Domain code, p.2
Domain Code, page 2
There was no way he was crawling into a cockpit tomorrow, he thought, without that full, mandated eight hours of crew rest.
Just get this done. Get this done, and then you’re done for the day, he told himself.
No such luck, though.
As soon as he got back in the building, he was instantly on edge. There was a feel in the air, some sort of nervous, angry anticipation echoed in the body language, the terse words, of the people walking around. Argo had felt that before. It usually presaged something big. Deployment orders or one of those briefings where you found out there’d just been a major loss. Something like that.
Something was happening.
Marathon wasn’t in the flight office. Argo checked the schedule on the central board and realized his flight commander was off today, working tomorrow night.
Great.
He went to find Rover instead.
The squadron commander wasn’t in his office either. Only one door in the small command suite was open, and Argo poked his head in there.
Chief’s office.
“Have you seen Rover today, Scurvy?”
The enlisted manager squinted at him, then turned off what must have been a private AR screen, waving his hand. “Argo. You’re not flying until tomorrow, right? What are you doing in here? You know you are allowed to go home, right?”
Argo forced a smile. “I had kind of a weird weekend, and—”
“Haven’t we all?” Scurvy snorted.
“What do you mean?”
But Chief just shook his head. “What do you want to talk to the boss about?”
“I—”
“Because if it can wait, I would advise letting it wait. It was a pretty fucked-up weekend around here. Did you see that camp on your way in?”
Off-balance now, Argo did nod. “All the RVs and shit out in the fields by the spaceport?”
“Tamm’s little lottery has attracted a lot of interest, in the middle of everything else that’s going on.” Scurvy took his monocle off. Rubbed his temple. “You didn’t get arrested or anything, did you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly.” Scurvy snorted. “I swear, officers.”
Argo considered that for a moment. “Nobody was called or notified or anything?”
“About your weekend?” And Chief grinned at him. “We did get a visit from your new biggest fan.”
“What?”
“You know that ChatBot show?” Chief said.
Oh, holy hell. “I, uhh…”
“You seem to have left an impression on Lisa McConnell. Or at least Daelia did. That woman wanted to interview the both of you, maybe have you on the show to talk about your impressions of the Galactic Exposition,” Chief said, and smiled at him. “Sausage shut that shit down pretty fast. I think they’re all up at the Sinkhole now.”
“Lisa McConnell? She…”
“Sat next to you two on this morning’s flight down from orbit. How in the hell did you manage to work that out, sir?”
Chief’s words were light, but his expression was serious. There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it. First thing a guy learned at the Academy: the rules were there to be broken, but when they caught you, you damn well didn’t try to lie your way out of it.
“How’d McConnell even get on base?” Argo groaned.
“It looks like she got clearance from the First Mobile Armor Brigade, but she hadn’t cleared it through the local chain of command, so they’re hashing that all out right now. Hence, the Sinkhole.”
There was something significant there, but his exhausted brain wasn’t picking it up. “Uh-huh,” was all he said, trying to process it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Scurvy chuckled.
“What?”
“How does some social media influencer who doesn’t even run a proper news stream get granted a first look at what the Army’s doing out here?” The chief shrugged. “Could be that she was just the biggest, closest name they could get. Or maybe they’re really looking for that influencing part.” He tapped a pencil against his desk. “So, be straight with me, how much fun did you have up there?”
“Very little,” Argo said, honest. And then, catching the chief’s expression, he added, “But we did get to see quite a bit of the expo. That was…interesting.”
Scurvy grunted. “You look like you need to talk, sir, and feel free to burden me with it anytime. But right now, I’m a month behind on performance feedbacks, and if I don’t get this done today, it ain’t going to happen.”
Chiefs were generally respectful of rank, but there was a vast difference in experience between them and junior officers. If Scurvy thought there was something worth pursuing with Argo, he’d press for it. And Argo wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d get through that kind of interrogation with his secrets intact.
If the unit only knew because some streamer had barged her way onto base…
Argo left Chief’s office, debating whether or not he should risk a trip down to Wing headquarters when his phone buzzed.
Daelia.
Emily wants to talk to us.
Fantastic.
Daelia met him out at Emily’s shade structure, UTV parked and the virch bottle set up. One of the maintenance sergeants was talking to her softly but stopped when he saw Argo walk up.
Little pilot, Emily rumbled as he walked up. Her machine body was under its shade structure, dragon-form pulled around it like a blanket. Happy you alive.
“Yeah, you and me both,” he said, folding his arms.
“How was outer space, sir?” the guy called cheerfully. “Daelia here says it sucks.”
“Daelia was spacesick the whole time. I, on the other hand, had a blast,” Argo replied with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Sergeant, uhh, Koval, do you mind if I get a minute with my plane?”
The sergeant shrugged and looked back at Daelia. Looked at the swath of bandages covering the cuts on her face. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Like I said before, I’m fine.”
“Hope it doesn’t scar up for you too badly there, Daelia. Nobody wants to go around for the rest of their life looking like Frankenstein.”
“Fuck you too, Koval,” she snapped back.
The tech laughed and nodded at Argo. “You look a little banged up too, sir.”
“What can I say? Zero-gravity showers are a bitch all around,” Argo lied.
Koval left after that, still chuckling to himself. Daelia glared at him.
“Now he’ll think we’re sleeping together!” she protested.
“They’re going to think that anyway,” Argo told her. “Lean into it. It won’t be as bad.”
Swap biologics, yes yes, Emily said, left head nodding along to the right head’s words. Good feel for humans, ach? What like?
“We aren’t doing that, girl,” Daelia told her. “Argo just let Koval think we are. Which means everybody will—”
“Do you really want to tell them the truth?” Argo asked sharply. That seemed to shake her, and she looked at him, a question in her eyes. Shit, she was pretty, he found himself thinking.
“Kind of,” she said, and her voice was bitter.
“Yeah, but we can’t. We don’t have any evidence. We need some proof. Isn’t that one of the reasons you want to go back to—”
“Okay,” Daelia said, cutting him off now, hand on the virch bottle controls. “Let’s just talk. Emily, you ready, girl?”
Always ready for stretch in virch, Emily said, and ruffled her wings.
And with that, the scene changed.
It wasn’t the cave today. Not the waterfall, either. Instead, it was a wide-open plateau, the top of some mesa overlooking a windswept valley below. The sun was low over the horizon, and false stars glittered over what Argo assumed was supposed to be the eastern edge of the sky.
Emily lumbered around the mesa top a little, back to him, tail dragging in the dust. What you want say, little humans?
“It’s secure, right?” Argo asked Daelia.
The answer came in the form of a rumbling grunt and a spit of fire. Type, ach, yes, if type.
“If we talk,” Daelia added, “other people can still hear it. This is private, but only if we keep communication to just within the virch.”
“Last time we did this, we were talking,” he said.
“Last time we did this, I was able to upload a proprietary maintenance NOTAM in time, so everybody would stay the hell off the ramp,” Daelia told him. “We don’t have that today.”
Argo wondered why this had never occurred to him. An indication, maybe, of how the human brain placed so much trust in what it saw.
Argo rarely used the typing app in his monocle, but he pulled it up now. He wasn’t great with it and didn’t have it fully tuned to his movements, so he kept his sentences short. Avoid confusion, save on time.
There’s no official word I went to orbit, he wrote out.
We, Daelia added. Her typing was easier, fluid. Although everyone seems to know anyway.
Yes, no would. Emily said. It was accompanied by a parade of smug emojis.
Argo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It’d probably screw up his monocle settings. Why not?
Emily preened. We stop.
What? Daelia asked.
I have friend, yes yes, same friend get kugu from. He stop.
Argo thought about that for a moment. Tenuki?
Emily smiled, fangs gleaming. You met, yes?
Daelia huffed. What did he do?
Wipe all surveillance footage, all imagery, all records, you leaving the stations. Difficult prove now, presence. Emily dragged out the last word.
How?
Our domain live in data streams. Know how to manipulate.
Argo found that smug little pronouncement disquieting, especially after they’d caught her manipulating her own imagery. Wasn’t the point to guarantee data fidelity? Weren’t there safeguards in place? Why was everybody suddenly able to bypass all this shit?
There were two possibilities, neither of which he liked. Either the abiota had developed some kind of new tech, or they’d always been able to do this and, for whatever reason, just hadn’t.
How? he asked again.
Not important, Emily replied.
Yes, it is.
Why, she said, and smiled at him. It is why.
And that was some obscure bullshit, something Argo just knew she wanted him to ask about.
Emily, that’s not an answer, Argo said.
But then the mesa was gone. Only the airfield remained. And Emily was settling in, curling up like a cat, watching the runway.
Like gravity, she rumbled.
And just like that, the virch blinked out. The conversation was over.
“You two done yet?!”
Argo looked.
Rover. Barking at him from the seat of one of the Group’s UTVs. Great. More shit between himself and bed.
“Uhh, yes, sir?” he called back.
“You, me, right now. Chat time!” Rover paused, shifting his attention. “Daelia, how you doing? How was orbit?”
“Umm…”
“Looks like you had some fun up there. What, you have a fight with the zero-gravity showers?”
Argo glanced back at Emily. She said nothing but puffed an illusory smoke ring into the shadow of her canopy.
For a moment, it looked like the gravity circuit up at Aethera.
“I’m glad you tried to stop by my office,” Rover said after Argo climbed into the seat next to him. “Saves me some paperwork.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were up in orbit this weekend, right?”
Argo hesitated, trying to get his bearings.
Rover was driving south. Back to the unit maybe. Something about it felt ominous, though.
Maybe it was Argo’s own guilt.
He needed to report what he’d seen, what he’d done. What he’d found. He needed to turn Bri Quercitron in to military custody and give his chain of command the full rundown on Numina and probably talk to the Academy grads in the squadron about Skoro. One of the guys here had to be Class of ’26, had to have known him, maybe even still talked to him from time to time, and…
But Argo was going to do none of that.
He couldn’t.
Not yet.
Not if Daelia’s plan was going to succeed.
“Sir, Chief already told me about the Lisa McConnell thing, so you know that I was—”
Rover held up a hand.
“Spare me the bullshit,” his commander said, “and just give me the straight answer. Orbit, yes or no.”
Argo breathed out. “Yes.”
Rover’s next question, when it came, didn’t sound angry. “How’d you manage that?”
“Umm, Daelia called in a favor with Frank Tamm.”
“And Daelia took you along?” Rover asked, somewhat incredulous.
“Look, sir—”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop sir-ing me, dammit?” Rover snapped. “What’d you do up there?”
“Oh, you know. Took in the sights,” Argo said.
“Nothing else?”
“Had dinner at the Nightsea.”
Rover looked at him and grunted. “My wife has been on my ass to get her up there since they announced that place. Was it worth the money?”
“It was pretty goddamn good. But Tamm paid for it. Not sure I would have.” Unbidden, the memory of Daelia in that green dress came to mind. Maybe he would have paid it, for that view if nothing else.
“Fucking billionaires.” Rover rubbed his temple. “So you already know the ChatBot girls are on base.”
“Yeah, Scurvy told me.”
Rover grunted. “I hope you were going to mention that you sat next to her on the flight back, because she’s in Cactus’s office right now and the boss is pissed.”
What did Lisa McConnell know? He hadn’t exactly had time to watch news streams in the past few days. She’d probably spent the entire weekend reviewing Bri Quercitron’s fake alien exhibition and sampling the best of anything Aethera had to offer. But she’d also seen both of them beat-up and sweaty and wasn’t a stupid woman. She had to suspect something.
“Cactus is pissed at me? Sir, it really wasn’t a big deal. We just went up and, umm… shit, what do you want me to say?”
“Daelia’s as good as a niece to me, Argo. You break her heart and it’s the end of you, you understand? I’ll make it my personal mission to ruin your life.”
Now Argo was thoroughly confused. “What?”
Rover waved a hand. “Protective-uncle thing out of the way. Lisa said you looked like you had some fun with the bump bags.” His boss chuckled a little. “Like I said, I’m going to assume you were fully intending on telling us about all of this, including this shit with Lisa McConnell, because having her on the damn airfield in the middle of everything that’s going on is incredibly inconvenient. She’s asked for an interview, got it approved through State Public Affairs before Cactus even knew she had requested it, in the middle of this bullshit with the First MAB—”
“Sir,” Argo protested, “I honestly have no idea what’s going on right now.”
Rover pointed down the ramp. “The feds are moving in. Down at NASA.”
Scurvy had mentioned that, Argo realized. First MAB. Wasn’t an Air Force acronym…and then it hit him. “Mobile armor’s on base?”
“This is the kind of quality data analysis I expect from Academy guys,” Rover said.
Argo frowned. “We’re getting Idisi units here?”
“Yeah. As security support, of all the damn things,” Rover said. “We’re going to be hosting the Unity candidate space-lift mission, and the feds don’t trust us to keep them safe on our own.”
“Space lift?” Argo asked and thought about Quercitron. Numina. His brother’s friends, dead in the corridors. “Why? To what?”
“Their mother ship, fuck, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine,” Rover said, and looked at him. “Unless you got any insight as to what’s going on up there?”
That was an opportunity. Maybe the only one he was going to get. Come clean. Let the Air Force know what he’d seen. What had happened. But this wasn’t one of those old legal dramas on streaming; what the hell was the Air Force going to do about it? What could they? No, there wasn’t going to be any help there.
There was a crack in the system, a flaw where things like Bri had been able to inject their nonsense and have it accepted as gospel. Something was going on, something subtle but fundamental.
Until that was identified and fixed, Argo wasn’t going to say a damn thing.
His brother was still up there.
He didn’t trust Unity—or whoever was behind Unity—to not track Aiden down and kill him. Out of spite.
“No, sir,” Argo said. “Got nothing to offer here.” The unit building was right there, but Rover didn’t slow down.
That sinking feeling in Argo’s gut intensified.
“Where are we going?” Argo asked.
“Just because you think you don’t have anything interesting to say, doesn’t mean you don’t. Quite the array of adventures you’ve been having lately, Argo. Cactus wants a debrief.”
Argo bit back a groan.
So much for sleep.
4
Daelia wasn’t sure what it was about today, but she couldn’t warm up.
Maybe it was the damp. Humidity was high, the sky threatening rain. That kind of weather went straight into your bones.
“What a shit day,” Daelia grumbled.
“You came back from orbit alive,” Dad said. “I’ll take that.”
Daelia pulled her jacket tighter around her. The thing felt wet. Wasn’t doing anything at all against the October night. “You know what I mean.”
Dad gave her a look, one she could see even in the failing light, and just shook his head. Walked on.
She trudged after him. Up the old road cut through the thick forest, toward a place that, more than likely, she’d be seeing a lot of over the next few days.
Shit, Daelia wished Argo could have come with them. But he was flying tomorrow and had crew rest restrictions. Besides, she was still hoping that maybe there was some way of keeping him out of this.
