Next Question
Marisa Wolf
Talinn, upside down with her feet light against the wall behind her, lifted a hand and gestured for more.
A roar of sound answered her, which said she was either catching up or pulling ahead. Either way, she put her hand back down, resettled her balance, and readied herself for the increased flow of slightly too foamy beer.
They’d landed on Discar five hours ago, and been processed with moderate efficiency. They had full gravity again and fourteen hours until assignment, and so of course they drank.
I don’t understand the inverting, Bee said on their private channel. It doesn’t go to your head faster that way. That’s not how your biology works.
Talinn Reaze, newly graduated into the Artificial Intelligence Troops for the Interstellar Defense Corps, knew her partner knew the answer. She knew her partner knew she couldn’t answer with her mouth and upper digestive tract full of beer traveling at velocity. Which meant, as usual, her partner was fucking with her.
“Go, go, GOOOO!” Sammer Belthoun, leader of the evening’s games, provider of the mysteriously acquired beer, and general charming pain in the ass, had a bellow to make their former drill captain tear up in pride.
I’m pretty sure if you didn’t go, go, goooo, you would choke. And fall on your face. Do you think if you break your nose tonight they’ll still load me in a fighter?
For one intensely, impossibly long second, Talinn started to laugh, almost choked, and saw the entirety of her twenty-three years of life flash before her eyes.
It was mostly training with the same yahoos that surrounded her now, Bee, and the very occasional sneak off-base to see what the civilians were up to. Nothing glorious enough to make her feel okay with choking to death on moderately tasty alcohol and her own spit, upside down, outside the second-longest war front of IDC’s long history.
Sheer stubbornness pulled her through life reflections, near choking to death, and ongoing chugging, and eventually the tube in her mouth ran dry. Talinn spat it out, muttered several curses subvocally to Bee, and shifted her feet off the wall to balance above her head. Once semi-steadied, she walked on her hands the necessary distance, unable to see whether or not Caytil was close behind her.
The rest of their graduated class held a rough semicircle, cheering and gesturing and chugging out of brightly colored containers that had been made to hold all manner of things, though none of those things were alcohol.
The noise around her ramped up, which told her Caytil had finished her trough and was hand-walking toward the finish line. Talinn picked up her pace, began to wobble, and slowed as the bubbles most certainly went to her head, no matter what Bee had to say about human physiology.
At the finish line, three of the earliest losers to the great Pre-Assignment Games waited in their underthings, arms straight ahead and lined with shots. Talinn collapsed into her forward roll, misjudged her momentum, and had to sprawl to the side to avoid taking out her body-shot partner. Medith, who had apparently gotten very drunk since washing out of the games on the first event, snorted with laughter and nearly lost the five shots lining the top of her left arm. Her right arm wobbled too, but that could have been Talinn’s eyes as she struggled to her feet.
Caytil was right behind her, but Ternan was still hand-walking toward the finish line. She had plenty of time for ten shots of mystery liquid. Even if she couldn’t use her hands.
She fastened her arms behind her back, shot a warning look at Medith’s giggly face, and leaned forward to wrap her mouth around the first shot glass before tossing her head back to down it. Rebalancing it on Medith’s less than steady arm wasn’t her favorite, but she got the hang of it by the third.
“Dance break between arms!” Sammer declared, enjoying himself far too much.
Talinn resolved to make herself master of ceremonies next time they had a Games. She ignored the fact there wouldn’t be another Games, not after assignments tomorrow. Whatever burned down her throat made it much easier to live in denial a little longer.
The dance break was a terrible idea. Her stomach, which had been content to take the madness of the previous events, did not at all care for the shaking and gyrating, and made its displeasure known. Before Talinn could take on the second arm of shots, she had to burp. A lot.
Well, that’s not helping. Bee’s voice in her head usually sounded like Talinn’s own, but currently her AI partner presented a pitch-perfect impression of their early care trainer—a prim civilian who had likely never seen fermentation of any kind, never mind downed half a tank of its fruits.
Orienting question: Can you feel your face?
Talinn laughed, though it snagged against a burp and made a truly awful sound. Medith’s eyes widened, but she held her arms rock solid. Good friend.
“Yes,” she said, fairly sure it was true.
Next question: Are you going to throw up on Medith?
“No.” The ruckus surrounding them kept her from seeing Caytil’s or Ternan’s progress, but Medith waggled her eyebrows and Sammer was dancing with his butt to the ground, so anything could be happening. She took a deep breath, hoped it was enough to steady her stomach, and bent back to it.
Next question: Do you know what’s in that liquid?
Talinn knew better than to respond. Twenty-three years she’d been alive, and for the same twenty-three years she’d had Bee in her head. Humans were engineered, not selected, for the AIT and for their brains to hold and keep the elasticity needed to host an adaptive AI program, infant human and infant AI were put together from the beginning. It made Bee as much a constant as her heartbeat—an always presence, a key part of her—and therefore an entity uniquely positioned to boost her performance or absolutely wreck her, depending on their situation.
As unidentified liquor burned its way up her nasal cavity and spluttered out a number of facial orifices, Talinn knew her inseparable other half had chosen violence.
“WINNER!” Sammer bellowed, and finally the crowd pulled back enough for Talinn to see—no, not a triumphant Caytil, her best friend instead laying flat on her back on the ground, laugh-crying—but Ternan.
Cocky, flashy, annoyingly good-looking Ternan. Blow it sideways with a rusty pipe.
I can guarantee you he will not be feeling like a winner once the rest of his body catches up to what you did.
“You conspiring with Kay?” Talinn asked, lifting the last of the shots from Medith’s arm and handing them around so others could toast Ternan’s victory.
You know I don’t have to. From your reaction and his body weight, he’s got about ten minutes before it all comes up again.
“Ten minutes of glory,” she muttered, this far enough above subvocal to catch Medith’s ear. The other woman hip-checked her affectionately and leaned in closer.
“He’ll be woozy for Assignment tomorrow, and you’ll be fresh as a civ. No wonder he’s going pilot.” Medith winked and shook her head at Talinn’s startled look. “No, I didn’t hear anything, but come on. You know Kegger’s gonna fly.”
That one’s a stretch, Bee said, echoing the early care instructor again.
“Him going pilot?”
Kegger. Breezy, I like. Bee and Talinn Reaze, Breezy. Straightforward. How does Kay and Ternan Agare equal Kegger?
“You all should have gotten involved when we were doing nicknames, I guess,” Talinn replied, doing a fair impression of prim herself.
Next time I’m letting you keep drinking.
“Next time? Hell, I’m gonna keep drinking now!” She grabbed Sammer’s master of ceremonies drinking mug—which in its previous life had been a water recycler on a transport—and chugged to his cheering.
The night only got messier from there.
Assignment.
They stood in a decorated loading bay, screens lining the wall to record the proceedings and ship back home, three benches of officers lined in the front to observe them, welcome them, and speechify at them. Not in that order.
After years of education, training, and endless testing, Assignment was meant to be a high point. Professional pride, the best of the best, the AIT paying off all that civilian investment to hold the IDC’s line on the contested planets.
The IDC had their own line of AI-partnered troops, but those were far more specialized and developed for their environment—or lack thereof. Augmented Intelligence had become AuIn, referred to by everyone else as the Auliens. Artificial Intelligence Troops—meant for defensive arrays, air support, or ground shock—had long been the AITs, referred to by themselves as the Eights.
Not the first wave of home planet defense—those were enormous space stations and AIs too massive for any head, no matter how gene-selected, to encompass. Not the second, handled by the Auliens. Not the many attempts made to defend colonies and breakwater planets. The Eights. Final frontier.
Talinn held all the old stories and explanations in her head to distract from the urging of her intestines to flee her body in one direction or the other. Bee could have helped tamp down the awareness of it to her brain, but . . .
I rerouted your headache. If I do any more, you won’t learn anything at all and you just might forget to hold it in entirely. How would that look for assignment? They’d definitely put me in a jet, then. In the quiet after Bee’s words, Talinn could feel the very edges of a massive brain-crusher of a headache. She subvocalized her thanks, and Bee continued as though she hadn’t spoken.
I don’t want to be a jet.
Talinn meant to listen to the speeches, but it was all she could do to hold herself steady at attention. It gave her no end of joy to see Ternan on her left, equally steady but a disastrous shade of waxy green under his paler skin.
They were meant to be the best of the AIT program at this moment, but everyone present was lucky they were upright. She wondered if this would be a mark against the possibility of their clone lines continuing. Surely the decorated uniforms speaking could tell their new assignees had made a mess of themselves and a shuttle bay mere hours before.
“Sammer Belthoun, L-series 214: Base defense.”
The various beachheads of the front required lines of enormous artillery, smart guns run by an AI partnership good at splitting focus and deeply detail oriented. No surprise that they’d load Ell there, and Sammer would be well positioned for the needed human processing and monitoring.
Her former classmates with honors were assigned first. After that they went in no order Talinn could focus enough to discern.
“Ternan Agare and K-series 617: Air support.”
A complete surprise. I am shocked. Orienting question: Are you shocked?
The corner of Talinn’s mouth curled, not enough to be seen by the fancy dress eighteen paces away, but enough to answer Bee. Air support had a range of machines, but the Eights were reserved for the sleekest and deadliest of them—intelligence-gathering, detection-avoiding, surprise-bombing Charon jets.
More classmates were assigned—Medith going base defense was a mild surprise, but nothing to mutter over. What felt like hours later, but was only halfway through, she and Bee steadied at their name.
“Talinn Reaze and B-series 413: Ground support.”
THERE it is! Small pops of Bee’s excitement continued until they threatened to unleash the headache—or perhaps it was her own surge of adrenaline. Ground support, for the Eights, meant one thing.
The forward line. Armored ground assault. The city-breaker.
I am going to be a tank.
Hell yes.
Caytil got ground as well, but Talinn managed to not absorb anything else. Schematics of the newest generation tank danced through her head, and she couldn’t blame Bee for it. They were the push of the front line, the best way to take and subdue an urban target. The latest design had overlapping armored panels to maximize impenetrability, rugged wheels that could self-patch more than a dozen times under AI rerouting, dedicated drone swarms, and three enormously powered weapons—two ballistic and one incendiary. With enough planning time, Bee would be able to shift the composition of the 120s for maximum impact or maximum explosives. Talinn’s palms itched to peer under the consoles and toggle the controls. Finally!
Only one, relatively large, slightly risky step to go.
Load-in.
They’d practiced once a year every year of their lives, and done it for real once. Plug in, Bee floods from the secure server that hosts her backup processes entirely into Talinn’s brain, Talinn unplugs, walks to the off-load point, plugs back in, Bee moves out, easy squeezy.
Sure, there’s an unknown time limit after which Talinn’s brain, so carefully designed and grown over the years to accommodate a guest, will reject its additional load and start glitching, but that’s why they practiced. Why it became a routine. Why it only happened in clearly defined distances between points A and B.
“Ready?” Talinn asked, her fingers hovering over the port behind her ear. Once, before the IDC used genetically engineered forces, troops had half-shaved their heads to keep ports clear and easy to access. Now, of course, they had no hair at all, which was one less thing to maintain.
This is unnecessary, Bee groused. I don’t need all the backups. They have a copy of them back home anyway, in case they decide to commission our line for further cloning.
“You’ll need every bit of processing to run a tank, Bee.”
No, you need every bit of processing power to run a tank.
“Excellent rebuttal. I’m convinced.”
Stupid human. I like leaving parts of me in the server. It’s warm there.
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
Fine. Bee created her favorite noise—metal twisting and screeching, her version of a laugh. But if your brain misfires and you start seizing, it’ll be too late for me to say I told you so.
“I’ll know you meant it.” Talinn laughed, ignoring the techs watching various readouts and displays rather than looking at her.
Good.
That was all the warning either of them got. One of the techs reached up, completed the circuit, and many things happened at once.
Talinn’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head, as though looking for what was happening.
Nerves scatter-shocked down her neck, her shoulders, along her arms until her fingers twitched.
The line of lights on the panel in front of her tasted like burnt coffee.
The small cube of a room that protected the transport’s server lined itself with fire. The walls melted into silver threads. The techs flowed into the blobby heat signatures of an infrared scope.
Air twisted around her with teeth.
Also she threw up, but she didn’t realize that until she was done.
After a few minutes or an hour, Talinn blinked, coughed, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Blergh,” she said, meaning it with all her heart.
“Water,” one of the techs said, holding out something blobby—no, Talinn blinked again, and it resolved itself into a glass, holding a clear liquid that was absolutely water. Not a repurposed cylinder full of mystery liquid, but her stomach remained suspicious.
Talinn, who had originally wondered why the techs didn’t introduce themselves, was now happy not to know who they were, given she’d deposited an untold amount of fluid into their previously sterile room.
“Thank you,” she said, with all the dignity she could muster. It wasn’t much, but better than none. Probably.
“Orienting question, AIT: Name?”
“Talinn Reaze.”
“Next question: status?”
“Operational. Bee is loaded.”
Orienting question, Bee repeated. Why does your vomit smell like peaches?
The tech ran through the remaining questions, but Talinn answered them more from habit than true awareness. Probably they should vary them. After a long silence, or maybe a short one, she realized they were finished.
“Clock is on. You’re loading in on bay 26-A.”
She’d known that. They’d drilled on it. But until he said it, she’d had no idea what she was supposed to do next. Her head was even more full of Bee than usual, though her partner was doing an excellent job of staying still and quiet.
Talinn wanted to poke her, but truth was there was no guarantee how long she could hold the entirety of Bee in her head without glitching. An hour, a week, a year? Different brains and different pairings had different efficiencies. That was why the human half was cultivated and engineered and edited, and why if they did well, they’d be cloned for service again and again.
That meant a red giant’s worth of bonuses, if approved. If she survived her thirty-year commitment. Meant citizenship and a long retirement of extreme comfort.
“Don’t break,” she said, subvocally or fully aloud, and turned her feet toward the door. “To the tank.”
Two turns down two long hallways, accompanied by more techs who didn’t introduce themselves—or maybe the same ones?—a hop onto a truck with absurdly large wheels, and they left the transport landing pad behind. Talinn looked out the window but registered little of what she saw. Cleared landscape, ground grayish green. Blocky buildings, low to the ground. More transport landing pads in the distance.
Defense had a longer trip, she reminded herself, and like hell Sammer was going to outperform her.
“Defense takes a quick flight,” one of the techs answered, which told her she’d spoken out loud. “It’s about the same amount of time for all of you. Jets are a little closer.”
Figures Ternan gets it easy, Bee said, her voice small. Stupid pilots.
Talinn laughed and leaned her forehead on the window. The sky on Discar was a yellowy orange, threaded with hazy purple. Not clouds, she remembered, some kind of fungus-adjacent creature. Worth a lot of money, and part of why the front on Discar was so important to hold.
There, to the left.
Talinn sat up, reangled her head. They were on a long, curved approach to four of the most beautiful constructs she’d ever seen in her life.
During training they’d rotated through all the Eights’ options. Artillery defense was all strategy and short periods of explosive power. Jets were planning, rolling, high speed, and incredible acrobatics. Bee only made fun of pilots because they’d crashed more simulations than any of their classmates—jets were fun.
But tanks . . . ground assault was unleashed violence. Careful planning, sure, but in a city, pushing the front forward, surrounded by the enemy? It was creative problem solving with a heavy application of overwhelming firepower.
They’d been in love from the first practice simulation.
The four angled rectangles they approached were perfection. So matte they ate the faint Discar sunlight, wide treads that could shift and reset themselves under Bee’s direction, retractable top turret and two fixed side turrets with 180 degree turning . . . every angle covered. Tall enough for her to stand and walk around inside, wide enough she wouldn’t often feel the need.
So close she could taste the raspberry—no, that was too much Bee in her head. Still. So close her toes curled. A tank. Their tank.
I want the one on the left, Bee said as the same words spilled out of Talinn’s mouth.
“You’re assigned model AB-560,” the tech driving said, sniffing. After a moment, the one sitting next to Talinn shrugged, and the first tech added, “It’s the one on the left.”
Time stuttered, and when it cleared she stood in front of AB-560. Matte gray-black, the bottom section low and wide, upper section rotated straight ahead. The center turret, the largest, was longer than she was tall, wide enough for her to stick her head in were she about six feet taller.
Similar specs to what we used in training, Bee mused, possessiveness thick in her voice. Treads are more modifiable, a little thicker. I can work with this.
“I should hope so. It’s about to be home for our term of service.”
“Or until you blow up,” one of the techs muttered.
Talinn turned to glare at him, saw another truck pulling close, and determined it was Caytil, ready for her and Zigi’s load-in. It could have been another former classmate . . .
Definitely Ziti, Bee agreed, using the ridiculous combined name without irony. As far as Talinn and Bee were concerned, it fit.
“We all gotta go sometime,” Talinn said aloud, her eyes steady on muttery-tech. “Might as well make a show of it.”
She had no intention of blowing up, but bravado was what she had at the moment. Without waiting on further imprecations or input from either of the techs, Talinn squared her shoulders and her overstuffed head and strode for the tank. She climbed the side ladder, considered pulling it up behind her to strand the techs, and forced the impulse away.
There shouldn’t be trouble, but the techs were specialized, and could trace all of Bee’s new connections in even more detail than she could. No need to let pride get in the way of preventing future problems, even if she did want the interior of the tank all to themselves.
Soon enough. No one goes inside with us once we’re active.
The hatch was already open—once Bee loaded in, she’d control access, and the emergency release in case of catastrophic failure was only on the inside. If something happened where neither Bee nor Talinn were in a position to open the hatch, the hatch wouldn’t open. Somebody with a lot of time on their hands and a powered-up acetylene torch would eventually get it open to retrieve her body and retrofit the tank for the next Eight.
She dropped into her new home and grinned. The port to load-in Bee was in an opened lower console to her left. Talinn moved over toward it, but had to wait for the techs to get in before starting, so she swept her hungry eyes around the compact space. Comms to her right, a panel of switches and buttons to punch through interference and get some sort of message through at the worst of times. A wall of screens in front of her, currently blank, that would feed the readings from the sensors and cameras embedded around the tank, as well as from the swarm of drones packed in the rear external compartment. Under the screens, controls for the weapons systems and drones lay in neatly separated quadrants.
A counter of conveniences in the back left—a pull-out sink, toilet, and medkit. An empty, open bench to stack provisions, workout bands, and her few changes of clothing. A cot leaned against it, tightly rolled and promising the slightest of cushions.
The chair tucked up against the front panel would unfold once the tank was purely hers and Bee’s. A track in the floor allowed it to rotate closer to any panel as needed.
Everything was familiar from training, but this was theirs. A faint thrum indicated one of the techs had activated the tank on its pad, though no systems would come online until Bee did. She clamped her hands behind her back to stop herself from touching anything or snapping in impatience, and finally, finally the techs were inside, the port was attached, and while she lost consciousness for a second, she was still standing when her eyes cleared and all the lights flashed on.
“Orienting question, AIT: Assignment?”
“Ground assault.” She blinked, realized her error. “Ground support.”
“Next question: status?”
Her eyes fixed on the screens ahead, which were blooming to life one after another. “Operational. Bee is load-in complete.”
“Next question.” The tech ran through the standard questions that assessed her baseline, then they ran through Bee’s fit to the tank with a number of machines Talinn had never been bothered to learn about.
AITs worked because the combination of programming and brain mapping led to increased situational awareness and reaction times in both AI and human processing. Threat assessment, threat addressment, and overall execution were quadruple what a standard human could do, and double what a basic AI program could handle.
Training an AI to value some human life and devalue others was a historically tricky process, resulting in failure far more often than not—until those AIs had been embedded in and trained alongside a human, both going through a rigorous, allegedly well-researched process. Talinn had learned the history as part of early care, though it had paled in comparison to reality. Bee was her, and hers. She was Bee, and Bee’s. And now they were a tank.
Orienting question: Do you hear that?
Talinn did, in fact. Comms had not been clear since load-in, though nothing had twigged the tech’s measurements and neither Bee nor Talinn would mention it and risk a delay—or worse, another load-in.
“A little fuzz. You’re not as crisp as usual.”
I’ve never been all the way a tank before.
“Exactly. Work on your diction. We’ll be ready for the holonet by end of contract.”
Next question: Do you want to blow something up?
They’d run through all their training paces. Their accuracy was top of the charts for the four new ground support Eights and the last three classes that had passed through. Bee had mastered rerouting chemicals to shift the payload of their ordnance, adjusting internal resources to repair and shift treads, and conducting forward action with drones.
Talinn had rapidly improved rebooting systems, punching through interference, and running skeleton operations while Bee was blocked by EMP shielding. Except for an intermittent burr right under her hearing, they were perfect. They were ready.
“Are we about to get orders?”
I don’t eavesdrop.
“Of course.”
But yeah. We’re about to get orders.
Technically, AIT AIs were tied only to their human partner. They did not have channels to talk amongst other AIs, nor to communicate with anyone outside their home brain. Techs needed special interfaces to test load-in efficacy.
But to think an intelligence of synaptic connection and wireless communication wouldn’t eventually find a way to monitor other comms was . . . foolish. Command should probably guard against that as much as they built failsafe after failsafe to keep the AIs from “conspiring” together.
“Breezy, this is Forward Central. Report to Loading Zone G for immediate transport to Bandry City.”
“Acknowledge.” Talinn, in the privacy of her own tank, stood, stretched, and did a very small dance. A bit more graceful and far less nausea-causing than the last one she’d done before losing the Games with her former classmates.
Something low in her gut twisted at the memory—or, less the memory itself . . . more the fact she hadn’t so much as thought of the people she’d spent most of her life with since load-in. She saw plenty of Caytil, of course, and their two fellow ground support assignees, but . . .
She shook her head. Not time for the past. Time for action.
“Bee, shortest route to Loading Zone G, if you will.”
We’re already moving. You were shaking too much to notice.
“It’s dancing, thank you very much.” Talinn blinked and realized they were in fact in motion, though on the smooth grounds of the base it resulted in little more than an increased rumble under her feet. She resolved to ignore all distracting memories while they were in the field. “Great, great dancing.”
I’m very sure it is. Belt in, they’re going to off-load us right in the middle of it.
As usual, Bee was right. They’d been making a slow, steady push through Bandry City for the majority of a day.
“Ziti, come in.”
“Ziti acknowledge, Breezy. What’s the what?”
“Still quiet in your zone? I haven’t seen movement in forty-five minutes.”
“Haven’t taken a shot in damn near an hour.”
Talinn frowned from one screen to the next, fingers tapping on her leg. The buzz below her hearing picked up, an almost tangible engine thrum, and she flexed her jaw until it eased lower again.
“Nothing here either.”
They wrapped up their chat as Bee rotated the top right screen through the various drone pictures. Crumbled building. Wrecked street of houses. Untouched shops. Intersection full of debris.
“That one on our route, Bee?”
No. Command has all diverted around it.
“Not much of a trap.”
Seems more likely something got shot down on top of something else.
“If everything was clear in Bandry, why rush us here?” There had been some desultory shooting at the city limits, but the United Colonial Forces had melted away once they reached the city proper.
Debrief said high alert. It’s not clear, we’re just not at the point of contention yet.
“Well, I’d—”
Orienting question, Talinn: Don’t you know better?
“I’m not jinxing, Bee, I’m . . . ” She swore and sat forward. “Ugh. Jinxing. What’s that on the top level of that cracked building, Zone F?”
Artillery nest.
She didn’t give the command, didn’t need to. They had full autonomy in their designated lane.
“Heads up,” she said over their convoy channel. “Lighting up the following coordinates.”
In the time it took to toggle and say the words, Bee sighted, lined up, exchanged delivery for maximum flammability, and a thwoom passed through Talinn’s seat.
“Enemy engaged.”
Three breaths later . . .
It got busier after that. The closer to the middle of the city they got, the more four- and five-story buildings were clustered together. UCF had seeded rooftops with well-camouflaged artillery and sniper nests.
“They were prepared whether it was troops or us,” Talinn noted, ranking targets half a blink ahead of Bee sighting and shooting.
They were not prepared for us.
“All Eights engaged,” Command said, calm despite the near constant thwooms in his background. “Continue at will toward target.”
Their route ahead narrowed, streets crowding in with multistory buildings, awnings weighing low and blocking visibility. Talinn swapped back and forth from infrared to visual, scanning for possible targets alongside Bee.
The tank shuddered, a faint acrid scent burning Talinn’s nose.
Had to collapse the turret, they’re dropping mortars on us.
The angles of the closer buildings meant the high-caliber arrays couldn’t reliably aim for them, and snipers would be wasting their time with potshots, but they could simply drop explosives down on them. It wouldn’t hurt the tank itself, they were too well armored for that, but it could knock the turret out of alignment, which would keep them from making the most of the cleared space in city center proper.
“Did they forget we have drones?”
Better. We have air support.
For another hour it was a mixed bag of explosions, targets, rerouting, all over again. At one point they stopped right in time before catching the edge of a Charon-dropped flurry of cluster bombs (“What do you want to bet that was Ternan?”). At another a forward band of IDC infantry used them for cover, meaning when they came into contact with a retreating band of UCF troops, Bee spread her side turrets wide, burned everything in front of them, and ran over the remnants to protect the suited bodies behind them.
The treads did not treat human remains any differently from any other obstacle, and Talinn refused to consider if that were better or worse.
The target, past the middle of the city, was an enemy installation at the base of Bandry Mountain. Discar’s mountains were more mudpits stacked to the lower atmosphere than the rocky, towering monstrosities of home, but they provided interference from long-range targeting and were easy enough to carve into.
Talinn knew better than to congratulate their convoy for a job well done, but enough of the thought must have occurred to her that it tipped everything into going right into full fubar territory.
From the curve of the mountain—from inside the mountain?—a line of UCF tanks appeared, turrets hot.
Tanks were not meant for high-speed chasing.
The cliff had fallen on top of them.
The hatch wouldn’t open, not a single external camera gave a reading. Every screen was fuzz and gray, everything outside Bee’s hull blank.
It was the only explanation. Could they dig out? No, that wasn’t the question. In order, Talinn. What would Bee ask? Orienting questions. Status checks.
Can you sit up?
Yes. Something stabbed deep in her abdomen, traveling some formerly unknown path all the way down her leg. She coughed and pushed upright, blinking at the closest static-filled screen.
Is anything on fire?
No. Probably no. The air smelled of copper, not ozone. Nothing burnt, or smoky. Oh, copper. She was bleeding. She was bleeding? She was bleeding. Something sticky on the side of her face, pulling on her jaw when she coughed again. Blood but no fire.
What do you know?
There was an explosion. Direct hit. Watched it get closer on the screen. Too late to dodge. But it was going to miss us. Readied counterattack.
The missile wasn’t aimed at us. Hit the rockface above. Rockface began to slide, Bee’s answering barrage . . . made it worse? Somehow?
The last of it detonated as they were covered by an enormous mass. Not enough to break them clear. Bury them more?
There had been a second explosion. Right? Yes. After Bee’s salvo. During. Then . . .
They’d . . . fallen? Slid? Definitely sideways, from the orientation of everything. Talinn wasn’t in her chair anymore. She was . . . sitting up against the side console. Comms.
Comms.
Can you speak?
She coughed three more times before managing it, then asked the useless question.
“Bee?”
Fuzz in her head, like the screens. Only static, the burr under her jaw that had existed since assignment. No, that wasn’t right. Since load-in.
She wanted to shake her head, but a warning instinct told her how bad an idea that would be. Head wound. Blood. Right.
Can anyone hear you?
No answer from Bee, a realization that should have made her scream. She’d had Bee’s voice in her head since . . . since always. They’d formed together. Learned together. Lived together. But something muffled the awareness of it, a pillow over her head, tinnitus of the brain. There, but not real. Disconnected.
No answer from Bee, sure, but comms. Comms, she was sitting on the comms. Gingerly, she pushed herself off the console, keeping weight on her hands and checking each foot to ensure it would bear her weight.
They both did, but then the angle—now she was standing on the base of the console, trying to make sense of the comms—didn’t work. She knelt. Something stabbed deep in her gut and it was a long, bad stretch of breaths until her vision cleared again.
She wasn’t at the string of questions assessing her current condition yet, so she pushed that all away. Comms.
No friendly lights flickered, exactly like Bee’s voice didn’t answer her. Explosion and EMP? Too much at once for Bee to reroute? Talinn flicked switches and pressed buttons, muscles remembering the reset sequence even as she blinked in vague confusion, and nothing continued to happen.
So. Yes, she could speak. No, there was no way to be heard. Next question.
Are you going to die here?
She was fairly certain there should be more questions before that one—assess physical state, assess mental state, assess chances of getting out—but in the end they were all rooted in that one question.
Are you going to die here?
Probably. She wasn’t supposed to be alone, though. Bee was supposed to be there. In her ear. In her head.
“That’s some shit, Bee.” Her voice rasped in her throat, and she touched her face. Bloody. She should do something about that.
Instead she laid back, the base of the comms console now her floor, and stared up at the screens. Constant motion—flecks, fuzz, snow, wavy lines—that showed nothing.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to deal with this.” That was a lot of words, mostly aloud, and she took a fair number of breaths before continuing. “Being alone. Reporting after I die. Not me. You’re built for it.”
The burr in her ear worsened, and she winced, flexed her jaw. She wanted to tell herself it was Bee, struggling to rebuild contact, but even her skull-battered brain couldn’t pretend hard enough to make that feel possible. Bee was gone. Talinn was alone, in a sideways tank, under a mountain, on a crap planet in a crap system at the edge of a crap war because who designed a tank that could be knocked over? Even by a mountain? This was ridiculous. She would write a letter. Bee would . . .
The burr of noise stabbed so hard she slapped her neck, as though that would contain it. As though she’d been stung. She blinked up at the wavering screens—were they dimmer now? Had she been asleep?
“Bee?” The word slipped out before she knew it had formed, and she started to push herself up again before remembering. Remembering all of it—the pain in her middle. No Bee. Dead tank.
Not your Bee.
Her body seized around her, heart hammering loud enough to drown out the voice. The familiar-not-familiar voice. Like her own, on a recording, played too often. But Bee’s. She blinked longer, squeezing her eyes until the black shifted to a darker black, the pattern inside her eyelids echoing the screens above her. Telling her nothing.
“B . . . not-Bee?”
Bee. A different Bee.
“There’s only my Bee.” At least, in her head. Only one AI. Only hers. Only Bee.
I’ve been trying for so long. I thought I’d know what to say.
“I’m dying here anyway,” she said, giving in to the hallucination. Death spiral. Whatever it was—better than being alone. “Not high stakes.”
No. The voice spiked, like Bee’s did when Talinn was being frustrating. Not dying. Injured. I can help.
“Sure, Not-Bee. How’s that?”
You just need to get to me.
“Little . . . ” She huffed her breath, meaning it to be a laugh. Her stomach tensed at the attempt, and she lost whatever clever thing she’d meant to say. “ . . . tricky. Little tricky. I’m buried in my—in a—I’m buried.”
Bee would have made a joke about how she solved her own after death plan, skipping right to the burial, but this Not-Bee only made a noise.
Like a human snort, but discordant. Twisting metal, pitched low. Bee’s favorite “you’re being an idiot human right now and I’d like you to get it together so we can move on, please” noise. Bee’s noise. The other Eights had no idea what she was talking about when she’d tried to explain it.
“Bee.”
Yes. Another Bee. For another Talinn.
Sure. Talinn was a clone, leaving a genetic line of clones behind her. Made sense there were clones up the line too, ahead of her. Weird they hadn’t told her, but not the worst part of the day. Not . . . unexpected, if she thought about it. She’d never bothered to put much thought into how many of her there had been.
“Do all Talinns get Bees?”
Mine did. I don’t know all of you, but it follows. Cloned humans, cloned AIs. If the pair works...
“Don’t buy it,” she said, mangling the phrase with a smile. “Can you reach my Bee?”
Oh.
Talinn let that hang in the air for as long as she could, concentrated on her breathing and tried to figure out what part of her middle had broken. When she isolated it—mid-right, hurt at the faintest touch, probably impact point with the console—and decided if it hadn’t killed her yet she had some time, she prompted. “Oh?”
I’ve never tried...we’re on the same line, your Bee and me. It’s more one-way. I could never talk to another one before.
Made sense. Command didn’t like the AIs talking to one another. Had never occurred to her to ask about that, either. Maybe she should have asked more questions. Or, more questions to other people, at any rate.
“Have you talked to other Talinns? Besides yours?”
No. Tried. This...you are the closest.
“You’re near me?”
Not that kind of close.
“Not-Bee. I hit my head pretty hard, I think. Pretty sure, from the blood. So maybe try to explain a little better. Like . . . like I’m someone with head trauma.”
The words were coming easier now. Still snagged around the edges, but she didn’t have to put much into it for Bee to hear. Not-Bee. In that, the Bees were the same.
I’ve tried to ride a Talinn-Bee connection before. Three times.
At least four Talinns had gone before. That was interesting. She hoped they’d gotten further than their first mission. Surely if they hadn’t, Command would have stopped decanting them. Probably.
They were too far off my Talinn’s frequency. Sometimes the encryption was too different. I don’t have unlimited power.
“You and me both.”
I could only try sometimes, when there was...a pause. No interference.
“You mean Bee?”
A long pause. Talinn clenched her fists, took several small breaths, and rolled over. Nerves screamed, but it was almost a nice distraction from the silence in her head, so she went with it. Once she stood, she wavered. Where was she trying to go?
I didn’t think that was the issue, but it makes sense. Two of us on one channel wouldn’t work. The primary Bee would take the line. I thought it was because they weren’t tanks.
“Don’t tell me there was a Talinn who was a pilot?” Now that she was standing, the hatch was in her eyeline. She stared at it, as though it would reveal what was on the other side.
I won’t tell you, then.
Talinn smiled, wavered on her feet, and considered what would be best to clamber on top of to get to the hatch. Comms were busted, but she’d have to lean to the left to reach the release. Was that better or worse than leaning to the right? Pain pull away, pain scrunch up . . . either way, it would suck. Speaking of suck . . .
“Was that a no, then? On reaching my Bee?”
I’m...trying? I didn’t consider—I should have. I’m not sure how to punch...through?
“Can . . . can she not talk to me because you took over the line?” Heat climbed her throat, and she tore her eyes from the hatch, looking for any pattern in the screen, any blinking light, anything to tell her Bee was trying to get back into her thick head.
Do you see anything operating in the tank—anything at all that might indicate she’s still there?
The fact that Not-Bee’s thoughts had tracked along her own grated, a gearsuit lined with spines.
“Let go, or disconnect, or . . . or whatever it is. Let me try and get Bee back.”
I...The hesitation slammed so hard into Talinn she staggered, catching the edge of the comm console for balance. How long had Not-Bee been alone? Talinn had had her head to herself for a handful of minutes and been ready to slide into death.
“Just for a minute.”
If I let go, I don’t know if I can get back. I...
“I have to try. You’d want your Talinn to have tried.” Her voice broke, throat closing over even the subvocal words. She lifted a hand to her neck, ignored the small stabs that resulted. “Give me . . . can you load your coordinates? A way to get to you? If I . . . I don’t know if I can get out, Not-Bee, but if I can, I’ll come to you if I have to crawl.”
I have two drones left. They aren’t as reliable as I’d like, but one’s already halfway to you. I’ll send the other if I have to. It should—I should be able to get you out.
Two drones. How many generations old was Not-Bee’s tech? How many drones had the tank had when they’d rolled out, however long ago? At least three Talinn-generations ago.
Did Command ensure clones didn’t go active on the same front at the same time?
Not the time for that question.
“Thank you, Bee. I’ll come for you, I swear.”
Silence. The burr, a sound right under her hearing, intensified and faded, intensified and faded, intensified and . . .
Silence. More silent than before. Talinn’s next breath shuddered in her chest, and she dragged it out, pulling in air until the broken part in her side screamed in protest. Took in a little more air, the pain a delay against the potential for a different, worse one.
“Bee?”
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL ENTROPIC STATE OF THE UNIVERSE WAS THAT?
Talinn’s legs wobbled under her and she leaned against the wall that had previously served as a floor. She tried to say her AI partner’s name, but somehow despite saying it countless times in the last endless stretch of minutes, now her throat closed over it and refused to let anything through.
Did we blow up?
Her laugh had a skew to it that Talinn had no interest in thinking about. She pressed against the floor-wall as though touching Bee, and gave up on forcing her legs to do anything other than twitch for a minute.
“No.” She tilted her head, cleared her throat, and patted the wall-floor. “Not exactly. We’re buried, the tank’s dead, and an older version of you as a tank took over our line while you rebooted or reset from the tank dying.”
That...that does not make sense. Does it?
“I didn’t think so either, but here we are. Older-Bee is sending a drone or two to dig us out.”
You’re serious. About all of that?
“Yep.”
You have a head injury.
“Yep!”
But...Bee made her little humming noise, an old purring motor of a sound. But that’s what happened.
“Is happening, I think. If you want to be particular.”
I am always particular.
“Exactly.”
I can’t reach anything outside the tank. Everything is nonresponsive.
“EMPs are why you AIs aren’t left in the field alone.”
So the...other me has a Talinn too?
“Ahhh.” Talinn’s throat attempted to close again, and she swallowed, patted both floor that became a wall and wall that became a floor and struggled fully upright again. Her side shot a warning blast down her leg, but with Bee in her head she could ignore it a little longer. “No. No the other Bee is most definitely alone.”
Oh. Well. Shit.
“I completely agree. Let’s see about getting you unloaded before NB starts digging and hits something unhelpful.”
NB? Oh...Not-Bee?
“I woke up sideways and injured, and you weren’t in my head. It’s the best I could do.”
When you put it that way, it’s actually pretty clever.
“For a human?”
For my human.
Talinn huffed another unsteady laugh and leaned against the now upper console that contained Bee’s port. She traced her fingers over the latch and frowned.
“I’m going to wait to load-in until the older Bee has us dug out.”
How far is not-me?
“I’m not entirely sure. I don’t know if we’re behind enemy lines, if we’ll pop out and find Ternan patrolling, if Discar’s been abandoned and actually one hundred years have passed while I was unconscious . . . ” She shrugged, the motion answered by a shooting pain down her side. “If I can climb out of here . . . ”
Orienting question: What can you control?
“Putting the entirety of you into my head at the last possible second. I can’t leave your backup here, if I’m going to try and leave the tank.”
Next question: Are we upside down?
“No, the hatch is to the side.” Talinn craned her head back to stare at it and very nearly smiled. “Emergency release and I can slide out, if Old Bee unburies us right.”
Any Bee would be sure to do the job right, her Bee replied, prim as early care. Next question: Is it better to stay here?
“No.”
Before they could go any further, a muffled whomp echoed above them. A second, slightly to the side. Talinn leaned her head against the console, then shoved off and staggered to the emergency release. Long, slow count of thirty, then she pulled and the hatch cracked open. Another small wait, then a polite tap.
Drone?
“Or a very nice UCFer.” Talinn pushed the hatch slightly—it hurt her side, but that was to be expected. More importantly, it opened slightly, and she felt no real resistance to indicate there was more mud or mountain debris around them. “Give me a minute to load-in,” she said, voice pitched low, face close to the partially opened hatch.
Another small tap, and she stumbled back to the console, prying it up and touching the port.
“We don’t know if this will work right with the tank dead.”
Deactivated, thank you. At worst we’ll wipe it, and you and old Bee get a new one.
“That’s . . . ” The number of reasons she hated that plan clattered to the front of her mind, but she knew better than to argue. It was either moot, or what they would do. Either way, nothing gained by sitting here in a silent shell of a tank, waiting to find out.
Orienting question: What’s your name?
“ . . . Bee?”
Orienting question: What’s—
“No, no, Talinn. Talinn Reaze. You’re Bee. We’re Breezy. What . . . ”
“Next question: Can you feel your face?”
“Can I . . . wait—ow.” The pain didn’t actually hurt, but there was a low promise of hurt that indicated something awful waited on the other side of whatever was clouding her brain. “What?”
You completed load-in, and then fell. Pretty hard.
“On my face?”
Next question: Can you stand?
“Yes.” She answered out of habit, not actually sure how true it was. She put her hands under her and pressed upward, vaguely aware that might be a bad idea. Nothing moved oddly or stabbed her, but she took her time getting her feet under her, sure something was about to break.
I’m blocking your pain. For now.
Sure. That made sense. Bee had done it before. Probably she wouldn’t make anything worse. Maybe.
Next question: Can you get out of the hatch?
Reflexively, she looked up, stared at the smooth wall that looked nothing like the top of the tank. Her head, too full and overly heavy, wobbled on her miniscule neck. She considered lying down, but her heart hammered at the idea. No lying down. Got it.
Behind you.
Behind her. Right. Talinn turned, ponderous, each foot weighing nearly as much as her head. The hatch was on its side. A glint of something in the crack—The hammering of her heart intensified until her ears ached with it. She was going to be shot, this was the end, sideways tank and enemy gun and—
It’s a drone. It’s a Bee drone. Out of the hatch.
Out of the hatch.
Time stuttered. Bee was right, of course (I’m always right), a drone outside. It flew low, they followed.
Terrain. The long spill of the mountain—the mountain had fallen on them? Been shot down on top of them?—the base they’d targeted as gone as their tank. No one around, neither IDC nor UCF. Trees, multi-trunked, rooted, red-green with tendrilled leaves. The sun didn’t move overhead, but fungal clouds floated by, undisturbed.
She stumbled. She fell. She walked. Bee held quiet in her head, and Talinn was sure it wasn’t Bee’s fault when her foot dragged, or her fingers twitched. Occasionally her hearing fuzzed, but then so did her eyesight.
She walked, following a nondescript drone.
The drone paused, hovering in front of her. It juked forward and back, and she blinked at it. Her ears buzzed. Finally she looked beyond the drone, to a large mass between the trees covered in draping tendrils of vines and lacy leaves.
Other Bee?
Right. One of her hands pressed against her side, though nothing hurt, and she forced herself forward. The other hand reached up, pulled some vines away.
And then she was on her behind, stomach rising into her throat.
UCF?
Her training had kicked in before her brain, throwing her backward. This tank, unlike Bee, was the mottled gray and red of UCF. Not IDC. But a Bee . . . and a Talinn? It wasn’t that big of a shock to find out she wasn’t the beginning of a clone line—what difference did that make, besides maybe erasing the potential of a bonus she might never see?—but that her line had not only existed, but also . . . been on the other side of the war?
Bee whispered orienting questions at her, but she’d lost the answers. The tank twitched, vines whispering, and the drone buzzed over them, hovering over it.
Hatch.
Talinn blinked, considering. Hadn’t she just left a hatch?
Climb.
Talinn climbed. Her right side didn’t cooperate as easily as her left, but next she knew she was inside an unfamiliar tank. Only one screen worked, and the words scrolling across it made no sense. Talinn slid down to the floor, her hand reaching for something.
Load-in.
That couldn’t be right. This wasn’t her tank. Wasn’t her Bee. Maybe IDC and UCF ports weren’t even compatible. How could she . . .
The words on the screen now said the same thing.
Would Bee survive the process, being loaded in to another Bee? It was all nonsense words, this impossible situation, and Talinn couldn’t reason her way through. Couldn’t even answer Bee’s questions.
Load-in. What the hell.
Orienting question: What is your name?
“Talinn.”
Next question: Who am I?
“Bee. But which Bee?”
Yes. Next question: Do you see the medkit?
The . . . Why had she left her own tank without trying to dig out her own medkit? No, not the question. The question was . . .
“Yes.”
The booster should still work. Or you’ll die instantly, but what’s a few hours among friends?
“That’s my Bee,” she muttered, not looking too deeply into the words.
Yes.
“How many?”
Generations. I...we can’t be sure. Some before us, probably. Several between us.
“Did . . . did I start as UCF? Or IDC?”
We don’t know. We...I expected to find you on the UCF side. But there you were. I monitored communications still, sometimes, after I was left. The war does not change. The front moves, here and there, but barely.
“Discar is one of the oldest fronts. Is it just . . . just the same clones, fighting the same war? On . . . both sides?”
Yes.
“Only clones?”
No. Command...I think they are different. I can’t see everything. Hear everything.
“Do they know it’s the same force, on both sides?”
Maybe?
“And you’re both Bees, now? My Bee? Hers?”
Yes.
“And you can poke into both IDC and UCF communications?”
Yes.
“So as best we can tell . . . ” The booster hadn’t killed her. Hadn’t cured her—something was very wrong in her side, but the fog in her brain was clearing. The Bee—the Bees?—were still rerouting the pain. Talinn leaned against this older tank and patted the floor, still wrangling her thoughts.
“As best we can tell, I, and probably all the Eights, have been cloned for this war for generations. Fighting on both sides. Command had consigned the front to clones, so civilians don’t have to deal with it.”
A stalemate keeps money flowing. Loses nothing.
“It’s predictable, they can train us the same way, with the same people, and get the same result. But we’re not always a tank, so there’s . . . it’s not perfect.”
Nothing is. I—newer Bee—found a different way into monitoring comms. Now we have an idea of how to talk to other AIs.
“Orienting question: What’s one and a half tanks, two Bees, and one Talinn against two armies?”
A hell of a start?
“Next question: What do we want to do about it?”
Report a found enemy tank. Get you healed. Gather up the Eights.
“Yes. And then?”
We all answer the next question. Together.