Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction (14 page)

Aiden’s dragus.

Aiden!
She gasped and nearly fainted from the pain. Was Aiden still inside his droid?

Surely he ejected. Aiden wasn’t that stupid. Still, Bren had an uneasy feeling. There was a reason the Battle Committee ordered the dragus models destroyed. She fought to think over her throbbing head. Something about a flaw in the design. The pulse cannon shorted out certain circuitry if it was used too frequently. Like the taming chip…

Shit
.

Bren had no love for Aiden, as a pilot or a person. But her parents had been taken by feral droids, and no one, not even the Victor family, deserved that pain. She fumbled for the communication switch but couldn’t reach it with her good arm. She tried Fang’s optic scanners next, but the display monitor was as cracked as Fang’s windshield. No sensors. No radio. Not even a clear view outside.

I’m blind.

Bren had the sudden urge to vomit. She had lived with poor eyesight her entire life and never felt as crippled as she did now. She wouldn’t stand for it. Fuck her crappy eyes. Piloting was a sense all on its own. And Bren was a damn good pilot.

She reached under the console to the emergency drawer that was, of course, her brother’s idea. Inside, among other things, was a self-contained breather.

Bren pulled it on, feeling her chest spasm painfully from the change in pressure. Then in a compartment above her head, she pulled the lever to manually eject Fang’s windshield. It popped off with a pressurized
woosh
and shattered on the rock outside. The air was hot and caustic. Bren would have twenty minutes—not even, since she had open wounds—before the poisons would start doing damage. Then she would have no choice but to activate her ejection pod. She wouldn’t be much help to Aiden then, but the pod would keep her alive until a rescue team came.

The dragus wasn’t hard to spot. Not even for her. It stood among a scrapyard of feral canid parts. Its core, like those of the five remaining ferals, blazed a violent red. Without Fang’s sensors, Bren couldn’t see Aiden inside the cockpit. But she could hear him, faintly, when she came within communication range. He was crying.

She spoke slowly into her breather, trying to concentrate past the pain in her chest, her throbbing arm, and the slow burn of poisons creeping into her blood.

“I promised you a worthy opponent, Fang. And there it is.”

Aiden’s dragus flattened another feral, ripping out its innards in a shower of metal bits. Then its mouth opened, exposing its cannon and the charging pulse within. It made a low
wurwurwur
noise that grew louder every second it gathered energy.

“We’ll only have one chance. Directly after it fires the next pulse.”

The remaining four ferals edged closer, compelled by their program to fight the powerful rival despite the inevitable bad outcome.

“Now I can’t use the scope with this mask on. And your sensors are screwed up. So, we’ll have to breach the core another way. Otherwise…”

Otherwise her droid would end up like those ferals, with a little bit of her thrown in.

“How ’bout it, partner? Ready to show everyone why I named you Fang?”

Fang roared. Despite its injured limb, Bren’s droid started into a loping run. Bren watched the dragus splay its legs, straighten its neck and dig its talons deep into the rock. The whirring of its cannon reached a new terrible pitch. Then the air erupted with a great
BOOM,
followed by a more sonic
VIRRR
!

Two unfortunate ferals were directly in the path of the discharge; they turned into a fine, gray powder. The other two were catapulted hundreds of yards into the air in opposite directions. They hit the ground, shattering limbs and shedding other chunks as they tumbled.

Its program satisfied, the dragus vented a great hiss of steam, unlocked from its battle stance and began to turn towards Bren and Fang. But it wasn’t fast enough.

“Now!” Bren commanded. Fang leapt. Bren pushed the claw-release just as it slammed into the dragus’ chest. Then she hit the button beside it.

Fang opened its mouth wide, allowing two sickle-shaped saber teeth to release like switchblades. Momentum did the rest. With a snarl, Fang drove its weapons through layers of tough dragus armor.

“Deeper, Fang!” Bren urged. She could barely hear herself over the sound of grating metal and the dragus’s roar. Heat poured out of the punctures, making Bren’s many small injuries sting.

Too much heat. Venting too fast.
The mechanic in her knew. But she couldn’t pull Fang back now. Not even if she wanted to. She found herself looking up past the dragus’s overheated core into the pilot cockpit. Aiden had his hands and face pressed against the reinforced alloy. And though Bren couldn’t see the terror in his eyes, she hoped he saw hers. And all that her fear implied.

The final layer of the dragus’s armor gave, letting Fang’s weapons sink deep into the core with a pressurized
crack.
For a moment, the huge droid’s power dulled—enough to give Aiden the control to eject his escape pod and send him rocketing away from the coming explosion. The dragus gave a furious cry in response. Its body sparked, twitched, then fell. Fang fell, too, its claws and fangs buried too deep to allow escape. The impact rattled through Bren’s bones, making her see spots.

“Great job, Fang. You won. I knew you could,” she praised between pained breaths. “Now we need to get the hell out of here before… before…” She tugged on Fang’s controls, but the droid refused to budge. The effort left Bren dizzy. She fought to try again. But this time, even her good arm wouldn’t move. She stared ahead, watching but not seeing anymore as the dragus’s core flickered, then began to glow brighter than any core should.

One of Fang’s controls clicked without her order. And Bren heard her droid gave a soft
vrum
. So soft Bren could barely hear. The sound of goodbye.

Terrible heat poured from the puncture, melting Fang’s face into the dragus’s armor. But Bren didn’t feel it. Reinforced alloy closed around her, along with a rush of cool clean air. The sensation stirred her enough to recognize the rumble of her escape pod’s rockets speeding her away from a great plume of fire and smoke.

Awareness came slowly. Soft beeps. Antiseptic smells. A hospital.

My eyes!

Bren tried to sit, sending a spasm of pain through her chest and shoulder.

“Easy,” her brother said, resting his hand on her forehead.

Bren squinted through the dim light. Nothing seemed any different. “No surgery…” she finally dared to ask.

“No surgery,” he assured. “After what you did for Aiden, I couldn’t bring myself to…”

“Thanks.”

A nurse arrived at the door. “Excuse me, Brenna? A representative from the Droid Battle Committee is here to speak with you. “

“Send him in.” said Brice. Then he patted her hand. “It’s okay. We’ll get through this.”

The Committee rep arrived. He was stiff and official-looking and reeked of expensive cologne. He proceeded to inform Bren that, “the Droid Battle Committee simply cannot tolerate this blatant disregard of protocol from one of their—” he stopped himself before he could say ‘pilots.’ In any case the rules were there for a reason and she was “lucky she didn’t kill someone.”

Bren listened in silence—because Brice gripped her hand every time she started to protest.

“We will be contacting the authorities to take you into custody.”

Brice cleared his throat. “Before you do that. There is something I think you should see.” Brice reached over and hit the shade-open button on the window, then stood aside. The metal slats opened and lifted, filling the little room with light. Bren winced. Below, a mass of people and droids crowded near the hospital entrance.

“What the—?” The rep strode over. “What are all these pilots doing here?”

“Rioting,” said Brice, in a tone that was almost… excited. He gripped Bren’s uninjured shoulder. “They know about your eyes, Bren, and they aren’t too happy the Committee wants to arrest the pilot who risked herself to save a fellow competitor’s life.”

“My own riot…” Bren resisted the urge to grin. “But how did they find out?”

Brice squeezed her shoulder and suddenly Bren knew. She looked up into the blurring image of her brother’s face.

“What made you change your mind?”

“You,” he said. He hugged her. “You were amazing out there Bren. You scared the living shit out of me… but you were amazing.” Tears welled in his eyes. “Things will be different after today.”

Bren looked to the rep, who was still staring out the window.

“I think maybe you’re right.”

Better to Have Loved

Kate O’Connor

The funeral began at ten o’clock on Wednesday morning. It was supposed to be a simple service: a short viewing and then a flower-bedecked car would take Deanna to the crematorium. Sophie had arrived half an hour early to make sure everything was ready. It had taken five minutes to adjust the flower arrangements and set out a few pictures. She had been sitting in a padded folding chair, alone, ever since.

The event director had hovered until her silence and the lack of other attendees had cut into his enthusiasm for a “Real Old-Fashioned Funeral!” Sophie tried not to blame him. People didn’t want to be bothered with funerals. Until Deanna’s death, Sophie would have wholeheartedly agreed that they were a complete waste of time. She still wasn’t sure why she had changed her mind.

At a quarter till eleven, the door opened. She didn’t look up, expecting the director to make another attempt at being friendly and consoling. The coffee in her recyclable plastic cup had long since stopped steaming. She swirled it with the little red stir stick anyway.

“Heya, Sophie.” The sound of Ben’s voice made her jump.

Sophie nodded a greeting. Ben’s long brown hair was tied up in a scruffy ponytail and he still had his work boots on. Sophie ground her teeth. Her brother-in-law wasn’t dressed for the event. Funerals were supposed to be about respect. A moment later she was ashamed of being angry. Deanna had never cared what her baby brother wore.

“So,” Ben sat on the edge of the seat with two chairs between them. His eyes were red and puffy. Sophie felt even worse for having noticed the boots first. “We got the invite, obviously. Mom and Dad aren’t coming. They took their tabs already. You shouldn’t have sent it. It could have made a real mess if I hadn’t seen it first.”

“Sorry.” Sophie shrugged uncomfortably. She hadn’t really been thinking when she messaged Deanna’s family. Like the funeral, it had just seemed like the thing to do at the time.

“No big deal.” Ben looked equally uncomfortable. “Look, Soph, I know this has been hard on everybody. Let’s get this funeral thing out of the way and then forget all about it. Your doctor gave you the prescription, right?”

Sophie nodded.

“Okay then. You know Dee wouldn’t have wanted any of us to suffer. I’m going to go home after this and take mine. Mom and Dad did two days ago. They’re normal now. Really happy.” Ben sniffed and blinked rapidly.

“Okay.” Sophie answered in a small voice. Ben was right. This had been a silly idea. She stirred the coffee again. Ben gave her a watery smile and took her hand. She squeezed it once and let go after an uneasy moment. They got along well enough, but they had never been close. Most of what she knew of Ben had come from Deanna’s stories.

The rest of the vigil passed in oppressive silence. When the time came, the director returned with his staff, shooting Sophie a reproachful look as they wheeled the coffin out. Evidently the event hadn’t met his standards. Sophie understood. Whatever a funeral was supposed to accomplish, she didn’t think this one had.

On the way home, Sophie drove by the pharmacy. She circled the block twice, fighting the panicked feeling that was burning off the numbness she had been living in since the call about Deanna. On the third time around, she turned the car into the lot, furious with herself for prolonging the inevitable.

Fewer than half of the spaces were filled, but she waited while an elderly man pulled out of the spot nearest the door anyway. As she walked through the sliding door, a woman gave her a curious look. Sophie ducked her head, pretending interest in an eyeliner display. She didn’t want anyone to see her face. Grief was an embarrassment. There was no point to it beyond selfishness.

There was a line at the pharmacy counter. She waited anxiously, shifting from foot to foot and trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. When it was her turn, she pushed her card under the scanner and tapped her PIN onto the screen. There was a momentary delay before a message flashed up: SEE ATTENDANT.

Sophie looked around uncomfortably. There was no one working the counter. She turned to go. It would be easier to just call her doctor and get the prescription sent directly to the house. Wishing she’d thought of that earlier, she turned towards the exit. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a woman poke her head out of the office behind the counter.

“Sophia Latner?” Her voice was bored and tired. Sophie turned back around, feeling like she had been caught doing something illicit. The woman stumped slowly around the end of the counter. “My name is Irene. Right this way, please.”

Sophie followed her behind a screen advertising ‘Influenza vaccines: Protect yourself! Inquire HERE!’. A wheeled cart, partially stocked with gauze and little fluid-filled bottles was pushed off to one side of the small space. The woman sat down in one of the two plastic chairs. Belatedly, Sophie sat as well, clutching her purse with both hands.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’s just standard procedure. We have to tell you all about how this one works. Legal reasons, you understand.” Irene patted her clenched hands consolingly, seeming not to notice Sophie flinch at the unexpected touch. “First off, the tablets work as limbic regulators. They inhibit emotions and memories associated with the person who passed away on a very selective basis. You’ll be able to move on with your life without having to spend all of your time moping and worrying.”