Insignia (49 page)

Tom blinked, feeling dull and rather stupid. It was only two minutes, but it felt like being catapulted right into the action before he was ready. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Nigel’s voice sounded hollow. “You know why Marsh wants me out there first? It’s so if you lose, it’ll still make him look good, like he took it by the book and gave me a chance, and I couldn’t cut it.” His lips twisted. “He’s a coward. He should just have you do it if that’s what he wants.”

And Tom could agree with that suddenly: Marsh was a coward. He’d gone out of his way to get Tom into the program, but now he didn’t have his back, not really. Tom’s only chance lay in pulling off a miracle and beating Medusa.

He remembered his father’s words, suddenly, from the day they parted:
Tom, whatever happens, you take care of yourself
.

So he’d do it. He’d beat Medusa, and if he didn’t, well, then Marsh wasn’t going to wash his hands clean like he’d played no role in getting Tom in the Spire, in getting Tom to fly at Capitol Summit. He took the wire from Nigel, and reached up to plug it in. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Nigel’s toxic smile, and the keyboard he unveiled from beneath his sleeve.

“What are you—” Tom began.

It was his only warning Tom had before the text flashed over his vision center:
Session expired. Immobility sequence initiated
. Feeling seeped away from Tom’s chest on down. He crashed to the ground, just like in Calisthenics.

Nigel stepped calmly over him and retrieved the wire. “Really, Raines, did you think I was going to sit back and let you be the big hero today? Did you really?”

Tom looked up at him, shocked. “Well, yeah.” He clawed uselessly at the carpet below him. As always, the Calisthenics immobility program allowed use of his arms, but no weight-bearing. He couldn’t even drag himself up.

“It’s not going to happen!” Nigel whirled back toward the Rotunda. “I thought when I leaked the CamCo names, that would be enough. Marsh would have to use me. He’d have no choice once the IPs were public!”

The gears of Tom’s brain ground to a halt. “That was you.”

Nigel grinned sickeningly. “Back when Dominion Agra was working with you, Dalton Prestwick offered to sponsor me, too, if I just helped him make CamCo public. They probably figured the same thing I did: that as soon as everyone knew the current Combatants, the military would need more who were still anonymous. And wouldn’t it be so easy for Dominion to move you up the ranks if that happened? They had names they could leak, but they didn’t know what IPs went with them. They asked me to do the rest. But once you destroyed the club, Dalton told me the deal was off. It didn’t make a difference, though. I’d already decided to leak the information myself. I sent one untraceable email with just enough neural processor-specific lingo to convince the Chinese ambassador I was legit, then a second with the list. It was that easy. I told you, I’m going to be CamCo whether I get a sponsor or not.”

Tom threw a desperate glance toward the image of the Rotunda, where Svetlana looked in control as she pretended to steer a ship, and Elliot was coated with sweat, fighting for real for the first time ever at the Summit. He was jerking violently at the controls, his vessel in the upper atmosphere barreling toward the satellite in a direct course, all determination and no imagination.

Medusa was too clever for that. She used her engine exhaust to propel debris his way, knocking him off course. Sometimes she simply toyed with Elliot, ignoring the satellite altogether. She’d veer in, about to ram him, then sweep to the side after he panicked and jerked his ship wildly off course. Then, with a taunting wiggle of her vessel, she’d hang back to wait for his next attempt as though the whole process amused her. She was psyching him out. It was like a cat dangling a mouse from its claw. It was obvious that both Combatants knew who was going to triumph.

“Nigel, you can’t trust Dalton. Dominion Agra won’t sponsor you. They’ll just make you a fall guy! That’s probably what they had planned all along!”

Nigel whirled on him ferociously. “You don’t get it, Raines! I
don’t
trust Dominion Agra. Of course I don’t. I’m not stupid.
I
was supposed to be CamCo. Sure, Dominion Agra gave me the idea, but I knew it benefited me, too. I knew leaking the names and making CamCo public would move me up. Even when they revoked their offer, I knew I was going to do it anyway. But even that blew up in my face, thanks to Marsh’s apparent need to advance you, so
this
is my chance. Right now. After today, the military will have no choice but to let me fight.”

“What are you planning?” Tom asked him warily, gazing at the wire in Nigel’s hand.

Nigel turned toward the screen, regarding the crowd with an exultant glow in his eyes. “I’ve got a starship at my control, Raines. And you have to say one thing about the Spire: it’s a pretty easy target.”

Tom stared at his back. He couldn’t be serious. He wasn’t seriously going to use Elliot’s ship to attack the Pentagonal Spire.

“The Pentagon won’t even see the attack coming. They’ll think I’m”—Nigel leered back at Tom—“well, they’ll think you are doing some bizarre maneuver. I guess that’s what happens when you put a plebe in charge. And a plebe deranged enough to bite the head off a scorpion, too.” He shook his head. “I can hear it now. ‘What was that Marsh thinking?’ He’ll get a court martial for this. For sure.”

“There aren’t any missiles on that ship. Remember?”

“I’m not using missiles. I’m ramming it. Pow. Big explosion, right at the base. If it doesn’t wipe out everyone in the building, it’ll at least take out a good chunk of them.”

Tom grew cold. That plan could work. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Actually, Tom, I will.” Nigel knelt down carefully out of arm’s reach, smiling tauntingly into his face. “Remember how Blackburn planted that memory of the scorpion in your head? I thought it might be useful, so I figured out how to implant memories, too. As soon as the Spire’s in flames, I’m planting a new memory in both our heads. You’ll get my memory of destroying the Spire for the census device, and I’ll get your memory of being unable to stop it, however hard I tried. The public will blame Elliot, the military will blame you, and I’ll be the only hero here. As one of the only surviving Combatants, I’ll have to be CamCo. I’ll even have a clean conscience about it. Isn’t that the greatest?”

Tom’s mind was blown. Nigel was some kind of diabolical mastermind, and he’d been turned down for CamCo?

“Yeah, that’s right, Raines,” he sneered. “I am much, much smarter than you.”

“Nigel, come on, wait!”

With a last, taunting smirk, Nigel hooked himself in.

Tom watched him fade into the program, raging at his useless legs, the arms that refused to let him heave himself up. He pounded his fist on the floor, frustrated. He craned his head up as far as he could to see Nigel’s slack face, and the screen looming over the Combatants. Then his gaze riveted to Elliot. Tom saw the moment Elliot lost control of the fighting, because he gave what looked to be a relieved laugh, and a certain happiness washed over his features. He had no idea that this wasn’t his proxy come to his rescue but rather the doom of them all.

Tom saw Nigel’s ship spinning around in the upper atmosphere, whirling away from Medusa altogether. An ignorant observer might’ve thought it was some clever tactical ploy or even showmanship, the way he aimed it right into the Earth’s atmosphere, the fire blaring around the heat shields. Tom heard a few appreciative murmurs from the spectators as Nigel streaked down toward the land mass below.

Then Tom realized with sudden, dizzying shock that Nigel was through the upper atmosphere, that his ship was hurtling toward the ground at breakneck speed, setting coordinates for Virginia. The lights of Washington, DC, veered into sight as he dipped lower, and then beyond that to Arlington. The Spire rose over the land.

Nigel was really going to do it. No one knew that ship was an enemy. No one knew they had to stop it. Nigel was going to take out the Spire and destroy everything Tom had.

Tom did the only thing he could, unleashed the single weapon he had.

He gazed straight at Nigel, gritted his teeth, and thought out the phrase
Tiny spicy Vikram … TINY SPICY VIKRAM!

And then it happened. The adware virus file unloaded from his processor like a hydrogen bomb rolling its way out of a bomb bay. A sense of lightness snapped through Tom’s brain, the virus deleting itself from his processor as the stream of code danced across his vision, deserting him, slamming Nigel, triggering.

He sprang out of his seat like he’d been slapped by some giant, invisible hand.

“‘Your computer is infected,’” Nigel read, seeing something in his vision center. “‘Click here to download protection for your PC.’ … I’m not a PC! I don’t need a …” His voice changed again, something else scrolling before his wide blue eyes. “‘Free money. Click here for details.’” He fumblingly tore out his neural wire, but it didn’t stop the barrage of ads. “‘Learn the ultimate belly fat-busting secret.’ … What is this, Raines?”

“Sounds like it’s the ultimate belly fat-busting secret.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Nigel’s face grew cloudy again as he seemed to see something else, his voice growing deeper and thicker. “‘Become a mystery shopper.’ … ‘Get paid for your opinions.’ … ‘Find out who’s searching for you.’ … ‘Congratulations, you’ve won a free’ … ‘Swat the fly and win a hundred’ … ‘Make money from home.’ …”

His voice grew slower and slower, like the wheels of a train chugging to a stop, and his slim fingers threaded through his black hair and tugged on it, as though he hoped gripping his head would stop the ads Wyatt’s virus was unpacking in his brain. The screen overhead showed Nigel’s ship whirling out of control, hurtling toward the Spire.

“Whaaat isss thiiiiis …” Nigel stepped toward Tom as if wading through some thick swamp. Slowly, sluggishly, he keeled toward him, reached out to grab him. “Raaaines …”

He staggered right into arm’s reach. Tom punched him.

Nigel reeled back, his head crashing against the corner of his chair. He crumpled to the ground and stayed there.

Tom couldn’t drag himself over to Nigel with the immobility program stopping his arms from bearing his own weight. So he grabbed Nigel’s skinny leg, dragged him over, tore the neural wire out of his slack grip, and then shoved it into his own brain stem.

The program enveloped him. Tom’s brain was sucked straight into the navigation system of Nigel’s ship, a jarring shift of consciousness. His senses zinged with the machine’s sensors, the logical parameters of the vessel’s computer warring with Tom’s human brain. He forced himself farther, the machine humming around him, plunging deeper into the command system. He became enveloped by every connection, every stream of code, even as the view on the Rotunda’s screen jolted toward the target. He flashed between the ship and his organic body, where his heart was pounding with terror. For the briefest instant through his eyes, he saw the screen, with the uneasy stirring in the Rotunda and Elliot’s shocked expression as everyone gazed at the screen where Tom’s ship was on a collision course with the Pentagonal Spire.

And then Tom veered, pulling out of the death plunge, soaring back up through the silken clouds into the upper atmosphere again. The blue sky drained into stark darkness around him. Tingles of excitement climbed up his spine as the Earth curved beneath him and the stars resolved in vibrant life about his vessel.

Medusa’s ship had clamped upon the satellite they were competing to seize. Tom gazed at her vessel—a sharp, scythelike thing—through the thermal sensors of his own, and he was glad the virus, the easy cheat, was gone. This was how he wanted to face her. His kind-of girlfriend, his idol, his archenemy. Warrior to warrior.

This was going to be their first real battle.

T
OM FOUND INTERFACING
with a machine in space strangely similar to interfacing with the body of an animal in Applied Sims. The commands and controls registered themselves in his thoughts as soon as he hooked in. He knew how to crank his engine to full the same way he knew how to lift his leg and step forward. It came so readily. Another flexure of his thoughts, and he sent his vessel charging straight at the satellite, determined to deploy his own clamps and grab it. He’d either tear it from Medusa’s grip—unlikely—or destroy it. If she took off with the prize, it was over. If he destroyed it, at least they
both
lost.

She veered aside just in time to avoid a collision. When she made for Earth, though, he veered in to block her way and made another grab at the satellite.

She used net-send, targeting his ship with her message, since she couldn’t know what IP address she was dealing with.
Are you turning this into a zero-sum game now?

Tom messaged back,
What’s a zero-sum game?

Are you an idiot?

Sure I am. Deranged, too
.

A pause. Then,
You. I should’ve known
.

Should you have?

No one else would’ve risked destroying that satellite
. Medusa dipped a wing at him. Tom felt sure she was amused, even as she dodged his next attempt to barrel in and destroy the satellite.
No one but you. Oh, and me
.

And then with one sharp twist of her ship, she flung the satellite at him. He dodged just in time to avoid the sure defeat of losing both his ship and the prize. But Medusa was heading toward him, obviously having decided upon a new strategy: destroy his ship and
then
take off with the satellite. Tom frantically reoriented himself as Medusa’s vessel veered in behind him and then hung back against the black tapestry of stars like a calculating predator.