door and rested a hand on it, preparing to open it. “Or,” he added, “you can come with me right now and do the thing you were made for.”
He paused long enough to let the weight of the moment settle, and then without another word he opened the door and stepped out into the bright sun. He remained at the vehicle’s side just long enough to don his cap and straighten his immaculate uniform. Then the door closed behind him and Colonel Almeida walked towards the building with a sharp stride. No hesitation, no looking back.
Lincoln sat in the vehicle, strongly tempted to take the bait; to swallow the hook he knew was there and just see where it took him. But there wasn’t enough for him to go on. He’d dreamed about joining the unit for years. And now, on the cusp of realizing that dream, or at least finding out for certain whether he had what it took, this man he didn’t know was trying to entice him into throwing it all away, just to solve the mystery. There was no calculation to it. Lincoln didn’t have any data to calculate. It was all risk. All chance.
It was crazy, is what it was. Lincoln glanced out the tinted window at the shadow world beyond. It certainly looked like the normal world was still out there, doing its thing. Was any of this actually happening?
The car chirped twice, signaling its availability for a new address. A few words, and Lincoln would be on his way back to Housing, and the very apologetic second lieutenant. A few words, and this would all fade into a weird memory, something in time he could probably convince himself was just a fever dream brought on by the trauma of his very difficult Wednesday. Just a few words.
And before he’d consciously made the decision, Lincoln found himself opening the door and stepping out of the car.
“Colonel Almeida, sir,” he called. Almeida didn’t miss a step. He swiveled right around and marched back over to Lincoln at the exact same pace.
“Captain?” he said when he reached Lincoln.
All risk. All chance.
“Sir,” Lincoln said. “Where do I sign?”
Almeida flashed his broken smile.
“We don’t like to leave a lot of records lying around,” Almeida answered. He extended his prosthetic hand. Lincoln clasped the cool metal in his own, firm grip, shook it. When he drew back his hand, there was a weighty coin in his palm. A challenge coin. A long-standing military tradition. On it was a simple design; an angular shield with a sword laid on top. Or, on second look, maybe the shield was a coffin. Along the top in scrollwork it read “519th Applied Intelligence Group”, with the nickname of the unit underneath. The bottom edge of the coin read simply “No Grave Too Deep”, which sounded just vaguely ominous enough to seem like a bunch of weenies trying to sound like tough guys.
“Captain Suh,” Almeida said. “Welcome to the Outriders.”
FOUR
P IPER SWEPT two slender fingers across the panel to her left, switched the view from Sol-side to the Deep. Another deft motion and the view expanded to fill the entire station wall in front of her. It was just a constructed image of course, not a real actual window into outer space. When she’d first seen pictures of people working a hop, she’d thought they had real honest-to-goodness windows, big old panes of glass separating the watchers from the vacuum. Then she’d learned about what a grain of sand moving at velocity could do to the outer hull of a ship and she came to appreciate why no one had ever once made a hop with a real honest-to-goodness window. It was still a little disappointing.
Most of the watchers preferred to look back from the station, back towards the sun. Back towards home. Not Piper. The stars had always called to her, always been her destiny. She’d spent her formative years staring up at them from her family’s little patch of dirt in the eastern lowlands of Peru; when she turned seventeen, she signed up to see how close to them she could get. It’d been almost
He paused long enough to let the weight of the moment settle, and then without another word he opened the door and stepped out into the bright sun. He remained at the vehicle’s side just long enough to don his cap and straighten his immaculate uniform. Then the door closed behind him and Colonel Almeida walked towards the building with a sharp stride. No hesitation, no looking back.
Lincoln sat in the vehicle, strongly tempted to take the bait; to swallow the hook he knew was there and just see where it took him. But there wasn’t enough for him to go on. He’d dreamed about joining the unit for years. And now, on the cusp of realizing that dream, or at least finding out for certain whether he had what it took, this man he didn’t know was trying to entice him into throwing it all away, just to solve the mystery. There was no calculation to it. Lincoln didn’t have any data to calculate. It was all risk. All chance.
It was crazy, is what it was. Lincoln glanced out the tinted window at the shadow world beyond. It certainly looked like the normal world was still out there, doing its thing. Was any of this actually happening?
The car chirped twice, signaling its availability for a new address. A few words, and Lincoln would be on his way back to Housing, and the very apologetic second lieutenant. A few words, and this would all fade into a weird memory, something in time he could probably convince himself was just a fever dream brought on by the trauma of his very difficult Wednesday. Just a few words.
And before he’d consciously made the decision, Lincoln found himself opening the door and stepping out of the car.
“Colonel Almeida, sir,” he called. Almeida didn’t miss a step. He swiveled right around and marched back over to Lincoln at the exact same pace.
“Captain?” he said when he reached Lincoln.
All risk. All chance.
“Sir,” Lincoln said. “Where do I sign?”
Almeida flashed his broken smile.
“We don’t like to leave a lot of records lying around,” Almeida answered. He extended his prosthetic hand. Lincoln clasped the cool metal in his own, firm grip, shook it. When he drew back his hand, there was a weighty coin in his palm. A challenge coin. A long-standing military tradition. On it was a simple design; an angular shield with a sword laid on top. Or, on second look, maybe the shield was a coffin. Along the top in scrollwork it read “519th Applied Intelligence Group”, with the nickname of the unit underneath. The bottom edge of the coin read simply “No Grave Too Deep”, which sounded just vaguely ominous enough to seem like a bunch of weenies trying to sound like tough guys.
“Captain Suh,” Almeida said. “Welcome to the Outriders.”
FOUR
P IPER SWEPT two slender fingers across the panel to her left, switched the view from Sol-side to the Deep. Another deft motion and the view expanded to fill the entire station wall in front of her. It was just a constructed image of course, not a real actual window into outer space. When she’d first seen pictures of people working a hop, she’d thought they had real honest-to-goodness windows, big old panes of glass separating the watchers from the vacuum. Then she’d learned about what a grain of sand moving at velocity could do to the outer hull of a ship and she came to appreciate why no one had ever once made a hop with a real honest-to-goodness window. It was still a little disappointing.
Most of the watchers preferred to look back from the station, back towards the sun. Back towards home. Not Piper. The stars had always called to her, always been her destiny. She’d spent her formative years staring up at them from her family’s little patch of dirt in the eastern lowlands of Peru; when she turned seventeen, she signed up to see how close to them she could get. It’d been almost
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