The Senator’s tinny voice sounded out through the computer’s speakers. “Captain Tocco, we appreciate you taking the time to meet with us. I don’t believe we’ll need you again. However, are you available to meet again for these proceedings, should we need it..?”
As the streamed hearing devolved into murmuring and shuffling of papers, Tepora Lemaota watched the proceedings with a skeptical eye. Her round, broad-nosed face frowned as she considered what she’d just seen. Her sixth sense told her that Something-with-a-capital-S was going on. That tall white boy knew way more than he’d confessed, and she was very much immune to his ‘aw, shucks’ demeanor and his breastplate-worth of medals. As far as she was concerned, the latter just meant that he was really good at killing and stacking bodies.
Still, she was conflicted. There was a lot of horseshit being flung about in her particular, rather exclusive hacker circle about the latest situation, and it was pretty much a fifty-fifty split at this point. Either the Breakers existed, and humanity needed to pull together and fight them. Or the supposed alien menace didn’t exist, and humanity needed to instead fight the Coalition with all of their combined might…which, admittedly, would not amount to much against an interstellar threat.
Well, that’s why she was here, wasn’t she? To obtain the info which would cut through all of the bullshit.
Tepora pulled her keyboard towards her and began tapping, then paused as she thought through her strategy. What was the best play, here? One way was to be all technical and sneaky and try to infiltrate the necessary servers via what Hollywood would consider hacking…that is, lots of fancy typing on multiple keyboards like a piano-player on meth until you got to exclaim ‘I’m In!’.
But then there was the other way, what an impolite person might call ‘lead-pipe-decryption’. Namely, you found the person with access to what you wanted and then beat the password out of them using a lead pipe.
Not that Tepora would engage any in such crude or violent methods, of course. She prided herself on professionalism…even if, when anyone in meatspace asked what she did, she would reply ‘I’m between jobs’. She leaned back in her chair and pondered for a few moments, then realized there was one reliable go-to source when it came to spilling secrets.
She leant forward and began typing again, this time looking for certain email addresses…
__________
Chao hated, hated, hated with a thousand passionate suns of flaming hate this running track. She’d seen far too much of it in her recent life, and its red, textured surface now mocked her while she put her hands on her knees and did her very best to Not Throw Up.
Corporal Luca Martinez cruised up beside her, and that was the other thing she was now regretting. Sure, she now had a badass, lean-torsoed boyfriend who looked oh so very fine with his shirt off, but in this moment she now realized the cost of such a feat. Namely, he expected her to be every bit his equal in the physical-fitness department.
“Gonna barf?” he asked her, far too cheerfully.
“…Not yet.”
He took hold of one elbow and steered her off to the side of the track. “Hey, no worries, it happens to the best of us. Man, that first week of Jump School was nothing but one long puke-fest. Here I thought I was gonna learn how to jump out of a perfectly good airplane even when it ain’t on fire, but instead it was all about running my ass off towards hither and yon. Didn’t puke myself, but only by the literal skin of my teeth…by the way, I do know that McCoy yacked at least once during Jump School, juuuust in case you needed some blackmail material on ‘er. But trust me, she was not alone. I mean, we’re talking gallons of the stuff, you could see it all along the trail from the mess hall towards…”
Chao finally found her voice. “NOT. HELPING.”
His hands gently guided her into a seated, wide-legged position on the grass. “Right. Head between yer knees, keep looking at the ground. Just breathe, nice deeeeeep breaths. Like I said, if you gotta you gotta. There’s no judgment here. I’ve been there, done that, gotten the tee-shirt. More than once.”
She breathed as instructed, and felt her nausea subside. Finally she could speak normally again. “I remember, back when we first met. On board that Herc. Shaw gave me some barf bags. I still keep one on me when we run, just in case.”
“Oh, yeah?” Chao could hear the cheekiness in the corporal’s voice. “I remember that too. I also remember thinking, ‘what’s this utter smoke-show of a woman doing on a plane with us idiot grunts?’ I was even worried that McCoy might start to get jealous.”
She laughed. “Oh, you didn’t think that.”
Martinez placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “Chao, you sell yourself short. Holy hell, the first time I heard you speak you were going on about maybe this data means aliens, and then you talked more about orbits and Lagrange points…I mean, I was completely smitten. Then afterwards, when we talked during the quarantine inside Cheyenne Mountain and I found out you were also a fan of the ‘Foundation’ series? That sealed the deal for me.”
Chao now felt well enough to raise her head. “You’re pretty smart yourself, you know.” She figured a way to get the conversation back into her own territory. “Have you looked into further education?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a couple of possibilities lined up. I just can’t figure out which way to go. Which do you think would be better? I could go to Annapolis and become a nuke, but there would be a lot more paperwork involved since I’d be transferring to the Navy. If I go to West Point and do tactics, that would be easier. But, to be honest, that option feels a bit like studying on how to best use horse-mounted cavalry. I’m kinda leaning towards the former, but…”
She returned his warm shoulder-pat. “Annapolis. Nuke, all the way. If you can swing the transfer, of course.”
“You’re sure?” Thanks to her much-higher security clearance, Chao knew that Martinez knew that she knew certain things which she was not allowed to tell him. Not directly, at least.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “Good. I mean, I’ll do what I can to get through it. From what I’ve heard Nuke School is an utter, cast-iron bitch." He stood and smiled. “In the meantime, now that that’s settled and now that Madame does not appear about to Lose Her Lunch anymore…we’ve done what I wanted to do, so now it’s your turn. What do you want to do?”
Chao grinned. “Nachos. I want to eat all of the Nachos.”
Martinez returned her smile. “Fully loaded?”
“Of course. Along with some nice cold beer, if it’s available.”
“As it so happens, I know just the place where we can obtain both.” He offered her his hand to pull her to her feet.
__________
Zawahir Ibn Harith wondered, at times, what his forefathers (and mothers) would make of his current position. He was now the head of the Borlaug Institute, with both the good and the bad parts which that very elevated position came with. The good part was that he was at the forefront of cutting-edge research into medical technology; he was also in the enviable position of having way more budget than he knew what to do with. The entire world seemed determined to throw money in his direction. Not to mention he got to, every day, watch once-again-young people emerge from their ‘tanking’ with a new lease on life. It was a repeating miracle which made him reinforce his belief in Allah.
The ’bad’ parts included Zawahir having to get up to speed on how to give a good TV interview. It boiled down into various versions of ‘Smile and Nod’ while getting asked the most asinine questions in existence. He’d nearly lost it, during one particular interview. He came very close to asking the interviewer if they could actually breathe automatically. Somehow, his handlers had picked up on it and, to his great relief, Zawahir didn’t have to do all that many interviews anymore.
Right now, to his great relief, he was the one asking the questions. But, to be fair, he was a little intimidated by his current interviewee. “So you did volunteer for becoming an ‘Exalted’, am I correct?”
Nadash nodded. Her silver eyes were much more warm in real life than they appeared when viewed on a TV screen, but they still gave him a bit of a shiver. That coloration, plus the silver fractal patterns at her temples, made it clear that she wasn’t….normal. “I did. It’s something we’re made aware of, at a very early age . All of us have the option to be, well, converted. Not just auhn, of course. Every species in the Coalition is given the choice.”
“Made aware of?” Zawahir’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t quite understand.”
“We Exalted do not, hmm, what’s the English phrase…’push’ ourselves on others. We merely make it known that it’s an option. Not necessarily the best option, but it is there. My sponsors only want people who come to us.”
“Huh. So, forgive me if I have this wrong, but when you came of you age just strolled up to some Exalted and said to them ‘I’m in’?”
“It was that simple, yes.” Nadash’s serene gaze didn’t falter. “Of course, it wasn’t that simple afterwards. I had to be tested, to ensure both that this change was of my will and that my body could withstand the conversion process. Being merged with our sponsors was quite the experience.”
Zawahir breathed out. “I mean, I know that type of capability is well beyond what would be considered ‘proper’ tech transfer, at least as far as our current agreements extend between you and us. Still, I’m curious. What was it like, going through that process? And what was it like afterwards?”
She leaned back, putting up one clawed foot on her chair in a very human-like gesture. He couldn’t shake the notion that perhaps she was doing that to make her look more relate-able to the filthy organic-only people. “The process itself is mildly painful, but auhn are similar to humans in that we carry no pain receptors within our brain itself. It was more the idea of what was happening which I found disquieting. I confess, I had a moment of weakness where I almost called it off.
“Afterwards? It’s…hard to put into words. I’m not able to connect with the network right now, unfortunately. Otherwise I could have them compose a sonnet within a few milliseconds which would get across the feeling far better than I could describe.”
Zawahir nodded. “Of course. I understand your limitations. I was just wondering…do you think that some day humans might be also among the Exalted?”
Nadash looked a bit taken aback at the question. “Of course. Why not? Your neurons function much the same as the other species of the Coalition. There’s no reason to believe that we couldn’t interface cybernetics with your brains.”
He thought very, very hard about his next question. “Do you think we could start looking into it sooner rather than later?”
“We couldn’t do that.” Her tone was final. “Or, rather, I can’t do that. I can’t connect to my sponsors’ network, and thus I can’t get proper consent even if somebody comes up and volunteers!” She sounded genuinely upset.
Zawahir held up a calming hand. “I’m not saying anyone’s getting put into the network, even if they are a volunteer. There’s a lot of simple tissue testing we can do, to make sure that your nanotech can interface properly with human neural tissue. Are you willing to help with that? If not, that’s fine. I figure it’s good to get a head start on such things.”
She actually grumbled, something he never figured to hear. “Oh, 'just' a head start, eh? You humans are all about talking up 'head start' and ‘just to make sure’, and then next thing I know you’re going and planning to build a damned dreadnaught in orbit.”
Zawahir smiled “Just for the record, I’ve had nothing to do with that.”
__________
Kim ‘Stuka’ Foisy had achieved her call-sign thanks to a very poor moment of judgement on her part, back when she was still in flight school and had almost turned her very expensive government-issued helicopter into a lawn-dart. But she’d survived, as had everyone on board that aircraft. So now she only had the call-sign as witness to her previous error. But that was usual when it came to call signs. Oh sure, everybody shows up to flight school wanting to be ‘Maverick’, but the fact is that nobody gets to be ‘Maverick’. Otherwise, everyone would be ‘Maverick’. No, call-signs were more or less a reminder that, no matter how much of a god one might be behind the stick, one was also but a mere mortal.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
David ‘Chum’ Cham had also acquired his particular call-sign via some epic night on the town which he’d always refused to discuss. Kim figured that it was due to some equally epic puking. But right now, both he and Kim were in much more of an existential crisis.
“How the fuck did she do that?” asked David.
The two of them were off in the room containing the simulator, a huge windowless angular box mounted on hydraulics. It now banked and flexed in simulated combat while the poor sod inside got put through his or her paces by Kifa. The spidery alien was now both the darling of the armed forces as well as a terrifying force of nature, spoken only of in whispers like Nyalarthotep.
Kim took a calming sip of coffee. “Kifa’s an it, not a she. I know the cute voice throws you off, but the xyrax are hermaphroditic…”
“I don’t care!” snapped the man, then held up a hand. “Sorry. Just trying to nurse my bruised ego here.”
“Join the club. I mean, I’ve played Kerbal Space Program with the best of ‘em, right? I could even give Scott Manley a run for his fucking money. I thought I knew orbital mechanics.”
“So did I,” replied David. “I guess we’ll muddle through it eventually. We just have to get it to the point where it’s intuitive.”
Another figure entered her line of sight, heading for the coffee-pot. Oh. Oh shit.
It was him. The Pilot. Nobody dared speak his name, lest He Be Summoned. Instead, they just referred to him with the definite article.
The pilot poured himself a styrofoam cup of the usual and seated himself next to the two of them. “You’re both army, right?” he asked with good cheer.
Kim was very proud that her voice didn’t squeak. “That’s right, sir. Warrant officers.”
His weirdly-ageless face scanned them both. “Wow. Rotary is something I couldn’t imagine handling. You have my respect.”
David found his voice. “To be fair, sir, you did go much faster than we ever have.”
The pilot waved a hand, not dismissively but in an eh, it’s nothing attitude. “It is what it is. Look at it this way…when I got my ass burned to a crisp back in a certain shall-not-be-named country which contains some jungles, it was a heli that came swooping in to save my stupid butt. Once I was out of the hospital, I made sure to track down those pilots and buy them each a couple cases of beer. Professional courtesy, and all that.”
Kim chuckled. “I will thank you, sir, on their behalf.” She looked at the simulator above them, which was still tilting and flexing. “Have you been in there with Kifa?”
He took a sip of coffee. “Oh heck yeah. Kifa’s kicked my butt in that thing more times than I care to think about.” He smiled an oh so very smug smile. “But I got to take a xyrax to beyond Mach 3. For real.”
“Oooh, in one of the new Blackbirds?” asked Kim. “Do they work as we hoped?”
The pilot nodded, drank his coffee, and somehow managed to not look all sorts of smug.
David leaned forward. “But…sir. Are we going to be ready? Obviously with enough training time we’ll muddle through somehow. But what if the Breakers show up tomorrow?”
The trio now stared at the ground in thought. It was indeed a fair question.
__________
Tepora was next in line, and she smiled at the barista with a confidence she did not feel. “A large house roast, black, please.” Right now, she’d found herself in the middle of the ‘land mine goes click’ phase of Fuck Around and Find Out, wherein she had indeed Found Out what she’d wanted to find out but had literally no idea of what to do next with it. Or, at least, what to do whilst still keeping possession of her proverbial foot.
The barista smiled at her, probably because it was such an easy order to fulfill. “Sure! Do you want room for cream?”
“No thank you, just…black.” Tepora kept glancing around her, sure that at any moment some ominous SUV would come bombing up next to the shop, and then a swarm of black-suited assholes would tackle her into the ground and drag her off to Area 51 or some black-ops site. If she was lucky, she’d get experimented upon and then develop superpowers and then fight the Powers That Be For Great Justice. Or, given her luck, she’d just develop some flavor of Super-Cancer and then Die.
The barista, however, merely smiled and nodded off to her right. Tepora moved away from the register as instructed, hoping that today would be just like any other day. But then a voice stabbed into her hope like a bayonet through a balloon.
“Capuchino, please. Nothing fancy on top.”
It was an instantly recognizable voice, and judging by the few gasps Tepora heard that was the case for several of the other folks in line. She did a side-eye glance at the person now at the cashier’s place.
Yep.
It was him.
This couldn’t be coincidence…or could it? This place was well within the DC area, after all. Maybe he just liked the coffee here.
The barista took his order with a bit of a fangirl-crush aura, but otherwise kept herself together. Meanwhile, Tepora had received her own drink and sprinkled a bit of cinnamon into it (a must for black coffee, and she would fight anyone who dared to suggest otherwise) and managed to sidle away casually from the minor-celebrity-thing going on at the register.
She found a quiet booth in one corner of the café, with her back to the wall as per usual, and at a place where she could get a commanding view of the street through the café’s windows. Tepora sipped her coffee, relishing in the flavor combination of bitter oils and cinnamon, and for a minute or so she was happy…until she felt a presence near her.
Tepora looked up in fear.
“May I sit here?” asked one Captain Matthew C. ‘Toke’ Tocco, current Darling Of The Internet. He gestured to the bench-seat across from her. His dark-hazel eyes were kind, and absolutely not those of the stone-cold bastard which the hacker knew that he really was thanks to her digging. This was a man who would quite cheerfully put an entire platoon of soldiers into the ground, all by himself, if he thought that the cause was right.
Her brain froze up, but only for a moment. “Um, sure.”
He smiled, the same aw shucks I’ma just a humble country boy smile he’d given to Congress, then took his place. “Thanks. Nice placement, by the way.”
“Um, I’m sorry?”
Matt took a sip of his own drink. “Right now, where you sit, you’ve got good sight-lines for every entrance into this space, even those into the kitchen. Your back is to the wall. You’ve got a good view of the outside.” He motioned his head behind him. “I mean, I’m taking a chance with putting myself across from you, but I hope you’ll tell me if some nefarious uber-ninja assassin comes creeping up behind me.” He winked at her.
It wasn’t a lewd wink, so she responded with a slight smile. “Of course. That’s just, um, would you call it professional courtesy?”
He set his oversized cup back down into its saucer with a definite clink. “I very much would. I even approve of your choice of beverage. I would’ve ordered the same. I do like me a capuchino from time to time, however I prefer black coffee. But it would have appeared a bit weird if I ordered the same thing right after you did.”
Maybe this was still some sort of coincidence. Tepora peered up at him. Damn, he was still tall even when seated. She figured she’d still try to play all innocent. “I mean, I saw you on the livestreams, Captain. I kind of understand your background and why you’d think about such things. Sightlines and all that, I mean. They were pretty vague about your past during the hearings. I just sat here because it was open…and I don’t like having people near me.”
“I can very much relate to that last bit,” replied Matt. “But you saw much more than just the livestreams, didn’t you, Tepora? Or should I call you Nighthawk, AKA N16H7H4WK?”
Her mouth hung open for far too long. She knew she was busted, in the worst possible way. Finally, she closed her mouth with an audible click.
But Matt didn’t get all nasty. Instead, he smiled gently. “Relax, Nighthawk. I come in peace.”
“Puh…peace?” she squeaked.
“Of course. Look at it this way. You found out certain things.” He fanned one hand out in front of her, with its palm facing towards himself. “That is, of course, added to the utter mountain of bullshit also now getting thrown out into the ether.” He fanned his other hand in front of her, then interlaced the fingers of those two hands together. “Who can say which is which? You have put out certain data, other people will claim to have certain other data saying that this alien shit is all some weird nefarious plot.” His voice slipped into a truly horrible Scottish accent. “A Nefarious Plot Created by a Secret Society known as…The Pentaverate. A group made up of, the Queen, the Vatican…”
Tepora grinned and matched his quite terrible Scots accent and spoke alongside him. “…The Gettys, the Rothschilds…”
They finished together, “AND Colonel Sanders, before ‘ee went tits-up!” Their combined exclamation was loud enough to get everyone else in the café looking at them while the pair cackled in laughter.
Matt held out a fist, and she bumped it. “It’s good to know that the kids are still in touch with the classics,” he said.
Tepora’s own laughter subsided as she looked down into her coffee. “Welp. Shit. Guess I’m blown. For real.”
“Hey.”
Something in that simple declaration made her look back up. His deep brown, almost black eyes were kind. “I said I come in peace, and I meant it. We have a few options here, and none of them are bad. They’re just…options for you. The ball is very much in your court, as they say.”
She took a calming sip of her drug of choice. “I’m listening.”
“Option One. The simplest one. I walk out of here, we never met, and I will deny any such meeting to the best of my ability. Which, as you know, is considerable. You, in turn, will never speak of what you found out, or of this particular meeting ever again, to anyone. And I do stress ever. Otherwise things will get…messy. Not bloody messy, I’m talking legal messy. No lead-pipe-decryption is going on here. Understand me?”
“…okay.”
“Option Two. The more complex one. You tell us how you got what we know you got. My personal bet is that you got it via leaning on someone in State who has some spicy personal details they’d rather keep hidden. Maybe they’ve got lots of oddly specific furry porn involving Wonder Bread, maybe some of that artwork was commissioned, maybe it’s something else entirely. Fair warning, I’ve got a couple of Benjamins riding on that particular bet with a certain red-bearded menace who’s all goddamn smug now that he’s got a regrown leg alongside a brand-new lady-friend. Sorry, that fact isn’t germane to this conversation. Anyways, after you tell us that, as per Option One, we all part ways amiably and never speak again. To anyone. Again, threats of legal messiness applies if things happen to escalate.”
Tepora took a gulp of her spiced coffee and then braced herself. “It sounds like there is an Option Three.”
Matt chuckled. “Option Three is, shall we say, the most fraught but it’s also. in a way. the simplest. Ms. Tepora Lemaota, how would you like to have a real job? Speaking as one who now has somehow wound up with that job again…full disclosure, the pay is decent. The medical is okay at best. If I’m honest, the dental is kinda ‘eh’ but that’s just my personal opinion.” He tapped one side of his face. “I still have some TMJ stuff which the VA hasn’t properly addressed. I tend to grind my teeth when I’m sleeping.”
She stared for a moment, then snickered. “A badass troubleshooter-plus-assassin-and-sniper who has jaw issues. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Oh no you haven’t. Unless you come with me to the dark side. Trust me, Tepora, we’ve got the really good cookies. Not to mention, you’ll get to see all of the cool shit. And play with it.”
Tepora chuckled. “So you want me to become a glowie." She fixed him with her equally-dark eyes. "Look. Just...did it really go down like that? Some stupid drug dealers..."
He made a low wave of one hand, and she knew that she should shut up.
"It went down like what you found out," he said quietly. "In my defense, I didn't have much time to figure out options."
She took a more significant gulp of her drink. "Okay, I can understand that." The air between them was a bit fraught. On the one hand, if she took him up on his offer then she'd become one of them, the powers that be. That was something she'd sworn to herself to never do. However, maybe she could use her new position to get info out into the ether? However however, they must be expecting her to do that...this could be a trap.
"Tepora." His calm voice cut into her mental back-and-forth.
She looked up at him, and saw, to her great surprise, a slight misting of moisture upon the stone-cold-killer's eyes. "It's true. All true. The Breakers exist. We've had the NSA dweebs going through all of the raw data supplied by the Rithro. We've gotten the after-action report when they surveyed the planet and landed. It's true. Out there, in the direction of Delta Pavonis, is a cute little race of blobby-people who got turned into ash" He blinked, and now his eyes were hard as agate, with a light in them that made Tepora feel rather uneasy. "We're gonna fuck 'em, Tepora. Turn them into scrap. Not you, not me, not that cute barista who I totally saw you checking out.. Us. We are gonna go and make those robo-fuckers pay."
She pointed a very definite finger at him. "If I go in, you show me everything, right? I'll make my own decision as to how accurate the data is."
"Of course. You're a professional. I'd expect nothing less."
Tepora chuckled sadly. "A professional layabout, at least if you ask my parents."
Matt sipped his cappuccino. "You just haven't found your calling yet."
She looked up at him with a sour expression. "Says the guy who's probably killed more people than are standing in this cafe. What kind of calling is that?"
To his credit, the tall white-boy considered her words. "I'm just not normal. Fortunately, I realized that a long time ago and managed to focus myself." Off of her alarmed look, he continued. "I'm...kind of broken, Tepora. I never 'got' PTSD. I mean, I could examine what I'd done afterwards, figure out how to do things better. But in the end, I never felt 'bad' for what I've done. Bad guys needed to go away, I made them go away. End of story." He leaned forward. "You care, though. Much more than I ever could. Tell the truth, you picture yourself fighting the good fight against a giant implacable foe, right?"
After a long, long moment of introspection, Tepora nodded.
"No shame in that. Like I said, you care. Much more than I ever could."
She glared at him. "So why were you almost crying over some blob-people you'll never meet?"
"Because it's too big."
Off of her side-ways glance, he continued. "I mean...okay. Do you want to know about the very first time I killed someone?" Matt looked down. "We need something stronger than coffee for this."
Tepora reached over and juuust touched his hand with the tips of her fingers. "No, I want to know."
"I shot a guy in the stomach. We were clearing a house, and a guy busted out of a closet with a rifle, he pointed it at me...and bam." He chuckled and gestured towards his own abdomen. "That's a real war story. The movies are nonsense." He took another gulp of calming drink. "I knew, then. I was...not myself, anymore. I'd killed a man. I figured I was scarred for life. But then I slept just fine that night. No nightmares. And then I woke up the next day, and I was the same. That's when I knew. I was that all along. Someone who could open up another man's stomach and then go and sleep the whole night through."
He regarded the table surface between them. "But that's one man. One life. It sounds horrible, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that much. But those, er. 'blob-people'? Who knows? They might have had poetry and plays to rival Shakespeare .They loved each other, they loved their children. They might have become our friends." He looked out of the window next to their booth. "But now they're all dead. All of them."
"And you want revenge."
"Revenge is the number-two priority. Number-one is that the same shit doesn't happen to us. So. How do you want to proceed, Nighthawk?"
Tepora took in a deep breath.