“So are we continuing on this course?” Dev asked after a long moment’s silence.
Jess sat back in her seat. “Let me think about that for a bit, kid.” She let her head rest against the back of the chair. “Just keep us on track for now.”
Dev turned back around and ran her eye over her settings, then she peered out the forward window, seeing the bulky outline of the clouds overhead in the eerie glow of the infrared. She checked the clock, and snugged her straps a bit tighter, wishing she had a drink of water somewhere around.
She heard Jess unstrapping and moving around, but she kept her eyes forward, watching the horizon for the first sign of land, wondering how this latest development was going to change the plan.
After about five minutes, Jess appeared at her elbow, handing over a sealed vacuum container and opening one of her own. “If it were two carriers I just blew up, we’d have turned back already.”
Dev examined the container, and opened it, finding a cold, slightly fizzy beverage inside. She took a sip of it, wondering if Jess had somehow heard what she was thinking.
“But there’s still a team there.” Jess went on. “And I can’t just go back and leave them and not know.”
“Okay.” Dev nodded. “I’m sorry something happened to that other one. I hope it isn’t as bad as you think it is.” She lifted the container. “Thank you for the drink. I needed one.”
Their eyes met briefly. “There’s a dispenser there, behind the scan console. It’s tucked in back, you can barely see it.” Jess said. “Sorry. Should have told you when we came in. It’s not standard.” She was perched on the edge of the console, running the edge of her finger against the container.
Dev wasn’t sure what to do. She sipped her drink, watching her readouts and from the corner of her eye, watching the silent figure at her left hand side.
“Anyway.” Jess straightened abruptly. “So maybe we won’t drop. At this point, I don’t know what to expect when we get there.” She went back to her station and sat down, setting the container in a swinging holder as she went back to looking at scan.
Dev put her own cup down and ran over the engine settings, making sure the power levels were where they needed to be and everything looked normal.
Normal. Dev had to rub the bridge of her nose for a moment. Normal? She had gone from her classes in the crèche to driving a half strange transport into a big fight in just a sun’s complete turn. Her life could not possibly have changed more than it had in the last day.
Could not possibly.
“Thirty minutes to the edge of the storm. “ She told Jess.
Jess put her pad away and drained her drink. She got up and went to the drop pack, checking the harness carefully and running the device thorugh its diagnostic checks. Little more than a set of small, tightly controlled air jets it was designed to let a person wearing it fall out of the lower hatch of a carrier and land without killing themselves.
Or that was the theory anyway. Jess had several long healed bone breaks from using the thing, but it was safer and more controlled than either gliders or chutes and in an area like they were going into, full of cliffs and rocks, at least it would give her a chance at an upright landing.
She opened the harness up and got it clipped, ready for her to step into if the time came. Then she set up one of the big laser rifles in it’s holder on one side, and a grenade launcher on the other, balancing out the weight.
She made sure they were secured, then she sat back down in her seat and powered up the weapons systems again.
So what was the plan now? Jess glanced up at the pilots seat. Joshua would have asked a dozen times already, nervously messing with switches and toggles up there. In contrast, Dev was quietly running her checks, and getting ready to take the ship off auto nav, her eyes never ceasing to move over the readouts watching them closely.
Very surprisingly competent. Jess was uncomfortably stunned at the level of knowledge the crèche had given this kid in a week, aware of just how long it would have taken a natural born person to get to this level.
On the one hand, at least she knew the kid probably wasn’t going to drive the bus into a cliff. At least, not more so than any of the other techs. ON the other hand, if they could do this with just one week’s lead time…
Holy shit. Maybe that’s what Bain really wanted. Get rid of all the troublesome, stubborn artifacts in the company and replace them with cute, competent, smart kids.
Who he could trust.
Who he could order by the dozens if he wanted and not have to pay the family tender rights.
Jess stared at the back of Dev’s head. Should she let that happen? “Did you say you were the only one of you?” She asked, suddenly.
Dev turned and looked back. “Yes.” She said. “I always sort of envied my crechemates who were part of a set group. They always had people to talk to.”
Jess managed a brief smile. No, there would be no instant conversion. Even bio alts took the same years to grow up and mature as natural born did. So even if Dev did work out, it would be… “How old are you?”
Dev’s nose wrinkled a little. “Seventeen and a half standard years.” She admitted. “We’re not supposed to be assigned before eighteen, but this was a special request.”
A kid indeed. Jess did the math. Even if it did work out, she’d be either retired to a watchman’s role, or dead by then. So what the hell. “I wont’ tell anyone.” She said. “Let’s get in there, and see what we see. Play it by ear. I’d like to find out at least what happened to our four.”
Dev nodded. “I”ll do my best.”
“I bet you will.”
**
They were moments from the edge of the storm, and Dev throttled back to match the carrier’s speed with with the energy shot edge of clouds she could now clearly see on the horizon. She checked the positioning estimate and saw the edge of the Gibraltar outpost on the far position on the grid.
That was where Jess said they would start chasing them. She rechecked the sensors, moving from one view to another until she was sure they had a good view all around the shuttle so she could see things coming at them.
The scan would tell her positioning, but she knew enough about the systems to know that sometimes they weren’t one hundred percent correct. It was good to be able to see for yourself too. The sims did that - more than once she’d requested a perimeter view and found obstacles, or once even a stalled shuttle that the scan hadn’t reported.
So she checked and rechecked, feeling a nervous ball start to form in her stomach as they crept closer.
This was hard. Dev wasn’t sure she was up to this task, it’s demands overrunning the amount of programming she had for it. She knew what to do, but she also knew things would start happening so fast she would have no time to think about it.
“Okay.” Jess exhaled, bringing her systems live. “Let’s get ready to run the gauntlet, kid.”
Dev had no idea what a gauntlet was or why they would want to run one, but she settled her hands on the controls, put her boots on the thruster pedals and hit the toggle that would flood her comms with all the inputs of the carrier.
Instantly, the sound of the wind outside trickled in, and she could hear the thunder and crackle of the storm. The screens over her seat came alive with views around the carrier and she focused on the forward screen, where she knew the storm would roll over their target any minute.
Behind it, they were hidden. There was so much disruption in the atmosphere in the leading edge no scans could see past it. They were coming in hard behind it, the two other carriers to their left and right, a few thousand feet to their rear.
Dev’s heart started beating faster. She felt uncomfortable, her mouth was dry, and her hands felt shaky. Her forward display was showing the nearby flashes and behind her, she heard Jess hitting contacts, making a strange low noise as she did so.