CIDOME EAST 22

BREACH TIME: 02:41, 302-12-4

DAMAGE: 80% of residential habitat beyond salvage. Missile fallout renders remaining levels temporarily uninhabitable.

CASUALTIES: [extracted from page 2] … Kirkland, Arthur; Kirtley, Desaan; Kitson, John…

()()()

Alfred had forgotten a very important face, and he couldn't even remember whose it was.

It was, he thought, the worm's fault. He could feel it in his head, moving around very slowly, and eating as it moved. Mainly what it ate was memories. It couldn't actually be eating his brain, because Alfred didn't think he was dying, although sometimes the pain was so bright and clear that he wasn't sure. But it mouthed at everything he thought until the thoughts shriveled, and it left a trail behind it of thoughts that weren't his.

Alfred was sure he hadn't signed up for this, whatever this was. He couldn't tell if the worm was real or not. He was having a very hard time telling what was real anyway. The scratchy, medical-feeling sheets under him were real, he thought, and so was the harsh, ragged breathing. That was him.

He was certain the attack was real, as well. He still remembered the blaring of the warning systems and the pressure breach, the hissing of the lights systems and the water leaking into their sealed underground environment. He'd been on the main concourse, doing something important, something he couldn't quite remember. And then the first Elite spider-drone came through the breach.

He desperately tried to remember. He could get flashes of grey tunnels, interface controls, even the tunnel entrance to his old school, but faces eluded him. Even the important one, that he'd forgotten, and that he'd said he'd never forget. He must have had family, he must have had friends –

The worm didn't like that, and fat and bloated as it was, it still managed to move with surprising speed to latch onto the dying memory. Alfred pushed it away and another spark of pain went through his body. He turned his head. Fighting it might hurt, but no hero would let it win.

He didn't know how much time passed as he struggled in and out of consciousness with an IV in the crook of his arm. It hurt to open his eyes to the bright white light of the room, and the disinfected air dried out his throat.

He folded everything he could salvage – no full memories, because he had lost all those, but instead all the half-formed struggles and grief at forgetting – into a bright white space somewhere within the pain and shoved it down, away from himself, away from the worm. And when he had done that, he stopped fighting, and lay back exhausted, and let it in.

Some time later, it let him sleep.

()()()

Alfred woke up with a strange dull jumpsuit on and an entire set of new knowledge in his brain.

He was in – downshift quarters, was the term that immediately pushed itself forward, looking around the sparse room with eight beds, although he'd had a vague notion he'd called it something else before. He sat up in bed, rubbing his head. He felt weirdly well, considering he'd been on an IV last time he was conscious. There was an odd, nagging need, though, in the pit of his gut. Alfred prodded his stomach, disconcerted. He knew what hunger felt like, and that wasn't it. Something's wrong.

"Hey, you're awake!" The door slid aside and a boy with green eyes and a shock of brown hair came in. He was wearing an identical blue jumpsuit to Alfred's – pilot overalls, Alfred thought, the information feeding itself automatically from his brain. "Thought you'd never make it up."

Alfred managed to summon up a grin. Something's wrong. "I wake up for food," he said. "And I'm really hoping this isn't gonna be hospital trays, 'cause I need something fried."

The boy laughed, although there was a puzzled undercurrent to it. "You'll get food in mess," he said. He grinned. "Although you look like you could lose a few pounds. Heroes don't get to be flabby."

Heroes. Was that why he had signed up for this? The answer was tantalizingly out of his reach. "I'm Jones, by the way," Alfred said. His name seemed to be one of the things that hadn't faded at all. "Alfred Jones."

"Tell your grandmother. Your name's come up in briefings every morning." The boy held out his hand. "I'm Antonio. I run Tracer. Welcome to the Aurea pilots."

Alfred grasped his hand and tried to find the words to ask how he got here, or about the person who was vitally important and who he had stupidly forgotten, but another thought – a need – was pushing itself so insistently in his head that his other thoughts were being drowned out. Aureus, he thought, and the thought was so strong it pushed him up from his bed and had him groping for his shoes.

"Gets you, doesn't it," Antonio said, still grinning. "C'mon, I'll show you the way."

"That'd be neat," Alfred said, striving for casualness. Something's wrong. The weird feeling had morphed into a screaming compulsion that sat tense at the back of his neck. It was stronger than the worst cravings he'd ever had. It was even stronger than his need to find whoever he was looking for.

They didn't seem to need any ID for moving around this habitat – the door hissed open as they neared, and led out into a passage. The end of it terminated in a series of airlocks with no apparent way to open them from this side. Alfred hesitated, torn in two between checking them – what if whoever he had forgotten was behind them? – and following the new compulsion in his head.

"What are you waiting for?" Antonio said cheerfully, and Alfred turned away from the airlocks. He could check them later. The compulsion led the other way, around the gently curving metal corridor. It felt like a small habitat, the corridor only wide enough for two people to pass. They didn't meet another soul as they picked up speed. Other doors hissed open as they went by, but Alfred was too caught up with the compulsion even to look.

A door slid aside for them, and Alfred strode through it ahead of Antonio and stopped for an instant to get his bearings. He was in a domed white room, big enough to be an insane waste of habitat space. There were steps leading up to a walkway that hugged the dome, with eight hatches leading off it at intervals. Alfred found he had a word in his head for it already. "The – rotum?" he said uncertainly, as they looked up at the high curves of the ceiling.

"That's right," a voice barked from behind them.

Alfred turned, and had to look up. He wasn't used to that. The newcomer was a tall, broad-shouldered boy, maybe a couple of years older than them, dressed in blue with the little gold wing crest like theirs. His blonde hair was cropped close to his head. "You must be the new pilot," he said, his voice deep and no-nonsense. "We got briefed about you." He looked Alfred up and down, his expression not impressed.

Alfred, used to the disapproving gaze of staff sergeants – how did I get used to sergeants? Why can't I remember? – straightened his back automatically. "Jones," he said, then hesitated as he tripped over the blank space where he should have said his rank. He'd forgotten that too. There was a bright, white space inside his head which suggested student, but that was all mixed up with medic trainee and transit passenger and intern.

"Jones, sir," the tall boy snapped.

The gold wings on their shoulders were exactly the same. It took Alfred only a split second to decide he wasn't deferring to anyone the same age and rank as him. He gave the boy look of wide-eyed surprise. "I'm senior already?"

The tall boy turned apoplectically red. Alfred thought he might actually be choking. He raised his voice. "I am the ranking pilot here!"

"Ludwig, I'm sure he's just-" Antonio interjected, but Alfred wasn't in the mood for backing down.

"What makes you the ranking pilot?" Alfred said, crossing his arms.

The boy called Ludwig strode across the short distance between them and brought his face close to Alfred's. "Because I can take a bunch of ragtag insubordinates like you and turn this into something approaching a disciplined force." Alfred tried to look as contemptuous as Ludwig was, but he didn't have the same icy glare. Ludwig snorted. "Now get down and give me ten pushups."

"Ludwig," Antonio said, and this time he shoved Alfred aside. "Give him a break, he's just woken up from conditioning. He's got new-pilot jitters." He waved his hands in front of him, his whole body language placatory. "He'll be better once he's logged some Aurea time."

"Hmph," Ludwig said, unimpressed. He turned away. "That's the only free infraction you get, Jones. Get him in Eagle."

Alfred glanced around as he followed Antonio further into the room. Eagle meant nothing to him, although the word Aurea had sent a shiver through his whole mind – every part of it, that was, except a peculiar bright white space which seemed oddly detached.

On the other side of the rotum there was an air-interface control stretching like a prickly black bush against one curved wall. A small, gangly-looking boy with a flyaway strand of hair sat before it, absorbed in the complicated dance of his hands as he changed the flickering screens in front of him. There was another boy looking over his shoulder at the screen, his sandy head bent near the first boy's dark one.

"Romano!" Ludwig said. "Eagle and Leviathan. Call up."

"That's not on schedule," the dark-haired boy grumbled. The other, sandy-haired one glanced over his shoulder, and Alfred stopped dead.

"When you get an order from your superior, you don't stop to comment on it," Ludwig growled. Romano said something annoyed and half-whining in return, but Alfred wasn't listening. Everything had closed down around him. He was in a tunnel where everything around him rushed past, blurred, until there was only him and the other boy in the universe.

"A-" he started, and nearly choked.

The boy was giving him a curious look, as if Alfred was a stranger who had come up to him in the street.

This is what's wrong. Alfred tried again, nearly swallowed his own tongue, and tried again. His new thoughts didn't want him to say it.

To hell with them. He could forget everything else, but he was not going to forget this.

"Arthur!" he said. As if the word had set his body free, he took three strides across the room and grabbed Arthur's arm.

Arthur jerked back, pulling his arm away. "Excuse me," he said coldly. "I don't believe we've been introduced."

It felt like a needle stabbing his chest. I deserve this, Alfred thought, dropping his arm in dismay, although he couldn't for the life of him remember why.

"You don't know him," Antonio said, sounding like he was trying to be helpful. The needle stabbed again. "You only just got here."

"I know him," Alfred said.

"I've never seen you before in my life," Arthur said flatly. Stab, stab, stab.

Romano leaned around Ludwig to look at them. "Great! Three months' wait for a new pilot and we've got a mad one."

"I'm not—"

"Silence!" Ludwig said. He glowered at Alfred and Arthur indiscriminately. "Jones, you will stop this nonsense at once. Kirkland, you could do with more Aurea time to keep you off the interface. Call up Lancaster."

Romano turned back to his screen and entered a series of commands with tiny movements of his hands. Arthur's saluted, although his eyes flickered to Ludwig in what Alfred recognized as hidden contempt. Alfred did know him. He knew every twist of his face and nuance of his expression. He knew the shape of Arthur's emotions better than his own.

"Done," Romano said sourly. "Now are you bastards going to leave me in peace to get on with these battle plans, or do you want to go in without them? Because I'm fine with you all ending up in a smear on the ground."

"He doesn't mean it," Antonio said cheerfully. He had somehow got between Ludwig and Romano. "Stop snapping in front of the new pilot," he said, giving Romano's shoulder a pat. "You're making a bad impression."

"I don't give a shit," Romano said, fiddling with the controls. Above them, three hatches were starting to open. "You'd all do me a favor by getting blown up."

"Then you wouldn't have anyone to complain at," Antonio said. "You're just cranky because you're hungry. Here, I saved you this." He reached in his pocket and dropped a wrapped plastic block – ration cube, said the knowledge Alfred' head – on the wrist-rest. "You only had one cube at lunch before you raced off to fiddle with your battle sims."

"Not hungry," Romano said, his eyes glued to the screen. Ludwig turned on his heel, beckoning Alfred and Arthur.

"Eat, or you'll fail workout," Antonio said, ruffling Romano's hair as they left.

"Get off!"

The compulsion was coming in alarming waves, ebbing every time Alfred glanced at Arthur, but coming back with a vengeance when he looked at the hatches. He felt a sense of inevitability as he climbed the metal stairs to the walkway, like this was what he had been born for. But Arthur didn't fit with that vision, and Alfred felt almost seasick as he swung between the two.

Alfred stopped by the nearest open hatch, the compulsion drawing him to a halt. He leaned in, hardly even aware of Ludwig's stream of instructions. Eagle, Ludwig had said. This was it. This was the Aureus.

It was a tiny enclosed space, with a control seat and grooves to rest his arms and legs and head. There was such a tangle of wires and tubing that he couldn't see what anything did, but the moment he pushed himself in, soft cool pads closed around his legs and torso. And that was right, but not enough – he should be connected to something. He thumped his hand into the metal side and felt like he could have cried.

"It's manual," Ludwig said, his bulk blocking out the rotum light at the hatch. He reached down and picked up a metal pad connected to a tube. "Do your legs first – these are microneedle pads, so this is going to sting. You have to make sure you connect up slow and straight." He eased the metal square down onto the soft pad covering Alfred' right calf, and Alfred felt a sudden ache, followed by a cool tingling. That was it. He did the one on his chest himself, Ludwig directing him how to position it. The final one plugged into the back of his neck. A few seconds after it was in, the tingling feeling flooded his body.

When he opened his eyes, he was something else.

He flooded into the bulk of metal around him. Its sensors were connected up with his own body, the pump of its fuel drive like his pulse. The tubes were writhing around him now, settling in much closer so their flow was more efficient, now he didn't need space in the cabin. Eagle lay quiescent in what he could now feel was a docking bay. Alfred reached out with beams that felt like his own fingers and triggered the release mechanisms, the knowledge as easy as breathing, and launched.

The air rushed past him in a dizzying blast, and he was flying. He soared through the foggy sky. The fog only thinned out below, where Alfred could see – or feel, with Eagle's external sensors – ravaged ground bristling with defenses along a wall stretching out from horizon to horizon. The defenses were thickest around the thin metal circle of the launch tunnel, ten kilometers of sensors and heavy artillery.

There were gusts of wind battering him from the north, but Eagle's slim form and extendable fan-wings had been built to slip through and ride them. He could feel that he could get through the clouds, higher than anything made of metal should be able to.

Two other Aurea shot out of the tunnel below him. Alfred felt them rather than saw them, the pair outlined in his augmented senses like glowing sparks against the night sky. One was big, climbing through the sky slowly and massively, the air folding around it. Leviathan. The other – Arthur's Lancaster – was mid-sized and compact, heavier than its size suggested, but Alfred could feel the short-range missiles nested around it as easily as he could feel Eagle's light long-range ones. A close quarters fighter.

As they emerged into the sky, images of Arthur and Ludwig flickered up in front of Alfred. They were projections in the cabin, so Alfred had to spare some of his Aurea-awareness to run his body and weave his annoyingly limited visual input in with his much wider-ranging senses from Eagle.

"Keep close," Arthur said, his voice as clear as if he'd been sitting next to Alfred.

Alfred grinned at his image on the screen, the tiny scowl of concentration between Arthur's eyes that was so adorable. "Not on your life," he said. "Let's let this baby fly." He engaged the boosters and shot upwards.

"Get back down here!" Ludwig shouted, pulling Leviathan up.

"Communications problem!" Alfred said. "Static on the line! What's that you're saying?" He cheerfully ignored Ludwig's reddening face and rose and rose, hoping for the stunning sight he was sure waited for him above the clouds. Leviathan was easy to outpace, and Alfred left him struggling through the lower atmosphere.

To Alfred's intense disappointment, the fog stretched up with no break. There seemed to be no blue sky left – he couldn't remember where he had got the image of it, but he felt in his bones that sky should be blue. But even Eagle couldn't reach further than this. He dropped back down the last few miles slowly and despondently.

"You fool," Ludwig snapped, catching up with him and bringing Leviathan to bear on his tail, shepherding him towards the launch tunnel. "This is a war zone! Get back!"

"Fine," Alfred said grouchily.

"You say, yes, sir!"

"Yes, Sir Stick-Up-Your-Ass," Alfred muttered, and on the screen he heard an involuntary snort from Arthur. That gave him heart. Whatever else was happening, however unsettling this got, he could still make Arthur laugh. "Can we land and explore?" he said.

"No!" Ludwig said, and the fury had turned into something near alarm.

"Don't try!" Arthur said, almost at the same time. "Aurea explode on contact with the ground."

"That sounds like—" Alfred tried to say pretty shitty design, but the new knowledge in his brain wouldn't let him.

"We can't leave anything for the enemy to study," Arthur said, but he looked uneasy for the first time since they'd launched.

A soft click sounded, and a voice came through speakers Alfred hadn't known were in his cabin.

"Leviathan, return," Romano's voice said sharply. "Lancaster, Eagle, return. Urgent. They're coming."

"Down!" Ludwig barked. Arthur started dropping Lancaster towards the tunnel instantly. "How far are they?"

"Outer perimeter ping." That was Antonio's voice. "You'll get it on your systems in – there." A small piercing whine filled the cabin and Ludwig grimaced and shut it off. "Roderich and Gilbert are on duty. Albatross and Shrike will be out there in T minus two minutes."

"Get the new brat back," Romano added.

"Don't get your underpants bunched," Alfred said. "We're coming." He started the descent. As Leviathan slowly dropped behind him, Alfred felt a dark smudge on the horizon, miles and miles out.

"That's them," Ludwig said grimly. "See them?"

When you were in an Aureus, seeing seemed to be synonymous with feeling, but it would have been impossible to miss the black shapes creeping on the horizon. They felt slimy and cockroach-tough to Eagle's sensors, and Alfred felt a shiver through his physical body even encased in the protective metal.

"Cree," Ludwig said, disgusted. The word slammed open a door in Alfred' head and new knowledge came pouring out: insect, revolting, dangerous, hungry, alien, other. He knew their attack patterns, the gelatinous shine of their ships, and their relentless hunger to cross the line and consume whatever they found on the Elite side. But the Aurea were here to fight them. That was what Alfred was here for. That was what he existed for.

"We can take them!" Alfred said, slowing his descent until he was nearly at a halt. There only felt like two of them.

"I'm not taking you into combat until you've logged more hours," Ludwig said. "Get down."

"But –" Alfred said. Before he could finish, a sudden wall of noise came from his speakers, screeches and groans and insect-like chittering. It sent a violent shudder through him. It sounded like wings on carapaces, skittering legs, biting mouths. His skin was crawled so badly he wanted to scratch grooves in it to get rid of the imaginary bugs.

He saw Ludwig's image swear and flick a switch, and the chittering stopped. "Damn bugs," he said. "They like to scare us. We block their transmission, but every now and then they find a way around it."

They were coming a lot faster than Alfred had realized. He sped his descent again, but Leviathan was still moving slowly above him, trying to turn. With a nasty shock, he felt three more Cree ships enter his senses, screaming down from the upper atmosphere faster than should be possible. They were right on Leviathan's tail.

Hero, he thought, and a burst of adrenaline lit up his body and sent him diving upwards, bringing Eagle's long-range missiles to bear. One shot – two – three – a pair of the needle-like Cree ships fell out of the sky, and Leviathan swung round and obliterated the third with a barrage of firepower that could have taken out a small cidome.

Alfred had taken his attention off the screens for the brief moments the dogfight took. When he reached out again, looking for Arthur, a thrill of horror went through him. Arthur was right by the launch tunnel, and a Cree had crept up under the radar and was arrowing straight for Lancaster's unprotected tailwing.

"Arthur!" Alfred shouted, but it was too late, the Cree had already started to shoot. But, unbelievably, Arthur was already moving as well, whipping Lancaster around in an impossibly fast spiral. The missile nearly grazed Lancaster's wing. Arthur turned, his face locked in a tight scowl, and fired a single short-range destroyer. The Cree exploded in a white blast.

"Nice shot!" Alfred shouted, letting Eagle drop in a wash of enthusiastic relief. "Show the bastards!"

Arthur looked as cool as usual. Ludwig finally made it to tunnel level, his expression strained somewhere between anxiousness and towering anger. "Stay closer in formation, Kirkland," he said gruffly.

"Yes, sir," Arthur said, his expression cool and giving nothing away.

"That was great flying," Alfred said admiringly, as he circled down. "You must have eyes in the back of your head."

"I watch my own back," Arthur said. There was something colorless about his voice that touched a painful nerve ending inside Alfred's white memories.

"Arthur—" Alfred said, uncertain of what to say. He felt like he and Arthur were standing on cliff edges and the gulf between them was only getting wider.

"I learned a while ago that nobody would come and save me," Arthur said flatly. "Nobody ever does."

He cut his projection from the screen. Alfred stared at the blank space, his relief turning cold.