Crystal Rebellion (29 page)

She tried imagining she was in orbit and then pictured
herself flying just above the treetops. She focused on her breathing. And when
that didn’t work, she tried intensifying her concentration. In her mind’s eye,
she flew faster and then slower, moved in straight lines and then zigzags.

And none of it helped. “Can we take a break?” she said,
rubbing her eyes after hours of sustained effort. “I need food. And caffeine.”

Clem, on guard outside the Cage doors, directed them to a
small commissary at the end of the hall. When they entered, Cheryl saw Melody sitting
alone at a table along the far wall. Melody saw them and stood, then rose up on
her toes with her hands clutched at her waist, head bobbing as she tried to
lock eyes. Her face fell when Sid shook his head.

After what turned into a lunch break, it was Sid’s turn in
the chair. Cheryl used the ops panel this time, raising and lowering different
amplifications, concentrations, and other parameters to see if she could fine-tune
their way to success. Like her, Sid couldn’t conjure an inkling of a connection
with the scout.

At the end of the day, Melody and Clem followed them out to
the street. After delivering the bad news to Melody about the need to return
tomorrow, Cheryl and Sid rode back to Cheryl’s apartment. Sid spent the first
half hour acting moody, then announced he was going for a run. She went to bed
early, before he’d returned.

They started again the next morning, and this time they both
sat and worked together to sense the scout. They first used a coordinated approach,
then tried working independently, visualizing different scenes aimed toward the
same goal.

When nothing happened, Sid moved the chairs around the room
looking for a sweet spot of maximum signal strength. Then they tried adjusting
the settings on the ops panel in a systematic fashion to be sure they’d tried every
combination.

Frustration grew as the hours passed. Then Sid—Cheryl
couldn’t say why the comment even had relevance—suggested that she “just relax
and let it happen.” He might as well have slapped her.

Beyond the fact that the statement implied that their
problems were her fault, the words themselves were a trigger phrase for her. She’d
snuck out from her parents’ home when she was fourteen to meet James—eighteen
and gorgeous. He’d started molesting her the moment they were alone and she’d
fought him like a wildcat, knees and elbows swinging everywhere. Then he’d
wrapped a huge hand around her neck and used those same words.

Sitting in the cage, she flashed on a memory of the fear
that had pierced through her as he’d leaned in for a kiss.
Puke and liquor.
His breath had smelled awful.

And she remembered running home wondering how she would
explain the bloom of ruby-colored blood on her blouse. She’d head-butted his
face with her forehead, breaking his nose with a sickening crack.

Standing up from her chair, she let the edge show in her
voice. “I’m taking a break.”

She nodded to Clem in the hallway, then made for the
commissary.
Get it together, Cheryl. The stakes are too high.
She’d
succeeded in life because of her intelligence, work ethic, and thick skin. She
could shake this off, but she needed some time to do so.

Melody stood as Cheryl entered the commissary. Her
expression went from hopeful to crushed when Cheryl shook her head. After
grabbing a cranberry muffin and coffee, she found herself at Melody’s table. “Mind
if I sit?”

Nodding, Melody motioned to the other chair. “Please.” She
sat forward in her own seat, squaring her feet and lifting her back so her
swollen belly rested on her legs. “Are you almost done?”

“Sorry. We’re trying as hard as we can.” She pinched off a
corner of her muffin and popped it in her mouth. The cranberries were tart and
she washed the mouthful down with coffee. “What are you waiting to test?” she
asked, more interested in a distraction than anything else. “Are you allowed to
discuss it?”

Melody turned and reached into a yellow satchel hooked over her
chair. Turning back, she placed a cream-white doily on the table and straightened
the edges for Cheryl, revealing an intricate lace weave about as big across as
her open hand.

Cheryl felt her attitude improving and attributed it to food
raising her blood sugar levels. “What’s it do?”

“It’s a live-mission interface.” She lifted the lace with
one hand and set it on top of her head. “It gives the wearer much finer control
over thought-enabled equipment. Fleet is less interested in that, though, than in
using it as a connect amplifier for field agents in remote areas. There are
still lots of places on Earth where web links are few and far between.”

Savvy about technology development, Cheryl asked the
all-important question, “Does it work?”

Melody accessed her com and a display projected in front of
her. “Put it on your head and I’ll show you something very cool.” She tapped
and swiped, then looked up, smiling.

Cheryl took the lace and set it on her head. Every nerve in her
body came alive. “Oh my.”

“I know, right?” said Melody. She tapped again. “Breathe
steady. Let your eyes unfocus.”

Having practiced just that for the last two days, Cheryl
slid into a receptive state in a few breaths, and in her mind’s eye she found
herself floating above the floor.

“Use all of your senses to experience the web,” she heard
Melody say. “Reach out and feel a feed. Use your tongue and taste a link.
Seriously. We amp everything.”

The web was alive all around Cheryl. While the presentation
had muted colors and a stark simplicity, it was good enough for her to see the
paths and channels of signals zipping every which way. She turned and sniffed
at a yellow flow passing near her head. “It smells hot,” she said, smiling.
“And I didn’t even know that was a scent.”

A blue packet whizzed by with a high-pitched whistle. She
tried to move using the same mental reflexes she’d developed in her sessions
with Criss. After a few false starts, she managed to push herself in the
direction of the Cage, and soon made enough progress to see Sid slumped in a
chair with his eyes closed and legs stretched straight.

Removing the lace from her head, she returned to the staid
world of the Fleet commissary, with Melody sitting across the table. “This
seems like a no-brainer. Did Fleet say why they’re dragging their feet? And no
offense, but if they made you wait a year to use the Cage, they’re not that
interested.”

“Because my method uses hardware.”

“What?”

“The committee that sets the schedule for the Cage has a
strong bias toward passive methods—those that don’t require the user to wear a device.
An admiral actually told me that his people don’t wear beanies.”

Cheryl’s foot started tapping on the floor as her mind
raced. “Could we try this inside the Cage?”

“Can I come?”

“Sure.” Cheryl rose to her feet and waited for Melody to
collect her things. Holding the lace up to the light, she noted the simple
construction common to many prototypes. “This is very cool, indeed.”

“Thanks.” Melody waddled toward the door and Cheryl
followed. “After I finish with Fleet, I’m releasing a gaming version. That’s
where the real money is.”

Cheryl remained quiet but guessed that the Cage committee
knew about her interest in gaming, and that too contributed to her low
priority.

Sid emerged from the Cage as they worked their way down the
hall. He gave Cheryl a quizzical look.

“Back,” she commanded him, pointing at the door.

Clem watched from his station along the wall. “Is everything
all right?” he asked, his question directed to Melody.

Grinning, Melody nodded. “Things are looking good.”

Stepping from the Cage, Sid nodded curtly
to Clem in the hall, who glared back as if he were trying to drill a hole in
Sid’s head.

He’s aggressive toward me for making Melody unhappy.
Something
clicked and he looked at Clem again.
I wonder if he’s the father?

Melody and Cheryl marched down the hall in his direction,
and Cheryl pointed to the door behind him. “Back,” she commanded.

He’d chosen his words poorly earlier and instead of
apologizing, he’d let them hang out there. She had a right to be upset.

But they were here working as mission partners. He didn’t
think for a moment this had anything to do with personal issues. Something big had
her blood flowing, and anxious to learn what it was, he twirled on his heels
and re-entered the Cage.

He moved to the side and Cheryl walked past him and sat. The
chairs were positioned side-by-side facing the door, and Melody plopped a
yellow shoulder bag on the seat of the other.

Putting one hand on her lower back, she looked at Sid. “Mind
if I sit?”

“Please.” He gestured toward the chair.

She slumped down, pulling the shoulder bag up onto her lap in
a precision move that she completed as her butt hit the seat. Digging around
inside the bag, she pulled out what looked like a woven-wire cap. Cheryl confirmed
Sid’s guess by placing it on her head.

“I’m trying to locate something that doesn’t want to be
found,” she said to Melody.

Melody’s face fell. “Oh, that’s hard. Someone who doesn’t
want to be found has lots of ways to hide.”

“It’s a some
thing
, not a some
one
, and I’ve
connected to it before, so I know exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Okay,” Melody said, though Sid couldn’t detect confidence in
her voice.

Making a few precise motions, she launched a display and
moved it so it floated within easy reach of her chair. Sid, who’d spent many
frustrating hours with it over the last two days, recognized the display as the
ops panel for the Cage.

A tap and swipe later and she brought up a second display,
this one oversized and crowded with a convoluted tangle of knobs and indicators.
Sid presumed this was for the beanie. Standing behind Melody, he watched her
adjust this and move that like she’d done it a thousand times. “Is this the
invention you’ve been anxious to test?” he asked.

“Yeah, but not so much test as refine.” She nodded toward
the complex panel floating in front of her as she continued her fine-tuning. “I
need to reduce this mess down to a few intuitive controls before Fleet will
accept delivery. And to do that, I need to be in here pushing its limits to
make sure I don’t sacrifice functionality as I simplify.”

He still wasn’t sure what “it” was, but before he could ask,
Melody turned to Cheryl. “Ready?”

Cheryl answered by tilting her head toward Sid so he could
see the beanie. “Melody made a power boost.” Placing her elbows on the
armrests, she folded her hands in her lap and sagged into the chair. “Ready.”

“You know what you want to do, so go for it,” Melody said to
Cheryl. “I’m just sitting here watching.” As she spoke, she made tiny adjustments
to a couple of knobs on the control panel.

Cheryl sat still for few seconds. “Sid, I think I have
something.” Her elbows started twitching.

“Why is she moving?” Sid asked Melody. When using Criss’s
thought reader, they remained motionless in their chairs.

“She’s fine,” Melody sounded unperturbed, though she tweaked
a couple of knobs. “This is normal.”

Cheryl’s hips thrust up like the seat was on fire.
Disconcerted, Sid intervened. “Turn it off, Melody. Now.”

“Okay. Geez.” She reached out, lifted the beanie from
Cheryl’s head, and draped it on the armrest. “There.”

“Hey.” Cheryl sat up and looked at Melody. “I was right
there. Why’d you do that?”

“Talk to
him
.” Melody jerked a thumb over her
shoulder. Then, struggling to stand, she said, “Junior is sitting on my bladder
and I have to pee. You two figure out what you want and I’ll be right back.”

“Why’d you stop me?” Cheryl asked as the door shut behind
Melody.

“You were flopping in your seat like you were possessed.”

“Really? I was so focused I didn’t notice.” She swiveled in
the chair to face him. “I found the scout immediately and was trying to get
inside. I could circle it okay, but whenever I approached, its defenses would
activate.” After walking him through the details, she said, “It was scary at
first, but I could’ve made it with more time.”

That Criss had raised the scout’s defenses and scared her played
to Sid’s base instincts. Leading into danger was his department, at least in
his mind. He also thought Cheryl had a technological skill set that made her a
better match for working with Melody in the Cage while he was under and looking
for the scout.

Moving around to the front of the chair, he motioned for her
to stand. “It’s my turn.”

“No way.”

“Up.” He motioned again. “You’ve tried it. Now let me.”

“Hey, you interrupted my turn.”

“We’ve been taking turns since we got here. You just went. I
get to go.”

Melody returned at that point and offered an observation. “You
two bicker like lovers.”

Cheryl rose from the seat. “Sid’s going to take a turn.”

Sid sat and picked up the beanie. “So having people flop
about is normal?”

“About twenty percent of our users move a small amount.”
Melody looked at Cheryl with a sheepish expression. “I guess Fleet isn’t
excited about that, either.”

Sid placed the beanie on his head, sat back, and exhaled as
he opened his mind.

“Here you go,” said Melody.

Sid’s consciousness flipped into a different world. Relative
to Criss’s thought-immersion technology, this virtual realm had a two-dimensional
presentation with washed-out colors. But he could recognize everything and, in
his mind’s eye, he could move about at will.

Guiding himself to cloud level, he circled the globe in
great loops. On his fourth go-round, he found the scout. Presented as a
white-gray silhouette with dull blue highlights, the craft sat underwater east
of Boston and south of Nova Scotia on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

“I found it,” he reported back to Cheryl. The image blurred when
he spoke, so he stopped talking and studied the craft. There wasn’t much to see
in the minimal rendering, though. The nuances discernable inside Criss’s thought-reading
world were absent in this simple presentation.

More by reflex than conscious action, he shifted his
decision-making so his gut instincts had a greater say in whatever happened next.
Keep going
. He approached the craft in slow, deliberate steps.

The blue highlights around the scout changed to magenta and Sid
stopped. Like Cheryl, he interpreted this as the raising of defenses. But nothing
else happened, and his instincts urged him forward.

When the magenta lights became red, he didn’t stop.
Scrambling into the scout, he dashed down a passageway, onto the bridge, and lurched
for the ops bench at the front.

He swiped the bench surface to access the nav, but it didn’t
respond. And for an awkward moment, his skin prickled as he imagined Criss preparing
to strike. He allowed himself the fantasy for a heartbeat and then tried again.

This time he pictured himself taking large, theatrical
actions. An exaggerated tap on the ops panel caused the display to open.
Swipe.
Tap
. With big, expressive moves, he accessed the nav, inserted a flight
path, and signaled for execution.

The scout shuddered and rose from the ocean floor. Sid
grinned when it broke the surface, water spilling from its cloaked surfaces,
and began to climb into the sky. Lifting the beanie from his head, he paused to
reorient his thinking to the Cage. Then he shared the news with Cheryl in a whisper.
“It’ll be waiting for us at the lodge.”

Cheryl chirped with excitement and began readying for departure.

With half a week left in her time slot and excellent user data
from Sid and Cheryl’s session already recorded, Melody danced around the Cage, fist-pumping
the air as she twirled.

Sid moved to the door but Cheryl held back. “Can you fix it
so people don’t move when they’re using your gear? I see that as the big hurdle
to your success.”

“I think so.” Melody stopped dancing. “I’ll lose some
sensitivity, but I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of backing off on a few of the
channels. Now that I’m here,” she swooped her arms to indicate the Cage, “I
should be able to find the right balance by this afternoon.”

Cheryl nodded. “How is it going getting investors to commit?”

Melody’s eyebrows leveled as she transformed from euphoric
to thoughtful. “I have a big vision, but getting there is harder than I thought
it would be.” She told Cheryl the amount of money she was trying to raise to
launch her company.

Sid raised his eyebrows twice. Once at the big number Melody
mentioned. And again when Cheryl said, “I’m committed for the next couple of
months. But I’ll contact you after that—when you and your little guy are
settled—and perhaps we can chat some more.”

Four hours later, Sid and Cheryl arrived at their rustic
retreat in a wooded valley of the Adirondack Mountains. Minutes after that, they
clambered aboard the scout.

Cheryl sat in the pilot’s chair, slumped back, and as she exhaled,
the scout came alive. Protected by Criss’s cloak, the craft rose from the park-like
expanse behind the leadership lodge and climbed into the afternoon sky.

While Cheryl guided it into orbit around Earth, Sid toured
the vessel. They planned to make the scout their home for the duration, and his
duty list now included keeping the craft maintained and ready for action. In
methodical fashion, he walked through his own cabin and then Cheryl’s.
Same
as we left it.
Crossing the hall, he walked through Juice’s cabin and then the
lady’s lounge—the last crew cabin that Juice and Cheryl had repurposed into a
comfortable refuge.

Like an inspection that any ship’s captain would conduct, Sid
looked for mechanical or structural problems and confirmed that all areas were orderly
and properly stocked with equipment and supplies.

He also sought to confirm that Cheryl and he were the only people
on board.

Continuing the tour, he peeked into the food service nook and
then circled around through the workshop and common room. Climbing down into
the engine compartment, he scanned the cramped space and then stuck his head through
the floor opening into the weapons bay.

So far, so good,
he thought as he made for the
bridge. Well-provisioned and spotless, it seemed that Criss had readied the
ship for his review.

Sid considered that a thorough inspection would include an
examination of the scout’s crystals. The nimble craft had ten Criss-trained
three-gens running just about everything. But neither he nor Cheryl knew enough
to conduct an exam. Juice was the only one he trusted for that task. Since
everything seemed to be functioning as expected and Juice wasn’t available, he
chose to assume that all was well with the crystals until something caused him
to believe otherwise.

Stepping onto the bridge, he approached Cheryl, who sat
still in the pilot’s chair as she flew the scout in Criss’s virtual world. He
recalled the sensation of flying through space like a superhero while the scout
mirrored his actions and intent. Excited, he prepared to join her.

Lowering himself into a seat behind hers, he reflected on their
new solitary existence. Close friends came and left all the time in his line of
work. It had happened to him when he was a plebe and continued through his
years as a clandestine warrior. He remembered in his rookie year at the DSA, old
man Grimes, the section chief and a living legend, had promoted Wally Winters
to field commander. A big deal, it had signaled that Wally could someday be section
chief himself.

Agents not out in the field were “invited” to attend an
impromptu induction ceremony. Grimes faced Wally, but when he spoke it was
apparent that the ceremony’s real purpose was to give the old man an
opportunity to talk to the troops.

“Today is your first day in a new, prestigious assignment.
And that makes today the best day for you to internalize and accept that there
will be a last day for you in this job as well.” Grimes had nodded. “Everything
that starts, eventually ends.”

Then his voice got louder, signaling that the message was
for the room. “If you accept now that there will be a last day for you in this
role, if you can come to terms with that idea, grieve now and put it behind you.
That will help you make decisions during your term that are best for everyone
else.” Turning on his heels, Grimes had made for the exit. When he reached the
door, he’d called over his shoulder, “Congratulations, Commander.”

The event had been so random—surreal almost—that it stuck
with Sid. He knew Grimes had been saying, “Fight to do your job instead of
fighting to keep it.” But Sid’s takeaway had been the part about beginnings and
endings. It had helped him be philosophical about some tough losses over the
years. He hoped it would help here with Criss.

Looking at Cheryl, seated in front of him, his thinking
changed direction. He’d fight to the death for her. No question about it. Why wouldn’t
he fight for Criss as well?

He left for a reason
, Sid reminded himself.
You
supported it
. Yet his gut now told him that had been a bad decision. They
were stronger and could accomplish more working together as a team.

Slouching back in the chair, he marveled at the tremendous
power they’d gained by taking the scout. He guessed that with all of Criss’s
upgrades, the craft was equal in capability to a dozen Fleet warships.