So. This again: storm of stimuli cascading down into your meat-mind, familiar and alien at once—but you are not new to this any longer, not even considering the six years you took off: calm, calm, breathe deep, that’s it. You shudder, twitch once, and then it is done.

  The ringing in your ears resolves into voices: “Ghost Eater and Amphitrite taking up the watch by Ma Wan,” Holly’s saying, “Sea Witch, positions?”

  “Wow,” says Gutierrez, “this again? Really?”

  You are arrayed in a crescent at the bottom of the sea, your sonar bouncing shallowly off the surfaces above and below you: probably a hundred feet or so of clearance, you guess, still groggy. Of course it is not the real sea, nor real clearance, nor real sonar—but close enough, as ever, for a gullible monkey like you. This must have been the arrangement the rest of your squad started in back when you were sent to be babysat by Carol, that first sortie out. And you are standing in what must have been Walz’s place.

  “Yes,” says Holly over the radio, “really. We bungled it the first time, and frankly the latest, so we’re doing it again. Sea Witch, do you copy?”

  “I copy.” Strange (to your animal intuition) that Yen should sound as distant in your helmet as any of them when she’s right next to you here, a handspan (ten or so meters) away. “Trailing point by twenty. Will read back at Buddha.” And, “Advise holding until our signal.”

  “Acknowledged,” says Holly. “Rotating now. Mazu, Fishhawk—lead the way.”

  The wireframe on your HUD lights up. “Moving,” says Lau, and there, yes, her position marker flares in time with the slow thunder of engines, which hit your sonar and acoustics a moment later. You follow suit. Next to you, so does Sea Witch in a flurry of displaced water and HUD purples.

  “You should let me switch with Lau,” says Gutierrez.

  “No,” says Holly.

  There’s Enika: “Also no.” (Doesn’t help that she was already in sim by the time you arrived, hardly offered you a hello before she got in the pod; no face to put to the voice today.) “Mazu is best positioned for point.”

  Gutierrez says, “Why?”

  Even you can’t deny that there’s a whine in her voice. “Because she’s our most agile unit, and we need speed if we want to head this off,” says Holly, at the same time that Debrah says, “Tracey, stop arguing, you’re bleeding time,” and in the ensuing split second of silence, you swear you could hear a molecule come down the umbilical into your helmet feed.

  Then Gutierrez says, “Fine, but if we fail again I’m going in,” and: “Is Buddha really our best strategy? Can’t we hold further out?”

  “You know what happens if we do, Trace,” says Debrah.

  You don’t. Nobody invited you to these little pow-wows in the cockpit that have evidently been happening this past month. You key the mic: “What about our last two fighters?” And, for clarity, “In the field. Where would they position?”

  “You and Barracuda? Same as before,” says Lau, “warming the dugout by Ma Wan.”

  Her tone’s quietly acerbic. You will yourself not to let your hackles rise. “So you wouldn’t have them anywhere else?”

  “What else are you good for?” says Lau. “You haven’t ridden in six years.”

  Too late: hackles risen. “Apparently good enough for riding with Sea Witch today,” you say, “so maybe ask her why she wants the loser who hasn’t ridden in six years.”

  “Sure. You wouldn’t be here if Yen hadn’t asked you along,” says Lau, “and if Walz would pull herself away from teaching for once.”

  “Enough.” In a subzero tone, “Nobody’s warming the dugout. Get the fuck out; targets aren’t going to wait for us.” Ah, shit, right, you’d almost forgotten you were still on the shared frequency.

  “Sure, Cap. Have fun out there for me, ladies,” says Gutierrez, “and let me know if you need a break.”

  “Moving out,” says Lau, as if she hasn’t heard Gutierrez. “Ping back at Discovery.”

  “Trailing Mazu,” says Venkatesh, “moving out in ten.” And that’s that.

  Before you can fall behind you spool up your engines—sensation of muscles bunching, cording in your shoulders, your calves, the small of your back, mirroring main thrusters—and then you are cleaving forward; the water parts nigh soundlessly before you, for you are not moving fast enough to have built up much of a bow wave, which the strategic rounding of my frontal surfaces helps (you’re welcome). On your wireframe two little red dots do the same ahead of you, and another beside you; Sea Witch, shimmering purple with low-frequency noise on your sonar, her thrusters flared, her wakes bright orange.

  The radio crackles. “Hey—” That’s Debrah. “You maybe want to try playing nice this time?”

  Nobody answers. You suspect that was meant for Lau, but after another moment you can’t bear to leave her hanging, so you take a risk and key the mic. “Sure,” you say, “regarding what?”

  “Not you, Emma,” says Debrah, not unkindly. “You just take it easy and keep our lancer shielded and you’ll be all right.”

  This is probably meant to be comforting. But then Lau says, “She doesn’t even know what the strategy is,” and you can’t help but bristle.

  “Enika,” says Debrah, “come on, quit sulking and help me out here.”

  “She won’t,” says Lau. “She doesn’t even want to be here any more than this dead weight of a cadet does. After that fight she had with Amphitrite—”

  “Shirley,” warns Debrah.

  “After the fight,” says Lau, “I think she wanted to be alone, as usual, probably down there with her weeds—but Amphitrite wanted to punish her, so she figured she’d punish Amphitrite back by dragging the cripple along. So she did, and—”

  “I’m not a cripple,” you say.

  “Then don’t pilot like one,” says Lau.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  You know better than to rise to this bait, surely. Of all your tete-a-tetes with Lau you have slowly, stubbornly, learned—if nothing else—that biting back serves nothing. Lau, unlike Gutierrez, isn't wont to counter you with childish pranks, and if that cut on Gutes' face is anything to go by, you don't want to see her really angry, coward that you are.

  You try again: “Why don’t you pull your other two fighters into play by Buddha and have Ghost Eater and Amphitrite move further out? What’s wrong with what Gutierrez said?”

  “Tokyo,” Lau says, very slowly, like you’re stupid, “we don’t have two more fighters. ‘Cuda’s not here.”

  Christ! You say, “So have sim supply us with ghosts. I meant in theory, obviously—”

  “In theory nothing,” says Lau, and the radio ripples and croaks in your ear for a moment, heterodyne, and then there’s Debrah: “Ladies, clear channel. We can iron out the plan later. Mazu, heads up, waypoint approaching, target should be on the way at three kilos out, south-southwest, inbound and closing five hundred meters per second—”

  “Acknowledged,” says Lau with all the quiet ferocity of someone trying to navigate an automated phone directory at a large company, and the water fans orange with the wake of her thrusters.

  “Tokyo,” says Dare, “lagging a bit.”

  Which causes you to realize with a shock that she’s right; beside you you can see the shoulderblade of Sea Witch breaching slowly into view, and you are meant to be directly alongside her, not behind. But of course, you’ve been moving this whole time, the little red dots that represent your squadmates’ center of masses drifting silently along the wireframe; you’ve been so busy squabbling you hardly paid notice, and now you’re out of position, because while I helpfully commanded the finer points of your engine adjustments and made sure we continued to maneuver along trajectory, you haven’t made the adjustments to maintain pace, which is why deep sync would help you, wouldn’t it, you basket case?

  Fuck! You’re still on the shared frequency, naturally, so everyone heard that. Your cheeks bloom hot. You fumble—cycle your attitude thrusters to bring yourself more in line with Sea Witch—come up with, “Venkatesh didn’t brief me. Sorry.” And, “Run me through strategy again.”

  “You should be keeping pace regardless of briefing,” says Debrah, still not unkindly. “Fair point on strategy. Sea Witch, you copy?”

  “Heading to Buddha,” says Lau, who is pointedly not Venkatesh, “pinging back to Central there on deep frequency. Read off trace behavior and confirm direction of target approach. Mazu spearheads with Fishhawk. Tokyo and Sea Witch stay in reserve in case we need it.”

  Debrah makes a noise. Lau says, “Fishhawk”—“Tokyo and Sea Witch counterparting us across the way, thirty meters east-southest,” says Debrah, “frontline combat positions, pincer formation, recommend Venus approach.”

  “Disagree,” says Lau, “we shouldn’t place Tokyo in frontline combat position right now.”

  “She’s been in frontline combat,” says Debrah mildly.

  “Once,” says Lau. “She’s green, Fishhawk. She shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “It’s a sim, Shirley, for Christ’s sake,” says Debrah, “how bad can it be?”

  Mazu does not slow: on the wireframe her wake flares peacock. You see now what an advantage it is being the smallest frame in the unit, slipping nigh sideways through the water like a bullet, quicksilver and nearly soundless (her sonar signature is a line, bright and drop-slender). Past her right shoulder Lantau is a green and sleeping giant.

  On your wireframe, then, she does not stop or glance back or change trajectories at all; but hearing her on the radio, feeling her scanners slip over you once, silver-bright and ear-splitting for a breath, it’s like she’s turned to look right at you. “Bad enough to knock out half the team, in my experience,” she says, and that’s all.

  (Ah. Rachel, the Rift disaster—)

  “Come on, that isn’t fair, Shirley,” says Debrah. “That was different. The problem wasn’t that any of you were green—”

  “You weren’t there,” says Lau, “so shut the fuck up, and don’t call me Shirley, Fishhawk.”

  “Fine,” says Fishhawk evenly, “then I’m raising a formal objection. Outline what strategy you propose as an alternative.”

  Mazu says, “Let Tokyo decide between whatever stances best suit her, and place Sea Witch ahead of her, in midfield, ready to counterpoint off me as needed.”

  “Negative,” you say, almost surprising yourself. And then, scrambling, because you’re not sure you really had anything ready to say other than challenging Lau: “Me and Sea Witch should actively trail frontline at thirty meters. Barriers up, destructive interference—” You need something to legitimize this with. “Like Arrowhead,” you say, “at Shenzhen, a false bottom.”

  This is clumsy, of course, and should be shot down right away. But Fishhawk merely says, “Any counters? Better lock in sooner than later.”

  “Yes,” says Lau instantly. “Tokyo doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Your cheeks burn. You soldier on anyway: “You and Tianhou’s Gaze pulled this same move to dispatch that target, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. False bottom, pincer offense—”

  “False bottom against what fallback?” says Lau. “Parallax how? We have two targets here.”

  “Maintain parallax during the chokehold, early on,” you say, “transition to single-body assault after the second target becomes active,” but it’s clear you’re falling apart; she’s torn your fumbling suggestion wide open, and all you wanted to do was help.

  She’s already turning away. You feel her through sonar, the cascading ripple of Mazu arcing away and into the channel, what little attention you had gone now. So it is that desperation grips you—you key the mic, against better judgment—you say, “What happens if we hold further out than Buddha?”

  This is the wrong move.

  “We can,” says Dare. “It’s just not as defensible.”

  “No,” says Lau. “No, that isn’t true. We can’t.”

  “Ghost Eater demonstrated that we can,” says Dare, and Lau says: “Ghost Eater failed, and got thrown bodily into the abyss, and had to eject,” and you have to wonder that she hasn’t done just that to Gutierrez for real, outside of sim, for all the fire you hear in her voice as she says this.

  You say, “The fuck happened?”

  “I’ll tell you what the fuck happened,” says Lau. “We held past the mines. We didn’t have any fallback when the targets approached. It’s open ocean. And fucking Gutierrez can’t read unbounded wake trails to save her goddamn life.”

  “She was ambushed,” protests Dare. “We didn’t have precedent—”

  “Bullshit we didn’t have precedent,” says Lau. “Christchurch, Perth, Busan. It’s Gutierrez’s fault, but it’d be ours too if we held there again.”

  Busan, you remember dimly, the hydra Ghost Eater took down. Maybe you did catch snippets of that on the TV back then, but not enough to know what happened strategically. You want to know. "Let's say we don't have Gutierrez," you say, "and got a good read on the wake trails."

  “We only stop at Buddha at all because Barracuda called it,” she says. “But fine, sure, let’s entertain the idea for a moment that we hold further out. Let’s say we don’t get ambushed.

  “So we wait for them out there, somewhere,” you see on the wireframe the vast expanse of darkness beyond the minefield that marks the edge of safe passage, “and the targets whiff our scent on the currents. Where do you think they’ll go?”

  Rhetorical, of course. “I don’t know,” you say stupidly, “where do their tracks predict them?”

  “Nowhere,” says Lau. “Because you can’t predict your target if you just wait for them to come to you. They won’t. They’ll run.”

  That isn't the bottom line academy teaching sold you, but then again, when did you ever do any real hunting? Alcatraz was meant to drum up sentiment as much as all the civilian safety posters ever were, truth be told. You were just too young to realize. Still are. You say, "That doesn't make any sense. They have to feed. They're going to come in—"

  “They won’t,” Lau repeats. “Maybe ten years ago, Kanagawa, but things have changed since you dropped out of school. Your monsters got smarter. Megs don't fuck around anymore."

  This renders you speechless for a solid moment: the idea that things have changed—oh, you know they have, but this much? Serves you right for fleeing after the Rift disaster, doesn't it?

  Gamely you soldier on: “So what, we hold out past Buddha and they flee—isn’t that what we want? To get rid of the targets?"

  The minefield rears up behind her, all red eyes and dark tails. Mazu's teardrop helmet is silhouetted against them in flashes of sonic gold.

  “Sure,” says Lau. “We get rid of them. But we're not fucking scarecrows—we're Titans. When they go, they die.”