When her family's cargo business folded, the first of her rights that Hitomi Sullivan sold was her right to vote.
At eighteen, it hadn't seemed like a huge deal. A single vote never made any difference anyway. And so that right was packaged up with those of other down-on-their-luck former middle-classers for auction. The package was purchased by the Tram Consortium, giving them a total of eighty-five million votes in the 2080 LAR presidential election.
The money had bought her a commission at the Lunar Flight Academy and kept her out of the worst fighting between the Liberal Atlantic Republics and the Eastern Pact States on Earth.
The receipt was taped to the ejection hatch cover in the two-year-old Starseeker fighter she had leased from the UAR defence forces post-graduation. Light cracked through the hangar bay, spilling over the receipt. Next to it, her maintenance tech had tacked up a note during the pre-flight.
"Don't even think about ditching my ship."
Tomi inhaled and rubbed the head of her good luck sheep, Dublin. Its plush ears danced in the zero gravity.
My life would be over either way, so-
The clamps holding the Seeker in its rack released, cutting her thought mercifully short and dropping her out into the black void of outer space. Back in flight school, she had had lunar gravity to pull her away from the carrier, and she counted on the jolt to snap her out of her pre-flight reveries. Here in outer space was the carrier's auto-pilot, guiding her ship slowly away from the rest of the squadron. Tomi took the opportunity to flit her eyes over the comm controls. Music filled the cockpit. Good, cheap music, ripped from the original vinyl. An ancient band called the Guess Who. Playing it in the cockpit was strictly against regulations, but life was short.
Really, really short for some people.
Best to not think too much about that.
Instead, she banged out a pretty bitchin' drum solo with her fingers in time with the blaring guitar.
"Leading Edge, Bankshot is clear."
Cymbal crash.
The blue field of Earth appeared from under the shadow of the carrier, waiting. A small convoy of cargo ships floated not far away. And beyond them... anxiety and potential death.
Tomi brought up the biofeedback display in the corner of her visor, showing her spiking heart rate.
Crash. Crash it.
A subscription to the readings was costing her forty dollars a month, but she had seen what happened to pilots who ignored it. They topped out and got their flight status suspended. No one (no one important) wanted a stroke in potentia guarding their multi-billion dollar osmium shipment.
Should probably cut back on the Amp, eh, Dubs?
The rest of the squadron fell from the hangar racks into the void around her as the auto-pilot eased the Seeker towards the orange and white shapes of the cargo ships.
A white wall, the Leading Edge loomed up behind her. Lit in the naked light of the sun, the behemoth looked like a slab of marble with the words "Tram" emblazoned on the side in letters the height of a football field. Little more than a floating billboard with a squadron of fighters behind it, the ship dwarfed all the other family owned carriers Tomi had ever been contracted on. All one of them.
"This is Lead," the comm chirped. "Red flight, pick up escorts."
Tomi glanced up through the cockpit screen toward the convoy just as another Seeker passing overhead blotted out the Leading Edge.
Dammit, Tyri, why you gotta fly so tight?
"Charlemagne, Bankshot." Tomi forced as much impatience through the comm as she could. "You got an entire solar system out there; you wanna use it?"
The comm fell silent for a moment.
"Bankshot, this is Wolfsbane." A male voice surprised her. "Charlemagne got bought. I'm flying with you now."
"What?"
“Charlemagne hit escape velocity. Her contract was bought out.”
Tomi eyed the pale blue of the Earth over the hull of the growing cargo ship. She had maybe five years to go on her flight contract if she was lucky. That meant at least five hundred more of these runs. Another five hundred passes through jaws of grim death.
Tyri had seemed like a lifer. If not quite a friend, then at least a constant face. One of the few other women jocks. And she hadn't even said goodbye.
"She fought two Zetas off a Van Blunt freighter. Five billion dollars."
"Well..." Tomi sucked her tongue. "Good for her. Welcome to Red Flight, Wolfsbane. Still flying too close."
"This is regulation, Bankshot. You coming down with rubberitis?"
"I do not have rubberitis," Tomi grumbled before switching off her comm. "That would mean I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy, am I, Dubs?"
Dublin the sheep shook his head as Tomi twitched the flight controls.
I just made the mistake of getting attached.
Cargo Three was one of the older Atlas class freighters. Over thirty meters long, its dimensions were carefully calculated to maximize load while minimizing loss in case of its destruction. Broad shoulders along its first third supported a pair of rotating engines to maneuver the ship. At the same time, the tightly grouped rear drivers propelled it forward. Armour plating covered the twin mid-ship cargo holds. Atlases were less powerful than some of the newer models, but they were reliable. So reliable that most had been bought up by UAR and were sitting in a junkyard on Deimos.
The Atlas her parents had owned always reminded Tomi of an orange and white sea turtle—powerful, but graceful in its own way. And inside, it was... homey.
The music drifted away into the void.
"Cargo Three, this is Bankshot," Tomi hailed. "You've got two escorts. Maintain position until-"
"Cargo Three, this is Grendel. You have four escorts." A new voice broke into the comm. Tomi recognized it a moment before another ship slipped dangerously close to her port, blacking out her cockpit.
Tomi slammed her throttle back. The flight restraints pressed into her ribs.
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"Grendel? What the hell are you doing? Two jocks per civ."
"You can look up the mission specs, girl." Tomi could hear the sneer in Grendel's (she never bothered to learn the real names of scuzzballs) voice.
This wasn't her first dance. She'd checked the pre-flight before sitting her ass in the chair. Nonetheless, her eyes darted over her visor's display, selecting menu options. Four ships were listed as escorts for Cargo Three.
Tomi frowned. There were never four escorts for a simple ore run. And there were never, never changes to the mission specs after launch. Flight command was a bunch of water cooler dictators barely held together by a few AI algorithms, but they weren't careless. It was odd. Damn odd.
The heart rate monitor whispered angrily from the corner of her eye.
"Grendel, Bankshot. Were there no actual jackals available to fly that thing? There might be fewer kills stolen. Probably smell better, too."
"Uh huh, all those kills that aren't on your board were stolen. Getting rubberitis, B.S.?"
"I am not getting rubberitis, Grendel. Just remember who's in charge on this flight."
It’s me, Wing Commander Sullivan. Nice ring. Good pay. Less getting shot at.
“Yeah, I am, B. S.”
“I have five combat engagements,” Tomi shot back. “How about you. Three, was it? I’m the most experienced here.”
"Bankshot, Grendel. Whatever you need to tell yourself, girl."
It was 2081; a person would think that kind of misogyny was lying on the dung heap of history. But wartime had a way of stirring the shit.
Not wartime, ‘tactical economic action’ time.
The comm crackled with a dark male voice, interrupting the witty retort. "Whoever's in charge up there, Cargo Three is eager to get underway."
Tomi gave the clear, manoeuvring the Starseeker a few dozen meters off the vast ship's bow in a standard cross formation. She was alone out in front. Grendel and whoever had followed his sickly stench out here flanked. Wolfsbane hovered aft, above the wake of the massive engines.
The Starseeker's ion thrusters died away with a rattle as the fighter reached cruising speed.
Five minutes to Earth.
The lie of the lunar shadow turned the globe into a crescent, beige and blue with hints of green algae super-blooms along the edges of the ocean. She had seen a few ancient videos of land that was still green. Forests hadn't yet been plowed under in the rapacious search for lithium, cesium, and neodymium. And the horrifying Eastern Pact launch platforms had yet to be constructed in an attempt to keep all those things from coming in from space.
Four minutes to Earth.
Through the cockpit screen, the pair of inscrutable towers hung. The ECG complained violently, and Tomi slammed her eyes shut.
You killed my family... financially, you bastards.
"Lead. All ships, burn line in fifteen seconds. Secure and switch to short-range comms. Prepare for full manual flight."
Shit.
She tried concentrating on the way the screen blackened as the blast shutters closed over it. Her visor brightened, and the cockpit around her dissolved into the blue of Earth, backed by a bright star field. Even the air felt thin in her lungs. Nothing was different, of course. The visor was just showing her the Starseeker's exterior but damned if it didn't feel like she was sitting in a chair floating through the void. It was the next best thing to being in an Atlas cockpit again, Dad rocking the seat beside her. Music blaring. No regulations telling you what to do. Freedom.
The telemetry from the Leading Edge died away as they hit the scrambling field. She was on her own.
"Bankshot, secured." Tomi swallowed and tried to focus on her breathing.
Nothing to worry about. You do this all the time. Just going to fly these civvies between these two hives of bees and hope no one notices.
The ECG beeped. Yellow. Barely passing. Tranquilizers might help. Balance out the Amp. You had to spend money to make money.
"Lead. Status check." Peele was in rare, monotonous form this run. Tranquilizers. Definitely.
"Bankshot. Tank's full. Artillery full," Tomi repeated the totals in the corner of the visor.
Cost me an arm and a leg, but it's there.
If she conserved enough fuel on this run maybe she could send a little bit of money home this month. Mom and Dad were running out of rights to sell.
"Grendel. I got a tank full of tritium, and I won't take shit-ium."
“Grendel, Bankshot,” Tomi found the bait impossible to resist. “Is working on that line why the light was on in your bunk last night?”
“Stow it, Bankshot,” Peele grumbled.
“I just think we need to support the mentally disabled when they show an interest in comedy, Lead.”
“Stow it! Burn line in five.”
The blood pressure monitor blaring marked the approaching line of no return. In a matter of seconds, they would be within the burn-through range of Pact radar. No amount of scrambling was going to help you in there. The Pact would know the convoy was coming in. The question: Were they going to do anything about it?
What kind of dancing are we doing tonight? she thought. Oh? Feel like sitting this one out? Please do. Shit, maybe I do have rubberitis.
“Cargo, Bankshot. Cut engines, form up on the burn-line with the other ships.”
Beneath her, the cargo ship -- almost exactly like the one her parents used to own -- fired its thrusters. Tomi frowned. Were the freighters dense? Was this their first run? They had to know the protocol. Everyone waited at the edge of the burn line and went through together. Less time in the danger zone, less time for the Pact to react, better odds they wouldn’t waste the resources on the slim chance of catching stragglers.
The Atlas toddled toward the burn line. It’s ion engines still burned bright blue.
They weren’t stopping.
Her heart buzzed in time with the ECG readout. Dublin flopped around against the duct tape holding him against the hull.
"Shit. Shit. Lead, Bankshot," she chirped. "I got a line jumper."
Tomi watched the chalky white of the launch platforms towering in front of the pale blue atmosphere. She could feel the Pact AI running its various calculations. Would the damage inflicted on UAR surpass the cost of potentially lost ships? In the economics of attrition, which AI was running the best numbers? In their bunks at night, fighter pilots whispered their guesses and superstitions.
The early commitment of the cargo ship would make the ships behind that much more tempting a target.
She wheeled the Seeker back toward the accelerating freighter, sinking into her seat. Everything would be okay if she could get in front of it before it crossed the scrimmage line.
"Just a load of osmium or some bullshit coming through," Tomi whispered to the inscrutable towers of death. "No need to get worked up."
"Red Flight, Nightguard! Contact! Contact! Contact!"
Hitomi whipped her head over her shoulder. Red lights flashed along the white exterior of the launch towers. Even a hopelessly wet-behind-the-ears pilot would recognize the pattern of navigation lights. In the darkness between the bright red strips, she could make out the minuscule forms of descending fighters.
Bloc pilots slept in their ships.
"Shit! Shit!"
The goddamn freighter had jumped ahead, spreading out their formation. They all could have sailed through the blockade in ninety seconds, and the AI would have remained quiet. No fighters could have gotten to them in that amount of time. Ninety-five seconds, though... Might be enough time to blow apart a UAR freighter. Several thousand kilograms of raw materials were destined to build a few million AI chips for the decades-long chess match the thinking machines were playing.
"Port wing. Fifteen inbounds!"
"Fifteen on the starboard wing."
"Red Flight, Lead!" Peele's voice was a razor against the static of the comms. "Safeties off. Weapons loose."
Hitomi's sweating fingers flicked the safeties of the coilguns, and the eerily comforting whine of charging capacitors filled the cockpit. Her fingers trembled against the triggers.
Shit! Strap on your dancing shoes, Dub. Shit!
A blinding flare of sunlight flickered as a squadron of Pact Zeta fighters descended into the Earth's beige and blue background.
Hitomi's stomach fell through the seat below her and into the ether of black with the screeching of the ECG.
"So much for sending money home this month."