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CHAPTER 8


Their slow approach to the off-course location rapidly became moot.

“Base to Breezy.”

“Sammer?” Talinn cleared her throat and Bee clicked over for her to answer properly. “Breezy to Base, we read.”

“Base is under attack, repeat, base is under attack. No AITs are to return without further orders. Go to coordinates as assigned. Wait further contact. Confirm.”

Sammer did not give orders—no matter how helpful Belay had been in the last attack, the arrays were for defense. Eights were not truly in the command structure, and even if Base Two were compromised somehow . . . 

Confirm it—we’ll figure out the rest as we go.

Talinn repeated the orders, comms went dead, and she leaned her chair back to study the ceiling of their tank for five slow seconds.

“Bee. Go to the weird patch. All speed.”

Fast tank, confirm.

The jets could outrun them, sure, but on this planet, with its scrub bush and wind-torn low plants? There were no obstacles to slow them down. Bee plotted the shortest line between two points, they did their best not to brood on the fates of their friends, and the tank tore through the empty planet, leaving a trail of dust arcing into the sky like a flag.


“Can you reach Ziggy? Or River or Nips?” Their four tanks had been sent to different corners, but as far as they could tell their comms should be working, and it would be helpful to hear if their fellows had come across anything of interest.

Still no.

“No vibrations. We’re getting data from the satellites, but nothing’s happening up there, either.”

Satellites don’t show any action at the base. Even accounting for delays, either Belay lied to us, is providing cover at the risk of their own careers, or we can’t trust any of our devices.

“I don’t love any of those options.”

Life is hard.

“Nah. It’s so easy. Look at us—we’re on our own, out of contact, in a borrowed tank, on a cyst of a planet on the hind end of the war, waiting on the ground to fall out from under us or a secret base to appear out of scrub and dirt.”

I’m aware. Not sure the report summary is super necessary.

“You’re bored too. I’m helping.” Talinn continued to help by running her fingers over Sigmun’s careful series of stitches in the blanket, and keeping an unblinking gaze on the unhelpful screens in front of her.

I’m not bored. I’m constant vigilance-ing. Making sure we don’t get the ground blown out from under us.

“How’re you doing that, if none of our incoming data is to be trusted?”

As long as the vibrations from our passage matches exactly what it should, nothing else is close enough to kill us without warning. I’m varying our speed and the composition of treads to ensure it’s not an easy pattern to match.

“You really are clever.” The screens flickered in Bee’s particular sticking out tongue equivalence, and Talinn’s smile didn’t feel as unnatural on her face as before. “So not a ton of warning, but at least some.”

We do the best we can with what we got. It’s why they give us the big bonuses.

“You know, we haven’t gotten a good bonus in a long time. Should probably complain to someone about that.”

Maybe we can ask whatever’s haunting the base’s back door to transfer funds in our direction.

“Sure. Might as well look like all the way a traitor, instead of just being suspected because our brains are wired together.”

There aren’t wires in your brain.

“Now isn’t the time to get pedantic on me, Bee.”

Not sure there’s a better time.

Talinn flicked her pinky in the general direction of the screens, and Bee made her shearing metal laugh. It edged into normalcy, like any other long, boring, uncertain patrol they’d had.

Which was likely why in that particular moment it all went sideways again.

Talinn.

“I hate when you start like that.”

There’s a ditch.

“Is it steep enough you’re worried we’ll topple?” The screens flickered, then a sketch overlay superimposed onto the picture of the terrain in front of them.

I’m worried that my cameras and aerial view tell me it’s solid ground, but our vibrations aren’t reading right for that. Bee scribbled additional lines onto the sketch, indicating she had no idea how accurate the measurements were.

“Keep going wide. I’ll go up and look.”

Helmet. Medkit’s no good for head shots.

“Yeah, yeah. Safety is tops.” Talinn swung out of her seat, leaving the blanket behind, and stomped to the bunk. Vest, face cover, goggles, helmet, then she paused at the ladder and sighed. It took awkward twisting, and the reinforced sides of the protective vest protected the shape right out of her ribs, but she managed to retie her boots more securely.

Boots first. Then everything else.

“Hey, people with the limbs get to make the call.”

Really seems like you enjoyed it your way, my apologies. All your middle bones are mostly still in the right place. Don’t forget the LV setting.

“I don’t block it out just because it gives me a headache,” Talinn muttered as she pulled the ladder down. “Also it’s stupid. Just give us binoculars.”

More efficient to bake everything into the goggles.

“Unless someone’s corrupting all our programs.”

The goggles are too dumb to corrupt. It’s controlled by its buttons, it’s not wireless. No frequency to break into.

The film that made their goggles suitable for long and micro vision also had a slight warp that affected normal vision, but Talinn had trained her eyes past noticing that. She couldn’t train her eyes to deal with the odd shapes the goggles made when the different settings were dialed in, but she’d never mentioned it to anyone but Bee.

The last thing she wanted was anyone up the command line to find a reason to zero her and Bee out from active assignments. Way less chance for bonuses and a comfortable civilian life after their service.

She eased open the hatch a hand’s width and Bee held it in place. Halfway through her quick circuit she froze, unsure if she should laugh or start shooting or drop back down and pretend nothing had happened.

Is that . . . 

“So there’s a tank out there. Not one of ours. Just sitting on the other side of a ditch—it’s a big one, good call on stopping, Bee. Turret’s facing down. Don’t suppose it’s showing on any of the sensors and you thought it would be funny to scare me?”

Nope.

“Didn’t think so.” Talinn chewed the inside of her lip until a sharp bloom of copper reminded her to stop, then toggled the dial on her goggles to long vision in order to get a closer look.

She dropped down into the tank, and Bee slammed the hatch while their accelerated processing staggered over what she’d seen.

“Bee . . .”

It’s not—

“It is. But . . .”

It’s wrong, all—

It was Talinn. Sitting on the tank across the way. Perched in the open hatch like Talinn herself did at ease. But a cracked mirror version of her—softer jaw, crinkled skin. Her nose a little longer.

Talinn, but older.

Which was impossible. Talinn was the first of her genetic line. The possibility for clones existed, but after her, if she and Bee performed well enough. A possible cloning line to follow, not . . . ahead of her.

But an older version of her—her face, her posture, her lean—was camped out on a tank across an otherwise invisible ditch on the wind-torn scrubland of a planet on the hind end of the war . . . 

And she’d waved.

Silence stretched between Bee and Talinn for a long set of heartbeats. Not attenuated and strained as when Bee had been in the portable server. Heavy, slow, a deep current pulling them down.

Shock. The word could have been Talinn’s or Bee’s, but either way it sat between them, sand in the bunk, an unfinished equation needing closure.

Comms turned themselves on. Talinn shifted—a ponderous motion, as though her body had developed its own gravitational pull—and Bee fluttered the screens.

“Breezy to Talinn and Bee, UCF Eights. Want to try that again? We can meet at the ditch.”

Talinn had never wanted to do anything more. Or less. She couldn’t tell which, but she knew it was one or the other.

“I really did jinx us.” The words wandered out of her without conscious effort.

You really did.

“Want to go meet some us?”

Is blowing them up an option?

“It’s not . . . not an option. But not yet.”

“Breezy to Talinn and Bee, repeat: We’re not here to fight. We are here for you. Come say hello—maybe it’ll be fun.”

Fun.

“Or maybe we’ll all blow up. Either way, better than hiding in someone else’s tank.”

“Oh, we’re the worst,” Talinn muttered, wrapping a hand around the ladder behind her.

“I know, we’re the worst. Maybe it’ll get better. Come and see.”

Talinn took a breath.

And went.


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