Taking Control
Rituals were the core of Ayan’s older memories. In her last life, as Ayan Rice, she was a soldier first and an engineer second in her training. That may have reversed later in her career, people depended on her as an engineer, but the discipline and routines of a soldier were always present.
Things were very different in the life she was living. She couldn’t help but reflect on the changes as she shaped her vacsuit into a much smaller version of itself so she could feel her muscles move unassisted. She was up before Lacey, hopefully before anyone who would need her could come calling. That was part of a routine she’d embraced over six months before, when she recognized one of the major differences between herself and the old Ayan. It was much easier to get out of shape, and she wasn’t nearly as coordinated.
Simulations were fine, they could trick your mind into thinking you were having actual experiences, feeling actual pain, and exerting yourself as much as you would if you were actually doing whatever was being transmitted to your brain. There were a few important things they couldn’t do, however, like train muscle memory. There were short cuts, like targeted electro-stimulation, but Freeground fleet training maintained that there was nothing like getting into workout gear and having it out on the track, or obstacle course, or firing range, or sparring room, or whatever activities you wanted to practice to the point of reflex.
Ayan’s purpose that morning was two-fold. The run would clear her head, and she wanted to challenge her fear of heights. It wasn’t a full-blown phobia – that was rare – but an intense fear. The large octagonal tower top had transparesteel windows around the edge tilted on a forty-five degree angle, and a wide gangway one level up. Tamber was still shrouded in the shadow of night, but the moon had turned to reveal a starry night. People who grew up on colonies with an Earth configuration with one moon said it was difficult to adjust, but Ayan’s sense of time was tied to nothing but a clock. The extreme tidal forces did affect mood and a few other biological factors, but she was well acclimated after spending months on the ground.
She jogged up the steps leading to the platform and started running along the inner edge. The platform was mostly transparent. If she started running in the middle, it would look like she was running in mid-air, with nothing but a clear view of the ground so far below. Her palms were sweating, her heart protested with a vigorous beat, and her mind objected, but she focused on moving forward.
She remembered feeling out of shape and facing the choice: begin taking fitness pills that were normally reserved for people who didn’t have space for exercise, or start working it off. The soldier in her won, and with a little embarrassment she approached Oz to coach her. He did, and those first workouts seemed so long, they were so hard that she found herself wondering if her body was defective. It took months, but she eventually got into the shape she wanted. There was no changing the fact that she was short, or that she would always be thicker than her previous inception without serious body modifications, but once she uncovered her natural shape, she began to like it and there was no way she’d allow herself to slide back. Ayan swore off the fitness pills as well. Unless she set foot on a starship, she’d depend on good old physical exertion to stay in shape. As for being clumsy, she still bumped into things from time to time, but Ayan felt like she’d taken possession of her body, and mishaps were far more infrequent.
Focusing on keeping her pace and her breathing constant, maintaining good form and running in a broad circle around that upper deck eventually calmed Ayan down. She could jog along that path, at that pace, for another hour, her comfort increasing by the second. Memories of shrinking away from safe but high places spurned her on to challenge herself instead. Most of the time she was the only one who got vertigo in a crowd, and she wouldn’t have it.
“Oh, good glory,” she muttered to herself as she altered her path so she was running along the outer edge of the platform, where it joined with the transparesteel window. A glance down confirmed that everything beneath her was fully transparent, and she nearly stumbled as her knees threatened to buckle. “Don’t be a bloody child, outrun the fear,” she challenged herself, pushing from a jog into a full run. “You’re better than all this, everyone else knows it.”
She slowed down to a pace she could maintain for longer after three more laps and glanced down. Her hands flailed outward as the sensation of falling gripped her momentarily, but she kept running and brought them back into form. “Stupid girl,” she said as she forced herself to look down while she ran, gritting her teeth as she fought the powerful instinct to get off the platform. “Finish strong, or move along,” Ayan said as she stepped up onto the incline of the transparesteel window. An involuntary whimper accompanied the act of running along the forty-five degree tilt of the window itself.
It was all she could do to keep running along those solid as steel but as clear as air windows. Ayan concentrated on her running form, but forgot about her pace completely, which had become a dead run. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel her pulse in her head and hands. “Oh shut up,” she spat as her comm unit beeped a medical alert. “I’m doing this.”
It took three full laps before she started to calm down and her comm stopped beeping a cardio warning. Ayan was almost out of energy, but smiled at herself as she slowed a little and decided to do four more laps. “Just to be sure I’ve done this and didn’t dream it.” Her heart was still pounding, and every time she saw too much of the ground she had to fight for balance, but Ayan knew it wouldn’t be long before she grew accustomed to that vista in particular.
She’d have to continue to challenge her fear of heights until it was gone, but that morning Ayan had claimed an incredible victory. She’d gotten over her fear in little leaps, during obstacle courses while testing Ranger’s training when she had time, and a couple of other times before, but taking on her fear when stepping away from the edge as an option was completely new.
With just over one lap left, Ayan had almost calmed down about the view, and she was starting her push to the end when her comm vibrated and chimed an emergency signal. As a reflex, she looked at the unit on her arm, saw the distant ground past it, had a sudden episode of vertigo and lost her balance. The transparesteel window, the deck, and the safety railing didn’t yield in the least as she tripped, rolled, and crashed into them in that order. Her vacsuit was in workout mode, so unless an impact was hard enough to break bone, it wouldn’t activate, so she felt every considerable bump and twist, almost falling over the inner edge of the walkway by the time she came to a calamitous stop in a heap of limbs and long red hair.
“Ayan! What happened?” Lacey asked as she ran up the stairs.
Ayan carefully straightened herself out, and sat on the edge of the walkway, clearing curls out of her face. “I won the fight against my fear of heights but lost against momentum and gravity.”
“You took your jog on the platform?” Lacey said. “How did you fall back in here?”
“There’s a platform outside?” Ayan asked, fearful at the thought of repeating her exercise beyond the confines of the room.
“Just above the edge, there,” Lacey said, pointing.
Ayan followed her gesture and noticed the outline of it, a glint of transparent metal that overhung the inward curve of the transparent windows. “I don’t think I’ll be ready for that for awhile,” she said. “Ran along the inside of these though,” Ayan said, glancing at the obstacle she just conquered.
“Nutter, I wouldn’t even try that and heights are no big thing for me. I’d worry about a panel popping.”
Ayan turned her attention to her comm unit, finally catching her breath and opened the emergency message. The image of Tyra Kim’s head appeared in front of both of them. She was in disarray, frantic and angry at the same time. “Ayan, the Carthans are coming here, saying that you’ve abandoned your claim and they’re taking Haven Shore. The Council is convening in a moment to discuss our options, but I’m afraid it’s too late. You screwed us, taking the military with you, I hope you’re happy.”
Ayan brought up her holographic status screen and tactical displays, filling the air around them with images of Haven Shore and the area around the island. “They’re moving in right now and those idiots haven’t put up the Everin Building’s shield or called an alert,” Ayan said. Perhaps it was her already high heart rate, or her already low patience for the behaviour of the civilian government in Haven Shore, but she found herself quick to anger. “If Carl was there the alert would have sounded already.”
“Checking now,” Lacey said. “He’s still asleep on the Triton. Looks like he was up late viewing Haven Shore civilian transmission logs.”
“Well, I’m just glad I didn’t surrender my control codes for the Everin Building,” Ayan said, raising the building’s shields. She sounded an invasion alert within. Ayan activated a combat alert for the Triton, the available soldiers in her base and in the other active Order of Eden bunkers. The Clever Dream acknowledged the alert as well.
“What’s your thinking?” Lacey asked.
“We’re going to force the Carthans to talk to us about this. Within twenty minutes, we’ll have nine times the firepower mobilized than they have in the air, and that’s without sacrificing essential personnel for our settlements.” Ayan gathered all the intelligence and a summary of her actions into a report then sent it to Oz, her father, and the Haven Shore Council. “The Clever Dream will pick us up on top of the tower in two minutes,” Ayan said. She got to her feet with a groan.
“You might want to change first. I see a lot of support in that outfit, but not much coverage,” Lacey teased. “Unless dazzling the Carthans is part of the plan.”
Ayan flashed her a sheepish grin and nodded. “Might work with some of the stares I’ve caught from our Carthan rep at the Council table, but armour might be more appropriate for what’s coming. You’ll probably see more people wearing this kind of outfit. I know you didn’t watch much of the Ranger training, but a big part of it is learning how to do things without technology. The human body, even mine, is capable of more than people give it credit for.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your body,” Lacey said as she walked along side her. “Anyway, back to the present. Do you really think this’ll escalate?” Lacey asked as they ran down the stairs.
“I think they’re going to try to drive us off, starting with Haven Shore and moving on to our other positions. Fighting may be our only choice.” A signal from Oz with a status update confirmed her thoughts. “Oz agrees, the Triton is launching fighters and manoeuvring into a space where it can cloak.”
“Why does the ship have to manoeuver to cloak?” Lacey asked.
“They have to drop out of navnet patterns and get some distance so other ships don’t collide with it. You can’t go around what you can’t see.”
“Ah. Another question: is it too late to turn down that promotion?”
“Absolutely,” Ayan replied. “Your job in this is to make sure everyone has what they need to survive so people like me can take command of the combat side of things. I hope we can avert this, but it could become a complicated siege if I can’t, especially since there are no Carthan ships anywhere near our other positions. Their attention is entirely focused on Haven Shore so far, and the largest problem we have is our lack of intelligence with regard to the rest of their fleet. We don’t know exactly what they’re holding back.”
Ayan dropped her light vacsuit and slipped into her armoured suit as Lacey changed into her medium vacsuit. She didn’t own anything that resembled Ayan’s combat armour. “Where do I start?” asked Lacey.
“Make sure you take stock of exactly who is stuck outside the shield right now and forward that to me. The combat arm of our command unit will decide where they should go and what they should do. When you’ve done that, take control of conditions and provisions. Check food levels, make sure the environment control systems are working well enough in Haven Shore structures, and then start preparing a statement informing all the civilians of the situation. Send it to me before you release it to them.”
“Thank you,” Lacey said. They heard the dull creak of the ceiling above as the Clever Dream set down. “Is that normal?”
“The structure is fine, the Clever Dream is the first ship to use that landing pad, you’re just hearing the deck plates and the frame fitting together as they take the weight.” Ayan’s mind was working faster than it had in months. Despite the bruises and other minor signs, her morning triumph was already far from her thoughts. As she finished pulling her armour together and started to activate the systems within, Lacey gave her a vanilla meal bar. “Thank you. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t eat until this crisis passed.”
“I know,” Lacey said. “Don’t worry, I’m watching.”