Drivers

And we're back! After a lovely, informative break last week I am happy to bring you some good old-fashioned fiction from Ben Spendlove, who you may know from his previous appearance on Glass Cases. OK, so by "old-fashioned" I mean fiction that involves high-speed drivers of vehicles called "coffins" and robotics. Anyway, I'm very happy Ben has submitted a new project for us from his novel Driven. He's sharing Chapter 7, in which the main characters, Ash and Zephyr, meet the man who recruited them for the suicide mission they survived.

Ben "battles rogue robots for the good of society," which means he is a technical writer at a robotics company. After reading Drivers, check out his blog here.

Drivers
Chapter Seven: Photo Shoot
By Ben Spendlove

Yul leads Zephyr and me back into the conference room. This time, the only light reflects from a screen at the other end of the room. A giant Tantalum Corp logo is projected onto it, nearly as big as the wall.

“As if things weren’t bad enough, now they’re making us watch PowerPoint slides,” I mutter to Zephyr. She doesn’t laugh.

Nick Decker stands on the other side of the long table, holding a remote. Shadows on his face make it hard to read. It’s a wonder he can face us after what he did to Nathan.

Yul pulls out two chairs for us. They’re not adjacent, and he sits between them. Buzz sits on Zephyr’s other side. I feel like a criminal. Why the guards with guns? Why the cameras and locked doors and razor wire?

“Congratulations,” Nick says with a smile. “I said you’d do alright, didn’t I?”

“Sure, Nick. You know everything.” Zephyr folds her arms.

The smile deepens. “I should thank you. You’ve been extremely helpful.”

Somehow, I don’t think the smile is for us.

“Let’s take a look at exactly what you did.” Nick points the remote at the screen.

Why do people do that? It’s just a hanging sheet.

“First of all,” he says, “there’s a big difference between the two of you. I thought you might like to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie.”

“Why would we want that?” I ask. Seriously. He acts like it’s just another job for us.

“First of all, Ash was hit at least thirty times.” A photo of my cratered coffin appears. “Everything from light rifle to heavy machine gun fire.”

“What can I say? I’m attractive like that.” No response. Maybe this isn’t a good time for jokes.

“You barely limped back to base. Another few minutes and your engine would have died. You endangered the base by coming back in such a state.”

“Huh?”

“The self-destruct,” Zephyr says. “He would have made an awful mess in the shop, wouldn’t he? Pieces of flesh stuck to the ceiling. Flying bone fragments can be dangerous.”

Apparently I’m not the only one feeling sarcastic.

“Oh, of course,” I say. “How could I be so selfish?”

The look on Nick’s face is priceless. “I’d expect a little more maturity.”

“Then say what you mean, Mr. Decker.” Zephyr spits out his name. “Just say that Ash could have exposed what’s really happening if he’d blown up near the army base. How do you expect him to know his engine’s about to die, anyway? You didn’t even know.”

Nick tries to stare her down and loses. He clicks to the next slide. It’s another coffin. “Zephyr was hit only five times.”

“I’ve never been popular,” she says.

“That’s your coffin?” I ask. It looks brand new, aside from missing all its missiles.

“Now, why such a difference?” Nick asks, plowing through his presentation.

“I’m a coward,” Zephyr volunteers.

Another slide. The overhead map of the target zone. “We don’t have GPS pose, of course, but we’ve estimated your courses.” Two lines appear. Blue and pink. Cute.

“Am I the pink one?” I ask.

“Ash found a stream and drove up it at full throttle.” A laser dot traces the blue line. “It was a direct approach, but exposed him to the heaviest fire. He had to fight all the way, and finally got stuck by a downed tree.”

“Which I downed myself, I might add.”

“Zephyr, on the other hand, took a more cautious approach.” The pink line arcs way out to the west before heading north again. “She avoided most of the enemy troops by proceeding slowly and quietly. She never fired a grenade round and avoided attracting much attention.”

“She sounds like a coward to me,” Zephyr says.

“Ash sounds like an idiot,” I say. “What was he thinking? That he was on a suicide mission?”

Nick turns to face us. “Look, I’m trying to help you.”

“Are you talking to us?” Zephyr asks.

“Make fun of me if you want, but you’ve got a lot to learn from each other. Zephyr’s approach was much more effective. She took out four artillery placements, including one of yours, Ash.”

“But I’m still alive, so it couldn’t have been that effective,” Zephyr says.

“Yeah, I’d say Nathan’s approach was most effective.”

“Nathan got scared.” Nick’s almost yelling at us. “Your objective wasn’t simply to get killed.”

“Mine was,” Zephyr says. “Shooting the artillery was an accident.”

“I was trying to defect,” I say. “They just didn’t understand Morse code in bullets.”

Nick glares at me and clicks to the next slide.

It’s instantly familiar. A screen capture of my display, night vision infrared. There’s a person in the crosshairs.

“I think they understood exactly what you were trying to do, Ash.” Nick’s voice is venomous. “The computer saves a snapshot every time you press the trigger. Notice the display?” He points with the laser to the bottom. It says “range locked.”

It means I was in focus, basically.

Another slide appears. Another person, only his arm and the muzzle flash of a rifle. My crosshairs are right where his chest would be. Range locked.

“This is what you did really well, Ash. You hit everything you fired at.” He clicks through slide after slide. “Every. Single. One. Oh wait. Let’s go back to that one.”

No, let’s not. Please. It’s a glowing man like the others, but this one is closer, clearly visible. Bright specks radiate from his torso in all directions. The cross hairs are over his head.

“This is the third shot,” Nick says. He clicks back two. “First, his stomach. Second, his upper chest, and you can see the effects of the first shot. Third, well, we don’t have a snapshot of its effects. Only video. I could get it if you like.”

What the hell is wrong with him? It’s horrific.

“You must really enjoy killing people, Ash. You’re so good at it.” The slides keep coming.

I close my eyes and lean forward onto the table. My stomach cramps. Darkness spins around me, suffocating.

“You took out two mobile artillery units and an anti-aircraft gun. Ash, don’t you want to see this? You fired blind, from the looks of it, but still managed to hit the AA gun. You can see it in the video.”

The nightmare replays behind my eyelids, bright figures exploding with every shot.

“Assuming there was a crew of three at each gun, you killed over two dozen Deeps, Ash. Your shooting skill is amazing. Even when you lost depth perception, you still picked out and hit targets with incredible speed.”

My shooting skill? I was taking photos, that’s all. I love photography. It’s the one thing I’m good at. The one thing I’m good for, but never good enough—until now. No. I don’t want to be a killer.

God forgive me. It’s much too late.

I can’t hold it anymore and scramble for the trash can by the door. My stomach wrenches, heaving what little it holds into the can.

I was so scared. I had to shoot them. Every one I could.

For once, it feels good to vomit. It empties me. That’s all I want, forever, is to be empty.

Thoughts flit around my head like moths. It’s not murder, it’s war. You did your job. You did what you had to do. I push them away. I don’t want to hear it. I didn’t have to kill anyone. I’m not equipped to kill people. I’m not a soldier.

Nathan had the right idea.

When I return to the table, Yul offers me a tissue and gets up to take out the trash.

“You don’t like it?” Nick asks, his voice low. “Be smarter next time. Like Zephyr.”

What does he mean by that?

“Tomorrow morning, you’re going on another op.”