***Londa did not notice it back then, so many years ago, but since she had so much more time to simply look around her, she noticed now. She saw some transporters come in with great holes torn in their bellies, bits of wing missing, or no wing at all. Some that came straight down and dove right into the Earth in plumes of glittering and molten steel confetti, plastics, wire, and pulverized flesh, billowing in high black smoke. No matter what direction they came from they always came in a vertical dive from the ceiling until only a few miles above the airspace of Rallypointe. All around them something was happening, and had been for years. ***
"Desert sand is like love: all the grating and jostling and scraping will either leave you hard and gnarled or hard and easy to touch- or dead," Londa was musing again. The desert sand was a thing much like another thing she knew, but lying on her back, 59 power shades strapped tightly to her eyes, and her short haired head lying on her crumpled sun hat, she couldn't put it into eloquent words. "Desert sand is like love: it gets inside of you and refuses to leave," with this she allowed herself a chuckle. Her own laughter still sounded weird to her. "Desert sand is like love: it barnstorms your drawers and leaves the crowd wanting...," she tailed off. She did not really know what else. Being 27 she heard stories about love. She heard that there were men outside the base that would want to bring her gifts and try to impress her and 'get in her pants' when she left, but she rarely wore pants now so they were definitely going to be let down on that count. She wriggled her bare calves in the fine sand as though she were making a snow angel, enjoying the feeling of liquid heat as it cascaded one way then the other, but quickly stopped as a quick gust brought the grains directly into both of her nostrils.
Abruptly she sat up, sticking a finger up her nose a moment. Her power shades immediately adjusted their shielding since she was no longer gazing at the sun's spots and brought a shrub several miles distant into clear focus as though it were directly in front of her face. With a humph she yanked the goggles off her face and tossed them a few short feet to her ATV parked some yards away. She shook sand out of her muddy sun bleached blonde hair, stood up and did likewise to the pleats of her knee length tan skirt and equally utilitarian themed long sleeve shirt. "Desert sand is like love: when it gets under your skin no ones happy," not that she knew anything about that, but she heard stories. Ellie told her once that one of the transport pilots, a real dasher, said he had two ex-girlfriends. "Not one. Two!" Ellie grabbed her by both shoulders and nearly shook them both with her excitement. "Talk about a boomer and zoomer, eh?" Ellie chucked Londa under the chin. "Think I can land him?" The girl's on base sometimes talked about landing the transport boys, but Londa also heard that it never happened. They never talked about their age, but it was well known that people with gray hair were much older than the airmen, and there was not a single transporter with no less than a full head of gray.
Nevertheless the hair was attractive. The transport pilots were the only ones known to frequent both sides of the base walls. Londa strolled in long steps, sweeping her boots through the pixie dust sand, to her ATV and pulled her water pack out of the side crate. Slipping it over her shoulders she gave it a little shake and felt the little cooling motors in the straps whir to work. "Desert sand is like love: sometimes it hurts," she murmured, clamping the packs straw between her teeth and taking a couple of newly frigid sips across her tongue and gums to wash down the pointed grains pricking the inside of her mouth. That was what the wing commander said to her when she went in for her final debriefing at age 20. The commander made it excessively clear that there was no actual wall, but there was also nothing around the base for a greater range than any human being could traverse alone or with a team, mechanized or not, and hope to come out on the other side alive. After the final debriefing you were free to roam as you pleased. The base was your oyster, barring the hangars, and boy's quarters (the same went for them), and you would be "well off to learn to love the desert". Not knowing what love was, except for the occasional gym locker story and Ellie's tales repeated from the lips of the transport boys, she did not quite comprehend the hurting aspect. "Desert sand sucks," she spat.
She hopped on her red and tan mottled ATV and began to turn the key, but stopped. Her sun hat still lay crumpled. The 59 power shades still in the sand. They would be replaced without question at the dispensary. If she decided to push the ATV, crates and all, off of a cliff it would also be replaced. She placed one hand over her eyes like a visor and squinted her light brown eyes in the bright sunlight. The white sand was almost bright enough to be blinding. Far away in the distance she could almost make out what appeared to be a blotchy mirage of a black pool of water or the sprawling asphalt runways of the base. Either way the guidance system mounted to the bars of the ATV would not be so easily fooled by the desert sunlight as her eyes were. "Even I would be replaced should I die out here in the pitch of dunes and cliff faces and crags out here," Londa reminded herself.
In the opposite direction, nearly beyond sight, rose the saw like black teeth of the Devil's Hatch crater rim. She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, slowly releasing it. She knew she was no longer a valued asset to Rallypointe Base, but she also knew her potential was still worth more to Devil's Hatch alive than dead. She asked Ellie about it once. Asked her what they talked to her about at her debrief. "The usual stuff, Lonnie. Commander Kearse said my services are no longer needed. I'm on permanent leave until discharge pending the annual battery interviews. Blah blah blah, you know the story," Ellie made the cross armed gesture, miming what Commander Kearse would look like if she shot herself in both of her ovaries with the two antique revolvers she probably bought new that she kept on display in her office. "The woman is old," they used to joke, but never laugh. Laughing was the surest way to get assigned to focus labs. It was later, after they were resettled to the edge of the girls barracks on their 11th birthday (birthday's were reassigned to your first briefing day on arrival), that Ellie opened up more.
Nothing was observed in the outer barracks. There was no more monitoring. And it changed Ellie. "We're already dead, you know," she whispered across the sparsely appointed, midnight darkness, of their shared room. "One of the dasher's told me. I told him he was cute and you know what he said?" Londa did not answer, but she was wide awake as well on her first real night of freedom. "He said I wouldn't remember him. Lonnie, I see him ever day," she heard her voice shiver momentarily, but restraining herself she went on, "he said none of the airmen remember anything. He said we keep him employed. You know, he pushed me out of the way. He pushed me!" Her indignation crackled, but was swallowed in the clouds of tears gathering behind her closed eyes. "I need to get out of here," defeat crept along the undersides of her words like the legs of an insect from another hemisphere that neither of them could recognize.
As the final debrief approached, the stories circulated. The stories of why they held you at Rallypointe Base in the Devil's Hatchery until you were 30. Why they did not need you after you turned 20. Why they took you from home the year you entered the school system's 5th grade. She saw the smuggled in clippings of newspapers. Heard about the favors done for digital cards that contained a few minutes of television programs and the prices paid for discovery of such unholy contraband. She dismounted the ATV and replaced her 59s, taming the blazing light of the desert instantly. With equal care she emptied her sun hat and placed it gingerly on her short hair. Glancing toward the mystery blotch it immediately resolved into the criss-crossing black stripes and bulbous hangars of Rallypointe. She shook her back pack and took another cool sip.
She spent almost all of her free time crawling the dunes and cliffs. Never straying too far. There was not much else to do that could hold her interest. It was a mighty step down from her 5th birthday. Her first day going up in the R5-Tenor. That blazing arrow she studied and built and repaired for other, older airmen for a whole year, before they finally let her ride it to heaven and back. An even mightier step down from each birthday that followed up until 10 when she took a R565D-BossTenor on mock combat over Rallypointe. Every day from her first simulator stints at 10 years old until that day lead up to that 20 hour mock dog fight. And then it was over. No flying. Just a year of debriefings. Daily, then monthly, then once a year, every year. "How do you feel today? How will you feel tomorrow? How did you feel yesterday? What do you remember the most about the simulators?" On and on it went for nearly a year. And then nothing. No communiques. No updates. Not even a news brief. The squelch of two R9-Torns drifted down through the miles of air and Londa turned her eyes upward. The 59s brought one of the two into focus, the other probably being miles out of the focus reticule. It was a position battle. From the precision of the inputs, probably a pair of dueling and soon to be debriefed airmen midway through an all day final mock combat run. They stopped telling the roomers, airmen boys and girls beyond their final debrief, waiting for discharge, about the iterations of aircraft. But if you kept watch you could guess and if you really wanted to know you could look closely at the airstrips and catch a new one with its designation branded on a tail vane in faint, body colored, lettering rolling off of a big, high winged, transport.
"Love looms," she said to no one in particular. Everyday it seemed to grow and mutate into something new and more frightening. "They wipe us because they love us," Ellie murmured earlier that year, "to save us". She only said a few words a year after their first few handfuls of months in the edge barracks. The stories. There was something inside of them, every boy and girl airman, placed there on their 11th birthday. And when you hit 30 years old it went off and took away everything you knew before that day. Reorganized you point by point until your brain was bald as a baby. She saw the news story too. The industrial espionage. The discovery of escapees, who could not be confirmed as roomers from within Rallypointe, who actually made it by enemies of unknown origin, attackers and trackers that none of their desperate eyes could codify or identify. The discovery of the corpses dozens, sometimes hundreds of miles away from the Devil's Hatch, mutilated beyond recognition and violated beyond reason. None older than 30. Londa plopped back down in the sand, tapping the toes of her boots together, still watching the wheeling ever changing shapes of the control surfaces of the Torn. A smile cracked her lips at the prowess of the young pilots efforts, though inside her head her she was months in the past.
"How do you feel today?" the young airman, a boy who could not have been older than 18, asked her on her 27th birthday.
"I feel endless like desert sand," Londa read about poetry, but there was none on the base so she attempted now and then to make some.
"Did you feel this way last week?"
"I felt timeless, but not that I had a lot. Like I had none. Like it keeps getting cut in half."
"Did you dream?" The boy was handsome in an official way. His medals shown brightly, a small balcony of diplomats and heroes ever applauding from his little lapel for his service with psychological operations. She had her own row once, but she left them out in the sand once too often and never bothered to return to the dispensary for replacements. His hair somehow felt better than hers, though she had not touched it or made any effort to do so.
"Yes," she scratched her ear. Some sand rattled down against the metal back of the chair and onto the floor with a slight hiss. The boy perked up.
"About?"
"I don't remember," she was not blunt, or short with the lad. The only rank at Rallypointe was Commander, then airman, then transporter. And she could not remember what the dream contained anyway.
"Have you made anything in your spare time?"
"Rounds. Tracks. Poems," her mind wandered to what was outside the little interview room, the once a year question box.
"Noted. How do you feel about the desert in recent days?" he reached a hand out, as he stood, signaling the close of the yearly interview.
She reached her own, sun freckled hand to grip his, "love." A surge of something went through her from the seat of her pants, along her spine, and spilled from her eyes into his eyes. Abashed she snatched her hand back and turned to leave, nearly knocking the chair to the floor.
"Next year, then, Airman."
Overhead, the combined power of all four of the R9's Fiestemblock power plants sent a caterwaul across miles of air space loud enough to raise goosebumps on Londa's freckled cheeks. She knew that maneuver. She was halfway certain she was the one who originated and precipitated the addition of that maneuver to the training manuals and simulations. Up the Torn went, punching a righteous hole in the sky like a bullet fired from a nuclear powered gun, challenging Londa's 59's to keep up. Her neck, years away from the strain of simulators and flight, quickly and happily craned backward and kept her scopes on target. Slipping her sun hat once again to the back of her head she flopped back into the desert's sandy warmth. "Love looms, Ellie," she smiled, as the pack sent more cooling water to her parched mouth.
Ellie looked frantically for her spark, every year trying a new strategy. At 19 years of age no pilot had the creative capacity or selfless recklessness to add anything new to the data sets being accumulated, analyzed, and incorporated, she read from a tiny card screen in another girls dorm. The girl got the newsclip from one of the boys who got it from a transporter, apparently not a real dasher, but something of a queero. Age 10 to 15 was simply raw assimilation of past data and learning the current standards down to the last wire and bolt. 15 to 19 were production years. That's when you won your medals if they selected you as a pilot. They kept you for 10 whole years after that, each year reassessing you to see if you had something, anything to further enrich the program and warrant reassignment to active barracks. "Pushing the envelope at Devil's Hatch! It was the only way the war would ever-". The talking head program was cut short, but the implication echoed long into Londa's night.
Ellie, always looking. She appeared smaller and more frail each year. Many of the roomers did. After 20 it was a countdown - to what? A brief thunderclap brought her eyes from their general wandering around the blue dome of the sky to the burly sound's center point.
High above, at the enforced ceiling (the R series had no ceiling even when Londa was still piloting. They could propel themselves, if properly urged, into a low orbit, but return was never guaranteed), an even brighter blue ball of radiation expanded behind the second R9 that was now diving for all it was worth, and luckily, for the pilots skill, was still intact. Out there in space were the drones. The automated, warhead armed, death dealers. You could go up if you were good enough, but they would eventually get you for the sheer number and power of their armament and ability to sustain G loads light years beyond any human being. "In the atmosphere it was another story", Ellie told her when they were still learning the envelope from the sticky airstrips and arm sized wrenches and auto-tools. Some transporters flew in the new birds and new 10 year old airmen, the brand new Tenors and their soon to be mechanics, and that very same day Ellie went digging for morsels with her little pinches and hugs and winks. "I asked a real dasher if he would take me home with him if he could and you know what he said?"
"What'd he say, Ellie?" Londa asked over a spoonfull of hot lunch.
"He said I don't want to be out there. You want to know why," she did not wait for Londa to swallow her chow, "he said there's some kind of war going on and they have to fly at the cieling and dive vertical to get here or they get bitten! Can you believe that! In those wide tails!" Ellie nearly chortled, but contained and reduced it to little more than a smile.
Londa did not notice it back then, so many years ago, but since she had so much more time to simply look around her, she noticed now. She saw some transporters come in with great holes torn in their bellies, bits of wing missing, or no wing at all. Some that came straight down and dove right into the Earth in plumes of glittering and molten steel confetti, plastics, wire, and pulverized flesh, billowing in high black smoke. No matter what direction they came from they always came in a vertical dive from the ceiling until only a few miles above the airspace of Rallypointe. All around them something was happening, and had been happening for years. The last story she found on a pinch and a wink, the last one she cared to go out of her way to find was only the year before. It was not from a transporter, but an airman on her way back from the hangar.
Londa watched her leave and counted the hours till her return. 12 hours, and not a speck of grease or dirt on her jumper. She stopped the 14 year old, her pleated skirt and shirt and home made haircut easily giving away that she was well past her final debriefing and probably should not even be near the inner barracks. But she seemed approachable enough and the girl seemed to have some questions for her as well.
"Is it true you get to go wherever you want? I heard there are snakes in the hills. Real ones," the pint sized workman asked as Londa sidled up on her approach to the barracks.
"Absolutely, airman. Wherever and whenever. And there are huge snakes. Like, this big," she had not seen a live snake the entire time she explored the Devil's Hatch dunes, but she saw a skeleton of what was probably half a snake. So she embellished a little. "So what have you been at today? You look clean as a whistle," it was frowned upon to stay too clean during the mechanic shift because it was assumed you were not working as hard as every other airman on the hangar floor.
"I work as hard as everyone else. A couple of the grids went down on the main controllers in the data cove. We lost two flights today and six years of data. It's invaluable," the little airman glanced up at Londa with an expression of utter urgency that Londa could not entirely comprehend "I have to take six hours of down time, but I'm going back over as soon as I wake up."
It took a lot of thinking, days on her ATV watching with the 59s and listening. There is a war. She was the data. Raging above the ceiling was non-stop drone combat. Raging all around them beyond the interminable ridge of Devil's Hatch was non-stop drone combat. The flights of dark shapes leaving Rallypointe in full afterburn some midnights were entire flights of them, one after another. Somewhere out there were bubbles of heavily fortified civilization and refugees and gorillas and armies, but inside this particular bubble there was only production. They were programming the drones with Londa and Ellie and all the other airmen's knowledge and errors and tricks to go out there and kill without error in the tumult of an unfortunately gaseous biosphere. No one came back from beyond the cieling because it was simple enough to program a superior maneuver in a vacuum. But inside, bombarded by gas molecules and currents and pressure variations there was a massive tug of war between producing incredibly advanced drones and generating programming that could use the advances to the fullest through the handicap of liquid space. They were terribly smart machines, but were also growing impossibly difficult to program efficiently without simply grafting processes, subroutines, and executions into them. The industrial espionage, the micro reels of kidnappings and the bodies torn from their identities, the banks of information, hangars large enough to hold ten times as many aircraft as there were able pilots in the barracks to fly them, aircraft strong enough to obliterate a pilots body with sheer power of action. They weren't made for people. The war was being won and lost every day and few understood or were even aware of it.
"Desert sand is like love," Londa was not sure if she really understood it. Far away, another thunderclap, but subtly different. Londa did not have to bend her gaze from the still high sun to know what was different. One of the R9s had gone down. An imperfection. The mock battle could not have been more than 8 hours in. An error was the only explanation, as it was a well known fact that it took approximately 19 hours to test all of the knowledge and paths and improvised variations imprinted and assimilated up to that point. Many bad reads probably superseded the committed action, but it was for the best. 19 hours of testing, recital, improvisation, recognition and rebuttal, chased by one hour of hellishly raw, algorithm, science, and physiology defying creativity.
Creativity she had not known since, but would know again soon enough. A little laugh bubbled up from inside of her. A light little thing that must be what it felt like to see a real life bird hopping about over bread crumbs for the first time. "The hardest part about forgetting, is not knowing whether it was a good memory or a bad one," she recited an answer to a question from some years back. It sounded important and poetic then, but it sounded silly to her ears now. "The hardest part about forgetting," she took on the massive idea again, feeling a tiny shard of a spark prick the back of her mind, "is Ellie."
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