Exo

by Fonda Lee

  “Why are you lecturing me?” Donovan shouted. “I’m a stripe! I swear on the Accord! But it’s not that simple; not everyone in Sapience is the same. Maybe the group does bad things, but each individual—”

  “Is personally responsible,” his father finished. “You want to know the truth. Very well. ‘Max’ was questioned this afternoon. She confessed to being involved in last year’s Denver bombings—the ones that killed thirty-two government workers, including two exos, and five innocent bystanders. She helped to plan the assassination of Dr. Stuckart, the leading scientist-in-erze studying light-plus transfer point stability—you might recall that his entire research team was murdered.” His father held up the empty bottle of armor juice. “There was also the narrowly averted plot to poison half a dozen algae farms, along with factories producing dietary supplements for exos. Should I go on?”

  “No,” Donovan said miserably.

  His father pinned him with a fearfully intense gaze. “She took you to a secret Sapience laboratory. Why?”

  “She … she wanted to know if an exocel could be removed.”

  “And you were going to let her try?”

  “No!” Donovan cringed. “Father, no. God. I’m not suicidal.”

  The Prime Liaison’s face relaxed, very slightly. He placed the bottle back on the table. “She told me once that she would rather see you dead than armored. The entire time you were in Sapience hands, I was afraid she would find you and take advantage of your vulnerability to twist your thoughts, to convince you of things that aren’t true.”

  Donovan sat down hard.

  His father gave him a long look, then sighed. “Tell me,” he said, “what do exos represent that Sapience fears so much?”

  Donovan rolled his head back and groaned at the rhetorical questioning. “Everything they can’t stand: cooperationism, zhree technology, the government—”

  “Progress, Donovan.” His father began to pace in front of the coffee table. “The zhree have advantages over us: They live longer, they cooperate better, they’re hardier, more adaptable. The erze are more stable than human institutions, and exocels protect against radiation and harsh conditions on new planets. The zhree built a far-flung, space-faring empire. At the time of the Landing, we humans had never gone past the Moon.” The Prime Liaison stopped pacing and dropped the entire weight of his gaze on his son. “Exos have the same advantages as the zhree. If we humans are to control our own destiny, it won’t be through war with the zhree but by rising to their level. By reaching the stars ourselves. You are the future of humanity. That’s what the reactionaries fear.”

  “Did you have me Hardened to get back at Mom? To prove you’d won so she’d never come back?”

  A change came swiftly over his father’s face. It was a subtle but menacing shift, like a storm cloud appearing in the sky. “I had you Hardened to give you a future.” Ugly lines deepened between the Prime Liaison’s nose and the corners of his mouth. His next words were spoken barely above a whisper, but they were as clear and cutting as fractured glass. “You insult me, Donovan.”

  They glared at each other for a long, silent minute. To his shame, Donovan looked away first. He heard his father turn and begin to ascend the stairs, one loud step at a time.

  Donovan got to his feet and followed his father to the foot of the staircase. “What will happen to Mom?”

  His father kept walking. “That is for the courts to decide.”

  “She’ll be convicted of treason and terrorism. They’ll send her to the atomizer.”

  “It is out of my hands.”

  Something inside Donovan snapped. “You’re the Prime Liaison!” His father’s bodyguards outside of the house could probably hear him shouting, but he didn’t care. “She’s still my mom. She used to be your wife. Doesn’t that mean anything?” He gripped the banister and ran up the steps after his father. “You could keep her from getting the death penalty. You have the power to do that, I know you do. You have the influence to get the courts to make an exception.”

  His father turned slowly. “Haven’t I taught you anything? Power and responsibility go hand in hand. When I go to the Towers, it is as the emissary of humankind for this entire country. It would be wrong of me to abuse that position.” He scowled down at Donovan. “Once, only once, have I used my influence to make an exception. I let a criminal escape prosecution, and then I sealed her file. It was a mistake, made in a moment of emotional weakness. Others paid the price. I won’t do it again.”

  “Please, Father.” Donovan cringed at the note of pleading creeping into his voice, but he plowed on. “There’ll be nothing left of her. It’ll be a public spectacle.”

  His father was terse. “The public event is for us humans, you know that.”

  Donovan clenched his jaw so hard he could feel it in his eye sockets. You could kill a non-Hardened human in all sorts of ways, but atomization was the only instant, painless way to kill a creature with an impermeable exocel, and thus the only legal form of capital punishment in the Commonwealth. During one heavy period of insurgency many decades ago, rumors began flying that certain executed criminal leaders were not dead after all, because no bodies had been produced by the government. So Congress had petitioned the zhree to allow for public executions. Donovan used to be able to see the excellent logic of it—for those who glorified martyrdom, it was thoroughly unsatisfying to wink out of existence without fanfare. No suffering. No angry mob and weeping relatives carrying your coffin through the streets. Simply … gone. As a soldier-in-erze, he agreed heartily with the practice. Right now, it seemed diabolical.

  “People will understand if you intervene,” Donovan insisted, desperation climbing into his voice now. Did his father have to be so principled and stone-hearted about everything? “You can’t expect me to watch her being led out and vaporized! Even you can’t be that cruel.”

  “Is that what you think my motive is? Cruelty?” His father descended until he stood one step above Donovan. The storm cloud that had been brooding on his face darkened to true anger, the corners of his eyes tightening, as they had last night, when staring at the ex-wife he hadn’t seen in a dozen years. “You are a Hardened and sworn soldier-in-erze. An officer of the Global Security and Pacification Forces. I realize that you have a romanticized image of the mother you remember as a small child, but you, of all people, know the importance of upholding the law!” He paused, his shoulders heaving, and Donovan, his stomach in tight knots, fought the instinctive urge to shrink from the weight of his father’s authority. The Prime Liaison’s voice lowered. “This is precisely why I did not tell you the truth earlier. You don’t have the mental fortitude that the markings on your hands suggest. Are you no longer in erze? What did that woman tell you in the days you were with her?”

  “She said you’re a ruthless, self-serving egomaniac,” Donovan said. “And she’s right.”

  His father’s hand swung up and arced down to strike him hard across the face.

  Donovan flinched, waiting for the blow to land. It didn’t. His father’s hand hung, trembling and suspended, over Donovan’s turned face, as if arrested by some unseen force. Dominick Reyes’s mouth twisted in pained disbelief and shame. Only then did Donovan realize he’d armored fully—harder than necessary, harder than mere reflex. The impact would have broken and bloodied his father’s hand.

  His father had never struck him before.

  Even so, you didn’t raise battle armor to your parents. You just didn’t.

  For a second, both of them were stunned into immobility. Then, with what felt like wrenching effort, Donovan dropped his exocel completely. He drew every fiber of panotin back into himself and waited, bare-skinned, paralyzed between anger and shame, for his father to administer whatever punishment he was now justified in delivering.

  The elder Reyes lowered his hand slowly, wrapping it around the banister, his knuckles white. “This is a trying time for us, Donovan.” His voice was a monotone whisper. “Tomorrow the High Speaker
will be here. Inspecting. Asking questions. I’m told he’s not like his predecessors, not a supporter of the frontier colonies. It’s vital that we present a unified front. You will be there to stand honor guard with your erze, and you will not allow your emotions to interfere with anything that happens this week. Is that clear?”

  Donovan swallowed a bitter lump. “Yes, sir.”

  “You must trust me on this, son. It’s important.” His father climbed the rest of the steps without looking back again.

  Donovan watched him go. Then he slunk back to the sofa and sat, staring out the window at the lit spires of the Towers.

  When Donovan awoke on the sofa in the morning, it was to the sound of Jet buzzing the security system. When he opened the door, Jet took one look at him and said, “You had it out with him, didn’t you?”

  Donovan left the door open and headed up the stairs without answering. “I need a shower.”

  It was still dark outside, but his father was already gone, having taken the state skimmercar and his bodyguards with him. Donovan hadn’t even heard him leave. Deep sleep had not erased any of Donovan’s surreal emotional exhaustion. He felt as hollow as a drum. Partway through his shower, he realized he no longer had a five-minute water limit and stood under the blissfully hot spray for ten more. His mind drifted; he wondered where Anya was now, whether she was okay.

  Jet had brought Donovan’s dress uniform over from his locker in SecPac Central Command and left it in his room, along with a comm unit and sidearm to replace the ones that had been taken from Donovan when he’d been captured. Donovan shrugged on the starched fabric and stared at himself in the mirror as he fastened each of the small gold buttons. Cleaned up, freshly shaved, and in uniform, he still looked every bit the upstanding soldier-in-erze, the son of the Prime Liaison, a shining example of interspecies cooperation.

  He went downstairs. Jet had turned on the morning news. They stood in the kitchen, munching buttered toast and watching Commander Tate hold a press conference. The Commander looked as if she hadn’t slept in days; she had bags under her eyes as dark as bruises, but she could barely contain the gloat of triumph in her voice as she made the latest official SecPac statement about the Black Hills offensive. The updated figures were: sixty-three insurgents killed, thirty-nine captured, and twenty-five still suspected to be at large. She also emphasized that a strike team had safely recovered the Prime Liaison’s son, killing two of his kidnappers (Reed had bled out in the stealthcopter), and capturing a third, the well-known Sapience propagandist leader known as “Max.” “We have dealt a major blow to the enemy,” the Commander declared.

  “She’s going to milk this big-time for Peace Day.” Jet slurped noisily at an oversized mug of coffee.

  The news shifted to show a series of politicians standing up in Congress to commend the swift, bold actions taken to combat the Sapience threat. Donovan turned off the screen. It was only going to get harder to watch. So far, no one had dug deeply into the identity of “Max.” Once it got out that she was the former wife of the Prime Liaison, the resulting media frenzy would take on the veneer of a bad soap opera. And he would be a part of it.

  “How are you doing?” Jet asked.

  “I’m okay,” Donovan said.

  “You’re lying. But you’re faking it pretty well.” Jet glanced at Donovan sideways. “Listen, I know your dad probably said you have to go to this thing. But it’s just going to be a lot of standing around. If you’re not feeling up to it, I’ll cover for you. I’ll say—”

  “No,” Donovan said. “You’ve saved my ass enough lately.”

  Jet set down his mug and fastened his own dress uniform. After a second, “You’d do the same for me.”

  Donovan attached the comm unit. He picked up the reissued sidearm and waited for it to calibrate to his exocellular body signature. “Like you said, it’s mostly going to be standing around. How hard can that be? Anyway, I kind of want to see it. Historic event, right? How often do dignitaries from Kreet show up for a visit?”

  Jet grunted. “Like any of the homeworld zhree care what happens all the way out here. The High Speaker will probably just walk around, waving his legs, while Administrator Seir and the rest of the zun trot out the dog and pony show for him. Then he’ll get back on his ship and go home for another fifty years.” Jet drained the rest of the coffee. “Step on my foot if I start to fall asleep today.”

  The calibration indicator on Donovan’s weapon went on. He holstered it. “Let’s go get this over with, then.”

  They walked out to the skimmercar. It was still early; the streets were quiet. The skimmercar hit the first major spoke road and took it all the way to the Towers. The sunrise haloed the looming spires in pale light, their faintly metallic sheen winding up and around the many arching causeways and twisting steeples. Thousands of zhree and humans worked inside, tens of thousands in the surrounding area. The Towers were truly glorious, unearthly and beautiful, and the sight of them made Donovan’s breath catch. It felt good to be home.

  Jet took hold of the skimmercar’s manual controls and guided it through the western arch to the main landing field. Several SecPac vehicles were already lined up around the perimeter. Jet parked alongside them.

  The circular landing pad was an excited, but orderly, swarm of activity. Zhree and humans of several different erze were rushing to and fro. Raised voices mingled with the frenzied music of shouting zhree and the intrusive babble of translation machines barely able to keep up with the demands of so many conversations. Donovan raised a hand to his eyes as he looked up into the broad morning sky. Not a ship in sight yet. “Come on,” Jet said. “Honor guard is supposed to report to the center.” They dodged through the crowd toward the easy-to-spot cluster of uniformed SecPac officers.

  There were twelve of them, all tugging uncomfortably at their dress uniforms. At Donovan’s appearance, there was a renewed round of back-clapping and smiles. “You’re here!” Vic exclaimed. The lump on her head had gone down a bit. She bounced on the balls of her feet, hyper with exhaustion. “Nothing keeps you two away.”

  “Nothing keeps a good stripe down,” Thad said, fist-bumping them.

  “Nothing,” Jet agreed distractedly, gazing at Vic like a painter enthralled by the colors of sunrise.

  Others started to chime in, to ask Donovan questions, but Soldier Werth chose that moment to make an appearance. His gait knocked a distinctive triple-beat pattern on the tarmac as he approached, yelling in song and gesturing to Soldiers to take up formation. Light gleamed off his battle-armored body and limbs. He spun into the group of humans and stopped, hard amber eyes taking in all of them at once. They snapped to attention, armor down.

  For some reason, Donovan thought of the video he’d seen in the Warren. Had he been alive at the time, Soldier Werth would have given those War Era humans nightmares. He had short, thick fins and larger-than-average eyes; long, powerful limbs and predatory-looking stripes. Despite his fearsome appearance and reputation for being obstinate and quick to judge, Soldier Werth was known to be good to his humans-in-erze. He treated them fairly and with respect. Earth was so far from the rest of the Mur fleet, Donovan’s father had explained to him once, that Werth was constantly short on Soldiers and relied on human allies even more than the other zun.

  Werth’s fins flattened in a gesture akin to a scowl as he surveyed the group of SecPac officers. “Twelve? I requested twice this number from Commander Tate.”

  Thad stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back politely as he waited for the translation machine to finish repeating the Soldier’s message. “Commander Tate sends her apologies, zun. A dozen exos is already more than SecPac can spare right now.”

  Soldier Werth hummed low—an irritated sigh. “The twelve of you will have to do. The High Speaker will be landing in a few minutes. Take a knee.” The twelve of them bent to one knee so Werth stood over them. The Soldier tugged the translation machine close and spoke in a slow musical voice. “The zhree you will be seeing t
oday are not like the ones you are used to. They are strangers to this planet. They may find you odd, ugly, or frightening. Remember, they are to be treated with the same respect as any erze master. You are paragons of your kind. You exemplify the mutually beneficial relationship between our species. Present yourselves well.”

  “Yes, zun,” they chorused.

  “Take your positions.” As they stood back up, Soldier Werth reached out two of his limbs and clasped Donovan’s hand between outstretched pincers, a distinctly human gesture many zhree had adopted. “Donovan. Every exo in our erze is valuable. I am relieved you were recovered unharmed.” His alien gaze was inscrutable, but his fins dipped in a solemn nod.

  “I am too, zun,” Donovan said.

  Soldier Werth motioned him back to his fellow officers and took off down the landing field. Werth epitomized the second-generation colonists—he didn’t keep humans at a subservient distance the way some of the War Era old-timers still did, but he wasn’t as informal with them as, say, Nurse Therrid. Five years ago, he’d scrutinized a room full of young exos and picked out Donovan, Jet, and a number of their classmates for his erze. “I chose your commander as well, when she was a hatchling your age,” he’d explained at the reception following their marking ceremony. “I’ve seen so many exos over the years, I have an instinct for it. I know which ones can carry Soldier markings.”

  The extensive welcoming party—human and zhree—had just arranged itself into the proper semicircular formation when the High Speaker’s ship appeared in the distant sky over the Towers like a sudden celestial miracle. Donovan missed the sight of it first coming into view; when the stir of exclamations made him look up, the vessel and its military escort of zhree fighters were streaking earthward, trailing thick white lines of vapor. People all over the Round and in the surrounding Ring Belt were no doubt stopping, staring, and pointing as the ships descended.