoded signal before flying back the way it had come. Tweak whooped, punching the air joyfully.
"Yes! Yes! Hell y-yes!" She shouted so loud that the mic in Kevin's helmet crackled. He'd never seen her smile for more than a second. She was usually ready to take your head off at a moment's notice. And yet here she was yelling for joy. He could barely believe it.
Had this happy little girl been hiding behind Tweak's viciousness all the time?
Was that how she'd survived?
Maybe everyone else had been right.
Tweak was still laughing when she got back into her seat. "I g-gotta tell Billie! She's g-g-gonna freak!"
"You can tell her all about it when we get back, and-" Kevin started to say when his HUD flashed bright red. Behind him, Tweak yelped.
"The fuck was that?"
"Weather warning." Kevin replied tightly, blinking twice to bring up the readout.
WARNING. WARNING. HAILSTORM IMMINENT. WARNING. WARNING.
"Bloody hell. Hang on tight," Kevin spat, and gunned the engine.
"Hey! Wrong way!" Tweak's voice crackled in his ear.
"I'll explain when we're safe," Kevin snapped in reply. "Just shut up and hold on."
He pushed the engine to eighty, swerving around rocks and running the bike for all he was worth while he hunted for some protection, any protection.
There, an up-thrust of red rock like a dead giant's spine. It'd do.
"Hang on!" he snapped into his mic, and gunned the bike up and in.
Tweak screamed like a crow in his ear. And then they were into a crevasse and safe. Breathing hard, Kevin cut the engine and glanced over his shoulder. The cloud front was already racing across the sky, darkening the land.
"The fuck was that?" Tweak demanded, yanking off her helmet, "You fucking nuts or-"
CRACK
Overhead, thunder split the sky as the first of the hailstones came down. Gravel and rock sprayed up as balls of ice that would fill both Kevin's hands if he held one pummeled the ground. Tweak's jaw dropped.
"Never seen a hailstorm before, I take it?" Kevin asked, taking a seat.
Tweak shook her head, standing frozen near the entrance as she watched fury from the heavens.
"N-no."
Watching her, Kevin wondered if he had looked that way the first time he saw the destruction rain down. Bloody hailstorms.
Something this bad could do so much damage to their base. It could play hell with their slick tarps, their solar panels, or the delicate wiring that held all their systems together.
But he couldn't do anything about that now. They'd pick up the mess when they could tell how bad it was. All he could do now was wait.
"This is my third," he remarked from his seat on the gritty rock. "They aren't common, but they do make an impression. Take a seat. This is going to go on for a while."
Pulling out his tab, he saw that a message already blipped on the screen.
Message Handle: QueenOfClubs
Message: You guys safe?
"Liza's checking up on us," he remarked in Tweak's general direction, bringing up his screen and typing a reply.
Message Handle: KingOfHearts
Message: Undercover and doing nicely. You?
The reply came a moment later
Message Handle: QueenOfClubs
Message: We'll find out when it's over. Keep your heads down. Tell Tweak it's going to be okay.
Over his shoulder, Tweak gave a yap of laughter. "L-liza think's I'm a k-kid."
"Liza thinks we're all about seven," Kevin remarked with a distracted smile as he typed. "She's got a bit of a Big Sister Complex going. Of course, most of us are like siblings to her. We've been together long enough. She and Dozer practically raised Topher."
Message Handle: KingOfHearts
Message: Roger that.
Tweak was silent for a beat.
"Where's his folks?"
"Dead," Kevin replied with a shrug, "EagleCorp got them. Don't ask him about it."
"Yeah," Tweak agreed quietly.
Kevin glanced at her as he brought up a game, but she wasn't looking at him. Solitaire began in a flutter of cards.
Tweak's voice was quiet. "How about your folks?"
"Also dead," Kevin replied shortly. "Cavanaugh took them out. It's not something I enjoy discussing."
Silence.
"So that guy, Taylor. He raised you guys."
"Some of us," Kevin agreed, wishing she'd stop talking. "And some of us he helped finish growing up. Why the interest?"
"Way you guys talk about him. All you guys," Tweak stated baldly, shrugging. "It's weird. Weird's bad. People're hiding stuff. H-hidden stuff gets people d-d-dead. So what gives?"
Kevin sighed. "It's not a complex story. He had bone cancer and we couldn't get the therapy he needed. He died."
Silence.
"Huh."
"Huh, what?" Kevin asked coldly, his eyes on his digital cards.
"Just, huh," Tweak's high voice replied. "You guys're good at getting shit. All the stuff you got for this test. Food. Clothes. Stuff. You're good."
"Apparently not good enough." Kevin heard the acid in his own voice.
He switched the game to Metroid. He needed a real challenge to get his mind off Tweak's words.
The next thing s
he said almost made him throw the tab at her.
"You the one who fucked up, huh?"
Kevin, very quietly, snapped.
"Yes, Tweak," he stated, knowing and not caring that his voice was too sharp. "Yes. You win. I was the one who fucked up. I was the one who went eight days without sleep to code every credential we needed. I was the one who stole the proper uniforms and bribed people to take a day off work. I was the one who got my team within a dozen feet of the storage room and the cure we needed, and I was the one who made three coding errors that cost me the commander's treatment package, a bullet in my back, a bullet in my shoulder, a bullet in my best friend's leg and three days in the med bay. I fucked up and it killed the man who took me in, loved me like a son and taught me how to be someone worthwhile. You're right. The clever CES boy is a failure of the most abject kind. I was incompetent and arrogant and, because of it, I killed Commander Taylor. I killed him. I'm sure you're just thrilled. You were absolutely right all along, and you can tell everyone you meet that Kevin McIllian fucks up so badly that the people who matter most around him die."
He ran out of words then, his breath catching in his throat. Tweak was staring at him like a startled bird.
"Sorry," he managed, dropping his eyes. "That wasn't your fault, or your issue."
A long time later, Tweak cleared her throat. "Asked b-bec-c-cause I sorta get it. My-my issue, too. R-reason s-somebody's d-d-d-dead, too."
Kevin blinked, clearing his eyes of tears that had threatened to escape.
"What?"
Tweak gave another one of her signature shrugs. "B-baby brother. My mom. Got s-s-sick. We were broke. S-started s-s-s-sneaking into Techo dump. Found stuff. Fixed it. T-to sell. G-g-g-got me c-c-c-c-c…" She swallowed. "Caught. I w-went to j-j-jail. They d-d-d-died."
Outside the hail rattled down, pounding against the rock. Shards flicked inside to glitter like diamonds before melting.
Kevin swallowed down the lump in his throat. "How old were you?"
Tweak's fingers plucked at the hem of her poncho. "'Lleven."
"Eleven?"
"Yeah."
The hail banged down. Kevin's neglected tab went into sleep mode, leaving the crevasse even darker than it had been. Now all Kevin could make out was Tweak's silhouette.
He wondered what he'd act like if he'd been in a detention center since the age of eleven. What he'd be like if he'd gone there knowing his failure had killed his family.
He wondered if he'd be sane at all. After all, look what failing so badly as adults had done to him and his base mates. To go through that as a child…
"Tweak?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
Tweak's slender shoulders twitched in a shrug. "I d-didn't say. You d-didn't either."
Kevin smiled weakly. "Touché, Tweak."
The silence between them was brittle. Looking to fill it, Kevin picked up his tab.
"Ever played checkers?"
Tweak shook her head.
Kevin brought up the game. "This is pretty simple."
She was incredibly fast once she understood the rules. Halfway into the game, Kevin glanced up at her face.
"Tweak?
"Yeah?"
"From the sound of it, what happened to your family wasn't your fault. I hope you know that."
She stared at him for what felt like ages, Then she cocked her head and smirked. "Y-you telling me don't be g-guilty? Y-you?"
"I'm trying to," Kevin agreed.
Tweak rolled her eyes. "Asshat. Shut up. Play game."
Around the third time Tweak won, the hail let up. They rode slowly back to base, wary of spinning the bike out on the shattered balls of ice and the small potholes they'd begun to melt into.
The garage under the slick tarp was unlit. That was Kevin's first warning of disaster. His second was Liza's white face.
"You got to go get us photoelectric cell cradles or the stuff to print them," she rapped out. "We're down to ten percent capacity. Fucking hail smashed most of the cradles and all the wiring. The power storage unit's only got a five day charge stored for the base. I've got a specialist call out to help Janice once we get the parts, but we need them now."
"Get Yve," Kevin replied in the same tones. "I'll get packed."
Event File 38
File Tag: Fully Functional
Timestamp: 10-18-2155/ 10-19-2155
Kevin didn't remember a lot about the next two days. He had a hundred photoelectric cell attachment cradles and charge controllers to get ahold of. He sent Jim out to the Fringe communities, asked Yvonne to go bartering from base to base, and headed onto the Grid himself.
By day he shopped legitimate home improvement stores and borrowed the credentials of eight different ArgusCo employees to make what appeared to be legitimate deals. By night he cased warehouses, coded and recoded with Tweak's remote help and searched for inroads into shipping schedules in corporation databases.
Every morning, precisely at six, Liza and Janice sent him updates. Their slick tarp was holding. It was being supplemented with Tweak's first base-size transmitter prototype. This one told the ViperDrones that what they saw was just another piece of desert.
They'd shut off the lights and anything else that might drain the power storage unit. Everyone knew what would happen if their slick tarp went down.
Around half past seven, Yvonne and Jim reported in each morning. They'd each scratched up a handful of parts - thirteen cradles, twelve photoelectric plates, a few printer instructions and a few silica and plastics gels for their 3D rig.
Not enough.
Tweak wrote him reports each evening. She had bots out scouring the Net for any hint of any shipment that could help them. He followed every possible lead, anything to do with construction, with fabrication, anything to do with power production stations with possibly a shed full of spares left unguarded.
Nothing.
By the fourth sleepless night, his hands had begun to shake as he typed. It was a distraction he didn't need. StayWake would prevent permanent damage to his brain. That was all that mattered.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw it, scrolling past in an ArgusCo list he'd hacked into.
A new suburb going in near the Copperhead Complex. A truck of supplies being shipped. A semi rig full of photoelectric plates. Enough to use and hand out to everyone else in the Sector.
Grinning, he pulled up his Greynet messaging app.
Message Handle:KingOfHearts
Message Authentication x2zß
Message: Bingo. Standby for deets and ETA.
He ran his network mapping program and grabbed the rig's IP address. The rest was simple. It was child's play to get into the rig's damage controls and tell the system it had blown tires. It was easy to tell it to go to a repair station that didn't really exist. Scrambling its GPS was nothing.
Kevin got the message he'd been hoping for at 6am.
Message Handle: NineOfHearts
Message: Struck fucking GOLD :D Come Home. Party time!
Kevin laughed quietly and stood to pack his bags.
He almost fell asleep on the train that took him out as far as a station where he could slip into the Dust, find the bike and gear he'd hidden and go home. He noted absently that the lights were on as he stumbled into the base and walked down the hall, grey eyes too wide in his pale face.
Good sign, he thought distantly.
He knew his team wanted to see him. Everyone would want to see him. They'd want to celebrate.
But that wasn't what he wanted. Peace. He needed peace and quiet and to get his head down.
He was so tired.
There was a clatter, and a black woman with a toolbox came slamming out into the hall ahead of him. Catching sight of Kevin, she froze. He stilled.
The woman's eyes narrowed. "Thought for sure you'd be dead by
now."
Shit, Kevin's exhausted brain whispered to itself. Suzanna.
They'd put out a call for specialist aid. They'd gotten Suzanna.
The last thing he needed.
"I'm afraid you're doomed to disappointment," he muttered, brushing past her. She didn't follow to argue, for once. Thank God for small favors.
Out of her line of sight, he let his feet grow still. Where was he going?
His room would be empty and cold. No. He couldn't stand that now. But people? He couldn't stand people. Not noise and demands. Not now.
Warmth and peace. He tried to think the problem through.
Warmth and peace. Yes. He knew where to go now.
Nearly stumbling, he turned his feet towards Aidan's room and pushed open the door. Aidan was sitting on the bed, an injector pressed against the inside of his arm. Kevin smiled weakly when he looked up.
"Hi. Can I come in?"
Aidan stared at him for a moment, eyes widening. Kevin wondered what kind of mess he must appear to garner such an expression. His boyfriend fumbled to keep hold of his injector and set it carefully back on his bedside table before standing and crossing to the door.
"When did you get back? Are you alright?"
"Fine. Did the work. Got the delivery. Just got in," Kevin added, leaning against the doorframe. "Gridbuzz is kind of bad this time. Didn't sleep for four days. I hate that."
"Then you should sleep. I've got insomnia pills if you need them." Aidan kept his voice soft as he twined his fingers between Kevin's. "Your bed's more comfortable than mine. Want me to come back with you?"
"No. Want to be with you," Kevin mumbled, leaning heavily against Aidan, relishing his warmth. "Missed you," he murmured absently into Aidan's chest, head sunk against Aidan's collarbone.
"I missed you, too," Aidan muttered. He kicked the door shut behind them and wrapped Kevin in his arms. "Kev, let's get you sat down. D'you need food? Water?"
Kevin tried to walk with his boyfriend, but he found himself leaning more than he'd realized. He flopped onto the bed.