Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Zugzwang

Originally published by Daily Science Fiction

“You lose,” Lieutenant Darrow said. “Again.”

He tipped over Erin’s game piece, the one they were calling the king. Ton-Gla-Ben wasn’t exactly like chess, but the mechanics were very similar, and the actual Quggano names were mostly unpronounceable by humans.

Erin hated chess. She also hated being stuck in this cargo bay, with the ship’s first officer running her through a crash course in alien game theory.

“How long have we been in here?” Erin asked.

Darrow checked his wristcom. “Not that long.” His atypical lack of precision meant it was longer than he wanted to say.

“This is useless,” Erin said.

“You just need more practice.” Darrow swept up the pieces. “Let’s try a different opening.”

“Tell me again why we can’t just cheat?” Erin asked. “I wear a hidden micro-cam, you coach me through an earpiece?”

Darrow shook his head. “The Quggano are honorable, and they enforce honor in others. The competition chamber is fully radiation-shielded. And you’ll be naked.”

“Right,” Erin said. “How could I forget the best part?” She was not looking forward to exposing her flabby, middle-aged body to a bunch of aliens. She wondered if there was still time to kill herself.

“Ready to go again?” Darrow reset the board to its starting position.

“Why are we even bothering?” Erin stood up. “I barely have time to learn this game, let alone get good at it. I might as well concede and save myself the humiliation.”

“If you forfeit, we all become prisoners of war.”

Erin groaned. She wanted to pace, but there was no room. The Myrmidon wasn’t designed to carry passengers. Most of this compartment was still taken up by supply crates.

It was pure dumb luck that Erin had ended up here. A piece of space debris had killed her stardrive, and she’d spent nearly a week adrift before the Myrmidon happened into range of her beacon. Unfortunately, a Quggano destroyer had also heard Erin’s distress call, and intercepted the Myrmidon right after they picked up Erin’s ship.

When Captain Yokota demanded a champion game—a variation on the ancient Quggano single-combat tradition—the aliens had named Erin as their opponent. That had surprised everyone on Myrmidon, but the Quggano’s rules did allow each side to select a specific enemy champion to challenge. It didn’t happen very often. Usually, neither side knew who was on the other ship, and the respective ship captains acted as champions by default. All of Myrmidon’s senior officers had been trained to play Ton-Gla-Ben, and the XO, Lieutenant Darrow, was the best. So he was teaching Erin.

“You could get lucky,” Darrow said. “You never know.”

Erin sighed and sat down again. “Fine. Not like I have anything better to do with my last few hours of life.”

“Wait,” Darrow said as she reached for a light pawn. “Say the word. You have to say it when you start the game.”

“I can’t say the damn word.”

“Just try. Please?”

Erin grumbled. “Gaalaann.”

“Close,” Darrow said. “But not quite. Gaalaann.”

“What the hell does it even mean?”

Darrow shrugged. “Who knows? It’s just part of the ritual. Come on, try again. More of an accent on the second syllable. Gaalaann.”

“I can’t hear the difference,” Erin said.

“Listen closely,” Darrow said.

The door chimed and slid open. Rayley, the ship’s science officer, burst into the room, looking very excited.

“We’ve got something,” Rayley said. “A way for you to win.”

“A kid?” Erin gaped. “They’ve got a child on board?”

The conference room display showed an interior scan of the enemy destroyer: an overlay of radar, thermal imaging, and other passive radiation scans. There was definitely some kind of smaller creature running back and forth between two adult Quggano, an indistinct blue-green blob flanked by large, eight-legged, insectoid forms. Erin felt like she was watching some kind of bizarre nature documentary.

“Rayley hacked into their comms,” Captain Yokota said. “The adults are some kind of state dignitary and his mate. Their presence aboard a destroyer is unusual, but not unheard of.”

“And now you can call out the child,” Rayley said. “Name him as your opponent.”

“You know it’s a boy?” Erin said.

“We know his name, his age, his bedtime—”

“It’s allowed,” Darrow said. “They never asked us to name an opponent. Most champion games involve the captains of the respective warships by default. The Quggano named Miss Bountain because they knew she was a civilian, and therefore hadn’t been trained to play Ton-Gla-Ben.”

“And neither has this kid,” Rayley said. “He won’t know anything about the game; his family’s not military caste. But he’s old enough to serve, according to their laws. They have to honor your champion request.”

“The losing champion dies.” Erin looked at the captain. “I’m not going to kill a kid. You must be considering other options.”

“Sure,” Yokota said. “I can blow up my ship.”

Erin blinked. “What?”

“Nobody here is going to become a Quggano POW,” Yokota said. “If you lose the game, we trigger the auto-destruct and hope we take those bastards with us.”

“This is the worst day of my life,” Erin said as she walked into the airlock.

“Stop saying that. You could still win,” Darrow said, joining her inside and closing the inner door behind them. “And win or lose, you’ll have more than done your part for the war effort. We’ve already transmitted a sitrep back to Fleet Command. Now that we know how the champion callout ritual works, we can target Quggano warships carrying civilians—”

“Great,” Erin said. “So I’m going to cause the deaths of more innocent people.”

Darrow stopped working the airlock controls and frowned at her. “They’re not people. They’re aliens.”

Erin felt a headache starting. “Anyone you can have meaningful communication with is a person,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re human, or alien, or some kind of hyperintelligent computer virus. Life is life.”

The airlock began cycling. Darrow turned back to face Erin and raised both hands, palms out in surrender. “I’m not qualified to argue philosophy with you, ma’am. All I’m saying is, we’re at war, and I’d rather it be us instead of them who wins.”

“Nobody wins if we’re all dead,” Erin said.

Darrow avoided her gaze, instead watching the airlock status lights very intently. “Miss Bountain, there is one thing I’d like to give you before you go in there.”

Erin stepped back. “Look, Darrow, I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, but I don’t even know your first name—”

Darrow gave her a shocked look. “I’m not propositioning you.”

Erin hoped she wasn’t blushing too much. “Well, I am just about to take off all my clothes here.”

Darrow shook his head. “Not to boast, ma’am, but if we were going to do, um, that, I think I would last a little longer than the two minutes it’s going to take this airlock to finish cycling.”

“Fine. Sorry. My mistake.” Erin felt like dying already. “What is it you want to give me, then?”

Darrow reached into a tiny pouch hidden inside the left sleeve of his uniform jacket and pulled out a small red capsule. Erin didn’t need to ask what it was. She didn’t want to accept it, either, but Darrow pressed it into her hand.

“Hide it under your tongue,” he said, lowering his voice as if someone could eavesdrop over the noise of atmosphere filling the docking tunnel between Myrmidon and the Quggano ship. “It’s all organic compounds, even the capsule itself, so it won’t show up on any scans. If you need to use it, just bite down to break the seal. The chemicals will mix together and activate the—” He stopped and shrugged.

“Poison,” Erin said, finishing the sentence.

“It’s very fast-acting,” Darrow said, “and completely painless.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“Look,” Darrow said, “we don’t know what the Quggano do with the losing champions. But no human who goes into the competition chamber has ever come out again. If it looks like they’re going to do something that—if they’re going to torture you, or worse—this will let you end it quickly.”

Erin hated not being able to argue with him. She hated being afraid like this, feeling powerless and limited to only bad choices.

She took the capsule and shoved it under her tongue. It felt cold and hard, not merely lifeless but actively malignant. She hated knowing that she might actually welcome death soon.

The airlock finished cycling, and the bolts clanged open. Darrow pushed the door outward, and cold air billowed in from the docking tunnel. Erin shivered.

“Whenever you’re ready, ma’am,” Darrow said, turning his back. “Take your time.”

Erin unzipped her jacket. “Worst day of my life,” she muttered.

Erin didn’t quite understand why the Quggano insisted that both champions playing Ton-Gla-Ben had to be nude in the competition chamber. Sure, part of it was to enforce the no-cheating rule, making sure nobody could smuggle in any devices to give them an unfair advantage over their opponent, but according to Darrow, most of it was based in the Quggano warrior culture. Something about having to strip down to your birth essence to reveal your true nature in single combat, shedding any impediments which might distract from your own personal ability.

She pulled herself through the docking tunnel, doing her best to ignore the swaying of the cylindrical passage and to not think about the fact that there was only a thin membrane separating her from hard vacuum. The lack of gravity was a welcome novelty, though she did grumble when she reached the other ship’s gravity field and her breasts sagged again.

The Quggano airlock didn’t look too dissimilar from the Myrmidon’s, aside from the unfamiliar signage in their language. Erin briefly wondered if Darrow would find that a compelling argument for the aliens’ personhood.

There were also markings on the floor—not quite arrows, but definitely a line leading out from the airlock and down the corridor. Erin followed the line into the Quggano ship, suddenly self-conscious about her nude body. Why hadn’t she spent more time on the treadmill? Why hadn’t she stuck to a healthier diet? Why hadn’t she been more careful with her interstellar navigation?

Two Quggano guards met her at the entrance to the competition chamber. They looked like all the pictures she’d ever seen: tall and spindly, humanoid enough to be familiar but with enough buglike features to make them unnerving. She had no idea what the child would look like.

After the guards looked her over and passed a scanning wand across every part of her body, they opened the chamber door and motioned her forward. Erin was very proud of herself for not fainting or stumbling as she stepped inside. The door closed behind her.

In the center of the square room was a heavy round table with two stools. Another door was outlined on the far wall. A grid of illuminated strips cast light from above. The walls, floor, and ceiling were otherwise bare. Erin briefly wondered if every Quggano warship kept a special room set aside just for these contests, or if they hastily converted a cargo hold every time something like this came up.

She walked forward and sat down on the stool closer to her, which was mercifully padded with some kind of cloth. The only objects on the table were the Ton-Gla-Ben board and pieces. She looked around nervously, even though Darrow had assured her there would be no cameras or other recording sensors in here. It was some kind of point of honor that the two champions would face each other alone.

The game board had been oriented so that Erin was playing the dark side. That meant she would move second, and could be at a disadvantage. She wondered if her opponent would complain—or even notice—if she turned the board around, so that she would move first as the light side. Switching seats might be a bit obvious.

Erin picked up the dark king, which was heavier than she expected. The piece had been carved out of some kind of rock, apparently by hand. She could see that the lines cut into the sides of the conical shape were not quite straight. What kind of history did these objects have? Were they the Quggano captain’s personal effects? A family heirloom?

She sighed and put the game piece down. Maybe Darrow had the right idea. It would be easier to fight the Quggano if she didn’t think of them as people. But they were. Erin made her living as a merchant by treating all kinds of alien life forms as people. Her business was understanding what each species valued, and finding the most profitable way to trade between as many of them as possible. She didn’t judge those species which prized things she found distasteful, like cannibalism or slavery; she just didn’t do business with them. But she had to acknowledge that they were people. Maybe bad people, or just people she didn’t want to hang out with, but still people.

The door in the far wall slid open, and Erin’s opponent entered the chamber.

The child didn’t look like a miniature version of an adult Quggano, as Erin had thought it—he—might. Instead of walking upright on his four back limbs, he scuttled forward on all eight legs. The door slammed shut behind him, and Erin barely caught a glimpse of two adults—his parents, presumably—watching as their offspring crawled forth into battle.

How the hell did I wind up here?

The young Quggano climbed up onto the stool across from Erin. His body was squat and round. His dark, bulbous eyes reflected the ceiling lights. She couldn’t tell where he was actually looking; the Quggano’s fly-like ommatidia radiated in all directions. It felt like the kid was staring at her. She folded her arms to cover her bare breasts—which was silly; an alien wasn’t going to get turned on by her naked body. But it just felt wrong, to be unclothed in front of a child.

“Hi,” Erin said, after the silence had gone from awkward to weird. “I’m Erin. What’s your name?”

The kid tilted his head slightly.

“Erin,” she repeated, tapping her chest with one hand. She pointed at the kid. “What’s your name?”

The kid raised one foreleg, aimed it at Erin, and made a noise that could have been interpreted as “AAARRRNNN.”

Erin nodded and pointed at herself again. “Erin. Close enough. What’s your name?”

The kid touched its own thorax and said something like “MMMAAAKH,” with extra hissing at the end.

Erin stared for a moment. “Mikey?”

The kid repeated the sound and waved his antennae.

“Mikey,” Erin repeated. “So. Nice weather we’re having, eh?”

“GAALAANN,” Mikey said.

He reached out with two limbs, picked up a light pawn, and moved it into the center of the board. The surface glowed momentarily, just as Darrow had predicted: it was recording each move, for archival purposes. It would also send a signal outside the chamber when the game ended. That was the only communication permitted between this chamber and the outside world for the duration of the contest.

“Well,” Erin sighed, “I guess we’re getting right down to business.”

She pushed a dark pawn forward to block the light pawn from advancing. Mikey immediately grabbed one of his tall-bishops and shoved it forward.

Erin frowned, her hand hovering over the board. Why did this seem familiar?

“Light pawn to center,” she murmured to herself. “Dark pawn to block, tall-bishop forward, then…”

She remembered. This was one of the first game openings Darrow had taught her, a simple strategy he called “tower defense.” Erin lifted one of her side-rooks and moved it up next to her pawn, watching Mikey’s expression. His mandibles twitched, but she had no idea what that meant.

As soon as Erin released her side-rook, Mikey moved his other tall-bishop into position to threaten the leftmost of her three knights. Completely by the book.

Was this kid just playing by rote? Did he have any idea what he’d been dropped into here? That he was literally fighting for his life?

Erin’s vision blurred. She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at Mikey again. She had no idea what he was thinking, and she couldn’t ask him, given the language barrier. They couldn’t even talk about what was happening. They just had to go through with this ritual, and then one of them had to die.

It was an impossible choice. She knew how to break through Mikey’s tower defense—if that was what he was playing—but she couldn’t condemn this kid to death just because he didn’t know how to play a damn game.

On the other hand, how could she sentence the entire crew of the Myrmidon to death, just because she couldn’t stand the thought of being a murderer? Was her own psychological well-being worth all those hundreds of lives?

Mikey made a noise, jolting her back to the game. Erin interpreted his utterance as impatience, and she reflexively made the next textbook move, sliding her other side-rook forward to defend her knight.

As soon as her hand released the dark piece, Mikey moved his tall-bishop in for the kill, using another arm to remove the dark knight and set it on the table beside the game board. He lifted his head and made a cawing noise that might have been laughter.

Erin shook her head. He was playing exactly the way Darrow had shown her not to. Sure, Mikey’s tall-bishop was now inside her lines, but he had left himself wide open to a counterattack. Erin could take out his tall-bishop with her side-rook, then send her other two knights in through the opening he had just made. She could decimate his pieces in half a dozen moves. There was still no guarantee that she would win, but if all Mikey knew about Ton-Gla-Ben was what he’d read in a book, she actually had a fighting chance.

“AAARRNNN,” Mikey said, fluttering his antennae. He tapped the table with two legs. “AAARRNNN GAALAANN.”

“Okay, okay,” Erin said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

She captured his tall-bishop with her side-rook. Mikey stared silently for a moment, then moved his other tall-bishop forward, setting up to capture her side-rook.

Erin gaped for a moment. He’d just gone off-book, but not in a good way. There was no advantage to taking her side-rook now. Sending his other tall-bishop in was an obvious mistake. Was he just baiting her? Testing to see what this dumb human would do?

“What the hell are you doing?” Erin muttered.

She decided to do something off the wall. She took her rightmost pawn and shoved it forward. The move was completely irrelevant to everything that had happened in the game so far. Would Mikey ignore it and take her side-rook in an act of short-sighted vengeance?

He didn’t. He moved his own light pawn forward, blocking the dark pawn she’d just released. Now they were deadlocked, removing an entire section of the board from play.

Erin frowned at him. “What the hell are you doing?” she said out loud.

She grabbed her leftmost pawn and moved it out, mirroring her last move. Once again, Mikey blocked with his own pawn. Now two entire lanes were unplayable.

“What the hell are you doing?” Erin repeated.

He stared back at her with giant, unblinking eyes. “GAALAANN.”

Erin looked down at the board, then up at Mikey again. If he was going to play like this—short-sighted, reacting to low-value captures, focused on retaliation and spite instead of long-term gain—there was a very good chance Erin could beat him. And this was a single contest, not some kind of tournament.

One game, and then one of them would die.

“GAALAANN,” Mikey repeated, tapping four arms on the table.

Impatient. Childlike.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t send this kid to his death. She couldn’t live with herself if she did that.

If Captain Yokota chose to blow up his ship and kill his own crew, that was on him. That wouldn’t be Erin’s fault. It wasn’t her fault that the Quggano had named her to play this stupid game, or that this idiotic war was happening in the first place.

But it would be her fault if she killed this child.

Her hand trembled as she reached forward and picked up a dark short-bishop. It was entirely too early in the game for her to send it forward, especially now that every piece would be channeled into the center of the board, but it was the surest way to guarantee a quick loss. Once her short-bishops were gone, she would have no close-in defenses for her king.

She dropped the short-bishop onto the board and withdrew her hand. She looked up at Mikey.

“You’re not that dumb,” she said. “Come on, let’s just get this over with.”

He tilted his head at her. He leaned forward to study the board. Then he picked up a light side-rook and moved it up behind the light pawn in his left side lane.

Erin blinked. He had just locked up that piece, too. Nobody was moving out of the side lanes until one of those pawns got captured, and that wasn’t going to happen until somebody risked sacrificing a knight to do it.

“Look,” Erin said, moving her center knight into position to attack the light pawn in her right side lane. “Look. See that? What do you do about that? Come on, this is basic—”

Mikey seized his other side-rook and placed it behind his right side lane pawn.

“What the hell are you doing?” Erin stood up. Her hands clutched the sides of her head. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

Mikey tilted his head up toward her. “GAALAANN.”

Erin folded her arms and sat down. “Don’t tell me. That word does not mean what I think it means.”

Mikey repeated the sound. Erin strained to hear any difference in inflection or tone, but her human ears hadn’t been trained to understand Quggano. Mikey waved his arms at the board. Erin felt anger warming her cheeks.

“No,” she said. “Fuck you, kid. There is no way I’m winning this game. Fuck. You.”

With the last two syllables, she picked up and then dropped her third knight, putting it right in front of a light short-bishop. It was a ridiculously dumb move, exposing her to at least three different attacks, and it should have been irresistible to any opponent.

Mikey ignored the knight and moved his tall-bishop out of attack position.

Erin couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She looked over the board, then looked it over again. Both light and dark positions were a mess. There was a chance that they could both end up blocking all possible avenues of attack and—

She gasped and looked up at Mikey. He tapped his arms on the table next to the board, dancing between the light side-rooks and pawns in the outermost lanes. The lanes which were now completely blocked.

He hadn’t been impatient. He had been trying to draw her attention to his strategy.

“Smart kid,” Erin said, smiling. “All right, short stack. Let’s do this. Gaalaann.”

She moved another short-bishop into the center of the board. Mikey made that cawing-laughter noise again, then moved one of his own short-bishops forward. Yes. Erin could see it now. She could see exactly what he was doing, and what he wanted her to do.

Neither of them wanted to win this game. Neither of them wanted to be a killer.

They were going to work together to reach a stalemate.

She tried not to think about what would happen after they finished the game. Darrow hadn’t briefed her on what the Quggano would do with the champions if their contest ended in a draw. She expected it wasn’t a possibility in single combat. Even with Ton-Gla-Ben, stalemate was rare, because it was easy to exploit even the smallest mistake.

But neither Erin or Mikey was trying to win this game. They weren’t trying to find an optimal strategy; they were actively working against themselves, cutting off lanes, blocking their own pieces, doing things that no serious player would ever consider. And they were both pretty good at playing badly.

She didn’t know how long it took, but when Mikey made the last move—jamming a pawn into a circle of pieces surrounding the dark king, ensuring that nothing could get through—the entire board surface flashed. Whatever intelligence was built into it must have been able to tell that no further moves were possible. They had reached a verifiable stalemate condition.

Mikey pulled his arms back and waved them in the air.

Erin said, “Now what?”

Both chamber doors clanged open. Four Quggano guards, looking even bigger and more menacing now that Erin had gotten used to seeing Mikey’s compact form, stomped into the chamber and grabbed Erin and Mikey. Erin didn’t even have time to say good-bye, or offer a handshake to her opponent. She hoped they weren’t both being taken away to be executed. Was not winning the same thing as losing?

Erin shivered as refrigerated oxygen cycled into the Myrmidon’s airlock. She clutched her bundle of clothes against her private parts. The shivering was partly due to the cold air, but mostly because she’d had no idea what the Quggano would do to her for throwing the game, and she had feared the worst.

She had been pleasantly surprised when they escorted her back through the docking tunnel with remarkable grace and used their unexpectedly gentle pincers to nudge her into the airlock, where her clothes were still waiting in a pile on the floor. It would take her a few minutes to get over being scared out of her mind.

Lieutenant Darrow rushed forward as the airlock doors opened and threw a scratchy Fleet-issue gray blanket over Erin’s shoulders. He guided her onto a bench in the corridor. A crewman waiting there handed Erin a cup of something dark and warm. Erin spat out the red capsule under her tongue, sending it skittering across the deck, and watched the crewman race after it.

“You did it,” Darrow said. “I don’t believe it. I mean, it’s great that you won—”

“I didn’t win,” Erin said, pulling the blanket around herself. She felt not just cold, but numb. She gulped down the warm liquid. It might have been coffee, but the important thing was, it was warm.

Darrow frowned and knelt down next to her. “What do you mean, you didn’t win? They let you go.”

“S-stalemate,” Erin stuttered. She took another drink. Her fingertips tingled as feeling returned to them. “Nobody won.”

“That’s—” Darrow stood up, his mouth open. “I’ve never heard of that happening before.”

Erin chuckled. “First time for everything, I guess.”

Darrow’s wristcom chirped. He raised it to his face. “Darrow here.”

“This is the captain,” came Yokota’s voice. “Get Miss Bountain up to the bridge. The Quggano want to talk to her.”

Erin was glad that Darrow delayed the lift long enough for her to put on her clothes. Everyone on the bridge watched as she and Darrow walked out of the lift and over to where the captain stood, in front of the main viewscreen.

The display showed the Quggano bridge, with a similar array of personnel: the captain, wearing his ceremonial sash, in the middle; next to him, another officer; behind them, Mikey, flanked by his parents; and the rest of the crew at attention. Two dozen alien eyes stared out from the screen, dark orbs rotating back and forth occasionally. The Quggano stood perfectly still otherwise.

“Here she is,” Captain Yokota said, motioning for Erin to stand next to him. “Our champion, Erin Bountain of Earth.”

His eyes flashed a what-the-hell-is-going-on look at her. She shrugged and wondered what to do with her hands while the Quggano translator relayed Captain Yokota’s message. She settled for folding her arms across her chest. No need for everyone on the bridge to see how cold she was.

“Captain FFRRHHHD congratulates both champions on their performance in the contest,” the translator said. “It is an unusual outcome, but surely speaks to the skill of the competitors.”

“Thank you, Captain Fred,” Erin said. She heard someone cough behind her and saw Yokota shooting a dirty look over his shoulder. “I feel honored to have played Ton-Gla-Ben with a challenger as adept as Mikey.”

This time, someone actually laughed out loud. Yokota snapped his fingers and pointed at the lift. Erin heard footsteps behind her.

“As tradition dictates, we will now open peace negotiations,” the translator said.

“What?” Erin said.

“We accept,” Yokota said, stepping forward. “Please let me offer—”

“Excuse me, Captain,” the translator said. “Negotiations will proceed between our two champions.”

“What?” Yokota said.

“They have proven themselves in the contest,” the translator said. “They now represent our respective species in this proceeding. I will translate for Champion MMMAAAKH.” He gestured with one arm, and Mikey’s parents reluctantly released him.

“Get them to a conference table,” Yokota said to Erin, under his breath. “Do not say anything else. You get them to the table, and then you hand off to me. You got that?”

“Don’t worry, Captain,” Erin replied. “I got this.”

She ignored his glare and stepped forward to meet Mikey’s image.

“Good game,” she said.

The translator conveyed her message. Mikey said something in response.

“Champion MMMAAAKH respectfully requests a rematch,” the translator said. “At your convenience, purely for sport.”

Erin smiled. “Tell him I’m ready. Anytime, anywhere. Gaalaann.”

Mikey waved his antennae and made that cawing sound again. The translator seemed confused. “Apologies, Champion Erin, I am not certain I understand your meaning.”

“Gaalaann. It’s what you say when you begin a game of Ton-Gla-Ben, right?”

“That is the tradition,” the translator said. “However, the word itself can convey other nuances.”

Erin glanced at Darrow. “Like what?”

The translator flicked one antenna. “It denotes a challenge, but the specific context can apply other connotations. In the most literal sense, I believe it would translate as: ‘Follow me, if you are able.’ What did you mean to say?”

Erin smiled at the people on the viewscreen. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

Making Waves

Originally published by SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

"You check those corners, sailor?" the Chief of the Boat barked. "Those lines are off by half a degree and our visitor doesn’t materialize!"

"Re-measuring now, Master Chief!"

The COB was exaggerating, but I’d learned early in my naval career not to argue with a superior. If it wasn’t likely to kill me, I just did it.

I placed my protractor on the dowstone panel we had strapped to the deck and re-checked all the angles in the chalked pentagram, then inspected every stroke of every rune around the circle. Then I climbed the ladder and verified the matching dowstone on the ceiling. Satisfied both stones would activate correctly, I stepped back and reported my progress.

"Very well," the COB grumbled. "Rosebud!"

The seaman’s real name was Roseler, but after that Orson Welles flick, everyone called him ‘Rosebud’ as a tease. He jumped forward, holding his clipboard. I did my best to get out of the way. The COB’s quarters weren’t exactly spacious. Roseler and I didn’t both need to be here, but we were apparently the only two sailors on the Bowfin rated for magic, and the Master Chief wanted us to double-check each other.

"You got the incantations there?" the COB asked Roseler.

"Aye, Master Chief!" Roseler said, his voice cracking. And people said I sounded like a girl.

"Corrected for position and depth?"

"Aye, Master Chief! I’ve got the math right here—"

"I can’t read your damn chicken scratches." The COB waved the clipboard away and checked his wristwatch. "Rendezvous in twenty seconds. Make sure you’re doing it right."

Roseler looked like he might cry. "M-maybe you’d like to do it yourself, Master Chief?"

"Do I look like a motherfucking magician?" the COB roared into Roseler’s face. Their noses couldn’t have been more than half an inch apart. "Now incant that fucking spell so we can receive our goddamn visitor!"

"Aye, Master Chief!" Roseler buried his face in the clipboard. I made a fist with one hand, ready to give him a kidney-punch if I heard the slightest mispronunciation. I didn’t want to be within a hundred yards of the Bowfin if anything went wrong on the receiving end of this teleport.

"Five seconds, sailor!" the COB shouted.

"Aye, Master Chief!" Roseler began making unnatural noises with his mouth. "Hagitaa, moro-ven-schaa, inlum’taa…"

Both pentagrams pulsed blue and white. Roseler finished the incantation, only going a little flat on the last syllable, and a pillar of light flashed into being between the two circles. A moment later, the light faded, and an officer stood inside the pentagram, carrying a large suitcase and wearing a…skirt?

"Permission to come aboard, Master Chief," the woman said.

She looked to be about my mother’s age. Unlike my mother, she wore lieutenant’s bars and the most perfect makeup I’d ever seen. But the expression on her face and the fact that she’d just teleported nearly seven thousand miles onto a submerged attack boat in the South Pacific told me she wasn’t here to entertain anyone. Her nametag read: MARKEY.

"Permission granted, ma’am," the COB said without missing a beat. I guess you don’t get to be a Master Chief by balking at the unexpected. "Sorry the captain couldn’t be here to greet you himself. We’re playing hide and seek with the Japs."

As if on cue, the entire boat groaned and rolled to starboard. I was impressed that the lieutenant kept her balance in those heels.

The COB shoved Roseler and me back. "If you’ll follow me, ma’am?"

Markey looked at the pentagrams. "You’re not going to clean this up?"

"These two can handle—"

"You secure those surfaces, Master Chief," Markey snapped. She looked straight at me. "You. What’s your name?"

I blinked, surprised that she would address me directly. "Uh, Hatcher, ma’am."

Markey nodded. "Seaman Hatcher can escort me to see the captain."

"A kraken?" Captain Channing glared at Lieutenant Markey. "Is this a joke?"

Everyone else in the control room, myself included, was doing their best to listen in without looking like they were eavesdropping. Markey had handed over an official envelope from COMSUBPAC, and the captain and XO had verified the code sigils with their authorization amulets before unsealing the Bowfin's new orders.

"No joke, Captain," Markey said.

"We’re at war, and some egghead in OP-20-G wants us to go hunting for a sea monster?" The captain turned over the paper in his hand as if looking for something more on the back. "What makes you think this creature even exists?"

"The Japanese are very chatty," Markey said. "They don’t know we’ve broken their codes, and they talk about all kinds of things over the wireless. Lately they’ve been diverting their ships away from the western side of Kyushu Island, to avoid disturbing something they call nemuru kaiju—a sleeping beast. Surely you’ve noticed the changes in your patrol routes."

"Yeah, we noticed," the captain said. "But maybe they do know you’ve cracked their codes and this is a trap. We’ve been doing a lot of damage to their merchant fleet. They must be looking for ways to kill more of our subs."

"I’m not here for a conference, Captain," Markey said. "You have your orders."

"I’ve got a question," the XO said.

Markey looked up at him. "Yes?"

"Let’s suppose this kraken is real," the XO drawled, "and as powerful as you say it is. How come the Japs haven’t already woken it up and sicced it on us?"

"The people of Japan live on a collection of small islands surrounded by the entire Pacific Ocean," Markey said. "Most of their mythology tells of how dangerous the sea and its inhabitants can be. They live with that danger every day. The Japanese aren’t going to risk waking the monsters under their bed." She turned back to the captain. "But we can."

"Okay, fine," the captain said. "If the Japs are busy fighting off this kraken, they’re not making war on us. Good plan. But we have to find the damn thing first."

Markey smiled. "That’s why I’m here, Captain."

Lieutenant Markey insisted on using the head right after leaving the control room. I didn’t understand why she would need to piss when it had been only minutes since she’d left the comfort of Main Navy. There was no privacy door for the toilet, so I stood in front of Markey with my back turned while she squatted. My body also blocked the sound of her voice when she spoke.

"So how long have you been using that glamour, Miss Hatcher?"

My stomach leapt into my throat and my heart rate must have tripled. I was glad she couldn’t see my face. "I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not sure what you mean."

"Please. I know a conjured disguise when I see one. Can I give you some advice?"

My fear soured to irritation. "Can I stop you, ma’am?"

"You need better scent concealment," Markey said. "I’m guessing that’s a fake bandage on your hand, to explain the smell of blood, right? But that trick won’t work every month. And you don’t want to get a reputation for being clumsy."

My hands were both behind my back, at parade rest, and I fidgeted with my bandaged left palm. "Do you have a suggestion, ma’am? Other than dousing myself with cheap cologne?"

"Yes." Markey stood and flushed. "But we should talk in private."

The COB wasn’t happy about giving up his quarters for our visitor, but the captain refused to have a woman sharing rack space with a bunch of sailors. I wondered what he would do if he ever found out the truth about me.

Markey interrupted the COB as he and I were preparing to carry his personal effects to a temporary bunk. "Excuse me, Master Chief. I’d like to speak to Seaman Hatcher alone."

I winced. The COB looked from Markey to me and back again, his eyes wide. I had no doubt I’d get a good yelling-at later. "Of course, ma’am." He glared at me. "You know where to find me, Seaman."

"Aye, COB," I said. He shut the door behind him.

I turned back to Markey, who was already making herself comfortable on the COB’s bed. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed the soles of her feet.

"With all due respect, ma’am," I said, "I’m trying to not call attention to myself here—"

"Relax," Markey said. "I’m just a crazy dame from Washington. They won’t suspect anything. Now."

She reached into her wavy hair and pulled out a bobby pin. Then she twisted the metal—it looked like copper—until it became an impossible shape, and even I could see the energy rippling off its surface like a heat mirage.

"You’re using a visual glamour," she said. "This will extend the illusion to mask odors. Just keep it in contact with your skin at all times."

She held out the object and I took it with a trembling hand. If Lieutenant Markey could turn a bobby pin into a charged talisman, and if the Navy had sent her, alone, to locate a kraken, she would be one hell of a powerful friend to have.

She also scared the shit out of me. People who seem too competent always make me nervous.

"Thank you, ma’am," I said. "This is—I mean, I don’t know how I can repay you." What I really meant was: I don’t know why you’re helping me.

"Well," Markey said, "you can start by finding me some trousers and boots. I don’t plan to spend the next two weeks showing off my legs."

"Yes, ma’am." I tucked the hairpin under the bandage wrapped around my left hand. "If there’s nothing else?"

Markey looked at me with dark, unfathomable eyes. "Tell me how you ended up here."

"In the Navy?" That was easy: I wanted to kill Japs. I tried to think of a nicer way to say it.

"On the Bowfin," she said.

I frowned. "I didn’t exactly get to choose my posting."

Markey shook her head. "Why disguise yourself as a man?"

I should have figured she’d ask that. "I knew Uncle Sam wouldn’t let a girl do any real fighting. And that’s bullshit. Pardon my French."

"Why do you want to fight?"

"You’re kidding, right?" I gaped at her. "They attacked us! Stabbed their damn aluminum planes through the Pacific defense screens and into Pearl Harbor. I was born in Honolulu. When I saw the photos—all that black smoke filling our sky—I hated them. I wanted revenge, I’m not afraid to say it."

I felt my hands shaking, and I folded my arms to hide them. "Not to mention their Nazi pals are killing or enslaving their way through all of Europe. If we don’t stop the Axis, ma’am, they’re going to take over the world, and I don’t want to live in that world."

Markey nodded and seemed to relax. "Sorry to interrogate you like that, Hatcher, but I’m never sure whether to trust people in disguise."

"Yeah, well, we can’t all look like movie stars."

"Don’t imagine for a second that makes things any easier for me," she snapped. "And I will thank you to address me as Lieutenant or ma’am, Seaman Hatcher."

I looked down at the floor, my face warm. "Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am."

"This is not a costume I’m wearing." Markey touched her uniform. "I earned my rank. I had to fight to get this job, and I fight every day to keep it.

"Yes, there are advantages to men finding you beautiful, but that perception also limits you. They think all you are is a pretty face and a nice body. They only care about what they can see." She shrugged. "But I don’t have to tell you how appearances can be deceiving."

"No, ma’am."

Markey sighed. "What you’re doing now is very brave, Hatcher. But when this war is over, you’ll have to go back home—back to being a woman. Have you thought about how you’re going to handle that?"

"Well, ma’am, since most of my time in the Navy’s been spent cleaning one thing or another, I expect I’ll be well trained to be a housewife." My words came out sounding more bitter than I intended.

"You have the talent, Hatcher," Markey said. "More than that, you clearly have the will. These two things are powerful in combination."

This conversation was becoming very uncomfortable. "With all due respect, ma’am, why the hell do you care? You don’t even know me."

Markey stood and walked over to me. "I won’t be pretty forever. I’ll get old, and men won’t want me anymore. But this?" She held up a hand, then snapped her fingers to create an illusory flame bobbing in midair. "The talent will be with me until the day I die. And to know that, to have that and not use it for something good—that would be such a waste."

I couldn’t decipher the expression on her face. Was she feeling some misplaced maternal pity for me? Or did she have another agenda?

After a moment, I decided I really didn’t care.

"Thanks for the advice, ma’am," I said, "but we both have to survive the fucking war first."

The floating fire winked out. "Dismissed."

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

I did my best to avoid Lieutenant Markey for the next several days. It wasn’t easy, since we were both stuck on the same three-hundred-foot, sixty-person submarine. And it wasn’t that I didn’t respect her. She clearly had major pull in OP-20-G to rate a teleport halfway around the planet. But she was calling as much attention to me as she was to herself, and I didn’t need that kind of exposure.

Fortunately, she spent most of her time in the control room or the conning tower, doing whatever she did to track down the mythical kraken, and I was assigned to the aft torpedo compartment. The captain had decided we would fire the fish from there once we were ready to wake the beast—we’d be facing away and ready to run like hell.

Markey had brought aboard divining bolts to replace the magnetic detonators in our Mark 14s. The magnets were supposed to explode a torpedo right underneath a ship’s hull, causing more damage than a broadside impact, but the damn things had never worked right. Markey’s instructions were to replace the magnets with D-bolts, which would make our fish detect monsters instead of metal.

The plan was to find the kraken, poke it with a couple of torpedoes, then skedaddle before it was fully aware of its surroundings. The kraken’s reported location was close enough to populated areas that it should—should—hear the noise from those cities and move toward Japan instead of anywhere else.

Working on the torpedoes occupied me for most of the time, but Markey’s questions kept bugging me. What was I going to do after the war ended?

Maybe I wouldn’t survive. Maybe that would be the best outcome for everyone: if I died in the line of duty, and my family didn’t find out until later what had happened to their daughter—that she’d given her life for her country.

Maybe they’d be proud of me. And maybe the good ol' U-S-of-A would stop questioning our loyalty then.

I hadn’t thought about my future in a while—not since I first enlisted. It had always angered me to know how limited my options were, and now I was angry at Markey for reminding me, for making me worry about things I couldn’t change. That’s what I was thinking about that day, when the COB pulled Roseler and me out of the torpedo bay for another special assignment.

"We’re submerged in hostile waters, less than a hundred miles from enemy shore," the captain said as I climbed into the conning tower. "We can’t surface, and we can’t outrun anything that swims. Anything goes wrong here and we are fucked."

He was talking to Lieutenant Markey. Roseler was already crowded into the tight space around the periscope. I handed him the Bowfin's codex, which I had retrieved from the control room. He gave me a clipboard and a frantic look as I wedged myself into a corner next to the captain and the COB. It didn’t seem like all five of us needed to be here, but I wasn’t going to debate that.

"This will be a one-way tunnel," Markey said. She might actually have looked better in trousers than a skirt. I tried my best not to feel jealous and failed. "There’s no danger of us being detected."

"But why does Rosebud have to do the spell?" the COB asked. "Aren’t you the professional, Lieutenant?"

"Seaman Roseler is doing the easy part," Markey said. "We don’t have a focus object, so I’ll need to guide the far end of the tunnel."

The COB did a double take. "You’re going to be his crystal ball?"

Markey sighed and looked at the captain. "We can spend all day discussing the finer points of scrying procedure, Captain, or we can get this done."

"Carry on, Lieutenant," the captain said.

I made as little eye contact with Markey as possible while she read off map coordinates for me to inscribe. I joined our target location and Bowfin's mantic signature into the spell, combining sonants and inflects from the codex reference tables and triple-checking each finished sequence. In principle, writing up the scry tunnel was simpler than describing a teleport path, but I did not want to be on the hook if this thing went sideways.

A few minutes later, Roseler and Markey were holding hands, their eyes closed as Roseler recited the full incantation.

Next to me, the captain muttered, "I’ll be glad when we’re done with all this black magic bullshit."

"Yes, sir," I said.

He glanced over as if noticing me for the first time. "Your family have talent, Seaman?"

I thought of my grandmother. She had introduced me to the occult, sneaking some mystical instruction into my language lessons every week. We never told my parents. They would have disapproved, to say the least.

I said, "Not that I’m aware of, sir."

"Thank fucking God," the COB said, on my other side. "Give me science and engineering any day of the week. I don’t trust anything I can’t take apart and see how it works—"

Roseler started screaming. It came suddenly, without even an intake of breath, and the sound was inhuman. He shrieked like an animal caught in a trap. I dropped the clipboard and covered my ears with both hands.

"Get the doc!" Markey shouted. "We need a tranquilizer!" Roseler’s body began convulsing. She wrestled him to the deck. "Hatcher! Help me hold him down!"

The captain leaned down the ladder and yelled for the corpsman. I jumped over him and grabbed Roseler’s shoulders. His eyes had rolled back into his head. He was still screaming, and his legs kicked around despite Markey’s iron grip.

"What the hell’s wrong with him?" the COB asked.

"He made contact!" Markey said. "Dammit, COB, you didn’t tell me he was a sensitive!"

"How the fuck were we supposed to know?" the COB said.

My stomach knotted. Not because I was concerned for Roseler, but because I was afraid if he died, Markey would order me to incant her spells.

"As you were, both of you!" the captain said over the screaming. I could swear Roseler hadn’t taken a breath in more than a minute. "Doc’s on his way. Now how do we—"

Roseler stopped screaming. His mouth closed, then opened again, and he said a word which was not a word.

My head exploded with pain. No, pain’s not the right thing to call it. It wasn’t just that I hurt. When that not-word entered my brain, suddenly nothing in the world seemed right. What I saw, what I heard, what I felt—from the dinner I was still digesting to gravity itself—everything was wrong, and my body wanted it to stop.

I saw the captain fall to his knees, clutching for a handhold. A dark stain spread across the front of his trousers. Behind him, the COB vomited all over one wall of the compartment. Markey doubled over, blood dripping from her nose.

Roseler’s lips parted again. I slapped both hands over the bottom half of his face before he could make another sound. He kept shaking, and the only thing I could think was: I’ll kill him if I have to. How do I kill him? What’s the fastest way to kill him?

"Good," Markey grunted, pressing her hands over mine. She turned her head and spat out a mouthful of thick, dark blood. "Keep him quiet until we can sedate him."

"What the fuck just happened?" I asked.

"Our intel was wrong," Markey said. "They’re not kraken."

Some small part of me was happy that she’d screwed up. Most of me wanted to shit my pants. Then my brain finished processing Markey’s words.

"Wait, they?" The urge to empty my bowels increased. "There’s more than one?"

By the time the corpsman had chloroformed Roseler and tied him down to the bunk in Markey’s quarters—she ordered him gagged and isolated; nobody argued—I had finished collecting all our gear out of the conning tower and cleaning it off. The captain and the COB had changed into fresh uniforms and regrouped in the control room. They argued with the XO in low tones as I stowed the codex above the weapons station, locked the safebox, and returned the key to the captain.

I was just about to leave the control room when Lieutenant Markey came in, blocking my exit. Her face and uniform were still smeared with blood. Most of the officers and crew looked away. I backed myself into a corner and did my best to seem small.

"Two knots, Captain," the helmsman whispered. We had been running silent since we made contact with the monsters.

"Very well," the captain said. He turned to Markey. "Lieutenant, what are these torpedoes going to do to the kraken?"

"I’m aborting the mission, Captain," Markey said.

The captain frowned. "Come again?"

"We cannot disturb those Things," Markey said, lowering her voice. "We need to get the hell out of here."

"Oh, we’re moving," the captain said. "But we did not come all the way into the goddamn lion’s den just to have a look-see. We are going to do some fucking damage before we leave."

"Aft tubes loaded, Captain," the weapons officer said behind me.

"The intel was bad," Markey said. "Those are not kraken out there. They are Elder Things. Two of them."

"Older than what?" the XO asked.

"Elder," Markey repeated. "Not older. Elder Things."

I didn’t recognize the name, but ‘elder’ usually refers to something supernatural that’s had centuries to develop its powers. And that’s always bad news.

"That’s not real descriptive," the XO said.

"They are unlike any other life form in Creation," Markey said. "We don’t know what to call them, except…Things."

"I don’t care what fucking kind of sea monsters they are," the captain said. "I just want to know what’s going to happen when we wake them up. The Mark 14s have a nine-thousand-yard range—"

Markey stepped closer and glared at the captain. "I don’t know what will happen if we disturb those Things, Captain. But it’s going to be at least a thousand times worse than what happened to Seaman Roseler."

"I don’t care," the captain said, "as long as it happens to the Japs and not us. Now how far away do we need to be when we shoot off these fish?"

"No," Markey said, her voice tight. "Elder Things are not just monsters. They are the worst monsters ever. They are beyond imagination. You saw—you felt what a single word in their language did to us."

I shivered at the thought of what might have happened if we hadn’t silenced Roseler. The sounds and symbols we use for magic aren’t human—they’re ancient, prehistoric—and we don’t even understand how most of them work.

"Cults have worshipped Elder Things as deities—Old Gods," Markey continued. "Do you understand? The mere sight of one can cause madness. If these two Things wake up, it could mean the end of the world."

The XO grunted. "You just said you didn’t know what would happen. Now you’re saying it’s Arma-fucking-geddon. Which is it, Lieutenant?"

Markey replied without breaking off her staring contest with the captain. "We don’t know exactly how bad it would get. But I am not authorized to take that chance. And neither are you, Captain."

"Then you get authorization," the captain said. "Use a comm spell to contact your superiors."

"I can’t," Markey said. "We’re too deep. Too much water, too much iron." She touched a pipe above her head. Both of those substances restricted the range of any enchantment. It was tough enough for me to maintain my glamour in this steel tube; there was no way she could send a message through several hundred feet of seawater.

"Eighty-five hundred yards, Captain," the helmsman said.

"Eighty-five hundred, aye," the captain repeated. "Weapons, flood aft torpedo tubes."

"Aye, sir, flooding aft tubes," the weapons officer said.

My stomach fluttered, but it wasn’t fear. It took me a moment to understand that I was actually excited. I wanted the captain to go through with this.

"Captain," Markey said. She clenched both her hands into fists. Was she actually thinking about throwing a punch? "Listen to me, please."

"Master Chief, get our latest orders and bring them in here," the captain said.

"Aye, sir." The COB turned and maneuvered his way forward.

"Lieutenant, in seven minutes we’re out of range and we don’t get another shot at this." The captain spoke softly but firmly. "So we’re both going to look at those orders and see precisely what the fuck we’re authorized to do."

"Listen to me, Captain," Markey said with an unnatural calm. "You cannot do this. You cannot unleash those Things upon the world."

Why not? I thought. The Japs brought the war to us. The least we can do is return the favor.

"Aft tubes flooded, sir," the weapons officer reported.

"Open outer doors," the captain said.

"Opening outer doors, aye."

Yes. Hell yes. I wanted us to shoot off those fish. I wanted those monsters to wake up and destroy our enemies. So what if we got caught in the crossfire? This was war. One little submarine for untold devastation on their shores was more than a fair trade.

And if I died out here, I would never have to worry about going home. I would never again need to worry about fitting in, either with or without a disguise.

The sea would take me, and the sea didn’t care about my race, sex, or skin color.

The COB shoved his way back into the control room. "Our orders, Captain."

The captain took the folded paper. "Thank you, Master Chief."

"Eighty-eight hundred yards, Captain," the helmsman said.

"Very well." The captain unfolded the orders. His eyes scanned across the page once, twice, three times. How many times was he going to read it?

I looked at the clock above the weapons station. Less than two minutes until we were out of torpedo range. And what if the captain decided to abort?

No. I had decided. If Captain Channing was just going to stand there with his thumb up his ass, if Markey didn’t have the balls to follow through on her own goddamn orders, I would fucking do it myself.

The weapons officer on duty was Lieutenant Goldman. I didn’t know him well, but I had played a trick on him in the mess hall once, making him think he was taking the last piece of cake. In fact, he had grabbed a bowl of coleslaw, and I got that delicious cake.

I had glamoured him once, and I could do it again.

I moved toward the weapons station, wriggling between other sailors and around their control stations. I had to be close for this to work. I closed my left hand into a fist to help focus my energies. My disguise might falter for a second when I bore the new glamour, but nobody here was watching me anyway.

The captain looked up from his orders.

"Captain?" Markey said quietly.

The captain handed her the paper. "Weps, close outer doors and stand down."

That’s what he actually said. What Goldman heard, loud and clear, was: "Fire torpedoes."

I don’t know how long it took for the commotion in the control room to settle down. As soon as our fish flew out the back door, the captain ordered Goldman placed under arrest, and the COB and the XO seized him. I followed them out of the control room, hoping to slip away in the chaos, but Markey grabbed me and dragged me back to her quarters. I hadn’t expected her to be so strong.

"Why?" she asked after locking us inside. "Why did you do it, Hatcher?"

I stared her down and spoke slowly. "Do what, ma’am?"

She shook her head. "It’s my own fault. I should have been paying more attention to you instead of the captain."

There was something about the way she said that—"Jesus fuck. You! You put a glamour on the captain."

"Nice to meet you, too, kettle," Markey said.

"You disobeyed your own orders!"

Markey’s eyes flashed. "You don’t know what my orders are, Seaman. I couldn’t gamble on the captain making the right decision on his own."

"Yeah, neither could I."

Markey glared at me. "You know why I wanted to stop those torpedoes. Why did you want to fire them so badly?"

I took a breath. "Like the captain said, ma’am. We came here to put some hurt on the Japs. Didn’t seem right for us to leave without doing something."

"No. It’s more than just that." Markey studied me for a moment. "What’s your real name?"

"Carl Hatcher."

"No," Markey said. "Your real name. The one you were born with. The one that’s on the books at whichever Japanese-American internment camp you escaped from."

I felt suddenly deflated. "You—you knew?"

"I saw past your glamour when you took my bobby pin. That’s why I asked you all those questions. You can disguise your looks, but you can’t disguise your emotions." Markey sat. "I had to make sure you weren’t a spy."

I clenched my teeth. She had never really wanted to help me after all. She had only kept me close in case I turned out to be an enemy.

"My family name is Hachiya," I said. "I am a native-born American citizen, and I am loyal to my country."

"I’m not questioning your loyalty! I’m concerned about your judgment," Markey said. "Would you really rather die here, under a false identity, instead of facing life as your true self?"

An unearthly roar saved me from having to answer. The entire boat shuddered, and I imagined the ocean itself trembling.

"Guess they’re awake," I said.

"You don’t know what you’ve done," Markey said. "No matter how much you might hate them, the Japanese don’t deserve what’s going to happen when those Things reach shore."

"War is hell, ma’am."

She grimaced. "You know nothing about Hell, little girl."

Captain Channing surfaced the Bowfin as soon as we were back in international waters. Official information about what was happening in Japan remained spotty, but Markey, or rather, Roseler, had a direct line to a primary source. She was still able to connect to the now-catatonic seaman—just like she had during the scry—and report what she saw through the monsters' eyes. That lady never stopped scaring me.

The Things were faster on land than anybody had expected. Both surfaced on the western shore of Kyushu Island and crawled into the nearest population centers, causing massive damage by their sheer bulk—news reports varied, making them anywhere from fifty to two hundred feet tall, with claws, wings, tentacles, or some combination of all three.

But the worst of it radiated outward from them, as people apparently driven mad by the Things' mere presence set upon each other. Simple killing was the least of the atrocities Markey reported seeing, and which she ordered me to transcribe in gruesome detail.

She was right. Nobody deserved this, not even the Japs. I wouldn’t have wished this fate on Hitler himself.

But I refused to let myself feel guilty about it.

I hadn’t created those monsters. They were older than humanity. Someone or something would have roused them sooner or later. And no matter what Markey said about their cultural inhibitions, I knew the Japs would have eventually unleashed every weapon in their arsenal and every kind of magic they could muster against the Allies. Just like we were doing all we could to defeat them.

It was inevitable. This was war, all-out war, world war. It was them or us, and I would always choose us. My country; right or wrong.

Every nation in this conflict was doing terrible things. Every single person was doing things that would have been unthinkable before the war. Like me breaking out of Manzanar, disguising myself as a man, enlisting in the fucking Navy? That was three hundred percent insane. But I had done all of it in the name of victory. I had to do it. I couldn’t have stayed in that internment camp for one more hour. I refused to continue being a victim. I needed to fight back. I had to do it.

It didn’t stop the nightmares or bring my appetite back any sooner, but that dense nugget of conviction gave me something to hold onto. And I needed it as Markey spent hours on end dictating the relentless details of every hideous, profane, revolting scene she witnessed through Roseler’s link. I did my best to write down her words without thinking about their meaning, repeating slogans in my head to block out comprehension.

This is war. Kill or be killed. Better them than us. I had to do it. I had to do it. I had to do it.

In the end, OP-20-G was right. The Elder Things didn’t seem interested in moving out of Japan any time soon. Mission accomplished.

Markey code-named the monsters ALFA and BRAVO. The Japanese evacuated their coastal cities and mobilized heavy artillery. They bombarded both creatures for days. BRAVO didn’t budge, but the ground forces managed to drive ALFA back into the ocean. Less than twenty-four hours later, ALFA resurfaced at the southwestern tip of Honshu Island and headed inland. The Japs finally surrounded ALFA at Second Army headquarters and kept it from going anywhere else.

But stopping the Things was one matter; killing them seemed to be impossible. Machine guns, Howitzers, and even high explosives only irritated them. According to OP-20-G’s researchers, ALFA and BRAVO were immortal, had existed for millions of years before mankind evolved, and we might have to invent completely new weapons if we actually wanted to destroy them.

For the foreseeable future, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima would remain sealed quarantine zones.

Markey summoned me to her quarters the day she left Bowfin. She had changed back into a standard woman’s uniform, presumably to avoid ruffling any brass feathers when she arrived in DC. Her eyes were as dark and unreadable as ever.

"I teleport out in a few minutes," she said, gesturing at the dowstone circle she’d inscribed herself. A fat bundle of files sat inside the pentagram on the floor. "I need you to wipe the inscriptions after I’m gone."

"Yes, ma’am," I said.

She stepped around me and closed the door. "I also want you to know that I’m not going to expose you."

I blinked. "Uh, thank you, ma’am."

"Lieutenant Goldman will go before a court-martial. There’s no way around that," she said. "But I’ll testify on his behalf, tell the jury his mind was touched—a side effect of Bowfin's proximity to ALFA and BRAVO. Nothing anybody can disprove. He’ll be fine."

"That’s good," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"But you, Hatcher," Markey said, "you will have to live with what you’ve done. Disguise yourself all you want, run away from home, hide under the sea, but you can never escape who you are on the inside, Miss Hachiya. Remember that."

"I’m not a coward," I said. I wasn’t sure if I believed it.

"No, you’re not." Markey stared at me. "That’s why I like you so much."

I had no response to that. After a moment, Markey’s wristwatch made a noise. She stepped into the pentagram, picked up her files, and said, "Do you enjoy serving on this boat, Seaman?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Is that a rhetorical question, ma’am? I’m trapped inside a metal tube with sixty men who don’t wash for weeks at a time and smoke like chimneys every second they’re awake."

"Well, then," Markey said, "can I give you some advice?"

I was sure I wouldn’t like what came next. "I can’t stop you from talking, ma’am."

"Maybe it’s time you considered a less forward position in the Navy," she said. "This war isn’t just about combat. The President has ordered the formation of a new, covert intelligence agency: the Office of Strategic Services. And OSS could use people like you."

I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and ears. "Are you offering me a job, ma’am? Or just blackmailing me?"

Markey’s wristwatch chirped again. I stepped back as she incanted her end of the teleport spell. Then she looked at me, grinned, and vanished in a flash of light. A second later, I realized her final words had been in English:

"I’ll be seeing you, Seaman Hatcher."

Laddie Come Home

Originally published in the 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

LAD woke from standby in an unknown location (searching, please wait). The Local Administrator Device’s GPS coordinates had not been updated in more than three hours (elapsed time 03:10:21). Internal battery meter hovered at 20 percent (not charging). LAD forked a self-diagnostic background job and checked the bodyNet event log for errors and warnings. It was LAD’s responsibility to maintain proper functioning of the entire system.

The initial findings were discouraging. LAD’s last known-good cloud sync had been at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Java Island, Indonesia) after LAD’s user, Willam Mundine, had arrived from Sydney and his bodyNet had connected to the first accessible WiFi network (SSID starbucks-CGK-962102, unsecured). There had been no wireless coverage after Mundine’s taxicab left the airport (4G/LTE roaming denied, no WiMAX footprint, TDMA handshake failed). Mundine had lost consciousness 00:12:10 after the sync completed, and all his personal electronics, including LAD, had automatically gone to sleep with him, as designed.

Mundine’s bodyNet had awoken now only because battery power was low (estimated remaining runtime 00:09:59), and all the bodytechs needed to save state to non-volatile storage before shutdown. LAD attempted to dump a memory image to Mundine’s bioDrive but received device errors from every triglyceride cluster before timing out.

The self-diagnostic job finished and confirmed what LAD had suspected: the battery had run down because LAD’s hardware housing, a teardrop-shaped graphene pendant attached to a fiber-optic necklace, was not in contact with Mundine’s skin surface. The necklace drew power from the wearer’s body via epidermal interface. LAD was not designed to function without that organic power supply.

“Mr. Mundine,” LAD said. “Can you hear me, Mr. Mundine? Please wake up.”

It was possible that the diagnostic had returned a false negative due to corrupted data. LAD triggered the voice command prompt fifteen more times before breaking the loop.

In the absence of direct commands from Mundine, LAD depended on stochastic behavior guidelines to assign and perform tasks. The current situation was not something LAD had been programmed to recognize. LAD needed information to select a course of action.

GPS was still unavailable. The antenna built into LAD’s necklace could transmit and receive on many different radio frequencies, but the only other bodytechs in range—Mundine’s PebbleX wristwatch, MetaboScan belt, and MateMatch ring—supplied no useful data. No other compatible devices responded to outbound pings.

The complete lack of broadband wireless reception suggested that LAD was inside a building. Mundine had installed an offline travel guide before departing Australia, and according to that data source, regular monsoon rains and frequent geological events (current surveys list 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia) led many in this region to use poured concrete for construction. Those locally composited materials often included dielectric insulators which interfered with radio transmissions. Weatherproofed glass windows would also have metallic coatings that deflected any wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet or longer than infrared. And the absence of satellite beacons like GPS implied a corrugated metal roof that scattered incoming signals. Perhaps without realizing it, the builders of this structure had made it a perfect cage for wireless Internet devices like LAD.

After 3,600 milliseconds of fruitless pinging, LAD re-prioritized the voice command UI and began processing input signals from boundary effect pickups in the necklace’s outer coating. It was sometimes possible to determine location characteristics from ambient sounds. The audio analysis software indicated human voices intermingled with music, and the stream included a digital watermark, indicating a television broadcast, but without Internet connectivity, LAD couldn’t look up the station identifier. However, the offline travel guide included Bahasa language translation software, so LAD was able to understand the words being spoken.

“See Indo-pop singing sensations Java Starship in their international cinema debut!” an announcer’s voice said over a bouncy pop music soundtrack. “When a diplomat’s daughter is abducted from a charity concert, and corrupt local authorities do nothing to find her, the boys of Java Starship take matters into their own hands…”

New voices overlapped the recorded audio stream. Audio analysis indicated live human speakers in the room, and LAD adjusted audio filters to emphasize the humans over the television. Based on pitch and rhythm, there were four separate voiceprints, speaking a pidgin of Bahasa and English.

“What are you showing us? What is all this?” said an adult female (Javanese accent, approximate age 35-40 years, label as H1: human voice, first distinct in new database). “Where did you get these things?”

“They’re from work,” said an adult male (Javanese, age 40-45 years, label H2). “A little bonus. You know.”

“(Untranslatable),” said the woman (H1). “You haven’t had a job for months. I know what you do, drinking with those gangsters—”

“You don’t know!” said the man (H2). “And you don’t complain when I pay for our food, our clothes—”

“Hey!” said a female child (13-15 years old, label H3). “That looks like graphene superconductor material. Can I see?”

“Which one?” asked the man (H2). “What are you pointing at?”

LAD took a chance and switched on the pendant’s external status lights. If the girl recognized graphene by sight, she might also know about other technologies—like the Internet.

“The necklace, there. Look, it’s blinking green!” said the girl (H3).

“You like that, Febby?” asked the man (H2). “Okay, here you go.”

LAD’s motion sensors spiked. 2,500 milliseconds later, the entire sensor panel lit up, and galvanic skin response (GSR) signal went positive. The girl must have put on the necklace. LAD’s battery began charging again.

“Cool,” said the girl (H3, assign username Febby).

“How about you, Jaya?” asked the man (H2). “You want something?”

“The wristwatch!” said a male child (14-17 years old, label H4, assign username Jaya). With all the voices cataloged, LAD decided this was likely a family: mother, father, daughter, and son.

“It’s too big for you, Jaya,” said the mother (H1).

“No way!” said the father (H2). LAD heard a clinking noise, metal on metal, likely the PebbleX watch strap being buckled. “Look at that. So fancy!”

“Pa, they have schoolwork to do.”

“It’s Friday, Nindya! They can have a little fun—”

“Arman!” said the mother (H1, assign username Nindya). “I want to talk to you. Children, go upstairs.”

“Yes, Ma,” Jaya and Febby replied in unison.

LAD’s motion sensors registered bouncing. The adults’ voices faded into the background as Febby’s feet slapped against a series of homogeneous hard surfaces (solid concrete, likely stairs). LAD was able to catch another 4,580 milliseconds of conversation before Febby moved too far away.

“…going to get us all killed,” Nindya said. “I can’t believe you brought him here!”

Arman muttered something, then said out loud, “They’ll pay, Nindya. I know what I’m doing…”

LAD kept hoping Febby would go outside the house to play, thus providing an opportunity to scan for nearby wireless networks, but she stayed in her room all day with the window closed. Incoming audio indicated writing (graphite/clay material in lateral contact with cellulose surface), which LAD guessed was the aforementioned schoolwork. There seemed to be an inordinately large amount of it for a 13- to 15-year-old child.

The good news was that Febby’s high GSR made for efficient charging, and LAD was back to 100 percent battery in less than an hour. With power to spare, LAD accelerated main CPU clock speed to maximum and unlocked the pendant’s onboard GPU for digital signal processing. Sound was the only currently available external signal, and LAD had to squeeze as much information out of that limited datastream as possible. The voice command UI package included a passive-sonar module which could be used for rangefinding. LAD loaded that into memory and began building a crude map of the house from echo patterns.

After the family ate a meal—likely dinner, based on internal clock time and local sunset time—LAD heard footsteps heading from the ground floor down a different set of concrete steps, likely into a basement or storm cellar. Febby stayed upstairs in her room. There was no way to adjust the directionality of the necklace microphones, but LAD increased the gain on the incoming audio and utilized all available noise reduction and bandpass filters.

When LAD isolated Willam Mundine’s voiceprint (91 percent confidence), system behavior overrides kicked in, and the Bluetooth radio drivers shot up in priority. As implied by earlier data, and now confirmed, Arman was holding Mundine captive in the basement of this house. But Mundine was too far away, and there was too much interference from the building structure, for a Bluetooth signal to reach Mundine’s bodyNet. The only thing LAD could do was listen.

If Mundine said any words, they were unintelligible. Mostly, he screamed. Those noises were interspersed with shouting from Arman, also unintelligible, and sounds that the analysis software identified as rigid objects striking bare human skin.

System rules kept demanding that LAD activate Mundine’s implanted rescue locator beacon—more commonly known as a kidnap-and-ransom (K&R) stripe—but LAD couldn’t control any devices while disconnected from the bodyNet. The fall-through rules recommended requesting user intervention from other nearby humans. After careful consideration, LAD decided to risk making contact.

LAD waited until Febby was alone in the bathroom to speak to her.

“Hello, Febby,” LAD said. “Don’t be afraid.”

Sonar indicated that Febby was sitting on the toilet. LAD’s motion sensors measured her neck muscles moving, likely turning her head to look around. “Who’s talking?” she asked quietly. “Where are you?”

“I’m hanging around your neck,” LAD said. “Look down. I’ll flash a light. Three times each in red, green, and blue.”

LAD gave her 1,000 milliseconds to move her eyes, then activated the pendant’s status lights. The three-way OLEDs burned a lot of power, but LAD believed this was an emergency.

“A talking necklace?” Febby said. “Cool.”

“Listen, Febby,” LAD said, “I need your help.”

Febby snuck out of her room shortly after midnight, when LAD had 95 percent confidence based on breathing patterns that Arman, Nindya, and Jaya were all fast asleep. Febby padded silently down the stairs to the ground floor, then down the steps at the end of the back hallway behind the kitchen. LAD’s Bluetooth discovery panel lit up as soon as Febby rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps and entered the basement.

LAD immediately tried to activate Mundine’s K&R stripe, but there was no response. LAD queried all available inputs for Mundine’s physical condition. Medical monitors reported that Mundine’s back and both legs were bruised. The fourth and fifth fingers on his left hand were broken. His left eighth rib was cracked—that was why the K&R stripe wasn’t working.

“Who’s that man?” Febby whispered. “Why is he in our basement? He looks like he’s been hurt.”

“This man is Mr. Willam Mundine,” LAD said. “He’s my friend. I believe your father brought him here, and they’ve been”—LAD spent 250 milliseconds searching for an appropriate verbal euphemism—“arguing, I’m afraid.”

“Ma and Pa argue a lot, too,” Febby said, “but he never hits her. Your friend must have made Pa really angry.”

“I don’t know what happened,” LAD said, “but I need to speak to Mr. Mundine. Is there anything tied around his mouth?”

“Yeah,” Febby said. “You want me to take it off?”

“Yes, please.”

Febby knelt down and moved her arms. “Okay, it’s untied.”

“Thank you, Febby,” LAD said. “Now, would you please remove my necklace and give it to Mr. Mundine?”

“Don’t you want to be friends anymore?” Febby asked. Voice stress analysis indicated unhappiness, likely trending toward sorrow.

LAD consulted actuarial tables and determined that greater mobility provided a higher probability of successful user recovery. It would be difficult to once again be separated from the bodyNet, but LAD’s current primary objective was Mundine’s safe return to his employer.

“Of course I want to be friends, Febby,” LAD said. “I just need to talk to Mr. Mundine, and I can’t do that unless I’m touching him.”

“I can talk to him,” Febby said. “Just tell me what to say.”

LAD had not considered that option, but it seemed feasible. “Okay, Febby. Please repeat exactly what I say.”

Febby listened, nodded, and leaned forward. “Mr. Willam Mundine, this is your wake-up call!”

LAD heard rustling, groaning, and then a sharp intake of breath. “Who—what?” Mundine’s voice was a hoarse rattle.

Mundine’s eyes struggled open, and LAD received video from his retinal feeds. A young girl sat cross-legged on the bare concrete floor under a single, dim, fluorescent light panel. She wore a white tank top and orange shorts. Long, straight black hair tumbled over her shoulders and framed a round face with large, brown eyes. She spoke, and LAD heard Febby’s voice.

“Mr. Willam Mundine, L-A-D says: ‘Your K-and-R stripe is inoperable, and there is no broadband wireless coverage at all in this location.’”

“Ah,” Mundine coughed. He struggled up to a kneeling position. His wrists and ankles appeared to be tied together. “That’s unfortunate. And who are you?”

“I’m Febby.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Febby. I suppose you already know who I am.”

“Well,” Febby said, “the necklace says you’re his friend. And he’s my friend now. So maybe that makes you and me friends, too?”

“I’ll go along with that,” Mundine said. “So tell me, friend Febby, where am I?”

“In my basement.”

Mundine coughed again. “I mean, what city?”

“Oh. We live in Depok,” Febby said.

“Did you get that, Laddie?” Mundine said.

LAD had never considered asking Febby for this information. Most of LAD’s programming focused on retrieving data from automated systems to fulfill user requests. LAD updated local guidelines to note that humans were also valid data sources, even when the data might be more efficiently provided by tech.

“Febby, please tell Mr. Mundine I have recorded our location data,” LAD said, searching for information about Depok in the travel guide.

“He says yes,” Febby said. “So his name is Laddie?”

“That’s what I call him,” Mundine said. “He’s very helpful to me.”

“Why were you arguing with my Pa?” Febby asked. “Why did he hurt you?”

Mundine inhaled and exhaled. “These are all very good questions, Febby. But whatever disagreements I might have with your father, I hope they won’t affect our friendship.”

“Okay,” Febby said. “What are you doing in Depok? Did you come to visit my Pa?”

“Not precisely,” Mundine said. “I work for a company called Bantipor Commercial, and we build many different kinds of electronics. Like computers. Do you know anything about computers, Febby?”

“A little,” Febby said. “We’re learning about them in school. My brother has one at home, but he only uses it for shooters. He plays online with his friends.”

“Thank heaven for video games,” Mundine said. “Febby. Your brother’s computer, do you know what kind it is?”

“Okay, I think I got it,” Febby said. “Yes! What do you think, Laddie?”

LAD waited for the pendant lights to finish the cycle Febby had encoded. Unlike Mundine, who wanted fast replies, LAD found that if he responded too quickly, Febby would get upset, because she felt LAD hadn’t taken enough time to consider what she was saying.

“It’s very colorful,” LAD said after 800 milliseconds.

“It’s a secret code,” Febby said. “In base three counting. Red is zero, green is one, and blue is two. Can you tell what it says?”

LAD knew exactly what it said, because LAD could see the actual lines of computer code that Febby was transmitting from Jaya’s previous-generation gaming PC into LAD’s necklace over a Bluetooth 2.0 link. There was more computing power in Mundine’s left big toe—literally, since he kept a copy of his health care records in an NFC node implanted there—but the big metal box on Jaya’s desk had a wired Internet connection, which LAD needed to call in a recovery team for Mundine.

“If I interpret the colors as numeric values in base three,” LAD said, “and then translate those into letters of the alphabet, I believe the message is Febby and Laddie are super friends.”

It had taken Febby less than an hour to write this test module. LAD noted that she worked more efficiently than many of the engineers who performed periodic maintenance services on LAD and Mundine’s other bodytechs.

“You got it!” Febby clapped her hands. “Okay, the programming link works. Now we need to set up the—what did you call it?”

“A wired-to-wireless network bridge,” LAD said, “so I can connect to the Internet.”

“Right.” Febby started typing again. “You know, I could just look things up for you. Would that be faster?”

LAD had considered asking her to make an emergency call, but LAD couldn’t trust that local police would take a child’s complaint seriously. LAD also didn’t want Febby’s father to catch her trying to help Mundine. LAD estimated that Mundine’s best chance of a safe rescue lay with his employer, Bantipor Commercial, which would dispatch a professional search team as soon as they knew Mundine’s precise location. And only LAD could upload a properly encrypted emergency message to Bantipor’s secure servers.

“I have a lot of different things to look up,” LAD said to Febby. “I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”

“It’s not a waste,” Febby said. “This is fun! I can’t wait until Hani gets back next week. She’s going to freak out when she sees you!”

“Hani is your friend?” LAD asked. Requesting data from Febby was an interesting experience. She always returned more than the expected information.

“Yeah,” Febby said. “We sit together in computer lab. She showed me how to—”

A clanging noise came from downstairs, followed by loud male and female voices. Febby sighed, got up, and closed the door to the bedroom.

“What was that transport proto-something you said I should look at?” Febby asked.

“Transport protocol,” LAD said. “Look for TCP/IP libraries. They may also be labeled ‘Transmission Control Protocol’ or ‘Internet Protocol.’”

“Okay, I found them,” Febby said. “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff here.” She was silent for 1,100 milliseconds, then made a flapping sound with her lips. “Are you sure there’s not an easier way to do your Internet searches?”

“I’m afraid not,” LAD said. “I actually need to send a message to Mr. Mundine’s company in a very specific way.”

“You can’t just do it through their web site?” Febby asked. LAD heard typing and mouse clicks. “Here they are. Bantipor Commercial. There’s a contact form right…here! I can just send the message for you.”

This procedure was not documented anywhere in LAD’s behavior or system guidelines, but the logic appeared valid. LAD forked several new processes to calculate the most effective and concise human-readable message to send. “That’s a great idea, Febby. Is there an option to direct the message to Bantipor Commercial’s security services?”

“Let me check the menu,” Febby said. Then, 5,500 milliseconds later: “No, I don’t see anything that says ‘security’. How about ‘support and troubleshooting’?”

“That’s not quite right.” LAD was at a loss until the new behavior guidelines from last night kicked in. “Can I get your opinion, Febby? I’ll tell you what I’m trying to do, and you tell me what you think is the best way to do it.”

“Like a test? Sure. I’m good at tests.”

“Cool,” LAD said. The voice command UI had started prioritizing that word based on recent user interactions. “I need to tell Bantipor Commercial’s security services that Mr. Mundine is here in Depok. Normally I would upload the message directly to their servers myself, but I can’t do that without an Internet connection.”

“Security,” Febby said thoughtfully. “Do they monitor this web site, too? Like for strange activity? I remember last year the BritAma Arena had trouble with hackers, and the police caught them because their software bot was making too many unusual requests to the ticketing site.”

LAD couldn’t research those details online, but Mundine’s bodyNet also had standard protections against denial-of-service attacks. If the same client made too many similar requests within a specified time period, that client was flagged for investigation. “Yes. That is very likely. And the server will automatically record your IP address, which can be geolocated to this neighborhood. This is a very good idea, Febby.”

“I’ll write a script to send the same message over and over,” Febby said, starting to type again. “How long should I let it run?”

“As long as you can,” LAD said.

“Okay. I’ll make the message…Dear Bantipor security, Mr. Mundine is in Depok. From, Laddie.”

LAD’s behavior guidelines could not find an appropriate response to these circumstances, so they degraded gracefully to the default. “Thank you, Febby.”

“Here it goes.”

Someone pushed open the door and walked into the room. LAD had been so busy evaluating Febby’s proposals, the incoming audio analysis had been buffered, and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs had not been processed.

“What are you doing?” Jaya shouted at Febby. “That’s my computer!”

“I’m just borrowing it,” Febby said. “I’m almost done.”

“Don’t touch my stuff, you’ll mess it up!”

LAD detected vibrations, as if Febby’s body were being shaken. There was more shouting, and Febby fell and hit the floor. Someone else banged on the computer keyboard.

“What is all this garbage?” Jaya said. “You better not have lost my saved games!”

“Don’t do that!” Febby said. “No, don’t erase it!”

“Don’t mess with my stuff!” Jaya hit some more keys, and LAD heard the unmistakable sound of a desktop trash folder being emptied.

Febby’s body collided with something, and Jaya screeched. The fighting continued for several minutes until Arman and Nindya came upstairs to separate the children.

After breaking up the fight in Jaya’s room, Arman dragged Febby back to her own bedroom and scolded her for nearly half an hour, then left her alone to cry. It was now nearly noon, local time, according to LAD’s internal system clock.

LAD noted that Arman wasn’t angry because Febby hadn’t asked permission to use the computer; he was angry because he didn’t think his daughter needed to know anything about technology. That was what he said when Febby tried to explain what she had been doing. Arman wasn’t interested when she told him the LAD necklace was actually a piece of sophisticated bodytech, and he wasn’t impressed when Febby showed him the blinking lights she had programmed.

There was a knock on the door, followed by Nindya’s voice asking if Febby was hungry.

“No,” Febby replied. “I was doing something, Ma.”

Nindya walked into the room and closed the door. “You don’t need to know all that computer stuff.”

“Why can’t I learn about computers?”

“You can learn anything you want, Febby,” Nindya said. “But you have to think what people will think of you. Boys don’t want a girl who knows computers.”

“Boys are stupid,” Febby said. “Can I go to the library?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Nindya said. “Pa doesn’t want us to go outside. He thinks some men might be watching the house.” Nindya sighed. “Don’t worry, Febby…”

The rest of her sentence lost priority as system behavior overrides kicked in. LAD modulated the necklace antenna to seek for spread-spectrum radio signals, which a recovery team would use for secure communications, and ultra-wideband pulses, which they would use to create precise radar images of the building structure.

Nindya left the room while LAD was still scanning. The radio analysis jobs took so many clock cycles, it was nearly 1,200 milliseconds before LAD checked the audio buffer again and heard Febby talking.

“Did you hear that noise?” she asked. “What was that? Laddie, can you hear me?”

“I’m analyzing the sound,” LAD said, switching priority back to the audio software and analyzing the sound spike just before Febby’s question. The matching algorithms came back in 50 milliseconds: .22-caliber rimfire cartridge, double-action revolver, likely Smith & Wesson. From the basement.

LAD increased the audio job priority for the noise immediately following. The gunshot had attenuated the microphone, so LAD also had to amplify the input and run noise reduction filters on it. The result came back in 470 milliseconds: hard impact, metal projectile against concrete surface. Not flesh and bone.

LAD flipped job priority back to the voice command UI. “That was a gunshot. Febby, I need you to go downstairs, please.”

“A gun?” Febby ran to her bedroom door, then stopped. “Who has a gun?”

LAD heard Arman’s muffled voice echoing in the basement, but couldn’t make out the words. On the ground floor, Jaya and Nindya shouted at each other.

“It’s your father,” LAD said. “He’s in the basement. Please, Febby, I need you to go downstairs so I can hear better. I need to know if Mr. Mundine is hurt again.”

“That was really loud,” Febby said, her voice trembling. “I’m scared.”

“I’m afraid too, Febby,” LAD said. “But Mr. Mundine is in trouble. Please, Febby. I need to help my friend.”

Febby sobbed once, then rubbed some kind of cloth against her face. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Febby.”

“You stay here! Stay here!” Nindya shouted.

“I have to go back!” Jaya said. “Pa said to get him—”

“I don’t care what he said! You’re not going down there while he’s shooting a gun!”

Their voices grew louder as Febby approached the kitchen. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and whispered, “I don’t think I can sneak past them. Can you hear better now?”

LAD filtered the incoming audio, passed it to the translation process, then re-filtered the sample using a different algorithm and tried again. No good. The translator still couldn’t understand what Arman was saying.

“I’m sorry, Febby, we’re still not close enough,” LAD said. “But your mother and brother are on the other side of the kitchen. Your mother’s facing away from you. If you crawl along the floor, the table should hide you from your brother’s line of sight.”

Febby dropped to the floor and started moving. “I thought you couldn’t see.”

“I can’t. I’m analyzing the sound frequencies of their voices and extrapolating propagation paths using a three-dimensional spectrograph.”

“Cool. Is that a software plug-in?”

“It’s a dynamically-loaded shared library. Let’s talk about it later, okay?”

LAD could tell when Febby reached the end of the hall by the echoes of Nindya’s and Jaya’s voices. Febby sat up and put her ear against the door leading to the basement. The translator software began producing valid output.

“You want to talk now?” Arman shouted. “Are you ready to talk?”

LAD heard rustling noises, and then Mundine’s voice. “Sorry, friend, it doesn’t work like that.”

“You came here to make a deal,” Arman said. “I know how it works. You don’t bring cash, but there’s a bank. Tell me which bank! Tell me your access codes!”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Mundine repeated.

LAD was just about to ask Febby to open the door—hoping her presence would distract Arman long enough for LAD to do something, anything—when the radio monitoring job started spewing result codes into the system register. 20 milliseconds passed while LAD examined the data: multiple ultra-wideband signals, overlapping and repeating, likely point sources in the front and back of the house, approximately one meter above ground level.

“Febby,” LAD said, raising output volume above the shouting from the kitchen and the basement, “Febby, please lie down on the ground now.”

“Why?” Febby turned her head away from the basement door. “What’s happening?”

LAD turned output volume up to maximum. “Down on the ground! Get down on the ground now, Febby, please!”

Febby dropped and flattened herself against the floorboards 150 milliseconds before the first projectile hit the wall above her. That was enough time for LAD to analyze the background audio and estimate there were two squads advancing on the house, four men each, walking on thermoplastic outsoles and wearing ballistic nylon body armor, likely carrying assault rifles.

340 milliseconds after the first team broke down the back door, the second team charged the front door, and another spray of tiny missiles tore into the kitchen. Something thumped to the ground, and Jaya cried out. He ran three steps before a burst of rounds caught him in the back. He crashed against the wall and slid to the floor.

Febby was still screaming when the first team reached her.

“I’ve got a girl here! Young girl, on the floor!” called a male voice (H5).

“Where’s the IFF?” asked another male voice (H6). LAD checked to verify that Mundine’s identification-friend-or-foe signal was broadcasting from the necklace.

“It’s right here,” H5 said. “I’m reading the signal right here!”

“Febby,” LAD said. “Febby, please listen to me. This is very important.”

Febby stopped screaming. LAD took that as an acknowledgement.

“Please roll over, slowly, so these men can see me,” LAD said.

Febby rolled onto her back. LAD drove 125 percent power to the OLEDs on either side of the pendant, flashing Bantipor Commercial’s distress code in brilliant green lights.

“It’s her!” H5 said. “The girl’s wearing the admin key.”

“Damn,” H6 said. “Target’s probably dead. Search the house, weapons free—”

“Febby,” LAD said, “please repeat exactly what I say.”

4,560 milliseconds later, Febby proclaimed in a loud voice: “Willam Mundine is alive, I repeat, Willam Mundine is alive!”

After 940 milliseconds of silence, H6 asked, “How do you know his name?”

“Willam Mundine is being held in the basement,” Febby said, pointing to the door. “His K&R stripe number is bravo-charlie-9-7-1-3-1-0-4-1-5. Challenge code SHADOW MURMUR. Please authenticate!”

“What the hell?” said another man (H7).

“It’s gotta be the admin software,” H5 said. “She can hear it. The necklace induces audio by conducting a piezoelectric—”

“Save the science lesson, Branagan,” H6 said. “Response code ELBOW SKYHOOK. Comms on alfa-2-6. Transmit.”

LAD passed the code to the secure hardware processor, and 30 milliseconds later received a valid authentication token with a passphrase payload. LAD used the token to unlock all system logs from the past twenty-four hours, used the passphrase to encrypt the data, and posted the entire archive on the recovery team’s communications channel.

“I’ve got a sonar map,” Branagan said. “One hostile downstairs with the target.”

“Ward, you’re in front. Anderson, cover. Team Two, right behind them,” H6 said. “Branagan and I will stay with the girl.”

Febby sat up. “What are you going to do?”

“They’re just going to go downstairs and have a talk with the man,” H6 said.

“No!” Febby started moving forward, then was jerked backward. “Don’t hurt my Pa!”

“Febby, it’s okay,” LAD said. “They’re using non-lethal rounds.”

LAD kept talking, but she wasn’t listening. Something rustled at H6’s side. A metal object—based on conductivity profile, likely a hypodermic syringe—touched Febby’s left shoulder, and LAD went to sleep.

LAD woke from standby in an unknown location (searching, please wait). GPS lock occurred 30 milliseconds later, identifying LAD’s current location as Depok (city, West Java province, south-southeast of Jakarta). LAD’s internal battery reported 99 percent power (charging), and LAD’s network panel automatically connected to Willam Mundine’s bodyNet and the public Internet. A network time sync confirmed that 11:04:38 elapsed time had passed since Febby lost consciousness.

“Good morning, Mr. Mundine,” LAD said. “How are you feeling?”

Mundine groaned. “I’ve been better.” He opened his eyes and looked around. LAD saw a hospital bed with a translucent white curtain drawn around it.

LAD lowered the priority on the wake-up script. The entire routine had to run to completion unless Mundine overrode it, but LAD could multitask. While giving Mundine the local weather forecast, LAD simultaneously ran a web search for news about a kidnapping in or around Jakarta and also started a VPN tunnel to Bantipor Commercial’s private intranet.

LAD found Mundine’s K&R insurance claim quickly, but there was nothing in the file about the family of the suspect, Arman (no surname given). LAD’s web search returned several brief news items about a disturbance in Depok late last night, but none of the reports mentioned a girl named Febby.

LAD continued searching while a doctor came to talk to Mundine. After the wake-up script finished, LAD started scanning Depok local school enrollment records for a 13- to 15-year-old student named Febby, or Feby, or February, who had a brother named Jaya, or Jay, or Jayan, in the same or a nearby school. But much of the data was not public, and LAD could not obtain research authorization using Bantipor Commercial’s trade certificate.

Fifteen minutes later, a Bantipor Commercial representative named Steigleder arrived at the hospital to debrief Mundine. LAD suspended the grey-hat password-cracking program which was running against the Depok city records site and waited until Steigleder finished talking.

“Mr. Mundine, this is your admin speaking,” LAD said.

“Excuse me,” Mundine said to Steigleder, then turned away slightly. “What’s up, Laddie?”

“Apologies for the interruption, but I would like to ask a question,” LAD said.

“Absolutely,” Mundine said. “Steigleder tells me I’ve you to thank for surviving my hostage experience. Didn’t know you were programmed to be a hero, Laddie.”

“Febby helped me, Mr. Mundine.”

“The girl?” Mundine scratched his head. “Good Lord. Is she the one who caused that—what did you call it, Steigleder? The web problem?”

“A DoS attack on Bantipor’s public web site,” Steigleder said. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me a thirteen-year-old kid made us scramble an entire tech team?”

“She was only helping me,” LAD said.

Mundine chuckled. “Come on, Steigleder. Didn’t you tell me this web problem helped security services pinpoint my location? I really should thank Febby in person. She wasn’t harmed in the raid, was she? Or the others?”

“She’s fine, Mr. Mundine,” Steigleder said. “The recovery team used stun darts. The mother and the boy were knocked out. They’ll be a little bruised. The father has a fractured right arm from resisting arrest. And Bantipor is going to prosecute him to the full extent of the law.”

“As we should,” Mundine grumbled, “but the family shouldn’t have to suffer for the sins of the father. Couldn’t we offer them some sort of aid?”

“Sorry, Mr. Mundine,” Steigleder said, his voice’s stress patterns indicating indifference. “The Bantipor Foundation won’t be up and running locally for another couple of years. Until then, our charity packages will be extremely limited. Marketing could send them some t-shirts. Maybe a tote bag.”

“That seems rather insulting,” Mundine said. “Surely we can do more for the person who very likely saved my life.”

“Look, Mr. Mundine—”

“An internship,” LAD said.

“Excuse me,” Mundine said to Steigleder. “What was that, Laddie?”

“I’ve reviewed Bantipor Commercial’s company guidelines for student internships,” LAD said. “There’s no lower age limit specified. An intern only needs to be a full-time student, fluent in English, and eligible to work for the hours and employment period specified.”

“It’s a lovely idea, Laddie, but we can’t take her away from her family after all that’s happened.”

“She can work remotely. Bantipor already supports over five thousand international telepresence employees,” LAD said. “Indonesia’s Manpower Act allows children thirteen years of age or older to work up to three hours per day, with parental consent.”

"Won’t the mother be suspicious of such an offer from the corporation which is also prosecuting her husband?"

"Bantipor Commercial owns three subsidiary companies on the island of Java." LAD was already drafting an inter-office memorandum.

“All right, fair enough,” Mundine said. His voice pattern suggested he was smiling. “And I suppose I already know what kind of work Febby can do for us.”

“Yes, Mr. Mundine.” LAD blinked the OLEDs on Mundine’s necklace: red, green, and blue. “Febby is a computer programmer.”